[Fic] Of Shoes and Ships And Sealing Wax... (1/2)
Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax. And Cabbages. And Kings. (Also, Dinosaurs)
Alice / Primeval
Syfy’s Alice AU.
mizzy2k for aiw_big_bang
Artist username: yappichick
Link to master post for fic: http://mizzy2k.livejournal.com/300243.html
Fandom(s): Syfy's Alice/Primeval
Genre: Adventure Romance
Pairing(s): Alice/Hatter; Abby/Connor (one-sided).
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Possible slight torture trigger, nothing more than is in Syfy's Alice. If you're scared of dinosaurs... oops.
Additional note: No dinosaurs were harmed in the production of this fic.
Summary: AU. Alice and Hatter teamed up to fight the Suits, but an accident in the ensuing battle left Hatter in our world with the Stone of Wonderland, and Alice trapped in Wonderland. Hatter finds these strange anomalies in our world which at the moment lets dinosaurs through from the past, and he realises he can use these anomalies to try and get back to Wonderland. All he has to do is go undercover, pretend to be someone else, and fight a ton of prehistoric dinosaurs. It's all for the love of a pretty girl he once met in a wet dress, but Hatter figures... he once fought a Jabberwocky. How hard could dinosaurs be?
Prologue
Once upon a time, for the sake of a very pretty girl in a very wet dress, Hatter learned not only to fight a Jabberwocky; he also learned to listen all the way down to the very truth of himself.
Alice taught him that.
Before her, his life had been as grey as the buildings that stretched down and down into the fog at the bottom of Wonderland. He hadn’t known whether he wanted to a Black Hat like the Clubs and the Suits, or a White Hat like Caterpillar was rumoured to be. Dodo insinuated he should have a grey hat, but Hatter had always lived in denial. Besides, he looked better in Tan.
He hadn’t known whether he wanted to live the high life or the low life, to fit in with the Hearts or to fight for the Resistance. Hatter fitted nowhere. He tried for a while to sit at the table his great-great-and-then-some-Grand Father sat at, where he had apparently used to - in his drunken moments - espouse about The Alice, The Great Alice. Then again, his Great etc. Grandfather had once kept a Dormouse in a teapot, so clearly lunacy was just ingrained in the family tree.
That’s what Hatter thought when he started running around with Alice. First he thought he was mad, and then he thought he was loopy, and then he thought he’d gone round the bend. He knew it rather than thought it in the end when he started to listen to Alice. He knew his madness was irredeemable when he not only listened to her, he believed. He knew he didn’t even want it to be redeemable when he started to talk like her. It helped that her eyes lit up when he did talk in the same impassioned tones, truth making his words come to life.
It felt amazing to have her by his side in the casino as they talked and talked and the oysters came back to life. Hatter finally had a purpose in life. He had someone to share his life with. When Alice kissed him in the casino, under those too bright lights, while the Oysters helped fight off the Suits, Hatter knew it then and there: he was in love with Alice. Just Alice. Alice Hamilton. Not the Alice; his Alice. He was in love with her and he would go to the ends of Wonderland for her. He would die for her.
That night they gave themselves to each other. It should have been uncomfortable, out in the bracken and branches, as they hid from the Suits trampling through the undergrowth and planned their escape through the Mirror. Neither of them felt it. Hatter pulled her close and told her I love you; she said it back. That night, Wonderland lived up to its name.
In the morning Hatter ignored the surface voice in his brain, the superficial one, that said to wrap up this woman that he loved in blankets and run and keep running until they found somewhere to be together forever, but Alice had completely and irrevocably changed him. His deeper voice, his singing heart, told him they needed to complete their plan, and that was the voice he listened to.
With Alice by his side, they stormed the building where the Mirror was held. The guards were taken by surprise. A couple of Oysters fell and died in the melee; Alice didn’t cry, she just got pissed. Apparently in her world, Alice was something called a Judo Sensei. Hatter could fight, he could fight really well; Alice could beat him any breath of the day.
The fight went well, they were winning. Except that’s when Mad March came in and ripped the ring out of the device. The Mirror only had so long to function before it sputtered out. Alice kept fighting; Hatter kept scooping up the Oysters and bodily flinging them through. He ended up fighting Mad March, and he was losing, but his fingers grasped around the Stone of Wonderland, and he stumbled back, and Alice caught him. Her eyes were wild and so very, very beautiful.
Hatter turned slightly and saw the Mirror sputtering. He turned back to Alice, ready to push the ring into her hands, ready to pull her through with him, and he had time for none of it - Mad March grabbed hold of Alice and not him. Alice struggled, got half free, and instead of turning around and getting the rest of her free, she did something else.
She kicked Hatter. Hard. So hard he tumbled with the last of the Oysters right through the Mirror and into Alice’s world.
When he finally regained consciousness, on the wet damp pavement of New York City, in a puddle of his own blood, the Mirror was shattered, and would not open again. He was trapped on this side, and Alice was stuck in Wonderland without the ring.
Of course his plan was simple at first: find a mirror, open the mirror to Wonderland, get Alice, smash the ring, live happily ever after in whichever world she chose. The plan by necessity became more longwinded the longer he searched. He took the name David Hatter for a while. The wheeling and dealing that he had learned in his Tea Rooms worked surprisingly well in Alice’s world. He got money, he changed aliases a dozen times, he learned about Alice’s world, he sent money anonymously to her frantic mother, nothing helped. No one could help him find Wonderland.
Then by chance he found something. A woman named Helen Cutter disappeared 7 years ago, and a conspiracy theorist linked it to some sort of anomaly. Hatter spent a long time examining the anomaly thing. It was a random burst of energy, boosting some sort of radio signal and chronotemporal displacement energy and a weird type of radiation no one on Earth had ever seen.
But Hatter had seen it, in Wonderland. When the ring was activated to open the mirror.
Hatter spent 7 months trying to detect the anomalies and come up with some way to use them to get back to Wonderland. He failed. He had money, but he didn’t have the proper knowledge or the proper resources. It would take decades, and Alice and he didn’t have decades.
So his plan, his simple plan for a Happy Ever After, became a little more complicated.
He couldn’t gather the resources, but the British Government - where the anomalies seemed most to surface - could.
So that plan was this:
a) convince the government they needed a crack team of specialists designed to investigate the anomalies and
b) convince them to let him on that team.
Hatter’s best chance was to assume a new identity; he picked a bumbling nerd, and called himself Connor Temple. He conned a grieving parent to give him a database of prehistoric life her son had spent his whole life since he was 14 working on. He practised being clumsy and socially inept because people accepted that kind of persona more easily; the database and the fighting skills he would hide would have to be enough to convince them he was needed on the team.
He would have to pretend to be Connor Temple 24/7. It didn’t bother Hatter; being Hatter just felt painful for most of the time anyway, because he missed Alice more than he could bear. He’d only known her for four days but chocolate and cream cake were useless on true love.
So his new plan ended up being pretty simple too.
Except he didn’t exactly count on the dinosaurs, but once upon a time for the love of a pretty girl in a very wet dress, he fought a Jabberwocky. Dinosaurs weren't half as scary after that. Of course, he couldn’t tell anyone that, because Connor Temple was a cowardly cat most of the time and couldn’t even say boo to a goose.
It was difficult, but it was for Alice, it was all for Alice, and if Nick Cutter could find his wife after 8 years, it wasn’t impossible for Hatter. And even if it was, well, believing 6 impossible things for Breakfast was his Wonderland hobby. He’d had practice. He would believe and believe and believe until he had her back.
Whatever he had to do to get her back.
And if that meant pretending to be an inept dork of a geek, well, that’s what Hatter would do.
---
Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax. And Cabbages. And Kings. (Also, Dinosaurs)
---
Abby used to have a borderline relationship with insomnia before starting work with Nick Cutter and his team.
She tried all the usual insomnia cures. Whale song. Long baths. Learning to meditate. Reciting all the scientific names for all the reptiles she had ever seen.
Nothing worked so well, apparently, as running from various dinosaurs and dangerous prehistoric creatures for her life.
Failing that, there was just something calming about hanging out with her team. Either sitting back and listening to Nick's offbeat version of typing on a computer (like a woodpecker trying to tap against a tree that kept moving in the dark), or exchanging war stories of university with Stephen, or messing around in the lab as Connor tinkered with yet another of his odd projects.
Abby just felt settled with them, with the whole thing, which was ridiculous. She hadn't realised something was missing from her life to start with, and the fact that the missing item was nearly being eaten by a velociraptor every other week, well. It did sometimes rather boggle the mind.
This week, though, Connor had been a bit more distracted than usual. Abby found herself hanging out more by herself in the cafeteria than she would have liked, because Nick had just come back from a week of conferences with Julia, with a face full of thunder, even though Julia seemed unchanged, and Stephen was going through a huge rugby phase and while Abby normally liked seeing men get sweaty and dirty on a field, she had a lot of reports to write, and she really liked to write them with company around.
The cafeteria wasn't exactly company but at least it had noise - the clatter of plates, the buzz of the lighting, the faint dull conversation as employees chatted politely over the soggy tunafish sandwiches and traffic light jelly which seemed to be the only two edible items of food (and that was stretching the definition of the word edible) that the cafeteria served.
The idea of going into the cafeteria on her own for the seventh day running cut severely into her sanity levels; it was an easy decision to risk a brain full of science babble from Connor to avoid the dire fate of the cafeteria ladies giving her those sad, sympathetic looks over their thick eyeliner and claggy mascara. (Abby had idly wondered about putting in a request to Lester for the maintenance female staff to have mandatory make up lessons, but as Lester hummed and hawed over approving toilet rolls for the staff toilets, the very concept might give him an aneurysm. Actually, this was probably a plan Abby shook take a second look at it, because apparently it had hidden promise.)
As Abby expected, Connor had his dark head bent over one of his odd pieces of machinery when she entered the lab. She liked the moments like this, when she was able to watch him putter around whatever it was he was building, fixing odds and ends and humming contented odd little songs under his breath that she had never heard before. Then he would inevitably notice her, and sort of tense up. Abby had tried to call him on it once; he told her only he hated being watched, it made him nervous. She guessed it made sense.
Still, he had to stop for lunch, despite his brain not being clued into that necessary part of reality, and well, Abby was just being a mate by interrupting his work and making him eat lunch with her. It wasn't entirely selfish.
It wasn't 100% selfless, but Connor wouldn't appreciate passing out on his experiment either.
"Connor? Hey, it's lunch time."
Connor didn't turn around. Abby frowned, cleared her throat, and tried again. "Connor?"
Sometimes he didn't respond to his own name. Abby once had the flight of fancy that it wasn't his real name, because there were times she called to him and he didn't even flinch or tense up like people did when they heard their name. But she'd been around him for long enough to notice that he didn't pay much attention to anything when he was in his own little world.
"Aha!" Connor moved in a blur, grabbing for a screwdriver and doing something to the whatever it was on his desk, pressing a button, putting his safety glasses on which made him look especially dorky and watching his machine like it was about to turn into gold, or something.
It didn't. It made a whirring sound and started producing smoke.
"Ah," Connor said, eventually. "That wasn't meant to do that."
"It's not a smoke machine?"
Connor turned, startling at the sight of her leaning against one of the lab desks. He was so in his own little land most of the time. Scientists were supposed to be observant, but then, no one on the team was a proper scientist.
"I came to distract you, to get some lunch," Abby said, stepping forward, her best wheedling expression on her face. She knotted her fingers together, stretching them forwards, turning one foot beneath her, aiming for casual and coming across as way too desperate. Connor looked at his smoking machine. "You need it to cool down before you fix it. And there's soggy tuna sandwich and traffic light jelly in the cafeteria."
Connor looked at her, his eyebrows raised comically, and Abby fought down the flush she wanted to make whenever he focussed his attention on her. He was cute. It was just a pity he was so distracted all the time by his job, but maybe that's what Abby liked best about him. That he could go off in his own world. Too many of the blokes she dated needed her constant attention, it was irritating.
"Soggy tuna sandwiches and traffic light jelly, how could I refuse." Connor slid his safety glasses off and extended his arm to hers, gallantly. Abby took his arm, and grinned. "Lead the way, milady."
#
Connor prattled his way through the whole miserable lunch, and also through the chips which they went for after the sandwiches and jelly, because really, that hadn't been food. It was nice walking down the street, eating the fish out of paper and pointing out all the variety of people that lived in London. Connor was never familiar with London geography, and Abby ribbed him mercilessly for being a country bumpkin, which just made Connor smile, shy and sweet, which was probably why Abby did what she did.
It wasn't much of a move, but it was one which had been successful for her in the past. Connor had smeared his chips with ketchup, because chips were never chips unless they had ketchup, and predictably he had ended up with most of it on his face. Abby leaned in and wiped it off with her fingers, and Connor didn't even react to her touch.
Like it was completely normal. Like she wasn't flirting, even though she was trying her best. Connor was either clueless, or just not interested, and both options stung a little. She ended up wandering back into headquarters with him, a little quiet, and she didn't notice James Lester was in reception until he was heading towards them.
"Ah," Lester said, hurrying over from the main desk, "I was looking for you, uh, Connor."
Abby folded her arms, moving in close to Connor, because Lester could remember all of their names - especially when he was chewing them out - but he always stuttered over Connor's. It worried Abby, and she knew it worried Nick too. If Lester didn't rate Connor enough to even properly remember his name, it meant if their program got their funding cut, Connor was in danger. Their contracts were carefully worded so any of Connor's work - including the huge prehistoric database that Connor basically paid his way onto the team with - would belong to them.
Abby didn't want to lose Connor from the team. He was an amazing asset, and an amazing friend. Even if Abby was probably going to have to run into him with the clue bus to get him to notice she was flirting with him.
"I wanted to talk to you about that mirror project," Lester said, his eyes flicking nervously from his hands to Connor's face. "I pushed the paperwork through and the equipment's in the main room. I know privacy is of course optimal in this case, but the size of the requisitions, they, uh-"
"It's fine," Connor said, balancing on his feet, barely able to contain obvious excitement. "As long as it's there, I am fine. Giddy, even. Dandy."
Lester looked a little flustered. "Oh. Um. Grand, then. Bring me a report whenever."
"Absolutely." Connor grinned at Lester, then turned around and picked Abby up bodily, twirling her around before dropping her back on the ground. Abby couldn't help the squeal, but she could manage a death glare at him, which lacked coherency because she hadn't known Connor was that strong. "Let's go!"
Abby stared wordlessly at him, his hands on her elbows as he shook her, and she nodded, caught up in his infectious happiness. "All right."
The requisition turned out to be a mirror. A really big mirror. And some larger equipment, of the kind Connor had been working on in his lab. Several of the other team members were working in the main room who wouldn’t normally be there, so they were curious too, and Abby could see why. It was odd, and for Lester to be approving such an odd thing that Abby doesn't remember being mentioned in the team meetings...
Connor headed for his anomaly detection screen first, tapping something on the screen, a line of graphs that Abby would never understand and she thought she had a head for science. But he got excited at something on the screen, jabbing at something and talking nineteen words to the dozen to Janice, one of the lab techs, and they immediately started toward the equipment, unpacking things.
Abby hung around at the back, at a loss. She supposed she should go and work on her reports, but she was just as curious as the others. She ended up pulling up a chair and not even pretending to work. Then Connor's anomaly detection screen started beeping, which set off a series of light inside the headquarters, and Abby leapt onto her feet because that meant one thing - an anomaly. An anomaly here.
"We're not ready yet," Connor said, and stayed working on the equipment, hefting another piece out a crate with the grimmest look on his face she had ever seen on anyone, let alone Connor, so on Connor's face it was like Abby was getting a glimpse of another person. A dangerous person. Someone she could quite imagine going to war. Abby shook that thought away, unaware where it came from, and the next time she saw Connor's face, reflected in the giant mirror, he looked hopeful, which was so much more Connor - but no less confusing.
"Connor." Stephen came into the room then, Nick a few metres behind him, "The anomaly's scheduled for the middle of the room, you need to let the professionals in for this. We need you behind the defence line to help us identify whatever comes through."
"No time," Connor said, pushing something into place, and the machinery came to life, spluttering into a spectrum of colours, tiny lights all over it. Abby tilted her head, even as Nick came forward to guide her behind the line of guys with guns. The machinery looked like some sort of giant arch over the large mirror, and it formed some sort of carriage around the mirror, like the mirror could be moved. Which was exactly what Connor did, after punching some buttons. He shifted the mirror round in an angle, and returned to the console of his giant new device, his face strained and anxious.
"Connor," Nick barked out, as the telltale light of the anomaly sputtered into life, and the alarms in the headquarters automatically started blaring - but there was no need. The anomaly sort of spasmed, and spread out, over the mirror, widening and going slightly dull. Abby couldn't help but gasp at the effect, it was like the mirror was trapping the anomaly, holding it into itself and clouding their stunned reflections. It was like looking at a pool of water in the morning, sunlight bouncing off it so hard you could hardly see the water below, but this was vertical, not horizontal, and it was more beautiful than Abby could describe.
"Oh, my god," Abby said, "I don't even care what this is."
"It seems to be neutralizing the anomaly, centralizing it," Nick said, and Abby didn't think he even realised he was speaking out loud. "This could revolutionise everything, if we can stop the anomalies from fully opening. This machinery must have cost millions."
"Lester approved it," Abby said.
Nick actually turned to her at that. "Lester did?"
"I had to." James Lester's voice was unmistakable. He joined them, looking at the sight contemplatively, at Connor furiously looking between the mirror and his console as he jabbing furiously at the buttons, making some changes. His face was getting more and more strained, and Abby wanted to help, but she had no idea where to start. "We got the nod from up on high."
"David approved it, you mean." Stephen joined their small line, squinting at the shifting light of the trapped, dancing anomaly. "Which is why Connor's allowed to put everyone's life at risk for a madcap, untested experiment while we're left completely in the dark."
"David?" Abby questioned. She had heard the name maybe once before, like a rumour or a whisper, but nothing else.
"That's as much as I've heard," Nick said. "The government's not fully funding this. There's a private investor who puts most of the money into this project. So I guess a hoop like this is a small enough one in order to help people."
"I don't like it when rich people think they can swoop in and sabotage anything, just by throwing money at it," Stephen muttered. "Like we can't be trusted, or there's something they're hiding."
"Look," Abby said, not because she wasn't interested in the conversation - it was interesting to learn more about where their funding did come from, especially with all the paper trails the government had to deal with when funding super secret projects - but because something was even more interesting.
Specifically, Connor shrieking "Ha!" and punching even more ferociously at the console of his giant mirror machine, and, even more specifically, the mirror.
It was changing. The anomaly was still spilling in it, almost as if trapped somewhere between the surface of the glass and the reflection, but in the centre, there was a darkness, and the darkness was growing. Abby found herself stepping forward instinctively; the line of security guards with guns pushed her back, which startled Abby into looking at them angrily for a second. When she looked up, there was... part of a structure of some kind. Like they were looking inside another building. It was fuzzy, and like they were looking through murky water, but Abby could see a column, and a wall of bricks, and she could barely breathe.
Especially when something in the darkness moved, and Abby thought, oh, here comes the dinosaur, but it wasn't.
It was a woman. Abby couldn't clearly see her face, but it was definitely a woman - waist-length brown hair, blue dress, purple tights. The woman ran forward, toward them, but stopped as if hitting glass, and her face was still out of focus, but the woman's fists were banging against the mirror from the other side, and there was a darkness on the woman's face, like she was shouting, and Connor was furiously typing at the machine, staring at the mirror as he did, an earnest, terrified look on his face, and he was saying something, under his breath, that Abby could barely make out. "Come on," she eventually made out, "come on, come on, come on-"
Abby thought the woman's face was about to become clear, and the anomaly flared around the edges of the woman, like twenty fireworks going off around the reflection of the woman at once, and then the mirror shattered and the anomaly sucked in the shards of it as it collapsed into itself.
Abby's ears were ringing. She found herself staring at the spot where the mirror had been. She could see through to the offices behind again, and there were several large pieces of mirror on the ground, but they were back to being regular, reflective mirror shards, and they were the only evidence that the stupidly large mirror had been there.
And Connor was stood staring at the gap where the mirror had been, tears on his face.
At first Abby thought he was hurt, and summoned the paramedics to the main room before realising he wasn't physically hurt. He was just upset, and Abby didn’t blame him one bit. This was epic. This was game changing. Somehow, somewhere in time, there was a woman. Trapped in prehistoric time. Like Helen, except maybe this one had wandered through an anomaly and was stuck. With no idea how to get home.
Abby wondered how the woman had seen them, if she had seen them staring at her, wide mouthed and a combination of curious (the scientists), wary (the security guards), angry (Stephen) or concerned for Connor (Nick and Abby.) Her heart leapt for this woman, and Connor was softer than her. Of course he would be tearing himself up over this.
He was.
"Stupid," Connor said, "so, so stupid. I'd calibrated it all wrong. I could have, she could have-" He looked up as Abby picked her way over the few remaining mirror pieces to see if he was okay. His face was tear-stained and he looked devastated, but also... a little like Halloween when he went Trick or Treating and ate too much sugar all in one go.
Hyper and on edge and completely somewhere else in his mind.
#
"Okay, so you know how I said that last week's mirror experiment was the creepiest thing in the world after being chased by giant carnivorous worms?" Stephen said, a week later. "I was wrong. This is."
Abby looked up from her handheld anomaly detector, and across to where Stephen was looking, at a silent Connor traipsing along, not clumsily, just walking. Not saying a word. Or prattling.
He'd been that way for the whole week, and it was, definitely, pretty damn creepy.
Abby tried to strike up a few conversations, at first being casual about how horrible it must be to be stranded through an anomaly, and eventually she even researched some conspiracy theories online, trying to talk about Slenderman and black helicopters, but nothing worked. She even went to Lester in the end, who muttered something about another mirror due in a fortnight, but that was obviously too long for Connor. When he did speak, he was muttering words she didn't understand, or writing down formulae way beyond her level.
She was at a loss, but he was her friend. She only had time left to give him, so that's what she was going to do. Hang around until he felt he could talk.
Of course, Abby hadn't exactly factored being kidnapped by lunatics into her plan of giving them time and space, and it wasn't her first thought when she woke up groggily on the floor of a dirty warehouse, inches from where Stephen was doing the same thing. She blinked, trying to remember what was going on, because as far as she was concerned, she had just been hurrying along the street alongside Stephen, anomaly detector in hand. Stephen said something about Connor's silence being weird, and then- then-
Her head was aching, and her back was too, and when she touched her hand to her head, it came back sticky and wet with blood. She opened her mouth to speak, and Stephen moved towards her, clamping his hand over her mouth. His hand tasted of dirt and straw and Abby glared at him until her vision focused and she could see the scene. There were two guys in balaclavas with guns trained on them. Abby nodded, and Stephen pulled his hand back.
"You're all awake." Another man stepped out of the shadows, dressed in an immaculate, well-tailored suit. He hadn't bothered with a balaclava. He was about forty years old, thin black hair, thick black moustache. He had wrinkles, but looked good for his age, but also a little tired, which worked well in their favour for when they would inevitably try to fight back. He looked quite pleasant, except for the hardness in his voice. He didn't sound British, but Abby couldn't place his accent. "Good. I presume you're not going to struggle, considering what happened last time."
Abby opened her mouth to speak, and then saw it - Nick, slumped unconscious a few metres over, covered in blood. He'd obviously woken up first, and tried to rescue them. Abby's heart tumbled painfully in her chest with worry. She remembered, now, feeling concern over Connor, her handheld anomaly detector in her hand, and she meant to reply to Stephen, let him know she was worried too, but she saw a coloured dart appear in Stephen's chest, and then a sting in her back, meaning she must have been hit too.
These people had kidnapped them. Abby didn't want to think about why, but her missing anomaly detector unfortunately spoke volumes. Lester had always included being kidnapped by conspiracy theorist lunatics in his safety briefings, but Abby had always assumed that had been his pedantic ever-present neuroticism. She felt like an idiot for thinking that.
"There's far more of us than there are of you," the man continued, and six men with guns flanked him immediately. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I don't get what I want."
"What do you want?" Stephen spat out.
"My dear boy," the man said, sounding delighted with himself, "answers. Like, what all that delightful equipment is you're carrying." The man looked over them, his eyes lingering horribly on Abby for a moment; she felt raw, and exposed, and terrified for herself, which she hated, because even when they were running over velociraptors she was more scared for her friends than herself.
But these were men, with larger brains than reptiles had, and their motivations could be much more insidious than hunger or survival.
"That's the one we want to question," the man said, and for a horrible moment Abby thought he meant her, and she felt sick, and awful, and then it turned out he actually meant Connor, and she felt sick at her relief.
She watched, heart in her mouth, as the men dragged Connor to his feet and flung him onto a chair, restraining his hands roughly. Connor looked up at the guy sullenly, his eyes flashing with something Abby couldn't identify.
"Are you going to give me the answers I'm looking for, I wonder." The man yanked out a knife from a sheath hidden under his jacket. Connor's eyes tracked it.
"It's me you want to question." That was from Nick. His eyes were barely slits. He'd obviously only just regained consciousness, and his first impulse was to help his team, and Abby felt shame for her self-worry again. "I'm the team leader. I'm-"
The man gestured at one of his goons, and the nearest one to Nick smacked him over the face with the back of his hand. Nick groaned, in obvious pain.
"I know fully who you are, Professor Nick Cutter, Professor of Palaeozoology at the Central Metropolitan University. Stephen James Hart, his loyal lab assistant. Abby Maitland, lizard specialist. I've been following you for a while, you and your organisation." The man looked down at them, an odd expression on his face. "There's a lot of money disappearing your way. Odd reports of these... anomalies. Creature reports in the police files that make no sense. I think your team work for an organisation that is either creating them, or covering them up, and I want to know."
"You're being ridiculous," Nick said. "We're just Palaeozoologists, doing a project funded by the private sector, tracking fossils and extracting biological information, there's nothing-"
The man made a signal across his arm, and the nearest goon clicked his gun, aiming it at Nick's face. Abby strained forwards automatically - Stephen held her back.
"I've heard those lies," the man said, dismissively. "I'm here for the truth. And you," he added, turning to Connor, "are the one to give me them. Of course, all the torture manuals do say to go for the weakest link of the team..."
Abby got angry, then, because Connor wasn't the weakest link, okay, he was a bit goofy and strange, and rambled, but he wasn't the weakest link, he was brave and he was brilliant-
"Calm down," Stephen hissed. "Connor won't last a minute. You shouting in his defence only weakens him further."
Abby shot an angry look at Stephen, but stilled.
"Quite," the man said, looking across at Abby with an indulgent smile. "I thought about it, but no, it's not nice beating up a woman, and I'm far more interested in you, Connor Temple." He looked back at Connor, a hard expression on his face. "You see, you're the anomaly in this whole thing." He smiled. "I see it in all your faces. Anomaly. It's a word that means something to you. Maybe you... hunt them? Ah, perhaps that's the case. But did you know one existed in your midst?"
The man looked away from Connor, at the three of them. "Did you know Connor Temple doesn't exist? That the database online all the paleozoologists are going gaga over was created by a dead fourteen year old, and this man here stole it from his grieving parents for a paltry amount of money, my dear boy-" the man turned back to Connor, "you really should know how to cover your tracks better."
"I'll keep that in mind," Connor said, his tone oddly jovial.
The man sneered a little, and pulled up a chair, straddling it backwards. "Care to do this the easy way? I've been tracking you for months, Temple. All that money, weaving in and out in pretty circles."
Connor shrugged. "Beats me. I just like the way all those numbers go up and down, and how little men like you panic when it happens."
"Beats you, huh?" The man snarled, and looked at one of his goons. "Rough him up a little for me, would you?"
Abby clamped a hand over her mouth so the goons didn't hear her squealing, because she couldn't help the sound that ripped from her own throat as two of the guys moved over and started beating Connor with what looked like thin, narrow truncheons.
She expected him to react like Connor, cry and whimper and possibly beg for his own life. He was silent until the man said, quietly, "Enough."
There should have been terror in Connor’s gaze after that; there was nothing but an almost belligerent amusement. Abby would have bet a thousand quid before today that Connor had never been tortured or abused; now she wouldn’t take that bet at all.
"Willing to talk now?"
Connor stared up at the guy, blood running from his forehead to his teeth, and smiled a smile full of bloodstained teeth. "What would you like to talk about?"
The man cocked his head, frowning. He obviously hadn't expected that reaction. "Huh?"
"How about... this?" Connor moved suddenly, yanking a hand out that Abby hadn't even noticed he'd loosened, and Connor grabbed hold of the man's wrist, pushing the material up and out of the way, revealing one of the weirdest tattoos Abby had ever seen. It was almost like a leaf, dark green and twisting, with holes and a swirl, and Abby had the oddest feeling she'd seen it before, somewhere.
"So I was an Oyster," the man said, shrugging, "there were a lot of us got free."
"It means you know exactly who I am," Connor hissed, "and you're a jerk anyway."
The man smiled, no sign of humour in it, only malice. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Shoot you," Connor said. There was a moment of confusion on the man's face, and then horrified realisation as he went for his gun, and noticed it in Connor's hand.
The next few minutes were a blur, as gun fights always were to Abby. Stephen launched into action, all rugby muscles and basic firearm training and bravado, with Nick close behind. Abby stayed out of the way, only joining the action when the nearest goon to her had his firearm forcibly taken from him by Stephen. She had the fleeting image of Connor kicking ass and taking names as the vernacular went, and then she was distracted by the fact she really needed to take this nearest guy out or have her own ass kicked, and by what felt like ten seconds later but was probably much longer, the goons were either knocked out or they had escaped, and unfortunately, according to Stephen, the man leading them was one of the latter.
"Found our anomaly detectors," Connor said. "Looks like our original call was a false signal."
"I've put a call through to Lester," Nick said, having rooted out a mobile phone from one of the unconscious goons. "He's on his way with backup so we can get some answers from the ones that are left."
Abby hugged herself, and looked at them.
"We should tie them up for now," Connor muttered, his face swollen and bloodied.
"Good idea," Stephen said, grabbing some of the rope lying tangled around the chair Connor had been tied to. Connor mutely helped tie the guys up with Stephen, and Nick was reading something. Abby crossed over to him.
"What's that?"
"The man in the suit left this behind," Nick said, and his voice was hard, and his expression was unidentifiable as he looked up to where Connor and Stephen were securing the last guy. Abby caught a glimpse of a photograph of Connor in the file before Nick slammed it shut and crossed across the floor.
Abby recognised Nick's angry expression a second before he reached out and grabbed Connor by the shirt. "Hey!" she shouted, "what do you think you're doing? He's hurt!"
Connor flickered a grateful look at Abby from behind his swollen eyelids.
"He's a liar is what he is," Nick said, and pushed Connor bodily into the nearest wall. Stephen flanked Nick immediately, another length of rope stretched between his hands. “Who are you?” Nick reared back and smacked Connor across the face hard with the back of his hand. Abby flinched.
“Connor Temple,” Connor said, in a low amused voice, a smirk coming onto his face slightly before Nick belted him again. Abby let out a soft cry and moved forward to stop Nick; Stephen bodily held her back, his face impassive.
“You stole that database from a dead kid,” Nick said, “pretended it was yours; said you were one of my students but the university has apparently never heard of you according to this file. There’s no record of a Connor Temple past a little over a year ago. If you’re Connor Temple, you don’t exist.”
Connor stayed silent.
“Connor,” Abby pleaded, “tell him. This is a misunderstanding. You’re you, of course you’re you.”
But Connor just smiled, with false joviality, and said, in a weird sing-song voice she’d never heard him use, “Of course!” He grinned, all teeth showing, and Nick reared back and hit him again.
“Me and Stephen, we can keep this up all day,” Nick said. “We apparently don’t know you, but you know us.”
Connor just looked away. Abby’s stomach clenched. She had seen someone smacked around until they were honest, and they’d reacted the same way - when Abby asked them why, the poor girl said it was because it wasn’t the first time. Connor had definitely been beaten like this before. Her stomach clenched more. Was he an enemy? She didn’t like that thought at all, it didn’t ring true with what she knew of Connor; then again, she remembered the weird things he’d been doing over the last week, and her stomach plain hurt, because apparently she didn’t know Connor at all.
“What was that device you were using back at headquarters?” Nick punctuated Connor’s silence with another hit. “What are you trying to do with the anomalies? Are you working with her?”
“No,” Connor said, as if completely scandalised, and then he pursed his lips together as if he hadn’t even intended to speak at all. Nick went as if to hit him again; Connor winced, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment, before opening and locking on a point on the floor. “I’m working alone.”
“To do what,” Nick said. “I took you in, took you under my wing, and this is a complete betrayal of everything we stand for.”
“You wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for me,” Connor said oddly, somewhat heatedly, and Nick both looked confused and like he was going to hit Connor again.
Then Stephen said something, something that might have been one word, something that might have been two, Abby didn’t know, but it was something that made Connor’s face completely change.
“Wonderland,” Stephen said.
Connor froze. It wasn’t for long, but it was enough.
“Wonderland?” Nick said, obviously thinking it was some sort of name for a drug cartel or triad or secret Government organisation.
“Connor Temple,” Stephen said, slowly releasing Abby and walking over to stand next to Nick, his eyes lightly on Connor, his body tensing as if for a fight. “Friend to all conspiracy theories everywhere. You’ve mentioned nearly every Conspiracy Theory out there under the sun - black helicopters, Slender Man, Yetis and 9/11 - yet never once in the last year have you mentioned Wonderland.”
“Wonderland?” Nick said.
“Yeah,” Stephen said, his eyes remaining on Connor even though he was talking to Nick. “A ton of people disappeared over a space of ten years, and a large number of them reappeared in New York City on the same day. All of them with some same variation of a tale, that they were kidnapped by a man that looked like a white rabbit, and put to work in a weird Casino where they were called Oysters."
"Like you said that man was," Abby said, thinking it over. "You said he was an Oyster."
Connor's eyes fluttered shut for a moment at that accusation.
"These Oysters, they said they were rescued by Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. I thought they were all insane, that it was just a coincidence, a madness.”
“Wonderland’s just that, an old story,” Connor said, dismissively. “It’s not true.”
“But that’s the thing about conspiracy theories,” Stephen said, his voice harsh. “Most of them aren’t true. So for a true Conspiracy Theorist, who’s seen what we’ve seen, you wouldn’t discount Wonderland.”
“So I missed one Conspiracy Theory,” Connor said. “Big deal. It doesn’t make me not who I am.”
“Except you flinch every time I say Wonderland,” Stephen said, and it was true. It was barely perceptible, but Abby could see it, now she was looking for it. “Wonderland,” Stephen repeated, “Wonderland, Wonderland-“
“Stop it,” Connor said, and he did look wild now; he jerked against the restraints and looked up at Stephen and somehow, incomprehensibly, he was upset. “Stop it-“
“My little sister disappeared a couple of years back. I thought I’d never see her again, but she came back and she was one of these Oysters, telling the same story and I thought it was food deprivation and abuse, and that she was crazy,” Stephen said. “But she’s not, is she? Wonderland ... is completely real... and for some messed up reason, you want to open the door to it. If you were an Oyster, I can’t imagine you would want to go back, so what are you? Mandy used to have these nightmares about something called Mad March and the Suits, are you one of them?” Stephen’s voice and gestures got more expansive. “Or, let me think back to the book. Are you the Queen of Hearts? Jack? Did you steal her tarts?”
“Stephen, enough-“ Nick said, but Stephen ignored him.
“Did you work for the White Rabbit? Is that it? Did you kidnap the ‘Oysters’? Did you kidnap my sister?” Stephen’s voice rose to a controlled shout. Connor flinched.
“No, no,” Connor said, and his voice broke a little as he said, “I helped them. I helped them. All right?” Connor dropped to the ground, his knees crumpling beneath him, and Nick let him go. His shoulders shook a little. He looked almost broken.
Stephen stared, looking completely stunned, and Nick looked bewildered, and it was Abby who managed to move. She stepped forward, and knelt down, and looked up into Connor’s face. The tears made her heart shake, just a little bit. “Who are you?” Abby said, trying to sound kind.
“Lady asked you a question,” Stephen barked when Connor didn’t respond.
“He doesn’t have to,” Abby said fiercely, defending him.
“He does,” Stephen said. “Who are you?”
Connor lifted his head, his face pure anger. “I didn’t help take them.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend-“ Connor started, but Stephen leant over Abby and punched Connor so hard that Stephen’s knuckles were covered with his own blood, and Abby screamed a little, and Nick leapt forward, but not quick enough, because Stephen lashed out again, and Connor screamed, “I’m just trying to help, I've always just been trying to help. I got them through, I'm the one that got them back, ask any of them, ask your sister. I'm from Wonderland, and I'm just trying to get home." His voice broke at the end, and he sank all the way down to the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked so very broken that Abby pushed all the way forward and sank down next to him, crouching down on her knees, putting her hand on his shoulder.
"Abby," Stephen said, his voice full of warning, and she shook her head.
"No," Abby said, "no. I believe him. Don't you?" She looked up at Nick and Stephen, putting as much energy into her glare as she could. "If he wanted us hurt, he wouldn't have done all he has during our missions. If his aim was just to get back, he wouldn't have helped saved our lives from the dinosaurs, we wouldn't have meant anything to him. But this is Connor. Even if that's not your name." She frowned, and looked at Connor, like it was only the two of them in the room. "What is your name?"
Connor smiled, and looked away from her as he said, "David. My name's David."
"That's kind of dull," Abby said, considering it. "I guess you look like a David."
"Thanks," Connor said, and he would probably always be Connor in her head.
"We will ask my sister," Stephen said, his voice low and angry, "she's in town."
"I know," Connor said. "Mandy, you said? Saw her last week. We had cake." He hummed under his breath a little, which made Abby smile and shake her head in disbelief. He grinned at her. "I like cake. Cream cake can salve a lot of things. Just... not everything."
"That woman in the mirror," Abby said, testing out the theory, because the pain in his voice then was so very tangible, and no one raised as much hell as Connor had in the mirror experiment just to get home, no one got so urgent about a place, but about a person... "She's who you're trying to get back for."
Connor looked at Abby then with such a long, lost look that Abby felt it like a blow to her gut. He eventually shrugged helplessly and got to his feet. She offered him a hand. After a second, he took it, looking really vulnerable for a moment. She guessed trust must be difficult for anyone even if they were, uh, apparently from somewhere else.
And that was a thought. Was Wonderland another island in the world? Or a different planet? She felt woozy, and wondered why she had skipped lunch before heading out on this anomaly search in the first place. (Oh, yeah, tuna sandwiches and traffic light jelly. It was palatable the first hundred times, but eventually, one had to give up trying to eat the cafeteria food.)
"Hang on," Stephen said, "David." His mouth opened and stayed like that, unattractively. "You're that David."
"Yeah," Connor said, laughing a little under his breath, putting an arm on the back of his neck and grinning helplessly. "When I found out money was the only way to ensure these anomalies got researched, well. It's easy to make a few million when you're inspired. If it had been just up to the Home Office, they'd have absorbed the velociraptor casualties into their accident statistics. You've got a bit of an odd world. Says me, jabberwockies, bandersnatches-"
Nick looked a little bit cross-eyed at that, at the whole thing actually.
"Once these guys get here-" Connor started.
"No."
Abby frowned. Nick wasn't normally so harsh.
"What?" Connor said.
"I said no," Nick said, "we're not deciding things as a team. You are not part of this team any more. Christ, Connor - David - I'm not even sure you're human."
The hurt on Connor's face was so palpable that Abby's stomach lurched and she felt the urge to protect him spring up in her more fiercely than ever. "Not even sure I'm - Oh, right, I'm Nick Cutter, I define the world. Something crops up I'm not sure of, I can't control, then-"
"Don't turn this around on me," Nick snarled.
"Oh, because you weren't making this about you, and your long history of betrayals, Helen this, Helen that, when we all know the instant you get a chance to run off and save her, you'd be gone like a shot, whether you had to betray us or not." Connor stepped into Nick's personal space, his eyes cold and deadly, and every shred of his pretence of clumsiness gone. This Connor was aware of his physicality and what he was capable of, and Abby saw how much of Connor Temple was an act. It chilled her a little, but not enough to stop wanting to help him. Facts could be faked, but friendship like theirs couldn't be entirely fabricated.
"What would you even know-" Nick started.
Connor laughed, a sound utterly devoid of humour. "What would I know? My 'Helen' is stuck in Wonderland. Trapped, without any means of getting home." He stepped so close to Nick they were nearly touching. "My Alice is in Wonderland, and I can’t get her back, and I need to. I need to get her out. I love her and I’m trapped here in this place without her and I-“ He looked up at Nick through unshed tears. “If it was a year ago, and it was Helen on the other side of an anomaly, you would have raised hell to get her back.” Connor looked at him very earnestly for a long beat, and then he edged a look at Stephen. “And by the way, Jack of Hearts? He’s the tart.”
That was the moment their response team burst in, guns waving and yelling at the top of their lungs. Nick sighed, not looking away from Connor. "We aren't finished here," Nick said, and stalked away to deal with the situation.
( On to part two!)