"New Tracks" by Aelfgyfu

RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)

CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it

SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness. 

SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars" 

WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.

DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.

Go straight to:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Epilogue

New Tracks

by 

Aelfgyfu

Chapter 1: Poo and Other Discoveries

Stephen tried to read the damned necropsy reports, but his concentration, usually so reliable, kept failing him this afternoon. He looked out the window and checked the time again; it was still too early. He had half an hour to wait until Abby's much-praised Lieutenant Miller came to fetch him. He hadn't properly met the man, as far as he could remember. Noel Miller was one of several new soldiers assigned to the ARC a couple of weeks before his whole world went completely to hell, but he hadn't taken the time to get to know any of them. He ought to have introduced himself at least to Miller, who was apparently the only officer in the bunch.

At the time, though, Stephen had been exhausted—tired of fighting with Nick, tired of Abby's judgemental looks, tired of Connor's uncertainty about how to behave around him. He'd pulled further and further into himself. He could tell that now.

Stephen had learned his lesson this time, though. No more idiotic mistakes. No more wars of attrition with his team-mates. Most of the soldiers at the ARC seemed willing to overlook his past failings, as terrible as those had been, because he'd taken Cutter's place in that room full of predators. They'd come to visit him in hospital. He wasn't sure about those who hadn't come, but he couldn't worry about them.

Abby and Connor seemed to like Miller. Stephen hoped he'd get on with him. He'd read the file they'd sent on his secure computer, looking at the man's photo to see if it knocked loose any memories of the person. It didn't help much. Miller was a newly commissioned second lieutenant; he'd not been in the field at all yet but had been selected for further training and then snatched up by Lester. Stephen knew Miller's colour (black), height (same as Stephen's), build (more muscular than his own, to judge from one picture and reported weight), eye colour (brown).... Nothing important. The man in the photo had the same blank look most military men had when photographed. Stephen couldn't recall him specifically.

Cutter wouldn't talk about Miller much. He seemed to think Stephen still worried that he would be replaced. Of course he didn't want to be replaced, but that didn't mean he feared or blamed the new man on the team. And he'd rather be replaced than lose his team because they were a man short. At least two of the three left on the team had no sense of self-preservation. He felt more relief than concern that they'd added an officer to the team.

Stephen still had hopes of coming back. He'd made a lot of progress over the past ten days. Maria, his physiotherapist, wouldn't give him any firm dates for going home, but he was beginning to think that he might not be stuck in the rehabilitation facility forever. He'd have to return regularly as an outpatient for a while, but that he could handle; he'd had physio several times before in his life. 

Stephen checked the time again. He now had 27 minutes to wait until Miller appeared. He'd better get back to the damned reports. It made his gut twist, reading about the creatures that had been in the room with him when he'd nearly bled out. But they were all dead, and he was alive. That counted for something. That counted for a hell of a lot, in fact.

He just needed to remember that more.

***

Noel Miller drove up to the low concrete building with decidedly mixed feelings. Some of the lads at the ARC, the ones who had been there longer than he, assured him that Hart knew his business, and that if anyone could teach him to track animals, it would be Cutter's assistant. Most of them seemed undisturbed by the fact that he'd slept with Cutter's wife repeatedly (although a few disagreed). Noel couldn't wrap his head around how most of them accepted the man sleeping with his best mate's wife and missing a mission to remove a mammoth from a major highway because he was spending time with her. Most of the soldiers understood Hart's most spectacular act as bravery, but it seemed to Noel sheer stupidity, maybe even cowardice. Throwing yourself into a room full of large, meat-eating animals could never be the best solution to a problem. Apparently, however, it did buy forgiveness for some pretty serious sins. He never heard a bad word from the professor about Hart. Instead, Cutter kept reminding Noel that he wasn't taking Hart's place. He was an 'extra' on the team, Cutter said once, as if Noel had just wandered into a scene in which he didn't really have a part except to swell the crowd. 

Noel put those thoughts out of his head as he stopped the car. At once he saw a man with dark hair and a walking stick step out of the building. That must be Stephen Hart. He didn't look quite as Noel remembered from several weeks ago, when he'd first started working at the ARC and Hart was still on the lead team. He hardly looked at all like the man in the photo Abby Maitland displayed on her desk, a photo that showed a dripping wet Professor Cutter and his equally wet assistant grinning at the camera. This man looked smaller; Cutter had clearly had to reach up to get his arm around Hart's shoulders in the photo, and this man didn't look that tall. He had the same slightly long, slightly unkempt hair, though. If he was thinner after the animal attack, that was probably to be expected.

Noel walked over. "Stephen Hart?" he asked.

Hart nodded and offered a cautious smile. "Noel Miller?"

"Yes, sir." Noel hesitated. He clearly couldn't shake hands, given that the other man had his right arm in a sling and his wrist in a cast.

Hart wasted no time but went straight around to the passenger side, taking care as he stepped off the pavement. "Stephen. Or Hart. Not 'sir'."

And the lads had told him that Hart understood the military. So much for their advice.

Hart's refusal of proper address made Noel hesitate just long enough for Hart to reach the car door before him. Noel could see him take a moment to balance himself, shifting all weight off the stick before he opened the door, flung the stick into the back, and eased himself onto the seat. It seemed to take concentration for him to get both legs into the car, but he managed to grab the door and close it before Noel could. 

"Good to finally meet you," Hart said as Noel got into the car himself. "Abby and Connor have been telling me all about you."

That was hard to imagine, since they didn't know all about him: Noel wasn't the best conversationalist himself. "I'm sure they're just being kind," he said as he put the keys back in the ignition. "So where are we headed?"

Hart snorted a little. "A park near here, actually." He looked rather apologetic. "It's popular with dog owners. We're going to practice tracking dogs."

Noel blinked as he failed to come up with an appropriate response.

Hart supplied directions, and Noel started driving. 

"It was the best I could come up with," the civilian said with what might have been a shrug. "Training you now was Abby's idea. They're not letting me go to any anomaly sites at the moment, and I don't think I'm up for the zoo yet. Abby does think she can get us in there once I'm a little steadier on my feet." 

Noel glanced at him enough to catch a hint of a smile on the other man's face. "So I'll learn to track pets," he echoed, trying to sound neutral, and barely managing to swallow the "sir" at the end. 

"Yeah. Blame Abby if you want. I do appreciate you springing me from the lock-up, though." Hart sounded a little more cheerful. "I will see if I can teach you something out here, but I'm not making any promises."

The rest of the mercifully short drive was spent in awkward non-conversation as Hart asked about how he was getting on at the ARC and Noel tried to reply. Hart was probably as relieved as he was when Noel found a parking space very near the park.

Noel automatically got out of the car, thinking to get the passenger door and help Hart out if he needed it, but as he crossed in front of the car he could see Hart straining to reach the stick from the back seat. He was trying to reach around with his left hand, and he couldn't quite get his arm all the way across his body and the car seat.

Noel went back to his side of the car and self-consciously reopened the door to get the stick. Hart apparently decided that was his cue to exit, and he managed to get out more or less gracefully, though he held the car frame in a tight grip with his left hand. Not fifteen minutes, and Noel already felt that he was somehow doing everything wrong.

"Thanks," Hart said with another apologetic smile when Noel came back around the car with the stick. "I haven't quite got the hang of... cars... yet."

"Leg's getting stronger, though," Hart continued as the two of them walked the few metres to the park itself. "I won't need this much longer." Considering how much weight Hart seemed to be putting on it, Noel was a little dubious, but he didn't say anything.

Stephen smiled again as he stepped on the grass, but immediately thereafter he listed heavily to the left. He righted himself before Noel could even move to help him, though.

"Ground's a bit soft," Hart said quickly. "Stick's going to be a bit of a problem. Good for learning to track, though."

Noel followed him in, managing not to shake his head. Abby surely meant well, but this had to be the most cracked idea he'd heard proposed in his short time on the team. Then again, he knew they'd managed a lot worse before he'd joined them.

"Right! Here," Stephen said, shifting his weight a little to the right and lifting his stick to point at some tracks in a muddy patch. "What do you see?"

Noel looked at him, trying to hide the fact that he had no idea what he was really being asked. "Erm... dog tracks, sir?" That sounded idiotic.

Hart grinned at him. "Good start. What can you tell about them?"

Noel stared down at the paw prints in the mud with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Was he today's entertainment for Hart? He thought Abby was a nicer person than that. 

"Look at how big they are," Hart said encouragingly, with a voice like a teacher might have used back at school. "How far apart are they? How big is the dog?"

Noel crouched for a better look at the mud. He could do this. It wasn't that different from the SERE lessons, was it? And he damned sure wasn't going to let Hart laugh at him.

"Well, the individual prints aren't very big, so it doesn't have awfully big feet," he started.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Hart nodding.

"These two are aligned, so I suppose the dog stood still here rather than walking," he continued. "So if I could find the front paw prints, I'd get the size of the dog...."

"Good, except that those are the front paws; I think you're on top of one of the rear prints."

Noel closed his eyes for a moment so that he'd miss the smirk.

There wasn't a smirk in the voice, though, as Hart continued while Noel stood up and cautiously stepped back to see if there was a rear print he hadn't obliterated. "The whole area has been messed around quite a bit, so it's not easy," Hart commented.

Noel looked around. He could see lots of prints, but few clear ones.

"Can you estimate its weight?" Hart asked.

Noel met his eyes. Hart raised his eyebrows, apparently in encouragement. Noel looked back at the ground. He'd learned to estimate boot size, human heights and weights! 

"No, sir, I can't," he admitted.

"Well, I'd reckon about twenty pounds," Hart answered for him. "And put away the 'sirs.' I'm not your superior."

"You're a civilian—"

"Yeah, and I'm not trying to break your training or anything. You can call Lester 'sir' all you want; it probably makes him happy. Leek would have loved it," he added, almost under his breath. "But I'm not in charge of you," he resumed in a normal tone. "I'm only trying to teach you a little something, and Ryan could manage to call me by my name. I'm sure you can too."

"So," Hart continued, "you've got two nice clear tracks in the mud, but then we get onto grass. That makes things a bit harder, with the ground spongy as it is. Let's see if we can follow this dog."

So they followed that dog, with Hart doing most of the tracking and Noel trying to suss out how he did it. Hart did explain, frequently, but it was sometimes hard to see exactly what he was seeing. Noel was also aware that Hart couldn't put much weight on the stick without it sinking into the earth, so he was hardly using it at all. If Hart got hurt out here, Cutter would kill him. It hadn't taken long at all to realise how protective Cutter was of his team. Worse, Cutter kept telling him, "Stephen's still on the team," as if the others would let Noel forget.

In the end, they followed the blasted dog's tracks right back out of the park.

"Good start," Hart told him, and he looked like he meant it. Of course, Hart was a practised liar, so for all Noel knew, he was laughing his head off inside. It sure as hell wasn't what Noel would call a good start.

"I probably should have gone for a bigger dog first," Hart said, picking his way deeper into the park again. "You've been used to tracking humans." He stepped carefully, looking at the mess of tracks around him. The overcast sky probably limited the number of people and dogs here now, but today was Sunday, so the park still had a decent crowd. There had probably been even more the previous day, which had been clear.

Noel followed more or less in his steps, trying not to wipe out any more tracks he might need later. That had been a stupid mistake at the start, stepping on the rear tracks. He wasn't sure how he'd done it, except that he wasn't used to looking for tracks that small. He wasn't truly used to tracking people, though he didn't correct hart. He'd only done the one course. Most of that hadn't even been on tracking. He'd got lucky with the hadrosaurs a couple of weeks back, but apparently the right people had taken notice of his luck, and now he was on Cutter's team.

"Here's a good one," Hart said, gesturing again with the stick.

"Big one," Noel noted. "German shepherd?"

Stephen shrugged. "Damned if I know. I don't usually track dogs." A slight smile crept onto his face. 

"Right," Noel said, examining the tracks again. "Walking, from the stride and depth of the tracks relative to their size."

"Good!" 

He lost the dog repeatedly as they crossed from patches of mud to patches of grass, but he felt better when Hart couldn't find the trail either for a bit. Hart's attempts to get a good look at the ground might have been funny if they weren't painful to watch. Apparently his injuries wouldn't allow him to crouch, so he kept his legs fairly straight and bent over, leaning onto his stick. The stick would sink into the ground, so Hart was constantly rebalancing, and Noel stayed close. If he let Hart pitch into the mud....

Hart gave up on the patch of ground he was examining and cast about until he could find a track again. Noel managed to follow it for a little bit—and then stopped dead when he heard Hart chuckling.

"That's successful tracking."

Just the other side of a bush, a German shepherd was relieving itself. Noel had been so intent on the ground he'd ignored it as he'd been ignoring all the dogs around them. Oh, God—the first time he did that with prehistoric creatures would probably be his last. 

As Noel glanced around, he noticed not only the dogs, but the people. Several of them seemed to be staring at him and Hart, though they looked hastily away as Noel scanned the park. He pasted on a smile. "Ready to head back, sir?" he asked.

Hart's eyebrows shot up. "Already?" He screwed up his face. "Much as I love my rehabilitation centre, I don't think my work here is quite done." He shook his head. "No, you're doing fine, for somebody who's never tracked animals before. I'm... I... I don't get to spend much time outdoors. You're not in a hurry to get anywhere, are you?"

Of course he wasn't; Noel was on duty the whole afternoon. He'd only get out of here when Hart tired or a call came in about an anomaly—and he wasn't too eager to face another one of those. The hadrosaurs hadn't been bad, but he hadn't enjoyed the giant spider (though he was a little proud to have been the one to catch it, truth be told). Some of the reports of earlier anomalies that he'd read gave him chills. 

They tracked another dog. Then they had to examine the dog's poo. Hart insisted you could learn things from droppings, although he had to admit that what he learned from this pile was that the dog's food had far too much artificial colouring.

After that Hart switched off and had him tracking people, including one who'd had the bad sense to come to a muddy park in stiletto heels. Hart laughed at that—and then immediately checked around, probably to make sure the heels' owner hadn't heard him.

Noel grew increasingly worried that Hart was going to do himself some harm as their time in the park passed an hour. This park had a few benches, but Hart showed no inclination to sit. His limp was becoming more and more pronounced. Hart finally admitted he was done after almost 90 minutes. The professor visited him every day, didn't he? This evening, Hart would be exhausted; tomorrow, Noel would be dead.

Noel was heading with relief back to the car when Hart stopped at the edge of the pavement. 

"Can't go back like this," Hart said apologetically, nodding towards the mud on his trainers. He turned back and headed to a bench, then leaned over with some difficulty and pulled his shoe off. He frowned at it for a long moment, then began to knock it against the bench leg.

There had to be a better way to clean a shoe. Noel looked at his own boots and realised they too were muddy. He knocked them against the pavement some, then rubbed them against each other. He got them clean enough, but only by putting most of his weight on one leg at a time. No, that definitely wouldn't work for Hart. 

If Noel hadn't been completely sure this would end in disaster one way or another, the whole situation could have been funny. You didn't get through Sandhurst without a keen sense of the ridiculous. You also didn't get through without an even sharper sense of when to keep what you noticed to yourself.

Noel couldn't tear his eyes away as Hart gingerly put the trainer back on his right foot and slowly retied it. It belatedly occurred to Noel that he ought to offer to do something, because Hart couldn't hide the fact that he was in some pain. But what could he do? Tie the man's shoes? It was uncomfortably close to the boot-cleaning his father had had to do for other soldiers when he was in the Army. He wished for the easy confidence Flash had shown throughout school and Sandhurst, or the self-assurance that Noel's wife Jessica had. They'd know what to do in a situation like this.

He wondered how Flash and Derrick were getting on in Afghanistan. They'd thought they'd all be going together, until Noel had been reassigned. 

Hart had been shifting to take off the left shoe when he suddenly paused and looked at Noel thoughtfully.

"I don't suppose you happen to have an ice scraper in your boot? Because that might come in rather handy right now." Hart gave a hopeful little smile that probably got him an awful lot of things in life.

It wouldn't get him an ice scraper, though. Noel had checked the equipment in the car himself, making certain he had his kit in case an anomaly call did come through. There was no ice scraper in the boot.

The smile fell off Hart's face at Noel's silence. "A broom?"

"Why—" Noel managed not to say 'why the hell'—"why would I have a broom in an ARC-owned car? Sir?"

"Oh," said Stephen. "I thought it was yours." He shifted slightly to try to get the mud from a different angle, but he could hardly lift his left foot off the ground any longer.

Noel felt a twinge of sympathy. "It's not my car, so it doesn't matter if we get a little mud in it." 

Stephen's gaze dropped to the ground so fast Noel could only think it was embarrassment. "I didn't even think of the car. The staff will tell my physio, and when she hears...." He sighed and looked back over the park. "It's silly, but she'll be so... disappointed in me. I'll get this little speech from her...." Hart's face was drawn, his shoulders slumped.

Hart was hurting himself getting mud off his shoes so that his physiotherapist wouldn't be disappointed in him? Noel had heard Hart had been getting counselling—everyone knew—but apparently the need was greater than he'd thought.

"Oh, stupid," Hart muttered. He sank onto the bench, grabbed his stick, and started knocking the remaining mud from his shoe with the stick. Noel could tell that it cost him effort to keep his foot off the ground, but he finished the job.

Meanwhile, Noel could only continue to stare. The man had asked for an ice scraper, then a broom, and Noel never even thought to suggest the stick. Did simply being in Hart's presence cause one to lose IQ points? That might explain some of the reports he'd read. Noel really had no excuse for not thinking of it himself.

At last they could climb into the car, Noel managing to open the door for Hart this time as he ought to do for someone with a disability. Hart gave him a shy grin in return, perhaps a little embarrassed again at needing the help. When Noel got into the car, Hart's face was unguarded for a moment. He stared off into the distance, exhausted and disheartened. Then he turned towards Noel, and the mask was up again.

"So you've had a little time to get to know the team," Hart said.

"Yes, sir."

Hart shifted in his seat. "Think you can keep them safe?"

"Sir?" Noel couldn't keep the surprise off his face. He'd been asking himself the same question for days, but he didn't expect to have to answer it for Hart. Worse, he didn't have an answer.

To his surprise, Hart chuckled a little. "That's probably the only possible answer. I didn't do a very good job of it myself." He shifted again, grunting a little. His leg must be bothering him—or something else. He'd had abdominal injuries as well, Noel had heard.

"I know it's not fair of me to expect you to do better than I did...." Hart trailed off.

In other words, he did expect Noel to do better. He should. Noel had military training; Hart was a civilian, a research assistant, an academic.

"I'll do my best, sir." Noel started the car. He could see Hart nod, though he was trying to keep his eyes on the road. He didn't feel comfortable with this scrutiny. 

"You know that Connor has all the self-preservation instincts of a three-day-old kitten." Hart laughed, but without much humour. "I bet they say the same of me back at the ARC."

Noel managed not to give away that he'd been thinking that already. "I try not to listen to gossip, sir." It was true—but ARC gossip proved difficult to avoid, especially after a member of the lead team showed up late for a call, and brought the estranged wife of the team leader when he did come.

"Abby has some good sense. Probably as much as the rest of us put together," Hart continued, as if Noel hadn't spoken. "Cutter's the one you really need to watch. You (.*) Connor's going to forget himself and do something stupid, but Cutter's careful—much of the time. He wouldn't be alive still if he weren't. No, when Cutter decides to do something stupid, sometimes you can see it coming. He's big into being the one to take the risk. He'd have gone into that room if I hadn't hit him." 

It took Noel a moment to process that sentence and realise that Hart was talking about the room with all the predators, the room where he'd nearly died. Noel had been stationed outside the control room that day, watching out for more of Leek's men. He'd heard quite enough to be glad he hadn't seen the video feed.

When Hart shifted this time, it was away from Noel, to look out the side window more. "Other times, though, you just don't see it coming. And we can't lose Nick. We're not doing a perfect job now, but... we're doing a hell of a lot more than we would be without him."

"We need the professor. Already understood, sir." 

"Yeah, but sometimes—sometimes Cutter gets crazy ideas in his head," Hart added urgently, speaking more quickly. "I mean—I can trust you, right?"

Noel looked to see Hart's face turned back towards him, fixing him with an earnestness Noel couldn't believe was a put-on. "Trust me to do what, sir?" He wasn't keeping secrets from his higher-ups.

"I have to tell you something, and I need to know you won't tell Lester," Hart insisted. "It's important so that you can... understand Cutter, know what you have to do to protect him. But I don't think Lester would understand."

Noel took a deep breath. "If Mr Lester asks me directly, sir, I'll have to tell him the truth."

After a long moment and another look out the window, Hart nodded. "Fair enough. We could do with fewer people on the team keeping secrets." He inhaled audibly. "You've read all our reports, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"So you know our cases better than Nick does," Hart muttered.

"Sir?" 

"Never mind. You know about the raptors at the shopping centre?"

"Yes, sir."

"You know Nick took the two adults back to the past?"

"Yes, sir. You went with him—"

"That's where the reports aren't a hundred per cent... accurate." Hart took another breath. "I didn't go with him, though we kind of made it sound that way in retrospect. I went after him. He went alone. He ordered us all to stay."

Pulling up at a red light gave Noel a moment to look at Hart again. Hart had an intensity to him he'd seen in the best officers, and he didn't expect it in this man who had obviously cocked up his life phenomenally.

"So I waited long enough that I reckoned he wouldn't be able to pitch me back when I came through, then I followed. Sometimes, you can't follow orders."

The light turned green again. 

"Learning when, now that's the trick." Hart shook his head. "This time, though, I was right. Cutter had walked away from the anomaly, left the hand-truck we'd loaded the raptors onto, and he was going to just... keep... walking."

Noel glanced at Hart again. He wasn't sure if the pain evident around the eyes was physical or mental. Probably both. The man had done done a lot of damage to himself—and some to those around him.

"His universe changed. I didn't believe him then, but I do now. The past changed while he was in an anomaly, and we were outside, so we couldn't remember—or notice—I'm not sure how to say it. A woman named Claudia Brown simply...ceased to exist. And he found out about that right after he found out... that I...."

"I know, sir." Noel didn't want to ignore what Hart had done to his best friend and mentor, but he didn't want to hear it, either.

"Yeah. Right. So he thought maybe he could change things back. Or maybe he'd just keep walking. He wasn't going to come back! And I knew, so I went after him. I convinced him to come back. Otherwise Leek's plans would have gone through, and we'd probably now have predators running amok in the streets, or we'd have Leek as prime minister for life, or something."

Noel worked to follow the logic. It must go back to Hart's earlier statement that Cutter was necessary. If Cutter hadn't come back, they might have been able to deal with individual anomalies, but not with Leek's conspiracy. That made sense. 

"You see?" Hart asked, as if he'd noticed some change on Noel's face.

"I think so, sir." What he didn't see was why Hart was telling him this. "So you're trying to warn me...?"

"That Cutter's unpredictable. That you have to pay attention.... I'm not sure exactly what tipped me off. The big thing is, don't let him go anywhere alone. Not through an anomaly, anyway."

They pulled up in front of Hart's medical facility, but Hart didn't move. Instead, he kept talking.

"Sometimes... look, we've all taken stupid risks, every last one of us, Abby included." The intensity on Hart's face hadn't faded one whit, but he looked even more tired than before. Cutter would have Noel's head.

"Connor forgets about his own safety; he gets excited about things, and he doesn't have proper training, although I gather Lester's making him do some now. Abby doesn't forget often, but you have to keep an eye on her." Hart's eyes drifted off Noel's face as he remembered something, but then he looked up again.

"But Cutter... Cutter's got a one-track mind. He'll do something else for a bit, but he'll keep coming back to his original idea, and he won't let go. He told us repeatedly that Claudia Brown ought to be there, and when we didn't listen, then he stopped talking about her. But he had that look in his eyes, like when Helen.... He wasn't going to let her go, and he wasn't going to let me off the hook, and I kind of knew it then."

Off the hook about the affair? Must be, from the guilt evident in Hart's face. Noel's idea that this man was an effective liar was taking a big hit; his emotions seemed all too easy to read, and Noel wasn't even that good at reading people.

"So when he ordered us not to go after him, I knew I had to. And he didn't come back because of me. He came back because he wants to help people. He knew we needed him; he needed... a reminder. He still wanted Claudia back, and he wanted to be rid of me, I'm pretty sure, but he came back because we needed him. A lot of people would be dead without him."

Noel nodded slowly. He was following so far, but he wasn't sure he was getting the main point.

"Sometimes, Cutter gives daft orders. You seem like a by-the-book bloke; you'll have to let that go a little. Often, Cutter's crazy orders are right, and you have to take them. But sometimes, they're going to get people hurt, and you have to learn how to handle that. And when to tell the difference."

"And you learned all that?" Noel asked, keeping the anxiety out of his voice, more or less. Hart had been working with Cutter for what, a decade now?

Hart snorted. "Not as well as I should have. I have a whole list of things I didn't do that I should have done, or I did do that I shouldn't. Read the reports on the sea creatures in the Thames—now that's a lesson in how not to handle Cutter."

Noel remembered that file, but he made a mental note to re-read it.

"Look, I know it's a lot. And you must think I'm completely mental, dumping all this on you two hours after we first met."

Hart continued, "It's just—I thought you'd better know before a real crisis. Cutter.... You can count on him for anything, but sometimes you have to remind him what needs to be done. He gets...distracted. And all of them—you've got to keep them alive, okay?" Hart concluded with a forced smile.

"All I can promise is to do my best, sir. But I do promise that. I'll do everything in my power to keep them alive." 

Hart seemed a little relieved at that. "Okay. Well, thanks for the... outing. I hope...." He laughed. "I hope you learned something."

Hart unbuckled his seat belt smoothly, despite having to reach across the sling to do it. Noel grabbed the walking stick and jumped to open the door for him. 

Hart got out of the car slowly and a little shakily, and Noel awkwardly put a hand on Hart's arm to steady him.

"Thanks," Hart said with a nod. He released the car frame with his left hand and took the stick carefully.

"Do you need help—?"

"No, I'm fine." Hart stepped carefully up onto the pavement. "We should do this again sometime," he said with a wry grin before he turned and went toward the doors. Noel could see him straighten and pick up his foot better as he got closer to the building, clearly trying not to draw attention to himself—until Hart realised he couldn't open the door and that he'd walked right past the button that opened it automatically.

Noel jogged to the door and opened it, again receiving Hart's thanks before he could finally leave. 

When he'd come to pick up Hart, he thought he knew who the man was. Now he wasn't sure. Worse, he'd thought Cutter had the answers—but now he wasn't sure. How on earth was Noel ever going to fit into this team?

***

"Maybe we can make do with some takeaway tonight?" Stephen gave them one of his winning smiles, but Nick could see from the twist of her mouth that Abby wasn't having any more of it than he was. Stephen hadn't been this pale since the time Nick walked in during one of his hydrotherapy sessions. He'd clearly exhausted himself in the afternoon, and his efforts to hide it were pathetic. Nick would have words with Miller in the morning. 

Connor had, of course, already whipped out his mobile, ready to call as soon as someone made a decision on where they'd get the food.

"So you and Noel got on all right?" Abby said. 

Nick looked at her sharply. He hadn't expected her to change the subject and let Stephen off so lightly.

"Oh, yeah, fine." Did Stephen honestly think they didn't notice he was leaning against his pillows and had hardly moved since the three of them had walked in?

"So you had a nice long outing with him?" Abby continued meaningfully. Ah: not letting him off easy.

Stephen looked ever so slightly flustered. "Well, not too long."

Even Connor didn't look persuaded by that.

"Then you'll be up to a little Indian?" Nick couldn't help himself. He stood and pulled his keys out of his pocket. "It's early enough we can probably park not too far—"

"Indian's out," Stephen said with a convincing show of regret. "I'm still on a restricted diet, remember."

"Oh, we remember," Abby said. "Did you remember you were on restricted exercise as well?"

Stephen had the decency to look embarrassed.

"That's a 'no,'" Connor cheerfully observed.

Stephen brought out the heavy guns then: the puppy eyes, the protests that he was outnumbered, the need to train Lieutenant Miller so that the team would be safe.... Nick sat back down. This could take a while. It would be more entertaining if he were less worried about Stephen. Stephen had never been good at recognising his own limits. Nick knew he wanted to build his strength up as quickly as possible, but overworking himself would both slow him down and damage his confidence. That confidence already seemed to have suffered greatly since Helen.... 

Of course, Stephen's confidence hadn't suffered so much that he would easily give in to the others. He finally accepted some admonitions from Abby. 

After Abby and Connor had left to get the takeaway, Nick opened his mouth, but Stephen cut him off.

"I know what you're going to say," he said tiredly.

For once Nick got to smirk at him instead of the other way around. "I think Abby already said it for me."

They made a short evening of it. Simply getting to the lounge where they could all eat at a table proved taxing for Stephen, and Nick added a few words of reproof himself before he left. He felt a little unsettled that Stephen accepted them without argument. It was probably too much to hope that things would ever be the same between him and Stephen, or for the team as a whole, as they'd been before Helen came back into their lives. He hoped it wasn't too much to hope that they could put things back together in some new way.

***

Even on a second reading, Noel would never have suspected that the reports of all four team members on the raptor incident left anything out if Hart hadn't told him. The reports didn't even look like they'd worked together on them. The records gave no indication anywhere that Cutter had nearly left the team and the 21st century forever, nor that any argument had occurred between the professor and his assistant.

Hart hadn't told Noel something else that did appear in the reports and that Noel had only vaguely remembered until he re-read them. The professor had come back through to the present first and Hart had brought up the rear. One of the raptors they'd just returned had got its teeth on Hart's boot. The anomaly had closed so soon after they'd finally managed to pull Hart through that the pursuing raptor had been beheaded by the closure. 

The medical reports were there, too. The boot had protected Hart's foot well enough that he'd suffered only scratches; Dr Gupta had put him on strong antibiotics to be safe. She'd also prescribed painkillers and a muscle relaxant for the strain the tug-of-war had put on his body, particularly his leg. 

Protecting Professor Cutter seemed to be a very dangerous game. Had Hart not told him that he'd nearly been killed in the incident because he didn't want to frighten Noel off, or because it didn't seem that important to him? 

Noel was turning to the reports on the Thames incident when Abby and Connor arrived. Now there was something else he couldn't work out: they were flatmates and drove everywhere together, yet they didn't seem to be in a romantic relationship.

Abby greeted him cheerfully while he was starting the second file. She was the one with whom he felt most at ease here, though it had taken him a bit to get his head around the fact that this wisp of a girl with the bleached hair and the heavy eye make-up was an expert herpetologist with more brains and common sense than most of Noel's mates in the military. She didn't put on airs, though, and she didn't forget him, as the professor did.

"So," she said, pulling up a chair and banishing any thoughts that he'd get to read through this report before the morning meeting. "What'd you think of Stephen?"

"The man knows how to track," Noel said. He had to admire Hart's skills.

Abby's face fell a little; apparently she'd wanted more than that from him.

"Did you learn much from him? Because I've tried to work out how he does what he does, but I don't get it," Connor said, coming up behind Abby and leaning an arm on the back of her chair.

"I learned a bit about tracking dogs," Noel said cautiously. He hoped he wouldn't have to test his fledgling skills on anything more dangerous until he could do better.

Abby rolled her eyes. "Stephen was complaining too, but it's not as if you can go out and track t. rexes in the park!"

"Besides, even I can track a t. rex," Connor said, grinning down at the top of her head.

"If we ever get a pack of ravening German shepherds through an anomaly, I'll be prepared," Noel replied gamely.

"We did have those dire wolves a year or so back," Connor said thoughtfully.

"Then if we get them again, maybe I'll be ready." Noel really hoped they never came back.

"So you did learn something?" A note of disappointment remained in Abby's voice.

"Oh, yeah, yeah. I won't know how useful it will be until I have to try it in the field."

Of course, that persistence that he liked in Abby also meant she wouldn't go away. "How did he seem? He was exhausted when we saw him last night."

Noel grimaced. "He didn't want to say he was tired."

Abby flashed her teeth at him. "That's okay. If Nick can't handle him, we can't expect you to manage him on your first time out."

Cutter wasn't in yet, so Noel took a chance and asked: "Is the professor going to have my head for this?"

"Nah," Connor answered. "He took it out on Stephen already last night."

Abby gave Connor a warning look, or tried to, but it was kind of hard with him standing over her like that. "He did not, Con. He was simply concerned, that's all." She smiled again. "And well he should be. Stephen can face up to a charging Gorgonopsid, he'll lock himself in a room full of predators, but I bet he's shaking in his boots about what Maria is going to do when she sees him this morning."

If he can get his boots back on, Noel thought. "Why? Who's Maria?"

"His physiotherapist," Abby told him. "She'll be so disappointed! He'll get stern looks, and he'll just fall apart! It's kind of cute." 

They hadn't been talking much longer when the professor arrived. Though they had told Noel that Cutter wouldn't be cross with him, Abby and Connor left Noel's desk as soon as they realised their team leader was in. That didn't bode well.

Cutter didn't chew him out, though. He gave him a stern look and told him that if he couldn't deal with an injured man who didn't know when to quit, he was going to have a hard time commanding his soldiers. 

Given that Noel had never actually commanded anyone, and wasn't likely to do so any time soon despite his commission (whose ink had barely dried), the remark seemed poorly aimed. He apologised, the professor was mollified, and Noel could return to his project of trying to suss out the team all over again. The Thames reports. Brilliant.

An hour later, most of what he'd got out of the reports was a headache. He couldn't understand anyone's behaviour. He'd thought Lester a sensible man, but Lester had sided with Hart and insisted they stay in one sealed-off area even after Abby had been taken from a different area. Both Lester and Hart must have been off their heads, and he couldn't understand why. Cutter had gone off on his own after he'd been told to leave. Thus no one knew he'd been knocked unconscious; he could have been killed, and they'd have been none the wiser. When Cutter finally found clues indicating where Abby might be, he'd called in Connor instead of alerting anyone with proper weapons (although the knock on the head might explain his subsequent judgment, or lack thereof). Connor had followed the professor's lead and could have ended up dead as well. Abby had done the least poorly, but she'd been standing up in a boat the day after a creature had pulled Ms Lewis into the water because she had been standing, and Ms. Lewis would have died had Hart not been a crack shot. The whole episode boggled the mind.

Noel finally admitted to himself that he couldn't make sense of the events and reluctantly went to ask Abby. To his surprise, Abby readily admitted they'd all acted foolishly, but she was either disinclined or unable to explain much more than that. 

"We'd been under tremendous strain and Nick and Connor did save me, and Stephen did get there in time to, well, save us all," she defended them.

"But why on earth didn't anyone besides Professor Cutter recognise that if you'd been taken outside the canal Hart was searching, the creatures couldn't be confined to that area?"

Abby shrugged. "Panic. Grief. People do funny things...." 

Yes, people did funny things. That was what training was for: to stop the instinctive responses, the panic and the mindless need to do something, to search a limited area even if it was the wrong one. Why had the soldiers been so useless at the canals? He tried to ask her that, but she knew less of them than she did of the professor, Hart, or Lester.

"We are trying to do better," she said with an encouraging smile that didn't have the effect she surely desired. "Lester is making sure we work with the soldiers, and everyone goes out properly equipped now. You know this: you've got Connor's doing weapons and self-defence training at last!"

Noel smiled as best he could and went back to his desk. In the few minutes he'd been away from his desk, Hart had sent him a raft of references: publications on tracks of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, collections of photographs of such tracks, and a list of files the ARC alone had on its servers from things that had come through anomalies. Moreover, as Abby had reminded him, he had team-mates he was supposed to train. Well, that was his day sorted.

***

Nick resented the military training him. He might have been less annoyed at the training if he hadn't had to take it with Connor, who was all politeness but surely noticed that Nick wasn't doing as well as he was. 

It didn't help that the man training him was supposed to be under his command. Lester apparently thought that having Lieutenant Miller teach the two of them shooting and fighting would help them bond. Nick snorted to himself as he changed in the locker room.

The fact that Noel Miller didn't seem pleased by the arrangement mitigated Nick's resentments a little. It wasn't that Noel looked displeased, exactly; he simply didn't look happy. He never seemed to take any pleasure in being better at things than the team leader, or even his new team-mates. Noel was rather difficult to read, though. 

And Nick didn't want to have to learn to read somebody else, damn it! He usually didn't worry about what other people thought. Abby had suggested that he might want to pay a little more attention to the effect he had on people. No, he reflected, reaching for his trainers: Abby hadn't suggested, and she certainly hadn't said "a little". He couldn't remember her precise words, but she'd driven the point home more than once since Stephen had been injured.

Worse, he knew Abby was watching him, especially in his interactions with Noel. She and Connor seemed rather protective of the young soldier, which Nick found funny. Noel was an officer. He'd surely been through worse already than anything Nick could dish out. 

Nick gave up waiting for Connor and went to the gym, where he was surprised to find that Connor wasn't late; he'd gone early and was already letting Noel throw him around.

"Oh, hi, Professor!" Connor called happily from flat on his back.

"Hello, Professor," Noel echoed, straightening at Connor's greeting. Whether he called Nick that because Connor did or for his own reasons, Nick wasn't sure. "If you'd like to start stretching, sir... we've already warmed up, sir." 

Nick frowned. Oh, damn. He was supposed to have been here at 10:30, wasn't he? Not 10:45. He apologised, but of course Noel brushed it off. Two sirs in one sentence? Abby was right; Noel didn't seem very comfortable on the team yet. Nick decided to blame Lester. No one should have to train his own team-mates when he was new to an established team.

"So Abby's got the new vet doing some comparative work—oof." Connor hit the mat again. Better him than me, Nick thought, but he knew he'd get his turn.

"Pay attention to me, not him," Noel said gently as he helped Connor up. He seemed to have tremendous patience for Connor. He also didn't call Connor "sir".

"But if I can't fight when there are distractions, how will I be able to handle a real fight?" Connor hardly seemed to need Noel's help; he came easily to his feet and looked ready to get knocked down again.

"It's one thing to fight with distractions; it's another thing to be distracted," Noel said, positioning Connor's body again. Nick tried to watch while he stretched. Noel said that the more you learned by watching others, the less you hit the mat yourself. Connor bounced so well, it only made sense he should take the falls and show Nick how it was done. "If you're thinking about Abby or the next update to the ADD or lunch, you're not watching how I'm coming at you."

"Stephen could hold a conversation and fence at the same time," Connor objected, to Nick's surprise. He hadn't realised Connor had ever seen Stephen fencing. 

"Then his opponent can't have been very good," Noel said with a grin that Nick didn't see very often.

"'Parently not," Connor answered, and promptly hit the floor again. He had to catch his breath before he could continue the story any further. 

Nick began to think that he'd do better than Connor today.

Of course, that thought didn't last very long after Noel started in on him.

***

"Home?" Stephen knew he ought to be excited, but instead he felt stunned. "Next week?" he repeated like an idiot.

Maria beamed at him. "Yes. Of course, you shouldn't be on your own for the first couple of days, just in case there are unanticipated problems. Not that we expect any problems!" she added. 

No, that would be why they called them 'unanticipated problems'.

"Do you have someone who can stay with you...?"

Stephen closed his eyes for a moment. Cutter certainly wouldn't turn him down. He'd probably expect Stephen to ask, in fact. But if he was finally going home, Stephen wanted to go to his own home, not Cutter's. He didn't have an extra bed in his flat, not even a camp bed. A night on Stephen's sofa, and Nick would be on the verge of firing him again. 

Besides, that might be a bit more togetherness than Stephen could handle at the moment. Cutter was surely to be trying to stay on good terms with him. Stephen had been on his best behaviour too. He'd bitten back so many comments over the last few weeks he felt like he'd been chewing on his tongue. He'd done rather well, not snapping at Cutter for most of his thoughtless remarks; he'd even restrained himself from jokes that a year ago would never have worried him. Their revived friendship might be a little too vulnerable still for him to attempt the kind of humour they used to share.

So far, Stephen was doing well, but it made being with Cutter that much more tiring.

Connor, on the other hand, had been happy to help with anything Stephen wanted, often thinking of things even before Stephen did. He'd got him a new mobile, with a new number, when they found that Stephen had lost his. Connor hadn't even asked what had happened to the old phone. He'd simply made sure he changed the number when he'd learned that Helen had been calling Stephen. 

"Yes," Stephen told Maria. "I've got a friend who can stay with me." 

She beamed. She'd forgiven him for Sunday's exploits already. 

"But I'm still using the walking stick," Stephen couldn't help saying. "Will I be...?"

"You'll need it at least for a little longer," Maria said, "but you're getting around with it quite well, and that's our main goal for getting you home!" She turned a little more serious as she outlined his ongoing treatment plan, involving three to four outpatient visits a week, but she remained so clearly excited for him that he began to feel the excitement himself.

He phoned Connor as soon as he got back to his room. Connor was so thrilled that Stephen had to hold the phone away from his ear for a few moments while the younger man's voice settled back into a more normal range. Even then, Connor continued to prattle at an alarming rate, identifying everything that would need to be done at the flat, thinking of things that hadn't even occurred to Stephen. 

Soon Connor was all set to have someone install a handrail in the shower like he was an old man.

"I don't think we need to go that far, Connor," Stephen finally managed to wedge a few words in. "I do fine with the shower here, so why would I have any trouble at home?" This shower did have a handrail, but he hadn't used it in days. 

"Just... well... you have a tendency to overdo things, Stephen," Connor answered slowly. 

Stephen rolled his eyes but remained silent. He'd learned repeatedly over the last two or three weeks that listening quietly to lectures was one price he had to pay for his friends' patience. Connor didn't usually lecture him, though. Abby or Cutter must have browbeaten Connor as well on this issue of 'overdoing'.

While Connor ran out of steam on the topic, Stephen looked over at his roommate, who was snoring loudly again. At this rate, he'd be out of here before he ever got that private room they'd promised him. 

***

Noel was not entirely surprised to be summoned to James Lester's big glass office. He wasn't pleased, either, but he could keep that to himself well enough.

Lester wasted little time on pleasantries, although he did motion Noel to sit. He got quickly to the point, or very nearly the point: "So, how are you settling into the team?"

"Fine, thank you, sir," Noel said with what he hoped came across as sincerity. He hadn't had much of a chance to get the measure of the man yet.

Lester regarded him with obvious disbelief. "Well, that was fast!"

"I'm still settling in, as you say, sir, but I think things are going well. I've read all the incident reports, and...."

Lester held up a hand to cut him off. "Yes, yes. I'm sure you're very diligent. That's what it says in your service records, after all." He leaned forward a little, as if to impart a confidence. "But how are you adjusting to... their quirks? Their personalities?"

Noel hadn't expected quite such a direct approach, although perhaps he ought to have done. He tried to buy a little time. "We all have our—"

Lester slammed a hand onto the desk. "If you tell me that great men all have their eccentricities, I'll transfer you today!" Lester snapped. His veins were standing out a little on his neck.

Noel blinked but tried to keep his face neutral, not at all sure what he'd said wrong. 

Lester's shoulders dropped. "Never mind. That's just a reply I never want to hear again."

Noel filed it for the future. He didn't think his planned reply had been close to what Lester thought he was going to say, but obviously there was some history he didn't know. Wasn't that the case with the whole team?

"Let's try again. How are you getting on with Cutter?"

Noel thought for a moment. "Well enough, as far as I know, sir." Cutter's tendency to ignore or forget about him when they weren't one-on-one didn't merit mention here. He’d noticed Cutter doing the same to Connor, and occasionally Abby too.

"He doesn't give you any nonsense about not being Stephen Hart?"

"No, sir." Not as such. 

"And he seems to be... holding it together all right?"

What was he supposed to say? Did Lester think he was some kind of spy? Some of the soldiers joked about when Cutter was going to lose it; was Lester honestly worried about that? "All my interactions with Professor Cutter have been professional, sir, if that's what you mean."

Lester nodded. "How is his training coming along?"

Noel raised his eyebrows. "We've only had two sessions of hand-to-hand and one on the firing range. I'm not yet prepared to evaluate his combat skills. I can tell you, however, that Professor Cutter is a decent shot, especially for someone who doesn't like guns, sir." 

Lester leaned his chin against his hands, his elbows on his desk. "That's good to hear. And Temple?"

Noel almost smiled. "He'll do much better once he gets used to the recoil on real guns, sir."

"Ah, his 'I'm a crack shot at video games!' excuse." Lester shook his head. "We should have had him training much sooner. Of course, I never thought we'd need him shooting. I'd rather we didn't, frankly." Lester's eyes drifted off Noel's face briefly, to a point somewhere over his shoulder.

Lester resumed soon enough. "And Abby Maitland?"

"Very good shot, sir."

Lester's eyes flicked over some papers on his desk. "I see you're working with her separately on hand-to-hand."

"Yes, sir." No need to elaborate unless he was asked.

"Are you training her differently, or is it a matter of not letting her show up the men?"

Noel's eyebrows rose of their own volition. 

"Probably a good choice," Lester said, somehow correctly interpreting his surprise as agreement. "Connor wants to impress her, and Cutter's probably even more difficult when his pride is on the line. In fact, you might want to work with them each individually. I know it will take more time, but...."

Noel nodded. He'd realised that today already. Connor's verbal encouragement did not help Cutter; Noel had sent Connor to the showers while he'd finished with the Professor, and the man had loosened up a bit with his protégé gone. Not a lot, but it was some improvement.

"And Hart?"

Noel's eyebrows went up again. "Sir?"

"How is your training coming?"

Noel made an effort to keep still. "I've made a start, sir. I have... a lot left to learn, apparently." It was an honest assessment. 

"And how is Hart doing?"

Noel hesitated. He wasn't sure what Lester was looking for here. He wasn't comfortable reporting on team-mates, but it surely couldn't hurt to offer verifiable facts. "He managed to walk for the better part of 90 minutes yesterday, mainly without using his stick much. His tracking skills are obviously still sharp." Far sharper than Noel's.

Lester made an impatient little humph. "If I want a doctor's report, Lieutenant, I'll ask a doctor. How did he seem? How does he feel about training the man he must think of as his replacement?"

If you want a psychiatrist's report, sir, perhaps you should ask a psychiatrist. "I didn't feel any resentment, sir," he said, and it was true, though he hadn’t thought about it before. "He's concerned for his team."

Lester nodded. "With good reason. It's a miracle any of them are still alive—but Hart even more than the others." Lester leaned back in his chair. "You don't have to look so tense, Lieutenant."

Noel cursed silently. He thought he looked relaxed.

"I'm not asking you to betray anything personal. I thought that as a new member, you might be more objective than... some." Lester's chair pivoted just slightly, right and then left. "Sometimes they think I'm the enemy."

Noel didn't point out that asking questions about them behind their backs might contribute to this impression.

Lester leaned forward again. "I'm not the enemy. I think they know that now. But they'll act differently with you than with me." He clasped his hands. "If there's a problem, I need to know. I didn't know Cutter and Hart were so much at odds until it was too late. I had no idea Helen Cutter had been dropping in on Hart. We can't afford those kinds of secrets here. If there are tensions that affect the team's functioning, if there are secrets that might compromise our security, I need to know. And it's your duty to tell me."

Noel nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, and he meant it. Unfortunately, he didn't have much of an idea how he was going to know which problems might affect the team's functioning or compromise ARC security.

***

Stephen had a slightly guilty look that evening when Nick arrived at the rehabilitation centre. 

"You don't have to visit every evening, you know," Stephen told him as they sat down in the lounge. "It's not like I'm in danger of... I'm doing well."

Nick rolled his eyes. Stephen had started this refrain last week. Nick wasn't even coming round every evening, only when he wasn't too tired from work or at an anomaly. 

"Tired of my company?" he asked jokingly, but Stephen didn't laugh.

"No, of course not!" the other man protested. "If it weren't for you, I'd have been bored—" He cut himself off, obviously realising he'd started arguing against his own position. "It's just... I must be taking up a lot of your time."

"Because I have such a scintillating social life otherwise," Nick replied. "You know if I weren't here, I'd be sitting home watching the telly."

"Or reading, or writing." 

Argumentative tonight, are we? "It's not like I can write anything these days anyway! Everything's Official Secrets. Nothing to write." And it chafed. Nick knew he should be thrilled simply to see all these wonders, but to be unable to share them rankled. The internal documents he generated for the ARC weren't the same as real academic writing.

Stephen shook his head. "You're learning things that you can write up. You don't have to reveal that you learned them by seeing these creatures close up! Now that you know what to look for, you can re-examine the fossil record. Those raptors at the shopping centre? They didn't exactly match any known species, but I bet we've got some fragmentary pieces of similar ones that no one realised were different because they didn't know what they were seeing."

Nick shook his head, but Stephen was apparently only warming up. "The dodos! They turned out to be from an intermediate stage of development; they don't—"

"No, Stephen," Nick said. "Lester would know I'm writing things I shouldn't, and I don't have time."

For a moment guilt flashed across Stephen's face, and then it was gone again. "You don't have time because you're wasting it all—"

"Wasting it all doing paperwork, for God's sake! Lester has us creating all kinds of contingency plans—he's got you working on them too, I know." Stephen nodded grudgingly, holding a hand up to interrupt, but Nick would not be put off. "I'm not wasting time visiting a friend who's hurt. I'm—"

"But I'm doing better," Stephen insisted. "They're letting me go home."

That brought Nick up short, with his mouth open. He closed it and considered. Stephen still needed the walking stick. He'd graduated from the one with the four little feet that had so horrified Nick to a normal stick that went straight down to a rubber tip, and he didn't rely on it as heavily as he had. Yet he didn't even walk from his room to the lounge without it.

"When?" he finally managed to ask.

"Next week. Monday, Maria thinks; they reckoned moving back home would be a good substitute for my Monday session." A hesitant smile played around the corners of Stephen's mouth.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were Stephen's heavier sessions, Nick knew. It still didn't sound right.

"Home?" he asked. "As in the place with all those stairs?"

Stephen's smile looked a little more forced. "Yeah. But it's not like I have to go up and down them all day long." When Nick hesitated, Stephen added, "The flat's all on one level," as if Nick didn't know. All right, he'd spent very little time there, but that much he knew.

The physiotherapists here must be a bunch of nutters. Or Stephen had charmed them into something they shouldn't be doing. Of course, it wasn't as if Nick's house was much better. He had a slightly wider staircase and better banisters, perhaps, but both the bedrooms were on the first floor. 

"It's okay, really," Stephen said a little anxiously. "Connor's going to move in with me for a few days to make sure—"

"Connor?" Maybe Stephen was tired of his company. Nick doubted the hyperactive geek with coordination issues made the best companion for someone newly out of hospital. And he would drive Stephen crazy. Surely....

Stephen was frowning. "Connor offered," he said, wriggling a little nervously in his seat. "He can sleep on my sofa without being in pain all the next day. And...." He broke off as he often did when he'd realised he'd started something he didn't mean to say out loud. Stephen could keep quiet for long stretches, but once he started talking, he sometimes said more than he intended.

"And what?" 

"And... I thought you might be tired of me at this point." Stephen addressed this not quite to Nick, but apparently to an invisible person just over Nick's shoulder. 

"And Connor's not?"

"Connor doesn't visit every day any more," Stephen said with a gesture marking the room as empty of Connor.

"That's because he's e-mailing and texting you every five minutes. I'm amazed you can manage any physio between his missives."

That brought a real smile to Stephen's face. "Oh, the messages pile up when I'm busy. I get to them later."

"What the hell is he constantly telling you, anyway?"

"Oh, just making sure I don't feel I'm missing anything. Lester's snarky remarks. Your responses—if they're worth relating." Whatever guilt Stephen was feeling wasn't sufficient to keep him from being cheeky. That was probably all to the good. "What he's been working on with Miller. Why is it Connor never took me up when I offered to train him?" His voice became plaintive at the end.

"Ask him. I didn't even know you'd offered." 

"I kept telling him he needed to know how to handle himself. And he wanted a gun! But only in the field; whenever we were at the ARC, he was always too busy with something to give it a go." Stephen fidgeted with his stick, turning it over and over. 

"Why didn't you ask me to encourage him?" Nick asked. Then he realised: these conversations had probably come after Nick's world changed, after he stopped talking so much with Stephen. Connor hadn't mentioned them, and Stephen....

Stephen frowned directly at him. "You don't like guns, and I couldn't get you to do any training!" He offered another tentative smile. "Then again, you have tended to be a bit more of a 'do as I say, not as I do'—'"

"Oh, stop it," Nick huffed. "You know they've got Miller training me too?"

Stephen smiled crookedly at him. "Better him than me!" He twirled the stick some more, watching the slight wobbling of the tip on the carpet. "So how's it going?" he asked a little too casually, and Nick suspected Connor hadn't been keeping Stephen filled in on his own training.

Yet it felt good to complain to Stephen about the regime Noel had started them on, even if Stephen overdid the sympathy more than enough to ensure that Nick knew how fake it was. He didn't ask about Stephen's physio. That was something he could only get away with once every few days. It must be going reasonably well if they were sending him home, though, surely.

But he had all those stairs to reach his flat....

***

After another quiet week, Noel found himself on a Monday afternoon almost wishing for an anomaly. He spent much of his time going through old reports, trying to learn what he could of the team and their methods. He found himself constantly frustrated: now that he knew what the reports of the raptor incident concealed, he kept wondering how much else had been left out or twisted, so  the reports didn't help him much anyway. 

He was also not at all certain the team had much of a method. Connor ran the technology, but Noel had learned that much the day he started. Hart tracked animals. The Professor made wild leaps of faith and reason, if it could be called that, and those seemed to succeed far more often than they should. Abby seemed to know the most about animal behaviour—and team-mate behaviour, Noel suspected.

The reports proved nearly as frustrating as training the male half of the team. Abby was quite limber and very responsive to constructive criticism. She didn't weigh much, but Noel was teaching her to use her weight for all it was worth. Noel made a mental note to ask her questions about the reports—and the team dynamics.

Connor remained cheerful no matter how many times Noel dropped him to the mat. He shook it off and was game to try again. He simply didn't learn very well. He seemed genuinely to be trying his best, but he couldn't remember when to watch Noel's feet and when to watch his hands; half the time he was watching his own limbs too much. At least he seemed to be gaining skill on the shooting range. Repetition taught him to compensate for the recoil, and Noel could measure his improvement. Noel suspected he saw more use in the weapons training. They all hoped they'd seen the last of conspirators, but Connor needed to learn to protect himself physically. Even Hart had once had to fight off a raptor with pieces of a laser tag maze rather than a gun.

Then there was Professor Cutter. The man was brilliant, and Noel had looked up to him his during first few weeks on the job—especially before he had to teach him. He wasn't sure if the professor had a mental block convincing him that he could only rely on his brains and not his physical skills, or a true reluctance to fight, or if he suffered from wounded pride because he couldn't do as well as younger men (and especially a newly-minted second lieutenant). Cutter's hand-to-hand skills were still non-existent. He'd already been a decent shot when Noel started with him a couple of weeks before, but he had some sloppy habits, and they were proving difficult to root out. Even as simple a matter of timing his shots against his breathing seemed to elude him.

Cutter had got the day off to help Hart move back to his flat, and Connor bounced about the ARC in excited anticipation of going to Hart's place after work and... what? Making sure Hart didn't hurt himself falling down the stairs? Connor's near hero-worship of a man who had slept with his best mate's wife was a little disturbing, especially since Noel otherwise quite liked his fellow geek. Noel had hardly been the lone geek in the engineering course at Sandhurst, but he had come in for some teasing for being a bit harder core than some of the others. And when his mates found out his taste in movies, he'd really come in for ribbing. 

Noel turned back to the hundreds of photos of creature tracks they'd amassed in the ARC database. They were very hit-and-miss, mostly taken by Connor for fun, apparently. When he'd asked Abby about the database, she'd said darkly that perhaps Noel should ask Stephen why he hadn't made better plans for how the team would carry on without him before he decided to lock himself in a room full of predators. Noel knew better than to answer that, and she'd added that they'd never given much thought to training anyone else.

Mr Lester had changed that. Since the disaster a month ago now, many procedures had been codified and policies put in place. Everyone had to write his or her own job description—even Noel, new as he was to the team. His was a joke; he'd only been on four anomalies so far, one of which had produced no creatures. The other three hadn't given them any major problems, except that he absolutely hated spiders and did not ever want to see one bigger than his hand again. 

Noel knew he should be grateful for all kinds of things. He should be glad he hadn't faced a real test yet. He should be thrilled to be still in England! He'd expected to be posted to Afghanistan with his mates. Now that he'd settled into the ARC, he'd be allowed the occasional night off at home with his wife.

Yet Noel missed his mates. He'd thought for ages that he knew where he'd be going, what he'd be doing—and it would be with some of his friends. He didn't expect to be the one person pulled off the list before their posting. He got e-mails from Derrick and Flash all the time. They told him what they were doing. Sort of.

He could only tell them that what he was doing was classified. They thought he was doing something exciting; they were sure he was doing anti-terrorist work, and he couldn't say anything. Worse, Jessica had decided that too, and she told him it was fine when he couldn't say anything. She was proud of him, she said.

If they'd seen him sitting here squinting at photos of muddy messes that were supposed to be the tracks of a sabre tooth tiger, they'd fall out of their chairs laughing, he suspected.

Chapter 2: Old Habitats and New

Stephen was pleased he'd thought to ask Cutter to help him move back to his flat. It seemed to make up for any snub he'd given in asking Connor to be the one to move in a for a few days, and he still managed to avoid having to deal with a cranky Cutter in the mornings.

Of course, it didn’t take long to unpack the few belongings that Stephen had had with him in at the rehabilitation unit, including his clothes. Nick was currently inspecting the flat with a highly critical eye. They were probably both going to be thoroughly annoyed before dinner. Stephen had already been lectured on minimising his trips up and down the stairs, and, having managed not to make any jokes about being on house arrest, he sat in a chair in the kitchen while Cutter glared at his cupboards.

"I don't know how you'll manage when Connor isn't here to help!" Nick said, flinging a hand up. "You've got everything too high to reach yourself when you're trying to balance—"

"I can put weight on the leg, you know," Stephen said patiently, trying not to remember how many times he'd already said it.

"You only have one good hand! You're still not to use the right." 

Only that morning Stephen had finally traded the plaster cast he'd had for over three weeks for a lightweight temporary cast. With luck, he'd be out of that as well next week. At least he could have proper showers now.

"And you're not even listening to me!" Nick threw in.

Stephen made a face. He'd had enough pussyfooting around. "Of course I am! I'm cataloguing your errors. I'm not to overuse my right hand, nor take any real weight on it, but I can use the hand. I do think, for instance, that I'm capable of getting down a glass, say—"

"And no alcohol yet!" 

"Water glasses, Cutter. I have the drinks glasses...by the drinks, oddly enough."

"Wouldn't it be better if I simply moved the things you needed down to the counter so that you wouldn't have to get them down yourself?"

Stephen knew that Cutter just wanted to feel useful, but he shouldn't have taken the whole day off to help Stephen. Stephen still didn’t know how Cutter had convinced Lester to give him the time. Perhaps it had been exactly this sort of behaviour. "Go ahead," he said reluctantly.

So he watched Cutter get plates and coffee mugs out, several of each, apparently under the impression that neither Stephen nor Connor would be capable of doing any dishes for the next few days, and that the dishwasher didn't work. In no time Stephen would lose what little counter space he had.

Then, of course, Nick was on his tiptoes reaching for the glasses, which were on the top shelf. Stephen sighed, stood and reached over Nick, who started violently back into him. 

"What the hell, Stephen? You're supposed to be sitting down!"

Stephen congratulated himself on not losing his balance as Cutter finally got out of his way.

"But I'm the one who can actually reach the glasses." He pulled down four, one at a time, with his left hand, to make Cutter happy. The man stood by him the whole time, ready to grab him if he should fall over. If he did fall and Cutter tried to grab him, they'd probably both go down. But he wasn't going to fall. He could stand for much longer than this.

"Well, what's the point of me getting things out if you're just going to get whatever you damned well please anyway?"

Stephen could hold his tongue, but he couldn't stop the grin spreading over his face as he sat back down. 

"Well, fine!" Cutter huffed at last while he looked around again to see if there was anything he'd missed. "If you overdo things, you know who you'll have to deal with now."

"Yes, you," Stephen muttered, he thought under his breath.

"I meant Doctor Gupta!"

"She never gives me any trouble," Stephen said. Cutter seemed to have a bee in his bonnet about her since she'd treated his concussion. Stephen still wasn't sure what that was about. She must be on the long list of people that Cutter had thoroughly pissed off; she was nice to Stephen.

"Well, what about your physio?"

Stephen shrugged. "I won't overdo." Nick had hit a nerve, though; he couldn't stand that look Maria gave him when he'd over-extended himself.

Now Cutter looked smug as he leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. "You'll still be seeing her every second day, and you do overdo things."

"For God's sake, Cutter!" Stephen said, feeling his patience slip again. "It's not as if I've never had an injury or done physio before."

Cutter shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Not like this, you haven't."

"Yeah, and that's why I haven't been home in a month. But I'm better now." Stephen finally realised what had been bothering him since they'd opened the door. "Why isn't this place—did you clean up? I didn't see my dirty washing, the place doesn't smell...."

"Connor's been back and forth several times now," Cutter said. "And he and Abby came by yesterday to make sure everything was ready."

Oh, God. Odds were good Abby was the one who'd done his washing. Airing out the place, anybody could handle. But he could have coped with his dirty clothes on his own. When he'd left, he had thought it was for a couple of hours at most. His laundry had been in a heap on the floor, pants and dirty socks probably at the top of the pile. 

"That was awfully good of them," he said lamely.

Cutter finally pulled up a chair at the small table himself. "I guessed you wouldn't want me trying to clean up."

Stephen snorted. "You know me too well."

Cutter frowned for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose I do," he said. "Shouldn't you have a lie-down before Connor gets here?" he asked, changing the topic abruptly, and Stephen wasn't sure if he was uncomfortable thinking about how well he did or didn't know Stephen, or still anxious about Stephen's health.

"I'm not an invalid, Cutter!" He cringed inside. Oh, yes, the whining should be very convincing.

"Connor was bouncing off the walls this morning. He and Abby are bringing dinner. You might want to recharge your batteries while you can." 

"What, and get up to find you've rearranged the rest of my flat?" Stephen snapped, and then he winced. "Sorry, I don't know where that came from," he said quietly.

Cutter seemed amused, though. "I think it came from not having any privacy for the past month, maybe. And maybe," he added, leaning forward and dropping his voice, "from needing a nap."

Stephen couldn't check his watch without Cutter noticing. How long until dinner? The nap might almost be worth it to get away from Cutter for a bit.

***

Nick couldn't believe he'd felt relieved when Stephen insisted on working, but he was afraid if they tried to make conversation much longer, someone would probably get hurt. He did make noises about having gone to the trouble to take the day off only to find he wasn't really taking it off, but there wasn't much else to do in Stephen's flat. He'd hardly been inside before. In the timeline with Claudia, Stephen lived in a different flat, nearer the university. In this timeline, Nick had picked Stephen up and dropped him off a few times. He'd even gone up once or twice to help him carry equipment, since they used so much of Stephen's own equipment in their work at the ARC. but he'd never had a look around until today. Stephen had offered him drinks once, but Nick hadn't been in the mood then. He noticed now that this flat had even fewer personal touches than the student digs Stephen had kept when he'd become Nick's assistant.

Sitting down and going over files with Stephen felt a little awkward at first, but they fell into a familiar rhythm before Nick had even realised it. Stephen had been doing a good bit of work even before returning home. Nick knew he'd been doing something, but the only part of it that had crossed his desk had been Stephen's report on everything that happened after he appeared at the motorway anomaly site with Helen. That report Nick had only very reluctantly read. He'd been horrified to learn that Stephen hadn't slept with Helen since her disappearance—until Nick fired him and then hit him. He'd pushed Stephen to do the very thing he'd accused him of doing. 

He pushed those thoughts out of his head while Stephen showed Nick the lists of responsibilities and procedures he'd written up for his job, asking Nick if he'd forgotten anything. In fact, he'd noted a good deal more than Nick remembered or realised he'd been doing. Nick hadn't known Stephen had been cataloguing animal tracks and even making notes on their smells. Much of that had been added to Connor's database, which they'd all come to rely on without thinking much about it. Or maybe it was just Nick who didn't think much about it. 

The list, of course, would be going to Noel Miller. He couldn't take over all of Stephen's responsibilities: Stephen often loaded tranquilliser guns himself, and now Abby was the only one who knew the proper medications and dosages. Stephen wanted the others to get some training on that too, insisting that anyone needed to be able to step in if someone got hurt. They'd never thought much about that before. Maybe if Nick entertained more seriously the possibility that one of them could get badly hurt, could even die, he would have worked at patching things up sooner. He should have known; that arthropleura bite had put Stephen into a coma, and then they'd nearly lost Abby to the water creatures. Yet he'd stubbornly ignored all the evidence of their own mortality.

Stephen wouldn't let him stray into memories or regrets for long, though. He kept pushing Nick on details.

"I don't want to leave out something that Noel might need," he said. "I won't... I won't be there when he needs to know things."

"Connor has the computer set up so that you can be in constant contact—"

"Until you enter a dead zone," Stephen interrupted. "It's a miracle we've done as well as we have, staying connected so close to anomalies. Sometimes they do interfere, and that's a hell of a time for Miller to realise, say, that he doesn't know which of you are carrying tranq guns and which real weapons."

"A tranq gun is a real weapon," Nick grumbled. That time Connor had shot Abby by mistake could have been deadly, if the young raptor had turned on her when she was defenceless, or Connor before he could reload. And if they ever shot one of their own when they were loaded for large animals....

"The tranquillisers don't stop animals immediately," Stephen reminded him, though he hardly needed the reminder.

"You know Lester is making us all wear Kevlar vests now?" 

Stephen smiled. "Connor told me. Won't help if he shoots someone in the leg again."

"I suppose I should be thankful it's not full body armour; I think Lester would have us all in that if he thought we'd be any use that way."

"You're slow enough as it is."

"Hey!" Nick swiped at Stephen's good arm, but Stephen scooted sideways on the sofa, and he missed. "You know, Lester seems to be worried about our safety now?"

Stephen didn't take his eyes off the list on his screen. "He'd be stupid not to." He typed an addition to the note, using both hands to type. Nick had given up admonishing him about overusing the injured arm. He leaned over to read the screen.

"Always keep mobile on," the new wording read. "Cutter often forgets to turn his on, so fielding calls meant for him may be necessary." 

"Hey!" Nick said again.

Stephen smirked. "Trying to cover all the bases." The smirk didn't last, though.

"What?"

"Miller needs experience. Proper experience. He's not going to get it in a park or even looking at Connor's photos. I should have been taking photos myself; Connor didn't even know what he was looking at, half the time." Stephen shook his head. "D'you know Connor labelled pictures of women's shoe prints 'pteranodon'? If I'd had any idea, I'd have taken photos myself!"

Nick snorted. "I think you're generally a bit busy to take photographs at anomaly sites."

"Well, now I have plenty of time," Stephen said with a touch of bitterness, "except I can't go to any sites."

Nick wasn't sure what to say to that, but Stephen forced a smile and continued: "I do have time to re-label Connor's photos, though. God, I hope Miller doesn't think pteranodon feet make marks that look like women's heels. You're not even supposed to wear those kinds of shoes on the greens!"

"I'll make a note of it next time I go golfing," Nick said drily. 

"What?" Stephen suddenly turned from the computer screen, and Nick could almost see him replaying the statement in his head. Stephen laughed. He didn't do that anywhere near as much as he used to.

"You're a nutter. Clearly, it's Jenny we need to worry about."

"She has changed to much more sensible shoes to go out in the field," Nick told him with a smile. "And fewer tight, short skirts."

"Oh," Stephen said disappointedly. "Too bad for you." 

"She's dressing more like Claudia now," Nick added. "It's very strange; it's almost like she's both of them, now."

Stephen leaned back, even taking his hands away from his laptop. "Is that a good thing?"

Nick shrugged. He hadn't meant to talk about it. "Maybe Claudia's simply fading in my mind now."

"But you cared about her."

Nick got to his feet, suddenly uncomfortable. "I did, yeah. But she's gone. And Jenny Lewis took a submachine gun and shot her way out of Leek's hellhole. Which I can't imagine Claudia Brown ever doing."

"So maybe you ended up with the person—maybe you ended up in the universe you're supposed to be in," Stephen fumbled. 

Nick walked to the windows, not sure he wanted Stephen to see his face. "'Supposed to be'? By whose judgement?" 

The silence lasted almost long enough for him to turn around, but he preferred looking at the street below.

"I don't know," Stephen said. "I.... Do you care about Jenny, now?"

"Of course!" Nick said, turning to face him. "We've been through a lot together—"

Stephen rolled his eyes. "You know that's not what I mean."

Of course Nick knew. And he was trying to put the past behind him. That didn't mean he had to discuss his love life—his possible, future love life—with the man who'd slept with his wife. 

That would always be there between them, wouldn't it? Stephen had surely done enough good to make up for what he'd done wrong. But things would never be the same.

From the way Stephen ducked his head and looked back at the computer screen, Nick suspected he was thinking the same thing.

"So," Stephen said, doing something quick on the keyboard, "have you been working on these emergency packs we'll have nearby in case someone has to go through an anomaly?" 

Nick hadn't been, but they spent the next hour or so arguing about what items were most crucial to have on hand regardless of where the anomaly might lead. He was surprised at how much they'd accomplished. The things Lester had assigned Stephen weren't merely make-work. They had a place for Stephen even while he continued to recover, Cutter was relieved to realise.

Abby and Connor came earlier than expected, Lester having either taken pity on them or been driven to distraction by Connor's eagerness. They quickly set up plates, cutlery, and take-away, none of them allowing Stephen to do anything, which Stephen clearly bore with difficulty.

Stephen had finally been allowed to have Indian food, even if only the mildest of it. That didn’t stop his complaints. "What are Indian people supposed to eat when they’ve been ill or injured?" he asked, starting into his own food but eyeing Nick’s hungrily.

"What you’re eating,” Abby told him with a smile. “I asked specially."

Stephen's fork stopped in mid-air. "Asked what?"

"She asked the owner what she'd make for a sick relative," Connor answered proudly for her. 

Stephen squinted at the chunk of meat on his fork as if he expected it to bite back.

"Well, I think it's sweet!" Connor declared.

Abby shifted a little in her seat and cast a half-hearted glare at her flatmate.

"Oh! Yes, yes, Abby, thanks," Stephen said apologetically. "It's... I... I'm awfully tired of being on a restricted diet."

"Well, Maria said it shouldn't be for too much longer," Abby said authoritatively.

"So much for medical confidentiality," Stephen muttered, digging into his chicken and rice again.

"I think you signed away all your privacy when you joined the ARC," Abby said. "So Connor showed me your new security system?" She skillfully moved them to the safer ground of technical discussions.

Lester had insisted upon the security system. Nick and Stephen each had one at home now. The alarm was silent and connected straight to the ARC; it had been set up with one person in mind. Helen hadn't been to Nick's house in ages, as far as anyone knew, but Lester had put in the alarm at his house after Nick's encounter with Helen outside the hospital. He was probably right to have one set up here. She'd been to Stephen's flat more recently than to Nick's home. Connor had helped to customise the system and began regaling them all with details no one wanted, but Stephen seemed happy. If he wasn't stopping Connor, Nick certainly wouldn't. The conversation moved on to other topics eventually.

After Stephen had finished eating, he excused himself and got up, starting away from the table without his walking stick.

"Shouldn't you take this?" Nick asked with a frown, pointing.

"I think I can make it to the toilet without," Stephen said, and he did seem to be walking without a limp as he went out of sight.

"I would think it would be easier without, actually," Connor said. "I mean—"

"We know exactly what you mean, Connor," Abby cut him off. 

"No, when you think about it—"

"So, Cutter," Abby asked, dropping her voice as she blatantly changed the topic. "I've been meaning to ask: what's with all the mirrors?"

"Mirrors?" Nick glanced around.

"Not in here. In the bedroom! Two full-length mirrors in the bedroom, two in the bathroom, and a mirror over the sink as well." Nick hadn't really thought about them when he'd seen them earlier.

"The man knows he looks good," Connor said with a shrug, helping himself to the last of the saffron rice.

"Well, you wouldn't think he'd need five mirrors to tell him that!" Abby kept her voice low but seemed quite intent on the topic. "I'm wondering if it's some kind of insecurity—I mean, you'd think a guy with even one full-length mirror could work out not to wear the orange trousers."

"With what?" Connor asked, looking perplexed.

"With anything!" Abby hissed.

Even Nick knew which trousers she meant. He didn't often notice clothes, but those things were an eyesore. On the other hand, they were occasionally useful out in the woods, making it harder to lose Stephen.

Abby resumed, "So I wondered if deep down he doesn't think he looks good, so he's seeking constant reassurance. But if it's all in his head, no amount of mirrors is going to help. Really—"

"So you think he doesn't like the way he looks?" Connor asked in clear astonishment.

"I don't know! That's why I'm asking!" It was amazing how emphatic Abby could be in a low voice. "What do you think, Professor?" 

Nick's eyebrows went up. "I never thought of Stephen as particularly insecure about his appearance. He rather prides himself on it, I think. Or—" Or he had, until... about a month ago. Nick didn't want to say that, but he was afraid it showed on his face when Abby frowned at him.

The muted but unmistakeable sound of a toilet flushing had Abby straightening suddenly in her seat. A moment later, Stephen was back—still not limping visibly, although he slid back into his seat a little awkwardly.

Abby was scraping the last bit of curry from her plate with a little too much concentration.

"Did I miss something?" Stephen asked.

Nick shrugged. Connor looked like he was going to ask something, stopped, and then said, "We were wondering—what's with all the mirrors?"

Abby's eyes got huge, and for a moment Nick thought that it was a good thing she had her hand on her fork instead of anywhere near Connor. Then again, there was a reason they used plastic forks in prisons, right?

Stephen chuckled. "Oh, those! Yeah, I couldn't work that out either. They came with all the other furniture; I took the place furnished, you know. Alison explained it: it's an estate agent trick to make the place look bigger." He glanced around the table a little uneasily. "You've been sitting here talking about my interior decorating?"

Abby seized the moment. "How could we? You haven't got any!"

Nick didn't laugh out loud but let the two of them go at it. The last thing Stephen needed to hear was that they'd been debating how vain or insecure he was about his appearance. Stephen defended his minimalist flat, but the conversation quickly turned into an argument about whether plants constituted decoration and whether Stephen's were even real.

"I hope so!" Connor interjected nervously. "I've been watering them for almost a month now!"

The conversation eventually began to wind down. Nick didn't want to keep Stephen up late, but he found it hard to leave. Stephen had left round-the-clock medical care for Connor's company? Much as Nick had come to like the young man, he wouldn't entrust his health to Connor, given any other choice. 

Connor didn't seem to have any worries, though. He cleared the table and began putting things in the dishwasher while Stephen threw a nervous look over his shoulder.

"It's okay," Abby hissed to him. "I think I've finally got him trained."

"What?" Connor called back when he heard the two of them laughing.

"Just told Stephen how much you like doing dishes!" Abby shouted, louder than the short distance or the running water justified. 

Connor looked confused for a moment, then smiled. "Oh, yeah," he said. "I'm ace with dishes."

"Just don't let him help with your washing!" Abby hissed. "Everything will turn... orange!"

She and Nick shared a laugh while Stephen looked at them quizzically, but she refused to explain.

"Nothing wrong with orange," Stephen muttered, but he let it go.

It was Abby who finally dragged Nick out of the flat, rather bluntly reminding him that Connor needed to settle in and Stephen needed rest.

"I didn't forget!" he insisted on the way out. "How could I?"

"Don't worry!" she said, patting him patronisingly on the arm as they stepped outside. He shoved his hands in his pockets. 

She went on, "They'll be fine. And Connor has both of us on speed dial, plus Lester and Jenny and Maria and Dr Gupta—she gave him her home number even though she has a toddler at home!"

"She does?" Nick didn't even know she was married. Of course, it was possible she wasn't. Abby was right: he ought to pay more attention.

Abby glared at him, obviously thinking the same thing. "The point is, Cutter, Stephen will be fine. And he can take care of himself. Mostly. Connor is just here in case."

He noticed that she didn't add anything worse like "what could go wrong?" 

***

After Abby had finally managed to pry out Cutter out of his flat, Stephen could relax a little. He hadn't been worried about coming home, but Cutter made him nervous! Stephen and Connor began watching a movie that Connor had brought with him, but Stephen realised he truly was tired. He told Connor to go ahead and watch the rest without him, and Connor cheerfully did so. No fuss about helping Stephen get changed, no worries about him falling down while brushing his teeth or anything like that. Yes, Connor was definitely the right choice to stay here for a few nights.

Stephen felt exhausted by the time he crawled into bed, even though he'd done less than usual. He'd had none of his physio, and he'd hardly even walked anywhere; getting up the one flight of stairs to his flat had been his only real exertion of the day. 

It felt strange to be back in his own bed. The sheets smelled fresh; his gratitude to Abby for doing his washing overcame his embarrassment. He didn't want to think about who'd been in that bed last with him last. He hoped Abby hadn't thought about it, either.

The flat seemed unusually quiet. Connor must have put in earphones, because Stephen couldn't hear anything of the movie. He'd got used to having a room-mate who snored, the buzzing of fluorescent lights in the hall, the occasional scuff of a sleepless patient passing outside his door. The hospital had been even louder. Stephen turned onto his side to get more comfortable. 

A few minutes later he tried the other side. How could he be having trouble getting comfortable in his own bed? He'd waited weeks to get back here. This was ridiculous.

Finally Stephen heard some noises: Connor closing up his laptop and settling on the sofa, no doubt. He hoped Connor was comfortable enough. He wished he had one that folded out into a bed, but he didn't. He'd offered Connor a sleeping bag, but Connor insisted the sofa would be fine; he'd done a lot of sleeping on them, he said. That wasn't a surprise.

Stephen very much hoped that he wouldn't have a nightmare. At least he'd never bothered anyone else with them, but he suspected his room-mate could sleep through cannon fire; the man couldn't hear very well even with his hearing aid, and he took it out at night, probably rendering him completely deaf. Stephen had given up trying to hold conversations with him after a couple of days. Maybe he should have worked on it more. He kept thinking that any day one of them would leave the room, and that would be it. He didn't expect to spend so long at the rehabilitation unit. 

Of course, his room-mate was still there; David had arrived well before Stephen, and it didn't look like he'd be leaving the facility any time soon.

None of these thoughts helped him sleep. Stephen lay still and calmed his breathing. He usually had no trouble falling asleep, even at the hospital. Well, there he had been on medication. He'd already stopped taking everything but paracetamol most days, and he'd slept well at the rehabilitation unit most of the time. Some nights didn't go so well. Dr Jacobs said that was a normal part of working through it all. He'd made the transition from hospital to the rehab centre fine; he could make the transition back home just as smoothly. He wasn't even alone....

Pain shot through Stephen as he woke to find himself curled into a tight ball. His gut twisted and his leg felt like he'd torn something. He took a deep breath and rolled onto his back, trying to get his muscles to relax. He couldn't quite remember what he'd dreamed; he'd been awake only a moment ago, hadn't he? He let out a few panting breaths. There wasn't any snoring—had his room-mate...? Then he remembered he was back home. Connor was in the next room. Stephen sat up as best he could and used his hand to straighten out the injured leg. He'd done this a few times before, and Maria said each time that he hadn't made it worse. Nothing had really torn. It just hurt for a little while. He rubbed the upper leg gently before lying back down. He fell the last inch or two as his stomach muscles decided they didn't feel like holding him up any more.

Stephen heard nothing. He must not have made any noise, or at least not enough to bother Connor. That was good. He didn't want Connor worrying about him too. As the pain subsided, he turned his head enough to look at his clock. 1:21—he'd been asleep for a while. That surprised him.

Sleep didn't seem to want to return. He hadn't heard a thing from Connor. He couldn't even hear him breathing from here. It was as if Connor wasn't even there, and he was alone in the flat. He was usually alone in his flat. It shouldn't bother him. 

But it did. Well, at least he'd have something different to talk about with Dr Jacobs this week. He was getting tired of rehashing the same problems.

When he felt like his leg could hold him again without the help of the walking stick, Stephen finally gave in to the urge to check on Connor and walked quietly to the bedroom door. Even with his injury, he was apparently still nearly silent when he wasn't using the stick, as he'd shown by surprising Nick earlier in the day. He moved into the dining area. Barely enough light came in through the windows for him to see a shape on the sofa. As he came closer, he could see Connor was lying on his side. He'd pushed the pillow onto the floor and was using the arm of the sofa as a pillow. He looked quite peaceful. 

Stephen returned to bed feeling a little better.

***

It was only as Professor Cutter came up behind him that Noel realised he was scowling at the computer screen. He composed his face.

"Memorising animal tracks?" the professor asked.

"Trying to, sir," Noel answered. "Hart—Mr Hart's taking me to see some at your university in two days, and I don't want to be a complete novice."

The professor nodded and pulled up a chair. "Did you check the labels on all of these?"

Noel could feel the wrong words coming out, but he couldn't quite stop them. "How else would I be able to learn what they are, sir?" He could only hope it hadn't sounded sarcastic.

Cutter took no offence, fortunately. "It's just that Stephen said Connor had mislabelled some."

Brilliant. Just brilliant. How many hours had he spent on these?

"I think he said he'd fixed them, though. I'm not sure. You could phone him...." Cutter checked his watch. "I don't know what time he's getting up these days. You might want to wait a bit. Or here, let me see." Cutter grabbed the mouse, and Noel moved to let him take control of the computer. 

The professor started clicking on icons, saying, "I think he said some of the pteranodon ones, and... oh, hell, maybe I should phone him."

They had pteranodon tracks? Did the things walk? Noel thought they simply perched. Damn. He didn't remember seeing anything labelled 'pteranodon'. Maybe he hadn't made it that far yet.

"What's this 'miscellaneous' file? Have you looked at it?"

"No, sir. I thought I ought to be pretty solid on things that had been properly identified first. I thought perhaps you weren't certain what those were."

Cutter opened it. "No!" he exclaimed while clicking to pull up an individual record labelled "calceus". Then he laughed so hard it startled Noel; he'd begun to think Cutter didn't have much of a sense of humour, despite what the lads said. "He did! Look at that!"

A photo of an odd shape poking a hole through some grass had the usual labels of place, date, and time. For Species, it read: "calceus curialis". Under Comments, Noel found: "Had been an endangered species in this environment, and rightfully so. Seems to be making a comeback. Groundskeeper needs to exercise better control."

"And calceus curialis is...?" Noel asked.

"Court shoe, in dubious Latin." Nick laughed again. "A woman's heel poked a hole in the green—it was a golf course—and Connor photographed it. That's one of the ones Stephen was complaining about. God, he must have been bored."

Nick opened another one. The screen showed some impressions that Noel couldn't identify on what appeared to be rubbish next to a building. Place, date, and time matched that anomaly that had left Cutter and Hart briefly trapped with a child on the wrong side of an anomaly. The record read: 

"Species: peregrinator templi. 

Comments: Someone else had better start taking the photographs."

Noel was a little more prepared for the laughter this time. "Temple's rover," Cutter eventually translated, pointing at the species label with the widest smile Noel had yet seen from him. He clicked to a linked photo; it showed the rover—and its treads.

Noel couldn't help but smile himself. 

Abby came in and barely had time to say a cheerful good morning before the professor dragged her over to the computer to show her Hart's work.

"You're in early," she said to Cutter when he let her get a word in.

"Yeah, well...." He shrugged.

"Waiting for Connor to get here."

The professor gave his head a little shake, but he didn't otherwise deny it. "Have you heard from Connor?" 

When Abby shook her head, the professor asked with studied nonchalance, "What time does he usually get here, then?"

Noel pulled up the photos he'd been working on before the professor had commandeered his computer and hoped they'd drift away before Connor arrived. Abby decided to abandon the professor and make conversation with Noel, however, which made it even harder to concentrate. At least it was more pleasant than watching the professor becoming increasingly anxious. She even asked about Noel's wife. 

Of course, Connor's appearance put an end both to their conversation and to Cutter's shuffling around the room trying to look like he was doing something. Abby's eyes went to Connor almost as quickly as Cutter's did. Oblivious to the attention he was getting, Connor greeted them all happily.

"How was last night?" Cutter asked nervously.

That was not the question Noel had expected, or at least not the wording, and he was pretty sure his face twitched. Abby giggled outright. Connor frowned at her, obviously missing the joke.

"Fine," Connor shrugged, looking back and forth between Cutter and Abby curiously. "Sofa's not so bad. I slept well, in fact."

Cutter let out a sound of exasperation. "I meant Stephen."

"Oh!" Connor brightened. "He's fine too."

Abby turned and grinned at Noel as if they were sharing a joke no one else got. Then again, looking at the other two men in the room, Noel reckoned there was no 'as if' about it.

"No problems? No...?" The professor waved his hands in the air, either trying to find words or hoping Connor would take his meaning and save him from finding them.

Connor frowned again. "No. What kind of problems did you expect?"

Abby helped them out. "Any trouble getting around? Any nightmares?"

Connor took a moment to think. "Not that I noticed. And I should have noticed. It's not that big a flat."

The professor's posture relaxed visibly.

Unfortunately, Connor didn't know when to stop. "No, I didn't notice a thing. Slept right through until the coffee woke me."

Cutter stepped closer to the young man. "Coffee?"

Any sensible person would have heard the danger in that word, but Noel had already realised in his short time with the team that Connor hadn't been gifted with a surfeit of sense. 

"Yeah, coffee. Stephen made us both coffee." Connor clearly thought this to be a good thing.

"So he's moving around well," Abby suggested brightly.

"Yeah, no stick or anything. And he asked me if I wanted eggs, but I thought it might be better if he didn't stand there cooking."

Cutter's jaw kept tightening. He was going to have a headache by lunchtime if he kept that up. Noel very much wanted to go back to his work, but he couldn't look away.

"That was wise of you," Abby said with no irony in her voice. She'd stepped closer to the two of them, perhaps preparing to intervene if things got worse. 

"So Stephen was up and moving about for how long before you woke up?" Cutter asked in what was probably meant to be a neutral tone but missed by a mile.

Connor, of course, took the question at face value. "Well, long enough to shower and get dressed."

When Cutter pasted on a smile, Noel began to wonder if he should duck and cover.

"So what you're saying," Cutter said with a thicker accent than usual, "is not that Stephen had a good night, but that you can sleep through anything but coffee." The forced smile stayed on his face.

Noel had to wonder if the look that now crossed Connor's face was the one he had when suddenly confronted with a dangerous creature. His eyes grew big, his lips parted and he might have been considering which way to run.

"No," Connor said very slowly, his jaw working more than the one syllable would require. "I'm saying Stephen's... very... quiet."

Abby pressed her lips together tightly—trying not to laugh, apparently. Cutter had stopped smiling. Was that better, or worse?

Noel decided he'd throw himself on the grenade for Connor. "That's a valuable skill to have when you track creatures for a living."

Cutter spun around like he'd completely forgotten Noel was in the room (which he probably had). The professor frowned, he squinted, he looked like he wanted to shout—but Abby stepped in again.

"He's always been very good at that," she said with a surprisingly straight face. "It sounds like he's making an excellent recovery." And behind Cutter's back, she threw Connor a look even he couldn't miss, right before Cutter turned again to look at her.

"Right, right," Connor said a little too hastily. "I think he's doing really well. All things considered—" He broke off, and Noel wondered if Abby had sent him another signal that he hadn't seen himself.

Cutter sighed loudly. "For God's sake, Connor, you're there to help him, not test out his sofa! And next time... next time you make the coffee, okay?" He left the room muttering to himself.

Everyone stayed where they were for a moment.

"Wow," said Connor at last. "He's a little too tightly wound still, isn't he?"

When Abby laughed long and hard, Noel reckoned it was safe for him to laugh too.

***

Nick managed to hold off on the phone call until lunchtime, and then he couldn't wait any longer. He was a bit surprised when Stephen answered just as the second ring began and told him so.

"I had the mobile in my pocket," Stephen said with an air of exaggerated patience. "If I took too long to answer, that would have worried you."

Nick couldn't honestly deny the charge.

"So have you interrogated Connor yet?" Stephen asked. Now he sounded like he was laughing at Nick. 

"Well, of course I asked him how things went. What did you expect?"

After a long pause, Stephen said, "Exactly that. I'm fine. Honest."

"And you can get lunch all right?"

"There's enough Indian in my fridge for two more people," Stephen said. "Abby and Connor went overboard."

"But you're only supposed to have the biryani!" Nick couldn't help himself. 

Stephen let out a put-upon sigh. "The website says the tandoori is, and I quote, 'easily digested.' And even you can't object to the chapati." 

Good Lord. Was he that predictable, that Stephen had gone to the restaurant's website to find something to head him off?

Now Stephen was laughing at him out loud, which was even more annoying. "Sorry, Cutter. I suppose I've robbed you of your midday worry, and it's taking you some time to come up with a new one?"

Nick had a good answer to that on the tip of his tongue when the ADD alarm went off and he forgot it. 

"Sorry. Got to go."

Stephen could no doubt hear the damned siren over the phone. "Yeah, I'll be following you on the computer. Tell Connor I'll stay in touch with him on his mobile, right?"

They had to run and suit up. Having to get into gear to go to anomaly sites slowed them down, Nick complained to himself. He had tried complaining about it to other people, but after what had happened to Stephen, everyone else wanted the vests and the heavy-duty military jackets. Nick had his own military jacket from a surplus store, but that didn’t meet with approval from on high, so he too donned one of the black ones. 

Before they left the building, Lester appeared and told them to be careful. It might be touching if it weren't so disturbing. James Lester worried about their well-being? It wasn't the first time, either. Noel had already made it to the Hilux and was checking the equipment, especially the weapons.

"First load of soldiers have already set out, and Ms Lewis is taking a separate vehicle, sir," he told Nick. 

"I don't want the soldiers getting there before us!" Nick growled, though he knew it wasn't Miller's fault. Robinson made those decisions. "What if they just start shooting?"

"We do have some training, you know, sir," Noel said without evident sarcasm as he finished his checks and got in the back of the Hilux. 

Maybe Nick should simply be glad he was still in charge of driving, he thought as he pulled out.

They weren't far behind the soldiers, however, and in London traffic they managed to overtake them, although he did hear a few comments about his driving from Abby. Noel never said a word. Cutter wasn't sure what to make of the soldier: a little too stiff? Or quietly looking down on the civilians, maybe even laughing at them? Maybe he was just paranoid. Why shouldn't Miller laugh at him openly? Abby and Stephen did. 

He brought them to a halt outside some terraced houses on a quiet street. Naturally, that meant neighbours were popping their heads out of doors to watch as three vehicles disgorged their motley group of passengers. Great. Jenny had her work cut out for her.

"If you could please move back indoors, we have a potentially dangerous gas leak," she called out in a voice that managed both to carry and to sound reassuring. 

"And you have soldiers dealing with it?" an older man leaning out a window shouted back.

Connor positively identified a large house as the source of the reading. When no one answered the door, and a soldier efficiently picked the lock.

"We are a little concerned about explosions, sir," Jenny called back, walking closer to the man. He was clearly not the only one watching her. "If you could all just go back inside, moving away from windows, it would be best...."

Nick missed the rest of her spiel as the team piled in after two armed men led the way into the house. The whole line about explosions might be very convincing if the soldiers weren't carrying automatic weapons. 

"This floor!" Connor said. "Right—"

The light coming through a door that a soldier kicked open made further directions unnecessary.

Immediately the soldiers readied their guns, and Nick obediently made sure he had his tranq gun ready; he refused to carry anything more deadly than that until he knew what they faced.

A rodent roughly the size of a small squirrel hopped into a doorway near the back of the house, on its hind legs. The moment it saw the large, black-clad figures, it retreated. 

All heads turned towards Nick.

"Well, it doesn't seem particularly dangerous, but we should catch it!" he exhorted. Apparently someone had to say the obvious, because no one was moving.

"Don't tranq it!" Abby cried out as everyone began to move. "It's too small for the dosage I loaded! And certainly don't shoot it!"

The soldiers looked again to Nick, who pushed past into the kitchen, saying, "You heard her! Make sure to use your gloves if you handle them!" He pulled his own from a pocket, a pair of heavy-duty gloves included in their kit since Lester had made them start wearing more protective gear.

Abby made it to the kitchen right before him. The view from the door made Nick hesitate. Half a dozen of the creatures must have been running around in a panic. 

"Rubbish bins! We used bins on the dodos!" Abby called out, dumping the contents of rather a large white one onto the floor and rushing to cover two of the creatures. She missed one, but the other bounced against the side—from inside!

"Or saucepans!" Nick shouted, grabbing one from the rack that hung above the island in the centre of the kitchen. He threw himself down on top of one of the creatures—and immediately fell off to the side in pain. He'd not only missed the creature, he'd also mistaken the distance between the handle and the edge of the saucepan. He'd thrown his own weight onto a pan he'd brought down on his fingers. He shook his hand out. The pain wasn't too bad. Nothing broken. He'd probably done worse to his back.

By the time he'd shaken his hand out and started back to his feet, the hanging rack was nearly empty as soldiers raced around with kitchenware after hopping rodents. Connor was already standing near the island, opening his laptop and trying to stay clear of frantic soldiers.

"Shut the door!" he roared at the soldiers piling into the room as soon as he had his breath back. "Some of you take the rest of the house!"

Another couple of rodents hopped out of the anomaly, conveniently located in a pantry just off the kitchen. They took one look at the chaos and hopped back, making the little things possibly the smartest creatures they'd encountered since.... Abby slammed the pantry door.

"Shit!" 

Nick ran around the island to find a red-faced Miller on his knees at the back door while Abby shut the door to the pantry. At least more of them shouldn't come tumbling out.

"Sorry, sir, it's just—"

"A cat flap!" Abby cried, running to Nick's side and seeing what Miller had peeked through.

"How many have got out, do you think?" he asked.

The look on Noel's face was pure despair; Nick felt a terribly inappropriate urge to laugh.

A phone rang, and annoyance trumped his moment of humour.

"Shut it, Connor!" Nick roared.

"No, it's Stephen!"

"I can't open the door because more things might hop out! Sir!" Noel added belatedly. "I only saw one go through, but others might have made it out already."

"I've got the door!" another soldier shouted, positioning himself between the cat flap and one or two of the creatures. 

"Right!" There was a key already in the deadbolt. Noel opened the door, slipped out and closed it behind him in a flash. Nick heard another curse, muted by the door.

His radio clicked. "I've got two, sir," Miller's voice said, mostly over the radio but with overtones coming through the door. "I'm going to...." The sentence ended with a grunt, and he didn't say anything more. A dull crash sounded outside.

Nick made it to the window while Abby directed other soldiers to see whether the front door had a cat flap and if there was a side door anywhere.

Noel had a metal bucket and was running through a well-maintained garden, doubtless in pursuit of a creature Nick couldn’t see. The owners weren't going to be happy.

"Cutter!" Abby yelled. "Help!" 

A pan that someone had left untended in the kitchen had just been flung off by a panicked rodent. Nick ran for it and got the pan but not the mouse- or rabbit-creature.

"Yeah, I haven't had time to pull anything up on my computer!" Connor was saying into his mobile. "Here's a picture!" 

A flash went off in Nick's face, and he cursed. Now he had a big blind spot to his left. 

"Oh, sorry, professor!"

Nick swung around, looking for loose animals, and found one bouncing off a corner.

"Is somebody bringing in the cages?" Abby shouted loud enough for anyone in the house and probably some outside to hear. The front door slammed a moment later in answer.

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking!" Connor's voice followed Nick. "Stephen thinks they're jerboas or some relation?" he called out to the room uncertainly.

"How does that help?" snapped Abby, putting cookbooks on top of another bouncing saucepan to weigh it down. "What do they eat? How do we catch them?"

Nick managed to trap the damned thing with a pan while Connor relayed the question to Stephen. 

"Got any more cookbooks, Abby?" Nick yelled above the chaos. From the sounds elsewhere in the house, he knew some had escaped the kitchen.

He got hit with a very large volume.

"Sorry!" Abby didn’t sound sorry. "Is that all from this room now?"

Another curse came from outside that Nick didn't need a radio to hear.

"Stephen says some are herbivores, some eat insects, and some aren't picky," Connor announced solemnly. "They like to hide in burrows, and they'll make their own burrows—"

"Can I open the door without letting any out?" Miller called over the radio, his voice frantic.

"Yes!" Cutter shouted, then realised he didn't have his finger on the radio button. He flung open the door himself. The one soldier who remained in the room stood nearby, his back to the door, to fend off possible escapees.

Noel almost bowled him over shooting through the door clutching—a large cat? "It ate half the bloody thing, sir," he reported in obvious dismay, holding the struggling creature at arm's length, clutching its scruff. 

Abby's mouth fell open. 

"I didn't think it was safe just to leave it...." Noel's eyes were big, but he was getting his voice under control. "Sir. Sorry for my language, sir."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Cutter rubbed his palm hard against his forehead. Not only did he hear worse in the ARC on a regular basis, he said worse.

Miller's eyebrows went up and his mouth opened.

"Not about the language! I mean, yes, about the language! I'm hardly going to put off by a few curses, am I?" 

"He is Scottish," Connor supplied in an undertone that managed to carry.

Noises in the rest of the house seemed to be subsiding a bit.

"You did the right thing," Abby assured Noel, picking up where Nick had meant to do. "We'd better quarantine it, in case the... jerboa?... had any kind of disease."

Connor now had his laptop open on the counter and was typing while trying to hold his mobile to his ear. "How recent are jerboas, d'you know?"

"I don't remember!" Nick barked.

"Not—oh, never mind," Connor muttered.

Noel kept standing there with the cat, holding on while it hissed and spat and tried to scratch him. Nick had to hand it to the lad—he had a very good grip. 

"Cages?" a soldier said, entering the room with two pet carriers. He gave Noel a funny look.

"Get the cat in first!" Nick ordered.

The newcomer opened the cage and held it out horizontally while a look of disbelief flashed across Noel's face.

Abby grabbed the animal carrier from the soldier, turned it vertically, and put it on the floor under the struggling cat. Noel dropped the cat in, and Abby swung the door shut and had it locked in a flash before turning it horizontal. The cat was no less vocal from inside the box.

"That was easy," Abby said loudly. "The hard part is going to be lifting the saucepans and bins and everything without losing the jerboas."

"Stephen thinks they're fairly recent," offered Connor helpfully.

"Get off the damned phone and help Abby get them into the cages! Noel, help me with this one." That wasn't fair to Abby, sticking her with the one person in the house who seemed to have caught nothing, but if Connor got any closer to him, Nick might not be able to resist the temptation to smack him.

"You lift the pan and I go for the, um, the creature, sir?" Miller asked, all politeness again.

Nick assented, and the plan worked like a charm. Miller had the cage over the creature before it had decided which way to hop. 

"I think I've got a fairly heavy bucket on the one trapped outside, sir. It should stay put, I hope." Miller added.

"Wait—what's under the bucket?" Connor looked up in consternation from where Abby was about to lift a large bowl.

Noel frowned. "Well, the ground—"

"But Stephen said they burrow! Abby, hold that one!" 

Abby grumbled and simply sat on the bowl.

***

As Noel ran back into the garden with Connor right behind him, he tried to stay focused on the job and not how stupid he'd been to leave the creature outside under a bucket. But he only had two hands, and he hadn't wanted to lose the cat!

"Do you have a pet carrier? I don't have a pet carrier," Connor said, coming up beside him.

Noel looked around. "Radio for one! Okay, I'm going to flip the bucket, and if I can keep it inside, I'll sit on top to hold it in until we get a cage."

"But what if it bites? Oh, kevlar, right!"

Noel was already moving the bucket, turning it and scooping into the soft soil in the hopes of catching the creature. Instead, he turned over some dirt and plants. There was a rodent-sized hole. He bit back several curses before giving up and letting them fly.

"Shovel! I bet there's a shovel in that shed!" Connor pointed. 

Noel dropped the bucket and ran the short distance to the shed, yanked on the door, and found it locked. With no time to locate the private who'd picked the front door lock, he threw his weight back and forced the door. Yes! He found plenty of garden tools. He grabbed two sturdy shovels. If all else failed, perhaps they could knock the thing unconscious. Abby wouldn't be pleased, but....

Noel ran the few steps back and threw a shovel to Connor, who reached, got a hand on it, and then managed to drop it. Noel started digging out dirt and bits of what had been a rosebush while Connor picked up his own shovel.

Noel's sense of self-preservation soon reacted against the sight of Connor waving around a blunt weapon. "I've got a better idea," he said. "Forget the shovel—keep the bucket ready! Did Hart say how deep they go?" He looked at the hole he was making, which kept collapsing. Did they dig down, or sideways?

Suddenly the pile of dirt exploded as the animal burst out of its ruined lair. Connor lunged and missed; Noel jumped on the creature. "Bring the bucket!" he shouted as the thing gave up biting at his chest and went for his sleeves; he didn't know what kind of parasites or diseases or....

Connor dropped to his knees with the bucket; Noel heaved himself on top of it while clinging to the rodent, managed to get his arms out of the way, and covered the top of the bucket with his chest. He could feel the little thing thudding maniacally against him and blessed Lester for decreeing that no one went anywhere without bulletproof vests.

"You needed a cage?" asked a new voice. Sergeant Tyler was on the back step, with a cage in one hand but the other hand on the doorknob, as if he might duck back into the house if he got the wrong answer.

"Yes!" Noel yelled in unison with Connor.

Noel managed to slide partway off the bucket while Tyler pushed the cage into the space he vacated and Connor held a shovel to cover the gap. The confused creature shot into the box, and all three of them fumbled to close the cage.

"Wow," said Connor, grinning. "That was pretty slick!" 

'Slick' was so far from the words that came to Noel's mind that he was dumbfounded.

They went back inside, Tyler carrying the cage, and found Abby and the Professor sending the rover into the anomaly.

"Hey, you didn't wait for me!" objected Connor, running to his laptop. Two piles of cages sat, or rather vibrated, near the door of the pantry. The cages ranged from tiny to how did that fit through the door?. The team came prepared for anything, but not necessarily a lot of anythings.

Connor helped himself to the rover's controller and tried to retrieve his mobile at the same time. 

"I'll call Stephen," Abby offered, taking the mobile from him; he didn't object.

From above came a couple of dull thumps.

"There's only one still left, as far as we know," the professor told Noel with a hint of a smile. "I've left the soldiers to that, but if that noise keeps up, I might send you to help them. It seems to have them outnumbered, or at least outgunned."

Noel ended up greeting the other soldiers halfway up the stairs, because they had finally caught the last jerboa. The four of them had probably done more harm to each other and the house than the creature had. He told them to re-check the house in case they'd missed any. He took the captive back to the kitchen.

"Looks clear," Connor told him happily. He turned to his mentor. "So how about Noel and I go through and open the cages over there? They'll probably be off like a shot."

"Fine idea, except I go instead of you," Cutter announced.

Connor's shoulders slumped a little, but he did not look surprised.

"Ready?" the professor asked Noel.

"Yes, sir. Erm... what about the cat?"

Abby told him they were quarantining the cat. They couldn't simply leave it in the house when it might have been exposed to pathogens. Yet they didn't want to release it at an unknown time in the past, because there was no telling what effect it might have on evolution. Plus, it didn't seem fair to the cat.

"So are these things prehistoric?" Noel asked, wishing he knew some evolutionary zoology himself.

"Stephen thinks not, actually," Connor said, having reclaimed his phone at some point. "At least, these aren't far different from the ones these days, as far as he can tell."

"From a few blurry photos taken on a mobile?" the professor scoffed. "I don't think we'll know until we get more information. If we ever do. Got your camera?" he asked Noel.

"Yes, sir." He patted a pocket. He hadn't had time to take it out yet.

"Well, let's go." The professor started to pick up a cage.

"Wait, are you sure I shouldn't go?" Connor started to fumble through a list of reasons why he should go through, but Abby cut him off.

"You've been through an anomaly, Connor, and it wasn't much fun," she said darkly.

"Have you checked all the way around the anomaly?" Noel asked, feeling that the one thing he was truly in charge of, the safety of the civilians, was about to slip completely from his grasp.

"Yeah, did a quick 360," Connor answered, not even looking back at his screen, but gazing longingly at the shimmering sound-and-light show in front of him. "It'll be faster with three," he pleaded.

"Stay here, Connor," the professor said gently before he took a step forward.

Noel put a hand on his arm. "Sir, shouldn't I go through first?" 

He felt like an idiot, asking that question of a man who'd been through several anomalies and had even been trapped on the wrong side of one. Yet God alone knew what else might pop up on the far side, and it was Noel's job to protect everyone.

Cutter looked amused, which Noel found a little annoying. "Be my guest," he said, stepping back.

Noel went through, weapon at the ready, only to see a few more rodents hop away or vanish into the ground. He didn't feel any different. He thought he'd feel something, going through a wormhole like that, but the only difference was that it seemed hotter here. The air had to be clearer, too. The sky was a pale blue, the sun high in it. The place was arid, mostly dirt with some scrub here and there; he couldn't see any grass.

Noel took a deep breath. Yes, it did smell different. No diesel, no fumes. He was in the past. He didn't know how far in the past, but he'd gone back in time. He'd dreamed of time travel as a kid. He thought it would be a bit more exciting, but how could he complain? Excitement on this job seemed mostly to be of a bad sort.

The professor came through a moment later, a cage handle in each hand. "Be ready to make a loud noise to frighten them away from this area so they don't just run back through the anomaly. Connor and Abby are supposed to be ready, but let's not make them deal with any more." 

Cutter opened one cage door and then the other, but they didn't have to worry about making a racket. The creatures made their escapes with speed. A few more trips back and forth, and they'd released all seven that they'd caught. Noel took photos of some of the newly freed jerboas, what he hoped were jerboa prints, and the landscape. After they'd returned, they closed the pantry door and stationed a couple of soldiers outside it in case anything slipped under (unlikely) or the situation somehow changed (all too likely, Noel feared).

"Very convenient of the anomaly to appear in the pantry like that." The professor seemed to be in quite good humour now. "If only the family had kept the door closed, we'd have had no trouble at all."

"No, things are never that easy. We'd have opened the door to see the anomaly, and they'd all have rushed out at once," Abby said. "Nobody's been bitten on this side. Cutter, Noel, they didn't get you, did they?"

Noel checked himself in case. He had some minor rips in his sleeves, but they hadn't caught any skin. The professor seemed to have escaped even clothing damage, though he did seem to be rubbing the fingers on one hand. Noel couldn't see any wounds there.

"I think our work is done here." The professor frowned at Noel. "Maybe you should stay and supervise the clean-up. You seem to be far more competent than the rest." 

Noel had no idea whether to take that as praise or not. He smiled and pointed out that Captain Robinson was in charge. He'd left Robinson with the others upstairs, checking under furniture and examining rugs and floorboards for signs of chewing. 

Abby hauled the poor cat out to the truck to put her in quarantine, and Connor handed the rover to a soldier to load. He started shutting down his computer.

"How far back were we?" Noel asked Connor.

"As far as I can tell, somewhere in the Holocene, maybe late Pleistocene. Not too different from now, but definitely past."

Noel would have to look those up again. He needed to memorise the geologic ages, on top of everything else.

"I'll go and wish Jenny luck in explaining all this to the homeowners," the professor announced cheerfully as he left.

Noel began to help cleaning the mess they'd made in the house. Ms Lewis came inside to take a look. 

"Not too bad," she said after she'd been shown the upstairs and the kitchen. "You should have that all squared away in no time."

"You should see the garden, too, ma'am." Noel opened the door and showed her out. He could put the shovels and bucket back easily enough, and he could even fill in the hole they'd made. The trampled plants and the broken catch on the shed door might be a bit more difficult.

"Oh," she said, and her smile looked less natural. "Well, not bad, all things considered." She walked away muttering something about how she was going to explain the quarantined cat.

'Not bad'? Maybe it wasn't too bad a performance for his first real outing as a member of the team—if everybody forgot that he hadn't considered that a rodent might escape by burrowing, which seemed pretty obvious in hindsight. 

Noel spent the next couple of hours trying to find tracks to see if any jerboas had escaped, and then trying to restore a garden. He couldn't find any trace of tracks leading out of the garden, but if his tracking skills were as poor as his gardening talents, then the neighbourhood could be in trouble.

***

The images from the rover ended abruptly, and Stephen sighed and set the laptop down on the coffee table. Of course Connor hadn't thought to call him again when they were wrapping things up. Stephen could probably safely assume they were returning the jerboas to the other side of the anomaly. Everything would be fine. Someone would ring if they needed help. He ought to get one of those little headsets so he could have his hands free while he talked on his mobile, he decided.

Stephen looked at the remains of the lunch he'd reheated while his team had driven out to the site. He'd eaten a little before Connor called, but then he'd set it aside. He didn't feel hungry anymore. He scraped it back into the take-away box. It would survive another reheating. He certainly wasn't going to waste almost the only food with actual flavour he'd had in four weeks.

At least the anomaly had come when he'd been at home, and not at physio, or he'd have missed the whole thing. It wasn't very exciting from home, but it was a damned sight better than sitting in a medical facility. 

Everyone said he was doing well. He didn't even think he should have to stay at home this week, but the doctors had insisted. Devi Gupta had offered him a deal: if he passed muster with his physio this week, she'd examine him Monday morning, and maybe he could start working a few hours a day at the ARC.

Stephen spent the rest of the afternoon trying to fill time. He had work enough for the ARC, but it was exactly the sort of thing he'd always put off if he had anything else he could do. The contingency plans were a good idea, though; they should have made them before this. They weren't very interesting, however. Unless Connor got involved: "What should we do if a T. rex suddenly appears by the London Eye? Or in the London Eye?" the young man had asked at one point. "When the media finally do get hold of this, do you think we'll have paparazzi stalking us?"

Nick had pretty well convinced Stephen that they did need to keep the anomalies under wraps—or, rather, Leek had. Surely other dangerous people would seek to gain some advantage from the anomalies once they become public. Stephen had no doubt that they would become public eventually, unless they could work out a way to stop them, which didn't seem likely. The ARC had hired some physicists, and Connor dutifully took lots of readings for them, but the physicists seemed mystified. If the anomalies kept appearing, sooner or later there would be one that even Jenny Lewis couldn't hide. Or the death toll would simply get too high. That thought scared the hell out of Stephen, but he had no solutions.

By the time Connor rang to say that he was bringing back some Chinese, Stephen had given up all pretence of working. He briefly resorted to a game Connor had installed on his machine, but not for long. Connor must have thought defeating dinosaurs on a laptop would be helpful, somehow, but it just felt creepy, when it wasn't simply boring.

While they ate, Connor happily gave Stephen all the details of the afternoon's outing. 

"You'd never have left a burrowing rodent under a bucket," Connor observed, then looked a little guilty.

"If I had my hands full of cat, I might have," Stephen said, trying to imagine the very restrained Lieutenant Miller with the struggling pet. "Why didn't anyone go outside with him?"

Connor shrugged. "I dunno. We didn't know how many were out there."

"The ones in the house were trapped. The ones outside—well, we may yet hear of unusual rodent infestations." Stephen frowned. He should have thought of that while he was on the phone to Connor. 

"Well, it's not like they were trained to use a cat flap!" Connor argued. "I'm surprised two of them got out as it was."

"Good point," Stephen conceded. 

Connor thought headsets for the mobiles, both Stephen's and his, were an excellent idea, and he put in a requisition through the ARC as soon as they'd cleared the table. Miller's photos had been uploaded by the end of the working day, so they reviewed those. Stephen didn't tell Connor that Miller had done a better job than most of Connor's efforts, and Connor was still too excited about the whole thing to notice.

He was glad to have Connor around, Stephen thought as he prepared for bed. He'd lived alone for long enough that he was afraid he'd be resentful, but after having all day to enjoy the quiet, if 'enjoy' was the right word for it, he found himself glad of company. 

He also felt surprisingly relieved not to be alone at night. He'd get used to his flat again soon, its darkness and quiet, but for the next few days Connor would be there. If Stephen had another nightmare, he could go and listen to Connor's breathing for a bit, and he'd be all right—as long as Connor didn't wake up and freak out. It was a good thing Connor seemed to be a heavy sleeper. 

***

Things didn't seem to be going too badly, Noel thought as the Thursday morning meeting drew to a close. No more jerboas had surfaced, so probably none had escaped the garden. No one seemed to be holding his mistake with the jerboa against him, including Hart, who continued sending him e-mails three or four times a day on what to read and study. Noel read them carefully, probably too carefully, for any signs of rebuke, but he found only the brief suggestions Hart had been sending him since they'd met. Was Hart using just one hand to type? Noel wondered idly. Or could he use the arm with the cast, which only covered the wrist and not the fingers?

Professor Cutter was starting to treat him a bit like the other two members of the team—greeting him in the mornings by name, sometimes even asking his opinion, and only occasionally forgetting he existed. 

"And Stephen Hart has suggested that everyone go through a proper first aid course...." Lester trailed off as the chorus of groans and objections began. Noel was still adjusting to the informality of this posting; he couldn't imagine reacting audibly himself. 

One grumble cut through the rest: "Just because Stephen has nothing better to do that sit at home dreaming up more work for us...." 

Noel unintentionally started, and the mutters around him died down quite suddenly. He could see the moment when the professor thought through what he'd said, and the curse that followed was much louder than the original comment.

Abby looked first shocked and then furious, but Lester spoke again before she could say anything.

"Now Lieutenant Miller has recently had a military first aid course, so he's off the hook. He has been sentenced to spend the afternoon with Hart anyway, so that makes this afternoon an excellent time. I've scheduled a visit from an Army officer who trains medics. I'm sure it will be a valuable opportunity, and I expect you all to pay attention."

"This afternoon?" squeaked Connor.

"Why? Do you have a hot date? We'll start promptly at 2—"

"Well, no." Connor seemed still not to have mastered the art of recognising rhetorical questions. "It's just that I'm working—"

"Nothing is more important than this, Mr Temple." Lester seemed unusually serious, not even loosing his notorious sarcasm on them. "In fact, I'm taking the course myself, since we've learned that even the ARC is not immune to... incidents."

That statement ended the dissent, but Professor Cutter seemed particularly quiet for the rest of the meeting. The group broke up slowly. Noel watched them drift apart, Connor and Abby together, the professor going his own way.

Noel drove to Hart's flat a little later. Torn between excitement at seeing photographs and casts of prehistoric prints, and anxiety about showing his ignorance, Noel took a few deep breaths after he'd pulled up across the street from Hart's place.

By the time he'd got out of the car, Hart was already crossing the street towards him. Noel checked his watch; he was a few minutes early. Hart must have been waiting outside for him. A bit eager, wasn't he? 

Hart greeted him with a grin and tried to wave Noel aside from opening the door for him. "I can manage, you know," he said, chucking his stick in the back easily and buckling his seatbelt with no problems. 

"Glad to hear it, sir," Noel replied.

"I thought we were done with the 'sir'? And you really can't do it today. Pretend you're not military. It might raise some eyebrows. Just show your driving license when they ask for identification for the visitor's card, not your military ID." Hart seemed to have everything planned out. He must have been waiting for this outing for days. They'd been through most of it already. Noel had made certain to wear civilian clothes. "And call me by my last name. I'll call you by yours. No one will think anything of it."

"Sure, Hart," Noel said, practising. 

Noel had already looked up directions, so he didn't need Hart's, and Hart quickly realised that and stopped giving them.

"So how's the cat doing?" Hart asked out of the blue.

"The cat?" Noel smiled. "The cat seems fine. Abby and I visit her every day. They want us to wear gloves and be sure not to get bitten, but all the blood tests have come back clean so far." He was glad of that; the cat was affectionate and had forgiven Noel that initial manhandling.

"I'm sure Abby will be glad of that, but she'll probably miss having her around when they send her home. Do you know what they told the family?"

Noel didn't. He had no interest in cover stories unless he really needed to know them. 

"It's too bad the ARC couldn't get more data out of the jerboa bits, but I gather the cat had already made a good start on the front half. Except for the feet it threw up," Hart added with a little too much glee for Noel's taste.

"Not really my area, s– Hart."

After that, the drive was fairly quiet. Noel didn't have a lot to say. Hart occasionally asked a question or two about the ARC and how Noel was fitting in, but Noel had no doubt his former team-mates were keeping him well briefed, especially with Connor living with Hart now. Noel was pretty well briefed on Hart, too, largely thanks to Connor. When he'd first heard Connor sing Hart's praises, he'd assumed Connor had added a good measure of hyperbole, but the more reports Noel read, the more realistic Connor's descriptions seemed. Hart had been a tracker, sharpshooter, diver, swimmer... the list seemed endless. Now the man needed a walking stick. It struck Noel suddenly how much Hart had lost. Why did he not think of it that day at the park, tracking dogs? He'd brought too many preconceptions that first day, perhaps.

"I haven't been back to CMU in, oh, ages," Hart finally said, with a touch of sadness. "Ever been here before?"

Why would Noel have been to Central Metropolitan University before? "No."

"I hope the collection hasn't changed. Can't imagine it has, though."

Noel expected some reminiscence to follow, but instead Hart asked about Connor and the professor's training. Noel said what positive things he could, and Hart didn't press him. 

Once they reached the university, they had a longer walk to the building than Noel expected. He hadn't realised the university was so large. Hart seemed energised despite the walk. 

At their destination, they were greeted by an older woman who glanced up and then gave them a more thorough look and got to her feet. "Mr Hart! Haven't seen you in years!"

"Has it been that long, Miriam?" Hart asked with a smile. "Can't be. Months, maybe."

Miriam was obviously surprised by Hart's appearance, but he brushed off questions gently and kept moving the conversation back to her: how she looked the same as when he last saw her, how he and Cutter missed her, how he'd have to drag Cutter down here to say hello himself. Their new project was exciting, but the archivists weren't quite up to Miriam's standards. And so on. Noel mostly tuned out the details but was interested to see Hart at work. Finally he saw some of the man he'd expected. Hart smiled a lot as he introduced Noel, but soon he'd turned the conversation away from Noel. A bit of flirting and a bit of flattery later, the woman handed Noel a form to apply for a visitor's card with hardly a glance at him. Hart told no actual lies. Noel hardly got a word in, for which he was grateful.

Miriam offered to come back with Hart and help him, but Hart thanked her and told her Noel would do any heavy lifting.

Noel expected the act to drop once they were out of the archivist's sight, but Hart was still smiling a little as they walked back into rows upon rows of long metal cabinets. 

"Miriam took good care of us while we were here, no matter how close to closing time we arrived," he said.

Noel found them a couple of stools, mindful of Cutter's warnings about letting Hart do too much. Then he pulled out a long metal drawer that Hart indicated. It contained large photographs of dinosaur tracks.

"I thought I'd avoid my mistake at the park, and we'd start with the big ones," Hart said, his eyes on the photos and not on Noel. "We've got a great collection here at CMU—very few actual trackways samples of our own, but one of the best collections of photographs of prehistoric prints in the world. You know, we should see if we can get permission to digitise them! The ARC could do with quick access to the collection, and Connor's database would be even better with samples like these."

The photos were amazing, and Noel thought Connor would love these, even spoiled as he'd been by seeing the real thing so many times. The photos were much safer, anyway. Connor must have seen them already, though: he'd been Cutter's student. He'd have to ask Connor later.

Hart took him through a couple drawers' worth of large photographs. Some had been taken from a distance, showing a number of tracks. Others were close-ups of a few footprints, or sometimes only one. All had markers showing scale. Hart taught him what to look for in terms of size, depth in the photos where it was clearly visible or marked with a ruler, and spacing, as well as counting toes, looking for claws, and checking for signs the creature had been injured. They kept their voices low, but the quiet didn't hide the awe in Hart's voice. Noel found himself fascinated, and what he thought might be a chore turned out to be the best afternoon he'd spent at work since...since he couldn't remember when.

"Stephen Hart!" a loud voice suddenly came from the end of a row, and Hart jumped a little. "Miriam told me you were here, and I said she must be mistaken! Cutter doesn't let you out on your own enough!"

Noel automatically stood to greet the new arrival, a very blond man a few inches shorter than he was and a little paunchy. 

"Tony!" Hart slid slowly off his stool."I didn't expect to see you here! How've you been?"

"But what happened to you?" The man walked right up to Stephen, ignoring Noel, and looked him up and down with a frown.

"Got a little too close to something unfriendly." Hart shrugged. "This is Noel Miller," he said, offering no further explanation. "Tony Jensen. We were both postgraduates here."

Jensen nodded to Noel and turned right back to Hart. "You never did finish that PhD, did you?"

Hart shrugged again. "Happier doing fieldwork."

"Doesn't look like fieldwork has been treating you too well, though!" Jensen looked concerned, but something about him didn't feel right.

Hart smiled. "I've had worse." Now that was an outright lie, Noel was pretty sure.

Jensen seemed dubious too. "Really? I must have missed that. Seriously, what has Cutter got you doing? He was always against shooting things; didn't recognise that sometimes in fieldwork, you have to look out for yourself! Was that what happened?"

Hart shifted uncomfortably. "No, no. Just... bad luck, some poor judgement on my part. So what have you been up to?"

"Oh, the usual! Giving papers, publishing. Quite busy. I haven't seen you or Nick on the conference circuit in a while. Got something big under wraps, or has he...?" Jensen wiggled his fingers near his head.

Stephen frowned. "Nick's still hard at work. He's got several things he's working on." The frown eased. "You know him and his perfectionism. Might be a while before you get to see them."

Jensen smiled again. "Yeah. He should be publishing more! You've got to push him, Stephen—especially if you want to get ahead, too." Then Jensen turned more serious. "Are you sure you're doing all right? You look... you've done a lot of fieldwork, and I've never seen you like this before. An arm and a leg?"

Stephen shrugged again. "Could have been worse. Really. You don't want to know. How's your wife?"

Noel had been thinking this man a practiced liar? He couldn't even change topic without being obvious. The picture Noel had constructed from what he heard of Hart and the two Cutters when he first arrived at the ARC had been embarrassingly inaccurate. The only redeeming thing about Noel's judgements was that he had not voiced them aloud. 

Some discussion of a woman Hart and Jensen both knew followed, and Noel's attention drifted from the words to the body language. Hart didn't seem concerned; he kept standing but didn't look particularly tense. Jensen leaned too far forward, putting himself into Hart's personal space. Hart moved back, probably unconsciously.

Breaking up the conversation seemed far outside Noel's duties, but he was itching to get back to those photographs. That feeling only increased when suddenly Jensen decided to include him in the conversation.

"So, Noel Miller, right? Are you one of Cutter's students too, or does he not have students on this big grant that got him away from the university?"

"Oh, he has his students still," Stephen said with a hint of amusement, probably thinking of Connor. "Noel's fairly new, and I thought I'd show him the ropes around here."

"Excellent!" Jensen was now in Noel's space, and Noel couldn't move any farther from him with drawer handles already digging into his back. "And how are you finding it?"

This conversation could turn at any moment to what Noel's field or plans were, and Noel didn't know how to get out of that. Flash would have been great at escaping. Wait: Connor had a way of sidetracking conversations when he wasn't even trying. Noel decided to channel Connor.

"This collection is amazing!" Noel told him, letting his genuine enthusiasm show. "I've never seen anything quite like it. I didn't even know it was here until recently! I feel privileged to be able to see it." No, too thick—he'd better cut back. "I'm sure you know the feeling, sir, since you're coming back to see it."

Jensen's laugh brought him up short. "'Sir'? Are you sure he's Cutter's student, Hart?" 

Hart raised an eyebrow. "Now haven't you always known me to be polite?"

"Honestly, Stephen, I think Cutter ruined you. He made you all snarky and sarcastic." Jensen sighed dramatically. "Ah, the good old days. Department gatherings here were more... exciting than those in my new department." He smiled too broadly. "Of course, there are advantages to a quieter place." He looked back and forth between Noel and Hart. Neither answered.

"Well, Stephen, I wish you luck on your recovery," he said, clapping Hart lightly on the shoulder. Hart flinched ever so slightly. "And good luck to you, Noel." Jensen shook Noel's hand again as he left. "Tell Cutter I said hi!" 

Hart nodded.

"Well, that was nice of him," Hart said absently as Jensen disappeared and they settled on their stools again.

"It was?" Noel asked, regretting it immediately, but he'd expected some of the sarcasm Jensen had mentioned once the man was out of earshot.

Hart looked at him curiously. "I didn't think he and Nick got on all that well. I haven't seen him in years. It was nice of him to show some concern for me."

Noel frowned. It was none of his business. Yet it bothered him to see Jensen possibly putting one over on Hart, even if he wasn't sure what.

"No," he said finally, "I don't think it was nice. I don't think it was all concern for you. I felt like..." Noel fumbled a little to interpret what he'd seen, finally concluding "...like he wanted something from you."

Hart frowned. "Like what?"

Noel could only shrug. "I don't know the man. He didn't have much to say about Professor Cutter, though."

Hart snorted. "He doesn't like Cutter. Nick's a bit of an acquired taste, you've got to admit."

Noel nodded. "I—I just... sorry, si—um, Hart. None of my business."

Hart gave him a sharp look. "Now that you mention it, he wasn't exactly friendly towards you. Until, suddenly, he was. That might possibly make it your business." After a dry chuckle, he added, "And it has been pointed out to me that I'm a bit clueless when it comes to dealing with people, so if you have some clues, please—feel free to share them."

Well, that was the first time anyone had ever said that to Noel.

They spent the entire afternoon in the archives, most of it bent over photographs. Then at the end they moved to an even more climate-controlled room, with some plaster casts of real dinosaur trackways. Noel could finally truly see the depth of some prints, although, as Hart noted, those would vary greatly with the hardness or softness of the ground, not just the creature's weight. They had a few footprints from a dimetrodon, and a hadrosaur (much clearer than he'd found in his real life encounter with them), and even one from a T. rex. Awe enveloped Noel. Hart looked around, then told him quietly to touch it, very gently.

"Surely I'm not supposed to touch!" Noel replied, sticking his hands in his pockets reflexively, the way he'd do in a shop full of crystal.

"Well, no," Hart answered in a low tone. "But you'll remember better if you do. And if it's a choice between the plaster lasting a few more years and you learning something that will save lives...."

Very gingerly, Noel put his fingers into the tracks, trying to memorise the texture, the depth, everything. He realised he'd closed his eyes only when he opened them to find Hart grinning at him.

"There's nothing like it, is there?" Hart asked with longing. "Except the real thing." The grin faded to a very faint smile.

Noel realised only when they left that Hart was moving quite slowly. He'd been so wrapped up in the trackways he'd failed to notice or inquire. Hart shrugged off Noel's attempted apology. 

"It's worth it," he said, "to have a whole afternoon here again."

***

After his afternoon outing, Stephen had a little time alone before Connor came back to the flat. It was Connor's last night at Stephen's. Stephen hadn't truly needed Connor for anything. He could hardly justify keeping his friend on the sofa when he found himself taking over the cooking and cleaning because Connor, much as he wanted to help, wasn't a very good cook and didn't know where anything was supposed to go. Connor seemed eager to return to Abby's flat. Stephen wasn't entirely sure how eager Abby would be to have him back, but as long as he didn't do the cooking or the dishes, she probably wouldn't mind.

"They say absence makes the heart grow fonder," Connor said as he packed his things up on Friday morning. "You know, Abby said it wasn't the same without me around!"

Stephen smiled and barely restrained himself from advising Connor yet again to ask Abby out on a proper date. "You might want to say you missed her too, and not make a big fuss over Rex instead." 

Connor looked surprised, and Stephen suspected that was exactly how things would have played out otherwise. Now maybe there was some hope for Connor. 

"You're sure you'll be all right?" the young man asked, concern suddenly flashing across his face.

Stephen nodded. "I've been fine during the days, and it's not like I need help at night." He couldn't explain that simply having Connor there sleeping helped. Connor slept like a log, night after night. Stephen had envied him a little, but he felt wrong creeping out to listen to Connor breathing when he'd had nightmares or trouble sleeping. 

Nick came for dinner on Friday night, which gave Stephen a chance to break the news to Nick that he'd be coming to the ARC that coming Monday for a physical—and if he passed it, he'd start working a few hours a day there.

He'd braced himself for the look of horror that crossed Nick's face as the news sank in.

"I'm doing very well with the physio," Stephen continued calmly, pretending he hadn't noticed and giving Nick a chance to get himself under control. "I work from here, but it's boring. I end up calling you all several times a day, waiting because my Internet connection isn't as fast as being on a computer at the ARC, and generally wasting my time."

Nick had pulled himself together but now looked ready to object.

"Besides, you'll be able to keep a closer watch on me there." Stephen smirked at him deliberately.

It worked; Nick laughed. "And maybe you'll stop suggesting things for Lester to do to us when you might have to take part yourself?"

Stephen gave him a querying look.

"That first aid course we had was basic as anything and dull as dishwater! Abby could have taught it. Didn't she tell you so?"

"Yes, but she passed the message via Connor, which was a good deal easier on me." Abby had been none too pleased about it, that much was clear.

Nick fidgeted with the cutlery.

"It'll be fine, Nick," Stephen tried to reassure him. "After hospital and physio, the ARC will be easy."

Nick blew out a surprised breath. "Well, now you've gone and jinxed it all, haven't you?"

Stephen wasn't worried. 

When Cutter left, he insisted, "Keep your mobile by your bed, and don't hesitate to phone me tonight if you need anything. Or any night. It seems awfully soon for you to be on your own again."

Stephen promised he'd keep the mobile by the bed, and turned on, and he did. He still wasn't worried. It seemed none too soon to him.

Of course, by about 1.00 am, he had changed his mind on that, and several other things. Stephen had had little trouble falling asleep most nights that Connor had been there, but now when he turned out the lights, he saw snatches of things he didn't want to remember. 

He finally turned a bathroom light on and fell asleep that way, waking up from time to time but free of nightmares, as far as he could recall. It was normal to be anxious, Dr Jacobs had said, even as Stephen had insisted he wasn't anxious. Returning to normality could be stressful in itself. It would get better. He kept repeating it to himself whenever he woke up, and he got through the night.

A Saturday with no physiotherapy and no visitors seemed daunting, but Stephen had told each of the members of the team he needed some quiet time, and it was true. The visits from soldiers had trailed off since he left the hospital and stopped entirely since he had moved back to his flat, although a couple of them had called to ask him how he was. His teammates, however, were nearly as persistent as ever.

Mostly, Stephen wanted to stop them thinking of him as an invalid. He took a longer walk than usual in the hope that it would make him tired enough to sleep well, then regretted it when he had to climb the stairs back to his flat. Well, he'd take it easy on Sunday so that he was ready for Dr Gupta to examine him on Monday. 

Tonight, he decided, he'd sleep with the lights off. Even if it took a while, he needed to get used to it.

***

Nick hadn't realised that Stephen had made certain that none of them were visiting on Saturday until Abby called him to see if he was seeing Stephen that evening, and if he knew if Stephen had been all right the previous night. Of course he didn't know anything. For all he knew, Stephen had fallen in the shower and cracked his skull. As soon as he had finished speaking to her, he phoned Stephen.

"You don't have to do everything alone, you know!"

"And hello to you, too, Cutter!" Stephen answered with annoying cheer. "Should I ask Lester to schedule lessons on phone etiquette—"

"Don't be a smart-arse."

"But I learnt from the best!" Stephen replied.

"You've been taking Lester lessons?"

"I suppose you're right: Lester does have you beaten."

Nick took a deep breath and managed not to snap at Stephen again. "The point stands. You don't have to be completely alone, you know."

"I know, and I do appreciate it," Stephen said, more seriously. "But it's the first time I've been completely alone since—in almost a month now. I'm used to spending time alone. I'm not used to having people constantly ask how I'm doing, if I need help, if it hurts yet—oh, sorry, that would be the physio, not you." 

So much for seriousness.

"I'll keep the phone on my bedside table again, I promise. Look, I'm crossing my heart." 

Nick knew when he had lost. "Fine. Have it your way."

***

Jessica smiled at Noel over the dinner table. "What are you thinking?"

He smiled back. "I'm thinking that I must have been crazy to be disappointed when I didn't get posted to Afghanistan with my mates. Getting my off-duty nights with you? How'd I get so lucky?"

"It wasn't luck," she told him with pride. "Someone wanted the best new officer."

Noel didn't believe her, but he must have been not half bad to pass muster with James Lester, he reckoned. 

"I do wish you could talk about it, though," she said after a sip of wine. "I'd like to hear about he people you work with, or where you go?"

"I spend most of my time in one office or another," he told her. "The people I work with...." That would be safe, wouldn't it? He wasn't sure how comprehensible any of them would be outside of their jobs, though. Come to that, he wasn't sure how comprehensible any of them were at their jobs. There must be bits he could tell her. "I do work with some characters," he admitted at last. "It might take a while to tell, though, and some of the funny bits might not be funny without context."

"That's all right," Jessica said. "We've got all night."

"Assuming I don't get any calls!" he warned her hastily. Then he took a sip of his own wine and lowered his voice. "But if we don't...I can think of better things to do than talk about the people I work with."

Jessica's smile was stunning. "How'd I get so lucky?" she murmured.

Chapter 3: Predator

Nick went to bed reluctantly. He'd had bad dreams again the previous night. He wished Connor were still staying with Stephen. Hell, he wished he were staying with Stephen, even if he had to take the damned sofa. It would be easier than the bad dreams, waking up and trying to remember if Stephen was dead or alive, in hospital or at home.... But Stephen was trying to get back to normal, and Nick couldn't interfere with that.

***

Something didn't smell right. Something breathed on him in the dark. Stephen jumped for the lamp, ignoring the complaints of his abdominal muscles, and flicked on the light. His legs automatically pulled back to protect his scarred abdomen before his mind had even registered what he saw.

"Well, Stephen," Helen said, seating herself on the bed where his feet had just been, "I'd expected a warmer welcome, but I suppose I shouldn't have surprised you. I'm sorry."

Stephen had to fight to get his breathing under control and keep from grunting as his leg added its complaints to the ones coming from his guts. He couldn't get a word out, but he tried to level a glare at her.

She frowned at him, with a look he’d once have assumed meant genuine concern. "You used to sleep in the nude, didn't you? Are the scars...?”

He had indeed started wearing a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms to bed only after he'd been injured, and the reminder angered him further. He tried to control his inhalations so that he could speak.

She touched his right knee, and he flinched back.

"Get out!" he snapped breathlessly. He had wondered what he would feel if he saw her again, but now he had his answer: fury. Belatedly, he recalled Lester's repeated orders to keep her in his flat if she appeared. She had surely set off the silent alarm. He couldn’t let her get away. 

"Now that you have no one staying with you, I thought you must be better!" Helen sounded sympathetic, her face still lined with apparent worry.

Stephen had to keep her from knowing he needed her to stay there. Of course, she wouldn’t do what he truly wanted and leave, no matter how many times he said it.

"Get out now!" he spat at her, his breath still catching a little.

She had the gall to look disappointed. "Is that any way to talk to the woman who saved your life?" She tried to touch him again, reaching for his right arm, and he pulled back again and grunted a little as his body protested. "I'm sorry. Did that hurt?" She withdrew the hand.

"Saved my life?" Stephen managed to choke out a laugh. "You nearly got me killed, playing at conspiracies with a homicidal maniac!"

Helen looked sadly at him. "Yes, I made a terrible mistake. But I fixed it. I came back for you." Her face brightened at once.

"Fixed it? You call this fixed?" Stephen waved his cast at her, though that injury would heal fastest and most completely. "The best thing would have been if you'd gone in the damned room yourself!" He was surprised to find that he really meant it.

Helen sighed, giving him that disappointed look he still recalled from when she was his supervisor. He’d have done anything to avoid it once. "Then I'd have died, and I wouldn’t have come back. You needed me to escape, so I could come back later."

She must have gone mad. Perhaps years spent traveling through the anomalies had done it; perhaps guilt over the havoc she had wreaked had pushed her over the edge. Either way, she wasn’t making sense.

"I couldn't make it to the control room in time from down there," she continued, apparently unaware of how she sounded. "I had to find another anomaly, come back through at an earlier date, and wait a month until I could sneak back into the building. I almost didn't make it past one of Leek's hired hands, but I got there in time to stop you dying again."

Stephen gaped at her, feeling that he should understand what she was saying, but also that he didn't want to. "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care. You nearly let me die! And if Nick had gone in there, he never would have survived—your own husband!”

Helen lowered her eyes to his bed. "I know. Which is why I'm forever grateful to you for taking his place. I know you don't understand, but you died." She looked at him again with urgency in her eyes and voice. "You died. I saw your funeral—from a distance; I wasn't exactly invited. I went back when I could, and I made sure you survived."

"You're lying!" he snarled. "You don't care about anyone but yourself!"

Her eyes flashed. "I could have left you in the room with all those creatures, you know," she said coldly. "It wasn't safe for me to return to the area. Leek's men weren't taking orders any longer, and your soldiers were on their way. And Nick...." She laughed softly. The sound gave Stephen chills. "Nick would say I shouldn't have done what I did, that I don't have a right to change time, but then you'd be dead," she continued.

Helen looked at him with soft eyes again. "I couldn't leave you to die like that. And I couldn't do that to Nick, either. I don’t know what he’d have done if he’d lost you. He has come to depend on you, hasn’t he?"

When Stephen didn't answer, she continued, "I wanted you to know what I did. You have a right to know. And you have to understand how important my work—"

"I don't have to understand anything. Get out!"

She frowned at him. "You keep telling me to get out, but—" She began to glance around, and her eyes fell on the mobile on his bedside table. Stephen lunged for it at once, gasping as his abdominal muscles protested and his own weight fell across his right wrist in his haste. He missed. She snatched it and jumped back from the bed.

Stephen pushed himself up with his left arm, forcing himself to sit upright. He'd be damned if he'd lie there in obvious pain in front of her. 

Helen frowned at him again. “You are still hurt. I did the best I could. I couldn’t get there any sooner—”

“Give me my phone,” he demanded. At least, he hoped it sounded like a demand and not a plea.

She took another step back and began to push buttons on the phone instead of answering him. “Nick is still first on your speed-dial! I’m glad. I was wrong to—”

"Give me the phone." Stephen could feel sweat running down his chest at the effort, but he managed to keep his voice even this time. "You've already cost me one phone. I want that one back."

She laughed a little, and he felt his gut twist in a way that wasn't caused by physical wounds. "Actually, I've lost my own as well. And mobiles are rather hard to come by in the Jurassic."

Stephen tried to gather himself for a jump out of the bed without looking like he was doing it. Fortunately, Helen was apparently still fascinated by his mobile.

"And, surprisingly, even in the future! The systems aren't compatible.... Here's a name I don't know: Noel Miller."

He jumped at her. Helen stepped easily out of the way, and he collapsed on the floor when his bad leg gave out.

"Oh, careful, careful!" She had both hands on his arms now to push him upright; where was his phone? She'd probably pocketed it already. "You don't want to aggravate any of your injuries!"

He grabbed her right arm with his left, but she jerked back, and he was still off balance enough that he lost his grip and fell onto his back for a moment.

"Well, if we can't have a rational conversation," she said, "I suppose then I ought to go."

Stephen pushed himself into a sitting position and managed to reach the bed with his left arm, but levering himself up wouldn't be easy. He was still panting from the pain and the exertion. He couldn't let her go yet. The ARC soldiers couldn't have arrived. "Why?" he asked, giving up on trying to keep his voice steady. "Why did you do any of it? Why work with Leek?" His voice cracked pathetically, but that might be to his advantage. 

Helen squatted down just out of reach, her head still a little above his. She was wearing jeans and boots, with a leather jacket and a modest blouse for a change. The moment she left, she could easily disappear on the street. ARC soldiers could drive right past her. Nothing about her stood out.

"You really don't understand, do you?" She shook her head slowly, giving him a sad smile. "I'd have thought you of all people would! The things we can learn, the things we can do, once we understand! Nick has made it quite clear he has no interest. I still—"

"Leek?" he prompted, pushing himself back far enough to lean against the bed. He clearly wasn't in any shape to jump her, so the best he could do was keep her talking.

Her face grew hard. "Leek was a mistake." She suddenly raised her head, cocking it to one side as if listening. "Why did you go from throwing me out to asking questions?"

"Because throwing you out didn't work!" he cried in genuine frustration, praying that the soldiers were close. He hadn't heard anything, but if they did their job right, he wouldn't until too late.

Helen grinned again, though it was more like a predator showing her teeth than a smile. "No," she said. Suddenly she lunged forward and grabbed his lamp, tipping it onto the floor.

He pulled back, but the lamp didn't hit him. It didn't even go out. Helen shouted something and jumped on the lamp, and he could hear the shade and bulb break. Blind in the sudden darkness, he didn't even see her go. He could hear her footsteps as she ran, but all they told him was that she was headed for the stairs. He pulled himself up and stumbled towards the light switch. He heard no cars rushing away or squealing to a halt. He hadn't kept her long enough.

***

"I can't believe this!" Noel grumbled in frustration as he finished dressing. "Why didn't this happen the nights I was on duty? The first off-duty time they’ve let me have since my posting, and now we get a call?"

"Is it dangerous?" Jessica asked, now fully awake herself a few minutes after the phone call from the ARC.

"No," he said, giving her a quick kiss. "It's not. Don't worry about me, and don't wait up. It's just bad timing."

She looked at the clock. "No. An hour ago—now that would have been bad timing."

Noel had to smile as he left.

***

Nick jumped when his mobile rang. He fumbled about for a moment, finding the light switch and then looking for his phone, which he'd knocked to the floor when he woke so suddenly. He checked the caller ID. Oh, God—he didn’t think Stephen would really call. 

"Stephen?" he asked anxiously.

"I think I startled him, but I'm sure he'll be all right," a woman's voice said.

In his surprise Nick took a moment to place the voice, and then he almost dropped the phone again. "Where's Stephen? What have you done?"

Helen laughed, and Nick wondered how he could ever have found that sound attractive. "I've borrowed his mobile, that's all. I lost mine...a long time ago. Oh, Nick. I can't tell you how glad I am the two of you have patched things up."

"Where are you? What the hell are you doing with Stephen's phone?" Cold fear settled in Nick's stomach. What could he do?

Helen gave him some nonsense about checking on "dear Stephen."

Nick still had a landline; Lester had insisted. He got out of bed to head down to his study, clutching his mobile tightly. He wasn't sure how he'd make a call on the landline while he was on his mobile with Helen. E-mail wouldn't raise the alarm fast enough, even if his computer didn't take forever to wake up and he could type while fumbling with the mobile. If she was at Stephen's flat, soldiers should already be on the way—but best to be sure.

"I thought he'd be happier to see me, given how much he enjoyed my last visit to his flat. But we all need to put that behind us."

He should keep her talking, keep her in place. Yet he could hardly imagine that Stephen could be unharmed, if she had full control of his mobile at his flat.

"Where is Stephen? Let me talk to him," Nick demanded as he started down the stairs to his study.

"Stephen is fine. I assure you, Nick, I haven't done anything to him. I know you think I’ve turned against you, against both of you, but I never meant for either of you to be hurt!" 

She was walking quickly, Nick realised. He could hear it in her voice. 

"Stephen is so hostile to me. I've never seen him like this, even when I made my admittedly spiteful confession about the affair in front of you all. Nick, I've been selfish—"

"My God!" he exclaimed, pausing on the stairs in his shock. "Is that all you think this is?"

"I'm... I suppose I'm trying to apologise, Nick. I've never been very good at it." 

He'd reached the bottom of the stairs. He flicked on the lights. 

"You know, I never signed any divorce papers. We're still married," Helen stated.

"You've been declared dead," Nick said bluntly, wishing he could wound with words as she could. He seemed to have a knack for it, but only when he didn't mean to hurt, not when he did. "As far as I'm concerned, you are dead." He flicked on the lights in his study.

"Oh, Nick—"

Having reached the phone, he realised he had no idea what number to call. He had everything programmed into his mobile, which he could hardly check at the moment. Damn it!

He had to play for time. Stephen must have alerted the ARC, if the alarm hadn't—assuming that Stephen hadn't been seriously harmed. Anything that slowed Helen down could help. He threw his frustration back at her. "You're not the woman I married. I don't even know you. Why are you calling me?"

"Oh, Nick," Helen sighed again. "We've been married so many years, and you don't want to talk? Stephen wanted to talk to me." She laughed. "Then again, I believe Stephen had ulterior motives—and I suppose with all this shuffling around you've been doing, you may have started a trace. I'd better go. Goodbye, Nick. And when Stephen tells you what I did, remember: I did it for both of you." The phone went dead.

***

Stephen struggled into street clothes, cursing when he heard footsteps on the stairs. The soldiers weren't very quiet, but they no longer needed to be, he supposed. At least he succeeded in getting into his jeans before they reached his bedroom.

"She's gone!" he shouted as best he could. He still hadn't caught his breath entirely. "You've only missed her by a couple of minutes! Helen Cutter!" he added belatedly. 

Stephen grabbed his boots and backed up to sit on the bed. Well, it was more of a controlled fall. He ignored screaming muscles as he pulled each of the boots on.

"Clear! You all right, sir?" A soldier kept his rifle at the ready as he checked around the side of the bed. Another slipped into his bathroom while the first one checked his wardrobe. 

"Clear!" the other one called. 

Stephen could hear other soldiers elsewhere in the flat.

"Fine! Just let me get my boots on, and I'll see if we can pick up any tracks." He knew it would be hopeless. It wasn't as if she was bleeding this time, or even wandering around with prehistoric mud on her boots; his floor was clean, so there certainly wouldn't be any marks outside. But even a search he knew would fail had to be better than sitting around his flat. 

A young soldier looked Stephen up and down. "You don't look very well—begging your pardon, sir." 

No, he probably didn't. He hadn't had time to change his shirt, between running (or hobbling) around the flat seeing if he could see which way Helen went through the windows (he couldn't) and then trying to get some decent clothes on before the troops arrived.

"I'm fine," he grunted, finishing the laces of one boot. "I don't like being awakened by someone stealing my phone. My phone!" he shouted, remembering how Leek had trapped his team. "Call Connor. Have him trace my phone. Make sure he doesn't go himself!" He could find no sign of it in the flat, and he assumed she'd taken it with her. He could only hope she hadn't turned it off.

One of the soldiers immediately relayed the idea to the ARC. 

"We're checking the vicinity, sir," one of the men told him. "Lieutenant Miller is on his way. Perhaps you could just tell us what happened while we wait?"

"Great. Miller can meet us outside." Stephen managed a passable knot in his other bootlace and got up, grabbing for his walking stick. Helen Cutter had been in his flat. That was all they needed to know right now.

"Sir, are you, erm, sure that's a good idea?" the soldier asked, hovering as if uncertain whether to help or get out of his way.

"Do you have any orders to the contrary?" Stephen snapped.

"No."

"Then you can stay here, or come with me." Going down the stairs resembled a controlled fall, too. Stephen still had painkillers and muscle relaxants. He hadn't used them in over a week. He silently promised himself both, as soon as they wrapped this up. 

***

Discretion? Didn't their orders say something about discretion? Noel thought as he pulled up in his car to find a handful of the ARC soldiers playing torches over the ground, and, oh God, was that Hart? Noel jogged towards the man in question. Yes, it was. Well, at least if Cutter or Lester demanded his head for this, he'd have spent part of his last night on earth with his wife. 

Some lights were on in homes and flats, and Noel could see at least one person looking down at them.

"Sir?" a young soldier asked in a pleading voice, giving his head a quick nod towards Hart. Hart was staring moodily at the ground and didn't notice.

"Sit rep."

"Sir, Helen Cutter broke in, but she left before we arrived. She seems to have picked the lock."

"Got it changed while I was in hospital," Hart said hoarsely, turning and starting to cross the street. 

Noel cocked his head for the soldier to follow Hart, and the two of them went after the man with the stick. 

"She took his mobile. We've got personnel at the ARC trying to run a trace, and we've got a call in to Temple to get there and help." 

"If it's on, Connor can find it," Hart said with certainty.

"She'll know that, won't she, sir?" Noel said. He looked down at the pavement. He might not be an expert tracker, but he could see that there was nothing there to track. 

"Yes," Hart said with gritted teeth. He finally looked at Noel. In the light of moving torches, his eyes looked like they'd sunk back into their sockets. Noel could smell the sweat on him, but it must be drying rapidly in the cool night air. Hart might be off the team for now, but he was determined not to let that woman get away. Noel had wondered if Hart was going to repeat his mistakes, but it seemed clear enough that he wanted to find her the way he'd want to find a dangerous animal, not the way one looked for a lover.

The young soldier's eyes flicked back and forth between Noel and Hart again. "We've already been around the whole block once, sir."

"Sir—Hart—look. She's gone, right?" Noel asked pragmatically. "We're searching the area, but we're not really going to find her, are we?"

Hart's shoulders slumped. "No."

"Then let's get back inside, and you can get off that leg." He was about to say, and you can tell us what happened, but he wasn't certain Hart would be up to that.

Hart hesitated a moment, then nodded and headed back towards the flat. 

They had Hart on a sofa soon after that, and Noel sent a soldier to get him some water. Hart's hair was sticking in all directions, and his t-shirt was quite damp around his neck and armpits, though the night air was chilly enough that Noel hadn't minded wearing both his jacket and his Kevlar vest. Hart was trembling visibly, and he looked awfully pale. Noel wondered if he should call a doctor before he checked in with Captain Robinson, who was coordinating things from the ARC. Where did Hart keep his own jackets? He needed one, or a jumper.

"Oh, God, Nick!" Hart exclaimed while Noel tried to decide what to do first. "I have to call Cutter. He has to know. She might go there next."

Noel gave the information to Robinson. They'd dispatch men as soon as possible to Cutter's house. God, he hoped there wasn't an anomaly tonight; they had few soldiers left to deal with it. But capturing Helen Cutter was a top priority. 

"Maybe we should hold off on calling him?" Noel suggested. "He has the same security system as you. If you call, she might see a light, or even see him on the phone—it'll scare her off." 

Hart started to get to his feet, and Noel gently put a hand on his shoulder. 

"No," Hart objected. "You don't know what she's like. He deserves some warning." He started to stand again. "Let me get to my phone!"

Noel saw a landline in the kitchen. "No, sit," he said, pulling out his own mobile. "I've got Cutter on speed dial." He selected the number and handed it to Hart.

A moment later Hart turned even paler; was he going to pass out?

"Busy," he whispered as he disconnected. He looked lost.

Noel contacted Robinson again and suggested that the soldiers contact Cutter directly and make certain he was all right.

Even before he'd rung off from the captain, Noel saw Hart set his jaw and begin entering some numbers in the phone. 

"He's got a landline too," Hart murmured as he moved the mobile back to his ear.

Cutter's "What?" when he answered was so loud that Noel could hear it from where he stood next to the sofa. 

"Nick?" Hart's voice trembled. "Helen.... Yes, yes, I'm all right. She...? The phone ringing just now didn't cause her to hang up, did it? .... Oh, damn. They're trying to track her. Yes, I've got soldiers here."

Noel stepped away, talking to the soldiers while he gave Hart a little privacy, but the men had little to report. 

***

In retrospect, Nick was surprised he hadn't been stopped by the police on his way to Stephen's flat. He didn't even know how fast he'd been going. Stephen had sounded like hell, and he didn't believe the other man's assurances that he was all right.

"Ah, Cutter! Glad you could join us!" Lester greeted him after he'd made it up the stairs. What the hell was Lester doing there?

Stephen looked even worse than he'd sounded. Half his hair was plastered to his face, the other half pointing in all directions, and he seemed to be shivering even under a jacket. Cutter ignored Lester and sat down next to Stephen on the sofa.

"Did she hurt you?" he asked quietly, putting a hand gently on Stephen's shoulder.

"No, no. Just... the adrenaline's worn off now." Stephen took a gulp of water; at least someone seemed to have given him that.

"You need to take him to hospital," Lester said bluntly. "He said you were coming, and he wouldn't leave until you got here."

"I'm fine. I'm not hurt," Stephen insisted, but he wouldn't make eye contact; his eyes drifted, unfocused, around the area of the coffee table. "I... wasn't expecting to have to wrestle for my phone and make a couple of extra trips up and down the stairs."

"If you lost a wrestling match with Helen, you weren't in good shape when it started," Cutter said, and then he wished he'd worded it a little better. Even that didn't get Stephen to look at him, though.

"They should probably re-x-ray that wrist and check his leg," Lester instructed. "See? Those first aid lessons are valuable. I'm using them already."

Lester's attempts at humour were completely off. Nick gave him a good look for the first time since he'd entered the flat. The man was furious, Nick realised, but he wasn't directing it at Stephen. Lester was also dressed in jeans and a jumper, a sight Nick had never seen before. 

"Shock," mouthed Lester, tilting his head to indicate Stephen.

"Right. Let's go." He moved his hand down to Stephen's elbow and stood slowly, helping Stephen up. 

"Temple thinks he has traced the phone, and the soldiers are on their way to the location," Lester told him in a tight voice.

Nick couldn't believe they could be so lucky. "Helen said she thought we were tracing her; she didn't turn it off?"

Lester shook his head. "If Connor's right, it's on and stationary. Miller's leading them in with utmost caution."

It wasn't merely anger he saw in Lester's face, Nick realised; he could see fear there, too. Sending ARC personnel after Helen again scared him as well.

"I'm illegally parked right outside," Nick told Stephen with cheer summoned up from God knew where, "so you won't have far to go." He took Stephen's stick from one of the soldiers and kept his hand under Stephen's elbow. 

Stephen's eyes finally came around to Nick's face, and he nodded.

Once in the car, Stephen answered Nick's questions with monosyllables. Nick remembered Helen's parting words and wanted desperately to ask what she'd said, but Stephen was clearly exhausted and hurt, and Nick didn't press him.

They found that Lester had phoned ahead to the hospital, and somehow Stephen got seen right away, before people in the waiting room who cast resigned eyes over the two of them. Nick was allowed to hang about Stephen's cubicle. He called Lester when Stephen went to x-ray.

"It was a bloody postbox!" Lester exploded into Nick's ear. "She put his mobile in a postbox, still turned on, so that we would find it!" 

Relief that no one had been hurt won out for the moment over Nick's disappointment that Helen had escaped. 

The doctor concluded, some time later, that Stephen had not made his injuries noticeably worse, but that he should see his usual doctor first thing on Monday morning. Nick realised the doctor was addressing him as much or more than Stephen, who was currently back in his street clothes but wrapped in a blanket over the open jacket. That seemed to have stopped his shivering. The doctor advised bed rest and handed Nick some painkillers and muscle relaxants while instructing him on dosages.

"Don't need them," Stephen said. So he was paying some attention. "Plenty at home."

"We're not going to your home tonight. We're going to mine. It's the only way you'll get any sleep." It was probably the only way Nick would get any sleep, too.

Nick managed to get Stephen out of the hospital and into his car.

"I need a shower," Stephen said while Nick buckled his own seat belt.

"Not tonight! I don't trust you to stand up alone, and I'm not holding you up in the shower."

"I'm a mess," Stephen said, pulling up the front of his own shirt and sniffing it.

A few minutes later, Stephen complained, "She took my phone. Connor got me that phone while I was still in hospital."

"We've got it back," Nick told him, briefly relating the latest news from Lester.

"But she has my number now," Stephen said, apparently not fully following what Nick was saying. He was well past exhaustion. Now Cutter understood why the doctor insisted Stephen be already in bed before he took the tablets. It was as if Stephen had been drinking; his defences weren't working properly.

They drove a little longer in silence before Stephen spoke again. "She.... You won't like this, Nick."

"I don't like it already," Nick growled, and Stephen flinched.

Nick added hastily, "Not because of you. Because of her."

"She said I died." 

Nick could barely hear Stephen. He waited for more. Eventually, it came.

"She said I died in there.... When she was in the control room, turning the cages on... that wasn't the same Helen who'd just left us. That was Helen who had come back, from the future. Because I died. That's what she said."

Nick couldn't believe what he was hearing. It took a long moment to sink in. He checked his speed and brought it down to exactly the limit. If he concentrated on keeping it there, he might not blow up, or crash, or start yelling. 

Stephen sighed. "Connor can make sense of it. I just... I thought I'd better tell you."

Those were the last coherent words he got out of Stephen, who fell asleep in the car before Nick could even point out what a liar Helen was. He didn't know if what she'd said was true, or even if he'd understood Stephen correctly, and he didn't give a damn. She had no right to burden Stephen with that, and no right to make him decide whether to tell Nick. He wanted to be glad that Stephen had been honest with him, but all he felt was anger at Helen.

Nick pulled up at his house, and Stephen started when he turned the car off. He managed to help Stephen out of the vehicle with some difficulty. He mentally cursed Stephen for doing too much, he cursed himself for having both bedrooms on the first floor, and he cursed Helen above all. He gently pushed Stephen into his own bed so that he wouldn't keep him waiting while he made up the spare bed, pulled Stephen's boots off, then got him some water and gave him a muscle relaxant. Stephen didn't even seem to need the painkillers now. He'd give him some in the morning. Nick pulled the duvet over Stephen and suspected he was asleep before Nick had left the room.

As Nick pulled the sheets for the spare bed out of the airing cupboard, he saw streaks of light in the sky. It was morning. Screw it. He shoved the duvet off the spare bed, stripped down to his underwear, and curled up on top of a carelessly thrown sheet and a pillow with no pillowcase. As an afterthought, he pulled the duvet back up and crawled under it. Lester had told him that soldiers were stationed discreetly around the house. They were safe, for now.

***

Noel had long credited himself with a keen appreciation for the absurd, but he wasn't appreciating it right now. Half a dozen ARC soldiers had surrounded a pillar box while he and three others kept a watch for Helen; insane co-conspirators (should any exist); and, above all, creatures not from 21st century London. They then broke the lock on the postbox. Noel still felt at some level they'd be in deep trouble for that one. They fished Hart's mobile out of a stack of mail and left a guard there to make sure no one robbed the post before someone came in the morning to mend the box. Lester had relieved him of the responsibility for contacting the appropriate authorities at the Royal Mail (though he'd probably handed it over to Ms Lewis).

All this was so far from how he'd planned to spend his Sunday morning it wasn't funny. Now he and some of the soldiers, including a few who'd seen Helen Cutter in person, were combing through hours of footage from the security cameras covering much of London. She'd taken off at a run from Hart's building, slowed within a block—and then somehow disappeared in the small gap between two cameras' areas of coverage. He and Tyler viewed footage taken farther and farther from Hart's flat, in the hope that they'd pick her up again. The rest of the men were trying to backtrack from the camera by the postbox, which had picked up the Cutter woman finishing a phone call and then waving at the camera before she dropped the mobile through the slot. 

After two hours, Noel had begun to wonder how long it would take blindness to set in. After three hours, he found himself actively wishing for blindness, though only the temporary sort. He was amazed how many people wandered around London so late, or so early, depending on one's point of view. Many of them appeared to be drunk. At least that explained why they were wandering the streets. He wasn't sure about the others. 

"Sir?" asked the sergeant in a small voice. "How long are we going to keep at this, sir? Do you have any idea?"

It was the third time Tyler had asked, but the most direct query yet. Noel rubbed at his temples.

"Everyone take a break," he ordered. "Fifteen minutes. I'll see you back here then."

The room cleared more slowly than he would have thought, but everyone was stiff by this point.

Noel found Captain Robinson already in Lester's office.

"Yes?" called Lester before Noel had even had a chance to knock.

Noel reported their findings, or lack thereof, and his own conclusion that Cutter's wife knew the locations of the cameras.

"Ex-wife," corrected Lester absently, staring into space. "Of course she does." He sounded tired.

Captain Robinson said that they could review more footage later.

Lester nodded. "From what little I managed to get out of Stephen, she had worked out that he was trying to keep her at his flat, so the blasted woman knew people would come after her. She doesn't seem to have expected security on his flat, however, so we—and by 'we' I mean 'you'—should backtrack from her appearance at the flat. We've got the precise time from the alarm. Maybe we can learn a little more about her movements, particularly where she was before she broke into the flat."

Lester then waved him off, telling him to check in with Connor, and clearly meant to resume whatever he'd been saying to the captain.

"Yes, sir." Noel hesitated. "Mr Hart—and Professor Cutter—?"

Lester nodded curtly. "We've stationed people outside Cutter's house. Hart's there with him. Apparently he did not succeed in worsening his injuries despite his best efforts. But Helen Cutter isn't stupid enough to show up there. If she does, she'll be lucky if the soldiers get her; they at least have orders to take her alive. I doubt the men inside will extend her the same courtesy." Lester did not sound too keen about the soldiers' orders himself.

Noel was a little surprised to find Abby in the main concourse with Connor. They were both staring at the bank of screens in front of them. Connor looked up hopefully as he saw Noel coming down the ramp, and Noel could only shake his head.

"Well, I've got nothing either." Connor raised empty hands and let them fall. "Lester even called in a forensics team to do Stephen's flat, but I don't know when we'll get their results."

"What could they possibly tell us?" Abby asked, her arms folded, anger in the sharp angles of her body. "We know who was there, we know how she got in, but nothing there will tell us where she went!"

Both of them looked like they needed more sleep. They also seemed to have dressed in the dark, but Noel sometimes thought they looked that way on normal days.

"Do we even know why she went there?" he asked, pulling up a chair.

"You know more than we do," Abby pointed out. "You talked to Stephen."

"Yeah! Did he say anything?" Connor joined in.

"He wasn't very talkative. He tried to track her from his flat, but of course it's all pavement, so he got nowhere." Noel leaned back, sticking his hands in his pockets. He repeated Lester's status report.

"Why didn't Stephen just hold a gun on her?" Abby asked angrily. "Jenny put through loads of paperwork to get him that special weapons permit so he wouldn't always have to come back to the ARC for them! What's the point if he doesn't use them when he needs them?"

Connor started fidgeting with the fingerless gloves he always seemed to wear. 

"What?" Abby demanded of him. "He's not still feeling something for her, is he?"

Noel grimaced. "Oh, I think he's feeling something, but it's not what you think."

Then, of course, they wanted to know everything about Stephen's demeanor. Noel told them what he could. At last he managed to sidetrack them into e-mailing Cutter to see if he needed anything and then sent them home. He had to stay at the ARC in case anything turned up, but they didn't need to be there. 

By the time he'd convinced them to leave, Abby and Connor had decided that what Hart really needed was a new flat, and they were cooking up plans to help him with his search. Hart was lucky to have such loyal friends. Of course, if he didn't want a new flat, then Hart was in trouble.

Noel had begun to feel lucky, too. No one had been hurt. Better still, the woman who had divided the team before might be making it stronger now, in spite of herself. 

***

Stephen had been awake for less than an hour now, and Nick was beginning to understand why his assistant might rather have Connor stay with him when he moved back to his flat. Connor wouldn't argue with Stephen unless he was being deeply stupid, and Nick did have to admit that Stephen probably hadn't sunk quite that far yet. It was a near thing, though. They'd already argued about whether Stephen needed painkillers, whether it was safe for Stephen to have a shower while still under the influence of muscle relaxants, and whether it even made sense to shower when Stephen had no clean clothes at this house.

Nick could only think he was getting soft in his old age as he listened carefully for the shower to finish. In less than an hour, he'd already lost three arguments. They'd been three surprisingly polite arguments, to be sure, both of them being careful after the trials of the night.

Connor was bringing clean clothes for Stephen, as Stephen had suggested (thus winning the shower argument). He was bringing more than one set, however, and Stephen's laptop, some books, and his toiletries. Stephen didn't know all that yet. The discovery would no doubt make for argument number four, unless they managed another one before Connor arrived. Nick wanted to think that it was a good thing that they could argue as they had before, without him completely blowing his lid or Stephen giving up and walking away angry, but he'd have to wait and see.

Nick wandered around the ground floor of his house, listening. The water went off before the deadline he'd set mentally, after which he'd have allowed himself to start worrying. He ought to lay on some brunch for Stephen and Connor; it was getting on towards noon, and he and Stephen hadn't eaten yet. He'd scarcely put on the water for tea when his mobile rang. The ARC were tracing all incoming calls to both his phone lines, the mobile and the landline, in case Helen called again. Nick found himself relieved to see that the call came from Lester. He'd barely answered when he heard the soft creak of the stairs; he went out to the front hall again while Lester said something about coming to Nick's house for a debriefing. 

"Stephen, what are you doing?" 

Stephen had put on his dirty clothes from last night and was coming down the stairs, which made no sense, because he'd undoubtedly want to go back upstairs to change into clean clothes.

"Coming downstairs," Stephen said in an isn't it obvious? tone while Lester was silent for a moment. "Have you seen my stick?"

"Oh, it's still in the car."

"What is he doing?" sounded in Nick's ear.

"No, Stephen, you're only going to want to go back—"

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," Stephen said with forced brightness while Nick easily beat him to the door.

Connor and Abby stood there, with an overnight bag and a laptop case. 

"No, Stephen, stay there!" Nick tried to direct while opening the door and holding onto the phone. 

"Morning!" Connor said happily while Stephen ignored Nick and came the rest of the way down the stairs.

Stephen had made it all the way down before he saw Abby and halted, pushing a hand through his still-damp hair self-consciously. "Oh, erm, Abby," he fumbled, but Nick lost the rest of what Stephen said because Lester had raised his voice.

"As I was saying, Cutter, I'll be there at 12.30 for a proper debriefing, since you're obviously both awake—"

"Connor, what's—my laptop? Why are you...." Stephen's voice rose in volume. "Cutter, what—"

"—reviewing footage," Lester's voice continued. "I don't—"

"Why don't you get dressed and properly dried while Cutter talks to—is that Lester?" Abby asked in an obvious attempt to keep the peace.

Stephen huffed slightly but reached to take the bag from Connor.

"No, Connor, don't make him climb the stairs with a bag right now!" Nick said in exasperation.

"—even listening to—" said the little voice on the phone that was sliding down his shoulder away from his ear.

"Sorry, right, I'll—" Connor's eyes darted about as he apparently tried to decide to whom he was apologising.

Stephen was hefting the bag already. "That's more than one day's clothes," he said suspiciously, carefully using his right hand to start unzipping the bag.

Nick grabbed for the phone he was about to lose. "We're rather busy at the moment," he snapped to Lester, raising his voice so that he could hear himself over the others.

"I don't care. Clear your schedule for forty minutes from now," Lester shot back before hanging up.

"How many days' clothes did he tell you to bring?" Stephen asked Connor in disbelief.

"Well, we didn't know what you'd want to wear," Connor hedged.

Connor turned his questioning look and Stephen his glare on Nick at the same time, and Nick wished Lester was still on the phone, or that he'd had the presence of mind not to lower the phone so that he could pretend he was still talking.

"Why don't I help you make tea or something?" Abby asked, and she put a hand on his arm to turn him.

Cravenly, Nick allowed himself to be led back to his own kitchen.

"Connor will help Stephen, we'll give him some time to cool down, and then you can face them," she said with a gentle smile as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Idiot's going back up the stairs!" Nick growled, but it sounded like he had Connor with him to carry the bag—and make sure he didn't fall back down. "I told him not to come down!" He added, "And Lester's coming to debrief us, and I started making tea for three, not five...." He petered out. None of this was Abby's fault.

"That's all right," she said, lifting the kettle and putting more water in it. "I should have warned you I was coming." She put the kettle back on and gave Nick a sympathetic look. "She broke into his flat, Nick, and stole his phone. She invaded his space and took what he uses to keep in touch with us. Stephen needs to feel like he has some control."

"Oh" was all Nick could say. She was right, of course. 

"Did you know he has no weapons in his flat?" she asked. Her tone was mild, but she was watching him very closely.

"Stephen? Since when?" 

Abby nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer. "That's what I said. They're all at the ARC, even the ones he owns. Connor knew. Noel said... you don't leave a man with PTSD with guns in his bedroom."

"Why the hell does Noel even need to know about it?" Nick asked angrily, not asking how Noel knew about it when he didn't. Noel had only met Stephen twice, hadn't he?

Abby shrugged, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. "He's part of the team now. And he was the first one of us to Stephen's flat last night." She crossed her arms. "I don't think he needed to know, but Connor...."

"Connor should have shared that information with me, if he was going to share it with anyone," Nick said, annoyed. "Not with the new man on the team, and certainly not with someone who hardly knows Stephen."

"So Stephen hadn't told you, either," Abby confirmed again.

"No." Nick sighed. "But he did call me right away about Helen, and he told me what she said. I don't think he's even told Lester or Miller yet. Stephen's a very private person...." He said it as much to remind himself as to remind Abby. Everyone at the ARC knew about the affair—and about Stephen getting fired, and the extent of his injuries. They probably even all knew that he was seeing a psychiatrist. Nick oughtn't to grudge him keeping the one piece of information private.

With steps sounding on the stairs again, Abby had no time to respond, other than to nod understandingly. 

***

Stephen had managed to get past his initial anger at Cutter's unilateral decision that he'd be moving in here for the time being, and brunch was pretty pleasant. It made sense, as Abby argued, that the two of them be in the same place for a while, so that soldiers could watch them without spreading themselves too thin. He found arguing with Nick oddly reassuring as well. Helen might have caused the latest trouble, but they weren't arguing about her. It felt almost like old times again.

Unfortunately, Lester arrived before they'd finished eating.

Stephen still thought Helen wasn't likely to approach either of them for quite a while now, but then again, he'd never expected she'd come to his flat only the second night that Connor was gone. He said as much to Lester, who debriefed him in Cutter's study while the rest finished their brunch. 

Lester stayed surprisingly civil while questioning him, keeping his snarky remarks to a minimum. Stephen had told him everything he could remember, as honestly as possible. The last time he'd tried to keep secrets, he'd nearly lost his whole team to Helen's mad plot. So he told Lester everything, including Helen's comments about having changed the time line. Stephen hoped she had only been trying to get a rise out of him; he didn't want to think about her deliberately tampering with time. He certainly didn't want to think he had been dead at some point. Lester's eyebrows went up a lot during that part of the story, but otherwise he did not react much. 

"Do you think she's just lying?" Stephen finally asked Lester. "She didn't really go back and...."

Lester just asked Stephen what he thought, however, and moved on. At last Stephen had told all he could remember.

"So is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" Lester asked for what must have been the fifth time. "Is there—"

"No," Stephen insisted, "I've told you—"

"If you'd let me finish," Lester cut him off. "No one is letting me finish a sentence today! I was going to say: did you notice anything that seemed odd? Any clues about what she thought she was doing or where she had been recently? Maybe not something she said, or did, but something she didn't say, or didn't do. Any... impressions that could help us?"

Stephen raised his eyebrows.

Lester shrugged. "I didn't get much sleep last night either." He sighed. "Well, if you think of anything later, please don't keep it to yourself. You never know what might be important. And here." He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a mobile—Stephen's mobile. "The technicians had a look; they found no signs of tampering, and no calls after her call to Cutter last night, but you should have a look and see if anything's been changed. Settings, that sort of thing."

Stephen didn't want the mobile back, but Lester held it out to him.

"Take it!" Lester said. "We've got a trace set up so that we'll know where any calls you receive originate, and we'll do our best to track them. We've done the same on your landline and Cutter's phones. And we need you to answer if it does ring, in case it is Helen again. You know the game. Do try a little subtlety this time in keeping her talking, if you can."

Stephen reluctantly took his mobile. "Oh," he said, suddenly remembering a detail that had slipped his mind. "She was looking through my contacts. She read Noel Miller's name out loud and said she didn't recognise it."

Lester made a note, in addition to the tape recorder he had going. "That's something, at least. Anything else?"

Stephen had already related Helen's remark about Cutter still being first on his speed dial. He wondered what else she'd been looking for on his phone, or why she cared—or expected to know everyone in his contacts list. He said so while he flipped through his phone book and his call log, looking for any changes. Connor had been the one to enter much of the information, putting everyone in the ARC Stephen could possibly want to call, and a few he wouldn't, into his phone list. He wasn't certain he'd even recognise minor changes. 

Wait—Noel Miller wasn't on his speed dial, though Stephen had dutifully entered his number into the contacts list. Maybe he ought to have put him on speed dial, but he hadn't yet. "She wasn't only looking at my contacts list," he told Lester, "or she couldn't have switched from Cutter to Miller so fast. She pulled up the first speed dial number, but then she must have switched to my incoming call log. Miller called me late Friday afternoon with some questions about tracks he was studying, and I only got a couple of calls after that. Why does she care who calls me?"

That thought was quite disturbing, but the next one that came into his head was worse. He hesitated to say anything, but Lester must have seen something in his face and prompted him.

"One of the first things she said to me, actually, was: 'Didn't you used to sleep in the nude?'" Stephen could feel his face flushing, and the expression on Lester's face didn't help; it looked like he was choosing amongst the cutting remarks that crossed his mind. "And I did, but—we didn't spend the night together. It was an affair. We... met in the afternoons. So how did she know what I, what I did, or didn't, wear to bed normally?"

Lester blinked at him but, to Stephen's surprise, didn't crack any jokes. "How long did she stay at your flat before... the incident?"

"One day," Stephen admitted, his face still burning. "Oh, and one night. But one night is hardly enough to base 'used to'—oh, maybe it is. I suppose I'm...." He wished he could sink into the sofa.

"But I'm guessing," Lester said, "that any nudity that one night would not be merely for the purposes of sleeping?" 

Stephen stared at him. Was the man making some sort of attempt to spare his feelings?

Lester pressed on, undiscouraged by Stephen's silence. "So she may have been observing you before she turned up to get you fired? Perhaps she was making certain that you weren't already living with someone? Maybe she was even seeing how you were getting on with the rest of the team, and with Cutter?"

"Oh, God." Stephen had thought he'd plumbed the depths of his own stupidity, but apparently he hadn't. "If she was spying on me, or getting into my flat—I hadn't been making... social calls. Of any kind. On the phone, in person. She'd know that. I'd lost contact with friends from outside the ARC, and... well, I had pretty minimal contact with... with the team, at the end, there."

He lowered his face to his good hand. "No wonder she scarcely argued when I took her to talk to Nick, that day with the mammoth—she probably knew we were hardly speaking to each other at that point. She knew he'd get angry at me. God...."

"I think we're finding there's no end to the the scheming she'll do," Lester said grimly. "And she's still interested in you both, though damned if I know why." 

Was that an insult? Somehow the idea that Lester had insulted him again made Stephen feel better.

"Anything else she said that might have indicated she'd been observing you? Anything she did?" Lester pressed.

Stephen concentrated on remembering the details of the previous night.. "She didn't sit on the side of the bed nearest the door. I woke up, and she was already moving to the far side, my right side. That could be because she knew I still have the cast on that arm, or it could be that she knew I have a bedside table there. Maybe she meant to turn on the light if I didn't."

Lester sighed. "But presumably she'd have noticed the table before—"

"She couldn't have. I didn't have it. Connor and Abby, probably Abby, thought to get it for me before I came home. The lamp, too. It's so that I don't have to get out of bed to turn the light on and off, and I can see my clock by turning my head. I'd had the clock on the floor, before." The flat had come sparsely furnished, and he'd never felt the need to add much.

"So she probably had been observing you both before and after the incident," Lester said. He said 'the incident' so easily, unlike everyone else. Cutter didn't even have a consistent word for it yet. Usually Cutter didn't call it anything; he left a break in middle of a sentence, and Stephen knew what he meant. Abby avoided talking about it. Connor, when he spoke of it at all, always did so in such a jumble of words that Stephen had enough work to follow the main thread.

Stephen didn't know what to call it himself. 'The incident' was as good as anything else.

He couldn't remember anything further, so Lester let him go. 

After the debriefing, the rest of the day went fairly well. Cutter insisted he shouldn't work, but he didn't press Stephen to take his tablets. He didn't even try to argue Stephen out of going for a walk in the late afternoon, though he wouldn't let him go alone. Stephen learned that Lester had told Cutter he'd concluded that Helen had been spying on Stephen, although Lester seemed to have spared Cutter some of the details about how they'd decided that. Cutter said he had no way of knowing whether she'd been spying on him as well. Cutter refused to discuss how soon Stephen could move back home again, and Stephen knew he'd already pushed his luck more than enough for one day. He did persuade Cutter to take his own bed back, however, and make up the spare bed for Stephen. Sleeping in the Cutters' bed was too strange.

When he did wake up that night from a too-vivid dream, Stephen had to admit that he felt better knowing someone was within shouting distance, even though he didn't do any actual shouting. He got back to sleep relatively quickly again.

***

Stephen went in to the ARC the next day with Cutter so that Devi Gupta could examine him. He could hardly believe it when she told him she wanted to go through with the physical they'd planned and not simply recheck whether he'd aggravated his injuries. A nurse took some blood, ran him through some tests, and quizzed him on his pain levels, how he'd been eating and sleeping, and how often he'd been taking his tablets.

The chart Devi brought with her when she returned at last looked as thick as a phone book. Stephen tried to keep looking confident. If he could convince her he was all right....

"And how are you feeling now?" she asked with a smile.

"Fine," Stephen assured her.

"Despite the blood tests, the range-of-motion tests on both arms and legs, and more questions than the average police interrogation?" She raised her eyebrows at him. "I don't believe you." Then she stopped, apparently waiting for him to say something.

He considered his options. Better than I felt Saturday night would definitely not win him any points. I feel like not answering any more questions or I was waiting to have this conversation with my psychiatrist would be even worse. "Tired and annoyed?" 

She laughed at him. "Why don't you try answering honestly, rather than guessing what will get me to stop badgering you?" She hopped onto the trolley opposite his, her eyes never leaving his face.

Stephen realised he'd let his mouth fall open and closed it. "Tired, cranky, and nervous," he answered with a glare.

Her eyebrows went up again, but less. "That sounds like it might possibly be true!" She didn't have to sound so damned surprised.

"I think I'm starting to see why Cutter avoids you," Stephen said before he could quite stop himself. 

Of course Devi seemed amused at that too. "And here he thought he was being subtle." 

Stephen tried to squelch his own smile. Cutter didn't do subtle. 

She flipped the top two or three pages on his chart. "Now tell me how you're really sleeping."

Stephen shrugged. "I told the nurse. Some nights I have nightmares. Some nights I don't. Look, I talk to Doctor Jacobs about this; do we have to go through it again?"

Devi nodded. "I'm more of a quantitative person than Doctor Jacobs. Please humour me." 

So they went through everything again, though Stephen had been fairly honest with the nurse, mostly because he couldn't help noticing that lately he seemed to get caught out every time he fudged more than a little. 

Then she pulled the curtain around his bed, and Stephen could feel himself flushing even before he had to show her the scars.

"They're coming along nicely," she said, touching them gently. 

"I have to be honest, and you don't?" Stephen tried to make it sound like a joke, but it didn't come out as light as he'd hoped.

Devi didn't seem offended, though. "I have seen far worse. Have you been using the Lansinoh?" 

Now he must be red all over, Stephen thought. "Yes," he said quietly, looking away. 

"And doesn't it work like I told you?" She sighed when he didn't respond. "Sit up again."

When he was sitting upright, with his gown covering him as well as he could make it, she spoke again. "You are using it, right? I know you must think it's silly, but I've told you—lion-tamers used lanolin to heal scars. They still do, for all I know."

"I bet they don't buy it in tubes labelled 'for breast-feeding mothers'," Stephen said sourly.

"Well, if you want to keep your manly scars looking as bad as possible, you don't have to use it," she noted. "And then you won't need this." She pulled another tube of the stuff out of a pocket in her white coat. 

Devi didn't seem to be laughing at him this time, and he reached out grudgingly to take it. It beat the hell out of buying it himself. 

"I'll give it to you when you're dressed again," she said, slipping it back into her pocket. "Why don't you get back into your clothes and then we can talk some more?"

Stephen couldn't help wincing. "I'd rather get it over with now. Any idea how long it'll be before I can come back to work here?" He'd hoped he could come back that day, but those had been pretty well dashed by Saturday night's disaster.

She smiled at him again, flashing her teeth like she was in some damned toothpaste commercial. "That depends. How long does it take you to get dressed?"

He stared at her. He didn't get this joke.

She took pity on him. "Today. Only for a couple of hours, but I'll allow you to start back at your desk once you're dressed—and after we've talked."

Stephen stared at her another long moment, waiting for a punchline, before he finally realised she wasn't joking.

Or maybe she was, he thought a few minutes later, as he found his "couple of hours" of work included Lester's morning meeting, pushed back to allow him to attend. Stephen wondered if Lester had insisted he be allowed back to work so that he could attend. 

The doctor wanted to delay the change from a cast to a light brace a few more days, although the x-rays looked good.

"With the extra stress you may have put on it Saturday night, better safe than sorry," the doctor told him. She thought they'd take it off by the end of the week, though she warned him he'd still have to take it easy, and he'd need to keep working on it in physio. She added that they would run his blood work and make sure everything was within normal range. She would let him know if there were any problems, but in the meantime, he could start working a short schedule.

Stephen stepped out into the hallway and stopped, taking a moment to decide whether he ought to tell Cutter first, as he no doubt should, or find Connor. Stephen could rely on Connor being happy—no mixed emotions, no confused signals, no mess. But he owed it to Cutter to tell him first. He was staying at the man's house, and he knew Nick still felt guilt over his injuries, even if Cutter didn't talk about it any more.

The decision wasn't his to make, however. Before he'd made up his mind, Cutter happened to be there in the hallway, holding a mug, pretending to be surprised to see Stephen. 

"Finished already?" he asked Stephen casually.

Stephen checked his watch. He'd been there a good two hours, so there was no "already" about it, and he said so.

Cutter smiled. "If you're whining about the time instead of the doctor's decision, you must be happy about the results. Is she sending you back to work soon, then?"

"Now, actually." Stephen grinned—only to watch the smile slide off Cutter's face. "What?"

"Isn't it awfully fast?" he asked, actively frowning now.

Stephen could feel his own smile vanishing. "It's been five weeks! I've been going out of my head—"

"No, no, I mean since your little night-time adventure."

Stephen snorted. "'Night-time adventure'? That sounds like something Lester would say. And probably will say in a few minutes, because he wants me at the meeting." 

Stephen started walking; he wanted to find Connor and Abby first. He expected them to be in the atrium, and he wasn't disappointed. Connor was practising with the rover using controls he'd added to the ADD panel and talking excitedly to Noel, but when Abby hit him on the arm, he turned and jumped up.

The two of them stood there, faintly vibrating, but they didn't ask. Stephen spared them the suspense. "I'm back," he told them simply, as soon as he was close enough not to have to shout it. "Only for a couple of hours a day at first, but if I do—"

Abby jumped towards him, hesitated, and then gave him a gentle hug. He couldn't help but think she'd been more enthused when they got that pteranodon back to its time, but then again, she hadn't been worried about injuring him then. She was tiny, but his leg still wouldn't appreciate the extra weight if she jumped on him again. Connor grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets—and bounced in place. Even Miller smiled at him.

Stephen resisted the temptation to point out to Cutter that some people knew how to make a guy feel welcome on his first day back at work. 

Jenny too gave him a warm welcome, as they went into the conference room—her quick hug took Stephen completely by surprise. Lester, on the other hand, walked in and simply started the meeting as though Stephen had never been gone.

The meeting mostly concerned Helen and what they had and hadn't managed to learn about her movements. The latter far outweighed the former. Jenny had combed through police reports and announced that a hot-wired car had been found in a camera blind spot not far from the postbox where Helen had dropped Stephen's phone; the police had assumed joy-riders had taken it. 

"She can hot-wire a car?" Cutter said with distaste.

"Oh, yeah! It's not hard. I can teach you," Connor offered.

After a moment of surprise at Connor's offer, Cutter declined. Jenny and Abby expressed interest, however.

"Never know when it might come in handy," Abby said. 

"Right! We'll pencil in hot-wiring classes," Lester contributed, waving his pen at a calendar he'd brought. "Oh, wait! We seem to be booked solid. Perhaps you can do that outside of work hours."

They'd learned little else. MI5 were still combing through Stephen's flat. Further reviews of camera footage had proved "unenlightening", as Noel put it. 

"So we have no clues about where she came from, where she's been the last five weeks, or where she went afterwards, unless what she told Stephen about her time-travels to rescue him were true," Lester summarised.

"I wouldn't put money on it," Cutter grumbled.

"You said earlier she seems to have been spying on Mr Hart, sir?" Miller asked. 

"It does appear that way. She knew the set-up of Hart's bedroom, which has changed in the last week."

Then Lester had to tell everyone what Helen had said about changing the timeline, which started Connor down the path of speculation—a path where Stephen couldn't track for long (nor did he care to do so). Cutter stared straight at the table, not looking at anyone. Abby seemed to be looking at her nails (which were in surprisingly good condition given the work she did). Jenny did a good impression of listening. Stephen wondered if he should have returned to work at all. They were talking about him, but no one talked to him.

Lester reined Connor mercifully soon. "Please save the theories for the physicists and science fiction fans among us. The question is: do we have any way of knowing if what she said is true?"

"Helen said it," Cutter growled. "Therefore, it isn't true."

Lester ignored the interruption. "Connor?"

Connor looked nervously around the table; Abby glanced up from her nails and gave him a small smile. "That's what I've been saying. We can't know. If it happened, we're part of the changed universe, just as everyone except the Professor was when he came back from that anomaly."

The meeting then turned to the question of Helen Cutter's motives and next possible moves, but that discussion was nearly as speculative as the one about timelines. Stephen found himself tuning out again, shrugging when a question was addressed directly to him.

Stephen survived the meeting, although by the end he had no idea why Lester had wanted him there. He'd had nothing to contribute. He'd already told the man everything he knew, which Lester had shared generously. He had nothing to add when other matters finally came up: the care and feeding of the ARC's current residents, the possible hiring of a physicist (who might make a good sounding-board for Connor's theories, at least), and how to do it all within a budget.

By the time the meeting had ended, Stephen had all of twenty minutes left before someone was supposed to take him home. He felt a little shaky. He thought he'd been keeping up by reading reports and viewing everything he could on the computer. Yet everyone else had more to contribute to the meeting, including Miller, who was new, and Jenny, who wasn't even on the team. His team-mates didn't seem upset, though, and Connor especially seemed glad to have him back. Stephen hoped he could get back into the flow. It was going to be hard, working less than half days for a while.

Spending the afternoon alone in Cutter's house writing a formal report about Helen's visit to him didn't make Stephen feel any better about his position at the ARC. 

***

Nick wasn't at all sure Stephen was ready to be back at work. Dr Gupta had been so hard on Nick about his concussion, then she'd given him the third degree before she let him return to work himself. How could she allow Stephen return to the ARC while he still needed a walking stick and could only work a few hours at a time? Moreover, though he hadn't heard any sounds of distress from Stephen at night, Nick could tell simply by looking at him that the man wasn't getting all the sleep he needed. Stephen wasn't a talker like Connor, but he'd been unusually quiet during the meeting. Dr Gupta should have known better. 

When Nick returned home, Stephen dutifully answered questions. Yes, he was fine; no, he wasn't tired. Nick didn't tell him that the clearly visible imprint of the sofa arm on his cheek made it obvious he'd recently taken a nap, and probably an impromptu one. 

Yet despite his misgivings, Nick was honestly glad to drive into work with Stephen again the next morning. It had been weeks. Hell, it had been months since they'd shared a ride to work without any bickering or frosty silences.

Unfortunately, he apparently couldn't keep his doubts completely hidden. Stephen spent half the journey insisting the change of scenery would keep him from overdoing things, and that with more people watching him, he'd be less likely to get into trouble. Not that he'd be getting into trouble when he was alone, he'd added. Now that was convincing.

Thus Nick felt entirely justified going to check on Stephen every once in a while at work. As he returned to the lab where he'd left Stephen, he could hear Noel talking; he missed a few words, but the young man definitely ended, "...told the Professor?"

"No. Why would I do that?" Stephen was asking, his back to the door. 

"Tell me what?" Nick asked as he stepped into the room.

Stephen turned towards him and rolled his eyes. "Nothing important."

Nick frowned. His second day at work, and Stephen was back to this foolishness already? "I thought we weren't keeping secrets anymore. Why don't you tell me, and I'll decide if it's important?"

Stephen settled onto the edge of the nearest desk. "Nothing, really. We ran into Jensen last week when I was showing Miller the photos and trackways at CMU...."

"Who?" Nick asked when Stephen paused for breath.

"See?" Stephen said, turning a little towards Noel, who was watching it all with a very guarded expression. "He doesn't even remember Jensen!"

Nick crossed his arms.

Stephen turned back to him, looking annoyed. "Tony Jensen. Fair-haired bloke, a little shorter than you are, finished his PhD not long after I finished my Master's?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember him." Only vaguely, but Nick did remember him. He'd been one of Helen's students too, but he'd completed his degree with someone else. Stephen was the only one of Helen's students that Nick had taken on. "Well, go on."

Stephen shrugged. "Not much to tell. He was using the collection too, and he chatted with us a bit. Miller thought he was after something. I... didn't." His jaw clenched. "Miller was right. I got an e-mail from Jensen this morning, forwarded from my old CMU account. He's got a grant, wanted to see if he could lure me away." Stephen held his gaze steadily, even if he did seem to be annoyed.

Noel peered at his own computer almost convincingly, making random mouse motions.

Nick couldn't help but glance at the walking stick abandoned against the other desk, Stephen's slightly hunched shoulders, and the cast still on his wrist. Really, Stephen would be better off somewhere else. This Jensen fellow wasn't likely to get him killed. So why did Nick feel dread when he asked, "So what did you tell him?"

Stephen looked at him like he'd called Jenny 'Claudia' again. No, he had more sympathy when he called her the wrong name. "I deleted it, of course."

Nick felt a guilty sort of relief, which he tried to swallow. "Maybe you shouldn't have. Did you even read the details? Maybe you ought to consider his offer....”

He wasn't sure what he expected. A smile, or a laugh. Certainly not a glare that felt like it would burn through Nick if Stephen didn't break it off soon. Then Stephen pushed off the desk and practically stomped out of the room past Nick, not saying a word. 

All right, Nick realised, he must have done something wrong, but he wasn't sure what. He was entitled to be concerned for Stephen, wasn't he? He wasn't even fussing over him.

"Did I miss something?" he asked Noel.

The lieutenant's eyebrows went up as he stopped pretending to look at the computer. "Sir?"

"Did I miss something? Because I don't see how what I just said could possibly cause Stephen to storm out of the room."

The eyebrows stayed up.

Nick was losing patience. "Well, then, what the hell did I say?”

After a pause, long enough for the eyebrows to descend to a more normal altitude, Noel said quietly, "It sounded, sir, like you were suggesting Mr Hart find a new job."

Nick started to argue, but he was already replaying the conversation in his head. "Oh, hell! That wasn't what I meant." 

Noel's eyebrows started upwards again.

"Yes, I know you're not the one I need to tell!" 

***

Trying to rein in his anger at Cutter and himself, Stephen headed for the rec room. Once he could keep his temper, he'd go back and see if Cutter truly meant for him to leave the ARC. First, though, he had to calm down. He'd been over his past behaviours with Jacobs enough to realise that when he answered quickly while angry, like as not he'd make things worse. Of course, stomping out of the room wouldn't exactly have shown Cutter that Stephen was ready to return to work, let alone fit to rejoin the team eventually.

Stephen hadn't quite made it to the rec room when an odour hit him like a punch to the stomach. Assailed by a sense of dread, he slowed, but then the full force of the stench washed over him. He felt hot all over, and while he knew he was still in the ARC, he could almost see that room full of monsters, even the ceiling crawling with creatures as he lay on his back on the floor, thinking he'd never get up again—

He started to make a run for restroom just around the corner, but the best he could manage was a fast limp. He managed to drag himself into a cubicle before he sank to the floor and could try to get his breathing under control again.

Something had burned. He knew that charred smell couldn't really be animal flesh and fur, but he couldn't think what it might really be. The smell that had overwhelmed him before he lost consciousness all those weeks before overcame the memory of what he'd walked through just minutes ago. He gave up trying to identify it and closed his eyes. He couldn't hear anyone else in the room. Thank God. That was the very last thing he needed to deal with. Stephen slowed his breathing, but his heart was still racing. He pushed the cubicle door closed belatedly, in case someone did enter.

Had anyone noticed him rushing in? He thought he'd heard Abby's voice from the rec room, but he wasn't sure she'd been speaking to him. Cutter might come after him, demanding to know why he hadn't told him about Jensen sooner. Or insisting he take the job. 

Focusing on that conversation helped Stephen push away the memories of the smells, both more and less recent. 

Did Nick truly want him gone? He hadn't been happy when Stephen first returned to work, but he'd said he didn't think Stephen was ready. Was that simply an excuse? Maybe he didn't trust Stephen anymore. He couldn't blame Cutter, if he was honest with himself. Even if Cutter forgave his recent betrayal with Helen, he'd shown a complete lack of judgement. He'd been unable to work out who was on whose side, he'd believed the crap Helen had fed him even when she had the flimsiest of excuses for everything, and he'd never even wondered how she could know about the conspiracy if she weren't involved.

On the other hand, Cutter had come almost daily to see Stephen as he was recovering—and he wasn't giving Cutter enough credit if he ascribed that all to guilt. Nick probably felt some guilt that Stephen had taken his place inside that bunker room, but he'd talked to Stephen. Hell, Cutter had admitted mistakes of his own, and no amount of guilt would ever get Nick Cutter to open his heart to somebody.

Stephen remained seated on the floor while he played their recent conversation back in his head, paying attention to the words and the body language as Jacobs had been trying to get him to do. It didn't look or sound like Cutter really wanted to get rid of him. He hadn't sounded angry; there was something else in his voice, something... sadder. Concern? Disappointment? Maybe he thought Stephen would take the offer—or regret not taking it. Stephen had a list of regrets longer than he was tall, but he couldn't imagine he'd add deleting that e-mail to the list. He didn't want another job. He wanted to keep this one, and start doing it properly again.

If Cutter was worried about him or wanted to talk more, he'd be looking for Stephen. Stephen had better pull himself together. He pushed himself to his feet. Even if Cutter wasn't looking for him, Stephen probably ought to find him and apologise. 

His pulse was almost back to normal. He looked at himself in the mirror. Was his face a little flushed? He splashed some water on it. Oh, damn—he remembered too late they didn't have paper towels. They had electric hand dryers, for environmental reasons. Well, he wasn't using one of those to dry his face. He did the best he could with a sleeve. All right: he was ready to face the world. And maybe even Cutter.

As soon as Stephen opened the door, he saw Cutter leaning against the wall opposite the door to the toilets. Cutter looked deeply worried. Stephen had received enough of those looks lately. 

"There are two cubicles in there, you know, if you want a little privacy." His voice was a touch shaky, but he thought he pulled off the smile. A bit of damp hair slipped down onto his forehead. He probably wasn't fooling Cutter at all. 

"I, I—I thought I ought to apologise," Nick began.

Stephen leaned back against the wall next to the door, relieving the weight on his left leg. "I, erm...."

Nick sucked in a deep breath. "Look, let me say it, because it's not like I'll do a better job given more time," he said in a rush. "I realised—that didn't come out the way I meant it. I meant you'd be safer somewhere else. I didn't mean that I don't want you here."

Stephen had realised that, though belatedly. "Yeah. Erm—I... overreacted. I...." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I was afraid... I was kind of afraid that was what what you'd think, if you heard, so...."

"Are you honestly worried that I don't want you here?" Nick asked.

Stephen brought his eyes up from the floor to Cutter's face. "I'm afraid I'm never really going to be back on the team," he confessed.

"You've had little more than a month to recover, and you're worried about being back at full strength? You need to give yourself more time than that! You were laid up for the better part of six weeks that time you broke your leg in the rock slide!" 

While Stephen tried to think of an answer, Cutter added, "That godawful smell? I nearly had to duck in there myself once I walked through that, but I reckoned the last thing you needed was company."

Stephen had no idea what to say to that. 

"What, you think I didn't notice the smell? God, I—" Nick stopped, then added hesitantly, "I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn't remember that."

Stephen chuckled drily. "I don't remember what happened clearly after a point, but that smell—I don't think I'll ever forget that part." It hadn't occurred to him that of course Cutter knew the smell as well. He'd been right outside the room while the creatures died, and Cutter hadn't been the one to pass out. He'd been conscious the whole time, unlike Stephen.

Nick shrugged helplessly. After opening his mouth a couple of times, he looked at his watch instead. "Look, you should be going in shortly anyway. Why don't I take you home—"

"No, I'm fine." Stephen had to be fine. If a bad smell could put him out of commission, he'd never get back on the team. "You don't need to leave work. I'll do a little more, and then one of the soldiers—"

Nick slapped his hands against the wall behind him but took another deep breath, and let this one out slowly, before he spoke. "I'm glad you're fine, because I'm sure as hell not."

Stephen looked away and started to shove his hands into his pocket, but the cast stopped him. He frowned at Cutter, not sure how he could make it clear that he was fit for work. Was Cutter really confessing that the smell had upset him, too? Or was he just trying to make Stephen feel better? Cutter rarely seemed concerned to put people at ease. Stephen wasn't sure the man would know how to do that if he'd wanted.

"I need to get out of here, and I think you do too," Nick said. "You wait here. Connor's cleaning up that mess he made in the microwave, and I doubt the smell is gone yet. I'll go back and get your stick. Anything else you need before you leave?"

The smell came from the microwave. Connor had burnt something in the microwave. Nothing more. Stephen shrugged. "The laptop too. I'll come with you."

"No—"

"Look, if I can't even walk past a microwave, how am I ever going to...." Stephen turned and started walking, giving Nick no real chance to argue.

"You don't have to prove anything," Nick said in a low tone as he caught up. 

"Not to you," Stephen answered in an undertone. Damn, he hadn't meant to say that out loud. He focused on not limping.

Abby appeared in the doorway to the rec room. She must have known something was going on, to judge from her wide-open eyes. "Oh, good! You found him," she said as they drew close.

"Yes—he, he hadn't gone too far," Nick stammered.

"Not lost," Stephen said, even managing a smile as he passed Abby. He tried not to inhale until he was well past the doorway, but he still caught a whiff of the stink. Nick dropped back, no doubt to reassure her. He wondered what they'd said about him.

He went back to the office where Miller still sat at a computer and fumbled through a sort of apology. He felt a bit better when Miller offered an equally awkward one for butting in and managing to alert Cutter.

Nick wasn't long in entering the room either.

"Tell Lester I'm taking Stephen home, will you?" Nick asked Miller.

"Cutter!" Stephen said with exasperation. "You can't make him tell Lester! Tell Lester yourself."

"Why can't I ask Noel?" Nick asked.

"Because the military aren't allowed to talk back when he gets all sarcastic on them!" Stephen added to Miller over his shoulder as he left the room, "Don't tell Lester. Cutter will tell Lester."

He heard Nick tell Miller, "I'll be back in a little while," and then Cutter followed Stephen back into the hallway. 

"Ryan could handle Lester," Nick whined.

"Ryan was a captain, and not a brand-new one, either." Stephen started the other way down the hallway so he wouldn't pass the rec room. "Miller's a new lieutenant."

Nick ended up telling Lorraine where he was going, and Stephen called him "coward," but Lorraine smiled at them anyway.

It was a quiet drive back. Stephen didn't feel talkative, and Cutter seemed to be turning over everything in his head again. He did assure Cutter that yes, he'd be fine for lunch; no, he didn't need Nick to get him anything; no, he wasn't in pain.

Cutter insisted on seeing Stephen into the house, and by the time they had climbed the front steps, Stephen knew he was limping a little.

"Look, you're exhausted. Maybe you should go to bed?" Cutter suggested.

Stephen sighed. "Maybe a little rest," he conceded. He turned. "Thanks for bringing me back, and I'll see you later."

Nick frowned. "Sure you're all right? Don't need any help getting your boots off? Need any—"

"Cutter!" Stephen made an effort to smile after he realised how sharp he'd just been. "I'm fine. I'm going to take a little rest, then have some lunch." He sighed. "I just want to get back to normal. Yesterday, Sergeant Tyler brought me back, and he didn't even see me up the front steps. I was fine then. I'm okay now, honest."

"All right. Phone if you need anything." 

Stephen watched from a window to make sure Cutter drove away before turning on his laptop and getting back to work. He didn't need a lie-down. That would only bring back those images the smell had already reawakened in his mind. He wanted to focus on something else. 

***

Nick wasn't surprised when he found a message back at the ARC that Lester wanted to see him. He didn't know if Lester wanted to give him a hard time about leaving in the middle of the day, or if he was going to ask about Stephen's fitness. Let him ask the doctors if he wanted to know how Stephen was doing. As for the rest, Nick could take an early lunch if he wanted.

He wasn't prepared for Lester to say, as soon as the door closed behind him, "I hope the make-up sex made it all worthwhile." 

Nick's gut reaction was to reply with an obscenity, but God knew what Lester would have made of that. He decided it was best simply to drop into a chair without waiting to be invited to sit and glare at the man.

"Oh, by all means, have a seat!" Lester said with a gesture. He was almost smiling now.

Nick wondered if "piss off" might be safe, but Lester seemed to be waiting for him to say something, so he decided not to say anything.

"Oh, come now, someone was going to make that joke," Lester said, leaning forward on the desk a little. "Actually, someone probably already has."

Nick stared at him some more. 

Lester folded his hands and sighed. "Fine. We can skip the pleasantries."

Nick waited.

Lester stared back, probably trying to guess what Nick was doing. "So is Stephen all right?" 

"He will be. He's a bit tired."

Lester waited for him to say something more. Nick wondered if he should have tried this tactic months ago.

"Very well, Cutter. Remember the little talk we had about how I'm not the enemy, and I need to know what's happening with my people?" 

Nick nodded.

"I need to know what's happening with Stephen. And you."

"Nothing's happening," Nick said. It had the advantage of being true: everything that had happened was now settled, past tense. "Stephen's been through a hell of a lot, and I took him home. He said he'd do some more work this afternoon, and he'll be in tomorrow."

Lester didn't look pleased. "You know, if ordered, Miller can repeat a conversation nearly verbatim."

Nick bristled. "I take it you ordered him?" How much had Noel repeated? That wasn't fair. To anybody.

"Yes, although Miller delivered it in a monotone and looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if he thought you two had kissed and made up."

It was no wonder, if Lester had worded it like that.

Lester went on, "It sounded like one of your typical blow-ups with Stephen, but he doesn't usually go home after them. And you don't usually go home with him."

Nick frowned. How many blow-ups had Lester even witnessed between him and Stephen?

"So I wondered if anything else was going on?"

"Doesn't Stephen have a psychiatrist for this sort of thing? I don't think he needs you trying to get inside his head as well," Nick snapped, uncertain how to deal with a surprisingly concerned Lester. 

Lester winced a little, perhaps. Nick wasn't sure.

"He has a psychiatrist that you won't see, and I have to work with all of you. The grunge twins are clearly concerned—"

Grunge twins? "I'll talk to Abby and Connor."

"The point is that unless I put us all in group therapy—and I don't think anyone wants that—I've still got to pay some attention to what's going on among you all." Lester leaned back in his chair. "Because there was hell to pay last time I simply let things go," he concluded quietly.

Nick knew that Lester had been concerned for Stephen; he'd been to see him in hospital a few times and inquired after him regularly. It had never once crossed his mind Lester might feel he bore some responsibility, or that he might also be concerned for Nick. He shifted in his chair. Knowing that Lester felt some guilt didn't make this conversation any easier. 

Surely Lester didn't need to know about the flashback. As Nick had said, Stephen was already in counselling. He didn't need a bureaucrat informed about it. Hearing about the argument ought to satisfy him.

"Stephen and I had a disagree—no, it was more of a misunderstanding. I said the wrong thing, he got angry...." Nick swallowed and hoped Lester wouldn't notice that he was omitting a huge part of the story. "I caught up with him, we sorted things out. He'd have stayed here a little longer, but I talked him into going home, and I took him before he could change his mind."

Lester nodded slowly.

"I hardly think it was worth interrogating my whole team," Nick added, remembering why he'd been angry. "Why didn't you just phone me?"

Lester's mouth quirked up a little. "This wasn't a conversation I wanted to have while you were driving." 

He had a point there. 

"And," Lester added conversationally, "exactly when were you planning to tell me that one of Helen's former students was trying to hire Stephen Hart away from the ARC?"

Nick frowned. When Lester worded it that way....

"That's what I thought," Lester answered his own question. "It didn't seem important that someone who worked with Helen tried to hire your assistant 48 hours after Helen's little visit to him?"

Well, perhaps he should have mentioned it, but other concerns had taken higher priority. "You know, if you weren't always being nasty to people, they might talk to you more willingly," Nick couldn't help saying.

Lester pursed his lips and pretended to consider. "I think that's a little too radical a change in my management style," he said at last. "We'll be keeping an eye on this Jensen fellow. Anything else I should know?"

Nick shook his head. "I don't think so." He started to get up, and Lester didn't stop him. He'd put in the request for a new microwave for the rec room later.

***

Noel thought of Torchwood's "Day One" and consoled himself that at least it wasn't his first day at work, and he hadn't freed an alien life form to kill innocent civilians on the streets of Cardiff. He'd set Professor Cutter and his assistant at each other, apparently after a month-long truce, and he'd topped it off by repeating the entire thing to their boss when ordered. 

If he was transferred, was it too much to hope that he might be with Derrick and Flash again? But he'd only recently got used to the idea that he could stay with his wife....

Connor and Abby sidling into the room interrupted his pity party. They peered in before entering, and Connor seemed to check behind the furniture before they sat down, Abby in a chair and Connor on the edge of his desk.

"Did you see what happened between Cutter and Stephen?" Abby asked in a low voice.

Noel shrugged noncommittally. 

"You didn't?" Connor asked in surprise. "Because Lester seemed to think you had—"

"Oh, he saw it," Abby cut him off. "He just doesn't want to tell us." She leaned towards him, and between the menace in her posture and a smell he couldn't identify, it was all Noel could do not to lean back. He wasn't sure what he was afraid of. It was irrational to be afraid of Abby, he told himself firmly. But he did like her, and he wanted to keep her good opinion. That was rational.

So was a desire for self-preservation.

Abby really stank, though. Possibly Connor as well. What on earth had they been doing? He didn't think it was an animal smell.

"If you want to know what they said, you should ask them," Noel said, trying to focus back on the timeline he'd been working on: the last time the owners had reported the car used, the time Helen had been picked up on camera near Hart's flat....

"Oh, right," Abby said, still quietly, still leaning towards him. "I'll tell Cutter you told me to ask him what happened. I'm sure he'll be happy to repeat the whole thing for us."

"How're we supposed to help them if we don't know what's going on?" Was Connor purposely playing good cop to Abby's bad cop? Noel looked up at him. No, Connor was entirely in earnest. So was Abby.

Noel's shoulders sagged in defeat. "Look, I hardly even understood it! Apparently the Professor meant to say that Hart would be safer somewhere else, but Hart took it the wrong way—"

"You mean safer at the house?" Connor asked, perplexed.

Having said that much, Noel could hardly stop. "No, safer in another position."

"You mean something that would keep him here at the ARC?" Connor asked, still befuddled.

"No." Noel felt himself sinking deeper into the emotional quicksand. "Something outside...."

"He suggested Stephen look for another job?" Noel could feel the tide of Abby's fury starting to turn away from him.

"No, no." He sighed. Best to come clean and get it over with. "Hart had an e-mail offering him a job, as somebody else's assistant, somebody he knew from university. He told me because—well, I don't know why he told me." Maybe he'd done it simply because Noel was there when the e-mail arrived; maybe he wanted to confirm Noel's suspicions about Jensen's motives. It hardly mattered now.

He continued, "I asked him if he was going to tell the Professor, and that's when Professor Cutter came in." Lester would probably tell everyone at the next briefing anyway, Noel salved his conscience. 

Abby and Connor looked at each other.

"But they straightened it out. Hart went home with the Professor. The Professor said he'd be back soon." He sighed again. "Mr Lester came and asked me what had happened, though. He made it an order. I had to tell him."

Somehow that seemed to have been exactly the right thing to say, because now Abby's look held only sympathy. 

"That's all right," she confided. "You can't do worse than we've done. Well, than Connor has done," she amended with a half-hearted glare.

What could they possibly have done to rival his performance for the day so far?

They explained the smell and the effect it had apparently had on Stephen, who'd practically broken into a run as he passed the room, Abby said. She'd got Cutter to confirm her suspicions, too. Noel hadn't been close enough to the action that terrible day to have smelled what had happened when the force fields were activated on the animals. Now he could identify the smell on his two friends. Yes, Noel had to admit, that did probably beat his own errors for the day. He offered to help them clean up.

"No, I think we took care of it," Connor said, brushing his fringe away from his eyes. "It wasn't easy, but there wasn't any smell when we left, was there, Abby?"

"No, I think it was all gone. You know they make sprays now to neutralise odours in the air? Good thing we found some in the rec room cupboard."

Noel looked at them incredulously: how could they not notice that they reeked? They looked back. 

"What?" Connor asked, so he told them.

They'd both run off in search of fresh clothes and showers by the time Cutter returned. He gave a suspicious sniff and sat down in the chair Abby had vacated.

"So Lester can order you to repeat conversations."

"I'm afraid so, sir. I'm very sorry about that. And about putting my nose in where it didn't belong, sir, as I told Mr Hart." He was truly sorry about that. He thought Hart should have volunteered the information, but he had never meant to force the issue.

Cutter gave him a look he couldn't quite interpret. "Didn't I tell you to stop calling me 'sir'?"

Noel was fairly sure he'd have recalled that. "I don't remember, sir." The formality was out of his mouth before he could stop it. All right, he might have forgotten.

Cutter cracked a smile. "Habit?"

"Yes s—" Noel wished he could start the day again.

"Well, work on breaking it. It's annoying. But it's probably a good thing you did tell Lester. Were you the one who realised it was Helen's student approaching Stephen? Because I heard him say it, but neither of us thought to tell Lester."

In fact, Noel had only put it together when he'd been producing the ordered recapitulation of the argument. It hardly seemed fair to take credit for that. He settled for admitting he might have highlighted the relationship between Tony Jensen and Helen Cutter in his retelling.

"Good thinking," Cutter said approvingly, and Noel felt a little guilty at being praised for working out something he ought to have realised sooner. "I think in dealing with Helen, we can't be too paranoid." Cutter stopped suddenly, focusing somewhere in the distance. "Well, sometimes we can. But you were right to point this one out." 

After all that, Noel found himself dragged to lunch with the whole team, because no one had eaten yet. The others began talking about Hart over lunch, and they seemed so genuinely concerned for him that Noel thought he really must get to know Hart better.

Chapter 4: Herbivores

Stephen's week could only get better after the first two days. He had plenty more grist for Dr Jacobs's mill. He had learned, to his surprise, that talking things out with someone who wouldn't get upset helped. Maybe Jacobs even helped. Stephen had hated the idea of changing flats because of Helen when Connor first suggested it, but Jacobs said that thinking of it as giving in to Helen was the wrong way to approach it. Stephen had no doubt that she'd find him again if—no, when—she wanted, but he didn't have to make it easy on her. He'd never even been all that attached to the flat. It was a place to sleep and sometimes to eat. He'd gone on so many trips over the last several years that some of his things remained in storage; he'd never even moved them to this flat. 

Connor and Abby seemed thrilled to help him hunt for a new place, and he caught their excitement in spite of himself. If nothing else, it would get him out more.

Physio continued at a glacial pace, but Maria told him that if his cast came off as planned at the end of this week, next week he could start a little swimming. When he was discouraged, she pulled out his chart and reminded him of how he'd done in his first few sessions. He would have preferred not to remember, but he couldn't deny her point.

Cutter seemed more at ease after his blow-up over the job offer, as if he'd been waiting for something to happen. Or maybe it was that something had happened and they'd both lived to tell about it—or not to talk about it. 

Miller remained reserved, and Stephen wasn't sure if that was just Miller, or if it was his reaction to Stephen. He still missed Ryan, with whom he'd got on well from the start. However, Miller proved a strong student, at least for the limited amount Stephen could teach him without real field work. They visited CMU's collection again. Not only was Miller's memory good, but he also could take what he'd learned and apply it to photos he hadn't seen before. He had enthusiasm for the work, but he squirmed a little when Stephen complimented him. Miller seemed much more comfortable with Abby and Connor. 

Meanwhile, Stephen made a point of meeting the new vet. Henrietta Farnam looked to be in her mid-50s, with long grey hair pulled back in a bun. She seemed happy to meet him, and she gladly introduced him to the mammoth, and to Thelma and Louise, as Connor had named the two young hadrosaurs they'd picked up while Stephen was in hospital. She laughed when Stephen said Connor should have his naming privileges revoked. 

The hadrosaurs didn't seem to match any known genus, let alone species, so Stephen began a subtle campaign to start Nick writing again, suggesting he take another look at known hadrosaur finds and see if he couldn't use his inside knowledge to reclassify a few fossils. Cutter always grumbled about writing. He had trouble with first drafts, he hated revising, and so on, and so forth. For all his complaints, though, he seemed happier when he wrote. 

Then Friday arrived, and the cast came off, and Stephen went from elation at finally having both hands free again to the hard realisation of how much strength he'd lost. He'd known intellectually that his right hand would be much weaker from lack of use, despite the exercises he'd begun while still in the cast, but feeling it was different. He'd also been able to type with that hand for a couple of weeks now, so he'd fooled himself into thinking it worked properly. 

Stephen felt as though he had to keep his spirits up for the others, though. They were very pleased to see him return to work with no cast. Staying at Cutter's place meant he had little private time to feel sorry for himself. That was a good thing: he'd done more than enough of that already.

***

The night that Nick found Stephen up and pacing at 2 am, he almost felt relieved. He'd been able tell from Stephen's face that he hadn't been sleeping as well as he should, but his friend brushed off inquiries. He didn't want to violate Stephen's privacy by checking on him in the night, but he could hardly be faulted for this inquiry.

"I didn't mean to wake you" was, of course, the first thing Stephen said.

"I was already awake," Nick told him. "Bad dream—you've had the same, I imagine?" 

Stephen might have nodded or shrugged; it was too dark to tell. Nick turned on the landing light. 

Stephen blinked several times, taking his left arm from where it was curled around his right to rub his eyes. He didn't have his walking stick.

"How about a drink?" Nick asked.

Stephen laughed nervously. "I forgot to ask Dr Gupta if I can have alcohol again. I haven't had any since...."

"I won't give you much, don't worry." Nick started down the stairs. He wanted to ask if Stephen needed his stick, but the less he said, the better. Stephen might talk more if Nick didn't fuss.

"I didn't think I'd wake you. I couldn't go down the stairs because, well, you know how they creak," Stephen said, still apologising.

Nick had heard him only because he'd been having trouble sleeping himself. He poured them each a couple of fingers of whisky. It wasn't enough, really.

"You know, part of the whole point of staying here is so that you don't have to go through this alone," Nick said as they sat down.

"I thought it was so the soldiers would only have to watch one house," Stephen mumbled into his tumbler. "Just kidding," he said, glancing up at Nick. Except that he probably wasn't, or not entirely.

Nick tried to hold his gaze. "I don't give a damn how many houses they have to watch. It scared the hell out of me when Helen called me on your mobile. All I could think was that if you were all right, you wouldn't be letting her call me on your phone."

Stephen frowned uncertainly.

"At least if you're here, I know you're safe," Nick continued. How hard could this be to comprehend?

"But Abby and Connor—"

"Abby and Connor didn't nearly get torn apart by a horde of animals!" Nick tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. Stephen wasn't usually this dense—or this insecure. 

"Abby was taken by giant seal-like creatures—"

"And came home without a scratch. And nobody has broken into her flat since she's had it. They may not be safe on the job, but I think they, at least, are safe in their flat." Unlike Nick and Stephen, whom Helen might accost anywhere.

Stephen took rather too large a mouthful of whisky and then smothered a cough with his arm—the arm that didn't have a cast now. 

"Do you dream about it?" Nick asked gently. He didn't want to hear the answer, but he thought Stephen might need to say it.

"About Helen breaking into my flat?" Stephen tried to smirk at him. The result looked a little desperate.

"Stephen!" 

Stephen took a smaller sip and set down his glass. "You don't need to hear about my dreams. You have your own." His arms went around his midsection again.

"I'm not the one who was up pacing," Nick reminded him.

"Do you want to talk about your dreams?"

"No!" Nick replied at once.

"Then why would I?" Stephen looked down at his arms and let go of himself deliberately. He reached out for the tumbler and took a last swallow before setting it down again, looking at Nick calmly.

Nick had no answer for that. He finished his own drink. He'd like to have another, but he could hardly pour himself more and deny it to Stephen. One drink should be all right. Hell, he'd had more when on painkillers himself. Still, he didn't want to take risks with Stephen's health.

"It's okay, Cutter," Stephen said gently, as if Nick had been the one up pacing. "Honestly... I'm glad to know you're all right, too. Sometimes... in my dreams... you aren't."

God. In all the horrors that piled atop each other after they found Leek's bunker, Nick had forgotten that Helen had told Stephen they were all dead. Now he remembered the stunned look on Stephen's face when he had seen Nick alive, and the horror as he turned to Helen and asked her what she'd done. 

"It's enough...." Stephen continued, or tried to continue. "I can talk about my dreams with Jacobs. Whether I want to or not." He offered another weak smile. "But right now, it's good... to know that you're here. And Connor and Abby are fine, because if one weren't, the other would tell us."

"Does that help?" Nick asked. "Talking with Jacobs?" He'd never asked before.

Stephen arched his eyebrows. "Sometimes. Sometimes, it's annoying. He can't ever let anything be."

Nick had suspected as much. That was why he had no intention of seeing the man—or any other head-shrinker.

"But... he helps put things in perspective." Stephen smiled challengingly. "You might try it sometime."

"If you're still having the dreams, what's the point?" Nick said, a little more gruffly than he'd meant.

"Maybe I have them less than I would. Maybe not. But that's not all we talk about." Stephen shifted, looking away.

Nick didn't want to know what else they talked about. He stared into his empty glass. Maybe if he could get Stephen back upstairs, he could have a little more on his own. No, furtive drinking was a bad sign. When he looked back at Stephen, Stephen was still looking at him, apparently waiting for a response. Well, tough. If he was going to try to convince Nick to see a psychiatrist, he'd have to do all the talking himself.

"Ready to try to get back to sleep?" Nick asked, standing.

Stephen went back upstairs, Nick following. Nick didn't hear anything else from him that night. 

***

Noel found himself getting a little restless as another Monday came, making two weeks without an anomaly. He knew he should appreciate the calm, and especially the fact that no one was getting hurt, but he was itching to do something. He'd studied until he dreamed of animal tracks and droppings, but he had no way to know yet whether he could put this knowledge to any use. Ms Lewis dropped by to talk to him—Jenny, she wanted him to call her. She said she wanted to get to know him, now that he was on the team, and that she'd waited too long already. He didn't understand her point, but he chatted with her as best he could. She didn't seem a bad sort, as far as professional liars went. Well, someone had to do it. Military intelligence had people for that sort of thing, and Noel tried to remember to think of Jenny's work that way. Still, he didn't like it, and he didn't feel quite comfortable with her.

His team-mates definitely had better hand-to-hand and shooting skills than when he'd started. He could only train them on quiet days, so that was all to the good. The more opportunity they had to practise their skills, the better prepared they'd be for the next anomaly. 

Noel learned that he wasn't the only one restless at the lack of action. The next morning, a drizzly Tuesday, found him helping Connor run some diagnostics on the ADD, because Connor worried that no alarms meant they were missing something. Abby and Hart had brought work into the main atrium as well. They seemed to like to be around people, even when they weren't talking to them. Neither of them seemed to be terribly interested at first when the conversation turned to Star Trek: the relative merits of the different ships and then their captains.

"Captain Kirk is still the best," Connor insisted. "Youngest captain in the history of Starfleet, assembled the greatest crew the galaxy had ever known—"

"No, no. Kirk was all ego. Now Captain Sisko, or Picard—that was leadership," Noel answered firmly.

"Hey, you're forgetting Janeway!" Hart objected suddenly, to Noel's amazement. He didn't even know the man watched Star Trek, or that he'd been listening.

But Noel couldn't let that answer pass without challenge. "Janeway? Janeway was a nutter! She demoted Tom Paris citing the Prime Directive, but the Prime Directive didn't even come into play, because that planet already had warp drive!"

"I haven't seen all the episodes," Hart admitted. No real surprise there.

"He has a thing for older women," Abby joked, but Connor gasped, and then Abby's eyes opened very wide. She put her hand to her mouth. Stephen looked away. Noel glanced around, but he could see no sign of Cutter. Good, because the professor being present was the one thing that could make this conversation even worse.

"Hey!" Connor broke the awkward silence. "I know how we can settle this! Video night! We'll watch—"

The poor lad seemed surprised when everyone groaned. It had been a game try, anyway.

"Sorry, mate." Noel at least had a good excuse. "I'm married, remember? The nights I'm not assigned here, I spend with her."

"Oh, right. Erm—" Connor looked downcast for a moment, then looked hopeful again. "She can come too!"

Noel moaned louder.

"It's okay," Abby assured Noel. "We understand. Not everyone is as into Star Trek as Connor is."

"That's not the problem," Noel admitted, his brain running a little behind his mouth. "The problem is, she'd be so excited, she'd want to bring the popcorn!" Now that he'd admitted it, he was in trouble. 

"Probably without setting the microwave on fire, even!" 

The group again fell into a horrified silence at Hart's words.

"What?" Hart looked truly surprised. Had he not had a flashback triggered by the smell, as they'd concluded, or did he think that no one else suspected? "Connor, I think the man who invented the ADD out of spare parts and built a moon rover from a hair dryer can take a little teasing when he can't operate kitchen equipment!"

"And that was my hair dryer, too, and you promised you'd replace it!" Abby pointed an accusing finger at Connor, obviously glad to change the subject.

"Why do you even need a hair dryer?" Noel asked her. "Your hair is shorter than anybody's but mine!" Satisfied with his part in turning the conversation away from sensitive topics, he picked up his mug again.

Hart gave him a condescending look, then turned to address Abby. "Obviously, he doesn't realise that perfection like this doesn't come simply from towelling off." He fluffed his own messy hair with his fingers. 

Noel nearly choked on his coffee. "No, I thought it came from not even bothering to use a towel!" 

At Hart's look of surprise, Noel wondered if he'd gone too far. After all, he didn't really know this man. Then Hart started laughing. "Abby said you had a sense of humour," he said, "but I've been taking her word for it until now."

Noel shrugged. He generally tried not to let it show at work. His father always said it would get him in trouble.

"So... does this mean we're on for Star Trek Captains' Night, or not?" Connor didn't know when to quit.

Noel was saved by the bell, or rather the anomaly detector going off. As they went to get ready, leaving a visibly anxious Hart at the ADD control panel, Noel felt guilty for wishing for something to happen. It had, however, spared him not only boredom but also a conversation from which he couldn't seem to extract himself safely. He didn't want to hurt Connor's feelings, but he had no desire either to miss time with his wife or bring Jessica to watch Star Trek with this lot. Connor talked too much, and he would surely let something slip about their work.

Jessica had not been happy about the alarm system the ARC had installed after Lester learned that Helen Cutter had shown interest in Noel's name. Noel thought it for the best, especially with his wife often there alone, but he'd been hard put to explain it. He told her lamely that he might have attracted the interest of spies, that they posed no threat to her safety or his, but that there was a small chance they'd break in looking for information. It was the truth, because Helen was a spy of sorts, though working only for herself. Noel was relieved not to have to lie. He didn't want to lie to his wife, but he also didn't want to tell her anything that might put her in danger. 

When the team met at the Hilux, Noel learned that the anomaly's location had been narrowed to a school. His blood ran cold as he heard that. Jenny Lewis had already left with a team of soldiers, and she was supposed to ensure that the school was evacuated and the children, faculty, and staff moved to a safe distance. God, he was glad she seemed to be very good at her job.

It felt as though it took forever to reach the school. Ms Lewis had assured them by phone while they were still en route that everyone had been taken to a place of safety. In the meantime, she'd learned that a chemistry teacher had seen an unusual light and heard odd sounds in a stairwell. The teacher had sounded an alarm, thinking the bright light some kind of fire at first, but then a large lizard had appeared. The witness had been quite certain that it was a lizard and could even offer a rough description of its size and colour. They put her on the phone to Cutter, who had quickly handed her off to Abby with some excuses about driving. Abby seemed to be having difficulty getting information without giving any in return.

Connor nearly convulsed with silent laughter when Abby insisted, "If you give us a description, we might be able to tell if it matches one of the costumes that has been reported stolen from a nearby shop." 

They couldn't hear the words on the other side of the conversation, but the tone made it quite clear this woman wasn't going to be easy to fool.

"Yes, evacuating the school was probably an overreaction, but better safe than sorry, right?" Abby said cheerily before ending the call. 

"I'm told," she informed them, "that we have a lizard with a duck-like bill—"

"A hadrosaur? Maybe we can bring the others back!" Connor cut Abby off without regard for courtesy or his own safety. It was probably lucky she was in the front with Cutter and Connor was behind Cutter, where she couldn't easily reach him, given the glare he got.

Abby frostily confirmed that that might be the case.

"Since you have my phone," Cutter told her between curses at other drivers, "perhaps you could call Stephen, tell him to have the hadrosaurs readied for transport in case, and check the location against one where we found the first two? Perhaps it's a fault line like—"

"Oh, I've got the headset!" Connor said, triumphantly pulling a slightly mangled headset out of one of his many pockets. "I'll give him a ring."

"You do that," Abby said, lowering the hand with the phone. She still sounded annoyed, but Noel also knew her well enough by now to know that it would soon pass.

They arrived at the school more than half an hour after the ADD had sounded because of the rush hour traffic. Noel wondered how he might gently suggest that he drive next time. Connor looked a little green and was the first out of the Hilux, stumbling a little as he climbed out.

Armed with the handheld ADD, Connor led them to the anomaly easily enough. Brown and green streaks on the steps confirmed that something had come through, and the trail went down the stairs to the ground floor. Unfortunately, at that point, the short trail of vegetation ended, and the mud and water tracked in by students merged with the mud and water from the creature.

"I don't suppose it turned around and went back?" Connor said hopefully.

Noel began to examine the floor very carefully while trying to block out Connor describing the scene over his headset to Hart.

After ten minutes, Noel was ready to tear his hair out (or would have been, if it hadn't been too short to pull). He hadn't a clue which way the creature had gone, and everyone was standing around waiting for him to do something so that they wouldn't further muck up the tracks. More soldiers were checking the outside of the school; the only good news was that they'd seen nothing yet. Professor Cutter insisted that no one else enter except a few soldiers to guard the anomaly itself, because extra people might obliterate tracks.

Noel would start down what he thought might be a track and then decide it wasn't, and then he'd do it again. The Professor had hauled Connor back up the stairs to send the rover through the anomaly, which proved a task in itself. They had to hold it and guide it gently into the anomaly, praying that nothing came through while they were right there. Then they retreated to a safe distance to look at the video feed.

Noel was grateful for the quiet at first, but Abby and two soldiers staring at him didn't make him feel any better.

"I don't know that Stephen would even be able to track it in here," said Abby at last. "I can't make anything of it myself." 

"Well, why don't you ask him?" Connor clambered back down the stairs with the rover he'd retrieved. He tried to hand it over to Cutter, who simply looked at him sideways, so Noel took it off his hands. His hands now free, Connor pulled off his headset and announced to everyone, Hart included, what he was doing.

Noel abandoned his brief attempt to clear mud and plant substances from the rover to put the headset on, pulling his radio earbud reluctantly from his ear. He still had the radio itself. He should look into getting an earbud for the mobile so that he could keep the radio earbud in the other ear.

"Oh, thank God!" a tinny version of Hart's voice said in his ear. "I thought Connor was going to keep narrating everything to me!"

Noel tried to explain how he'd lost the trail, but Hart cut him off. "Have Connor put the rover on the floor, tilt the camera down a little, and start transmitting again."

Making that simple request turned Noel into the conduit between Cutter and Hart. From the rover's recce through the anomaly, they had determined that they probably did have the right era, or near enough, so the Professor wanted the hadrosaurs back at the ARC prepared for transport.

Connor eagerly set the rover on the floor, hitting the transmit button and repositioning the camera repeatedly until Hart complained of vertigo, but Noel managed to get the camera pointed at what Hart agreed was probably the best angle.

"So?" asked Cutter.

"Well?" said Abby.

Connor grinned at him.

"Hang on, I'm taking control of the rover," Hart said, and Noel had to relay the words to the little crowd. Maybe he should get some kind of speakerphone.

The rover went forward, looped slightly, and hit a wall.

"Wait a minute, this is harder than it looks," came the voice in Noel's ear.

Abby gave Noel a look as if he'd crashed the rover. 

The rover reversed straightened out a bit, and then went right back into the wall.

"Now that's not fair! Maybe Connor should operate it...." Stephen muttered.

The rover reversed again. Connor must have had the same thought as Hart, because he'd started patting himself down, having apparently misplaced his own controls already. Noel wondered if it wouldn't be easiest for him to pick the thing up and carry it.

"I let this man drive?" Professor Cutter asked incredulously.

"He drives better than you do," Abby said, but she was watching the little machine with disgust herself.

"Stephen hasn't had any practice on it! I should have given him some...." Connor fumbled his own controls back out of a pocket. "Maybe I should...."

"This is a lot harder than it looks," Hart said, his voice tight with concentration, "but I think I'm getting the hang of it."

The rover had begun to move up and down the hall in a more or less rational way.

"Well?" Abby asked.

Cutter and Connor both looked expectantly at Noel too.

"Anything, sir?" Noel asked politely. He could hardly criticise when he couldn't see anything himself.

"There's too much reflection," Hart said, his voice even tenser. "It looks like there's water all over the floor."

"Yes, there is," Noel answered.

"I don't think the video quality is good enough. I'm getting blinding glare, and I can't see the level of detail I need. Do you see any scratches on the floor? Or did they wax recently?"

Noel knelt down, then touched the floor. "There's scratches. It's hard to see with so much water."

"Damn." Hart sighed. "Sorry to do this to you, but I don't think I'm going to be much help. Look, if you can find the scratches, look for deep ones."

"Oh!" Noel should have thought of it himself. "It's going to be heavier than your average schoolkid, isn't it?"

"Heavier even than most headmasters, and not wearing galoshes." Hart sounded a little less tense. "Look, tell the others I'm giving up on the rover, right?"

Noel relayed the message and then cast about for scratches, anything unusually deep.

"If they have waxed at all recently," Hart said, "you might be able to see any trail from the light reflecting off the surface. I only get blurs on the camera, but where you've got dry bits, they should be less reflective than the rest of the floor if they've been scratched."

Bloody hell—Hart was right. Noel found some gouges in the floor. They weren't anything he'd have recognised as tracks, but they were deep enough to get under whatever coated the floor, so there were patches that were less shiny. Noel kept losing them in the changing light and puddles of water, but slowly he found what might be a trail. The others followed him.

***

Stephen had thought it would be less frustrating to be at the ARC than at home when calls came in, because he'd have more technology at disposal. He thought it would put him in closer contact. He'd been wrong. He was damned near useless at a desk, even looking at multiple screens. He might as well have been at home, staring at his laptop. Fortunately, once he'd given Miller an idea of how to track it, the man had gone with it. Stephen kept the headset on but muted his microphone as he went to help with their two captive hadrosaurs. At least he could do something here.

Henrietta was inside the room they'd devoted to the hadrosaurs, saying hello and perhaps goodbye. "I've got my assistant fetching loads of salad," she told him with a cheerful smile. "I don't think we'll have any trouble getting these girls in the truck." She looked pointedly at Stephen's leg.

"I wanted to say goodbye before they left," he said, ignoring the direction of her gaze. His leg was fine. The morning was still young; he'd hardly walked at all yet, and he didn't even need his stick. He'd left it back in the atrium.

A smell hit him, and then a thought struck him just as hard. "Miller?" He remembered to turn the mic back on and tried again. "Miller? Sometimes smells help. These things fart worse than cows, you know." 

Miller gave a surprised chuckle. "I'll keep that in mind. I'm too slow. I keep losing the trail."

Stephen tried to say something reassuring. He wasn't sure it helped. He wouldn't have been very encouraged if he were the one on the other end.

A young woman wheeled over a trolley full of greens, and Henrietta took a handful. Stephen turned the mic off again and thanked her, taking a handful himself. The hadrosaurs came easily out of the room. They'd come to like their humans. Cutter hadn't wanted them to make friends, but the poor things had such a small space that the only way to give them exercise was by escorting them around the indoor track, and people had to do that. Stephen tried to get Lester to let him take the creatures to the enclosed ARC parking lot, only to find out that Abby had already asked repeatedly. Lester didn't respond favourably to either of them. 

"It's been through the cafeteria!" Noel said excitedly in his ears. "Tables have been pushed aside! And it smells like—well, something came through, and I don't think it was schoolkids!"

Stephen remembered to turn his mic on again before saying, "Good work!" 

***

Abby drew level with Noel as he jogged through the cafeteria to a pair of doors that had some muck smeared on them; they'd closed again, but he had no doubt the dinosaur had come this way.

"Stay back," he hissed quietly.

She simply lifted her tranq rifle in reply and pointed to his own lethal weapon. Cutter and Connor were right behind them, also carrying tranquillisers, so he was counting on his SA80 if anything did go wrong.

He signalled them all to wait, then slowly pushed open the door to the kitchen. It creaked, of course. He raised his weapon, stuck his head in—and a dinosaur longer than the Hilux slowly turned to look at him, still chewing from a convenient rack of vegetables. It regarded him for a long moment, then turned back to its breakfast. Hart was right about the odour.

Abby joined him. "Beautiful!" 

The look on her face was pure joy. A moment later the other two members of the team joined them in the doorway, and soon they were beaming too.

"I hate to ruin the moment," Noel said, "but how are we going to get it out of here?"

"Easy," said Abby, "we'll take the vegetable rack, and...." She stopped.

"How will it turn around?" Connor voiced all their concerns.

"So you've got it?" Hart's voice sounded in Noel's ear, reminding him that his audience was one larger than he could see.

They sent Connor to see if there was another door around the other side—"preferably a delivery entrance," Abby told him. Noel remembered to take photos for the files. The creature seemed displeased at the flash.

***

Stephen found himself grinning even though he couldn't go on the call. Apparently this new hadrosaur was also a small one, though bigger than the two young ones they had caught some weeks ago. Maybe it was a male. He passed the news on to Henrietta as they walked down the hallway. He pushed the trolley and fed Louise in the front, and Henrietta coaxed Thelma behind them.

"You can't go to the site," she told him gently, but he'd already known that.

"I'll help you get these creatures into the truck," he said as they neared the loading dock.

"Miller, tell Cutter that if the traffic cooperates, we'll have the juveniles to you in under 40 minutes." Stephen turned to push open the doors to the loading dock with his back and pulled the trolley through with him. "Does Connor—"

He turned to look at the trucks and found two guns raised at him and froze. "What the hell?" 

Louise calmly continued to eat the lettuce he had in his hand. 

"What's going on?" Miller demanded.

"Stephen, dear, we can't get past you," Henrietta called from behind.

Stephen focused on the soldiers in front of him, forcing himself to calm down. For a moment he thought they'd been infiltrated, but this was probably mere incompetence. The guns were not quite pointed at him, he realised, but at Thelma and Louise. "These are herbivores; lower your arms, for God's sake! You should have tranquilliser rifles, not automatic weapons!"

"What the hell?" Miller shouted.

"Some of your men appear to be over-zealous." Even now the older one wasn't changing his stance, though the younger one seemed to be wavering.

"Stephen, did you say they have automatic guns?" Henrietta started to poke her head around the door.

"Henrietta!" Stephen exclaimed. "Stay out!"

One of the soldiers immediately lowered his weapon. "Sorry, ma'am."

"Sorry?" She moved as if to step in, but the hadrosaur made it impossible.

Stephen held up a hand to stop her. "Henrietta, wait until I get this sorted."

"Hart, tell me what's going on!" Miller bellowed.

"Look, stand down!" Stephen ordered. "The hadrosaurs aren't dangerous—"

"Listen to him!" Henrietta snapped. "Do you think I'd be standing here sandwiched between two of them if I thought they were going to hurt anybody? They're no more dangerous than horses or cows, you idiot!"

Only then did the sergeant lower his weapon.

"Hart, for Christ's sake—" Miller's voice sounded in his ear.

"It's all right now," Stephen growled into the mic. He tried to control his temper; it wasn't Miller's fault. "Apparently they take orders from Henrietta but not me."

"You haven't exactly shown the best judgement," the sergeant said unrepentantly, looking Stephen straight in the eye. He turned towards Henrietta. "Sorry, ma'am. I didn't realise you were with him. As far as I knew, he was still on desk duty only."

"Get their names. I want a full report later," Miller ordered.

Stephen tried not to look sheepish when he verified their names; they'd been with the ARC for months, and he did in fact know them both. He hadn't seen them in a while. They hadn't visited him in hospital or at the rehabilitation centre. The younger man had the decency to look ashamed, but not the older one.

He helped Henrietta get the dinosaurs in the truck.

"We're to go with you, ma'am," the sergeant broke the tense silence.

"Like hell," she said. "I'll take this one." She jerked a thumb at the private. "He knows when to take orders. You can tell Lester where we've gone." She gave Stephen a half-hearted smile. "Sorry, Stephen. I'd prefer to have you, duff leg and all, rather than that fool, but Nick would probably have a heart attack on the spot. I do rather like him, and I'd hate to lose him like that."

Stephen secured the doors on the truck while she climbed in. He left the loading dock as quickly as he could with the shreds of dignity he had left, the sergeant glaring after him. He went back to the Atrium to continue being useless.

***

Noel could not believe their own people had given Hart trouble. Sure, he'd heard people bad-mouthing him; hell, he'd agreed with them, up to a point. He'd stopped hearing the gossip after he got added to the team. He probably should have put a stop to it even before that, seeing as he was an officer, but.... No, no probably about it. This was what happened when you let something slide. Hart had assured him they'd seen the hadrosaurs and the vet safely off, but Noel was still fuming.

Thank God Cutter seemed to have missed the whole exchange; he was helping Abby move the vegetable rack around a confused dinosaur while Noel held the Professor's tranquilliser gun because the man insisted.

The plan was to lure the creature outside, across a playground, and back into the building towards the steps. God help them if the thing decided it was full, or if the anomaly closed. Connor had run back to check on the anomaly.

Luring the creature turned out to be slow work. Noel worried that Abby or the Professor might get crushed by the thing, and he didn't like the looks of its teeth, to be honest. Connor had plenty of time to go back inside, assure them the anomaly was still strong, and join them back outdoors with his laptop. 

"I think it's a Lophorhothon," he announced cheerfully.

Cutter left the rack for a moment to go and look at the laptop, now covered with a big piece of plastic. It was still drizzling. Noel kept the rifle trained on the beast, in case. He doubted the tranquilliser would work in time if things went belly-up.

"Different genus than we've got," the professor grumbled.

"I thought we didn't know what Thelma and Louise were," Connor objected. 

"Look at the bill. Does that look the same to you?" Cutter ran around in front of the creature, who continued to crunch, unperturbed by the humans dashing around it. 

"Not exactly," Connor admitted. "Did you ever determine the genus or species of ours?" 

"What do I do if she finishes the vegetables?" Abby asked, a little peevishly. Noel couldn't blame her;. She was dragging a cafeteria rack through the rain, while the other two argued about the shape of its muzzle.

"Maybe you should walk faster," Cutter suggested.

"Maybe you should take a turn at the rack!"

Looking surprised, Cutter did. It wasn't that he wasn't willing to help; he just didn't always think along the most helpful lines, Noel thought. 

Abby pulled out a video camera and began recording. Noel nodded approvingly. He should have thought of that. Video was even better than the stills they had begun collecting.

They maneuvered the creature into the building and even to the bottom of the stairs before it finished the vegetables. 

"Turn off the hall lights," Abby hissed. "Maybe the light of the anomaly will attract it!"

That proved harder than Noel had expected; apparently the lights were on some kind of motion sensor system. Connor managed to disable a few, and then the dinosaur started up the stairs. 

When they'd come back into the building, Noel realised the anomaly had its own smell, a sort of wet, woody odour that must be coming from the vegetation beyond. Perhaps that helped attract the dinosaur, too. It seemed very hesitant, however, perhaps not liking the stairway. Still, when Abby and Connor started lobbing vegetables into the light, it went through.

Abby and Connor squealed and gave each other high fives. Noel remembered to update Hart on the situation; he sounded relieved, but somehow distant. Noel wasn't looking forward to going back to the ARC and dealing with the two idiots had disobeyed direct orders from the Professor's assistant.

Henrietta came with the ARC's hadrosaurs a little later, and the two of them proved quite tractable.

"I hope we're doing the right thing," Cutter temporised as they brought Thelma and Louise into the building. "I'm not sure it's even really the same era, nor that they'll find others of their kind...."

"We can't keep them," Abby pointed out, though her face left little doubt that she would if she felt she could. She patted each on the snout. 

Louise went towards the light as if she might have had a dim memory of it, or perhaps the smell and the illumination attracted her. With the drizzle continuing outside and most of the lights now off indoors, the anomaly gave off the brightest light in view. Thelma, though, hovered nervously by Abby at the foot of the stairs, and Abby started walking her up.

"Do you think that's wise?" Noel asked, handing Cutter back his tranq rifle and putting a hand on his rifle in case. "Something else could come through, and we'd hardly have time to react!"

Abby smiled. "Throw me a head of lettuce," she said.

"She'll have a tummy ache," said Henrietta fondly. "I hope she doesn't just turn around and come back!" 

Abby gave Thelma a mouthful of lettuce and then lobbed the rest gently into the anomaly. Thelma followed. Abby came back down the stairs, two at a time despite the water and mud making them slick. "Everyone out of sight," she said. 

Noel slipped reluctantly into the shadows by a water fountain; the others seemed more amenable to hiding. Abby's instincts had been right. One of them reappeared moments later; Noel thought it was Thelma. She looked down the steps, blinked, and then turned and vanished back into the light.

They ended up waiting over an hour for the anomaly to close. Lester called Cutter, but the professor put him off. No one wanted to leave in case anything—especially their hadrosaurs—came through again. Noel felt rather silly claiming dinosaurs as theirs, but he had to admit to himself that he'd begun to think of them that way. They were the first ones he'd tracked, too. He'd become fonder of them than he'd realised.

At last, though, the anomaly closed and they could return to base, leaving a team of soldiers to clean-up duty as directed by Captain Robinson and Jenny Lewis. 

Back at the ARC, Noel dug up Hart long enough to get the names of the men who'd held weapons on him and the hadrosaurs. Damn—he didn't want to have to deal with Sergeant Burroughs this way. The man was in his late forties. Noel respected and even liked him; his own father had worked his way up to sergeant-major, and he never got the respect he deserved. Of course, his colour had been part of that, but Noel knew plenty of good people, even some great ones, could be found in the ranks. He'd thought Burroughs was one of them. Apparently, he'd been wrong. 

Burroughs had been one of those to welcome the new soldiers assigned at the same time as Noel, and he'd welcomed Noel too, the sole new officer. He'd told him who was who and what was what. Now that Noel thought back, that included telling him about Helen Cutter and Stephen Hart. Noel should have seen this coming.

Noel located Burroughs and Private Rollins. At least the private was young enough for this to have been stupidity and following the more senior soldier present. The older man had no such excuse. Noel told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to follow orders from the civilians unless they directly contradicted orders from one of their military superiors.

"Mr Lester told us to keep the creatures secure," Burroughs said baldly. 

"With automatic weapons?" Noel demanded.

"He left the weapons to my discretion, sir." Burroughs met his gaze and held it. 

"Well, apparently your 'discretion' leaves a lot to be desired! Hart's been on the project since the start. And I understand you weren't pointing weapons only at dinosaurs, given the civilians' proximity to them!"

Rollins looked directly in front of him, absolutely still, but Burroughs opened his mouth.

"Don't want to hear it!" Noel shouted, channelling one of his instructors. "Cock up again, and you'll find yourself transferred! For now, you're not to go out on shouts, because neither of you can be trusted around civilians. I'll revisit the matter in a month. But if I hear anything more about either of you, your time here is over. Dismissed!"

Rollins barely kept to a walk as he left the room.

"With permission, sir?" Burroughs asked, remaining where he was.

Noel stared at him. He couldn't believe the man wasn't leaving. But maybe there was something he needed to know. "This had better be damned good," he said.

"Have you spoken to Captain Robinson about this, sir? Because, with all due respect, sir, you're not our commanding officer."

"Captain Robinson is still at the scene," Noel began before he realised he should not be explaining himself to this man. Since shouting obviously had little effect on this man, he lowered his voice and hoped it sounded sufficiently menacing. "I will inform him on his return. When you disobey orders from senior staff, whether they're civilians or not, I don't wait for your commanding officer before I speak to you. Understood?"

"I had not heard that Mr Hart—" 

"Understood?" Noel demanded.

"Understood." Burroughs didn't sound menaced.

Noel dismissed him and watched him leave the room before he let out his breath.

He found Hart reviewing footage from the rover and from Abby's video camera. "Sorry about that, Hart. You haven't had any problems of this sort before, have you?

Hart gave him a sardonic look. "Haven't had much chance, working a few hours a day here, but no."

"Well, do let me know if anything happens again. But it shouldn't. I've taken care of it." Noel very much hoped that he had. Burroughs was career military; even if he didn't like it, he should get it. And Rollins had looked scared silly.

"Thanks!" Hart smiled a little. "And here I was thinking you didn't like me!"

"It's nothing to do with liking. We need to keep order!"

He realised how that sounded only after the smile vanished from Hart's face. He tried to think of a way to soften the words, but Hart began speaking again.

"Cutter doesn't need to know about this, right?" Hart wasn't quite pleading. "Most of the soldiers are fine; they even visited me while I was in hospital, and then at the rehab facility. Those two just...." he trailed off. 

"I don't need to tell him," Noel said hastily. "I can't say what Dr Farnam will do." That was something else he didn't need to say. Brilliant.

But Hart thanked him, anyway, and asked him more about the hadrosaur they'd found that day, and pretty much acted like Noel hadn't all but said he didn't like him. Noel played along; he didn't know what else to do.

Captain Robinson told him later that he'd done well with the situation. He said he'd keep Lester informed and implicitly took the matter out of Noel's hands. Noel could only hope the Captain took the matter with appropriate seriousness.

***

Nick sat back in his chair and took stock of the day. Not only had they safely returned what did indeed seem to be a Lophorhothon, but they had also restored their two resident hadrosaurs to what they hoped would be a better environment for them, even if they weren't sure it was quite the right one. Abby had assured him that they belonged there more than they belonged in a room in the ARC. Miller had proved useful, and Stephen had managed to pitch in too, even from the ARC. Jenny had been a bit upset about Abby's silly cover story, but she seemed to be making a go of it.

All in all, a good day. 

When Henrietta appeared in his doorway a moment later, Nick knew from the look on her face that he must have jinxed himself. 

"The hadrosaurs?" he hazarded. "Please don't tell me we've made a mistake."

"No," she said, pulling a chair up right next to his desk so she didn't have to look at him over the pile of papers on the top. "It's not the hadrosaurs. It's humans, funnily enough."

Nick sighed and rubbed his face. He'd been looking forward to going home—a bit late, but not unduly so. "Which humans, and what did they do?"

Henrietta usually came right out and said things, so he was surprised when she answered with a question. "Did Stephen tell you what happened when we were loading the hadrosaurs to take them to the school?"

Nick frowned. He'd seen virtually nothing of Stephen since they'd returned; he'd had to report to Lester. Stephen still wasn't working full days, but Nick wasn't exactly sure when he'd left.

"I take it that's a no," Henrietta said.

What she said next left Nick uncertain whether to be horrified or furious. They'd had trouble with overzealous military types before. It wasn't uncommon for soldiers to point guns at creatures that had come through, even with ARC personnel reassuring them that it wasn't necessary. But Nick had never before heard of a soldier outright defying the orders of the civilians. On occasion the officers overruled the team, and Nick hated that. Yet he'd quickly come to trust Ryan, and Ryan had returned that trust, taking a chance on the pteranodon when Nick and Stephen argued for it, both in the universe Nick had left and the one in which he'd arrived. Robinson seemed less inclined to argue; Cutter couldn't remember the last time he'd had trouble getting his way with Robinson in charge. The soldiers did as they were told.

And Stephen hadn't told him. An old anger rose up in Nick, but he was tired of it. Maybe, he tried to tell himself, Stephen meant to tell him later. They'd had a busy day. But how long would Stephen let it fester before mentioning it? How dangerous did things have to be before he made it a priority to tell Nick? They'd been through this before with Ryan and his men, but that had all been sorted long ago. After Nick had set Ryan straight, Ryan made sure that the soldiers had been far more circumspect about pointing their weapons anywhere near civilians. Except for Helen, of course. 

"I thought you ought to know," Henrietta said finally, after Nick had no doubt been silent too long. "Miller did come talk with me. He assured me he'd dealt with the two men, and he'd seen to it that they wouldn't be in a position to deal with civilians for quite some time. It's only—he's military himself...."

Nick nodded. Henrietta had probably seen very little of Noel Miller; she wasn't usually at the daily meetings, and she didn't get out into the field much. Of the ARC personnel, Abby worked closest with Henrietta.

"I can't decide what I'm most upset about, myself," the vet admitted. "That they pointed guns in Stephen's direction, that they didn't take his orders—or that they took mine easily enough, so that it seems clear that it's Stephen who counts for nothing in their eyes."

"He's got more experience in some areas than anyone here," Nick agreed. "If soldiers even pause to question his orders, we could be in real trouble." 

What the hell was Stephen thinking, not telling him? He'd have to deal with this, and it couldn't wait. Damn it. He thanked Henrietta and went in search of Noel, who was, fortunately, still at the ARC.

Noel didn't deny or whitewash any of it. He confirmed what Henrietta had said and added details of his own tongue-lashing of the men involved. That last should have made Nick feel better, but somehow it didn't help.

"And you didn't see fit to tell me?" was all he could think to say.

Noel considered the question rather longer than Nick would have liked. "I spoke with my commanding officer," he said at last. "He agreed with my handling of the situation and said he'd keep Lester informed."

"He didn't say he'd keep me informed."

Noel remained impassive. "I thought it was a military matter."

"It's not simply a military matter when people point guns at my assistant and tell him his judgement doesn't matter!"

"No, s—" Noel said slowly, biting off the "sir" at the last moment. "It's not."

Nick was merely getting warmed up. "What if Henrietta hadn't been there? Is Stephen unsafe, left alone with the military now? For God's sake, do you know how many soldiers visited him in hospital? I thought we could count on you people!"

Noel straightened further, though Nick wouldn't have thought it possible. "Our duty here is to protect civilians, both the ones who work for the ARC and the general public. Two of our men seem to have forgotten that, and for that, sir, I deeply apologise. We've tried to deal with it internally. If there are any further instances, sir, I ask to be notified immediately. We will deal with them."

"And you'll tell me if there's anything more?" Nick asked.

"Yes, sir."

"And cut the 'sir's." Nick sighed. "But you didn't tell me this time. Why?"

Miller pursed his lips. "Because Hart asked me not to say anything."

Nick was no less angry for being unsurprised. "But for God's sake, why?"

Noel hesitated before finally answering, "Maybe he thought you didn't need the reminder."

"The reminder? Of what? That he nearly got himself killed? I remember that every time I look at him, damn it!"

Noel gave him that look the soldiers often gave him, the one he knew meant they thought he'd lost it. It wasn't as obvious on Noel, but they'd been working closely for long enough now that Nick could recognise it if he looked carefully. "The reminder of how he nearly got himself killed, sir."

"He nearly got himself killed saving my life. And the lives of everyone who would have been killed if the creatures had got out. And that makes the soldiers think he can't be trusted? That he doesn't know the difference between a dangerous dinosaur and a harmless one?" Nick couldn't even stand still any more; he had to walk back and forth to get rid of the energy he'd like to expend by hitting something (or someone). "If anyone knows what dinosaurs are capable of, it's Stephen."

Noel's eyebrows had gone way up at some point.

"But of course I know what you mean. So you think it too, do you? That Stephen's injuries aren't really from saving anybody, that they're because of Helen? He never colluded with her!" Nick realised he was almost shouting and reined in his voice with an effort. "He had no idea about Leek. And when I asked him to help contain the creatures, he didn't hesitate for a second. He tried to come clean about Helen and share information, and I fired him. Even then, he didn't leave the ARC until I hit him. The moment I asked for his help, he came back. For God's sake, after I'd already fired him, and he thought Lester was plotting against him, he still went to a beach to take care of a creature so that no one would get hurt."

He leaned over Noel's desk. "If anyone has earned the right to judge Stephen's behaviour, it's me. And I've judged it. I trust him with my life, your life, the lives of everyone on this team, everyone in the ARC—and everyone those creatures could hurt. Stephen is still my assistant, and when I'm not here, he acts in my stead. Anyone not willing to accept his authority—well, I'm sure we can arrange a transfer. And that includes you."

Nick straightened up, slowly, realising that he had gone a bit far. Noel hadn't done anything to undermine Stephen. Unless Noel was flat-out lying, he'd backed Stephen against those soldiers. Now that Nick had said what he had, though, he didn't know how to take any of it back. And he wouldn't want to do. He just wished he'd worded it a little differently. 

Noel looked stunned, as though some of what Nick had just said was completely new to him. Could it really be? Noel's mouth opened and closed a couple of times before words emerged. "I have never questioned Mr Hart's authority, sir. I do not allow any of the men to do so either." He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he shut his mouth and looked expectantly at Cutter.

Nick ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "You're right. I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't mean.... I shouldn't have included you in that. It just... scares the hell out of me that when I thought Stephen was safe back here, our own people would take it upon themselves to put him in danger."

Noel nodded. "I should have told you. You're right. A failure of discipline like this can create a very dangerous situation. I will tell you if anything like that ever happens in the future. I very much want to think that it won't, though, sir."

Nick nodded. "And you'll tell me if you even suspect there's a problem. We've been through this before, well before your time, but I thought it had all been settled. If it's not, I need to know immediately."

"Yes, sir. I'll tell you."

Nick finally let himself relax. "And cut the 'sir', will you, Noel? I can just about handle 'professor'."

Noel smiled cautiously at him. "Yes, Professor."

***

Once Cutter left his office, Noel let himself slump forward onto his desk. Here he thought he'd been doing the right thing, handling the matter himself and keeping Cutter free of the whole mess. And he'd been sparing both Hart and Cutter's feelings.

Chalk it up as a learning experience, his parents would say. He hadn't irreparably damaged relations with his team-mates, had he?

Noel had been wondering how Cutter managed to get along with Hart after the man had betrayed him not once but twice with his wife. Clearly, the professor didn't think about matters the same way Noel did. He'd known that, in the abstract, but he'd never before heard what Cutter thought about what Hart had done. Cutter told it as if Hart's cheating was a couple of aberrations in a long collaboration between them. Noel had already known that that collaboration kept a lot of people alive who would otherwise now be dead, including both Cutter and Hart themselves, and certainly Abby and Connor as well.

It was Noel's job to judge who or what might be a danger to the team, and, no matter what the professor thought, he couldn't abrogate that duty. Yet Hart's loyalty to Cutter was undeniable. Hart wasn't a danger, though Helen Cutter remained one. Burroughs and those like him were a threat, too.

Noel had hardly had time to sort through his thoughts before Connor came barrelling in.

"Shouldn't you head home?" Noel asked weakly.

"I had a thought."

Of course you did.

"I know you're on call now what, five nights a week here at the ARC? But you can do what you want within the ARC as long as you're ready to go at a moment's notice, right?"

Noel nodded, unsure where Connor was going.

"You don't want to spend your two nights a week with your wife watching Star Trek with us—and I understand that!" Connor hastened to add. "So how about we bring Captains' Night to you? I'll bring the episodes, and we can all watch—Abby will come, even if she complains, and I bet Stephen will be glad of a change of scenery for the evening." Connor clearly thought he'd had a brainstorm.

"How much of a change of scenery is it when he works here during the day?" Noel asked weakly.

"Oh, enough! He's worried that he and the Professor will drive each other crazy if he stays there too long. Well, we'll get him out of the house for one evening—more, if it takes more than one night. I mean, we've got Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer, so we've got five captains! We'll only get to have one episode of each in an evening! That may not be enough...." 

Connor kept going, but Noel couldn't keep listening. He saw no way out of this. Well, it might not be so bad. He might enjoy watching some Star Trek with Connor, even if he did have to see Voyager and Enterprise. Hart would be sure to cry off, avoiding any awkwardness between them.

"Okay," he said, at last interrupting the torrent of words. "So long as it's a night I'm only on call and have no other duties, and not one of my nights off, I'm there."

"Great!" Connor looked like someone had just given him a puppy.

***

By the time Nick got home, his anger had burned off. He felt tired and a little disappointed in Stephen. Even if he meant to spare Nick—well, that wasn't his call to make. He closed the door quietly behind him and hung up his jacket, then turned to go look for Stephen.

He jumped a little when he found Stephen already in the study doorway. "Silent but deadly," Abby had called him once. Even with a limp he could still be quiet.

"You should have phoned! I'd have put something on for dinner." Stephen looked tired, but he wasn't using his walking stick.

Nick shrugged. "Had a bit of a surprise before I left."

"Oh? What's happened?"

"Nothing that you don't already know. Tell me: when exactly were you planning on telling me that two of the soldiers pointed guns at you?"

Stephen's eyebrows went up. "Well, never, since that's a bit of an exaggeration."

"Oh, really?"

Stephen leaned against the door frame. "You have some microwave meals, don't you? They're rubbish, but I'm hungry." He started back towards the kitchen.

Nick had no choice but to follow Stephen if he wanted to continue the conversation, such as it was. "I thought we were going to talk about things!"

"Yes, but we don't have to talk on an empty stomach." Stephen opened the freezer and surveyed it.

Nick wanted to accuse him out loud of buying time to think about how he would spin the matter, but he was tired of arguing. Instead, he set out cutlery while Stephen started the pre-packaged meals heating.

Nick pulled out a chair, then thought again before sitting on it. "Sit down. I can do that."

"You sit. I spent all day in one chair or another."

"Except when you were being held at gunpoint." 

Stephen laughed. "You're determined to make this as awful as possible, aren't you?" He stared at the microwave. "Two soldiers were waiting by a truck in the loading bay. They raised their weapons when I came in with Louise. They weren't aiming at me, but at the hadrosaurs."

"But you were between them and the hadrosaurs, from what I've heard."

Stephen shrugged. "Not exactly. And you have to admit, I'm a walking advertisement for why one has to be careful with ancient creatures. Or a limping advertisement."

NIck could only stare at him for a moment. Stephen didn't return his gaze. Finally, Nick said, "Why on earth would you defend what they did?"

That made Stephen look up. "I'm not defending them! You know I wouldn't have wanted anything to happen to Thelma and Louise. I'm just saying...." He trailed off, leaving Nick to wonder what he thought he was saying.

"You think maybe you deserved it? Maybe you think you shouldn't be trusted?"

Stephen flinched back in his chair, and Nick suspected he'd hit home. "No!" he said in surprise. "I just think.... They made a mistake. I've made mistakes. I should be the last one to cast stones."

"You're a senior member of staff. They're supposed to do what you tell them."

Stephen shrugged again. "They didn't lower their weapons on my say-so, but they did on Henrietta's. They thought I supposed to be tied to the desk. It was just a misunderstanding. Miller talked to them. And I asked him not to tell you, because... because you've lost enough sleep over me already, and I knew you'd blow this out of proportion." 

Stephen's shoulders slumped. "I mean.... God, I'm hungry, and I'm saying this all wrong."

"You didn't have to wait for me," Nick pointed out while he tried to process everything else Stephen had said.

Stephen frowned so hard his eyebrows came together. "The only thing that makes this sort of food tolerable at all is company so that I can forget I'm eating it. It's not worth the trouble to cook for myself." 

The microwave beeped, and Stephen switched meals. "Hold on—I'm doing them each in two parts, so they'll end up more or less hot at more or less the same time."

Nick had to admit he was hungry. Probably even hungry enough to eat one of those. Why the hell did he buy them? Stephen was right: they were rubbish.

Now that Stephen had changed the subject, Nick probably had little hope of making any more progress talking about the confrontation with the soldiers. "Look, I thought you were going to tell me if you had problems."

Stephen didn't reply until he had both meals on the table and they'd sat down again. "Somehow I managed to get through my whole life before this without telling you every little thing."

"Yeah," Nick snorted. "And your life was very nearly cut short as a result of your inability to tell the big things from the little things." 

Stephen pushed some peas around with a fork but didn't raise it to his mouth. 

Nick took a deep breath. No, he wouldn't get any further with Stephen about the matter of armed men failing to follow orders. The best he could do would probably be to keep a close eye on things, and make sure Noel did the same. "You didn't get us drinks. Fancy a beer?" He rose and headed for the fridge.

Stephen looked at him suspiciously, but he didn't have any ulterior motives. "Okay."

"Just one, though. I keep forgetting to ask Dr Gupta if you're still off alcohol."

"She says I can drink in moderation. I hardly ever need the tablets anymore."

"Oh," Nick said as he sat down with the beers.

"I asked her after... the other night, when you gave me the whisky." Stephen was still staring at his peas, but then he brought his eyes up to Nick's face. "You can ask her yourself."

Nick took a long swig at that. "It's not that I think you're lying to me," Nick told him honestly. "It's, well... you still don't tell me things, you know?"

Stephen winced. "I've always not told you things. You don't tell me things."

Nick laughed out loud. "The one thing I didn't tell you about was the damned conspiracy. And I wish to God I had—you know that." 

Stephen nodded.

"Everything else, you already know. I don't have secrets any longer, Stephen. Everybody knows about Helen. And there's not much that's that interesting about me!"

Stephen shook his head. "And what about me? You really find a misunderstanding with a couple of soldiers 'interesting'? Miller sorted it. It's over."

"That's not why you didn't tell me."

Stephen glared at him. "No, you're right. You want honesty? I want as few people as possible to know about the whole thing, because I'm afraid the sergeant was right. I haven't got good judgement. Maybe they shouldn't trust me, or take my orders." He looked at his plate again, but he'd only had a few mouthfuls, and he didn't seem to be in a hurry to take any more.

Nick covered his shock by drinking some more of his beer. What surprised him was not what Stephen thought, but that he would say it out loud. 

"Eat your food before it gets cold, because then it will be completely inedible," Nick said after a moment, to buy a little more time.

Stephen shovelled some into his mouth, still not looking at Nick.

"How can you think that?" Nick asked at last. "Yes, your judgement about Helen was absolute rubbish. But you never helped her harm anyone!" Except for the way they'd wounded Nick, but Nick didn't need to bring that up yet again. "My judgement was useless too! And you've finished keeping secrets from us, right? You told me everything she said last time you saw her?"

Stephen nodded. "Pretty much. But it's not just that. It's Lester."

Nick didn't follow. "You haven't told Lester something?"

Stephen rolled his eyes, which Nick took to be a good sign. "No. I told Lester everything. I meant my judgement in thinking Lester was the conspirator—before."

"Oh. That. Well, that was weeks ago. That's over and done with too."

Stephen, apparently tired of the peas, began pushing the meat around his plate.

"You know, you don't get nutrition from it unless you chew and swallow it," Nick advised.

Stephen speared a piece on his fork. "I'm not sure I get nutrition even if I do."

"Fine. You buy the meals next time."

"I can cook, if I know when to expect you."

"Oh, that's right! Pasta with tomato sauce. Pasta with pesto. Pasta with Bolognese sauce!" Nick teased him deliberately, trying to keep him from sinking back into a sulk.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Stephen stuck a piece of meat in his mouth and made a face as he chewed.

"Yes, your pasta certainly beats this!" Nick said around his own mystery meat.

"Oh, now that's a low blow!"

"I never hired you to cook, Stephen," Nick told him more seriously. "I hired you because you know animals. And you do. You misjudged Helen and Leek—but so did I. I never thought she'd do what she did." He'd also misjudged Stephen, thinking he had resumed his affair with Helen when he hadn't yet. The loss of his job and his friends had led to him doing so. If Nick had listened to Stephen the day he'd brought Helen to the anomaly site, they might together have realised her involvement in the plot.

Stephen put his fork down again and stared at it.

"Look at me." Nick paused until Stephen did. "Lester misjudged Leek. He got past all of us. When I let Jenny in on the whole... conspiracy thing, even she didn't suspect Leek, and she's the best of us when it comes to people."

He waited until Stephen gave a grudging nod.

"You screwed up, yes. We all did. And your confidence has clearly taken a beating. I suppose that's why you're seeing a psychiatrist."

Stephen looked at him suspiciously for that.

Nick continued anyway. "But your knowledge of animals, contemporary or prehistoric, hasn't suffered at all. You need to remember that. And anyone in the ARC who doesn't know that, well, they need to go. We can't afford people like that working with us."

Nick chewed through some more tasteless meat. Stephen's pasta was far superior. Occasionally he cooked something else. Nick could usually manage meat and potatoes, that sort of thing. As long as he had a cookbook. They did need to stop eating these horrible things.

Stephen started eating again too. Finally, he asked, "End of lecture?"

Nick laughed. "Did it work?"

Stephen shrugged. "You know I always listen to your lectures. I can deliver most of them for you, remember?"

"Good, because I don't want to have to repeat this one."

Nick could relax, then, and Stephen seemed to relax as well. They talked about Henrietta and the anomaly. Stephen genuinely wanted to hear about the hadrosaur they'd lured out of the cafeteria kitchen, so Nick told him all he could think to tell him, even though he could see the longing kindled in Stephen's eyes by his words.

Naturally, Stephen pushed him to work on an article on hadrosaurs. He probably thought he was being subtle. It was rather kind of him, though Nick would never admit it. Nick did miss the more academic side of things. Maybe he should see what he could dig up on smaller hadrosaurs.

***

When Stephen went to his computer the next morning at the ARC, he was greeted by a sheepish Miller at the neighbouring desk.

"The vet apparently told Cutter what happened with the soldiers," the officer explained. "Then he came to me, so I had to tell him what I knew, too. I'm sorry. I know—"

"Not a problem," Stephen told him. "It's just as well, really. I shouldn't have tried to keep it from him."

"Oh." Miller seemed surprised at that. "Um, about the other thing...."

"What other thing?" Stephen tried to remember what else they'd talked about. The soldiers. The need to maintain order. Tracking on a wet floor.

He heard Connor coming up behind Miller while the soldier opened his mouth to say something else.

"Morning, Connor!" Stephen said before he even saw his friend, warning Miller implicitly.

"Hey! I talked to Noel last night, but I didn't have a chance to tell you: we're doing Captains' Night!"

Abby also came into the room behind Connor, rolling her eyes. Connor had to explain, because Stephen had already forgotten about the idea.

Stephen looked at Miller, who again looked sheepish. Maybe Miller had meant to warn him about this. "I thought you didn't have the time?"

"I've worked it out!" Connor announced happily. "We'll do it here, while Noel's on call but not on duty! I rounded up some appropriate episodes last night. So, are we on for tonight?"

"Tonight?" Stephen tried not to look panicked. Miller didn't seem exactly enthused either. "I've got physio this afternoon. I'm usually a little tired afterwards. Sorry. You can go ahead without me."

Abby tried to get a word in, but she was cut off by Connor. 

"That's okay!" He smiled then. "I thought of that. Noel, you're also on call tomorrow night, right? And Stephen, you don't have physio on Thursdays! So that was my back-up plan all along! You're still on for either night, right, Noel?"

Stephen sneaked a glance at Miller, who said, "Sure." If the response wasn't as enthusiastic as the question, Connor didn't notice.

"Stephen? It's all down to you, mate."

Abby seemed to be mouthing something at him. It might have been "don't have to," but it could as well have been "don't hurt him." Even with the exaggerated lip movements, he wasn't sure.

"Um, I should check with Cutter, make sure—"

"Abby can pick you up! Right, Abby?" Connor turned to Abby, who had managed to make her face normal again already. She agreed, a little to Stephen's surprise. That meant she'd be going, surely? But she didn't like Star Trek, right?

After all Connor had done for Stephen, he could surely tolerate a little Star Trek for him.

Then a thought hit Stephen: this was the first time in ages they'd invited him out to do something fun. They weren't springing him from a medical facility; they just wanted to have him around. For fun. Well, three of them, anyway.

"Sorry," Miller said when Connor and Abby finally left, after some viewing of hadrosaur footage and other things. "I meant to warn you." Miller even looked a little sympathetic.

***

So Noel found himself in the rec room the following night, setting things up with Connor. He half expected Abby to come in alone, telling them that Hart had made excuses. The other half of him anticipated she'd phone to say that and not bother to come herself. That was fine. He knew Star Trek wasn't her thing. 

He did not expect Abby to tow Hart in at 7 pm on the dot, carrying boxes of pizza. Hart didn't even have his walking stick. Connor, of course, showed no hint of surprise; it had probably never crossed his mind that either of them might not show. Hart pulled up a coffee table on which he could prop his bad leg and sat down on the side of the sofa closest to the door. Good strategic thinking. Abby sat next to Hart, with Connor on her right. Noel pulled up a chair next to Connor's side of the sofa. They'd hooked up Connor's laptop to the big telly so everyone could see. No one asked how or why Connor had Star Trek episodes on his hard drive.

The pizza went quickly, and Hart offered to make the popcorn. "Leg gets stiff if I sit too long," he said when the other two tried to jump up and stop him. Naturally, he didn't burn anything.

Noel had to admit watching Star Trek with this group was fun. Connor kept shushing them, but he clearly already knew all the dialogue. Abby made smart remarks about the women, the science, and Captain Kirk in particular, but she seemed to be having a good time. Even Hart seemed to enjoy himself, though he didn't say much. Noel was still not certain whether it was good or bad that he hadn't managed to pull off his attempt to tell Hart he didn't dislike him. 'I like you' or 'I think I like you' sounded too grammar-school. 'I respect you' wouldn't repair the damage he'd probably done and might make it worse.

The big bowl of popcorn ended up in Connor's lap. Noel and Abby could reach it easily. As they started the Deep Space Nine episode, and Hart leaned forward once again to stretch his long arm around Abby and grab some popcorn, Noel had a premonition. He ought to say something, he knew. It was a little mean to both Abby and Hart, wasn't it? Well, it wasn't as if he'd set them up. They'd brought it upon themselves. And he wasn't even sure it would happen.

Besides, he'd made it through Sandhurst on little entertainments like this.

Sure enough, though, deep into the episode, Hart went to grab popcorn without leaning forward.

"Hey!" Abby shouted, hitting him on the arm audibly. 

"Ow!" Stephen yelped.

Yeah, that would leave a bruise, Noel thought.

"You hit him on the injured arm!" Connor gasped.

"Oh, God, Stephen, are you all right?" Abby fussed.

Connor paused the episode with a miniature remote. 

Hart sat there rubbing his upper arm and looking at the other two as if they'd lost their minds. "I broke my wrist, not my humerus! And it's healed!"

"It's probably stronger than before," Connor said, dead serious. "That means it's liable to hold and something else will break if you put too much stress on it."

"Like Abby's going to break my bones? Not that I don't think you could if you wanted, Abby," Hart added quickly. "I don't think you'd do it to me for brushing you by accident."

Noel sniggered out loud. They all looked at him, which wasn't quite what he'd intended. Too late to back down now, he said, "Of course it was an accident."

Hart gave him a sharp look. "If I wanted to feel her up, I wouldn't use the back of my arm."

"Hey!" Abby objected.

"What?" Stephen seemed exasperated. "I was not trying to feel you up, it was an accident! Here!" He leaned far forward, grabbed the bowl out of Connor's lap, and shoved it into Abby's. "You hold it, and it won't happen again."

"I don't want it in my lap!"

"Why not?" Connor asked.

"Then I'll eat it!"

"I thought the whole point of popcorn was to eat it?" Connor was clearly out of his depth.

"Not all of it! Not me!"

"I'll help," Stephen offered.

"Maybe we can pass it back and forth?" Abby suggested.

"I've already had to pause Deep Space Nine for minutes now!" Connor objected. "If we're passing popcorn around, we're going to miss things!"

"Look at the time!" Stephen said. "At this rate, I might not even be able to stay for Enterprise!" He leaned back and offered Noel a tentative grin behind the backs of Connor and Abby's heads.

"That'd be a crying shame," Noel said, smiling back.

"Then we'd better get started again!" Connor pulled the popcorn out of Abby's lap and put it on the coffee table. "Here, I'll re-wind it a little, since we missed some when you two started fighting."

"Fighting?" Abby asked, causing Connor to pause it again. "If I were fighting Stephen, he'd have a lot more than a bruised arm."

Even in the dim light of the telly, the look of incredulity on Hart's face was priceless.

"Abby, even with a bad leg I could pick you up and throw you over my shoulder!"

"You wouldn't dare." Abby's voice was dangerously quiet. It was the tone Noel had meant to use on Burroughs, but somehow this petite blonde managed it better than he had.

"No," Hart added thoughtfully, "you're right. Especially in those boots." He grabbed some popcorn while everyone else looked at Abby's boots.

They had very pointy toes.

Hart was turning out to be smarter than Noel had thought. And more interesting.

Connor restarted the show. Abby settled back on the sofa with a huff, crossing her arms.

In the end, Hart backed down on any claims for Janeway, which was no surprise, but by then Abby had somehow been converted to the Janeway cause. Maybe it was sheer perversity. By the time their evening together came to an end—without Enterprise, because it had indeed grown late—Noel wasn't surprised when they agreed to a rematch the following week.

He was a little surprised to find that he rather welcomed it.

***

Stephen looked around cautiously as he entered the gun range early the next afternoon. Good: no one he knew. He'd asked Lorraine about Noel's training schedules with everyone so that he could be sure none of his team-mates were there. He hadn't fired a weapon in something like six weeks. It wasn't going to be pretty. Wanting something light, he started with a Beretta. His first couple of shots went just a little wide of where he was aiming, but he put the next several fairly close to where he wanted them. Stephen let himself relax into the familiar routine, timing his shots against his heartbeat and breathing. His left arm hadn't been injured, but he hadn't picked up a gun since the day he was injured. It was good to know he hadn't lost those skills.

Stephen traded the Beretta for a rifle. It was time to see how well he did with the injured arm; rifles were generally made for right-handers, so he'd always fired those with his right. He knew he'd lost some muscle mass and coordination. He took a deep breath and stilled himself before beginning a new target. His first two shots missed the paper entirely, but he stayed focused and did better with the next several.

When a combination of pain and frustration started to make his shots miss the target completely again a few minutes later, he knew it was time to stop. 

Maria had warned him. Stephen had even asked her about shooting, which horrified her; he'd had to assure her he meant target shooting, and that he didn't go gunning down innocent birds or bunnies. Then she'd given him a reasonable idea of what to expect: that after so many weeks, his right arm strength was still way down, and the recoil would probably hurt. He'd become unused to it.

More than that, Maria refused to say, referring him to a doctor instead. Devi told him that he should in time regain full motion and strength with that wrist and hand; he should be able to shoot as well as ever. He'd never be able to run again as he had before because of the scarring in the muscles of his left leg. Only time would tell how much of his speed and strength would return. 

Still, Stephen meant to run again. He didn't do it only for his job; he had always enjoyed running. Now that he could walk reasonable distances without the walking stick, he was going to start running a little again. That he hadn't discussed with the doctor. Or Cutter. 

He did have to get out of Nick's house. He enjoyed sharing meals with his friend again, and it was reassuring to have someone else in the house when he woke up in a panic, as he still did occasionally. But aside from having Connor in his flat for a few days, Stephen hadn't shared living space with anyone in years. Sharing a tent was different: they'd spend as little time in the actual tent as possible, and they had plenty of space right outside. He and Cutter had done that more than once. In a tent, Cutter also didn't do all the annoying things he did at home.

They hadn't quite reached the point where they were driving each other crazy, but Stephen put that largely down to his own efforts not to set Cutter off. He was getting tired of making those efforts. Lacking an en-suite bathroom, Cutter used the same bathroom as Stephen, and he'd been surprisingly quick to realise that Stephen had started tidying ever so slightly. Stephen couldn't explain it himself: all those years sharing office space with Cutter, and he'd managed to keep his urges to organise things under control. A week in Cutter's house, and he could hardly stop himself straightening things up. And the way Cutter loaded a dishwasher was a disgrace. Worse than Connor.

***

Nick was ordinarily glad of Fridays. They remained on call 24/7, of course, but Saturdays and Sundays were usually free of meetings and paperwork. Now, however, the prospect of another weekend with Stephen loomed menacingly before him. How could he not have realised his assistant was a complete neat freak? At some point, Stephen was probably going to get over the sense of being a guest and start truly treating the house as his own (as Nick had unfortunately urged him to do more than once), and then there'd be hell to pay. All right, the fixation on toiletries could perhaps have been predicted from Stephen's appearance, but who could have known about his kitchen hang-ups?

And if Stephen dropped one more 'hint' about Nick starting to conference papers or journal articles again, Nick was going to drop something a lot heavier than hints. It was ridiculous to think of him going to a conference anyway. "Excuse me, but my assistant and I have been called to subdue a dinosaur; could someone read my paper for me, and make up answers during the question time?" This office could do with some whisky, Nick decided, not for the first time.

A quiet knock on the open door roused him from his thoughts. Jenny took his eye contact as an invitation and came in.

"James liked my contingency plans so well he wants more of them," she said with a smile as she sat down.

"That's the price of being good at your job," Nick answered with a smile of his own, glad of the distraction.

"Oh, I should have asked: am I interrupting anything important?" 

Nick took a moment to consider how honest to be and decided he could do with a confidante for the moment. "Only if you consider plotting how Stephen and I will put up with each other for another weekend 'important'."

She laughed. Was it because she was the newest one here, save the slightly dour Noel Miller, that Jenny still had the quickest laugh and the brightest smile in the place? "Two men used to living on their own, suddenly in close quarters. Two very strong-willed men. I think I see the problem."

"We've been on expeditions together. We've been in much closer quarters. But without dishwashers, as they don't fit in tents and generally require electricity. Somehow, that seems to make a difference."

"Oh, no! He has a system for loading the dishwasher? You know, if my fiancé hadn't broken it off with me, I might have had to break it off with him for that. No one should be forced to live with someone like that!" Nick couldn't remember Jenny mentioning her ex-fiancé once since she'd told him the engagement had been ended. 

"He moves things after I've put them in!" Nick exclaimed, relieved to be able to share his frustration. "He stands there bent over the machine, furtively moving cups and saucers about, then closes the whole thing and thinks I won't notice!"

Jenny laughed again. "It could be worse. At least he doesn't lecture you on what you've done wrong. But I didn't come here to talk about dishwashers—although my advice is, if he's bored and worried about it, leave everything in the sink and let him do all the loading. And the unloading."

"I can't do that! He's hurt!"

Jenny rolled her eyes. "If he's in good enough shape to go to the shooting range, he's in good enough shape for the kitchen. Now I didn't actually—"

"Wait—he's going to the shooting range?"

Jenny paused for a moment before resuming her sentence. "I didn't actually come here to discuss dishwashers, but to—"

"He told you he's going to the shooting range, but he didn't tell me?"

Jenny's shoulders dropped with her sigh. "Cutter, do you have any idea how you sound? And no, he didn't tell me. He told Lorraine where he could be reached in case of emergency, apparently because he might not hear or feel his mobile if we called while he was on the range."

"And you know this—?"

"I know this because I thought I'd speak to him first about our stock cover stories, because he's less distractible, believe it or not. But he's not here, he's at the range," she repeated, as if Nick were slow.

His "oh" probably confirmed her in that opinion.

Jenny didn't give him time to say anything more before she launched into her explanation. She didn't think much of Abby's 'stolen costume and fireworks' story and wanted to talk about potential scenarios and pre-established cover stories they could trot out of Jenny wasn't first on the scene. 

"And God forbid you ever have to deal with the public, Nick, but it could happen," she added.

She was still smiling, though. Jenny had a very pretty smile, when it was a real one and not calculated. This one wasn't calculated. He didn't even mind, not really, when he realised she had not come to discuss plans so much as to tell him what her plans were for various eventualities. He let her talk—and smile.

***

After a second Saturday at Cutter's, Stephen was ready to move back to his own flat. He explained very, very carefully that he needed to get his life back to normal, and living at Nick's wasn't helping. He told Cutter that he kept forgetting to bring this book or that, that Connor had already taken care of his plants quite long enough, and even that he knew he'd awakened Cutter a few times in the night because the floorboards creaked too much.

Cutter still stared at him with what might have been hurt or distrust or even fear for his safety until Stephen finally hauled out his weapon of last resort: "And if you get any more annoyed at me, you'll hit me again, and then you'll feel really, really guilty."

He almost wish he hadn't said it, because the guilt on Cutter's face was as plain as if he had indeed hit Stephen again. Yet the next thing he knew, Cutter was grudgingly asking him when he wanted to go back and whether he wanted someone to stay with him the first couple of nights, and the battle was won.

That first night back, Stephen did wish he'd asked for someone to stay with him. Lester had assigned a soldier to watch his front door, since he'd assured them that Helen was not about to scale the wall to his first-floor flat. He didn't have to worry about unwanted visitors. Not real ones, anyway.

Stephen took a while to fall asleep, but he woke up Monday morning having slept through the night. It was the first time he'd done that in his flat alone since coming home. Of course, he'd only had one night before Helen's unexpected visit, but it was still a win. Jacobs had insisted he set realistic goals, and being able to sleep alone was one of them. 

Stephen wished Jacobs agreed that "going out on an anomaly call" was a realistic goal at this point, but Jacobs didn't.

***

Noel had begun to feel that he had become part of the team. Yet he'd also begun to share Connor's confidence that Hart would be back on it in a few months. That left him uncertain. Lester insisted in meetings that a military member would be kept on the team permanently, and that was Noel, for now. What his role would be when Hart came back as tracker, however, he didn't know. Just muscle? Firepower? Hart had been quite a marksman, but six weeks out of commission would have taken away his edge, at a minimum. Noel's engineering training made him an obvious back-up for Connor, and he knew the rover and the ADD well enough to make necessary repairs, in the ARC or in the field, but even with his training he wasn't sure he could compete with Connor's combination of natural aptitude and off-the-wall inspirations. He had the best first-aid training in the team, but Abby knew far more about animals. 

Well, every team needed a reserve, to watch their backs and step in when needed. Until Hart returned, Noel was the best tracker they had—as he had to remind himself as he slogged through the mud near a hastily-evacuated pond looking for some kind of lizard the size of a bull. At least its size made it easy to track! Its prints sank well into the mud, and they found the creature taking a kip in an area full of small bushes (some now trodden into the ground). Abby lured it back through the anomaly with food, but only very slowly; it had apparently nearly eaten its fill before the team arrived. Noel didn't even need Hart's help, though he kept the headset on and sent images periodically back to the ARC. 

Hart congratulated him on a job well done with almost no trace of hurt or sadness in his voice, and Noel thanked him sincerely before signing off and settling down to a long afternoon of watching the anomaly to ensure nothing else came through. He wished Connor had stayed too, but Connor had responsibilities back at the ARC.

Well, Noel hadn't joined the military to spend his days chatting with friends. It was rather a nice bonus to find that there were times when he could in fact do just that.

***

Nick hadn't realised how accustomed he'd become to Stephen's company until Stephen was gone again. Every evening he had to fight the urge to phone him and make sure he was all right. He felt foolish, because he saw Stephen at work every day. Indeed, Stephen was working well into the afternoons now. Nick tried to worry less. Jenny had made it clear to him how ridiculous he'd become, wanting to know Stephen's every move and feeling hurt if he wasn't the first to know. 

The third day after Stephen left, he found himself thinking that he couldn't remember what he'd been doing with his evenings before Stephen had come to his house. That seemed absurd, until he remembered that for well over a month, the evenings he hadn't spent working had been spent visiting Stephen at a medical facility. What had he done before that? He cast his mind back. He'd worked late at the ARC a lot. He'd spent fruitless hours trying to work out where he'd gone wrong: where he'd misread Helen, where he'd misread Stephen; how he'd failed to realise that Valerie would be willing to sacrifice human lives for what she thought of as a pet cat; and how he could have gone so wrong with the sea-creatures from the future (and his own team). He'd put hours into trying to understand who could be working against them, instead of discussing it with his team. He'd drunk rather more than was necessary as well, resulting in a number of completely wasted nights.

He could hardly believe it when he found himself pulling files on hadrosaurs and doing database searches for every hadrosaur find catalogued. Yet it beat the hell out of drinking and second-guessing himself. 

***

Stephen had become so used to disappointments that when Maria finally told him he could swim—no kick-board, no flotation devices, just swim—and he made it across the pool and back with little difficulty, he almost cried. He'd lost a lot of his speed, his leg and abdomen twinged, but he could swim again. He hadn't lost it forever. As Jacobs made him say, he had merely put some things aside for a time. He could pick them back up—slower than he'd like, but they'd be his again. Not everything. He'd never fence again. But swimming....

Maria told him he'd still need to come for physio for a few weeks, minimum, but he could swim on his own. She didn't want him running yet, she told him sternly, and he didn't even argue. (He didn't intend to wait for her permission, however. He would take it slowly.)

Then Devi let him return to full days at the ARC (provided he didn't go into the field and worked no overtime), and he began to feel that he might really rejoin his team at some point. Noel Miller seemed to be keeping them safe these days, so he had confidence he'd have a team to which he could return.

Chapter 5: Carnivores

Noel should have known that everything was going too well. He could go home and be with his wife a couple of nights a week and spend even the occasional day with her. The team were doing well. Professor Cutter had been the happiest he'd ever seen him, and Stephen Hart seemed happy as well. They'd had another Star Trek Captains' Night with everyone except the professor. Connor invited Cutter for the second one, but the professor had managed to give two or three separate reasons why he couldn't make him, leaving Noel with little doubt how Cutter felt about Star Trek. Connor was talking about a third Captains' Night, and no one had complained (too much) or refused (yet). 

When the anomaly detector sounded late one Friday afternoon, Hart announced his intention to monitor them from the ARC, and everything had been going well enough that Lester agreed to let him stay beyond his usual time (which had surely already ended, but no one seemed to be keeping track too carefully any longer). Jenny and some soldiers left first, while the team kitted up and piled into the Hilux.

The anomaly had opened in a patchwork of small farms some distance outside of London. Traffic coming out of the city was a nightmare; it seemed forever before they arrived. The sunlight of an unexpectedly warm and bright late April day helped hide the glow of the anomaly, and the team were relieved to find no people within visual range of it. Jenny Lewis briefed them on the cover story, which involved unexploded WWII bombs resurfacing, while Noel looked for tracks. He could find some near the anomaly, all right, but they were a mess, small and criss-crossing each other repeatedly. He wasn't sure what they were. He and Connor took photos and dutifully sent them back to Hart while Jenny left to go spread the cover story more widely.

"That's a mess," Hart promptly confirmed over the headset. "It looks like creatures may have gone back and forth through the anomaly, and probably more than one stayed on this side. Move out a bit, find some more, and send me clearer pictures if you can't identify them yourself." He was very matter-of-fact, not implying anything about Noel's abilities, or so Noel hoped.

Noel tried to follow some tracks. Connor, meanwhile, readied the rover, now that they weren't so worried about obliterating the tracks directly outside the anomaly.

"Connor! Abby!" the professor shouted from a short distance away. He was holding something. 

Noel had a bad feeling. He jogged over with the other two to see what the professor had in his hand.

"It's a feather," Connor said, voicing a thought Noel was afraid sounded too simple. "A bird, maybe? That's not so bad," he added with forced hope.

"Depends on the kind of bird," Cutter said grimly, and Abby nodded. Noel remembered the report about prehistoric birds that had killed a golfer and nearly Cutter as well. 

This seemed to be rather a large feather, but Connor assured them it was too small for a phorusrhacid or terror bird. "Unless it's one of its smaller feathers, from the head, maybe."

Noel told them the tracks looked far too small to be from a large bird—and cast about for more tracks. The last few days had been unusually dry, and this farmer didn't seem to be watering much. The markings were faint.

Cutter directed Connor to send the rover through the anomaly, and only three soldiers besides Noel were allowed into the area. More were positioned around the anomaly, to ensure that nothing got through. The rest were sent back to the road. Noel didn't want too many people near the tracks.

He kept finding and losing tracks. He took a few more photos to send. "They criss-cross a lot, Hart. I think we're definitely looking at more than one creature, probably three or four, at least."

He could hear Hart's sigh of frustration over the line. "I'm sorry, Miller, but these photos aren't good enough. Can you get better resolution on them?"

Noel adjusted his camera phone as best he could. He needed better equipment. They had digital cameras capable of far better, but he couldn't transmit those images without extra steps, and he didn't want to take the time now. "I'm afraid that's the best I can do for now, sir," he said, snapping off a couple more.

He walked a little further. "Oh, wait, here's a good clear one." He sent the picture before he even tried to identify it himself. "That looks like some that you showed me back in the photos at CMU, sir! Oh, tell me it's not the velociraptor."

There was a long silence on the line, and Noel nearly asked if Hart was still there. 

"It could be," Hart answered at last. "Damn it! Sorry, it's... these photos aren't much to go by, though this last one is quite clear. But a feather, tracks like this...." He heard a deep breath over the line. "You need to follow. You need to be looking for... bodies. Birds, rodents, anything. There might not be much left, though.... Smell, too." 

"Smell? Like, for farts?"

Hart chuckled drily without actually sounding amused. "I was thinking more of the smell of blood." After a pause, he added, "You do know the smell of blood, right?"

"Erm, I think so, sir. I haven't... this is my first posting since Sandhurst and some additional training, and—"

"Yeah. If you think you know how blood smells, though, you probably do. God."

Noel put Hart on hold a moment and went back to the others. This news was best given in person.

From the looks on their faces, however, he wasn't really bringing news. As Noel approached, Cutter and Abby looked up from Connor's laptop screen while Connor stayed focused on his rover.

"Raptors?" Noel asked.

They nodded. 

"On the other side, at least," Cutter said. "We just saw them."

"We think the tracks here are from raptors too," Noel informed them. He went to stand behind Connor, to get a better sense of how his adversaries looked.

"They're smaller than the ones in Jurassic Park," Connor said, almost apologetically, and Noel wasn't sure if he was sorry that they were less impressive, or that they had to deal with them at all.

"But still deadly," the professor contributed.

"At least they're smaller than the ones we had at the shopping centre!" Abby offered, and Noel thought of his mother saying, "Thank God for small favors." This favor might be a small one indeed.

"We think they hunt in packs," Abby told him; he didn't bother to say that Hart had taught him that the day they saw the trackways at CMU. "That would explain why you've got so many prints...." She waved an arm and let it fall again.

"Do we know how big their packs are?" Noel asked. The ones on the screen appeared to be some distance away; a couple hung about looking towards the anomaly, but others darted in and out of the picture.

The professor answered, "No. We were hoping you could tell us."

Noel closed his eyes for a moment and resisted the urge to spit out a string of curses. "I'm having a lot of trouble with these tracks. I'd better get back on it," he added.

"Right," said Cutter.

"Cattle prods. That might force them back into the anomaly if others try to come through," Abby suggested before whipping out her mobile. "Maybe shields like crowd-control police have as well."

Noel jogged back to where he'd been, watching carefully to make sure he didn't step on any tracks he hadn't yet seen. Then he settled down to try to track the damned beasts. 

***

Stephen felt completely useless. A possible pack of velociraptors, and he was stuck at the ARC. He had to trust that Miller would find them. Or the others might do. Abby had done a little tracking; Stephen ought to be working with her as well as Miller, because they could never have too many trackers. Cutter seemed to have an instinct for finding animals and trouble, Connor could use that amazing database he'd built to pull up information on raptors, and Abby came up with good ideas. 

Still, velociraptors! They could do serious damage in less time than the tranquillisers took to have an effect. He'd been lucky with the one at the shopping centre. The creatures that had attacked him in Leek's hellhole had wreaked havoc on his own body in mere seconds; the velociraptors might be smaller, but no one would suddenly electrocute them all, as Helen had killed his attackers. Stephen didn't even want to think about his friends coming too close to those monsters.

Lester came into the atrium and looked over his shoulder. Stephen had photos up on a couple of the smaller screens and a map on the central screen. "Now we wait?" said Lester, sounding no happier about it than Stephen felt.

"Unless you're willing to send me out there," Stephen said.

"I've already faced a vengeful Leek. I'd rather not have to deal with a vengeful Cutter."

That was far less negative than Stephen expected, so he pushed his luck a little. "It would be better to have a vengeful Cutter than...." He found he couldn't say "a dead one" out loud, though.

"You're not going anywhere."

That sounded fairly absolute, but Stephen had nothing better to do, so he kept arguing. "Miller's having trouble with the tracks."

"What makes you think you'd do better?" 

"About twelve years' experience in the field."

"And wouldn't you like to live long enough to get more?"

Stephen glared at him, annoyed at the sardonic tone. "With a weapon with more than a couple of bullets left in it, I'd be as safe as anyone else on the team."

Lester was looking at him already, but poker-faced. "From the raptors, perhaps. Not from the wrath of Cutter."

"So but for Cutter you'd send me?" Stephen couldn't quite believe the way this conversation was going.

"But for Cutter, and Gupta, and Jacobs—oh, and the fact that I really am trying to keep the casualty reports to a minimum. After all the trouble we've been through with you, I want a few more good working years from you, and that requires that you be alive."

"You need Cutter more than you need me," Stephen told him bluntly. 

Then Noel sent him some more photos, and Lester wandered away while he examined them.

***

Watching Miller wander about the field looking at his feet, Nick had to admit that they could have done with Stephen. He was still glad Stephen wasn't here; when Stephen had faced a raptor in the shopping centre, he'd ended up doing hand-to-hand combat with the thing. Of course, he'd also saved Nick's life when it came after him. The damned fool had taken an escalator up towards a deadly dinosaur! When Nick had called him on it later, he'd had the gall to grin and say, "The stairs would have been too slow." Nick shook his head at the memory. 

Stephen took far too many chances. They shouldn't risk him out here with an unknown number of deadly creatures on the loose. It was a miracle he'd lasted as long as he had without being seriously hurt. Well, except for the arthropleura bite. And nearly losing his leg to a combination of raptor teeth and an anomaly closing. But he hadn't even been badly hurt that time. Nor the time the scorpion had dragged him under the sand. Then Nick supposed he ought to be counting the concussions too, which raised the total.

Nick cast about looking for tracks himself, but the only ones he could make out came from their own booted feet. They'd been in these fields for nearly an hour already. God, he had a bad feeling about this.

***

Noel had to admit he couldn't do this. He couldn't follow the tracks in this dirt; he'd see something, but then he'd lose it again. Abby had finally pointed out that this field was actually fallow, nothing growing but some grass. Other fields were in use. Those should have better tracks. Yet Noel didn't know in which direction the creatures had gone, or if they'd gone in more than one, so he didn't know which fields to check.

Captain Robinson had the soldiers raise a tent as a command centre at the far end of the field from the anomaly: close enough to see it, but distant enough to have warning should anything come through. He set up a search plan, but it was an ordinary grid search. With a known point of origin, and their limited numbers, Noel felt certain they'd be better off working an outward spiral, but he couldn't convince the captain. Instead, Robinson pulled some more soldiers in and had Noel show them examples of what to watch for from Connor's database and the recent rover images. Everyone paired up—one civilian with each military, until they ran out of civilians, and then military with military. Many of the military were taken up closing roads, however, so there weren't many purely military teams. Noel kept the professor with himself. They were all to call in if they found anything.

Hart remained on the line, but he either wasn't saying anything or was muting his mic for long stretches of time. That was fine. Noel didn't need commentary on how poorly he was doing. Hart said he was doing a fairly good job, but Noel could mentally fill in 'for a beginner under poor conditions'. Noel finally promised to keep Hart in the loop and rang off.

"Damned traffic let them get such a head start," Cutter growled. "We could have done with a helicopter."

"If you tell Mr Lester so in your report, Professor, I'll second it."

"I've already told him on the phone."

They started another fruitless stretch of time searching for tracks, now on moister soil. 

"I may be new at this, sir, but I think I'd spot if they came through here," Noel finally told the professor.

Connor suddenly chimed in over the radio, which, thank God, was working for the moment. "We've got something," he said quickly. "Bit of blood and fur—we think it might have been a rabbit, or a rat. Virtually nothing left, but something happened here."

Noel whipped out the map they'd used to assign the searches. "You're still in that eastern field?"

"Yeah, around the middle of it."

"We'll be right there."

'Right there', of course, turned out to be a bit inaccurate. Noel worried they'd foul up some tracks he hadn't seen yet, so they proceeded carefully. As they approached Connor's position, Noel did see some prints in the dirt. Connor and Tyler had walked only a couple of metres away, apparently not noticing the trail among the fresh shoots. Noel rang Hart again and let him know.

Soon they were all looking at a surprisingly small smear of blood and fur. Noel could only go along with Connor's guess of a rodent, and Hart simply said he couldn't tell from the photos. But from there Noel could pick up better tracks—or at least more of them. They were again too confused for him to count separate creatures.

Noel made Cutter and Connor stay where they were and sent Tyler to gather the teams that had gone in completely the wrong direction, praying the raptors hadn't simply doubled back or split up. He followed the trail for a few minutes and managed to conclude that they had five distinct animals. Cutter and Connor came after him; he could make them stay back a short distance, far enough that they didn't muck up his trail, but they wouldn't stay put. He hoped that they were also far enough behind that if he came on the raptors suddenly, they couldn't get to the civilians without going through him first.

Then Noel heard Connor cheerfully tell the professor that if Noel was too focused on the ground to see the raptors, he'd be glad to have the two of them covering his six. God, he hoped it didn't come to that. 

***

Nick couldn't believe what he was hearing. Stephen had called him to ask to join them out in the field.

"You're barely back to working full days! In fact, you're not even allowed overtime. You're supposed to have left by now!" Nick yelled into his mobile.

"I'll take tomorrow off."

"Tomorrow's Saturday anyway."

Stephen kept at him: "Look, which is more important: me getting a full night's sleep, or protecting people from a pack of raptors?"

"It's not an either/or proposition." 

"It might be. Remember those jerboas that got out through the cat flap? How many houses out there may have cat flaps, or open barn doors?"

"Everyone has been warned to stay indoors, and even a small raptor won't fit through a cat flap!" He'd been awfully patient with Stephen throughout this long recovery period; did that make Stephen think he could push his luck? 

"I'd rather focus on my work here than argue with you, Stephen, and Noel might want to speak with you." Nick didn't want to think about the people who might go out if they heard strange noises from a barn, or who might go out anyway because people ignored government warnings all the time.

Noel threw a quick look over his shoulder, but Nick had no idea what it meant, if anything.

"I'm sorry, Stephen, and I do appreciate how badly you want to help. But I think we do have it under control—"

"You have a minimum of five raptors, and you don't know where they are!" Stephen was getting upset. Nick stopped for a moment and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he found Connor staring at him with concern.

"We've got the teams all focused in the right area now, and Noel has been following their tracks!" Nick told Stephen. Yes, Noel had been losing them and finding them again, but it was the finding them that counted. Nick stopped the voice in his head that was trying to list the names of the civilians who had died from creatures that came through the anomalies. 

He finally got rid of Stephen and recited silently to himself the names of some of the people they'd saved from creatures. He tried not to let it bother him too much that Stephen had been present for nearly every one of those and had rescued many of them personally.

***

When the fear for his team and the general population grew greater than his frustration, Stephen chose his arguments carefully.

"It's been two hours since they got there, over three since the anomaly opened!" Stephen began as soon as Lester returned on his circuit of... the whole ARC, for all Stephen knew. The man had been prowling restlessly, like an animal in a zoo. "The shadows are getting deeper. There are woods not far from that field they're in now. If the raptors headed for the woods, there's no way Miller can track them. He just doesn't have the experience!"

"Well, he'll have to do!" Lester shot back with equal frustration. "I'm not sending you to limp about in the woods at night."

"Because Cutter will yell at you? How does that compare to Cutter getting killed? Or a civilian? Or a group of Girl Guides in the woods?" 

Lester's eyes narrowed a little, and Stephen wasn't sure if Lester was annoyed with him or with the situation. Lester reminded him, "They've closed off the roads and notified everyone to stay indoors and away from windows. Jenny's cover story should be highly effective."

"Should be. For those who have heard it." Stephen pulled up two maps he'd been looking at before, plotting his strategy. "Here's our maps of the area," he said, pointing, "and here are our most recent satellite photos. I can see two tracks already that don't match the maps Jenny and Robinson had to close the area." 

Lester stepped right up to the screens. "I trust you told them this—"

"Of course! And the lanes don't lead out of the area, so no one should come in from outside that way," Stephen admitted, before Lester could realise it. "But people out for a walk, or a run, could be out there without hearing the warnings, without encountering any of our people. Hell, children could be out playing!"

Lester stiffened, and only then did Stephen remember that Lester had children himself. "So what do you recommend we do?" he asked, after a pause. 

"I recommend that you get me out there, in a helicopter, while we've still got enough sunlight for me to spot the tracks. It's not going to be easy as it is, with the shadows as long as they are. After dark, even I'm going to have trouble."

Lester looked at him like he was stupid, but Stephen didn't flinch. He'd been through far worse. "Then why should I send you? Surely we've only half an hour or so until sundown!"

Stephen almost choked on that. "Well over an hour! Do you even look out of the windows?"

Lester raised his arm to point up to his office. "Yes, and I see you! Not helpful."

Damn. Stephen could have told him it that sunset was even later than it was; he wouldn't have known the difference.

"Driving would waste time we don't have. Commandeer me a helicopter, and help me get out there before we get a call that the raptors have found something larger than a rabbit."

"Commandeer you a helicopter? Who the hell do you think I am?"

Stephen gave his best smile. "James Lester, one of the most feared and powerful—"

"Cut that out right now!"

"—men in the Home Office, has the ear of at least one minister—"

"I'm not military, and Captain Robinson can't easily arrange a helicopter for you."

"I know," Stephen said impatiently, "or I'd have called him! Look, you know that rabbit was hardly even an appetiser if we have five or more—"

"Hart?" Miller's voice came over the headset, and for a moment Stephen feared he'd forgotten to mute his mic again. "I'm not sure but I think they may have made it to the woods. It's not a very big wood, but...."

"Hold on," Stephen said, then remembered to turn the mic on again and repeated it before pressing mute once more. "They're in the woods. Miller can't do it."

Lester frowned. "No. I'm sorry, I simply can't—"

"Can't what? You can't allow me to risk my neck, but you can live with the risk to any family who might have missed the warnings or thought, 'Any bomb that hasn't gone off in 60 years won't now'? Any farmer who got impatient waiting for the all-clear?"

"Gupta hasn't cleared you! I haven't had a report from Jacobs. I can't send you back into the field. What—"

"Well, she's left for the day, and I won't see him again until next week! The raptors aren't going to wait for the paperwork!"

"What if you injure yourself again? What if you slow down the team?"

Stephen jumped to his feet and stabbed a finger at the screen. "They've gone from here to here in two bloody hours! How can I possibly slow them down? I could crawl faster than that!"

"Do any crawling, and Gupta will have you on bed rest for week," Lester said, and Stephen knew he'd won.

Of course, the argument hadn't quite ended yet. Lester looked like he might burst a blood vessel when he asked Stephen if he'd talked to Cutter, and Stephen had to admit that Cutter had rejected his help. Stephen did convince him to make some phone calls and be sure a helicopter was on standby.

Then he called Cutter back. And got a busy signal. God, the most important man on the anomaly project didn't have call waiting on his mobile? Stephen yelled for Lester, but only Lorraine answered.

"He's on the phone," she told him from up on the ramp, "arranging your helicopter."

"Right," he sighed, and he dialled Connor.

Connor answered at once. "We've got some tracks leading into the woods," Connor told him breathlessly, apparently unaware that he knew the situation. 

"Connor," Stephen tried to interrupt.

"Noel keeps making us stay back; he's worried we'll walk on the tracks."

Stephen had no doubt that Noel had other worries besides that, but he didn't say so. "Connor, I know. I need—"

"And it's getting a bit late; I don't—"

"Connor!" Stephen bellowed. "I need to talk—"

Then his own call waiting sounded. Oh, bloody hell! He asked Connor to hold and switched to the other line.

Noel didn't waste time identifying himself. "Hart, there are leaves down, and even with a torch to give me light directly on any given area, I'm having trouble seeing anything useful on the ground."

"You've positioned men around the woods, to watch in case they exit?" Stephen asked automatically.

"Of course. That much I can do." He could hear the strain in Miller's voice. "But the men are spread a bit thin. They might miss a small group, and if they separate and one comes out alone.... Hart, I can't do this. They're only bird footprints. If we were tracking them through mud, yeah. But—"

"I know," Stephen cut him off, trying to hold onto his remaining patience. "I'm coming. Lester's ordered me a helicopter."

He took a deep breath and added, "Don't tell Cutter. I'm telling him myself. His line's busy, so I've got Connor—oh, never mind. Just don't tell Cutter. I'll be there as quick as I can. Meantime, do your best. You do know this, better than you think you do. You might have it wrapped up before I even get there."

The silence continued so long Stephen wondered if they'd been cut off. "Miller? You still there?"

"Sir. Sorry, sir. Yes. Keep tracking, let you tell the professor. Got it."

"I may be out of communication for some of the time, getting on and off the chopper, that sort of thing. I'll stay on the line with you as much as I can. But I've got to talk to Cutter now."

"Right, sir. Out."

Stephen managed to retrieve his call to Connor and send Connor after Cutter. God, he should have gone there in the first place. Raptors might be dangerous, but trying to work from a desk would give him a heart attack if he kept it up.

At last he got Cutter, on Connor's phone. "Stephen, I'm on my phone with Jenny. I don't have any new information, so I'm afraid you're going to have to wait—"

"Cutter! I do have new information! I'm coming up there. I know you don't want me, but Miller—"

"What? Stephen, I can't hear you."

Stephen knew damned well that Cutter could hear him as clearly as he could hear the other man. He didn't know whether Cutter was playing at the phone not working right or honestly thought he must have misheard.

So he yelled. "I'm coming there! Lester's getting me a helicopter. I'll—"

"You can't be serious!" Cutter yelled back.

"Of course I'm serious! You've got a pack of raptors—at least one pack. Miller—"

"No!"

Stephen's patience snapped. How many times had he contained himself over the past few weeks when Cutter threatened to get on his last nerve? After a brief bout in which they simply tried to shout over each other, he yelled, "If you don't like it, talk to Lester!" and hung up.

Lester immediately walked into his line of sight from somewhere behind him. "You know I'll make you pay for that." His arms were crossed, and he didn't look at all amused.

"Don't care," Stephen said, barely managing not to yell. "Now where's my helicopter?"

"On its way. Gear up, check out whatever you need from the armoury, and for God's sake do not leave that walking stick here."

***

Noel could heard Cutter shouting into a mobile from some distance away. He thought about Hart walking out when the professor told him he should have taken Jensen's offer, and he wondered how a more serious argument between them would go. He didn't want to witness that.

He couldn't afford the distraction. He kept picking up a bit of scent here and then losing it. The other soldiers were restless, stationed around the woods; they wanted to be where the action was. Noel wanted to be able to listen as well as look and smell. And right now, all he could hear was one very angry team leader.

One very angry team leader calling his name. Noel picked his way quickly and carefully back to the approaching Cutter.

"Did you ask Stephen to come out here?" Even in the shadows, he could see that Cutter's face was flushed with anger.

"No, sir." He thought of saying more, but none of it would make matters better, so he stopped there. 

"Are you still on the line with him? Because he hung up on me!"

Noel unmuted his mic. "Hart?"

Cutter moved closer to him, probably ready to yell into the mic.

"Miller?" Hart sounded breathless. 

"What's your status?" Noel asked, trying to buy some time and maybe ease the situation a little.

Noel never had the chance; Cutter pulled the headset off his head. Completely unprepared for the move, he stood for a moment with his mouth hanging open. Cutter was shoving it onto his own head, fumbling a bit in his anger.

Never had any of his training, basic or advanced, covered what to do when a civilian who technically commanded you simply took your equipment. Should he ask for it back?

"If you show up here, I will fire you again! No, you listen—don't you dare cut me off! Stephen! Stephen?"

Cutter thrust the headset back at Noel. "Get him back!"

His father always said, "Discretion is the better part of valour."

Noel put the headset on. The call was well and truly lost. He dialled back and got a busy signal, then tried again and went straight to voice mail. Oh, hell. And Cutter was looking at him like it was his fault.

"Sir," Noel said as calmly as he could manage, "the best I can do is try to track the creatures before he arrives and save him the trouble. Now if you'll excuse me, I can do this easier if you're well back." He shone his torch on the ground again. Leaves, twigs—all disturbed, at least partly by one Scottish academic.

"You didn't know anything about this?"

"I heard right before he called you, sir."

Cutter snorted. Noel deliberately didn't look up. He returned to the last tracks he'd found and began making a slow spiral around them, hoping they led somewhere. Hoping, too, that they were in fact tracks, and from the raptors.

***

Stephen tried to get ready fast, but he wasn't used to changing into the black uniforms and Kevlar vests. They'd worn them for a bit in the early days of the ARC, but then the civilians had stopped using them. The others had started wearing them again after he'd been hurt—as if that would have prevented anything, since he'd been fired and they thought they were retrieving Rex. The weapons, however, he'd used much more recently. His accuracy had suffered from his injuries and time away from the range, but he'd better have something. A handgun shouldn't prove too much for his wrist. He doubted he'd need one for more than a couple of minutes at most. Either he'd get the raptors, or they'd get him, before muscle fatigue caught up with him. He finally checked a Beretta and a small tranq gun out of the armoury.

God, Stephen hoped he was ready for this. Jacobs wouldn't like it. Then again, he reasoned, Jacobs would like it even less if Stephen lost a team-mate. He'd only had the one full-blown flashback so far, and Jacobs didn't seem too worried about it. The smell of burning had caught Stephen completely by surprise that day. This time, he knew what to expect. He knew how bad things could get, but he also had training that might prevent the situation from getting bad. No one else had all his experience.

Stephen kept the stick with him as he ran towards the exit. Lester was suddenly right beside him, so he slowed a little. He'd get enough lectures about pushing himself too hard from Cutter; he didn't need them from Lester first.

"You're not really supposed to be in the field yet, so if you get hurt, we have no responsibility," Lester told him as he matched his stride.

What the hell? "I wasn't supposed to be in that building with Helen and Cutter, either," Stephen reminded him. 

"Yes, but you did rather save greater London from predation by anachronistic creatures, so we decided to overlook it just the once. The paperwork was dreadful. Don't do it again."

"I have no intention of a repeat performance." Stephen sped up again.

Lester sped up too and seemed to keep pace without difficulty. "Good. By the way, Cutter's already started calling to yell at me. I handed him over to Lorraine for a bit."

Stephen shrugged. He couldn't do anything about it now.

"I think she put him on hold, but without the hold music. I do wonder how long he'll yell at no one before he realises, but I don't suppose we'll ever know."

"Connor can probably analyse the phone records for you," Stephen said absently as he mentally reviewed the maps. He'd packed hard copies in his pockets, but he might not have the time to fumble for them in the increasing gloom. He should have been on site already.

"Oh, that's a good idea." Lester sounded surprised.

Stephen went through the outer doors. A helicopter awaited him, rotors turning, ready to take off.

"Good luck," Lester shouted unexpectedly over the din of the helicopter. "And remember: this was all your idea, and don't you dare tell Cutter anything different."

Once in the helicopter, Stephen had a radio link back to the ARC, and Lorraine managed to route him through to Miller again.

"Cutter's spitting bullets," Miller warned him in a tone so low Stephen could hardly hear it, despite the earphones muting the sound of the chopper. 

"I'll just tranq him," Stephen said with forced cheer, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach.

"I've lost the tracks. I simply can't find them! We've paired back up to search the woods."

"So you're with Cutter?" Stephen asked, amazed that Miller could say what he did with Cutter right there.

"He's off with Connor this time. I've got Abby."

Stephen heard Abby's voice but couldn't make out the words. He laughed, just a little. His abdominal muscles reminded him that this was the longest he'd worked since before he got himself fired, and that he hadn't done any running since then. Nor should he this evening.

It took a real effort not to think about his last encounter with creatures. These were small raptors, Connor had assured him. Nothing like what he'd faced. The size of wild turkeys, Connor said. Simply big birds, with feathers and long tails. And sharp teeth. Lots of very, very sharp teeth. Not to mention the claws.

***

It was a damned good thing Stephen wasn't in front of him right now, Nick thought, because he had a gun. He felt a tiny, momentary twinge of guilt for thinking such a thing about the man who'd saved his life, but it passed. What was Stephen thinking? He still had a walking stick, and he wouldn't even fire his guns at the range when anyone else was around. Nick knew why: Stephen must be embarrassed about his abilities now. He had no business coming out here. Stephen couldn't truly help; he could only hurt their efforts, and probably himself as well.

So Stephen was willing to go along and pretend to be a good team player again until he didn't like the way things were going, and then he went over Nick's head. He'd hardly even talked to Nick about coming out to the site. Nick had barely begun to scratch the surface of why he shouldn't! Then Lester wouldn't listen to him, and Lorraine seemed to have lost the call. Not that she could do anything to improve the situation anyway. Perhaps he could persuade her to slip Lester some arsenic next time they ordered in sandwiches.

Nick shook his head. He knew he needed to concentrate on the problem at hand. He didn't need these damned distractions. That's what Stephen had become—a distraction. How the hell was Nick supposed to take him back on the team when he only took the orders he liked?

Connor was walking bent nearly double with a torch, looking at the ground intently. Nick hardly bothered. He knew he couldn't see anything. He'd never been very good at it on field trips with Stephen, and Noel had shown him what he said were the clearest tracks. He had to take Noel's word that they were raptor tracks at all! What the hell use Connor thought he would be at this, Nick didn't know. At least one of them felt like he was doing something useful, though, and Nick wasn't going to take that away from Connor. Another soldier trailed them at a slight distance, looking constantly around.

He tried to think of what he might say when Stephen came. What would get him out of harm's way and back on that helicopter? Lester would have strong words for him if they wasted a flight like that, but it was better than throwing a disabled man into the middle of a dangerous situation. Stephen wasn't ready for this. He wasn't going to be able to do what he thought he could. He would only set back his own recovery and distract from the business of finding the raptors. There was no way in hell Nick was going to risk an already injured man—or the people who would be trying to protect that man. It was the soldiers' job, but Abby and Connor wouldn't stay away from Stephen, and if they followed orders the way Stephen did....

Nick realised Connor had been calling him. "D'you think these are tracks?" the young man asked.

"I thought we'd pretty much given up on tracks, Connor," Nick said as gently as he could. "We're looking for signs of a kill, and listening for anything unusual." If they were lucky, they'd have some warning before they encountered a raptor in the flesh. Of course, they weren't always lucky.

"I can hear soldiers tromping thataway." Connor stood and pointed. "That's all I hear. I thought they were supposed to be stealthy?"

"Maybe Noel can take that up in training." Then Nick realised he'd been overlooking the obvious. "You've been pretty close to Stephen lately, right?"

Connor's head snapped around quickly to face Nick, but with the trees blocking most of the slanting sunlight that remained, Nick couldn't see his expression.

"Yeah. I suppose so." Connor sounded noncommittal.

"What do I say to him to get him to follow orders?" Frustration crept back into Nick's voice, though he tried to keep it out. "He used to listen to me."

"He still does." Connor turned back to his search. "He.... He listens to you. Honest. Quotes you all the time."

"He does? On what?"

"Keeping the creatures alive, keeping the military in its place, the need for safety, the need to be fully certified on the tranq guns, both so that I can protect myself and so that I can protect the creatures from the soldiers, who won't be carrying tranq guns."

Was Connor making this up to appease him? Probably not; Stephen did tend to talk like that anyway. They always had agreed on some things.

Connor stopped, and Nick realised he'd followed him smack to the edge of the woods and a soldier some distance away had jumped and pointed a gun at them. He turned it aside just as quickly, calling out an apology.

"I don't think we were supposed to exit here," Connor said, turning around. "We—wait! Did you hear that?"

Nick hadn't heard anything.Then he did: gunshots.

Connor started to run back into the trees, but Nick yelled, "No! Faster to go around the outside, I think!" The soldier they'd seen had started running. Nick broke into a run after Connor, who was faster.

The gunfire had stopped after only a few rounds, and soon they could hear yelling. As they got closer, Cutter could see people down on the ground. Noel and Abby reached them before he did, Noel yelling at the soldiers. Two of the men on the ground instantly jumped up and got their guns into position. Sloppy, that they needed an officer yelling at them to do that! 

Cutter didn't reach the group very long after Connor and the soldier. The men had all been clustered around an injured soldier. The wounded man lay on the ground, a medic tending bleeding wounds on his legs. Also on the ground was a raptor, clearly shot dead. The blood painted the ground so much that Nick hoped some of the blood on the soldier's trousers wasn't his own, but splatter from the dead creature.

"Contact Robinson. Have this man evacuated as soon as possible," Noel ordered. "You!" he shouted at the soldier who'd been on the outskirts of the woods. "Back to your post in case others come through back there!" 

The soldier saluted and ran.

"Maybe we can get him evacuated on the chopper bringing Hart?" the medic suggested. A sergeant got on the radio immediately.

"He only saw three raptors," Abby explained to them as Noel began picking his way along a hedgerow leading away from the woods. Cutter, Abby, Connor, and a couple of soldiers followed, at a distance, giving Noel space. "Apparently we flushed them out of the woods nearly right at him!" She sounded appalled. "He wasn't sure if he hit the others," she added.

"I could do with some quiet, please," Noel called back. He shone the torch atop his weapon along the ground next to the hedgerow, and occasionally he peered into the brush cautiously. Nick shone his torch, too; Abby and Connor kept theirs off.

Finally, a trail they could follow: the bloodstains were thickening as they crept along, using the torches to augment the decreasing sunlight.

Minutes crept by. Were they even on the right trail? They should be right behind the buggers. How fast could those things run? Nick hissed the question to Connor, but suddenly Noel held up a hand for silence.

Abby hefted her tranquilliser gun, and Nick and Connor followed suit a little belatedly. Noel was carrying a tranq gun, but that wasn't the weapon he held ready.

"Wait!" hissed Abby, and she ran up alongside Noel.

Now Nick could hear it—rustling in the growth ahead of them. They all moved forward slowly, following Noel's signal. Sticks crunched under Connor's boots. There was silence for a moment, and then a louder noise—a scuffle, some squawks, and Noel ran forward. At this point they didn't need the torches: they could see two raptors tearing at each other, with blood evident even in the gathering dusk.

Noel shot four times, and all movement ceased.

For a moment there was complete stillness: no one moved, no one spoke.

Abby broke the spell with two steps that took her in front of Noel. "You didn't have to kill them!" 

He was already sidestepping, pointing his gun at the ground. "Don't ever get in front of my weapon," Noel said in a voice that Nick had never heard from him before. "You know better than that."

Nick drew up right behind. "She's right, though."

"They attacked one of our men. I couldn't take the risk, sir."

"They were injured!" Abby pointed, and Nick shone his torch on them.

He could see great tears in the one on the bottom, gobs of flesh hanging off. He could see bullet holes more clearly in the one on top. 

"The soldier had already hit them!" Abby was furious. "We could have tranq'd them and taken them back...."

"They were fighting for their lives," Noel explained calmly, casting his light about as he moved his gun slowly side to side. "They'd turned on each other already, and they'd have turned on us in a moment. You've told me those sedatives take a few seconds to work, minimum. They're too damned fast. If we're this close, I'm shooting. And I'm not going to argue. We don't have time."

"Guys, where are the rest?" Connor asked. He'd turned his torch on but was looking more behind them. "You said there were five of them."

"Yeah," said Noel heavily. "Price only saw three. The pack might have split up when they couldn't find enough food? Something startled them?" He answered his own question when the others didn't. "It hardly matters. The important thing is, I'm pretty sure we've got at least two more out there."

"Can we at least try to use tranquillisers?" Abby pressed. She looked to Nick for help.

Nick wanted to say something in support, but he couldn't. Stephen was too much on his mind. He had nearly lost Stephen just a few weeks ago. Nick had also held Captain Ryan while he breathed his last. People's lives were worth more than animals'. They would save the animals whenever they could, but they'd nearly lost a soldier back there to these two animals. Noel had done the right thing.

Noel raised a hand suddenly and hissed, "Hang on—what's that?" 

"That's a car! Somebody—" Abby started across the field towards what might have been a narrow lane.

Noel muttered something that might have been a curse. "Don't go off by yourself!" he said. He turned almost at once to look at Nick and Connor and waved. "Come on! Nobody stays by the hedgerows alone!"

***

As Noel made his way towards the approaching sound, and especially towards Abby, he thought that his original opinion might have been right. Civilians were too much trouble. They'd seen Hart practically torn apart by creatures, and still they were all for tranquillising them and hoping for the best. These beasts were killers. 

There might only be two raptors left, but he wasn't certain of his original count. And if a pack broke into smaller teams, then the five he'd counted might not have been the whole group anyway. At least no others had slipped through into their time since ARC personnel had arrived at the anomaly site. The men there kept in contact over radio: a few raptors had tried to come through, but electric cattle prods convinced them to turn back without injury to the soldiers.

A car pulled up at the side of the road, and Noel recognised it when Jenny Lewis jumped out on the driver's side.

Stephen Hart hopped out of the passenger side and a private emerged from the back with his weapon, already on alert. Hart turned to pull things from the car.

"Delivered as promised," Ms. Lewis said too brightly.

Hart pulled out a tranq gun with a small torch on top, released the strap across the top of the handgun in his thigh holster, and picked up his walking stick from the back seat.

"Take him back," Cutter said, his voice tinged with bitterness.

Hart faced him. "We know there's a man injured and one raptor down."

"Noel just shot two more," Abby said flatly.

"Leaving two?" Stephen asked.

"Doesn't matter if there's thirty," Cutter interrupted. "You're not needed here, Stephen. Jenny, take him back."

Hart persevered. "So you know where the remaining... how many did you say, again?"

Noel didn't want to be in the middle of this, but he'd been asked a direct question. "At least two, I think, but we don't know wh—"

"Stephen!" the professor shouted. "For once in your life, listen!"

Hart's shoulders slumped a little. "I did listen, Cutter. And then I talked to Lester. He's in charge of the operation. He authorised—"

"It's my team, my operation, and you're not on it!"

"I—"

"And unless you get back in that car right now, you won't be on it. Ever again. I have no use for a team member who won't take orders and will go over my head whenever he feels like it."

Noel turned to shine his torch out over the field so that nothing could sneak up on them. They couldn't afford this argument now. They needed Hart, whether he was fit for duty or not, and Noel suspected Cutter's opposition had as much to do with Hart's physical condition as his anger at being overruled.

"Nick. I have never gone over your head before." Hart's tone remained even and low.

"At the canal? When I told you—"

"I was following orders! Orders I didn't ask for. We don't have time for this."

Noel heard a few steps and turned to see Hart staring at the fence. The tracker hesitated only a moment, hooked his walking stick into his tac vest, and climbed awkwardly over. It was obvious his left leg still wasn't at full strength, but no one moved to help him. Noel wasn't sure if they were a little too surprised to move in time, or giving Hart a chance to prove his fitness—or lack of it.

"James says he is needed, Nick, and James does have the authority to add him to the team," Ms. Lewis said in a matter-of-fact tone.

 Noel turned back to the field.

"And I have the authority to refuse him," Cutter asserted.

"No, you don't," she told him firmly but not rudely.

Hart walked up to Noel. "So what do we know about the location—?"

"Stephen! I'm not finished with you!" Cutter stalked over, standing far too close to Hart for comfort. Noel wanted to move back from both of them, but he held his ground. Hell, he'd rather be tracking raptors, but he needed Hart for that.

"Look," Cutter said in a low voice. "Apparently you can do this, and I can't stop you. And we haven't got time to argue."

Thank God he knew that, Noel thought, even if he did seem to be the last one to realise it.

"But I can stop you from rejoining the team as a regular member. And I will. You can still get back in that car. You can follow my orders, and you can complete your convalescence, and you can come back when the doctors clear you. Or you can do what you're doing, and I'll never work with you again."

"Cutter!" Abby cried.

In the silence that followed, Noel could hear Hart swallow.

"There's not enough light left to waste," Stephen said, and he turned his back on Cutter. He took a small step away from the professor and towards Noel. "What do we know about the rest?"

"Nothing," Noel admitted. "Price saw three. Those are all dead now. I think there were at least two more, and we have no idea where they are."

***

Nick felt utterly sick. He had honestly that thought Stephen wouldn't.... Wouldn't what? Call his bluff? But he hadn't been bluffing. He couldn't afford a subordinate who wouldn't accept his orders. Damn it, though, he'd given these orders for Stephen's own good! But the reason didn't matter. Having Stephen do whatever the hell he pleased was too dangerous for all of them, both because it put Stephen in danger, and because it set a bad precedent for Abby and Connor. They already disregarded or reinterpreted orders too often as it was; if they thought Nick would tolerate it any longer, they needed to learn otherwise.

Jenny was saying something about Lester staying at the ARC until things were resolved. Nick managed to register barely enough to nod.

She put a hand on his arm and put her face close to his. "Nick, he has to do this. For himself, and for whoever might be out here. Do you know the soldiers have already turned back three cars on various roads? They sent one other through because it was coming out of this area, not going in! But none of them were supposed to be on the roads here. They've also flagged down a cyclist and one person out running and escorted them backk to their homes." She waited a moment. Nick wasn't sure if she was giving him time to respond or letting the information sink in.

Jenny continued, "People are not staying indoors. People miss the announcements, or they disregard them.... Someone's going to get hurt or killed, and it's not going to be just a soldier."

"Just a soldier," Nick repeated, surprised.

She winced and shook her head. "I didn't mean that. I mean—soldiers signed on for this. What if a child is next? Or someone's mother or father?"

"Don't try to manipulate me," he said coldly, angry to see her talents turned against him. 

"It's not manipulation. It's the truth." She sounded tired and frustrated. "Work with Stephen. Don't let anyone else get hurt—or killed. That injured soldier is going back in Stephen's helicopter, by the way. Nick, don't make it personal. It's not about defying your authority. It's about doing his damned job, which no one else can, right now. And for God's sake, save the arguments until at least tomorrow. Now you'd better catch up with them."

Nick turned to see Noel and Stephen most of the way back to the hedgerow, with Connor and Abby not far behind them. He hadn't even heard them go; he was still standing by the fence.

He felt a sudden kiss on his cheek, and he turned back to see that Jenny had already turned away to get back in her car.

***

Miller played his torch over the bodies of two raptors. Stephen's heart beat hard in his chest, but that wasn't abnormal. He wasn't panicking. He could do this. 

"I had to shoot them. Abby had a—Abby got angry," the lieutenant told Stephen quietly.

Stephen shrugged. "Abby...." He realised he didn't have anything useful to say and gave up. Instead, he bent down for a good look at their teeth and claws. He needed to know what he was up against and how their tracks looked in person.

"No one has seen any sign of the remaining two, or however many there are?" he asked instead, hoping that last bit hadn't come off as denigrating Miller's skills. He was doing a damned good job for someone who'd only been on the team for a few weeks. None of the team had been hurt since he'd been with them, Cutter hadn't kicked Miller off, and several creatures had been sent back to their times.

"No. I'm hard put to work out how many tracks I'm looking at, even when I can find tracks, which I haven't for well over an hour now."

Stephen used the stick to help him stand back up, easing the strain on his leg. He played his torch up and down, walking carefully alongside the hedgerow and shining the light into the bushes and weeds. It made sense for the creatures to seek cover in the unfamiliar landscape. Perhaps the others had gone through here before the ones that Miller had shot came through? 

He couldn't help but notice that Cutter was standing some distance away, apart from Abby and Connor, who were practically shoulder to shoulder a few metres behind Stephen. 

"D'you think they went this way?" Connor called hopefully.

"Still checking," Stephen replied. 

Miller followed close behind Stephen, looking where he was looking, adding his own beam of light.

"I don't see anything on this side, do you?" Stephen asked after a couple of minutes of looking.

"Me? No. Once we get past the blood and feathers from the dead ones, nothing."

Stephen nodded and pushed his way through the hedgerow with some difficulty, praying he wasn't obliterating anything important. Miller followed him through, right in his footprints, Stephen noted approvingly; it had taken Cutter more than one field trip and many verbal reminders to learn that trick. Stephen glanced back, but it was dark enough that he couldn't see Cutter's face clearly. He could tell that his arms were crossed, though.

"Connor! Abby! Cutter! Keep an eye out around, and ears open! Don't let anything creep up on us in the shadows!"

"We could hear these two before we could see them," Connor called back, but Abby slapped him on the arm, and he shut his mouth again.

Stephen and Miller played their torches around the other side. The foliage was too thick for raptors to walk through the hedgerow itself for any distance. Stephen couldn't see any tracks on the clearer ground.

"I don't know that the others even came this way," Miller said quietly after a couple of minutes. "Price only saw the three; they came out of the woods right on top of him. They probably weren't following the others, or Price would have seen them."

There was nothing for it but to go back to some of the tracks Miller had found earlier and hope he could pick up a trail that led to the remaining creatures. They headed back, with Stephen and Miller in the lead, shining their torches on the ground in case there was anything there to find. Stephen would rather have put Miller in the rear, to ensure that nothing could come on them from behind, but he wanted his help tracking. Hardly any daylight remained, and the trees blotted that out when the team entered the woods. He asked Abby to watch the rear: she had good eyes and ears, and more common sense than the remaining two combined. Cutter radiated disapproval, but he walked in Stephen's footprints, or near as made no difference, and he didn't say a word.

Stephen would rather still have had him arguing, but he knew that was selfish. Argument, even simple rebuke, would mean Cutter still felt Stephen was worth talking to, but it could distract him. Stephen needed to focus. He needed to put the personal out of his mind. He'd have plenty of time for regrets later. He'd grown used to them over the years. 

From time to time Stephen bent to look at the ground, but he could find no definite sign of raptors after they'd crossed the tracks of the three that had come at Price. Maybe his skills had become too rusty while he'd been recuperating. Maybe it was simply too dark and the ground was wrong for the imprints of the creatures. Maybe the other raptors hadn't come this way. Maybe he should have gone back with Jenny when Cutter offered him the chance. No, Stephen reminded himself: no room for personal worries.

Miller kept pace with him easily; at one point he put a hand under Stephen's elbow to help him stand back up after another fruitless close examination of the ground. The soldier looked grim. He must be thinking of the injured man; he'd said he wasn't certain of the smell of blood. This was his first posting, wasn't it? Miller shouldn't have seen anyone wounded before.

Connor was uncharacteristically quiet. He had his arms wrapped around him, though his layers of clothing should be sufficient for the unseasonably warm evening. Stephen was relieved when Connor finally broke the silence.

"This weather must be colder than they're used to?" It was a question rather than a statement, though Connor surely knew the answer better than the others. "Maybe they've curled up somewhere to wait for daylight and warmth again?"

"If we're lucky," Stephen said, trying to be encouraging, but Cutter spoke at almost the same time.

"We've seen other creatures run wild through colder nights than this. I don't see why we should be particularly lucky." 

"We've been lucky before." Abby sounded as if she'd been waiting for an excuse to argue with Cutter, and maybe she had. "We're all here because we've been lucky at least once. We should have been dead from those mer-creatures—Lucien, Connor, me, and even you, Cutter—but for Stephen showing up with weapons."

Oh, God. Why that example?

"If Stephen had just listened—" Cutter started.

"Abby," Stephen interrupted gently, hoping that addressing Abby would prevent Nick from taking offence. "We need to stay focused. And quiet, so we can listen. For raptors," he added.

"Sorry," she said in a voice almost too low to carry to him.

Everyone lapsed back into silence. 

***

Noel couldn't fault Hart's thoroughness, but every time he stopped to check the ground more closely, they all had to stop. They hadn't even made it back to the last set of prints he'd found yet, and they'd lost the daylight. Well, people were less likely to leave their homes now, weren't they? If everyone stayed locked up tight, they had hours.

Of course, on a Saturday morning people wouldn't stay in their homes, no matter what story Jenny Lewis circulated. So Hart had better find the creatures before daylight. 

Hart showed no desire to argue with Cutter. Perhaps he felt too tired; he still had physio on Fridays, didn't he? He rarely used the walking stick around the ARC anymore, and Noel had begun to wonder why he continued to bring it. Now he knew: Hart brought it in case he needed to go into the field, approval be damned.

Noel hoped it was worth it. Cutter didn't seem the kind to back down from a threat, and he'd made it in front of several people. Noel still didn't know Hart all that well, but he remembered the wistful looks Hart had given the trackways and his expression whenever the ADD went off and he stayed behind. Noel knew what the team meant to him. He also knew they needed him. Of course, Cutter would face a rebellion in the ranks if he carried out his threat. Abby was merely saving her arguments for later, Noel would bet. Connor hated personal conflict, but Noel suspected he cared too much about Stephen to let him go without saying something. Hart's cool professionalism helped keep everyone in line for the moment, Cutter included. 

Maybe if Hart found the raptors, Cutter would forgive him. After all, he'd fired him once but taken him back. Of course, Hart had saved Cutter's life that time. He wasn't in any shape to do that now.

Indeed, Hart wasn't lifting his left foot properly, and he was using the walking stick again. They had better find these creatures soon.

***

Nick knew he was too distracted for the work at hand, but he felt so damned useless that he couldn't seem to pull himself out of his own thoughts. He couldn't talk, because that would disturb the trackers, and Abby, and even Connor, who were all listening intently. Nick knew from experience that everyone else would hear something long before he did, so it wasn't worth trying to help. Every so often one of them would start, but the noise would turn out to be a bird or a squirrel.

He did have to think of his authority. He led not only this team but also in some ways the whole ARC. Lester might be head of the project, but Nick made the scientific decisions, and even the military generally followed his judgements. He couldn't be seen to cave in to pressure, or personal friendship, when his orders had been so cavalierly disregarded.

Yet he shouldn't have made it all or nothing, he realised now. He shook his head at himself, then shook it again when Connor paused a moment and threw him a questioning look. Maybe Jenny was right. Maybe he was making it personal. Stephen seemed to be working very hard not to make it personal.

Nick hated admitting he was wrong. He didn't know anyone who liked it, true, but Nick did seem to have particular problems in that area. Maybe this time he needed to apologise, to take back his words. That was leadership too, wasn't it? Admitting mistakes? Plus, there was team morale to consider. Connor huddled, folded miserably in upon himself though it wasn't cold. In the moments when a light caught Connor's face, he looked as though someone had shot Rex. Nick could practically feel Abby's eyes boring into his back. He had no idea what Noel thought.

Nick had never asked to be in charge; the position had simply fallen to him. He'd been content as a lecturer with a few students. (He attracted a lot, but most found other mentors after they'd tried working with him for a little while.) He'd never meant to lead a team. He had never truly learned to be a leader.

A dark forest with raptors in it was a hell of a place to have an epiphany. Or a partial epiphany. Nick knew where he'd gone wrong, but he had little sense of how to correct his mistake.

He was still wrapped in his thoughts when everyone came to a dead halt. Noel was on the radio again; he'd been checking in frequently. Nick was far enough back to pretend that he hadn't quite heard rather than that he hadn't been listening.

"The soldiers just found the body of an animal," Connor filled him in quietly.

"We need to move fast," Noel announced, looking at Stephen.

Stephen hesitated a moment. "You'll be faster without me," he said. "I'll catch up as best I can."

"No!" Nick objected. "We're not leaving you behind!"

"No, sir," said Miller. "You're all staying with him." He nodded, a gesture that seemed to have become his form of a salute to civilians, and ran off at an angle from the direction they'd been walking.

Stephen tucked his stick under an arm and started a sort of limping run after him. 

"Stephen!" Nick snapped without even thinking about it.

Stephen stopped and turned at once.

"For God's sake, don't try to run! They found a body, not the raptors themselves. If there's tracks leading away from it, we'll need you to follow. You can't do that if you completely rui