I stopped just behind them both in the hub and cleared my throat.

Nick spun around somewhat passive–aggressively in his chair, his eyes fell on me, and immediately he sat up straighter.

Beside him, Connor's eyes widened slightly.

Before either of them could say anything, I sighed. 'So, we have this colleague, right,' I said. 'Jensen.' Nick suddenly gasped in realisation and opened his mouth to give what I presumed would be an apology, but not missing a beat I pointed at him and continued enthusiastically 'yes! Him. He's engaged and he invited me and my boyfriend to this engagement party where I couldn't even drink the champagne, but my aforementioned boyfriend never turned up to help cover for me, so I had to make up an excuse, Jensen had to finish all my drinks and now he is pissed. Mean like…' I held up my hand to mime him drinking for the bottle. 'That was where I was when I got the alert and had to sneak a drunk man out of his own party.' I threw the phone in my hand into Nick's lap. 'Better not be another false alarm,' I said, 'I am not sneaking him back in.'

Jensen's fiancée had apparently been a bit concerned that he hadn't invited anyone from his work. Between us we'd somehow reached the conclusion that I was the most normal out of everyone and therefore would make a good impression on his in-laws. But, this had been before I'd known I wouldn't be able to have any of the bottomless champagne so Jensen then agreed that Nick could come with me if he promised not to sit in his car outside their house again at night.

It hadn't surprised me that Nick had forgotten.

'I am so sorry,' he apologised.

I waved a nonchalant hand. 'It's Jensen you'll have to say that too, he's probably gonna throw up. Had a lot of champagne. Bless.'

'Why did he need to cover for you?' Connor asked. 'Surely if you don't want to drink that's your problem.'

I agreed with his logic.

'Future mother–in–law,' I explained, 'apparently the whole party was her idea, paid for it all before hand and didn't want any of it to go to waste. Would have got away with it if I hadn't been the only friend he had there. Everyone else was the brides. Not being funny but it's only a month in and already this sucks. I can't drink. I had to give up coffee,' I explained in disgust, 'wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't literally the only thing that keeps me alive. And perhaps it's all in my head but I think this dress is too tight.'

'No,' Connor replied, a little too quickly. As Nick turned his head to stare at him, Connor quickly sat up in his seat. 'I mean you can't tell,' he continued awkwardly, 'that you're… you know. If that's what you mean.'

Nick turned back, swept his eyes right up my body before he met my gaze. 'You look very nice.' My lips curled up into a knowing smile, and biting down against the inside of my cheek I locked my gaze with his.

Connor awkwardly cleared his throat. 'We have an active site,' he said in way of reminder.

'Let me get changed.'

'No,' Nick said, 'there's no time.'

'There's a bag in my locker.'

'The anomaly's been open two hours already.'

I sighed. 'Alright, but sweetheart, if I break a heel you're gonna pay.'

Nick shrugged his eyebrows. 'Ooo,' he said curiously.

Connor's nose crinkled. 'Ew,' he finished.

Nick kept a tight hold of my hand all the way through the building like he thought I was going to fall.

I was good at walking in heels. It wasn't a surprise because I was short and half the time I needed them when I went out when I was younger in order to be able to see into the fridges behind the bars.

Now, my hair bounced with every step I took and it occurred to me that even though I hadn't worn heels in a long time, I hadn't missed it. Mostly they were impractical, secondly, the occasion never really arose because I didn't need them in an everyday capacity unless Lester had told me I needed to be at an important meeting for something or other. Lastly, the noise they made bugged the hell out of me.

Nick held the P.H.D in his other hand. We followed the noise through to the rear of the building.

Nick went out ahead of me. 'It's over here,' he called back after a moment, 'it's in a drainage pipe.' He turned around, still walking, to make sure I was within hearing distance. 'We're gonna have to contact the builders and close this whole site down.'

I nodded. 'Sure, once Jensen's sobered up, we can get him to throw a few violated building codes at them.'

I looked around. That wouldn't be too difficult; the whole site was tip. I could see a lot of rusty metal that made me twitch at the thought of when I last had a tetanus jab.

My ears caught something and I whipped my head quickly around towards the pipe the anomaly was in. I took a couple of steps towards it.

It sounded like the wind at first. Like howling in a thunderstorm, before I strained to listen harder and realised that it was in fact howling. But it wasn't like the wind. I heard a bark and I stepped back, holding out an arm to warn Nick.

'Somethings coming,' I said.

'Back up.'

I quickly took a couple of steps backwards but I hadn't succeeded to get very far when something came through.

A scotty dog scampered out the pipe and came to a stop at Nicks feet.

A few seconds later we shared a look, confused, before he bent down to pick it up. 'Um…' he hedged, 'it's called Sprat. Where's Lincoln Square?'

I hummed in thought, reaching out a hand and patted her head. 'It's a she,' I informed him softly, 'and… few streets from here, I think.' I looked back to the anomaly. 'Okay… might have a huge problem…'

Nick looked up from the dog to me. 'Huh?'

'Dogs usually don't take themselves for walks, right?'

His expression suddenly dropped. And he whipped his head around to look at the anomaly too. 'And if the dogs here?'

'the owner…'

'might be on the other side.'

'Trapped?' I suggested. I pulled my hand back from Sprats fur and took a couple of steps back towards the anomaly.

'You think so?'

'Why wouldn't they just come back?' I returned. Then I had another realisation.

'Dead?' Cutter intimated.

'Can't leave them if they are still alive. And… there's only one way to find out.'

We locked eyes, silently exchanging and understanding I could tell he didn't like it. I shouldn't go but I was going to–and he couldn't stop me– but I shouldn't. That still didn't mean I wasn't the best person for the job. Whatever was on the other side of that anomaly I was the best chance we had.

'Where's Stephen?' he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders, 'probably with Connor,' I said. 'Want me to call?'

He nodded.

'Please tell me you brought it?' I called out as I approached their truck.

Connor reached a hand into the boot and tossed a bag to me.

I'd already got changed. We'd had a bit of time between calling and waiting for them to actually arrive and I'd brought a spare change of clothes from my locker, however I'd decided that white converse probably weren't the most practical choice of footwear to take through with me, and had requested that Connor find pair of boots and bring those as well.

'Thanks,' I echoed, toeing off my trainers and tossing them into the back of the truck.

'Wait…'

Both Connor and I looked up, somewhat expectantly at the sound of Stephens voice, and when I glanced at him I saw he was frowning at me.

'Wait?' I repeated for clarification.

'Are you coming with us?'

I shifted my attention somewhat suspiciously to Connor.

I hadn't told Stephen about the baby. So far, as it stood, only the three of us– and Caroline–knew. Nana hadn't said anything but was probably aware through a dream or something. It was still too early to be telling people but given what had happened before it wouldn't have surprised me if Connor had let slip accidently in the excitement.

But he shook his head in denial, so I straightened up and put my hands on my hips because if Stephen didn't know he had no right to suggest I shouldn't.

I resisted the eyeroll. 'Why shouldn't I?' I asked.

He looked quickly between the two of us before he started shaking his head. 'I thought– oh. You know what, never mind. Of course you should be coming, you've certainly got the experience.'

'If you'd rather I stayed here…' I started somewhat sarcastically,

'Well…' he gestured to me. 'You're the one that's said that.'

My eyes narrowed. 'the fuck's got your panties in a bunch?'

Stephen opened his mouth to respond but Connor cleared his throat and interjected. 'I don't know why you lot are always so eager to go,' he said, a little too loudly, to try and diffuse the situation. '21st century,' he stated, 'that's where I want to be. Jurassic, Triassic– no thank you!'

He lifted one of the crates from the back of the truck, eyes widening as he quickly realised just how heavy it was, and tried to lower it to the ground. A groan escaped his lips and Stephen immediately reached out to take it off him.

'What's this then,' Stephen asked, as he put the box on the floor, 'and why do we need it?'

'Latest gadget,' Connor explained. 'You're gonna be seriously impressed with it. I'm telling you.'

'Go on then, Connor, it's your big day.' Nick's hand made contact with the small of my back as I leant into him. I turned away from the anomaly and waited for Connor to start.

'Seriously guys,' Connor said proudly, 'prepare to be amazed.'

I tried not to be so pessimistic when Connor reached down into the crate and started lugging the devise out, however, as soon as he put it down in the dirt beside him I had to narrow my eyes and tilt my to try and work out which way up it was supposed to go.

'The fuck is that?' I asked before I could stop myself.

'It's a prototype,' Connor returned, thankfully unoffended. 'It's not meant to be sexy.'

'That's lucky.'

'That things not gonna make it through the pipe,' Stephen complained, 'let alone the anomaly.'

'Is that what it's for?' I questioned in surprise.

Connor tutted, 'can we have a little bit of faith please?' he returned. 'And a little bit of silence.' He eyed us all in turn and I held up my hands in surrender. 'Thank you.'

He pulled a remote out his back pocket and started the devise. It whirred and crawled its way through the dirt towards us. I stepped back to let it past when I noticed something and immediately frowned. 'Fuck's sake. Is that, or was that at any point my hairdryer?' I asked.

'Might be.'

I groaned. 'Guess I can stop looking for it then.' I folded my arms over my chest. 'You know, when they made the first hadron collider no one lost any of their household appliances.'

And even if we were only teasing him, Connor rolled his eyes. 'Now I know how Galileo felt,' he responded.

'High CO2,' Connor relayed from the footage as we all peered down at the computer. 'Low oxygen...'

'Carboniferous?' I stated in suggestion, 'Ordovician. Silurian, maybe. No dinosaurs, no mammals, no birds.' But I cocked my head as I saw something on the camera and lent in to take a closer look. 'Mean, except her.' I poked the screen and Connor zoomed the camera in on the girl on the other side of the anomaly, sitting on the rocks.

'It's a little girl,' Connor stated.

'Oh god, what's she doing?' Stephen groaned in response.

I looked at Nick. 'Looking for her dog,' I said. 'Must be injured,' I continued in realisation.

'There's nothing really in the Silurian that could injure her,' Connor replied.

Something came to me– an idea so old I had to brush the cobwebs from it before it made sense to me again. 'What if there is?

'What do you mean?'

'Why do we talk aloud when we know we're alone?'

Connor stared back at me, eyes wide in excitement, as he immediately responded with the subsequent answer. 'Because we know we're not.'

Looking somewhat curiously between us, Nick frowned. 'What?' he asked.

'Tom spent hours writing this really amazing old Doctor Who fanfiction, right,' Connor started to explain without realising that wasn't the important information in this story.

'Based on a theory I had: Evolution perfects survival skills. ,' I explained, ' Perfect hunters. Perfect defence. Why is there no such thing as perfect hiding?'

Connor grinned, again reciting the lines of the old story back to me. 'How would you know?'

With a smile of my own, I nodded. 'Logically, if evolution were to perfect a creature whose primary skills were to hide from view, how could you know it existed? How would you detect it, even sense it? Except in those moments when for no reason you choose to speak aloud.'

'It could be with us every second and we would never know,' Connor finished. We shared a look again before I turned my attention back to the screen.

Stephen blinked in confusion. 'You're talking about it being invisible,' he stated in realisation.

I nodded. 'Well, yes, but that doesn't have to mean literally, in this case, the reasoning still stands. With the perfect disguise anything is invisible, isn't it? We know fossil records from that period are severely incomplete. If its primary survival instinct is perfect hiding, who's to say we ever would have found it?'

'It would know we were there, but we wouldn't have a clue where it was,' Connor explained.

'Sand,' I said. 'There could be plenty of things in the Silurian that would happily bite your head off and suck your insides out, but they wouldn't be running around out there on the surface.'

'The sand is the perfect camouflage,' Connor agreed.

I exhaled in respect to it. 'Means she…' I put my finger back on the screen. 'must be terrified. Have to get her out.'

I brought my eyes up to Nick. He nodded. 'Let's do it.'

I'd forgotten what the Silurian was like.

Well– I supposed– the sheer extent of what the Silurian was like.

As soon as we stepped through there was sand up my nose. And the heat beating down on us brought an immediate clamminess to the area of my back that my rucksack and my knife was pressed again.

5 minutes later I was starting to feel a bit sick.

'Have you got a headache?'

I turned my head to check if Nick was talking to me or Stephen but his gaze was fixed on the horizon. Whichever way, Stephen answered.

'Yeah.'

'Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,' I answered. 'Like being at altitude. There's no oxygen. Brains gonna feel it first. Headaches,' I informed them, 'nausea. Couple of hours you're gonna find it hard to make decisions, then you're gonna start seeing things, and hearing things, and you're gonna get quite severe mood swings, so, try to stay calm. After six hours its gonna feel like swimming, not walking. Try to reserve your energy. How long has she been here now?'

As Nick lifted his binoculars to check on her, Stephen looked down on his watch. 'Couple of hours, maybe, depending how soon she came through after the anomaly opened.'

'Perhaps that's why she hasn't moved,' Nick said.

'She thinks were some sort of mirage?' Stephen clarified.

I shrugged. 'Could be… or –' I suddenly cut myself off in a demand for silence and immediately looked down to the ground.

With the shift, Stephen mimicked my actions. 'What?' he asked suspiciously.

'Can you hear that?'

It was a clicking, a tick–a–tapping sort of noise like an old typewriter and I span around slowly, trying to source the location of the noise.

A moment later a swarm of Arthropoda – centipedes by the looks of it– appeared around our feet.

'Insects…' Stephen groaned.

I didn't have time to tell him that they were technically more accurately Myriapoda–Arthropod: generally venomous– to some degree– predominately carnivorous, essentially top of their food chain. So what were they running from?

'Need to get to the girl,' I stated, 'right now.'

As I started moving Nick and Stephen both followed after me.