It was mid-day on the other side of the anomaly, giving the landscape a golden glow. The light shone through the pine trees, putting patterns onto the floor beneath them.
We heard Danny come up behind us, his feet crackling on the leaves as he got closer.
Connor closed the anomaly behind him, only to open yet another one in front of us.
"This goes to the future, doesn't it?" I asked him, even though I knew that he wouldn't admit it even if it did lead to the wrong place. "Hopefully," he nodded, an unsure look on his face.
"You mean you're not sure?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow at him. "No, I can't be sure," he admitted. "But I'm guessing that if we came in this way, we should be able to leave through here."
I heard Danny sigh as he came up next beside me. "Well, there's only one way to find out, yeah?"
"This had better work," I mumbled, noticing Connor close his eyes and take a deep breath when he heard me.
Danny went first, leaving us with no choice but to go in behind him. We stepped through slowly, still unsure about what would be on the other side.
I sighed with relief when I noticed what was left of the artifact, lying scattered across the dark concrete floor, the console that Helen, and, later Connor, had used to open the anomaly, and the all too familiar logo of the Anomaly Research Centre on the wall.
"You were right," I admitted to him, giving him a quick vote of confidence. He kept a blank look on his face, like he was thinking about which reaction he should have. "What, you thought I wouldn't be?"
I looked around myself, looking for a reason to change the subject, but coming up empty-handed. "Well…" I started, having to stop myself soon after to avoid hurting Connor's feelings.
"Alright, you two, let's go," I heard Danny say, grabbing our attention.
We worked our way outside, having to step over various things, ranging from boxes to pieces of stone from the crumbling walls, that had found space on the floor after years of neglect.
"So, the anomaly…" Danny reminded us once we were outside. Connor and I exchanged an annoyed look.
"It was over there," Connor said, pointing in the direction of where the anomaly had been before.
"Alright, then," Danny said, before starting off in the direction Connor had told him to go in, forcing us to follow behind him.
We all three started to move a bit faster, knowing that it wouldn't be too much longer until we were home in London.
We pressed on for quite a while, longer than it had taken before, but that was to be expected, considering that two out of three of us were in no state to be doing anything right now, much less traipsing through time, searching for--.
"Danny? What about Helen?" I asked him, bringing up the one subject that everyone else had failed to mention.
"Ah, Helen," he said slowly, as if just remembering who she was. "I don't think we'll have to worry about her anytime soon."
"You mean she's…" Connor started, not seeing the need to finish, seeing as both Danny and I already knew what he was going to ask. Danny turned around and looked at him, an amused expression on his face. "Yes, Connor, she's dead," he finished for him.
"But…how?" I asked, wondering how we hadn't seen her, dead or alive, on our way to find Danny.
"She fell off a cliff, along with a raptor," he explained, forcing back laughter in his attempt to be the mature one.
I could hear Connor chuckling next to me. I glanced over at him, wondering what could possibly be so funny. "Death by dinosaur," I heard him say quietly, just loud enough for me to hear. I felt myself start to laugh, then scolded myself for doing so, knowing that it wasn't the right thing to do when you found out someone had just died. "Shut up, Connor," I told him, even though I still found myself smiling along with him.
It put an odd feeling in my chest, knowing that Helen was dead. I knew that I should be happy about it, but it still just felt wrong. After all, she was human, wasn't she? And even though she had killed Cutter, her own husband, I still felt like we should acknowledge her death with something other than grins and giggles.
"Let's go, Connor," I heard Danny call, interrupting my thoughts and making me realise that while Danny had kept going, Connor had stayed, waiting for me.
"Right, sorry," he said, when he noticed that I had snapped out of it by now. I threw him an apologetic smile, feeling guilty for making him look bad. "Sorry," I mouthed, accepting the fact that it was my fault for getting lost in my thoughts. "It's alright," I heard him mumble, before we started off again.
As we walked on, I noticed how familiar everything here was. The buildings we passed were all ones I had seen before, back home. And the ARC, of course, now grimy and decrepit, still felt the same, even if it had taken on a whole new look.
In the middle of turning a corner, Danny stopped abruptly, looking back at us. Connor and I exchanged a puzzled look, neither one of us knowing exactly why we were stopped.