"We're heading for something, somewhere I've never been." ~Celine Dion

Claudia's P.O.V.

"Where are we going?" I asked Caspar as we trekked through the woods, getting farther and farther away from our campsite by the step.

"To look for another big white hole. Anomaly," he corrected himself, holding a branch out of my way.

I looked over at him as he effortlessly pushed through the think foliage under out feet. "You act like you enjoy trekking through the jungle and shooting any dinosaurs that get too close," I said incredulously.

"Actually, I do," he smiled. "Back home they like to refer to me as a 'ninja with an AK47,'" he said happily, giving the gun that was slung over his shoulder an affectionate pat.

"Well back home they refer to me as a 'civil servant turned dinosaur chaser,'" I said, taking a deep breath of clean air as we emerged from the forest into an open field. It felt wonderful after the humid air that filled the forest we had just come from.

"This is where I first found you," he said, motioning to the field surrounding us. I was suddenly gladder than ever that he'd taken me in, had I been left here there's no doubt I would have been dead within the hour.

"Hey, what's it doing that for?" he muttered to himself.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, distracted until he voiced his next sentence.

"The zipper and button on my jeans are…pulling," he said as if he was in want of a better word.

"Like something magnetic is pulling them forward?" I asked, stopping abruptly in my tracks.

"Exactly," he nodded.

I felt a grin spreading across my face. "An anomaly is nearby."

Nick's P.O.V.

I stared out at the busy street as if looking hard enough would suddenly open an anomaly. I couldn't get past the fact that my Claudia was stranded, alone, and she may even be….no. I couldn't let myself even think that word. She had to be alive. She just had to be. Thinking of life without Claudia was like thinking of taking a breath and not finding oxygen.

We'll find her…we are going to find her…I repeated those words to myself over and over again, trying and failing to stay calm. There was still no sign of an anomaly from where I sat in my car, which was parked in front of a store on Main Street. I held the enhanced compass in my hand like a lifeline, staring at it and hoping beyond hope that the needle would move.

I was snapped out of my thoughts by my mobile ringing, and a tiny spark of hope lit up in me. Oh please tell me someone's found an anomaly, I thought desperately as I hit the green button and put the phone to my ear.

"Yes?" I said impatiently.

"No greeting? Well isn't that rude," Lester said sarcastically from the other end.

"Do you need something or are you just calling to annoy me? Because if it's the latter then congratulations, because you're doing a fantastic job," I said, my irritation causing my Scottish accent to become more and more pronounced by the word.

"Fine then. If you're going to be downright impolite about it then I won't tell you that I'm standing in front of an anomaly on 3rd Street," he said.

I hung the phone up before he could get another word out. I cranked the car, pulled out onto the street, and drove like a bat out of hell. I nearly wrecked three times because of my speed and the fact I kept driving on the wrong side of the road. By the time I finally reached the anomaly site, my heartbeat was erratic and I was nearly shaking.

Lester, who was leaning against the rental car he'd come here in, raised an eyebrow at my disheveled appearance but didn't comment. It was a good thing he didn't, because in the frazzled state I was in, I may deck him again. On the other side of that anomaly was Claudia. She was there. I didn't know if she was alright of if she was even alive, but I had no doubt in my mind that she was on the other side of that anomaly.

"I'm going through," I said, grabbing a tranquilizer gun from the large case and ignoring Lester telling me to wait for backup.

"Go fill out some paperwork Lester!" I called over my shoulder.

And with those words lingering behind me, I stepped forward into the anomaly.

Claudia's P.O.V.

"The anomaly is getting close," I said as I led Caspar across the field and into a different section of woods than the ones we'd just come from.

"I'll take your word for it," he shrugged.

I'd give him one thing; he never seemed to get tired. Given that we hadn't taken a break since leaving the campsite, we'd been walking for about two hours straight now and he hadn't uttered one word of complaint or even showed any lack of energy. He walked behind me and kept watch for dinosaurs whilst I held my wrist out in front of me and watched carefully to see which way my bracelet was being pulled. It wasn't the most practical way to find an anomaly, but we didn't have a compass, so it was going to have to do.

"Claudia," he said, his voice suddenly dropped to a whisper.

"What?" I asked, dropping my voice as well.

"Don't. Move."

He said the words separately and deliberately, as if they were the two most important things in the world. I did as I was told and stood completely still, not moving a single muscle. I clenched my hands at my sides to keep them from shaking with fear. I heard the click click sounds given off by his machine rifle being fired, and I tried not to think too hard about what he might be firing at.

"Alright, it's safe," he said.

I finally exhaled and turned around to see the bodies of two large animals lying not two yards away from my feet. I felt my brow furrow in confusion at the two red circular objects on their heads.

"They were neural clamped," Caspar said, who'd apparently noticed my confusion.

"What exactly does that mean?" I asked.

"It means those red things on their heads means someone is controlling them," he explained as we began walking again.

"Someone's here besides us," I said, and it was more of a statement than a question.

"Apparently. They keep themselves well hid, because I've been here for a year now and haven't seen hide nor hair of any human but me until you came along," he said.

A theory was forming in my head, but I prayed fervently it was wrong. I only knew one person that may know how to control dinosaurs, but I hadn't heard anything of her since she'd hightailed it though yet another anomaly. Helen Cutter was the most viable suspect, as much as I hated the thought of her reentering the equation.

Anomalies were hard enough to deal with without her running around throwing a wrench in things. Not to mention the fact that the creatures Caspar had just shot didn't look like anything Prehistoric. It was difficult to even wrap my mind around, but I had to wonder if there was a possibility that we were dealing with something from the future.

"What are you thinking about so hard?" Caspar asked.

"I just have a bad feeling about who may be behind those creatures," I said, pointing back to where we'd left the bodies.

"Who?"

"Her name is Helen. She's like a velociraptor with a bad haircut," I said distastefully. "She's been going in and out of the anomalies for eight years, learning everything she can about them," I added.

"Sounds like a really fun lady," he said sarcastically.

I sighed and glanced absently off to the side, catching a glimpse of something deep in the woods. It was just a small flash of beige, the same color of khaki clothing, but the form it belonged to looked more human than animal. It had only been a glimpse, but it still looked like a person. I blinked a couple times, and then the form was gone.

"Did you see something?" Caspar asked, having seen my blinking and my look of confusion.

"No. No, It was probably just my eyes playing tricks on me," I murmured absently, trying to ignore the cold prickling sensation on the back of my neck.

It was the same feeling I'd had when I'd left Joseph's flat the other day. I felt as if I was being watched. I looked around and saw no one, yet I still felt a chill creeping down my spine. You're just being paranoid, I thought to myself. But even as I told myself that, I had a bone deep feeling that Caspar and I were not alone.

"Everybody is watching you, everybody is watching me too." ~OneRepublic

Author's Note:

I promise the next chapter will be more interesting! This is just filling a gap before this whole Claudia-is-stuck-in-the-Prehistoric-era thing comes to a head. Oh, and a couple notes to/about various people:

Caspar, like I said, belongs to Squabble. He is an awesome OC that I take absolutely no credit for because she is the genius that invented him :-)

And in response to R2R, who left an anonymous review last chapter; Thank you for your advice on making Nick's illness more realistic, I will definitely use some of the facts you gave me next time I mention the cancer. The facts I included in earlier chapters were mostly off of Wikipedia, so my apologies for any errors.

And of course thank you so much to everyone that's reviewed! :D