I stayed on the sofa that night. And aside from getting myself up at half three in the morning to change Connors clothes from the washing machine to the tumble dryer, I did nothing for that whole time except stare at the ceiling and wonder if he was sleeping just fine on his own.

The next morning I was glad that Connor would be there to fill the silence. However, the minute he emerged from the spare room he didn't seem like himself. Instead of saying his usually chirpy and energetic good morning he just sort of groaned.

'Jesus,' I noted, sipping my coffee, 'look like shit.'

'I have got the worst headache,' he replied in complaint, holding his hand up to rub across his forehead.

He dropped down into the chair next to mine at the kitchen table and I reached across to hold the back of my hand to his face. He was hot. 'Got a temperature, Con' I relayed. 'Maybe you should stay home.'

'No,' he replied quickly, 'oh please don't make me stay here, we were gonna set the traps today and I really want to see it! I'm fine, A, really.'

Shaking my head in disbelief - though it was exactly the same thing I would have done - I sighed. 'Alright,' I said, 'your decision. Start to feel worse, I'll take you home.'

'Thank you!'

I kept an eye on him through the car ride back to the park. This time there wasn't any of his chatter to cover the awkwardness. The radio seemed almost too loud despite the fact I couldn't hear whatever the guy was saying properly over the noise of the engine.

Connor kept his head resting against the cool glass of the car window and kept his eyes firmly shut. We could both get migraines sometimes. He got it worse than me. And as he hadn't had one for a while it seemed like this one was overdue.

I parked up next to Stephen's truck. Cutter and I got out but Connor stayed back and I assumed he'd fallen asleep.

'Good morning!' Stephen called, as we walked down the path towards the shelter.

'Morning,' I echoed.

'I'm glad to see you're all alright.' It hadn't occurred to me that the last time I'd seen him was before he left me in the woods yesterday. His attention was somewhat fidgety, his lip twitched like he was trying not to bite down on it out of nervousness and when he glanced quickly at Cutter I realised he was waiting to be told off.

I cleared my throat. 'Mostly...' I continued, before I gestured back to Connor. 'Headache,' I explained.

'Right,' Stephen nodded. Cutter walked past him, continuing on to the table where Stephen had laid out the maps. And Stephen frowned in confusion, looking between the two of us, before he leant in towards me. 'So he's alright with the whole...'

'Didn't tell him,' I mumbled back. 'Thinks you dropped me at the station before you took Valerie home.'

'Ah,' he noted in realisation, matching my whisper, 'so you guys are still–'

'Stephen?' We quickly turned our head and looked back to Nick. He was especially impatient this morning, and it seemed the frown was going to be a permanent feature so that was nice. I wasn't sure if he was aware that he'd interrupted us but I doubted he cared either way. 'So, you already know where you want to set these traps?'

Stephen cleared his throat and nodded before he started striding towards the bench. 'Yep. there.' I joined them around the table just in time to see Stephen plonk his finger down on the first map before he found the spot on the other map with a finger on his other hand. 'If we lay a second trap there, we've got the whole area cover.'

'Okay,' Cutter returned, 'take Connor with you.'

I was surprised; yesterday he was desperately trying to avoid me, but today it seemed he was doing just about everything he could to get me alone with him. I caught Nick's eye accidentally and quickly looked away.

A car door slammed behind me, and assuming it was Connor getting out to join us I turned, mouth already half open to ask how he was feeling when I saw it wasn't him.

'You got it fixed,' Stephen remarked warmly, as Valerie came down the path towards us.

'What?'

Oh.

Stephen and I shared a momentary glance before he continued. 'The van.'

She stiffened for a second, then shrugged. 'Oh, it seems to be okay now. What are you doing here?'

'We're just working out where to lay traps,' Nick replied. 'Now, don't worry we'll leave the place looking as good as new.'

The smile slipped from her face. 'Surely you should be looking by the railway.'

'No.' Nick shook his head.

'Won't stay there,' I explained.

'Too many people,' Nick finished.

She became instantly distressed and without a word turned back and started striding up the path towards her vehicle. 'Whoa, whoa, Valerie.' Stephen jogged off after her but she didn't stop. He threw his arms out in some great frustrated gestured as her car door slammed shut.

I stared somewhat awkwardly across the table at Nick, grinding my teeth as I tried to decide whether or not to speak.

'Let her go,' Nick called after Stephen, somehow sensing how I was thinking through the intensity of my stare.

'Why?'

'As my nana says,' I started, '... wanna find honey, gotta follow the bees.'

Nick suddenly whipped his head around, a passively accusatory stare burning in his eyes as he looked at Stephen before his expression condensed further into a deep frown.

Stephen raised an eyebrow. 'What?' he asked.

Nick had taken it upon himself to operate the diggers and set about turfing up the ground to set the traps.

By lunch, the first one was ready. I'd spent the whole morning trailing through the undergrowth, collecting fallen branches and stray bits of shrubbery to lay across the top of the traps to disguise them. I'd also had the funniest interaction with the ASDA man who looked extremely confused as he turned up with a delivery to a tourist resort. He was even more confused when he unloaded the crates and saw there was nothing inside them but several joints of meat. At least that had cheered me up a little.

As I dumped another load of twigs down beside the hole, and turned, about to start back into the undergrowth, something caught my eye.

'Fuck! Nick!' I called, as recognition struck me. 'Stop, stop digging!'

He cut the engine, kicking the cab door open and scrambling out like he thought someone was hurt.

He was halfway to me when he suddenly stopped.

I heard the twigs– an all too familiar harrowing snap that made my stomach drop. I knew there was something behind me before I turned around.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen a Smilodon but it was the first time I'd been this close to one. It was ten feet from me at best, eyes locked on me like it was waiting for me to move because it wanted the thrill of the chase. And I sure as hell might have been stubborn enough to wait–out a lot of things but a Sabre Tooth Cat wasn't one of them. Without a second's hesitation I jumped down into the pit.

It followed after me, blocking out the sun as it stopped right at the edge of the hole and pawed at me. I ducked, making myself as small as I could in a corner in the hope it wouldn't be able to reach me there. I heard engine of the digger start up again. The noise caught the Smilodon's attention and it jumped back away from the hole.

I couldn't see what was happening; I was too far down, but the sound of the diggers whirring travelled back to me and I quickly realised Nick was distracting it. So I rose back up onto my feet and I ran up the length of the trench, bracing a foot halfway up the dirt walls for leverage as I jumped and caught the edge of the pit to pull myself out. No sooner was I back on my feet I whistled, quickly surveying the immediate vicinity and spotted a rope ladder leading up to a zipline within an appropriate distance. 'Hey! Come on!' The Smilodon reeled around, away from Nick and the digger and watched me. 'Come on,' I repeated as I turned and started to run, 'chase me.'

I didn't look back over my shoulder until I was already at the top of the ladder climbing out onto the platform, reaching down with a steady hand to quickly undo my belt. I threw one end over the zip line and grabbed a tight hold of it before glancing back at the Smilodon again. The best thing to do was to wait– I knew that– until it had climbed almost all the way up the tree because it would give me longer at the other end to escape. So, I left it until the very last second when I was definitely already within its reach before I jumped off the platform and started flying down the zipline.

I didn't know it had chased me all the way down there until I let go at the other end. The momentum carrying me over onto my side where I crashed down through the leaves and finally took a breath when I heard it. Its growl caught my attention and I froze, still only halfway back onto my feet. It charged right at me. I reached back, grabbed a hold of the handle of my knife and quickly looked my gaze onto the soft area of its neck between his first and second cervical vertebrae. That was where I'd put my knife. It would go through easily. The creature wouldn't feel a thing.

Just as I started to pull the weapon from his holder a gun shot rang out.

Spooked, the creature altered trajectory, leaping up at the last second as I flattened myself to the ground and it leapt straight over my head.

I sat straight back up, snapping my head around to located the source of the weapons fire. Nick stepped out through the bushes and walked towards me. He swung the tranquilizer onto his back as he stopped in front of me, out of breath and somewhat dishevelled from his run as he extended a hand down to help me up.

I took it and he pulled me effortlessly back to my feet.

Even I noticed that I was extraordinary calm about the whole thing as we walked back to the trench. It hadn't even occurred to me that what I was doing could have been dangerous. I hadn't felt afraid. And I guessed that so much practical experience of killing animals in the past probably meant I had acclimatized far too comfortably to the idea.

A part of me wondered if I'd been the one who'd caused all the changes in the timestream. That in all the time I'd been marooned back there fighting to survive I'd stepped on too many butterflies. There had been all sorts of ripples. Maybe I was the cause of the future I'd seen. I always tried not to fatally wound anything. Sometimes it had just been unavoidable.

One night in the Triassic I'd sat and considered whether or not I was doing the right thing or if I should have just rolled over, staved from disrupting the continuum. In the end I considered that there was no way of knowing if anyone else would ever come close to figuring out the anomalies. The how, and the why. It was important we did that. So, I'd found a way home.

Once we got back, I climbed down through the mud into the hole. And too my surprise Cutter climbed down into the pit after me. 'You saw something,' he stated, like he was reminding me.

I nodded. I scraped through the mud and dug around the outline around the object I'd seen in there.

'Oh my god.'

I scrubbed away the mud to reveal the flesh of a humanoid arm.

I was the one who had to excavate it. A part of me hoped the arm was all we would find, but attached to that was the shoulder, the chest, the head... and wrapped up beside it in sheet of tarpaulin was the other half of the body.

I met the others back in the clearing. As I came out the trees, Connor glanced at me and my eyes widened as I saw he wasn't in a much better state than the body. He tried to smile reassuringly, moping a thin layer of sweat from his pale and clammy forehead but I raised my eyebrow. Beside him, Stephen was eyeing him with an equal amount of concern.

As I got closer, Leek stepped out from the backseat of one of the trucks. He grumbled under his breath as he tiptoed through the mud. I briefly glanced down at myself for comparison.

I was plastered in mud. It was wet and thick and all the way up past my elbows almost to my shoulders. My jeans were no longer blue. My boots were covered and the laces hidden somewhere beneath it all. The wind pulled some stray hair from the front of my plait down over my forehead, and I assumed I would be okay to brush it away with my upper arm but I felt the mud streak across my face and I tutted in frustration. 'Savaged,' I relayed, aware that the others didn't care about my situation and just needed information about the body, 'cut in half.'

'How long has he been there?' Leek questioned.

'Week,' I stated in conjecture. If that. I knew it hadn't been long because most of him hadn't started to decay.

'Well, if the bodies been there that long, the anomaly must have formed before the detector came online,' Connor noted, 'which means there's nothing wrong with it.'

'Yeah,' Stephen agreed, 'but we still have a big problem.'

'What do you mean?' Leek asked.

'Smilodon might have killed the guy,' I responded, 'but did it fuck dig a trench 10 feet deep and bury the body.'

'Someone knows,' Stephen said. We shared a look, presumably having the same idea and just as I turned my head to check if Nick had followed our train of thought, I heard Leek sigh.

'West.'

I frowned. 'What?'

'Jensen needed someone to pin an escaped lion story onto, and said this guy West fitted the bill. He wanted to create a cover story for the press.'

'West's a pig,' I said with a frown, 'but he's harmless. We go down there, talk to him, I guarantee he's gonna have no idea what this is about.'

'Then who the hell is it?' Leek demanded.

'Valerie,' I answered.

'Valerie?' he repeated.

'She works here,' Nick explained.

'She was out in the woods last night,' Stephen continued.

'Looking for it,' I added, in deduction.

'And she stopped me from shooting it, when we were up at the station. Of course.'

'So, it's what, her pet?' Connor questioned.

'Sounds like it,' Nick said. 'Anna, get down to West's farm, go rescue Jensen before he does something really stupid.' I nodded. 'Take Connor with you, okay?'

'What are you guys gonna do?' Connor returned, 'wait here in case it comes back?'

Nick shook his head. 'We're gonna go get the thing.'

Another A.R.C vehicle was already stationed in the driveway when Connor and I pulled up in the car. 'He's here already,' Connor noted nervously. I threw my car door opened and jumped out. The farm was unnaturally quiet. The sound of Connor slamming his own car door shut echoed. And, seemingly sensing the same grungy atmosphere I had yesterday, Connor shuddered. 'Didn't I kill something here on level 3 of Resident Evil?'

Lifting an eyebrow in solidarity, I quickly made my way towards the voices coming from the barn. It was Jensen's voice I heard first:

'I need someone to blame, Mr West, and I'm afraid you're my only candidate.'

As we rounded the corner, coming up to the barn doors both Jensen and West looked over.

Jensen smiled.

But I couldn't return it. I didn't want to; on reflection it seemed stupid because I could read the rage in West's face, as he looked suspiciously back and forth between Jensen and me. I narrowed my eyes.

His nostrils flared. 'No, I will not be stitched up by you.'

'Did we make a mistake... so you're not breeding dogs to fight then? Admit the lion was yours and I'll give you a few days to get rid of the dogs before I call the police.'

I turned my head to Jensen, eyes wide in silent warning for him to be quiet as West balled his hands up into tight fists and for a second I thought he was about to punch the other man. 'What you doing, Mr West?' I called. I could sense he was close to snapping. I really didn't want to deal with the fallout right now.

'I'm sick of you people,' he growled in return. 'Always harassing me, taking away my livelihood.'

His eyes moved, flitting to something hidden behind the beams and I caught sight of it just in time.

A shotgun.

He twitched, about to start towards it. 'Ah!' My cry made him jump but he didn't move- perhaps aware that we were almost equidistant from it and that with the advantage of my agility I'd get there quicker.

However, he was closer.

Perhaps he thought he could make it. He twitched again, one half step taken towards me, when before he could blink I pulled the knife from behind my back.

He stopped again.

'No, Joe,' I said, 'no, no.'

Connor moved, from somewhere behind me over to the shotgun and picked it up. 'You alright, Jensen?' he asked.

Jensen nodded. 'I'm fine.' Of course he was; we'd just so happened to get here just in time to save his ass. 'What's going on?'

'It isn't him,' Connor explained.

'What?' Jensen responded, frowning, 'it's not?' I shook my head. 'Then where is it?'

'Back at the park,' Connor said. 'This guy's done nothing wrong.' He reached up, wiped his forehead again with the back of his coat sleeve. 'Let's get out of here, come on.' As we turned he lost his balance slightly and stumbled. He barely managed to catch himself before could hit the ground.

'Connor?' I questioned.

He forced himself to blink a few times like he was trying to clear the dizziness. 'I'm– I'm fine...' he said.

'No,' I replied. 'Enough. Taking you home.'

'No, A... don't. I want to see it– I want to–'

I watched his eyes roll back into his head and immediately I grabbed a hold of his forearm and tried to keep him upright and on his feet. He was going to faint. I wasn't going to let that happen here. 'Get in the car.'

The effort of nodding was almost too much for him. 'Yeah...' he rescinded, 'yeah, okay...'

I was standing at the edge of his bed a few hours later when my phone started to ring. He'd only just managed to get to sleep and not wanting the sound to wake him I pulled out my phone and answered as I quickly walked across his bedroom floor to his doorway. 'Hey,' I whispered, slipping out his room and pulling the door firmly shut behind me so that the light from the hallway wouldn't get into his darkened room.

'Anna,' Nick's voice crackled back to me.

I was immediately aware of how tired he sounded. I felt a twinge in my heart. Crossing through Connor's living room I stopped at the top of the staircase and sat down on the top step.

'What's up?'

'Valerie's dead,' he responded. 'The sabre–tooth killed her. She's sitting in the morgue ready for some sort of post mortem as we speak but I don't know how we're gonna explain all this. The creature...' He exhaled a drawn–out sigh. 'The creatures dead too. Leek– Leek said it was some sort of heart attack or something on the way back to the A.R.C, but somethings not right. Now, I said I wanted you to do a post mortem but the creatures been destroyed. Risk of disease. But how much disease can it have, it's been here for most of its life already? So, I need you to get back here, bring Connor if you want if he's still with you. Let's work out what the hell is going on with–'

'No,' I interrupted. Then I forced myself to swallow the lump in my throat before I continued 'think Connor's got a bug, I can't, he's literally just thrown up everywhere.' I shut my eyes, trying to take myself away from the smell of it on me, mixing with the mud that was starting to flake off my clothes as I moved.

'Oh...' Nick responded.

'Gonna stay.' I glanced back over my shoulder his bedroom door. 'Think it's bad, Nick. He's delirious, not making any sense even for him- and he's not keeping anything down.'

'Is he... is he gonna be okay?'

'Yeah...' I conjected, though I wasn't completely sure. He would need a lot of fluids. If there wasn't any change within 48 hours he would need an intravenous. Even that didn't mean he'd be better.

'So I'll... see you at home then?'

I bit my lip before I responded. 'No.' And I took a deep breath. 'Gonna stay... until he's better.' And I doubted that would be for a while.

'Right,' Nick replied softly, 'right, yeah, okay... I... well, I'll see you soon then I hope, because we're doomed here without you.'

I exhaled my laughter. 'Yeah...' I didnt know what else to say; I had nothing else I wanted to tell him and he wasn't saying much either. It felt like the end of the conversation to me. 'um... bye...'

'Yeah,' he mimicked. 'Bye.'

I pulled my phone down from my face and was about to hang up when I heard him call my name so I quickly lifted it back to my ear. 'Hmm?'

'I love you,' he said.

I shut my eyes again. 'Love you too...' I said. 'Bye.'