Part Two:
Location: James Lester's office. Anomaly Research Centre headquarters.
"Listen, you silly little man, I am a government official, not some low-rent hacker with nothing better to do than burn footage! Don't you have some celebrities to annoy, or Page Three pictures to mooch off of dirty Web sites, or in fact ANYTHING better to do than harass me about your so-called footage of dinosaurs that you claim is missing?"
James Lester hated journalists with a passion that smoldered like a fire in a coal seam. They had no respect for government secrets, and seemed to find it objectionable when those ham-handed American idiots let knowledge of their secret electronic spying programs slip out. Furthermore, they had a rather annoying knack for getting footage of anomalies and dinosaurs, and had a tendency to come calling to his phone line when Jess deleted their footage. Lester was absolutely certain that some Whitehall fat cat with the IQ of a small piece of granite had it in for him personally, and so had made this supposedly secure line the official number for disgruntled reporters.
"You annoying piece of office plankton, I have no time or energy to deal with your unhinged rantings about dinosaurs. I am far too busy at the moment, and in any event I am not a psychologist. Now leave me alone, and tell Rupert Murdoch and your superiors at the Daily Fail that they can kiss the Prime Minister's sedentary behind if they have a complaint."
He slammed the phone down, swearing and promising himself to get a new phone number.
Jess's voice came in over the brand-new intercom. That had been a useful new addition to the ARC. Now Lester didn't even have to leave his seat to yell at his staff.
"Sir, there's a woman at the front desk here to see you. She says that she's here on the Minister's orders, and that she's a liason from the Russian anomaly team. Do the Russians have an anomaly team?"
"Russian, you say? I thought that they dismantled their team last year. Procedural issues or something. Let me check with the Minister."
He dialed a number on his brand-new iPad, cursing new-fangled technology as he did so.
"Yes?" said the perky secretary on the other end of the video call.
"Get me the Minister at once. This is urgent."
"Please hold for a moment, sir."
The screen went black for a moment, and the new Defense Minister, Harold Duvall, made his appearance as he folded up a newspaper.
"Ah, Mr. Lester. What can I do for you today?"
"Please explain to me why a Russian agent is in the ARC's lobby claiming to be a new staffer. I was under the impression that the Russians had shut down their program pending further review."
"Well, you know, they still have a temporary team, and the Russian covert operations director said that his agents needed to work with and study some real professionals in the field. Ms. Sholoshkova is merely the agent who was selected. It was a completely random process, I assure you."
"Professional team? With the exception of Captain Becker and his men, I call bullshit. Connor Temple is the least professional man on the planet, Abby Maitland, despite her formidable fighting skills, refuses to harm the creatures if it can be avoided in any way—even in ways that jeopardize the mission—Matt Andersen is both from the future and possibly mad, Jess Parker is nineteen, and Emily Merchant is from over one hundred years ago. She still can't even drive. These are not professionals. They are rank amateurs. Brilliant rank amateurs who are excellent at their respective jobs, but amateurs nonetheless. They are even paid like amateurs. With respect, sir, why is the Russian here?"
Duvall grimaced and spread his hands. He was probably trying to look tired and harried, the picture of a politician who knew that a mess was out of his hands. Instead he merely looked patronizing and oily.
"It's not my fault, Mr. Lester. The Russian director insisted, and he called in some favors with higher-ups. My hands were tied. The Prime Minister himself ordered me to let her in after I tried to deny her access. I'm sorry. She's only here for a month, though."
Lester ground his teeth and kept several choice words inside his mouth, barely.
"Wonderful. Just wonderful. I hope that she speaks English, at least."
"Barely. She's got one hell of an accent. Oh, and Mr. Lester?"
"Yes, Minister?"
"Don't piss her off. She has a…reputation. Keep that in mind."
"Of course, sir," said Lester with barely disguised hostility, and terminated the call with a vengeful finger. Wonderful. A psychotic Russian, to be snooping around the team while they screwed up their jobs as usual. Just wonderful.
In the Defense Minister's office, the minister smiled to himself. April was in. He just needed to back up the story. Bribing a couple of the Prime Minister's secretaries would probably work. In under a month, the entire ARC alpha team would be dead, and that annoying Lester would be dead and rotting.
"What are they?" asked Becker.
Abby opened the jaws of the little creature at her feet. Altogether too many teeth greeted her.
"Well…they share some features of Eusuchia—modern crocodiles—but there are so many differences. For one, they have these teeth on their palates; crocodiles, unlike other reptiles, don't have those. Also, the feathers, and these scales on their heads—the head scales are like helmets. This is all one big plate, protecting the braincase. Connor, can you try to pull out one of those tail filaments, so we can see if it's feather or hair?"
"What is the difference?"
"If those are feathers, Emily, then these things are most likely just highly evolved crocodiles. Feathers are made of the same type of keratin as scales. Hair is different—if these filaments are hair, then someone's been messing with genetic engineering."
"Is that even possible?"
"After Helen Cutter's clone army, I'm not putting anything to do with DNA down to chance. Connor, what've you got?"
Connor yelped suddenly.
"Ow! The bloody thing stung me!"
He pulled back his hand, accidentally yanking a feather out as he did so.
"Ow! It's got some sort of barbs or something—it's stuck!"
Abby shared a look with Emily, and sighed.
"Here, let me see." She yanked the feather out without warning. Connor yelped. "See? Nothing to—uh-oh."
"What is wrong?" asked Emily.
"This thing's hollow. And there are barbs on the end. Just like a porcupine quill—oh, this can't be good."
"Maybe it's just hollow for no reason, and I'll get away with just a stung finger," said Connor, taking his finger out of his mouth for a moment.
There was a pause as Abby and Emily stared at Connor's finger. He got a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"It's swelling up from poison, isn't it."
Abby nodded.
Connor looked down. His finger was swelling and rapidly going purple. As he watched, the swelling spread to his hand, which started to go numb.
"Oh, shit."
Abby Maitland ran with the nurses through the incredibly clean halls of Mother of Mercy General Hospital, holding on to the stretcher with her left hand while clutching Connor's so far non-swollen right hand in her right. The nurses were yelling something about an unidentified toxin.
Connor was considerably worse for wear. His entire left side was swollen from the toxin, his face puffy and purple, his breath coming in wheezing gasps. Abby was reminded of the time when they had finagled some vacation time out of Lester and Connor had been stung by killer bees while stopping to use the restroom behind a cactus on the way from the airport to the Grand Canyon.
A little voice in the back of Abby's head said that she really should've been expecting this, given Connor's horrible karma and the fact that he had not suffered a near-death experience or an embarrassing injury for considerably more than three months. She mentally told that voice to shut up.
The medical team wheeled Connor into place in the emergency room and drew the curtains. Abby was left behind. As she stepped outside the emergency room to call in and give the others an update away from the shouting, a nurse ran past with a disturbingly large syringe in a paper-backed package. Abby saw the word "antihistamine" on the package, and her brain compared the size of the syringe (and, therefore, the most likely dose of whatever antihistamine was being used) to the dose that had been needed when Connor had been attacked by killer bees. The result was not at all reassuring.
Matt's voice came in over the coms unit.
"How does he look, Abby?"
"Bad. They have at least two doctors in there, he's going purple, and there's now a nurse running in ith an EpiPen and an antihistamine drip."
"Ouch. Is he still breathing?"
"Barely. He's wheezing like the air conditioning at the old ARC—remember, Becker?"
Ten miles away, Becker winced. "Unfortunately, I do."
"I heard them saying that he's got a fifty-fifty shot at survival without treatment. If they can find out what the poison is within twelve hours, he'll be fine for sure. He'll be spending at least two days in here no matter what, though."
"Right. Emily, you take one of these feathers," said Matt. "Becker and I will deal with the creatures. Come back when you've delivered the feather; pull rank and claim Official Secrets Act protection if they ask what it is. They should be able to isolate the toxin from the feather in time to help Connor. Let's just hope that their bites aren't venomous as well."
"Matt?"
"Yeah, Abby?"
"I think that these creatures may not be natural."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, predatory animals don't usually use their tails as weapons. Signaling devices, effective extra limbs, even occasionally mating appendages, but never as weapons. They're just too unwieldy. Besides, these things have rigid tails; even less useful, because they'd have to turn all the way around to attack prey with the tail."
"Maybe it's a side effect. Maybe their bites are venomous."
"No, there were no signs of venom glands, and these things are too active for waiting for their prey to die of a slow-acting poison to be worthwhile. So either these things were designed by someone hiding out in the future as living weapons, or there's something through that anomaly that eats them."
"I sure as hell don't want to meet whatever scares these bird-crocs enough to make them evolve porcupine quills. And what's the point of a weapon if you can't control it?"
"Helen Cutter wouldn't care."
There was silence over the coms for a few seconds. Then:
"Good point. Let's hope not, though. These things are small, and they'd be like walking Weetabix pieces to most of the creatures we fight."
"Come on, Matt," said Becker. "We have a full Special Forces squad, more EMDs than we can use, and some unconscious creatures to use as bait for their friends. I've been wanting to have a shoot-out like this for months!"
ARC lobby:
"Ah, Miss Sholoshkova, I presume?"
James Lester was certain that he had seen the voluptuous blonde before, but he wasn't sure where. He'd better ask Becker or Anderson about the Russian later.
The aforementioned blonde Russian smiled charmingly, impossibly white teeth glinting in the light. She took Lester's hand smoothly, her grasp considerably stronger than he was expecting.
"Ah, good day, my friend," she said in a beautiful but thick Russian accent. "I assume that you are Mr. Lester, the head of the Anomaly Research Centre?"
Her voice was a smooth alto, seductive and alluring. Damn. A sparrow*. He'd need to warn the men to be careful.
"This way, please. Here is your temporary security card; we should have a longer-term card for you within days. I hope that we are not too messy; we had only a very short notice of your arrival."
"It is no problem. I am here to observe, after all, and my superiors feel that one gets the best feel for the operations of others if they have little time to prepare."
"Ah. Sensible. May I ask, why are you here?"
"We have had over thirty alpha-team casualties in the past six months. I am the only agent to have been active for more than a year. I am here to find why your operation has had only four fatalities and one MIA in over five years of operation."
Lester winced. Those were major casualties. Alpha-team deaths were to be expected, but those casualty rates were at least one per mission. If the ARC had casualties like that…well, it was a miracle that the Russians were still operational after six months like that.
"How many missions?"
"Four in a good month. Up to six in a bad month."
Internally, April smiled. Her cock-and-bull sob story had thrown Lester off track. He thought she was just a sparrow who'd been transferred to anomaly duty, not realizing her true status. She just hoped that the real Russians didn't find out; Irina Ivanova was particular about things like impersonators, and the Russians had more than enough reason to kill April already.
"Well, we are fortunate in that we have a lower casualty rate than that, and most of the deaths are from the security teams. We had a major spike during the Convergence recently, but we still have had under twenty men killed in over two years—including that unfortunate incident with the prehistoric crocodile."
"How many alpha team casualties?"
"A grand total of four deaths, one MIA, and two deaths of Prospero liaisons—which caused an issue with the whole public-private partnership chestnut. Our first tactical captain, Tom Ryan, was killed in the past about five years ago. Stephen Hart—one of our scientists—got himself eaten alive a little more than three and a half years back. Nick Cutter—our de facto field leader—got shot by his insane ex, Helen Cutter, approximately six months later. Sarah Page, another scientist, was eaten in the future during a rescue mission about six months after Cutter's death. Danny Quinn—Cutter's replacement—is missing in action in the past. Our chief investor, Phillip Burton, was blown up during the Convergence. He wasn't technically part of the team, though. Neither was April Leonard, a spy that Burton got into the ARC. She manipulated Connor Temple, got him to build a prototype doomsday machine. She died during the convergence, fell and broke her neck after a fight with Abby Maitland, our animal behavior expert. Anyway, here is the elevator. We're on the fifth floor. You should meet the current alpha team in a few hours at most—they are in the field right now."
And it was so hard to not reveal myself during that fight, too, thought April. I can't wait to see the look on Maitland's face when I impale her. She smiled internally. Other people's pain always gave her that warm fuzzy feeling.
*A type of espionage agent (usually female) trained for seduction. Stereotypically from Soviet Russia.