'You're staring,' he said as he dropped down into the chair opposite me at the desk. I tore my attention off Jensen Lewis, tightening my grip on my pen as though trying to remind myself that I should have been working.

'Least I didn't shout in his face,' I replied.

Nick leant forward to rest his elbow on the desk. 'I didn't shout,' he returned weakly. Presumably because he knew it was a lie.

'Did,' I returned.

He'd tried to convince Jensen Lewis that he wasn't Jensen Lewis at all. And even though I'd been there beside him and completely understood what was going through his mind, I hadn't come to his defence. 'Okay,' he amended, 'I didn't mean to scare him though.'

'Did,' I repeated without looking up from annotating the corrections onto the pages of photocopies.

'Would you stop that?'

I shrugged my eyebrows and tried not smile at the fact I knew he had found it amusing despite his tone. He had to hide his smile by spinning his chair to turn his back to me.

Connor was working at a desk across from mine. The movement must have caught his eye because he looked over and tutted. 'Hey.' He pushed off from his desk and rolled over in his chair towards us, 'you're staring again, Cutter.' Nick huffed and quickly turned back around, this time not bothering to hide his grumpiness. 'You think Lester will want to see you again today?' Connor continued. He pulled the slide from the microscope on my table and put it up to his eye, then, looking it through, he turned to find the light.

'Still isn't happy,' I muttered. It had been hours and hours and days and days I'd spent so far trying to explain everything to him. He didn't understand. He'd been further frustrated by the set back I was inadvertently causing: my report about the future predator incursion was proving difficult to complete because I couldn't remember half the stuff that had happened.

The paperwork was piling up.

Everything Nick and I had been trying to tell him about the electromagnetic radio inference had somehow got lost. Then there was other stuff that had taken priority.

'Is he ever?' Connor replied.

I looked up towards the window into his office. He was pacing inside it, phone to his ear, and I couldn't hear what was happening but I could see that he was frustrated.

'Connor.' Nick swivelled his chair to face him. 'How goes it with the plans for the detector?'

Connor winced. 'I've had another hold up.' Nick rolled his eyes. 'I need Lester's approval before anything can be drawn beyond the theoretical blueprint: it's a confidentially risk, apparently.'

I hummed. 'Still won't sign off on anything until the outstanding projects have been filed. Can't file the paperwork because I don't have all the relative information without doing all the calculations. So nothing else is being processed for financial request.'

'We need that detector, soon as possible, so we need to start building it,' Nick said.

I knew that. 'Hands are tied, apparently.' I reached over and took the slide off Connor. He pouted as I slipped it out of his hand– probably assuming it was just going to put it back on the desk–but instead I raised it to my own eye and tried to balance it like a monocle. 'My fault. Wilderness excursion slowed me down.'

'I've been thinking about that,' Connor said back, 'it must be so... interesting...'

I wasn't so sure.

It honestly wasn't that exciting. Most of the time I was hungry, tired, too scared to stop walking just in case I missed the anomaly by a few steps. At least for the first few months. After that, the next few months were bleak. I didn't calm down and let myself settle into the ambiguity of it until way past the one-year mark. After that I found the routine of everyday exceptionally mundane.

'Anna!' Connor's hand enclosed around mine to stop the constant scrawling of my pen, and when I looked down I realised I'd come off the sheet of paper and started forging a path of words across the table. The slide across my eye slipped out of place and rattled down against the vinyl covered wood. 'God, you alright?'

I wasn't sure what to say.

'I don't mean to… you know…' Connor continued, 'but ... did you think you'd make it back?'

I sucked in my cheeks. 'Yeah.' I knew I'd make it. I knew in my bones. 'Not enough just to survive it,' I said, 'the after is worse.' The recovery. That's where it would really get me.

There was a sound from somewhere above us, a hand knocking sharply against glass, and all three of us turned in unison. As soon as he had our attention, Lester pointed down at us - one of us. I couldn't tell who.

'Who's he pointing at?' Nick questioned.

Connor pointed a finger back at himself. 'Me?' He question. Lester flapped a hand at him. 'No?' Lester pointed again, jabbing his finger against the glass. We made eye contact, he mouthed my name, then turned away from the window and resumed his conversation with whoever was still on the other end of the phone. 'Oh,' Connor noted, looking around at me. 'Unlucky.'

'You've been summoned,' Nick agreed.

I sighed as I rolled my chair back from the desk. 'Time to crawl out my corner of hell.'

As I went through the double doors leading to the foyer outside of Lester's office, a small man straightened in the seat behind his desk and called out to me. 'Miss Havisham?' I didn't answer. I came to a gradual halt in front of Lester's office doors. He was still on the phone. He saw me through the glass and held up a finger to say he'd be a minute. 'Miss Havisham, I'm sorry, you can't go in yet.'

'Can see,' I returned. I turned away from the office door. Glancing around, I saw the name tag on the top of the man's desk and picked it up. 'You're what…' I asked the man who I hadn't seen do anything but sit outside the office for the past few weeks, 'his secretary?'

He opened his mouth, flustered or frustrated and reached up to quickly adjust his tie. 'I'm – I'm his assistant.' What was the difference? 'You know that Miss Havisham. I've been here since the start.'

'So you say.'

'Miss Havisham?' Lester opened the door to the office as though in invitation. He had put the phone down but he didn't look any less frustrated. 'Christ's sake Leek, if I've got a meeting before 10 a.m. then I'm obviously on a tight schedule for the day.' I wasn't aware we had a meeting scheduled. It was entirely possible. 'Don't waste my time chit-chatting with people.'

'Sorry sir, I didn't–'

'Ah!' Lester held up a hand. 'Come through Miss Havisham.'

I was in his office for over an hour before Nick appeared to rescue me.

The sound of the knock on the door brought my head around, away from Lester who had been talking for what seemed like 20 minutes without taking a breath. He'd been lecturing me about something- we'd spent the first 40 minutes going back and forth about the paperwork- falling back down that same rabbit hole about how he should just write off the existing projects that now would just be a waste of my time whilst he argued that he couldn't because he needed the work to be done before he could officially close anything.

I had long since zoned out and started giving less-than-one word answers.

Nick came into the room without even waiting for a response from Lester. Lester cut himself off in annoyance. '-Professor...' Nick came to a stop behind me and put his hands down on my shoulders as he leant in.

'Remember, you'll do more time if they can prove it was planned,' he said lowly by my ear.

'As far as I know, your derestriction of the team does not extend to the nature of the scientific investigations,' Lester continued. 'So if you don't mind-'

'Ah, no, that's where you're wrong.'

Lester sighed. 'Would you care to enlighten me? If this is about the new proposal, I've already told you-'

'Come on,' Nick interrupted again. 'We're wasting time- we've been wasting time all morning, and every day since the mall. It's ridiculous, surely even you can see that this needs to be done.'

'Life or death,' I added simply. That was what it came down to. Lester seemed to understand it, and to some extent I believed he was on our side but whoever was higher up on the food chain seemed to care more about funds and results than the reality of why were doing all this: to save people.

Lester paused. He stared back at the two of us for a moment and said nothing, like his silence was an indication to explain. Nick squeezed my shoulder.

'Every time an anomaly opens, it gives off a burst of radio interference,' he explained. 'We didn't spot it before because we weren't looking for it.'

'And you can build a machine that detects this interference?' Lester clarified.

'Yes,' I said.

'Like tracking down a pirate radio station.'

'The same thing.'

'Then we can also develop a hand-held detector to work with short distances, out in the field.'

'And we'll be able to spot the anomalies as soon as they open?'

'Well yes,' Nick confirmed. 'That's the idea.'

'Will it be expensive?' Lester asked.

I folded my arms over my chest and shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. 'Do it properly.'

Lester clouded over with thought- I could see the turmoil in his expression like he knew the right thing was going to be nothing but grief for him. After a moment or two of uneasy contemplation, he sighed again and groan sort of simultaneously as he threw up his hands in surrender. 'Fine... tell Leek what you need and he'll see to it.'

Nick and I shared a look. 'We want Connor to supervise the work though. He's gonna handle it,' Nick said.

Lester raised an eyebrow. 'Wouldn't this be something you'd be better doing yourself?'

Again I shrugged my shoulder. 'Science,' I said, as I gestured to myself before I turned to point out the window to Connor at the desk in the hub. 'Technology,' I explained. Though I imagined in his head there was little difference. 'Can engineer it with him but he should code and format.'

He looked exasperated. I knew he wanted to roll his eyes, but perhaps all the stress of the morning had exhausted him too much, instead he just shut them. 'Fine.' Lester finally conceded. 'Alright. Whatever. He reports to Leek.'

By mid-morning I'd finished the pile of outstanding paperwork from the Castle Cross shopping mall incursion and decided to take a break.

Apparently it was a Thursday. It didn't take much convincing to get Connor to come with me so that we could go to the video store and pick something up.

Half an hour later I started to think it might have been a mistake. I'd forgotten how fussy Connor was with movies. That whole time I'd been trapped in the past I hadn't been able to stop thinking about Thursday nights, the extended editions, pepperoni pizza. I'd missed it.

I'd missed squishing in all five of us onto the three-seater couch in the boy's house.

I'd missed the late-night supermarket runs when we ran out of ice cream and gin. One night Connor was so pissed he'd brought a pink acoustic guitar out with him and tried to play it whilst we'd skated along. To this day I have no idea where he got it from.

I'd missed Contract Whist and Jenga games. We tried Monopoly once but the board got flipped 5 minutes in. I'd missed the company most of all.

Connor was flicking almost aggressively through the indie cult collection, muttering under his breath as the cases clacked together. 'Uh,' he grumbled in deflation, 'seriously… there's nothing good here. Uh. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…'

I frowned. 'My choice tonight Connor,' I reminded him.

'What are you talking about? You chose last time.'

His memory can't be that bad. It had only been like a few weeks ago for him. Despite being much longer for me I could still remember it clearly.

The same thing had happened last time; it had taken 45 minutes to suggest Texas Chainsaw Massacre again and I'd been so bored I didnt have the energy to argue with him. 'Let's have something different,' I said with a sigh.

'What?' he grumbled, 'like this…' he flopped towards the romance stand and pulled out the closest option. He held it up. 'The holiday?'

I looked from the DVD to him. 'Know you're joking but Jude Law looks really fucking good in that photo.'

'Really, cause this looks like my worst nightmare.'

I huffed. It wasn't worth it. 'Fine. Need to pee anyway. Meet you back at yours. Choose,' I surrendered, 'just not horror, for a change. And no action. And definitely no dinosaurs. Bye…'

'Bye...'