A/N: So, I didn't have internet access this week, as expected, but I did manage to get the next few chapters edited. The story's been done for a couple of years now, but I thought that fresh eyes might catch old mistakes. Since the last chapter was so short, here's two considerably longer ones to get everyone through the weekend (the next one will be up within the hour). Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians! :)
It was 4 full days before Becker saw Jess again. As fast as they had closed each anomaly, another one had opened somewhere else. The teams were coping as best they could, but this was more than they'd ever had to deal with. Connor hadn't left the ADD since his rooftop chat with Becker, and only left when he really, really needed to use the bathroom.
After he and Matt had split the ARC's 25 teams as best they could, Becker went back to Jess and requested that they join her in the field. She wanted to protest, to exercise her authority to restrict their movements, but under the circumstances she had no choice. They needed all the manpower they could get, so she relented. A few teams were restructured a bit, and she managed to get them their own team. That way, at least she could get her soldiers to keep an eye on them.
They went all over the UK over the next few days, pushing creatures back into anomalies wherever possible, and then moving on to the next one. Connor was brilliant with getting them new locations and intel, along with updates on the other teams. The hardest part was when they heard that someone had been lost, because there wasn't any time to even think about it. The medical team back at the ARC were doing surprisingly well given all of the injuries they had to cope with. They'd managed to keep the number of casualties to a minimum, but it was still tough.
After the first day of fighting, Jess ordered that each team return to the ARC after three anomalies. The last thing she wanted was her soldiers getting too tired to do their job right. Everyone was to return and rest for at least a few hours before heading back out. While many protested, no one outright disobeyed that order. They knew better than the mess with her.
When Becker returned to the ARC after the fourth day of fighting, he headed back to the canteen where the sleeping cots had been set up. Groups of soldiers were fast asleep or talking in whispers. This was the sanctuary: for the few hours that they stayed here, they were safe and away from everything. He looked around the room, receiving and returning nods from the various soon-to-be-sleeping soldiers he'd been working with lately. Becker was just about to settle himself on a cot near the server, when something caught his eye – or rather someone.
Jess was sound asleep on a cot against the far wall, a blanket loose around her waist. Her left hand dangled off the edge of the cot, and her right was nestled near her neck. But what really caught Becker off-guard was the serene expression on her face. It was such a change from the harsh looks she'd had lately. It would have been really off-putting if he didn't still have the image of his Jess in his mind. The soft smile on her face as her lashes flickered against her cheeks, the gentle sighs that rose from her lips. It was heart-wrenching for him.
She shifted in her sleep a bit, and he froze, afraid she'd wake and catch him watching her. But she stayed asleep, the calm expression staying put as her right hand clenching over her chest. Glancing down at her hand, he caught sight of the chain tangled in her fingers and his eyes widened. She was hanging onto his old dogtags for dear life. He smiled gently at the idea that she didn't completely hate him, and reached for her blanket, pulling it up so it covered her up to her shoulders so she would stay warm. He then settled down on a cot a few over from her, and let his eyes linger on her face before he drifted off to sleep.
Jess woke up about two hours later, stretching out her stiff muscles before she decided to open her eyes. The cot was definitely not the most comfortable place she'd slept, but at least it was better than the ground. With a deep sigh, she finally blinked and looked around, her eyes falling on the figure a few cots away. She let her gaze travel over Becker's sleeping face, and felt a pang in her heart that she hadn't felt for a long time. Shaking herself from her thoughts, she rose from the cot (releasing the tags in the process) and headed back to the hub to prep for her next trip out.
"Any updates Connor?" she asked as she approached her old friend. He'd left Evans monitoring the ADD, and had stepped over to the side of the room with his laptop.
"Nothing's really changed in the last few hours, but the teams are coping with the anomalies," he replied in a tired voice.
"Good," she stated. "What are you working on?"
"I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to kill these anomalies. But right now, it's not looking too positive."
"You'll figure it out. You managed to kill the New Dawn anomaly. You'll get this one."
He turned and looked at her, surprised at her kind words. She'd never been mean with him over the years, but just firm. He felt like he'd stepped back in time: Becker and Matt were back, and so was the sweet Jess. Not missing a beat though, he smiled. "Thanks."
"Why don't you go get some rest?" she suggested, his eyes widening at the idea. "Maybe a bit of sleep will give you some fresh perspective…help figure out how we can make the anomalies turn on themselves."
"Yeah, maybe you're…" Connor's jaw dropped as the pieces came together in his head.
Jess looked at him, puzzled. "Connor?"
His eyes seemed to come alive as he turned to her. "You. Are. Brilliant!" He grabbed her shoulders and hugged her close. Stunned, Jess left her arms at her sides until Connor pulled away.
"What's this all about?" she asked.
"Come with me!" he shouted as he grabbed her arm and pulled her down the hall. Along the way, he grabbed Emily to bring her too. Abby and Matt were still out on calls, so they'd be getting an explanation when they returned.
Connor's shouts had roused Becker from his sleep, and he walked out of the canteen just in time to have his arm grabbed by the mad scientist. He caught Jess' eye to see if she knew what was going on, but she threw an honestly confused look back at him.
A few minutes later, the quartet was standing in the lab that had once housed Connor's man-made anomaly. While his friends watched curiously, Connor raced about the room, setting up various machines and computers. He asked for very little help, but they were quick to do so when he did. About twenty minutes after arriving, he was ready to explain things to them.
"I've been going about this the wrong way," he told them. "For the last few days I've been trying to figure out how we can stop the anomalies from converging on one another, but I should have been trying to link them to this one!" Everyone stared at him as if he had two heads, so he went on. "When I made this device for Philip, it was originally intended to harness energy for the hopes of fuel. If I can change the polarity of this anomaly and link it to the others, it could have the potential to literally turn the anomalies on themselves."
"How?" Emily asked as Jess digested how her own words had inspired this.
"If the polarity of an anomaly is reversed, it'll pull things back into it, rather than letting them cross through to this time. It's similar to the locking device in that we can control what the anomaly does, but we can use this to push the creatures back to their own times before they start crossing over into the wrong eras."
"So you're going to be able to program this anomaly to send the creatures back to specific times?" Becker asked.
"If things go as planned, yes." Connor looked almost giddy with the idea. "It'll take me a while to get it sorted and tested though," he admitted. "We got rid of most of my research and calculations after the New Dawn fiasco, so I'll have to build them from scratch again."
"Well," Jess began, remnants of her old shyness being hinted at in her voice. "That's not entirely true." Everyone whipped around to look at her. She motioned for them to follow her out of the room, and they did just that until they ended up in an old lab that had been converted into another research/storage room. Jess walked over to a file cabinet on the far wall, and opened a drawer. She carefully pulled out a very old looking external hard drive and a large file folder. Turning to Connor, she met his eyes. "When we started making changes after New Dawn, I brought these down here. You'd spent so much time on them that I thought maybe one day we'd need them. I always just assumed it would be for creating anomalies to send our pets back to when they really belong."
Connor's jaw was on the floor in shock again, and both Becker and Emily flicked their gazes between the two geniuses. Suddenly, Connor broke out of his trance and grabbed Jess in another hug, this time lifting her off the ground. Emily grabbed for the items in Jess' hands as the head of operations hugged her friend back, a soft smile gracing her face. Emily wanted to cry at the sight, for it had been far too long since she'd seen Jess smile. Becker was just glad to see one of her walls could still be knocked down.
"I'm getting to work on this right away," Connor announced once he'd set Jess back on her own two feet. Taking the information from Emily, he started to lead the way out the door.
"Let me know what you need to make this work, and we'll make it happen," Jess told him. He bounded out of the room, and she, Emily and Becker turned to look at each other. The idea that there may actually be an end in sight was more welcome than the prospect of sleep at that point. "Let's go," Jess said, breaking them from their individual reveries. "There's still creatures to take care of in the meantime." She received smiles from the other two as they hurried to get back to their teams, and she followed as Connor's plan set in.
As she was walking back towards Ops, an idea crept into her head, unbidden. It was completely out there, but given everything that Connor had just told them, maybe not…
Making a split-second decision, Jess retraced her steps back to Connor's lab. She slipped inside the door to see him hunkered down over his old notes, but he looked up when he heard the door close. "What is it?" he asked.
"I had a thought…"