[fic] Losing Time (Primeval/Losers) 2a - Don't Shoot!
Title: Losing Time
Chapter 2: Don’t Shoot! (A, B and C)
Author: Stormy1x2 (traveling_storm)
Words (this chapter): 8,500-ish
Notes: again, thank you to nickdevilance for the poking, the prodding and the suggesting! Also, I am starting to hate and detest LJ. I quite clearly remember being able to have posts over the 4,500 word limit. When the hell did it get shortened???
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“Dinosaurs,” Pooch said in disbelief. “You expect me to believe your cousin chases dinosaurs.”
They were standing around Jensen’s laptop watching illegally downloaded files from a secret headquarters in London named the ARC, and despite watching one of the videos in particular four times already, there was still a general feeling of ‘not-believing-ness’ that Jensen was sensing. “He doesn’t chase dinosaurs,” Jensen corrected him. “He tracks down time-anomalies and contains the animals that come through it.”
“From the past,” Aisha blurted. “Animals from the past.”
“Like dinosaurs,” Pooch repeated like an album stuck on the needle.
Clay scratched his head and looked sideways at his corporal. “Jensen?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not as such, no.”
“Am I?” Pooch muttered as an aside to Cougar. The sniper snorted and gave a half-shrug.
“Play it again,” Clay ordered. Jensen complied and hit a key. They watched in silence as a huge T-Rex look-alike moved towards the camera. A golden flow streamed out from behind it but it was hard to focus on as giant teeth suddenly picked off the screaming reporter next to the cameraman. The camera fell to the ground just as huge, blood-stained jaws swung around, and then a giant foot came down next to it. A gurgling scream was abruptly cut off. The lens was cracked from the fall, but it remained recording, aimed at the wall. A distinctive noise caught their attention again as a dark shape moved swiftly across the fractured camera path - a helicopter. Not military issue, Clay was certain. The sound was wrong. Seconds later another shape lumbered past in pursuit - it was the dinosaur again. There was a strange humming sound and then the sounds of someone - a female - ordering someone to wait. Suddenly the camera was picked up and a soldier looking half-heartedly at the screen just before it switched off.
“They uploaded that video onto their private server at the ARC,” Jensen said. “It was easy to get it from there. Child’s play, really.” He blew on his fingers, buffing them on his shirt.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a genius,” Clay said, still staring at the hacker’s laptop.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As was his custom, Lester stood behind the railings on the second level, just in front of his office, and watched the various scientists, computer techs and other ARC personnel run about the floor below him like mice in a maze. It had been over a month, but it still struck him as terribly odd to not see Connor perched at his usual table, inventing yet another gadget to help them in their work. There wasn't a layer of dust covering his tools and computer, or any such nonsense - the ARC's janitorial staff were paid very well to be very thorough - but it was still a rather lonely picture indeed.
His eyes flicked over to one of the labs that ringed the first floor main operations room. The wide glass panels gave him clear sight into the room - tall plants and flowers from by-gone eras still growing from the care of the other scientists, but seeming to lack the vibrancy they'd had when Abby was constantly monitoring them, spritzing them every other hour to keep them looking especially shiny and lush. He stared at them for a long moment before shaking his head and moving along in a check-up that had become almost ritualistic since the decimation of his team.
Sarah Page was visible in another lab. She was settled yet again in front of her computer screen, attempting to recreate digitally what Nick Cutter had done months ago in his own workshop in an effort to make a tangible recreation of the anomaly prediction matrix. She had been devoted to putting it back together, figuring it was the key to retrieving their lost teammates, but despite the assistance she had from the other lab techs, none of them seemed to have a mind that worked like Professor Cutter's. Their efforts were slow and cumbersome. They needed another mathematician but granting just anyone authorization into the ARC was impossible.
Lester had dealt with geniuses before, and they all wanted public recognition. Pulling a specialist in to work on the matrix would be dangerous, security-wise and besides, he really didn't want to deal with the additional paperwork.
Of the team, only he, Sarah and Becker were left. The other techs just didn't have the right skills to help them - one lab tech went out with Sara and Becker and had fainted at the sight of a really big and supremely annoyed Archaeopteryx. Another had gone trigger-happy and killed a harmless juvenile Scutellosaurus. Sarah had been distraught - Lester assumed she was taking Abby's place temporarily as the personal champion of all time-lost creatures - and even Becker had been pissed off enough over that particular gaffe to storm over and yank the gun away hard enough to twist one of the man's fingers in the process.
They had always been extremely lucky in finding just the right sort of people to handle the business of anomalies in the past. Apparently that luck was starting to run out. The ones they really needed now were gone.
Lester abruptly realized his thoughts were turning a bit maudlin - or frankly, quite soppy, at the very least - and so he snorted once, shrugging his shoulders and adjusting the lapels of his obscenely expensive Italian suit. He tugged on his tie, fingers working the knot briefly, and then he turned and strode back into his office.
It was time to do something he'd been putting off for a while now, but it was becoming quite apparent he had no choice. He couldn't take charge of their team - he had far too many other things to do. Not to mention his need to depend on Home Office rules and protocol - half the reason for the team's success was their 'fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants' ways of making things happen, and being present in the field. Their sheer disregard for the rules tended to work in their favor, and he had no intention of throwing off the team dynamic at this particular juncture.
Then, there was also the camaraderie that developed within the team as a result of dealing with life and death situations every day, and as their boss, while he supported them whole-heartedly and as best he could, he had to appear to remain neutral to be completely effective.
Which meant they needed someone else. And quite frankly, there was only one person he could think of that was qualified for the job. Drumming his fingers on the varnished wood top of his desk, Lester stared at the phone. Then he sighed, picked up the receiver and dialed. A moment later a woman's voice answered with a cheery 'hello'. Lester rubbed the bridge of his nose, massaging away the burgeoning headache he could feel forming, and said, "Hello Jenny. It’s Lester. Have you got a moment?"
+++++++++++++++++
{Flashback}
There was nothing in the first room at the top of the hall. Jake was half-heartedly poking his nose into the rooms, but Connor was apparently quick to get over his apprehension. The little boy was suddenly darting around, eyes wide, refusing to relinquish his hold on Jake’s hand. Jake figured some of the house must have seemed familiar to him, even though his Aunt had probably left around Connor’s third birthday, taking the kid with her. “Jake, look!”
Jake blinked at the carved doors ahead of them. “Neat,” he commented, moving forward to run his hand along the smooth edges. “Custom work. Probably costly too.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing, Con.” Jake smiled at the squirt staring at the door curiously. He really was an adorable little devil. “C’mon, let’s check it out.”
Like the rest, the door was unlocked. Pushing it open, Jake realized they must be in what used to be his uncle’s study. Books lined both walls on glossy, polished shelves, ending at either end at the large picture window that lined the whole back wall. Suddenly his eyes fell on the computer perched on the old-oak desk. “Score!”
“That’s Daddy’s computer,” Connor said unexpectedly.
Jake glanced at him. “Yeah?”
Connor nodded, still staring at the computer.
“Let’s see if there’s any games on it then.” Jake moved forward and one hand went to turn it on.
Suddenly Connor was there, yanking on his arm. ”No!”
Jake froze. “What’s up, Connor?”
Connor repeated stubbornly, “That’s Daddy’s computer.”
“So?”
Connor’s eyes dropped to the floor, and he began nervously moving one foot around. “No touching the computer,” he recited was apparently was an often-repeated phrase. “Good boys don’t touch the computer.”
Jake silently cursed his uncle. Boy, did that ever sound familiar. He was almost afraid to ask. “What about bad boys, Con?”
Connor’s scared eyes flitted to the side, and Jake’s blood froze as he took in the wooden cane leaning against the bookshelf. “No hits,” Connor said quietly. “No touching the computer.
“Goddam old fuck’s lucky he’s already fucking dead,” Jake seethed quietly. Even his dad had just stuck to his own hands.
“Huh?”
“Never mind, sprout.” Jake knelt beside his cousin. “Listen, kid. Your dad’s not here, okay? He’s not coming back. He can’t hit you. Even if he could, I wouldn’t let him.”
Connor studied Jake carefully, as though looking through him to see if he were telling the truth. He bit his lower lip, and then tilted his head. “Do you mean it?”
Jake nodded solemnly. “Cross my heart.”
“Okay.” Connor nodded back, trustingly.
Jake was half in love with the kid. If having a baby brother would have been like having a little Connor running around, maybe he wouldn’t have protested the idea so much when his sister was born. Connor was cool, whereas his little sister was pure evil. Cute, but evil. “All right then. Let’s fire this puppy up!”
Connor giggled. “S’not a puppy!” he protested. “S’a computer!”
“So it is,” Jake conceded. He cursed as the monitor sprung to life. “It’s also password protected.” He locked his fingers together and stretched them out until he heard a crack, and then glanced at Connor, inviting him to sit on the big chair with him. “C’mon kiddo. You’re about to get your first lesson in Hacking 101.”
_______________________________________________
Sarah was convinced the world was working against her. The red beeps were becoming a hated noise, one that made her grind her teeth every time she heard it. Just as she was thinking about that, it went off again, deleting the last set of coordinates she’d input.
"I hate this bloody thing!" Sarah smacked the screen with the flat of her hand and then yelped in pain. Shaking her hand out, she buried her face in the other, groaning loudly and leaning forward to thunk head and hand together against the computer. "Why! Won't! You! Work?"
"Breaking it won't be very effective either," came a quietly amused voice - and a familiar voice at that.
Sarah's head shot up. "You..." she breathed, and then whirled around to see Jenny Lewis leaning against the door. The time away had obviously done her some good. When they'd last seen her, she had been recently revived from nearly freezing to death. Before that, long hours, the difficult job of running the team and doing PR for the ARC, plus the shock of learning she had once been someone else entirely - well, it had taken its toll on her, leaving her pale with eyes dark and puffy from exhaustion and strain. The fungus-monster had been the final straw.
Now though, she looked tanned, as though she'd spent some time on a beach somewhere. Her hair was pinned back, and her make-up was minimal, the way she'd taken to wearing it after she'd taken over Cutter's position. In the beginning, she'd dressed the way a public relations manager should - bright, heavily made up in case of impromptu interviews and cameras, with fancy clothes that she'd quickly learned were extremely impractical in their line of work. Case in point, she was dressed casually in a pair of denim jeans, a dark tank top and cropped jacket. No jewelry was to be seen. Loose and relaxed, she looked so much better than the last time Sarah had seen her.
Sarah realized she was staring and pushed herself up away from the computer. "Jenny!" One step, then another, and then Jenny was meeting her halfway. A quick handshake became a warm hug, two old friends greeting each other. The initial shock was wearing off and Sarah pulled back and looked at her friend and former colleague with a wide grin. "You look fabulous!"
"Thanks! You look..." Jenny cocked her head and gave her small, sympathetic smile in return. "Tired. Good, but very tired."
"You got that right," Sarah sighed. Then she blinked, furrowing her brows. "Is this a social visit?"
Jenny gave a rueful chuckle and shook her head. Then she spread her arms out, flicking her eyes around the room with exaggeration. "I'm back!"
"That's great!" Sarah blurted out, clapping her hands. Then she slammed both hands over her mouth, looking at Jenny with large eyes. "I mean... Jenny... I'm sorry. I know you wanted out of this, but--" she broke off and looked down, raking a hand through her hair agitatedly, before looking back up. "Oh Jenny, we need you. Have you heard--"
"I know about Abby and Connor. And Danny." Jenny squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I can't believe they're gone."
"They're gone but they're not dead-gone," Sarah said determinedly. “I won’t believe it until I see-“ she cut herself off. “Well, you know.”
"Lester mentioned you were working on Cut..."Jenny took a deep breath. "Cutter's matrix. He said you think we can find them."
Sarah nodded. "If we can get the matrix back up, if we can recreate it, we can find an anomaly that will take us to where they are, maybe reopen the one that closed after they went through. I mean, the key, the technology Helen was using to open anomalies, that tech had to originate here, in the ARC. We're the only ones doing this sort of work and we did discover that the buildings in the future were part of the ARC.”
"The predators come from the ARC?" Jenny gasped.
"They come from the future where the anomaly happens to materialize in the ARC, yes," Sarah corrected her. "Becker’s team found our logo on the walls during one of their checks. Maybe this, all that's happened in the past few months is what triggered it - what made us start making the anomaly ‘maps’ and anomaly 'openers' in the first place."
"Openers?"
"You have a lot of catching up to do."
"Apparently." Jenny looked past her to the computer where rotating, pixilated bars with dates pinned along their lengths intersected and spun around the screen. "It does look like what he was doing, doesn't it?"
"It's a start." Sarah actually growled in frustration, turning to glare at her computer. "But this was Cutter's baby, and while I get the gist of it, making it a reality is proving to be exceptionally difficult. I need a proper mathematician, or a time- spacial, fractal-whatever expert, or at the very least, someone brilliant enough to take this on and figure it out faster than what I'm doing."
"You're doing fine, Sarah," Jenny said in what Sarah assumed was an attempt to be soothing. While the effort was appreciated, the reality wasn't so easily reassured.
"Too slowly," she said. "It's going too slow." Before she could stop herself, a choked sob escaped her throat. Weeks of working and fretting and stressing and at the same time, decidedly NOT thinking about her lost friends, suddenly catapulted to the front of her mind. A hand whipped up to her mouth in a poor attempt to prevent another one from escaping. "Jenny, it's been almost two months. They had no supplies other than weapons and a first aid kit. No survival gear. The odds of them being alive are so unbelievably slim..."
"Shall we give up, then?" Jenny asked, sounding somewhat casual in her phrasing. "Such a remote chance of survival... we should be focusing our efforts on the anomalies themselves."
"We will NOT give up on them!" Sarah protested, snapping her flashing eyes to meet Jenny - who was smiling at her. Sarah groaned, realizing what Jenny had done, shaking her head. "Oi... it's not fair to use reverse psychology on someone who's been running on four hours of sleep a night for the last month."
Jenny opened her mouth but before she could say anything, a soldier burst into the room, skidding to an abrupt halt and firing off a hasty salute. "Ma~am, sorry for interrupting, but Major Becker's team just arrived."
Sarah frowned. "Why didn't he call me?"
The soldier shrugged. "With all due respect ma~am, he said he did."
"What?" Sarah slapped her hands over her pockets, patting herself down. When her phone failed to materialize, she bit her lip. "Oh please don't tell me I lost it. I still have fourteen months left on my contract!" Jenny coughed; Sarah rolled her eyes. "Not helpful!"
Jenny held up her hands. "I didn't say a word!" But she was grinning. Then she blinked, eyes focusing on something, and she strode across the room to where Sarah's lab coat that she wore when using her chemicals, was draped haphazardly over a chair. A moment of rooting through it, and then she held up Sarah's phone triumphantly. "I believe you were looking for this?" She glanced at the screen. "And set to vibrate, hmmm. You must have high hopes in those waves being able to reach you over here."
"Oh hush." Sarah accepted the phone and thumbed in the password, wincing as she saw six missed calls and two text messages. "Oh dear."
"Let's go," Jenny urged, and the two of them followed the foot-soldier to the main room.
Becker was just pushing through the door at the end of the hallway when they met up with him. He did a double-take when he saw who was with Sarah. "Jenny."
"Hello Becker," she said, holding her hand out. Sarah smiled as Becker pushed her hand aside to give her a hug of his own. "It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you too." He pulled back, still smiling at her. Then his gaze swiveled to Sarah's - she winced again as she took in the admonition on his face. "Do we need to go over the basic rules regarding communication and why it is so important to be able to reach one another?"
"I know, I'm sorry," Sarah apologized, wringing her hands. "I just... it got hot, and I took my lab coat off and I was so into what I was doing I didn't hear anything--"
"I wasn't aware 'vibrate' made a loud noise," Becker said musingly. "I mean, that is why people set their phones on it in the cinemas, yes?"
"And now you're just being obnoxious." Sarah poked him in the chest. "I am very, very sorry. Can we move past this and tell me what was so important?"
Becker pushed one swinging door open; Jenny got the other. "My team finally recovered something interesting."
Jenny looked sideways at him. "Recovered?"
Sarah nodded. "From the future anomaly site."
"The one with the predators?"
"The one and the same." Ever since the day Danny, Abby and Connor had disappeared through time, Becker's team had been systematically sweeping the area, quadrant by quadrant. It took mass amounts of fire power and sonic grenades and an area was never 'clear' for good. The predators always came back, no matter how many of them were killed. The giant insects had nowhere near the predators intelligence levels and were just as abundant as the insects in their own time, which was why, nearly two months later, they still weren't finished checking the buildings.
Becker's team went in every day, armed to the teeth and suited up with specially developed protection - double-strength anti-stab vests (front and back) four times stronger than Kevlar. Neck guards of the same material attached to helmets that could withstand a bullet at point blank range, leather and Kevlar bodysuits to protect everything else. It added almost fifty pounds of weight to each man in addition to the weapons they carried but they were well worth the effort and expense - thus far, Becker had only lost two men since that day, and one was due to the soldier idiotically taking off his helmet because he was too hot. A giant flying ant sliced his head off not three minutes later.
They were checking out different sections, short jaunts only. Head-cams recorded everything in case they had to run without a close-up inspection - the videos were examined carefully by their lab technicians for any clues, any shred of evidence of what had happened to their friends. It had been disturbing to realize that the ancient, half-destroyed buildings, the rusted cars and the abandoned tech lying around the entire area were in fact the remnants of what was once the ARC. There were no papers lying about to give them answers, having disintegrated long ago, and the few banks of computers they'd been able to find to date had been completely destroyed. But now Becker's team had found something he obviously thought was worthwhile. "What did you find?"
Becker smirked and pulled a small metal-and-plastic square out of his pocket, holding it up in front of her eyes. "Does this look familiar?"
"Oh my god," Sarah gasped as she realized what she was looking at, and snatched it out of Becker's hands, turning it over in her own. It was the handheld device that Helen had used to track and open anomalies, like the day she had (in her guise as a strange woman from the future) at the ATV campgrounds with the prehistoric rhinoceros herd.
Well - it was like the one she'd used. This one was older, the black casing cracked. Dust and dirt caked the machine, and the display screen was badly chipped. There was no obvious power source, but even so, it was still a positive find. "Becker, once again you are my hero!"
"What is that?" Jenny asked blankly.
Sarah whirled around and waved the device at Jenny excitedly. "This, Jenny, this little machine can find, track and open anomalies! The 'opener' I was telling you about!"
Jenny blinked. "What?"
"With this - well, with a working version of this, we don't have to chase down random anomalies and hope that one of them will magically lead us to Danny, Abby and Connor!" Sarah flipped the device over again, running her fingers almost reverently across the scarred surface. "We can open an anomaly on our own!"
"But we don't know where they are,' Jenny protested. "I mean, I don't want to be the dream-crusher here but as I recall, there were hundreds of points on Cutter's matrix--"
"We have one idea of where Helen is," Sarah corrected her. She smiled grimly. "And where she is, we have a chance at finding our friends."
"So where are they?"
___________________________
Part B
Chapter 2: Don’t Shoot! (A, B and C)
Author: Stormy1x2 (traveling_storm)
Words (this chapter): 8,500-ish
Notes: again, thank you to nickdevilance for the poking, the prodding and the suggesting! Also, I am starting to hate and detest LJ. I quite clearly remember being able to have posts over the 4,500 word limit. When the hell did it get shortened???
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“Dinosaurs,” Pooch said in disbelief. “You expect me to believe your cousin chases dinosaurs.”
They were standing around Jensen’s laptop watching illegally downloaded files from a secret headquarters in London named the ARC, and despite watching one of the videos in particular four times already, there was still a general feeling of ‘not-believing-ness’ that Jensen was sensing. “He doesn’t chase dinosaurs,” Jensen corrected him. “He tracks down time-anomalies and contains the animals that come through it.”
“From the past,” Aisha blurted. “Animals from the past.”
“Like dinosaurs,” Pooch repeated like an album stuck on the needle.
Clay scratched his head and looked sideways at his corporal. “Jensen?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not as such, no.”
“Am I?” Pooch muttered as an aside to Cougar. The sniper snorted and gave a half-shrug.
“Play it again,” Clay ordered. Jensen complied and hit a key. They watched in silence as a huge T-Rex look-alike moved towards the camera. A golden flow streamed out from behind it but it was hard to focus on as giant teeth suddenly picked off the screaming reporter next to the cameraman. The camera fell to the ground just as huge, blood-stained jaws swung around, and then a giant foot came down next to it. A gurgling scream was abruptly cut off. The lens was cracked from the fall, but it remained recording, aimed at the wall. A distinctive noise caught their attention again as a dark shape moved swiftly across the fractured camera path - a helicopter. Not military issue, Clay was certain. The sound was wrong. Seconds later another shape lumbered past in pursuit - it was the dinosaur again. There was a strange humming sound and then the sounds of someone - a female - ordering someone to wait. Suddenly the camera was picked up and a soldier looking half-heartedly at the screen just before it switched off.
“They uploaded that video onto their private server at the ARC,” Jensen said. “It was easy to get it from there. Child’s play, really.” He blew on his fingers, buffing them on his shirt.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a genius,” Clay said, still staring at the hacker’s laptop.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As was his custom, Lester stood behind the railings on the second level, just in front of his office, and watched the various scientists, computer techs and other ARC personnel run about the floor below him like mice in a maze. It had been over a month, but it still struck him as terribly odd to not see Connor perched at his usual table, inventing yet another gadget to help them in their work. There wasn't a layer of dust covering his tools and computer, or any such nonsense - the ARC's janitorial staff were paid very well to be very thorough - but it was still a rather lonely picture indeed.
His eyes flicked over to one of the labs that ringed the first floor main operations room. The wide glass panels gave him clear sight into the room - tall plants and flowers from by-gone eras still growing from the care of the other scientists, but seeming to lack the vibrancy they'd had when Abby was constantly monitoring them, spritzing them every other hour to keep them looking especially shiny and lush. He stared at them for a long moment before shaking his head and moving along in a check-up that had become almost ritualistic since the decimation of his team.
Sarah Page was visible in another lab. She was settled yet again in front of her computer screen, attempting to recreate digitally what Nick Cutter had done months ago in his own workshop in an effort to make a tangible recreation of the anomaly prediction matrix. She had been devoted to putting it back together, figuring it was the key to retrieving their lost teammates, but despite the assistance she had from the other lab techs, none of them seemed to have a mind that worked like Professor Cutter's. Their efforts were slow and cumbersome. They needed another mathematician but granting just anyone authorization into the ARC was impossible.
Lester had dealt with geniuses before, and they all wanted public recognition. Pulling a specialist in to work on the matrix would be dangerous, security-wise and besides, he really didn't want to deal with the additional paperwork.
Of the team, only he, Sarah and Becker were left. The other techs just didn't have the right skills to help them - one lab tech went out with Sara and Becker and had fainted at the sight of a really big and supremely annoyed Archaeopteryx. Another had gone trigger-happy and killed a harmless juvenile Scutellosaurus. Sarah had been distraught - Lester assumed she was taking Abby's place temporarily as the personal champion of all time-lost creatures - and even Becker had been pissed off enough over that particular gaffe to storm over and yank the gun away hard enough to twist one of the man's fingers in the process.
They had always been extremely lucky in finding just the right sort of people to handle the business of anomalies in the past. Apparently that luck was starting to run out. The ones they really needed now were gone.
Lester abruptly realized his thoughts were turning a bit maudlin - or frankly, quite soppy, at the very least - and so he snorted once, shrugging his shoulders and adjusting the lapels of his obscenely expensive Italian suit. He tugged on his tie, fingers working the knot briefly, and then he turned and strode back into his office.
It was time to do something he'd been putting off for a while now, but it was becoming quite apparent he had no choice. He couldn't take charge of their team - he had far too many other things to do. Not to mention his need to depend on Home Office rules and protocol - half the reason for the team's success was their 'fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants' ways of making things happen, and being present in the field. Their sheer disregard for the rules tended to work in their favor, and he had no intention of throwing off the team dynamic at this particular juncture.
Then, there was also the camaraderie that developed within the team as a result of dealing with life and death situations every day, and as their boss, while he supported them whole-heartedly and as best he could, he had to appear to remain neutral to be completely effective.
Which meant they needed someone else. And quite frankly, there was only one person he could think of that was qualified for the job. Drumming his fingers on the varnished wood top of his desk, Lester stared at the phone. Then he sighed, picked up the receiver and dialed. A moment later a woman's voice answered with a cheery 'hello'. Lester rubbed the bridge of his nose, massaging away the burgeoning headache he could feel forming, and said, "Hello Jenny. It’s Lester. Have you got a moment?"
+++++++++++++++++
{Flashback}
There was nothing in the first room at the top of the hall. Jake was half-heartedly poking his nose into the rooms, but Connor was apparently quick to get over his apprehension. The little boy was suddenly darting around, eyes wide, refusing to relinquish his hold on Jake’s hand. Jake figured some of the house must have seemed familiar to him, even though his Aunt had probably left around Connor’s third birthday, taking the kid with her. “Jake, look!”
Jake blinked at the carved doors ahead of them. “Neat,” he commented, moving forward to run his hand along the smooth edges. “Custom work. Probably costly too.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing, Con.” Jake smiled at the squirt staring at the door curiously. He really was an adorable little devil. “C’mon, let’s check it out.”
Like the rest, the door was unlocked. Pushing it open, Jake realized they must be in what used to be his uncle’s study. Books lined both walls on glossy, polished shelves, ending at either end at the large picture window that lined the whole back wall. Suddenly his eyes fell on the computer perched on the old-oak desk. “Score!”
“That’s Daddy’s computer,” Connor said unexpectedly.
Jake glanced at him. “Yeah?”
Connor nodded, still staring at the computer.
“Let’s see if there’s any games on it then.” Jake moved forward and one hand went to turn it on.
Suddenly Connor was there, yanking on his arm. ”No!”
Jake froze. “What’s up, Connor?”
Connor repeated stubbornly, “That’s Daddy’s computer.”
“So?”
Connor’s eyes dropped to the floor, and he began nervously moving one foot around. “No touching the computer,” he recited was apparently was an often-repeated phrase. “Good boys don’t touch the computer.”
Jake silently cursed his uncle. Boy, did that ever sound familiar. He was almost afraid to ask. “What about bad boys, Con?”
Connor’s scared eyes flitted to the side, and Jake’s blood froze as he took in the wooden cane leaning against the bookshelf. “No hits,” Connor said quietly. “No touching the computer.
“Goddam old fuck’s lucky he’s already fucking dead,” Jake seethed quietly. Even his dad had just stuck to his own hands.
“Huh?”
“Never mind, sprout.” Jake knelt beside his cousin. “Listen, kid. Your dad’s not here, okay? He’s not coming back. He can’t hit you. Even if he could, I wouldn’t let him.”
Connor studied Jake carefully, as though looking through him to see if he were telling the truth. He bit his lower lip, and then tilted his head. “Do you mean it?”
Jake nodded solemnly. “Cross my heart.”
“Okay.” Connor nodded back, trustingly.
Jake was half in love with the kid. If having a baby brother would have been like having a little Connor running around, maybe he wouldn’t have protested the idea so much when his sister was born. Connor was cool, whereas his little sister was pure evil. Cute, but evil. “All right then. Let’s fire this puppy up!”
Connor giggled. “S’not a puppy!” he protested. “S’a computer!”
“So it is,” Jake conceded. He cursed as the monitor sprung to life. “It’s also password protected.” He locked his fingers together and stretched them out until he heard a crack, and then glanced at Connor, inviting him to sit on the big chair with him. “C’mon kiddo. You’re about to get your first lesson in Hacking 101.”
_______________________________________________
Sarah was convinced the world was working against her. The red beeps were becoming a hated noise, one that made her grind her teeth every time she heard it. Just as she was thinking about that, it went off again, deleting the last set of coordinates she’d input.
"I hate this bloody thing!" Sarah smacked the screen with the flat of her hand and then yelped in pain. Shaking her hand out, she buried her face in the other, groaning loudly and leaning forward to thunk head and hand together against the computer. "Why! Won't! You! Work?"
"Breaking it won't be very effective either," came a quietly amused voice - and a familiar voice at that.
Sarah's head shot up. "You..." she breathed, and then whirled around to see Jenny Lewis leaning against the door. The time away had obviously done her some good. When they'd last seen her, she had been recently revived from nearly freezing to death. Before that, long hours, the difficult job of running the team and doing PR for the ARC, plus the shock of learning she had once been someone else entirely - well, it had taken its toll on her, leaving her pale with eyes dark and puffy from exhaustion and strain. The fungus-monster had been the final straw.
Now though, she looked tanned, as though she'd spent some time on a beach somewhere. Her hair was pinned back, and her make-up was minimal, the way she'd taken to wearing it after she'd taken over Cutter's position. In the beginning, she'd dressed the way a public relations manager should - bright, heavily made up in case of impromptu interviews and cameras, with fancy clothes that she'd quickly learned were extremely impractical in their line of work. Case in point, she was dressed casually in a pair of denim jeans, a dark tank top and cropped jacket. No jewelry was to be seen. Loose and relaxed, she looked so much better than the last time Sarah had seen her.
Sarah realized she was staring and pushed herself up away from the computer. "Jenny!" One step, then another, and then Jenny was meeting her halfway. A quick handshake became a warm hug, two old friends greeting each other. The initial shock was wearing off and Sarah pulled back and looked at her friend and former colleague with a wide grin. "You look fabulous!"
"Thanks! You look..." Jenny cocked her head and gave her small, sympathetic smile in return. "Tired. Good, but very tired."
"You got that right," Sarah sighed. Then she blinked, furrowing her brows. "Is this a social visit?"
Jenny gave a rueful chuckle and shook her head. Then she spread her arms out, flicking her eyes around the room with exaggeration. "I'm back!"
"That's great!" Sarah blurted out, clapping her hands. Then she slammed both hands over her mouth, looking at Jenny with large eyes. "I mean... Jenny... I'm sorry. I know you wanted out of this, but--" she broke off and looked down, raking a hand through her hair agitatedly, before looking back up. "Oh Jenny, we need you. Have you heard--"
"I know about Abby and Connor. And Danny." Jenny squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I can't believe they're gone."
"They're gone but they're not dead-gone," Sarah said determinedly. “I won’t believe it until I see-“ she cut herself off. “Well, you know.”
"Lester mentioned you were working on Cut..."Jenny took a deep breath. "Cutter's matrix. He said you think we can find them."
Sarah nodded. "If we can get the matrix back up, if we can recreate it, we can find an anomaly that will take us to where they are, maybe reopen the one that closed after they went through. I mean, the key, the technology Helen was using to open anomalies, that tech had to originate here, in the ARC. We're the only ones doing this sort of work and we did discover that the buildings in the future were part of the ARC.”
"The predators come from the ARC?" Jenny gasped.
"They come from the future where the anomaly happens to materialize in the ARC, yes," Sarah corrected her. "Becker’s team found our logo on the walls during one of their checks. Maybe this, all that's happened in the past few months is what triggered it - what made us start making the anomaly ‘maps’ and anomaly 'openers' in the first place."
"Openers?"
"You have a lot of catching up to do."
"Apparently." Jenny looked past her to the computer where rotating, pixilated bars with dates pinned along their lengths intersected and spun around the screen. "It does look like what he was doing, doesn't it?"
"It's a start." Sarah actually growled in frustration, turning to glare at her computer. "But this was Cutter's baby, and while I get the gist of it, making it a reality is proving to be exceptionally difficult. I need a proper mathematician, or a time- spacial, fractal-whatever expert, or at the very least, someone brilliant enough to take this on and figure it out faster than what I'm doing."
"You're doing fine, Sarah," Jenny said in what Sarah assumed was an attempt to be soothing. While the effort was appreciated, the reality wasn't so easily reassured.
"Too slowly," she said. "It's going too slow." Before she could stop herself, a choked sob escaped her throat. Weeks of working and fretting and stressing and at the same time, decidedly NOT thinking about her lost friends, suddenly catapulted to the front of her mind. A hand whipped up to her mouth in a poor attempt to prevent another one from escaping. "Jenny, it's been almost two months. They had no supplies other than weapons and a first aid kit. No survival gear. The odds of them being alive are so unbelievably slim..."
"Shall we give up, then?" Jenny asked, sounding somewhat casual in her phrasing. "Such a remote chance of survival... we should be focusing our efforts on the anomalies themselves."
"We will NOT give up on them!" Sarah protested, snapping her flashing eyes to meet Jenny - who was smiling at her. Sarah groaned, realizing what Jenny had done, shaking her head. "Oi... it's not fair to use reverse psychology on someone who's been running on four hours of sleep a night for the last month."
Jenny opened her mouth but before she could say anything, a soldier burst into the room, skidding to an abrupt halt and firing off a hasty salute. "Ma~am, sorry for interrupting, but Major Becker's team just arrived."
Sarah frowned. "Why didn't he call me?"
The soldier shrugged. "With all due respect ma~am, he said he did."
"What?" Sarah slapped her hands over her pockets, patting herself down. When her phone failed to materialize, she bit her lip. "Oh please don't tell me I lost it. I still have fourteen months left on my contract!" Jenny coughed; Sarah rolled her eyes. "Not helpful!"
Jenny held up her hands. "I didn't say a word!" But she was grinning. Then she blinked, eyes focusing on something, and she strode across the room to where Sarah's lab coat that she wore when using her chemicals, was draped haphazardly over a chair. A moment of rooting through it, and then she held up Sarah's phone triumphantly. "I believe you were looking for this?" She glanced at the screen. "And set to vibrate, hmmm. You must have high hopes in those waves being able to reach you over here."
"Oh hush." Sarah accepted the phone and thumbed in the password, wincing as she saw six missed calls and two text messages. "Oh dear."
"Let's go," Jenny urged, and the two of them followed the foot-soldier to the main room.
Becker was just pushing through the door at the end of the hallway when they met up with him. He did a double-take when he saw who was with Sarah. "Jenny."
"Hello Becker," she said, holding her hand out. Sarah smiled as Becker pushed her hand aside to give her a hug of his own. "It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you too." He pulled back, still smiling at her. Then his gaze swiveled to Sarah's - she winced again as she took in the admonition on his face. "Do we need to go over the basic rules regarding communication and why it is so important to be able to reach one another?"
"I know, I'm sorry," Sarah apologized, wringing her hands. "I just... it got hot, and I took my lab coat off and I was so into what I was doing I didn't hear anything--"
"I wasn't aware 'vibrate' made a loud noise," Becker said musingly. "I mean, that is why people set their phones on it in the cinemas, yes?"
"And now you're just being obnoxious." Sarah poked him in the chest. "I am very, very sorry. Can we move past this and tell me what was so important?"
Becker pushed one swinging door open; Jenny got the other. "My team finally recovered something interesting."
Jenny looked sideways at him. "Recovered?"
Sarah nodded. "From the future anomaly site."
"The one with the predators?"
"The one and the same." Ever since the day Danny, Abby and Connor had disappeared through time, Becker's team had been systematically sweeping the area, quadrant by quadrant. It took mass amounts of fire power and sonic grenades and an area was never 'clear' for good. The predators always came back, no matter how many of them were killed. The giant insects had nowhere near the predators intelligence levels and were just as abundant as the insects in their own time, which was why, nearly two months later, they still weren't finished checking the buildings.
Becker's team went in every day, armed to the teeth and suited up with specially developed protection - double-strength anti-stab vests (front and back) four times stronger than Kevlar. Neck guards of the same material attached to helmets that could withstand a bullet at point blank range, leather and Kevlar bodysuits to protect everything else. It added almost fifty pounds of weight to each man in addition to the weapons they carried but they were well worth the effort and expense - thus far, Becker had only lost two men since that day, and one was due to the soldier idiotically taking off his helmet because he was too hot. A giant flying ant sliced his head off not three minutes later.
They were checking out different sections, short jaunts only. Head-cams recorded everything in case they had to run without a close-up inspection - the videos were examined carefully by their lab technicians for any clues, any shred of evidence of what had happened to their friends. It had been disturbing to realize that the ancient, half-destroyed buildings, the rusted cars and the abandoned tech lying around the entire area were in fact the remnants of what was once the ARC. There were no papers lying about to give them answers, having disintegrated long ago, and the few banks of computers they'd been able to find to date had been completely destroyed. But now Becker's team had found something he obviously thought was worthwhile. "What did you find?"
Becker smirked and pulled a small metal-and-plastic square out of his pocket, holding it up in front of her eyes. "Does this look familiar?"
"Oh my god," Sarah gasped as she realized what she was looking at, and snatched it out of Becker's hands, turning it over in her own. It was the handheld device that Helen had used to track and open anomalies, like the day she had (in her guise as a strange woman from the future) at the ATV campgrounds with the prehistoric rhinoceros herd.
Well - it was like the one she'd used. This one was older, the black casing cracked. Dust and dirt caked the machine, and the display screen was badly chipped. There was no obvious power source, but even so, it was still a positive find. "Becker, once again you are my hero!"
"What is that?" Jenny asked blankly.
Sarah whirled around and waved the device at Jenny excitedly. "This, Jenny, this little machine can find, track and open anomalies! The 'opener' I was telling you about!"
Jenny blinked. "What?"
"With this - well, with a working version of this, we don't have to chase down random anomalies and hope that one of them will magically lead us to Danny, Abby and Connor!" Sarah flipped the device over again, running her fingers almost reverently across the scarred surface. "We can open an anomaly on our own!"
"But we don't know where they are,' Jenny protested. "I mean, I don't want to be the dream-crusher here but as I recall, there were hundreds of points on Cutter's matrix--"
"We have one idea of where Helen is," Sarah corrected her. She smiled grimly. "And where she is, we have a chance at finding our friends."
"So where are they?"
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Part B