Obviously, I don't own Primeval. The OC is mine, though.
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Part 2:
Anomaly Research Centre.
Jessica "Jess" Parker, age 20, really wished that her boyfriend was more romantic. Oh, sure, Becker was strong and handsome, and it was definitely true, at least in his case, that soldiers were more attractive—but he was so careful around her, like he was afraid of hurting her feelings. The few times that he had been a proper romantic boyfriend, Jess had been in mortal danger and Becker had been coming to her rescue.
Seriously, was it too much to ask to be swept off of one's feet and carried into bed after a night out? She had, after all, sat through that boring weapons test, and had tolerated Becker's lessons at the shooting range (although she had to admit that those lessons might actually come in handy sometime); and the night had perhaps been the biggest let-down. She had dressed for it, all black lace and stuff (which she had heard was appropriate for seduction), and had taken Abby's relationship advice to heart ("Always, always make the first move—the good men are too terrified of us to do it, and the ones who do make the first move tend to be morons")—with no luck. They'd ended up cuddling and watching a bad romance movie, and Becker had (before he passed out from overindulgence of champagne) been so annoyingly respectful and hands-off.
At least the date hadn't been a complete waste. Abby had laughed uproariously at the story, and even Emily, who was usually a little more restrained about these matters, had giggled hysterically for over a minute. Abby had assured Jess that her experience with Connor had been quite the same (and had then cracked a "What happens in the Cretaceous…" joke), and said that she and Emily would be sure to talk to Becker about being more romantic next time.
All the same, Jess was a little irritated, even a week later, and on this particular day she was especially frustrated because the coffee pot had broken (or, more accurately, it had exploded with climactic drama when Connor had had a little "accident" with an EMD) and Lester hadn't got around to ordering a replacement.
Her irritation was fortunate, as it turned out, because otherwise she never would have noticed the ever-so-slight delay in the computer. Part of her said that it was just her imagination, but Becker was sweeping the area and Matt's team was heading for the anomaly with a locking device, so she had time to spare, and anyway Jess was, as has already been mentioned, in a rather subpar mood.
She pulled up the task manager screen (cursing Windows 9 as she did so), and found nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing at all, in fact—wait. The processing usage and outgoing signals were a few kilobytes per minute more than they should have been. A small discrepancy, but…
Jess opened up the calculator function—the only part of the new Windows operating system that was worth the upgrade, in her opinion (and why Connor used Windows for higher processing, she would never understand)—and totaled up the active processes. They came up about three kilobytes lower than the total, on both processing usage and outgoing signals. Something was reviewing and sending out information, and it wasn't appearing on the task manager. Spyware.
Jess cursed.
"Jess? Is something wrong?"
"Spyware. There's spyware on the ADD, Matt. Where the hell is Connor?"
"Spyware? Camouflaged, I guess?"
"Oh, hi, Connor. Yes, it looks camouflaged. There's no process running, but there's a discrepancy in the processing usage."
"Run a virus scan. Abby, drop me off up here; I'll nip back to the ARC in a taxi."
"Virus and malware scans running now."
"Run me prototype Trojan detector, too—if this is professional, which it probably is, then commercial protection probably won't be effective. If you can, send me a raw feed—I have a throwaway detector console MK-2 in the back, hooked up to me old iPad. I'll do a direct link via a secure internet channel—give me a moment here."
"Virus and malware scans just came up clean. Shit!"
"That's good, right?"
"No Matt, that's bad. A really good virus can evade sweeper programs. We're just lucky that Jess went to the trouble of manually analyzing the feed—whatever made you do that, anyway?"
"I don't know—paranoia, I guess."
Connor chuckled. "Well, at least paranoia does us some good for once. We've really got to do that more."
Forest of Dean.
April cursed her luck. The Arrows worm was supposed to be undetectable. It was really rather typical of the mutant killer's luck that the annoying little bitch had been paranoid today.
April briefly considered dropping her cover right there, but she decided against it. Emotions under control on the job, always. Duvall hadn't given the kill order, and some direct hacking would definitely get her some information that her employers would kill to acquire.
She hung back from the group for a moment and checked her email, muttering an excuse about a message from her (nonexistent) Russian boss.
Her dummy account was empty, but the secret one had a new message.
From: mominatrix
To: iamnumber4
Subject: A52
April dear,
Just got word from October on that info you wanted—Area 52 does not seem to be capable of augment mass-production. They have also not yet developed Twelve-grade gen mod tech, or room-temperature superconductors (hence, no locking devices, no openers, and only primitive sun cages). Anomaly control is accomplished by biological/technological hybrid; Agent Gull (Stephanie? Maybe Joan?) has electromagnetic organs on the outside of her skull that she uses in conjunction with an unidentified meson-metal helmet to create a dampening field (full closure, not merely a lock). She also appears capable of sensing anomalies at fairly close range.
Area 52 has developed intractinium. Other meson-metals have not been confirmed, but we have confirmation that at least three skeletons and several miscellaneous weapons have been manufactured so far. They recently began using a new model Shocker—twice the discharge, half the waste, very similar to a British EMD.
New orders from up top: Do not let the ARC ally with Operation Falcon. The Americans haven't developed conventional room-temperature superconductors, and so haven't developed working locking devices or mechanical openers. The ARC has not yet developed genetic modification tech, and so are incapable of defeating our employers' forces. If they work together, they stand a chance of finding and eliminating the base before our employers can initiate the Event.
How is your Russian disguise? I've been stuck out here in Siberia for a week, running ambushes against Ivanova and her team. Operation Falcon shared gen mod tech with them in exchange for meson-metal fabrication info. Petrov punched me in the face yesterday. I gutted him. Ivanova retrieved him, but he's out for a few weeks.
Have fun with your new pain monkeys!
Your friend and colleague,
September.
April was about to reply, but then she caught the scent.
Raven!
Anomaly Research Centre.
James Lester was unhappy, as usual.
"Listen, Minister, I need that authorization! My team has found invasive spyware on our detector and we need to call in a technology expert!"
"You have Temple, don't you?" Duvall's voice was lazy and contemptuous. James Lester hated being talked down to.
"Well, yes, he has some technological training, but his primary field of knowledge is paleontology! He can't be expected to…"
"Lester, I don't have the funds to spare. MI6 wants more funding, the military needs more guns, and the Prime Minister just caused a diplomatic incident with North Korea!"
"Don't give me that bullshit, Harold! The military has more guns than it knows what to do with, MI6 has been overfunded since the last damn Ice Age, and, the Prime Minister's lack of brain tissue aside, the North Koreans are always threatening nuclear war. If you would be so kind as to stop telling porkies and give me some honest answers, I might be more sympathetic!"
Duvall's voice suddenly grew hard. "No funds or outsourcing, Lester. And if you persist in asking why, you will regret it."
"Who the—what are you playing at? Who are you really working for here?"
"Last chance, Lester," said Duvall, and he slammed the phone down on his end.
Forest of Dean.
Taylor Craig, CIA agent and veteran of many things that a fifteen-year-old should not have seen, was currently sitting in a tree with three hungry dinosaurs prowling below her.
Yes, three. Just her luck; she could take two, but not with a third to flank her. She didn't even have her Shocker to blast the damn things, because of course she'd left that back at base. Seriously, this new gig (anomaly watch for Britain, without the British government's knowledge) was pretty much a disaster from the start.
Taylor was nursing a sliced right arm at the moment—dinosaur bites hurt. Dilophosaurs had jaws like traps; the premaxilliary bone extended past the maxilla and left a gap between the premaxilliary and maxilliary teeth. The result was a little nook in between the front teeth and the main set, which could trap prey like a very spiky net. Taylor had only gotten away by punching the offending dinosaur in the eye.
She had been stuck up this tree for about a minute so far. Her friends should have warned the field trip by now, and with a little backup her team's newly upgraded anomaly detector would kick in soon and they'd come and help. They should be calling her cell phone any minute now—oh, wait, she'd turned the damn thing off. Crappy school policy.
Taylor swore as she moved her injured arm. She'd need a new trench coat after today—this one was shot. It still served its purpose, but people would wonder about the tears and bloodstains on the sleeve.
A crunching sound in the undergrowth announced the high-speed arrival of three men and a woman, all armed to the teeth. Two of the men were in Kevlar vests and combat boots; the woman was wearing loose cargo pants and a T-shirt with something in Russian written on it, and the man was in a generic brown shirt and jeans—seriously, jeans? On a combat mission? And who were these people, anyway?
The dinosaurs turned. One took two blue electrical pulses to the teeth and collapsed.
Shockers. Taylor felt a little better. These had to be the Russians—none of them were obvious augments, but the woman was moving with the self-confident grace of a powerful—oh, shit! That was April!
Taylor shivered involuntarily. The last time she had met April—that had been bad.
Blood. Death. Foss being killed as she watched. April holding her down, hissing with glee. The raptors shrieking. Stephanie shooting the ultimate assassin in the head. And April had recognized her—recognized her as the one who got away from the Area 51 fiasco, hidden in a closet while Susan Martinez, who had liked to show Taylor pictures of her three-month-old daughter in those adorable bunny slippers, got cut down by April while dumping aniseed oil everywhere to cover Taylor's scent. That had been the worst part, those few seconds when she would have given anything, anything to just fly away, free as a bird, leaving Foss to die. And she knew that she was a coward—heck, everyone was a coward when they were screaming as their best friend died, with the ultimate living weapon holding them down and whispering threats of blood and pain into their ear. But she had wanted to run, not to help Foss. Even as she screamed, and he was ripped apart without a sound. He had been braver than she could ever be. And even now, the wings on her back, the ones she loved so much, that she couldn't live without even for those two weeks per year of molt, reminded her that she had been a coward. Never again.
Taylor dropped out of the tree, locking her legs around a dilophosaur's neck and clapping her hands against its eardrums as the man in jeans—seriously, if he did any martial arts in those, he'd be in for some major pain in his balls—took out the third animal with a Shocker pulse.
Taylor flipped herself over the stunned dinosaur's back, ignoring the men's shouts of surprise and April's startled breath as she grabbed for her phone with her uninjured left hand. The move might have revealed her wings—but no time to worry about that.
Taylor ran. April yelled something behind her, and Taylor heard the light, dexterous footsteps of a highly modified augment behind her.
She flipped open her phone. Come on, boot up, boot up!
Matt POV.
To say that Matt was quite surprised when the teenage girl dropped out of the tree, knocked the dinosaur out cold with her bare hands, and flipped backwards over its back as it fell was an understatement.
"Whoah—what the hell?"
Then he saw the blood on the leaves.
"Hey, she's hurt! Someone…"
"I'm on it," said Tanya, breaking into a sprint. She was incredibly fast—not as fast as the girl, who was now a vanishing blur in the undergrowth, but still faster than Matt would have thought possible.
"Wait, there could be more—ah, great." The Russian was already gone, leaping straight over a large bush after the fleeing girl.
"Right, we need to regroup. Jess, contact Becker. This girl with a bleeding arm just dropped out of a tree and took out a dinosaur with one hit, with her bare hands. Someone's out here. The Russian's going after the girl, but there could be civilians out here—Abby, are you here yet?"
"Yeah, I just got here. Where did the girl go?"
"South. Due south."
"Right, we'll take the south side. You two, with me. What kind of dinosaur, Matt?"
"They're about twenty feet long. Theropods, fairly lightly built. They've got a pair of crests on their heads—thin little things, not weapons."
Connor's voice came over Coms. "Dilophosaurus. They're coelophysids, from the early Jurassic. How many?"
"Three. All out cold."
"So they are pack hunters! Right, there may be more, so stay alert. That's a nasty species—fast, strong, and jaws like traps. Don't let them bite you, whatever you do."
"Right. Tanya, where are you?"
"She's not answering her coms. I think she shut them off. Matt, I can't raise Becker either!"
"Alright. Jess, you keep trying to raise Becker and Emily. You two, help me find the anomaly and take these little charmers back home. Abby, make sure the area's clear and come help us. If you find the Russian or that girl, bring them too. Connor, any progress on that spyware?"
"It's some nasty stuff. It blew past my firewalls like they weren't even there and hacked the malware scanners like a hot knife cutting butter. It even used the scanner programs to shield itself. It looks like it hit Norton first, used the corrupted program to disable Avira and Malwarebytes—damn, this is some nasty stuff. Somebody's gone to all the stops with this—I think that it's rooted in everything. Coms looks free at least…oh, crap!"
"What?"
"My sweeper's coming up empty; I'm going to need to undo this code line by line. Call you back later—this is going to take me a few hours, minimum."
Matt swore. Anything that could stump Connor Temple was extremely dangerous.
AN (note, spoilers below):
And so the action begins, along with the main plotline. If anyone is wondering what happened to Future Matt—he's coming. He's got an extremely important cameo in Episode 6, which will drive the plotline of Season 7.
If you're wondering why a teenager is working on an anomaly team—she wasn't originally a field agent. This will be explained later.