There were thirty-eight of them left when Matt counted.

Twenty-six ARC staff, and twelve people who'd thrown in their lot with him. They were all huddled together in what looked to be some kind of storeroom at the top of the fire escape. Outside there were people emerging from the station a few at a time, running off in random directions. Even as he watched, a predator emerged from the shadows. It was injured, but that didn't stop it going after one of the slower stragglers. Matt winced, and looked away, finding one of the newcomers staring at him. They'd obviously seen what was happening outside.

"Do we just stay here?"

"For now." He looked around for Lester, wanting to discuss the situation with him, make a decision on what they should do next. But he was crouching down with the rest of the core team, all of them huddled together in grief, several of them quietly crying. Part of him wanted to go over and join them, to recognise the pain he felt himself at what had happened. He'd let himself grow attached to his friends and care what happened to them. It was something he'd been brought up never to do. He'd failed his father in so many ways. But he couldn't help himself, he went over, crouched beside them, tried to find something to say that would help. It wasn't something he was good at.

"Perhaps he survived. You don't know..."

"Of course he didn't survive, you stupid man!" Jess snapped at him. "How could he possibly have survived that?!"

Matt had no answer. He knew the truth as well as she did, and left the sobbing girl with Emily to find whatever comfort she could. He had other things to worry about. He'd learned long ago not to dwell on the dead.

He turned to Tyler, who had been Becker's deputy, and started organising rotas with him for keeping watch. If Tyler felt aggrieved at the apparent lack of reaction to the loss of his friend and senior officer he didn't show it because he was Becker's man through and through and Becker would have just got on with the job as well. Matt was thankful for that one small mercy.

They never found a body that they could definitely identify. Becker's EMD was found amongst the debris weeks later, twisted and broken when they'd returned to the tunnels after the water had gone. There were too many dead in the tunnels to even think about searching through them, and the only safe thing was to burn the bodies before disease took hold and became one more thing to threaten their existence. If Becker was among them they really didn't want to know.

They cleared the shelter out, salvaged what they could, scavenged the remaining shops and offices, and started again.

January

Anomalies were the only way out.

This one was difficult to reach, partway up a collapsed tunnel. If the bombs hadn't hit it, the chances were that the anomaly would have remained hidden, underground. At least the attacks had done some good. Emily and Gilmore had climbed up to it and gone through. It was what they did, the woman from the past and the young soldier who was charged with protecting her while she checked the area. Sometimes they were barely gone for a moment, racing back through, screaming at the others to lock the anomaly.

This time they weren't back quickly. Jess watched the concern growing on Matt's face, the way he kept glancing at his watch. It had looked so hopeful at first, they'd called back that it looked habitable, then hurried off to scout the area. It had to be a quick decision, whichever anomaly they finally escaped through, and a few minutes looking around was vital.

Emily came back through, her face shining, hopeful in a way none of them had dared to be in a long time.

"My tribe!" She was almost laughing with relief. "I found the tribe! We can go through, we can join them!" She turned to Abby, her eyes drifting automatically to the woman's swollen stomach. "You will be able to raise your child in a clean world. And one of the tribe is a doctor."

Jess huddled over the radio, talking to someone in one of the other shelters, telling them what they were doing. She was aware of people going past her, climbing up into the anomaly. There was hope on their faces, something she hadn't seen for a while.

Then her friends started to climb, Connor carefully helping Abby, all of them knowing getting through that gateway was really her only chance to have a relatively safe birth. Emily was ahead of them, holding out her hands, reaching down to pull Abby through. She looked like an angel reaching down from heaven, Jess thought. The light of the anomaly lit her from behind, and from her position up high it looked like a tableau from a painting she recalled as a child. Then Abby was through and gone, Connor behind her, never far from her side. Two of the women from the group scrambled up after him, then several of the injured men. Lester had tried to stay back, insisting that others went first until on an order from Matt three of the soldiers manhandled him through the anomaly, his angry protests that he wasn't injured and could wait his turn all being ignored.

Jess felt a hand on her arm.

"Leave the radio, Jess. The anomaly's starting to flicker. You need to go."

Matt wouldn't go through, she knew that the moment he'd forced Lester to go, making sure that they had someone who would take charge out there. Connor had whispered his suspicions to her weeks ago and it looked as if he were right. Even if every last one of them was safe she thought he'd still stay, still try to save the world. He deserved better, she thought. They all did, really.

"Make sure you follow me. We need you," she told him as she started the climb. He said something that she didn't catch, but she didn't look back, knowing she would hold the others behind her up if she didn't keep moving. The woman in front slipped, lost her footing and nearly knocked them all down. Jess scrambled to get her place back, clawing at the rock. Someone pushed past her, desperate to get through and she slipped back down a little.

"Jess! Matt! Hurry!"

She looked up at the cry as another man pushed past her, and realised in horror that she could never make it in time and this would be the last time she saw Emily. Her best friend's face was framed by the halo of the anomaly, shocked and afraid as it flickered around her. A hand snaked out, grabbed Emily and pulled her to safety a moment before the thing closed. Fingerless gloves. Connor. Another friend they'd never see again.

Numbly, Jess let one of the soldiers lift her back down. They stood there in the silence. All those left behind really had nothing to say.

Matt's expression was unreadable as he stared at the space where the anomaly had been. And then he looked at her, and she knew she wasn't who he wanted to see standing there, for so many reasons.

She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it gently, sympathetically.

He didn't pull away.

Sometimes life felt like a dream.

When Becker had opened his eyes he saw a clean white ceiling above him, and felt a soft mattress beneath him. There was no sign of bombs or floods or impossible creatures that could rip you apart before you knew they'd even sensed you.

"You're awake."

The medic leaning over him hadn't smiled. He ticked something off on the clipboard on the end of the bed, then moved on to the next bed. No explanation, nothing.

The room was full of beds. Some people were lying on the floor, some on beds like the one Becker was on. The place stank of blood and antiseptic. The man on the bed next to him was so white he looked like a marble statue, his eyes sunken and gray. The sheets didn't cover his injuries properly, Becker could see there was only one leg.

His own leg hurt too much to be missing. He'd looked down, and had seen the outline of his own limbs. Still whole.

Being awake had been, apparently, enough for the medics. He had been left there for a few hours, mostly because he wasn't in danger and they'd probably forgotten all about him, and then someone had greater need of the bed and he got moved into a chair.

At that point, someone in a white coat who presumably had some medical skills had come over and run a few tests. No concussion, two broken ribs and a hairline fracture in his leg. They said he was lucky.

Becker hadn't felt lucky. He still didn't. The injuries were going to make it difficult to run when the predators swamped the place, because sooner or later that was going to happen.

The staff were too busy to talk much, but he gathered that he was in a temporary hospital along with countless other people. He'd been picked up by the military, they'd been rescuing survivors where they could despite claims otherwise. He'd been thrown into a fairly open spot by the blast, and maybe they recognised one of their own, because there had been a brief landing and he'd been pulled out with a few others.

All the survivors had their own horror stories. The relative safety of the hospital seemed to have lulled them all into a false sense of security and they chattered and complained and wondered who they could sue. Then they wondered when they could go home, because surely the government would have sorted things out by now. Becker felt quite sorry for the administrators, who seemed to bear the brunt of it all. He kept to himself, naturally quiet, gave out his military background and offered his help.

It had been a good way to get out of there and get back into doing something useful. His knowledge of the anomalies wasn't completely unique because records that the British government had obtained from the ARC had been shared, but it was close enough for him to be invaluable to the allied forces. Apparently it was a good career move too. He was reinstated with a promotion, and his injuries were given time to heal whilst he sat around in meetings discussing strategies and every technique they'd ever used against the predators.

Ridiculously, the sonar information actually got him a second promotion. It was a pity that civilisation was ending and he couldn't enjoy either the increased salary or the recognition. Not that either had ever been a big thing to Becker. He had tried to tell them that the sonar hadn't been his discovery, that their priority should be trying to retrieve Connor and Matt because they were the ones with the real knowledge, and the rest of the group too. His words fell on deaf ears, London was felt to be too overrun, nobody could still be alive down there. It wasn't worth the risk.

If anyone could keep them alive, it would be Matt, Becker reflected. Matt knew what was coming, what had already started to happen, and knew how to live through it. Becker wasn't going to give up hope until he saw the bodies... and given how little the predators left behind he knew that meant never giving up hope.

When it was quiet, when there was nothing to do except sit and wait for his injuries to heal so that he would be allowed back out into the field (because he was going back out there, promotion be damned, he wasn't going to sit behind a desk and wait for them to be overrun), Becker listened to the radio broadcasts that were getting picked up. It was a long way from the American military base he'd been moved to, there was a whole ocean between them, but it made him feel slightly less detached from what was going on.

He'd had comms set up for him so that he could listen to what was going on, messages from the areas that were already lost. The signals were weak, almost inaudible, but every now and then there was something from Jess or Connor, mostly information on the situation over there. They seemed to have a contact in Belgium who was relaying their messages back and forth for a while. Then that stopped. It didn't mean it was them. It could just as easily be the contact that was silenced. Belgium wasn't doing too well, after all. Or they'd gone through an anomaly, because they'd talked about that. He didn't like the idea, would never like the idea, but if it meant they were alive and safe somewhere then he could live with it. Of course, that meant he'd never see any of them again. He knew he'd have to live with that, too.

Two months recuperation was a long time to wait in the circumstances. His ribs were healing, but they still hurt, and the crutch he had to use to reduce the stress on his leg made the idea of him going out in the field laughable.

He waited.

February

It was the colours that Jess missed the most. Somehow the whole world had turned grey. Perhaps it was the explosions, scattering dust and debris everywhere. Perhaps it was because it never seemed to rain any more and nothing was washed clean. Perhaps it was simply because they lived in the sewers and the tunnels, like rats. She hadn't seen daylight in weeks.

There were eleven of them that had failed to make it through the anomaly. Matt, Tyler, herself, two other soldiers, four ARC staff and two people who had joined them when the tunnel had flooded. Four more had joined them since. Jess thought she should probably get to know them, at least learn their names, but she was finding it difficult to care.

Matt, Tyler and two of the others were coming back in after a trip to the surface. They looked greyer than ever, filthy from the dust out there.

"Here." Matt pushed a thick bundle at her which turned out to be a ski jacket. Too big, but welcome in the growing cold of the late winter months on the rare occasion when they went outside or ventured nearer the surface. They didn't know what to expect from the temperatures. Perhaps everyone would freeze to death and wouldn't that be a mercy of sorts? She pulled the warm material around herself because the will to live was still stronger.

March

Matt never slept well, always half-awake, listening for the sound of the predators that would one day wipe them all out.

One night it was a human predator he heard, a shriek, a grunt of pain, and then suddenly Jess was standing over him with her sleeping bag in her arms. She didn't even ask, just flung it down next to him and slept there from then on. He noticed in the morning that they were missing one of the research technicians. Becker's men were well-trained and carried standards of decency even through the fall of civilisation. Matt supposed that was going to be tested to the limit in the coming years, assuming they all lived that long. It hadn't escaped his notice that only three of their remaining group were female. He could remember what it was like, back in his past, in their future. The women were like prizes, treated as if they were less than human.

He shifted closer to her, wondering just how long he'd be able to protect her. He had other things to worry about, more important things, but he didn't like the thought of anything happening to the last member of the small group of people he'd come to think of as his friends.

Others were going to be less fortunate, with nobody caring enough to protect them, or having the benefit of spending several years being brow-beaten into learning basic self-defence by the man they were both missing.

Two weeks later predators found their way into the tunnels. They lost five people, including one of the soldiers and one of the last women. The remaining group of nine moved on. It wasn't as if it mattered. Nobody was looking for them.

April

Becker felt as if he had just sat back and watched the world collapse around him. Slowly whole countries seemed to have been swallowed up, their broadcasts stuttering, failing and then gone.

He had healed, as much as he felt he needed to, and was ready to go home. From the other side of the world, with no planes heading for Europe if they could help it, that was easier said than done.

At his own request he eventually got permission to go back out into the field, helping fight against the ever-growing threat, but it was growing hopeless. Becker could remember all too clearly the footage Matt had brought with him, images of what the world was going to turn into. He had seen the huge changes for himself first hand as well, long before Matt arrived. He'd nearly died in a future world that they'd all hoped that they would never see again. Somehow, when Matt had shown them the footage it had looked just like a film, like something that could never happen despite everything that they had witnessed.

The quickest way home still seemed to be through the military. Time and again he tried to get himself on board a flight back but they were few and far between, and he was still looked upon as being too valuable, even though he had nothing left to tell them.

There was the option to just leave. It wasn't the American military that he'd ever signed up for, after all, and it wasn't as if anyone was going to bother to come after him. He suspected that was why they wouldn't approve him for an overseas trip, because whilst he made no secret of the fact that he wouldn't come back there was probably a suspicion that he would vanish at once and not even carry out whatever mission he was sent over there for.

Anyone who thought that didn't know him very well.

But then, that was part of the trouble. He was their expert, or had been, and having been established as such they were reluctant to give him up. Even though everyone was an expert now, it was hard to break a habit, particularly when the whole scenario was so frightening and new. He didn't think that he'd ever persuade them.

And then the opportunity suddenly arose. A rescue attempt, not for the people who might actually be able to help, but for some useless General whose ill-advised surveillance flight had gone down somewhere over the Austrian Tyrol and he needed picking up. Despite the fact that there had been no predators sighted in the area, there was a distinct shortage of volunteers. Suddenly Becker found himself on a flight with a few others. It would still be a long way from home, but at least he wouldn't be separated from it by an entire ocean. He didn't look back.

May, June...

Becker had lived in or around London for most of his life. His parents had moved there to be closer to his father's work at Whitehall when he was just a boy, he'd grown up there, and then returned when he started work at the ARC.

London went on forever. He'd walked and walked as a teenager when he'd grown sick of the place, trying to find green fields. In any other city if you walked far enough you'd find the end but London never seemed to end.

When he finally found his way back to the city after months away, crossing the Channel in a small motor boat that he beached and abandoned, he didn't recognise it. All the landmarks were gone, swept away in a tide of carnage and destruction.

He carried a Mossberg, and he travelled slowly, quietly through the streets. The predators had been more numerous outside the city, roaming the countryside where most people had escaped to. He'd stayed in the truck that he'd managed to hotwire when he arrived back in his homeland, because leaving it meant certain death. Only when the roads started to become impassable did he leave it, and even then it was only to get out, clear the way and then get back in the truck again. But eventually he got to the really heavily bombed areas, and the only way was on foot.

Becker hadn't really expected to find them still at Belsize Park, but he had to go there first. There was evidence that someone had been there since the flood, and signs as well of a predator massacre though what was left wasn't enough to identify anyone from. It wasn't them, he was determined to believe that. They had Matt who knew which of the tunnels were going to survive the longest, they would have got away.

The trouble was, there was no clue as to where they had gone. If they were still managing any sort of radio contact he wasn't picking it up, though he knew that was probably down to his own lack of skills and the damage his equipment had suffered during a near miss with a predator just outside Dover. His only option was to start searching.

Abandoning the truck, he tried walking through the underground tunnels, reasoning that Matt was most likely to have taken them down there. He didn't find them, but he did find other survivors, and asked them all about the ARC team but to no avail. They all were huddled away, a few of them starving because they were too afraid to go out and scavenge for food. If they'd seen other groups they mostly tended to hide from them. Some of them followed him because he took pity on them, went up to the surface and found food to take back to them. He wondered what they were all going to do when the now well-depleted storerooms of the shops and cafes ran out.

He didn't want to be a leader. That was Matt's job. Danny's job. Cutter's job. He particularly didn't want to lead a group of people who were weak and frightened and doomed.

Somehow, as the days passed, his little band of followers grew.

Everything they'd ever seen of the future was bleak and empty, the population long gone. The reality wasn't like that.

There were so many people in the world, and despite their overwhelming strength there were still only a relatively small number of predators so far. It meant that there were a large number of people still around. The predators were reproducing fast given the huge food source, both with each other and via the ever-opening anomalies. Survivors had mostly left the city once the bombing started, but those left had banded together in small groups, the noise they made ensuring that they were easy pickings.

Outside the city, smaller towns had been overrun by vast mobs, hungry and terrified and just as noisy, looking for an escape that wasn't going to come. It was totally different, and yet the end came in just the same way.

An anomaly opened. It looked calm enough on the other side, or so they said when he sent two people through to look. He sent them all through, was alone again and glad of it. He knew he was probably tearing history apart, doing everything they'd always tried not to do, but he'd stopped caring too much. Given the future that history had grown into it really didn't seem to matter.

He kept searching, sometimes going up and scouring the ruined city. Famous landmarks that he'd grown up with were burnt out, half-demolished by the air attacks or the predator attacks, or both. It had horrified him at first, but after a while he'd find himself walking near the Thames and not even looking at the ruin that used to be the Parliament building, or the cracked dome of St Paul's. All he saw were the shadows where death might be lurking, or the entrances to the underground levels that might hold the answers he was looking for.

It wasn't as if it was home. It didn't look like home.

July, August or sometime around then...

Sometimes the constant running and hiding was too much and Jess felt as if she'd like to just throw herself in front of one of the creatures and have done with it. Sometimes she was just that tired of it all. And sometimes they found somewhere that they could stop, could hole up for a few weeks, take a breather and things would be better. And then a creature would find them, and they had to fight and move on and it all started again.

Matt didn't ever step down, and Jess for her part wouldn't leave him. Even on the day an anomaly opened hours after a predator attack and many of their group went through. It didn't look wonderful on the other side, they'd be taking their chances with dinosaurs, but after they'd watched two of their team torn apart in the attack, the dinosaurs didn't seem so bad.

"I'll go through if you do," she told him. "Otherwise I'm staying."

He just stared at the wall, impassive, and told her to go. He blamed himself that this had come to pass, she knew that.

"We could all blame ourselves," she told him. "Maybe I could've got you to that first anomaly faster, perhaps I could've located it sooner. Maybe we should've searched and searched for those predators until we found them, never come home."

"I had years."

"Maybe this was supposed to happen. Go through, you've done enough."

He wouldn't, so they both stayed.

Tyler remained with them, and the other soldier, Johnson. It was a little easier then, with just the four of them, trying to keep ahead of the creatures and stay alive. They lived on tinned food and bottled water that they'd found and squirreled away. Matt always seemed to know exactly where to store them so that they would still be hidden when they returned. He showed them how to collect water, filter and purify it because the stores wouldn't last forever no matter how much it seemed like it.

They moved from tunnel to tunnel, until they found by chance the old, long abandoned one at Down Street, better hidden than most due to already having been sealed off decades before. Its use as a base during the Second World War provided them with a derelict telephone exchange that Jess butchered for radio parts, and all kinds of run-down facilities. They holed up there; it was as good a place as any and having already been shut off when it closed it was easier to defend than most.

Sometimes it really was too much and she'd turn to him in the night. It was just comfort, and not much of that either. It wasn't as if he was betraying Emily, or she was betraying her memory of Becker. Both were long gone. And they always knew that every night could be their last and that they were just holding on to what they had left. Which wasn't much, really.

And then suddenly that was gone too.

It was an anomaly back to the time before everything went wrong. Back to that summer.

As soon as he realised, Matt was determined to go through. He thought he could go to the anomaly site, lock it before anything got through. Their ruined future would never have happened.

"I can do it. I can stop it. It's a last chance to change things."

Jess stared into the wild, half-crazed eyes of the man she thought she knew better than anyone and knew there was going to be no dissuading him.

"But there were others," she reminded him gently. "More creatures came through later. I think... perhaps this is how it's meant to be."

She could see anger then, and wondered if that was how he would remember her, through a haze of denial.

"You're wrong. And Jess, you really want to stay here, live like this?"

"As opposed to going to live in a world where I exist as someone else, and where I can watch this happen all over again? Yes. Because it's going to happen, Matt, no matter what you do. You've tried over and over, and this is still the way things go. Maybe it's just evolution, just the way things are meant to be."

"You'll die here."

"Maybe. If you're gone, I'll go through into the past. Maybe we'll find Emily again. You'd be missing that chance."

"Needle in a haystack. Come with me."

She shook her head. "I can't watch you fail again, Matt. I'm sorry. You need to accept this is how things are."

"You didn't used to be so defeatist."

She thought of the door closing on Becker all that time ago, and knew that the door had also closed on any optimism that she felt at that moment as well.

"People change. Don't go."

He shrugged. "If you're right, Jess, and it's just another failure then I'll be back, won't I? Because this will still have happened."

She couldn't answer that, because she knew whatever happened he wouldn't come back to this, that he'd keep trying to make things right over and over again. That was his particular fate, and he didn't need her pessimism to add to the bleakness of it. So instead she held him close, one last time, wished him luck, and knew she'd never see him again.

Part of her wanted to follow him into the past, try to change things with him. Perhaps when it all went wrong she'd be there in that tunnel on the other side of the door and it could be her that was swept away and drowned. But trying to change things didn't work, messing about with timelines and trying to second-guess destiny. And if it all went wrong again, like it would, it wasn't a period of time she wanted to live through twice.

Jess waited, but there was no sudden change to a happy future, not that there was likely to be given the timeline she lived in. Even if it had worked she might still be doomed to live this timeline out to its inevitable conclusion. Eventually Tyler, who had taken command after Matt left, declared it was time to go. Wearily she packed up the radio, slung her pack over her shoulder, and trudged along with the other two, back to their shelter.

Matt didn't return, but there could be a thousand different reasons for that.

Few of them could be good.

Another time, another place...

Anomalies were few and far between in the world that Emily had taken them to.

It took a while for them to understand why.

At first they were puzzled by the unfamiliar flora and fauna, the way that nothing seemed to be the same as anything they'd ever encountered from fossils or occasional accidental trips to the past. And the stars were wrong. They were always wrong through an anomaly, but it seemed to Connor that there were ones missing. There shouldn't be stars missing, even if it were just a few.

It was one of the ARC staff who worked it out. Not one of the scientists but a girl from Accounts who had been helping dig out irrigation channels in the fields. She'd found a simple thing - a pound coin, impossibly ancient, buried deep in the ground.

Connor wondered if talking apes would come riding in to capture them.

It explained why they'd had to climb up to the anomaly, and then emerged on level ground. Centuries of dirt had built up, raising the level. It didn't explain where the predators had gone, or the giant bugs, or any of the other horrors that they'd seen come through from the future. Abby wondered if they had died out without a food source, and gradually the earth had healed itself.

It gave them a second chance, the realisation that they didn't need to worry about changing anything because they were in the future and it was completely unwritten. It gave them hope.

It also made Connor feel even worse that they'd left some of the group behind. And so he worked on the anomaly detection device, adjusting it as best he could with the limited tools he'd carried through with him. He did it quietly, not sure that anyone would approve of him risking the new land they'd been lucky enough to fall into. But he couldn't leave them behind. He couldn't.

All he needed to do was open just one anomaly to the right time, just once. He could do it. He wouldn't rest until he had.

There was a light coming down the main line. A narrow access tunnel from the old Down Street station let them see anything that came down there.

Tyler was ready, gun drawn, aimed and ready to fire. It wouldn't be a predator, not with a torch, but it could be someone after their supplies. Food was getting very scarce. He'd already had to kill one intruder who'd tried to break in.

Just one man, looking into every nook and cranny. Definitely after food. Tyler pushed Jess further back behind him, stepping back himself further into the shadows.

The man stopped at the tunnel, shining the torch inside, then trying to open the gate to take a closer look. It rattled, locked, and they saw him raise his shotgun and blast the lock away.

Johnson pulled Jess back, and she couldn't see what clearly happened next.

"That's far enough!"

Tyler was a quiet man but his voice was authoritative enough when it needed to be. The gun he held was pretty imposing as well.

The other man, the intruder, didn't attack but apparently was quick to move back out of range because she heard the gate clang, and then he called out to them:

"I don't want your supplies. I'm looking for some friends of mine."

The voice was familiar, it sounded so much like Becker that it hurt. Jess glanced up at Johnson, and could see from his frown that he thought so too.

"Show yourself!" Tyler demanded. Evidently the recognition was there for all of them.

The man laughed: "So that you can get a better aim? No thanks, I've been shot at enough. I just want to know if you've come across any other groups down here. It's quite a large group. An Irish man, a pregnant woman, soldiers..."

Jess pushed forward again, ignoring the curse from Johnson and only stopping when Tyler grabbed her arm.

"It sounds like..."

"I know," Tyler hissed at her. "But it can't be."

"Becker?"

He wasn't stupid, he didn't rush at them. Tyler, after all, had a gun. But he shone the torch into his own face, then quickly at them, then back again.

It was difficult, under all the grime, to see if it was really him. There was a scar, many scars, and she'd never, ever seen him with a beard or with his hair looking anything like the straggly mess it had become. But there was that distinctive build and height, and just the way he carried himself and anyway she'd know him anywhere.

"I thought you were dead!"

"Apparently not." He looked as if he was going to make a further comment, but she just flung herself at him, too relieved to do anything else. She was vaguely aware of the other two following her, clapping him on the back. It was the only hopeful thing that had happened to the three of them for a long time. She clung tighter.

The discovery had been so sudden, so unexpected. Becker had been briefly horrified that there were only three of them left, until Tyler told him that most of the others had escaped to the past.

"It'll be okay now," Jess whispered to him.

He looked around, over the top of her head at the tired, familiar faces of his two remaining men. Hope was something they'd forgotten. It was the end of the world. It wasn't ever going to be okay. Even if they all escaped through an anomaly, found somewhere safe to live out their days, they'd know that one day it would all come down to this.

"Jess, it's not..."

He felt her grip tighten. "I know," she whispered, although he hadn't voiced his pessimism. "I know. But just let me think it, just for a minute."

So he did.

A million years away, an anomaly opened at Connor's command.

That was the impossible thing. Finding his friends and bringing them home would be easier.