Helen's Hi-jinks Part III
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Intermission III
The restaurant, described as such by Caroline and Connor was really more a small yet glorified fast food joint, done in a rather ethnic, East European theme.
"Oh, but it got some great teriyaki here," Connor gushed excitedly. "With sour cream and BBQ sauce as well!"
"Oh! That is nice! But I was hoping for some semblance of a business meeting," Lester snapped back.
"You were riding an oversized elephant," Caroline rolled her eyes. "Maybe we should have tried a Hindu theme instead? Something like Kipling's Kim?"
"That wasn't an elephant. It was a mammoth."
"Aren't mammoths supposed to be woolly?"
"Those were different animals. Our mammoth didn't need to be a woolly!"
"Mmm... perhaps! But food is about to be served all the same." A pause. "Oh, and Connor? Today's special is not meat. It's fish."
For several moments, people examined their order. "Caroline, what is this?" Abby snapped, still riled over the discussion about mammoths.
"It's fish stuffed with crab meat, and baked in cheese," Caroline said cheerfully. "Plus herring under blanket – that's the red salad – and the chicken salad."
"What's in it?" Claudia asked, almost meekly.
"Well, chicken, also apples, raisins, egg whites – it's really good."
"It is, too," Connor nodded, as he slowly dug into his share of the meal. "Still, I am more of a meat guy."
"Connor," Abby said, as the others more reluctantly tried their meals and found out that it was, indeed, good, "how'd you know this?"
"Hey, where'd you think we went on our dates for meals?" Connor shrugged.
"Yes, but isn't it the man-" Abby paused, remember some of Connor's less endearing personality traits and changed her mind. "Just what kind of a relationship you two had?"
"I don't know," Caroline answered instead, "but this introduces me neatly enough to my part in this story, Ms. Brown. Several weeks or maybe few months ago, an old 'friend' of mine, Phi, introduced me to Leek, a government agent, who asked me to help condone a semi-official investigation of the ARC, starting with Connor over there. We settled on the price and I began to work with Connor. Then, few days before you got hired, Leek launched his coup."
"You forgot the part where you kidnapped Rex," Abby snapped.
"Ah yes. Leek had hinted that the ARC had something to do with unusual and exotic animals, so I thought that bring Rex over to him, get a bonus and get out. Leek clearly had Napoleonic plans, and I did not intend to get tangle in them. Unfortunately, it was too late-"
"I'll say!" Lester opened his mouth to argue Caroline's version, but at that moment the door to the restaurant's kitchen flew open with a crash, and out crawled the biggest centipede the world had ever seen – a Carboniferous arthropleura, almost three meters in length, and armed with a pair of sharp and powerful jaws.
Nick's mouth opened wide from surprise. Just like the anurognathus from earlier in the day, he had encountered the arthropleura before Leek or Jenny. The giant relative of the centipede was not a carnivore for real, but it had a very easily irritable temper and a poisonous bite. Stephen had almost died from bite of one of these prehistoric monsters.
"Earth to Cutter – what do we do?" Lester snarled, as the arthropleura made its way closer to them, weaving around other tables and chairs. "Hit it on the head with a chair?"
"No. It is not dangerous unless provoked. Somebody pass me the plate with the fish," Nick replied tersely.
"You want the taser too?" Caroline asked, as Nick took the platter with the fish.
"No, not yet." And with these words, Nick sent the plate skidding towards the invertebrate. The arthropleura paused, touched the baked fish with its antenna, and dug-in.
"Well, that's a messy eater," Lester said after few moments when it became obvious that the animal was busy eating and ignoring everything else. "So what do we do now?"
"Find a way to lure it back into the time anomaly from which it came, otherwise it will die from the oxygen deficiency once it gets sufficiently far away from its time period," Nick replied.
"Yes, well, you said the same thing about the giant scorpions that Leek had-"
"It was later discovered that Helen had Leek supplement their food with oxygen pills-"
"Say what?" Connor could not help but ask.
"Oxygen pills. They are used by mountain climbers on particularly high altitudes where are low oxygen levels," Jenny explained helpfully.
"Really? Wow, that's neat!"
"Abby? Just try to get to the kitchen and open the door to see if the time anomaly's still there," Nick said wearily.
"Right! Caroline, the taser, please?"
"Here."
Abby took the taser and carefully circled the still feeding arthropleura, who was almost done with the fish. Once she was closer to the arthropod's rear end, Abby shifted gears and run to the kitchen, opening the doors.
"Whoa!"
The time anomaly was huge, much bigger than what they had seen before, and much more pale, almost translucent. On its other side of the anomaly lay a primeval forest, complete with plants that Abby and others had never seen before, upon which crawled some of the biggest insects, unseen before by human eye (except for those of Helen Cutter) as well.
"Whoa!" Abby repeated her previous statement.
"The Carboniferous," Nick gasped, as the prehistoric air rushed into the main room with a whoosh, bringing with it smells and senses of prehistoric tropical rainforest. "Probably some time around 300 MYA."
"That's fascinating," Lester's tone suggested that it was anything but, "yet how do we get the arthropleura back there?"
"I think it is going back there by itself," Claudia said meekly.
And indeed, the arthropleura, having finished with the stuffed fish, turned around and began to crawl back into the time anomaly with a speed amazing for such a big bug, its multifaceted eyes set on several salamander-like amphibians that had crawled close to the time anomaly's edge, obviously considering about going into the breach as well. As soon as they saw the approaching arthropleura, though, they whirled around and hurriedly vanished back amongst the ferns and other low-growing plants, with the arthropleura seemingly pursuing them in an ominous way.
"Not dangerous unless provoked, hah?" Lester was first to break the silence.
"No more so, than, say, a bear," Nick turned to his superior in irritation.
"Ah, guys-" Abby spoke up to point out that the time anomaly was still open, when it popped, literally speaking. A gust of warm and damp air raced outwards and forwards in a circular motion, through the diner and beyond.
The time anomaly vanished without a trace, but some things did change with its passing. Abby was first to notice it:
"Guys, why is it so dark?" she asked in a confused voice, and blinked. Something else had changed, other than the weather, but she could not put her finger on it.
"Because there's going to be a thunderstorm outside," Jenny supplied helpfully. "Abby, are you okay?"
"Well, uh, when we got here, the weather was fine."
"And now it changed. Abby, it's the storm season, the weather changes several times every day!"
"Storm season?" Abby frowned. Something was wrong; England did not have a storm season...or did it? She was a lizard girl, not a weather girl, after all...
"I think I need to sit down for a moment," she muttered, before her legs gave out from beneath her, and she fell on her butt. Darkness claimed her.
"Abby!" Connor shouted, as he rushed over to his girlfriend, followed closely by Claudia. Nick, however, noticed that Caroline was shifting unobtrusively towards the exit and turned to her.
"And where are you going?" he asked curtly. It was the young woman's idea, after all, to go here, and if this was another one of Helen's traps...
However, Caroline did not seem to be too intimidated by Nick's question. "To start the car," she said calmly. "Abby there needs to be taken to a hospital-"
"To the ARC," Nick snapped.
"Thanks to Eugene, the ARC as a building is down for the count."
Nick slowly paused. "Do you really think this was that Eugene man you know?"
"It sounded too similar to him, and I am not taking any chances," Caroline shook her head. "I may be a coward, but-"
"No, you're not," Jenny spoke-up suddenly. "It's when my cousin mentioned someone who might be Eugene Flint that you began to try and blend into the woodwork. Caroline, come on, he's just a man."
"Exactly!" Something seemed to snap in the younger woman. "He's human. I may not have lasted to get a diploma in human psychology, but I have studied enough to understand that the humans are the scariest things to have ever lived, live, or to live on this planet! A giant bug is one thing, a human who gets his jollies from killing people in imaginative and inventive ways in something else!"
"Guys! Abby's really pale!" Connor yelled, interrupting Caroline's rant. "She must've gotten sick from the Carboniferous air or something."
"Or maybe she was just too close to the time anomaly," Lester said insightfully.
"I'll go start the car," Caroline sat in a clipped tone of voice, very different from her semi-hysterics moments before. "Professor, if you don't mind, please help your friends get her out of here."
Nick opened his mouth, but saw Caroline's gimlet-eyed stare, as well as Jenny's worried one, and gave in – but at that moment, Abby moved. "Guys, what happened?" was the first thing she asked.
"The time anomaly must have knocked you out somehow," Claudia explained helpfully. "We are going to take you a hospital."
"What? No, I am fine!" Abby got back on her feet, albeit somewhat shakily. "Connor, you can start breathing now, I am okay."
"Yes, well, still, maybe we should-" Connor began, but Abby was adamant:
"No."
"Well, that was fun," once again, Lester's tone suggested that it was anything but, "yet besides the obvious we have learned nothing."
"If by the obvious you mean the fact that the time anomalies seem to be changing, then maybe you shouldn't be so high and mighty, really," Jenny actually interrupted her boss. "I mean, Lester who do you think we are? We've just began to study the time anomalies without Leek causing us problems underfoot, and you already want amazing scientific break-throughs? Get a grip!"
Angry red spots appeared on Lester's cheeks. "Ms. Lewis," he began coldly, "need I remind you that you are working as a public relations consultant?"
"Yes, but since our shortage of personnel, it appears like I've been shifted to the field agents office instead," Jenny stood her ground. "Besides, even as a PR agent I need to be out in the field, to deal with any leaks that appear right on, immediately."
Lester opened his mouth. "Don't," Connor spoke up suddenly. "The only man who managed to pull-off the tone of voice with a woman was the Caped Crusader, and even then he only managed it some of the times he used it."
As Lester sputtered in sudden shock, Nick blinked and turned to the younger man. "You talk about Superman or Batman?"
"Batman, actually," Connor muttered, his face turning red from embarrassment. "Although both of them had been called that by various parts of the comic book fan community-"
"Connor, not now," Nick sat back down on a chair "This isn't the right time for a Superman vs. Batman argument, you know?"
"Well, what do we do?" Jenny asked, as she nervously sat down next to Nick.
"I don't know!" the Scotsman replied, clearly upset. "This is just like when Helen was doing her scheme with Leek. They had the initiative and we spent more time fighting between each other than figuring out what was going on around here. Now, it feels like a same thing – we have no idea what is really going on, or what's Helen is up to..."
"Or maybe it is not really her," Caroline said, still in a rather flat tone of voice. "From what I understood about her, she was not a likeable person unless she tried hard to, and Eugene for all of his character quirks usually understood very quickly when someone was trying to manipulate him and would retaliate with physical violence as soon as possible. Phil's less keen, but then again, he probably worked with Leek, not with Helen."
"Helen was the one pulling the strings."
"Maybe, but Leek probably tried to take all the credit for himself. He had a Napoleon's complex, Leek had, and Helen did not make a good Josephine to him. So, it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart," Caroline shrugged.
"And as much as this insight in the minds of manipulative and violent was educational, we still have no idea of what to do... oh wait, no, that's not true – I do know what to do."
"Then share it with us, oh great one," Nick muttered with more sarcasm than what he usually had.
"Certainly," Lester nodded in the same grand manner of behaviour. "You will accompany Ms. Lewis over here to Ludlow, where you will see just how much scientific damage the 400 million year old jalopy of Daphne over there had done. For her part, Daphne and Shaggy will loan the new mystery machine hired by Velma over there and keep the fort, while Ms. Brown finishes her job, and I explain to my superiors just what the Hell is going on over here with fossilized cars and giant scorpions haunting our beaches. Any more questions?"
Nick opened his mouth, but James Lester was doing well, and therefore he rolled right over the other man.
"Yes, I am quite aware that this isn't anything near the level of perfection that you wanted, professor, but really, none of you seem to have any ideas for better or worse at all. Therefore, I use the powers invested in me by Her Majesty's government to make my decision unanimous, you savvy?"
Nick and others looked at Lester as if he had sprouted a tail or a pair of horns, but kept quiet: Lester's speech did hold a grain of truth: they were currently out of any ideas of their own.
"Then the motion is carried," Lester said proudly, as if he was hosting a meeting back at the ARC. "Cutter, Ms. Lewis – I'll see you in Ludlow, the rest of you also know what to do."
Immediately after, as if Lester's speech was its cue, a lightning bolt flashed and the rain began to fall.
In the silence following the thunderclap, Connor looked from Abby to Nick and just groaned.
"We're doomed," he said quietly.
To be continued...