Avery waited in the hall as her dad and Claudia walked into the hospital room. From the door she could make out a young man with dark brown hair shivering on the hospital bed, a thin sheen of sweat covering his skin. He was gasping for air, half lucid. She had seen the men earlier having arrived a few moments before Nick.
Avery walked towards a balcony close to the hospital room. She leaned against the concrete railing overlooking the concrete jungle below. She pulled her phone out and sent a message to her boyfriend, asking if he would go out for a drink later tonight. He replied a couple minutes later saying he would meet her at 8.
Avery placed the phone in her pocket and leaned against the rail. The cars crawled past slowly on a Sunday drive. The sky sunny and people rushing to where they needed to go. A bird came to land next to her, a brambling, reminding her of the one she found when she was younger.
A little girl raced through the house calling for her mother. She found her in the study; writing notes from her trip a few days back.
"Mother look! These boys were throwing stones at the tree outside and this bird fell out." The girl started to cry. "I-I think it's wing is broken."
"Let's have a look." She grabbed the little bird from her daughter's hands and placed it on the desk in front of her. She looked it over before turning in her chair back to the girl.
"I think your right. Why don't you go and get your father to grab the first aid kit out of the laundry and I'll bandage its wing."
"Okay mummy." The girl said before rushing off.
A few moments later the girl came rushing back in carrying a little case with a big red cross on it. Her husband walked in behind her being dragged in by his daughter's hand.
"What happened Helen?" Her husband asked looking at the bird on the desk.
"Our daughter found an injured bird Nick. I am going to bandage its wing." She grabbed the first aid kit from her daughter and said to her. "Avery, would you like to help me bandage its wing?"
Avery nodded shaking the pigtails on her head. She walked towards the desk and Helen told her to hold the wing out. Helen placed a thin stick on the top of the wing to keep it strait, and wrapped a white bandage over it and the wing.
Avery smiled widely and looked towards her father, who had walked forward and wrapped his arms around her and Helen with a content smile on his face.
Nick joined her as he finished up with Dr Lewis, snapping her out of the memory.
"The man was poisoned with venom. It's quite unusual." Nick said leaning on the railing next to her.
"Did you see the wound? A single puncture mark. Wounds inflicted by a weapon don't look like that." Avery said.
"Yeah, it looked like he was bitten by something big." Nick agreed with her theory. He had said the same thing when he saw the mark.
"So it's another anomaly?" Avery said. She looked for the brambling but she could not find it. It must have flew away when Nick came out.
"Most likely. Come on lets go talk to Lester." He turned around and walked inside. Avery stood on the balcony a moment later looking for the brambling that flew away, before walking with her dad back to the car.
Nick talks to Lester as they, Claudia and Avery walk through the home office.
"I can't close the underground on a wild hunch." Lester said.
"Something injected a fatal dose of venom into his bloodstream" Nick said pulling his hands out of the pockets of his black trench coat, a gift from Avery he got last Christmas.
Avery walked close behind them. "The bite couldn't have been by anything man made."
"There could be a perfectly rational explanation." Lester said. The office was buzzling with activity oblivious to the new danger that had arisen. Perhaps the government had told the secret of the anomalies to a select few.
"Oh, now that I'd love to hear." Nick said as Lester accepted a pile of papers. Avery wondered how he could look through them while still staying on topic. They reached his office and he turned to the three following him.
"And how do you suggest I explain this to the mayor. 'Excuse me sir, would you mind terrible throwing the whole bloody underground into chaos because there may be a fair-dodging creepy-crawly on the loose somewhere?" He said getting frustrated.
"We're not talking about shutting down the whole system, just the area where the attack took place. There's a whole network of disused tunnels down there." Claudia reasoned.
Lester sighed, moving behind his desk. He chucked the papers in his hands on the table and said "Yes, Very well."
He sat down and started to sign several of the papers. "Well, what are you waiting for?" Lester said looking up again.
As they were leaving Avery bumped into a soldier walking through the office.
"Sorry." They said at the same time. His dark hair was short and styled to the sides.
"No. It was my fault I should have looked where I was going. Hi I'm Becker." The soldier said holding his hand out for her to shake.
"Avery." She said taking his hand.
"What are you doing at the Home Office? You don't particularly look like you belong here." Becker asked looking at her as if he was unsure she was a threat.
Avery took a pass she had in her bag and passed it to Becker. He took a moment to look over it before passing it back to her.
"Sorry for that. Just had to check." Becker apologized. He still stood strait; a perfect soldier.
She was about to reply when Nick came back. She looked towards him staying where she was.
"Avery are you coming?" Nick said from a doorway.
"Yeah, in a second." Avery said. She turned back to Becker.
"Well it was nice meeting you Becker. Maybe I'll see you around." She left Becker there and walked away with her dad.
Nick, Stephen, Abby and Avery arrived as the soldiers raced into the station. People were rushing out and sending strange looks at the soldiers surrounding the area. Like at the last anomaly they were covered in black clothing and moved in perfect sync. Avery wondered if the men were even human the way they moved without communication.
"We should be down there with them." Nick said talking to Claudia.
"Special Forces goes in first. You didn't think Lester was going to let you have it all your way?" Claudia said to him. She waited for Captain Ryan to tell her his men was ready. After the way he handled the last anomaly she trusted him to make the decision for his soldiers.
"We're ready to go. Just give us the word." Ryan said over the radio.
Claudia looked around to see if everyone had left the underground. "Okay. Go ahead just keep an eye out for whatever's down there. We don't want any incidences." She said.
Abby and Avery walked away to a covered area near the underground.
"Have you talked to Connor?" Abby asked her sweeping her fringe back.
"No. Not since the other day. I might talk to him later, he will still be at the university." Avery replied.
"I didn't mean to get him in trouble. It's just that if there really was an anomaly we couldn't handle it on our own." Abby said. Avery could see that she felt really bad about texting Stephen.
"You did the right thing." Avery said.
"Yeah. Well." Abby sighed out. She might have done the right thing but it was still her fault.
A few moments later the Home office soldiers came rushing out of the underground. Ryan was carrying someone who looked weak and sweaty. He brought him to one of the cars and a medic was soon on the both of them.
Avery walked over as Ryan shook the medic off him. "Look after him first." Ryan said pointing to the weakened soldier.
"They were like spiders but with pincers, not fangs. Some of them over a meter long. Horrible little…"
Nick cut him off. "Look, tell me how you feel."
"Sick. My ears are ringing…" Ryan said as they walked away from the medics.
"Any blurred vision?"
"No. But there's something else. The gunshots were to bright, like fireworks."
"That's classic signs of excess oxygen in the atmosphere." Stephen said.
Years ago when Stephen first got his Gun license he and Avery did a test with one of his guns. They had filled an old steel storage container with oxygen then fired a bullet. It had bounced around the walls at a fast rate and sent of a bright flash every time it hit something.
"A richer, more heavily oxygenated air must be seeping through from another anomaly. We're not talking about the Permian era any longer. This is much, much earlier." Nick continued. Catching on to what Stephen was saying.
"How much earlier?" Claudia asked.
"Maybe the Carboniferous about 300 million years ago. We really need to see exactly what these creatures look like. I need to see this for myself." Nick asked. He had this habit of placing his hands together when he was asking for something.
Avery, Nick, Stephen and Abby looked at her hoping she would let them go.
"Okay, go." Claudia said convinced. She took a step back allowing the boys to leave.
"Let's get some gear." Nick said and Ryan took them to where they could get suited up.
So we've had our first look at Becker. Would you like me to do more scenes with him or wait until season 3?