Chapter 4
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.
Note: contains spoilers for the official series.
The mood was subdued as the ARC field team approached the location of the latest time anomaly. "A public bathhouse?" Connor exclaimed in a half-hearted attempt to light the mood. "Now I must've seen everything!"
There was a good hard pause as everyone tried to figure out if he was joking or not.
"So, are you joking or not?" Emily asked when it became clear that Connor was trying to elaborate. "Because right now? It could go either way."
"Then let's keep it that way," Connor muttered quietly. "I just don't want to go wrong the way our last mission did."
Becker opened his mouth to say something, then caught Jess's worried face and changed his mind. "Well, then maybe we need to make a new strategy. Emily, would you and Jess mind covering the rear?"
"Isn't it the strategy that we decided on in the first place?" Matt muttered wryly.
Something shifted in Becker's facial expression. "Excuse me," he grabbed Matt by the arm and began to lead him away from the cars towards the doors of the bathhouse, clearly intent on having a confrontation.
"Um," Connor turned to Emily. "Should we step in?"
"No, we probably would just make it worse... wait! Something changed," Emily said slowly, "and stopped too quickly. We need to join them – allofus."
And so they went.
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"Okay, what's wrong?" Emily asked as she approached Matt and Becker, with Jess and Connor trailing behind her.
"Jess," Becker said firmly, his eyes fixed on something just 'peeking' from beneath the door, "please, stay behind – you promised!"
"Well, yes, but," Jess leaned over and around Emily to take a good look and frowned. The thing Becker and others were looking at was a stain of a dark brownish-red colour, not quite rust, more like-
"Blood," Emily whispered, "somebody already was hurt in there, and-"
"No," Jess said firmly, as she hardened her grip on an EMP, "I'm not staying behind on my first mission like some useless baggage. I'm not."
"Jess, don't argue, you might die!" Becker snapped. "Maitland actually had field experience, let alone a year of survival in the Cretaceous, and yet Leonard had killed her, somehow, I'm sure! I do not want you to die – not ever in general and not now in particular!"
There was silence, and not just because Becker had been yelling just moments ago. "Well," Jess finally spoke, "well, Hilary, I don't know whether to slap you or to hug you or both... but I'm not staying behind. I promise not to die, but I'm not letting you die too."
"Jess, I can take care of myself," Becker stammered, rather surprised to see Jess's new, resolute face. "We-"
"Becker," Jess said firmly, "don't. As you have pointed just now, training and experience goes so far, so don't be a hypocrite."
"Fine," Becker deflated, "but-"
"This is all very exciting, but are we coming in or what?" Connor spoke for the first time since Jess and Becker began to argue...when the door creaked open – seemingly of its own volition.
"Now that," Matt muttered in the following silence, "is probably a trap."
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As the ARC field team carefully stepped inside (with Jess and Emily in the rear, as promised), there was no actual indication of a trap, however, and the blood trail seemingly vanished in one of the baths, now abandoned, but still full of water.
"Hmm," Matt and Becker began to carefully swing their rifles around, looking for some track... when Becker suddenly halted.
"I got another idea," he said grimly, and flung something that resembled a grenade at the ceiling. In fact, it was a grenade that exploded into dozens of small rubber pellets that just bounced around while the ARC team huddled behind the doors.
"Becker, what are you doing?" Matt hissed.
"Thinking outside the box, 'Leader'!" Becker hissed back. "I've been neglecting my duties of keeping this team safe for too long!"
"This is my job-"
"Guys, the pellets have stopped bouncing," Connor said quickly, as he snuck another peak into the bathhouse.
Crack!
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For several moments nobody moved as Connor lay prone on the ground, wheezing.
"Connor," Jess whispered, "are you hit?"
"Just by Becker," Connor wheezed, "he knocked me down as soon as the gun fired... that was a gun that fired, right?"
"Some sort of a repeating rifle, judging by the slug, and not one of ours – a Yankee one, I think," Becker muttered, also prone. So was everyone else, for that matter, but Connor was only one lying on his back, winded.
"What's a repeating rifle?" Emily asked curiously, as she began to get up.
"Down!" Becker yelled desperately, and Emily dropped – just in time, as several more shots riddled through the door and the air on her and Jess's side.
Becker sprung, whirling around the door and launching a second stun grenade in the direction of the shooter. More pellets flew, some even hitting Becker as he lay prone on the floor, but the majority of them remained on the other side of the bath.
Something large and heavy fell into the bath water.
"Got you," Becker grinned, but that grin immediately vanished, as the sniper burst from the bath. It was shaped like a man – two legs, two arms, a single head, but its skin was covered in greyish-grin scales, it had a short but powerful tail behind it, and its face was more like that of a reptile, complete with two small horns, positioned directly one after another like those of an African rhinoceros.
As Becker watched, the creature discarded the rifle, pulling out a large machete-like knife with its other hand and swung it at the man. Becker was barely able to block the knife's swing with his rifle, but the impact not only knocked him on the back, but also broke the rifle in two.
The creature swung again, and swung hard, but Becker twisted, causing the descending blade to miss him by a few millimetres. The creature grabbed Becker with its other hand, and Becker pulled out a combat knife of his own, and began to desperately stab his assailant in the stomach and groin, thighs and the knife-holding hand – and his efforts were not altogether unsuccessful, as the creature flung him away, howling from about a dozen non-fatal stabbed wounds.
Matt fired his own taser at the creature, and hit it dead center, dropping it in its tracks.
"Good!" Emily proclaimed, with venom in her voice unheard-of ever before by any of the ARC team. She stalked out towards the prone creature and shouted, loudly:
"You! I know your kind works in pairs, you monster! Come out and face me, or are you the coward that can only shoot in the back – or the coward that leaves their partner behind?"
A second creature emerged from the decorative shrubbery to Emily's right. It cast away its own rifle and pulled out its own knife – all in one smooth motion as it charged. Its knife descended upon one Emily's kukris... who deflected it in one smooth motion, while stabbing her assailant in the thigh with the second blade.
Blood spurted, and the creature collapsed. The fact that Matt shot it as well was not amiss either.
"And now," Emily said flatly, but Matt interrupted her:
"No! Emily – don't!"
"Matt!" Emily yelled back, and there was pain in her voice, not unlike the pain that was evident in Connor's voice when he talked about Abby, or Becker when he talked about Jess. "These things... they got the majority of my tribe...only, I, Charlotte and Ethan had survived... they have to pay..."
"Oh really? We do, do we?"
Becker, Matt and Emily stiffened, as more of those creatures emerged into the bathhouse's antechamber, flanking two more people.
One of them was a woman – well, probably. She had no tail, and her scales were only in patches, and they were bluish in colour, to match her hair, and she had a horn on her forehead – a single horn, not two, and much bigger than those of others, but she still looked mostly human.
The other newcomer was Ethan Dombrowski.
"You!" Emily spat, ignoring everyone else. "Ethan, how could you? Have you forgotten what they did to the rest of us? Have you forgotten Charlotte?"
"No, Emily, I have not," Ethan replied, his voice unusually serious, "but during all these times that were together, I realized one thing: with Charlotte gone, all I care about is killing things...and also people."
"You know, I also realized one thing," Becker suddenly spoke up, still holding on to his own blade. "If you look past the horn, and the bluish hair, and those ears, she looks rather like our fearless leader. Matt, do you have something to tell us?"
"No," the woman answered instead, "we never net. But we do share a father: I am the daughter of the one his people knew as Iuna."
"Lies!" Matt erupted. "My father and lady Iuna were friends, nothing more, and she was a human-"
It was then that Jess and Connor jumped from behind their scanty cover and discharged their tasers at the light fixtures up ahead. The latter naturally, was overloaded and exploded in a cloud of embers and sparks, half-blinding and half-surprising everybody. Moreover, it was enough, for Emily and Matt and Becker to flee out of the bathhouse into their car, and do not stop until they reached the ARC building.
End chapter 4