Chapter 3

Abby looked along the thin plastic tube running from the machine into Nick Cutter's arm. He was unconscious: they had knocked him out before moving him to the medi-centre. His gaunt, unshaven features were starting to look vaguely healthier though. She wasn't sure which was more disturbing: seeing him sitting staring into space in his office or seeing him lying here being fed through a tube. The ARC medical team were useful in a crisis, but unless there was blood pouring out from somewhere, or weird physical symptoms that they could get their teeth into, they seemed to be out of their depth.

Whatever was going on with the professor, it was mental, not physical. Becker had been able to pinpoint the exact moment when he changed: right after Helen said something to him just before she disappeared. Abby couldn't help but wonder what those few quiet words had been to have such an effect. She was no psychologist, but whatever those words were, they had caused a reaction so great that the mind of Nick Cutter was stranded or fixated, or whatever the right word was, upon them.

"Why won't you just talk to us?" Abby murmured, only realising afterwards that she had given the thought voice. She glanced over her shoulder self-consciously. She'd never been much good at hospitals, especially not at the "talking to the patient" therapy type stuff they went on about. Even when Stephen had been dying from an arthropleura bite, she had just sat there and watched him; although, with Stephen, who could blame her!

"D'you have any idea of the mess we're in?" Abby sighed: resigning herself to talking out loud and trying to make herself feel better about it by telling her head that whatever she said to the professor he probably wouldn't be aware of anyway. "Connor's in charge of all the science stuff now and he's about ready to explode! He even missed... and I say this in full awareness of the fact that it's going to make me sound like a geek! He even missed the first episode of the new series of Battlestar Galactica because he had to 'work'. Can you believe it? He spends almost all day here, and I don't mean nine to five! He's in here from whatever time in the morning to almost midnight sometimes! There have been nights when he hasn't even bothered to come home! And to make matters worse, the majority of the time he spends here he spends with his new IT buddies working on that ridiculous looking contraption and trying to figure out where they can take it next and how they might be able to shrink it or modify it or get from the one they've got now to whatever Helen had that made her disappear like that and unless I'm actually there hanging over their shoulders I never get to see him and now Rex is even starting to go in the huff with me!"

Abby took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to compose herself. She let out the breath slowly, keeping control.

"Everything okay?"

Abby jumped and turned round. Connor was standing in the doorway.

"How long have you been there?" Abby asked, frowning.

"We've got a new anomaly alert," said Connor, looking past Abby to Nick's prone figure on the ARC medi-centre bed.

"Where?"

"Up north again. Hull this time," Connor was still watching Nick.

"Any more information or do I have to play twenty questions?" Abby tried to sound cheerful.

"There's a team leaving in half an hour. Pack a bag in case we need to stay over again."

Abby watched as Connor turned and walked away. She blinked and shook herself, going over the sparse pieces of information that were trying to fight their way through the warning signals that were screaming in her brain.

She turned back to Nick, anger now seeping through.

"This is ridiculous! I can't believe we have all come so far just to collapse in a heap when Helen snaps her fingers! Wake up! You're doing nobody any good lying there like one of your fossils! Stephen's gone. Jenny is who knows where! Connor seems to be drifting further away from me every day and I cannot, I will not, lose him over THIS! Wake up and do something before the whole world goes to pot!"

Immune to her tirade, Nick lay there. He made no movement, no sign that he had heard her. Abby screamed in frustration and stormed out of the room.

XXXX

It was a long drive up to Hull. The M1 was not the most interesting of motorways and nobody in the convoy seemed particularly loquacious. Becker had delegated driving duty to another soldier. He sat in the front passenger seat communicating via radio with a team already at the site. Connor and Abby occupied the rear of the land rover, each at opposite sides of the vehicle, each staring aimlessly out of the windows. Once or twice, one of them would look round but, finding the other looking away, would quickly return to their previous occupation.

Finally turning off the road at a sign for a dive centre, the team soon found themselves surrounded once more by military vehicles. A cordon had been set up some distance back from the centre and Becker paused to make sure that the guards had their stories straight should anyone start asking questions. It was only a vague bluff about some piece of military equipment turning up, but in the absence of a PR expert, it was the best he could do.

"What have we got?" Becker asked as he and the others piled out of the land rover by the side of a large, artificial looking lake.

"Two of the centre's divers were down this morning, sir," a black clad, middle aged man replied. "They were surveying the site before reopening. Apparently there was a lot of damage during the floods."

Becker nodded, recalling the massive flood damage the area had taken in the wake of the North Sea anomaly. Things hadn't been too bad on a grand scale, but if you condensed that scale to the north bank of the Humber, things had been exceedingly damp.

"What made them call us?"

"While they were down there, they spotted a few things out of order. Nothing major, nothing that couldn't be explained by the storms. Then they spotted something moving. One of the divers is a marine biologist by degree, sir: she swears the creature she saw should be extinct."

"Oh great!" Becker pulled a face and tried to stop himself swearing. If there was one thing he didn't need, it was another scientist! "Right, fine, give me the details."

"Name: Kate Barratt. Age: 26. B.Sc. Honours in Marine Biology. M.Sc. in Aquatic Ecosystems. Dive Master qualification with PADI. Currently working on a PhD. in Interspecies Interactions in Aquatic Ecosystems. Hull University. Part time diving instructor here for the past two years. Claims that the creature she saw was a belemnite, sir. Prehistoric and extinct, but she's not sure about the era without checking."

"Okay, where is she?"

"One of my female officers is with her just now."

"And her dive buddy?"

"In the office with another of my officers. He's another story, sir."

"Oh?" Becker frowned. "Why?"

"Claims he saw something entirely different down there."

"What?"

"You're not going to like this sir," said the older man, glancing down at his feet, "but he says he saw a bomb."

Becker's jaw dropped. It took him a moment to snap out of it.

"What kind of bomb? An old one?"

"One of the World War ones, he says. Thinks the storms stirred it up. Maybe from the Blitz: Germans trying to hit the docks and all that."

"That's great!" Becker was almost laughing. The other soldier looked at him strangely. Becker held out his hands and continued. "No, seriously! We need a reason to shut this place down to the public: what better than a legitimate bomb scare! It's close enough to the story our boys already have at the gate and if we do dredge up an old bomb we'll have tangible evidence of our reasons for being here."

"I suppose I didn't quite look at it that way, sir," the soldier conceded.

Feeling altogether more cheerful, Becker turned back to his reinforcements with a spring in his step.

"Right: I want a team of divers down there assessing the situation. Any sign of predators, anomalies or live explosives and you return to the surface immediately. Go carefully in the deeper areas: you may need to make a decompression stop on the way up. I need my next team extending the perimeter. We have a possible bomb threat, so let's treat it as one. I want a base set up at the edge of the perimeter. Get our civilians there and keep them separate: I want to interview them individually, especially the marine biology woman." Becker took a breath and turned to Abby and Connor. "Can either of you dive?"

Both shook their heads. Becker turned back to his troops, some of whom were rapidly disappearing in various directions. He picked out one of the few awaiting orders.

"Right: you. Call through to the ARC and find out who in the science team has underwater experience. The IT tech's should be on their way up with the imploder, not that it's likely to be much use here. Find out if any of them have SCUBA qualifications. If there are no divers in that team, we'll have to make do with our guys."

"What can we do?" Abby asked, aware that, beside her, Connor was still staring off into space.

"Water samples," Becker replied. "We have a full analysis kit in the supply truck over there. Make use of it. I want to know if there's anything odd about this lake. If you happen to catch anything in your jam jars, let me know."

Abby opened her mouth to reply but Becker was already walking away. She sighed and turned on her heel, heading for the truck. She had gone no more than three paces when she realised that Connor hadn't moved.

"Connor, what is it?" Abby snapped. "It's bad enough with Cutter spacing out on us without you going too!"

"Hmm?" Connor looked round. "No, I'm fine. I was just... Just..."

"Just what?"

"I was just thinking: Peta can dive. She used to dive the Great Barrier Reef out in Australia. She told me."

Abby rolled her eyes and turned back to the truck. This time she heard Connor following. She hurried ahead of him, muttering:

"I might have known blooming Lara Croft would be able to come to the rescue!"