Chapter 3

"Becker?" Lester stuck his head into the on-site quarters and looked around. The captain's head and shoulders appeared over the other side of the sofa, his hair slightly more rumpled than was usual. Lester raised an eyebrow. "I know you're bored," he continued, his acerbic tones doing little to hide the dry amusement in his voice, "but when you and Doctor Page have quite finished tidying yourselves up, I believe there's a Mr Temple and a Miss Maitland on their way here to see you both. Thank you!"

Becker sat back in the sofa, rolling his eyes and hoping Lester had been alone in that corridor. Beside him, Sarah sat up and ran a hand through her hair. She'd have to find a hairbrush. So would he, probably. It could have been worse, he told himself. He shouldn't have kissed her back, admittedly, but he hadn't really been expecting her to kiss him in the first place. If he'd had some warning, or clues, maybe he could have avoided... Well, it was done now anyway. As usual, he'd made a total mess of things and he had no idea how best to sort it out. As he ran a hand over his face, Sarah stood up.

"We should go," she said. "I should go, anyway. Sort this..." she pulled the loose hair band out of her hair and roughly remade the ponytail.

Becker nodded. "I'll be along in a bit," he said, leaning on his elbows. He heard the door close as Sarah left and let his head fall into his hands. Confusion reigned. He liked Sarah. She was a friend. They got on. He'd never even considered the possibility of anything else between them. They'd probably be good together. They always had made a good team in the past. On the other hand, he felt guilty. Guilty for not spotting Sarah's feelings for him. Guilty because he had thought he was beginning to develop feelings for someone else. Guilty because it was her face that had flashed into his mind when he kissed Sarah back.

XXXX

The ARC had changed a bit, but not much, Connor thought as they clambered out of the brand new pickup that had replaced the old one in their absence. Apparently, although the old hilux could take crashing into dead trees, attack by giant prehistoric birds, attack by future bats, attack by giganotosaurus and even attacking a gorgonopsid, it had baulked at a pothole on the M2.

Lester met them at the door of the atrium with the closest thing to a smile they'd every seen from him. They exchanged a few pleasantries, then their ever professional boss decided he needed to speak to Abby in his office and left Connor in the welcoming embrace of a jubilant Sarah Page.

"We tried to find you, we really did!" Sarah explained, finally letting Connor have the use of his ribs again.

"It's okay, it's fine," Connor grinned. "We're back, we're well, we're only slightly hungry. I mean we were only stuck there for what? Three days? Four?"

Sarah stepped back, a look of confusion clouding her features.

"Connor," she said, watching his bemused expression, "you've been gone more than four months!"

Connor could feel his face fall. "What?"

"I'm not kidding Connor," Sarah shook her head. "Go look at a newspaper or something!"

"But," Connor frowned. So many things had jumped into his head at once it was hard to pick one of them to voice. "But Rex," he settled for. "Sid, Nancy, my Star Wars collectors edition!"

"They're all here," Sarah put a hand on his arm. "Well, the animals are here, anyway," she corrected herself. "Jack Maitland's looking after the flat, and the mini. That's probably the paperwork Lester's taking Abby through just now. He was her only living relative, you see, so when the minister had you declared missing, presumed dead, he took over everything of hers. We didn't know what to do with your stuff and we couldn't separate out half of it anyway, apart from the obvious. Becker's got those at his place."

The fact that he hadn't yet seen Becker finally registered in Connor's brain. He looked around expectantly. "Where is he anyway?"

"I left him in one of the in-house apartments," Sarah replied. "He said he was on his way down. I expected him to be here by now."

"Since when do we have in-house apartments?" Connor frowned, thinking back to the time he had spent sleeping in an office before moving in with Lester.

"Just a few months," Sarah shrugged. "Lester thought they'd be a good idea for some reason. Don't know why. Come on, I'll show you. They're up by the medical wing."

"It's fine, I'll find them," Connor said, looking up at the sound of a door opening to see a rather annoyed Abby stomping out of Lester's office. "You know you really should spend some time catching up with Abby. I'm sure she'd love someone to vent at right now, bye!"

If Sarah had said something as he hurried away, Connor hadn't heard it. He shifted the weight of the backpack on his back and a squeak reminded him of its extra occupant. The prototherid had been quiet throughout the journey back to the ARC and he'd actually forgotten it was there. He stopped on the stairs and swung the bag round, checking to see there was nobody in sight before opening the zip a little more and watching a small, furry, pointy nose with massive whiskers pop out of the bag and start sniffing at the air.

"I know," Connor said quietly. "Lots of new smells and stuff. Don't worry: you'll get used to it. We'll have to keep you hidden for a bit though. Uncle Lester won't be too happy to see you, no he won't. We'll have to think of a name for you too, won't we? Yes we will. Yes we will."

"Temple, why are you talking to a bag like a gibbering idiot?" Becker's weary tones cut through Connor's descent into silly voice and baby talk like a hot knife through butter. Connor immediately hid the bag behind him and the prototherid squeaked in protest.

Becker feinted to the left, then grabbed to the right as Connor swung the bag away from the captain's left hand. It really was too easy, Becker thought. The words "candy" and "baby" could even be applied in this case. He pulled the bag open and peered inside, then dropped the bag with a shout of alarm.

"Dammit, Temple! I hate rats!"

"He's not a rat!" Connor replied in wounded tones, bending down and extricating the prototherid from the folds of the silver emergency blanket that had, being the next thing down in the bag and having been stuffed there unfolded by Connor, landed on top of the creature in a heap. "He's a prototherid. One of the earliest mammals."

"It looks like a rat to me," said Becker, unconvinced and keeping his distance.

"They're more like shrews, actually," said Connor, happily scratching the little animal behind it's satellite dish ears. "In fact, that would be a great name for them, if they haven't already got one: Prototheria soriciforma!"

"I prefer Colin."

"I can live with that."

Aware that Becker was still keeping his distance from the newly Christened Colin, Connor let the captain pick up the fallen contents of the backpack and followed him up the stairs. The new apartments were just at the top. There were four of them, each containing a semi-open plan bedroom and living area, with a tiny kitchen area on one side and an en suite on the other. Connor sat down on one side of the sofa and shifted uncomfortably. He detached one hand from the furry mammal long enough to reach behind him and drag a rather large earring out from under one of the cushions. He looked at it, frowned, then looked up at Becker suspiciously.

"Wasn't Sarah wearing the other one of these when I was talking to her downstairs?"

XXXX

"I cannot believe they just gave the place to Jack!" Abby ranted, storming through the building in the direction of the menagerie as Sarah hurried to keep up. "They declared us dead!"

"Missing, presumed dead," Sarah corrected. "It's not quite the same thing."

"We were only gone four days!"

"Four months here!"

"He's an idiotic jerk with absolutely no thought for anyone but himself!"

"He's your only living relative!"

"Not for much longer, if anything's happened to that flat!"

A familiar chirrup stopped the ranting short as the Sarah closed the menagerie door behind them. In a move that reminded Abby of the first time she'd thought she'd lost Rex, the coelurosauravus glided down into her arms, all four feet pointing outward, and landed on her chest. Folding his wings back behind him, Rex licked at Abby's nose and chirped again.

"At least nothing's happened to you, Rex," Abby smiled down as Rex turned and curled up in her arms, his tail flicking back and forth lazily. "My lizards, my flat and my mini. I'll get them all back, just you wait."

Scratching idly at her neck and surreptitiously removing the single remaining earring whose partner she'd just realised she'd lost, Sarah cleared her throat. "How does two out of three grab you?"

XXXX

Danny looked around the collection of woven wood huts perched on the massive tree root. The community was like nothing he'd ever seen before, except maybe in films and inhabited by small furry teddy-bear-like creatures that seemed to get a lot of enjoyment out of riding motorbikes that were far too big and far too fast for them. The view was like nothing else too. He felt like he'd been shrunk down to the size of gnat. Everything was massive, stretching up above him out of sight. He didn't dare look down.

The welcoming committee that had met him at the lift had dispersed, leaving him with only his brother and sister-in-law. Together they had walked up the root, following a path worn into the bark by many years of use. The distance between Danny and the ground now was more than double what it had been at the lift, and that had been far enough!

"Why build so far up?" Danny had asked as they walked. "Surely the root was wide enough where the lift is."

"Too low," Lena had replied quietly. "We do not build within reach of the swamp beasts."

Danny had looked to his brother for an explanation.

"Let me put it this way," said Kiran, putting a reassuring hand on Danny's shoulder that somehow failed to fulfil its purpose. "It's not just the trees that are bigger out here."

The conversation had turned to why they were out here in the first place. Apparently it was safer. The tree villages were harder to find in the swamps, being almost invisible from below. Although the land was a bit dryer than the swamps Danny had come across in his own time, most notably the everglades on a golfing trip to Florida, it would still have been difficult to bring anything ground based across it and the hovercars were easily spotted on some sort of detector thing Kiran had tried to explain to him and failed miserably. He'd have got on well with Connor, Danny thought.

As far as Danny could make out, this was only one of a number of Rebel hiding places. They could stay here for a few nights, but no more. Once they had rested and filled Danny in on the many and varied reasons for their very existence, he, Kiran, Lena and a small group of other known and wanted Rebels would be heading out beyond the borders of the City lands.

Danny smiled weakly and reminded himself not to look down. He somehow didn't think the hovercar would be coming up to collect them at their doors.