AN: This is the updated and sort of spinoff version of a story I wrote about two years ago under OpenUpMyHeart... I decided to change some things, make characters older, add new one's in, and go down a different story route altogether (It's sort of The Hardship Of a secret, only set a few years later, sort of)

Warning: Foul language ahead.

I know I said I'd do a proper chapter this time, but this one just sort of came to me and it seemed appropriate to have it here.

Chapter Two:

A memory, Part II

Ryan's account of the night Isabella disappeared.

It was a simple job.

So simple.

Even now he doesn't understand how it went so badly wrong.

Except. He does.

They'd arrived at the wood. Tower Wood. Just off the M40, outside London. They'd piled out of the vehicles; it was supposed to be training exercise. Ryan was supposed to lead this one.

He'd instructed the team to find the Anomaly. Simple enough. The team consisted of himself, several ARC military personnel, Nathaniel Cutter, William Becker, and Isabella Temple.

Isabella was the technical specialist in this one. She accompanied the locking mechanism for the anomaly.

All were in their gear; but only William was cleared for EMP usage at the present time.

The wood's had been thick, and it was late at night. A night-time exercise; it was supposed to test them. Except Ryan knew it was where the first fault lay.

In the dark they were hard put to see the attack.

Three of the ARC military personnel were taken down in moments; which left them with seven men, plus them; armed men with nothing but eighteen year olds who thought they knew enough at the time.

"Dilophosaurs'"

Isabella was right off the bat with what they were being attacked by; but this wasn't supposed to happen. Or at least, Ryan was not prepared for an attack yet.

It was supposed to be so simple. It really was. I thought we'd be in and locked down in minutes.

"You men, form a perimeter, I want to know where their coming from!" Ryan had shouted; William quickly fell into line with the Military employees. At least he knew what he was doing.

"We still have to close the anomaly" Nathaniel had said, looking off into the darkness of the trees.

"We can't, not until we get these creatures back through." Isabella had said, surprisingly calm, checking that the locking mechanism hadn't been damaged. I remember wondering how she could be so calm; she was usually so like Connor, always babbling... I suppose she took after Abby in that aspect.

"Right – so, we need to somehow herd them back thro-"

A deafening roar interrupted him; one of the Dilophosaurs came bursting through the trees. It took out another member; after that, he couldn't really get a grip on the situation.

The entire group broke formation as they were attacked from all around; there were at least four of them. He had been shoved down by William and a ARC soldier.

He'd heard Nathaniel yell as one of the Dilophosaurs clipped his shoulder with it's claw. He has a huge-ass ugly red scar now, right across from the front of his shoulder to the back.

William yelled and fired an EMP blast at the Dilophosaurs and it fell right next to Nathaniel almost crushing him; William got up and ran to Nathaniel – That's when it started for them I think, or at least, that's when William realised.

Another one came out of the tree's but was shot down with an EMP again. I heard one of the ARC men get on the radio for back-up... but that wouldn't arrive for at least twenty-minutes.

And we held out for twenty-minutes. Most of our EMP's were out of charge, and we were down to three ARC men, myself, Nathaniel and William – That's when I noticed she was missing.

In all the panic. Isabella was gone.

She must have run off, been chased.

I looked towards the vehicles. We called out "Isabella" several times over but – Nothing. Not a sound.

When the back-up arrived, my Father, Danny Quinn arrived with them. Mission screwed over double time.

He took over pretty quickly. Got the wounded men medical help. William had wanted to stay by Nathaniel's side, but Nathaniel told him to go with us. Then we began the search. We searched for a good half-hour. Found the locking mechanism about fifty feet or so from where we'd been making our stand; it was smashed to pieces. And that's when one of the techies came over the com. That the anomaly had closed whilst we were still being attacked.

"...she must have gone through" My Father had said. I immediately told him no. She couldn't have, it's rule number one of course, you don't go through, no recon and no rescue attempts. I had them search again and again until dawn; after all, I was still in charge until the mission was deemed complete. But as the morning came in, we hadn't found anything... and we concluded that Isabella had gone through; whether on purpose of because she had no other choice, we don't know. She was stuck on the other side, with many creatures like the ones that had attacked us.

"And how did you feel about that?" Doctor Zungupta asked, scribbling away.

"Like the ground had fallen out from beneath my feet. Like someone had stabbed me with a hot poker and forced it through my guts... Like I'd failed"

I had failed.

"Like it was my fault"

It was my fault.

So yeah, that was the second in the series of memory chapters.

I'll try and add another chapter as soon as possible...

Please let me know what you think so far!