The Hidden Heroine
Title : The Hidden Heroine
Author : talliw
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Helen Cutter, James Lester, Nick Cutter, Captain Ryan
Disclaimer : Primeval is the property of Impossible Pictures. I write just for fun.
AN: Inspired by the lovely people of Primeval Denial with their stories for the Primeval 100 challenge 834: Team Meeting
"Oh, come on James. I did you a favour. Don't pretend you like those horrible meetings as much." Helen said with a grin.
Lester muttered something under his breath and rattled at the shackles chaining him to the wall of his former own cellar.
How Helen had got her hands on his old family manor he had sold after his wife had filed for divorce was still a mystery to him. But there had been more pressing questions.
Helen had answered most of them quite readily. Telling him that she had enough of roaming prehistoric times and was planning to return to her former life, with some minor adjustments.
For the latter she needed Lester's help and offered him her abundant knowledge of past and future events.
To prove her good intentions she had invited Cutter as well. Lester could hear him shouting from the next basement room.
"They will start looking for me when I don't attend the budget meeting with the cabinet ministers," Lester tried to reason with Helen.
"Don't worry, James. This meeting has been cancelled on grounds of a bomb threat. I told you I know what happens next."
Cutter's hue and cry from the next room grew in volume and made further conversation impossible. With an irritated huff Helen moved toward the cellar door.
"Excuse me for a moment, James. I have to speak with my husband."
"Nick, will you stop yelling for just a minute and listen," Lester heard Helen scream with annoyance.
"Stephen is going to die, mauled by prehistoric creatures Leek is collecting in an old factory site. Is your wounded pride more important than his life?"
This revelation shut Cutter up, for ten seconds. Then he angrily demanded an exclamation.
Helen told him cheerfully how Cutter's behaviour would drive a rift between the team that would lead to Stephen's death.
Lester listened in intensively and filed the information away for later use. Leek would be incarcerated upon his liberation immediately.
Helen returned to Lester with her husband at his side, who was quite subdued after learning that his irrationality would not just cost his former best friend's life but might lead to his own early death as well.
Together they had been able to convince Lester to hear Helen out.
Rubbing his chafed wrists Lester followed Helen's invitation. Over a cup of tea and Helen's homemade cookies he listened to the tales of smilodons, horror birds, raptors and the chaos caused by a mammoth on the M25. Then she moved on to more global events.
Lester wrinkled his forehead in disbelief when she told them about a future pandemic, the following global economic crisis, the wars flaring up all over the world and the complete melting of the polar ice caps, leading to mankind's ultimate doom.
"Of course, I might have made everything up," Helen conceded Lester's objection "Maybe you will believe a more reliable source. After I had him nursed back to health he was with me on my latest visits to the future and can attest my stories.
Ryan, would you please come in and say 'Hello' to your former superiors."
Helen nipped at her second Daiquiri and squinted into the setting sun of the small Caribbean Island she had bought after her second released children's book had been sold to Disney for screen adaption.
When Templeton, the most popular and safest messenger, created by the young computer genius Connor Temple, announced a new message she stretched her arms and grasped her mobile. Only a handful of people had her private number.
With a chuckle she looked at the pictures Stephen had sent her from a dig in West Jordan Land, showing Cutter proudly presenting the find of a complete skeleton of a carnotaurus.
Helen typed her congratulation and settled back into her comfy beach chair. She had lost all interest in dinosaurs after running away from them one time too often. Shall Nick and Stephen have their moment of fame. No one could ever surpass her accomplishments. After all, she had secretly saved the world. Now she enjoyed a life in seclusion after her divorce.
The anomaly in the Forest of Dean was the only anomaly still active in the present. The ARC under Lester's and his partner Ryan's command was still monitoring it carefully.