A/N I am taking the history of the anomaly project here to be what was shown in season one, minus the existance of Claudia Brown. See Chapter One for disclaimer.

Tracking what was probably a Sycosaurus through the forest of Dean, which none of them knew their way around, in the dark, with soldiers who weren't allowed to shoot it, in case that messed up the fabric of reality, again, wasn't exactly how Derek Lewel had planned on spending his evening.

Following the giant footprints wasn't hard. It was trying to stay quiet enough not to alert something big, angry and probably hungry to their position that was hard. Every time someone stepped on a twig, the special forces would glare at them. Someone had coughed a minute ago and Captain Stuartson had nearly shot them.

Derek had no idea how much tranquilizer this creature would need so he had settled for a lot. So there was a chance that either it wouldn't be enough and the creature would kill them all or it would be too much, killing the creature, changing evolution and causing them all to disappear from existence.

"Why didn't I just become an accountant?" he muttered.

Truth was he found this job…odd. When you get a call from someone claiming to be the British Home Secretary saying that they need your skills for a top secret government project you expected something a bit more full on.

Sure there were days when he got to stop evolution from folding in on itself and chase dinosaurs around. But most anomalies were weeks, if not months between. Two in one day was so rare as to be worrying.

He could tell that Becker and Dr Page were worried. He had only heard snippets about what had happened before he arrived but the name Helen Cutter had come up a lot in what he'd heard. The captain and the doctor had been talking when they first arrived at the site.

"Two in one day Becker. That's really rare."

"I know. It's almost suspicious"

"You don't think this is something to do with Helen Cutter?"

"I hope not. Danny, Abby and Conner went back to stop her."

"But we don't know if they succeeded. She could be behind this."

He wondered about asking who this Helen Cutter was and what the old team had tried to stop her doing. Then again he knew that he'd come up against the wall of silence that seemed to have been erected around the disappearance of the old team. He, Sam and Stuartson supposedly had top level security clearance, but no one would tell them anything about the history of the anomaly project. It was both annoying and insulting.

Distracted, he managed to stub his toe on a tree trunk. He swore loudly and the entire special forces team turned to glare at him. Captain Stuartson stalked over to him.

"Do that again and I will use you as dinosaur bait" he hissed.

Tired, cold and grumpy Derek turned his mind back to the search.

Picking his way through the dark forest, Captain Ryan Stuartson was in his element.

This was what he had been trained for. This was what he had joined Special Forces to do.

Okay so he'd always presumed he would be tracking down terrorists or something human at least rather than Dinosaurs but still. The principal was the same.

That was when he heard the noise. It was a very organic noise. He tried to place it…It sounded almost like something…being…eaten.

"We've found it" he whispered to Becker. "I can hear it."

The group made its way quietly towards the sound. A huge shape came into sight, its mouth in what appeared to be an animal corpse of some kind. Derek edged to the front of the group taking careful aim with his tranquilizer gun.

Then someone sneezed.

And all hell broke loose.

The Sycosaurus roared as it wheeled around to face them, charging the group. Bullets flashed as the soldiers tried to defend themselves, enraging the creature further. It began snapping at the soldiers who only narrowly avoided the monstrous jaws.

As the soldiers began to fall back they scrambled up trees, hoping to escape the beast.

Desperately trying to keep some kind of order amongst his men, Stuartson saw Derek lining up a shot. He could see what would happen next. Derek would shoot, miss, and the dinosaur would wheel around and eat him.

Derek squeezed the trigger. By some miracle the shot went in.

As the Sycosaurus turned towards Derek it began collapse, falling to one side and landing, unconscious at the feet of the shocked zoologist.

"Yep. Should've become an accountant"

Back at the anomaly site Sam was getting some very unusual readings. If she believed what her screen was telling her then there were two more anomalies within a hundred meters. But given that she could see that distance but no anomalies she concluded that her detector must be broken.

"Piece of junk" She muttered as she put it into her bag. She took out the detector that Conner Temple had built. It wasn't as powerful as her upgraded one but at least this one wasn't showing phantom anomalies.

Unlike her other teammates she had actually known her predecessor. Not closely; she was just a lab tech at the ARC and he had been the lab techs hero. Proof that sometimes the nerdy guy gets the cool job. Still although she had known the truth about the anomalies for longer than her new teammates she had never been privy to any classified information. She knew that Helen Cutter was the bad guy, but no specifics.

She turned her attention back to her laptop. She would mend her detector when she got home but until then she would have to distract herself by working through some of the ideas she had had to strengthen the anomaly sealer.

Let's see…if she tweaked this logarithm, she could recalibrate this electrode, which would increase the power by this much…

"Which would result in all of us dying as it overloads and explodes" she said ruefully

"Ma'am?" One of the soldiers left with her gave her a curious look.

"Nothing." She reassured him. "Just thinking aloud" Her brain began ticking over

Hmm…now if that equilibrium could be shifted to the side….

Sarah felt vaguely guilty about what she was about to do. She had told Becker that she would stop but it was almost an addiction for her. She couldn't stop.

"Sam" She approached the anomaly where Sam had her head buried in her laptop. "Sam I want you to open that anomaly." Sam looked up, with a strange expression on her face.

"Sorry, Dr Page but Captain Becker told me I'd be fired if I let you go through" Sarah cursed inwardly. Damn overprotective soldier.

"Call me Sarah. And I have orders from Becker to go through. So open it up."

"I'd rather wait until I heard that from Becker" Why hadn't they chosen a techie with less backbone?

"Ma'am" the soldier cut in. "I can't let you go through alone. Captains Becker and Stuartson will be furious."

"So come with me." Her voice was daring.

"What I mean ma'am is I'm not going to let you go through that anomaly."

Sarah was mentally calculating the odds of her successfully unlocking the anomaly and running through without Sam or the soldier stopping her. A million to one, probably. She sighed with frustration.

Just then Becker and Derek arrived back at the anomaly site.

"Sarah we have to get back to the ARC. Lester wants to see us now." She knew by the look in Becker's eyes that he knew exactly what she was trying to do.

"But it's the middle of the night. And we aren't finished here. And where is the Sycosaurus?"

"It's five am. By the time we get back it'll be about seven. Derek and Sam can finish up here and the Sycosaurus currently has a zoo's worth of tranquilizer running through it while Captain Stuartson tries to figure out how to get it back here. Let's go."

On the two hour journey back to the ARC Sarah was expecting a huge argument. She was already working out her defenses. But to her surprise he only said one thing.

"Sarah. You promised."

When they arrived back at the ARC the sky was beginning to lighten a little. Even this early the building was occupied. The soldiers, a few lab techs who looked like they'd pulled an all night shift, a couple of miscellaneous home office employees and of course Lester.

They entered his office, a sense of foreboding hanging over them. Lester had never called anyone away from an anomaly site for a meeting since they'd been on the team. It was curious. And worrying.

"Captain Becker, Dr Page. Please sit down. Now, as we have no members of the original team remaining in the twenty first century I presume the two of you don't know the history of the forest of Dean?"

"Of course sir" said Sarah "The area was inhabited in Mesolithic times, and there are also remains of later megalithic monuments including-"

"No Dr Page, I am referring to the anomalies. None of the others ever told you about the anomalies there?"

"No sir."

"The first anomaly that we dealt with was in the forest of Dean. A predator escaped and destroyed a house and a school among other things. A PR nightmare, the papers had a field day."

"So this isn't the first time an anomaly has been found there?"

"No. Not long after that, the anomaly reopened and future predators broke through. We don't know for sure but I have intelligence that suggests that Helen Cutter first entered the past through an anomaly in the forest." He paused briefly. "And more disturbingly if Cutter was telling the truth about changing the past and this Claudia Brown person, then the change occurred through that anomaly. Essentially every time that anomaly has appeared it's caused trouble. Right now trouble is the last thing this unit needs. I need this dealt with before something else goes wrong."

"What do you want us to do about it sir?" asked Becker.

"I've no idea. Whatever it is you people actually do. Run around making a lot of noise and scaring people I suppose. Incidentally, what creature came through this time? "

"A Sycosaurus sir. From the Permian era." You could have heard a pin drop.

"Permian era" he said in a low voice. "Are you sure?"

"Yes sir. Derek and Sam identified the creature and apparently it only comes from that era of history." Sarah said. "Is something wrong sir?"

"The Permian Era and nothing going wrong go together about as well as the European Union and a non standardised Banana. I want this dealt with. Quickly and quietly."

"Yes sir"

"Yes sir"

As he watched them leave Lester was more worried than he cared to admit. The Permian era and the Forest of Dean had been constantly repeating nightmares for them. If it had opened again something bad, expensive and probably incurring lots of paperwork was going to happen.

He wasn't a physicist and he had next to no interest in how the anomalies worked. But still you couldn't work with Nick Cutter for that long and not pick up some idea about the science. Maybe, time was weaker in the Forest? More subjective?

He brushed the thoughts from his mind. He hired other people to think about that sort of thing. Turning back to his paperwork he tried to ignore the vague sense of foreboding nagging at the edges of his mind.

Back at the anomaly site, Sam was trying to figure out what was going on with her detector. It was registering the nonexistent anomalies and actually taking readings from them.

One of the anomalies showing seemed to be fluctuating wildly. The readings were rapidly approaching critical when suddenly....

In a burst of white light, space and time ripped itself open.