new: "Currents of emotion"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: Currents of Emotion
part of The Transposed Universe
Author: rodlox/Keenir
Character(s): Claudia, Ryan, Shannon.
Pairing: at the end of the fic.
Rating: Mature
Word-count:
Warnings: Creature attacks.
Summary: While keeping the public away from a dead Prehistoric, Ryan, Claudia, and Shannon are attacked.
Beta(s): Ayla, Fififolle.
Author Notes: If you would like to archive this, let me know please. Also, Shannon is the woman who, in s3, when Christine banished Lester from the ARC, Shannon got the nod from Lester & typed something into the computer. Lastly, the Creatures are listed at the end of the fic.
~~~~~~~~~~
…during 3.07…
TimeLine One
Location: Irish Sea, Welsh Coast:
Claudia Brown watched all the gawkers and tourists head back to their cars, the locals being the last civilians to go home. “A narwhal,” she repeated to herself, wondering at her choice. Everyone had believed her, some quicker than others, but they’d all bought it. And why not, after all? They’ve all heard of what pesticides and other chemicals are doing to frogs and birds, so what’s so outlandish about a whale falling victim to it?
But Claudia knew the answer to that: what was outlandish was the statement that it was a narwhal. She reached up and more wiped than rubbed at the back of her neck. What the hell is Helen up to? This was the third water anomaly this year.
Nick and Stephen were in Hampshire with Lacey tracking a flock of megabirds. Connor and Abby were probably getting lessons from Ditzy in whittling down the invasive woodys of another geologic Age. And I’m here, feeling not the slightest bit disappointed.
“So, not a starving walrus?” Captain Tom Ryan asked her. Some of Claudia’s tension just melted away upon hearing his voice.
He hadn’t been behind her a moment ago when the audience had been here, he’d been standing to one side, keeping a weather eye on them all. But he was behind her now - and Claudia rather liked him there.
“Walrus don’t have a tail, Tom,” she said.
“Noted,” he said. Then, he added, in a teasing tone, , “Did Shannon tell you that too?”
Feeling just a twinge of jealousy, Claudia said “No, she just mentioned that this creature is a dolphin.”
“And then?” Ryan asked, sounding curious and amused in equal measure.
“And then,” Claudia said, sharing in the amusement - I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but be amused - this must be what Stephen feels regarding Connor - “and then she said that all of the aquatic anomalies’ve disgorged Creatures that follow the same iterative evolution that dolphins did.”
Ryan nodded. “Meaning things that look and act like dolphins, but aren’t dolphins.” Like sharks and mosasaurs.
Claudia frowned: she’d fully expected to hear an objection or a clarification, but there wasn’t anything more than the sound of the tides. She looked over at the Odobecetops corpse lying at the waterline, which was now missing the person who’d been kneeling beside it. “Shannon?”
Ryan turned with Claudia. “Maybe she saw an old friend in the crowd?” knowing as he said it how unlikely it was: Shannon was one of Lester’s creatures, and probably filled out a permission slip or a requisition form just to use the water closet. There’s no way she didn’t let me know she was going somewhere.
Even so, Claudia preferred the idea of her momentarily acting out of character, to the alternative.
The two of them hurried over to the one-tusked dolphin, Claudia ignoring any discomfort in her ankles. Aside from Shannon’s absence, the only change was a few more of the mystery prints in the sand - impressions that didn’t match paw prints, seal flippers, wetsuit flippers, whale flippers, or anything else. Kinda like how the scrapings carved into the skin and surface flesh of the Odobecetus didn’t match any tools or known teeth or beaks.
Both Ryan and Brown kept their respective guns ready - she’d been armed ever since the end of that disasterous futurebat incident, he’d always carried more than a rifle - as they spread out, slowly circling the Peruvian dolphin. Neither of them saw anything…but then, they knew how well Creatures often camouflaged - the futurebats were neither the best nor the worst at such things.
There was no attack.
The attacks were simultaneous, one to a human, one clean yank toppling them into the sea.
Ryan’s rifle was drawn out of his hand and through the submerged anomaly. Not metal-free enough, it seems, he thought as his free hand drew his ivory knife and slashed at the nearest part of the Creature presently bite-clutching his other arm.
Creature blood poured from that twisted paddle that barely functioned as a front flipper.
Almond-shaped nostrils flared at the end of its flat head, but the almond-shaped skull didn’t let go of him. Instead it bit down harder, though thankfully it didn’t have sharp teeth or strong jaws - they were only strong enough to hold on, which hurt enough as it was.
Ryan’s peripheral vision noted that the anomaly was closing. Claudia! as he slashed at the Creature’s throat - not knowing what this mammal was, Ryan didn’t know how dense the skull bones were or how tightly-knit they were.
And made contact, ivory making a stab-and-slice through that thick neck. Now the Creature let go of him, but by this point, Ryan was not about to let it get away. For one thing, the anomaly had closed. For another, wounded animals were far more dangerous to turn your back on.
So he twisted around, lungs beginning to feel the strain, positioning himself over its back, where he had to keep that steadily-weakening head from bending back and taking one last nip out of him as he probed its side and, having found a spot between two ribs, cut into it - fatally.
Only then did Ryan’s feet push him away from the now-dead beast.
There was too much blood in the water to see clearly - that and a need for air drove Ryan to the surface, his mind in overdrive. Looks like Shannon was wrong after all - these things aren’t shark-shaped in the slightest. And then Ryan mentally kicked himself: Should’ve known! Mosasaurs came through with the hespys, and the shark with with some scruffy otter-things, and with the Odobecetus came … what are these? as he broke the surface, mouth sucking in much-needed oxygen.
Seconds went by before he saw bubbles. And since his attacker was dead, there was only one possibility.
Ryan jackknifed back down and towards the source of those bubbles. All the blood made vision difficult, but he persevered.
He found Claudia lying on the sea floor, her feet stuck to another of the Creatures - the same species as the one which he’d just killed - this one clearly punctured numerous times, enough holes to explain the abundance of blood in the water.
Ryan tried to pull her away, but it seemed that her shoes were caught in the beast’s body…so he cut the leather straps, freeing her feet, and brought her to the surface.
Extensive CPR wasn’t needed, which was a relief in Ryan’s mind…both because it meant she hadn’t been deprived of oxygen for too long, and because between the creatures and the currents, it’d take a minute to swim back to shore.
Once she was breathing regularly and evenly, Ryan asked her, “Better?”
“I’d kill for some medical attention - oh wait, we just did,” Claudia said.
Ryan smiled; any joke is a good one - it shows the mind is a-okay. “Let’s go,” and they started swimming back to shore.
Once they’d reached the merely damp part of the coast, “If my mother only knew…” Claudia said. “I would not live that down.”
“Killing cthulhu’s pet from the black lagoon?” Ryan asked.
“Mother always said that heeled shoes never ran out of uses,” and recalled that, of all the women in the ARC’s employ, Shannon was one of the only two who never wore heels.
“I’d say this is a good occasion for a thank-you card,” Ryan admitted.
Claudia was silent as Ryan opened the Government-issued car they’d taken out to here, and as he applied first aid to them both while she called Lester and asked him to send an ambulance and a transport truck - the latter for the three Creatures - to their location. “Like lions,” Claudia said to Ryan once she’d hung up.
“Lions?” Tom asked.
“Man-eaters become man-eaters when they’re too old to eat proper food,” she explained. Which means that Helen *didn’t* send them - she only handles prime specimens, good quality material, which brought to mind the fact that Claudia didn’t think she’d ever seen Shannon out to or back from a date…though there were the rumors about her and Sir James.
Ryan nodded, having seen the barely-there nubbins of forward-facing teeth in the creature’s mouth. And the less said about how frazzled and worn the beast looked, the better. “We’re safe,” he told her.
And the look on her face was the same as on his: Was there a third one of them? Is that why we can’t find Shannon? and she told herself that the unease filling her was the same as if Connor or Stephen or anyone else from the ARC were missing.
Then, as if in answer to a wish which hadn’t been fully articulated, a body bobbed up in the tide near the shore’s edge. A distinctly human body with straight slim long legs.
Sores put aside, Claudia and Ryan dashed to the body, hauling it up the packed sand, Ryan hefting it at the waist, and it sounded like a gagging or a spewing, a vomit of pure or almost entirely liquid contents. They dropped her onto the sand, Ryan making sure the last drops of seawater and bile drained out of her mouth.
Claudia ran her hands over the body and legs while Ryan inspected the head and raised arms. Her fingers lingered in spots for only a miniscule fraction of a second longer than in the other spots, but Claudia blushed to have noticed it, and hoped that Ryan, dear Ryan, hadn’t noticed it at all; if he had, he was giving no indication of it, focusing on Shannon’s throat and face.
“No CPR then,” Ryan said, amused and relieved in nearly equal measures, but relief winning by a nose.
“Good to have you back with us,” Claudia told Shannon. Ryan nodded.
Shannon looked at them body, her body still weak from the struggle and the drifting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End
Pairing: Claudia/Ryan, pre-Claudia/Shannon
Creatures: Odobecetops, Peruvian mollusk-eating dolphin. Paleoparadoxia, Californian member of the Desmatostylians. Reference also to an otter-like ancestor of the Sea Lions.
Images: Odobecetops http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/seamonsters/factfiles/closeup.shtml?odobenocetops
And http://stonewaresnake.blogspot.com/2009/03/odobenocetops.html I’m not providing Desmatostylian photos because nobody can agree on what they looked like or how they moved.
Title: Currents of Emotion
part of The Transposed Universe
Author: rodlox/Keenir
Character(s): Claudia, Ryan, Shannon.
Pairing: at the end of the fic.
Rating: Mature
Word-count:
Warnings: Creature attacks.
Summary: While keeping the public away from a dead Prehistoric, Ryan, Claudia, and Shannon are attacked.
Beta(s): Ayla, Fififolle.
Author Notes: If you would like to archive this, let me know please. Also, Shannon is the woman who, in s3, when Christine banished Lester from the ARC, Shannon got the nod from Lester & typed something into the computer. Lastly, the Creatures are listed at the end of the fic.
~~~~~~~~~~
…during 3.07…
TimeLine One
Location: Irish Sea, Welsh Coast:
Claudia Brown watched all the gawkers and tourists head back to their cars, the locals being the last civilians to go home. “A narwhal,” she repeated to herself, wondering at her choice. Everyone had believed her, some quicker than others, but they’d all bought it. And why not, after all? They’ve all heard of what pesticides and other chemicals are doing to frogs and birds, so what’s so outlandish about a whale falling victim to it?
But Claudia knew the answer to that: what was outlandish was the statement that it was a narwhal. She reached up and more wiped than rubbed at the back of her neck. What the hell is Helen up to? This was the third water anomaly this year.
Nick and Stephen were in Hampshire with Lacey tracking a flock of megabirds. Connor and Abby were probably getting lessons from Ditzy in whittling down the invasive woodys of another geologic Age. And I’m here, feeling not the slightest bit disappointed.
“So, not a starving walrus?” Captain Tom Ryan asked her. Some of Claudia’s tension just melted away upon hearing his voice.
He hadn’t been behind her a moment ago when the audience had been here, he’d been standing to one side, keeping a weather eye on them all. But he was behind her now - and Claudia rather liked him there.
“Walrus don’t have a tail, Tom,” she said.
“Noted,” he said. Then, he added, in a teasing tone, , “Did Shannon tell you that too?”
Feeling just a twinge of jealousy, Claudia said “No, she just mentioned that this creature is a dolphin.”
“And then?” Ryan asked, sounding curious and amused in equal measure.
“And then,” Claudia said, sharing in the amusement - I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but be amused - this must be what Stephen feels regarding Connor - “and then she said that all of the aquatic anomalies’ve disgorged Creatures that follow the same iterative evolution that dolphins did.”
Ryan nodded. “Meaning things that look and act like dolphins, but aren’t dolphins.” Like sharks and mosasaurs.
Claudia frowned: she’d fully expected to hear an objection or a clarification, but there wasn’t anything more than the sound of the tides. She looked over at the Odobecetops corpse lying at the waterline, which was now missing the person who’d been kneeling beside it. “Shannon?”
Ryan turned with Claudia. “Maybe she saw an old friend in the crowd?” knowing as he said it how unlikely it was: Shannon was one of Lester’s creatures, and probably filled out a permission slip or a requisition form just to use the water closet. There’s no way she didn’t let me know she was going somewhere.
Even so, Claudia preferred the idea of her momentarily acting out of character, to the alternative.
The two of them hurried over to the one-tusked dolphin, Claudia ignoring any discomfort in her ankles. Aside from Shannon’s absence, the only change was a few more of the mystery prints in the sand - impressions that didn’t match paw prints, seal flippers, wetsuit flippers, whale flippers, or anything else. Kinda like how the scrapings carved into the skin and surface flesh of the Odobecetus didn’t match any tools or known teeth or beaks.
Both Ryan and Brown kept their respective guns ready - she’d been armed ever since the end of that disasterous futurebat incident, he’d always carried more than a rifle - as they spread out, slowly circling the Peruvian dolphin. Neither of them saw anything…but then, they knew how well Creatures often camouflaged - the futurebats were neither the best nor the worst at such things.
There was no attack.
The attacks were simultaneous, one to a human, one clean yank toppling them into the sea.
Ryan’s rifle was drawn out of his hand and through the submerged anomaly. Not metal-free enough, it seems, he thought as his free hand drew his ivory knife and slashed at the nearest part of the Creature presently bite-clutching his other arm.
Creature blood poured from that twisted paddle that barely functioned as a front flipper.
Almond-shaped nostrils flared at the end of its flat head, but the almond-shaped skull didn’t let go of him. Instead it bit down harder, though thankfully it didn’t have sharp teeth or strong jaws - they were only strong enough to hold on, which hurt enough as it was.
Ryan’s peripheral vision noted that the anomaly was closing. Claudia! as he slashed at the Creature’s throat - not knowing what this mammal was, Ryan didn’t know how dense the skull bones were or how tightly-knit they were.
And made contact, ivory making a stab-and-slice through that thick neck. Now the Creature let go of him, but by this point, Ryan was not about to let it get away. For one thing, the anomaly had closed. For another, wounded animals were far more dangerous to turn your back on.
So he twisted around, lungs beginning to feel the strain, positioning himself over its back, where he had to keep that steadily-weakening head from bending back and taking one last nip out of him as he probed its side and, having found a spot between two ribs, cut into it - fatally.
Only then did Ryan’s feet push him away from the now-dead beast.
There was too much blood in the water to see clearly - that and a need for air drove Ryan to the surface, his mind in overdrive. Looks like Shannon was wrong after all - these things aren’t shark-shaped in the slightest. And then Ryan mentally kicked himself: Should’ve known! Mosasaurs came through with the hespys, and the shark with with some scruffy otter-things, and with the Odobecetus came … what are these? as he broke the surface, mouth sucking in much-needed oxygen.
Seconds went by before he saw bubbles. And since his attacker was dead, there was only one possibility.
Ryan jackknifed back down and towards the source of those bubbles. All the blood made vision difficult, but he persevered.
He found Claudia lying on the sea floor, her feet stuck to another of the Creatures - the same species as the one which he’d just killed - this one clearly punctured numerous times, enough holes to explain the abundance of blood in the water.
Ryan tried to pull her away, but it seemed that her shoes were caught in the beast’s body…so he cut the leather straps, freeing her feet, and brought her to the surface.
Extensive CPR wasn’t needed, which was a relief in Ryan’s mind…both because it meant she hadn’t been deprived of oxygen for too long, and because between the creatures and the currents, it’d take a minute to swim back to shore.
Once she was breathing regularly and evenly, Ryan asked her, “Better?”
“I’d kill for some medical attention - oh wait, we just did,” Claudia said.
Ryan smiled; any joke is a good one - it shows the mind is a-okay. “Let’s go,” and they started swimming back to shore.
Once they’d reached the merely damp part of the coast, “If my mother only knew…” Claudia said. “I would not live that down.”
“Killing cthulhu’s pet from the black lagoon?” Ryan asked.
“Mother always said that heeled shoes never ran out of uses,” and recalled that, of all the women in the ARC’s employ, Shannon was one of the only two who never wore heels.
“I’d say this is a good occasion for a thank-you card,” Ryan admitted.
Claudia was silent as Ryan opened the Government-issued car they’d taken out to here, and as he applied first aid to them both while she called Lester and asked him to send an ambulance and a transport truck - the latter for the three Creatures - to their location. “Like lions,” Claudia said to Ryan once she’d hung up.
“Lions?” Tom asked.
“Man-eaters become man-eaters when they’re too old to eat proper food,” she explained. Which means that Helen *didn’t* send them - she only handles prime specimens, good quality material, which brought to mind the fact that Claudia didn’t think she’d ever seen Shannon out to or back from a date…though there were the rumors about her and Sir James.
Ryan nodded, having seen the barely-there nubbins of forward-facing teeth in the creature’s mouth. And the less said about how frazzled and worn the beast looked, the better. “We’re safe,” he told her.
And the look on her face was the same as on his: Was there a third one of them? Is that why we can’t find Shannon? and she told herself that the unease filling her was the same as if Connor or Stephen or anyone else from the ARC were missing.
Then, as if in answer to a wish which hadn’t been fully articulated, a body bobbed up in the tide near the shore’s edge. A distinctly human body with straight slim long legs.
Sores put aside, Claudia and Ryan dashed to the body, hauling it up the packed sand, Ryan hefting it at the waist, and it sounded like a gagging or a spewing, a vomit of pure or almost entirely liquid contents. They dropped her onto the sand, Ryan making sure the last drops of seawater and bile drained out of her mouth.
Claudia ran her hands over the body and legs while Ryan inspected the head and raised arms. Her fingers lingered in spots for only a miniscule fraction of a second longer than in the other spots, but Claudia blushed to have noticed it, and hoped that Ryan, dear Ryan, hadn’t noticed it at all; if he had, he was giving no indication of it, focusing on Shannon’s throat and face.
“No CPR then,” Ryan said, amused and relieved in nearly equal measures, but relief winning by a nose.
“Good to have you back with us,” Claudia told Shannon. Ryan nodded.
Shannon looked at them body, her body still weak from the struggle and the drifting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End
Pairing: Claudia/Ryan, pre-Claudia/Shannon
Creatures: Odobecetops, Peruvian mollusk-eating dolphin. Paleoparadoxia, Californian member of the Desmatostylians. Reference also to an otter-like ancestor of the Sea Lions.
Images: Odobecetops http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/seamonsters/factfiles/closeup.shtml?odobenocetops
And http://stonewaresnake.blogspot.com/2009/03/odobenocetops.html I’m not providing Desmatostylian photos because nobody can agree on what they looked like or how they moved.