The first thing I heard was a noise above me and I snapped my head up into the darkness. I blinked, trying to force my eyes to adjust as tall shapes came into my vision.

Trees.

I was in a forest. And it was night, that much was obvious, and it was cold so– Carboniferous. Cretaceous. Jurassic.

No.

Not again.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no…

A flood of terror passed over me. A wave of fear that I was trapped again, alone, in the night. I lifted my hands to my face, trying not to completely breakdown with the panic as it flared inside me.

I kept breathing but the air felt so heavy. 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.'

I expelled the last breath in anger. Helen fucking Cutter. If I ever saw her again…

I tugged the coat closed around me, tying the sash in a lose knot in an attempt to keep me a little warmer.

I spun around on the spot as if to was catch my bearings. I had my knife. I didn't have my bag– damnit– left it in the truck just for the evacuation. No medical supplies. No emergency rations or a lighter or a torch or a blanket.

My phone had a torch– and while the battery wouldn't last long, it would be enough to help me find some sort of shelter nearby. I dug my hand into the pocket in my skirt, and as I pressed the button the light burst out the screen and I had to narrow my eyes. I still had a signal.

Wait. What?

I checked the time. It read something past 11 and though suspicious I started looking around and caught sight of a light, flickering somewhere between the trees, and I sharpened my vision to it.

It looked like a streetlamp. I started walking towards it, more suspicious of my own senses than serious of my sight. But as I got closer and weaved towards it I realised I'd been right. And the relief burst out of me in a terrifyingly long sigh.

I'd been sent only a few hours ahead.

I continued on my path through the leaves and more lights came into view. A building slowly was revealed behind it, and the closer I got the more I realised I knew exactly what it was. I recognised the windows outside the cafeteria and the pond which used to have ducks. I remembered watching them one morning as I sat in the window and drank my coffee.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been to the university. There had been some sort of service for Nick, I'd barely been out of hospital in time but hadn't made. I hadn't been able to face it.

I reached the streetlamp and stepped out onto the path.

Standing this close even now felt suffocating.

He was a tangible presence here. I could see the spot outside the cafeteria, past the atrium, where we'd met. Then the image of his dead body laid on the concrete flashed in my vision and I had to drop my chin to my chest and screw up my eyes to replace that a shape with darkness.

I took a breath.

It felt stupid to stand outside the university here and not go in. I felt myself moving towards it.

It was so quiet here at night. I'd forgotten how peaceful it felt.

As I walked past the windows I caught a glimpse of my own battered reflection in the glass, I saw past it to the table where Connor and I had been sitting on that first day when we saw them and chased them half the length of the university.

My body knew where it was going. I walked along the duckboard, past the archaeology building and round to the steps that led up to the palaeontology department.

My eyes clouded with tears the second I reached the staircase and I laid a tentative hand against the railing, pausing, just to take another deep breath before I started up them.

I had never missed him so much.

The pain in my chest was near debilitating and I had to stop only three steps up to question what I was doing here.

It probably wasn't even his office anymore, I knew they'd closed it following his death out of respect, and I was pretty sure I'd seen something at some point explaining that all his belongings would be taken to his place of residence before it reopened. Having not been home since then I had no idea if that had been a dream or something someone had told me too soon after his death that I couldn't properly remember it.

Everything following it seemed hazy. Especially those few months when we weren't allowed into the A.R.C whilst it was being rebuilt. I barely remember a thing from then.

I reached the top of the stairs.

I stood there for a moment, a hand half outstretched towards the door ready to push it open, but something inside me was holding me back.

I'd told myself already not to be too surprised that the room would look different. Most people were a lot more organised than Nick. There wouldn't be piles of papers, stacks of books, half excavated exhibits littered all over the room.

It would most probably be empty and dark.

And to stop myself from being too upset by it, I pictured the empty room in my head as I finally put my hand to the door handle and twisted.

The door swung open, and the light came bursting through.

Absolutely nothing had changed.

And for a second I wasn't sure if I'd wanted to see the place exactly how I remembered so much that I'd imagined the detail, because everything was there in its place.

All the books and the bones, and the mugs stationed round the room at random points on the floor.

And it was cool, the same way I'd always remembered it to be, with the same smell of his cologne mixed with the pages of the books.

I felt my heart falter in its momentum. It was completely still as I took a few slow, tentative steps down the stairs by the door and towards his desk.

It was like I could feel him there.

I could feel his presence.

I reached out, ran a hand across the edge of the wood on his desk.

And I hadn't felt at home anywhere in such a long time that the peacefulness in the silence was so long awaited and welcoming that I was completely out of myself.

My thoughts and my body felt disconnected like what I was seeing wasn't really there, and what I could feel didn't exist.

Something touched my arm and I jumped, grabbing my forearm in the opposite hand and I pulled my arm back to reveal a small, sticky spot on my skin. And the tongue of the ammonite slipped back into the pocket of Sarah's trench coat.

God I'd forgotten that was even in there. I exhaled slightly in amusement as I reached into the pocket and pulled it out, laying it momentarily on the desk beside an overturned picture as I wiped the slobber off my skin.

Instead of grabbing the ammonite straight away, I picked up the picture frame instead, half curious, half not thinking like I'd expected it to be something else– not a suspiciously familiar picture of Helen.

The very thought of her made my stomach instantly churn and just as I was about to throw it back down onto the desk a voice cut right through the fogginess to me.

'You think you've found the answer?' There was someone here!

And I whipped around on the spot. Another noise quickly followed before I could even snap myself out a frozen panic. I heard the chime of a glass as though someone had put it down on a worktop.

'Yes…'

And I knew that voice. And if the fully–functionally internal statement wasn't enough, the almighty pain that ripped through my chest was so powerful a siren I was physically winded.

Nick.

He was here.

This isn't home. This is then.

I looked down to the desk, to the ammonite I'd just put down– just for a second so that I could wipe my hand– and I saw the vivid flashback slam against my brain. I'd looked down at this scene before.

'But… different question.'

As I stood there, routed with shock, and awe, and fear, there was a further kerfuffle of noise. Another glass blindly shoved into the other, across the worktop, and I heard it in my almost deafened ears clatter down into the sink.

Then the figures stepped suddenly back into view.

And wide eyed, bleary eyed, barely able to see until I blinked the tears away, I watched Nick step out of the alcove as he kissed me– her– Anna– and she fell back against the wall.

I could still remember exactly how that kiss had felt. How firm his lips had been against mine, and how I'd tried to ignore the idea that somehow, I was doing something wrong by kissing a guy I knew I liked a lot after I'd lost someone before.

I pressed a hand over my mouth as though to keep that trace of him there as I stared at them– us– him and her.

She– me– looked so young. Honestly, in reality, I hadn't changed much. I was thinner now– not in a good way– I was tired, pale and dark simultaneously, and yet she had so much life.

And Nick. Fuck. Oh, god. He was there. He was right there in front of me, real and tangible, with a beating heart. And I had missed hearing it beneath my head when I slept.

I knew him. I knew him so well I could have picked that heartbeat out a line up.

And of a sudden it overwhelmed me. A noise escaped my mouth before I could stop it, but somehow, in a spilt second I remembered hearing the noise, and I knew before I could blink that her–me– Anna– would break away from that kiss and look around.

So I lunged, dropping down behind the edge of Stephen's desk.

'Anna?' Nick asked.

And I wanted to reply. Hearing my name from his lips again made the tears leak from my eyes down my face, and I clamped the hand tighter over my mouth until I couldn't even breath through it.

'I heard something.'

I heard her footsteps, and she pulled herself out of Nick's arms and walked back across the room towards the desk.

And I knew I'd be distracted by the ammonite for a second, so I turned, shuffling to peer around the other side of the desk, to check what Nick was doing, and see if I could make an escape.

He was distracted.

He was staring back over at the woman standing in front of his desk, with her back to the door and her fringe falling down over her face.

And I'd never seen him look at me like that.

There was such adoration in his eyes– even then– back when we had only known each other for the smallest amount of time and this was how he looked at me.

I felt something inside me, a tightness that eased, a pain that felt for a moment slightly less unbearable because the hazy eyed, shiny expression was everything I'd missed in that terrible, fatal moment.

It was everything he'd tried to tell me.

It was everything I knew.

And with a final look– and shutting my eyes to try and burn into my brain– I leapt up, crossed the room in a second and was at the door.

It swung closed behind me, and giving myself no time to adjust to the darkness I stumbled down the staircase, panicked, already sort of breathless, as I tried to just get to the bottom as quickly as possible.

And I couldn't stop. I jumped from the steps as soon as I was close enough and continued back around the building, past the pond, past the windows, feet pounding against the duckboard as though aware that there were people following me.

Because I remembered.

And every experience since this moment meant I could easily outrun– well– myself. I ran down the path beside the entrance and made it back to that same streetlight, desperate for the cover the shadows offered behind it.

As I closed in on it I felt the sash from the coat slipping undone and the material billowed behind me. I slipped through the beams of light and disappeared into what I knew would be darkness. Finally shaded, I stopped to get my breath back.

'Who was it?'

My uneven breath hitched once again in my throat, because it hadn't occurred to me that just because I couldn't see me here it didn't mean I wasn't still close enough to hear them.

I put my hand back over my mouth. I didn't want them to hear me breathing, come looking for me further, come to investigate what it was they had heard.

'I don't know,' my own strange and somewhat alien voice said.

And I think I'd known, even back then, I'd had an inkling that I had in fact vaguely recognised the figure and it came to mind that yes– it could have been Helen– but that didn't change the fact it bared some sort of resemblance to me.

From the safety of the darkness in the treeline, I looked at myself, and watched as she turned her head towards him. Then she swallowed a lump in my throat. 'I didn't see.'

'Liar,' I hissed under my breath.

'Are you okay?' she asked. It was weird.

Nick nodded. 'Yeah… just… what if that was her? Helen?'

'Why would Helen be here? Why would she come back in the middle of the night and run away? If it was her, then she'll be back, now is not the time to be running off after any ghosts,' she insisted. 'Nick, listen, you'll get your answers I promise. But whoever that was they've gone, so maybe we should go back inside.'

But Nick was just as stubborn as I remembered. He stayed there, beside her, gripping the railing and scanning the darkness for any sign or indication that someone was out here.

And, just for a moment, he looked right at me. Instinctively I took a step back, though I knew it wouldn't make any difference; I was sheltered completely in the darkness here, but his eyes were locked with mine, my heart gave way, before he finally dropped his head.

'You're right,' he said. 'Yeah, okay, you're right… '

I remained routed to the spot, hand resting sealed over my mouth shielding the sound of my breath long after they'd gone back inside.

I was only acutely aware of how fast my heart was beating. My breathing was rugged, my hands were so sweaty and so numb that I hadn't even realised I was still holding the picture frame until it slipped from my grasp and clattered down against the sticks and dried pine needles by my feet, startling me.

And I stared at it. I stared into the shadowy face of Helen Cutter for no longer than a second, before the depths from the abyss tore out of me.

I screamed into my hand so loud and so long my own vision shook before it clouded complete and smudged all the dark shadowy shapes together in hot tears. They burned a little path down my cheeks, as in anger I stamped, shattering the glass and splintering the wooden frame.

And once wasn't enough.

Sobbing, I stomped down on it again and again and again until every ache in my body conformed to an encompassing numbness. And shaky hands closed over my trembling mouth. I descended back into myself, into the pit inside me, as my legs gave out and I fell down.

I didn't have a plan.

I didn't know how long it took for the tears to stop, and I'd spent more than a little while leaning back against a tree, staring out into the woodland but I knew I would eventually have to get up and work out what to do from here.

I couldn't go home– to the house on the hill– because Connor was there, and I couldn't risk anymore interactions with anyone from the team or the home office, or what would become the A.R.C; I couldn't meet anyone before I was supposed to; I couldn't step on too many butterflies.

And I didn't have a car or any type of transport to get me anywhere.

But I couldn't stay here. There was no reason why I couldn't borrow a home office vehicle. The home office was about a twenty–minute drive from the university. It must have been about 8 or 9 miles, and while I knew I could walk that I also knew it would take far too long to get there.

The best chance I had of staying undetected in this time was by limiting my contact with people, and the reduced numbers of personnel on the nightshift at the home office would allow that.

And again I found myself wishing I had my backpack; I always kept some emergency money in there.

Should have kept it in my boot– that's what Nana used to say– but after so many M.S.M.B.O moments, it wasn't such a realistic expectation.

As I pushed myself up onto my feet, belted the coat back around my middle and pulled it tight. Then, in an attempt to warm my hands a little, I shoved them into the pockets.

Sarah was just as messy as I was. There were all sorts of stuff in there, bits of crumpled old receipts, corners of wrappers, a few loose coins– a scrap of paper– I pulled it out. A £20 pound note.

And with that I was able to relax– just a little– into the fact that I at least had options now.

It took me about 5 minutes to walk to the closest tube station, then, from there, I took a tube into central London.

I didn't recognise the man who met me in the carpark at the home office– which was probably a good thing because it meant I probably hadn't met him back when we used to work here.

He did seem little confused when I asked to take a vehicle and couldn't say for sure when I'd be returning it, but he checked my name against a list, before he handed over the keys.

And after I climbed up into the vehicle, I sat behind the wheel for a second because I realised I still had no idea where to go.

Then, as I turned the keys to start the engine, so that the guard stopped looking at me weird through the windscreen, a thought occurred to me.

I pulled out of the garage.

I pulled up on the street outside a row of terrace houses, pulling the keys from the engine, and trying to be as quiet as possible as I shut my door as to not wake the neighbours. And I could see, as I approached the front door that the hallway light was on. And I could hear the TV from the other side, so I didn't feel too bad about knocking.

I used my fist rather than the knocker. I rapped a hand against the wood and waited, then I was worried for a few moments afterwards that I'd been too quiet and the TV had drowned me out.

But after a few seconds I heard footsteps. There was a jangle of keys in the lock before the doorhandle twisted and the door creaked open.

'Anna? My love…'

And the sound of her voice was so comforting I could already feel the tears welling up in my eyes. 'Hi, Nana…'

I didn't need to say anything more, instinctively Nana knew that there was something wrong. Her face fell, and she reached out with a soft hand to take a gentle hold of my cheek. 'Oh,' she said, 'sweetie… where did you come from?' She stroked a thumb across my cheekbone and mimicked my grimace with a sorrowful smile of her own. 'You better come in.'