Never Let Me Down Again - Primeval Fanfic - Happy Birthday D1!
Title: Never Let Me Down Again part 1
Author: Clea2011
Word Count: 7949 total (3726 this part)
Characters: Becker/Jess
Rating: 12
Spoilers: No
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, I'm just writing for fun and non-profit.
A/N: This fills the
trope_bingo square '24 hours to live', that's 22/25 done.
Happy birthday (only a day late!) to deinonychus_1! Thanks to celeste9 for the quick beta!
D1 asked for Becker/Jess, chose the '24 hours to live' trope bingo square (there were a lot to choose from back then!) with the prompt, "You are not going to die on my watch." No particular preference which one is dying and which one is trying to save them.
(It's on A03 here.)
{C}
Never Let Me Down Again
{C}{C}
Matt Anderson had lived a thrilling life. It wasn't a good kind of thrilling, and not one that he'd recommend to anyone else. But still, it was thrilling. And it had been for the most part quite noisy, and that noise had usually been accompanied by pain and fear. As a young man he'd learned to appreciate when things were quiet.
This wasn't one of those times.
Becker was sitting in the front of the truck, driving. Becker always had to drive, they'd given up trying to take a turn and just let him get on with it because that was one of the things Becker thought he did better than anyone else. Matt wasn't entirely sure that Becker was justified in that belief, and was quite sure the soldier was going to get them all killed one of these days with his erratic, some might say dangerous driving. Usually Becker shared an occasional opinion about the other road users and how they should stick to the mobility scooters they really would be better off driving, but today he was silent. Silent, and sulking.
The cause of his sulk was sitting in the back seat next to Emily, looking equally cross and balancing a laptop on her knee. Jess Parker wasn't given to silence or sulking, but she was given to getting annoyed if pushed far enough, and to taking some time to consider what she was going to say before she launched into a rant. Matt turned back to speak to Emily, saw Jess simmering quietly, and thought better of it. No need to remind her what the human voice sounded like in case she decided to exercise her own.
The trouble was, Abby and Connor were off on honeymoon. That was perhaps not the trouble in itself, but it left them without any expert technical support in the field. Again, that wasn't necessarily a problem either, because things could be done remotely. The trouble was that there was an anomaly open in a deep valley. And that valley had once been underwater, millennia ago, and was now starting to fill up again.
Normally they could have just closed the anomaly without any difficulty and that would have stopped the flooding. But this valley housed a university with a particular enthusiasm for sports, which meant it had an Olympic-sized swimming pool and of course, of course, the stupid anomaly had to open up in the deep end in middle of the night, so that nobody noticed the water flooding through until the drains had been blocked by whatever debris and flora had come through and all the sports halls were several feet deep in water.
Connor had been developing a version of the anomaly closing device which could be used on land but would work from a distance on an underwater anomaly. The distance was currently only about twenty metres, but he was hoping it could eventually be used on ones out at sea, at least from the relative safety of a boat. However, it was still a prototype and the only person he'd discussed it with in detail (because it was all about programming and therefore very boring to anyone who wasn't a fellow geek) was Jess. And so Jess was coming with them, out in the field.
Becker was furious.
At first the numerous reasons he'd come out with as to why Jess shouldn't come with them had been amusing. Matt admitted he'd quite enjoyed baiting Becker.
"She's a civilian."
"Strictly, no, she's an ARC employee so doesn't have civilian status any more."
"She doesn't have any field experience."
"Didn't you say she diffused a bomb while you were both out keeping watch on Ethan... Actually, remind me again what it was you were doing to make you both fall asleep in the truck?"
"She needs to coordinate things from the Hub."
"Jess has deputies. You just don't seem to be around the Hub very much when they're on duty."
Matt had been particularly pleased with the look on Becker's face after those last two replies. And then, just to make it that little bit more perfect, Becker had got so flustered and cross that he'd spluttered out in front of Emily and Jess:
"She's a... a girl!"
His immediate retraction and insistence that he hadn't meant that no female should be out in the field, just ones like Jess, really hadn't helped matters. Jess was livid and Emily wasn't best pleased. When the female members of his security team heard about it they weren't impressed either, even when he pointed out that he'd been the one to employ them. Becker was just fortunate that Abby hadn't been there to hear him.
In the end Lester had come out of his office to find out what all the noise was. It took him less than a minute to size up the situation, hear as much as he needed to of both sides, tell Jess that of course she could go and then head back to his office grumbling about children and leaving Becker standing open-mouthed in his wake.
Matt loved Lester for sorting that out, just a little bit.
He didn't love the sulking or the silence in the car though. Maybe he'd goaded Becker just a little bit too much. But really, the soldier was the slowest mover Matt had ever seen in his life. If he'd lived in Matt's future world, he'd never have managed to get laid, ever. It hadn't quite been a case of dragging your partner back to the cave by the hair, but it wasn't far off.
Matt wondered what Emily would do if he tried that. Kill him, probably. Or at the very least she'd ensure he didn’t feel like dragging anyone back to his cave for a long, long time. He smirked.
Becker glared at him, obviously thinking Matt was laughing at him.
Matt went back to staring out of the window. It was safer.
---
Evacuating the university hadn't been easy. Becker had forgotten just how very difficult academics could be.
Students were easy enough, with most of them he could just appear with his team, look menacing, and they were gone. A few decided black-clad soldiers were sexy and stood around getting in the way which was annoying, and ogling them which was embarrassing, but for the most part they were easy to remove.
The academics were a completely different matter. It was like having Nick Cutter clones, dozens of them, all thinking he was being the worst kind of nuisance by trying to save their lives and drag them from their research.
Becker was tempted to leave them where they were and let them get on with it. But then there would be lots of paperwork if something happened to them, and anyway any delay meant that he couldn't declare the area clear and go and do what he wanted to do which was to stand over Jess whilst she closed the anomaly and make sure nothing came through and ate her. Or that she didn't slip into the pool. Or that the device didn't hit the water and electrocute her. Or that she didn't decide to test Connor's assertion that the prototype was waterproof by holding it under the water. Or that the thing didn't backfire in some way and suck her through the anomaly. Or... Well, anything could happen.
"Move!" he bellowed at a middle-aged gentleman in a cardigan and moccasins who was still relaxing in an armchair in his office, intent on an ancient-looking book.
The man looked startled, then indignant, then looked at Becker's thunderous expression and huge gun and must have decided to do as he was asked because he picked up his book and left without a word.
He wasn't the last, and it took nearly half an hour before Becker was finally confident that the buildings were fully evacuated. Emily, he supposed, was having a far easier time of it at the cattery up the road. Animals, even cats, were a lot simpler to deal with than crotchety old fools who thought they knew better.
"The building's clear," he told Matt through his headset. "Where are you?"
There was no immediate reply. The answer was supposed to be that they were either at the anomaly or safely back with the truck.
"Matt?"
"There's a problem..." Matt sounded a little out of breath, as if he had been running.
"Is Jess okay?"
Again, no immediate response. Becker broke into a run, heading for the anomaly site.
He knew she shouldn't have come on the mission.
___
Connor's new device had closed the underwater anomaly almost immediately. Jess had almost been disappointed, hoping for a more exciting venture out into the field. She had sat back, taken a few pictures and recorded some notes for Connor, who was bound to want to know all about it when he returned. Then she just watched the divers chasing round after the many small fish that had got through. Putting them back without more coming through was going to be a challenge, although that didn't seem to be something that would be attempted very soon. Then work could start on unblocking the drains.
Matt was pleased anyway. She supposed that if something had gone wrong he would have to listen to Becker harping on and on about it. Perhaps boring was good, though she would have liked something to go a little bit wrong just so that she could prove to Becker that she could cope with it. Matt patted her on the back, rather patronisingly she thought, and went to the doorway to make a phone call because the reception wasn't too good inside.
Becker and Emily were still off evacuating the campus and cattery. Jess wondered if anyone would mind if she went off to find Emily? She loved cats, most animals really as long as they weren't trying to kill or eat her, and the cattery sounded quite appealing.
And that was when, right on cue, the cat appeared.
It was young, not more than a kitten really, an adorably fluffy tabby who was pressing its nose to the window, scrabbling briefly at the glass.
"Oh, he's so cute! Matt, look!"
Matt looked, but didn't seem impressed. "Emily said one of the cats escaped," he told her, then went back to his phone call, apparently not bothered about a mere cat.
But it was somebody's beloved pet, Jess realised. She called to Matt that she was going out to see if she could catch it and he just nodded disinterestedly. From the snatches of conversation she gathered that Lester was having problems with the Dean, who either didn't appreciate having the university evacuated or didn't like the way Matt had done it, or both. She was glad she wasn't having to field the calls.
Outside, the kitten was nowhere to be seen. She called to it, but apparently it didn't answer to "Here kitty, kitty," because that only worked in films. Jess walked across the grass, noting that they didn't keep the grounds as tidy there as most of the rest of the campus had been. No wonder the cat was drawn to the area. It was probably teeming with mice.
Matt had followed her out, still talking on the phone. She sighed, knowing he didn't really trust her not to get eaten by a rogue dinosaur or something any more than Becker did. The team leader was leaning on the railing outside the door, looking progressively more dour as the conversation went on.
The kitten suddenly leapt up, trying to catch a yellow butterfly in its small paws. It missed, leapt again, and then went scampering off through the grass, heading towards a run-down building that looked as if it were a large, disused shed. Jess hurried after it. She'd had a pet cat as a child, not dissimilar to this one, and knew how playful the young ones could be.
One of the windows was missing most of its glass. The cat leapt up, landed on the sill, nosed inquisitively at the empty frame for a moment, then went inside. Jess wasn't even going to try to follow it through the window, but the door didn't look as if it were locked. When she tried it, the door just collapsed inwards with a loud crash and a cloud of dust.
Jess looked back for Matt, but he had vanished. The building didn't look particularly safe, and she wondered if she should wait for help. But then she heard a pathetic little mewl, then another one, and the sound wrenched at her. She peered through the broken window and could see the creature sitting up on a beam, looking at the floor but apparently unable to get down. It wouldn't take a moment to go in and help it. It wasn't as if the building was going to collapse around her, she reasoned, there would be signs up if it was that dangerous.
Stepping over a large board that from its state had obviously been lying in the grass for a long time, she went back to the open doorway, glanced back to see if Matt had reappeared yet, then made up her mind and went inside.
The place smelled damp and rotten, and she had to pick her way carefully into the room where the kitten had become trapped. There was a broken timber on the floor, which she nearly put her foot through. When the kitten saw her, it mewled again and walked farther down the beam, then sat there crying pathetically.
Jess carefully tiptoed over to it, not wanting to scare it. And then suddenly the hugest rat she had ever seen came running across the floor towards her, followed by another one. Jess gave a yell and jumped back instinctively, slipping on the floor and losing her balance. She fell against the wall, and then the floor gave way and the world seemed to tip upside down. The last thing she thought was that she was falling.
---
Matt had only gone back inside for a few moments, called by one of the security team. He'd left Jess chasing after some stupid cat. He didn't understand the attraction of cats. They'd been a rare treat for dinner, if anyone had caught one in his time. Now Emily was talking about getting one as a pet, and he had a horrible feeling that if the one Jess was chasing turned out to be a stray then he was somehow going to end up sharing his flat with it, because the word 'cute' had been used, and Jess and Emily were as thick as thieves, and none of it boded well.
"Sir, the anomaly reopened."
No, that didn't bode well either. The water was rising again, much more rapidly this time. He was ankle-deep in water in the already-flooded changing rooms; they hadn't even had a chance to pump the water out from the previous flooding. He sighed. Connor's prototype was obviously not perfected yet.
"I'll get Jess," he told the man. "Keep an eye on it, make sure nothing comes through."
Hoping Jess wasn't carrying a damp, cute feline, he made his way back outside. The grass, which had at least started to drain a little on its own, was already turning swampy, squelching under his feet.
"Jess!"
His voice was drowned out by what sounded almost like an explosion, followed by a lot of banging and crashing. Matt ran in the direction of the noise, not liking the fact that it was the same direction he'd last seen Jess heading in, and liking it even less when he rounded the corner of the sports hall and saw a derelict building still in the process of collapsing in on itself.
A small tabby cat jumped nimbly out of the wreckage, and sped off.
Calling for backup, Matt raced to the building, or what was left of it. The ground was even more soggy there. Parts of the structure were still standing, but they looked as if they might give way at any moment.
"Jess? Jess!"
There was no reply, and the collapsed building creaked and swayed ominously.
Behind him he could hear footsteps splashing through the swampy grass as members of the security squad arrived. He could also hear Becker in his earpiece spouting something about the campus being clear. Matt ignored him for a few moments because he really didn't have time for the way Becker was going to react to this.
"Jess might be caught under this," he explained to the men. "We need to check, and that means lifting all this up." He didn't need to say what they might find under there, he could see from their faces that they all knew. But they were professionals and if there was any chance, they had to try.
There was a board in the grass under his feet. When he kicked it over he saw a sign warning people that the building was unsafe, condemned. From where it was lying, it didn't look as if it had fallen off in the collapse but had been there for some time, totally failing in its purpose.
"Matt?" Becker was sounding concerned now.
"There's a problem," Matt told him, but before he could elaborate Becker immediately demanded to know if Jess was okay and Matt hesitated a moment too long before answering.
"Becker's on his way," he told the men. They'd started examining the structure, trying to work out the safest way to lift it without bringing anything else down.
"That might not be a good idea," one of the men, Turner, told him. "This can't be rushed, and he won't be patient."
"Too late," Matt replied.
One of the men hurried off to get a truck in the hope they could use it to pull off the heavier debris. At worst, at least it was going to be full of tools, at best they could secure the remaining wall with it. The others were carefully lifting off smaller pieces of debris, and Matt moved in to help.
The water wasn't helping matters. It was seeping into the half-demolished building and presumably making it even less stable.
"Sir." That was Taylor again. "The water seems to be draining to somewhere under the building."
And it did. It wasn't pooling on the floor like they would have expected, but trickling through.
"Bugger, look at the size of that thing!" One of the other men cursed as a rat ran out of the debris and away into the grass.
"It climbed up from under the floor," Matt pointed out. There were large holes visible in the floorboards. More appeared as the men slowly and carefully cleared the area, and it rapidly became apparent that not only was a lot of the floor missing, but that there appeared to be a massive hole underneath .
Turner leaned forward, shining a torch into the gap. "That's not foundations. It looks... God, some idiot's decided to build this over the top of an old swimming pool! Doesn't look as if they even filled it in, just boarded it all over!"
Lester was going to be having words with the university about health and safety, Matt thought. But he wouldn't worry about that now, or about telling Lester that the only staff member he actually seemed to like might be crushed to death.
"I think I can see her."
"Where is she?" Becker had arrived, pushed past Matt and was leaning right over Turner, breathing hard, trying to see. "Jess? Jess, can you hear me?"
There was no reply. Turner left Becker with the torch, and pulled Matt to one side.
"Difficult to tell how she's doing, she's half-hidden," he said, then added in a whisper: "I think she's breathing, impossible to tell for sure at that distance, in the dark."
"We'll get her out," Matt promised.
"We'll need to hurry. It's a swimming pool. That water's trickling into it. If we can't close the anomaly and can't get her out..."
Matt got the picture. He looked across at Becker, who was trying to widen the hole. His men were helping but it was a slow process and the water was still coming.
"Tell the divers to get out of the pool, we'll need every bit of oxygen we've got. Call back to the ARC for more, just in case. I'll try to get hold of Connor, see if he can talk us through what's gone wrong with the prototype. We need to get that anomaly closed."
Turner ran off. Matt tried Connor's number but just got an automated reply. He left a message, then tried Abby's. Neither of them were answering, which wasn't entirely surprising given that they were on honeymoon. Telling the field coordinator to track them down, starting with their hotel reception, he went back to the collapsed building.
Becker was flat on his stomach, leaning into the hole with a torch. He'd been fitted with a safety harness that was secured to a tree and was almost hanging in mid-air, two of his men supporting him. Becker gestured at them to pull him back up, and suddenly Matt found himself face to face with a very angry head of security.
"What the fuck happened? You were supposed to be looking after her! This isn't even anywhere near the anomaly site!"
"She went after a cat. If you want to yell at me, fine, but it's not going to help get her out of there!"
Becker glared at him, and after a brief moment when Matt thought he was going to get punched, made a visible effort to calm down. "I'm going down there."
It wasn't safe, but there was no point in telling Becker that. Besides, from a coldly practical point of view they had to know whether they were wasting their time. "I thought you would be."
Behind them, the truck had arrived, bringing Emily. Matt wasn't certain that was going to help matters, but he was saved from any further discussion by his phone. The caller ID told him it was the ARC, and he answered it swiftly, hoping that they'd located Connor.
They hadn't found Connor. It was Lester. And he was furious.
Part 2 here
Author: Clea2011
Word Count: 7949 total (3726 this part)
Characters: Becker/Jess
Rating: 12
Spoilers: No
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, I'm just writing for fun and non-profit.
A/N: This fills the
trope_bingo square '24 hours to live', that's 22/25 done.
Happy birthday (only a day late!) to deinonychus_1! Thanks to celeste9 for the quick beta!
D1 asked for Becker/Jess, chose the '24 hours to live' trope bingo square (there were a lot to choose from back then!) with the prompt, "You are not going to die on my watch." No particular preference which one is dying and which one is trying to save them.
(It's on A03 here.)
{C}
Never Let Me Down Again
{C}{C}
Matt Anderson had lived a thrilling life. It wasn't a good kind of thrilling, and not one that he'd recommend to anyone else. But still, it was thrilling. And it had been for the most part quite noisy, and that noise had usually been accompanied by pain and fear. As a young man he'd learned to appreciate when things were quiet.
This wasn't one of those times.
Becker was sitting in the front of the truck, driving. Becker always had to drive, they'd given up trying to take a turn and just let him get on with it because that was one of the things Becker thought he did better than anyone else. Matt wasn't entirely sure that Becker was justified in that belief, and was quite sure the soldier was going to get them all killed one of these days with his erratic, some might say dangerous driving. Usually Becker shared an occasional opinion about the other road users and how they should stick to the mobility scooters they really would be better off driving, but today he was silent. Silent, and sulking.
The cause of his sulk was sitting in the back seat next to Emily, looking equally cross and balancing a laptop on her knee. Jess Parker wasn't given to silence or sulking, but she was given to getting annoyed if pushed far enough, and to taking some time to consider what she was going to say before she launched into a rant. Matt turned back to speak to Emily, saw Jess simmering quietly, and thought better of it. No need to remind her what the human voice sounded like in case she decided to exercise her own.
The trouble was, Abby and Connor were off on honeymoon. That was perhaps not the trouble in itself, but it left them without any expert technical support in the field. Again, that wasn't necessarily a problem either, because things could be done remotely. The trouble was that there was an anomaly open in a deep valley. And that valley had once been underwater, millennia ago, and was now starting to fill up again.
Normally they could have just closed the anomaly without any difficulty and that would have stopped the flooding. But this valley housed a university with a particular enthusiasm for sports, which meant it had an Olympic-sized swimming pool and of course, of course, the stupid anomaly had to open up in the deep end in middle of the night, so that nobody noticed the water flooding through until the drains had been blocked by whatever debris and flora had come through and all the sports halls were several feet deep in water.
Connor had been developing a version of the anomaly closing device which could be used on land but would work from a distance on an underwater anomaly. The distance was currently only about twenty metres, but he was hoping it could eventually be used on ones out at sea, at least from the relative safety of a boat. However, it was still a prototype and the only person he'd discussed it with in detail (because it was all about programming and therefore very boring to anyone who wasn't a fellow geek) was Jess. And so Jess was coming with them, out in the field.
Becker was furious.
At first the numerous reasons he'd come out with as to why Jess shouldn't come with them had been amusing. Matt admitted he'd quite enjoyed baiting Becker.
"She's a civilian."
"Strictly, no, she's an ARC employee so doesn't have civilian status any more."
"She doesn't have any field experience."
"Didn't you say she diffused a bomb while you were both out keeping watch on Ethan... Actually, remind me again what it was you were doing to make you both fall asleep in the truck?"
"She needs to coordinate things from the Hub."
"Jess has deputies. You just don't seem to be around the Hub very much when they're on duty."
Matt had been particularly pleased with the look on Becker's face after those last two replies. And then, just to make it that little bit more perfect, Becker had got so flustered and cross that he'd spluttered out in front of Emily and Jess:
"She's a... a girl!"
His immediate retraction and insistence that he hadn't meant that no female should be out in the field, just ones like Jess, really hadn't helped matters. Jess was livid and Emily wasn't best pleased. When the female members of his security team heard about it they weren't impressed either, even when he pointed out that he'd been the one to employ them. Becker was just fortunate that Abby hadn't been there to hear him.
In the end Lester had come out of his office to find out what all the noise was. It took him less than a minute to size up the situation, hear as much as he needed to of both sides, tell Jess that of course she could go and then head back to his office grumbling about children and leaving Becker standing open-mouthed in his wake.
Matt loved Lester for sorting that out, just a little bit.
He didn't love the sulking or the silence in the car though. Maybe he'd goaded Becker just a little bit too much. But really, the soldier was the slowest mover Matt had ever seen in his life. If he'd lived in Matt's future world, he'd never have managed to get laid, ever. It hadn't quite been a case of dragging your partner back to the cave by the hair, but it wasn't far off.
Matt wondered what Emily would do if he tried that. Kill him, probably. Or at the very least she'd ensure he didn’t feel like dragging anyone back to his cave for a long, long time. He smirked.
Becker glared at him, obviously thinking Matt was laughing at him.
Matt went back to staring out of the window. It was safer.
---
Evacuating the university hadn't been easy. Becker had forgotten just how very difficult academics could be.
Students were easy enough, with most of them he could just appear with his team, look menacing, and they were gone. A few decided black-clad soldiers were sexy and stood around getting in the way which was annoying, and ogling them which was embarrassing, but for the most part they were easy to remove.
The academics were a completely different matter. It was like having Nick Cutter clones, dozens of them, all thinking he was being the worst kind of nuisance by trying to save their lives and drag them from their research.
Becker was tempted to leave them where they were and let them get on with it. But then there would be lots of paperwork if something happened to them, and anyway any delay meant that he couldn't declare the area clear and go and do what he wanted to do which was to stand over Jess whilst she closed the anomaly and make sure nothing came through and ate her. Or that she didn't slip into the pool. Or that the device didn't hit the water and electrocute her. Or that she didn't decide to test Connor's assertion that the prototype was waterproof by holding it under the water. Or that the thing didn't backfire in some way and suck her through the anomaly. Or... Well, anything could happen.
"Move!" he bellowed at a middle-aged gentleman in a cardigan and moccasins who was still relaxing in an armchair in his office, intent on an ancient-looking book.
The man looked startled, then indignant, then looked at Becker's thunderous expression and huge gun and must have decided to do as he was asked because he picked up his book and left without a word.
He wasn't the last, and it took nearly half an hour before Becker was finally confident that the buildings were fully evacuated. Emily, he supposed, was having a far easier time of it at the cattery up the road. Animals, even cats, were a lot simpler to deal with than crotchety old fools who thought they knew better.
"The building's clear," he told Matt through his headset. "Where are you?"
There was no immediate reply. The answer was supposed to be that they were either at the anomaly or safely back with the truck.
"Matt?"
"There's a problem..." Matt sounded a little out of breath, as if he had been running.
"Is Jess okay?"
Again, no immediate response. Becker broke into a run, heading for the anomaly site.
He knew she shouldn't have come on the mission.
___
Connor's new device had closed the underwater anomaly almost immediately. Jess had almost been disappointed, hoping for a more exciting venture out into the field. She had sat back, taken a few pictures and recorded some notes for Connor, who was bound to want to know all about it when he returned. Then she just watched the divers chasing round after the many small fish that had got through. Putting them back without more coming through was going to be a challenge, although that didn't seem to be something that would be attempted very soon. Then work could start on unblocking the drains.
Matt was pleased anyway. She supposed that if something had gone wrong he would have to listen to Becker harping on and on about it. Perhaps boring was good, though she would have liked something to go a little bit wrong just so that she could prove to Becker that she could cope with it. Matt patted her on the back, rather patronisingly she thought, and went to the doorway to make a phone call because the reception wasn't too good inside.
Becker and Emily were still off evacuating the campus and cattery. Jess wondered if anyone would mind if she went off to find Emily? She loved cats, most animals really as long as they weren't trying to kill or eat her, and the cattery sounded quite appealing.
And that was when, right on cue, the cat appeared.
It was young, not more than a kitten really, an adorably fluffy tabby who was pressing its nose to the window, scrabbling briefly at the glass.
"Oh, he's so cute! Matt, look!"
Matt looked, but didn't seem impressed. "Emily said one of the cats escaped," he told her, then went back to his phone call, apparently not bothered about a mere cat.
But it was somebody's beloved pet, Jess realised. She called to Matt that she was going out to see if she could catch it and he just nodded disinterestedly. From the snatches of conversation she gathered that Lester was having problems with the Dean, who either didn't appreciate having the university evacuated or didn't like the way Matt had done it, or both. She was glad she wasn't having to field the calls.
Outside, the kitten was nowhere to be seen. She called to it, but apparently it didn't answer to "Here kitty, kitty," because that only worked in films. Jess walked across the grass, noting that they didn't keep the grounds as tidy there as most of the rest of the campus had been. No wonder the cat was drawn to the area. It was probably teeming with mice.
Matt had followed her out, still talking on the phone. She sighed, knowing he didn't really trust her not to get eaten by a rogue dinosaur or something any more than Becker did. The team leader was leaning on the railing outside the door, looking progressively more dour as the conversation went on.
The kitten suddenly leapt up, trying to catch a yellow butterfly in its small paws. It missed, leapt again, and then went scampering off through the grass, heading towards a run-down building that looked as if it were a large, disused shed. Jess hurried after it. She'd had a pet cat as a child, not dissimilar to this one, and knew how playful the young ones could be.
One of the windows was missing most of its glass. The cat leapt up, landed on the sill, nosed inquisitively at the empty frame for a moment, then went inside. Jess wasn't even going to try to follow it through the window, but the door didn't look as if it were locked. When she tried it, the door just collapsed inwards with a loud crash and a cloud of dust.
Jess looked back for Matt, but he had vanished. The building didn't look particularly safe, and she wondered if she should wait for help. But then she heard a pathetic little mewl, then another one, and the sound wrenched at her. She peered through the broken window and could see the creature sitting up on a beam, looking at the floor but apparently unable to get down. It wouldn't take a moment to go in and help it. It wasn't as if the building was going to collapse around her, she reasoned, there would be signs up if it was that dangerous.
Stepping over a large board that from its state had obviously been lying in the grass for a long time, she went back to the open doorway, glanced back to see if Matt had reappeared yet, then made up her mind and went inside.
The place smelled damp and rotten, and she had to pick her way carefully into the room where the kitten had become trapped. There was a broken timber on the floor, which she nearly put her foot through. When the kitten saw her, it mewled again and walked farther down the beam, then sat there crying pathetically.
Jess carefully tiptoed over to it, not wanting to scare it. And then suddenly the hugest rat she had ever seen came running across the floor towards her, followed by another one. Jess gave a yell and jumped back instinctively, slipping on the floor and losing her balance. She fell against the wall, and then the floor gave way and the world seemed to tip upside down. The last thing she thought was that she was falling.
---
Matt had only gone back inside for a few moments, called by one of the security team. He'd left Jess chasing after some stupid cat. He didn't understand the attraction of cats. They'd been a rare treat for dinner, if anyone had caught one in his time. Now Emily was talking about getting one as a pet, and he had a horrible feeling that if the one Jess was chasing turned out to be a stray then he was somehow going to end up sharing his flat with it, because the word 'cute' had been used, and Jess and Emily were as thick as thieves, and none of it boded well.
"Sir, the anomaly reopened."
No, that didn't bode well either. The water was rising again, much more rapidly this time. He was ankle-deep in water in the already-flooded changing rooms; they hadn't even had a chance to pump the water out from the previous flooding. He sighed. Connor's prototype was obviously not perfected yet.
"I'll get Jess," he told the man. "Keep an eye on it, make sure nothing comes through."
Hoping Jess wasn't carrying a damp, cute feline, he made his way back outside. The grass, which had at least started to drain a little on its own, was already turning swampy, squelching under his feet.
"Jess!"
His voice was drowned out by what sounded almost like an explosion, followed by a lot of banging and crashing. Matt ran in the direction of the noise, not liking the fact that it was the same direction he'd last seen Jess heading in, and liking it even less when he rounded the corner of the sports hall and saw a derelict building still in the process of collapsing in on itself.
A small tabby cat jumped nimbly out of the wreckage, and sped off.
Calling for backup, Matt raced to the building, or what was left of it. The ground was even more soggy there. Parts of the structure were still standing, but they looked as if they might give way at any moment.
"Jess? Jess!"
There was no reply, and the collapsed building creaked and swayed ominously.
Behind him he could hear footsteps splashing through the swampy grass as members of the security squad arrived. He could also hear Becker in his earpiece spouting something about the campus being clear. Matt ignored him for a few moments because he really didn't have time for the way Becker was going to react to this.
"Jess might be caught under this," he explained to the men. "We need to check, and that means lifting all this up." He didn't need to say what they might find under there, he could see from their faces that they all knew. But they were professionals and if there was any chance, they had to try.
There was a board in the grass under his feet. When he kicked it over he saw a sign warning people that the building was unsafe, condemned. From where it was lying, it didn't look as if it had fallen off in the collapse but had been there for some time, totally failing in its purpose.
"Matt?" Becker was sounding concerned now.
"There's a problem," Matt told him, but before he could elaborate Becker immediately demanded to know if Jess was okay and Matt hesitated a moment too long before answering.
"Becker's on his way," he told the men. They'd started examining the structure, trying to work out the safest way to lift it without bringing anything else down.
"That might not be a good idea," one of the men, Turner, told him. "This can't be rushed, and he won't be patient."
"Too late," Matt replied.
One of the men hurried off to get a truck in the hope they could use it to pull off the heavier debris. At worst, at least it was going to be full of tools, at best they could secure the remaining wall with it. The others were carefully lifting off smaller pieces of debris, and Matt moved in to help.
The water wasn't helping matters. It was seeping into the half-demolished building and presumably making it even less stable.
"Sir." That was Taylor again. "The water seems to be draining to somewhere under the building."
And it did. It wasn't pooling on the floor like they would have expected, but trickling through.
"Bugger, look at the size of that thing!" One of the other men cursed as a rat ran out of the debris and away into the grass.
"It climbed up from under the floor," Matt pointed out. There were large holes visible in the floorboards. More appeared as the men slowly and carefully cleared the area, and it rapidly became apparent that not only was a lot of the floor missing, but that there appeared to be a massive hole underneath .
Turner leaned forward, shining a torch into the gap. "That's not foundations. It looks... God, some idiot's decided to build this over the top of an old swimming pool! Doesn't look as if they even filled it in, just boarded it all over!"
Lester was going to be having words with the university about health and safety, Matt thought. But he wouldn't worry about that now, or about telling Lester that the only staff member he actually seemed to like might be crushed to death.
"I think I can see her."
"Where is she?" Becker had arrived, pushed past Matt and was leaning right over Turner, breathing hard, trying to see. "Jess? Jess, can you hear me?"
There was no reply. Turner left Becker with the torch, and pulled Matt to one side.
"Difficult to tell how she's doing, she's half-hidden," he said, then added in a whisper: "I think she's breathing, impossible to tell for sure at that distance, in the dark."
"We'll get her out," Matt promised.
"We'll need to hurry. It's a swimming pool. That water's trickling into it. If we can't close the anomaly and can't get her out..."
Matt got the picture. He looked across at Becker, who was trying to widen the hole. His men were helping but it was a slow process and the water was still coming.
"Tell the divers to get out of the pool, we'll need every bit of oxygen we've got. Call back to the ARC for more, just in case. I'll try to get hold of Connor, see if he can talk us through what's gone wrong with the prototype. We need to get that anomaly closed."
Turner ran off. Matt tried Connor's number but just got an automated reply. He left a message, then tried Abby's. Neither of them were answering, which wasn't entirely surprising given that they were on honeymoon. Telling the field coordinator to track them down, starting with their hotel reception, he went back to the collapsed building.
Becker was flat on his stomach, leaning into the hole with a torch. He'd been fitted with a safety harness that was secured to a tree and was almost hanging in mid-air, two of his men supporting him. Becker gestured at them to pull him back up, and suddenly Matt found himself face to face with a very angry head of security.
"What the fuck happened? You were supposed to be looking after her! This isn't even anywhere near the anomaly site!"
"She went after a cat. If you want to yell at me, fine, but it's not going to help get her out of there!"
Becker glared at him, and after a brief moment when Matt thought he was going to get punched, made a visible effort to calm down. "I'm going down there."
It wasn't safe, but there was no point in telling Becker that. Besides, from a coldly practical point of view they had to know whether they were wasting their time. "I thought you would be."
Behind them, the truck had arrived, bringing Emily. Matt wasn't certain that was going to help matters, but he was saved from any further discussion by his phone. The caller ID told him it was the ARC, and he answered it swiftly, hoping that they'd located Connor.
They hadn't found Connor. It was Lester. And he was furious.
Part 2 here