A/N: Thanks again to everyone who reviewed, especially Pandora and Xanthiae. :) Help yourselves to cookies. On another note, if anyone reading this has also read and can remember as far back as Mirror, Mirror, now is the time to start looking out for one of the loose ends there being tied up. Well, explained, anyway!

Chapter 14

Jenny Lewis sat with her head propped up against the dusty chalk wall. On the far side of their jail cell, Claudia Brown was curled up in a ball, asleep. It had been quite some time now since they had last been visited by Nick Cutter. Jenny wasn't sure how long: there was never any way of measuring time in this place. All she did know was that the first time she and Claudia had set eyes upon this particular version of Cutter they had both been shocked into silence. He had spoken to them both politely, seeming completely oblivious to their knowledge of him, and had promised to visit them again, which he had, frequently. The effect of this upon both women was confusing to say the least.

"He doesn't know us," Claudia had stated blankly after that first visit. "Either of us."

"He's younger than the Nick in my timeline," Jenny had mused in reply.

"And mine."

"Then she's gone back and picked him out of the timeline from before he met either of us."

"Maybe."

"What does that mean?" Jenny had turned to look at Claudia. After so long in the cell, she had learned to recognise the signs of an idea in Claudia's speech.

"Well, think about it: if she'd taken him out of either of our timelines, we'd know about it, surely," Claudia shrugged. "We would never have met him."

"So what? A third timeline?" Jenny frowned in disbelief. "I hope Helen's keeping track of all this!"

"She will be, you can be sure of it," Claudia pulled a face. "But if multiple realities exist, then why should there only be two: one for you and one for me. Maybe there are millions. Billions even. One for every single life choice of every person on the planet."

"How could anyone keep track of themselves travelling through that many realities, never mind anyone else!"

"I don't know," Claudia shrugged again. "Helen has always been one step ahead, though, so maybe she knows."

Silence had fallen in the cell then as both women contemplated the repercussions of this idea.

"Do you realise," Jenny murmured, "That this means there could be just as many copies of Nick out there? Or you? Or me? Or Helen?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Claudia sighed. "At least in Helen's case. With all the risks she's taken there must be some timelines where those risks haven't paid off. Timelines where she's been injured or eaten, or where somebody was bright enough to take the shot while they had it and not let her escape every time!"

"Perhaps there's a timeline where she and Nick are still together," Jenny added. "Maybe even a timeline were Nick went with her to find the anomalies and they're both slowly going mad. Or a timeline where she never found the anomalies at all."

"Somehow," Claudia sighed wearily, casting her mind back to the various riddles and infuriating quirks of their conversations with this new version of Nick. "I get the feeling that no matter what universe you go to, Helen will always be exactly the same! Some people never change!"

Jenny looked over at Claudia now, asleep on the floor of the cell. Perhaps some people didn't change much, but they had. On the one hand, here was she, Jenny Lewis: high-powered executive and PR genius, used to getting her own way in everything. On the other hand, there was Claudia: low-level junior home office employee, haphazard, disorganised, by Jenny's standards anyway, and used to doing as she was told. And yet both of them had fallen in love with the same man. And from the sound of things, he had fallen in love with both of them. And here he was again, without the baggage of previous loyalty to either of them.

Jenny Lewis sighed and tried tell her brain to fall asleep. If she wasn't careful things could get very complicated indeed.

XXXX

Professor Nick Cutter sat up in his hospital bed, staring at Doctor Nick Cutter standing at the far end of it. So far Abby was stable and nobody here had caught the virus. That had freed up him mind to do some deeper thinking about the doppelganger staring back at him.

"Where are you from?" Cutter asked himself.

"Long story," Nick replied.

"Try me," said Cutter with a smile. "I think you'll find me capable of understanding you."

"I don't doubt it," said Nick. "Believe me it's just as weird for me to be standing here looking at you as it is for you to be sitting there looking at me!"

"And yet you don't seem particularly bothered by it. Why not? How much more do you know about what's going on?"

"Like I said: a long story."

"Pull up a chair," said Cutter stubbornly. "I'm in no rush."

Sighing, Nick moved round the bed and sat down in the chair indicated.

"Look, you know about the multiple universe theory," he said, spreading his hands in front of him. "So you know that I'm you from a different timeline. What else do you want to know?"

"Who were you in your timeline?"

"Doctor Nick Cutter. Lecturer. Central Metropolitan University. Married to Doctor Helen Cutter, missing, recently declared deceased..."

"How recently?" Cutter cut in.

"Six months before I got swept up in all this," Nick replied.

"And?"

"And what?"

"Have you found her yet?"

"Not in my timeline."

What does that mean?" Cutter snapped. "Is Helen behind this? Did she send you?"

"Professor Cutter," Nick replied, putting the emphasis on the 'professor'. "I was sent here on the orders of and with the help of just one person."

"Helen?"

"No, a man I'd never met before. He assured me you would know him, though."

"Who then?"

Doctor Nick Cutter looked up and smiled.

"He said his name was Connor Temple."

XXXX

Connor looked around the landscape. It was ridiculously, horribly familiar. He had been here so many times now he knew the place better than he knew his own room back in Darwin House. The shingle crunched beneath his feet, echoing footsteps taken so long ago. This time it wasn't Abby by his side but Helen. He made his way over to the pile of rocks that hid the other part of the beach and clambered up them, dislodging a few in his haste. A disgruntled nothosaurus looked up as Connor's head appeared over the top of the rock pile. It snorted at him indignantly and slithered off into the water. The rest of the animals seemed less bothered by his entrance and continued to bask in the warm Triassic sunlight.

"Well, we're in the right place," said Helen, joining him on the ridge. "But are we in the right time? The Triassic is a big time period."

"I used the samples still in the rover to calibrate the mechanism," Connor replied. "Your equipment got a much clearer date for them than ours, but it's still within a margin of five years either side. It should be easier to be more accurate when we actually know the exact time and date we're aiming for though."

"Fascinating," Helen smiled. A sound caught her attention and she looked back over her shoulder. Where their anomaly had been, and closed, another had opened. Helen grabbed Connor's arm. "Quickly," she said. "Over the ridge and out of sight."

Following her lead Connor dived over the ridge, rolling and sliding down the other side. Helen helped him to his feet and dragged him off up the beach to the greener ridge of the bank. When they reached a suitable hollow in the ground, giving them an almost clear view of the anomaly and part of the beach, Helen pulled him down and held a finger to her lips.

"Let's see what happens next," she whispered.

By Connor's reckoning they must have lain crouched in the hollow for nearly two hours before there was any sign of activity by the anomaly. He sighed and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the Triassic sky and wondering just how Helen Cutter was able to stay quite so still for quite so long. He stretched and yawned. If he didn't know that time had just lost all meaning as a solid measurement, he would have said they were running out of it. Right now he was more interested in making sure nothing crept up behind them and ate them than in watching the anomaly. If he was dead, that would certainly put a limit on the time he had left to save Abby.

He rubbed a hand across his eyes and gasped as Helen jabbed him in the side with her elbow. Turning round again, he looked over to the anomaly and saw the source of her interest. Something was coming through. Taking care to keep low and quiet, Connor peered over the edge of the hollow at the shapes emerging through the shimmering light. When he was finally able to identify them, his eyes widened.

"Oh. My. God," he hissed.