Hello my Primevalians! I am SO sorry about the delay. I've honestly been trying to find the time to read over this and then post it, but I just don't seem to have it any more. Anyways, I know you guys want to know what happens next with the Cutter situation and all, so here's the next chapter. It's a bit of a filler one, but it's important in the progression of the story. So, anyways. ENJOY!
This chapter is dedicated to "PrimevalChick" for so many reasons. One, her laptop broke, so she snuck onto a computer (I don't know which one, Thea) so she could read this. THEA YOU ARE AWESOME! Also, I just had to love your review. I won't post it, but if you want to check it out, I have to say it was pretty beast. Thankies Thea!
Disclaimer: I do not own Primeval or anything that belongs rightfully to it. If I did, Sarah would not have died, Emily would have not gone back to her own time and Connor would have NOT gotten into that car with Philip. "CONNOR YOU DO NOT GO INTO CARS WITH STRANGE MEN! Gosh, has your mother taught you nothing?
"Becker...Becker...Aw, Becker. You're a lot cuter than I remember!" ~Danny Quinn 4.7
"Lazlo, you aren't making any sense!" said Joanna Young, head of the Cardiff news company.
"It's just as I told you miss," said the one called Lazlo. "The government is up to something, and they don't want anyone to know about it!"
"I understand that part," said Joanna. "What I don't understand is what they are trying to hide. You described it as a "flashing, flickering ball of light." Isn't that called the sun?"
"No," argued Lazlo. "It really was a flashing, flickering ball of light. And I heard them say it was dangerous."
Joanna sighed. She tossed her long black hair behind her shoulders then fixed her dark, beady eyes back on Lazlo.
"Then why did you come to me first?"
"I'm trying to sell you a front cover story! If we figure out what it is they are really doing, then…"
"Then what? Nothing! It's not like it'll be believable. I can hardly believe it myself."
"But miss," begged Lazlo, his green gem eyes begging Joanna to understand.
But Joanna didn't want to put up with it any longer. She reached one long white finger to a button and buzzed for security. Lazlo saw this, and his green eyes went straight from pleading to panic. The security guards came bursting into the office very quickly.
"Take him away, to the asylum if you have to! He's gone completely mad!" she ordered.
"No miss, I'm telling the truth!" yelled Lazlo.
But before Joanna could have heard any more of Lazlo's story, he was gone. She gave an approving nod and then continued on with her work.
The ARC- Friday July 16, 2032 (AN: I looked it up, and the date is accurate)
It was 9:37 a.m. the next day and the team had been at the ARC for a long time. They rushed back from Cardiff the previous night for Nick Cutter had been in a bad condition. When they did arrive, Nick was put straight into the paramedic's care, and had been for the past twelve hours. Nobody dared to go home in case something happened, so everyone just slept in their offices.
Most everyone was up at this time and waiting in the hub for news, any news. Emma spun herself around in the chair by the ADD. Connor and Abby sat at the food of the ramp leading to Lester's office, Abby leaning into Connor who had his arms wrapped around her. Fowler and Becker were in the military corridor having their daily meeting with the soldiers. Danny was pacing all around the hub while Jenny watched him, a bit worried, and Lester was in his office. Everyone else was either still asleep or slowly waking up.
Emma wasn't thinking about anything in particular. She was just occupying her mind with random thoughts. She was currently thinking about what it would feel like to fly around the hub, maybe to annoy Lester, when she saw Alex come out of the west-end corridor with two cups of tea. He walked over to her and handed her one of the cups.
"Thanks," she said while taking a sip.
Alex smiled.
"No problem," he said as he learned against the ADD casually.
The two stood there in silence for a bit, enjoying their tea, but a question was on Emma's mind that she had to ask Alex.
"Since when did you learn how to wrestle?"
Alex laughed.
"I didn't," he said. "I just guessed, and it worked."
Emma gave him a playful punch in the ribs and smiled at him.
"How do you guys know Cutter?" asked Danny, completely out of the blue. The two teens looked to the left and saw that Danny had stopped pacing and was looking at them. "Just curious," he added.
"We've heard stories," said Emma, "from some of the…other staff."
"Yeah, and Lester gave us access to the archives for a day, so we could read up on everything and everybody," said Alex. "He was a brilliant man."
"That he was," said Jenny, "completely mad at times, but still brilliant."
Memories flooded her mind. Nick Cutter had been an utter nightmare, and the fact that she had fancied him really didn't help already awkward matters. She just hoped that she didn't start having those feelings again. She was married for God's sake.
A frantic medic bursting in to the hub caused Jenny to advert from her emotional rant. Everyone else seemed to snap out of their thoughts as well and turned towards the man, waiting for him to tell them the news on Cutter.
"Professor Cutter's awake," the medic squeaked nervously.
He wasn't able to say anything else, sadly, for the team was already out of the hub and sprinting to the medical bay. This area of the ARC wasn't very big. The medical bay involved of a main sitting room with two examination rooms, where they also did surgery, and a recovery room, which was about twenty feet long, filled with beds and curtains for privacy. The recovery room had a window next to the door, so those in the sitting area could look in on those recovering. Though, this window also had the capability to only let those in the sitting room view the recovery room. To those in the recovery room, it looked like a big piece of black glass. The team entered the sitting room and looked in on Cutter. He was sitting up on the second bed from the window and looked as if nothing had happened to him.
"He sure did recover well," commented Abby.
"Remember Abby, we're twenty-two years in the future," said Connor. "Medicine's probably revolutionized dramatically since our time."
"It has," said Emma. "He should be fine."
"I say Connor and Abby should go in first," said Danny. "They're the only two he'll remember. Well, other than Jenny…" Danny said this with a tad bit of jealously in his voice. He knew that Professor Cutter and Jenny definitely had a little "something" going on before he died. He just didn't want Jenny feeling like she made the wrong choice in the end, or getting any second thoughts. "…and Becker," he soon added. "Best to ease him in slowly so we don't overwhelm him."
Connor and Abby nodded then walked through the two doors that lead to the recovery room. Everybody else watched as the two walked in and started talking to Cutter. There seemed to be no offensive language or death threats thrown out in the first thirty seconds, so every expected that everything was going fine. About five minutes in the conversation, Fowler and Becker joined the team in the waiting room.
"We heard the news," said Becker. "Had to stop the meeting early to get here."
"Oh how tragic," murmured Danny, a bit sarcastically.
"Anything else happen?" asked Fowler, more towards Emma than anyone else.
"Not really," replied Emma. She paused for a bit. "Connor and Abby are talking to him," she mustered out in the end, glad she didn't say "mum and dad."
Fowler nodded and turned towards the large viewing window to watch the conversation while standing right next to Emma.
"How long has it been?" asked Cutter, trying to get a clarification on what was going on.
"Almost two years since you died for Abby, Sarah, Becker, Jenny, Danny and I since we're from the year 2010, but the six of us traveled through an anomaly in 2010 that lead us to 2032," said Connor, feeling as if he's already explained this to Cutter."So really, you've been dead for about 24 years."
"But the question is, was I really dead?" he asked himself.
"Well, we did bury you," said Connor.
Cutter sighed and ran his hands through his still quite long, blond hair.
"But let's just say, if I died, how can I be alive?"
"You don't remember?" asked Abby.
Cutter shook his head.
"What was the last thing you remember?"
Cutter thought for a moment before answering. It seemed as if it took a lot to recall the fuzzy memory that lurked in the back of his head.
"I was talking to Helen. I think I said something about her not being very smart, and then…nothing."
Abby nodded, taking all the information in before speaking to Cutter again. This caused silence to spread between the three as they sat in the recovery room.
"You know what I don't understand," pondered Cutter, interrupting Connor and Abby's thoughts quite abruptly. "The six of you supposedly died in or before the year 2032, but why did the government hire a bunch of teenagers? I mean, the new Lester is obviously the oldest, and he looks about…25ish."
"Apparently they were there when we died, and cleaned up the mess themselves," said Abby. "They also said that James Lester retired in 2030 and his son took over. Fowler was a soldier in training, next in line to be Captain I'm presuming; he'd be able to lead the back-up. As for the twins, I think they just got pulled into the ARC like Connor and I were."
Cutter, though still not believing a lot of the story his old colleagues were telling him, decided to go along with what the two were saying. He really didn't feel like making the situation more dramatic than it had to be.
"Okay," he said. "I'm getting up."
"But Lester says you need to rest!" said a frantic Connor, not wanting to get in trouble for letting Cutter escape the medical bay.
"If I can face James Lester, I'm sure I can face a young, inexperienced version of him."
The young couple looked at each other, not quite sure if Cutter exactly knew what he was getting into.
"They also said you need to stay in bed today, and possibly the entire week," argued Abby.
Cutter, who was half way out of the door, poked his head back into the recovery room.
"You're point?" he asked. When neither Connor nor Abby answered, he smiled and continued his way out the door. "I want everyone in the hub in ten," he said as he maneuvered through the crowd of people in the sitting room. "From both teams, no exceptions!"
A few people had to be woken up from still sleeping so they could attend Cutter's mandatory meeting. Patrick took ages to wake up, but after a while, everyone came to the agreement that he was faking it, so they dumped a large bucket of cold water on him. Stevie was the only exception, for she was saying that she felt a bit dizzy and light headed.
After a painful twenty minutes, everyone made their way to the hub. They found Cutter and Lester Jr. talking a bit, probably introducing each other. The parents of the past were surprised to see the two not at each other's throats. That is, until Cutter stormed away from him, rolling his eyes.
"Alright," said Cutter, scanning over the team. "For those of you who don't know me, I'm Professor Nick Cutter, former team leader. Now, Connor and Abby have told me everything about the two teams, so I want to know who Danny Quinn and Patrick are."
The two men stepped forward. Patrick was standing next to Alex and Fowler and Danny was over to the far left side, leaning on a lab table next to Jenny. Cutter couldn't help but notice how alike the two seemed; stance, posture, hair.
"I want to talk to the two of you later on. Don't worry; it's just some questions and suggestions. Now, I have heard everything about the last mission, and the creature. I don't know what it is you've encountered, and that's saying something. I plan on checking on all the archives and records and every bit of information there is on prehistoric creature findings to see what this creature is. So, until we do figure out what it is, we are assuming it should have never existed."
This got everyone confused.
"Why jump to that conclusion?" asked Sarah, who was standing next to Becker. "I mean, it could be some weird futuristic creature we haven't encountered yet."
"My first thought was it could be from the future, but as I was waiting for you slow-pokes, I decided to do a bit of digging on the last mission. Nice technology, by the way. Very advanced, the sealing device you used as well as the ADD were able to tell me where the anomaly was linked to. After looking at the anomaly readings, I came to the realization that this creature came out of the Permian era."
"But couldn't a future anomaly have linked to the Permian and the creature gone from the future, to the Permian, and then to this time?" asked Connor, standing by Abby and Emma.
"Only by anomaly creator," reminded Jenny. "The model didn't have any record of having anomalies leading to the future in the Permian era. So the only possibility, then, would have been Helen creating the anomalies herself."
"Created?" asked Cutter. "That isn't even possible. Last I checked, anomalies were arbitrary."
"Helen," responded Danny, "sort of figured out a way to create them."
"So them this is all of Helen's doing," concluded Cutter.
"Not exactly," said Jenny, slowly making her way towards Danny. "Mr. HotShot here took care of that."
Cutter turned towards the couple.
"You murdered my wife?" he asked simply, and sounded like he was dead serious.
"Well, not really. I merely got out of the way of a rampaging raptor falling off a cliff."
Deciding he didn't want the full set of details, and he could also just look it up in the archives, Cutter nodded and concluded he liked the team; new and old members. Sure, it sure was a big one, but they would manage…right?
"But," said Fowler quite suddenly.
Everyone snapped out of their thoughts and turned towards him.
"Helen Cutter could have done all of this before she died. She traveled through the anomalies for over eight years. Sometime in there, she could have decided to play a foul trick on the ARC in the future to get revenge incase she had a tragic mishap."
"Was there anything in that diary?" asked Becker to Sarah, knowing that she had been working on deciphering it for a few years.
"I read through the entire diary," said Sarah. "There was nothing about plans for bringing Cutter to the year 2032, or creating any anomalies in or to this year either. She did, though, talk about shooting Cutter. Even she wasn't expecting him to appear in the future. She thought he was dead for good."
"So whoever is planning this isn't Helen," confirmed Cutter, almost relieved about the fact.
"No sir," said Becker. "Seems as if Helen Cutter is out of our lives for good."
"Well that's a relief," murmured Cutter to himself. "Okay, now that it's settled that whoever this person is, is not my psychopathic wife, there's another issue we need to discuss. Connor also brought up another odd happening on the last mission."
"If I remember correctly," he said. "Every anomaly missions in Cardiff, up until 2010 at least, have been in the same spot."
"Yeah," said Sarah, still standing next to Becker, who now had his arm around her waist. "Remember the model, Connor. We were playing around with it one day and saw that the one set anomaly site in Cardiff was where it has always been, not in the cave like yesterday."
Connor's eyes got really big when he remembered what Sarah was talking about.
"Yes, I remember!" said Connor, as he jumped up a bit causing Abby and Emma to flinch a bit, "and we didn't find any other set anomaly sites in Cardiff did we?"
Sarah thought for a moment, making sure her response was accurate. When she responded no, Connor got even more excited, if that was even possible.
"So that means the anomaly was created by someone!" said Abby.
"But not Helen," reminded Danny.
"So then 'who was it,' is the question we should try to solve," said Cutter in barely a whisper.
Deciding that the team wouldn't be able to solve this issue today as well, Cutter decided to let the team go back to work, and start his little conference with the two team leaders. He had a little proposition he wanted to confirm with them to see if it was alright if they fell through with it.
Nicole, Alex, Fowler, Stevie, and Emma were all in the break room waiting for Patrick. He said that he wanted to discuss something with "his team" once his meeting with Cutter was over. Looking back on it, the new team didn't really participate in the conversation with Cutter. Fowler did play an important part, though, in bringing up Helen possibly doing this before she died, but that's all the next generation team was able contribute to the investigations. They had only been working for the ARC for about two months. They didn't know everything about everything quite yet.
Stevie was in a chair, sitting in what seemed to be a very uncomfortable position. Fowler and Emma were talking, Alex was looking through the newspaper, and Nicole was keeping Stevie company.
"Why is your foot underneath you and your hand behind your back?" asked Nicole.
"No reason," answered Stevie, a bit too quickly. "I'm stretching. It's…comfortable."
Before Nicole could protest any more, Patrick came into the break room and took a seat in the chair across from Alex. There was a weird vibe coming from him. He wasn't acting like himself. He was more…serious and…non-Quinn like. This worried everyone greatly.
"What did Cutter have to say?" asked Fowler.
"Just a few things," said Patrick. "I didn't know he was such a brilliant man! Well he's completely mad at times, but still really smart."
"What were his questions?" asked Emma.
"Just who was on my team and some background stuff, but we did talk about who should "lead" the big team."
"Big team?" asked Alex, a bit confused.
"It's too big of a job for one person to take care of all of the thirteen people," concluded Nicole. "That's why we stayed with Danny leading his team and Patrick leading ours."
"Oh, I know," said Patrick, "which is why Cutter suggested that we keep it like that, but he would sort of be all around in charge. He said that dad and I could still lead our teams, but we would report to him."
"That doesn't sound very Cutter-like, after what I've heard about him," pondered Alex.
"Yeah, from the stories, he seemed to be in charge because he was most experienced," said Emma.
"It was Lester's idea," said Patrick. "Cutter told us he wasn't all for the idea, but that it would save us from always having to report to Lester."
"So you agreed to it?" asked Nicole, still not sure whether his twin was exactly going with the subject.
"Not yet," said Patrick, "I said I wanted to consult with my team first."
"Smart move," said Emma.
"So, are you guys okay with the idea?"
Alex, Fowler, Nicole, and Emma all agreed they'd be okay with it. They all turned towards Stevie, who hadn't responded right away, which was unlike her.
"Stevie, you oaky?" asked Alex, going over to his sister.
Stevie inched a bit away from Alex as he approached her.
"I'm fine," she said quickly. "Just don't want you to catch whatever bug I have."
There was a pause.
"Oh, and I'm okay with Cutter's idea."
"Well that settles that matter," sighed Patrick.
"Is there something else?" asked Nicole.
"Well, I was thinking, since Cutter is here and all, do you think he could help us in general. You know, with keeping things quiet around our parents."
Nicole through for a moment; it sounded like a good idea. "Did Connor say anything about Cutter appearing?" she asked Emma.
"No," she responded. "He only said that he and the five others were coming."
"So not even Connor knew anything about this happening," said Fowler.
"Which probably means that Cutter was never supposed to appear," concluded Nicole. "Maybe we should ask for his help. This is getting pretty extreme."
"It's still risky, though," said Alex, "and we're doing fine so far as it is. If we really need to, then I say we can, but not now."
"Good idea," said Fowler.
Soon after that, the team had to continue on with their work, so everyone slowly left the break room. Though, Stevie was still acting strange. She slowly walked out of the break room, and quite awkwardly as well. Only Emma was in there now, for she didn't feel up to completing her paperwork. So she decided to do what she always did in her free time, draw. Deciding to stop drawing before she finished a creature, she ended up adding little unnecessary details to a few drawings to prevent them from being completed. Emma love spending her time like this. She just sat with her journal and draw the day away. She did it all the time a few months back, before she started working for the AEC and dropped out of school. Now, she seemed to barely have time for it at all. This made her wish she did cherish the times when she had enough time to do anything without worries.
Emma slowly snapped out of her thoughts when she felt someone shaking her. Caught off guard, she jerked her head so that she was no longer facing the journal. She then felt a hand go onto her shoulder to calm her down, which she did. Slowly, she started gaining her senses, and saw it was Fowler whose hand was on her shoulder. As she looked up at him, she started to notice that the anomaly alarm was going off. She quickly got out of her seat to go and get the co-ordinates, only to be pushed back down in it by Fowler.
"It's okay," he said. "Connor's going to get it."
Emma relaxed a bit in her chair.
"What happened?" she asked.
"You were asleep," he replied. "Everyone got worried when you didn't show up right away. I said I would see if you were alright."
"Thanks," she said. "I probably would have missed the call if you didn't come."
Fowler gave a small smile then shifted his gaze over to Emma's journal of creatures. He looked at the one she was currently drawing.
"That's really good," he commented. "I can't draw to save my life."
Emma smiled at the compliment. She picked up the journal and handed it to Fowler. "You can look at it if you want."
"You sure?" he asked.
"Yeah, go ahead."
Fowler smiled and took the journal from Emma. "I'll give you your grade once I'm done looking through it," he teased.
Emma smiled and gave him a small punch in the arm.
This would sort of be where the series would break. Kind of like what they are doing now. A big mystery lies ahead of the readers and the author is taking FOREVER to update. Again, my apologies. PLEASE REVIEW! I love reviews and the more you review, the more happier I am, which makes me motivates, and means MORE UPDATES! Hahaha, love you all.
~Logan ;)