Abby
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures.
1.
'Sometimes,' Abby mused as she went to bed after talking to Connor with the unexpected twist in the end, 'being a mature person just wasn't worth it – like tonight. I went home fully expecting to succeed in shaming Connor into, well, something, and instead, well it got turned around completely onto me.'
At this point in time, Abby Maitland's mood was almost as black as the night outside their house, which was currently actually grey and grizzled from fog and cold, drizzling rain that was falling down even so late in the fall. While normally Abby loved falling asleep when it rained outside the house – the sound of raindrops falling put her into a rhythm that helped her fall asleep even quicker than usual – now currently even that sound didn't help her any: instead, she concentrated on other sounds: bed springs creaking under Connor's tossing and turning body, Rex chirping in a curious way from the kitchen, the creaks and squawks of Sid and Nancy echoed by two or three more high-pitched but similar squeaks-
Abby frowned. That didn't sound, or come out in her head, quite right. She listened in, and sure enough, there were just a bit too many diictodon sounds coming out of their kitchen, just a bit too much noise for just Sid and Nancy to make – and consequently, Abby decided to investigate, quietly approaching the kitchen armed with a flashlight.
And yet, this still meant that she was rather unprepared to see not only Rex, chirping cheerfully from the top of the fridge, as well as Sid and Nancy snorting at the foot of the same household utensil, but also three smaller diictodon huddled between the two adults, looking slightly more nervous than the latter. They were also slightly chubbier and cuter than their parents, yet upon seeing them, Abby felt faint all the same, and began to frenetically wonder if Helen was spending her nights in Jenny's living room, and if not, would Jenny mind if Abby would call her so late at night and ask for Helen-
"Oh, I see that you're awake too," Connor, looking considerably less shocked or confused than Abby entered their kitchenette as well. "And the old gang is here as well."
Abby was still too shocked to respond to Connor in any way, but Rex chirped in confirmation and the diictodon family collectively turned their heads to Connor in an expectant way.
"Right then," Connor nodded, all play-business for once today. "Let's get started." He opened the fridge and pulled-out a large plastic bowl that held "Carrots for tubers, lettuce for the greens, some water sprinkled for moisture and white bread for carbohydrates, starches and fibre. Enjoy, you all!" He set the bowl on the floor, and immediately the diictodon tore into the vegetarian dish, their tusked beaks opening and snapping shut like well-oiled mini-guillotines.
Upon seeing the other reptiles begin to feast, Rex chirped once more, this time more impatiently. "Right, mate," nodded Connor, and threw a thawed shrimp into the air. Immediately, like a small green lightning, Rex flew off the fridge, grasped the shrimp in mid-air with his jaws and landed, still holding onto it, onto the top of the kitchen cabinets.
"Uh, Connor," Abby began, but was interrupted by the loud crunch of Rex snapping the still-armoured shrimp into two, before beginning to eat-out the softer inner meat from out of the now-broken shell. "You do this often?" Abby finished instead.
"Every night since they hatched," Connor responded, now more at ease than earlier that night when he and Abby were talking over their respective love lives. "I probably shouldn't have encouraged them, but Rex is still active during the day, mostly, and honestly, without you the nights were just so empty..." he drawled away, clearly remembering yesterday's events as well. "So, uh, why are you up?"
"Same as you – I just heard the commotion and came to investigate," Abby said a trifle weakly, as the assembled reptiles ignored them and just ate their late suppers instead. "So, uh, how and when did Sid and Nancy breed?"
"About the same time when your brother left and I left Lester's flat," Connor said. "They made a nest of sorts in the basement and Nancy was hatching them in there, and Sid was raiding our garden, 'cause we were still stuck in the past at that time. When I came back and Rex showed me what was going on, I sort of began to supply them with domestic greenery instead, before our neighbours caught a whiff that something was going on."
"But still, why carrots? Why not tomatoes or cucumbers?"
Connor sighed. "Abby, they come from late Permian. Back then, there were no fruits or flowers and very few trees. The diictodon were herbivores, but they ate mainly tubers and low-lying shrub foliage, hence the carrots and lettuce. I also added some white bread for carbohydrates and fibre and the like for a well-rounded diet."
"And water?"
"They're desert animals, Abby, they – and their pups – need water only every two weeks or so, so it's no big deal," Connor shrugged.
"And Rex?"
"Rex? Rex was kind of jealous of their midnight lunches and he was beginning to eye the youngsters in a funny way, and that caused Sid and Nancy to begin to give him the evil eye, so I threw him a defrosted shrimp to keep him happy."
"Why a shrimp?"
"'Cause Rex didn't eat any tubers or leaves," Connor said seriously. "He, however, ate insects and spiders, and to him a shrimp is like a big juicy beetle or something." Connor paused, and then added: "Abby, he is a reptile, he's got a different metabolism from a warm-blooded creature – a big snack like that keeps him full until daybreak or so."
"Does Caroline know?"
"Probably," Connor looked away. "Let's not go there, please, not now."
"And Lester? Have you told him?"
"No, actually, when I found out, he and others have already left for France, and the reports from Sarah show that the situation was already tense and complicated before the giant weasels invaded, so – no..."
"Right," Abby exhaled heavily, "that's good to know. Will we tell Jenny and Helen?"
"We'll, uh, um, I don't know?"
"Right, fair enough, well, I'm back to bed," Abby said crossly, re-opened the door of their kitchenette...
...and almost walked into a time anomaly that was levitating in the corridor.
"Oh, crap!"
2.
"Helen? Jenny? Anyone?"
"Miss Maitland, good morning to you too. Do you know that it's three o'clock in morning?"
"There's a time anomaly in our corridor, and I, Connor, our pets – we're sort of trapped in our kitchen."
"Right." Helen's voice turned business-like, and then more distant, as she apparently turned away from the phone receiver at her end and shouted, very loudly:
"Jenny! Wake-up! It's an ARC-related emergency!!"
"Wha-? What is it?" Jenny's sleepier voice came joined in on the conversation. "Abby, Connor, is that you?"
Carefully, yet quickly enough, Abby repeated their domestic situation regarding the time anomaly.
"Abby," Jenny's voice turned business-like as well. "Grab your pets if you can and get out of there through the window or something. If another starving giant bird or prehistoric tiger or some other big carnivore gets through there, you all will be sitting ducks, do you hear me?"
"Yes, Jenny, we're on it," Abby said quickly, "thanks. Connor-" she put down the phone receiver only to see Connor moving in the direction of the time anomaly. "What're you doing now?"
"Abby, come on," Connor said quietly. "I just want one good look at some sort of a prehistoric or a future world – please?" He made a pouting, puppy-eyed face at her.
For her part, Abby exhaled through her teeth: Jenny made some very good sense when she told them to get out of the kitchenette and their house in general – if there were any future predators, or raptors, or simply wild leopards or bears waiting or lurking on the other side of the time anomaly, then them venturing through the time anomaly unprepared would probably spell their end. And yet, unexpectedly, Abby felt something rebellious rise deep in her gut, suggesting that if she backed down now, she would never be able to look Connor in the eye again, or her own expression, or comment on Jenny's weight and lack of adventure spirit, so she said:
"Fine, Connor, but it'll be just a peak, and if I don't like what's there, we're going back and leaving the house, okay?"
"Aye-aye, captain Abby!" Connor said cheerfully. "Therefore, let's go now!"
And so they went.
3.
To say that the view of what greeted Abby and Connor when they emerged through the time anomaly was unexpected would be incorrect: Abby, at least, did expect to meet some sort of dinosaurs on the other end. However, even she did not expect to see a semi-tropical sea shore, almost hedged-upon by rather exotic-looking plants.
"What are they?" Abby whispered in something approaching genuine awe as she and Connor just stood there, quietly, with the time anomaly at their backs.
"Iguanodons, or rather iguanodonts of some sort – ornithopod dinosaurs of some kind in other words," Connor said helpfully, albeit misinterpreting Abby's question somewhat... but not by far: the striped, powerfully-built herbivores up to 10 meters in length in some cases had caught her attention as well.
"I, I meant the smaller, shorter, armoured ones," she argued weakly. "I'm guessing they're from a different family?"
"Yeah, they're some sort of thyreoporan specie – polacanthus, or Gastonia, or something like that," Connor nodded, observing the living tanks that grazed alongside the taller iguanodons. "I'm not sure if they're nodosaurids or ankylosaurids without examining them closer, especially their tails-" he trailed away, as one of the younger iguanodons, having eating its' fill for now, trotted away from the tree line to water's edge to stretch its' muscles and to bask in the sun – and that was all that an aquatic predator had needed.
Without any warning, a huge drab-coloured shape easily more than twice as big as the dinosaur burst from the sea, grabbed the animal's right foreleg in its' jaws and began to pull it backwards into the water seemingly without any effort on its' part. The dinosaur bleated either from pain or panic or both, and began... to desperately jab the spike on its' forelimb into the sea hunter's jaws, as its relatives fled inland, away from the monster.
Once, twice, thrice it stabbed the marine monster, and then the sea reptile had reached the deeper waters and began to flex itself around, effectively lifting the young dinosaur off the ground and flinging into the shallows of the shore. The impact stunned the dinosaur long enough for the other animal to release its' grip on the foreleg and bite through the ribcage instead: one bite, and the young iguanodon's body slacked, allowing its' killer to drag it off into the ocean's depths with ease.
Slowly – she has been standing closer to the water's edge than Connor – Abby turned to her friend. "We're leaving now-" she began, and then several things happened at the same time.
First, a really loud, practically thundering roar came from the prehistoric jungle, causing Abby and Connor to momentarily freeze in their tracks – just as the time anomaly winked and vanished, leaving them stranded. Then, several of the plant-eating dinosaurs – more of the same iguanodon variety – burst back from the jungle and flee up the sandy shore instead, keeping an eye on the marine hunters as well. And finally, the land hunters made their appearances, and these were the true meat-eating dinosaurs, as big as the biggest of the local iguanodons, but completely different.
Initially though, Abby was still in shock from the time anomaly's disappearance and the brief iguanodon stampede, so what struck her first, were the legs, built very much like a ground-dwelling bird – a black grouse, perhaps, or a snow ptarmigan. Unlike a ptarmigan's legs, however, the feet of the meat-eating dinosaur were armed with powerfully-looking talons, and were, much, much taller and thicker.
Silently, the gazes of the still-prone Abby and Connor travelled upwards, to the torso, which was covered, just like the legs and feet, in dark and opaque black-coloured skin with some russet-coloured vertical bars on the sides and back, which possessed a proportionally short ridge of skin and bone as well. Yet there was nothing short in regards to the dinosaur's swishing tail, or the fore limbs that ended in three wickedly hooked claws each, or the head and jaws, which appeared big and muscular and toothy enough to bite-off an iguanodon's head and neck with one bite.
Finally, as an extra detail to an already-finished masterpiece of hunting prowess, the initial meat-eater was accompanied by its' mate, a slightly smaller dinosaur whose colouration was brighter and less opaque than the first one's; in short, it appeared that Abby and Connor were doomed.
The older and bigger dinosaur moved forwards out of the tree colour, its' yellowish eyes scouring the scenery around it, its' nostrils flaring as it smelled out anything edible – and Abby and Connor were definitely in that category.
Slowly, ponderously, unflinchingly, the meat-eater's great head shifted in their direction: it was the end, as far as Abby and Connor were concerned, for the two dinosaurs had cut them off the relative safety of the tree cover, and the sea monsters in the water made the idea of swimming to safety impossible.
"Abby, I-" Connor half-turned to Abby even as she did the same thing in his direction with an unreadable look that could be either a matching proclamation of love or a start of the biggest dressing-down that had ever heard. "I-"
"Ah, there you two are!" Helen's voice brought Connor's admittance of whatever short. "Let's go – oh."
The meat-eating dinosaurs were beginning to pick up speed, seeing how their prey seemed to be escaping. Now they looked as quick and relentless as a pair of runaway freight trains – only shorter and deadlier. Helen thought, upon seeing this, just grabbed Connor and Abby by the napes of their pyjamas and pulled them backwards through the time anomaly, just as the dinosaurs had reached them – and then-
4.
"What were you two thinking? I told you not to go there – and you went there!" Jenny's dark-eye glare wasn't as intimidating as the yellowish gaze of the carnivorous dinosaurs, but certainly not for the lack of trying. "Abby – did you have a blonde moment? Connor – on the other hand, I really don't want to know!"
"And on that note, let's consider the first wave of criticism at an end," Helen said bemusedly, "and for my part, I'll note that you could've tried to take some sort of supplies with you, if you were going to explore."
"We were just going to have a look and go right back, but the dinosaurs...they were simply amazing," Connor responded quietly.
"And now you have a chance to remember them always," Helen shrugged. "Being an anthropologist, these reptiles aren't particularly attractive to me, but it's your call."
"No, it's not!" Jenny snapped crossly. "Have you forgotten who's in charge of the ARC to begin with?"
"Uh, James Lester?"
"No, well, yes, well," Jenny foundered and looked at Helen for support; unfortunately, the other woman didn't appear to be particularly supporting at the moment and just gazed bemusedly at the younger adults.
"Look, you two," she said after a brief, though somewhat uncomfortable, pause. "Why don't you get dressed and go with us to the ARC already? There, Connor can get whatever the equipment he has to come back and investigate the time anomaly's site and Abby still has to overlook the two terror birds that we brought back yesterday to the center."
"Yeah, I still need to do that, I just forgot, what with all the dinosaurs and sea monsters," Abby sighed. "What were their names again?"
"Mosasaurs?" Jenny suggested in a gentler tone of voice.
"No – the shape was too wide, there was still a neck – it was a pliosaur of some sorts," Connor spoke up suddenly. "Abby – I'm sorry that I got you into-"
"Yeah, but now you're out," Helen said firmly, "so stop waxing romantic and get dressed already – you're not exactly that sort of a paragon of manliness to show-off to everyone with whom you're working, you know?"
Connor turned red and fled into his room to change. Abby belatedly realized that this applied to her as well and followed Connor's actions as well.
5.
The terror birds, Abby first thinks when she sees them, are very much birds, not dinosaurs in feathers, even if they are probably twice her height, and have beaks that could bite-off her hand and arm up to the elbow in a single gulp and their wings are more like twisted, clawed forelimbs with actual claws on them... yeah, they weren't exactly dinosaurs, but they certainly tried.
And yet, Abby realized that they weren't dinosaurs, not precisely. True, the look in their eyes certainly was raptor-like, but that was the key to Abby's dissatisfaction with them, so to speak. Abby had met raptors at least three times – once in a mall before Jenny had joined the center, once in Leek's hide-out when Stephen had died, and once in the Cretaceous itself, when they had come with Danny to stop Helen – and every time the raptors proved to be quick and tenacious opponents, vicious predators and everything else, but after the meat-eating giant of today, as well as the giganotosaurus in the airport, Abby was no longer sure that the raptors themselves were 'all that'.
"Who is all that?" Helen suddenly asked, as she had silently approached Abby from behind, startling the younger woman.
"Raptors," Abby quickly collected herself. "Sure, they were nasty animals, like wild dogs or jackals, only without their charm or anything like it," she grimaced. "One of them had even eaten its' own young, you know?"
"If it did it, then it probably wasn't its' own young," Helen shook her head. "Among the dinosaurs, raptors were some of the smarter ones, as smart as jackdaws or the Tower's ravens."
"The tower's-?"
"The Tower of London," Helen shrugged, grimacing slightly, as if she remembered something that she didn't like. "Anyways, these aren't dinosaurs, they're birds-"
"Birds are dinosaurs, so to speak," Abby rolled her eyes. "Didn't Nick tell you that?"
"Yes – but it's not your point, is it?"
"Right," Abby nodded, belatedly remembering that mentioned Nick to Helen wasn't the most tactful thing ever. "Anyways, I guess I was thinking that by looking at these two you can see their dinosaur ancestors – but a very specific dinosaur ancestor, you know? The bigger meat-eaters – they weren't much related to birds, were they?"
"No, they just had a common ancestor – a very distant common ancestor," Helen nodded.
"Hah?"
"Didn't your boyfriend explain? The ancestors of both birds and tyrannosaur dinosaurs were small, feathered meat-eating dinosaurs-"
"What we saw, it wasn't a T-Rex," Abby shook her head. "It had three fingers on each hand, each clawed like a really big hook, and it had a ridge along its' back – not a sail like that of the spinosaurus in the movie, but a much smaller ridge."
Helen blinked and stared at Abby with something suspiciously resembling respect. "Fascinating. You realize that you have just described a dinosaur that I have never seen?"
"I have? You haven't? But you-"
"-am an anthropologist, my dear, and have never liked dinosaurs to begin with," Helen shrugged. "Never hid the fact from Nick either."
"Right. Anyways," Abby took a deep breath, "what are you doing here?"
"I came with you, remember?"
"No, I mean what are you doing here?"
"Uh," Helen had the good graces to look slightly embarrassed, "Jenny asked me to come with her."
"Doesn't she trust you?"
"After I have spent most of her bathroom shampoo and what-not on a good hard soak - apparently not."
"Must've been some bath-"
"Oh yes, yes it was," Helen smiled in a rather self-pleasing way. "It was probably my best bath in a long, long while. But never mind me – what about you?"
"What about me?"
Helen pointed at the birds. "Oh! Well, I-I am not sure," Abby admitted. "Is there anything that you can tell me for a start?"
"Hmm... Ruled the South American prairies for around three or four million years, hunting down small or slow-moving animals, used speed rather than brute strength to bring down prey, let it bleed to death before eating it, are rather cautious because of their hollow bird bones, died out during the Ice Age period due to competition with sabre-tooth cats and the like. Oh, and they know how to use their long necks to maximum efficiency – they could use them to drag monkeys out of trees and such, so don't get too close to them."
"Drag monkeys out of trees? I thought that they lived in prairies."
"They did, but eventually sabre-tooth cats began to push them out of the prairies for real, so they had to find new places to live, including the Amazonian jungle. Only it didn't really go too well, they were too adapted for prairie life, so they died out. But before they did, well, they improvised – and that included dragging monkeys and the like out of trees when given the chance."
"Hah. Interesting," Abby said thoughtfully, turning back to the terror birds, but her contemplation was interrupted by Connor's rather triumphant re-emergence, as he appeared on the scene and proclaimed:
"I did it!"
"Did what? Already? On the first try? No way!" Helen fired back. "Mr. Temple, you're being hasty-"
"No, I am not. Neither you nor Nick may have been technically savvy, but I am! Why don't you go and see what I have done?"
"Let's just go," Abby said slowly. "Otherwise, he'll just get onto our nerves until he goes and does it anyways – this way, we'll at least be able to control and direct his enthusiasm."
"That sounds reasonable enough, let's go."
And so they went.
6.
"Ta-da!!" Connor said proudly as soon as they exited the ARC's main building and came into one of the secondary parking lots adjacent to it. "Behold my invention!"
"What invention? You just re-wired my main time anomaly manifestation device with your stabilizer-"
"Exactly! It was simple, really, once I understood what each button did-"
"And the energy cost? I have also shown how much energy it consumed-"
"It doesn't matter – my machine isn't exactly energy cheap either, but Lester – when he learned this – he just gave me a green light in regards to cash," Connor said excitedly.
"Hah," Helen's poker face was still on. "I bet that that Christine Johnson woman would've been happy to learn that little chestnut to blind-side Lester right-on, eh?"
"Yeah – killing her was one of the better things that you did to the ARC, according to Lester," Connor nodded, looking rather discomfited for a change. "They say that once news of her death reached the PM and others, they actually threw a party after her wake."
"Yeah, it was a seventies disco-dance party – personally, I thought that it was tacky," Abby added, beginning to grow rather disturbed by Helen Cutter's poker face. "I mean, yeah, she was... I mean, you were almost one of us – almost, because you killed Stephen, and Nick, and it's kind of hard to forgive you for that, thought you certainly do try and all, but, anyways, as far as the ARC went, you were somebody, while Christine... I don't know, she was just an arrogant female person of Lester without his better qualities – you know, kind of how a raptor is like a jackal, but also-?"
"Yeah, I remember you mentioning it... anyways, uh, Connor, I see that you're trying to for early Cretaceous now?"
"What? Oh, oh yes," Connor said, clearly relieved by the abrupt shift in the conversation for a change. "And incidentally, that's where we went the first time, and by 'we' I mean me and Abby back in the morning."
"Really? So you have figured out what sort of a meat-eater has attacked you two back then?"
"Yeah – the back ridge was a giveaway: we were dealing with acrocanthosaurus, or simply two acros," Connor said calmly. "They're really interesting creatures, hardly known to science-"
"No, they're not," Abby said firmly, "they're just like the giganotosaurus – terrifying, maybe even majestic, but interesting? No, no way."
"Now, Abby-"
"Connor, what are we even arguing about? Whether dinosaurs are only interesting, or simply majestic? What's the difference?"
"Well, you don't want to study a majestic animal, you just go and see in the zoo-"
"Connor, I work at the zoo, and let me tell you, there's plenty of studying of animals done there-"
Helen cleared her throat. "People, as fascinating as your argument is, I want to see what Connor Temple did in terms of advancing chronological technology, okay?"
"There's no need of being sarcastic-"
"I'm not sarcastic! When I married Nick, I was so in love with him that I bent over backwards – and I don't mean that in a sexual sense – to accommodate him and his mammoth mother, that old... never mind. Well, you have seen as to where that approach has lead, and so I sincerely hope that you two will avoid that path."
"Oh. Right," Connor slowly said. "Well, I-I guess that I now show you how it all works, right?" and he flipped the switch.
7.
It was actually a very good thing that Helen was standing next to Connor: as soon as the time anomaly manifested and a solid stream of water burst forth, aiming straight for Connor like a massive battering ram, Helen pulled Connor down and flicked the switch closing the time anomaly and letting the cut-off water collapse into a puddle on the ground.
"Mr. Temple," Helen began in her teacher's voice and Connor gulped, sensing that he was going to catch it now. "What would you call this?" She pulled-off a dead something off his invention.
"It's a squid?" Abby suggested meekly from her place in the lot.
"No, but a good try. It's not a squid because it has a shell," Helen said, softening somewhat, "and moreover, it's not a curved shell, so it's not an ammonite either."
"It's a - it's a belemnite, right?" Connor said, also meekly. "They died out at the end of the Cretaceous."
"Very good," Helen nodded and dropped the armoured mollusc into Connor's hands. "Now, Mr. Temple-"
"Can I ask a question?" Abby asked, trying not to actually raise her hand or anything. "How exactly did we end up with water and prehistoric squids? This morning we came onto dry end – it was a sea shore, but we were on land."
"Ah, thank you for leading me to my point," Helen looked down onto Connor with definite disapproval. "Mr. Temple, in your calculations you forgot the little thing called the Earth's rotation around its' axis – you forgot that back all of those millions of years, Earth did just that, and what was dry land in the morning rotates with the rest of the planet and is replaced by a sea as time goes on. And furthermore, the fact that you have moved through space, as well through time-"
"What are you three been doing?" a loud, angry, shrill voice resonated through the lot. The voice belonged to Jenny Lewis – and she wasn't happy.
8.
"Hello, Jenny," Helen seemed unflustered by the other woman's anger. "What has happened on your end?"
"You mean you don't know?" Jenny glared with suspicion at the time traveller.
"Oh, please, just tell us – after all, neither Connor nor Abby know."
"Right. Well, we've been hit by a mother of all black-outs – literally. All electric devices have just stopped working!" Jenny exclaimed, still a bit shrilly.
There was a pause, as Abby and Connor first exchanged looks with each other and then looked at Connor's new invention. "What?" Jenny exclaimed. "What-"
"Jenny, if you move a bit to your left, you'll step right onto a Cretaceous jellyfish," Helen said mildly, "and in a more general sense, Connor here is beginning to understanding that modern and future technologies require different amount of energy to function properly."
"Connor," Jenny sighed heavily, "you tried to goof-off or something, hasn't you?"
"I didn't, I-"
"Mr. Temple made a slight mistake, worsened by James Lester's high-handed approach to technology and science," Helen said calmly. "Please don't be angry at him, be angry at me, if anyone."
"Why should I be angry at you-"
"Because of this," Helen replied, as she pulled out a different time anomaly manifestation device out of her pocket, and pressed a series of buttons. Immediately, a time anomaly manifested itself, and another person fell out of it. Then the time anomaly vanished, but nobody was watching it – instead, everybody stared at Christine Johnson being very much alive, even if very scared and confused, crawling on the parking lot's asphalt.
9.
The pause went for a long while, and then Jenny turned back to Helen, even as Lorraine (she had come out a bit after Jenny did) continued to stare in fascination at Christine crawling and staring at nothing in particular in the parking lot.
"You're right, I am angry, but not because you brought her back," she told the other woman, "but because you didn't bring Nick-"
"I can't bring Nick back," Helen replied bitterly. "He is really dead, just like Stephen. Christine Johnson, on the other hand, has never been dead, but, ah, put into storage instead."
"What about a future predator? There was one," Abby spoke up.
"A hologram projection made by a projector that I bought on e-bay in America after these things went out of style in about a century or two from now, but by modern standards they're quite convincing, wouldn't you two agree?" Helen turned to Abby and Connor, who nodded in agreement, instinctively.
"Right, I see," Jenny exhaled. "Well, you know what? I am not exactly even angry any more – just curious to enquire what do we do with her?"
"We can put her into a holding cell for now – after all, she's legally dead, Mr. Lester has told me and my direct co-workers about it; she's a legal non-entity, in fact!" Lorraine spoke-up suddenly. "Speaking of Mr. Lester, I, ah, I think I heard something about giving Connor Temple here a 'green-light' permission regarding financing his experiments?"
"I, actually, got a permission slip of his regarding that," Connor said carefully, turning and facing Lorraine fully for the first time. "I can show it to you, if you would like it."
"Oh yes, do bring it," Lorraine nodded, and added, with somewhat more uncertainty in her voice. "I and Ms. Lewis have a plan of sorts regarding the possible time anomaly in your home as well as several other problems that have risen during your absence."
"We weren't-" Connor began, but Abby, who understood that Lorraine was mentioning her sickness, silenced him with a glare instead.
"He'll be there," she said simply.
10.
It was dark now, though the rain had abated, and instead the night once again had descended onto London, though the stars still weren't shining in the sky. Connor and Abby sat in the guest wing of the ARC and carefully looked at each other.
"So-"
"So-"
"Abby, you first."
"Right. So, you don't mind that you got your plug pulled, metaphorically speaking-"
"Are you kidding? We've got sort-of promoted, at least temporarily, we're getting a pay raise, I may actually be growing-up-"
"What about the dinosaurs?"
"Oh, they're not going anywhere," Connor said calmly. "Make no mistake – one day I will go to the land where acros roam and pliosaurs lurk in the surf, but for now we'll have to take it slow."
"And you don't mind?"
"I can handle it – it's time for me to become more mature – what?" Connor asked curiously, seeing Abby grimace at the last word.
"Well, this morning, before we almost got eaten, I was thinking along the same lines, which means that I will have to, well, Caroline Steele will be a part of my life as well," Abby sighed. "Still, that's no longer too important – there's also the fact that we've got a promotion. I mean, so far we've been mostly in the secondary positions, if not to Nick and Stephen, then to Danny, and as for Becker-"
"Abby, relax," Connor smiled. "We are growing up, and things are changing, but we will rise to the challenges and master them, I am sure."