Primeval fic: Something Like Claudia Brown 4/5

[scwlc_fic]

Title: Something Like Claudia Brown 4/5
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Still owning nothing of Primeval.
Rating: PG-13 at the outset, I may change it later.
Summary: Abby's going to get married. Then she goes through an anomaly, comes back out, and finds out just how upsetting the Claudia Brown phenomenon can be.
A/N: I'm so behind on keeping up with my posting on here, you have no idea. Thank you for reminding me, aunteeneenah. Anyhow. Update!

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Before Abby was ready, it all went to hell.

It wasn't even a day after learning that Connor had sabotaged his own chance to work with the Home Office that everything fell apart. It started because Abby saw Helen walking down the street, not far from the anomaly she and the Home Office team were heading to. "Shit," she muttered.

"What is it?" Stephen asked.

She didn't want to get into it, didn't want to deal with Stephen and Cutter and Helen and the whole damn triangle that it was. "Nothing," she said. Then waited until his back was turned to text Jenny, who was the hub of Connor's team, telling her that Helen was in town.

The anomaly hovered in the mall, pretty and innocent-looking. Abby felt at her back for the EMD. She still carried it with her, because partially charged as it was, it was still a better weapon for her than the damn ketamine tranqs. They walked slowly through the mall, on the lookout for anything out of place, when she heard it. Abby had hoped to never hear that damned clicking ever again and cursed her own procrastination in telling Cutter and the others about the future predators.

She slowly looked up and saw one creeping down the ceiling towards Ryan. "No you don't," she murmured unconsciously, cursing internally as it turned its head to her. She was pulling out the EMD, hitting the charging button and aiming when the scene erupted into chaos.

Three other predators leapt from the ceiling at the SFs, Cutter dragging Claudia out of the way and Stephen spinning about, trying to track the things, to get a clear shot, and having no better luck than anyone else ever had. Abby got in a lucky shot as one launched itself at Ryan's back, sending it flying, but they were no match for them, and she shouted, "Run! Get to some cover and keep looking at the ceilling!"

She dove for an alcove that would, at least, let nothing approach her from behind or from either side, and pulled out her cell, dialling Connor. He answered, "Tom, you shouldn't call this number-"

She had no time to dissemble. "Get backup down here, now. There's future predators down here and I think I can stop them, but I need someone with computer skills and a laptop to help me, Conn."

"I'll be down as fast as I can," he replied, hanging up.

"What the hell did you just do?" grated out a voice in her ear.

Stephen had joined her, somehow managing to glare out of the corner of his eye while still scanning for the predators. "I called for help, Stephen. I can get them to stop, but I need to jack a laptop into the PA system. I need Connor."

The sound of a gunshot and a thud prevented the sharp answer brewing behind Stephen's eyes. "Not interrupting anything, am I?" Danny asked with his usual cocky grin.

"Not at - duck!" she snapped, bringing her EMD up to bear. Danny was perfect as usual and she landed the shot, sending the thing to the ground where it was promptly attacked by two others. "Let's go, while they're distracted."

Danny and Stephen unconsciously settled into a search pattern, each covering the other's blind spots while Abby led the way to the security offices. Or at least, where she had a memory of them being. "Where are we going?" Stephen asked, professional enough to put off the fight until this was finished.

"The security office," Abby said. "At least, I think it's this way. I need to get to the PA system."

"Why?" Danny asked. "What good'll that do? You going to tell them to run home to Helen?"

Abby blinked. "What does the bitch have to do with it?"

They both ignored Stephen's insulted-sounding exclamation.

"Everything," Danny told her, sounding incredulous. "She had them bioengineered."

"I . . . can't even be surprised about that," Abby said. "I think it never came up. Matt always called them freaks, but a post-apocalyptic future really isn't much of anything to judge evolution on." They'd come up on the door to the room which should have the PA system in it. She kicked it in, to an admiring look from Danny.

"Very nice."

"Abby!" Stephen sounded pained. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to pound them with a high decible and super high and super low hertz hit of sound. It'll blind them without making the rest of us deaf," Abby explained. "I called Connor, so he should get here soon." She turned to Danny. "I know it's not good in terms of a job for him, but I need someone with a laptop for this and I'm not good enough with computers to make it happen with one stolen from a store here."

Danny nodded sharply. "Good enough for me."

The familiar sound of a shotgun report echoed through the mall. "That'll be Becker," Abby said with a smile. "And Baby . . . excuse me, Priscilla."

"Danny, can you go and see who there's left of the SFs?" Abby asked. "I know it's a lot to ask, but it's going to get crowded in here, and I know that Cutter brought Claudia along -"

He nodded, ducking into the hall, immediately replaced with Connor. "Becker's heading off with Danny. What do you need?" he asked, pulling out his laptop.

It took only a moment for her to explain and for him to grin that beautiful smile of his at her, and then his fingers were flying over the keyboard. Before he'd finished, the door, which Stephen had jammed shut with a chair, shuddered under the impact of predator attack. Abby joined Stephen in holding the door.

"Damned orangubats," Connor muttered.

She rolled her eyes, even as she braced herself. "This is why Cutter cut you off from naming things."

"It's totally descriptive," he protested, his fingers flying over the keyboards of two separate computer systems, aligning them and jacking one into the other. "They're bioengineered bats and they move like speedy primates, half orangutan, half bat."

"It's as bad as monkey-bat and you know it," she told him. The top of the door broke under the strain and Abby whipped the EMD up, blasting the thing in the face.

"Got it!"

The attack stopped, and Abby pulled away from the door at once, now taking the time to switch her EMD to kill. "Okay, let's go kill a few future-"

"Orangubats," Connor interrupted with a cheeky grin.

They stepped out to see three of them frozen in place. Connor had a grim smile as he shot it three times in the head. Stephen followed his example and Abby took her one shot with the EMD. Then Stephen was hastily dialling his mobile. "Nick?" His whole body relaxed as he heard from the professor. "Yes. It's Abby. She called in Temple's people."

Abby sighed. "Well, this is ahead of schedule, but maybe it's for the best."

"Schedule?" Connor asked as they walked through the mall, systematically checking through the whole place for predators.

"I wanted to do this gradually," Abby explained. "See if I couldn't bring the majority of the SFs on board, then Sarah, then get to working on Lester and Claudia. Once I'd got them on board, I could pressure Cutter and Stephen into working with you, at least at a distance."

Connor's face was blank and she couldn't tell if he approved or not as he said, "Sneaky."

"I must agree. I really didn't think any of Nick's little cavalcade would have had it in them," came a horribly familiar voice behind them.

Abby gritted her teeth and turned to see the smirking face of Helen Cutter. "You know, I was really happy when I found out you were dead. I mean, you have the ability to cause trouble from the grave, but at least we knew there'd be a limit. And now you won't even stay dead."

The other woman blinked, then raised an eyebrow. "How . . . interesting. Meaning?"

"If you don't know what I mean," Abby said, "I'm not going to tell you." She wasn't either. The last thing she wanted was to risk giving Helen ideas.

A loud argument approached, Cutter and Stephen, an irate Emily snapping at them both, Becker and Danny egging her on instead of helping. Then they turned the corner, the lot of them coming to a halt. "Helen!" Cutter and Stephen gasped in unison.

"Great," Danny muttered sourly.

Helen smirked, and said, "Nick. Stephen. Lovely to see you both."

"You're here," Cutter said blankly. "I didn't . . . why, Helen?"

Stephen meanwhile fixed Abby with a look. "You knew. You knew she was . . . she's fine. Why didn't you say anything?"

"Yes," Helen smirked. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Connor said through gritted teeth, "Because you're a destructive harpy, that's why."

"Now, now," she said smiling smugly. "There's no need to be bitter, Connor."

Becker was shaking and furious. "How about I have every right to be bitter?" he demanded. "You had your goons murder my sister-"

She looked at him coolly, even as he raised the shotgun. "It's hardly my fault she was foolish enough to get in the way of that shot. They were simply aiming for the dimetrodon behind you." His finger tensed on the trigger, and she added, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. They don't like it when I'm threatened."

Looming out of the shadows came familiar faces. A familiar face repeated several times. "Effing Cleaners," Abby muttered. "You and your goddamned clones."

"What the hell do you want now?" Connor's voice cut across the scene. Sharp and commanding, it was all those flashes Abby had seen in Connor, when he was at his most confident, knew what he was doing and how to do it, but now it was concentrated in this moment and it took her breath away.

Helen had clearly seen something, because she grinned at Abby. "Is that the way the wind blows, lover?" she asked, an undercurrent of laughter to the question. "Because I thought we could catch up on old times." She turned slightly to Nick and Stephen, who were staring, shocked, at the whole scene. "Connor used to do the same thing as Stephen. You know, with your tongue on my-"

"What?" Abby heard herself gasp with Cutter. "You slept with her?" they chorused.

He wasn't her Connor, she knew Helen was a manipulating monster, but the hurt at the thought reared up inside her, and she said, "Connor? You slept with Helen?"

"One mistake," Connor ground out. "One mistake and it got Duncan killed. You don't get to judge anything, Maitland. You haven't been here for any of it."

"Oh, are you jealous?" Helen said with a delighted smile.

She felt a snarl on her lips and she said, "No, I just don't like women who sleep their way to whatever they consider success."

"I don't understand, Helen," Cutter said, sounding lost.

"Something around here has changed, Nick, and I'd really like to know how and why," Helen said.

And Cutter told her. "Somehow, something Abby did in the past, along with Temple, there, changed things in the here and now. She's not the one we're all used to."

"Bloody hell," Connor hissed. "Cutter, you idiot."

Abby snapped. She was through with Helen and her games. She brought up the EMD, still set for fatal shots and fired. Except that Stephen saw and shoved her over, shouting, "Helen! Look out!"

The shot went wide and hit Captain Ryan. "No!" Abby screamed. "No, no, no, no!" She threw the weapon aside, was blocked by two of Helen's damned Cleaners and slammed a foot into one's head and spun around to slam an elbow at another. Two broken necks she barely noted as she tried to get to him, hoping she could start CPR. She wasn't even aware as Helen ordered her clones to follow her out as she tried to reach the soldier.

Someone grabbed her and she didn't even think as she slammed her head back, hearing a muffled shout of pain and kicked backwards, making them let her go. Scrambling she reached his side, starting CPR, trying to pump his chest, feeling nothing. No breathing, no pulse. Someone else was beside her and she nearly hit them too, spotting the defibrillator just in time, seeing Becker join her in trying to revive the man.

Matt's design was good. It was the best.

Captain Tom Ryan was dead.

"What have you done, Abby?" Cutter demanded. "You tried to murder my wife-"

"She's not your wife anymore, Cutter," Abby snapped through the tears streaming down her face. "She hasn't been ever since she left you for fucking prehistory. She's gone mad and all she'll be is trouble. I should know."

"You tried to kill her in cold blood," Stephen snapped back. "This isn't your reality -"

"Enough is the same, Stephen. It's the same that she left Cutter, it's the same that she's tormented people just because she can, it's the same she made those goddamned clones of hers and it's the same that she fucking slept with you, Hart!" she finished. "Don't try to sit there on your high moral ground when you're half in love with the woman who cheated on your best friend with you!"

"Don't try to lie to cover your own mistakes, Abby," Cutter said sternly.

At the same time, though, Stephen replied, "I may have slept with her, Abby, but at least I've never killed anyone in cold blood."

"No," Connor sneered. "You're just so convinced of your own superiority that you'd rather ignore us time and again, rather than work with us, willing to let people die for your ego."

Cutter stopped dead, staring at Stephen. "You . . . and Helen?"

"Didn't catch that bit about his tongue before?" Danny said with a bleak, dark version of his cheeky grin.

The professor looked lost as he took in the two men his wife had slept with, the dead clones she'd arrived with and Ryan dead on the ground. "This is your fault," he told Abby. Then he glared around impartially. "You and your little team of incompetents had best stay the hell away Temple, or I'll make sure you're all thrown in prison for any trumped up charge I can make stick."

"Congratulations," Connor told her with a black and malicious smile on his face. "You've just succeeded at making all our lives harder, and getting me fired. Keep the hell away from us, Maitland." Then the smile faded and he stormed off, followed by the rest of his team, leaving Abby alone with Ryan's body and the silent SFs.

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The SFs were so kind about it all, Abby wanted to throw up. Lieutenant Jacobson told her everything was alright, that they, at least, didn't blame her, they trusted that if she'd tried to kill Helen there had to have been a valid reason and it was Stephen's interference that had sent the shot wide.

None of that mattered. He was dead, and she'd done it. His parents, family, friends, did he have a girlfriend? Wife? She'd never found out, and they'd all have to deal with losing him because Abby had taken a potshot at Helen. The whole scene sickened her, terrified her and suddenly Abby couldn't stand it anymore, bolting to her feet and running away. It was all a blur how she got home, flashes of what might have been a bus came to her, but nothing was really clear or real until she was finally behind the door of her flat, the world outside ignorable with the deadbolt shot and the chain on.

Then her knees gave out and she sank down, back against the door, sobbing. Rex came over to her, cheeping anxiously, but even he couldn't do anything to stave off the empty, horrible feeling inside her. She'd got Connor fired, maybe someone else on his team too, Cutter didn't trust her anymore, Stephen didn't trust her, Danny and Connor and probably Becker too all hated her and she'd killed Ryan. As her mobile rang, she pulled it out, staring at the display a moment. It was Claudia.

She let it roll over to voice mail. No need to hear more condemnation from that quarter. It started ringing again a few minutes later. Lester. Voice mail. Jenny. Voice mail. When the display lit up with Connor's name, a sob tore from her throat and she flung the phone across the room, sending Rex spiralling up to the rafters and smashing the mobile into the opposite wall, breaking it into pieces. She huddled against the door, not moving when it vibrated with the pounding of someone knocking and Becker calling her name through it. He was replaced with Emily, then Tom, finally Connor, and it was all she could do not to start bawling loudly enough to be heard through the wooden barrier keeping the world out.

Eventually they left, and with a shaking breath, Abby went to her computer, firing it up, turning off the wireless access. For hours she wrote. Starting at the beginning and leaving nothing out. This was no careful report, this was a bald-faced retelling of everything. From start to finish, she told them.

Meeting Ben, seeing Rex, the scutosaurus, the gorgonopsid, coming home and Connor being tricked by his friends, the mess with the arthropleura and how Connor got back on. She told them about Helen's return, her tricks and games. She told them about Cutter, staggering from an anomaly asking after a woman who'd never existed. She told them about Helen and Stephen and the horrible footage Connor had rescued from Leek's little madhouse of Stephen, stoic and brave, dying to save everyone and because he wanted to make up for his mistakes. She told them about Sarah and Becker and Cutter dying, leaving them all dizzy and confused without him.

She wrote about Danny appearing and taking over as leader, in a way as seamlessly as anyone could have. She wrote about Christine Johnson and running and hiding and the ARC taken over by someone else's soldiers because she was a power-mad madwoman. She spoke of how Helen came back again, because torturing Cutter and Stephen for eight years with her disappearance, getting Stephen killed and murdering Cutter hadn't been enough. Her plan to kill everyone, to destroy humanity before it even had a chance to start, and how she and Connor hadn't been able to keep up with Danny.

She wrote about a year of terror and loneliness, knowing they were the only ones they had. A year of despair, listening to Connor go on about cappucinos and how she hadn't understood how he could keep hoping in the face of everything, how she'd been certain they'd die there, never seeing home or their friends again.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard, on and on, telling about coming home, but it not being home, because there was no flat, no Sarah, no ARC as they knew it. Danny was still missing, and all that was left was Becker and Lester. She wrote about Jess and her boundless cheer, her brisk efficiency and her colourful clothes and impractical shoes. Matt and his stiffness and stoicism and his determination not to throw away Connor and Abby the way Burton wanted. Duncan and the kaprosuchus, Rex and the menagerie, Emily and the new ARC, Jenny's wedding and the way she and Connor started to fall apart because of Philip bloody Burton.

Then it was time for the story of Ethan, the pair of anomalies in the old prison, Danny's return and his subsequent chase after his brother right back through, with all of them wondering if he'd ever make it back again.

A whole year of seeing Connor fall for Burton's every flattering word and the knowledge that part of the fault for Connor's susceptibility was the way they'd all taken the mick at his expense for so long, and how he just lapped up people telling him he was good and smart and deserved respect. Because he'd had so little of it in his life that it had left an indelible mark on him that she'd never even realised until too late.

Matt and his quest to save the future, Emily's return and the discovery that Burton's plan was at Helen's behest. The fact that Helen, from beyond the metaphorical grave of her prehistoric death at the claws of a raptor in the era of the earliest humans, had managed to try to destroy them all again.

It was pages and pages of text, she didn't stop, didn't think or edit, just wrote. An outpouring of everything that had happened, everything she'd been keeping mum about because it didn't matter anymore, had already passed or had hurt too much to tell.

Connor, triumphantly standing on the generator, sure he'd finally stopped it, dragged backwards into the anomaly that Burton had managed in the end, Matt and her going through, pulling him back and Burton's realisation he'd been tricked by Helen stroking his ego and his sense of grandeur. All the hurry up and wait, the predators in the ARC, Jess, bloody and terrified, alone with Lester's head in her lap and their relief when Connor constructed a plan to stop things. The horrible moment they'd all thought Matt dead and the joy and relief of it all being over finally.

She wrote of a year of relative peace. No Helen, just simple, straightforward anomalies and clearing up the mess left by the creatures coming through. Of going to clean up after the oviraptor and coming out to find her whole world gone, finding Connor evaporated as though he never was with a stranger in his place and the dead come back to life. She confessed her plans, her secret meetings with Connor and his team and her hopes of bringing them together.

Then came the pages of every bit of detail she could remember from Connor about how the locking mechanism worked, the ADD, his dating calculator and the Sun Cage.

It took her all day to do. She finished by tendering her resignation, reconnected to the internet for long enough to email it to Cutter, Connor, Jenny, Claudia and Lester, then she shut the computer down and went to bed. Her plan was to start job hunting in the morning, find somewhere to be that took her away from everything. She'd start fresh, move to America or Australia if she had to, but it was over. She couldn't do it anymore.

For the next two days she was either hiding in her apartment or working from an internet cafe with a brand new email address so that if Connor or anyone else looked, they wouldn't see any activity from her. She looked for work anywhere but London. Searching for places that would take her in Scotland and Ireland, across the channel in Paris and further afield in New Zealand. All that mattered was getting away and finding something that would keep her from crossing paths with anyone from her past again.

She woke one morning to the sight of Connor, next to her, and half asleep she pulled him into a kiss. He seemed hesitant a moment, but she didn't care because after the nightmare it was wonderful to slide her fingers through his hair and taste him again. She said when it broke, "I had the worst dream Conn. That we'd gone through an anomaly and you just vanished."

"I'm not him."

"What . . ." she took in the sight of Danny, Becker and Claudia, standing behind him. Memory came rushing back. "Oh. I'm . . . sorry," she said lamely.

"I . . ." he turned to them. "Can you give me a minute?" he asked, over his shoulder.

"Sure," said Claudia, chivvying the other two men in front of her. Abby blinked in confusion at Danny's cheerful wink.

"I'm sorry," she told Connor again. "I just . . . I miss him." She closed her eyes against the grief. It didn't matter if there was a Connor Temple in front of her, hers was as good as dead.

"I'm not him," he repeated. "But Tom has a theory, and that email of yours . . ." he trailed off. "It might be a bit complicated," he told her.

"Okay," she said, slowly. She wasn't really sure why they were there, why Claudia was there with them, but she owed him that much for having probably ruined his life.

"See, when the timeline changes, the only changes that will affect you, as in your memory and who you are and all, are the ones that happen in the past of when you are. So if you're in the Oligocene, you can't be affected by anything that happens in the Pliocene, for example." Connor took a breath, running a hand through his hair. "That's why Cutter's trip through the Permian meant he could come back to find Claudia gone. Because the changes happened after the when he was in. It's also how Helen was able to come back to life. She was in the Pliestocene while you and . . . the other me, while you were both in the Cretaceous. All the changes that were happening were after that point in time. It basically makes you immune to those changes."

Abby nodded. "Right. With you so far, since I've seen that."

"The thing is," he said, "That when you or Cutter came back, or you and me or . . . whomever, when you come back to the present, you're coming back to . . . I suppose you could call it an empty place. When you travel to back before you wre born, there's still an empty place. But when you and . . . the other me came back, history had changed so that there was already a me here. Now, there might still have been two of us, but I think that the change that happened may have occurred as you were crossing the threshold. When you were on the event horizon as it were. There was a place for you, but your Connor, he got trapped in the moment of change and got . . . effectively merged into the new timeline."

Abby stared. "That . . . I almost understood that," she said. "But not really. So, you're saying that because we were in the anomaly while the change was happening, and Connor already had a double here from the change that he . . . sort of melded with . . . you?"

"Pretty much," he told her.

"How would that even work?" Abby asked.

Connor shrugged. "It's just a working theory, but the anomalies are electromagnetic fields, you know. And brain activity is a function of electrical impulses running from one neuron to the next. There's not such a dissimilarity in the type of energy there."

There was something here, something he seemed to be trying to tell her, but Abby couldn't for the life of her figure it out. "So, that's . . . at least that maybe explains things," she said distractedly. "Why are you all here with Claudia?"

"She and Jenny talked, after that email of yours," Connor said. "I think they buried the hatchet. Abby-"

She didn't want to hear him tell her again he wasn't who she wished so hard he was. She was decent, even if it was pyjamas, so she went downstairs to see Danny taunting Rex again. "Please stop that," she said tiredly. "Claudia, hi. What . . . why are you here?"

"Working out how to smack some sense into my idiotic Scottish boyfriend," she explained. "Blaming you for Ryan's death, more, blaming you for something his ex-wife had clearly arranged is simply beyond the pale." Claudia smiled at her and said, "I do hope we can talk you into taking back your resignation, because James is simply not going to cope well with being caught between Temple and Nick."

"I don't understand," Abby said blankly.

Danny smiled gently. "What she's saying is, Connor was an idiot. You were doing your best and you were right to call in help. What happened between Cutter and Connor is due to them, and," he raised his voice, "Certain people decided to blame the wrong person because they were feeling stupid about having their bad relationships paraded around."

"Yeah, yeah," Connor grumbled as he ambled down after her. "I am sorry. You were just trying to keep people safe."

"I killed Ryan," Abby said, feeling even worse as she finally spoke the words aloud.

Becker was beside her in an instant. "No. You tried to take out the enemy. It is not your fault that Hart prevented you from taking that shot." His face was serious and his hands clasped her upper arms as he clearly tried to force her to focus on what he was saying. "I know it feels terrible, but he was a soldier and a good one. If anyone can understand the sorts of mistakes that happen, it would have been him. You can't blame yourself."

She hadn't even noticed Sarah was there until the woman said, "I'll work on Stephen, Abby. He's feeling pretty confused right now, especially with how you've changed." Then she looked over at Rex. "Is this why you never let anyone into your flat?"

It was so much at once, because Abby hadn't expected they'd do this, hadn't thought Claudia would side against Cutter or that she'd see Connor again. So she focussed on the relatively inconsequential, because it all was leaving her shaky. "Yeah. I wasn't supposed to keep Rex, but when Cutter came back, Rex followed him back out the anomaly."

"He's cute," Sarah declared, gently scratching Rex on the head, listening to him croon. Then she said, "You know, I wish you'd explained more about where you're from, but from what Claudia said, it sounds like part of it were pretty awful."

Ryan and Stephen and Cutter and Sarah and losing their home twice over in the ARC and the flat, Abby felt a watery smiled cross her lips. "I really didn't want to talk about it."

Claudia cut through all that, saying, "So, James has arranged a proper meeting for both groups, and I rather suspect he'll want you there as the one person who can vouch for the abilities of everyone there. Your resignation has not been accepted." She gave Abby a stern look then a smile as she said, "So, get dressed, because I think James wants to scold you for keeping secrets."

Indeed, Lester did scold her, then he told her he was sorry and that she had his sympathies in that perfunctorily sympathetic way he had. By the time that was done, both teams had arrived, and Abby found herself frozen in the doorway, seeing Connor vociferously arguing with Cutter, Stephen shellshocked to the side while Sarah whispered something to him, Jenny and Claudia deep in conversation while Danny stood awkwardly to the side of the pair looking oddly harassed and Becker was deep in conversation with Lieutenant Jacobson, while Emily looked around with curious interest at the office.

Then they all noticed her and the room fell silent. And they all just started staring at her.

Well, this was uncomfortable. More so than when she'd first met up with the whole of Connor's team, more than the first meeting with everyone at the Home Office in this new timeline, more so even than living with Jess Parker, and that was whole levels of uncomfortable she hadn't even known existed, and she was used to living with Connor.

"Er . . . so . . . hi?" she finally offered.

Cutter broke the silence in his own inimitable style. "I just can't believe Helen would do this, any of it." He gestured with a sheaf of paper, then threw it to the table. Abby was just barely able to make out from that distance the familiar shape of the paragraphs. It was her . . . report? Confession? Whatever it should have been called.

From the other side of the room, Stephen said slowly, "I can." When Cutter whipped around to stare at him, Stephen repeated, "I can. She's always been manipulative, Nick. You know that, you complained about it often enough, before." Then he took a deep breath. "And when she came to me, before she vanished, she was able to twist everything around, made it sound like the affair was a good idea." He chuckled darkly. "It did help when she flattered my ego."

"'Oh, you're so much smarter than Nick, brilliant, you know,'?" Connor asked. "Yeah, she did that to me. The ego thing's really nice."

Danny muttered, "I told you she was old enough to be your mother."

"She really didn't act motherly," Tom said, wincing. "I should know. I walked in on it."

Cutter was stubbornly shaking his head. Lester chose to cut all discussion of that off at the knees. "As entertaining as your little relationship dramas may be, I have better things to do with my time than watch a cut rate impression of American daytime soap operas."

"James is right," Claudia said, poking Cutter sharply. "We're here to discuss bringing everything together into one place. It truly is ridiculous the way we're fighting over territory, and Abby is quite right that we ought to use the resources currently at our disposal." She turned to Abby. "I'm asking you to suggest something, because you know what everyone here is capable of, and you'll have a far better idea of how to distribute resources."

The spotlight now back on her, Abby took a deep breath and said, "I think we should just break everything down into two response teams." She smiled wryly. "As much as I personally would love to try to get back to one of the teams I'm used to, I doubt everyone'll get along well enough to do that."

"So, what do you suggest?" Lester asked, his eyes boring into her with his usual sharp intensity.

Abby started to slowly think aloud. "As far as being in the field is concerned, I think we need to put Cutter in as one team leader, and Danny as the other."

Tom immediately objected. "Connor's the one in charge," he said. "He's the scientist and this is supposed to be about the science, isn't it? That's why you're leaving Cutter in charge of one."

"Actually, that's habit," Abby admitted.

Stephen snorted. "Also because Nick's too bullheaded to let anyone else take charge."

"I am not," Cutter began indignantly.

Abby, Sarah, Claudia and Stephen simultaneously snorted with laughter. "Yes you are, dear," Claudia told him.

"You were saying?" Lester said, effortlessly dragging everything back on topic. "About Mr. Quinn?"

"Well, however we distribute the teams, Danny and Stephen need to be on different teams, because they bring the same sort of skill set to dealing with anomalies," Abby explained.

Jenny grinned, "Is that, I'm-completely-mad-and-I'll-do-anything-to-make-the-shot?"

She grinned back at her friend. "That's it, exactly."

"So, we'll have two hotdogging madmen," Claudia muttered. "Wonderful. Insurance premiums will skyrocket."

Another point, "I think, if Jenny's up to it, we should also have her on one team and Claudia on the other. For crowd control and telling people the mammoth's an escaped elephant and all. It's what Jenny was hired for in my timeline, and I think having her take the PR would be good. It'll also give us a sort of consistency in the public eye if people mistake her and Claudia for each other." She'd spent enough time with Jenny that she'd learnt a few of those public persona tricks.

"A not unreasonable idea," Lester agreed. "Ms Lewis, I do believe that we have access to some better grades of care than might be otherwise available to you. I will be certain to arrange the chance to have your injuries looked at again."

Jenny smiled, Danny took her hand, nodding acknowledgement at the gesture then smiling down at his fiancee. Connor chose to put his two pence in, then. "If we're trying to create an equal distribution, then Tom and I are going to have to be on different teams."

Tom's eyes were wide. "Conn . . ." he said, sounding hurt. "Why?"

"Because, Tom, we need someone on each team who handles the physics," Connor said gently. "This is just for in the field. We'd still work together in the lab and all, but this is about having the right person there to take the readings and improvise with computers and all." Then he turned to Lester. "And I think we definitely should take a page from Abby's original timeline and have Becker take over as the person in charge of the soldiers attached to the . . . field teams."

"Some of them, a lot of them, won't like that," Jacobson said, shaking his head. "Becker here may be fully competent, but there's a certain amount of bad feeling. It won't help that he's younger than most of us."

Sarah spoke up then. "Well, then why don't you try splitting the command of the forces, the ones who are okay with Becker going with him, the rest going with you," she nodded at Jacobson, "Since you're currently the ranking officer?"

"Put Danny in charge of security, then," Abby said in a burst of inspiration. "Overall head of the department, so to speak. He's old enough," she paused, letting Danny send her a mock-affronted look, "That they won't complain about that, and since he's from the police, it also won't feel like a complete civilian taking over. And he's certainly good enough at breaking into places to figure out how to stop it."

Sarah nodded, backing Abby up. "Then we can trade off which teams of SFs are going with which scientific team as backup, getting everyone used to working with everyone else."

Becker finally spoke. "At least until we've worked out who works best with whom," he cautioned. "Better to have solid teams that know each other's strengths and weaknesses than to constantly play around with things."

"What about me?" Emily asked. "This is all well and good, but I do think my role could be better defined."

"Oh, we're definitely on different teams," Abby told her. "Emily's as good as I am, better actually, at understanding prehistoric animal behaviours. She's lived with them long enough." She smiled at the other woman. "And she's not a bad shot, either."

"She'll have to get checked out on the range," Cutter said abruptly. "All of Temple's people will."

Connor's eyes narrowed a little. "Then we will. I'm sure that you won't have a bit of a problem with Danny or Becker."

The professor glared. "I was thinking more of the rest of you."

"You aren't so determined with Miss -- sorry, Dr. Page," Connor returned. "You let her come along everywhere without anything to defend herself and no expertise related to this sort of fieldwork." He shot Sarah an apologetic look, but immediately returned to glaring at Cutter.

"We know she's useful to us, Temple," Cutter growled. "All I know your team has proven is that they're all willing to listen to someone with the practical intellect of a toddler."

Connor developed a vicious smile in response to that sally, saying, "All we know about your group is that you don't have the technical wherewithal to build a decent anomaly detector with all the resources of the government behind you. Our taxes at work."

That hit Cutter where it hurt, and Abby knew she was watching a train wreck. "Both of you stop it!"

"Personally, I wonder about why we're listening to Abby about this when her judgment's compromised with a version of your that's clearly completely different," Cutter said. "One that wasn't a gormless idiot in the face of the anomalies."

"Cutter!" Abby tried.

Connor sneered right back. "Of course, her judgment regarding you is just as compromised. That Cutter seems to have been shaken off his bloody pedestal of self-righteous refusal to admit he might be wrong!"

"Connor, please!"

"Both of you, stop!" Lester interposed himself between them, glaring the two sides down impartially.

She couldn't help herself when she said, "First, Cutter, Connor was a gormless idiot for the first year, and you did try to throw him off the team. If we hadn't been desperate when Stephen was dying from the arthropleura's bite he never would have got back on. But you, the other you, gave him the chance and he proved himself." She glared, remembering the parasite and Tom dying, "And never tell me a man willing to step in front of six guns to protect a friend without flinching is emotionally a toddler."

She turned to Connor. "Don't even think about smirking Connor, because Cutter's a damn good scientist and it's his lead that's let them start to figure out the maths for the pattern to the anomalies' appearances. They've predicted them, which is more than you've managed, so get off your high horse about who's doing the real science."

"Well said," Emily spoke into the silence. "So, now that we have dispensed with the usual unnecessary masculine posturing, perhaps we can return to the purpose of this meeting?"

Jenny and Claudia shared identical amused smiles, and Claudia handed a sheet of paper with two neatly written lists on it to Lester. He looked at it, nodded, and said. "Very well. This is a temporary arrangement only, as Misters Temple and Brantford's," he nodded at Connor and Tom, "Skills are very much in demand here to design an effective anomaly detection mechanism, they will not be going into the field in the short term. Ms Maitland will remain with Cutter and Hart, Lieutenant Jacobson will command one half of the available forces in support of that team. Ms Merchant, Lieutenant Becker and Mr. Quinn will make up a second team, with Lieutenant Becker in command of the other half of the SFs. Ms Brown, Ms Lewis, I trust you both to decide between the pair of you who will be accompanying which team in respect of dissembling to the public. I expect everyone planning to go into the field will pass the necessary checks on the gun ranges before going out, which means, Dr. Page, you will be staying in the lab from now on." He gave everyone present a single supercilious dark look. "If I hear a word of any more childish displays of unnecessary machismo, that person will not like the results."

He turned on his heel and left. "Well, that tells us," Connor said, his good humour reasserting itself.

"As long as I'm not going to have to work with a bloody adulterer," Cutter said in a tone meant to be soft enough to ignore, but loud enough to be heard.

Stephen didn't ignore it, his jaw working as he said, "Then maybe, Nick, I should trade places with Quinn."

"What?" Cutter asked, then the realisation swept over him. "Stephen."

"After all, you'd been separated from Helen for eight years before she ever showed up again. You can't even really think of yourself as married to her anymore, can you? Whereas when I slept with her, it was before she left."

"Oh, please don't do this," Abby pleaded. "Stephen, it made everything fall apart back in my timeline and I don't want to ever see footage of you ripped apart by a pile of predators again."

Cutter stared, then shook his head. "I have to . . . excuse me," he said, turning on his heel and leaving.

Claudia looked torn, and Abby told her, "Go on. I'm sure we can handle giving people the grand tour. Such as it is." Once she'd left, Abby turned to Connor and his people, the people who were once her teammates and hopefully would be again, and said, "How about I show you all around, and then maybe we can try to figure out where this is all going to move when it becomes clear there isn't enough space for us all."

"Works for me," Danny said. "Well?"

There was a general murmur of agreement and they walked through the office space, Abby pointing out where various science departments had their liason desks, showing the media room, which impressed Emily, if no one else, and where everyone's offices were. She led them down to the makeshift barracks and shooting range that had been appended to the building, suggesting that Stephen and Lieutenant Jacobson check everyone out while they were down there, just to get the whole thing over with.

Jenny shocked Stephen out of his gourd, as she had shocked Connor, Caroline and Abby in the previous timeline, by handling the rifles with contemptuous ease, Tom had barely squeaked by, but he wasn't going to be there for his shooting anyhow, Danny and Becker barely paid any attention at all, carelessly shooting at the stationary targets with their own brand of contempt, and Connor put in a solid performance.

Then it all degenerated into a testosterone-fuelled competition between Stephen and Danny about who could shoot better, and Abby rolled her eyes, leaving the pair of them, and most of the rest of the two teams behind as a cheering section, leaving with Tom and Connor.

"So," she said. "Do you think maybe this could work? That maybe you could try not to antagonise Cutter? Or at least not bite back too much?"

Tom shot his best friend a look Abby couldn't interpret. "I think that'll be easier than you think."

Abby blinked. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"You didn't get what I was saying before," Connor said. "I didn't get to finish . . ." he stopped, turned to Tom, and said, "Could you find somewhere to be for a minute?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Tom waved a hand. "You owe me huge, Conn. I expect to get it back in kind."

"I've got a line on that signed photo of Tricia Helfer with the really torn uniform," Connor told his friend. "I'll get on that before it goes away on eBay."

Tom nodded decisively. "Your tribute is accepted. If I do not receive it, my vengeance will be swift." Then he ambled away, pretending like he wasn't going to wait around the corner listening in.

"It'll have to do, I guess," Connor said, heaving a sigh. He turned back to Abby. "It's just . . . it started the day you came through the anomaly. At least, that would explain the timing."

He looked conflicted and sad, and Abby put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her as she had so many times when he'd let his lack of self-worth beat him down. "Tell me. Whatever it is Conn, we can deal with it."

"I'm not him," he said to her. But as she flinched, pulling her hand from his face, feeling the hurt again at those words, he caught that hand and held it in place. "But for weeks and weeks I've had these dreams, Abby. I remember a burning building and carrying Cutter out of it. He was dead."

She felt her heart begin to race.

"Connor already had a double here from the change that he . . . sort of melded with . . . you?"

". . . the anomalies are electromagnetic fields, you know. And brain activity is a function of electrical impulses running from one neuron to the next. There's not such a dissimilarity in the type of energy there."

"We were somewhere, a large room, and Jenny was there, and some girl, I don't know who. And you were there and you walked away, staring down a smilodon."

"Connor," she said. But she didn't know what else to say. What did you say when someone starts telling you they remember things they shouldn't be able to?

He shook his head as though to dislodge a thought. "I thought I was going mad. I thought they were just dreams, maybe something from trauma." A half step closer. "Then Tom showed up, telling me that you were claiming to be from another timeline. One where maybe you and I'd been . . . close. And when I saw you at the theatre, you weren't anything like Maitland. You were something else. Tom saw that I was being weird."

She didn't dare interrupt. It felt like the moment itself was balanced on a knife's edge.

"I remember being in Lester's flat, with the diictodons. They were eating his suits," he told her. She couldn't help the laugh that escaped. He'd told her about that, about the adventures the pets had had while he'd been booted out in favour of her brother. "When you asked that evening at Jenny's, about where your Connor could have gone, I hadn't really twigged to the fact that there'd been another me."

The words slipped out before she could stop them. "Tom noticed, he figured it out."

Connor nodded. "He did. He asked what was wrong with me and I told him about those dreams finally. That I remembered having Fred and Wilma at your flat, only calling them Sid and Nancy. He came up with the theory, and then when everything fell apart, you sent that email. The one with everything in it."

"You remembered?" she asked in nearly a whisper. To say it any louder might have been overconfident, might have made him . . . not hers, tell her she was wrong.

"Some things. Enough that it's like there's two of me in here, sometimes. He . . . I . . . the other Connor, he told you he loved you the first time when you were dangling from a cliff, didn't he?"

That hadn't been in the report. Some things were too personal, even if you were baring your soul. "Oh, Connor!" She kissed him, feeling that joy she only ever got from Connor.

The smile on his face was sad as they pulled apart. "I'm not him," he told her one more time. "But maybe, do you think we could see if, in time, I could be?"

It wasn't perfect, nothing was, but behind the harder edges of this new Connor lurked hers, and she'd be damned if she let him go again the way she had so many times before. "If you can put up with how much I'm going to be yelling at you," she said.

"I'm not going to let you walk all over me the way you did to him," he said. "I quite clearly recall certain people taking the mick about my cleaning skills."

"I wouldn't if you didn't insist on leaving your bloody pants in the microwave," she told him.

"Too much information!" Tom shouted from around the corner.

"Why are so many of my friends bloody prats?" Connor asked her conversationally as they headed down the hall. "No, forget that. Why do you think they haven't updated the computers here in five years?"

Abby smiled. "I expect it's next on the agenda, after coffeemakers that think and nuclear powered cyborgs."

"Buffy? Abby! I succeeded at corrupting you!"

It definitely wasn't perfect, but she could work with this.

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