Nick eyed me in amusement from the fridge as he pulled out two bottles of beer and passed one of them to Connor.

Across the kitchenette, I was sitting on the worktop with my legs crossed waiting for the kettle to boil so that I could make some decaf tea.

I tried to play it cool, pretended I didn't care and scratched my chin as the two of them opened the bottles and sat down at the kitchen table.

On the inside, I was dying.

The kettle boiled, I poured the water into my cup and joined them. 'We're gonna need to set up a research programme into magnetite and how that effects everything we already know about electrical fields,' I said, as I shuffled my chair further under the table. 'It's effects on anomaly's, how electricity can be used to lock them.'

'Oh aye, of course,' Nick returned with a nod, 'and when you put it like that it sounds so easy.'

'Well, it shouldn't be that difficult, I told you I'd finished… mostly…'

Connor frowned and had to quickly swallow his mouthful of beer to get a word in before Nick moved the topic on. 'Finished what?' he asked.

'Well,' I replied, 'you know that ever since all of this started, I've been running hundreds of different experiments on magnetic fields, and the effect of charging a current into the reach of that magnetic field.'

'Explain the field thing again for me,' Nick asked.

'A charge,' I replied, 'moving into a magnetic field experiences forces that are perpendicular to its own velocity and the field itself.'

'Okay.'

'And you have your basic magnetism. Your N S iron filings type of field where the magnetic forces are more condensed in the middle but get further and further out as they join the north to the south… But we also have the torus –not like Nana– t–o–r–u–s magnetic field. The anomaly itself forms this doughnut shape of electromagnetism, and around this ring of electromagnetism are loops of torus magnetic fields.'

'And…' Connor replied thoughtfully, 'what exactly have you finished?'

'Oh, yes, right, so once I'd confirmed for definite that that's how the magnetic field around the anomalies works, I was able to start working out why the anomalies have magnetic fields. And as far as I can tell in order to understand the anomalies even a little bit in this instance, we have to stop seeing time as the thing that's moving because the anomalies are not two different holes in the same place, they are the same hole in two different times.

Now if they were all permanent, it would be much easier. The fact that they open and close is quite infuriating. There has to be some sort of direct energy transferring right into the heart of every one of them.

The anomalies come and go, when the energy accumulates to a certain level they appear, when that energy level starts to transfer elsewhere the anomaly disappears. And I believe that the energy is transferred between those two points in the meantime.

Now, my experiment theorized that some electrical current charged into the magnetic field encloses the energy in it. Those torus magnetic fields are what allows us to travel through the anomaly, but once you interject an electrical current into that field, the shape twists in on its to create this sort of ball of energy, which is what you saw in the Sun Cage. And since the charge never goes anywhere near the energy; it's all in the field, the electric charge holds the energy, without having any effect on it, until the energy is transferred again. Everyone still with me?'

I looked suspiciously across to Nick, who pulled a face.

Connor and wobbled his head. Sort of.

'There's more?' Nick asked.

I nodded. 'It's not as simple as it sounds; we know these magnetic fields are quite extensive so we'd need to work out the optimal distance from the anomaly, as we saw earlier, we might need to direct that electricity into the centre of the anomaly to create that change in the fields' shape before the electricity holds it together. I have a differentials equation that allows for fluctuation in the dissipation and accumulation of anomical energy. We know that the magnetism of the anomalies decreases as the energy dissipates, before it then closes, and with the detector we get a general sense of the range of the field, we'd need to allow for increases and decreases of electromagnetism.

Depending on how quickly this energy had built, from the evidence we've managed to collect, I'm now pretty much entirely confident that the length of time the anomaly is open for has a direct corelation to the length of time between the anomaly closing and reopening in our time.'

Finally finishing what felt like an extremely long-winded explanation for that one closing statement, I sat back and looked at them somewhat expectantly.

Neither of them spoke, neither of them blinked, like they thought even that would be interrupting, and I slowly realised they were waiting for me to continue.

But I didn't have anything else to say.

I needed a summary, I concluded. So I thought for a moment longer before I was finally able to explain. 'Experimenting on the external forces of the anomaly has meant I can now roughly calculate when anomalies may appear.'

Nick stared through me, a look in his eye I had never really seen before, and not recognising it I shifted uncomfortably. A moment later, when he swallowed, and opened his mouth to respond, his words gave me the explanation I'd been looking for. 'So this is a huge scientific breakthrough?'

'Oh, yeah,' I responded casually, because so far just up to this point, it was probably the 17th time something like this had happened. He didn't need to know that.

'We can predict when they will appear?' he clarified.

'In theory,' I answered, 'we can't ever know because we're looking at a time frame of a couple of days, to over a thousand years, and we'll be gone by then for sure.'

'Not if you invent that cryogenic pod you were always talking about,' Connor pointed out.

In theory, it should be so simple. If we have a way of preserving brain function and stopping the body from decay–

'No, don't bring that up, I'm still annoyed I haven't figured it out yet,' I returned quickly.

There was an echoing of footsteps down the corridor, and a second later Jensen rounded the corner into the kitchenette. He eyed us all in exasperation before his eyes dropped down to the beer on the table, and he straightened up. 'Oh thank god' he said in a sense of excitement before I could ask if he was okay, 'I need this.'

He walked to the fridge, snatched the door open and pulled out another bottle of beer.

It's socially acceptable to have a beer at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning here. It's socially acceptable to do just about anything.

He took the bottle opener from the drawer, cracked his bottle open, and came towards the table to drop down into the empty seat. 'Cheers,' he noted, as he clinked the bottle to my cup of tea, and smirked as he raised it to his lips.

'You alright?'

'Lester's been on my ass all day,' he answered dully. 'Broken exhibits, eye witnesses in central London, creature in the Thames.'

I winced. 'Fuck, yeah, you've had it.' Then again he hadn't had a quiet day since he started here.

'Don't know what we're gonna do about this one,' he stated. He looked tired, I hadn't noticed until then, but really he looked like he needed a holiday.

'Oh yeah, what's gonna happen to Sarah?' Connor asked.

Jensen shrugged. 'Don't know. Might have to relocate her or swear her to silence. It's looking like it'll be complicated no matter what we decide.' He sighed again, presumably trying to shake himself out his own funk before he sat up straighter in his chair. 'What's up with you guys?'

I wasn't going through it again. 'Scientific breakthrough,' I said.

'Another one?' he questioned. 'Ain't no stopping you now, is there?'

I'd had a lot of time to think about stuff, to be fair I'd never experienced anything so irritating as being marooned and having nowhere to write down everything I was calculating in my head.

There had been so much to remember. Even now it felt like there was stuff I was still forgetting.

'God,' I noted at the thought of it, 'I wish there was.' Then, without warning, another realisation settled on me and I groaned. 'We can use basic progression of magnetic torque to quantify the resistance of the field.'

Out the corner of my eye I saw Jensen frown. 'What?' he demanded.

'I can explain it but it'd be easier to write it down,' I said, 'has anyone got a spare whiteboard?'

Nick nodded. 'Where do you want it?'

'Meet me in the hub?' I asked in response as I stood up. 'I'm gonna get those papers and–' I was halfway across the kitchen before I stopped suddenly as a flashing image resurged through my memory and I turned back.

The locker.

I went back over to it, quickly twisting the combination into the lock before I pulled it open. A tidal wave of papers poured out over the floor and I had to crouch down beside them.

I knew it was here. I could see myself throwing it in.

I saw a glimpse of the chiral anomaly calculation beneath something else and grabbed it, standing up again and using my foot to shove the mountain back in the general direction of the locker.

I'd sort it out later.

I walked away towards the office.

They were standing in the hub, back to the doors with a large rolling whiteboard beside them when I burst back in a few minutes later.

'If two like poles of two separate magnets are brought near each other–' I started in explanation as I walked towards my workspace, '–and neither are restricted by external forces, a magnet will rotate to align itself.'

I stopped in front of my workspace in the hub and I looked around awkwardly for somewhere to dump the papers in my arms but my desk was already way too overcrowded and I knew Connor would never forgive me for outing them onto his side, so I dropped them onto the floor and made my way back to the whiteboard.

Sitting at a desk across the room eating an apple, the Captain looked up.

'When this happens, the magnetic field of the stationary magnet creates a magnetic torque. Torque tends to align a magnets' poles with the magnetic field lines.' I grabbed the white board and started wheeling it with me towards my desk where I'd left the pens. 'A compass,' I said in example, 'turns to align itself with the earth's magnetic field.'

'I don't understand,' Jensen admitted.

'Torque is a sort of resistance,' Connor explained, 'you get a constant north on the compass because the earth's magnetic field has equal forces pushing from both sides.'

'When you try to push the same poles of a magnet together,' I followed, 'that creates torque, the magnet will turn itself to alignment. That's the force you feel repelling them. But there's no torque on a magnet where m– the strength of the pole– is multiplied by the distance between the poles in the same direction as the magnetic field, since the cross product is zero for two vectors that are the same direction. A magnetic field exerts a torque on a loop of wire carrying a current. Each loop of wire has its normal vector perpendicular to the loop, so the field exerts a torque which tries to align its normal vector with the field.'

I took the cap of my pen and quickly raised it to the board.

torque = (# turns) * (current) * (loop area) * (mag field) * sin(theta)

N * mu * current

mag field = –––––––––––––––––

2 * radius

t= NIABsinϴ

N= number of loops

I= Current (amps)

B= Mag field strength (tesla)

ϴ=angle between mag field and coil.

'Torque is what turns your motor in your car,' I also explained, 'it's what we need.'

'So you want to use the torque created by the anomaly…' Nick responded, somewhat confused and trying his hardest not to lose my train of thought, 'to do what… exactly?'

I just shook my head. 'We're gonna use our own magnetic field to create an equal maximum exertion of torque.'

'And what's that gonna do?'

I looked to Connor, daring him to work it out before I had to explain. 'Our device would rotate to align itself,' he said.

I nodded. 'We don't even have to do the work. We use a mechanism that directs an electrical current into the magnetic field created by the anomaly, and as it exerts an equal amount of magnetic torque it will align itself perfectly to send a consistent and regulated current that allows for that differentiation of accumulating and decreasing tesla energy into the field. We can contain the anomalies inside this charge essentially prohibiting travel through the event horizon until the anomaly naturally closes.' I clicked the lid onto my pen and tossed it to Nick. 'And I was wrong,' I said, 'we don't have to wait to look at universal simultaneous correlation; we already have records.'

'What?'

'Ammut,' I answered.

I watched the realisation blossom in his eyes, and slowly he started to nod. 'Legends.'

'If anomalies have appeared in the past, which they have…' I replied.

'If the Pristichampsus is sunning itself on the banks of the Nile 3000 years ago,' he continued, 'that's the stuff of legend.'

'Anything that seems out of place.'

'Like Chimera,' I said.

'Pegasus,' Nick replied,

'The yeti,' Connor added excitedly.

'The hydra,' I returned.

'The kraken,' Connor continued.

'Tellem City,' I then conjected, 'Catalhoyuk, and other ancient cities and civilisations that have disappeared from all over history for centuries, for no known reasons.'

'Nessie,' Connor agreed. 'The Bermuda triangle.'

'We've been going about this all wrong,' Nick finished, 'two-dimensionally.'

'We need an expert,' I said.

'Someone who knows everything about mythical beasts. Someone to work on the source of all the great myths. Where they were spotted, when, by who. We can find a pattern…'

'Hmm,' I responded, 'now, who can you think of who might know something about that?'

Nick quirked an eyebrow at me. 'You want to make the call?'

As if by way of explanation my eyes jumped up to the ramp leading up to Lester's office. 'Someone's gonna have to talk to him.'

'That's okay Miss Havisham,' he replied, 'put away your eyelashes.'

I exhaled a breath of laughter. 'It's dangerous,' I then said, a little more seriously, 'we shouldn't ask people to do this.'

He shook his head in agreement. 'It's a desk job,' he said, 'we're not–' He met my eyes quite seriously, like it was me who he thought would be hurt by the mention of it, before he said 'we're not gonna lose anyone else. I promise. She'd be spending most of the time in the library anyway.'

I nodded a final agreement. 'I'll make a call,' I said.

'We should probably do something about the Sun Cage too,' Connor added in realisation. 'It's not as if it can be on public display anymore.'

Jensen frowned. 'I thought I–' he cut himself off for a moment in thought. 'Sorry, guys, I should have said earlier, that's not our decision to make. The exhibitions moving on. We can't do anything about it.'

'Anna?'

We'd only just dispersed when Nick caught my arm to stop me from walking away down the corridor to the mess outside my locker.

And by tidy I meant shove it back in.

There was something about his expression that worried me, and immediately my brow furrowed. 'Yeah?'

He started by sighing. 'Anna, you can't jump out of anymore windows,' he said. In truth I'd been waiting for it. I knew it was a serious stupid thing to do when I did it, even at the time. Even though he hadn't said anything when we got back into the car to head back to the museum, I'd assumed he wasn't happy with me. I ducked my head, nodding in agreement, but before I could reply I heard him take another breath and continue. 'You're pregnant,' he said, like he believed I could have forgotten, 'you have to be more careful. So, sorry, but you're benched.'

'What?' I returned.

'Benched,' he repeated again, a little slower, a little more firmly like he wasn't going to be undermined.

I reclined my head. 'Stay in the car, Chuck?' I asked in clarification.

He tried not to smile, I could see him fighting it so even though his attempt was successful it was pretty much redundant anyway.

'Anna…'

'Nick.'

He cocked his head. 'I'm not having you take any more risks. I'm sorry.'