We got back before they'd even had a chance to move the body.

It was still slumped against the lockers, eyes empty and open and staring out across the locker room.

As I approached, Becker looked up, eyeing me with this strange sense of concern and I realised there must have been a look on my face that disclosed my distress.

Nick was behind me, hands resting on my shoulders.

I couldn't tear my gaze off the body. 'That's impossible,' I noted.

Behind me, Nick took a sharp intake of breath. 'That's exactly what I said,' he replied.

'You two know this guy?' Becker clarified, 'you saw him die before, in the Silurian.'

I nodded. 'And the shopping mall. Except his body disappeared and we had no idea how.' I took a couple of steps towards the cleaner's body and lowered myself to a crouch beside it. 'You shot him.'

Becker frowned. 'Yeah…' he replied. 'He pulled a gun… Is that okay?'

I hadn't been trying to offend him, but in consideration I could tell how that all might have sounded. 'Of course it is,' I replied softly, 'that's your job, isn't it?'

He nodded. 'Then what?'

'We don't know what the fuck is going on,' I informed him, 'and it's a shame that now we can't ask him how. Maybe the only answers we'll get are in his DNA.'

'What do you mean?' Becker asked.

I glanced briefly at Nick, to check if he'd reached some similar kind of conclusion, and he nodded back at me like he knew exactly what I was thinking. I lowered my voice to a whisper.

'Is someone going to come for the body?'

Becker nodded in confusion. 'They'll take it down to the morgue.'

'No, get them to take it to my medical lab. And it has to be someone you trust, they need to keep guard of it. They've infiltrated the A.R.C before, who's to say there aren't more soldiers here working for someone else.'

Becker looked to Nick, just briefly, as though to check if it was some kind of joke. 'What's going on?' he asked.

'Come with me.'

Sarah looked up from her work as we came in, quickly shutting the door behind us, and I moved around to close the blinds in the window that faced the hub. Connor was sitting at our workspace out there, taking this opportunity to run the name we'd got from the estate agent through the system before we went back out.

'Is everything okay?' She asked.

She looked to Becker like he would have some sort of answer but he could only shrug. 'There's something weird happening,' he replied.

'You're going to have to be more specific,' she returned, 'everything that happens here is weird.'

I stopped opposite her at the desk and turned my gaze down to the table to avoid visual distractions; I needed to think.

'We're talking impossible sort of weird,' Nick replied. Before he could expand on his statement, Becker sighed.

'Cutter, this guy was eaten by a giant scorpion in the Silurian desert, I'd say that makes him fairly dead.'

'Exactly,' Nick returned, 'it doesn't make sense.'

'Before that I watched him get his throat clawed out by a juvenile velociraptor,' I added.

'Are you sure he died?'

'His blood squirted out his neck and hit me in the face,' I replied. 'So…'

'Then what happened?'

I tutted sort of under my breath. 'Well, then Connor shot me and I passed out.' I saw Becker raise an eyebrow at me. 'I know he has a habit. But there's no way that guy survived with a wound like that, he was practically already dead by the time he hit the floor.'

'Alright,' Becker said, as he moved forward, stopped beside me, and sat on the edge of my desk. 'It's his identical twin.'

'So, what's he doing here?' Nick questioned. 'Trying to break into that locker.'

'Did you see the tag?' I asked. 'N.C. It's Nicola Clarke's locker– she's an on-call Doctor– but there's no way it's a coincidence. He must not have known our lockers are out in the hallway.'

'What did he want? What was the point of trying to go through my laundry?'

'You killed his brother…' Becker said, 'so he steals your shirt.'

I saw him smile out the corner of my eye so I straightened up. 'We could do without the sarcasm Captain, if that's alright with you.'

The smile dropped from his lips and I quickly lowered my gaze.

'Sorry,' he muttered.

Perhaps that was a bit harsh.

'I didn't mean to snap,' I said, my voice low. He nodded politely in indication. It was okay. 'Even if he is the…' I paused, not really wanted to say it but having no other choice, 'evil twin,' I sighed, 'that doesn't explain the scarring.' I gestured to my own neck explanatorily. 'That's the third time that man has died, second time we've been there to see it. So how can we explain it…' I prompted. 'Come on, how can that man die in a shopping mall, and in the Silurian desert, and here in the locker room. How can people be in two places at once?'

'They can't,' Sarah said.

'Exactly. The only way one man can be in two places at once is that he physically isn't the same man.'

'He's a clone,' Nick concluded.

'What?' Becker returned. 'I thought– I thought that was impossible.'

'It's not impossible,' I told him, 'it's just, not that easy, and not that effective, and we aren't able to replicate humans the way they do it in all the 80's movies. A human being, like any other animal needs to be grown so it would take time. We just don't have that kind of technology.'

'Then how has this happened?' Sarah asked.

'Helen,' Nick finished in realisation. He didn't need to look at me for clarification. 'The neural clamp Leek used to control the predators, she gave him that technology from the future.'

'She's got something to do with this,' I agreed.

'She employed the guy before,' Nick added. 'She must have his D.N.A or something.'

'It's like bringing him back from the dead.'

Becker shifted. 'She must be scarier than I thought.'

And even though he was being sarcastic I nodded.

'You canny even begin to guess,' Nick agreed.

'Rule number 1,' I continued.

'If something inexplicable happens…' Nick started.

'Helen's usually behind it,' I said.

'Trust me.'

'She's back,' I finished.

'Anna!' We all jumped as the door flew open and Connor leant in, waving a piece of paper in his hand. I didn't have time to reprimand him again, because before I could even take a breath, or attempt to lower my heartrate, he was already speaking. 'I found Ryan Mason,' he said, 'and you'll never guess where he works…'

'Is it close?' I asked. Connor nodded. 'Right, let's try and get that sorted before I come back and do a post-mortem on the cleaner's body. You guys gonna be alright here?'

Stupid question. What's the worst that could happen with a few research pages?

'Aye, go on.'

It wouldn't take long, I told myself. We just needed to ask about what happened that night 14 years ago. If we had some confirmation of an anomaly being open then, we'd know how off our original calculations were, and we should be able to rework them.

I smiled, by way of valediction, then leant over to give Nick a kiss goodbye. 'See you soon,' I said as I followed Connor out into the corridor.

I wasn't at all surprised that Connor had been so excited when we pulled up at the fairground.

He pointed over to one of the vendors, and I supposed he'd recognised the man from the computer database, and we started walking towards him.

'Ryan?' I called out questioningly as we got closer.

The vendor turned, eyeing us both suspiciously, and for some reason based on our appearance he decided that he didn't want to talk to us.

He backed up towards the carousal.

'Ryan,' I repeated, 'can I talk to you?'

Connor was the first to reach the carousal, and once he jumped on I quickly lost sight of him as the carousal turned. I hopped carefully up onto the base and followed the man weaving between the horses.

'Ryan…'

'Leave me alone.'

'You are Ryan Mason, right?' I asked.

'And you… ain't paid.'

Connor came back into view on one of the horses as the carousal continued to turn. 'I always fancied this job,' he said. My eyebrow quirked. Ryan walked straight past him.

It felt ridiculous, because the floor was turning, and neither of us were really going anywhere but I wasn't exactly getting any closer. So, yielding, I stopped. 'I know you didn't hurt your friends.'

Ryan froze.

'We just want to know what happened in the house, mate. It must have driven you crazy all these years…' Connor jumped off the horse and joined me. 'People thinking you were a killer, when you've done nothing wrong.'

Ryan turned on his heel.

There was something in his eyes that suddenly made me wonder if we'd done the right thing coming back here.

If anyone had turned up looking for me, asking about what had happened the day everyone got shot, I probably would have had the same reaction.

I didn't want to relive that trauma, revive it, recount it to strangers when I'd been doing so well at getting better.

I knew, instinctively, a lot sooner than I realised I had: this was a horrific story.

'I heard this terrible screaming,' he said slowly, '…and there was this light, shining…It wasn't there before.'

The anomaly. Connor and I looked at each other. 'Was it flickering?' he asked.

Ryan's eyes narrowed in confusion. 'How'd you know?' When neither of us responded he shook his head. 'I just ran… there was this screeching… it was like an animal… no animal I'd ever heard. I never saw my mates again.'

I had to swallow before I had any voice to reply. 'The animal,' I said, 'what did it look like.'

I watched him shake his head. 'Nothing,' he replied.

And for a moment I thought it was the trauma– which I completely understood– that his brain had wiped away his memory of it in an attempt to protect itself, but he opened his mouth again and I realised he wasn't finished.

Exhaling a shaky breath to try and stop his voice from trembling, he finally continued, 'it was invisible.'

We looked at each other again, and I didn't need to say anything to him before I could understand exactly what he was thinking. Oh my god this was it. This was Toms monster. His Listen. An invisible creature.

'Look, this is my job, please…' Ryan continued. But neither of us were listening. 'No one here knows.'

'We understand…' I finally said slowly, as though I was barely aware I was even talking. 'You've got nothing to blame yourself for.'

'I've been back to that house a thousand times since, and I've never once had the guts to go back in. But I will.' And before either of us could say anything else, Ryan walked away.

'What do we do?'

'You're asking me?' Connor returned.

'I'm asking for solutions,' I corrected, 'theories, that if this was it, if there was a creature in that house with the perfect disguise…'

'How do we know it went back through?'

'I said,' I repeated, 'I said there was something living in that house, I could smell it. What if it's still there?'

'We need to go back.' When I started shaking my head, he put both his hands down on my shoulders and shook me. 'We have to find this thing.'

'Connor,' I returned, 'we can't. By its very nature it doesn't want to be found.'

'We have to do something,' he said. 'Because sooner or later, someone else is gonna go in there again. This creature… if it killed those boys it'll kill again. We can't let that happen.'

As much as I hated to admit it, I knew he was right.

'How are we going to find it?' I asked.

I watched his smile widen. 'Tom answered that for us,' he answered in reminder. 'How else would you sense a creature, except than in those moments when, for no clear reason, you choose to speak out loud. Who better than two psychics?'

We made our way back to the house and parked up outside, and I was about to walk down the bank and cross over the bridge when something caught my eye.

I reached out, slapped a hand around Connor's wrist to stop him as I locked my gaze onto the girl in the yellow coat standing up the bank, watching us walk towards the house.

'Err…' I started.

'Jesus,' Connor noted as he followed my gaze, 'why do they always have to be wearing yellow coats? Okay, this is weird this is really, really weird, and I'm starting to get creeped out.'

Even though I agreed and nodded back at him, I tried to use logic to calm us both down. 'But she's probably just a normal kid, right,' I returned, 'there shouldn't be anything creepy about a normal little girl…'

'Right,' Connor agreed. 'You're right. You know what, I bet she's just on her way somewhere… on her own, in the evening way past her bedtime…' I heard him swallow nervously. 'I'm cold. Are you cold?' I was a bit chilly. 'I'm not being funny, but does she look a little bit translucent to you?'

'Connor.'

'If she starts flying…'

At that moment the streetlamp above her started to flicker, flashing a few times before it came on. Connor jumped.

'Okay… I mean… What would Nana say?' I said in a whisper.

'"Where are my specks?"' he joked.

It wasn't the time for humour. I thumped him. '"Friend to the living…"' I started softly.

'"Friendlier to the dead,"' he finished. Then he turned his head down to meet my gaze.

'You think she's dead?'

'I have no idea.' Apprehension bleed through his expression. I could practically feel it rolling off him in waves. He turned back to the girl, lifted his arm, and waved to her. 'Hi!' he said.

The girl didn't respond.

She didn't even blink. I laughed nervously under my breath.

'Okay…' Connor said slowly. 'You wouldn't happen to have any salt in that backpack, would you?'

'We should keep going,' I answered in explanation.

'Yuhuh,' he agreed.

We walked further down the bank, only reaching the bottom of the stairs up to the bridge when she cried out 'No!' And we both jumped in fright.

'Jesus fucking Christ,' I noted under my breath.

'You can't go inside…' she continued.

We looked at each other again. 'At least she's not so creepy now,' Connor noted.

'Don't you remember? Nana was talking to that old milkman for three years before she realised he was dead.'

'Oh god!' he clipped. 'What do we do?'

I turned my head back to the girl. 'Are you a ghost?' I called out to her. Connor elbowed me. 'Do you want to know, or not?'

'You what?' the girl called back in confusion.

The tension in the atmosphere snapped like an elastic band. We both quickly heaved a sigh of relief. 'I'll catch you up.'

'What?'

'I'm gonna go talk to her,' I continued, 'I'll meet you there. I'll just be a minute. Wait for me. Don't go inside on your own.'

'Don't worry, I wouldn't dream of it.'

I walked around him, stepping off the bridge and started slowly up the bank towards her.

I could hear Connor's footsteps echoing, growing ever quieter as he moved across the bridge and towards the house.