STEPHEN
He was in his office when the call came, staring at his blank computer screen. Stephen had always been a man of action rather than deep thought; he was never rash, but he never overanalysed things either. Since his injury, though, he wasn't able to do a lot more than think deeply about things. The trip to the anomaly this morning was a rare occurrence for him.
At that moment, his thoughts were in turmoil. At first he hadn't believed his eyes when Cutter had stumbled through the anomaly; he'd been far back, sitting beneath the tree, and hadn't been able to see past the cluster of people that had gathered around. He'd heard them talking afterwards, though, and there was no doubt about it: after three years, Nick Cutter had finally returned to the present.
Helen was not with him.
That thought was the start of an incredibly unpleasant chain of emotions: disappointment, relief, guilt, fear. Cutter was his best and closest friend, and he was overjoyed, of course, to see him alive and relatively well. Helen, though... Their affair had been the result of her persuasiveness and his naïvety, and he had regretted it deeply – right up until the point where she came back, and they kissed, and he realised he still wanted her.
Therein lay the guilt. It was wrong, blatantly wrong, to lust after your best friend's wife, even if they had been estranged for eight years. He'd buried all memories of their affair after her disappearance. He'd been shattered, yes, but he could pretend it was because they had been friends, and he'd respected her, and because he cared about Cutter. And then they'd both disappeared through the anomaly in the Forest of Dean before he'd had the chance to sort his feelings out, and he'd buried it again. Stephen had always been a man of action rather than deep thought; he didn't handle emotional situations well, and his usual response was to confine them to the past and pretend that they had never happened.
Of course, the past had a habit of coming back these days.
Cutter. He'd spent three years away from them, and at least a part of that time had been with his wife. Did she tell him? The question thrashed around in his head, over and over and over. If she had, Stephen thought, he would surely know about it the moment Cutter saw him. If she hadn't... Well, if Cutter didn't know then he would keep it that way. It was what he had done the first time, and it hadn't worked out too badly.
The internal phone rang.
"Stephen."
"It's Claudia. You'd better come down here."
There was such symmetry to this. Only hours ago had he called her to come to the Forest of Dean, and now the roles were reversed. She sounded on the verge of tears, too. "Is everything all right?"
"Just come. Quickly. Please."
She ended the call. Stephen put the phone down, looked at it for a moment, and then resumed staring at his computer screen. Now that the moment of truth had come, he was afraid – more afraid than he had been when he'd been chased down the hallway of a school by a Gorgonopsid or poisoned by an Arthropleura. He hesitated for a second, which turned into a minute, which turned into several. He had never been like this when dealing with creature incursions; it was only ever where Helen was concerned that he felt out of his depth, damn her. And she wasn't even here.
Eventually, Stephen knew that he could put it off no longer. He wheeled himself out of the office, locked the door behind him, and headed for the elevator. As he pressed the button for the first floor, it dawned on him that Cutter would be unaware of his injury. Well, at least that meant they'd have something to talk about – after Cutter was done explaining what he'd been doing for the past three years.
There was a soft ping and the doors opened. Stephen shoved his fears to the back of his mind and left the elevator before he could hesitate any longer. It was a quick enough journey to the medical bay; they'd built in ramps everywhere to make it easy for him. For once he wished they hadn't bothered; it would have given him an excuse to further take his time.
He was outside the door now, and there was no more time to hesitate. He knocked. Connor let him in.
He moved slowly into the room and met Cutter's gaze.
