Temporal Anomaly, Chapter Three

Disclaimer: See chapter one.


Temporal Anomaly, Chapter Three


Jim was in the jungle again. He looked down at himself and saw that he was dressed as he had been when he lived with the Chopec. He looked up and saw the jaguar, his spirit animal, and Blair's wolf trudging through the woods side by side. He followed them, knowing that he wouldn't be here if they didn't have something to show him.

They entered a clearing, and there in the dappled light were two other animals. One was a cat of a kind he'd never seen. It was about the size of a German Shepard, with a red and white face and a darker furred body. It's legs were shorter than a normal cat, giving it a vaguely weasel-like appearance, but it was undoubtedly feline. Next to it was another wolf, this one nearly blonde in color. They were obviously as much a pair as he and Blair. The jag sniffed at the odd cat, walking stiffly at the invasion of territory, but not actually challenging. Meanwhile, the two wolves checked each other out. Neither showed any signs of aggression. It seemed that they would all be getting along.

Just then, Incacha came into the clearing. He said, "These two are here to help you, Enquiri. They will only be here for a short time before they are returned to their own place. They mean you no harm and would protect your lives with their own, for their lives depend on your survival, and more than that, they, too, are Sentinel and Shaman."

The scene faded and Jim woke with a start. He hated the visions sometimes, but this one didn't seem too bad. This one he could live with. There was definitely something coming, something big, but they were going to have help.

The phone rang, urging Jim to get up. He looked at the clock. 5:42 a.m. Man! Oh, well. He'd only have to get up in twenty minutes any way. He stood up and went down stairs, rubbing his eyes as he picked up the phone. "Ellison."

"Jim, I need you and Sandburg down here as soon as possible. That guy who was in your apartment last night was found this morning in lock up staring into space. Nothing's been able to bring him out of it. Sound familiar?"

"Sounds like a zone-out. You think he could be a Sentinel?"

"That's Sandburg's department. I want him to see for himself. I don't need to tell you, but we really don't need another Alex Barnes. I need to know if this guy is a danger."

"We'll be down as soon as we can get showered and dressed. See you in a few." He hung up the phone. This had to be the guy from his dream. But then why was he and his friend in the loft?

Blair, who had also been wakened by the phone, said groggily, "What's up?"

"Christopher was found this morning in lock up completely zoned. No one can seem to bring him out of it. Simon wants us down there fast." Blair's eyes widened. The specter of Alex Barnes, the rogue Sentinel who had killed him and nearly broken their friendship apart, visibly floated in front of his face. Jim remembered the lessons he'd learned from her and said, "I had a dream last night, one I'm guessing is talking about him and Emily. Incacha said that they were here to help us with something, and that after that they'd be gone." He told Blair about the images in the dream, the weird looking cat and the blonde wolf.

Blair thought for a moment. "That would mean that Emily is his Guide. She's in no condition to bring him out of it. I'll need to get him alone somewhere. We don't want the general population of the lock up to see me pulling him out of a zone."

Thirty minutes later, both men were showered and dressed. They went down stairs and got in the truck and headed for the station. On the way, the hospital called to tell them that Emily was awake, but that she couldn't be moved for at least another twenty-four hours. She could, however, be questioned. They decided that they would head to the hospital after dealing with Christopher.

They walked into the station lock up and were escorted by the guard to the cell that held Christopher. He was laying on one of the bunks, facing the wall and curled up into a ball. The other prisoners seemed to be ignoring the man, but when Blair turned him over, it became brutally apparent that this had not been the case all night. A major bruise had blossomed across one whole side of his face, his right eye swollen shut. His left eye stared into space, proving he was indeed in a zone.

Jim's anger at the sight came to the fore with a speed that shocked all but Blair. "Who did this?!" No one answered, increasing his anger. "If you don't tell me now, you'll all get assault pinned on the back of whatever you're facing now. If you do, only he'll get the assault charge." All of the prisoners blanched, and three of them suddenly pointed to the fourth, a bald man with a tattoo on his head. This man tried to cringe back, but Ellison grabbed him. He called the guard. "Take this guy down stairs and tack assault on the back of whatever he's in here for."

Blair, meanwhile, was trying to assess the damage that had been done and if he would be able to pull the man out of his zone. He figured he had either zoned on the pain, or he had already been zoned on something else and the creep had decided to take advantage of the situation. His anger rose to match his partner's, but it was more important to him to get Christopher out of here so he could bring him back. "Jim, we need to get this guy out of here and into the infirmary."

Jim turned and nodded. "All right." He told the guard to call the infirmary before he came back. Whatever it took to get this man back on his feet and able to answer the miriad of questions that were running through his head.

They went to the infirmary with Christopher, waiting while the staff doctor got him cleaned up. She left to go get some bandages after a while to deal with the cut over his eye. While she was gone, Blair started to talk to him in a low voice, taking a guess and calling him Chris instead of Christopher on the off chance that it was his first name and not his last, giving him instructions to get him to come out of the zone. He didn't touch him in case it was his sense of touch spiking. That lesson had been learned early on in his partnership with Jim when he had ended up with a back hand and a black eye from startling the older man out of a zone. However, the constant low speech gave the stranger something to focus on, allowing him to come back. Blair could tell it was working when his good eye closed, then opened again, signaling a return to awareness. He blinked a few times, then groaned as the pain he hadn't felt in the gray fugue state hit him like a bulldozer. When he started moving around, Blair said, "Hey. Stay still man, you're going to hurt yourself."

Chris took in the scent of the man above him. There was something about it familiar, something so close to his own Guide's scent that it instantly calmed him. He opened his good eye, realizing that the other one had swollen shut. What the hell happened? He looked up and saw the two men who's pictures and lives were so much a part of Emily's work. He said, "Where's S- Emily?" Damn! He'd almost called her Sandburg.

The elder Sandburg looked at him. "She's still in the hospital. They called us this morning and she's awake. We were going over there right after we talk to you."

Relief flooded him. If she was awake, then she was all right. Next question. "What happened to me?"

After making sure that the doctor wasn't close enough to hear, Blair said, "One of your cell mates thought it was funny that you didn't respond to pain while zoned out."

His gaze narrowed. They knew he was a Sentinel because he had zoned. Damn. Now they were more than just curious. He blew out a heavy sigh. "Look, I know how this is going to sound, but we really didn't intend to end up in your apartment. We cut out of there because we knew you wouldn't appreciate it and we couldn't figure out how we were going to explain our presence when we didn't really understand it much ourselves."

His ancestor glared at him, making him think of how much he looked like Uncle Jack. He shook his head to clear it of errant thoughts. Jim said, "You didn't mean to?"

He groaned. "I know, that sounds weak, but I'm not allowed to tell you much." Just then, the doctor returned. Curious about twenty-first century medicine, he looked to see what she had brought. Gauze bandages? At least it was in sterile packaging, and she was wearing gloves. He hated to think of receiving any serious injuries while stuck in this time. That thought made him jerk. Emily's name barely escaped his lips. What kinds of injuries had she received? How well was she being treated?

Jim's Sentinel hearing caught the bare whisper. He softened a bit. The man was obviously not at the top of his game with his Guide stuck in the hospital and no way for him to be by her side. He knew that he wouldn't be. He sighed. "Look, you say you aren't allowed to tell us these things. Who could you tell?"

Chris looked up at Jim. The question suggested a solution, though not the one he was thinking of. He smiled slightly. "I can't tell anyone. But that's not true of Emily. Oh she's not allowed, exactly, but she's not disallowed either. She's, for want of a better word, a civilian."

"A ride-along?"

He grinned. "Something like that." Then he quit grinning because the doctor, who was a bit jaded from having to deal with criminals for so long, was not exactly being the gentlest while cleaning out the cut and bandaging it.

Noticing the expression on his face, Blair said, Sentinel-soft, "Find the dial. Turn it down. Not all the way, just enough to be bearable."

Chris was able to anchor on Blair's voice, though not as well as he could on Emily's. He finally got the dial down, bringing the pain from a fiery agony to a low-grade sting. He looked at Blair gratefully. "Why don't you two go talk to her? She can tell you some of what I can't. She'll probably keep some things back, because even though she isn't required to follow the same directives I am, she understands the reasons behind this one. Tell her I said that the Prime Directive is only for the Fleet. She'll understand that." He sighed. "I hope she's all right."

Jim looked at the man before him. There was something familiar about him, something that went past the fact that he was a Sentinel. He felt that he could trust him. He remembered the dream, remembered Incacha's warning that both he and his Guide would be needed soon. He wanted to make sure, though. He made a decision. "We'll go see her in a little while. If she can convince me that you're telling the truth, I'll drop the charges. For now, as soon as the doc's through patching you up, you'll be going back to your cell."

Blair said, "The guy that hit you won't be any where near you." The doctor left to get some final supplies. Blair said, "By the way, what did you zone on?"

Chris was suddenly embarrassed. "That idiot with the mermaid on his head kept grinding his teeth and I was trying real hard to ignore him so I wouldn't punch them out."

Blair chuckled. "Nothing to be embarrassed about. Jim zoned on a Frisbee the first day we met." Then he ducked as Jim predictably tried to cuff him in the head.

Jim was grinning as he said, "Come on, Darwin. Visiting hours at the hospital start soon."

"Yeah. We'll let you know how she's doing later."

Chris looked gratefully at the retreating pair. "Thank you."


Emily looked up from what was supposedly her breakfast, deciding that the boiled roots she'd been forced to eat on Adelphus IV had tasted better, and saw the two men who's lives had been the basis of her life's work walking off the elevator. Man, how she wished she could just sit down and talk with them without having to worry about altering the future! The two detectives walked into her room with stern expressions, forcing her to remember what they were there for. They had probably spoken to Chris already, and he would have stonewalled them because of the Temporal Prime Directive. While she didn't fully agree with the policy, she understood why it was necessary. Not everyone who ended up in a temporal anomaly had the sense to know what might change the future and what probably wouldn't. She definitely knew of a few who she wouldn't have trusted not to accidentally change their own past or hers. The problem was in knowing what kinds of information was safe and what wasn't, as well as knowing who to trust with it.

Still, she should probably not say anything. Chris might get mad at her if he broke the damned directive, and she didn't think it was worth a fight. Some things were, but not this, not when every argument she could make could be countered by Chaos Theory and the Heisenburg uncertainty principle. Man, but it was tempting!

Ellison closed the door to her room and sat on the chair next to the bed. Sandburg the elder stood at the foot of the bed trying to be intimidating. She pretended it worked, but it was too much of a family resemblance and she knew too much about him to be intimidated like that. She knew that he wouldn't hurt her unless she threatened Jim, at which point she would wish she were dead. Not that she would do anything like that. Ellison laced his fingers together and leaned forward, then said quietly, "Do you think you can tell me what you were doing in our apartment last night?"

Now he was much more intimidating. But what could she tell him? "We didn't mean to" just sounded so lame, and "An omnipotent brat dropped us in there as a cosmic joke" sounded a lot worse. As she struggled with it, Blair's expression softened. "We talked to Chris. He told us to tell you that the Prime Directive is only for the Fleet. He said that you'd know what that meant."

Her eyes widened. He was right. She wasn't held by the rules of Starfleet personnel because she wasn't in Starfleet. It wasn't Earth or Federation law, it was Starfleet regulations. She was a civilian scientist. She would just have to be careful what she said so that she didn't give away anything that would change the future. "He's right. I can tell you some of it. This is going to sound really weird, and I don't know if you're going to believe me, but if you'll hear me out, I promise I can prove what I'm saying." She took a deep breath before she continued. "Let me first begin by fully introducing myself. My name is Dr. Emily Sandburg. My partner's name is Lieutenant Christopher Ellison. We are from three hundred and seventy-seven years into your future, and we are descended from the two of you, respectively. I have a double doctorate in anthropology and xenopology from Oxford, and for the past four years since I inherited the loft in my own time, I've been trying to get your work validated so that I could base my own on it. I finally succeeded, at least partially. Two of my professors and one of Starfleet's most prestigious officers have all conceded to the possibility that Sentinels might actually exist, and Commander Data understands the need to protect the subjects of research from public scrutiny. He's seen the work of scientists abused first hand before, and he would not see another suffer it. I've been looking for Sentinels in non-human cultures, and my current plan is to look at the planet Bajor. As to how we ended up in your apartment, that has nothing to do with my work. A being from an omnipotent race called the Q decided to pull a stunt. I think he's doing a bit of research himself, but he has a particularly ironic sense of humor. Before he dropped us in the loft, he said that he wanted to see how such a relatively primitive pair would react to this kind of sudden change. Personally, I just think he was in the mood for a good prank, but I don't actually know that."

The two detectives stared at her for a moment. She was either the world's best liar, as Jim could detect no change in either her heart rate or her eyes, she was crazy and believed what she was saying, or she was telling the truth. There was one thing that he could sense that lent credence to her words. Her scent was similar to that of his Guide in the same way that Simon's scent and Daryl's were so close together. It wasn't as strong a similarity, but through so many generations, it wouldn't be.

Blair was trying to make sense of the academic part of her story. The thought that even someone in the far future would take that kind of time to validate the work of a confessed fraud was touching at least. But she had said that she could prove it, and he wanted to know how. "You said you could prove it?"

She smiled. Good. They weren't dismissing her as a loony out of hand. "What's today's date?"

"August 16th."

She thought back over what she had read of Blair's journals, praying that she could remember specifics. After all their case load was always so heavy and they solved them so fast... "Ah! I remember. You're right in the middle of the Harborman case. You were called to the scene of the fourth robbery yesterday after lunch. The manager, having been burned on previous occasions of missing money, had set up a camera in the office pointing at the safe. It caught the tattoo on the wrist of one of the robbers, and by 3:00 this afternoon, forensics will have the blowup that you asked for of that frame. That's all I can tell you about the case without changing the future."

For a moment, it didn't take Sentinel senses to be able to hear a pin hitting the floor. The press could have deduced that Major Crime's best team would be the ones working this case, especially given that Harborman was the mayor's cousin. But no one other than the guys in the lab and Simon knew about the camera or the tattoo. And now they had a prediction as to the time when the lab boys would be done with work that she couldn't know about. Gathering his thoughts, Jim said, "How could you know that even if you are from the future?"

She grinned. "You know how detailed his diaries are. Cop he may be, but he's an anthropologist, too. I inherited everything, the journals, the research, the dissertation, and that's what I've been using to help Chris. Believe me, I'm glad I had this information so that we haven't had to go through some of what you have. Although I was surprised when Chris told me that he considered me to be his Guide." Then she chuckled. "Although the increase in excitement in my life should have been a clue."

Blair said, "What do you mean?"

She looked at him, merriment glinting in her eyes. "In the last three months, I've been held hostage three times and been shot at more times than I'd care to remember, though I haven't actually been hit, and now I've been sent nearly four hundred years into the past by an entity who's following in his father's interfering footsteps playing the 'Let's piss off Starfleet' game." She sighed. "To be fair, he's probably just getting a little humor in along with his research. As the first new member in his race since before the dawn of time, he's really being put through the hoops to make sure he doesn't turn into a monster, as well as having to be educated about the universe, something that's never had to be done before."

Jumping in before his partner's curiosity could run away with him, Jim said, "We'll wait until three this afternoon. If the labs are back by then, I'll drop the charges. Then we're all going to have to have a serious talk. If you're lying, I'll still be back, but I'll be leaning on you very hard to find out what you were really doing in our apartment. Let's go, Chief."

Emily snorted. "You already know I'm not lying, detective."

He glared at her and walked out of the room. Blair put his head in his hand. "Do you know how dumb that move was?"

She smiled gently at her ancestor. "I know the Ellison quirks, but I don't like him trying to intimidate me. He does know I'm not lying, so that was just rude."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, but you don't have to deal with him."

Jim stuck his head back in the room. "I heard that, Darwin." He grinned. "Come on, we need to get back to the station."

Once they were in the truck and headed toward the station, Blair said, "So what did you think?"

"About Emily? I don't know, Chief. That's a really wild story, but it's also an easy one to check. We just have to wait 'till three o' clock. If it's true, we should drop the charges, but Simon's going to ask why. He has enough problems just dealing with the Sentinel thing. I don't know how he'll handle visitors from the future and omnipotent beings with a prankster's sense of humor. Hell, I don't know how I'm dealing with it." Then he grinned. "After all, two Sandburgs in the same room..."

"You're real funny, man." He sighed. "If this is for real, We're probably going to be in the middle of a big mess. This kid doesn't sound like the type to do things for the sake of the prank alone. He's got a purpose behind it, and it isn't likely to be small."

Jim nodded. "And that would go along with the feeling in that dream. There's something big brewing, and we're going to need Chris and Emily to help with it. Meanwhile, we need to work on the Harborman case." He glanced at his watch. "We've got five hours at least to wait for those labs. We can go tell Chris that Emily is all right, then we can work on the case until three, or whenever those labs arrive. Then if it pans out we talk to Simon."

Time dragged slowly for the detectives. They couldn't do anything with the Harborman case until they got the labs back, so they did paper work, trying not to seem like they were either bored or waiting impatiently for a single group of lab findings, because if they did, it would just invite Simon to ask what was wrong.

Then, at fifteen 'till three, Serena came through the doors of the bullpen. "Jim. Here's that enhancement you wanted. Definitely a tattoo, and probably from prison." She handed him the folder.

Trying to hide the shivers that were working their way up his spine, he told the woman thanks, and she left. He looked at the paper inside. She was right on all counts. Now he could have Sandburg go through the computer and try to find a match for it. Only half of it was showing, the bottom half obscured by the sleeve of the robber's shirt, but it was fairly distinctive so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

He looked at the clock, knowing that he would have done so without this prediction come true. 2:47. Man!

Blair came over to him and said, "So what do we do now?"

"Now we go talk to Simon."

"Man, he is so not going to like this conversation."


Chapter three. Well, you read this one, too. I'll write some original Author's Notes at the end of the last complete chapter.