“We shouldn’t be here,” Becker growled.

He hated it when the team broke the rules and went through anomalies. Partly because as head of security he felt obliged to follow them.

“Shh!” Abby urged.

“It’s starting,” Emily pointed out.

“Don’t you want to know?” Connor asked.

Becker wanted to go back to the 21st century, like any sensible person. But he ( Read more... )

Matt couldn’t quite see the point of it. Why on earth would the rest of the team want to sit and watch Jurassic World again? He’d found a nice grown up documentary on plants that would be far more educational.

“You see dinosaurs nearly every day!”

“We don’t see Chris Pratt every day,” Abby pointed out.

“And those trained raptors are cool!” Connor ( Read more... )

Jess looked around, puzzled.

“Where’s my Twix?”

Abby looked as if she genuinely didn’t have any idea. Connor was doing his best to look all wide-eyed innocence. Hmmm.

“That Milky Way vanished mysteriously the other day as well,” Jess continued.

Connor’s eyes widened almost comically. Abby noticed, and rolled her eyes.

“Have you got something to confess ( Read more... )

“I wanted a cat,” Jess told Abby as they headed up the stairs of Jess’s flat. “It just seemed a little unfair when I work such long hours. It would probably go begging to the neighbours for food.”

“Cats tend to do that anyway,” Abby smiled. “And they’re very self-sufficient. Get one from the cats and dogs home.”

“I’d really like one,” Jess sighed ( Read more... )

“So what do you think we do with it?” Abby asked.

Jess peered at the strange pear-shaped object. “I don’t even know what it is!”

“It’s definitely a plant,” Emily confirmed. “Matt told me.”

Matt was visiting the Canadian ARC. He’d left strict instructions that his houseplants needed to be checked. Which was fine until they’d found the weird ( Read more... )

“It’s from the Precambrian,” Connor declared delightedly, taking pictures of the latest creature to get trapped on the wrong side of an anomaly. “The start of life!”

“So that’s just the little bit at the beginning?” Becker wondered.

“Little bit?” Connor protested. “It was about 4 billion years! It was about 80% of Earth’s history. All the rest is ( Read more... )

Charlie in Accounts was a pest.

Over the course of two months he had tried his luck with most of the female staff at the ARC. Abby had got Rex to poop on him. Lorraine had kneed him in the groin. Emily got her Time Tribe knife out.

Jess was preparing a complaint but was worrying about delivering it. So he thought her skirts were short. That ( Read more... )

“Glastonbury?” Becker raised an eyebrow. “Jess, please tell me it’s not festival time?”

He was still traumatised from chasing a triceratops past the pyramid stage. The selfies posted by entertained revellers were still up in the canteen.

“No. But there’s been a breach.”

The breach was a man, lying on the grass dressed in armour and bleeding ( Read more... )

Do a staff review of your team, the minister had said. Because that wasn’t a waste of time at all.

Lester barely glanced at the files. A man from the future who shouldn’t exist. A couple who’d spent a year lost in pre-history. A woman born nearly two centuries ago. An ex-soldier who withdrew a little more into himself with every life he failed ( Read more... )

It had been a long time.

Rex didn’t know how long, because months and years weren’t something he understood. But he understood sleeps and feedings, and gentle fingers stroking his head and back. He understood feeling safe. There had been many sleeps since he’d felt safe. He didn’t like the place where he lived now, locked away from the sun.

And ( Read more... )