I ran the bloodwork at the Home Office. After lunch Connor came with me to the Haematology lab to pick up the results.

'I don't understand,' Connor said as I finished explaining the circumstances of the incursion back in the forest.

'No,' I agreed, 'neither did I, until I started thinking about what happened with the Pteranodon. I said to Nick at the time, we know there are anomalies turning up all over history, so something could come through from a different era before coming through to ours. Which I'm pretty sure explains how those Anurognathus came through the same anomaly as a Pteranodon.'

'The Pteranodons are late cretaceous, right?' Connor clarified.

'Yeah,' I said, 'and Anurognathus are late Jurassic.'

'So, you're right. And something came through from another anomaly into the Permian, then into ours?'

'Maybe, but honestly who knows how many anomalies it could have travelled through at this point. Thanks for running with me on this.'

A lab door of the hallway opened and caught my attention, so I turned towards it just as someone came out with the blood results. They handed them to me and I thanked them before I started quickly scanning through the pages.

'What is it?'

'Okay, well apparently yeah most of that blood was from a lion but some of it was from a bat.'

'Well bats get everywhere.'

'No, this is weird DNA. Look at this-'

'I don't speak CATTAGCAACTT.'

I frowned. 'Those are genomes, Connor. That's DNA, but DNA on the whole is shrinking, the length of transposons in this genome sequence is incredible. I've never seen anything like it before.'

'What does that mean then?'

'I don't know,' I admitted, 'and I really don't like not knowing. It makes me nervous.'

My attention was shifted by the sound of footsteps echoing down the hallway towards us. Nick was standing at the other end of the corridor. He didn't smile when he saw me and instead started waving me to over.

'Oh, jesus,' I noted, nudging Connor as I pushed myself off the wall, 'it's not just me, is it? That's his Helen face.'

Connor nodded. 'That's the one,' he agreed cheerily.

I sighed. 'Fuck's sake.'

'Are you sure you don't already know what this is about?' Lester's voice sounded as soon as I came through the double doors at the end of the hallway.

I knew immediately that there was something going on here that I didn't know about. I looked to Nick, but his expression gave nothing away, so turning my head to Stephen I watched the way he held my gaze for a moment before he looked down the floor.

That's interesting.

'I'm sorry, what does that mean?' Nick returned.

'She's your wife.' So this is about Helen.

'Ex-wife,' Nick corrected.

'You join the dots.'

I cleared my throat. 'What's going on?' I asked.

'Helen's back,' Nick told me and then– though I doubted he was even aware he was doing it– he reached out for my hand and held it in his own. 'She wants to meet.'

'So we're talking about whether or not we think it's... what... safe for usto meet with her?'

'Not us,' Stephen said.

I sighed in realisation. 'Me?' I asked.

Stephen nodded. 'Yeah.'

'Okay, well, she saved my life–' Twice. Except Lester didn't know about all of that. '–we should give her some credit for that at least. She's propably not gonna hurt me when she could have just as easily let me die.'

'And we need to talk to her; she might know something about the disappearances,' Stephen explained.

'No. That's a police matter,' Lester interrupted, 'there's no evidence of creature involvement.'

'Except that it's taken a lion too,' I added. 'What sort of pyschopath is gonna do that? And I've got some weird DNA from the scene that might suggest we're looking for some sort of Chiropteran placental mammal.'

'Okay fine,' Lester finished, 'we'll do it her way. But if this turns out to be another of her manipulative little schemes, the deals off and she goes straight back on the wanted list.'

He turned on his heel, pushed the button for the lift and stepped straight inside one waiting on our floor. A moment later the doors closed.

Nick turned to me. 'A bat?' he repeated questioning.

'It seems like it.'

Stephen huffed. 'Wow. Well, that's got to be one hell of a bat.'

She was late. It wasn't a surprise when I found myself alone and waiting on the bridge for her.

Eventually, after what felt like hours, I heard footsteps approaching. She came to stop opposite me and leant back against the railing. 'You have a serious creature incursion,' she said without so much as a hello. I lifted an eyebrow. 'A highly evolved ambushed predator, intelligent, adaptable and ruthless. At least 3 people have disappeared in the last few days. The creature has a lair somewhere nearby it's taken them for food.'

'How do you know that?'

'Because it nearly got me too.'

'Do you know what it is?"

'It has no name.'

Well that didn't make any sense. Unless... I tried to quickly make a list in my head of all the hypothesis' that could be make it possible. Only one thesis fit. 'So it comes from somewhere that can't be identified yet.'

'What a clever girl,' she replied.

'Is that all you came here to say? You really shouldn't have gone to the trouble-'

'I could have kept this to myself, but I didn't-'

'Why?' I interrupted.

I watched her shrug. 'Gesture of good faith.'

I tutted and folded my arms across my chest. 'We're being attacked by a creature from the future, Helen, and that's where you took me, right, when you dragged me through that anomaly before? Have you come back to watch it happen? You want to see how the world becomes just like that.'

A buzzing in my pocket distracted me momentarily, but I knew I couldn't pull my phone out to check so I let it vibrate.

'Where are the others?' she asked.

I rolled my eyes; I knew she wouldn't answer me. 'You asked to talk to me,' I said, 'for some reason. And I get it, before you wanted to see the woman who's with your ex for yourself, because you felt threatened. You wanted to see if she compared to you, in anyway. And then you'd tell yourself she's a knock-off version because he's trying to find a fragment of you in someone else. Why are you doing it now?'

Again, she didn't bite.

'There's no way he'd leave you alone with me. The others are here too, aren't they Princess?'

'Yes,' I agreed.

'Bring them here.'

I held up a hand and waved it in through the air. The soldiers stepped out of the trees at the shoreline of the river, followed by Nick, Stephen, and then Lester. 'Helen,' I then said, as I watched them make their way towards us. 'Why are you doing this?'

She shrugged. 'Why does anyone do anything?'

'What's going on?' Nick's voice cut through and I snapped my head around to him.

'It's from the future, Nick,' I said, 'it's a predator from the future.'

He frowned. 'What?'

'Helen was about to tell us all about it,' I then said as I looked back to her. 'And be helpful, for once.'

Helen cleared her throat. 'I've seen a lot of amazing creatures but nothing like this one. It has human levels of intelligence and an almost supernatural ability to stalk its prey. It could be here right now watching us and we'd never know.'

'If it's so clever...' Nick said, 'how did you see it?'

'I discovered it in the Permian just after a kill. It was feeding and its defences were down.'

'And what does it look like?'

'A great ape... but bigger, faster and a lot more agile.'

'A bat you said,' Stephen intermingled.

'DNA is conclusive, there's no accounting for its own evolution and adaptions,' I answered.

'Hold on, what makes you so certain it's not some lost species that's disappeared from the evolutionary records?' Nick questioned.

'No Nick it's not like any creature from the Permian or any other beast or era,' Helen answered.

'It must have strayed from a future anomaly into the Permian era and then on into ours,' I said.

Behind me, Lester sighed. 'You know what; I'm really starting to regret not staying in management consultancy. So now it's the future as well? And apparently we can't do a damn thing about it. How did it get here?'

'I have no idea. It was only when I got back I found out it was on the loose. Obviously my first thought was to do as much as I could to help.'

'No...' Nick said - once again he was running alongside my own train of thought. 'It was you...'

'You got too close,' I added.

'And it caught your sent...' he continued.

'And it followed you–'

'–back here...'

'I'm still surprised though,' I said.

'That you told us about it...'

'–and you've got a conscience.'

'Unless...' Nick countered, 'you're worried–'

'–that it's still got your scent.'

'So you want our help.'

'And you need the protection of the 21st century.'

Nick and I shared a look as I finished before together we turned our attention to Helen. She was biting her cheek, lips pursed into some sort of sneer as she eyed the both of us in turn. 'While that was very entertaining... you're wrong. I just want to help before a lot of innocent people die.'

'How public spirited of you,' Lester said finally, jaw clenched, and arms firmly crossed over his chest. 'Where can we contact you?'

'At my house of course.'

Nick laughed. 'Aha!'

But, still frowning at her, I reached out to lay a hand on his arm. 'Nick...'

'What?'

'Twice.'

He put his hands on his hips and looked down at me and for a moment I felt ridiculously small beneath his frame and bewildered gaze, but then I saw him come to a decision – he trusted me– and he slowly he started to nod.

'You can stay with us,' I said.

'Yeah,' Nick continued, 'why the hell not!'

And then he looked back to me one more time, just to make sure I was absolutely certain. So I looped my arm through his and moved forward to rest my head against his shoulder– but I wasn't quite tall enough and instead had to lean it against his bicep. 'We'll just have to make margaritas tonight.'

Helen was unnervingly quiet as we pulled up outside the house and turned the engine off. As we got out, Nick held out his hand for me to take and we walked up the garden path together. By the time we'd reached the front door I'd genuinely forgotten all about her. Nick must have been the same – I unlocked the door, already thinking about making a big pot of coffee, and he came in behind me and just kicked the door to close it behind him without even looking – almost slamming it shut in Helens face. And we shared a look, trying to hide our amusement, before Nick let her in.

Neither of us had seemed to remember about the mess. We'd become accustomed to it. There were piles of paper stacked up as high as our waists, boxes of fossils or bits of partially built machinery from my lab were stacked beneath or on top, books intermingled between them. The carpet had disappeared beneath it all weeks ago.

Helen waded her way through the lounge, accidently knocking a stack of papers as she went and–without apologising– she threw herself down on the sofa.

'You could have redecorated.'

Nick hadn't been paying attention. Throwing his jacket over the bar stool beneath the island separating the kitchen and living room, he brought his head up and over to her. 'Hmm?'

'You could have redecorated,' she repeated.

'You know this isn't the same house,' he said. 'I've moved twice since you left me.'

She looked up in confusion. 'Really? I couldn't tell, it looks just the same as–'

'–oh, sweetheart.' Nick picked up one of the pages from the middle of the pile Helen had knocked and held it out for me. 'Is this what you were looking for?'

I rounded on him and leant in to his side. 'Oh, yeah that's my quantum physics paper on the dissipative anomaly in turbulence, because you know,' I dropped my voice and started to talk faster as I explained, 'time-reversibility remains unbroken and energy dissipation finite at the limit of vanishing viscosity, it's a whole Chiral anomaly theory, where the axial vector current is conserved as a classical symmetry of electrodynamics, but is broken by the quantized theory–'

'–Anna.'

'Right. Um, this has been gone for like 3 weeks, how did it...'

'Oh... the landslide' Nick said. Then he turned his head down to look at me. As soon as I saw the smile I knew.

'Oh,' I mimicked, 'the landslide.' We'd been slightly inebriated, he'd been too distracted trying to kick the stool aside he didn't see what he was shoving it into and pile after pile of paperwork toppled like dominos. I'd try to tell him he couldn't fuck me on top of them after, but he hadn't listened. 'Right. This is gonna be a huge help with that experiment I was doing explaining how universal simultaneous correlation is possible.'

'We should scatter a few more of these pages and see what else you've lost,' he suggested, almost as if he was talking to himself. His hand came to rest of my back, his expression was serious despite the implication. I raised an eye brow, turning, fully intending on rising to my tiptoes to kiss him when a noise behind us made me jump.

I snapped my head round in surprise. I met Helen's glare.

'Oh, Helen,' I said, 'sorry, yeah, what were you saying?'

She just bit her cheeks in annoyance again and kicked off her muddy boots onto the carpet. We deserved that.

'No no,' she said, throwing her arms out onto the back on the sofa, 'don't let me interrupt what you were doing. It's obviously important.'

'This is our house, Helen,' Nick said, he folded his arms over his chest. 'You invited yourself in so-'

'Our house?' Helen repeated in amusement and turned her attention back to me. 'So you're all moved in then, princess?'

I shrugged. 'Gotta settle somewhere.'

'With someone,' she added.

'You make it sound like you've never been happy,' I said.

She cocked her head at me, narrowing her eyes before her gaze flitted across to Nick.

He shook his head. 'You can't insult me, Helen. You left, without warning, posted me divorce papers, then disappeared for 8 years. You obviously weren't happy,' he said. 'I really don't get why you came back at all.' He rounded the arm of the chair and sat down. 'I mean why didn't you ditch us the second you lost that thing here? You could have been millions of years away by now.'

'I could have walked away but I didn't, I stayed to help. I'm still human Nick, I still care what happens. Believe it or not I still care about you–'

'Tequila,' I said as the realisation suddenly came to me.

Nick turned his head to look at me. 'What?' he asked.

'If we want to make Margaritas, we're gonna need some more tequila.'

'I thought we had tequila.'

I nodded. 'We did, then we drank it.' I winced. A lot of it. The memory still had my stomach turning with how delicate we had been for the whole of the next day. I hadn't ever had a hangover like it and that was saying something. 'Connor might have some.'

'I'll drive,' Nick said, jumping up out the chair and crossing the room quickly.

I gave Helen a tight-lipped smile. 'You'll be alright here until we get back, won't you?' Then, before she could reply I continued 'just don't touch anything. It's all...' I looked around at the mess again but didn't really know how explain that the mess was actually somewhat organised. 'It might not look it but most of it's... please...'

'Anna?' I heard Nicks voice call from the hall.

'Yep.' I turned on my heel and left the room, leaving Helen to put her feet up on the coffee table.