When the dust settled, Dan was the first one to raise his head. He remembered the dart sinking into Zoe's leg and her falling to the ground and he crawled over to her, only to find her pull herself up into sitting position, shaking auburn hair out of her eyes.
"You okay?" Dan asked.
Zoe nodded. "Must've just been a tranquiliser dart or something."
"Pretty weak tranquiliser dart." Dan replied.
Zoe shrugged, looking around. "Did we get it?"
Dan looked over at the T.E.D and gestured to it. "Well, the T.E.D's gone. I'd say that yeah, we got it."
"And look at this." Tom said, crawling over to them with Aneisha. He held up Derren's amulet and as they could see, Derren's crystal, which had been blue before, was now a dark onyx black.
"Well, at least you didn't destroy time." Zoe said, smiling despite her blinding headache and the dull throbbing in her leg.
"Mm-hm. That's a relief." Tom replied, looking down curiously at Derren's amulet.
"So you're saying the crystal in the amulet and the crystal in the T.E.D were one and the same?" Frank asked, confused.
"Exactly." Tom replied. "They should never have existed in the same time together. Bringing them into contact caused a short circuit."
"And in the resulting explosion the crystal must have got sucked back in time." Frank finished.
"To a month ago. When I found it in the alley." Derren said.
"So in other words . . . When Tom destroyed the T.E.D he not only finished the mission but he started it too?" Dan asked.
Zoe nodded uncertainly. The pain in her leg had faded and she'd taken a Panadol for her headache, but she couldn't help wondering why she was having this kind of reaction to a tranquiliser dart. She'd been hit by them before and she'd never had a reaction like this. What was going on?
"Sorry about your act." Aneisha apologised, passing Derren his amulet.
"Oh, not to worry." Derren replied. "I've made a lot of money this last month. So from now on, I'm going to do what I've always wanted to – paint."
"Good luck." Aneisha said as Derren was blindfolded and led out of HQ by two unknown MI9 agents in black suits.
"Well done. You're hereby officially reinstated." Stella announced.
"I'm just glad there was a rational explanation for the whole thing." Tom said.
"I still maintain . . . Logic doesn't have all the answers." Aneisha said, pushing a box towards Tom. Tom opened it and grinned, pulling out a crystal ball. "A fortune teller's crystal ball, what I've always wanted. Thankyou, Neish."
"Just remember; the past is history, the future's a mystery and today's a gift. That's why we call it the present." Aneisha replied, grinning.
Zoe smiled, her hand instinctively moving to rub the dull ache in her leg. Dan's brow furrowed as he watched her and Frank asked, "Zoe, are you alright?"
"Yeah. Well, I think so. It's just that damned dart. I'm having some kind of reaction to it."
"You don't usually have a reaction to darts like that. You're usually fine after half an hour." Frank said.
"I know. It's so weird."
"Do you want me to take a blood sample?"
"I don't want to be a bother." Zoe said.
"You'll be a bother if we have an agent who we have to take off duty because she's sick with a mysterious illness she caught from a tranquiliser dart." Stella said.
Zoe sighed, but she allowed Tom to take some blood so that he could work out what was wrong with her. Zoe couldn't meet Dan's eyes – they were too concerned, too full of love.
The team left Tom studying Zoe's blood sample as they went back up to the school. As soon as they walked out of the broom cupboard, Roly ran up to them, panting. "Guys, it's – it's . . ."
"Roly, slow down. What's going on?" Dan asked, grinning in amusement.
"Byron's back." Roly puffed.
"You're joking." Dan said.
"I'm dead serious." Roly replied.
Zoe and Aneisha exchanged a grin before they pushed past Roly, barrelling down several corridors until they stumbled outside. Both looked around eagerly until they saw a vaguely familiar boy with floppy black hair. Zoe noticed that he looked older than he had last time she saw him, but he still had the same cheeky grin as he cried, "Zoe!"
He walked up to them and hugged them both. "And how have you two been?"
"Oh, you know, the usual." Aneisha replied. "Auntie becomes new vice head teacher."
"Whoa. Good luck with that." Byron replied. He noticed Zoe looking at him curiously. "What?"
"You've got an accent." Zoe replied. And he did – he'd lost his thick Scottish accent in favour of an even thicker Boldovian one.
"Better be careful, Byron." Dan said, walking out with Roly. "You'll steal my status as the school heartthrob."
"And how is that a bad thing?" Byron asked, grinning.
Dan shrugged, laughing. "I suppose you're used to being chased by teenage girls, aren't you?"
Byron grinned and then turned to Zoe. "Do you wanna come show me how the school's changed?"
Zoe nodded and followed after him as he led her inside, feeling Dan's glare burn into her back. Byron turned around and gave Dan a strange look, but Dan just looked away. Aneisha started to say something, but then their pencil communicators started to flash.
Discreetly and quietly, the two crept away from the group and snuck down to the caretaker's cupboard. Dan was glad to have a distraction from his mind wondering what Zoe and Byron were doing.