In the end, Sarah allowed Becker to force-feed her some of the dinosaur meat and found it not too disgusting. She decided to make herself useful finding vegetation they could eat and collecting it in a little cache.
They realized after the first few days that they were lucky where and when they ended up. Becker took a day's walk both directions around the lake and they made a makeshift map of sticks and leaves in the sand. Large therapod predators lived mostly in one part of the forest, a few miles from their camp, while only small predators skirted through their part of the forest, which they didn't enter much anyway. Becker fashioned some rudimentary spears-not bad, Sarah commented, for the first spears ever-and taught Sarah how to throw them correctly.
Their 'resort' as they decided to call it now provided them with a surplus of food, and a surplus of free time. Sarah found herself spending more and more time with Becker. The just talked most of the time, about their lives before the anomaly project and about their friends and just about one another….and them.
One morning Sarah decided to go into the lake again (despite Becker ordering her not to). She found Becker asleep in his crevice in the boughs of their tree home and decided she'd be back before he woke.
She waded into the water until she was tiptoeing to keep her neck up; then she dipped her head under slowly, opening her eyes to scan the water.
It was fun, she had to admit, being there with Becker. There was no work other than the business of survival. They had plenty of food and water to last them. But a tropical paradise could not be paradise when they were missing their friends.
She kicked her way through the water, peering down through. It was relatively clear today without so many waves. She could see down meters beneath the surface.
She realized her mistake with the sea creature that had first attacked her. She had just been looking for light beneath the surface. She should've been looking specifically for the shimmering shards of light in an anomaly.
She spun about in the water, looking back to the beach. Becker was there, still asleep. She smiled.
She continued searching until she saw it. It wasn't just a glow in the water-there were bright flashes of light swarming about the central nucleus of light.
She swam back to the shore and ran up the beach to Becker, shaking his shoulder. "Becker!" she exclaimed, laughing a little as he jerked awake and almost fell from the tree.
"Wha-yeah, Sarah?" he asked, squinting in the sunlight. "What's happening?"
"Becker, I found the anomaly!" she said happily, pointing out into the water. "Come on, let's go!"
"Hold on, Sarah," Becker said. "You went out there? I ordered you not to!"
Sarah just beamed at him. "I'm just not very good at following orders, captain."
They ran out into the water. Sarah noticed how dark his skin had gotten from all the time in the bright sun, and how good it looked as droplets of clear water shimmered in the sun around him. They swam out until Sarah looked under and saw the shimmering array of light.
"There!" she exclaimed, pointing to the underwater anomaly. He nodded and grabbed her wrist, and they both took a deep breath before pushing themselves under.
It was difficult to fight through as the water tried to repel the air in their lungs, but Becker was a strong swimmer. Sarah closed her eyes as the past disappeared and the soldier began pulling her back to the surface.
When she opened her mouth to collect a gasp of air, she expected the water on her lips to be salty. On the contrary, she winced at the chemical taste of chlorine. Opening her eyes, she saw they were in the deep end of a swimming pool.
She and Becker kicked towards the edge and climbed out, the tile floor cool to their bare feet.
"How did we get here?" Becker asked. Sarah thought a moment before answering.
"The anomaly must have rested on a temporal fault line," she guessed. When Becker shook his head in confusion, she went on. "One of Cutter's theories. There can be a fixed position on one end of an anomaly, and the other end could move freely along a theoretical 'fault line'."
Becker stared down into her eyes. She looked at him blankly until he began to lean in again, passion blacking her out until they finally registered the voices behind them.
"The anomaly's this way, come on-Becker? Sarah? Oh-oh."
They pulled apart quickly, seeing Abby, Connor, and Danny standing there. Abby and Connor were looking away, Danny was grinning ear-to-ear but remained silent as he stepped forward, clapping Becker on the back.
They returned to life as usual at the ARC…as usual as it ever got. They closed anomalies. Becker led his men, Sarah studied in her office. But there was an electricity in the space between that was new, and neither of them would ever complain.