"So you're really going to be some kind of…wizard or something when this is over?" Abby asked, feeling ridiculous for even saying the word wizard in a sentence without it being mocking. They were back in the flat together after leaving the ARC, and since it was Connor's turn to pick a film, they were watching Serenity. She sat on the couch, and he stretched out beside her, head and shoulders in her lap. He'd explained everything Matt had told him about his sickness, about what he was becoming and the abilities that he would soon hopefully have, and she was still trying to get it straight in her mind. It seemed too mind-boggling. Magic? No way. Dinosaurs and time-travel, that was one thing, but magic…that one she was having trouble with.

He shook his head against her thigh without looking away from the screen. "I don't think it's really being a wizard, Abby. There's no magic wands or anything like that. Matt says that it's just being able to manipulate matter and energy. Magic sounds cooler, but it's not actual magic. Nobody's getting sawed in half or anything," he replied.

She rested and elbow on the arm of the couch, resting her cheek on her palm. Her other hand absently reached down to play with his hair, and she was pleased that he didn't brush her away. "I'm not sure about them, Connor. I'm not. Something about them…I don't trust them."

"Why not?"

"Because. They just showed up out of nowhere and pretty much asked us to just roll over and let them do whatever they want. I don't like it," she answered. She let out a heavy sigh, shaking her head as she rubbed her fingers into his scalp. When her hand paused slightly, lost in her own thoughts, he pushed his head against her hand like a cat demanding pets; smiling to herself, she continued combing her fingers through his hair. It was warm and soft, gliding between her fingers like coal silk. "D'you trust them?"

Lifting the remote, he paused the film and turned his head to look up at her. "I'm not sure. Something in me says that I have to listen to them to get through whatever this – " He gestured to himself in vague indication of the infection crawling through his veins. " – is going on with me. But another part of me says that they're dangerous. I'll have to work with them and listen to them, but…no, I don't think I trust them."

Abby nodded and stroked his hair once more. "Good," she said. She knew that he had a tendency to give trust too easily; it was his one and only fault really – that he cared too much about others, unable to guard his loving heart from people that'd take advantage of him. Giving a hesitant smile, she asked, "So I guess that Predator attack turned out alright, yeah?"

For a moment, he just looked up at her, and she feared she'd said the wrong thing too soon…but then his lips curled up in a smile. "Yeah. Guess it did, Abbs. Guess it did," he replied, turned over and pressed play on the remote, resuming the film.

Matt stood in the lab, staring at the plants potted in rows. They were large, beautiful plants, with strange colours and thorny spines and oddly shaped leaves and flowers; he had never seen anything like them before, but he found them fascinating. There were flower buds ready to burst into bloom and flowers that'd already unfurled, releasing a heady fragrance into the air. They came in all sizes and shapes and colours. The future they came from was hot and dry, dusty and barren; the only plants that grew there were tough and woody and scrubby, bristling with sharp thorns. There was never anything this soft and colourful.

The door opened with a hiss of pressurised air, and he turned to see Abby there, hand on the door, and her eyes instantly narrowed warily. "What are you doing in here?" she demanded.

"Is this your lab?" he asked, and she nodded. "Oh. My apologies. I was just looking at your plants. We don't…there's very few plants in the time I am from, and none are this beautiful. You do not mind?"

She lifted her eyebrows. "No, I guess not…here. You mind spraying that tray over there?" she asked, handing him a bottle and gesturing to a tray of plants over there.

"Of course." He took the bottle and began spraying a mist of water over the plants as she began working. "May I ask what you do in here?"

"These are plant samples from different time periods collected on anomaly alerts," she answered, still giving him cautious looks. "We're studying them to learn more about prehistoric flora."

"I see. Creatures can be understood and studied because they leave behind fossils, but plants do not fossilise as easily. This can provide insight to the environment of past times," Matt said, and she nodded agreement. "They are very beautiful, Miss Maitland. Are all of them from anomalies?"

"You can call me Abby, and no. Some of them are modern. We're trying to see if cross-pollination is possible."

He paused to study a very curious-looking plant. It was only about eight inches tall, with long, thin erect leaves that all grew from a single cluster at the ground, covered in curious reddish droplets. "What is this?" he asked.

"It's called a dewthread. It's from North America. Drosera filiformus. It's a carnivorous plant. The droplets on the leaves are sticky, and when insects get stuck on them, the plants digest the insect and release nutrients to be absorbed."

"And these here?" he asked, gesturing to a climbing vine wrapped around a support with a flower almost as wide as his palm, purest white with a thin yellow band running down the centre of each white petal into the heart of the flower.

"Calonyction aculeatum. Moonflower. It's a night-blooming flower. The petals will close soon…here." Abby walked over to the wall and pulled a book off the shelf, handing it to him. It was a field guide of wild plants. "Take a look at that." She kept an eye on him as he moved around in her lab, looking through the guide as he matched the plants to their proper names. There was a look of fascination on his face that was too real to be false. He wasn't joking, it seemed; he had rarely ever seen real, growing plants, and this lab was some sort of fantasy for him. "So…Connor told me about the sickness," she said at last.

She had the pleasure of seeing him look up at her in shock. Matt blinked several times, surprised, and let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head. "Does he not know the meaning of the word secret?" he asked, more to himself than her.

Abby smirked. "Are you kidding me? Connor broke the Official Secrets Act before. You really think he'll keep quiet because you told him to?" she asked with a chortle. Connor really couldn't keep his mouth shut for the life of him; not even a government act could make him shut up.

The Irishman lifted a disbelieving look to her. "He broke the Official…? God help me," he muttered.

She couldn't help but snicker again. From what she had seen of the Hunters in the past few days, these people were very…stoic seemed to mild a word for their mannerisms. She hadn't heard a single one of them crack a joke or even a smile, or laugh aside from the tiniest chortle, and their faces always seemed to be set in a serious expression, as if they'd forgotten how to look any other way. The idea of someone as bright and effervescent as Connor working with them…she imagined that it'd be rougher for Matt and the others than for Connor. "You're going to have a fun time with him, I promise you," she giggled.

"Yeah, I'm starting to think so."

"Let me your arm," Emily said brusquely, holding out one hand, and Connor obediently held out his arm. She peeled back his glove and rolled up his sleeve, exposing his pale forearm; without any pretense or warning, she took up a hypodermic needle, pulled the cap off, jabbed it into his arm ("Ow!") and drew out a measure of blood.

"What's that for, then?" Connor asked, rubbing at his arm as he fixed his sleeve.

"Blood test. To find out which strain you have," she replied, replacing the cap on the needle and setting it aside.

Usually, he'd have been put off by her cool, professional manner, but all of the Hunters seemed to be like that. It was like they'd forgotten how to smile or something. "Couldn't Palmer do that?" he asked, referring to their Titaness-esque chief medical officer.

The dark-haired woman shook her head, ringlets bouncing. "No. She wouldn't know what to look for. We, however, are trained to identify the signs in others in case of an infection like yours."

"Oh. So if I turn out to be an Elysian, will you be the one giving me magic lessons?" he asked. Matt said that it wasn't really magic, but hey, call a spade a spade. Danny had even laughed like an actual person when Connor referred to it as magic in his earshot, and he was hoping that maybe he could get her to crack a smile too. Even a little bit.

She paused to fix him with a cool stare. "I would be responsible for teaching you the Elysian disciplines, yes."

Swing and a miss, he thought. "So, is it safe for me to go out for a round at the pub tonight? Or will I be dropping dead any time soon?" he asked instead.

Her cool mask never wavered for an instant. "You've made it through your infection period, and there's no further danger of you 'dropping dead' as you so eloquently put it, so yes, it is safe," she answered.

"You don't smile very much, do you?" he asked. Emily fixed him with another icy glare, and he meekly slid off the chair and made his way to the door. "Never mind. G'night," he mumbled on his way out.

Emily plucked the results out of the machine and raked her eyes down the page. Her stomach fell into her toes, her cool façade slipping to reveal her shock. "What? This is…impossible," she whispered, staring hard at the page as if she could somehow will the words to read differently. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't. Yet there it was, staring her in the face in black and white. She had run the test three times now to ensure it wasn't a fluke or a mistake, but the results had come out the same over and over. Gripping the results tight in her fist, she jumped up and ran from the lab in search of Matt.

The Irishman jumped halfway out of his skin as the door of his temporary quarters burst open with a bang, Emily striding in. "What's wrong?" he asked, setting aside the field guide Abby had lent him and taking in her stunned expression and wide eyes, a wild look in her face that he had never seen from her. He knew that something had to be very wrong for her to lose control like this.

"Connor's infected with both strains."

"What?" He rolled to his feet and walked over to her. "Emily, that's – "

"Impossible, yes, I know, but here, look at the results. I ran Connor's bloodwork, and I did it three times to ensure it was not accidental. It came out the same every time. Look at them, Matt, and tell me that I'm wrong," she replied, shoving the papers into his hands.

Smoothing out the rumpled pages, he scanned the results and frowned. "The hell is this…?" he murmured quietly. He recognised all the genetic markers for the Charbydion strain, having seen them in his own bloodwork, right where they were supposed to be in the DNA chain. But the Elysian markers were right there alongside them as well. "How…how can this be?"

"I don't know!" Emily replied in a distressed voice. "He's survived infection, Matt. He's still alive, and there has been no sign of madness, no indication that there's anything remotely wrong with him. But he's got both strands. This isn't a fluke." She shook her head, twisting a curl of her hair about her fingers anxiously. She looked up at him. "What do we do?"

Matt stared at the results for a moment longer, then threw them down and grabbed his knives. "We have to find Connor now."