All in Good Time

by SCWLC

The first time Connor met Stephen wasn't the first time Stephen met Connor. Or something like that.

Title: All in Good Time
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: No ownership, no money.
Rating: R
Summary: The first time Connor met Stephen wasn't the first time Stephen met Connor. Or something like that.
AN: So, this is the highly derivative tale I warned you all of. I was complaining on the Daily Chat about the fact that I tend to have divergent, yet the same, plotlines floating about. This is the same-yet-different plotline from A Twist in a Relative Timeline. Mostly because I just couldn't decide which to do. Don't hate me because I'm indecisive. Here goes.

---

Connor had been overjoyed the first day in class when he spotted Stephen. The older man looked unchanged from the first time Connor had seen him when he was fifteen, but the fact that they'd both time travelled just meant that Stephen would have gone through the time portal far more recently than Connor had. Still, it was nice that their relative timelines had aligned, and that Stephen's prediction that they'd meet again at some point had come true.

He was in for a disappointment. "Stephen, hi," he started.

"Do I know you?" he asked. And not even with the squinty look of someone who recognises you but doesn't quite remember where from. This was the dismissive sneer of someone too cool to be seen with the likes of Connor Temple. For a moment, he was thrown, then he realised what it was. Stephen hadn't met him yet, while he'd already met Stephen. Just . . . not this Stephen. Must be a later edition.

The pause went on far too long and Connor realised the other man clearly thought he was an idiot. "Nothing, nevermind. I just . . . thought you were someone else."

Every class, Connor would go, meet Stephen's eyes a moment to see if he'd recognised him yet, see that blank and uncomprehending look, and bend back down over his notes. Eventually he had to stop, because some of the class thought he was crushing on the man, others thought he was a serial killer in waiting, and as amusing as it was, Stephen Hart was beginning to have a look a little like fear any time he spotted Connor Temple, which was not the impression he wanted to leave with people.

It was with blinding hope that he looked into the reports of the monster in the Forest of Dean, something that seemed a lot like something he'd once seen in person back a few million years before, so maybe this was it. Sure, he'd have to find a way to stay out of Stephen's way once he'd got him up there, but surely when it was over he'd get back the friend he'd had then. Connor didn't have so many friends he could afford to lose one due to temporal mechanics.

But what happened up there had nothing to do with what had happened before. Connor tried not to scream in frustration.

---

Connor Temple was possibly the strangest human being Stephen had ever met. Ever since that first meeting in the lecture hall, he'd maintained an odd watch on Stephen waiting for something, he had no idea what. Maybe for him to crack like an egg. Because Stephen had begun to feel a vague sense of fear every time he caught Connor looking at him. The obsession was unhealthy and weird and quite disturbing.

Then the anomalies happened and they had to work together. Stephen did everything he could to discourage the other man from getting anywhere near him. He'd be civil when they were working together and Connor was being competent, but this was just . . . too much.

And the hopeful puppydog looks. What was that about? He hadn't the foggiest, and the way that, the longer it went on, the more convinced he was that there was something fundamentally wrong with the kid. Worse was when he started to second-guess everything he did for fear he was somehow encouraging the behaviour. Still, time passed and Connor eased up, stopped trying to make them into mates or . . . whatever it was he'd had in mind.

Connor had been more or less rational and as normal as ever he got, until the day after they'd dragged Helen out from the anomaly in that woman's basement. Connor had been upset and strange after that, and then that evening he showed up at Stephen's flat, looking worn and agitated. "Stephen, you can't . . ." he started the moment the door opened. Then he shoved his way in, past Stephen.

"Make yourself at home," Stephen said dryly, wondering if this was how Abby had wound up with the idiot as her flatmate. Connor looked . . . sick, though. Strung out or on something. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, no, I don't . . . that's not important. Stephen, you have to . . . you don't think she . . . Cutter's wife, did you know her before, I mean, personally?"

Wondering where Connor was going with this, Stephen frowned. "She was my advisor when I was doing my post-graduate work."

"Right," Connor said. "What do you really . . . do you really think Lester and them can trust anything she says? I mean, she's run off for years, and the fact that she's been about, you saw her after you'd got bit by the arthropleura, thought Abby was her-"

"How did you know that?" Stephen snapped sharply. He hadn't told a soul that, how had Connor known?

Caught off guard by the question, Connor froze. "I just . . . you looked a lot like Cutter when you were talking about her, and you . . . what you said to Abby doesn't make any sense unless you're talking to someone you sort of care about and . . . and . . . it's not important," he nearly growled, turning on his heel and beginning to pace. He looked like nothing so much as a caged tiger, and Stephen barely heard what he was saying for wondering at the sudden grace in Connor's movements. "What's important is that I don't think we can trust her. She's not . . . she's been gone so long, how do you know she's not gone unbalanced?"

That was it. "I'm wondering if you've gone unbalanced, Connor," Stephen growled back. "Get out of my flat."

"Stephen-"

"Get out!"

He grabbed Connor by the arm, practically flinging him out the door, slamming it with satisfying force behind his unwanted guest. There was a moment of silence, then one single vibrating slam against the door.

The next day, Stephen noticed two weird things. Connor was back to normal, gormless as usual, acting as though he hadn't appeared the night before, but for one baleful, dark look after he'd got back from chasing Helen through the anomaly. The other was that his door, when he tried to shut it before leaving for work, had somehow shifted in its frame, no longer fitting quite right.

---

As time had passed Connor had to wonder when it was going to happen. It had to happen soon, because the Stephen he remembered was the one he saw every day, but he wasn't the one Connor had last seen, because that one hadn't treated him like a useless layabout.

So, it had to be soon, but it was getting galling trying to act normal, trying to think of some way to convince Stephen that Helen was the crazy, evil, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad - Christ, even his thoughts were reverting to desperation.

They all rotated who went out with who when they had to split up to track down anomalies and animals. Connor was pretty sure it was because none of them wanted to go with him, but he stuck it out despite it being painfully obvious sometimes that they were only tolerating him because of his database. The thing was, it could all change once he had Stephen onside, but he just couldn't trust anyone until he knew he had that backup. Not until he knew he had one person who'd never hand him over to some sort of government laboratory.

He'd trudged on past Stephen, who was doing some sort of arcane tracking thing at a tree, when he came across a clearing and saw one of Helen's pet clones. He didn't even have to think as he scrambled up the tree and out of sight. Like hell was he going to get caught by one of them. He watched as the man stolidly looked about, then turned and headed back into the anomaly. Before Connor could come back down, a small figure burst out of the anomaly, looking around in panic. The little boy raced into the woods, uncaring of any trail he was leaving or anything that might be hitting him as he ran headlong into the brush.

Connor knew that boy, felt his heart rate speed up as he realised who he was and what was going on. It was finally happening, and he couldn't do a thing now. He couldn't help, couldn't say anything, because he didn't want to mess up his own past.

"Come on! Hurry!" Elliott shouted as he ran back, trailed by a confused, but white-faced Stephen. A Stephen who was no doubt wondering where the hell Connor was. Connor stayed in his tree, waiting.

He saw Elliott race back through the anomaly, too anxious to care that he was travelling through a light that moved you through time and space, his only concern for his friend on the other side. Stephen paused, checked at the edge of the anomaly, then seemed to firm up and make a decision. With one last, contemptuous glance back, he went through after the boy.

It took another two minutes, but the interminable wait passed, and then the anomaly went unstable, then closed.

Connor dropped from his tree branch to the ground, pacing over to where the anomaly had been. He'd wanted to go through and help, but he didn't remember his other self being there, didn't want to risk the changes now that they'd hit the crux of the matter.

For something to do, more than anything else, he headed back to the car to collect some food and a first aid kit and hope that Stephen came out somewhere nearby. While he'd done his best on the return trip ten years before, the system had been unfamiliar, and Stephen's origins, since he wasn't a kidnapee, weren't in the system at all. He'd had to make a few educated guesses at that. Connor settled in and hoped this would be over of the afternoon at his end. He couldn't exactly explain to Cutter and Abby where and when Stephen was.

There was nothing to do now, but wait.

---

He paused, checking on the traces of what looked like animal tracks, just to be sure it wasn't something that would have come through the anomaly. It wasn't, but Stephen decided to fuss some more, just because Connor had learnt, finally, that Stephen liked quiet when he was involved in something specific when he was tracking, and this meant Connor would shut up and go away a bit.

Listening, Stephen waited until Connor had stumbled his way some distance off before standing again and taking a moment to enjoy the peace and quiet left in the wake of Connor going away. Silence descended, and he just closed his eyes a moment, trying to centre himself sufficiently he wouldn't snap the other's head off for anything. But the moment of peace stretched on, until Stephen suddenly snapped to alertness, because Connor would never be gone this long, would never be silent this long, especially if Stephen was clearly no longer tracking at that moment in time.

Now concerned, he started to follow the bumbling footprints, but was stopped when a small figure bowled into him. He caught the child, setting him back on his feet, and became immediately more worried, because the boy looked terrified. He was the subject of the child's gaze looking him up and down, then suddenly looking relieved. "You have to come with me!" the by insisted. "You have to! You have to hurry! They'll kill him. They'll kill him and they can't! He saved me and you have to help him! Please!"

"Who?" Stephen demanded. "Wait, just . . . slow down and tell me-"

"There isn't time!" the boy shouted, then raced off. Cursing internally, Stephen followed, wondering where the boy's parents were and just what he was running into, betting it was Connor who needed rescuing. The boy, whoever he was, was a speedy little bugger, and Stephen came to a shocked halt as the child raced through an anomaly in a clearing, not even checking at the threshold.

He ran after though, paused in front of it a moment, then squared his shoulders. If Connor had been taken through, he had to go after him, and who knew what the boy was getting into either. Without another thought, he went after.

On the other side he found himself faced with a drop on a cliff on one side that seemed to fall straight to a desert, and on the other was a forest. Scrubby little ferns and things abounded, and Stephen would have liked a moment to reorient himself, but the boy was there, hissing, "Come on! Hurry! You've got a gun, you can shoot them."

A roar echoed, sending birds fluttering into the air.

No, not birds, he realised. Coelurosauravuses and early pterosaurs. Still no time to absorb the situation, however. "No," moaned the boy. "Come on!"

Stephen followed the kid who was pelting toward the roar, the likes of which Stephen had never heard, and he'd heard some odd ones, especially since they'd been dealing with the anomalies. He caught up to the child, intent on demanded what the devil was going on, when he was halted in his tracks at the sight before him.

Another clearing, this time populated by a dozen heavyset soldiers, three unconscious, but the rest pinning down a slight and struggling figure, clearly intent on beating him to death. "No, let him go you bloody bastards," the kid moaned. "What did we ever do to you?"

That tore it. He lifted the dart rifle to his shoulder, firing off one shot, reloading the next, and the next. The tranqs, intended for larger and hardier animals than humans, dropped the men like a sack of rocks and they began to take note something was attacking them. The moment of distraction was all that was needed for the struggling person on the ground to get free, launching himself at his captors, raining what were apparently punishing blows on them.

The odds were still six to one, though. Stephen, not wanting to risk tranqing whoever the potential victim was, waded in to use his rifle as a club, knocking them out.

Whoever the person was, he was damned good at putting those men down with some prejudice. Together they made short work of the soldiers and Stephen turned to face him. He received a few shocks at once. The person he'd just helped rescue was Connor. But not the Connor he knew and vaguely disliked at times, this was a teenaged Connor, in his early-to-mid teens from what Stephen could tell.

Which meant that Connor's greeting to him that first day of classes more than made sense, Connor had no doubt been expecting recognition, perhaps even hoping for it, and had been ever since.

He took that in, in a flash, because there was something wrong with Connor. Something that left his dark eyes blank and unresponsive, his face twisted into a snarl, his body in a crouch that bore little resemblance to human behaviour and looking utterly feral.

The little boy who'd come looking for Stephen suddenly flew out of his hiding place. "No! Connor, stop!" he positioned himself between Connor and Stephen. "He's a friend, Connor."

Stephen found himself holding his breath as Connor halted, his eyes narrowing and his head tilting, clearly trying to process this information. He watched as the teenager crept forward, nostrils flaring, darting suddenly to yank the boy protectively behind him before edging forward again. Holding as still as he could, uncertain as to how to move to present himself as less of a threat, he watched, letting the adolescent Connor circle him slowly.

---

The cub had been sent away, running for safety. This was good.

He set himself to stop the Bad Things from chasing after his cub. There were a lot of Bad Things about, but these were the worst, because they worked for Her.

Diving at one, he slammed it into a tree, making it fall to the ground. Then another one came close enough to grab, and he yanked hard, twisting, feeling the neck break with relish. Now they were his prey, not the other way 'round. He was the hunter, they shouldn't be hunting him. The way they'd harmed the pack.

He had to move fast, the black men with their black pain things guns, whispered a voice somewhere in the back of his head could catch him if he wasn't fast. A lucky shot and he felt pain in his shoulder.

The pain was distracting. One more, too close and he swung a fist, felt-and-heard the satisfying crunch-thump of impact and it fell.

No! He hadn't been fast enough! Now there were black men all over him, pinning him, holding him down, raining blows down onto him. He struggled, not just to get away from the pain, the blackness encroaching at the edges of his vision, but also because he had to protect the cub. It wasn't safe for a cub alone with the Bad Things.

Suddenly the black men eased up, were letting him go. He didn't know why, just that it gave him the chance to break free, strike at them again. He had to hit them and hurt them and make sure they couldn't touch him or his cub again.

The last one hit the ground, broken and unconscious. He turned and saw another one. He was about to leap forward, to deal with the last one, when the cub leapt between them, protecting the new one. Making those noises that he couldn't understand "No! Connor, stop! He's a friend, Connor." The cub was protecting this one?

Cautious, because he didn't know whether this one, who wasn't in black like the others, didn't look at all like the others, smelled a little like something that made him think of safety, he yanked the cub behind him. It could be a trick, something that was supposed to make him think it was safe when it wasn't.

Watching carefully, making sure this one made no sudden moves, did nothing to attack the cub, he smelled more carefully, circled around this one, who had a thing like the black men, but wasn't even trying to use it.

The cub was making noise again, anxiously, distracting him, reaching for that little voice in his head.

Senseless noises suddenly resolved. ". . . and then we came back through the portal and he helped save you, Connor. You have to go back to normal, please!" Elliott pleaded.

The man in front of him was clearly not one of Her clones. "Who are you?" he demanded, straightening.

"I'm Stephen Hart," the man replied, looking relieved. "I don't suppose you can explain what the hell is going on here?"

Connor opened his mouth to reply, but his shoulder's ache suddenly multiplied by a thousandfold as the adrenaline wore off, he could feel strains and sprains from where he'd been held down and struggled for his freedom and the bruises and damage from the beating he'd taken made him feel like every inch of his body was throbbing and burning. The black around the edges of his vision spread suddenly and everything went black.

---

The moment Connor passed out, Stephen cursed and picked him up. "Come on," he said to the child. "We can head through the anomaly. There's a first aid kit in my car."

Nodding, the boy followed Stephen through the woods, back to where the anomaly was. Had been. "It's gone!" exclaimed the child in dismay.

"Hell," Stephen muttered. "All right. Then-"

"We'd better go to our tree, then," said his short companion. "They found us when we were out looking for food, not at the tree. It's safer."

With no better options, Stephen agreed, but said, "First I'd like to collect the guns those men were carrying."

"Okay," said the child.

He looked down at this teenaged version of Connor, looking half-starved, pale and ill and wondered what had happened that brought both boys to the Permian. "What's your name?" he asked the boy, not wanting to spend the rest of his time there, however long that was, calling him 'the boy.'

"I'm Elliott and you're carrying Connor," he said.

"I'm Stephen," he told Elliott. Once back in the clearing, he found himself stunned. The men were all identical. All of them. Who'd ever heard of that many identical births all choosing the same completely mad path in life? Elliott seemed undisturbed, but it seemed likely now that the child was used to this madcap world, so Stephen shook it off to be dealt with later. It took a few minutes to collect the pistols and Stephen unloaded a few, putting a few smaller, now-empty guns in a rucksack one of the soldiers had had, to Elliott to carry. He took the holsters off the men for the rest of the handguns, feeling rather like he was in an action film all of a sudden with all the holsters on him, collected as many of the automatics as he could, then said to Elliott, "Alright, where's your tree?"

Elliott nodded and scampered on ahead, cautiously Stephen noted with approval, looking back and forth anxiously as they reached a particular point. "This is sort of a deer path, Connor said, only it's for pe - pelycosaurs," he said the hard word triumphantly. "And that we need to watch for dimetrodons and things if they decide to hunt on the path."

"Smart of him," Stephen admitted. They crossed the path without incident and made their way up to a tree, at the top of which Stephen could see some rope.

Elliott looked chagrined. "I forgot," he said. "Connor usually lets down the rope for me to climb up the ladder."

Frowning critically at the setup, Stephen pulled one of the pistols and with a single, careful shot, dislodged the rope ladder. "Go on," he told Elliott.

The boy hurried up with alacrity, and then Stephen carefully shifted Connor to a fireman's carry, grateful the teenager was so light, and made his way up after. The heavy sticks Connor had used for the ladder had creaked alarmingly with the double load of man and teenager, but they held, and Stephen pulled the ladder up after. "Up here," said Elliott from further up the tree. It was actually quite an enormous plant, and a loose approximation of steps had been gouged into the sharply angled branches, leading upward to a platform that had been invisible from the ground. It was made of industrial pallets like the ones in warehouses for transporting goods.

"Where did this come from?" he asked in bewilderment.

It was a saddened little boy who answered, "It's the place they took us at first. Sometimes Connor breaks in to take things. It's dangerous, but the clones're all stupid, so he risks it because of me." The downcast face said it all.

"Don't feel guilty just because Connor wants to keep you safe," Stephen chastened him. "It's the adult's job to take care of the kids."

"Will you take care of Connor then, now?" Elliott asked anxiously. "Because sometimes he thinks I can't hear and says that he's just a kid too." He passed Stephen a partly emptied first aid kit as he spoke.

"I'll do my best," Stephen told him. "So, tell me what's going on while I patch him up."

"I don't know and Connor doesn't either," he started. "Connor was out on a trip with his boy scout group, he says, when he was taken. I was in the back yard, on the swings, and Mum went into the house 'cause the phone was ringing. Then suddenly this yellow light appeared, like the one we came through before, and the clones came out and grabbed me. They took me to the cells and put me in with Connor."

"The cells?" Stephen asked, pausing, aghast. The bullet seemed to have managed to, by some miracle, gone through Connor's shoulder without breaking anything. He didn't know how, just that it had. So, he poured the antiseptic onto both sides and taped a patch of gauze bandaging overtop both entry and exit wounds and then turned his buttoned shirt to being a sling.

Elliott nodded solemnly. "They put us all in cells together," he explained. "There's a lot of us. Kids and teenagers."

"Why?"

Shaking his head, Elliott declared. "I don't know. Connor said She wants bes - ber - besker?"

Thinking of Connor's act with the guards, Stephen prompted, "Berserker?"

"That's it!' Elliott said. "Ber-ser-ker. Soldiers. She wants soldiers or something."

"She?" Stephen asked. "You know who's behind it?"

"Uh-huh," Elliott nodded emphatically. "She used to walk by the cells and say things. I didn't always understand. She'd talk to Luke - he's one of the other teenagers. He's from Ireland and Connor said he's a hippie."

At that Stephen chuckled. "A hippie? Why? Does he have long hair, or is he from the 60s?" He walked his fingers carefully over Connor's skull, finding a knot, and reminding himself to check for concussion once Connor was awake again.

"Both," Elliott said. "How'd you know? Is that what hippie means?"

The implications of Luke being a teenager from the 60s took Stephen's breath away. "Sort of," he replied absently, not wanting to have to explain the whole of the social revolutions of the 60s. "She says things to Luke?"

"Yeah," Elliott said. "Like that she wants to play games with him and things. That she's got toys she wants to share." Disapprovingly, Elliott shook his head. "Like anyone would want to play with Her toys. She's mean and awful and she's a grownup, anyhow. They don't play with toys."

"She means grownup toys," Stephen said. "And I'm not telling you any more because you're too young to know what that means." He was carefully pressing his hands against Connor's chest and limbs now, looking for any telltale shifting that would indicate a severe break. It was quite a beating Connor'd taken.

"That's what Connor said," Elliott grumbled. "And Elsie and Zeke and Michael and Hettie-"

"Did you ask everyone?" Stephen was amused despite himself.

Pouting, Elliott nodded. "Yeah. We all asked our teenagers, but no one said anything."

He forced the conversation back on track. "What else does she do?"

"Well, Connor says that she tells the scientists what to do when he's taken away."

"What scientists?" Stephen asked sharply.

Elliott bit his lip indecisively. "I've never seen them, but Connor and the other teenagers say that, when they get taken, there's people, scientist sort of people that do stuff to them. Like they tie them up and put needles and things in them." His voice shook as he said, "They've done things so that Connor and the others can't . . . don't act like they used to. They try, but they can't." And then the child cracked and began to cry. "And . . . and . . . Marge, she . . . she . . . hurt . . . she . . ." He was sobbing too hard to continue, and Stephen reached for him, to comfort the boy, but Connor was awake suddenly, taking in the scene at once and pulling Elliott against his chest.

"Shh. It's alright, it'll be alright Elliott. I promised I'd do everything I could to get you home and I will." Connor rocked the boy gently, holding him as he clung tightly to 'his teenager'. Eventually the sobs petered out and Elliott seemed to have fallen asleep.

"How much did you overhear?" Stephen asked.

---

With Elliott having pretty much passed out, Connor looked at the man who'd come to their aid with the soldiers and felt a little like crying himself. It was an honest-to-God real adult. Someone who looked totally comfortable with the guns he had on him and seemed like a decent person and Connor had never thought he'd be so relieved as in that moment that he knew he could hand all the responsibility off to someone. He repressed the urge to fling himself at the man and bawl, though.

"Nothing," Connor admitted. "I woke up when Elliott started crying, pretty much." He sighed, running a hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes. "Probably the bloody pack instincts coming through."

"Pack instincts?" the man asked.

Connor took a deep breath. "What did Elliott tell you?" he asked back. "Because he's just five and there's a lot I wasn't sure how to explain and a lot I didn't want to explain." Then he realised something. "By the way, I know you told me your name, but I was sort of on the verge, and, well . . ."

"Not to worry," the man said with a friendly smile. "I'm Stephen Hart."

"Connor Temple. Mind if I ask you what year you're from?" Connor inquired. "Because we've got all types up at the compound there. David's from apartheid South Africa and Wesley's from Elizabethan England just as an example."

"It was 2007 when I went through with Elliott," Stephen told him.

"Interesting," Connor said musingly. "Elliott said he was from 2020."

Stephen nodded. "In any event, Elliott had explained you've been taken by a mysterious 'Her', that she's kept you all, teenagers and children, captive in some compound, that she's performing experiments to create berserker soldiers and when he began to speak about someone named Marge, he just . . ." Stephen gestured at the exhausted child in Connor's lap.

"Right," Connor said, taking a deep breath. "There's a lot of testing that goes on in there. Stress tests, taking blood, monitors and all sorts of things. Once She'd brought the kids in, she started tossing the lot of us, the teenagers, into a sort of Roman gladiator ring. She'll toss in a velociraptor or a gorgonopsid or what-all, and then . . . we just have to live."

Stephen looked horrified. "But how . . ."

"How do we not die?" Connor asked him, baldly. There was no way to pretty this up.

"Yes," breathed the man, unable to wipe the shock from his face.

"That's where the tests and injections and whatnot come in," Connor told him. "They make us faster, stronger, better senses and all." He could still recall what he'd heard Marge do to Yvonne, and what Thomas had done to Artie. "It makes us more brutal, though," he confessed. "I . . . there was a time I'd never have even thought of hitting a five-year-old, but there have been times I've been tempted to put Elliott through the wall, just for asking if he could have another protokiwi." Then it all began to spill out, because he couldn't say this to Elliott, didn't have anyone to confess this to, and he was scared of what he was turning into. "When we go in there, when I'm in there, it's like I turn into someone - something else. I don't think anymore, it's just all instinct and I want to tear things apart and taste blood." He kept still and his voice down only because Elliott was right there and sleeping. "Then they started taking us and doing some particular injection, She said she'd been waiting for it the whole time."

Stephen suddenly and swiftly moved beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder, and Connor gave him a grateful look for the grounding it provided him. "It was like I could feel everything slipping away, my . . . my humanity," he said. "I was stronger, but it was like I was going mad. That was when I took the chance to get me'n'Elliott out. I had to. But when we got out, I . . . if he hadn't hit me with that rock and run, I would've killed him." Stephen seemed about to say something, and Connor hastily continued. "So, you have to . . . if I go . . . go mad like that. You have to protect Elliott from me. You have to. I . . . these instincts, I see him sort of like a . . . like he's my cub or something, but I can't . . . I don't know how long that'll last, if I'll turn out like Marge and Thomas did. They ripped their kids apart. Like, literally." He looked at Stephen. "You have to stop me if it comes to that."

"I promise I'll do whatever I can," Stephen told him. "But you won't. You won't give up, you won't turn on him and you will be fine."

"You can't know that," Connor said.

Then Stephen looked at him, and for a moment he felt safe again. Really safe, like he was home in bed with his mum and dad right down the hall. "I do."

And screw that time that he'd won the regional science fair, the time he'd got the Leia poster from a single perfect dart throw at the fairgrounds game, the time he'd got Stephen Gould's autograph and when Penny Long kissed him all together. This was the best feeling in the world.

---

As Connor seemed to relax dramatically with Stephen's assurance, he was struck by just how young he was. He'd always thought of Connor as being young, not merely because of the eight year difference between them, but because of his ways of running around, all arms and legs, like a teenager in a growth spurt. But there was a sort of pleading desperation here for someone to step up and take the burden of adulthood off him, and Stephen was struck by the thought that perhaps, after this, Connor had taken his chance at living out the rest of his childhood with both hands, knowing what it was like once you didn't have it back.

Well, while he didn't know how he'd done it, obviously he had, because Connor had lived to disturb the living daylights out of him. It was oddly reassuring, but he still had to deal with everything here, and that included seeing if there was anything he could do for the ones still trapped in that compound.

There were a few questions he still had to ask, despite not really wanting to know the answers. Because teenagers forced into fits that had them tearing small children apart was terrible enough, but he had to know more. "Connor, if we're going to get you both home and the others out, I'm going to need to know about the compound, the guards and anything else you can tell me."

"Right. For strategy," Connor nodded. "Elliott'll be safe enough up here for a few hours tomorrow, so if you'd like, I can take you down to get a look for yourself."

Loathe though he was to leave a child alone in a place like this, Stephen had to admit that there hadn't been anything prowling the treetops yet that was dangerous. "What can you tell me about the guards? Elliott said something about clones?"

"Yeah," Connor nodded. "That's the going theory, at least. We thought they might be robots, androids or something, for a while, but Patrice got in a lucky hit once and they bleed, and they smell more or less human."

"Smell?" he asked. It was all so strange.

This odd younger Connor nodded. "The . . . treatments," he explained. "They make us stronger, faster, improve smell, well, all our senses, and they've caused some changes, physiological ones. It's not just brain chemistry," he added. "I heal faster, there are things I can do now I shouldn't be able to with a human physiology, and I'm pretty sure the makeup of the brain itself has changed as well."

"How?" These one-word questions might start getting old fast, but there was nothing else to add.

"It's . . ." Connor paused, looking for the words. "I'm not sure there's words for it, but . . . it's like a wolf pack, sort of. Like my instincts are telling me that Elliot's . . ." another pause, this one embarrassed. He pushed on regardless. "Elliott's my cub," he said defiantly. His arms tightened slightly around the sleeping boy. "But they're also sort of telling me that you're an alpha, a pack alpha and that I need to either . . . er . . ."

Despite the whole strange situation, it was a tad amusing. "You thinking of challenging me for position in the pack?"

"Maybe a little?" Connor said hesitantly. "I mean, it's sort of split. Either challenge or submission. It's sort of the, erm, polite thing to do."

"More like the thing to do," Stephen suggested. "I doubt that even wolves think that dominance challenges are polite, per se."

"Maybe," Connor agreed. "Anyhow, I'm pretty sure everyone down there's like . . . like a pack to me too, and is like this as well. The instincts, I mean."

Stephen nodded, thinking through things. "They can all fight like you did?"

The too-young face shuttered a moment. "The ones still alive can. The ones that couldn't . . ." The tear-filled eyes were familiar, the look on his face the one Stephen had seen as Connor knelt beside Tom, dying on the stadium floor. Suddenly, a snarl rumbled out of his chest, sounding like nothing so much as a puma Stephen had startled from its prey one time. "She laughed as they died," he growled around the sound. "Laughed. As though hearing them . . ." He was angry and grieving and lost all at once.

"Connor?" Elliott asked sleepily. He woke to see Connor's wet eyes and fury. "I miss them too," he said. Then suddenly wriggled off Connor's lap.

Without a word, Connor dropped off the platform down to the forest below. "Where's he going?" Stephen demanded.

"He's scared he'll do bad things to me," Elliott said placidly. "But when he goes away and does stuff, then comes back, he's better."

Frowning in concern, Stephen asked the boy, "What sort of stuff?"

"Dinosaur hunting."

"He didn't call it that, did he?" Stephen asked.

Elliott shook his head. "Well, first he tried to tell me he was going for a walk, like I was too stupid to know that's stupid. Then he said he was going and getting fruit, but he doesn't always remember the fruit, and one time he had stuff on his hands. So, then he admitted he was going after dinosaurs. But he doesn't call them dinosaurs, he called them archosaurs."

"Well, there aren't any dinosaurs around," Stephen pointed out.

Elliott leant over a branch, pointing out something that seemed to be a prowling dimetrodon. "What's that then? It's in all my dinosaur books."

"A dimetrodon is not a dinosaur," Stephen lectured. "It's a type of reptile that predates the dinosaurs."

"Predates?" Elliott asked.

"Sorry," Stephen told him. The maturity in the young face threw him. "It means came before."

"There was things before dinosaurs?" Elliott asked in awe. "But they were 65 million years ago! That's like 65 million time how old I am!"

He hadn't seen awe like that in what felt like a very long time. Cutter staring at the scutosaurus, his own shock and delight at the sight of the ancient creatures, even the gorgonopsid, seemed to have been lost ages ago, ripped apart like the victims of the monsters that had come through the anomalies. But from the safety of this treetop, looking down, he felt the sheer pleasure of watching an animal in its natural environment again, the fascination that came with the discovery of something new and the satisfaction that came with the knowledge that he was first. He'd seen this, not Cutter not some other evolutionary theorist, hunter, biologist or behaviourist.

So, he settled in to answer all of Elliott's questions. When Connor came back, he joined in, admitting quietly to Stephen in a moment when Elliott's back was turned, that he'd been letting the dinosaur thing go mostly because the stress he'd been under of having to be in charge had left him too short-tempered to risk the explanations lest he take out that temper on Elliott. Unsurprisingly, even at fifteen, Connor was a wellspring of hot and cold running paleontological esoterica. In fact, about the only flaws in his discussion were theories that had been disproved or invented since 1998.

He'd also arrived back with, "Protokiwis!" exclaimed Elliott in delight. They did indeed look rather like what Stephen imagined the predecessor species to the kiwi might appear, not that paleobotany was his area in any way. When he tried one, he understood Elliott's attraction to them. They were incredibly sweet. So sweet, they were candy-like.

Elliott was soon on a sugar high, and Stephen realised he and Connor weren't far behind. "You really shouldn't have given him those," he told Connor as Elliott happily bounced around the little treehouse.

Connor made a face. "I don't want to take him for a run out there," he jerked his head towards the forest floor. "There's a fair few predators that are starting to come out right about now, we're close to a watering hole, you see. After the nap he had, he might be up all night if I don't give him something so he'll wind down later."

"Ah," Stephen said as Elliott bounded past again, accidentally smacking him on the head. "I'm tempted to hit him," Stephen muttered, "And I don't even have an excuse like you. There's a reason I never wanted children." For a moment, Connor tensed, Stephen braced for a potential explosion, then Connor closed his eyes and breathed deeply a moment.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't really think that you'd . . . it's just the whole," he waved a hand around his head, "Thing."

---

Connor grimly suppressed the desire to make sure the interloper knew the cub was off limits. It had been a joke what Stephen had said, and he needed to remember that. "No," said Stephen, "I should have remembered. I'll try not to say things like that in future."

The way he'd backed down got Connor's hackles up. He had to control himself, because if this kept up he'd wind up going after Stephen, and Stephen was just there to help. He was trying to avoid confrontation, and the issue of alphas had no place there. He was grateful when Elliott crashed finally, and even more so when Stephen told him he'd take the first watch. "You've had a long day and you're still hurt, even if the rate at which you heal's been accelerated."

With another person there to stand watch, Connor sighed and relaxed into sleep. For the first time in a very long time he felt safe enough to really relax. Curled around Elliott, he felt himself begin to purr, content to know that the cub was safe and there was another member of their little pack there to watch for danger. He'd been dreaming of hunting and chasing when he was gently shaken awake.

Dazed with sleep, he snapped to a feral awareness, rather than full human consciousness.

There was the new interloper, the alpha-who-wasn't-an-alpha. The way he'd been backing down from confrontation, wouldn't fight, wouldn't slap Connor down meant he wasn't strong enough. "Connor?" came the soft voice of the cub.

Shocking Connor out of it. "It's okay Elliott. Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep."

"'Kay," came the soft reply.

He ran his hands through his hair. "Sorry, I just . . ." How do you explain you were about to try smacking someone around for not being a half-mad feral creature?

"It's alright," Stephen said. "Lesson learnt. Treat you like a puma." He reached slowly forward, placing a comforting hand on Connor's shoulder again, and Connor sighed, leaning into the touch a little. He'd never been particularly tactile, but he got the feeling that, whatever had been done to him, it had made him more so. "I was just letting you know to take the shift from now 'til dawn."

"Right." Connor nodded and took up the good watching position, seeing Stephen curl himself around Elliott, dropping into sleep quickly. Settling in for a wait, Connor took to patrolling around the top of their tree, keeping an eye out for more dangerous creatures that might cause them trouble, letting the movement and use of his senses soothe him. He had to wonder what he'd do when he got home. The night was so loud here, so full of smells and sounds, how would he cope at home? He wanted to go home, missed his Star Wars posters and the internet, he missed his family and friends, he didn't miss school so much, but the chance to go to uni, to meet a girl and have a life that wasn't scrabbling hand to mouth like this would be, that he'd regret.

But could he even have that? The best therapist in the world wouldn't be able to erase the animalistic instincts that drove him now, he couldn't stop scenting people and animals, if he was in his bedroom overnight he'd probably feel trapped by the four walls the way he felt trapped now by the tree.

The next morning, more to get ahold of himself than anything else he volunteered to check the water hole and see if it was reasonably safe, with no water-dwelling predators lying in wait and no land-dwelling predators on their way over. By the time he got back to tell them it seemed reasonably safe, Connor thought he had himself under control.

But Elliott had latched onto this real adult, leaving Connor without authority over his cub. Because Elliott was turning to Stephen for everything. And Stephen was taking control, smooth and competent, clearly used to wilderness like this, carrying bloody guns that he was able to whip out like some sort of action hero and aim at things, and Connor only had fists and a still-healing body. He knew he was being irrational. What did he know about survival in a tropical jungle?

The last straw came with the words, "But Connor, Stephen said-"

A visceral fear, primal, instinctive and unhuman overtook him of losing the cub to the interloper. Instincts that might belong to any dozen animals bringing to mind a thousand nature programmes on the telly where one male would kill another male's cubs or kits, just because, the desire to remain in control, the demand that this oh-so-passive alpha be brought down to the proper beta position to Connor, who was stronger and faster and morethan he was took over.

He snapped.

There was a red haze and the desire to taste blood as he leapt across the clearing. His opponent saw him coming, eyes wide, and dove out of the way. With a snarl, Connor turned, ignoring the cub as he bleated in those silly noises again. The other male was making placatory gestures and that just made Connor's lips split into a grin of triumph. He'd already won, he just had to drive the message home.

It didn't quite happen that way, though. For one, this time, when he launched himself again he was met force for force by a blow from the pain thing like the Bad Ones carried - gun - sending him spinning off course. The other wasn't stupid and slow like the Bad Ones were. He was fast and agile, blue eyes narrowed in concentration, getting out of Connor's way again and again. Not every time. He was taking his share of blows, but they didn't seem to slow or confuse him like the ones belonging to Her. And quite suddenly the sun was in his eyes, dazzling him, giving his opponent the chance to slide past his defenses, tackle him and pin him, something pressing to his throat to choke him.

As always happened when he went mad like this, the world suddenly resolved again, the words making sense. "You'll do as I tell you unless you've got a damned good reason otherwise, Connor. Are we clear?"

The last gasp of those instincts struck in that moment, but this time, reassuring him that Stephen wasa true alpha. The part of him that had been on guard, fearing the leadership of a weak pack leader suddenly rolled over and gave up, because he'd challenged this one and lost. It was with a sense of relief that he twisted, whining nearly subvocally, baring his neck in submission.

Stephen stood, filthy, but practically radiating his dominant stance in the pack. "Connor?" he asked, a snap of authority in his voice.

"Yeah," Connor said softly. "Stephen, I . . . thanks."

A single eyebrow was raised at that, reminiscent of Mr. Spock. It was a query and a rebuke at once, and Connor couldn't help tilting his head to show his neck again. He heard Stephen mutter, "Thank you, Abby," and had no idea what that meant, but didn't care, because he was given a hand up off the ground.

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Stephen told him, friendly again. "You'd warned me it might happen."

"But why Stephen?" Elliott demanded. "He didn't do anything!"

Connor knelt next to his little cellmate. "You know how I said those instincts keep making me think weird things?"

"Yeah. Did they make you think Stephen was bad?" Elliott asked anxiously.

"Not exactly," Connor told him. "It's more like . . . you ever hear people say, 'respect is earned'?"

Elliott thought hard. "No. What does that mean?"

Stephen broke in then. "It means that a person doesn't deserve to have people trust him or believe him or do everything he says until he's proved that he's good at his job, or smart or usually tells the truth and things like that."

"It's like when you get a new teacher in school," Connor explained. "At first you'll only do what they say because if you don't you'll get in trouble with the headmaster or your parents. If they're a really good teacher, you'll want to do what they tell you because you think they're a good teacher."

"Okay," Elliott said slowly. "So, what's that got to do with you trying to hurt Stephen and Stephen hurting you back?"

"Those instincts that make me act weird kept telling me I couldn't really trust Stephen. That he'd be a bad person to be in charge." He looked apologetically at the man. "You were always placating me, and they sort of kept saying that if you were a real alpha, you'd've smacked me down."

"But that's stupid!" Elliott cried, confused by it all. "He's a real grownup and he's got all those guns and he saved us. Why'd you think he wasn't any good?"

"Why're you scared of moths?" Connor retorted. "It doesn't always make sense."

"Moths're creepy," grumbled Elliott. "Stephen's nice."

With that, they made their way back to the tree and Stephen set Elliott to playing watchdog in the branches. It gave them a bit of privacy to clear the air a little more.

"So, you felt like I was an interloper moving into your territory?"

"Worse," Connor said with a sigh. "You know all those nature specials where they talk about lions killing other lions' cubs and the like? That was flashing through my head. That and the worry that if you couldn't take me on, obviously you weren't strong enough to head the pack."

"So, it's cleared up now?" Stephen asked. The mildness Connor had been taking for placation took on a warning subtext. So he nodded, and Stephen smiled, giving him a companionable half hug. And because he was still so grateful for an adult there to take control of things, the two halves of him came together and he couldn't stop himself from settling against Stephen and purring.

The look of bafflement on Stephen's face was worth the hideous sense of humiliation at Elliott cheerfully declaring that Connor was like his parents' new pet kitty, Minnie Tufty Tibbles McGonagall.

---

They didn't wind up going to look at the compound after all. Because Stephen was sore and bruised and feeling a stab of guilt every time he looked at Connor's bruised and happy face. Because he'd had to practically beat the boy into submission, and abuse of a minor did not sit well with him. Only the fact that Connor seemed happier somehow now that he'd been slapped down with such force kept him from feeling sick with himself. That, and that he'd truly had to fight for his life and limb the way Connor had acted in those moments, nothing Elliott said and nothing Stephen had said had snapped the boy out of his state. Only the rifle across his throat, choking him into submission had done it, and Connor had rolled over like a beaten wolf, baring his throat.

Abby's lessons in animal behaviour had never come so in handy.

Where before Connor had been grateful and eager if somewhat distrustful of Stephen, it now appeared he thought Stephen had hung the moon, and it was a tad uncomfortable for Stephen. Used as he was to the slight amount of hero worship Connor had a tendency to, the fact was that Connor from 2007 would also chide Stephen if he thought the older man was being offensive and had been known to take the mickey as much as anyone else at Stephen and his reputation.

This teenaged Connor hung off of Stephen's every word, eagerly bounding about, purring at any word of praise from him and getting disturbingly tactile.

He recalled the moment he'd leaned on Connor during that incident with the dodos and the way Connor had stared at the arm resting on his shoulder. At the time Stephen had thought Connor uncomfortable with the physical contact. Now he wondered if perhaps Connor had been resisting an urge to purr and snuggle.

And the purring. The noises Connor could now produce were a strange array of animal sounds normal humans could either not produce, or could only produce with training, practice and effort. It drove home in some ways better than anything else that Connor was truly no longer fully human.

He suggested they stay close to home that day instead, choosing not to let on just how sore and bruised he was. Connor, in his feral state was a force to be reckoned with, and Stephen knew that a bit more training or a bit more intelligence and he'd have lost. So, instead of having to creep around, hoping they wouldn't get caught, he found out from the pair how they'd survived, what they'd been eating (mostly archosaurs and protokiwis with a leavening of roots) and more about cartoons and comic books than he'd ever wanted to know.

But he also learned about the clones. The soldiers on the first day, the identical ones, Connor had assured him they were clones, and listening to the stories about the inhuman soldiers, the blank faces and the way they seemed unresponsive to anything but the most egregious pain. They could, of course, simply be very well-trained, but anyone who felt it was a valid thing to torture children didn't really deserve consideration.

That night Connor took first watch and Stephen was kept up a bit by his perambulations around the tree. He also woke up stiff, sore, wanting a hot shower and a good run to stretch out the kinks. "Hey, your turn," said the teenager.

"Mmm?" Elliott started to wake up, and Connor wriggled in behind him at once.

"Shh," he murmured into the child's hair. "Go back to sleep. 'S'okay." Then he started purring, and Elliott snuggled down and then relaxed back into sleep. Stephen rather envied him. Then he crept over to a decent watching post and had to settle for stretching repeatedly to get the kinks out.

Both boys woke up with dawn, and Connor said. "You wanted to get a look at the compound. We'd best do that soon. Anyhow, I'd wanted to see if I could get a tarp or some such for when it rains. We've been lucky in a way, but it'll rain eventually and I'd rather not get soaked if I don't have to."

"Are you sure?" Stephen asked.

Connor nodded. "I don't like it, but I also don't know anything about tanning hides or skinning things, and we'll need something eventually if we don't get home soon." Then he looked at Elliott. "Do you think we should leave Elliott a gun?" he asked. "I wouldn't want one, but right now I'm dangerous enough not to necessarily need one. Elliott's another story."

Frowning, Stephen gave it some serious thought. Because they'd be leaving a child of under ten alone in a very dangerous area. They didn't know what was prowling around, and Elliott was fundamentally helpless. He was also only a child, and there was no way of knowing if he could even handle it. In the end, he decided leaving a pistol was the lesser of two evils and spent a good half hour carefully going over gun safety with the child and making sure he knew how to turn on the safety and not to use the gun unless something was actually about to hurt him.

Then he and Connor left, striking out for the compound. Intrigued, Stephen watched this younger Connor as he retraced his way to the base. He frowned as he recalled Connor's movement back when they'd first met, when Connor had come flopping up to Cutter and Stephen at the university, the way he'd tramped about in the Forest of Dean and wondered what had happened to the way Connor was flitting so lightly along. The traces he was leaving were small enough even he could barely see them and Connor was silent and graceful as he did so.

The only thing he could compare it to was the evening Connor had come to his flat, trying to warn him about Helen. There had been none of the stumbling about then, just an easy prowl across the floor. He'd also looked sick, as though suffering some sort of withdrawal. Something teased at the back of Stephen's mind about the whole thing, but he couldn't quite latch onto the thought.

Connor suddenly grabbed his arm. "We're basically here. There's a good tree nearby for spying. Come on." Bent nearly double, they scurried along, darting from fern to fern for cover. It took some doing to get up the tree, and a bit of manoeuvring to get the both of them where they could see. There was a high wall surrounding the whole of it and a few different buildings. "The one on the left is where they run the experiments," Connor said. "You can't see it from here, but there's an enclosed corridor between them. The nearest end is where She has her Roman Gladiator ring."

"Roman Gladiator ring?" Stephen inquired.

"With the raptors and things," Connor clarified. "She's usually pretty . . . I don't know what to call it," he admitted. "But at a guess, she . . . she gets off on it."

He nodded, wondering who this sick woman was. "How do you know?"

"She smells the same when she's baiting Luke about wanting to play with her and her toys," Connor said seriously. "But it's a guess 'cause, well, my sense of smell wasn't good enough before to have known what that would smell like, and . . ." he flushed, embarrassed. "And girls aren't exactly beating down the door to snog the dinosaur geek."

There was nothing that wasn't trite and stupid to say to that, so Stephen changed the subject. "The other buildings?"

"The one in the middle's where they keep everyone," Connor said. "It's pretty much like what I've seen of jails on the telly." He gave a ghost of a grin. "But at least there aren't any big men wanting to shag us." It was a pale version of Connor's usual terrible attempts at lightening the moment with a bad joke. More pale, because this Connor lacked the wherewithal to truly make light of the situation, and was too saddened to go further. He shook it off and pointed to the last one. "The one on the right's where the soldier barracks are. I got close enough once to see in. It's pretty much just a big barn with cots. Somewhere in there's also where the armoury is and the like."

"What about the smaller one there?" Stephen asked, pointing to a fourth one closest to the fence.

Connor went very still. "That's why I guess about the berserker soldiers," he said. "I've seen it. That's where they put the teenagers that have cracked. They're in cages, and . . . and they're not . . . I'm not sure they're even really human anymore," he said, voice cracking. "I couldn't tell Elliott. What could I tell him? Gary, Tim, Kathy, Pam . . . it's like they can't recognise me or anyone else. They just scream and claw, and when they get loose they kill the soldiers and just . . . just tear them apart like animals. I don't even think there's instinct there anymore," he told Stephen. "Just . . . just the kill."

"I . . . I'm sorry," he said inadequately. He wrapped an arm around Connor's shoulders and felt the teen burrow into him a moment, seeking comfort. He was, despite how little he liked these sorts of things, he was more than willing to provide that comfort, because Connor had been a tower of strength for Elliott, and Stephen wasn't sure he'd have been up to it when he was fifteen.

Then his young friend stiffened. "There," he said softly, pointing to a female figure walking out of the enclosure they kept the transformed and feral teenagers. "That's Her. That's the . . . the bitch in charge." The venom and the cursing were unlike Connor, and Stephen strained to get a good look at this villainess.

For a moment, he felt the world do a lazy spin around him. The thought that had been trying to crystallise about Connor's evening visit landed like an anvil.

"Helen."

---

When his new adult friend whispered the name, Connor didn't understand right away. It took a moment for the thought to work through his mind, and the shocked and appalled look on Stephen's face forced him to understand. "You know her?"

Stephen looked like he might throw up. "Helen," he repeated, almost as though he were having a one-sided conversation with Her. "I don't . . . you left Cutter, you left me for . . . to do this?" He was shaking badly, and Connor glanced worriedly at him.

Unfortunately, while it might be safer to have this conversation back at their home tree, he had the feeling that making it clear to Elliott would require a more delicate touch than Stephen would be able to manage right then. "What do you mean?" he prompted.

"She . . . when I was in uni, she was my thesis advisor," Stephen told him slowly. The story being dragged from him. "I . . . she lied to me, made me think she was leaving her husband. We had an affair." Connor felt his jaw drop. Someone had wanted to sleep with Her? Why would Stephen, who seemed like a good person, want to do that? As though he'd heard Connor's thought, Stephen said, "She was different then. Or, at least, acted different. I was in love with her, I thought she loved me." He gritted out, "I believed her, you know? She was . . . is . . . beautiful and intelligent, brilliant really. Then she vanished. The university basically flung me at Nick, her husband, and I finished my degree under him. And he hired me on as his assistant. I found out she'd been lying about their marriage being over. At least, Nick hadn't had any idea."

Connor resisted the urge to say that he was pretty sure that a woman like the one he knew couldn't be trusted to tell the truth.

Stephen continued to speak as though he couldn't stop it, and Connor rather thought he'd needed to say it all for a long time. "I got bit by a giant prehistoric bug," he said. "And she appeared right after, and by the time I was found, I was hallucinating. I thought Abby was her. I'd wanted to see her again for so long, wanted it to be her so badly." He ran his hands through his hair distractedly. "I feel so stupid," he growled. "How could I not see?"

There was really only one comfort Connor could offer. "Sometimes people lie, about themselves and what they want, and sometimes they're so good at it you can't tell." He shrugged. "And sometimes you want it to be true so you believe it, and sometimes it's a bit of both. I remember when Julie Benson started making nice, acting interested in the things I was and the like." Connor hated the story, hated that he'd been as stupid as to believe Julie Benson of all people would have liked him, but he'd wanted to think it, wanted to think someone thought he was fun and interesting and worth going out with. "She played nice and I thought she really liked me. Turned out she just wanted me to help her get straight As so she'd be able to get a boost to her clothing allowance from her parents."

His story managed to break Stephen out of his shock and funk. "It's not exactly the same," he said, "But I'll take it. Thank you." He seemed sincere, and Connor felt that purr welling out of his chest, his inner feral self preening at the words from his alpha. He shook it off. Stephen had brought himself out of his fugue with that, and was frowning at the soldiers. "I just can't imagine where she's got them all from."

"She's got a whole bunch of scientists," Connor pointed out, "And the kind of genetic manipulation she's doing to us suggests it's not that far at all to cloning."

"I suppose," Stephen said. "I'm just having to wrap my mind around the notion that she's been doing this instead of investigating the lives of hesperornis."

"She's really a paleontologist?" Connor asked, fascinated at this insight.

Stephen shook his head, "Not exactly. She's an evolutionary biologist. It's more a matter for them of tracking the development of species and the ways they change over time and with environmental alterations and so on."

"Wow," Connor said, thinking he'd have to expand his views and species in his database.

In the end they were there all day as Stephen used his watch to time the shift changes, watched with Connor as they dragged poor Theresa out of the cell block and out to the enclosure with the other feral teens. Eventually they left, Stephen lost in contemplation, though no less sharp for it, and they made their way back to the home tree. When they were nearly there, one of the small predatory reptiles Connor had never heard of in the fossil record leapt out at them, only to be met by a perfect shot, fired off by Stephen with incredibly accuracy and on what appeared to be reflex. "Wow," Connor said. Then he took a closer look at it. "Oh, good. Dinner."

Shooting him an amused look, Stephen asked, "Really?"

"Mm-hmm," Connor nodded. "These're tasty. I killed a bunch of things when Elliott and I first got out, before I went back to normal. This was the best of the lot. And it's been a few days since Elliott and I had meat."

Stephen nodded, chuckling to himself about something, but refused to tell Connor the joke. "I'll explain sometime," he said cryptically, and wouldn't say any more.

---

"The Bad Lady's name is Helen?" Elliott said, appalled. "That's my auntie's name!"

Connor offered, "I'm sure Helens aren't intrinsically bad."

"What's intrin - in-trin-sic-ly mean?" Elliott asked.

While Connor explained the meaning of the term, Stephen just went over and over in his mind everything he'd ever seen of Helen, everything he'd ever known. No matter what Connor said, this was mad. How had he missed something so . . . terrible? Had going through the anomalies unhinged her? Was there something intrinsic (in spite of himself, he was a little amused at the apropos appearance of the word) to anomalies that drove people mad? Or had she always been this way and he and Cutter had both been so in love with some ideal version of her that they missed it entirely?

"How did you know her?" Elliott's question broke into Stephen's internal cyclone of confusion and anger.

"She . . . er . . . was one of my teachers at university," Stephen told him.

The five-year-old was fascinated. "She was a teacher?" Clearly picturing his primary or even nursery school teacher.

Stephen found himself faced with the task of maintaining a straight face as he pictured Helen teaching children. It was an entirely bizarre thought. As bizarre, he thought with an internal grimace, as the notion that she was a mad scientist running a laboratory in the Permian in order to build an army of berserker teenaged soldiers.

"She was teaching grownups who want to get more schooling once they're done with regular school," Connor explained.

Elliott was utterly baffled. "Why would you want to do more school?"

"Because there are lots of jobs they won't let you do if you don't. Like being a doctor," Connor told him.

"Oh," Elliott said. "Well, I want to be a firefighter."

Connor's reply that Elliott would have to go to the special sort of school for firefighters nixed that idea. Stephen slipped up a few branches to get some quiet while Elliott tried to find a 'cool' sort of job that wouldn't need him to do any more schooling than the bare legal minimum. He had a pad and pen on him and began to add to the notes he'd written about the plans of the buildings, and the guard shift changes. Ideas for how to get in and get the other children out, what to do about Helen and then how he was going to get a whole passel of children and teenagers somewhere safe they could get some sort of help.

A half hour later he still only had vague ideas and realised a few things. First, he wanted to see one of Connor's supply raids, which, despite Connor's wish the day before to get some sort of rain blocking item, had not happened, and he needed to get more information about the floor plans of the place and whether and how much he could rely on the other teenagers. "Elliott's decided he wants to work at Tesco's," Connor declared suddenly from behind him.

Stephen nearly fell out of the tree. "Why?"

"Because it was the first job that seemed sort of neat to him that didn't require at least college."

Nodding his understanding, Stephen commented, "It makes a sort of logical sense."

"I can't really blame him," Connor said. "I mean, are there a lot of professors that are secretly mad scientists? Because I'll have to give up on paleontology if there are." The cheeky grin and deep dimple were all Connor Temple.

Without thinking, Stephen replied, "You shouldn't, you're far too good at it." Connor frowned and Stephen hastily changed the subject. "I'm going to need to do some more information gathering," he said. "I wondered if you'd be willing to make that run you gave up on yesterday because I was wibbling over Helen. If it's possible, I'd like to break in myself at some point, but I'm not about to try it without watching some more. I can't manage a ten-foot vertical leap, after all."

"It's a good point," Connor admitted. "The one main advantage we have in this, is that the soldiers are really stupid. I haven't seen any indication that the scientists are a danger, but then, I haven't seen them back to the wall, either."

"We'd want to try to surprise them," Stephen said, considering. "The difficulty is that if we take out all of one or the other, there's the chance to raise the alarm. Not to mention, there's only the two of us-"

"There'll be more if we break into the cells and get the teenagers out," Connor pointed out. "They'll none of them hold back if it means getting free."

It was true that put a different complexion to the matter. Loathe though Stephen was to bring more children into the fighting, they'd earned the right to free themselves and take something out of their captors' hides. "So, perhaps what we need to work on is sneaking past the guards, getting everyone free and then splitting into two groups to deal with both sides at once."

Connor nodded. "So, we'll head out again this afternoon? I'll go after the tarp, maybe some other supplies if something's convenient to grab and see if I can't clarify some of the geography."

---

Stephen had agreed, and they'd headed out again, leaving Elliott with his gun after an impressive not-lecture from Stephen again about not shooting unless he was sure he was about to be eaten or taken or something. Just as Connor would have done, in order to avoid creating a trail for the soldiers to follow, Stephen led the way back to the compound by a different route. It seemed that, once he knew where he was supposed to be going, Stephen was able to navigate by some arcane means Connor couldn't identify.

At least for a few minutes. Suddenly he realised what Stephen was doing. "How are you following the way the soldiers took to get back before?" Connor asked, fascinated.

"There's a bootprint here," Stephen said, pointing out an impression Connor wasn't sure he'd've been able to pick out before he'd been enhanced. "It's pointing that way," he unerringly pointed towards the compound. "They've left the occasional stray thread about, and the way the vegetation is disturbed shows the directionality as well." Then he turned to Connor. "How are you able to tell that's what I'm following?"

"One of 'em was bleeding," Connor shrugged. "I can smell it."

Stephen's eyes narrowed at him a moment. Not in criticism, but in an odd sort of concentration, as though he were seeing something or someone else standing where Connor was. "I see," he said.

They got back to following and found a different perch to watch things from than last time, Stephen settling in to take more notes, while Connor watched for his chance to make a run at the wall. He felt oddly free, because now he knew that Elliott would be taken care of even if he got taken back. It made everything easier, because he didn't have to feel like every single shadow was about to get him.

As the shift change happened, the post was momentarily in flux and Connor leapt up the wall, dodging the cameras that weren't designed to watch for humans, but for incoming archosaurs, slipped past the guards and crept into the cavernous barracks. They were designed in a way that let him effectively stay up in the ceiling, the joists offering perches he could leap along, and the guards certainly weren't smart enough to expect trouble in their own home.

At the back was where the supplies and tents and things like that were, and Connor quickly located a waterproof sheet for them to add to the shelter with, then grabbed a few random boxes of ammunition. He didn't know one bullet from another, but there were only two gun types the clones used, so the two different types of bullets hadto be useful. There were some more first aid supplies and some clean water which he added to the rucksack, then he left.

He'd got back to the ceiling, having to be far more careful on the way out, burdened as he was with a full rucksack and carrying the tarp in his hands. He was nearly to the window he'd planned his exit through when he was forced to freeze and start praying.

She'd just arrived. Helen Cutter. Connor gritted his teeth and mentally crossed his fingers that neither she nor her stooge of a scientist would look up. "How are things coming?" she asked the man coolly.

"Quite well," said the sneering man who seemed to take an obscene delight in hearing people scream as the painful injections raced through the system of his victims. "We're nearly ready for the final phase."

"Excellent," said Helen. "I assume there have been no repeats of the . . . incident with the escaping ones?"

"No, no," he assured her obsequiously. "Security has been tightened and they are all coming on quite nicely. The changes are nearly completely settled."

Helen nodded sharply. "Very well. I want them all finished and processed by the week's end," she told him. "Once my pets are finished I can begin training them."

They'd all three been in once place long enough that by now Connor could scent her and the man clearly. They were both . . . excited by the thought. He wanted to vomit.

Barely aware of the need for caution, Connor was a little reckless in getting out. He had to get to Stephen, had to tell him. He arrived at the tree where Stephen was waiting. "Connor?" he asked, eyes wide with worry. "What's wrong? You look white as a sheet."

"She's speeding things up," Connor said, too worried to reassure Stephen he was fine. "She wants it done for the end of the week. That means we only have a few days. Otherwise there'll be nothing and no one left, Stephen."

---

Connor's words sent a chill of horror down Stephen's back. "What do you mean? How do you know?"

"I was up on the ceiling, people really don't look up ever," Connor said, "And she came in with that berk what's in charge of the scientists. She said she wanted everyone processed by the end of the week."

"Helen always was efficient," Stephen muttered to himself. "We'd best head back to," he paused as the sheer ridiculousness of what he was saying in this situation that was so filled with horror, "The tree."

Connor caught the pause and grinned. "We could call it base camp if that'll make you feel better," he said before sobering again.

"It would," Stephen told him as they hurried back.

His thoughts raced the whole way back to their treetop temporary home. How could they do this? Break in, get the children out, deal with the soldiers and scientists . . .

And Helen.

Connor was hastily explaining everything to Elliott while Stephen flipped through his notes, hoping to wrench an idea loose. Unfortunately, the only one he could come up with was risky for all concerned. "If I act as a decoy, sniping from outside, I can probably create a diversion and thin the ranks." He turned to Connor. "While that's going on, you'd have to get in-"

Never say Connor wasn't quick to pick up an idea. "And I break the others out. Once the other teens're out, we can take out the soldiers and . . ." he glanced at Elliott briefly. "Deal with them."

Elliott wasn't stupid either. "You'll kill them, you mean," he said. "There's nothing else we can do. They're too stupid to talk around. They're more like the dimetrodons than people anyhow." He was placid in the face of this, and Stephen felt a stab of sorrow that he saw echoed in Connor's face at how Elliott had adapted to the necessity of killing so well. "What?"

"They may be really dumb clones," Connor said to him, "They may be sort of brainwashed by Her," Stephen could hear the capital letters Connor gave the pronoun, not wanting to offer Helen the respect of even a name. "But they're still pretty much human, Elliott."

"But they're bad!" Elliott declared. "They're bad and they hurt us. They hurt you Connor, and you're the only one who never ever hit. Even Pam hit Theresa."

"You shouldn't ever think like it's a good thing to kill someone, Elliott," Connor said.

Elliott sighed. "I suppose. It's just . . ."

"I know," Connor told him. "What about Elliott?" he asked. "I mean, we can't just leave him alone here for the time that'll all take. Anyhow, someone'll have to make sure the kids're got out of the way somewhere safe."

"You can't mean - he's five!" Stephen said, shocked.

Connor glared right back. "We don't have a choice. There's only three of us, even with him. I can get him in and leave him to let everyone out. I'll head out and make sure to distract everyone from heading into the cells. That'll give Elliott and the rest time to get out."

They argued, Elliott piping up from time to time, trying to tell them that he was fine, both of them shushing him, because he was five and didn't know nearly enough of what he was talking about. But the sheer simplicity of the plan made it the best option. No one had to rely on signals, the whole of it was straightforward and easy to explain and it didn't require anything more than what they had, a passel of guns and the three of them.

Without any desire to put it off any longer, and because they couldn't use the help of the teens who were too far gone, they decided to act at sunset. Elliott was fresh from napping all day at Connor and Stephen's insistence, and they set up not long before sunset in a good watching post.

As full dark set in, Stephen settled in and pulled out the handgun. "Get ready," he told Connor. Connor was to basically carry Elliott in, clinging to his back as he slipped past the hopefully distracted guards.

Connor nodded silently and slipped away. After counting to twenty, giving the teenager time to get into position, Stephen lined up and took his first shot.

There was a reason he'd won awards for his shooting, there was a reason he could have gone to the Olympics. One by one, he dropped them with headshots, the gunfire ringing out into the night. Connor was right. They were stupid. They didn't take cover, just stared around into the dark.

When one of them finally got out the machine gun he carried, it took him another minute to even begin to get close to Stephen's treetop position. When one of the people in white coats emerged, shouting directions Stephen couldn't hear for the sound of the guns, he took the moment and took that one out too. Unfortunately, it seemed the scientist's death galvanised the guards, who all took to firing randomly into the treetops in bursts of automatic fire.

He was forced to move from high up and circle around the compound. He'd got to a new place, firing off shots at the soldiers who had boiled out of the barracks building like ants from a crushed anthill, when the teenagers began to burst from the building where they were kept captive. Half mad, they flung themselves at the soldiers, tearing them apart.

Stephen was suddenly very relieved that Connor had retained his self-control in any sense, because the sight before him was horrible. They were savage. Spending half their time crouched on all fours, there was nothing human in the way they moved, reacting to signals and actions Stephen couldn't see, tearing the guards limb from limb, literally. He knew the forces needed to do those things to the human body, but they did it with an ease that was truly frightening.

One of the guards got himself together enough to shoot a girl, who staggered back, slipping on the now blood slicked ground. He was borne to the ground in a wave of infuriated savagery.

Even as another wave of teenagers flooded from the building that housed the so-called scientists, probably having finished dealing with them one way or another, it cleared the way for the soldiers to line up with their automatic weapons to open fire. Stephen knew his role then. He lifted the machine gun up, braced himself and sent a hail of bullets down the line of blank-faced identical men. The back rows died as Stephen carefully aimed away from the children he was now there to protect, but it left the clones trapped between the snarling, feral creatures those children had become, and someone wielding a machine gun that they could not see.

"Enough!" shouted Helen.

---

As the single shots began to drop the guards one by one, Connor took off running, vaulting the security fence in a reverse of the way he'd escaped the first time, racing through the shadows and into the building he and Elliott had fled so recently. Staying out of sight as he hurried along, sometimes having to keep himself aloft and out of sight of the guards senselessly thundering out to see what was going on, he made his way to the cells, quickly snapping the necks of the two guards left waiting there.

"Connor?"

"Elsie?" he breathed. "I've come to get you out. Would you believe Elliott found some man with a gun lost in the woods out there willing to help?" He swiped the card to unlock the door letting her out, hearing the wonderful sound of the clamouring voices of his fellow captives.

"She'd said you were dead, she . . . we all thought . . ." Elsie flung herself out and hugged him.

He'd've hugged her back, but there wasn't time. "You need to get out there. One half to take on the guards, the others to take on the scientists. I'll join you once you're out."

"What about the kids?" Zeke demanded, even as he clapped Connor on the shoulder.

"Elliott knows where they're supposed to go. There's a decent room they can barricade until we come for them." Zeke nodded, sending his primary schooler off to Elliott, while the two boys shared a rapid conversation in which Elliott was singing the praises of Stephen Hart.

Hettie grinned and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm for the scientists," she said, grabbing Michael and a few others. Connor felt a moment of despair. There were so few cells left compared to the start, and that just meant so many dead children and mad teens. She left, but Elsie cupped his face in her hands a moment.

"Don't feel guilty," she told him. "You did the only thing you could. You were incredible, and you're getting us out."

"Exactly," Zeke told him.

He nodded, but still wanted to curl in a ball and bawl a little. It wasn't fair. "Okay. Elliott? You got everyone, yeah?"

"Yeah," Elliott said, and scampered off.

Connor led the way, letting the others sort themselves how they wanted. "Just one thing," Connor said to Elsie and Zeke. "I'm . . . they didg et to me. I . . . sometimes I wind up like Marge and Thomas and . . . the others. I might go a little . . . mad."

"We'll stop you, Conn," Elsie promised. "Now, let's show these . . . bastards what they've messed with!"

They burst into the night, and Connor couldn't help but feel a savage pleasure at the dead bodies littering the ground. The guards were out in force, but stupid as they were, couldn't seem to form a plan to deal with a single sniper in a tree. He saw a grin cross the lips of the others, and the leapt forward, treating those cloned things the way they had the raptors and troodons in the arena.

He didn't even fight the haze that overcame his vision, didn't want to, ripping into them with the rest of the pack, hearing the sound of his alpha taking more down and knowing the cubs were safe in a lair away from the fighting, he gave himself over to the screams and blood. A bullet tore through Elsie, sending her falling back, bringing Connor around for vengeance on the one that had hurt her.

From the other building, the one that was all pain and Her twisted pleasure, came the rest of the pack, thundering out, joining the fight to destroy the Bad Things. For a moment, they were lined up on opposite sides of the space, when the thundering rattle of machine gun fire came out of the darkness, tearing through the back of the crowd, sending them into distraction and disarray. Through the blood on his face, Connor smiled. They had the best alpha.

There were very few left, they'd have no trouble ending it now, when a familiar scent made them all freeze and turn in atavistic terror. "Enough!" shouted the monster that brought them there.

For a moment they froze, then Connor launched himself at her guards, the soldiers she had with her. They all did, tearing them apart.

But she'd done something, and no matter how any of them tried, they couldn't make themselves attack her.

Her smile was chilling. "Well, I'm glad something worked correctly. I'll have to speak to Mr. Kelly about the rest of this."

"What did you do to us?" Connor ground out. It would all be for nothing if they couldn't do anything to her, but the very thought made him cringe and want to abase himself. It was sickening. Terrifying.

"Just a little safeguard," she said. "Now, who's your - Stephen?" Her face went slack in shock.

"Helen," he said evenly. Connor shuddered in relief at the sight. Stephen was there, hadn't had done to him what she'd done to the others. "How about you answer Connor's question? What have you done?"

They all watched in disbelief as she oozed her way over to Stephen, shoving her breasts at him. "Oh, Stephen, you don't understand-"

"You're right," he snapped. "I don't. I don't know what game you're going to try playing Helen, but I'm not buying it. Not this time."

"You haven't seen the future, Stephen," she told him, laying a hand on his arm. Her face was full of patently false pleading. "It's for the survival of everyone. There are predators in the future, terrifying things. If we can just create soldiers to deal with them, we can save people." Connor just hoped Stephen didn't fall for it. No matter, they'd get the cubs and run if they had to. But Stephen didn't fall for it.

He just pulled away. "I don't need to, to know what's wrong, Helen. This is wrong." He shook his head. "This is why you were leaving Nick and seducing gullible students, he's too moral for you. Cares too much about right and wrong."

"I love you," she tried.

"If what you feel for me is love," Stephen told her, "I'm rather glad I've never been in love, then. But somehow, I doubt it. Now, you're going to cooperate, and tell me how to get these children home safely, then you're coming back to the 21st century and I'm going to have Lester toss you in prison."

"Are you now?" she asked, sardonically. "Going to shoot me otherwise?"

"If I have to," Stephen told her. "Look at what I've done here."

She just laughed, and stepped away. But before Stephen could do more than aim at her, one of the temporal gates opened up and she fled through, the thing closing right behind her. For all that Stephen looked angry, Connor thought he looked a little relieved too. But he didn't say anything. Stephen had enough to deal with, being in love with the monstrous bitch there. He didn't need Connor pointing out that he should have just shot her and had done with. It wasn't like Connor and the others had done better.

---

Stephen's first order of business was to check on the scientists. There wasn't a soldier left alive in the place for him to need to consider what to do with them. A few minutes of talking with the men and women there went to show that Helen had selected carefully, choosing people who, like herself, saw others as useful tools to their work. With the help of the teens, they were locked away in the cells that had previously housed the children.

Then he turned to the ones that seemed to have the most authority with the others. "I'm sorry I don't know your names yet."

"Elsie," said the redheaded girl. "That's Zeke." She was pointing to a black boy.

"Thank you," Stephen said, trying to commit the names to memory. "Listen, I know the temptation is to deal with those scientists the way you did the soldiers, but . . ."

"It's not right to do it now," said another girl. "I'm Hettie." She sighed, pushing bloody and blonde hair out of her face. "I wouldn't be able to resist, but Elsie?"

"I'll work with Michael," she replied. "We'll keep them fed and whatnot."

"Think of it this way," Stephen told them. "I may need to have a go at picking their brains for answers about how to reverse what's been done to you all."

The faces turned to him all developed such hopeful looks that Stephen felt a little inadequate being the bearer of such faith and hope. "You think you can?" Connor asked, looking more unlike the adult version of himself Stephen was used to than he had managed yet. Because in a situation like this one, Stephen was forced to admit, Connor's general brilliance was what the team tended to rely on.

But he was there, and, "My focus for my bachelor's was in microbiology. I have a chance at figuring out what was done and maybe mitigating it somehow. I'll have to see." Then he shook his head. "Listen, if any of you are any good at science in school, it might help if I had someone there to help me look through the notes and things the scientists had. The rest of you, they had to have been living somewhere, you might as well see about what there is in the way of supplies and places to sleep and all."

Hettie nodded eagerly. "Peterson always smelled like chocolate. I'll bet she has a stash of chocolate!" She was already leading a pack of them off.

Stephen turned to the ones left. "You mind making sure the children get fed, maybe cleaned up?"

One of the girls, looking sort of Pakistani, nodded sharply. "Absolutely. This is positively filthy," she said. "Brian?" she asked one of the others. "You take the boys, I'll take the girls and we'll see what we can do?"

"It'll be like wrangling my brothers and sisters," said what was, apparently, a young Irishman. They collected a few others on the way and the teens scattered, leaving Stephen alone with Connor.

"You're not going to join in the looting?" he asked.

"They must have a brilliant computer set up," Connor told him, shaking his head. "I want to see what they've got."

"Lead the way, then," Stephen told him. "I suspect you'll have a better guess than I will."

Connor grinned and they hurried off. The lab was a beauty. State of the art equipment, and Stephen heard Connor make a few noises that were rather uncomfortably like ones he'd made the last time Allison had been over for "dinner", when he started in on the computer systems.

While Connor muttered to himself, Stephen started reading. Any joy he had was rapidly consumed by the sick feeling he had as he read the notes on what Helen had done to the teenagers.

Travelling through time, she'd made a discovery of a fungus that had an almost mutating quality to it. It didn't simply overtake someone, growing at an incredible rate, it absorbed the DNA forms of the animal or plant and then mutated its own cells to use certain convenient aspects of the 'host' creature. She'd got her minions to separate out the sequences that allowed for the rapid mutation of cells, then had put them to combining those with animal genetics to create the instincts and abilities of those animals in the teenagers.

It had been in everything from the food to air pumped into the cells to the injections they gave the teenagers.

What he had to do was determine if there was a way to reverse the process, especially in the poor kids who were still trapped in the smaller cages for everyone's safety. Some of the results of early experiments had Stephen swallowing back bile as he thought of those poor victims that no one would ever be able to help. In the end, the only way he got through it was by treating it all as a hypothetical exam question. Something that would never be real, because otherwise he had to face the horror of what Helen had been doing.

He had answers to how it had been done when he was interrupted by Elsie softly asking if he'd like to take a break for a shower and some food, but nothing yet on how to undo it. Stephen looked up to see that he'd been there for the whole day. He'd been generally aware of the sunrise, the light moving across the room and activity in the background, but he hadn't realised how long he'd been at it. Suddenly exhausted as his concentration was broken, he told her, "I'd best get some sleep somewhere."

She smiled. "Connor's beat you to that," and she nodded her head to the side where Connor was asleep over the keyboard.

"Where's Elliott?" Stephen asked. "Connor'll probably be less . . . concerned if he wakes up with Elliott."

Elsie's lips pursed a little. "True enough. I can't . . . I'm amazed, you know. He's the only one that the bitch completed the process on who didn't . . ." her lips trembled a moment. "Penny was such a sweet little girl," she murmured. "And all the others."

After the past days with Connor and Elliott, Stephen's normal standoffishness was at an all-time low. He pulled the poor girl into his arms, holding her as she wept softly. "I'll do my best for you all," he told her. "You have my word. Even if I have to bring you all back to the 21st century and make Lester help."

---

Connor woke up, momentarily disoriented, but before he could do more than wonder where he was, the scent and sound of Stephen and Elsie reached him. Quelling some of his baser instincts, which were not going to be helpful, he suddenly realised Elsie was crying and Stephen was comforting her. He tried to edge quietly out of the room, but Elsie remained as much on edge as any of the others, and snapped to attention at the first sign of movement.

"You should probably get to bed," she said, hastily wiping away the tears on her face. "Elliott's been missing you. He'll be happy to see you come morning, if you want to set up . . ." she paused. "After you shower. Connor, you stink."

Putting on a grin he didn't feel, Connor told her, "I'm sure it's just a right manly musk, right Stephen?"

Stephen had another odd look on his face, but he replied, "Connor, I don't have an enhanced sense of smell, and even I can tell you stink. So do I, for that matter."

"No one ever appreciates a good joke," Connor grumbled as he left the room, following the scent of soap and warm water down the halls.

Following after him, Stephen asked, "Just wondering, but do you know where the showers even are?"

"Just following the smell of soap," Connor told him, holding onto a false cheer.

"Why do you do that?" Stephen inquired .There was a strange quality to the question, one Connor couldn't quite figure out. "Make those bad jokes. You must know they're not funny."

"They're funny if you let them be funny," Connor said, sobering. "And sometimes it's all I've had since I've been here. Keeps me from going howling mad."

They arrived at a set of showers, pretty much the same as the sort you'd find at a public swimming pool or gym, with what looked like the plundered contents of the towels, soaps, shampoos and whatever else bath-related had been found, scattered haphazardly all over the room. Connor hastily grabbed one of the bottles of shampoo and one of a body wash, diving into the shower, hastily peeling off his clothes from inside the stall, dropping them next to the towel and enjoying the bliss of hot water. When he opened the shampoo bottle he nearly choked. The scent of flowers was sickening and thick in the air.

"Connor?" he must have made some sort of noise. "Are you alright?" Stephen asked.

Slamming the lid shut, he choked out in response. "It's just the smell of the shampoo, I think the amped up sense of smell's a bit of trouble with this."

"Pass it here," Stephen told him, and a moment later Connor was in possession of an unscented bottle and set to getting the grime, sweat, oil and whatever the hell else he had on his head, off his head. When he was finished, he discovered Stephen wearing slightly ill-fitting, but clean clothes, and holding out a bundle of clean-smelling clothing to Connor. "Michael came by. He and the others have been raiding the closets. They'll probably be close to your size."

"So much better than at school," Connor commented. "No idiots snapping wet towels at you."

A wry look crossed Stephen's face. "Such a waste of everyone's time," he said, shaking his head. They split up, Stephen apparently following directions to someone's bedroom and Connor following his nose to find Elliott.

"Connor!" exclaimed his cub, bounding out of the bed. "I was worried you were hurt, I haven't seen you in forever," he finished reproachfully.

"I'm sorry," he said, plopping down on the bed, immediately joined by a snuggling five-year-old. "I was looking at the computers to see if there was anything in there that could help Stephen with fixing what's wrong with everyone."

"Oh," Elliott said. "Can I help? Only 'cause we're all bored."

Suddenly exhausted, Connor yawned, and crawled into the bed, answering, "I'll think about it tomorrow, Elliott. I'm really really tired right now."

"Okay," Elliott said, crawling in with him. With his cub safe, all the others safe, behind walls that would keep everything out and finally in a comfortable bed for the first time in what was weeks, if not months, Connor fell asleep immediately.

He was startled awake, and reacted as he'd learnt to out in the woods, lashing out first, slamming the intruder to the floor, determined to protect his cub from any attacker. A sharp voice brought him up short. "Connor! Stop that now!"

Alpha, Stephen, his brain reminded him. His mind cleared and interloper resolved first into pack, then into Zeke. "Oh, God. I'm so sorry." He scrambled back. "Zeke, I-"

"I told you," Elliott was saying with all the I-told-you-so a five-year-old could bring to bear. It was actually rather a lot. "That's why I went to get Stephen."

Zeke looked terrified, and Connor had to viciously suppress the part of him that was trying to howl in triumph at establishing dominance over the older, larger, teenager. "Zeke, I . . ." There wasn't anything he could say, though.

"Connor," Stephen said. There was a hint of sharpness behind the words, and Connor felt himself tilting his head in submission before he stopped himself. "Why don't you come back to the lab for a bit, you and Elliott?"

It wasn't really a question, and Connor sighed with relief internally as the pack alpha made him leave. He could feel his brain getting fuzzier by the day. What had been harder to tell, out in the woods, was clearer now. He may have slowed down whatever process the bitch had done to him, but it hadn't stopped and he was still changing. Pushing that aside for now, he asked, "What do you need?"

"Right now," Stephen said, "I need someone who can look through the computers and find out things other than the biochemical work."

"You need a hacker," Connor said. A thought occurred to him. "How did you know?"

"After yesterday and the time you spent on the computer?" Stephen asked. It had the feeling of a lie, even though it wasn't one, exactly.

He shook his head. "That's not it," he said slowly. "You keep knowing things, saying things that . . . it's like you know me."

"Trust me, Connor," Stephen said, "Before this I did not know you." He turned and walked away, gesturing for Connor to follow, but Connor's eyes narrowed a little. There had been an odd sort of ironic twist to those words that he didn't know what to make of it. Nonetheless, there had been no reason not to trust Stephen, and someone did have to go through those computers while Stephen focused on how to fix everyone.

By the end of the day, after Elliott had wound up bored, then asleep from boredom, Connor had learnt a few interesting things. Firstly, there was a machine that could be used to generate the temporal gateways they'd all been brought through and specific tempero-spatial coordinates for every kidnapee that he could use to send everyone home to their right places and times, and he'd found out what that Helen woman had meant by a safeguard when none of them could hurt her.

"Stephen," he called. "You should probably see this."

Stephen was over in a moment. "What've you got?" he asked.

"I don't really follow all the genetics here," Connor admitted, "But it seems that She . . . Helen, she made a few modifications to herself as well as to us. You know how there are some spiders where the female's a lot bigger than the male? Where the male has to either avoid her or, if he wants to mate has to sort of sneak up on her and stuff?"

Catching on instantly, Stephen looked closely at the file Connor had open. "She used that sort of atavistic caution and fear, input it into all of you and made the trigger for it herself," he muttered. "And a few other things, herding and pack instincts, placing her in the position of bellwether, for lack of a better term . . . and hyenas, who are matriarchal play a role . . ." He shook his head. "Maybe when I get home I should find out if she did that to me, too."

"I'd say something comforting, but there's not much that would be," Connor told him frankly. "I've also found out how to get us all home to the right place and times. I'm thinking we should send the children back. I don't think any of us teenagers are ready to be sent back, but Elliott . . ."

"Elliott should go home to his mum," Stephen agreed. "And the others. This is good news. You're sure you know how to do this?"

Connor nodded. "Ultimately, it's just a matter of inputting the data into the machine. It seems simple enough." It would be a pang to let Elliott go, but this was what would be best for Elliott.

Somehow Stephen knew, and they walked back to the rest of the group, gathered together in the barracks, letting Connor carry his still-sleeping cub one last time.

---

As always, Connor's intellect rose to the occasion, and after the meeting in which they told everyone that there was a way home, he started up the generator needed to create the anomalies and punched in the codes to send the first children home. Stephen went through, sometimes to a place lacking in supervisory adults, leaving the child with a caution that it would do little good to tell their parents, but some emerged to their worried parents standing right in front of the anomaly.

It felt good to be able to tell some people the truth, explaining roughly what the anomalies did, although he implied that it was entirely Helen's fault. At Elliott's turn he got a bit of a surprise. The very young woman standing in her back yard had pursed lips and a rucksack, a hat, a lot of bottles of water and a rifle. When he came out of the anomaly, she sagged in apparent relief, then flung herself at Elliott. "Elliott! You're alright!"

"Mum!" Elliott shouted happily. "I was so scared but Connor saved me and Stephen came and rescued everyone and he's gonna get everyone home!"

Her head came up and she grinned a little weakly at Stephen. "You really make a practice of this, don't you?" she asked.

"I . . . er . . ."

"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked. "Well, I suppose I have changed a bit." She pitched her voice higher and rougher and said, "I ain't baggage!"

After the whole mess with Connor, Stephen suddenly understood. "I think we may not have met yet, so to speak," he told her. "I'm still from 2007."

Her jaw dropped a moment, then she looked him up and down. "You would have to have fantastic genes to look that much the same after twelve years, I suppose," she said. "Still. I don't think I ever thanked you or Cutter for saving me from being an idiot back then. So, thanks. And thanks for Elliott."

"He's a great kid," Stephen told her honestly. "I've got to go. I have a few more of Helen's kidnap victims to return."

"Kidnapped!" she exclaimed.

"I'm sorry to leave, Elliott," Stephen said, "I'll see if Connor and I can't arrange to be here in the next few days. I mean, the us from now."

He walked back through to the young woman fussing over her son. Connor looked anxious. "How's Elliott?"

"Apparently I'm going to rescue his mum from something in a few months' time, so she was about to come through here with a rifle and God knows what else to rescue him," Stephen told Connor. He watched as Connor's hackles lowered and he seemed to take a deep breath to calm himself down.

"That's good," he said with a smile that was mostly unforced.

Over the next few days, Stephen found a few things out, including that Helen's final injection was a sort of binding agent, and the teenagers who hadn't had one would, with time, revert to normal. About half asked to head home right then. Connor obliged, of course. It wasn't fair to make them stay. But the other half stayed, standing guard on the scientists and helping Stephen threaten and occasionally go further than that with them, keeping the compound working, acting as lab assistants, cleaning and cooking staff and just doing all the things that needed doing.

Eventually he'd got everything from those merciless bastards he could. They were still left with the question of what to do with them. It was Hettie, one of the ones who'd stayed behind to help, that came up with the answer. "We can't hand them over to any officials, I mean, most of them don't exist in the same time or place as anyone else. I say we just toss them somewhere in time, and let them fend for themselves. If they make it, then they make it, but . . ." she shrugged.

"Somewhere after humans've evolved," Connor said slowly. "That's still a lot of free millennia, and I can program the thing to drop them in different places, too."

And that was what they did. They'd drop them off, a millennium apart with each 'group', and each individual was dropped a continent away from everyone else. One in North America, one in South, one in Africa, one in Asia, one in Europe and one in Australia. Then one thousand years later another 'group' of six would be distributed the same way, until they were all gone. With them, most of the teens who'd stood guard also left.

It was a small group now. Stephen's temporary lab assistants, the ones in the cages who needed feeding and care that he was still trying to cure, and Connor.

But that last send-off was the last of Connor. Because the next morning, he was bad-tempered and unable to work. Now easily startled at any approach, the only person who could keep him from descending to violence was Stephen, and there was another knock-down, drag-out fight between them before he brought Connor into submission.

It also took longer for Connor to recover human cognition afterwards, and when he did, he told Stephen, shaking, "I . . . I should've told you, I know. It's . . . I'm losing it, Stephen. I'm . . . I could have killed Hettie there, and Michael." He was close to tears. "I can't . . . it creeps up on me sometimes and I . . ." his hands slid into his hair, gripping the dark locks, pulling on it. "Without Elliott it's even harder 'cause I don't have the same reason to stay . . . normal." Suddenly his gaze shifted to Elsie, who'd also stuck it out, and was flirting with Michael. Connor's eyes went blank and a growl rattled in his chest at the sight.

"Connor!" Stephen snapped. "If you can't get yourself under control, I'm going to have to put you in with the other ones. You know that."

With visible difficulty, Connor met Stephen's eyes. "Then you'd best do it. I don't know how much longer I can hold on."

"Connor," Stephen said softly. He didn't know what to say. Connor, even at fifteen, had a brilliant mind, was good enough even at that age to stand in for Stephen's regular colleagues. But he'd been less and less help as this had progressed, and Stephen could, now that he was thinking about it, trace the development of Connor's current state. "You're right. Do you want to go in with the others, or should I put you into the cells, separate?"

"I don't . . ." Connor's voice cracked. "With the others. I don't . . . even if I'm not . . . I don't want to be alone."

"You're not," Stephen said. Even though he knew, had talked to and seen the man Connor had become, knew he must have found a way to fix this, he had no idea how, no idea how to break apart the binding agent that had made these changes permanent. "You're not alone, you never will be. I will find a way to fix this, Connor."

They walked together to the place where the truly feral ones were still held. They were fed and given water, when a blood sample was needed they were fed tranquilisers to make sure they couldn't break free and either hurt someone or get loose in the Permian landscape. There were empty cages, one for every teenager that had been left before they stopped Helen.

Suddenly Connor moaned and yanked open a door and practically flung himself in. "Connor?" Stephen asked, as the cage clanged closed with a horrifying sound of finality.

"I had to," Connor groaned. "I . . ." His head came up, his eyes blank and a snarl on his lips. "Made me weak, Stephen. Some alpha. I can smell how frightened you are."

He didn't dignify that with a response. Because he almost fancied he could hear Helen speaking behind the words. This wasn't Connor. This wasn't the floppy-haired affable young man who idolised Nick Cutter, it wasn't the colleague whose mind he couldn't help but respect, it wasn't Abby's cheerful and sloppy flatmate, it wasn't the half-mad teenager who would do anything to protect a small child, even take on a unit of armed soldiers. Stephen sat down beside the cage. "I won't leave you, Connor. Even if I have to get back to the lab, I'm not leaving you."

The dark eyes softened a moment again. "Thank you," he whispered hoarsely. Then he was off again. "You're keeping Elsie away from me. She's mine, I want her and she's going to be mine," Connor growled. "There's always some pretty boy they want better. I'll make her see me when I get you out of my way."

Eventually the vitriol wound down, the pacing, testing the walls. By dawn, Connor was just like the others, not a shred of human left in him, an animal in human skin.

"I'll get you back, Connor," Stephen told him as he left. "I clearly did it, so there must be a way."

He'd get a shower and some sleep, then he'd get back to the lab. He'd had some success in applying dopamine and serotonin to the problem. He just had to keep his mind on the work, not on the poor kid Stephen now considered as much family as he did his parents and Nick Cutter.

---

His cub was gone! All the cubs were gone!

What had the Alpha done?

He had to get out, challenge the Alpha.

The screaming from the cages next to his filled him with anger. These were the pack betrayers. They'd killed cubs and hurt the other pack members.

Sometimes, pack members would come, bringing him food and water. Shoving it in through small openings, he'd try to get a hand out, grab one, make them let him go. When the female with the red hair came, he'd reach for her because he wanted her.

Had to take her before the Alpha got her to agree to have his cubs. So far she'd clearly resisted, since he never smelled the Alpha on her, but the Alpha had to be after her, she was perfect.

Sometimes the Alpha would come, make noises at him that left him confused. The noises always made his head hurt. Not because they were loud, but because they made things in his head feel strange.

Light, dark, light, dark. Many lights, many darks passed.

The betrayers began to disappear, taken away. He was losing time, now. Sometimes he'd be reaching for his female, and suddenly he'd be bruised and aching from where he'd been flinging himself about in the cage. Things would go from light to dark in the blink of an eye and now he was afraid.

So few of them left, and whatever the Alpha was having done with the betrayers, clearly he was going to have done to him, because he was the only one able to challenge the Alpha.

This time when he woke, he was somewhere new, somewhere that smelled familiar, terrifying. Like the Bad Things and Her and the Alpha had taken him to the Bad Place! Was making noises at him, at his female, who was standing beside the Alpha and . . .

Everything snapped into sharp-edged coherence. "It should be working now. Connor, can you understand me?"

For the first time in longer than Connor cared to recall, his mind felt entirely his own. "Yeah. Stephen?"

"Yes?"

"Did you do it?"

Blue eyes with dark circles under them in a pale and exhausted face crinkled into a smile. "It seems I did."

"You look awful," Connor said frankly.

As Stephen laughed, he felt himself pulled under, but this time it wasn't into that state of nonbeing where he'd been losing more and more bits of him, it was just straightforward tiredness, and Connor went to sleep, relieved to know he'd wake up as himself again.

---

When Connor woke up he was alone, curled up in the bed he'd commandeered as his own back when they'd taken over the compound. It felt a little lonely without Elliott, but for the first time he didn't feel like what he imagined a father whose son had been kidnapped felt like. Which was a pretty big relief. He missed the kid, was a little worried about how okay he'd be back in his present, given the trauma he'd gone through, but nothing more than that. He didn't feel any need to bare his throat to Stephen in submission, didn't feel any need to challenge Stephen to a physical fight for dominance or for Elsie.

Now that he was rational he didn't think Stephen was the sort to be attracted to a girl half his age, either. He was also now well aware that Elsie had to return to 1940s Australia, the same way they had to return everyone to their native times.

That thought made his eyes go wide. Stephen! He had to figure out how to program it for Stephen's return to 2007. He was going to have to get details of date and time and place from the man, then figure out the calculations he needed to get him there.

He bolted out of bed, reaching for the borrowed clothes, and tripped and fell. He staggered to his feet, then into the wall. What was going on? Eventually his equilibrium was restored, but the world still felt oddly as though it were tilted, or wobbling. He couldn't get his bearings, not really. The whole way to the hub where the computers were, where he hoped Stephen was, felt strange, off-kilter. He knew he was walking oddly, but he couldn't help it, had to do it that way to keep his balance.

"Stephen," he called in relief when he got there. He took two steps in and tripped over thin air, hitting the ground hard. "Ow," he said, rubbing his head where it had bounced off a stool.

Stephen was at his side in an instant, along with Elsie. "Are you alright?"

He leaned against the desk instead of trying to get up. "I don't know. It's . . . it's not exactly dizziness, but something's not right. My centre of gravity feels all wonky, or my balance or . . . I don't know," he finished.

"We'd better get you to the lab so I can run a few tests," Stephen said worriedly. "There's a few things I need to talk to you about."

"Okay," Connor said, letting them pull him to his feet, and leaning heavily on Stephen the whole walk back down. "What did you need to talk about?"

Stephen took in a deep breath. "You know how you'd been trading food with Elliott, making sure that you didn't get the right formula for Helen's plan to work?"

"Yeah?" Connor asked.

"It worked to keep you sane," Stephen explained, "But it messed with the chemical composition of her binding agent. While I was able to reverse the process on the others, you've . . ." He paused, probably looking for a way to break to Connor that he was going to die or something. "You've made aspects of all this permanent. You'll always be susceptible to entering a sort of primitive, instinctive state unless you take some sort of regular treatment for it."

Connor felt himself pale. He couldn't go home like that, he couldn't, wouldn't have a normal life. "What? How . . . what am I going to do? I can't go home-"

Stephen cut him off. "I think I can bodge something together that'll work, and I also think you'd be able to make it out of some things that'll be simple enough to get." He shook his head. "But first, I need to find out what's going wrong now."

"Right," Connor said, feeling himself wobble rather dramatically. "I can't go falling about everywhere once I'm back home, can I?"

Soon enough they were back in the lab, Stephen asking all sorts of doctory questions and drawing blood, then producing one of those gourmet lollipops from somewhere, saying, "One of Helen's pet scientists had a collection. I figured we might as well enjoy it."

"Well, thank you Dr. Hart," Connor said with a grin. "I haven't got a lolly from the doctor since I was twelve and Mum said that I was too old to need a bribe to sit still for the examination."

When he was finished with the doing the tests, Connor asked, "Can you give me a hand back to the hub? Only I think we should probably start sending everyone home that's left."

"Probably a good idea," Stephen agreed. He went to the door and poked a head out. "Elsie? Could you give Connor a hand getting back up? He feels up to sending people home, and there's nothing left for me to do to him at the moment."

Elsie let Connor lean on her as they slowly made their way back to the hub. "Connor, I-"

"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I know I was all weird and stuff with you. I'm really, really sorry."

"It's okay," she told him firmly. "I mean, it's all wearing off, and I know how strangely I was thinking. With all the things that . . . that bitch did to us, I'm just . . ." she shook her head. "I just wish we could all go home and still get to know each other properly."

"Yeah," he said heavily. "But by the time we're home, some of us'll have been dead for hundreds of years."

She took in a shaky breath. "Do you . . . Connor, do you think you could maybe at least give those of us in the 20th century years and addresses and things? Maybe give us a chance to . . . to see if we could at least talk? See how everything came out in the end?"

"I'll see what I can do," Connor said, frowning. "It's a little late now with so many gone home, but I can see, sure." He sighed. "But you'll be . . . old . . . by the time I'm back. I left in '98."

She shook her head. "I can't imagine. It's just all so strange."

"I know. I mean, there's Doctor Who on the telly and all, but actually living it . . ."

"Doctor Who?" she asked, curiously.

"Sorry," Connor told her with a grin. "He wasn't invented until the 60s."

"I guess I'll just have to wait twenty years to understand what that means then," she told him, grinning a little.

For the afternoon she was his hands and feet so he wouldn't have to wobble all over from behind the computer, and he got everyone's addresses written down for everyone else who's lives might intersect. Then he started sending them home. Watching as, again and again, the machines would whir into life, creating the now-familiar golden glow with its shards of floating glasslike stuff, and someone else would go through, heading for home.

Right before she left, when it was her turn, Elsie darted forward and kissed him. Then she pulled away, smiling through tears. "Well, at least I can say my first kiss was with a hero," she told him, then sashayed through, leaving Connor goggling after her until Michael poked him sharply, saying over the collective 'oohing' of the others, "You know, some of us would like to get home sometime?"

"Shut up," Connor muttered, shutting the machines down and then reconnecting to the next destination. Everyone had finally gone home at the end of that day, but for Stephen and Connor. He hoped everyone was alright.

Stephen, now that he'd had experience with all this, was able to, pretty quickly, figure out what was wrong and make a few adjustments to the treatments Connor was going to have to give himself. And it was true that Connor should be able to distill out of some easily purchased items the necessary things to keep his brain chemistry balanced.

It was always going to wreak havoc on his balance, though. In retrospect, he felt a little awful at the harsh things he'd said to Connor when he was trying to teach him to shoot or make him run an obstacle course. Lester had insisted, once it became clear they were all going to be in the field being chased by monsters all the time, on a fitness regimen for all of them. He, Cutter and Abby had taken to it well, but Connor had faffed about all the time. Or so he'd thought. He'd have to find out when he got home. Would have to talk to the techs at the Home Office and to Connor, just to see if there was something they could do.

He left the lab, having done all he could to deal with things on his end and headed up to the hub. Connor was alone up there, and gave Stephen a sad smile. "Everyone's gone home now, but us."

"That's good," Stephen told him, smiling. "I think I've figured out what needs doing for you, so why don't we both take a break?"

"Sounds good," Connor agreed, and Stephen supported him down to the canteen, where they ate eggs and chatted idly about dinosaurs, neither one wanting to talk too seriously yet.

Finally, though, the topic had to be breached. "What are we going to do about this place?" Stephen asked. "We can't just leave this sitting around."

Connor nodded, then sighed. "I'd had a thought about that, and it means I'll have to leave last."

Stephen sat bolt upright at that. "What? Connor-"

"Hear me out," Connor told him. "I can arrange for this whole thing to get absorbed into one of those anomalies and sent back in time to when the earth was still forming. It'll get destroyed by lava and such. There won't be anything left. But I have to program the computer to turn on, send me home, then shut down, restart, then send the whole thing back further in time."

"You shouldn't be the last out," Stephen said firmly. "You're brilliant Connor, but you're just a kid and-"

"And I'm the only one who can do this," Connor said firmly.

Stephen remembered that Connor, when the gorgonopsid had arrived in the clearing where the Permian anomaly had been, had pulled Abby behind him, as though to protect her from the animal, that Connor had stepped between a mosasaur and Abby, that Connor had stepped between guns and Tom and that he'd kept the timeline intact, even mere feet from Helen, which must have grated on every nerve. "All right," he capitulated.

"Now," Connor continued, "I don't know the theory behind how those machines are getting locations and dates and such to send people to, so I'm going to have to make it up as I go along to get you back to the right place and time. I might be a little off," he cautioned.

"How off?" Stephen asked.

A wince. "At worst?" Connor asked. "A year or two in either direction, and . . . maybe as far as France."

That was not good, but it wasn't as though he had much choice, and that was certainly better than random guesses, or worse yet, being stuck in the past for years. "Well, you'll do your best and we'll just have to see."

Back in the lab, Stephen went over with Connor what he'd need to do to deal with things, and they both agreed to take a few more days before heading back, not only for Connor's calculations, but also because Stephen wanted to be sure he'd finessed the treatment enough to let Connor function. In the end, Connor's balance was shot, and sometimes he seemed to be having other troubles, and Stephen remembered Connor talking about allergies and asthma.

The day came though, that there was no more finessing he could do. Stephen was no doctor, no biochemist, had run to the limits of his knowledge and the equipment available, especially without any sort of professional resources to rely on. Connor had finished his programming and was finally mostly adjusted to his new balancing paradigm.

Connor fired the machine up, and Stephen saw the anomaly take shape. He took in Connor's face, imprinting that fifteen-year-old who had risen to all these challenges so magnificently into his memory, before heading back to the time and place he was supposed to go. He knew Connor would succeed in getting himself home because he had, but he still worried. Because if he'd done one thing wrong, everything could change. Stephen reached out a hand, Connor a little perplexed reached back for what looked to be a handshake, and then Stephen pulled him into a hug. "Take care of yourself," he said in the teenager's ear. He pulled away, adding. "And I'll see you in a few years, I'm sure of it."

"Right," Connor said. "2007. I . . . goodbye Stephen."

Then with a final deep breath, Stephen walked through the tear in time and back into his own present.

---

It wasn't until after sunset and hours of listening to Cutter and Abby berate him over losing Stephen that Connor began to get truly afraid for Stephen. After all, he'd said no further than France, but what if he'd miscalculated to the west rather than the east? Stephen could have been dumped into the Atlantic and drowned from exhaustion trying to swim back. Or Connor could have just got the time wrong and Stephen wasn't going to be back for years yet. Or worse, he'd completely miscalculated, sending Stephen spinning off to be lost in time and space.

He knew the machine worked, because he'd made contact with Luke almost immediately. Luke had never left Ireland and never stopped being a hippie. He lived in some weird commune they'd put together a few miles out from some tiny town at the northernmost bit of the island. Connor had gone out there once, have worked and save like a dog to take a gap year and visit everyone.

Not everyone had turned out so well. There had been victims of illness and war, he'd hoped Yolanda from early 90s LA would have been fine and one of the ones closer to his own age still, but she'd died in an earthquake not days after getting home. He'd found Hettie's grandkids, who'd been puzzled as anything by the safety deposit box she'd left them to give to anyone from a list of names who came looking for it. It had been filled with letters from others, left over hundreds of years. It seemed while Connor's back had been turned, the others had created a chain, oldest to youngest, so to speak, passing letters forward to each other.

He'd made photocopies of everything, passing them on to anyone still living and about. Hopefully when Stephen got back, they could have a talk about what they should do with them. Maybe store them in the Home Office until such time as the anomalies went public. It would be a nice set of museum pieces.

Elsie from Perth in Australia and David, who'd been from South Africa, both of them from about the same time, had scandalised everyone by finding each other after the war, falling in love and getting married. They'd wound up in New Zealand. Connor had travelled out there, the three of them having a happy reunion and amusing themselves at the expense of Elsie and David's kids, who were all in their forties and thirties and didn't know what to make of this teenager who they'd never heard of being so friendly with their parents.

David had laughed himself sick when Elsie had laid a rather dramatic kiss on Connor when he'd finally left, as all their kids had been horrified at their mother's behaviour, kissing a teenaged boy like that, and in front of their father. Connor rather suspected it was the tongue that did it, since Elsie was as feisty then as was when they'd been captives together. He'd noted the locations of everyone who had yet to go through the anomalies that were living, marking dates on calendars so he could call them or find them when it finally happened.

Wesley, it turned out, had made out incredibly well, becoming a very wealthy merchant during the end of Elizabeth the first's reign, and had left an amusingly perplexing diary to posterity, housed in the British Museum, filled with anachronistic references to everything from rap music, Doctor Who, Canadian politics of the 1970s, some obscure New Zealand children's television show from the 1980s and a variety of other minutiae that they were trying to parse through in terms of period knowledge. It had taken some doing, money borrowed from everyone and a discreet bit of hacking to get access to it. He'd gone through the old book carefully, page by page, painstakingly scanning everything to add to his collection. Wesley had been the one of them all from the farthest back, and he'd noted the details of his plan to create a chain of letters going forward.

There were a lot of snide comments about Connor's 'research' into the text. When Connor had politely asked if they thought it might be a hoax, he was given a lengthy lecture on the dating of artefacts, and a whispered admission from a Dr. Sarah Page that rather thought it had to be a hoax, because the results of one of the World Cups from the 1950s had been put in there far too clearly to be mistaken for anything else, not to mention the perfect drawings of various prehistoric animals done with the loving eye of an artist.

An evening at the Home Office listening to Cutter be furious over Stephen going missing and blaming Connor for it, he came dragging back to the flat he was supposed to be temporarily sharing with Abby to a stack of emails and phone messages a mile long, everyone asking after Stephen. He was forced to tell them, again and again, "I don't know. I didn't have preprogrammed coordinates."

He told Abby it was a computer gaming thing.

He was all at sixes and sevens the next day, forgot to take his dose and found himself twitchy and irritable, suffering from the withdrawal pangs. That was another problem. For all his intellectual gifts, microbiology and chemistry weren't among them, and Connor had been unable to adapt the dosages properly for the changes in his hormones and all when he'd finished puberty. With everything that happened, he was addicted now, rather than merely taking a medication, but he hadn't known enough to fix it, and it did unfortunate things to him. But it was this or madness, and shockingly, he'd take the addiction and being a sort of normal human being to being off it, and a murderous freak.

By the end of the day, he was suffering small tremors and Abby and Cutter were so angry with him they didn't care, labelling it faffing around rather than flu, which was his preferred excuse.

A week passed, and Connor was now sure that he'd killed Stephen by accident. He'd emailed Elsie and the others with his fears and had got a call at around three in the morning from her. "Connor Temple you listen to me. You have not killed Stephen and you knew you were hit and miss up to a year. Don't you sit there whining when you know that perfectly well."

"Else-"

"I'm not too old to put you over my knee, young man," she told him.

He heard the undertone and laughed despite his fears. "I don't think David'd appreciate you throwing him over for me."

The familiar accents of the black man who'd braved the police and everything in between to get out of a still-divided South Africa to Australia, travelling over land, from the bottom of the continent, up and across Asia, down through Indonesia and finally across the last gaps to meet Elsie, came on the line. "Somehow, Connor, you never struck me as that sort of person."

"Connor!" Abby shouted from her bedroom. "You'd better not be talking to some gaming buddy or I'll throw you out right now! It's the middle of the night!"

"Who's that?" Elsie asked.

Connor blushed. "I had some trouble at my flat and Abby was nice enough to let me stay on her couch until I straightened things out."

"You couldn't stay at Tom and . . ." David stopped. "Sorry."

Connor shook his head. "No, it's fine. I just . . . I was trying to impress Tom and Duncan and get them off me at the same time. If they thought that I had a girlfriend, it'd explain why I was missing Gillian Anderson marathon night."

"Well, now that I've yelled at you," Elsie said, "I'll hang up, since your friend's right, it's the middle of the night where you are."

"Thanks Else."

"Any time, Conn."

A week passed, Connor clinging to any semblance of calm he had, because he had thought it might be a year he was out, even then. But a year was a long time to wait when you were suddenly past the date you'd expected.

He was waiting for his run at the obstacle course, feeling even more off centre than usual while the SFs made disparaging remarks they pretended he couldn't hear, and Connor half wished he was off his treatments so he could shut them all up, when his mobile rang. He pulled it out and felt his heart stop as the number on the display caught his eye properly.

"Stephen?"

"You definitely missed the mark. I came out about five feet in the air, dead centre in the Liffey."

---

A gasp of laughter rang down the line. "I'm really sorry about that. Elsie's been on me for days now, reminding me that I'd said you might not come out where you'd started."

"Elsie's alright?" Stephen asked, curious, despite the fact that he was dripping wet in the middle of Dublin, having had to swim for shore, lying through his teeth about someone shoving him over the side of a nearby bridge when the police oh-so-politely inquired as to why he was swimming in his clothes in the river.

"Married to David and living in New Zealand," Connor told him. "And you will not believe Wesley's journal. I had to do a lot to get my hands on that, but it's in the British Museum if you can believe it. Chock full of Doctor Who references and some daft show little Katie told him about and the Canadian Prime Minister from the 70s, Pierre Trudeau. It's sort of really weird."

There was a shout from the other end of the line, a scuffle, and then Cutter was on the line. "Stephen? Are you alright? What happened? I can't believe Connor wasn't at least there enough to tell us what happened-"

"You haven't been harassing him, have you Nick?" Stephen asked. "Because he's been through enough for the moment, I should think."

Another muffled noise and a shout from Cutter. "Stephen?" it was Abby. "How are you?" she sounded breathy and girlish and Stephen found himself briefly staring at the wall in front of him in perplexity.

"I'm fine," he told her. "Look, give Connor back his mobile, then can you send someone to get me?"

There was some more muffled goings-on, and then Connor's voice, clearly far from the phone saying, "Thanks for my phone," before he clearly got it back in position. "So, other than a wetting, you're fine?"

"I'm fine," he assured Connor. "Though I've got a lot of questions."

"I'm sorry I didn't warn you," Connor blurted out. "I just . . . I didn't want to mess up the timeline and all."

"It's okay," Stephen soothed. "I was thinking more about the treatments and all."

A sigh. "It's not good," Connor admitted. "If I go off them I go into withdrawal, but . . ." he trailed off.

"Right." Stephen was about to continue when another round of muffled noise broke out at Connor's end.

Connor heaved a sigh. "We'll have to talk about it all later, Stephen," he said. "It seems that some of the SFs have taken the word withdrawal to mean I'm a heroin addict." He paused. "Lester said he's sending someone, and you should get to where the ferry to Liverpool lands up."

Later that afternoon, in his own clean clothing, showered and fortified with a beer, Stephen was settled in the conference room, faced with Cutter looking deeply anxious at him, Lester sneering as usual, and Claudia with one of those poker faces that only tells you something is really horribly wrong, because it wouldn't be that blank otherwise. Abby was making those doe eyes he'd been trying very strenuously to ignore, while Connor wasn't looking him in the eye at all. "So," Nick started with a sideways glare at Connor. "What happened that Connor missed?"

"He didn't miss it," Stephen said. "He was letting things take the course they had to."

"What?" came a chorus of voices back.

"You're not upset?" Connor asked him. "I mean, that I didn't warn you?"

Stephen recalled that bereft look Connor had shot him before he'd left him alone in the Permian. "No. Not at all. If I'd known I'd have insisted on waiting for backup to arrive. The anomaly would probably have closed and Elliott wouldn't have got home, or anyone else."

"What didn't Connor warn you about?" Abby demanded next.

So, Stephen told them. Told them about how Elliott had found him, led him through the anomaly into the Permian and over to the clones trying to kill Connor. His story about the shock of a teenaged Connor, explaining why Connor had been so weird all that time and his feral rages. He described the compound and the children trapped inside and the experiments done on them and how they'd freed the children and sent them home.

He told them all about Connor's troubles and saw a look of relief cross Connor's face, and realised that Connor had been truly worried that they wouldn't believe him if he'd tried to tell them.

"Connor?" Nick said, sounding deeply sceptical. "Connor's the victim of an experiment turning him into some sort of mad, half-animal?"

Stephen stood and came up behind Connor. "Connor? Do you mind if I . . ." he trailed off, very gently leaving a finger on the spot that he learnt made Connor purr reflexively.

"If my public humiliation'll do it, then get on with it," Connor grumbled, slumping forward. Stephen shook his head, amused, and dug his fingers into Connor's spine, the deep and rumbling purr erupting at once from Connor's throat and startling everyone to their feet.

"What the . . ." Cutter gasped, seemingly looking about for a firearm of some kind. Claudia looked frightened and Lester's face was deeply intense, if unreadable.

Abby however looked intrigued. "He's purring. Are you purring?" she asked Connor. "That's . . . I knew you made that sound when you were in the shower that time."

Connor pulled away from Stephen's fingers with a half-hearted glare. "Okay, enough. And Abby, I wasn't wanking."

She'd already dashed around and got her fingers on that spot, the suddenness making Connor's eyes roll back, a dreamy smile cross his face and the purr erupt again. This time, prepared, the others responded by retaking their seats while Abby got into a minor slap fight with Connor, who clearly was trying to get her to stop.

"Both of you, enough," Lester demanded sharply. He stared intensely at Connor. "You returned the children to their homes, you said?"

"Yes," Connor replied. "I mean, I returned them to basically the same minute they were taken."

There was a look of sudden vulnerability on Lester's face as he asked, "Was . . . do you recall a girl named Diane? She was a twin, her sister was-"

Stephen looked at Connor and saw a stricken look on his face. "Victoria. I'm sorry."

"Victoria had nightmares for years," Lester said softly. "She'd wake, screaming about clones taking Diane away and some terrible woman doing experiments. My wife said that a man who'd only given the name Stephen was the one who'd returned her. We never knew what she'd seen, only that she would tell us only that Diane was taken by someone."

"Peter never made it out of the arena," Connor said slowly. "He died, and H- . . ." he glanced at Cutter and continued. "They didn't have any use anymore for the children once the teenager they were being kept with had died."

Lester looked human finally as he crumpled. "Tell me," he demanded.

Connor looked mulish. "I . . . I won't tell you what they did to her, because you don't need to know. It was horrible and I know that no one needs to remember someone that way. I will say this. At least it wasn't because Peter was one of the ones gone so mad he killed her. She didn't die thinking he'd turned on her."

"Victoria," Stephen said frowning. "I remember. She was so reserved, I didn't know it was because of that. I saw her off to her Mum, but the woman hadn't seen the anomaly and Victoria insisted she'd be fine."

"I wasn't able to track where the children were, in a lot of cases," Connor admitted. "I tried, but without addresses and last names it was a bit hard. I was worried about the ones who didn't have someone to talk to, but better for them to be home, than lost in time."

"My God," Claudia said, staring at Lester. The image of the man as a doting father was strange, but the look on his face was a terrible combination of relief and grief. Probably relief at finally knowing what had happened.

"Perhaps you might come by," Lester said slowly. "I . . . it would be good for Victoria to be able to talk to someone."

Connor nodded. "If she wants to talk to one of the other children, not the teens, I know that Geoff's living in Brighton. He's fourteen now, and the closest one to her age."

"I'll ask," Lester said hoarsely. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and seemed to shelve anything human again. But there was a sharpness to his eyes that went beyond his usual degree of biting intelligence. "Do you know anything of who is behind this?"

Stephen exchanged looks with Connor, Connor raising an eyebrow at him and tilting his head, clearly indicating it was his show. Which, since he knew the sort of denial Nick was going to react with, it sort of was. "Helen," he told them, seeing Nick shake his head in denial. "It was Helen."

"No," Nick said. "It can't . . . she wouldn't."

Connor's voice was cold as he finally gave voice to what had no doubt been strangling him ever since he'd seen her coming out of that woman's house. "Yes, she would."

Stephen broke in. "Nick, you'll have to face it. The Helen we both thought we knew doesn't exist anymore, maybe never did." As Nick looked liable to argue, Stephen told him, "Not now. It's been a hard few months for me and I'm not going to have this argument with you here and now." Then he turned to Lester. "I'm going to need to get a real biochemical expert to look at Connor. While the treatment I bodged together back there's holding, it's making him sick."

"Not sick," Connor said with a sigh. "Addicted. I get body pains and the shakes when I try to take a spell off. I can't quit because it's the thing that keeps me in one piece mentally, but I'm having to up the doses again and again. I don't have the chemistry to fix this."

Lester agreed to that and the meeting broke up. There would be time to figure it all out in the coming weeks and months. Abby had pulled Connor aside and was in some sort of consultation that ended in her pulling him onto a sofa next to her and setting off the purr again. Claudia was talking to Nick urgently and Lester was on the phone, Stephen catching the name, 'Victoria' as he spoke.

He went to crouch next to Connor. "I'm sorry about-"

"Don't," Connor told him. "I really should have known better than to assume you'd know me when you saw me. In retrospect, it was clear that you'd got to know me before going through the anomaly."

"By the way," Stephen asked. "What were you going to say? Right before I left, I mean."

Connor smiled a little. "I was really scared that I wasn't going to get it right, that I wouldn't make it home. That I'd mess it up and wind up dying in lava with the lab. I was going to ask that you tell my parents something about what happened to me if I didn't make it. But I didn't want you to change your mind about going then."

"You're right," Stephen told him. "I wouldn't have left then." He glanced up at Nick, who Claudia was failing to restrain. "I'm going to head home and get some rest in my own bed before Cutter gets loose and tries to corner me."

"We should head back to my flat too," Abby said, pulling Connor to his feet. "You'll tell me everything you ever saw the ceolosauravuses doing in that forest," she informed him.

Connor's grin was blinding and happy as he obediently did what Abby told him. But as they split up, heading for their respective cars, a look Stephen had come to recognise crossed Connor's face. He suddenly reached out, pulling Connor into a gentle headlock and rubbed his knuckles into Connor's head, the same way his own older brother had done. "There you are," he grinned as Connor squawked and wriggled away. "I've finally got myself a younger brother to torment."

"Bloody stupid . . ." Connor was grinning back, even while he grumbled. "All those sisters and this is what I get now?"

Everything was finally put right.