The voice made me jump, I reeled around and switched my grip on my knife in one smooth move as though ready to slam it down on whatever was there, because in my nervousness I hadn't distinguished my name from a general mien of sound. Connor jumped back.

'Whoa! Anna! It's me!'

I dropped my knife and lunged forward to tackle him in a huge hug. 'Connor!'

'Are you okay?' I wrapped my arms around his neck in a crushing hug, and squeezing me back just as tightly, he lifted me momentarily off my feet before he set me down.

'I'm fine,' I answered, 'How long? How long have I been gone?'

'Couple of hours,' he answered quickly under his breath. I started to nod as I pulled away from him and saw the anomaly close right behind me. The alarm cut out and the room fell silent.

'There,' another voice said– and I recognised this one too. In a second I had turned. And Helen Cutter was standing there on the other side of the hub, bold as brass, no longer disguised behind an innocent face, and she had a gun pointed at Christine Johnson's head.

'You have her back now let me go.'

'You!'

Helen moved the gun to me as I dove for my knife, snatching it up off the ground and I lunged forward, closing the distance down between us in a blink of an eye until I was within arm's reach.

Then, Becker collided with me, his body slammed right into mine as his hand grabbed my forearm and forced it out to the side, directing my knife away from all our bodies. We crashed into the side of the desks but I was too angry to recognise the pain.

'What the hell do you think you're doing!' I demanded, as I balled up my fist and punched him square in the chest.

'Hey, I know, I know,' he returned quickly as he caught my hand. 'But we made a deal…'

And the intense horror of the whole situation washed over me. 'No…' I turned back to the others, to Danny and Connor and Lester who were all standing there in the hub staring at me whilst Helen held on to artifact. 'Tell me you didn't,' I continued desperately. 'You did not trade me for that thing.'

Lester scoffed. 'Of course we did.'

'You for the artifact, Ace,' Danny furthered with a nod.

'And the promise I wouldn't be harmed on my way out of here.'

'You!' I spat again, pushing back against Becker's hold, but he just adjusted his grip on my forearms and pulled me back. 'How dare you come back here after what you did.'

'You mean to Nick?'

'Don't!' I tried to snap myself out of Becker's hold a final time, and it must have been a stronger pull than he was expecting because I came free from his grip and stepped aside. He jerked as though to grab me again before he saw I hadn't moved– instead I held up my own hands as though in surrender because I wasn't going to go after her. Not yet.

'You know I thought killing Nick would be enough–'

'And guess what, it didn't work! So, you tried to kill me.' I dropped my fists to my side. 'Don't think you were looking at your little device too closely though because you'll never guess where it spat me out.' And she held my gaze, trying to be commanding and domineering in the face of ignorance because we both knew the truth– she had no idea. 'London,' I clarified, 'the university. Two years ago. And I saw him.' I couldn't let myself break. Before my weakness could crack through my voice I cleared my throat. 'I saw exactly what you were trying to end. You thought that we would create that future, you thought those creatures would come from here but we would never do that.'

Helen stared back at me. 'You're wrong. I've seen it.'

I shook my head. 'No.' I knew she wouldn't listen; there was an insanity behind her eyes.

'You've given me no choice. I can't let that happen. I have to finish it, once and for all.' She back up towards the hub doors, pulling Christine with her. 'You follow, she dies.'

I looked to Danny. He nodded back at me, an unspoken agreement, that as soon as she was out of sight we would in fact be following her. Helen pushed the double doors open, wrestling Johnson through them before she dead eyed us all a final time. The doors closed behind her.

We were just too slow.

By the time we made it down to the garage the car was pulling away in a squeal of tire smoke. Danny slowed to an uneasy stop behind me and I heard him growl. 'Damn it!' He punched the wooden door connecting the garage to the adjacent hallway and when he pulled his hand back there was a fist sized whole in the middle.

'Don't panic,' I returned quickly. 'I know where's she's going.'

And again, without needing any words to communicate, he moved towards the vehicle and tossed me the keys.

We couldn't have been more than a minute behind her when we pulled up in the carpark of Johnson's building.

It was Danny who had to point me in the right direction; while I'd made a point to find out where Christine Johnson had homed her base of operations after her attempted coup, I was the only one of the team who hadn't been inside.

Danny, on the other hand, seemed quite familiar with the schematics of the building. He was the first one to the door– a room off the corridor where he must have known the anomaly was because he'd run right to it. And I reached it not a moment after him, crashing down against the other side of the doorframe just in time to see Helen disappear between the flickering lights.

My homemade detector screeched inside my pocket. Danny took half a step forward but the anomaly closed before he could get any closer. The device went silent. 'No!' he cried. 'Damn it!'

There was a clatter of footsteps behind us as Becker and Connor finally caught up and fell through the door.

'What happened?' Connor asked, out of breath. Beside him, Becker propped his hands on his knees and took a couple of deep gasps. I kept my gaze firmly fixed on the spot where the anomaly had been.

'It's too late,' Danny replied.

'She's gone?' Connor clarified angrily. 'Well, what about Johnson?'

The detector suddenly came back on. I reached down, pulling it out of my pocket just as the strip of red L. on the top lit up in sequence, one by one in accumulation like a warning.

'What's that?' Connor asked. But I couldn't answer; I had just enough time to fist my hand into the back of Danny's shirt to drag him back against the wall before the anomaly appeared suddenly again.

There was a scream. Christine Johnson came tumbling through it, crashing onto the ground,. Danny lunged forward to catch her, accidently pulling me down with him and I landed behind him on my ass.

There was an instant twinge of pain through the tops of my femurs and a spot I knew would bruise on my coccyx's, and it was enough to debilitate me. Connor stepped forward to grab Johnson's other hand. They started to pull, scrapping her across the ground, inching her away from the anomaly, but they weren't quick enough.

A screech echoed back from the other side, a noise so familiar I instinctively flinched, catching my own breath in my throat before I could exhale and make a sound.

The predator appeared, its head pocked through the anomaly. Becker, who up to this point had been standing guard at the door, raised his shot gun, cocked, and aimed. But it was too late. The predators grabbed Johnson by the legs, she shot back through the anomaly and again, the whole thing collapsed in on itself and closed.

The detector cut out. I exhaled the breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

'We've got to stop Helen.'

My statement may have been ill–timed. Because Danny wasn't even back on his feet before he turned to look over his shoulder at me with an almost awkward grimace.

Connor pushed himself up. 'Okay,' he agreed with a dramatic sense of irony.

'No,' I continued, 'you don't understand, do you? You don't get what she said.'

'What?' Danny asked.

'She's gonna go back,' I said. Becker reached down, offering his hand to me, and I took it, allowing him to pull me effortlessly onto my feet.

'How are we gonna follow her, A? We don't know where she's gone.'

I frowned at Connor. 'We do,' I returned, and gestured to the empty space. 'We know exactly where she went.'

Connor cocked his head. 'The future?'

I nodded.

'The anomaly at the racetrack,' Danny added. 'It's still active right?'

'That's where we're going. And we need to go now, we can't waste any time and risk the chance that she'll move on somewhere else.'

Danny's hand came down to squeeze my shoulder. 'You sure?'

Despite everything that was screaming in outrage inside me, I nodded. 'Yes.'

Danny exhaled a calming breath.

'So… we're going back? Back to the future?' Connor asked. His tone was grave, his throat bobbed as he swallowed and glanced nervously back between me and Danny. 'I can't believe I got to say that and I can't make a joke about it.'

Nudging him, I shrugged. 'Why not?' I said in hope I could lighten the situation. 'Chicken?'

Connor managed a strained grin in response before his face started to fall again. 'You know this is crazy right?'

I just shrugged. 'We've got to do something.'