It was a surprise– the nice kind– which I wasn't used to so it took me a lot longer than it should have to react when someone put a mug of tea down in front of me.

I immediately whipped a hand out to steady it before I even looked up; my workspace was still a mess, the papers were still so uneven that I'd half assumed the mug would instantly tip over, however it wasn't at as much risk as I'd assumed because the hand hadn't pulled away, and as my fingers met flesh my head snapped up.

I had even more of a shock when I saw it was the Captain staring down at me in confusion.

'You okay?' he asked.

I rolled my eyes, at myself more than him, and nodded. 'Yeah, fuck, I'm sorry,' I said.

'Thinking about something else,' he nodded back at me, 'I get it. Thought you'd want some tea. It had to be black I'm afraid, there's no milk in the fridge.'

'Hmm, no, it's fine,' I assured him, 'I drink everything black anyway.' I put my hand over the top of the mug and he finally released it, and I lifted it, sipping from the gap on the rim between my thumb and forefinger. Ow.

'Also it's hot.'

'Yes.' I tried not to wince, trying to disguise the fact I'd already burnt my tongue. 'Thanks.'

He nodded. 'That's quite okay,' he said, 'I was there anyway.'

'Do you know about the list yet? Has anyone explained that to you?' As he frowned again in response I had my answer. 'The shit we need list, it's a notepad, lives next to the fridge. You can stick anything you like on it, and at some point someone will rip it off and go shopping.'

'Really?'

I hummed. 'Yeah. Someone may have written on there already, but if not… Can you stick cheerios on there too? We ran out and I really want some. And I want some white chocolate. Will you write that down too?'

'White?'

'Hear me out: black coffee– white chocolate.'

'I thought you weren't drinking coffee.'

'I'm not, but Connor doesn't like white chocolate so it's the only way I can get a lick in before it's gone.'

He answered with a laugh. 'Okay,' he said. 'Milk, and cheerios and chocolate.'

'Thanks Captain.' Then my head snapped up. Straight away I didn't understand; the sound of his laughter was strange because even though I was extremely confused I couldn't help but echo his expression with my own small smile. 'What?'

'People usually just call me Becker,' he explained.

'Good for them.'

Then, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the desk so that I could hear him, he continued 'what sort of crazy pregnant lady are you?' he asked, 'kicking down doors, jumping out windows…'

'Hey,' I returned, straight–faced, 'window singular, and I didn't know you'd even see me do the whole–'

'Kicking the doors down.'

'It had to be done.'

'You didn't have to do it. Anna, seriously, you're–'

'A liability?' I interrupted in suggestion.

He suddenly stood back. 'No,' he said, 'no. I was gonna say awesome.'

I didn't respond, my mouth opened, but nothing came out and I just had to shut it again. My eyes narrowed.

Who the fuck says awesome?

'Why don't you wear a ring, by the way?' he asked.

'What?'

Becker gestured down to his own hand somewhat explanatorily. 'If you're engaged why dont you have a ring?'

'I do,' I returned. 'And it's beautiful by the way.'

'Mmhmm.' He nodded.

'Well it snags on my gloves.' It lived in the box it was given to me in on my bedside table with the lid down so it didn't get dusty. I wore it at home. 'Because I have quite small hands for a grown adult woman we have to get kids gloves which means they're not designed for rings to go underneath and I can't get a pair on over it without splitting the rubber.'

'Then why dont you just take your ring off before you put your gloves on?'

'... hmm...' I frowned. Well that was a good idea actually. My attention was pulled down as my phone suddenly started to vibrated against the desk. I picked it up. 'Oh,' I said, 'Sarah's here, I should...'

'Yeah,' he replied, 'okay.'

And I slipped down off my stool, took a couple of steps away from my desk and towards the hub doors before I stopped, retreated back to grab my mug of tea, and smiled at him again in thanks as I picked it up.

Sarah was waiting at the desk when I got down to the entrance.

She hadn't been given her formal I.D yet, her little card with her name and face on that got her past the front doors even though she'd received her clearance a week ago.

As I stepped through, holding the door open with my foot so that it wouldn't close behind me, I waved her over.

'Morning!' she called cheerily as she came towards me.

'Oh good morning,' I replied, probably a little more energetically than usual. I smiled to the man on the reception desk and he nodded at me, before we both stepped back into the corridor.

'Oh you sound chipper today, how'd you sleep?'

When I looked down rather awkwardly at my watch and saw it was in fact half 9 already, I winced. 'Honestly? I didn't.' She gave me a knowing look. 'But that's alright,' I continued casually, 'that makes it only… Monday, right?'

'Oh, sweetie,' she returned, 'it's Thursday today.'

We came through the doors at the end of the main corridor, and to my surprise Nick was standing there, a briefcase in one hand and the other extended towards Connor like he'd just stopped him on his way to do something.

With our entrance they both turned their heads.

I hadn't seen either of them since last night. Nick must have been home to shower and change because I noticed his hair was sort of freshly fluffy and he was now wearing a pale blue shirt that brought out his eyes. I'd missed his face.

'Morning!' I called out to both of them, alerting them to our presence.

Nick smiled back at me. 'Morning sweetheart,' he replied.

'We're adding in the latest updates. You want to join us?' We overtook them in the corridor, heading down towards my office that had temporally become Sarah's workspace, on top of its other functions as the space we'd used to build the 3D matrix of anomalies.

'I've been trying to trace the origins of the Qilin,' Sarah explained.

'Also known as the Chinese unicorn,' Connor added. She looked back over her shoulder and nodded at him.

'Exactly,' she agreed, 'the earliest reference I could find was in the 5th century book Zuo Zhuan. So I made a rough calculation and put it into the matrix.'

When we walked into the room the lights came on, illuminating up from the ground and sparkling against the silver of the matrix map we'd built to detail the confluence of time.

Sarah threw her coat over the chair behind my desk, which had been moved up against the back wall to make space. She quickly pulled her hair back out of her face.

Connor was the first one to duck beneath the arches, and he immediately reached up to fiddle with one of the strings. 'I love this thing.'

'Connor,' Nick returned. He put down his briefcase and started to roll up his sleeves.

Connor looked back at him. 'Hmm?'

'Touch that and you could be changing the entire destiny of the universe,' Nick said.

Connor quickly pulled his hands back, glancing quickly at me, and reading my straight–lipped smile as a gesture of clarification. 'I'm not gonna touch it,' Connor resolved, stepping back, 'I'm just gonna…'

Nick smiled, his eyes finding mine before they moved on to Connor. 'Good man.'

'Whoa!' My head moved around to the door just as Jensen came in, wide eyed and taken aback, before his resolve quickly changed to his signature broad grin.

'Hi,' I said.

'Morning. Please tell me this all means something.'

'This,' Connor started, grinning excitedly back at Jensen, 'is a model of all known anomalies throughout history.'

'All cultures have their own mythical beasts,' Sarah added explanatorily. 'Like… um, Loch Ness Monster.'

'Where there's a myth, there's probably an anomaly,' I furthered, but I didn't need to explain everything because he was there with us before, 'so far, you'll be pleased to know, we have no idea if that's true.'

'All we can do is date these myths accurately,' Nick said.

'Like a road map,' Connor added, 'of time.'

'And cross reference these creatures with our database of vertebrate's. Nessie might have more commonly been known as Plesiosauria,' I conjected, 'or Elamosasaurus.'

'Or just Susan too her friends,' Connor said in his best Scottish accent.

I smiled, 'Sharon,' I suggested, in mine. He laughed. 'We're hoping we can predict where and when new anomalies might start to open. And not just ones that have been here before, we mean like patterns,' I said, 'sequences. N= A+1.'

'A new anomaly,' Nick said, 'based on the year, or as close as we can get it, to an old anomaly, plus whatever number of years between the two.'

'Call me stupid, but um… couldn't we have done all this on a computer?' Jensen questioned.

'Yes,' I agreed, 'but…'

'This way its more tangible,' Nick finished.

'It makes him feel more like God,' Connor added in a whisper, though I doubted it was quiet enough that Nick couldn't hear it. I tried to hide my amusement. 'You know, with the creation.'

Jensen fully understood.

I turned, expecting to see a not so amused expression on Nick's face, but he was distracted by something inside the matrix, and I wondered if he had heard after all.

'Hey, Connor, you might be right,' he said slowly. 'But if were not very much mistaken, I think we may have made our first prediction.'

I glanced back at him, confused, before I stepped over to join him beneath the arches. I looked at the clip he'd adjoined to the post, then down at the papers beneath on the floor. The rough calculations of two now overlapping points. So in theory it must have been right.

I turned my head and met his eye. 'I have the most recent updated equations on Universal Simultaneous corelation on my desk, in the hub.'

'We need to put them into the system,' he said.

I nodded. 'We can do that from there.'

When I got to my desk the hub there was a test–tube tray and several petri dishes stacked up on top of the pages on my side of the desk, and there was a note attached from Denise asking me to check through some of her reports and re–evaluate with my own findings if I had a minute. And it made me realise it must have been longer than I thought since I'd been up to my medical lab.

Stuff got busy quick around here.

I had to push all the stuff aside onto Connors half of the desk, which I could tell he didn't like much by the clipped noise of objection he made. I gave him a sorrowful glance before I picked up the pages and handed them to Nick.

'So this backs up what we were saying before?' Nick clarified.

I nodded. 'They'll be an anomaly there,' I returned, louder, so the rest of the group could hear, 'bet my life on it. Only issue it could be tomorrow, or it could be years from now. The margin for error within that area of calculating can be more refined, I just haven't got round to it yet,' I said apologetically.

'That's okay,' Nick returned with a smile. 'Captain Becker–' At the sound of his name the Captain got up out his chair and made his way over to us. 'Go check it out.'

Becker nodded.

'And I want you to take…' Nick stopped, finger half outstretched to Connor before he'd paused like he was deciding whether or not it was a good idea. He finally sighed. '… Nancy Drew with you.'

'I'll go too,' I said.

He whipped his head around to me. 'You're benched, Miss Havisham, remember?'

'Come on,' I returned, 'it's been two weeks.'

'And the detector hasn't made a peep so you haven't needed to move anyway.'

'I'm going crazy, I need to get out. I've learnt my lesson,' I complained.

Becker cleared his throat. 'I'll stick with her,' he offered with a shrug.

Beside me, Connor stretched out his arm to drape it around my shoulders. 'That's alright big man; I don't plan on letting her out of my sight.'

'Guys!' I turned my attention back to Nick and used my big expressive-eyes look that he usually didn't try to argue with. 'Nick,' I said, 'please.'

He sighed. 'Ah alright!' he finally resolved, 'fine!'

I turned to Connor, sharing an overly excited grin as he jumped up victoriously. 'Yes!' he high-fived me, neither of us realising it was probably a bad idea to do it right in front of Nick.

'Probationally,' he continued, 'but if I hear that you've even looked out another window. Captain, I'm trusting you to look after her.'

I rolled my eyes, trying not to look too frustrated in case he changed his mind. 'Cutter,' I said warningly.

'And I know that I'm in trouble when I get that,' he noted, so he lifted his hands in surrender. 'Aye, go on. Be careful.'

I started past him towards the exit. 'Aren't I always?' I shrugged.

'If anything happens, call me.'

'Of course.'

Becker fell into step beside me. 'He's a very protective boss,' he stated, as soon as we were out earshot, 'very protective of you.'

'Who, Lester?' I responded in confusion.

'No, Professor Cutter.' It took me a second to realise what he meant. 'I mean I get it with you being…'

'4 months pregnant?' I finished for him, 'yeah. I know he tends to make the decisions but he's not really my boss, you know…'

Becker frowned, just as we reached the doors to the hub, and I held them open first for Jensen to pass through, and then Connor, before I gestured for him to go through.

'He's not?' Becker asked.

'No,' I said. With one final glance back to Nick, I winked. 'Might be a bit weird considering he's my fiancé.' I stepped through and let the doors swing closed.

The confusion looked visibly painful on Becker's face. 'What?' he demanded. I didn't answer; he'd get it eventually, and once we'd reached the armoury at the other end of the corridor, the information must have finally sunk in. 'Okay,' he said slowly, 'then who the hell is Connor.'

I frowned. 'My cousin, what–' his insinuation made me wince. 'Ew.'

'Thanks, A,' Connor said.

'Captain Becker thought you were my fiancé.'

I saw Jensen wince, as the soldier on the other side of the armoury bench handed over the firearms. 'Ew,' Jensen agreed.

'What?' Connor replied, 'you don't think I could pull Anna?'

I narrowed my eyes. 'It's incest,' I returned.

'I meant theoretically,' he said.

'Theoretically,' Jensen repeated, 'it's incest.'

'Can we stop,' I pleaded, 'this is so weird. I don't even want to think about it.'

'And people are staring,' Becker added from behind me. 'So let's get out of here.'