A/N: Well, folks, this is it! Break out the champagne and strawberries, the series is at an end. This chapter is longer than the others (about twice as long) but there really was nowhere handy to split it, so I hope it just carries you through with the reading the same way it did with me writing it. I really hope you've all enjoyed reading this series as much as I have enjoyed writing it and reading your reviews. Thank you again to my regular reviewers especially: Xantiae, Kate, Pandora, Smallfri - help yourselves to lots of double chocolate chip mega cookies!

Chapter 19

"So how long were you stuck in the thirteenth century?" Connor asked Becker as they waited for the Kate to appear.

"Why?" Becker replied, staring fixedly at the door on the other side of the hanger. His men had already joined them and it had been agreed that John and Elizabeth would stay with Peta and the rest of Connor's team.

"You just seemed very comfortable in a frock, that's all," Connor shrugged.

"Don't push it, Temple," Becker growled.

Connor had failed miserably in persuading Abby that she wasn't well enough to go with them. His argument that she was still recovering from the virus had been met with a flat denial: the doctors had said she was fine. His plea that he didn't want to risk losing her again had been met with a counter-argument: all the more reason for them to stick together. His bold statement that this was really a man's job had ended in violence: he now had a very sore arm. He decided annoying two members of the team he was about to take into a hostile and potentially life-threatening environment might not be a good idea and shut up.

The two Cutters were deep in conversation a short distance away. Doctor Nick had offered to go through himself, undercover, and get Jenny and Claudia out quietly. Professor Cutter had argued that as similar as they may be, they still weren't identical and frankly he didn't trust a version of himself that could work with Helen for so long to rescue the most important person in his life. Not when there were other options.

Eventually Abby reappeared, with Kate in tow. Connor set up the controller and dialled up the anomaly. The tear opened right in front of them.

"What part of the caves will it bring us out into?" Cutter asked.

"Should be my old room, if they haven't done some major redecorating," Connor replied. "I don't have an exact date for the location so I've just reversed the signal that brought us through here and shifted the position slightly. As much time will have gone past on that side since we left as it has on this side since we arrived."

"Connor, that's nearly two months!" Cutter exploded. "Helen could have done anything with them in that time!"

"Well, then we'll just have to hope she hasn't, won't we," snapped Connor. "And if she has, then we find out exactly what time and date I need to program into this thing to get us there in time!"

Cutter didn't reply straight away. He knew the younger man was right. He sniffed and turned away from Connor to face the anomaly.

"Fine," he said. "Let's get going then."

XXXX

Cai crouched behind the boxes of supplies and watched the goings on in the engineering complex. From the moment the remote controller had been perfected, he had been shut out of proceedings. Helen and the man she had brought through an anomaly had taken over. It had been a bloodless coup: everyone knew the remote controller in Helen's hand was far more powerful than any gun or missile. With the remote, Helen could open an anomaly right inside your head or worse: inside your wife or child's.

With his engineers and troops either locked up or being forced to work for Helen, Cai was finding survival a greater challenge than usual. It was illogical that this woman from so far back down the evolutionary chain should be able to take over the way she had, but nevertheless that was what had happened. He had been outsmarted, out-guiled and outflanked. The clone army that Helen had raised in her time here was five times the size he had authorised and easily capable of overpowering the nominal troops stationed here in this outpost. He could only assume she had been making much more use of the controller technology than he had thought.

An opportunity arose and he darted across a clear area, grabbed something out of one of the boxes and darted back to his hiding place. The item he had picked up looked like only one small part of something much larger, but something he couldn't quite identify. Keeping a tight grip on it, Cai edged out of the room and back into the shadows of a side tunnel. Once encased in darkness, he stood up, stretching to his full height. He could move quickly and quietly through these tunnels with little need for light, but the question was where to go. It was known that he was a fugitive here. His own quarters would be watched. The side tunnels themselves were patrolled regularly. Everywhere other than the residential quarters and narrow side tunnels were under constant surveillance.

Dodging into a side tunnel that wasn't due to be patrolled for some time, Cai stopped and went over the residential quarters in his head. The photographic memory that allowed him to travel through the tunnels in darkness also provided him with a mental map of the area and the positions of all surveillance equipment. The quarters recently inhabited by the young Professor Temple and his friends were closest to him. He made his way there.

XXXX

The room disappeared into darkness as the anomaly winked out. After a moment or so of stumbling about, a few thuds and choice curses, Connor found the light switch. Light flooded the white walled room and it immediately became apparent which Cutter was which: the new one was the only other person not looking about in awe. Becker was the first person to come back to his senses, appraising the room quickly and quietly, then turning straight to Connor.

"Will Helen know we've arrived?"

"Unlikely," Connor replied, shaking his head. "The bedrooms aren't monitored for privacy reasons and their anomaly detector doesn't have a massive siren like our old one did. Besides, if she's still busy playing with her new toy, it'll already have an anomaly to focus on. At least one!"

"So where do we go from here?" Becker looked from Connor to Nick.

"The cells are down a couple of levels," said Nick, waving a hand to indicate the general direction of down. "There's a stairway not far from here, but there may be guards."

"I'll deal with them," Becker shrugged.

"Yeah, no offence mate," Nick smirked. "I'm afraid it's gonnae take more than you and the five amigos there to take down the guards in this place!"

"Quiet!" Cutter hissed from the other side of the room. While Becker had been quizzing Connor and Nick on the layout of the caves, Cutter had been making a circuit of the room. He had stopped by the doorway. He turned to Connor, pointing to the door. "Where does this go?"

"Out into the main corridor," said Connor. "Why?"

"There's something on the other side," Cutter kept his voice low. "Are you sure Helen doesn't know we're here?"

Connor flashed a panicked look at Cutter. Of course he wasn't sure. He'd based his reasoning on the cave system he'd left. He hadn't taken into account any changes Helen might have made in his absence. He scanned the room for cameras. None. He looked back to Cutter.

"What if there were no other anomaly open?" Cutter hissed.

Becker stepped in, waving everyone back against the door wall and taking up a place by the light switch. He held a finger to his lips, made sure everyone had got the message and flicked off the light just as the door handle started to turn.

Eleven people held their breath as the door slid silently open and a movement of air indicated the presence of a new person stepping into the room and closing the door just as silently behind them. In silence, they waited as a hand slid up the wall, fingers reaching out, feeling, searching, finding.

The light flicked on. Becker stepped forward. His gun was raised. The figure moved. A blur of speed. Becker's gun hit the floor. Becker soon followed. The figure turned. Five soldiers moved. They hit the figure as one. It dropped to the floor. They piled on top.

Moments later, the hooded figure was tied up and lying on the floor. Becker was on his feet again, holding a handkerchief to his nose and watching Cutter approach the figure cautiously. Cutter pulled the hood back and immediately stepped back, frowning.

"Who are you?" Cutter asked. "And while we're on the subject, what are you?"

"His name is Cai," Nick answered for the sullen prisoner. "He is human, but more so. He and his people are our evolutionary descendants. He runs this place."

"If he runs it, what's he doing sneaking round here on his own," Cutter growled.

"Helen has taken over," said Cai, glaring at Cutter. "Your wife, I believe."

"That sounds like her," said Cutter, pulling a chair over to face Cai and sitting down. "So far anyway. Keep talking."

"I rescued her from the blacklands north of here. She walked through a time tear with no fear of what may be on the other side. There was a prophecy among my people, millennia ago, of a lone woman, a time-walker, who would save mankind from its own downfall. I believed it to be her. I gave her food, shelter, medical care. When she was well enough, I told her of the prophecy and I asked her to help us. To help restore this dead and dying world. She agreed. I gave her everything that she asked for: access to our historical files, our research, our labs. I even provided her with a time map."

"Time map?" Cutter interrupted.

"A device which plots the time faults and allows you to open an anomaly anywhere that they cross," Cai explained.

"That's what she used to get to and from your time and this one," said Nick.

"She spotted something in the time maps," Cai continued. "It was just a flaw, so we thought. Helen decided to test that theory and discovered something new. She found she could not only move from one time to another, but also from one world to another. My people have long believed that every possible world is out there somewhere. Worlds where our ancestors chose not to halt the movement of the ice with nuclear power, but found another way instead. Worlds, even, where the ice never ceased to flow and the world froze, forcing our ancestors to adapt, leave or die. Helen found the key to those worlds. When she did, she found something else."

"Me," Nick stated simply.

"Yes, you," said Cai. "You and Claudia. Both of you are from worlds other to this one, and to each other."

"Where is Helen now?" Cutter began his interrogation again.

"She is in the engineering complex," said Cai. "She and her clones have taken over the entire cave system. There were far more of them than there should have been. Those who are not guarding prisoners are moving boxes through anomalies."

"What's in the boxes?"

"I don't know. Most were closed. One was open. I stole this from it," Cai nodded towards the item that had fallen from his hand when Becker's five soldiers rushed him.

"Connor, do you know what it is?" Cutter asked, handing the piece to Connor.

Connor turned the metallic object around in his hands shaking his head as he examined it from every angle. Suddenly he froze, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead.

"Actually, yeah, I do recognise this," he laughed. "This is a part of the first imploder we built! The one that got swallowed up by the anomaly at Darwin House!"

"The one that cost Lester three million quid!" Cutter exclaimed.

"That's the one," Connor nodded, turning the piece of imploder around in his hands again. I just assumed it had vaporised or disappeared into oblivion or something!"

"Looks like you were right with the something!" Becker muttered.

"What would Helen want with bits of a dead imploder that didn't work?" Cutter muttered.

"Well, it's not dead, exactly, just disassembled," Connor shrugged. "You put it back together again and it'll work no problem. And it did work. Or it would have done if we had told it to do the opposite of what we did tell it to do. If that makes any sense. Essentially it's just a bigger version of the controller we have now, but with less power and without the extra bit of programming that can narrow down the magnetic oscillations to exactly the right frequency to create an anomaly."

"So Helen could use these to build her own controller?" Cutter groaned.

"Helen already has a controller," said Nick. "We left her with one."

"Actually, she had a controller," said Cai. "Now she has a remote controller. She can open an anomaly wherever and whenever she likes from whatever distance. She's spent the past month since we perfected the design practising her aim. It's how she took over the caves so quickly."

"So what does she want the old imploder for then?"

"Other worlds," breathed Connor, his eyes staring, unfocussed, at the wall. "A bigger, better controller wouldn't just rip a hole in time and space, it would rip straight through to another dimension. Maybe the only ones she has access to are the two that she got Nick and Claudia from. Maybe they were already there, but not any others. She could use it to create more. Find more realities."

"Who knows, but with Helen, it's never good," said Cutter. "Look, we have to get Jenny and Claudia and get out of here. Preferably taking at least a part of Helen's plans with us just make her life more difficult."

"I can help you there," said Cai. "I can get you to the cells without passing the surveillance cameras, then back up to the engineering complex. The only problem will be if we meet some of her clone guards."

"Why should we trust you?" Becker grumbled, nursing his gun.

"You don't have that many options. Now that her own master has arrived, the pace of her operations has increased immensely. They'll be leaving soon."

"Her master?" Becker frowned as Connor and Cutter began untying Cai.

"I do not recognise him, but he obviously has power over her. You will see him when we get to engineering. The cells first though."

Reaching the cells proved simple. A series of dark side tunnels and spiral stairways led down to the cells level. Once there, it was easy to see where Helen's priorities lay. The corridors were deserted. Cai led them along first one corridor, then another, stopping in front of a control panel and pressing a few buttons. A grille slid back some distance down the corridor. Nick hurried forward, disappearing into the cell for a few moments before returning with both Jenny and Claudia. Both women looked pale at first, but then Jenny's face went white, then pink as she spotted Cutter. She hurried forward, then stopped, a look of apprehension crossing her features.

"Is it you?" Jenny breathed, watching Cutter closely. "Are you my Nick Cutter, or just another of Helen's mind games?"

"It's me, Jenny," said Cutter, striding forwards and wrapping his arms around her. "I swear, it's me."

The journey up to the engineering complex was as uneventful as the one to the cells. Cai settled the growing group in a corner behind some control panels, then dashed off, returning a few minutes later with the open box of imploder parts.

"Will this be enough to stop whatever she's doing?" Cai asked Connor.

"I've a feeling only a bullet in the brain would manage that!" Cutter snorted.

"It'll have to do," said Becker. "Now let's get out of here before our luck runs out."

"Too late," said Claudia. Her eyes were fixed on the space over Cutter and Cai's shoulders. They turned. Cutter's jaw dropped. He started to stand up, but Claudia and Cai pulled him back down sharply.

"That's Stephen!" Cutter gasped.

"Not your Stephen," Claudia hissed. "My Stephen. You see the scar above his right eye? It goes straight through his eyebrow. He got that in a so-called fight with Helen. I always thought it was a bit to clean a cut. I only found out I was right when he murdered my husband."

"Your husband?" Cutter frowned. Claudia Brown had never been married when he'd known her.

"You," she replied softly. "My version of you, anyway. After the Permian anomaly, you asked me and I said yes. Lester gave me away."

Cutter swallowed. He didn't know what to say to that. He certainly didn't know what to make of the version of Stephen walking around over there ordering men around and apparently taking charge even of Helen.

"We have to go, now," said Becker.

Cai nodded and led them out of the engineering area and into a side room nearby.

"You can open your anomaly here," he said. "Can't you?"

Connor nodded and started punching buttons on the controller. Seconds later the anomaly flickered into life. Connor stuck his head through then pulled it back, nodding and waving through Becker and his men, carrying the box of imploder pieces. Abby, Kate and Jenny went through next. They had barely disappeared when the door swung open behind them. A shot rang out and Connor clutched at his shoulder, almost dropping the controller. Cutter, Cai, Claudia and Nick turned to see Stephen levelling a gun at them.

Stephen's second shot was aimed at the controller in Connor's hand. Nick reached his arm before he pulled the trigger and pushed it wide, the bullet ricocheting off the metal fixtures on the chalk wall. One punch sent Nick to the floor. Before the others had a chance to reach him, there was a bullet in Nick's skull. Claudia screamed and launched herself at Stephen as soon as she saw Nick fall. Before Stephen could turn the gun on Claudia she had it in her hand and had turned it on him, firing without hesitation at point blank range. Blood spurted across the white wall behind Stephen and he slumped to the floor, leaving Claudia standing there, shaking.

The gun fell from her hand with a clatter and she sank to the floor. Cutter ran to her side.

"I couldn't let him get away with it again," Claudia gasped, her hand finding the knife that had buried itself in her side during her attack. "He killed my Nick once. I hated him enough for that already. But to see him kill him again. Like that. I-I just..."

"It's okay," said Cutter gently. "It's okay. You've probably just saved who knows how many millions of lives, not to mention ours."

Claudia smiled up at him once, then slipped away into oblivion. Cutter laid her down and turned at the sound of footsteps. It was Becker, back through the anomaly. He looked around and immediately dropped to Connor's side. In all the excitement, Cutter hadn't even noticed Connor had fallen to the floor.

"We have to get him through, now!" Becker cried, sticking his head through the anomaly then pulling it back, followed by his men. Between them the scooped up Claudia, Nick and Connor, carrying them through the shining aperture to the relative safety of the ARC on the other side.

"Come on, it's time to go," Cutter said to Cai, waving him forward to the anomaly.

"I have to stay here," said Cai, shaking his head. "Now that Stephen is out of the picture, maybe Helen and her troops will be disorganised enough for me to lead a resistance against them. Either way, my place is here, with my people."

Cutter nodded and stepped through the anomaly, picking up the controller on the way. On the far side of the anomaly, he turned and closed it, only then turning to see the chaos that had preceded him through. Jenny was crying silently by Nick and Claudia's bodies, Kate trying to comfort her, but what disturbed Cutter more was the sight of Abby staring blankly ahead of her, her eyes occasionally flicking across to the single wound in Nick's forehead, to the two red wounds in Connor's unconscious body.

Seconds later, medics piled into the room, moved Connor to a trolley and disappeared through the doors at the far end of the hangar with him. Cutter walked up behind Abby and put a hand on her shoulder.

"He'll be okay," he said. "They can do amazing things here."

"No, he won't," sobbed Abby. "He won't. I've seen this. I've seen it happen. All of it. Stephen turning on us. You dead. Connor dead. One wound through his shoulder, one through his heart. I dreamt it all and now it's all come true."

There was no reply to that, Cutter thought. After all, it was just the shock and grief talking. Flashing a look across to Becker, who nodded in return, he led Abby away. Away from the two dead bodies and the spreading pool of Connor's blood on the floor.

XXXX

"Uncle Pete, you need to watch this."

Becker looked up from the book he was reading to see John holding out a palmtop viewer to him. He was still having trouble getting used to the 31st century technology here. He even found it difficult to work his new phone. Jenny had made a similar complaint. Apparently her phone had worked perfectly in the future, where she had sent several messages for help to the only phone number she could remember: Connor's. Unfortunately it now turned out that it only worked when an anomaly was open to the correct time for a mobile phone signal to seep through to let her send the messages. For the rest of the time it appeared she had been "out of range" of the transmitters.

Becker let John set up the video in the viewer. The younger the person, apparently the less time it took them to adapt to more modern technology. He wondered how Elizabeth was coping. She'd been threatening to write everything they had been through down and restart her career with the longest awaited comeback in history. He pressed play, that much he could manage, and sat back.

Becker felt an odd constriction in his chest that he hadn't felt for a long time when he saw Lester's face appear in the video, along with his wife and two other children.

"John, Peter, we're leaving this message for you in the hope that one day you will find it. Once it's recorded I'll e-mail it through to the ARC servers with instructions for them to keep it on their permanent data banks with several backup copies, just in case an anomaly opens in one of them!

"By now, John, I'm sure your Uncle Pete has told you all about the anomalies. If he hasn't he should have. Stare him out until he does. You know he hates it when you do that. I've told your Mum and your brother and sister here. They had a right to know what was going on.

"I know you're not happy with me for leaving you on your own, John, but really I had no choice. I hope one day you'll understand that. We're not exactly cheerful about the way things have turned out here either, but at least we're together, and for that, we're grateful. We just wanted to leave you a message to remind you, wherever you are, that we love you. We always have and we always will. Wherever you are, you are still my son, and you will always make me very proud of you, just by having the strength to live through this for me.

I also wanted you to know that you're not alone. You do still have family. In fact you're one of the few who does, probably. You see your Uncle Pete was not the only person you know who had to change his name. I did too. A long time ago, when I was about the same age as your Uncle Pete was when you were born, I changed my name. I changed it from Berenger. When I did that, I had to walk away from everyone else in my life: my parents, my friends and my brother. My older brother, his wife and their little baby boy, Peter.

"Well, I'll get this sent off to the ARC now. We've all sorted out our wills so that everything should be held in trust for you until you claim it. You never know: if you're far enough in the future you might turn out to be a millionaire! Please don't spend it all at once! We really do need to go now, John. I don't know how much longer the power will last. Just remember that we love you. Goodbye."

Becker's eyes were wet when the screen went dark. He could hear John sniffling behind him too.

"Where did you get this?" Becker asked, his voice thick. Lester was his father's brother. He could hardly believe it.

"Nigel found it in the computers."

"Is he still hiding from Uncle Connor?"

John nodded. After discovering the source of his mysterious text messages, a weak but living Connor had demanded to know where the unsigned birthday card had come from. It turned out his secret admirer was not Peta, but Nigel. The speechless expression on Connor's pale face had made sure that Nigel turned bright pink and ran off to hide every time either Connor or Abby came into view.

"Where's Auntie Kate?" Becker asked.

"She's cheating at poker with Connor, Abby, Peta and Auntie Sam."

Becker smiled. John had taken to the haughty chemist.

"Tell Uncle Connor he shouldn't be out of bed yet," Becker grinned. "And tell Auntie Kate she doesn't need to cheat if Connor's playing."

"I did, she said it's not him she's worried about."

"Just don't let her play with your new fortune, kiddo."

~Fini~