A/N: Thank you again to everyone reading this. Cookies to everyone who has reviewed so far. WE're not at the end yet: there's a few more chapters to go. Just as a note, if there are any questions from the series (right through from Stormy Weather to Pretty Things) that still haven't been answered, please let me know. I have a list of 14 loose ends to tie up (although weirdly none from Bad Penny, so I'm guessing I'm either missing something or I'm remembering them in the wrong places) but I do want to make sure I don't miss any.

(If anyone can actually remember all 14 (and any others) I would be considerably impressed!)

Chapter 16

"If he's here, why can't I see him?" Professor Cutter bellowed at his doppelganger.

"You might still be contagious," Doctor Nick replied patiently. "This is a secure isolation unit. Nobody gets in or out without going through decontamination and the only people they let through the door are those we know are immune to the virus."

"There certainly doesn't seem to be any shortage of doctors and nurses getting in here!"

"Almost everyone in this time is naturally immune. The virus is no longer a threat here."

"Why?"

"Well it didn't take me long to work it out, so I can't imagine you're having that much difficulty! It is our field after all!"

"Evolution?"

"As always."

"They've evolved general immunity?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"How d'you think?"

Cutter was silent for a moment. If it had been any other species his brain would have accepted the answer easily. When it was his own, it took a little more getting used to.

"The virus wasn't stopped," he murmured.

"Correct."

"The only survivors were the ones with immunity."

"Again, correct."

"The entire population of the UK has re-grown from those few survivors, so they all have immunity."

"Not just the UK."

"The world?" Cutter frowned.

"The entire world," Nick nodded.

"My God!" Cutter breathed. "How many died?"

"Billions," Nick shrugged. "Ninety nine point nine nine five percent of the population of the Earth. One survivor in every twenty thousand people. Fifty in every million."

Cutter's face drained of colour. His mouth was dry. He swallowed. One in every twenty thousand. The population had been more than decimated, it had been destroyed! And yet here he was, sitting in a high-tech medical wing of the ARC, or of an ARC, it probably wasn't the same one, being attended by an array of tall, slim doctors and nurses and talking to himself. Well, to a version of himself. Humanity had not only survived, it had picked itself up, dusted itself off and started all over again. It was truly amazing.

"The virus," Cutter said suddenly. "What do you know about it here?"

"So far, not a lot," Nick replied, leaning forward in the chair and balancing his elbows on his knees, his hands waving in front of him as he talked. "We know it is highly contagious, airborne, survives for days at a time in water, in the air or on surfaces and difficult to kill. We know that those of us who are immune produce one particular antibody that attaches itself to the viral antigens. The genetic sequence required to produce the antibody was discovered using synthetic reverse transcriptases, scanning electron micrographs and several pieces of nanotechnology I just don't understand yet. We've tried altering the non-immune genetic sequence to match the immune one, but it doesn't work. It's an operon sequence. We can change the two nucleotide bases that make the difference to the structural gene in the sequence, yet another example of nanotechnology I haven't got my head around yet, but without the same sort of changes in the operator and possibly promoter genes, the gene still won't work. It's like the part of the DNA that switches it on doesn't work any more."

"Yeah, my genetics isn't that rusty," Cutter muttered, deep in thought. "And if the operator gene is knocked out for that, then there may be a whole bunch of other things not working."

"Exactly," Nick nodded. "Plus, we haven't identified the location of the operator gene yet. We know it's upstream of the structural gene that produces the antibody itself, but there are too many start codons to isolate it. Also, we don't know what effect changing any DNA in the operator gene will have on the other genes that are overlapping it!"

"Or if the activator protein will still bind to the operator."

"It should do, that should be a response to the virus..."

"Yeah, but it might not be the right response," Cutter interrupted, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "Damn, my head hurts! Too many weird words for this time of the morning!"

"Tell me about it!"

XXXX

Becker glanced back at his mismatched group of refugees. Funny, he'd never thought of them that way until he overheard Elizabeth trying to explain it in Latin to the knight, who had come round again while Becker was busy gathering supplies with his men.

So far they had managed some form of communication. Elizabeth had persuaded the knight to speak to her in Latin and had tried to explain away the bizarre appearances of herself, Kate, John, Becker and the soldiers. In return the knight had warned them of a fearsome creature in the forest. Elizabeth had explained that they had already met, and slain, the creature, but that one of their number had died and another been injured in the process. The knight had graciously offered them his hospitality and told them that his manor was not far from the forest. He had introduced himself as Sir Thomas Berenger, a Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, returning to his home after losing many of his brothers at the fall of Acre.

That put them at the end of the thirteenth century, Becker thought. Acre had fallen to the Mamluks in 1291. It had been followed by a period of retreat and reorganisation that had effectively signalled the end of both the crusades and the Templars. One Grand Master of the order had died in the siege, his replacement following him just a year later to be replaced himself by the final Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, in 1292. Becker mentally kicked himself for forgetting the names of the other two Grand Masters: it would have made ascertaining the date so much easier.

Looking ahead, through the trees, he could just make out the shape of a building coming into view. It looked like a large old-fashioned farmhouse or barn. As they drew closer, and the trees thinned, Becker could make out the high, small windows in the newest part of the building, its mortar still new and clean in comparison to the rest of the building.

The manor had been built over many years, wings and rooms being added on as and when the Berenger family's finances would allow. The line of the roof jumped erratically from one height to the next, the new wing being slightly lower than the main body of the manor, but higher than the elongated wing on the other side, which Becker suspected held the kitchens and perhaps stables.

They had barely left the cover of the forest when a cry went up from the manor and an array of men and boys were running towards them. Hanging back by the corner of the manor, Becker could see one or two young women holding back some smaller children. Maids of some kind, he assumed. A lot of staff, though, for a simple manor house. And certainly a lot of children.

A clamour of noise hit them as the locals arrived to greet their lord and master. It was only with much unintelligible conversation with Sir Thomas that they finally took the makeshift litter he was being carried on, as well as the one carrying Faulkner, and led the way to the manor. Sir Thomas explained, via Elizabeth, that none of his servants spoke Latin. The only members of his household who would be able to communicate with them would be his wife, his chaplain, his physician and, hopefully, if they had been paying attention to their lessons, his children and their tutor. He also explained that the manor was only a part of his lands and he apologised that he did not have a grand castle to welcome them into, as some of his brother knights did. The manor, it appeared, was the focal point of the Berenger estate, with several smaller buildings on the far side of it surrounding the rough shape of a courtyard where it seemed much of the estate business was carried out.

Becker allowed Elizabeth to take the lead in their group, walking between him and Sir Thomas until they reached the house then greeting the lady of the manor and relaying the situation to her, interspersed with old English from Sir Thomas, until Lady Berenger shooed her husband away with a few curt orders to the men carrying his litter. She turned to the men carrying Faulkner's litter and gave similar sounding orders, then sent one of the boys running out of the manor at top speed, presumably in search of the physician.

Having dealt with the invalids, Lady Berenger turned to Elizabeth and the others, looking them over with a disapproving eye. She was tall and fair, with a long, oval face and light brown eyes. She questioned Elizabeth mercilessly and Becker heard himself and the others being introduced as the two women spoke. He frowned when he heard the word "dux" aimed in his direction, trying to place it in the remnants of what shards of Latin he had actually learned in school, then had to fight to keep his face straight when he picked up the word "uxor" aimed at Kate. He knew he hadn't been able to follow Elizabeth's introductions all that closely, but hadn't she just told their hostess that Kate was his wife?

XXXX

Connor sat down heavily on the well-padded cot built into the wall of his room in the cave system. The technology worked. So far, so good. All they needed to do now was refine it a bit, produce a handheld version and work out what they were going to do with it next. His first instinct had been to send an anomaly straight into the flat and go get Abby himself, but both Helen and Peta had argued against that, quite rightly. If he went anywhere near Abby, or their version of the present, which was quickly becoming referred to as the "plagued present" to distinguish it from the time they now found themselves based in, then he would end up catching the virus and, if he brought Abby back through the anomaly, or even just came back through himself, killing all of them as well. Not a good plan. It hadn't taken long to talk him out of it.

In the end, the plan they had come up with, with some input from Nigel, Sam and Peta, but mostly from Helen, was to find a stopping point along the way. They were, even now, searching through the historical files for information that might help them pick a time. Cai had set aside a team of his men and women to help with the search. If the men were beginning to creep Connor out, he really didn't want to think about the women. There was some variation in every population but the comparison with the women from his own time made the differences stand out. Almost all of the women he had seen in the caves were tall and remarkably curvy. Not in the way that was usually a polite way of saying chubby or overweight, though. They reminded him of Seven of Nine, from Star Trek: Voyager, but, well, more so. And their eyes were weird. Massive, in fact. Probably a product of being stuck down in these caves for so long. Just like Cai and the other men, they were hyper-intelligent and zoomed through the historical files faster than any of Connor's team.

It was Peta that had sent him down here, to his room. She had spotted the signs that said he hadn't been sleeping and had sent him off to remedy the problem. He'd tried to protest, saying that just sitting in a room trying to sleep wasn't going to make him sleep, but she'd had an answer for that. Apparently, while he'd been burning his eyes trying to read the masses of text on the screen in front of him, she had been plotting behind his back. She had already procured the services of a medic, armed with a sedative. He'd been marched off by the medic and deposited on his bunk before being injected with the clear fluid that was now fogging his brain. He'd tried fighting it, but it was winning. With a groan, he lay down on the bunk and let the drug force the much needed restorative of sleep upon him.