Jess looked at every face in the room, all of them looked at her in either expectancy or anger. All except one. Cutter was just as still and unresponsive as he had been when she had entered the room, despite what had happened since. It was one look at him and she had decided.

"I'll just start from the beginning, shall I?"

She ended up sitting on the plastic chair which had previously Connor's while he perched at the foot of the hospital bed. She almost squirmed when she looked around and realised that she had everybody's undivided attention.

"What do you want to know?" Asked Jess already thinking of things to withhold from them.

It was Abby who spoke with a hard but quiet voice, "Everything."

Lester stepped in seeing the lost look on Jess's face, "Start with what was…meant to happen here."

Jess tried to swallow down her nerves though her voice still wavered when she spoke, "If I hadn't have come here Nick Cutter would have died." Her eyes were dragged to his prone body on the bed but she continued to speak, "In my time, Helen blew up the ARC and when Cutter came to help her… she shot him. He died before Connor got him out of the building."

Connor's voice too was shaky when he spoke, "I was the one to get him out?" Jess nodded while a barely noticeable frown flitted across Becker's face. It suddenly occurred to her that originally he hadn't gone into the building to help Cutter like he had in this version of event. Seeing that he had earlier that day it meant that he had run into that godforsaken building for her. She mentally filed that under things to think about later while trying to keep from staring at him.

"What happened next?" Asked Sarah her voice sounding unaffected though her eyes were suspiciously glassy.

"Let me see…" Said Jess mentally reviewing what had transpired, "The ARC got rebuilt, someone was hired to fill Cutter's space-"

"Matt?" Asked Becker looking at her intently, "You said he was the next team leader."

Jess looked at him warily as though trying to gauge his reaction to whatever she would say next, "No, I said he was a team leader." Just as she had predicted his jaw tightened and he avoided her gaze. If he was already feeling guilty at this point in the story she really didn't want to see what he would be like later. "Anyway, the next person was Danny-"

"Danny Quinn?" Asked Jenny looking incredulous, "The detective constable at the anomaly sight the other day?"

"That's him." Jess confirmed. "You make a good team-"

"Hang on," Interjected Abby, "What happened to Helen? You can't tell us that she just disappeared?"

Jess sighed while wishing people would stop interrupting her, "I was getting to that part. She, well, I don't know exactly, but she kept travelling through the anomalies, mostly back to the past…but she also visited the future."

Connor's eyes widened and he seemed much more interested despite who they were talking about, "What's it like? How far did she go? It must be amazing to just go out and see all of that-"

"No Connor." Said Jess quietly looking at her hands folded on her lap, "It's not a nice place. At all." Although she'd never actually been she gleaned what she could from the rest of the team. Perhaps the most telling thing about it was that Matt never spoke of his original time. She had asked him once, just out of curiosity, but an anomaly alert had sounded just then and somehow he had managed to skirt around the subject ever since.

Jess continued, "Our planet in the future is completely barren. The dominant form of life are genetically enhanced predators because they're one of the few things that can actually survive on the surface," Everyone seemed to shocked to stop her talking for once and her natural tendency to babble took over, "they've actually managed to infiltrate the ARC a few times, the last time was only a few months before I came here and it was just you and me." She said with a gesture to Lester whose face had suddenly drained of colour, "It wasn't too bad… well, it was, but it could have been worse." She stopped suddenly and regarded the faces around her uneasily, "I've gone off topic, haven't I?"

Becker was the one to nod at her but it was Jenny who broke in, "What happened to Helen?"

Jess thought for a second on how best to explain everything, "She saw what the Earth had become and decided to stop it."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Asked Connor looking around for support.

"No, it wasn't." Said Jess firmly, "Her idea of stopping the future was to travel back through time and wipe out the human race before we had a chance to evolve."

Her sentence was met with a general outcry. Lester lost what little colour he had regained while Becker's face showed only shock. Abby had actually stood up and Connor spluttered before breaking into speech,

"But she would have killed herself as well!"

"She knew." Said Jess grimly, "Anyway, Connor, Abby, both of you and Danny tried to stop her-"

"How-" Abby started to ask before Jess spoke over her and carried on her sentence.

"-You followed her through one anomaly and you were going to follow her though a second one but apparently there was a raptor attack." Jess rolled her eyes upward while she tried to remember the details of the tale that Abby had told her. "Connor ended up getting injured so both of you stayed behind while Danny kept going after Helen."

"Did he get her?" Jenny had spoken quietly but her stare was firm and Jess returned it.

"No, but the raptor did." Something akin to a grim smirk quirked at the corner of the older woman's mouth.

"Helen died before she could poison many early humans but…" Jess swallowed as all of a sudden her mouth dried out and the words stuck in her throat, "You two didn't make it back for a while."

The room was silent. For a second Jess could have sworn that nobody even breathed.

"How long?" Breathed Abby looking slightly horrified.

"A year." Said Jess trying to make her voice sound slightly more positive, "But you both came back in the end and so did Danny, though when he did get back he-… but lets not worry about that now…"

"How did they get back?" Asked Becker looking confused, "The odds of an anomaly opening to the right time can't be high,… wait, were there rescue missions? Is that how they got back?" He looked at Jess expectantly and she cringed on the inside as she realised what had to be said.

"They got back using some future tech, but that's not important…there were rescue missions. Four of them, in fact."

Lester voiced what most of the room had been wondering, "Why only four?"

Jess closed her eyes before she answered, "You ended them," She tried to ignore Lester visibly bristling as she talked over any protests he was bound to voice, "after Sarah was killed in the future."

The uproar was instantaneous. Connor had frozen while Abby had once again sprang to her feet but this time she it was to move over to Sarah. The woman in question looked completely shocked. Her normally dark complexion had drained of its usual colour leaving her looking sickly under the harsh hospital lights. Jenny looked up from her position on the bed looking like she wanted to leave and never come back.

Tentatively, Abby put an arm around her friends shoulders which seemed to snap her out of her daze. She pushed a shaky hand though her hair and gave a breathless laugh that sounded painfully strained.

"There's no point worrying about it now is there?" She asked the room in general, still trying to look as though Jess's news hadn't affected her in the way it had, "There won't be any rescue missions now, right?" She looked at Jess as though expecting confirmation and reassurance but Jess couldn't meet her eyes.

The enormity of what she had just changed had only just been fully recognised.

Helen was dead.

This changed everything she knew was going to happen. The implication of what she had changed, the timelines she had differed, the lives she had altered. What would happen to Cutter and Sarah now? Would Jenny still get married and leave the ARC? What would happen to Matt and Emily? Would they be separated forever or-

"No. There won't be any rescue missions. You're safe." Jess's rather morbid reverie was broken by Becker. He was looking at Sarah with his jaw set and an all too familiar guilt creeping into his eyes.

Jess had had enough. He blamed himself for Sarah's death in the future and she would be damned if she was going to let him do it before it had actually happened, "It wasn't your fault." She said firmly. The rest of the team looked at her in confusion but Becker looked back at her unflinchingly.

"Did I go through the anomaly with her?" He asked calmly.

Jess fought back a wince at this familiar line of thought and frowned before answering as a din at the end of the corridor broke her concentration, "Yes."

Becker continued just as calmly as before though his shoulders were slumped and his eyes dark, "Then as the head of security it was my job to protect the rest of the group which includes," he paused to look at Sarah briefly before his eyes flickered away, "the untrained civilians."

"Did you see the mission reports?" Asked Jess rhetorically seeing as she knew he couldn't have done, "Well then I'm afraid you're in no position to comment."

He stared at her for a second but she unabashedly met his gaze and refused to break it. He looked away first.

"What happens next?" Asked Jenny quietly.

"After that the ARC disbanded." Said Jess looking at all of the shocked faces in the room and moving to speak hurriedly so as to avoid being interrupted again, "It was put back together a year or so after- that's where I come in." She added before pointing at Connor and Abby, "You two get back to modern day soon after and…there's not much more to tell."

The last part was a shameless lie and one she hoped she wasn't called out on. Quite frankly, she didn't want to tell them about how Connor almost ended the world or how Ethan had appeared only to make their lives hell.

And that was only the main points.

She really didn't think she could go into New Dawn or Matt being from the future and Emily being from the past. Maybe another time, but certainly not now. She was well aware that there was such a thing as too much information and especially within such a short time.

"You still haven't told me one thing." Said Abby looking at her speculatively, "You might as well tell me who I'm engaged to now."

Surprisingly quickly the mood of the team lifted, if only slightly. The room looked around in interest apart from Becker who was betrayed as amused against his will by the quirk of his mouth and Connor who suddenly looked sullen.

"You're engaged?" He asked. Jess could tell he was trying to keep his emotions in check but he was doing a rather bad job of it, "Hang on," he said turning to Jess, his eyes wide, "you said I was engaged as well, were you joking or-"

The penny seemed to drop at the same moment for both of them as they silently gaped at each other.

It was too much for Sarah, who despite the news of her death started to laugh. Pretty soon even Jenny managed a small chuckle while Lester was trying to keep a smile from his face with interesting results.

Jess wasn't sure what it was that made them all laugh so much. It could have been the relief that the future could be changed, the desperation to find something worth laughing at or the pure shock at finding themselves still alive. Whatever it was Jess didn't want to end.

But all too soon it did. There were raised voices from down the hallway and heavy approaching footsteps, the same that Jess had heard dimly earlier. The laughter stopped abruptly as the hospital room door was thrown open to reveal one of the ARC's numerous soldiers with a nurse who was in vain trying to make him leave. With a look he sent the nurse huffing away and he turned to the room's occupants.

"Sir, there's been another anomaly." He said addressing Becker directly.

Becker straightened immediately, "Right, we should have some firearms left in the cars that survived the blast, round up a team the best you can and I'll meet you at the site-"

"No sir." Becker frowned at the blatant refusal of his orders but instead of balking under his superior's stare the young soldier looked desperate. "The anomaly's already closed."

"The what's the problem?" Asked Becker walking forward looking curious. Jess saw the younger man's eyes flicker to her before he spoke.

"Before it closed… two people came through, sir. We don't know where or who they are. We had reports of them but they've just… disappeared"

Jess fought back the urge to shift uncomfortably as she felt the weight of every stare in the room. Once again she remembered that from here on out she had no control or knowledge of future events.

Becker turned to her, "Do you have any idea about who it could be?" He asked, his voice remarkably even.

Jess shook her head, her brain working a mile a minute.

Becker closed his eyes and let his weariness cross his face for a mere second before he snapped back into shape. "Right, I'm going to need people searching the CCTV and-"

"I can do that!" Said Jess immediately. It wasn't a lie; sifting through footage was practically child's play to her at this point but her real motive was hidden. She wanted to see who these people were first. She needed to know who they were and if they could help her get back… if there was any place to get back to at this point.

Becker gave her a evaluating look and eventually a sharp nod.

it was only when she followed him out of the room that she managed to identify this new feeling that had sprung up in side her.

Uncertainty.

For the first time she was just as clueless as everyone else.

….

A/N- Really sorry for the long wait, but it's here now and I hope you liked it! It's probably pretty obvious who the new people are but I won't say just in case and hopefully the next chapter will be up far sooner than this one was.

All the best,

VE