She was only a few dunes away. We went over the first quite quickly but as we got to the top of the second and went over, I froze, eyes falling down to the stark contract of the black tactical gear abandoned on the white sand.

There were guns among them.

The guys quickly ran down the dune. I had to force myself to follow.

Nick threw a bag back over his shoulder to me, and I dropped down to crouch beside it, and rifle through it in search for some sort of indication of how long it had been here.

Out the corner of my eye I saw Stephen pick up a gun. I tried to focus on the bag but my eyes sporadically kept flicking back to it; it felt wrong to have it there and not be watching in case it was turned on me.

'Heckler–Gocke G36. This isn't army issue, this is a classic mercenary's gun.'

'Water,' I announced, pulling a canteen from the bag and taking a cautious sip. I swallowed, then I huffed in disbelief. 'Still cold,' I said.

In front of me, Nick picked up a piece of headwear. 'Hard drive. Night vision. This is serious stuff.'

'He's here.'

Stephen turned. 'Who is?' he questioned.

I pushed myself back onto my feet. 'No footprints leading away,' I continued.

'They've just disappeared.' Nick stood up, rounding on me, his arm outstretched to pass over the camera. 'Anna,' he said gently, 'if there's something on there– some creature– you're the most likely to know what it is.'

I hesitantly reached out and took it with a shaking hand then lifted to devise to my eyes and pressed a button. The footage started to replay.

'We're not social workers. Let someone else save her.' There he was– The Cleaner. The footage had all been recorded in night vision so he looked a little distorted but I could see it was him.

'Oh, who's gonna find her out here?'

There was a jump in the footage and it took me a moment to catch up with it.

'Hey look. It's some kind of snake.'

'What are you waiting for?'

'What the hell is it?'

'What is that thing?'

'Shoot it.'

I reached up to snatch the thing off my head but I wasn't quite quick enough. Gunfire exploded in my ears. I screwed up my eyes and fell back, tossing the devise as far away from me as possible.

I hit the sand, elbows catching me and propping me up as I fought against the panic with the logical side of my brain and tried to level my breathing. I needed to. Because the more carbon dioxide I inhaled in quick succession the worse I would become.

'They're dead,' I told them.

'You're not surprised by any of this are you?' Stephen demanded. He came towards me but didn't offer to help me up. Instead he stood over me, casting a shadow and blocking the sun. I looked up into his face. 'What do you know?'

I sat up and pulled off my jumper. I tied it around my waist. 'Don't know anything,' I said.

'Anna, there's a traitor on the team. It's Lester.'

'It's someone.'

He cocked his head at me. 'You knew? Since when?'

I shrugged; I didn't really know, I just had a feeling about it. And although I trusted that feeling I doubted that someone else would without evidence.

It had been a week since the canal. I guess the cleaner being there might have been the first proper inkling.

'Connor and I found spyware in the A.D.D this morning,' Nick announced.

As Stephen scowled at him, I finally responded. 'I didn't know that.'

'You knew too!' Stephen returned in outrage. 'Why didn't anyone tell me?'

'It could have been you…'

Stephen's mouth dropped into a snarl and I had never seen such hatred flood through someone's eyes. Any doubts we could have had about Stephen died there.

'Never thought it was,' I followed in explanation, 'but that doesn't change the fact that logistically it could have been you.' I got back onto my feet. 'Nick, Connor, me,' I continued to list, 'anyone. Understand?'

I knew he did; he wasn't stupid.

'They're playing us,' Stephen resolved. 'They have been since the beginning.'

'I don't know that,' Nick replied, 'and neither do you.'

'Fine. You admitted you don't know. But rather than share that with us, you shut us out. We're meant to be a team.'

'You sound like Helen.'

The annoyance tore out my mouth in a frustrated cry. 'Don't have time for this. Have to get to the girl, okay? Get to the girl, get back to the anomaly. I don't want to have to spend a minute here more than I need to and this doesn't matter right now. Deal with it back at the A.R.C. in the 21st century.'

And it wasn't until I turned back around towards the girl that I noticed she'd moved from her position on the rocks. She was on her feet and she was waving her arms.

And if any of us had shut up for two seconds before now, we would have heard her screaming.

'Fuck…' I noted under my breath.

'Wait a minute,' Nick said, as he tried to listen closer, 'what's she saying.'

'I don't know,' Stephen responded, 'I can't hear her.'

But even I wasn't sure. 'Something about the rocks,' I said. 'I think.'

'Perhaps we should go over there…'

'Good idea,' I nodded. And as if to take a step towards her, I shifted my weight, one leg was already outstretched when the sand burst up like a mushroom cloud explosion in our faces.

I snapped my eyes shut, desperate to keep out the sand because the last thing I needed was to lose my vision even momentarily when something was there.

As the last of the sand rained down, I cracked an eye open, and saw the ground bowing behind, crescendoing up and over like a wave either side of the thing moving towards us.

'What the hell is that?' Stephen asked.

'I don't know,' Nick answered.

I watched as the wave moved under our feet and wasting no time I set off in a run, assuming they would follow after me, but a few paces after I looked over my shoulder and stopped as neither of them had moved.

The wave had continued past them and just as I stopped, so the wave did too. It waited only a moment before it doubled back, a pair of huge black pincers pierced up through the sand, and I inhaled. 'Come on!' I shouted.

I reached the rocks long before they did and skidded to a halt to watch them follow after me.

No sooner had they both jumped up to safety, the pincers appeared again, and Nick jumped back further like he assumed he was still within its reach.

Empty handed, the creature slipped back into the sand, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

'You're welcome,' the girl said, placing her hands on her hips.

Nick slowly turned his head towards her, his expression twisted between relief and bewilderment, but he said nothing.

I liked her already. 'Hey,' I said, as I touched the back of my hand to her shoulder. 'What's your name?'

'Taylor,' she said.

What Lucien had told me rang in my ears. Sometimes you miss words out the start of your sentences. And while I wasn't too bothered around the people I knew, I wanted to make sure I spoke properly to her, to make myself as easy as possible to understand.

'I'm Anna,' I responded. 'I'm a doctor. Are you okay?'

She nodded, but grabbed a fist full of her trousers and pulled them up as if by way of explanation to glance down at her ankle. 'Yeah,' she said.

'What did you do to your ankle?' I asked. I crouched down, swinging my bag off my back and putting it down on the rock beside me.

'Twisted it,' she said.

'Ah,' I nodded, 'we thought you must have done something. Otherwise you'd have made your way back by now, right?'

'I made it to the rocks, but they ate my dog.'

'No, no, no, you're dog's still alive. She's on the other side,' Nick told her.

'Cool!' She responded, 'oh… she left me behind then. That's cold.'

I shifted my weight forward and shook my head. 'No, she ran to get you help. Do you mind if I have a little feel of your ankle, Taylor, is that okay?' She nodded, and I sat back, pulling her foot into my lap. I spread my fingers across the subtalar joint, pressing my fingertips across the talus in search for any abnormalities before I started up towards the tibia and fibula. 'How much does it hurt, on a scale of 1 – 10?'

She shrugged. 'Maybe like a 3?'

She seemed tough. There was a slight swelling around her lateral malleolus but no abnormalities in the structure, suggesting a grade 1 maybe 2 sprain, from a stretching in the ligament.

'Can you put your weight on it?' I asked, even though I'd seen her standing up. It didn't make much difference; I didn't have any ice to help the swelling go down and we didn't have the time to get her to elevate it.

Stephen peered around me. 'You can't walk on that,' he said, in his expert opinion. I tried not to roll my eyes.

'Dur,' Taylor returned, 'why do you think I've been sitting here.'

I smiled.

Undefeated, Stephen sighed. 'I'm gonna have to carry you.'

'No way,' she returned, folding her arms over her chest, 'I ain't baggage, no one has to carry me.'

Stephen looked hopefully at me like I was somehow going to overrule her, but I just shrugged. 'Her body, her decision,' I told him.

'She ain't baggage,' Nick concluded with a shrug. He sat down on the rock behind me.

'Taylor ain't baggage,' Stephen agreed under his breath.

'If you want, Taylor, we'll help you walk. ' I pulled out my canteen and passed it over to her. Once she'd taken a drink, she gave it back.

'Thanks,' she said.

'Okay.' I smiled again, reaching into my bag, pulled out a roll of bandaged and slowly started to wrap them around her foot. 'Now. Got to get you out of here.'

'You're gonna rescue me?'

'Yeah, do you have any objections?' Nick asked.

She shook her head. 'I was planning my own way back, but now you've gone and messed it up by making those things angry.' I shared a look with Nick before I turned my focus quickly back down to her ankle. 'You can tag along with me. If you want.'

'Well,' Nick replied, 'thanks. What are those things?'

'I don't know… They're pretty horrible. They killed the soldiers.'

I glanced up in concern. 'You saw that?' I asked.

'Heard it mostly,' she replied. 'All I know is that they come if you walk on the sand.'

'Can sense the vibrations,' I deduced.

'Well.' Stephen interrupted. 'We're going to have to go the long way around. If we stick to the rocks we can get close enough to the anomaly.'

I tucked the end of the bandage back on itself and slid her leg off my knee. 'There,' I said, 'if it starts to get any worse let me know. We'll see what we can do.'

'Thanks,' she said again, as she put her foot down against the rock and tested some of her weight on it. 'That's much better,' she continued joyfully. I gave a lopsided smile. 'Here, how can you be a doctor?' she asked. It didn't surprise me; I still wasn't old enough to be a doctor, not really, and it wasn't the first time someone had asked that question. I was, however, a little taken back when she continued. 'You're like way too pretty. I thought you had to be like ancient to know all that stuff.'

I titled my head. 'Ancient?' I repeated.

'Yeah,' she said, 'like that guy.' As she gestured to Nick a burst of laughter echoed through me.

'Nick isn't a doctor,' I told her. Then, as Nick and I shared another look, I quickly added in realisation, '–and he isn't ancient.' I stood up, offering a hand up. She took it and I pulled her onto her feet. 'Women can be whatever they want to be, and more than one thing at once. You can be pretty and smart and really fucking cool if you want to be, right? Aren't you?' I didn't notice I'd sworn until she giggled in response. 'Okay, also,' I continued, 'you need to know that sometimes in life it's okay to tell people to fuck off. You're allowed to do that.'

'You know no one's ever told me that before.'

I brushed the sand off my trousers before I reached down to grab my backpack and haul it onto my shoulders. 'You have every right to do whatever you want to protect yourself, okay?'

She nodded.

'We should get going,' Nick said, mirroring our actions and getting up onto his feet. 'You ready?'

I nodded my head back at him and reached out momentarily to take his hand and squeeze it before we set off.

'So is this some kind of giant wind–up?' Taylor asked. 'One minute I'm in Hackney, and the next I'm in the desert. The way I look at it, I probably been hypnotised or something and you brought me here as this big joke. I bet there are cameras everywhere.'

'And the public gets to vote which one of us gets eaten first,' Nick responded.

'Ah, its cooler than big brother.'

'Oh, aye.'