CONNOR
He tore around the office like a madman, trying desperately to clean it up before Cutter arrived. The place looked like it had been slept in overnight – mostly because it had. He kept spare clothes in the office in case he needed them after an anomaly appearance, but he'd thrown the ones he'd worn last night all over the place. There was a pizza box dripping cheese onto the floor, and several drink cans crushed up under his desk. Connor was usually a fairly neat person, but he'd been in a bad mood last night after Abby left and hadn't bothered cleaning up at all.

He needn't have rushed, though. When Cutter finally entered the office after almost half an hour, the state of the room looked to be the last thing on his mind. Connor glanced up from where he sat on the beanbag and his eyes widened. "Are you all right, Professor?"

Cutter turned to him slowly. "Claudia's engaged."

Connor winced. "Uh... yeah. That Jerome guy, I think he's called."

Cutter walked to the desk and sat down, staring at his hands. "Why did nobody tell me?"

"It wasn't really our place to tell, Professor," Connor said gently. "If it helps, she's been seeing him for almost a year now..."

"That doesn't help."

"Sorry." Connor scratched the back of his neck, unsure of what to say. He remembered how shattered he had felt when Abby had announced that she and Jones were an item, but this was almost like something else; from what Cutter had said, he'd spent all his time away searching for Claudia, only to find when he finally found her that she'd moved on. That had to hurt.

Cutter eventually broke the silence. "Let's just get on with our work."

"Right. Yeah." Connor went over to the shelf on the wall and pulled a laptop from its charger. "Since you're officially part of the team now, I figured I'd let you have one of these. Be careful with her; she cost the government a lot of money." He grinned, passing it to Cutter. "Password's cariresearch, no caps, no spaces. She's a real beauty – newest operating system, three-terabyte hard drive. I've copied the most important files to your desktop, but I wasn't really sure where you wanted to start."

Cutter was silent for a moment as the laptop booted up. "I have a few theories," he said after a while. Connor could almost see the professor forcing his thoughts away from Claudia onto easier things. "What we really need is a comprehensive analysis of all anomaly sites, both outside the anomaly and in. Pictures, data. We need to figure out what makes cross-universe anomalies different from regular ones, and how to tell one from the other so we don't have any... disappearances, again."

Connor nodded. "I can get access from the pictorial databases, but only up to the anomalies we've seen so far. If another one appears, we can't really risk sending a team in to take happy snaps, can we?"

"No, we can't," Cutter agreed. "The past anomalies will have to do for now."

They worked until late in the morning, browsing through albums of photographs, reading pages of documents that Connor had compiled. He did his best to keep from yawning, but he couldn't help it once or twice – beanbags may have been comfy to sit on, but they were a pain when it came to sleeping. He noticed that Cutter was distracted too; he would trail off in the middle of a sentence, or look up from his laptop and stare into space for a while. Whenever that happened, Connor didn't interrupt his reverie. He would just wait until the professor returned to the present.

"I'm sorry, I must have zoned out," Cutter said for the fifth time, turning to Connor. "What were you saying?"

"I asked if you wanted to take a break," Connor replied. "I'm pretty knackered as well, actually. Had a long night."

"What, fighting goblins?" Cutter gestured towards the Xbox hooked up to the TV in the corner.

"Orcs, actually." Nothing like an all-night PvP session to get his mind of whatever Abby and Jones were doing back at the flat.

"Right." Cutter didn't smile. "A break sounds like a good idea, though. Is there somewhere we can find something to eat around here?"

"There's a café across the road," Connor replied. "Food's not too bad. Coffee's rubbish, though."

Cutter made a face. "All right. I'll check it out anyway. Thanks, Connor." He closed the laptop and put it on the desk, then turned to Connor and looked him in the eye. "You've done a good job, while I've been away. Well done."

Connor grinned, absurdly pleased. "Thanks, Professor," he said. "I just do my best. Hey, listen... before you go." He cleared his throat nervously. "I hope you don't think this is weird, but if you ever want to talk, you know, about Claudia or anything... maybe you really should consider going to see Dr Shepard. I know the whole psychologist thing's a little bit freaky – I used to think they were out to hypnotise us and make them into their puppets in the quest for world domination – but she's not actually that bad."

"No counsellors," Cutter said flatly.

"Glad I'm not the only one who used to be creeped out," Connor said, nodding in sympathy. "Seriously, though, Cutter... you kind of look like you could use someone to talk to."

Cutter took a breath and let it out in a sigh. "Last year," he said, "in the alternative timeline, nobody but you believed my story about Claudia Brown. Lester set me up with some government-sponsored shrink because he thought I'd lost it. He tried to get me to see her three times a week so that she could get to the root of my 'problems'. It wasn't a pleasant experience – she gave up on me in the end, just walked out of the office. The same thing happened to the man who was assigned to see me by the university after Helen's disappearance. I don't do counselling, Connor. I'm perfectly sane, and I can take care of myself."

Connor nodded, abashed. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Cutter stood up and walked to the door. "Want me to buy you a coffee?"

"No thanks. I meant it when I said it was rubbish."

Cutter grimaced. "All right. I'll see you soon."