Primeval Fic: Something Like Claudia Brown 2/5
Title: Something Like Claudia Brown 2/4
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Still owning nothing of Primeval.
Rating: PG-13
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: Heeeeeeere's Connor!
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A couple days passed. Then on Sunday, Abby was at the mall, looking to see if there were any palpable differences in the world outside the anomaly investigation team from what she was used to, when she spotted Tom looking furtive. He looked like he was trying to avoid being seen, and it wasn't until she saw a truly exasperated-looking Becker approach her, bump into her, knocking her bag to the floor, and Tom shove something in while she supposedly was distracted that she realised what was going on.
It was cloak-and-dagger done Connor Temple style. She nearly laughed as she realised he'd somehow talked Becker into "distracting" her, while Tom was to drop off some sort of directions that would no doubt be convoluted and silly and might well end with a bag over her head in the back of a van.
The whole thing was just so . . . Connor, she couldn't help the wicked amusement that made her flutter her eyelashes at Becker. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Was I not watching where I was going?"
"No, ma'am," he said in that impeccably military way of his. "I should have been watching where I was going."
Tom scarpered, and Abby let enough of her hysterical laughter out to smile at Becker. Clearly there was something unsettling in it, because he looked even stiffer than usual. "I don't mind in the slightest," she told him, breathily. After all, he was quite handsome and Connor wasn't there to lose his mind about her flirting. "My name's Abby. Abby Maitland. What's yours?"
He looked even more dreadfully uncomfortable. "Becker, ma'am. Lieutenant Becker."
"You're in the army?" she asked, imitating those silly girls from uni who'd thought the best way to impress a boy was to act like everything about him impressed them, including his ability to down fifteen pints of beer in less than a minute without vomiting. Which, now that she thought about it, was pretty impressive in a stupid, but-why-did-you-do-it-to-start-with way.
"SAS," he replied, looking even more uncomfortable. "Excuse me," he said. "But I'm running rather late, I should be going."
"Maybe I'll see you around!" she called after him, waving.
Then she went to the tables next to the McDonald's and collapsed into hysterical laughter. She'd go along with it, but when she got her hands on Connor . . .
It took no time at all to find the scrap of paper. It was in code, a la Connor Temple, half sci-fi reference and half pseudo-military notations. Abby went home, changed into something that would stand up well to someone putting a bag over her head and shoving her into a van, spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on old case files, googling what all the references were, (It directed her to go to the location where the anomaly to the Silurian had opened, later that evening. The one where the girl and her dog had gone through) fed Rex, then headed out to the meeting spot.
Sure enough, moments after she arrived, there was a bag over her head and the sounds of people shushing Tom. Competently cuffed, she felt a sudden suspicion about who else was there with her and tugged the hairpin off her sleeve, opening up the handcuffs the way Danny had taught her, then yanking the bag off her head before anyone could react.
"I thought I recognised your style, Danny," Abby told the slightly flummoxed former detective.
The grin he shot her was pure Danny, and it made Abby homesick all over again, because he'd just got back from being lost in time again, and he'd made it in time to be part of the wedding and everything, taking up the role of best man for Connor, because he'd felt that someone should be there to give Connor a properly stripper-enhanced send-off, and he knew where all the good ones were at. "So, we knew each other in that alternate reality of yours?" he asked.
"Yeah, you were team leader for a while," Abby said, drinking in the sight of someone else who wasn't dead or missing. "When you got back, you butted heads with Matt so much Lester had to split up the teams into two. Matt got Emily and me, and you got Connor and Becker."
"Who's Matt?" chorused the van.
Abby shrugged. "You probably won't know him. He won't have had any reason to wind up at the ARC, any version of it, in this timeline." It also wouldn't help anything to tell Emily she'd been dating someone who effectively wouldn't exist. "So, I assume this is all because Connor wants to be sure I can't give away the top-secret clubhouse to anyone back at the A - Home Office."
"Something like that," Danny told her with another grin. "It's amusing enough to watch him play secret society head, so I don't buck his system."
Emily's lips were twitching, but Tom snapped from the front seat, "Connor's brilliant. There's no need to make fun of him for being cautious."
"I'm not making fun of him being cautious," Abby said. "I know perfectly well he's brilliant. The Home Office is practically in the Stone Age right now as compared to before, and that's all down to Connor. I'm making fun of how he's going about being cautious, because he's being silly. If he wanted it done right, he should have delegated to Danny and had done with."
As they pulled to a stop, Emily shot her an apologetic look and pulled the bag back over her head before they led her out of the van, up some stairs and over and about before finally bringing things to a halt. When the bag came off, they were in the theatre Emily, Ethan and Charlotte had arrived in back in Abby's timeline. They were on the stage, and there was a desk, a large office chair of the sort that spun around, and Connor was sitting, one ankle hooked over his knee. "Would you like a cup of tea?" he asked.
It was reflex. "Connor, I swear to God, you do that Alice 2009 thing one more time and I'm going to kickbox you back to the Cretaceous and you can just deal with Bob by yourself."
"Er . . ." They were all staring at her, Tom indignant, Danny and Emily amused, Connor a little stunned.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry. It's just, you've been doing that again and again since that bloody thing came out and it got a little tired."
"Who's Bob?" Danny asked.
"The spinosaurus that kept trying to eat us," Abby grumbled. "Connor wanted to name him something with a lot of words, ending in 'of Doom', but since he'd already named the raptors Two-Face and Joker, I got to name the spinosaurus."
There was a lengthy silence, and then Connor said slowly, "Well, you're not the Maitland from here, she has no sense of humour."
"I just . . . I need to know what's going on," Abby told him. "Because I feel like you not being there's the key difference. I mean, I'm happy Cutter, Stephen and Ryan are all alive again now, but everything's so different."
The twitch of his lips, which was obviously suppressed glee made both her eyebrows go up. "And what's got you so happy?" she asked.
"Sorry," he said, looking embarrassed. "It's just, alternate realities. It's kind of cool, yeah?"
When Connor stood then, Abby gasped. Because as his head turned, she saw a scar, thick and white, running down his face and neck, perilously close to his jugular, continuing below the neck of his top. Not only that, though. He was clearly favouring his left side, one arm tucked in close to hold his ribs. "Connor," she said, and instinct overwhelmed common sense as she nearly ran to his side, sitting him back in the chair to check on what was wrong with him, batting his hands away as she looked at the bandages on his side, tisking over the wrapping job before she realised that she was, to this Connor, a stranger. "Sorry," she said, flushing and backing away.
"Er . . . yeah, no problem," he said, blushing. Then he shook his head and pulled himself back up. "So, what exactly do you want? I mean, out of this meeting and all?"
She stood as well. "I don't even really know, Connor. I just . . . I needed to know what was going on, and when Cutter and Stephen started going on about how you were interfering and what-all, I had to know what went wrong and if they were right about you."
"Right about me, how?" he asked.
"Yes," said Danny, "I'd be very interested to know what they think of Connor here, especially that Stephen fellow."
"Don't you get started on Stephen with me-"
"Right," Connor said in that annoying sing-song of his. "Your boyfriend."
Abby rolled her eyes. "Why is it Stephen brings out more stupid alpha male in men than anyone else?"
"Because he's forever posturing in that irritatingly laid-back way of his," a new voice cut in. It was Jenny.
"Jenny? What are you doing here, luv?" Danny asked, hurrying over to her. She was limping heavily, the cane she was leaning on was well-worn, indicating that whatever injury had lamed her was of long standing.
She leaned on Danny, even as she rolled her eyes and gestured to Becker, hovering protectively behind her, to come along. "Since nearly everyone was here to meet this supposedly different Abigail Maitland, I decided that Becker and myself ought to be here as well."
"Oh, Jenny, what happened?" Abby asked. The last she'd seen of Jenny, days before her wedding, the other woman had been happily involved in working for some environmental concern in PR, writing scathing indictments of governmental policy and making snide comments about the Tories. This wasn't that woman. This was the exhausted Jenny that had left the ARC after literally freezing to death.
"I got in the way of a charging stegosaurus," she said. "It could have been worse, certainly." Connor immediately pushed the chair to her, and she sat down with that sharp self-possession that Abby remembered so well. "I take it, based on how you spoke to me that you knew me in this other timeline?"
"Yeah," Abby said, shaking her head. "It's just, this is all so weird. I mean, I keep expecting everyone to act the way they did back . . . there. But they don't quite. I mean, the you I know wouldn't have been caught dead back at the ARC - dealing with anomalies again."
"Really?" she leaned forward, looking intrigued. "Why's that?"
"Well, after you pretty much froze to death after the fungus monster got you it was just one thing too many. Sarah said you'd found some picture of Claudia in Cutter's things and sort of went a little mad." Abby heaved a deep breath. "At least I know how Cutter felt. This is so disorientating."
"Fungus monster?" Tom had perked up and asked. "What was that?"
"I think it got handled by Cutter's team," Abby said. "I've been skimming the files, and it looks like the anomalies were pretty much the same, but there are a lot fewer in the Home Office files than we handled at the ARC. But since Princess is at the menagerie, it looks to me like they pretty much got divided between them and you."
"Princess?" Connor asked.
Abby turned to him. "The dracorex."
"You named it Princess?" Danny asked, amused. "I thought only Connor named things like that."
"We don't let Connor name things anymore," Abby said, leaning against the desk. "After he won the argument with Lester to name the mammoth Stampy, Cutter put a moratorium on it. In fact, I think he also put a moratorium on Lester naming things, since he wanted to call it Manny. No, I think Princess got named by ARC-wide pool."
"You had a pool to name a dinosaur?" Becker asked, finally speaking up.
Abby smiled at him. "Yeah, after Connor and I had a shouting match about it, you decided to put all the animal names to a pool in future, unless someone was taking them home as a pet." Then the smile turned to a smirk. "I still haven't got you back for taking over Stephen's 'when Connor and Abby shag' pool."
"What?" Becker looked stunned. "But at the mall, you said . . . you were . . ."
"Please, I saw Tom coming a mile off, Becker."
"Wait, you know all of us?" Emily said. "How can that be? This is quite a disparate group to gather together by chance."
"How should I know?" Abby asked. "By the way," she turned to Tom and Connor, who were now shoulder to shoulder. It looked just a bit like Cutter and Stephen, although Abby would have been hard-pressed to say which had which role. "Where's Duncan? I'd have thought he'd be here. He was certainly insistent when the kaprosuchus started attacking people, dragging Connor out to the docks."
Tom and Connor both closed their eyes, matching grief on their faces. Becker's face had the same stony look as when he'd told Connor and Abby about Sarah dying. "Oh, I'm so sorry," Abby said.
"Duncan was still alive?" Tom asked hoarsely. "How was he?"
"I . . ." Abby took a deep breath and tried to find a way to put it that wouldn't just hurt them both all over. "After you died, Tom, he . . . didn't take it well. It didn't help that Stephen was denying up and down that there was a conspiracy, and Connor wasn't . . . he didn't handle it well either. They kind of lost touch for a bit, and after Connor and I were trapped in the Cretaceous for a year, Conn wasn't really in any position to be there for Duncan."
"Wait," Tom said. "That's right. You said it was good to see me alive. I was dead? I died? How did I die?"
"You lot missed that anomaly, and it's a good thing," Abby said, sighing. "There were some dodos. They had a parasite that got into your bloodstream and it kind of . . . ate your brain. You went a little mad at the end and tried to kill me."
"Oh, wow." There was a pause, then Tom added. "Well, that's kind of cool."
She couldn't help staring. "Having your brain eaten by what Connor called the mutant Goa'uld from prehistory?"
"Cool," Connor and Tom chorused. Ah. There was her geek.
Danny snickered while Jenny, Emily and Becker rolled their eyes.
Then Connor pulled himself back together, perching a little down from her on the desk. "So, you still haven't really answered my question, Maitland. Why did you want to see us, beyond remeniscing about your own old times that none of us'll remember?"
It came to Abby in a flash. She'd wondered what the ARC could have been if they'd had everyone there. If Cutter had been able to focus on his science while Danny led the team in the field, if they'd been able to have more than one alpha-grade team to send to the anomalies, if there had been a Jenny and a Claudia to run interference with the media, Stephen and Ryan on one team and Becker and Danny on another, if her hunch was right about Tom, Connor on one with Tom on another. The idea was quite dazzling. Maybe they could even find Jess. Getting everyone to work together, especially after Cutter and Stephen had been so stupid, would be like herding cats. If anyone could herd cats it would be Jess.
"Maybe with enough chocolate as a bribe," Abby muttered, not realising she was talking aloud.
"Pardon?" Jenny asked for them all.
"I didn't know when I got here what I'd find," Abby explained. "Cutter and Stephen could have been right. Connor and the rest of you could have been useless. At first I just wanted to know. But now I think I know what I want to do about all this. I just have to find a way to convince Lester. We need to get everyone working together properly. We could form a new ARC."
She hadn't expected it to be like in the films when someone gives a ringing speech and everyone leaps to join up. But she also didn't expect the snort that escaped Connor, her eternal optimist and the man who liked to find the best in everything and everyone. "Lovely fantasy. Let me know how it goes with the unicorns and leprechaun gold while you're at it."
Abby stared at Connor, who had always been the first to leap up and go along with hopes and schemes and optimistic plans. He was the one who, lost in the Cretaceous, had kept faith they'd get home, long after she'd resigned herself to dying in prehistory. It was so different from anything she'd expected out of Connor that she just gaped for a minute. In fact, she gaped for so long that Connor started looking very uncomfortable and said, "Maitland? Are you alright? You're not having a stroke or some such?"
"Absence seizure?" offered Tom.
Abby shook herself. "I just . . . you're really different from my Connor is all."
He raised an eyebrow, offering a sardonic smirk her way. "Was I supposed to leap up and agree to beard the T-rex in his den?"
She'd been so relieved at just seeing him, at seeing aspects of her fiance, she'd failed to notice Connor was dressed in dark military fatigues, as were they all, but Jenny. She hadn't noticed the world-weary look in his eyes or the way that his puppyish eagerness was muted with a sort of weight on his shoulders that looked like Danny when they'd thought Becker was lost to predators or Cutter when Valerie had been killed by her pet smilodon. Something had crushed that joy out of Connor, and she had the terrible feeling that it might have been Cutter.
Abby said none of this. Just felt tears prick her eyes, because one of the things that had made Connor so loveable and such a source of strength for her had been the way he always expected things to come out alright. This one expected nothing, just another body slam of disdain and bad news. "Well," she said, "I should have expected this. If I could be dating Stephen Hart, I suppose Connor Temple could become a pessimist."
That was when her mobile rang. It was Cutter. "Where are you?" he asked. "I was thinking that perhaps you might join us for dinner. Claudia's conspired with Stephen and Sarah to order in some food from some unholy foreign source-"
Stephen's voice in the background, laughingly alive, made her feel the tears again. "Sushi, Nick, is hardly madly exotic. Now, South African bat on the other hand-"
"Shut up you pillock," Cutter growled. "I thought you might want to get to know how things are now, again."
Sarah was saying something that made Stephen laugh again and Cutter clearly pull the phone away from his mouth to be nasty to them both.
Spend an evening with Stephen and Cutter? See them both alive and well and not bloody or dead? See Stephen at all, since there'd been almost nothing left after the predators had been done with him? She couldn't refuse that chance, for all that she was here, faced with Connor and Tom and other dear and familiar faces. Claudia was now on the line, a woman Connor had told her was the last thing Cutter had thought of while dying. "Abby? Are you coming?"
"Yes," she said, a little abruptly. "Yes, I am. I'm just . . . it'll take me a bit to get there. Are you still at Cutter's old house, or somewhere else?" She'd only been there once, but it was at the other end of London from the theatre.
The other three were getting louder, Stephen and Sarah conspiring in some way to harass Cutter. Claudia gave her the address. "Would you three knock it off!" she snapped.
"I know where that is," Abby said, feeling fairly ovewhelmed. "I'll be there in about an hour. It'll take that long from where I am, now." She'd have to take the bus, since she'd been kidnapped her car was still at the back alley.
"See you then," said Claudia, and hung up.
The people who weren't her friends anymore, because these strange copies never had been were staring at her. "Cutter just invited me to dinner. He wants to catch me up with how things are now," she told them.
"So, you're just . . . off?" Tom asked, looking sceptical.
She nodded. "I need to know more, and if I want to try to get the ARC back, to get what I know we can do if we all just work together on this, I need to know them too."
"There's more to it than that," Danny spoke from behind her, having moved without her noticing, now startling the hell out of her. "You're all soppy about it." The nasty spark in his eyes that had previously only been reserved for people like Helen and Christine Johnson was in his eyes, reminding her of the suspicious detective she, Jenny and Connor had met at the old house. "Is it Stephen?"
Her emotions had already been on a whirlwind up and down several times in only the last few minutes. Affection, amusement, sadness, grief, loneliness, anger, confusion, so many feelings all swirled inside her and made her take it out on him. "Yes, it's Stephen. It's the man who walked into a room with a dozen alpha predators from as many different periods in history and let them tear him apart to save everyone from being mauled to death. It's Cutter, who was murdered by fucking Helen, because she's a psychotic bitch, and it's Sarah, who died to rescue me and Connor when she shouldn't have been out there, and Claudia, who I never knew, but was the last thing on Cutter's mind when he died in Connor's arms. So you can take your damned attitude and shove it up your arse, Danny! If you had a chance to see Patrick the way he was, not as Ethan fucking Dobrowski, you'd take it, wouldn't you?"
She turned on her heel, storming past them all towards the exit. She paused on the way out and shouted back, "And Connor? The theatre Emily, Charlotte and Ethan came out in along with the arboreal raptors? Not subtle at all."
She left to the sound of Connor saying, "Arboreal raptors? Wait a second, Emily, why didn't you tell me there are arboreal raptors? I could have a whole new entry into my database." Then, "Maitland, you tease!"
It was on the bus, heading back to the other side of town that Abby felt herself starting to cry again. For a moment she'd thought she could get everything and everyone back. But she'd finally registered Connor wasn't calling Abby, he was calling her by her last name. He'd never called her Maitland. Not once. Not even during their worst fights when he'd just blackmailed his way into her flat. That mistrustful look on Danny's face hadn't been aimed at her since he'd found out how and why Patrick had vanished. Becker had never looked at her that way, the way he'd looked at Christine Johnson, all polite interest and perfect military bearing without a smidgen of compassion, and Jenny was . . . it was like the worst of all the bad times with Jenny. That supercilious smugness from the early days, that beaten down exhaustion from after Cutter's death, all of them so alike and so different, and Abby suddenly wanted to be back at her flat with Rex again, because at least Rex wasn't different.
"You alright, Ma'am?" asked the kid sitting in front of her while she stood there, trying to surreptitiously wipe away her tears one-handed, gripping the steel pole for balance in the stop and go of London traffic. When had she become a ma'am? Not that it didn't feel appropriate, she felt so old suddenly, like someone who'd seen the world change into unrecognisability over the course of a lifetime.
Abby cleared her throat, "Yes, I'm okay. Just got some bad news is all."
He gave her a sympathetic smile, and she forced herself to think about the evening ahead, and her other three friends, just as different, but at least alive and well.
The ride was a long one, and eventually the kid left and Abby was able to take his seat, fingering the matchbook Connor had given her when he'd found out where Danny was taking him to start off the stag night. Connor had gotten it to her, making sure she'd know where to start looking for him if she needed to. He'd made a joke about Danny being Chewbacca, given the state the man's hair had been in when he'd finally made it safely back to the 21st century, and had scribbled a note into the matchbook.
Chewie and me are starting here. Should I keep the walking rug out of your way?
She'd carefully laid aside the tinsel from her and Connor's last trip through the anomaly, wanting to preserve what few memories she had of him, but the matchbook was the last note he'd written her, and she wasn't able to let it go yet, any more than she'd take off the engagement ring he'd got her with a little tiny green-studded lizard for the band. Her stop came and went, and she was startled into movement at that, getting off at the next one and having to walk back to get her connection. The tube might have been faster, but the bus routes meant only the one connection, not two, and in her state of mind, simpler was better.
Eventually she made it to Cutter's, pausing at the door to pull herself together before knocking. She was greeted by a warmly smiling Claudia, who said, "Lovely to see you, Abby. Nick, Stephen and Sarah are competing to see who has better tall tales about digging expeditions, so I'm grateful that you're here, since you hopefully can make them all stop."
Dinner was pleasant, if a little awkward. Abby found herself with an elephant in the room that only she could see, which was of Connor and the others on his 'crew'. For every story Cutter, Stephen and Sarah told her, Abby could recall that event, but with Connor there, with Danny or Jenny, with Becker or Matt or Emily. They loomed large, and she didn't know how to deal with the impression the others had that somehow Abby must have been less experienced than they were, seen fewer anomalies or any number of other things.
The stories filled in the blanks left by the official reports, but they also compounded proof of the reason for Connor's bitterness and pessimism on the idea of being accepted by Cutter and the rest. In the minds of Cutter and Stephen, Connor was forever frozen in that moment of gormless, cheerfully overenthusiastic silliness when he'd sent his housekey into the anomaly in the Forest of Dean.
Even as Stephen told her a story in disapproving tones of Duncan, putting himself in the way of an angry indricotherium to save two small children, dying in the process, she wanted to shake them. The Home Office team had been late to the scene and Duncan and the others had been doing their best with the lack of supplies available to people with no access to the government resources that made life easier for the official team. It was a blind spot, and Abby had to admit it was the same one she'd suffered from when they first started.
But she remembered that angry mammalian version of a sauropod, remembered seeing Connor and Stephen tag-team against it together, whilst she and Cutter tried desperately to reload the tranquilisers. The adventurer and the geek had made a perfect team, Connor's perfect knowledge of the anatomy of the animal meant he'd known how close he could get to distract it and keep it away from potential victims, and Stephen's sheer skill could do the other side, and between them they'd got it back through the temporal gate without even needed to resort to shooting. Stephen had bought Connor a pint at the pub that night, and Connor had relaxed enough to tell them about the string of practical jokes he, Tom and Duncan had done at the university. He'd won a place on the team before that, but that evening he won himself a place as an equal with the others.
It hadn't happened here.
The story of how Sarah joined the team was nearly the same, but no one had found out that you could lock an anomaly, no one had figured out that the sun cage was a magnetic holder, trapping an anomaly inside it.
She wound up alone with Claudia, hiding and helping in the kitchen, because she didn't know the woman, and while the resemblance to Jenny was confusing, at least there wasn't that same awful expectation that she'd be one way, then react another. "You know, it's sort of odd," she commented to her, "For the longest time, you were sort of an abstract to me."
Claudia seemed to smile in amusement and frown in confusion at the same time. "What do you mean?"
"Well, when Cutter came out of the second Permian anomaly, everything had changed for him. So, while he knew you, had still been working out of the Home Office and everything, none of us had. As far as we knew, Oliver Leek-"
"That creepy, slimy, weaselly, vile, scheming, horrible little man?" Claudia asked, horrified. "I know Oliver Leek. He shouldn't be anywhere near the anomaly project, he'd botch it and turn it into some dreadful self-serving three ring circus."
"He did at that," Abby admitted. "But it took Helen interfering for things to get really bad."
Claudia shuddered. "Let's not talk about him. You were saying, about Nick coming out of a second Permian anomaly?"
"Yes. Well, you didn't exist, you see. So, he comes out, expecting to see you, and we just think he's raving. Just gone completely mad over there," Abby explained. "Eventually we believed him, but it was sort of like believing in God or something. We just had to trust Cutter hadn't lost his mind, especially when Lester hired Jenny and he kept on calling her Claudia."
"Ah, the perils of being a twin," Claudia said, sounding wryly remeniscent.
Abby nodded, shifting a few more dishes to the sink. "So, eventually, 'Claudia Brown' became a shorthand for, 'massive change in the past creating a different present you only discover when you get back.'"
"Which is why you said that it's just like Claudia Brown when you were trying to explain things to Nick," Claudia nodded in some satisfaction at the explanation. "I suppose it must be even more disconcerting for you, given that you're not dealing with one person who could be treated as an amnesiac, in some ways, but everyone you know."
Sighing, Abby could only agree. "It's confusing. I mean, Stephen and I never dated at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he spent a lot of time lying to me in order to keep me at arm's length because he was still so hung up on Helen."
"I'm rather amazed, actually," Claudia said. "The moment Helen came back, he latched onto you rather quickly. It almost seemed like he was trying to stake some sort of ground out to make clear to her that he wasn't going to have anything to do with her anymore." She shrugged. "We haven't seen much of anything of her for quite some time."
No Helen? Stephen and Cutter and Ryan alive? Sarah alive? Maybe it was all for the better that Connor had never joined, not for the progress of the ARC, but for the lives that had been saved.
But lives weren't saved, murmured a voice in the back of her head. Ben had been killed by the gorgonopsid and half a dozen zookeepers from Wellington Zoo had gone thanks to the the future predators, if the post-incident report was accurate. He brother was gone through the anomaly at the racetrack and the G-Rex had got a planeload of people before they'd brought it down. The little girl that had fed the chameleon monster had been torn to shreds in her brave quest to protect the neighbourhood pets, and Taylor "ain't baggage" from the Silurian was never seen again.
The people from the ARC were here, but the lives they had saved in Abby's timeline were gone. Killed because the anomaly project wasn't good enough, didn't have Danny to take mad risks and Becker to stand stalwart in the face of danger. They were here because they hadn't been there to put their lives on the line.
But no one of the home office team knew this. They'd been there as much as they could, as often as they knew to be there, and Stephen was still the man who would take on a prehistoric monster unarmed to protect a boy and his teacher, and Sarah was still brilliant and fearless, Cutter still headstrong and stubbornly determined to do what he thought was right.
She just had to make them all see that bringing Connor and everyone else in was the best thing to do. She just wished she knew how to do it.
******************
Abby was woken the next morning by the sound of her mobile going off, calling her out to an anomaly. By now, after years of doing this, it was all routine. Grab a rucksack with snacks, something to drink, coffee from the machine she and Connor spent hours arguing over that made coffee for you at a preset time overnight (he'd won the argument for that gizmo and two weeks after they bought it she'd dressed up as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for him and the sex had been fantastic). It was habit to snag the black box that had been recharging overnight (also habit, that) and the EMD, she absently noted it was getting low on charge, and headed out the door.
It wasn't until she was on the road that she realised she'd been so caught up in routine she hadn't even realised what she was doing. The black box wasn't needed because there was going to be no Jess in her ear, telling them all where to go and covering up the CCTV footage. The EMD was technology no one had invented because Matt wasn't there to provide the impetus and demand it, and most of all, she didn't need the second rucksack with all of Connor's bits and pieces he never remembered, the second cup of coffee he'd normally be sucking down like an amped-up hoover and she'd turned the sat-nav to the passenger side automatically, just because it made Connor happy to fiddle with it.
But Connor wasn't there, wasn't drinking his coffee, the machine she must have simply wound up buying for herself in this strange new world, and the bits and pieces weren't going to be used because Connor wouldn't be there to need them.
"I've got to stop crying," she muttered to herself.
She arrived at the office building to see Stephen waiting outside, looking cool and composed and sexy as ever. Even now, in love with Connor as she was, she had to admit, the man was a stunning package of lean lines and handsome face. He brightened as she trotted up the steps. "Abby," he said with a grin. "You're looking quite . . ." he paused, looking her up and down, and Abby was forced to recall the masses of punk wear she had in her closet in lieu of the jeans and pretty, yet comfortable tops she'd taken to wearing since coming back.
Connor, with no Burton to impress, had gone back to his waistcoats, fingerless gloves and scarves at once. Jess and Matt had been taken aback, while Emily had taken it in stride and pronounced it quite dashing in her opinion. It had led to the first time she'd ever seen Matt do anything that looked like bowing to peer pressure, and she and Jess had giggled over his attempts to imitate Connor's style, of all people, clearly thinking to woo Emily with it. Connor had been clueless about the whole thing, simply happy to be himself again. Lester had gone about muttering, yet produced Connor's old fedora from somewhere-or-other.
She shook off the shades of a now-gone timeline. "What? Like an adult? Anyhow, are we going right in, or what?"
That slow, lazy grin that had once made her knees wobble spread over his face. "First," he said, "sexy. And second, we've already got everyone out, fake bomb threat, and the SFs are guarding the doors and checking through the building. We're just waiting on Nick and Claudia."
"I'm not getting together with you," she informed him. "For one, I'm not that Abby, for another, the other you was a complete berk to me about the possibility of us dating, and last," she looked at him sadly, showing the ring on her finger. "I was supposed to get married only a few days ago. I'm never seeing him again and I'm not about to leap into bed with anyone else."
The grin slid off his face and he straightened at once, taking her hand to look at the ring. "It's very nice, and I'm sorry, Abby." The seriousness and calm, the way he'd instantly eased back on flirting to that soothing friendship she did recall seeing between him and Cutter made her smile back. "I should have thought about that." He looked away. "It's just . . . when we broke up," he gave a bark of laughter, "I don't think anyone had ever broken up with me before that I was going to have to see again on such a regular basis."
"Then that's been an important experience for you," Abby told him with a grin. "Anyhow, this'll free you up to make a move on Sarah, right? Someone who'll actually want to hear about all the disgusting things you ate in Gambia or wherever."
He rolled his eyes. "You're all just so pedestrian in your eating habits," he told her. "Really, I can't imagine having access to nothing but roast beef and mashed potatoes for the rest of my life."
"After having to eat scavenged velociraptor and listen to Connor moan about writing his imaginary cookery book, 'Yummy Roots and Tasty Bulbs', I think I've earned the right to be left alone about it," Abby informed him.
He stared. "What exactly do you mean?" he asked. "You've mentioned being trapped in the past once or twice, but you really haven't go into any detail. How long were you there?"
"One really long, really awful year," Abby said with a sigh. "In the Cretaceous, if you're wondering."
"My God, Abby," he said. "That's . . . unbelievable. That wasn't . . . when you got here, when you . . . things . . . changed, you hadn't just come back from that?" he asked, looking worried.
The worry was palpable, and Abby saw his fingers flex against his car, reminding her of nothing so much as how she'd wanted to help Connor about in the Cretaceous, him too hurt to get safely about, too proud to ask her for help because he didn't want to be a burden. Stephen looked like the slightest encouragement would send him across the space between them to offer her comfort and anything else she asked.
For a moment she wanted that. He was right there, wanted her, was gorgeous and practically primed to be a new boyfriend, but Connor's request over the com system, that if the giant carnivorous bugs ate him she'd never look at another man again, flashed in her memory, along with the still-fresh loss of her Connor, and she pulled herself together. She might someday move on, but right now it would just be dating for the sake of dating, and everyone deserved better than that. "No, Stephen. That was a couple years ago, now. We'd been back for a fair while before this," she gestured vaguely about, "happened."
He instantly relaxed. "Good. Because I can't imagine what that might have been like, I wouldn't have wanted to find out that you'd been trying to readjust after something like that."
"Yeah, it wasn't easy," she admitted. "There were days when I think we both wanted to run off back through the anomalies, like Helen, only coming back if we wanted something-or-other." She looked around at the concrete and steel that surrounded her. "It really is incredibly different, in a way I don't even think getting lost in the wilderness could be, just because you know that no one will come."
He looked a little oddly at her. "Like Helen, Abby?" He took in a deep breath. "There's someone I've avoided thinking about for a very long time. I do wonder what happened after she went through the anomaly focal point."
"The anomaly . . . focal point?" Abby asked, hesitantly. He didn't mean . . .
"Yes," he said slowly. "You mentioned that time yourself, with the dodos?"
"The spaghetti junction of anomalies, right," Abby said. "Wait. You haven't seen Helen since then?"
"No," Stephen said shrugging. "I wonder what happened to her, sometimes."
Abby was saved from trying to answer that, because Cutter, Claudia and the SFs all showed up then, in a flurry of vehicles and uniforms, and they all marched into the building to find out what exactly had prompted the call. They only knew that it was "Some sort of weird, mutant dog-things!" Unfortunately, that left everything open from dogs to dozens of potential suspects from prehistory which were all the originating species of something else.
On the sixteenth floor, they found it. A large mammal of some type, snarling and heading for the door of the hastily emptied cubicle farm it had come out in. As they tried to scare it back through, Abby saw it taking lunges at them all, snarling, trying to get through the door. Eventually they hit it with enough tranqs to knock it out, but something about the reactions made Abby uneasy. While the others all congratulated themselves, she snapped a picture with her mobile, then went to Stephen.
"Did any of that seem odd to you?" she asked him.
He frowned a moment, then suddenly his face set in understanding. "You're right. Why was it so determined to get out that door?"
In perfect accord they went into the hallway beyond, where he spotted something they'd all missed on the way in. "Look at this," he said, kneeling down next to the streaks of mud on the floor. "Footprints."
They led out, but the mud had clearly been worn away by carpeting and dried up, and by the time they got to the bank of lifts, although they could tell the thing had come this way, there was no way of knowing where it had gone. Only that, "It's small," Abby said, looking at the width and lengths of the trackway. "I bet it's her baby."
They looked at the lifts, one of which dinged and opened on its own. "If someone had left a lift running when we cleared the building," Stephen said slowly, "It could have got on, then gotten off anywhere." He cursed, turned, and headed off to get Cutter.
Abby nipped down the hall, and dialled a number on her mobile. Connor had kept the same number the whole time she'd known him, before they'd gone to the Cretaceous. If she was right, he should still have it. "Hello?"
"Oh, thank God. Connor, I need your database. We've got something loose in an office building and we need an idea where it might go. I've got a picture I could email you-"
He cut her off, swearing softly, then she heard a clatter, and Connor's voice saying, "No, sir. Of course I'm not taking personal calls. It's just Tom down at the mainframe. There's some sort of issue he wanted me to consult on." A pause. "Of course, sir. I'll make sure he calls someone else next time." Another sound of a shuffling phone, then Connor saying, "Hey, Tom, you know we're not supposed to use our mobiles for this. You mind using the office line?" Her phone beeped, saying she'd gotten a text message. "Thanks, mate." Then he hung up.
The message was a number and an extension, and Abby didn't hesitate to punch in the number, then navigated her way through the system of a stock trading firm she forgot the name of the minute she was in the system. The phone barely rang before Connor was answering, "Temple."
"Sorry," she said. "I didn't realise, but I need the help."
"Abby!" shouted Stephen.
"Damnit," she hissed. "Conn, look, I'm sending you the picture, can you just email me something to narrow down where we should be looking for its young?"
"Got it," he said, all effeciency. "I'll look it up quickly. Do you need an assist at getting into the CCTV in the building?"
"Abby!"
Putting a hand over the mobile to muffle her voice, she shouted back, "Just a sec, I'm fine!" Then put the phone back to her ear. "I should be fine, you and Jess taught me enough to get by, but I'll text if I need something. Don't worry. Gotta run, and thanks," she told him, snapping her mobile shut.
"What are you doing here?" Cutter demanded.
She froze a second, then lied like her life depended on it. "Just seeing if there was a chance it had gone this way." She pointed at a carpet that had some tears in it. "I thought those might have been from claws."
Cutter's face cleared. "Alright then. Listen, Sarah just got here, and I want you to head down there and watch her back while she looks at the CCTV system to see what's about."
Abby sighed and headed for the security centre, while the manly men went about doing manly things, while the three women were delegated to staying out of the way with the tv screens. She missed having Connor there to do that while she got to be in the action. She missed Jess doing that, so both she and Connor were in the action.
Halfway to her destination, accompanied by an SF, as though she didn't know how to shoot a gun, her phone buzzed with a message from Connor.
Ambulocetus, semi-aquatic mammal, Eocene period. It's a sort of proto-whale. Best guesses at the moment are that it's like a mammalian crocodile. So it may head for water if there's any to be had. Otherwise, my best guess is treat it mostly like an adolescent croc. Most people think it's an ambush predator.
It came with a picture from his database that pretty much matched what she had, and Abby smiled to herself as she sent a quick 'thank you' back. She'd forgotten about the SF, when he said, "You've been talking to that Temple lad?"
Abby whipped around, her heart pounding. Yes, she wanted to bring the two teams together, but she hadn't put together a plan yet, she didn't want things to fall apart before she'd had the chance to try properly. "What do you mean?"
The look in his eyes was shrewd, but kind, as he said, "Nothing, only that I've seen the work he and his people do, and I'd love to have a chance to work with some of his people. They're good."
"Harry Jacobson, wasn't it?" she asked, as they started back down the hall. "I remember you. Becker always liked putting you on point in the field."
"Becker?"
"SAS and head of our security," she told him. "Dark hair that looks like it never moves?"
A look of enlightenment appeared on his face. "Oh, that one. We call him the android, because that hair is not natural."
Abby was still laughing as she slipped into the control room for the security and joined the other two, who were staring in horror at the password protected system, while Claudia explained to Cutter that, "I can't magic these computers on to show anything, Nick. We're not hackers, you know."
"Move over," Abby said to Sarah. "All right, if I were the passwords of a nearly computer illiterate security guard, where would I be?" A few minutes later she found it. The little bit of writing on a tiny slip of paper underneath a monitor. "Hah. Passwords." From there it was the work of moments to navigate the system, bring up the monitors and start looking.
Keeping Connor's advice about crocs in mind, Abby checked the decorative pools and fountains on the main level. Nothing there and she started working her way up, floor by floor. "How . . . since when can you do that, Abby?" Sarah asked.
"My fiance," Abby said by way of explanation. She didn't feel like defending Connor right then, they were working and the fight that could erupt, given Claudia's opinion of Connor, didn't seem worth it. She was no Jess Parker or Connor Temple, but she knew enough to know how to look.
Fifth floor, an odd sort of lower area and a pipe that had somehow burst, flooding the section of floor, and there it was. Claudia had been talking with Cutter the whole time, Abby not paying the least attention, but she snatched the phone from the older woman's hands, once again bemoaning the loss of the earpieces, she really had to talk to Lester about that, and said, "The calf's on the fifth floor, Cutter. There's a burst pipe, and it's turned that office into a pool, pretty much, there's some weird sort of steps there that are holding the water. And Cutter, tell everyone to watch out, it's probably an ambush predator."
"Why are you so sure?" Cutter asked her curiously.
It was absent-minded, it was what she'd always done when relaying Connor's information to Cutter or anyone else. "It's an ambulocetus. Protowhale and probably an ambush predator like a crocodile. The mother seems to be built like one."
"Got it. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it moves," Cutter said.
Abby handed the phone back to Claudia, who looked at her, impressed. "That is different. Normally we just have to rely on the hit or miss from Nick and look into it later."
Hastily, Abby said, "That was just luck. I'd looked through Connor's database once. I just . . . remembered."
"Connor's database?" Sarah asked, curiously. "Is this as in Connor Temple?"
"Yes," Abby replied. Then, figuring it couldn't hurt, she said, "He'd been building it since he was fourteen. It was already extremely comprehensive before the anomaly project started, once we started having real animals to use for adding information it grew. We had a pretty impressive amount of memory devoted to the thing," Abby told her with a smile.
Nodding, Sarah said, "I can see how that would be useful, having all that at your fingertips. I wonder why they didn't get that from Connor in this timeline." She shrugged. "Well, by now there's so much bad blood he'll probably refuse based on principle alone."
"Probably," Abby agreed.
The SFs, Cutter and Stephen wrapped up getting the animals back through and they all trooped back to the Home Office to file reports. Abby got to her office, shut the door, and after a moment's thought, shoved a chair in front of it to block it from opening unexpectedly, and texted Connor.
You free? I want to thank you.
A minute later her mobile rang. "Hello?"
"You get the ambulocetus back through?" he asked, all business. He sounded like Matt, no time on the job to go off on tangents or anything else.
She took her cue from that and replied, "Yes. It was a mother and its calf. We found it hiding out in a flooded office, but they got it back through. Did you want me to tell you anything in particular, or would you be fine if I just photocopied the report I'm writing for Lester, or what?"
There was an odd sort of hesitation in his voice as he said, "D'you think we could meet up? I think we need to talk more. About everything."
"Sure," she said. "We could meet at my flat, if you'd like."
"I think the others would be pretty unhappy if I monopolised you," he replied, sounding amused. "How about . . ." he named an unexpectedly familiar address.
"Jenny's house?" Abby asked, surprised.
"Er . . . yeah," Connor sounded taken aback. "You know where that is, then?"
"Yes," she said. "Tonight? Maybe sevenish?"
"That works," he said. "I'll text if it changes."
"Okay," Abby felt so awkward. If he'd been her Connor, now was the time she'd have told him she loved him. But he wasn't and now she just had to end the call without accidentally sounding just a bit mad. "I'll see you then. I have to get back to work."
"Yeah, me too," he told her. "Tonight."
There was a brusque click as he hung up, and Abby snapped her mobile closed as well. Then she resolutely turned to the computer on the desk to complete her report. Because people might come back from the dead, fiances disappear, half the world could go mad, but the paperwork would still be there.
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