A/N: Sorry for the delay folks - I had reports to write.
Chapter 7
Professor Nick Cutter hammered on the door of the apartment. It had taken him all of ten minutes to hand the blood vial in to the lab for testing, then adjourn to his office for the first time since arriving back at the ARC. As soon as he opened the door, he spotted the sheet of paper on his desk. A quick glance told him that Abby had gone home. On its own, that wouldn't have worried him. It was the fact that she had gone home with a headache that had done that.
The fact that she hadn't answered any of his many phone calls, either to her land line or mobile, and now wasn't answering her door, worried him even more.
Something caught Cutter's attention and he grew silent, listening. It was a chirping noise. Rex. Cutter looked around for the source of the sound and quickly spotted the ancient lizard at one of the ground floor windows. He was chirping more than usual in a way that suggested agitation or a warning call. Cutter hurried to the window and peered in. Abby was lying on the sofa, unmoving. Cutter shouted in to her, but she remained still. Nothing Cutter did could wake her. Frustratingly, Cutter spotted Abby's keys on the table by the sofa, where she had dropped both them and her handbag as soon as she had arrived.
Rex chirped again. It was louder this time, but it came from higher up. Cutter looked for the lizard and spotted him at the top of the window, where it was open just enough for him to stick his head through and chirp at Cutter. Suddenly, Cutter had an idea. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his own keys, dangling them at arms length. The lizard's head twisted from side to side as he followed the movement.
"That's right Rex," Cutter called up. "I need these to get it. Where are Abby's, Rex? Go fetch them for me. Go on. Fetch!"
Cutter almost laughed in delight when Rex suddenly disappeared from the opening and glided down to the arm of the sofa. Nosing the bundle of keys on the table until the fell on to the floor with a jangling noise just like Cutter's keys had made, Rex hopped down, picked up the keys and flapped his way back up to the window. Wriggling both head and keys through the gap again, Rex peered down at Cutter like a green scaly spaniel with wings.
"Good boy, Rex," said Cutter, relief showing in his voice as much as the genuine smile that flooded his face. "Now drop them, Rex. Drop them down to me."
Much to Cutter's chagrin, the lizard did not drop the keys. Instead, he merely waved them back and forth as Cutter had done with his own, making them jangle again.
Cutter tried again, but got the same response. Running a hand through his hair, he wondered how to make Rex understand. Suddenly it clicked. The lizard was copying him. He took out his keys again and waved them back and forth. Rex did the same. He shook them. Rex did the same. He dropped them.
Rex did the same.
Scrambling forwards and picking up both sets of keys in one go, Cutter rushed for the door. The third key he tried fitted the lock, but it took another two to turn it and unlock the door. As fast as his legs could carry him, Cutter ran to Abby's side and placed one hand on her forehead, the other checking her neck for a pulse.
The pulse was there, but it was way too fast. Her forehead was hot and feverish. Whatever the soldiers at the ARC had, she had too. Dragging his mobile out of his pocket, he dialled the emergency services and demanded an ambulance.
"What do you mean there aren't any!" Cutter yelled down the phone as panic began to set in.
XXXX
"Look on the bright side," Kate whispered, "Nothing else has come through it yet."
"I'm more worried about what might come through it at any moment!" Becker hissed back.
They were standing to one side of the anomaly. Half of Becker's men were ranged in front of it, standing guard. The other half were sitting on the rocks, resting and waiting to take their turn. John was asking Elizabeth questions about ammonites.
"There might not be much on the other side," Kate shrugged. "We could always stick our heads through and check."
"Oh, and do what when it closes with you on the other side? Or worse, half on one side, half on the other? What if it's like Jurassic Park on the other side of there: t-rex and velociraptors all over the place?"
"Firstly, if it was, they'd have come through by now," Kate explained patiently. "Secondly, contrary to popular opinion, t-rex didn't exist in the Jurassic period, it came along much later. The film got it wrong."
"Were ammonites around at the same time as t-rex?"
"Well, yes, but.."
"Then what's your point?" Becker glared.
"Why are you so worried about a t-rex?"
"I'm just considering the worst case scenario!"
"Believe me, there's a lot worse than a t-rex!"
"Oh, I feel so reassured!"
"Look, I'm going to have a look," Kate sighed, "I'll just be a minute. I'll come right back. I promise."
"No way," Becker replied, grabbing Kate's wrist and pulling her back. She whirled to face him.
"Let me go!" Kate snapped. "I will hit you!"
"You can try," Becker replied lightly. "I'll just pick you up, carry you over to that massive boulder over there, tie you up and leave you on the top of it!"
"You wouldn't dare!" Kate scoffed.
"Try me!" Becker growled, his patience wearing thin.
XXXX
"I've got a signal again."
"Let me see!"
"No new messages."
"Give it time."
Claudia Brown and Jenny Lewis huddled round the light of Claudia's mobile. They didn't switch it on often, to conserve the battery, but sometimes they found that they had a signal and other times they didn't. Jenny's phone had long since died. Being less practical than Claudia, its battery had been as low as mere quarter when Jenny had been kidnapped and when that had gone, Jenny had thrown it at the wall in frustration, breaking it. What was more, Claudia had announced that she always carried a spare battery, just in case she were trapped somewhere.
They had found, by intelligence and observation, that there tended to be a signal available when the small, red light on the wall opposite was lit. Jenny had sweet-talked one of the guards into charging the first battery when it had ran out, leaving them with the spare to run the phone on.
It had taken them a long time to get their heads around each other's presence, but now they were a team, working untiringly on a way to get out of their sunless prison. They had theorised that they were in the future, hypothesised that the signal on the phone arrived whenever an anomaly to their own time opened, and agreed that Helen was a female canine who should be despatched as soon as possible should the opportunity arise. They had steered clear of any discussion about Nick Cutter.
"Are you sure you don't know anyone else's number?" Claudia sighed.
"None that are useful," Jenny replied, shaking her head. "The only numbers I ever learned off the top of my head were my mother's, my ex-fiancé's and my hair stylist's. The only reason I can remember Connor's is because it's so similar Sergei's!"
"Sergei?" Claudia queried blankly.
"Hair stylist," Jenny explained.
XXXX
"Kate, Uncle James, come and look at this!" John Lester called, breaking the glaring contest currently going on between Kate and Becker. Having caught their attention, the young boy waved a rock in the air.
Shaking her wrist free of Becker's grasp, Kate began making her way over to John, Becker rolled his eyes and followed her. When they reached John, and Elizabeth, who was standing beside the boy looking like a mother hen, they saw that the rock John held out to them had an odd formation sticking out of its side.
"It's a fossil!" John announced proudly. "Beth helped me find it. It's an ammonite just like the alive one Beth found!"
"Oh, so it is!" Kate smiled, taking the fossil ammonite and turning it in her hands. "Well done, John. Fossils are quite hard to find."
"Not on this beach they aren't," replied Elizabeth. "And the boy is right: that fossil is exactly the same as the living specimen, just a bit smaller."
"Why is that important?" Becker frowned.
"Because, dear boy," Elizabeth explained patiently. "It means that the living creature I found here this morning is from the same time period as the fossil in this stone."
"And do you know when that is?" Becker asked.
"Of course I do," Elizabeth sniffed. "All the rocks around here like this are from the Kimmeridgian era."
Becker stared at Elizabeth blankly.
"The what?" Kate asked, looking equally puzzled.
"Do you know nothing child?" Elizabeth sighed. "The Kimmeridgian is the second last era of the Jurassic period!"
"But hey, at least there's no t-rex!" Becker groaned.