Primeval fic: All in Good Time 3/4
Title: All in Good Time
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: No ownership, no money.
Rating: PG-13, may yet get upgraded.
Summary: The first time Connor met Stephen wasn't the first time Stephen met Connor. Or something like that.
AN: So close. I can almost taste the ending. I can also almost taste having the condo all to myself for the weekend, since Mom made it home from the hospital and seems well enough to head out to Niagara-on-the-lake for the Shaw Festival plays this weekend. I do so look forward to watching tv on an actual tv set for a change.
*******************
Stephen's first order of business was to check on the scientists. There wasn't a soldier left alive in the place for him to need to consider what to do with them. A few minutes of talking with the men and women there went to show that Helen had selected carefully, choosing people who, like herself, saw others as useful tools to their work. With the help of the teens, they were locked away in the cells that had previously housed the children.
Then he turned to the ones that seemed to have the most authority with the others. "I'm sorry I don't know your names yet."
"Elsie," said the redheaded girl. "That's Zeke." She was pointing to a black boy.
"Thank you," Stephen said, trying to commit the names to memory. "Listen, I know the temptation is to deal with those scientists the way you did the soldiers, but . . ."
"It's not right to do it now," said another girl. "I'm Hettie." She sighed, pushing bloody and blonde hair out of her face. "I wouldn't be able to resist, but Elsie?"
"I'll work with Michael," she replied. "We'll keep them fed and whatnot."
"Think of it this way," Stephen told them. "I may need to have a go at picking their brains for answers about how to reverse what's been done to you all."
The faces turned to him all developed such hopeful looks that Stephen felt a little inadequate being the bearer of such faith and hope. "You think you can?" Connor asked, looking more unlike the adult version of himself Stephen was used to than he had managed yet. Because in a situation like this one, Stephen was forced to admit, Connor's general brilliance was what the team tended to rely on.
But he was there, and, "My focus for my bachelor's was in microbiology. I have a chance at figuring out what was done and maybe mitigating it somehow. I'll have to see." Then he shook his head. "Listen, if any of you are any good at science in school, it might help if I had someone there to help me look through the notes and things the scientists had. The rest of you, they had to have been living somewhere, you might as well see about what there is in the way of supplies and places to sleep and all."
Hettie nodded eagerly. "Peterson always smelled like chocolate. I'll bet she has a stash of chocolate!" She was already leading a pack of them off.
Stephen turned to the ones left. "You mind making sure the children get fed, maybe cleaned up?"
One of the girls, looking sort of Pakistani, nodded sharply. "Absolutely. This is positively filthy," she said. "Brian?" she asked one of the others. "You take the boys, I'll take the girls and we'll see what we can do?"
"It'll be like wrangling my brothers and sisters," said what was, apparently, a young Irishman. They collected a few others on the way and the teens scattered, leaving Stephen alone with Connor.
"You're not going to join in the looting?" he asked.
"They must have a brilliant computer set up," Connor told him, shaking his head. "I want to see what they've got."
"Lead the way, then," Stephen told him. "I suspect you'll have a better guess than I will."
Connor grinned and they hurried off. The lab was a beauty. State of the art equipment, and Stephen heard Connor make a few noises that were rather uncomfortably like ones he'd made the last time Allison had been over for "dinner", when he started in on the computer systems.
While Connor muttered to himself, Stephen started reading. Any joy he had was rapidly consumed by the sick feeling he had as he read the notes on what Helen had done to the teenagers.
Travelling through time, she'd made a discovery of a fungus that had an almost mutating quality to it. It didn't simply overtake someone, growing at an incredible rate, it absorbed the DNA forms of the animal or plant and then mutated its own cells to use certain convenient aspects of the 'host' creature. She'd got her minions to separate out the sequences that allowed for the rapid mutation of cells, then had put them to combining those with animal genetics to create the instincts and abilities of those animals in the teenagers.
It had been in everything from the food to air pumped into the cells to the injections they gave the teenagers.
What he had to do was determine if there was a way to reverse the process, especially in the poor kids who were still trapped in the smaller cages for everyone's safety. Some of the results of early experiments had Stephen swallowing back bile as he thought of those poor victims that no one would ever be able to help. In the end, the only way he got through it was by treating it all as a hypothetical exam question. Something that would never be real, because otherwise he had to face the horror of what Helen had been doing.
He had answers to how it had been done when he was interrupted by Elsie softly asking if he'd like to take a break for a shower and some food, but nothing yet on how to undo it. Stephen looked up to see that he'd been there for the whole day. He'd been generally aware of the sunrise, the light moving across the room and activity in the background, but he hadn't realised how long he'd been at it. Suddenly exhausted as his concentration was broken, he told her, "I'd best get some sleep somewhere."
She smiled. "Connor's beat you to that," and she nodded her head to the side where Connor was asleep over the keyboard.
"Where's Elliott?" Stephen asked. "Connor'll probably be less . . . concerned if he wakes up with Elliott."
Elsie's lips pursed a little. "True enough. I can't . . . I'm amazed, you know. He's the only one that the bitch completed the process on who didn't . . ." her lips trembled a moment. "Penny was such a sweet little girl," she murmured. "And all the others."
After the past days with Connor and Elliott, Stephen's normal standoffishness was at an all-time low. He pulled the poor girl into his arms, holding her as she wept softly. "I'll do my best for you all," he told her. "You have my word. Even if I have to bring you all back to the 21st century and make Lester help."
**********************
Connor woke up, momentarily disoriented, but before he could do more than wonder where he was, the scent and sound of Stephen and Elsie reached him. Quelling some of his baser instincts, which were not going to be helpful, he suddenly realised Elsie was crying and Stephen was comforting her. He tried to edge quietly out of the room, but Elsie remained as much on edge as any of the others, and snapped to attention at the first sign of movement.
"You should probably get to bed," she said, hastily wiping away the tears on her face. "Elliott's been missing you. He'll be happy to see you come morning, if you want to set up . . ." she paused. "After you shower. Connor, you stink."
Putting on a grin he didn't feel, Connor told her, "I'm sure it's just a right manly musk, right Stephen?"
Stephen had another odd look on his face, but he replied, "Connor, I don't have an enhanced sense of smell, and even I can tell you stink. So do I, for that matter."
"No one ever appreciates a good joke," Connor grumbled as he left the room, following the scent of soap and warm water down the halls.
Following after him, Stephen asked, "Just wondering, but do you know where the showers even are?"
"Just following the smell of soap," Connor told him, holding onto a false cheer.
"Why do you do that?" Stephen inquired .There was a strange quality to the question, one Connor couldn't quite figure out. "Make those bad jokes. You must know they're not funny."
"They're funny if you let them be funny," Connor said, sobering. "And sometimes it's all I've had since I've been here. Keeps me from going howling mad."
They arrived at a set of showers, pretty much the same as the sort you'd find at a public swimming pool or gym, with what looked like the plundered contents of the towels, soaps, shampoos and whatever else bath-related had been found, scattered haphazardly all over the room. Connor hastily grabbed one of the bottles of shampoo and one of a body wash, diving into the shower, hastily peeling off his clothes from inside the stall, dropping them next to the towel and enjoying the bliss of hot water. When he opened the shampoo bottle he nearly choked. The scent of flowers was sickening and thick in the air.
"Connor?" he must have made some sort of noise. "Are you alright?" Stephen asked.
Slamming the lid shut, he choked out in response. "It's just the smell of the shampoo, I think the amped up sense of smell's a bit of trouble with this."
"Pass it here," Stephen told him, and a moment later Connor was in possession of an unscented bottle and set to getting the grime, sweat, oil and whatever the hell else he had on his head, off his head. When he was finished, he discovered Stephen wearing slightly ill-fitting, but clean clothes, and holding out a bundle of clean-smelling clothing to Connor. "Michael came by. He and the others have been raiding the closets. They'll probably be close to your size."
"So much better than at school," Connor commented. "No idiots snapping wet towels at you."
A wry look crossed Stephen's face. "Such a waste of everyone's time," he said, shaking his head. They split up, Stephen apparently following directions to someone's bedroom and Connor following his nose to find Elliott.
"Connor!" exclaimed his cub, bounding out of the bed. "I was worried you were hurt, I haven't seen you in forever," he finished reproachfully.
"I'm sorry," he said, plopping down on the bed, immediately joined by a snuggling five-year-old. "I was looking at the computers to see if there was anything in there that could help Stephen with fixing what's wrong with everyone."
"Oh," Elliott said. "Can I help? Only 'cause we're all bored."
Suddenly exhausted, Connor yawned, and crawled into the bed, answering, "I'll think about it tomorrow, Elliott. I'm really really tired right now."
"Okay," Elliott said, crawling in with him. With his cub safe, all the others safe, behind walls that would keep everything out and finally in a comfortable bed for the first time in what was weeks, if not months, Connor fell asleep immediately.
He was startled awake, and reacted as he'd learnt to out in the woods, lashing out first, slamming the intruder to the floor, determined to protect his cub from any attacker. A sharp voice brought him up short. "Connor! Stop that now!"
Alpha, Stephen, his brain reminded him. His mind cleared and interloper resolved first into pack, then into Zeke. "Oh, God. I'm so sorry." He scrambled back. "Zeke, I-"
"I told you," Elliott was saying with all the I-told-you-so a five-year-old could bring to bear. It was actually rather a lot. "That's why I went to get Stephen."
Zeke looked terrified, and Connor had to viciously suppress the part of him that was trying to howl in triumph at establishing dominance over the older, larger, teenager. "Zeke, I . . ." There wasn't anything he could say, though.
"Connor," Stephen said. There was a hint of sharpness behind the words, and Connor felt himself tilting his head in submission before he stopped himself. "Why don't you come back to the lab for a bit, you and Elliott?"
It wasn't really a question, and Connor sighed with relief internally as the pack alpha made him leave. He could feel his brain getting fuzzier by the day. What had been harder to tell, out in the woods, was clearer now. He may have slowed down whatever process the bitch had done to him, but it hadn't stopped and he was still changing. Pushing that aside for now, he asked, "What do you need?"
"Right now," Stephen said, "I need someone who can look through the computers and find out things other than the biochemical work."
"You need a hacker," Connor said. A thought occurred to him. "How did you know?"
"After yesterday and the time you spent on the computer?" Stephen asked. It had the feeling of a lie, even though it wasn't one, exactly.
He shook his head. "That's not it," he said slowly. "You keep knowing things, saying things that . . . it's like you know me."
"Trust me, Connor," Stephen said, "Before this I did not know you." He turned and walked away, gesturing for Connor to follow, but Connor's eyes narrowed a little. There had been an odd sort of ironic twist to those words that he didn't know what to make of it. Nonetheless, there had been no reason not to trust Stephen, and someone did have to go through those computers while Stephen focused on how to fix everyone.
By the end of the day, after Elliott had wound up bored, then asleep from boredom, Connor had learnt a few interesting things. Firstly, there was a machine that could be used to generate the temporal gateways they'd all been brought through and specific tempero-spatial coordinates for every kidnapee that he could use to send everyone home to their right places and times, and he'd found out what that Helen woman had meant by a safeguard when none of them could hurt her.
"Stephen," he called. "You should probably see this."
Stephen was over in a moment. "What've you got?" he asked.
"I don't really follow all the genetics here," Connor admitted, "But it seems that She . . . Helen, she made a few modifications to herself as well as to us. You know how there are some spiders where the female's a lot bigger than the male? Where the male has to either avoid her or, if he wants to mate has to sort of sneak up on her and stuff?"
Catching on instantly, Stephen looked closely at the file Connor had open. "She used that sort of atavistic caution and fear, input it into all of you and made the trigger for it herself," he muttered. "And a few other things, herding and pack instincts, placing her in the position of bellwether, for lack of a better term . . . and hyenas, who are matriarchal play a role . . ." He shook his head. "Maybe when I get home I should find out if she did that to me, too."
"I'd say something comforting, but there's not much that would be," Connor told him frankly. "I've also found out how to get us all home to the right place and times. I'm thinking we should send the children back. I don't think any of us teenagers are ready to be sent back, but Elliott . . ."
"Elliott should go home to his mum," Stephen agreed. "And the others. This is good news. You're sure you know how to do this?"
Connor nodded. "Ultimately, it's just a matter of inputting the data into the machine. It seems simple enough." It would be a pang to let Elliott go, but this was what would be best for Elliott.
Somehow Stephen knew, and they walked back to the rest of the group, gathered together in the barracks, letting Connor carry his still-sleeping cub one last time.
************************************
As always, Connor's intellect rose to the occasion, and after the meeting in which they told everyone that there was a way home, he started up the generator needed to create the anomalies and punched in the codes to send the first children home. Stephen went through, sometimes to a place lacking in supervisory adults, leaving the child with a caution that it would do little good to tell their parents, but some emerged to their worried parents standing right in front of the anomaly.
It felt good to be able to tell some people the truth, explaining roughly what the anomalies did, although he implied that it was entirely Helen's fault. At Elliott's turn he got a bit of a surprise. The very young woman standing in her back yard had pursed lips and a rucksack, a hat, a lot of bottles of water and a rifle. When he came out of the anomaly, she sagged in apparent relief, then flung herself at Elliott. "Elliott! You're alright!"
"Mum!" Elliott shouted happily. "I was so scared but Connor saved me and Stephen came and rescued everyone and he's gonna get everyone home!"
Her head came up and she grinned a little weakly at Stephen. "You really make a practice of this, don't you?" she asked.
"I . . . er . . ."
"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked. "Well, I suppose I have changed a bit." She pitched her voice higher and rougher and said, "I ain't baggage!"
After the whole mess with Connor, Stephen suddenly understood. "I think we may not have met yet, so to speak," he told her. "I'm still from 2007."
Her jaw dropped a moment, then she looked him up and down. "You would have to have fantastic genes to look that much the same after twelve years, I suppose," she said. "Still. I don't think I ever thanked you or Cutter for saving me from being an idiot back then. So, thanks. And thanks for Elliott."
"He's a great kid," Stephen told her honestly. "I've got to go. I have a few more of Helen's kidnap victims to return."
"Kidnapped!" she exclaimed.
"I'm sorry to leave, Elliott," Stephen said, "I'll see if Connor and I can't arrange to be here in the next few days. I mean, the us from now."
He walked back through to the young woman fussing over her son. Connor looked anxious. "How's Elliott?"
"Apparently I'm going to rescue his mum from something in a few months' time, so she was about to come through here with a rifle and God knows what else to rescue him," Stephen told Connor. He watched as Connor's hackles lowered and he seemed to take a deep breath to calm himself down.
"That's good," he said with a smile that was mostly unforced.
Over the next few days, Stephen found a few things out, including that Helen's final injection was a sort of binding agent, and the teenagers who hadn't had one would, with time, revert to normal. About half asked to head home right then. Connor obliged, of course. It wasn't fair to make them stay. But the other half stayed, standing guard on the scientists and helping Stephen threaten and occasionally go further than that with them, keeping the compound working, acting as lab assistants, cleaning and cooking staff and just doing all the things that needed doing.
Eventually he'd got everything from those merciless bastards he could. They were still left with the question of what to do with them. It was Hettie, one of the ones who'd stayed behind to help, that came up with the answer. "We can't hand them over to any officials, I mean, most of them don't exist in the same time or place as anyone else. I say we just toss them somewhere in time, and let them fend for themselves. If they make it, then they make it, but . . ." she shrugged.
"Somewhere after humans've evolved," Connor said slowly. "That's still a lot of free millennia, and I can program the thing to drop them in different places, too."
And that was what they did. They'd drop them off, a millennium apart with each 'group', and each individual was dropped a continent away from everyone else. One in North America, one in South, one in Africa, one in Asia, one in Europe and one in Australia. Then one thousand years later another 'group' of six would be distributed the same way, until they were all gone. With them, most of the teens who'd stood guard also left.
It was a small group now. Stephen's temporary lab assistants, the ones in the cages who needed feeding and care that he was still trying to cure, and Connor.
But that last send-off was the last of Connor. Because the next morning, he was bad-tempered and unable to work. Now easily startled at any approach, the only person who could keep him from descending to violence was Stephen, and there was another knock-down, drag-out fight between them before he brought Connor into submission.
It also took longer for Connor to recover human cognition afterwards, and when he did, he told Stephen, shaking, "I . . . I should've told you, I know. It's . . . I'm losing it, Stephen. I'm . . . I could have killed Hettie there, and Michael." He was close to tears. "I can't . . . it creeps up on me sometimes and I . . ." his hands slid into his hair, gripping the dark locks, pulling on it. "Without Elliott it's even harder 'cause I don't have the same reason to stay . . . normal." Suddenly his gaze shifted to Elsie, who'd also stuck it out, and was flirting with Michael. Connor's eyes went blank and a growl rattled in his chest at the sight.
"Connor!" Stephen snapped. "If you can't get yourself under control, I'm going to have to put you in with the other ones. You know that."
With visible difficulty, Connor met Stephen's eyes. "Then you'd best do it. I don't know how much longer I can hold on."
"Connor," Stephen said softly. He didn't know what to say. Connor, even at fifteen, had a brilliant mind, was good enough even at that age to stand in for Stephen's regular colleagues. But he'd been less and less help as this had progressed, and Stephen could, now that he was thinking about it, trace the development of Connor's current state. "You're right. Do you want to go in with the others, or should I put you into the cells, separate?"
"I don't . . ." Connor's voice cracked. "With the others. I don't . . . even if I'm not . . . I don't want to be alone."
"You're not," Stephen said. Even though he knew, had talked to and seen the man Connor had become, knew he must have found a way to fix this, he had no idea how, no idea how to break apart the binding agent that had made these changes permanent. "You're not alone, you never will be. I will find a way to fix this, Connor."
They walked together to the place where the truly feral ones were still held. They were fed and given water, when a blood sample was needed they were fed tranquilisers to make sure they couldn't break free and either hurt someone or get loose in the Permian landscape. There were empty cages, one for every teenager that had been left before they stopped Helen.
Suddenly Connor moaned and yanked open a door and practically flung himself in. "Connor?" Stephen asked, as the cage clanged closed with a horrifying sound of finality.
"I had to," Connor groaned. "I . . ." His head came up, his eyes blank and a snarl on his lips. "Made me weak, Stephen. Some alpha. I can smell how frightened you are."
He didn't dignify that with a response. Because he almost fancied he could hear Helen speaking behind the words. This wasn't Connor. This wasn't the floppy-haired affable young man who idolised Nick Cutter, it wasn't the colleague whose mind he couldn't help but respect, it wasn't Abby's cheerful and sloppy flatmate, it wasn't the half-mad teenager who would do anything to protect a small child, even take on a unit of armed soldiers. Stephen sat down beside the cage. "I won't leave you, Connor. Even if I have to get back to the lab, I'm not leaving you."
The dark eyes softened a moment again. "Thank you," he whispered hoarsely. Then he was off again. "You're keeping Elsie away from me. She's mine, I want her and she's going to be mine," Connor growled. "There's always some pretty boy they want better. I'll make her see me when I get you out of my way."
Eventually the vitriol wound down, the pacing, testing the walls. By dawn, Connor was just like the others, not a shred of human left in him, an animal in human skin.
"I'll get you back, Connor," Stephen told him as he left. "I clearly did it, so there must be a way."
He'd get a shower and some sleep, then he'd get back to the lab. He'd had some success in applying dopamine and seratonin to the problem. He just had to keep his mind on the work, not on the poor kid Stephen now considered as much family as he did his parents and Nick Cutter.
***********************
His cub was gone! All the cubs were gone!
What had the Alpha done?
He had to get out, challenge the Alpha.
The screaming from the cages next to his filled him with anger. These were the pack betrayers. They'd killed cubs and hurt the other pack members.
Sometimes, pack members would come, bringing him food and water. Shoving it in through small openings, he'd try to get a hand out, grab one, make them let him go. When the female with the red hair came, he'd reach for her because he wanted her.
Had to take her before the Alpha got her to agree to have his cubs. So far she'd clearly resisted, since he never smelled the Alpha on her, but the Alpha had to be after her, she was perfect.
Sometimes the Alpha would come, make noises at him that left him confused. The noises always made his head hurt. Not because they were loud, but because they made things in his head feel strange.
Light, dark, light, dark. Many lights, many darks passed.
The betrayers began to disappear, taken away. He was losing time, now. Sometimes he'd be reaching for his female, and suddenly he'd be bruised and aching from where he'd been flinging himself about in the cage. Things would go from light to dark in the blink of an eye and now he was afraid.
So few of them left, and whatever the Alpha was having done with the betrayers, clearly he was going to have done to him, because he was the only one able to challenge the Alpha.
This time when he woke, he was somewhere new, somewhere that smelled familiar, terrifying. Like the Bad Things and Her and the Alpha had taken him to the Bad Place! Was making noises at him, at his female, who was standing beside the Alpha and . . .
Everything snapped into sharp-edged coherence. "It should be working now. Connor, can you understand me?"
For the first time in longer than Connor cared to recall, his mind felt entirely his own. "Yeah. Stephen?"
"Yes?"
"Did you do it?"
Blue eyes with dark circles under them in a pale and exhausted face crinkled into a smile. "It seems I did."
"You look awful," Connor said frankly.
As Stephen laughed, he felt himself pulled under, but this time it wasn't into that state of nonbeing where he'd been losing more and more bits of him, it was just straightforward tiredness, and Connor went to sleep, relieved to know he'd wake up as himself again.
***********************************
When Connor woke up he was alone, curled up in the bed he'd comandeered as his own back when they'd taken over the compound. It felt a little lonely without Elliott, but for the first time he didn't feel like what he imagined a father whose son had been kidnapped felt like. Which was a pretty big relief. He missed the kid, was a little worried about how okay he'd be back in his present, given the trauma he'd gone through, but nothing more than that. He didn't feel any need to bare his throat to Stephen in submission, didn't feel any need to challenge Stephen to a physical fight for dominance or for Elsie.
Now that he was rational he didn't think Stephen was the sort to be attracted to a girl half his age, either. He was also now well aware that Elsie had to return to 1940s Australia, the same way they had to return everyone to their native times.
That thought made his eyes go wide. Stephen! He had to figure out how to program it for Stephen's return to 2007. He was going to have to get details of date and time and place from the man, then figure out the calculations he needed to get him there.
He bolted out of bed, reaching for the borrowed clothes, and tripped and fell. He staggered to his feet, then into the wall. What was going on? Eventually his equilibrium was restored, but the world still felt oddly as though it were tilted, or wobbling. He couldn't get his bearings, not really. The whole way to the hub where the computers were, where he hoped Stephen was, felt strange, off-kilter. He knew he was walking oddly, but he couldn't help it, had to do it that way to keep his balance.
"Stephen," he called in relief when he got there. He took two steps in and tripped over thin air, hitting the ground hard. "Ow," he said, rubbing his head where it had bounced off a stool.
Stephen was at his side in an instant, along with Elsie. "Are you alright?"
He leaned against the desk instead of trying to get up. "I don't know. It's . . . it's not exactly dizziness, but something's not right. My centre of gravity feels all wonky, or my balance or . . . I don't know," he finished.
"We'd better get you to the lab so I can run a few tests," Stephen said worriedly. "There's a few things I need to talk to you about."
"Okay," Connor said, letting them pull him to his feet, and leaning heavily on Stephen the whole walk back down. "What did you need to talk about?"
Stephen took in a deep breath. "You know how you'd been trading food with Elliott, making sure that you didn't get the right formula for Helen's plan to work?"
"Yeah?" Connor asked.
"It worked to keep you sane," Stephen explained, "But it messed with the chemical composition of her binding agent. While I was able to reverse the process on the others, you've . . ." He paused, probably looking for a way to break to Connor that he was going to die or something. "You've made aspects of all this permanent. You'll always be susceptible to entering a sort of primitive, instinctive state unless you take some sort of regular treatment for it."
Connor felt himself pale. He couldn't go home like that, he couldn't, wouldn't have a normal life. "What? How . . . what am I going to do? I can't go home-"
Stephen cut him off. "I think I can bodge something together that'll work, and I also think you'd be able to make it out of some things that'll be simple enough to get." He shook his head. "But first, I need to find out what's going wrong now."
"Right," Connor said, feeling himself wobble rather dramatically. "I can't go falling about everywhere once I'm back home, can I?"
Soon enough they were back in the lab, Stephen asking all sorts of doctory questions and drawing blood, then producing one of those gourmet lollipops from somewhere, saying, "One of Helen's pet scientists had a collection. I figured we might as well enjoy it."
"Well, thank you Dr. Hart," Connor said with a grin. "I haven't got a lolly from the doctor since I was twelve and Mum said that I was too old to need a bribe to sit still for the examination."
When he was finished with the doing the tests, Connor asked, "Can you give me a hand back to the hub? Only I think we should probably start sending everyone home that's left."
"Probably a good idea," Stephen agreed. He went to the door and poked a head out. "Elsie? Could you give Connor a hand getting back up? He feels up to sending people home, and there's nothing left for me to do to him at the moment."
Elsie let Connor lean on her as they slowly made their way back to the hub. "Connor, I-"
"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I know I was all weird and stuff with you. I'm really, really sorry."
"It's okay," she told him firmly. "I mean, it's all wearing off, and I know how strangely I was thinking. With all the things that . . . that bitch did to us, I'm just . . ." she shook her head. "I just wish we could all go home and still get to know each other properly."
"Yeah," he said heavily. "But by the time we're home, some of us'll have been dead for hundreds of years."
She took in a shaky breath. "Do you . . . Connor, do you think you could maybe at least give those of us in the 20th century years and addresses and things? Maybe give us a chance to . . . to see if we could at least talk? See how everything came out in the end?"
"I'll see what I can do," Connor said, frowning. "It's a little late now with so many gone home, but I can see, sure." He sighed. "But you'll be . . . old . . . by the time I'm back. I left in '98."
She shook her head. "I can't imagine. It's just all so strange."
"I know. I mean, there's Doctor Who on the telly and all, but actually living it . . ."
"Doctor Who?" she asked, curiously.
"Sorry," Connor told her with a grin. "He wasn't invented until the 60s."
"I guess I'll just have to wait twenty years to understand what that means then," she told him, grinning a little.
For the afternoon she was his hands and feet so he wouldn't have to wobble all over from behind the computer, and he got everyone's addresses written down for everyone else who's lives might intersect. Then he started sending them home. Watching as, again and again, the machines would whir into life, creating the now-familiar golden glow with its shards of floating glasslike stuff, and someone else would go through, heading for home.
Right before she left, when it was her turn, Elsie darted forward and kissed him. Then she pulled away, smiling through tears. "Well, at least I can say my first kiss was with a hero," she told him, then sashayed through, leaving Connor goggling after her until Michael poked him sharply, saying over the collective 'oohing' of the others, "You know, some of us would like to get home sometime?"
"Shut up," Connor muttered, shutting the machines down and then reconnecting to the next destination. Everyone had finally gone home at the end of that day, but for Stephen and Connor. He hoped everyone was alright.
*****
Stephen, now that he'd had experience with all this, was able to, pretty quickly, figure out what was wrong and make a few adjustments to the treatments Connor was going to have to give himself. And it was true that Connor should be able to distill out of some easily purchased items the necessary things to keep his brain chemistry balanced.
It was always going to wreak havoc on his balance, though. In retrospect, he felt a little awful at the harsh things he'd said to Connor when he was trying to teach him to shoot or make him run an obstacle course. Lester had insisted, once it became clear they were all going to be in the field being chased by monsters all the time, on a fitness regimen for all of them. He, Cutter and Abby had taken to it well, but Connor had faffed about all the time. Or so he'd thought. He'd have to find out when he got home. Would have to talk to the techs at the Home Office and to Connor, just to see if there was something they could do.
He left the lab, having done all he could to deal with things on his end and headed up to the hub. Connor was alone up there, and gave Stephen a sad smile. "Everyone's gone home now, but us."
"That's good," Stephen told him, smiling. "I think I've figured out what needs doing for you, so why don't we both take a break?"
"Sounds good," Connor agreed, and Stephen supported him down to the canteen, where they ate eggs and chatted idly about dinosaurs, neither one wanting to talk too seriously yet.
Finally, though, the topic had to be breached. "What are we going to do about this place?" Stephen asked. "We can't just leave this sitting around."
Connor nodded, then sighed. "I'd had a thought about that, and it means I'll have to leave last."
Stephen sat bolt upright at that. "What? Connor-"
"Hear me out," Connor told him. "I can arrange for this whole thing to get absorbed into one of those anomalies and sent back in time to when the earth was still forming. It'll get destroyed by lava and such. There won't be anything left. But I have to program the computer to turn on, send me home, then shut down, restart, then send the whole thing back further in time."
"You shouldn't be the last out," Stephen said firmly. "You're brilliant Connor, but you're just a kid and-"
"And I'm the only one who can do this," Connor said firmly.
Stephen remembered that Connor, when the gorgonopsid had arrived in the clearing where the Permian anomaly had been, had pulled Abby behind him, as though to protect her from the animal, that Connor had stepped between a mosasaur and Abby, that Connor had stepped between guns and Tom and that he'd kept the timeline intact, even mere feet from Helen, which must have grated on every nerve. "All right," he capitulated.
"Now," Connor continued, "I don't know the theory behind how those machines are getting locations and dates and such to send people to, so I'm going to have to make it up as I go along to get you back to the right place and time. I might be a little off," he cautioned.
"How off?" Stephen asked.
A wince. "At worst?" Connor asked. "A year or two in either direction, and . . . maybe as far as France."
That was not good, but it wasn't as though he had much choice, and that was certainly better than random guesses, or worse yet, being stuck in the past for years. "Well, you'll do your best and we'll just have to see."
Back in the lab, Stephen went over with Connor what he'd need to do to deal with things, and they both agreed to take a few more days before heading back, not only for Connor's calculations, but also because Stephen wanted to be sure he'd finessed the treatment enough to let Connor function. In the end, Connor's balance was shot, and sometimes he seemed to be having other troubles, and Stephen remembered Connor talking about allergies and asthma.
The day came though, that there was no more finessing he could do. Stephen was no doctor, no biochemist, had run to the limits of his knowledge and the equipment available, especially without any sort of professional resources to rely on. Connor had finished his programming and was finally mostly adjusted to his new balancing paradigm.
Connor fired the machine up, and Stephen saw the anomaly take shape. He took in Connor's face, imprinting that fifteen-year-old who had risen to all these challenges so magnificently into his memory, before heading back to the time and place he was supposed to go. He knew Connor would succeed in getting himself home because he had, but he still worried. Because if he'd done one thing wrong, everything could change. Stephen reached out a hand, Connor a little perplexed reached back for what looked to be a handshake, and then Stephen pulled him into a hug. "Take care of yourself," he said in the teenager's ear. He pulled away, adding. "And I'll see you in a few years, I'm sure of it."
"Right," Connor said. "2007. I . . . goodbye Stephen."
Then with a final deep breath, Stephen walked through the tear in time and back into his own present.
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Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: No ownership, no money.
Rating: PG-13, may yet get upgraded.
Summary: The first time Connor met Stephen wasn't the first time Stephen met Connor. Or something like that.
AN: So close. I can almost taste the ending. I can also almost taste having the condo all to myself for the weekend, since Mom made it home from the hospital and seems well enough to head out to Niagara-on-the-lake for the Shaw Festival plays this weekend. I do so look forward to watching tv on an actual tv set for a change.
*******************
Stephen's first order of business was to check on the scientists. There wasn't a soldier left alive in the place for him to need to consider what to do with them. A few minutes of talking with the men and women there went to show that Helen had selected carefully, choosing people who, like herself, saw others as useful tools to their work. With the help of the teens, they were locked away in the cells that had previously housed the children.
Then he turned to the ones that seemed to have the most authority with the others. "I'm sorry I don't know your names yet."
"Elsie," said the redheaded girl. "That's Zeke." She was pointing to a black boy.
"Thank you," Stephen said, trying to commit the names to memory. "Listen, I know the temptation is to deal with those scientists the way you did the soldiers, but . . ."
"It's not right to do it now," said another girl. "I'm Hettie." She sighed, pushing bloody and blonde hair out of her face. "I wouldn't be able to resist, but Elsie?"
"I'll work with Michael," she replied. "We'll keep them fed and whatnot."
"Think of it this way," Stephen told them. "I may need to have a go at picking their brains for answers about how to reverse what's been done to you all."
The faces turned to him all developed such hopeful looks that Stephen felt a little inadequate being the bearer of such faith and hope. "You think you can?" Connor asked, looking more unlike the adult version of himself Stephen was used to than he had managed yet. Because in a situation like this one, Stephen was forced to admit, Connor's general brilliance was what the team tended to rely on.
But he was there, and, "My focus for my bachelor's was in microbiology. I have a chance at figuring out what was done and maybe mitigating it somehow. I'll have to see." Then he shook his head. "Listen, if any of you are any good at science in school, it might help if I had someone there to help me look through the notes and things the scientists had. The rest of you, they had to have been living somewhere, you might as well see about what there is in the way of supplies and places to sleep and all."
Hettie nodded eagerly. "Peterson always smelled like chocolate. I'll bet she has a stash of chocolate!" She was already leading a pack of them off.
Stephen turned to the ones left. "You mind making sure the children get fed, maybe cleaned up?"
One of the girls, looking sort of Pakistani, nodded sharply. "Absolutely. This is positively filthy," she said. "Brian?" she asked one of the others. "You take the boys, I'll take the girls and we'll see what we can do?"
"It'll be like wrangling my brothers and sisters," said what was, apparently, a young Irishman. They collected a few others on the way and the teens scattered, leaving Stephen alone with Connor.
"You're not going to join in the looting?" he asked.
"They must have a brilliant computer set up," Connor told him, shaking his head. "I want to see what they've got."
"Lead the way, then," Stephen told him. "I suspect you'll have a better guess than I will."
Connor grinned and they hurried off. The lab was a beauty. State of the art equipment, and Stephen heard Connor make a few noises that were rather uncomfortably like ones he'd made the last time Allison had been over for "dinner", when he started in on the computer systems.
While Connor muttered to himself, Stephen started reading. Any joy he had was rapidly consumed by the sick feeling he had as he read the notes on what Helen had done to the teenagers.
Travelling through time, she'd made a discovery of a fungus that had an almost mutating quality to it. It didn't simply overtake someone, growing at an incredible rate, it absorbed the DNA forms of the animal or plant and then mutated its own cells to use certain convenient aspects of the 'host' creature. She'd got her minions to separate out the sequences that allowed for the rapid mutation of cells, then had put them to combining those with animal genetics to create the instincts and abilities of those animals in the teenagers.
It had been in everything from the food to air pumped into the cells to the injections they gave the teenagers.
What he had to do was determine if there was a way to reverse the process, especially in the poor kids who were still trapped in the smaller cages for everyone's safety. Some of the results of early experiments had Stephen swallowing back bile as he thought of those poor victims that no one would ever be able to help. In the end, the only way he got through it was by treating it all as a hypothetical exam question. Something that would never be real, because otherwise he had to face the horror of what Helen had been doing.
He had answers to how it had been done when he was interrupted by Elsie softly asking if he'd like to take a break for a shower and some food, but nothing yet on how to undo it. Stephen looked up to see that he'd been there for the whole day. He'd been generally aware of the sunrise, the light moving across the room and activity in the background, but he hadn't realised how long he'd been at it. Suddenly exhausted as his concentration was broken, he told her, "I'd best get some sleep somewhere."
She smiled. "Connor's beat you to that," and she nodded her head to the side where Connor was asleep over the keyboard.
"Where's Elliott?" Stephen asked. "Connor'll probably be less . . . concerned if he wakes up with Elliott."
Elsie's lips pursed a little. "True enough. I can't . . . I'm amazed, you know. He's the only one that the bitch completed the process on who didn't . . ." her lips trembled a moment. "Penny was such a sweet little girl," she murmured. "And all the others."
After the past days with Connor and Elliott, Stephen's normal standoffishness was at an all-time low. He pulled the poor girl into his arms, holding her as she wept softly. "I'll do my best for you all," he told her. "You have my word. Even if I have to bring you all back to the 21st century and make Lester help."
**********************
Connor woke up, momentarily disoriented, but before he could do more than wonder where he was, the scent and sound of Stephen and Elsie reached him. Quelling some of his baser instincts, which were not going to be helpful, he suddenly realised Elsie was crying and Stephen was comforting her. He tried to edge quietly out of the room, but Elsie remained as much on edge as any of the others, and snapped to attention at the first sign of movement.
"You should probably get to bed," she said, hastily wiping away the tears on her face. "Elliott's been missing you. He'll be happy to see you come morning, if you want to set up . . ." she paused. "After you shower. Connor, you stink."
Putting on a grin he didn't feel, Connor told her, "I'm sure it's just a right manly musk, right Stephen?"
Stephen had another odd look on his face, but he replied, "Connor, I don't have an enhanced sense of smell, and even I can tell you stink. So do I, for that matter."
"No one ever appreciates a good joke," Connor grumbled as he left the room, following the scent of soap and warm water down the halls.
Following after him, Stephen asked, "Just wondering, but do you know where the showers even are?"
"Just following the smell of soap," Connor told him, holding onto a false cheer.
"Why do you do that?" Stephen inquired .There was a strange quality to the question, one Connor couldn't quite figure out. "Make those bad jokes. You must know they're not funny."
"They're funny if you let them be funny," Connor said, sobering. "And sometimes it's all I've had since I've been here. Keeps me from going howling mad."
They arrived at a set of showers, pretty much the same as the sort you'd find at a public swimming pool or gym, with what looked like the plundered contents of the towels, soaps, shampoos and whatever else bath-related had been found, scattered haphazardly all over the room. Connor hastily grabbed one of the bottles of shampoo and one of a body wash, diving into the shower, hastily peeling off his clothes from inside the stall, dropping them next to the towel and enjoying the bliss of hot water. When he opened the shampoo bottle he nearly choked. The scent of flowers was sickening and thick in the air.
"Connor?" he must have made some sort of noise. "Are you alright?" Stephen asked.
Slamming the lid shut, he choked out in response. "It's just the smell of the shampoo, I think the amped up sense of smell's a bit of trouble with this."
"Pass it here," Stephen told him, and a moment later Connor was in possession of an unscented bottle and set to getting the grime, sweat, oil and whatever the hell else he had on his head, off his head. When he was finished, he discovered Stephen wearing slightly ill-fitting, but clean clothes, and holding out a bundle of clean-smelling clothing to Connor. "Michael came by. He and the others have been raiding the closets. They'll probably be close to your size."
"So much better than at school," Connor commented. "No idiots snapping wet towels at you."
A wry look crossed Stephen's face. "Such a waste of everyone's time," he said, shaking his head. They split up, Stephen apparently following directions to someone's bedroom and Connor following his nose to find Elliott.
"Connor!" exclaimed his cub, bounding out of the bed. "I was worried you were hurt, I haven't seen you in forever," he finished reproachfully.
"I'm sorry," he said, plopping down on the bed, immediately joined by a snuggling five-year-old. "I was looking at the computers to see if there was anything in there that could help Stephen with fixing what's wrong with everyone."
"Oh," Elliott said. "Can I help? Only 'cause we're all bored."
Suddenly exhausted, Connor yawned, and crawled into the bed, answering, "I'll think about it tomorrow, Elliott. I'm really really tired right now."
"Okay," Elliott said, crawling in with him. With his cub safe, all the others safe, behind walls that would keep everything out and finally in a comfortable bed for the first time in what was weeks, if not months, Connor fell asleep immediately.
He was startled awake, and reacted as he'd learnt to out in the woods, lashing out first, slamming the intruder to the floor, determined to protect his cub from any attacker. A sharp voice brought him up short. "Connor! Stop that now!"
Alpha, Stephen, his brain reminded him. His mind cleared and interloper resolved first into pack, then into Zeke. "Oh, God. I'm so sorry." He scrambled back. "Zeke, I-"
"I told you," Elliott was saying with all the I-told-you-so a five-year-old could bring to bear. It was actually rather a lot. "That's why I went to get Stephen."
Zeke looked terrified, and Connor had to viciously suppress the part of him that was trying to howl in triumph at establishing dominance over the older, larger, teenager. "Zeke, I . . ." There wasn't anything he could say, though.
"Connor," Stephen said. There was a hint of sharpness behind the words, and Connor felt himself tilting his head in submission before he stopped himself. "Why don't you come back to the lab for a bit, you and Elliott?"
It wasn't really a question, and Connor sighed with relief internally as the pack alpha made him leave. He could feel his brain getting fuzzier by the day. What had been harder to tell, out in the woods, was clearer now. He may have slowed down whatever process the bitch had done to him, but it hadn't stopped and he was still changing. Pushing that aside for now, he asked, "What do you need?"
"Right now," Stephen said, "I need someone who can look through the computers and find out things other than the biochemical work."
"You need a hacker," Connor said. A thought occurred to him. "How did you know?"
"After yesterday and the time you spent on the computer?" Stephen asked. It had the feeling of a lie, even though it wasn't one, exactly.
He shook his head. "That's not it," he said slowly. "You keep knowing things, saying things that . . . it's like you know me."
"Trust me, Connor," Stephen said, "Before this I did not know you." He turned and walked away, gesturing for Connor to follow, but Connor's eyes narrowed a little. There had been an odd sort of ironic twist to those words that he didn't know what to make of it. Nonetheless, there had been no reason not to trust Stephen, and someone did have to go through those computers while Stephen focused on how to fix everyone.
By the end of the day, after Elliott had wound up bored, then asleep from boredom, Connor had learnt a few interesting things. Firstly, there was a machine that could be used to generate the temporal gateways they'd all been brought through and specific tempero-spatial coordinates for every kidnapee that he could use to send everyone home to their right places and times, and he'd found out what that Helen woman had meant by a safeguard when none of them could hurt her.
"Stephen," he called. "You should probably see this."
Stephen was over in a moment. "What've you got?" he asked.
"I don't really follow all the genetics here," Connor admitted, "But it seems that She . . . Helen, she made a few modifications to herself as well as to us. You know how there are some spiders where the female's a lot bigger than the male? Where the male has to either avoid her or, if he wants to mate has to sort of sneak up on her and stuff?"
Catching on instantly, Stephen looked closely at the file Connor had open. "She used that sort of atavistic caution and fear, input it into all of you and made the trigger for it herself," he muttered. "And a few other things, herding and pack instincts, placing her in the position of bellwether, for lack of a better term . . . and hyenas, who are matriarchal play a role . . ." He shook his head. "Maybe when I get home I should find out if she did that to me, too."
"I'd say something comforting, but there's not much that would be," Connor told him frankly. "I've also found out how to get us all home to the right place and times. I'm thinking we should send the children back. I don't think any of us teenagers are ready to be sent back, but Elliott . . ."
"Elliott should go home to his mum," Stephen agreed. "And the others. This is good news. You're sure you know how to do this?"
Connor nodded. "Ultimately, it's just a matter of inputting the data into the machine. It seems simple enough." It would be a pang to let Elliott go, but this was what would be best for Elliott.
Somehow Stephen knew, and they walked back to the rest of the group, gathered together in the barracks, letting Connor carry his still-sleeping cub one last time.
************************************
As always, Connor's intellect rose to the occasion, and after the meeting in which they told everyone that there was a way home, he started up the generator needed to create the anomalies and punched in the codes to send the first children home. Stephen went through, sometimes to a place lacking in supervisory adults, leaving the child with a caution that it would do little good to tell their parents, but some emerged to their worried parents standing right in front of the anomaly.
It felt good to be able to tell some people the truth, explaining roughly what the anomalies did, although he implied that it was entirely Helen's fault. At Elliott's turn he got a bit of a surprise. The very young woman standing in her back yard had pursed lips and a rucksack, a hat, a lot of bottles of water and a rifle. When he came out of the anomaly, she sagged in apparent relief, then flung herself at Elliott. "Elliott! You're alright!"
"Mum!" Elliott shouted happily. "I was so scared but Connor saved me and Stephen came and rescued everyone and he's gonna get everyone home!"
Her head came up and she grinned a little weakly at Stephen. "You really make a practice of this, don't you?" she asked.
"I . . . er . . ."
"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked. "Well, I suppose I have changed a bit." She pitched her voice higher and rougher and said, "I ain't baggage!"
After the whole mess with Connor, Stephen suddenly understood. "I think we may not have met yet, so to speak," he told her. "I'm still from 2007."
Her jaw dropped a moment, then she looked him up and down. "You would have to have fantastic genes to look that much the same after twelve years, I suppose," she said. "Still. I don't think I ever thanked you or Cutter for saving me from being an idiot back then. So, thanks. And thanks for Elliott."
"He's a great kid," Stephen told her honestly. "I've got to go. I have a few more of Helen's kidnap victims to return."
"Kidnapped!" she exclaimed.
"I'm sorry to leave, Elliott," Stephen said, "I'll see if Connor and I can't arrange to be here in the next few days. I mean, the us from now."
He walked back through to the young woman fussing over her son. Connor looked anxious. "How's Elliott?"
"Apparently I'm going to rescue his mum from something in a few months' time, so she was about to come through here with a rifle and God knows what else to rescue him," Stephen told Connor. He watched as Connor's hackles lowered and he seemed to take a deep breath to calm himself down.
"That's good," he said with a smile that was mostly unforced.
Over the next few days, Stephen found a few things out, including that Helen's final injection was a sort of binding agent, and the teenagers who hadn't had one would, with time, revert to normal. About half asked to head home right then. Connor obliged, of course. It wasn't fair to make them stay. But the other half stayed, standing guard on the scientists and helping Stephen threaten and occasionally go further than that with them, keeping the compound working, acting as lab assistants, cleaning and cooking staff and just doing all the things that needed doing.
Eventually he'd got everything from those merciless bastards he could. They were still left with the question of what to do with them. It was Hettie, one of the ones who'd stayed behind to help, that came up with the answer. "We can't hand them over to any officials, I mean, most of them don't exist in the same time or place as anyone else. I say we just toss them somewhere in time, and let them fend for themselves. If they make it, then they make it, but . . ." she shrugged.
"Somewhere after humans've evolved," Connor said slowly. "That's still a lot of free millennia, and I can program the thing to drop them in different places, too."
And that was what they did. They'd drop them off, a millennium apart with each 'group', and each individual was dropped a continent away from everyone else. One in North America, one in South, one in Africa, one in Asia, one in Europe and one in Australia. Then one thousand years later another 'group' of six would be distributed the same way, until they were all gone. With them, most of the teens who'd stood guard also left.
It was a small group now. Stephen's temporary lab assistants, the ones in the cages who needed feeding and care that he was still trying to cure, and Connor.
But that last send-off was the last of Connor. Because the next morning, he was bad-tempered and unable to work. Now easily startled at any approach, the only person who could keep him from descending to violence was Stephen, and there was another knock-down, drag-out fight between them before he brought Connor into submission.
It also took longer for Connor to recover human cognition afterwards, and when he did, he told Stephen, shaking, "I . . . I should've told you, I know. It's . . . I'm losing it, Stephen. I'm . . . I could have killed Hettie there, and Michael." He was close to tears. "I can't . . . it creeps up on me sometimes and I . . ." his hands slid into his hair, gripping the dark locks, pulling on it. "Without Elliott it's even harder 'cause I don't have the same reason to stay . . . normal." Suddenly his gaze shifted to Elsie, who'd also stuck it out, and was flirting with Michael. Connor's eyes went blank and a growl rattled in his chest at the sight.
"Connor!" Stephen snapped. "If you can't get yourself under control, I'm going to have to put you in with the other ones. You know that."
With visible difficulty, Connor met Stephen's eyes. "Then you'd best do it. I don't know how much longer I can hold on."
"Connor," Stephen said softly. He didn't know what to say. Connor, even at fifteen, had a brilliant mind, was good enough even at that age to stand in for Stephen's regular colleagues. But he'd been less and less help as this had progressed, and Stephen could, now that he was thinking about it, trace the development of Connor's current state. "You're right. Do you want to go in with the others, or should I put you into the cells, separate?"
"I don't . . ." Connor's voice cracked. "With the others. I don't . . . even if I'm not . . . I don't want to be alone."
"You're not," Stephen said. Even though he knew, had talked to and seen the man Connor had become, knew he must have found a way to fix this, he had no idea how, no idea how to break apart the binding agent that had made these changes permanent. "You're not alone, you never will be. I will find a way to fix this, Connor."
They walked together to the place where the truly feral ones were still held. They were fed and given water, when a blood sample was needed they were fed tranquilisers to make sure they couldn't break free and either hurt someone or get loose in the Permian landscape. There were empty cages, one for every teenager that had been left before they stopped Helen.
Suddenly Connor moaned and yanked open a door and practically flung himself in. "Connor?" Stephen asked, as the cage clanged closed with a horrifying sound of finality.
"I had to," Connor groaned. "I . . ." His head came up, his eyes blank and a snarl on his lips. "Made me weak, Stephen. Some alpha. I can smell how frightened you are."
He didn't dignify that with a response. Because he almost fancied he could hear Helen speaking behind the words. This wasn't Connor. This wasn't the floppy-haired affable young man who idolised Nick Cutter, it wasn't the colleague whose mind he couldn't help but respect, it wasn't Abby's cheerful and sloppy flatmate, it wasn't the half-mad teenager who would do anything to protect a small child, even take on a unit of armed soldiers. Stephen sat down beside the cage. "I won't leave you, Connor. Even if I have to get back to the lab, I'm not leaving you."
The dark eyes softened a moment again. "Thank you," he whispered hoarsely. Then he was off again. "You're keeping Elsie away from me. She's mine, I want her and she's going to be mine," Connor growled. "There's always some pretty boy they want better. I'll make her see me when I get you out of my way."
Eventually the vitriol wound down, the pacing, testing the walls. By dawn, Connor was just like the others, not a shred of human left in him, an animal in human skin.
"I'll get you back, Connor," Stephen told him as he left. "I clearly did it, so there must be a way."
He'd get a shower and some sleep, then he'd get back to the lab. He'd had some success in applying dopamine and seratonin to the problem. He just had to keep his mind on the work, not on the poor kid Stephen now considered as much family as he did his parents and Nick Cutter.
***********************
His cub was gone! All the cubs were gone!
What had the Alpha done?
He had to get out, challenge the Alpha.
The screaming from the cages next to his filled him with anger. These were the pack betrayers. They'd killed cubs and hurt the other pack members.
Sometimes, pack members would come, bringing him food and water. Shoving it in through small openings, he'd try to get a hand out, grab one, make them let him go. When the female with the red hair came, he'd reach for her because he wanted her.
Had to take her before the Alpha got her to agree to have his cubs. So far she'd clearly resisted, since he never smelled the Alpha on her, but the Alpha had to be after her, she was perfect.
Sometimes the Alpha would come, make noises at him that left him confused. The noises always made his head hurt. Not because they were loud, but because they made things in his head feel strange.
Light, dark, light, dark. Many lights, many darks passed.
The betrayers began to disappear, taken away. He was losing time, now. Sometimes he'd be reaching for his female, and suddenly he'd be bruised and aching from where he'd been flinging himself about in the cage. Things would go from light to dark in the blink of an eye and now he was afraid.
So few of them left, and whatever the Alpha was having done with the betrayers, clearly he was going to have done to him, because he was the only one able to challenge the Alpha.
This time when he woke, he was somewhere new, somewhere that smelled familiar, terrifying. Like the Bad Things and Her and the Alpha had taken him to the Bad Place! Was making noises at him, at his female, who was standing beside the Alpha and . . .
Everything snapped into sharp-edged coherence. "It should be working now. Connor, can you understand me?"
For the first time in longer than Connor cared to recall, his mind felt entirely his own. "Yeah. Stephen?"
"Yes?"
"Did you do it?"
Blue eyes with dark circles under them in a pale and exhausted face crinkled into a smile. "It seems I did."
"You look awful," Connor said frankly.
As Stephen laughed, he felt himself pulled under, but this time it wasn't into that state of nonbeing where he'd been losing more and more bits of him, it was just straightforward tiredness, and Connor went to sleep, relieved to know he'd wake up as himself again.
***********************************
When Connor woke up he was alone, curled up in the bed he'd comandeered as his own back when they'd taken over the compound. It felt a little lonely without Elliott, but for the first time he didn't feel like what he imagined a father whose son had been kidnapped felt like. Which was a pretty big relief. He missed the kid, was a little worried about how okay he'd be back in his present, given the trauma he'd gone through, but nothing more than that. He didn't feel any need to bare his throat to Stephen in submission, didn't feel any need to challenge Stephen to a physical fight for dominance or for Elsie.
Now that he was rational he didn't think Stephen was the sort to be attracted to a girl half his age, either. He was also now well aware that Elsie had to return to 1940s Australia, the same way they had to return everyone to their native times.
That thought made his eyes go wide. Stephen! He had to figure out how to program it for Stephen's return to 2007. He was going to have to get details of date and time and place from the man, then figure out the calculations he needed to get him there.
He bolted out of bed, reaching for the borrowed clothes, and tripped and fell. He staggered to his feet, then into the wall. What was going on? Eventually his equilibrium was restored, but the world still felt oddly as though it were tilted, or wobbling. He couldn't get his bearings, not really. The whole way to the hub where the computers were, where he hoped Stephen was, felt strange, off-kilter. He knew he was walking oddly, but he couldn't help it, had to do it that way to keep his balance.
"Stephen," he called in relief when he got there. He took two steps in and tripped over thin air, hitting the ground hard. "Ow," he said, rubbing his head where it had bounced off a stool.
Stephen was at his side in an instant, along with Elsie. "Are you alright?"
He leaned against the desk instead of trying to get up. "I don't know. It's . . . it's not exactly dizziness, but something's not right. My centre of gravity feels all wonky, or my balance or . . . I don't know," he finished.
"We'd better get you to the lab so I can run a few tests," Stephen said worriedly. "There's a few things I need to talk to you about."
"Okay," Connor said, letting them pull him to his feet, and leaning heavily on Stephen the whole walk back down. "What did you need to talk about?"
Stephen took in a deep breath. "You know how you'd been trading food with Elliott, making sure that you didn't get the right formula for Helen's plan to work?"
"Yeah?" Connor asked.
"It worked to keep you sane," Stephen explained, "But it messed with the chemical composition of her binding agent. While I was able to reverse the process on the others, you've . . ." He paused, probably looking for a way to break to Connor that he was going to die or something. "You've made aspects of all this permanent. You'll always be susceptible to entering a sort of primitive, instinctive state unless you take some sort of regular treatment for it."
Connor felt himself pale. He couldn't go home like that, he couldn't, wouldn't have a normal life. "What? How . . . what am I going to do? I can't go home-"
Stephen cut him off. "I think I can bodge something together that'll work, and I also think you'd be able to make it out of some things that'll be simple enough to get." He shook his head. "But first, I need to find out what's going wrong now."
"Right," Connor said, feeling himself wobble rather dramatically. "I can't go falling about everywhere once I'm back home, can I?"
Soon enough they were back in the lab, Stephen asking all sorts of doctory questions and drawing blood, then producing one of those gourmet lollipops from somewhere, saying, "One of Helen's pet scientists had a collection. I figured we might as well enjoy it."
"Well, thank you Dr. Hart," Connor said with a grin. "I haven't got a lolly from the doctor since I was twelve and Mum said that I was too old to need a bribe to sit still for the examination."
When he was finished with the doing the tests, Connor asked, "Can you give me a hand back to the hub? Only I think we should probably start sending everyone home that's left."
"Probably a good idea," Stephen agreed. He went to the door and poked a head out. "Elsie? Could you give Connor a hand getting back up? He feels up to sending people home, and there's nothing left for me to do to him at the moment."
Elsie let Connor lean on her as they slowly made their way back to the hub. "Connor, I-"
"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I know I was all weird and stuff with you. I'm really, really sorry."
"It's okay," she told him firmly. "I mean, it's all wearing off, and I know how strangely I was thinking. With all the things that . . . that bitch did to us, I'm just . . ." she shook her head. "I just wish we could all go home and still get to know each other properly."
"Yeah," he said heavily. "But by the time we're home, some of us'll have been dead for hundreds of years."
She took in a shaky breath. "Do you . . . Connor, do you think you could maybe at least give those of us in the 20th century years and addresses and things? Maybe give us a chance to . . . to see if we could at least talk? See how everything came out in the end?"
"I'll see what I can do," Connor said, frowning. "It's a little late now with so many gone home, but I can see, sure." He sighed. "But you'll be . . . old . . . by the time I'm back. I left in '98."
She shook her head. "I can't imagine. It's just all so strange."
"I know. I mean, there's Doctor Who on the telly and all, but actually living it . . ."
"Doctor Who?" she asked, curiously.
"Sorry," Connor told her with a grin. "He wasn't invented until the 60s."
"I guess I'll just have to wait twenty years to understand what that means then," she told him, grinning a little.
For the afternoon she was his hands and feet so he wouldn't have to wobble all over from behind the computer, and he got everyone's addresses written down for everyone else who's lives might intersect. Then he started sending them home. Watching as, again and again, the machines would whir into life, creating the now-familiar golden glow with its shards of floating glasslike stuff, and someone else would go through, heading for home.
Right before she left, when it was her turn, Elsie darted forward and kissed him. Then she pulled away, smiling through tears. "Well, at least I can say my first kiss was with a hero," she told him, then sashayed through, leaving Connor goggling after her until Michael poked him sharply, saying over the collective 'oohing' of the others, "You know, some of us would like to get home sometime?"
"Shut up," Connor muttered, shutting the machines down and then reconnecting to the next destination. Everyone had finally gone home at the end of that day, but for Stephen and Connor. He hoped everyone was alright.
*****
Stephen, now that he'd had experience with all this, was able to, pretty quickly, figure out what was wrong and make a few adjustments to the treatments Connor was going to have to give himself. And it was true that Connor should be able to distill out of some easily purchased items the necessary things to keep his brain chemistry balanced.
It was always going to wreak havoc on his balance, though. In retrospect, he felt a little awful at the harsh things he'd said to Connor when he was trying to teach him to shoot or make him run an obstacle course. Lester had insisted, once it became clear they were all going to be in the field being chased by monsters all the time, on a fitness regimen for all of them. He, Cutter and Abby had taken to it well, but Connor had faffed about all the time. Or so he'd thought. He'd have to find out when he got home. Would have to talk to the techs at the Home Office and to Connor, just to see if there was something they could do.
He left the lab, having done all he could to deal with things on his end and headed up to the hub. Connor was alone up there, and gave Stephen a sad smile. "Everyone's gone home now, but us."
"That's good," Stephen told him, smiling. "I think I've figured out what needs doing for you, so why don't we both take a break?"
"Sounds good," Connor agreed, and Stephen supported him down to the canteen, where they ate eggs and chatted idly about dinosaurs, neither one wanting to talk too seriously yet.
Finally, though, the topic had to be breached. "What are we going to do about this place?" Stephen asked. "We can't just leave this sitting around."
Connor nodded, then sighed. "I'd had a thought about that, and it means I'll have to leave last."
Stephen sat bolt upright at that. "What? Connor-"
"Hear me out," Connor told him. "I can arrange for this whole thing to get absorbed into one of those anomalies and sent back in time to when the earth was still forming. It'll get destroyed by lava and such. There won't be anything left. But I have to program the computer to turn on, send me home, then shut down, restart, then send the whole thing back further in time."
"You shouldn't be the last out," Stephen said firmly. "You're brilliant Connor, but you're just a kid and-"
"And I'm the only one who can do this," Connor said firmly.
Stephen remembered that Connor, when the gorgonopsid had arrived in the clearing where the Permian anomaly had been, had pulled Abby behind him, as though to protect her from the animal, that Connor had stepped between a mosasaur and Abby, that Connor had stepped between guns and Tom and that he'd kept the timeline intact, even mere feet from Helen, which must have grated on every nerve. "All right," he capitulated.
"Now," Connor continued, "I don't know the theory behind how those machines are getting locations and dates and such to send people to, so I'm going to have to make it up as I go along to get you back to the right place and time. I might be a little off," he cautioned.
"How off?" Stephen asked.
A wince. "At worst?" Connor asked. "A year or two in either direction, and . . . maybe as far as France."
That was not good, but it wasn't as though he had much choice, and that was certainly better than random guesses, or worse yet, being stuck in the past for years. "Well, you'll do your best and we'll just have to see."
Back in the lab, Stephen went over with Connor what he'd need to do to deal with things, and they both agreed to take a few more days before heading back, not only for Connor's calculations, but also because Stephen wanted to be sure he'd finessed the treatment enough to let Connor function. In the end, Connor's balance was shot, and sometimes he seemed to be having other troubles, and Stephen remembered Connor talking about allergies and asthma.
The day came though, that there was no more finessing he could do. Stephen was no doctor, no biochemist, had run to the limits of his knowledge and the equipment available, especially without any sort of professional resources to rely on. Connor had finished his programming and was finally mostly adjusted to his new balancing paradigm.
Connor fired the machine up, and Stephen saw the anomaly take shape. He took in Connor's face, imprinting that fifteen-year-old who had risen to all these challenges so magnificently into his memory, before heading back to the time and place he was supposed to go. He knew Connor would succeed in getting himself home because he had, but he still worried. Because if he'd done one thing wrong, everything could change. Stephen reached out a hand, Connor a little perplexed reached back for what looked to be a handshake, and then Stephen pulled him into a hug. "Take care of yourself," he said in the teenager's ear. He pulled away, adding. "And I'll see you in a few years, I'm sure of it."
"Right," Connor said. "2007. I . . . goodbye Stephen."
Then with a final deep breath, Stephen walked through the tear in time and back into his own present.
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