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Part Four:
Forest of Dean.
Taylor Craig, codename Raven (CIA agent serial number A52-GMHX-13) frantically undid her coat buttons as she ran. She should've worn her bodysuit, and damn the heat. As it was, her modified T-shirt and fashionable jeans were going to get her killed.
Not that Kevlar was useful against April's armblades—the bodysuit was just easier to move in than jeans.
Still no cell phone signal. Her magnetic sense was pinging—something was drawing off her internal navigator. Something close. Straight ahead—there. The anomaly.
Taylor nearly sobbed with relief. The mutant killer was less than fifty feet behind her. The anomaly gave Taylor a chance.
Anomaly Research Centre.
"OK, try again."
"Still nothing."
"Damn it. Where did I put me lucky sonic screwdriver?"
"You have a sonic screwdriver? How did you get one of those?"
"There's this website, called ThinkGeek, and they sell all sorts of neat stuff. I got me a Tenth Doctor sonic screwdriver for ten pounds. Ah, there it is!"
"Alright… Do you have any other ideas? I'm tapped out."
"If we broaden the search parameters, that might work…"
"But we'd be running the risk of destroying critical data. I'm not risking nuking my computers."
"It might be our only chance. This is really good spyware."
"…OK. Hold on to that sonic screwdriver—we're going to need all the luck we can get."
"How broad d'you think we need to go?"
"Search for outgoing signals. I'm going to close all outgoing processes, which should leave the spyware as the only outgoing operation. Wait until I say go."
"Jess, you're brilliant! This might just work!"
"I know. All right, everyone, I'm not going to be coordinating for about five minutes. We're going to see if this new sweeper of Connor's can fix the system, and I need to close most of the programs. If it works, we'll clean up any mobile detectors that are compromised. Try not to get killed while I'm busy, because I'll never forgive you."
Forest of Dean.
April knew she was winning. The bird girl was clearly tiring, and she was barely fifty feet ahead. The anomaly was only a hundred yards away; she would make it, but then she'd be trapped in the past with the ultimate living weapon on her metaphorical tail.
April leaned in and pushed, sprinting as fast as she could. Thirty feet away—the girl was maybe fifty yards from the anomaly—twenty…ten…
And then Raven managed to pull off her coat as she dove through the anomaly, and the flying garment slapped April in the face as the agent's wings unfurled.
April did not so much run through the anomaly as nosedive unceremoniously through it, a fact that left her steaming with rage.
Something moved over her as she pulled the coat off her face, snagging the coat as it went. April sliced upwards, and was rewarded by a gasp of pain from Raven as her left armblade got the bird girl's leg.
The anomaly pulsed as the wormhole reacted to Raven's bioelectrical field, and a whoosh of air heralded the girl's kicking off into the air.
"Damn it! Son of a…damn. Right, you little *****, I'll call May and have her hunt you. Damn little augmented *****! You're freaking dead!"
April stood, sliced a tree fern in half out of lazy anger, and wiped her bloody armblade on a convenient leaf. It wouldn't be good to have to explain about blood dripping from in between her third and fourth fingers.
"They're close. The mud around this print is still slumping in. That way, no more than a hundred yards. The girl went for the harder ground, and Tanya followed."
Captain Hilary Becker broke into a run, Emily breathing heavily behind him, and set the charge on his EMD to level 1 (T-rex). Just in case.
There was a line of bushes that was still waving. Becker charged through heedlessly. The Russian was standing on the other side, shaking her head at the anomaly and hissing. It was an extremely creepy sound, eerily reminiscent of a pit viper that had bitten Becker in the leg on a mission to Uganda during his quick loan to the UN peacekeepers. Becker felt himself shiver involuntarily, but controlled himself.
"Tanya! Are you alright? Your black box malfunctioned; Jess thought that you were going over thirty kilometers per hour. We found it back that way, don't worry."
The Russian turned, grimacing.
"I have always been fast, tovarishch. Maybe not that fast, but fast. She got away."
"Who was she?"
"I don't know. She works for the Americans, of that I'm sure."
"Americans?"
"Da. We have had skirmishes with them before. I would advise you to be careful; they are not fully human."
"Not human? What do you mean?"
"They got their hands on some future technology. Nasty stuff. Cybernetics, implants, genetic modification—that girl was part bird. I wouldn't be surprised if she's got a mind-control chip in her head."
"Seriously? Because that's a little hard to believe."
"You're standing right in front of a hole in the damn space-time continuum, and you're saying that something's unbelievable? Really, Captain?"
Something about the way the Russian was talking bothered Becker. The way she said "stuff" didn't quite click with her accent.
"..huh. That actually kind of makes sense. Right. We'd better keep an eye out for them in the future. Matt, we've found the anomaly. Tanya ran a pretty much straight path down here—bring the creatures. We'll need to ask Lester to throw some pointed questions at the Americans when we get back."
April POV.
Damn it, damn it, damn it! Her goddamn accent! She got distracted by wondering where Raven had gone, and her freaking accent slipped!
On the plus side, Raven's little trick wouldn't work again, and April knew that the girl knew it.
A few quick lies would take care of the ARC team's suspicions. They had had encounters with future technology—most notably that nut Helen Cutter's clone army—before; it wouldn't be hard to manipulate them. Future tech—heh. Baselines. Even when they used stuff that only years before was nothing but science fiction, such as the room-temperature superconductors in the EMDs, they couldn't comprehend someone else making the same leap without getting the tech from the future.
Andersen and his team came up about fifteen minutes later, dragging an unconscious dilophosaur and gasping for breath. Abby arrived with the locking device shortly afterwards.
April resolved to ask May to hunt down Raven for her.
Note to self: be sure to ask May to take video. The girl's altered vocal cords should make a nice scream.
Anomaly Research Centre.
James Lester returned from his coffee break, fuming mildly.
"Any progress?"
"Yeah! We found the bug, and we're backtracking it through me programs. It's got dummy switches, metastatic segments, and false deactivication lines, but I think we've got it. We're going to peel it from the base code line by line, and then we're going to use its base functions to root it out once we've seized control. Jess is busy—don't mess with her."
"Excuse me, Temple, but I am the boss here…"
"Yeah, and if Jess gets interrupted this whole thing could crash, and we might never get the virus out. Trust me, don't distract her."
Lester opened his mouth, closed it, and turned again, storming off in a huff.
"Damn overpaid freelance staff…the temerity! Telling me to leave! The gall of the man…"
Jess snickered quietly.
"Alright, Connor, try this one out."
"Nothing. Damn it!"
"Try manually looking for an open value—that might be a password slot for back-door access to the program."
"Got it. I'm really clutching me sonic screwdriver now, by the way."
"Maybe that'll help. My god—I'm starting to go superstitious!"
"Happens to the best of us, on this job. I have a lucky pair of Star Trek: The Next Generation pants that I always wear if I've got advance notice of field missions. Try running a hidden-objects search—if we're lucky, that might find an access line."
"Right. Anything?"
"Nope…nope…nope…bingo! There's a password hatch and a login graphic; you have to use the hidden objects search, activate the program, and then it gives you the login! Someone slipped up and left a post hoc modification hatch!"
"Password?"
"Er…no clue, to be honest. It's not even labeled or marked, so I have no idea who wrote the code."
"It's on our systems, and it seems to be tailored for them—that must narrow the field a little bit."
"If it was made to target our systems…Anomaly. That's the password."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. Just like when Leek betrayed us, and I had to hack his files. Now cross your fingers, because we've got only one shot at this."
Jess crossed her fingers on both hands, closed her eyes, and started humming the Star Wars theme song for luck.
Forest of Dean.
Abby Maitland twiddled her thumbs idly as the men hauled the last dilophosaur back home. The Russian was sitting next to her, gruff and taciturn. The American girl had shaken her up pretty badly.
Of course, Matt and Becker wouldn't dream of asking for help, not in front of the Russian. Competitiveness. Must be a Y-chromosome thing. Why they thought that refusing help would impress the Russians more was a mystery, but it was mildly amusing.
She'd tried talking to Tanya, but had gotten one-word responses. After ten or so tries, Abby had given up.
Coms were still down—Jess and Connor must be having some trouble. Could be worse, though. At least this mission had been cleared up fairly quickly.
They hadn't found the missing schoolgirl, but Abby was inclined to believe that the "schoolgirl" was the American operative that Sholoshkova had gone after. Abby hadn't heard the whole story yet, but what she had heard was creepy.
Her mobile rang. Lester.
"Hello, sir. Coms are still down, I take it?"
"Correct. You should have field communications, apparently, but not back to the ARC. Now, this is extremely important; life and death, future of the world, irritatingly superior Harold damn Duvall, and all that wonderful garbage that we deal with on a daily goddamn basis. Oh, what I wouldn't give to get my hands on Harold Duvall's smarmy neck right about now…"
"Sir? You're rambling." That wasn't like Lester at all—he never, ever rambled. He must be extremely upset, to say the least.
Note to self: Head straight home. Ask Becker to give Connor a ride. No need to subject myself to the Wrath of the Boss.
"Yes, right…as I was saying; where are the special treats for Wilbur?"
"There's a big box of Osage oranges that I imported from Kansas over by the food for the arctocyonids. Connor said that the oranges aren't really oranges and so on, and that they evolved along with mammoths. They should be like candy for him."
"Ah, excellent. Thank you, Abby. Oh, and a tasteful little crate marked "Mammoth Chow", as well. How…cute. I'll just go feed the mammoth, then, while you…do…well, whatever the hell it is that you staff do."
"Goodbye, sir—and remember, the mammoth's on a diet, don't overfeed him again!"
"I'll overfeed my own damn mammoth if I feel like it! That said—perhaps I should save some of these for his birthday next week. Now back to work, Maitland!"
Abby sighed as she hung up. Lester didn't like to admit it, but he had a soft spot for that mammoth.
The anomaly pulsed, and Matt and Becker came back through the anomaly, arguing about football, of all things. Emily and the soldiers were passing money around behind them. The soldiers seemed to be doing most of the handing, and Emily seemed to be doing the receiving.
"I see that you've been corrupted by the twenty-first century," said Abby jokingly as the team walked back to their cars, the locked anomaly safe behind them under the watchful eyes of the ARC science and secondary security teams (who were quite sensibly sent out an hour after the core team, in order to reduce the deaths of techs and security men who had not been given all of the information about the ARC yet). "Less than a year here, and already gambling. How much did you win?"
"417 pounds. Those soldiers should have known better—I know Becker and Matt quite well."
"You certainly know Matt better than they do. How are you two doing, by the way?"
"We are taking it slowly. We had the most romantic dinner at his apartment three nights ago. Candles and flowers and everything!"
"Yeah, Matt's got a nice flat. He's romantic, eh? I should start training Connor in romance before we get married."
"That'd probably be a good idea. Scrawny, tactless geek like him who can't notice a damn thing to save his life and practically needs a damn billboard to notice the obvious? He needs help. A lot of help, fast."
Abby half-turned. The Russian was looking unusually and somewhat uncharacteristically surly—and what she'd just said hadn't sounded quite right. She was too familiar with English slang, and her accent had slipped, now that Abby came to think about it, that one time four days ago when Abby had asked her about a boyfriend or girlfriend. Tanya spoke with a thick Urals Russian accent, like a zookeeper Abby had known once at the Wellington Zoo, but when she was shocked, her voice had slipped into a Muscovite drawl, just for a few moments.
"Eh, he's cute. And he's not that hard to train. It just takes a little work, that's all."
Tanya grunted noncommittally in response.
CIA Deep Cover base 4 (Southern England and Wales). Undisclosed location.
Taylor Craig flashed her ID badge at the check-in. The perky redhead behind the counter saw Taylor's injuries and the Operation Falcon insignia on the badge, and immediately sent her down to Infirmary 3. The Area 52 ward. The techs down there called it the Animal Hospital, at least until Villette "Agent Sabertooth" Tcherine had heard that joke and rearranged a medic's face despite being semiconscious from therocephalian venom.
Taylor could always count on a free massage, foot rub, and personal highly nervous attendant every time she was badly injured enough to need medical attention in the area. The perks of working with Villette were many.
Two medics rushed forwards with a stretcher as soon as the lift bell dinged. Taylor collapsed onto it—flying had been painful, but walking on the injured leg had ben excruciating.
"Ma'am, what exactly happened to you?"
"Arm's a dilophosaur bite—nonvenomous. Leg's a Twelve armblade. She found me by chance, I barely got away. I need to call my boss—anything you hear is Level Seven secret."
The medics paled. Level Seven was above top secret—telling anyone that kind of information without express clearance was treason.
Finally, more than one bar. This ought to do it—and thank some random deity for the private carrier, because prices for transatlantic mobile calls were mad these days.
The other end picked up on the second ring.
"Agent Gull."
"Hey Stephanie, this is Taylor. I need to speak to Davis, right now."
Stephanie's breath caught. She knew what the call had to mean.
"Which one?"
"April. I got away, but only just. There were three dilophosaurs, she was distracted…"
"I'll catch the rest later. Professor! It's Agent Raven, she ran into one of the Twelve in the field."
Davis swore mutedly on the other end, and picked up seconds later.
"Davis here."
"Professor, it's Taylor Craig. I just encountered a Concordium cell."
"You're sure? This isn't just some crazy joke or mix-up with the Russians again? Because Ivanova said…"
"High-powered energy weapons, some sort of earpieces for coms, and a Twelve augment. It's April, sir."
And BWAHAHAHAHA! I WILL MAKE YOU WAIT FOR THE FINALE! Because I am freakishly busy applying to college. Also, I still need to iron out the kinks and get the story for the next "episode".
Answers to likely questions:
April's slipping because she's in a high-stress situation with a lot of variables. She had to lose close to thirty pounds, mostly muscle, for her last infiltration assignment in the ARC, and now she's using a completely different identity coupled with trying to express-remove all of the suspiciously unusual habits that she developed in six months of rooming with another psychotic killer. She spent six months regaining her muscle, she hates the ARC staff passionately, and Taylor/Agent Raven is a random factor that she couldn't account for beforehand. Right now she's trying to Indiana Jones Improv Ploy her way out of this mess without just revealing herself, because her superiors will be Very Upset if she terminates the ARC team before she gets the order.
Taylor didn't react with the ARC personnel, and she saw Matt and two soldiers with April, so of course she thinks that the ARC team members are April's mooks. She freaked out and attacked the dilophosaur to get the chance to run while April was partially distracted. She thinks that April and her organization have completely infiltrated the British government and is worried that she'll have to fake her death and relocate her family into witness protection or something.
Also, as for why there is a teenager working field duty on anomalies—and solo, for that matter—Taylor isn't a typical teenager.
Yes, I will give a little Jess/Becker romance mush in my next update. Because, you know, Jecker is cute.
Connor and Abby are still engaged here—wedding scene (with associated hilarity, stag night nightmares, creature attacks, and general geekdom) is still to come. I'm thinking of putting a little light something between Future Matt's reappearance at the end of episode 6 and the beginning of "season" 7. Minimal and light-hearted action, lots of situational comedy, a little slapstick.
Lester WILL get an awesome kickass Boss Rage scene. If he shoots a creature multiple times with an EMD for touching his new sports car—what happens to the augment who throws it at his head?
Still finishing up the creature design for next "episode". This one will be very scary and much, much more lethal than a future predator.