Chapter 4
John Lester was bored. It had been a stupid idea. He realised that now. His father was always telling him that real life wasn't like Spy Kids. Children didn't wake up one morning to find out that their parents were really super cool government spies with hi-tech gadgets that looked absolutely innocent but really had little secret buttons or switches that turned them into fantastic life saving tools that nobody suspected they really were.
John Lester shifted his position curled up in the boot of Kate's car and tried to go to sleep.
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Oblivious to his son's current condition as a stowaway, Sir James Lester signed the last of the pile of paper work he had been working his way through over lunch. His expensive looking fountain pen scratched the paper awkwardly as he tried to write the date and found that, once again, technology had let him down. Sighing, he moved the papers to one side and laid the pen on the smooth surface of the desk. He reached into a drawer and took out a box of ink cartridges, placing them at one side of the pen, and started to unscrew the barrel of the fountain pen.
Carefully removing the small but deadly blade of the hidden knife, the thin metal aerial for the GPS transmitter that was installed in the lid of the pen, the serrated titanium saw blade, the file, the lock picks, the blowpipe and ultra-thin poison dart, the roll of paper and the vial of acid, Lester plucked out the empty ink cartridge, replaced it with a full one, and put the pen back together again.
"With all the money they put into these things," he muttered, "you'd think they could have made one that refilled itself by now!"
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"Do you intend to keep this up all the way to Dorset?" Becker asked as the car finally escaped the crush of traffic on the M25 and turned on to the slightly less congested London end of the M3.
Kate stared studiously out of the window, ignoring Becker in an attempt to ignore the confusing, conflicting emotions flitting across her mind. She didn't have to talk to him, after all. She had every right to ignore him after the way he had behaved. Sneaking up on her like that! Grabbing hold of her wrists, although she was trying to hit him quite hard then, so maybe he could be forgiven that one. Then stealing her keys and her car like this! And to cap it all, he had the temerity to ask her out! How dare he! As if she would dream of going out for dinner with a man like him after all of that! How DARE he!
Besides, she had nothing to wear!
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"Initial mass spectrometer results suggest the samples found date from well into the future," Nigel reported back to Peta. "We're talking millions of years into the future, here, not just next week!"
"Can you be a bit more specific?" Peta asked encouragingly.
"Not really, no," Nigel shook his head. "Since we have no way of knowing how levels of atmospheric carbon fourteen may have accelerated from here to the future that the samples came from, we have no way of calibrating the readings."
"So when you say millions, we don't know if you mean two or three million, or two or three hundred?" Peta summarised.
"That's about it, yes," Nigel nodded. "Shall I take the information up to Mr Temple?"
"No, not yet, Nigel, let him sleep," Peta sighed. "Go and see what else you can find out from the samples. I want a full report on these before we even consider waking Connor up. Nothing less than an emergency is to disturb him before we have that. Understand?"
Nigel nodded and hurried off back to the lab. Peta looked over to Luke and Guy, the technician who had completed the initial remote gas spectroscopy analysis of the anomaly's atmosphere. They were carefully removing the rover from the decontamination unit. Guy ran a small Geiger counter over the rover.
"It's clear," he said, nodding to Luke who began closing up the decontamination unit again.
"How are we doing?" Peta asked, walking over to the two men as they locked the decontamination unit and began removing their protective gear.
"All clear, ma'am" Luke replied. "There are a few minor repairs to be done and I'd like to make a couple of improvements to the rover in general, but it's good to go if you need it now."
"You're the engineer of the team, Luke. If you think there are repairs or upgrades required, then they are required. We won't need the rover for a while. What are you thinking?"
"Well, a radiation warning, for starters, ma'am, but that's more an IT programming job. I was also thinking of installing an infrared camera next to the visual one, or a capacity to switch from one light source to the other. A mini-radar system would also help over distances like the one we saw there, but that might take some time to get the parts."
"I'll speak to Nigel about the programming, or I'll do it myself," Peta nodded. "Meanwhile, get to work on the infrared camera. I think being able to see two separate feeds is preferable to having to switch between them." Peta turned to Guy, one of her two analytical chemists. "Guy, go and take over from Nigel in the lab. He always ends up getting under Sam's feet."
Guy winced, nodded and headed off to the lab. Sam was queen of the chemistry labs. Her standards were high and exacting. Everything was in its rightful place and woe betide anyone who moved anything without permission. Analytical chemistry was a science where accuracy was paramount and Sam had the accuracy that could turn a burette tap to leak drops at just one every sixty seconds exactly, but if anyone even dared breathe at the wrong moment while she was working, they could find themselves on the receiving end of some highly colourful insults!
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"James?" Lester spoke into his speakerphone and stared at his desk.
"Yes, Sir James?" Becker's voice replied.
"Any update on your ETA for the south coast anomaly?"
"Shouldn't be long now, sir, we've cleared most of the traffic and refilled with petrol."
"Why are you driving a vehicle that required you to fill up with petrol, James?"
"It's Miss Barratt's car, sir. She wasn't expecting to be going for such a long drive in it and it has a fairly small tank."
"Oh, that old rust bucket," Lester sighed, rolling his eyes. "And is Miss Barratt with you?"
"Yes, sir. She sulking in the passenger seat."
"Other than the obvious fact that she is sitting in the passenger seat of her own car, is there any particular reason for Miss Barratt to be sulking, James?"
"I can think of a few," the amusement was obvious in Becker's voice. "Although she still hasn't declined my invitation to dinner this evening, so I'm hoping it's only temporary."
"You might at least have waited until her security checks were back!" Lester muttered away from the microphone, rolling his eyes. "You always were impatient!"
"I heard that," Becker's voice replied. "I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to call you back. The steering in this thing gets a bit shaky once you get past seventy."
"Do try to bring it back in one piece, James. I'd hate to have to fill in yet more paperwork!"
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Abby took a swig of water and rubbed her head. Cutter was busy overseeing the safe removal of their samples to the ARC laboratories and Lester was busy talking to thin air in his soundproofed office. She'd taken a couple of painkillers half an hour ago, but they still hadn't kicked in. If anything, her headache now seemed to be getting worse. It had started in the jeep on the way back from the anomaly, but other than dehydration, stress or maybe just the sheer amount of blood lost to those midges, she couldn't pinpoint any particular cause. At least nobody would be looking for her for a while. She could go home, feed Rex and have a lie down. She wasn't even needed in the labs now that they had lab technicians to do all the hard work for them.
Yawning, Abby scrawled a note for Cutter and dropped it off on his desk on the way out. It seemed to take ages to get home through the busy London traffic, but finally she made her way through the door of her apartment and sighed in relief.
At least it was warm in here, she thought as she chopped up some fruit for a waiting Rex, whose enthusiastic greeting had been dampened by Abby's groan of pain as the high chirping noise grated against her skull.
"Yeah, alright, alright," Abby moaned as Rex bobbed his head at the fruit. "It's on its way. Ow!"
Abby looked down blearily at the source of the pain. The pale pear she had been chopping was smeared with red stuff and her finger stung. Blood. She had cut herself. She must have been more exhausted than she thought.
Dazed, Abby raised her cut hand level with her face and examined the injury. It wasn't serious. Just a thin cut into the side of her left index finger, deep enough to bleed, but shallow enough that a plaster would fix it. The blood was even starting to clot as she watched it, fascinated. Her reflexes were still working at least, even if the rest of her wasn't. What had she been going to do? Oh, yes: a plaster.
Awkwardly, trying to avoid dripping or smearing blood anywhere, Abby retrieved the kitchen first aid box and rummaged through it for a plaster. There were never at the top, no matter how many times you reordered the box that way. Eventually she found one and tore the cover off with her teeth. Removing the backing one handed was less straightforward. Where was Connor when you needed him.
Connor. Had she done the right thing? Was she a fool to let him go? Did he ever think about her? Was it too late to put things right?
Abby threw the bloodstained piece of pear into the organic waste recycling bin and scooped the rest of the chopped fruit into Rex's bowl. Followed by the prehistoric lizard, she carried the bowl through to the living area and laid it down on the table by the couch. Collapsing into comfort of the couch as Rex landed and inspected his dinner.
Shuffling round on the couch until she was in at least a semi-comfortable position, Abby curled up to sleep. Thoughts of Connor invaded her mind. He would be in her dreams again, then, she thought. As long as they were just dreams, not nightmares, though. Happy dreams, not those nightmares that had plagued her for months now. Always the same, over and over. Never changing. Nightmares about losing Connor. And yet she had lost him, hadn't she? She had walked away. She had chosen to end things. So why did the nightmares keep plaguing her? Why did she still dread them so much? Why couldn't she get him out of her head? Why now, when her body told her she needed sleep so much, did her heart decide she needed Connor?