The other way

Chapter 7

The shift was sudden and abrupt: one moment the four people stood in the ARC lab as various light and sound alarms went off in a rapid sequence of succession, the next moment the whole light-and-sound cacophony fell abruptly silent, and they found themselves standing in some sort of a somewhat fortified pavilion among the gentle twilit tropical jungle.

"Where are we?" Jenny groaned. "Helen, what are you up to now?"

"The place is early Eocene, 49 MYA," Helen said, looking none-too-happy than the other people, "the place is the future site of Messel pits, Germany."

"Germany? Looks more like India – Nick, what's wrong?"

"The Messel pits, Helen? One of the richest sources of Eocene fossils?" Nick looked like he was experiencing a revelation of some sort. "Helen, that's, that's-"

"Yes, well, hold on to your urges," Helen grimaced. "Besides some really interesting local prosimians, this place is wildly underrated, in no small part because of the way how these fossils will be made."

"What do you mean? The modern science had established that the Messel pits will become so rich in fossils because of a massive eruption of natural gas..." Nick's voice trailed away as realization hit. "And it's going to happen soon, isn't it?"

"Around midnight," Helen nodded sagely. "The good news is that there will a time anomaly opening at around the same time to escape, the bad news is that that time anomaly is part of a chain of time anomalies that cover a span of millions of years and thousands of kilometres apart and if we get stuck in that chain I honestly can't guarantee that I'll be able to bring us back at that same moment from which we left."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you want to see what the ARC can begin to look like in 8 years worth of your absence?" Helen snapped, as she wandered around the pavilion, pulling out a pair of gas masks. "Now, who wants the spare?"

"Me, maybe?" Jenny said wryly.

"Well, maybe, but you already get the spare anti-bloodsucker suit."

"Bloodsucker suit?"

"Yes. Mosquitoes and flies, leeches and ticks, you call them – the Eocene has got them, and they're of a quite large size, too," Helen said with a grimace. "And even if you won't wear the spare suit because it's unfashionable or something, please wear the shoes at least. It's a jungle out there, high heels aren't recommended!"

"Helen!" Nick interrupted his soon-to-be ex-wife's rant sharply. "Why are we here?"

"I don't know!" Helen actually wailed. "This certainly isn't my doing – not the bloody Eocene, which is the third worse time period after the Permian and the Triassic!! Fascinating prosimians aside, this whole time period is a-"

A loud avian shriek interrupted her rumblings.

* * *

Throughout his tenure at the ARC, Connor Temple had experienced many odd and incomprehensive events, from the ordinary prehistoric or futuristic creatures coming from beyond the walls of the modern time and space to some sort of extra-dimensional creatures – to extra-dimensional tunnels – to...

...to whatever was happening now in the ARC. The alarms were burning out or dying down as whatever had caused them to reach just grew stronger. It wasn't a time anomaly, not even one that was opening right at the ARC: it was more as if the ARC itself was being, was being...

...sucked into that theoretical fourth dimension of Helen Cutter's, Connor supposed. Well, no longer just theoretical, as the walls of the center seemed to be melting into a clear, albeit a misty, sky, and the floor and stairways of the building too were breaking up into a grass-covered soil, and...

...and he suddenly found himself running face-first into a grassy knoll that seemingly manifested itself right in the merging of several ARC corridors, with the one leading to his lab veering away from-

Something kicked him so hard in the arse that he practically flew over the side of the hill and down it into the corridor, rolling along its length and into the unlocked doors. There, still unchanged, stood his newest invention, the time anomaly manifestation device that he had used earlier on the giant eagle.

Connor jumped forwards and grasped the control panel; the next moment –

* * *

There was a loud shriek coming from the side of Helen's temporary shelter – a shriek that seemingly came from the tops of the trees. "That's the eagle, mates," Stephen said, as the others just stood silently there, "I heard it cry out like this before – in our times. But what-"

"Gastornis," Helen said slowly. "Also known as the bone-crunching terror bird of the Eocene. Taller than a man, weighing half a ton of feather-clad muscle, with a beak that could snap our bones like dry twigs."

"And yet the Haast's eagle will still be able to take one on and bring it down," Nick said firmly. "Want to bet?"

"Why don't we go and take a look?" Helen shrugged back. "The eagle will probably eat its' kill right there on the spot, as it been used to do in New Zealand."

"This isn't New Zealand."

"To an eagle's ecological point of view – same thing. Flightless birds of different size, tropical climate, no large land predators, if you don't count the ambulocetus and its' kin... As far as the eagle is concerned, this very well can be home."

"Um, this is very fascinating and all, but could you people turn around so that I would get changed?" Jenny interrupted the other woman once more. "And Nick, don't give me that look. I mean, I mean I know that we... but this..."

"Mate, let's just turn and give Jenny some privacy," Stephen exclaimed, as Jenny slowly reddened from embarrassment, and Helen looked on with a quietly bemused facial expression. "Clearly, you haven't reached that stage yet."

"We haven't yet been to that damn funeral!" Jenny exclaimed angrily – and fell silent, as the small jungle breezes began to carry the warm and metallic smell of blood.

"Well," Helen finally spoke after a long period of silence, "maybe you should consider it a chance for a practice run, no, Nick?"

"Oh, shut up!"

* * *

"What's happening?" Abby managed to ask Becker as the ARC's alarms have finally been replaced by silence, and there was little more than just natural scenery all around them. "What has happened, to be more precise?"

"I don't know," the chief of ARC's security gasped, as he vainly stared around the hilly plain that had replaced London's urban jungle. "One moment all is peaceful, the next moment everything breaks loose, and-"

"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," Caroline gasped, as she stumbled along, one of her hands in a death-grip upon Michael's collar. "This is what my other mother meant, that when a time traveller takes a personal dislike to you, you're screwed."

"Caroline – are you all right?" Abby cut-off her original sharp retort as she saw that the other young woman looked flushed, pale and sweaty, half-crouching, half-huddling, trying to make herself as small as possible.

"No," Caroline looked in the shorter woman's direction, her mouth twisted in a humourless smile, but deep inside her eyes lurked something too similar to physical pain to Abby's liking. "I am most certainly not. Listen, uh – you, I know that we have barely withstood each other and all, but, if you'll be ever able to meet my mothers, can you tell them-"

"Oh, be quiet – it's not like anyone even of your species has died from a little food poisoning!"

Slowly, Abby (alongside Becker) turned their attention towards the new speaker, their eyes widening in a very concerned surprise: it was one of the extra-dimensional creatures who apparently were at loggerheads with Helen Cutter, Melinoe.

* * *

The sigh was a gruesome one. Unlike a moa, a gastornis is a carnivore itself, quite capable of self-defence, except that it wasn't exactly hard-wired to do so: nothing in its' true time epoch could hope to defeat it, certainly no flying bird.

Of course, a Haast's eagle is facing pretty much the same predicament: it just isn't that good at self-defence, especially against relatively smaller creatures, such as humans. However, it was also very good at bringing down flightless birds bigger or heavier than itself, and the gastornis and similar Eocene flightless birds fitted the criteria very well.

As a result, this particular time-travelling Haast's eagle was busy feasting on its' kill, when the humans had appeared and stared at it in a rather nervous apprehension. The eagle stared back, also obviously not happy about the development, but doing nothing about it either. For several heartbeats that impasse continued to be, and then the eagle stood up into an attacking poise – and its' eyes flashed blue.

"Oh no!" Helen Cutter gasped as she slowly took a step back. "Stephen, what had Connor Temple done to the bird?"

"I think that he had opened a time anomaly portal right upon it or something," Stephen groaned, as the eagle's body began to shake and shimmer as if it was made from electricity or a similar energy. "Let me guess – it has infused the bird with that extra-dimensional energy or something?"

"I think," Jenny spoke before Helen could reply, "that maybe we should retreat a bit before the eagle decides the stretch its' muscles a bit-"

The eagle stretched. Its legs elongated and became more suited for walking that for perching, and its' body became smaller and stockier, as its neck elongated, and the head became blockier. The wings too grew bigger yet not as wide as they had been before, no longer truly suited for flying unlike earlier. In a matter of seconds, the Haast's eagle transformed itself into a flightless gastornis-like avian – and the people didn't like it one bit.

"Connor Temple," Helen slowly swore as she shifted her stance into a less defensive one. "What have you created?!"

* * *

"...What you created?!" echoed distantly in Connor's lab of a chamber. Connor ignored it – for the moment, of course – and continued to set his machine at a different goal, one that was much closer to him in both time and space. He hated to leave Nick and others hanging like this because of his actions, yet some things had to be done first, if Melinoe were to have her way completely, the results would be far worse...

* * *

"You! I remember you! Helen Cutter has called you deadly!" Becker suddenly growled, startling Abby. "Your name is Melinoe, right?"

"Àye, it is!" Melinoe winked, still looking like a rather crazy and exotic-looking Eliza Dushku clone, yet her lack of shadow indicated that she should be taken more seriously than at her first appearance. "So happy that you remembered it – this will make our negotiations so much easier!"

"What negotiations? You just came over here, apparently destroyed everything, and-"

"I did not – Connor Temple did. Where is your ardent lover anyways, Abby Maitland? I have some gratitude to express to him, after all, without him; I would never have been able to gain a window into this brave new world at all."

"And now you can leave," Abby snapped. "Helen Cutter... is a nasty piece of work and probably not quite sane, but at least she's human, she has a shadow – unlike you, you ghost in the time machine or whatever!"

Melinoe just looked down at the short blonde. "Now that's just stupid," she said flatly, clearly unimpressed by Abby's show of defiance, "I can destroy you, yet come willing to negotiate and you piss me off?"

"I think," Becker spoke up deliberately slowly, "that you're bluffing. I've had Sarah look you up, just in case, and you came up as the spirit of nightmares or something like that. Now I admit that nightmares can be a very nasty thing, but like all dreams, they're not real, they're just in one's head, and that's why you were all about that psychological warfare – 'cause you got nothing else otherwise."

"Now that sounded like a challenge," Melinoe said calmly, almost smiling once again. "Now that is something that I can deal with decently. All psychological warfare, am I? Very well, then let me assure you that the best nightmares have always something real in them; something like – that."

'That' proved to be a giant bear, bigger than a grizzly, let alone a man, approaching Becker and his companions at a quick and steady pace.

"Now that is a North American giant short-faced bear," Abby groaned. "We're screwed."

Becker didn't flinch, but continued to stare at Melinoe and the approaching mega-bear. "Maybe not."

* * *

"Helen," Nick muttered, "what sort of madness it is now-" his voice trailed away. Helen was staring at the former eagle not unlike the way he used to stare at her – as if something (or someone) familiar had turned pseudonaturally alien.

"No," the anthropologist turned time-traveller was muttering, "no, no, no!"

"Helen! Snap out of it! It's only a bird!" Jenny was less patient than Nick for a good reason. "It's only a bird-"

The ex-eagle charged, the somewhat-reduced wings outspread to help balance the forwards-thrusting head and beak. Helen grabbed the other woman and jumped aside, but Stephen thrust his leg forward, and the odd bird tripped, falling off its feet and tumbling down a hill.

Helen gave Stephen a look. "That," she said slowly, "wasn't the wisest thing that you could have done."

"Why not?"

"That's why," Helen muttered, as the bird got back onto its' feet, shifting and changing once more – this time into a more humanoid shape. "The eagle's body has been partially converted into chronological energy, it seems, and it grows stronger, the rest of the original body mass is converted into it as well. The eagle is becoming another extradimensional creature, and that isn't something that I'm ready to handle."

"Not again!" Jenny groaned, as the memory of that misbegotten day spent partially in prehistoric Australia rose again. "Why couldn't it just be an eagle lost in a time different from its own?"

The thing that was once an eagle and once a different bird, emitted a cry that was part an eagle's screech, and part an extra-loud chicken squawk, and partially something else, almost like a human voice.

"Oh, screw this," Helen groaned, as the thing slowly stood up straight in a more humanoid stance and looked around. "I'm just a time traveller – not the oldest, or the smartest, or the strongest. There is no way I can handle something like that – I do not even know where to start."

"I do," Nick said slowly as he straightened up and walked forwards the strange being that now watched them with rather more intelligent eyes than before, waving forelimbs that were now something more than just wings. "Hello, there. Sorry that we got off a wrong foot and all, but look, if you agree to come with us, we'll help you to come to peace with yourself and have a better idea of what to do with your life and all. How that sounds?"

The thing made another sound and reached towards Nick with its' right forelimb. With some trepidation – the beak looked still very much bone-snapping and the fingers were clawed – Nick took the latter into his own hand, and then-

* * *

The bear looked very real and impressive; certainly the heat and stench of its' breath were a nicely realistic touch, as it stood up on its hind legs, dwarfing Becker for all of his own height, preparing to swat him down the way Becker would swat a fly.

A sudden growl off Becker's side, rather than before him, made the man look away from the approaching mega-beast; Michael, Caroline Steele's big (well, relatively big right now) Brazilian mastiff of a dog, had appeared at Becker's side, snarling its own threats. Becker remembered how Michael managed to take down a prehistoric sabre-tooth leopard and smiled – first, reassuringly, at Michael, then, mockingly, at the giant bear that now loomed before them. The beast just roared and swung its' paw, and then-

* * *

"Whatever happened to the nice time anomalies where you enter at one end and exit at another?" Jenny Lewis asked as suddenly they were back in the ARC. "'Cause this sort of time travel is not an improvement."

"My dear, we're altering and fixing entire time lines," Helen Cutter said calmly as she looked around the ARC with some of her trademark nonchalance returning. "Oh my, Melinoe has decided to visit us – again."

"Yes," Melinoe was half-scowling and half-smiling, "I saw and opening and – what has happened to you?"

"Therapy, I would say," Helen shrugged. "I was never the one to back down from a challenge, remember?"

"But- what have you done- you are a fool-"

Zap! An energy discharge similar to electricity lashed out at Melinoe, whose own eyes flashed with bright flame, and-

* * *

"What has happened?" Becker blinked. "Wasn't that shadowless woman here moments ago?"

"Oh, I zapped her, and she went away – I think," Connor said slowly. "Did she go away?" he turned to Helen.

"Yes she did, but you were never able to zap her," Helen said flatly, "and by the way, has anyone seen someone unusual here?"

"You mean the bird-thing? Is it also from the future?" Abby said meekly.

"No, it's the eagle that Connor managed to zap directly," Nick said calmly. "It has changed a bit and evolved some, and it is staying with us at the ARC now until we figure out what to do with it – or rather, until it – we're not sure what gender it has - does."

There was a crash from upstairs as the others looked and saw James Lester stare down at the ARC's field crew and its' newcomer before sitting promptly down on his arse, looking as if his self-control was about to snap.

"There, there," Jenny Lewis said in a vocal tone that was partly kindly and partly wryly. "It's just been one of those days, thanks to Connor Temple out here."

And it was when James Lester Esq. had lost his temper after all.

To be continued...