I was stirred into consciousness by the sound of a fist knocking on my bedroom door and lifting my head from the pillow I hummed to let Nick know I was awake.

I heard the unmistakeable squeak as the door opened and a moment later the mattress dipped in front of me.

I threw an arm out over his lap without opening my eyes and pulled myself closer to him. 'What time is it?' I mumbled.

'About twenty past ten.' The thought made me groan. 'I know,' he returned. His hand fell down to smooth my hair back from my face and tuck it behind my ear. 'And I'm sorry,' he continued, 'but we've had a call.'

I opened my eyes. 'Another incursion?'

Nick nodded. 'We think so.'

I kicked the duvet off me, rolling backwards away from him to climb off the mattress. 'Why didn't you say before?'

I immediately reached for a drawer, pulling out the first top I could lay my hands on and pulled it on over my bra. I turned and gestured for Nick to throw me the jeans I'd left on the floor from yesterday.

Yesterday.

I hadn't gone to bed yesterday. It had definitely been quite recently this morning.

'Has there been a sighting?' I pulled my jeans on over the thin pair of old pyjama shorts, assuming we were in some sort of a rush. Then I found a battered pair of white converse half kicked under the bed so I toed them on.

I hadn't fully unpacked yet. I didn't even have that much stuff anymore, but the feeling of permanence and home I'd got just by being in the room hadn't made it seem like a priority so my time had been spent elsewhere.

But I'd put up the pictures on the desk. Ones of the five of us. Of me and Connor and Duncan, and Will and Tom. The brotherhood. My eyes flicked briefly over it and I had to turn away.

'Not yet, no creatures or anomalies, but there's been an attack.'

'Casualties?'

'One.'

'A fatality?' I picked up a hoodie, put it on and zipped it up.

'Yeah...'

'What are you doing standing around? Let's go.'

I heard him exhale a breathy chuckle as I walked out into the hallway and tried to a hide a yawn behind sprawled fingers.

'You know, maybe you should go back to bed...' Nick suggested, tone tinged with a suggestion of that same amusement.

'You're kidding,' I satirised, 'I'm wide awake.'

We went down stairs, pausing only momentarily at the door to find the car keys whilst Nick stepped into his shoes. 'What time did you get in this morning?'

I winced. 'Maybe half 8?' I postulated.

'Jesus Anna... I never would have woken you up if I'd realised that. ' He opened the front door for me and I stepped out. 'Were you in the lab that whole time?'

Reaching the end of the garden path I opened the gate, stepped through onto the pavement and waited for him to come through behind me so that I could close it behind him.

'-anomalies, ignoring the fact that they are technically one that exists in two separate time streams, the true past that cannot be effected by this present, are basically rings of electromagnetism.'

He unlocked the car and I pulled on the door handle to open up to passenger door before I jumped in.

'Basic magnetism creates the shape of magnetic field were used, especially with these anomalies where the centre force, closer to the anomaly, is equally as strong as those two separate forces pulling from either end.'

I shut the car door behind me.

'But the anomaly itself forms a torus magnetic field by electromagnetism, essentially it's a loop of wire being charged to create this space in the middle where no forces are contained or exposed to this magnetic field which is how we, and all the creatures, are able to pass through without being torn apart.'

'Okay.'

'Now, I need to find a way of understanding how these anomalies are created from this electrical current, whatever it is. Whether it's like spontaneous combustion, a burst of energy powerful enough that's its ripping apart time, or something else. That's got nothing to do with my experiment, I just wanted to know if we could contain them.'

Nick waited– just for a second– once I'd stopped talking like he wasn't sure if that was the end of my sentence. He plugged the keys into the ignition. 'And was it worth it?' he finally asked.

'Well, I'm halfway through building the model machine that will replicate the magnetic effect of the anomaly, so, I haven't gotten anywhere with that actual experiment yet.'

Turning on the engine, Nick put the car in gear before he glanced across at me. And he exhaled. 'There's something I've been meaning to say.'

I crossed an expression, somewhere between a frown and a smirk back at him. 'Oh yeah?'

'I love you.'

I looked back at him and my lips gently parted but before I could say anything back he interrupted me.

'- I know it sounds insane,' he said casually.

I shook my head. 'No.'

'it's just you make it so easy to know.'

I felt my breath hitch. I'd been here a little over two months. I wouldn't have needed more than a day– an hour– alone with him to know that I felt exactly the same way. And the guilt was still there for sure. The idea of Will staring at me with those dead eyes daring me to follow him was fear in itself that I was going to lose anyone I cared about, but fundamentally that could not change the way I felt.

'Nick-' I returned, voice coming out a little above a whisper because my heart was pounding.

'You don't need to say-'

'But I do. ' And it wasn't that I was afraid to be with him, but, I was afraid, I was absolutely petrified of losing him the same way I'd lost everyone else.

'You don't have to say anything right now.' He reached over, put his hand over my own as it rested on my knee.

'I have something to say,' I informed him.

'Okay.'

I took a deep breath, but suddenly not knowing where to start made me chuckle and I had to turn my head away.

'What?' Nick asked, mirroring my amusement.

'If I have to think before I speak it never quite comes out right. I'm much better at disconnecting my mouth from my brain but... getting over Will was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I didn't think I'd ever be able to feel something again. The moment I met you I knew that was wrong.' I could still see it so clearly in my memory– hearing just his voice for the first time. I smiled. 'You know we really shouldn't do this now.'

'Yeah,' he agreed, 'I just, I couldn't keep it to myself any longer.'

'Yeah,' I echoed. His hand moved from mine back to the steering wheel and he indicated to pull out into the road. 'Thank you,' I continued, trying not to show the broadest grin on my face, 'for waking me up.'

When we got out of the car at the site, we fell into step beside one another as we headed up from the carpark towards the main house.

I held Nick's hand, something that I don't think he was expecting since he looked down to it as I first made contact but he didn't say anything.

And he stayed silent when I let go of his hand the moment Stephen and a throng of soldiers came into view in the entrance way to the hotel.

Stephen must have heard us coming, because as he looked up and saw us on our way down to him, he stepped away from the group.

It had been three months since I'd seen him last. He'd been kept busy at the home office whereas I had barely come out of the university lab except to go back at forth between there and Nicks'. The last time we'd spoken was the hospital.

From the look on his face he wasn't over it.

'Anna,' he said like he was actually surprised to see me there. And before he could say anything else I thought it would be best to just move on.

'Morning,' I replied curtly, 'what's going on?'

There was an ambulance stationed further up the drive and a man was sitting on the back step with a red blanket over his shoulders. The paramedics were standing around him.

'They've got a body. Nobody really knows what happened.'

Turning my head to Nick I asked, 'you said you thought it was an incursion.'

'We'd half to see the body to be sure,' he replied.

'That guy's in shock. He's the one that found him?' I furthered.

Stephen hummed.

'You think I should talk to him?' I asked Nick.

He nodded. 'Do you think I can come with you.'

Smiling once again at him, I started to nod my head and gestured for him to follow me down to the ambulance.

Stephen was at least useful; he took the paramedics aside to explain that we would need to question the witness and they dispersed. The witness looked up as we came to a stop in front of him.

The first thing I did was smile at him. 'Hi,' I said, 'I'm Anna, I'm a doctor and I'm gonna take a little look at you, is that alright?' I waited for him to nod in consent. 'What's your name?'

'Jeff,' he replied. 'Ringer.'

'Okay, Jeff. I'm gonna need to ask you some questions. Its gonna seem strange that you've just seen all these things and I'm asking you to mentally revive that trauma, but stress can cause amnesia and its best to check you aren't exerting any of those symptoms before we let you do anything– like drive yourself home–just in case you black out. I'll need to see if there are any gaps in your memories.'

So, strictly speaking that wasn't entirely true but the only redeeming feature it had was that it couldn't hurt to check he was facing any PTSD from the situation. I continued to smile encouragingly at him again.

'It's a nice easy one to start. Do you remember your date of birth?' The guy frowned, pulling the blanket tighter around him, before he nodded. Then he answered.

'Good, today's date? ' He answered again. 'And do you know what day it is?' With his reply I had to look to Nick as I realised I didn't know it was the appropriate response. Nick nodded. 'Alright, well done. These are gonna get a bit harder. Do you remember what time you got here this morning?'

'We... um... we said we were gonna meet at 9 but he was a bit late, it was more like 9:15 by the time we teed off from the first hole.'

'You didn't go round the course together?' Nick asked.

He looked suspiciously to Nick for interjecting, but none the less responded. 'No.'

'And what time did you find the body?'

'About an hour after that. I was trying to get onto the green on the 15th hole, heard him screaming. Thought it was some sort of joke at first you know... but I still went to see if he was...' He caught himself for a second, his chest rising and falling as he forced himself to take a deep breath. 'I found him in the bushes. There wasn't much left of his face. It was weird. The second I saw it, I was horrified but I felt fine... you know... like I hadn't even realised that he was so mutilated then it hit me. I threw up. I called the police from my mobile, they came out with the paramedics to meet me on the course but Jonny was already dead.'

'You know, all of that is actually very normal,' I reassured him softly. My brain suddenly flashed up that image of Tom laying lifeless at Connors feet on the grass. I had to cough to clear my throat.

'All his organs were out, what was left of them. But he still had his eyes...' Jeff mumbled, like he hadn't realised he was still talking. 'Those eyes... I can still see them, staring...'

It took every ounce of energy I had to fight to stay there, to not mentally drift again. Somehow I managed it.

'Jeff...'

'I don't understand what could have done this.'

'Did you see anything? Or hear anything out of the ordinary? There's a lot of woodland around here right? Did you see any animals or something that could have resembled one?' He shook his head. 'Any cold spots, strange noises from the bushes?'

'No.'

'And you don't think there's any way a person could have done that too him?'

Again, Jeff shook his head. 'Not in such a short amount of time.'

I momentarily glanced across at Nick and exchanging a look.

I knew what he wanted me to ask.

I frowned and him and shook my head slightly.

His stare transformed a furrowed brow. And sighing I looked back to Jeff. 'Did you see any sparkling lights?'

'What?' he asked.

I gave a tight-lipped smile. 'I know it's weird, but did you see anything, anything that looked maybe like a big ball of small mirrors with a light in the middle?'

Jeff frowned and looked me up and down like he was suddenly suspicious. 'Aren't you way too young to be a doctor?'

'Child prodigy,' I replied. 'Stress or trauma can sometimes cause cracks in the processors in our vision receptors and its possible you saw something like that. You know, like those lines you see in your eyes when you get a migraine.'

He shook his head again. 'No. No sparkling lights.'

'Alright.' And I smiled at him a final time to let him know we'd finished.

'Is that it?' Jeff questioned.

'That's it,' I assured him.

'So, did I pass?'

'Yes, well done, you seem to be okay... well... all things considered,' I concluded, just as the image of dead Tom came back to mind, and my smile faltered for a second. 'I'm sorry about your friend.' I leant forward, put a hand to his arm briefly before I pulled away. 'Thanks.'

Nick's hand came down to rest on my shoulder and taking my attention off the witness I saw him nod towards the Captain who, coming down the driveway, looked particularly unhappy this morning.

'Anna,' he said in relief and his expression slackened a little. 'It's good to see you. How are you doing?'

He leant in and we gave each other a short one-armed hug. 'Yeah, I'm good,' I replied as I pulled back. 'What's the latest here.'

'My men are sealing the perimeter now,' he explained, 'and considering I asked them to just seal it and not dry-stone wall it it should be done in an hour. The hotel's been completely evacuated, even the grounds staff have been sent home. What did you see?'

Nick shook his head, 'all over by the time we got here.'

'Any sign on the anomaly yet?'

'That's the thing...' I started.

'Well we're not absolutely sure there is one here,' Nick continued.

'I need to see the victim,' I finished. 'Do you know where the body is?'

'In the casualty clearance centre in the main house.'

'And its just the one, right? There's no more victims?'

'None we know of.'

'Good.'

Nick nodded in agreement, 'keep us updated.'

'I will.' He managed a tight-lipped smile; I imagined he was facing unsurmountable stress at the moment and it made me respect him just that bit more that he was still trying to stay somewhat friendly to us. 'Anna,' he continued, 'want to follow me?'

I nodded then glanced around to Nick. 'I'll catch up,' he said, 'I'm just gonna call Connor in first.'

There was a military medic standing over the gurney with the golfer's body. He didn't completely understand why we needed to see it but he complied with Ryan's order.

Once Nick came in and stood beside me next to body, the medic lifted the sheet.

Honestly, I was expecting worse. I'd seen men come into the hospital as soup in bags. At least he was still a vaguely humanoid shape.

'He's been torn to shreds,' the medic said. I nodded.

'Here,' I lifted a hand to point out the pelvic bone to Nick, 'it looks almost surgical the way the flesh has been torn away so cleanly. There's no wastage.'

'Any ideas on what might have done this?' Ryan questioned, he looked down at the body and scrunched his nose before he looked away.

Nick nodded. 'A creature of devastating power and savagery, to do that in just a few minutes.'

'Nick...' I said, 'do those look like claw marks to you, or would you say those look more like teeth?'

He frowned. 'What are you saying?'

'Um...' I straightened up. 'Well, nothing, yet, but how big do you think the mouth is of something that powerful? And, following that, how big are its teeth?'

Looking back to Ryan, Nick confirmed, 'one thing's for sure it came through an anomaly, first thing we have to do is to find that.'

'No trampled or broken vegetation, no track marks and no sign of any anomaly.' Stephen kept his focus on the compass in his hand as he came back towards me and Nick after emerging from the undergrowth. 'But there is one hell of a magnetic field so it's got to be here somewhere. Unless there's a pylon causing interference.'

I sighed in complete agreement, suddenly aware that a tension headache was forming at the front of my head. 'I can't see anything,' I concurred in frustration.

'Quiet a minute, let me think,' Nick mumbled. He took a few steps away from us and I turned my back on Stephen to survey the edge of the forest again.

An immediate silence followed. 'Quiet,' I repeated.

Stephen must have thought I was reprimanding him because he tutted and grumbled 'I didn't say anything,' in response.

Nick turned around to look me. 'Yeah, please,' he said.

'No.' I shook my head. 'I mean it's too quiet. Listen...' I pointed a finger up to sky and another momentary silence falls over us. 'No bird song,' I continued, 'call Bill Odie cause they've gone, there's–'

'not a peep,' Nick finished.

'They're scared off,' Stephen added.

'What would scare the birds away?' Nick asked.

I lifted my head to look up, slowly exhaling the breath I'd been holding. And with a smile I looked back to the others. 'You were wrong, it's not a pylon there is an anomaly.'

'Where?' Stephen asked.

'We're standing right underneath it.'

They both whipped their heads up at the same time, and, watching them both just for a second made me laugh beneath my breath, before I slowly my head up to the sky.

Stephen groaned. 'It's an aerial predator,' he deduced.

'Yeah, that's one way of putting it, now, how the hell do we corner off the sky?' Nick groaned.

I didn't have an answer, because his question was far too rhetorical for a start, but my attention had also already shifted elsewhere.

Stephen lifted a hand to block the sun from his eyes as he stared through the clouds. 'Cutter?' he asked.

I saw its shadow at first. A long thin pterodactyloid shape swooping down through the sky and coming straight for us. My heart thumped.

'I mean this thing could be anywhere by now.'

Oh god. I took a few steps back, still fixed on it; arms out ready to catch Nick's attention but I didn't need to.

'I would be so sure about that.'

Already turning, Stephen ran at the professor, arms out, and tackled him to the ground as my knees crumpled and my ass hit the grass just before the creature swooped over our heads.

'So,' Stephen said, 'not so hard to find then.'

I made a mental note to ask about the pair of binoculars Nick had produced from the pocket of his jacket. And when he passed them first to Stephen, who spent a minute trying to distinguish the creature before he passed them on to me, I knew it would be an interesting conversation.

'What is it?' Stephen asked.

'Pterodactyloid pterosaur,' I replied, 'a Pteranodon.'

'Is it what killed the golfer?'

'I'd say it's definitely in the frame,' Nick answered.

'No...' lowering the binoculars, I found both my colleagues already had their attention on me, at this deviation from assumption, as they waited for me to continue my explanation. 'The diet of a Pteranodon is known to have included fish, mostly, there was fossilized fishbones found in the stomach of one dug up half a century ago in Kansas, a fossilized fish bolus found in the jaws of specimen AMNH 5098.' I passed the binoculars back to Nick. 'Um, numerous species have also been known to preserve fragments of fish scales and vertebrae near the torso, so while fish made up most of the diet it's also possible they ate other small reptiles.'

'How do you know all that?' Stephen questioned.

'I think I read it once. They probably took the fish whilst in flight over the water and they'd dip the lower mandible into the water and collect them in their mouths, they wouldn't land to attack anything. Which means its hasn't got much of an appetite for 5'9 golfers. Want to know something else it hasn't got, Nick?'

'What?'

'Teeth,' I replied.

'Why is it circling?' Nick asked.

Snapping my head around to him, I frowned. 'What?'

'It's looking for a roost?' Stephen suggested.

Nick shook his head. 'It's spoilt for choice. It's definitely looking for something.'

'Is that Connor?' Stephen asked. He lifted his arm to point down the green.

'What?' Nick questioned gravely.

'It's Connor.'

'What's he doing?' I queried.

'More importantly what's our friend up there doing?' Nick raised the binoculars again.

'It's circling Connor,' I observed.

'He's not looking for a roost, he's looking for lunch.'

'Connor!' Nick immediately bellowed down the golf course. I mimicked him with a cry of my own. 'Come here, quickly!'

Connor looked over at us then ooked back to the ground but didn't move.

Nick looked around, called for Ryan, and the captain ran over from the nearest green.

I cupped my hands around my mouth. 'Get into the trees, Connor!'

'Run you idiot,' Stephen echoed.

Connor finally started moving with a speed and co-ordination I hadn't ever seen from him before.

'Cover it!' Ryan ordered, waving a hand at his men and they all moved their guns up. 'And aim...'

'No,' Nick interjected, 'wait a minute there's something about this that doesn't add up I'm just not entirely sure what it is yet.'

'No, do it,' Stephen argued.

I started to shake my head. 'No, Nick's right, we shouldn't kill these creatures, under any circumstances we had no idea what sort of affect this could have.'

'What other choice do we have?' Stephen returned. 'In a matter of seconds Connor's going to be ripped to shreds. We can't take that chance!'

'Were you not listening to a word I said? It's not going to eat him!'

'Then why is it chasing him?'

'Because he's running,' I stressed angrily back, 'if he got into the trees, it would leave him alone. It swooped at us, remember?'

'It didn't circle us!'

'That we know of; we only realised it was something that was above us one second before that.'

'Why aren't you worried?' he demanded, like he had the right to be insulted by the insinuation.

But I trusted myself. I trusted my knowledge and I knew Connor wasn't in danger. The only thing that was in danger was the Pteranodon itself. 'It's not going to eat him!'

A moment later I saw Nick take a dive at Ryan– in the chaos I'd missed the gun cocking– a gunshot sounded and I instantly shrank back with a gasp.

Ryan groaned, I heard him reloading the gun but I'd shut my eyes at some point.

I felt Nick collide into me, knocking me off balance but catching me in his arms and holding me against him. 'Sorry,' he apologised, 'I'm sorry I didn't warn you–'

But the gun sounded again, a string of bullets tore out of it this time and I felt my heart rate spiking.

'–Anna.'

'It's out of range. I really wish you hadn't done that. God knows how many people you've just condemned to death.'

I tried to slow my breathing but it was outstandingly erratic and I couldn't even catch my breath. And suddenly I was back there, back in the dining room with Will's cold dead eyes staring into me and my mother's blood pooling around my feet. I could hear my father shouting. I was going to be next.

He'd wanted to torture me with the fear of it all first. He'd held the gun to my head for what seemed like hours and monologued his insanity. But he hadn't known that somewhere between the grabbing me from the doorway and the sound of the gun cocking ready to be aimed at me, I'd lost all sense of the emotion, I'd starting wishing that he would and doubting he could, and I lost every scrap of love or respect for a man cowardly enough to kill something innocent.

I peeled my eyes open, pulling my head back from Nick's chest and his hands came down to cup my cheeks.

'I'm okay,' I told him shakily, before he could ask, 'I'm okay.'

'It didn't kill him,' Nick relayed.

I turned my head to Connor's last known location and I exhaled a heavy sigh of relief. 'Yeah,' I agreed, 'just like I said it wouldn't.'

Ryan turned around unapologetically and nodded at me. 'You know why I had to try it.'

I didn't even bother to answer because I knew he knew I was okay with what he did because he'd missed. Once again it was actually Stephen who I was furious with.

This time I was determined, despite the stress of the trauma pressing down on me, not to let it get to me. Throwing my arms down to my sides, I shook my hands, turning my back on the group to pace and shake some sense into myself.

'Wait a minute!' Nick said. 'There's a lizard with him.'

'A lizard?' Stephen repeated.

Well that explains why the Pteranodon went after him.

'A Coelurosauravus.'

'Rex?' I asked. As they all turned back to stare at me, I folded my arms over my chest. 'Well you know he came back, didn't he? He's been living with him and Abby, the girl who found the Scutosaurus in the forest with us.' It wasn't until after I finished I remembered that it was Connor who'd told me that everyone knew about Rex coming back through the anomaly. It then occurred to me that was a lie, but not to get Connor into trouble I covered with another. 'Lester told me he'd briefed you both on it.'

'Does he think this is some sort of game?' Ryan asked.

'Nobody's taking this more seriously than he is, I swear.'

'Look it's wounded. It's not going to go far,' Stephen interrupted, 'it needs to roost.'

'I hope your right,' Ryan replied, 'come on.' And waving his hand through the air again, he turned on his heal and marched off, his men following after him.

'Look he's got a point,' Stephen started.

'We're not being sentimental, there's a good reason for not killing the creatures,' Nick answered.

'And you're sure about that.'

'Yes I'm sure about that,' Nick replied. He clamped a hand down on Stephens shoulder. 'You've just gotta trust us.'

'Woo! Yeah!' I hadn't even noticed that Connor had made it back to us until I realised, he was right in front of me, out of breath but beaming broadly, 'that was a bit of a laugh wasn't it?'

'Urgh, Connor!' Balling both my hands into fists I put them against his chest, then leant my head in against my hands as though it was the only way I could politely convey the mixture of relief and frustration pouring through me.

'What?' he questioned.

'Oh Connor,' I sighed, 'you're killing me.'

'What?' he repeated again.

'Firstly.' I pulled back, lowering my voice and gesturing back over my shoulder at where Nick and Stephen were still having their conversation. 'You told me you'd told those two about Rex. I had to lie-'

'You covered for me?'

'Of course I covered for you!' I replied in outrage, 'but I told you Connor, don't ever try to bury a body. As a doctor I know much better ways to dispose of them,' I finished quickly. 'And secondly, run faster in the future yeah?'

'I know right,' he laughed, 'for a second I thought it was gonna eat me but-'

'- small reptiles and fish,' we finished together.

'And I heard the gun shots. Are you okay?'

I nodded. 'I'm okay.'

'Are the others mad at me?' he asked.

'Sort of.'

'But you aren't.'

I exhaled, 'luckily for you, Connor, I'm in love.'

His mouth dropped open. I turned away from him and started walking back towards the others.

'Wait, what?'