Disclaimer: I don't own it, it's not mine. Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, not me.

Findings

"Where the heck is that idiot?" grumbled Nick Cutter, stomping moodily around the anomaly site. They had eventually managed to herd the Allosauruses back through the anomaly, with minimum loss of life (a passing dog had become altogether too interested in the passing dinosaurs and had been trampled. Stephen was still trying to reason with the distraught owner, and persuade her she had not just seen a herd of prehistoric creatures storming down her favourite walking route.)

Abby sighed. "How should I know?"

"Possibly because he lives in your flat?" asked Nick in irritation, looking at Claudia as she went to help a faltering Stephen, who seemed to have made the dead-dog situation much, much worse. The poor woman was almost in hysterics.

He caught her words "huge flying lizard swooped from the sky and burnt it to a crisp, and you say-" float over, heard Stephen interrupt with a "no, it was an Allosaurus," and sighed. Jenny was now berating Stephen for revealing 'classified information' to an 'unknown and untrustworthy source'. Today had been a long day, and it still wasn't even lunchtime. The anomaly was still open, but nothing seemed to be coming through.

Stephen had had a look on the other side – before the Allosauruses had come – and there was little sign of life, apart from a few scurrying things that looked about as harmless as dinosaurs ever got. So hopefully, nothing else would come through. But Nick had never trusted to 'hopefully' in his whole life, which meant they would need to be here for as long as it took the anomaly to disappear.

He looked at his watch again, and made a tactical decision. "Okay, Abby, we need Connor here to give us a hand with the surveillance. It looks like we're in for the long haul on this." Abby groaned, and Nick wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. "Yeah, I know. One more thing, I need you to take the broken tranquilizer gun, and that anomaly detector that's going haywire back to the ARC first. Please? It's not that far off course."

After much groaning and complaining, Abby agreed, dragging herself back to her car. Then she thought about the look on Connor's face when she woke him up with an angry yell and a bucketful of ice on his face, and cheered up slightly.

xXx

Inside the ARC, Connor's hearing seemed to have sharpened immensely with the removal of his sight. Whether that was the case, or whether he was merely more aware, now, of the sound of the computers humming, the lights buzzing, and small drips and gurgles coming from the plumbing, he didn't know. And he didn't really care. What he cared about where the set of footsteps echoing across the ARC for the second time since he'd- collapsed? Fainted? Had a seizure? Died? He wasn't really sure. Possibly a combination off all of the above. Apart from the dying.

He hoped.

In the hour or so he'd been lying there (or at least he thought it was an hour. Being blind with nothing to hear but repetitive sounds, and no way of moving, had somewhat skewed his sense of time passing) he'd come up with a few ideas as to what had happened and how.

One, he had some rare, undiagnosed disease that resulted in him randomly collapsing, and it had only recently manifested its symptoms. Highly unlikely, due to the fact that he didn't know of any such disease, either by name or by notion, but it was a good conspiracy theory.

Two, the reheated Chinese noodles that he'd eaten after the omelette disaster were more past their sell-by date than the packet had suggested, and he had food poisoning; salmonella, or something like that. Possible, but he'd never heard of and food poisoning side effect being a coma.

Then that left third, that the pain he'd felt in his ankle had been a bite of some kind, from a poisonous creature – possibly the millipede type creature he'd squashed – and who's venom immobilised the victim so they couldn't run off while they were being eaten.

Depressingly, that was the most likely (and also least desirable) situation. But, on the plus side, he didn't feel like he'd been eaten, so maybe the thing had left. Or maybe the poison dulled the victims nerves, so…

He'd cut that trail of thought off very firmly. The idea of waking up and finding he was missing a leg didn't appeal to him at all, thank you very much.

The footsteps were coming closer now, approaching the Anomaly Detector. He picked up a faint humming noise, slightly tuneless, and his heart soared as he recognised it as the tune Abby had been humming all week.

Abby! he yelled silently, trying to move. Nothing happened. The footsteps were so close now he could almost feel them, hear the echo-

Something large and soggy landed on his chest. If he'd been able to talk, he would have yelped, but as it was he had to content himself with an internal cringe. There was, however, a yelp from above him. The large and soggy thing was removed from his chest. Connor suspected it was Abby's shoe.

There was a sharp intake of breath. "There you are, you idiot. C'mon, get up. We've got an anomaly to track."

Nononoooooo… moaned Connor in his head. Abby, help. Please. I know this seems like it's a joke, but really, honestly, it's not. And there's some weird person running around in the ARC. Help!

"Connor. This really isn't funny, you know." Abby sounded half irritated, half seriously worried.

I know it isn't! I'm the one on the floor, yeah? Believe me, these floors were not built for sleeping on. Really quite cold. Design flaw, actually. C'mon Abby! I'm not messing!

"Connor! Oh god, Connor, please. Move or something! Connor?" There was a little hitch in her breathing, almost like…

Abby… Abby, are you- crying?!

"Oh god." Her voice was definitely shaking. "Connor, if you can hear me, I know you're supposed to talk people through what you're doing, in case they regain consciousness, or they can hear you. Or something like that. I'm gonna take your pulse, 'kay?" There was a rustle of fabric as Abby crouched down, and soft hands cupped his face briefly before fastening around his left wrist. Abby muttered to herself, and Connor guessed she was counting heart beats.

After a minute, the hands moved, and Connor sensed rather than felt a hand hovering over his mouth. "Thank goodness you're breathing," she mumbled, turning him over onto his side, positioning his arms and legs in the recovery position.

"Oh, Connor," she whispered, running a hand through his hair in a surprisingly tender gesture. "What happened to you, hmm? No wonder we didn't see you at work. Busy zoning out on the ARC floor. Better places to have a sleep, yes?" She chuckled, and then remembered something. "Though, if you've trashed my flat, I'm still going to kill you."

Connor wished he could roll his eyes. Then he had a horrible thought – Abby reckoned he was unconscious. He obviously wasn't. Well, he didn't think he was, at least. What if she started talking to him, like people did on TV when they thought someone was in a coma? What if she said something horribly embarrassing, or really personal? What if- Oh god, what if they start trying to treat me for whatever's happened? What if they think it won't hurt, 'cos I'll be unconscious? I'll be stuck, unable to move, unable to tell them it hurts- oh, please, PLEASE don't let that happen…

Abby frowned at the 'unconscious' Connor on the floor. "Better tell Nick…" she whispered almost to herself. Gently setting down the tranquilizer gun and anomaly detector on the floor, she fumbled in her pocket for her mobile.

"Nick? Yeah, hi, it's Abby. I'm in the ARC."

There was a pause. "So?" asked Nick impatiently.

"…I've found Connor. He's- well, as far as I can tell, he's comatose. Still breathing normally, good heart rate, all the basic vital signs. Just not moving. No response to physical or verbal stimuli. Eyes are closed. I've put him in the recovery position, but that's about all I can do. No obvious sign of injury – a small cut on his ankle, but that doesn't usually send people into comas."

Nick's irritable hissing exhalation sounded like a crackly growl over the dodgy phone line. "Of all the days… That kid sure knows how to pick his moments. Sorry about the bad reception by the way."

"Nick!" said Abby, shocked. "It's not like he decided to keel over today."

"You don't know that," muttered Nick darkly, his Scottish accent thickening as it always did when he got annoyed. "Well, I guess the first step is to- BLOODY HELL!"

Abby heard the vehement exclamation repeated from surrounding people – although often in less polite wording. There was a sharp crunching sound, then another. Wind rushed in a crackle of static, and there was a huge bellow of anger – inhuman and terrifying. Someone screamed, and was cut off with a nasty snapping noise, followed by a wet slurp.

"Err... Nick? Nick?! Cutter, can you hear me? What's going on?!" said Abby as calmly as possible – which was not very.

"T-rex- wait, two t-rexes," gasped Nick. Abby could almost see him looking wildly around, his brain already calculating methods of trapping and herding the creatures back to the anomaly, or stopping them at any cost if that couldn't be achieved. "Just came through. Trampled a load of the SAS guys. Ate one. The dinosaurs are heading for…" he paused and conferred with someone off screen, "A village near here by the name of Long Maddlesbrough. Abby, I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do for Connor right now. I need you here, now. Just… put him somewhere safe and comfy, and get down here as fast as you can. Leave a note for him if it'll make you feel better.

Abby gaped. "NICK! We have no idea what's wrong with him, when he'll wake up – whether he'll wake up – and if he does, what state he'll be in! I should at least take him to hospital. We can't just leave him and…" she struggled for words.

"Of course we can. I'm sorry, Abby, but let's face it – he's probably just had too much to drink, or eaten something funny. I highly doubt he's in that much trouble. He'll come round in half an hour or so, I imagine. Anyone at the hospital would probably say the same thing. Anyway, I don't have time for you to drive him there, and it's not serious enough for an ambulance to be called.

"No, don't argue with me. I need you on this one, Abby. Two t-rexes is not a walk in the park. I expect you here in twenty minutes, and if you aren't, I'll want to know why." And with that, Nick hung up and went to confer with the SAS people and the rest of his team.

Abby stared at the beeping phone in her hand. "Bloody idiot," she snarled in annoyance. Unfortunately, she knew Nick meant what he said. And T-rexes… He was probably right. Connor had hit his head or eaten something funny, and would come round in a bit. And, she told herself, I am most definitely not trying to convince myself of that just so I'll feel okay leaving Connor here on his own…

"Better get you somewhere more comfortable, hmm?" muttered Abby, picking Connor up with surprising ease. "God, you're light! Where to put you, though…" She thought for a second. "I guess that'd be ok."

She started walking, with an all-too-not-unconscious Connor in her arms, who was confused, terrified, panicking, and very, very furious at Nick Cutter.