The future creature gurgled and cried out in a shriek of laughter. It threw its head backwards and looked up at the brightly lit sky, absorbing the warmth of the young star.

Nick Cutter watched it turn its skeletal head. Its grey eyes settled on his and seemed to snicker. A second later it was gone, vanished into the jungle behind, unharmed.

It was only then that he noticed his gun had been moved and that someone's hand was settled on his, diverting his aim.

"Helen...?" he whispered, finding his ex-wife's eyes fraught with panic. Her grip was tight, painfully melding their hands to the gun.

"Hello Nick," she said, but not as brazenly as she had done in the past. There was blood mixed in with the mud smeared indiscriminately across her skin. A weeping gash dribbled down her bare shoulder and claw marks crossed her neck, angry and red.

Despite the strength of her grasp, she stumbled slightly and soon Nick realised that she was using him to remain upright.

* * *

The ground shook. Lester gulped and stumbled back, landing in the soft leaf litter. The earth was warm as he clawed his way through it, scanning the encroaching tree line with panic. He was trying to hide, bury himself into the ground to escape the rumbling sound.

A slender pine bent down toward the ground beside him with its topmost leaves grazing the dirt. There was a crack through the air as its trunk snapped, showering Lester in splinters.

"No..." he whispered, as two white tusks pierced through the greenery. The scene faltered for a second, its pieces fracturing like glass. Then it fell away and Lester woke up on the floor of his office, covered in sweat.

He moaned and rolled over onto his back, basking in the brightness of the lights.

"Get a grip," he said, pressing his hands to his forehead. "You have to get a grip..."

* * *

Abby smiled and lightly tapped the glass enclose. Rex 'purred' as best he could, placing his feet on the glass.

"You'll be home soon," she told the creature, who appeared to understand her tone. It flapped its wings and paced about the enclosure in restless circles.

"Am I comin' too?" Conner's head popped up from behind the table. He was drowned in wires and bits of electrical tape. There was a set of metal clips on his collar which shined under the lab lights. "It's just – you said that I had to be gone in three months and it's been..."

"Nine?"

"Seven."

She snorted – he seemed genuinely unaware of the passage of time. It was a bizarre flaw in a man responsible for managing its most complex fluctuations.

"Is all your stuff out on my front step?" Abbey asked, pacing around to the other side of the table to get a better look at what he was up to.

"Ah..." he scanned the room nervously for help, but they were alone. "Not that I can recall."

"Then you haven't been kicked out."

* * *

"I can see that you're still angry at me," Helen let go of Nick's arm and took a few shaky steps back. There was excess oxygen in the air here and after a while it made her feel light-headed and ill. She wished that she had time to duck back to her old tie line and stock up on pain killers but, ironically, there wasn't time.

"You could say that," replied Nick, re-aiming his weapon at her.

She would have protested but she seriously doubted that he would pull the trigger – not now, not while he was curious.

"Listen Helen," he said irritably, as something grey darted in the foliage – no doubt escaping, "is there a good reason for this visit or were you just bored with your lonely landscapes?"

There was once some truth to that. Before she had seen the future Helen had been lost in the past. All those beautiful scenes and yet, with no-one to share them with...

"Nick - as much as I'd love to listen to your bleeding heart," she watched as he flinched, "there are bigger things at stake."

"Don' start with that kind of –"

"By all means, kill these few infant future creatures. Heaven knows I've seen enough of them to want them well and truly extinct."

"I hope you have a point."

"Time is linear," she drew an imaginary line in the air with her hand. "The universe is meant to flow from start to end without interruption. Every time something stumbles between the pages the end shifts – new realities are created – realities which supersede the others. We're not dealing with parallel timelines, Nick."

"What on Earth are you talking about?"

"Don't you see – it doesn't matter what you do, our timeline is gone. The world in which Claudia Brown lived has been erased and there is nothing that you can do to bring it back – or her."

"I refuse to believe that," he said firmly. "If I can just fix what it was that we did wrong the first time, everything will go back to the way it was before."

She lowered her head with a half-smile traced over her lips. "Oh Nick, you were always smart but you are no physicist. You can never arrange the water molecules in a glass the same way again. There are too many factors at play. Trying to restore the timeline by killing these creatures is like stepping on butterflies."

The thought crossed Nick's mind that he could end it all right here, pull the trigger on Helen and cease these games that she played with him and all the world.

"If I don't kill these things," Nick continued, "then the future has no chance. At least this way -"

Helen snapped her head back up and laughed cruelly. "I have seen the future," she said, "believe me, you wouldn't want to protect it."

"And what are you doing, Helen? Trying to change things for the better? You are such a hypocrite." She didn't respond – only stood there with eyes that were rapidly beginning to redden. "I don't think that you're evil Helen, I think you're scared."

"We're all scared Nick," she snarled. "But you're nowhere near scared enough."

* * *

Jenny could have sworn that she had seen a bright speck of gold flash in the air beyond her desk. It may have only been for a moment, but it had been enough to catch her eye. Now she was slumped over her desk, head resting in her hands as she stared dumbly into nowhere.

Then it happened again – another flash of gold at the very edge of her vision. She whipped her head around, spinning in her chair as she searched for the light but it was gone again.

"Argh..." she grimaced, as her headache made a sharp return. Pain throbbed its way through her skull with such ferocity that she feared it might break. It was crippling. All around her the air lit up with tiny fractures of time. Anomalies were clustering around her, screaming at her as they grew large enough to wall her in.

"Jenny?"

She shrieked, startling Ryan who had come over to see how she was. It had been a long time since he had seen her die. Jenny had simply vanished over the edge of the building, falling out of sight without a sound. He had lived that moment every day and now here she was, safe and alive yet.

"Oh," Jenny took a second look at the room and found nothing but a co-worker shifting files. There was no trace of the anomalies or the screeching in her ears.

"I came to tell you that we're heading back out to the anomaly. It hasn't opened or anything, but judging by the fragile nature of these anomalies it would be better to be nearby."

* * *

Helen's radio crackled.

"It starts five days from now," she began, backing away from him toward the tree line. "An anomaly opens up and five unrelated people slip through. From that moment on, everything is different."

"Helen, stop," Nick raised the gun to remind her it was there. She seemed unconcerned.

"Five days, Nick," she repeated, and then she was gone.

Nick wanted to shoot her – he really did but something new had overtaken him. Worry. He worried that there was some kind of twisted truth in her words. She had a habit of mixing fiction with reality and that made her dangerous too ignore. There was, however, one thing that he could be sure about – Helen knew more about this phenomenon than anybody and it had her running scared.

Five Months Earlier

"Oh, that's not good," Helen muttered to herself, as she teetered on the edge of the cliff.

She had miscalculated her escape by several metres and now it was too late. A glittering sea stretched lazily out in front of her. It was shallow, maybe three or four metres deep and about fifteen metres below the sharp rocks she was standing on. Not a chance. If she jumped she would cut straight through the water and shatter on the seabed.

"I presume it's too late to apologise..." she addressed the Coelophysis bauri. It was taller than her and light on its feet. There was a row of razor sharp teeth curved back from its lips which it brandished expectantly, inching closer to her. It really was a beautiful predator – lean and perfectly camouflaged in the lightly forested area. "Thought as much."

Given a choice between being ripped to shreds by an angry carnivore or snapping her neck in a warm sea, Helen did not hesitate. She bid the creature adieu, turned to the water and leant forward until the pull of gravity tugged her over the edge into freefall.

Hitting the ground hurt – she hadn't expected that at all. There was no splash or rush of water, just an 'urmph' as her body impacted the dirt. Dazed, she opened her eyes to find that she was not in a Triassic sea, but rather lying rather ungracefully in the pitch black. Indeed, she could see absolutely nothing.

She must have fallen through an anomaly – a random shred of luck which she had spent her whole life earning. Helen would wait to find out where she was until she decided how lucky she was.

Helen fished out her torch and found that she had been deposited on the stinking floor of some kind of cave with the flat static of her radio blaring. The first thing she did was flick off the radio and roll onto her knees. It hurt, but not too badly. The air was cold and thick around her like it was compressed – extra atmosphere no-doubt.

The cave itself continued either side of her well beyond the reach of her torch. All around her water trickled and dripped to the floor via limestone stalactites. There was a magnificent array of these features chocking the cave like a coral reef. Beautiful, really – but it worried her that she was under ground. That had never happened before.

"Something new, I guess," she said, clawing her way up the cave wall until she made it to her feet. Helen withdrew her knife in case the local wildlife decided to introduce themselves. Helen didn't see the creature curled around one of the stalactites, blending into the pale grey stone as if it too were just another lifeless statue.