I wasn't sure if I was awake or not to begin with because I couldn't feel my extremities but my head was excruciatingly sore. The noise certainly wasn't helping. I could hear the cry of an infantile velociraptor and it was close by so by way of deduction I assumed I'd taken a raptor-assisted tumble down a cliff.

That's the end of the dream then.

At least it hasn't eaten me yet. I groaned. That was a shame. Maybe if it had I wouldn't have woken up. Perhaps I'd still have been back there.

Home.

I rolled over without opening my eyes because I wasn't ready to move yet, so if a raptor was about to eat me right that second, I'd have preferred not to know about it.

I sat up on my knees, the ground suspiciously soft underfoot and rolled back my shoulder. Fuck. My head. I put my hand against it and stood up. And I finally opened my eyes. The bowling alley?

Fuck.

I'm not dreaming. I am home. I'm home.

I was still covered in the cleaner's blood so that wasn't a dream either.

The cleaner...

I turned around, locating the source of the call only a few feet away, on the other side of the desk. Except it wasn't what I was expecting. It wasn't the baby at all, and– with only a second to spare for the thought of how thoroughly fucked I was– the adult raptor saw me.

Following its line of vision, Connor turned around, looking first to the floor where I had been lying before he saw me standing there and he too sprang up to his feet.

'Connor?' I hissed not wanting to make any sudden movements.

'Yep.'

I held up my hand, lifting my fingers to count down slowly from 3 to 1. I turned, hurdling the desk to flee backwards, as Connor bolted around the outside and collided with me as I came over.

'Ah, sorry, sorry!' he apologised, half catching me as we stumbled back. 'Heads up.' I caught the pool cue as he threw it to me, filing between the pool tables to back up into the corner of the room where we could better defend ourselves. It never got that far; the claw machine beside us suddenly started singing and the noise startled it, distracting it and it jumped up to attack.

The rifles clicked again, two more tranqs hit the creature in the back but undeterred it just squawked and scampered away. Connor blinked in confusion. 'Uh... what just happened?'

'That's two doses of tranquiliser and it's still on its feet. We're going to have to up the amount,' Nick replied.

'How much?' I asked.

'There's 65 mg of Ketamine in each one.'

I shook my head. 'Need 120.'

Beside him, Stephen slammed tranquiliser gun down on the pool table. Then without a word he marched away.

Following him with my eyes for a moment I tried to work out why Stephen as I knew him seemed different here. There was something about him. The way he held himself. The way he emoted when he spoke that just felt off. Perhaps it was all in my head. That along with the knowledge that he'd been fucking Helen, it somehow altered the way I looked at him. But I was pretty sure Nick felt it too.

When I averted my gaze from Stephen to him, I found his eyes were already on me. I wasn't sure what he wanted: to be talked in or out of whatever he was thinking, but either he saw what he was looking for or made up his own mind because a moment later Nick pushed himself off the pool table and went after him.

Between Nick leaving and Connor refilling the doses to my recommended amounts, my body shut down. The combination of the exhaustion, dehydration and malnutrition, mixed with the ketamine in my system, everything seized up.

It made walking back to the anomaly almost impossible.

By the time Connor and I were negotiating the staircase I could barely move without wincing. It was weird to think I had run up these stairs an hour ago.

I heard him swallow nervously as he came up behind me. 'Sorry I shot you.'

'Shut up,' I said nonchalantly.

'...how you feeling?' I side eyed him. He winced apologetically. 'Want me to get you anything? I could run and get you a glass of water– not boasting– ooo, sorry, that was insensitive... Anna, I want you to know if I was gonna shoot anyone you'd so be the last person I'd shoot, apart from Nana, obviously, but you'd be way-' he gestured as thought to explicate his his point but seemed to have forgotten he still had the gun in his hand '–down the list with–.'

'Jesus, Connor!' I instantly threw myself back, trying to flatten myself against the steps.

'Yep, right, sorry.' He swung the barrel of the gun away from me and with his other hand reached down to help me up. 'Go on after you, I've got your back.'

'That's what I'm worried about.'

It took me so long to get there that Nick and Stephen had collected the bodies of both raptors and brought them down here before I'd had the chance to hobble in.

Nick came to meet me, holding out a hand for me to take, and with lopsided smile I slipped it into his. 'How you doing?'

'Uh.'

He nodded, half amused by the sentiment, but gracious enough to pretend his laughter wasn't aimed at me. 'I'm sorry I gave him a gun.'

I shook my head. 'Be dead if you hadn't.'

And though the statement was true, Nick cocked his head as if he were weighing out those pros and cons. We stopped in front of the anomaly.

Connor cleared his throat. 'So guys, let me get this straight. All we have to do is drag two of the angriest creatures in the known universe through a whole in time back into an ancient world where we don't know what's waiting on the other side for us?'

Stephen sighed. 'When you put it like that it sounds so easy.'

'I'm going to do this on my own.'

Bringing my head around to look up at Nick, I narrowed my eyes. Suspicious. 'We'll help,' I told him.

'Who's we?' Connor returned, arms still crossed over his chest. As his gaze shifted from me to the professor the amusement dropped from his features. 'I didn't say we wouldn't,' he quickly corrected, 'I just prefer to do my own volunteering, thank you.'

'Look I'm going to do this on my own, I don't want any arguments.'

I cocked my head. He was asking for one. I cracked my neck, limbering up, about to get into it when I felt his hand squeeze mine.

And suddenly I was back there, standing in the forest, desperately holding onto him as that six sixth sense consumed me. Now, I didn't feel any of it. There wasn't a pounding in my heart or an ache in my gut or any sort of nausea stirring inside me. So, I let his hand slip from mine as he called Connor over to him and lowered his voice so that I couldn't hear what was being said as they walked towards one another.

I spun around to give them their so–desired privacy. Then I swept my gaze over the raptors as if to check that they were still there, still sedated and on the ground. As I diverted from the female to the male, my eyes met Stephens.

Immediately he snatched his eyes away off me like he'd been caught staring. And if that wasn't suspect enough a moment later he looked up again, saw I was still looking, and then again looked away.

I didn't understand Stephen Hart. I'd given up trying. But perhaps he was still trying to work out me.

With Nick otherwise engaged and Connor with him, it didn't seem like I was needed. And I walked somewhat uncomfortably back towards the hallway to the staircase.

He was trying to keep his distance so that I didn't know he was there. I had every belief he thought he was getting away with it, as he followed me into the department store beside the bowling alley.

I'd become quite the expert at hearing things. Not just voices in my head of course– but subtleties of nature. When it was or wasn't just the wind. Noises of just about any creature on the fossil record at this point, and this was while there were other things going on around me. Now, in the empty and silent shopping mall it was all too easy to hear him coming.

It was all too easy to lay a trap for him.

As he followed me around the end of an electronics aisle I slammed a hand down against his chest, knife raised in my other hand and shoved him back against the shelves. Stephen jumped.

'Following me?' I demanded. I pressed the tip of the knife against his throat.

'You're unarmed and injured, and just because we haven't seen anything else on the monitors it doesn't mean there isn't something else out here,' Stephen replied. 'Where could you possibly be going right now, anyway?'

'The fuck is it to you?'

He swallowed. I watched his adam's apple bob uneasily. 'Put the knife down.'

I tried not to show my amusement. I stared up at him and narrowed my eyes. 'Hmm.'

'Come on.'

'Like you weren't pointing a gun at me an hour ago.' And maybe I was being petty and this was just a little bit of payback for putting me through that but I was enjoying it too much to stop.

'Hey, I didnt know who you were an hour ago. And, honestly, at least I was a lot further away.'

He shifted. He was enjoying this. Bastard.

I scoffed as I shoved myself away from him and pushing him further into the shelves. He didn't say anything for a second or two, he just continued to look down at me whilst I slowly returned my knife to its cover and brought my arms back to fold across my chest.

'What are we doing here, Anna?'

I moved by way of explanation. He followed after me, down the aisle past the microwaves and kettles to the radio. 'Heard something earlier,' I explained, 'when we walked past. Wanted to see.'

'What?'

'Tune them,' I answered, I put my hand down on the closest one and twiddled the dials until the radio started to make the same sound I'd heard before, then I read out the frequency. '187.6 on F.M.'

We worked quickly and quietly down the row tuning the others the noise grew louder.

'What is that?' Stephen questioned as he finished his row and looked up at me across the top of the display stand.

'Interference,' I said.

'Why?'

I narrowed my eyes, challenging him to work it out for himself.

'You think it's got something to do with the anomaly?' When I didn't respond, he continued, 'it could just be a technical problem at the radio station.'

'Then find out,' I returned. He didn't believe that any more than I did.

'But if it is the anomaly causing this...?'

'Could be interference on this wavelength any time one opens.'

'Which would explain why Helen was always one step ahead of us. She must have some kind of receiver or something.'

'Could build our own detector.'

He stared at me. 'We can do that?'

I nodded. 'Something that traces the anomaly within seconds of it appearing.'

'So, we better hope this is all because of the anomaly then?'

'The interference stops when it closes, we'll know.'

He stared across at me from the other side of the shelves and I could see him trying to consider whether he should or shouldn't say something. He sighed, his lips parted, and I braced myself for something outrageous.

And I waited longer than seemed necessary but he remained silent.

I sighed. 'What?'

He looked a little taken back but nevertheless he replied. 'I remember,' he said. 'I've got my memory back, all of it, I remember everything.'

My pursed thoughtfully. 'Remember that we don't get along then?' I clarified.

'Funny,' he returned, 'that's not what I got at all.'