Chapter 3: Less Than A Ghost

Danny was sat on his gurney, waiting for the doctors to give him the all-clear, when Sarah and Becker strode into the ARC's medical facility.

"Danny!" Sarah called and ran to give him a long, relieved hug. "We were so worried about you guys. We'd just about come up with a plan to come in and rescue you when we got the call."

He smiled and shook hands with a just arrived Becker. "Had to rescue ourselves, then, didn't we? How's it going soldier boy?"

"Quinn," Becker greeted, smirking at the name. "You three seemed to have done well for yourselves. Did I hear right that Helen Cutter's been neutralized?"

He nodded. "By a raptor, of all things. Wasn't pretty; I'm sure you can appreciate that."

"But how did you manage to come out in the Forest of Dean?" Sarah asked.

Danny tilted his head towards the stretcher where Connor was lying, asleep, Abby sitting in a chair at his side. "Helen had one of those devices that opens anomalies. The kid reprogrammed it to avoid the future and all accompanying creatures. Lucky, too, because that boy couldn't have run if his life depended on it."

"Is he all right?"

"He won't be waltzing anytime soon, but he'll live. It's about the least of our concerns at the moment, really."

"Why's that?" Becker asked, looking around as though searching for a physical threat.

"Oh, you two haven't heard this yet?" Danny chuckled. "Apparently we played around a little too much with the past and changed the whole damn course of evolution. Nifty, eh?"

They looked at him as though he'd completely lost his marbles. He thought they were probably fairly right on that point.

"It's fine. Only Connor, Abby, and I know the difference anyway. Couple people here that weren't; couple people gone that were here. Lost a good friend…again."

He'd started off jokingly, but by the end he could feel his face slacken and depress. He kept thinking that Jenny was still there—not at the ARC but in existence. She'd been gone from the ARC so long that he'd gotten used to her absence, but he'd always had this idea in the back of his head that he could find her if he really wanted to, or maybe that she'd ring him if she ever needed help. Just knowing she was in the city somewhere had been a comfortable thought. But now she wasn't. She never had been.

"I don't understand," Sarah said, taking his hand in hers. "You're not making any sense."

He shook his head and pushed a tight, strained smile across his face. "I'm very sure I'm not. Connor's the man to talk to about it, when he wakes up. He'll actually know what he's talking about. In the mean time, I think I'll head down to the pub and get thoroughly pissed. Anyone care to join me?"

The other two shared a confused, alarmed look, and Danny felt like hitting something.

"Never mind. Not much up for company, anyway. Ring me if the world ends again."

He pushed past them and the nurse who'd been coming to give him the results of his blood tests. He didn't care what they said, what they thought, what they did. He didn't care that he'd get hell from Lester for leaving without proper permission from the doctors. This was more than he could take just now, and the only solution was to get as much alcohol into himself as humanly possible and hope when he woke up from his massive hangover, everything would be back to normal.

And when it was, he'd call Jen. He'd call and ask her out for a drink like he should have ages ago, and he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. She wanted away from the ARC—that was fine, they'd leave off the shoptalk—but he had to see her, talk to her, have some part of her…

But it wouldn't happen, none of it, because now there was Claudia Brown and no Jenny. Cutter was alive and had his girl, and Danny had nothing. He had nothing.

Something had been building in him since he'd come face to face with the reality of the situation, and just then he thought if he didn't let it out it would end him. There was a door to his immediate left, and he kicked it in without even trying the knob. It seemed to be a storage room for the medical lab—shelves of bandages and instruments and medicines in cold storage, bottles of pills and jars of cotton balls—and in a pure rage he began throwing anything he could lay hands on against the walls and floor.

It didn't register when glass broke in his hand or debris flew back in his face. He didn't feel it; it wasn't important. All he knew was that he had to destroy something or this thing inside would destroy him. Anger, loss, grief, and pure acidic jealousy coursed through him, because none of them had to carry this with them—Cutter, Claudia, Sarah, Becker, Lester…they didn't have to remember the way Jenny smiled, knowing they'd never see it again.

How had Cutter not gone mad, seeing the woman he loved every day in a stranger's face?

Delicate hands gripped his shoulders and a matching voice called his name, but he brushed both aside and hurled a box of syringes against the wall, sending its contents rolling all over the floor.

"Sarah, move out of the way! He's not in his right mind!"

"Danny, stop!"

"Somebody call a doctor; Quinn's lost it!"

They didn't understand—they couldn't. They hadn't known her. They hadn't seen the fire in her eyes every time she'd tried to make him go, or the strength with which she held herself in a crisis. That disbelieving little laugh she had when he didn't do as she wanted. He remembered, and he'd always have to remember. To forget would be to lose her completely.

This time when hands gripped his shoulders, there was an accompanying sting to go with it, and his tirade ended quite abruptly with a fog spreading quickly through his mind. He looked down to see a nail-polished hand holding an empty syringe.

"Abby?" he questioned, cocking his head to look more closely. "What'd you do?"

"You're gonna be okay, now, Danny," she soothed, her eyes sincere and her smile sad. "I'm here. I understand."

Without his anger to hold him up, he once again felt the crippling grief overtake him, sending him sobbing to his knees. "She's gone, Abby. She's not even a ghost. She never existed."

Abby knelt down beside him and took his head against her breast, letting him hold on to her. "She did," she whispered, running her fingers through his hair. "She did exist, Danny. I remember her, and I miss her too. I miss her too."

Danny took that knowledge with him as the tranquilizer took full affect and ushered him into sleep. Abby understood; Connor would understand. There was someone else in this strange new world who had known her, who remembered her…who could remind him how she laughed if he ever started to forget.

OOO

Abby felt him grow limp and heavy in her arms, and she looked around for a proper place to lay him down.

"Somebody get a stretcher in here quick; he can't lie in all this broken glass."

Fortunately there was already one waiting in the hallway, and with the help of Becker and one of his military team, they were able to get him on it without further exacerbating the injuries he'd done himself. His hand and knuckles glistened with glass, and his face was cut some with who-knew-what. Most of what he'd kneeled in had stuck in the sturdy cloth of this trousers, but they'd have to check if any had gotten through.

Abby, on the other hand, had to sit while the medics picked plastic and glass out of her knees. It wasn't serious, just a small patch-up job and a total of three stitches, but Abby knew Danny would be feeling a whole lot worse when he woke up. They'd had to move him to a private room, one that locked from the outside, and Abby wasn't sure at all how well she liked that idea. The man was grieving, obviously, and he needed to know that he wasn't alone in all of it. Locking him up wasn't likely to give that impression.

"Are we about done here?" she asked the medic finishing up her stitches. "I promised Connor I'd be there when he woke up."

"Just about, ma'am," he replied, tying off the thread and cutting the excess. "There. Just keep these dry for the next seven days and you'll be good as new."

"Great." She climbed gingerly off the table and hobbled over to where Connor lay, still snoring quietly, on his stretcher.

He began to stir, though, when she took his hand in hers.

"Good morning," she smiled when his tired eyes met hers. "You sleep well?"

He looked around, confused, blinking and rubbing his eyes. "I didn't dream that, did I? Cutter? And Claudia Brown?"

"You didn't dream it," she assured him, stroking his palm like she'd stroked Danny's hair. For comfort; for solidarity. They were all in this together now. "The world's changed, and we're the only ones who know it. I guess Cutter was right all along, eh?"

"I always knew he was," Connor sighed, "but for some reason I never imagined it would happen again. I don't understand how it works, really. I wouldn't have thought we could go back to something that had already been erased."

"Don't know. Maybe we're slipping through dimensional portals or something. Maybe our world is out there somewhere, through a different anomaly."

Connor laughed shallowly, tilting his head up to the ceiling. "The guys would absolutely love that. Dinosaurs and inter-dimensional travel. What a job, eh?"

"This won't be so bad, will it Conn? Living here like this, knowing things how they used to be." She didn't want to tell him about Danny's episode, but she couldn't keep herself from thinking on it. Yes, she missed Jenny. She had since the woman had left the ARC almost a year ago, but they had Cutter now, and this Claudia Brown to get acquainted with. Cutter had been able to compartmentalize it and move on with his work; they would, too, right?

"Ups and downs, I'm sure," he replied, looking no more certain of anything than she was. "I suppose we'll see what else has changed and how, and then we'll just have to live with it, won't we?"

And that, she supposed, was the long and short of it. It didn't matter what they thought of this new reality of theirs because there wasn't anything to do about it, either way. Had there been, she was sure Cutter would have found it before.

"Abby."

She looked up to find him watching her carefully, a peculiar expression on his face.

"What's wrong? Does something hurt? I can get a nurse, if you like."

He shook his head and chuckled, though she had no idea what was funny. "No, I'm fine. I think I just need to go home. You think they'd let me out of here soon?"

"I'll see what I can do," she replied, groaning as she got to her feet and felt the pull of her new injuries.

Home, she thought, sounded absolutely lovely.