Fic, Silk and Steel, Part 81
May. 23rd, 2012 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Silk and Steel, Part 81
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Nick, Stephen, Connor, Abby, Annie, Blade, Stringer, Lacey, Matt Rees.
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : The team have to deal a difficult anomaly call out.
Warning : Slave!fic.
A/N : The links to all previous parts can be found HERE. Tanya Lacey appears with kind permission of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reggietate and Matt Rees appears courtesy of telperion_15.
Stephen stepped through the anomaly with a sense of mingled trepidation and wonder that he knew he’d never lose, no matter how often he made the transition from one time to the next.
One moment he was in Epping Forest on a spring afternoon, the next he was staring out into darkness lit only by the flickering shards of the time portal. Connor’s mobile probe had warned him what to expect, but that was no substitute for experiencing the transition for himself.
He flashed the beam of his torch around and the two soldiers who had accompanied him did the same with their rifle-mounted flashlights.
“Jesus Christ,” Lieutenant Matt Rees breathed in awe as beside him, Jake Hennessey simply stood and stared. It was the first time through an anomaly for both of them and Stephen knew how they felt.
He took a step forward, feeling stony ground beneath his feet. The torch beams revealed a stony, barren landscape with a cluster of jagged rocks standing like broken teeth about 200 metres to their right. Once Stephen had ascertained that they weren’t facing any immediate threat, he dropped to one knee on the bare earth and started to search for tracks, wanting to be sure that only the five animals he’d originally estimated had gone through.
The tracks were surprisingly easy to read, even with only the aid of the torches. He was able to follow the cloven tracks of some kind of hoofed ungulate and the pug marks of the hyaena group. There were more specks of blood on the sand, indicating that the creatures had been following an already injured prey. He knew hyaenas didn’t deserve their reputation for being cowardly, but they would certainly take advantage of defenceless prey that they could overcome easily.
“Hart,” Matt Rees’s voice held a note of concern.
Stephen looked up, wondering what the man had seen.
Rees gestured with his rifle-mounted torch into the darkness. To Stephen’s surprise he could see another light flickering some distance away from them, shining like a beacon in the darkness.
“Does that mean there are people here?” Rees asked quietly. “Is it a camp-fire?”
Stephen stared at the light for a moment and then shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He hesitated for a moment, confirming in his own mind what he was looking at before saying, “It’s another anomaly.”
* * * * *
Annie Morris drew in a slow breath, doing her best to remain calm in the face of the group of hyaenas staring at them out of the dark undergrowth.
The eerie chattering noise fell away into silence as the animals fixed them with their gaze, tracking every movement with their eyes.
Annie Morris couldn’t suppress a shiver as she returned their gaze. The creatures were beautiful, but this wasn’t a wildlife film. It was real, and they undoubtedly had the speed and strength to kill her all too easily.
“Striped hyaenas,” Abby said quietly. “They’re an endangered species now, maybe fewer than 10,000 left in the wild.” She shot Captain Stringer a hard look. “I want these animals sent back through the anomaly unharmed, Joel.”
The look on Stringer’s face could probably best be described as resigned. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. “But if there’s a threat to life…”
“Don’t go there,” Abby retorted. “We’re dealing with a family group here. They’re monogamous and these are their young. They’re out of their own time and it’s our job to get them back in one piece.”
“Tell me what we need to know about them, ma’am,” Stringer said quietly. “Help me out here, I need some hard facts. How do they hunt?”
“They’re nocturnal,” Abby said, her face a mask of concentration. “That’s why they’ve hidden in the bushes. If they’ve hunted something through the anomaly they will have come through from darkness into this…” She waved her hand at the softening shadows of late afternoon. “The daylight will have been enough to frighten them. They’ve gone to ground as best they can in the undergrowth. They’re primarily scavengers but they will take live prey if they get the chance, mainly taking young or old animals. We need to find what they followed through as well.” Abby spoke quickly in a low voice, never taking her eyes of the object of her monologue. “Don’t let any of them get hold of you; they’ve got jaws that would put a pit-bull terrier to shame…”
Annie glanced over her shoulder at the anomaly. If they weren’t careful, they would run the risk of Stephen and the soldiers coming back through the anomaly as Stringer’s men were trying to corral the animals back to their own time, but it was important to know that there weren’t any other pack members about to join the party. Annie stood her ground to one side of the anomaly. Blade had moved smoothly in front of her. He was easily as dangerous as the animals they were facing and she knew perfectly well that her escort would have no compunction in disobeying the combined orders of both Cutter and Abby if he perceived any immediate threat to her. That thought both comforted and frightened her at the same time. The fact that he would willing put his life on the line for hers was a weight on her conscience and for a moment made her doubt the wisdom of accompanying the team into the field. She was a scientist, unused to putting her life at risk. The adrenaline-fuelled siege, pitting their strength and wits against that of an army of future predators in the ARC, had been as much exposure as she wanted to the sort of dangers that the rest of the team faced every time they ventured out into the field.
“Spread out,” Stringer ordered, taking his cue from Abby to keep his voice low. “We want to make sure they can’t just bolt back into the woods. Professor Cutter, I want you and Professor Morris to move away from the anomaly. Temple, you can take your bloody readings later, when we’ve got rid of this lot. For now, I want the rest of you to make your way back to the vehicles. Move slowly and carefully. Abby… ma’am…” he corrected himself. “What’s the best way of getting them to move without spooking them too much?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Abby admitted. “But we could try waving our arms about.”
Annie saw a grin lighten Stringer’s expression for a moment. “The old methods are always the best,” he muttered, clearly amused.
“Take it nice and slowly, ma’am,” Blade said to her. “I’ve got you covered, just no sudden moves, that’s all.”
“Yes, dear,” she acknowledged, taking a small step backwards. When the hyaenas didn’t react, she took another one.
Under the watchful eye of Captain Stringer, his men started to fan out, clearly intending to get behind the creatures if they could and then drive them back in the direction of the anomaly. Annie could see Connor bend down to pick up his mobile probe, earning him a frown from Stringer and a hissed instruction to leave it. Connor grimaced, but did as he was told, stepping away from the small tracked machine, not much larger than a child’s toy, that was able to send images back to the base unit in his hands. Connor clearly didn’t take too kindly to leaving his toys behind.
Abby stood her ground next to Stringer, with Tanya Lacey at her side. Both women held the fire extinguishers they’d taken from the vehicles, ready to use them against the hyaenas should the need arise.
Annie was the first to reach one of the Range Rovers, feeling the metal of the door at her back. She groped with her fingers for the door handle and pulled it open before clambering inside and pulling the door closed behind her. A moment later, Cutter reached the vehicle as well, but remained outside, too stubborn to take refuge inside the hard, metal shell.
“Marsden, stick your head through the anomaly,” she heard Stringer order. “Tell Hart and Rees I want them back here now. We can’t afford to send this lot back with them on the other side. And I want to know if there’s any other threat on the other side.”
The soldier who had introduced himself to her earlier broke away from the widening circle of men and moved slowly and carefully towards the anomaly, his rifle held in readiness, but with the barrel pointing down at the soft, leafy floor of the forest. She could see the other soldiers moving into position as well. So far it looked as though the plan was working. The hyaenas were still standing in a tight knit group, their striped fur blending in almost perfectly with their surroundings, only the hint of silver-grey in their thick fur giving away their position.
The largest of the group, the male, Annie presumed, was tracking the movement with its eyes, the large blunt-muzzled head swaying slowly from side to side as it determined the level of threat posed by the unfamiliar scents and even more unfamiliar surroundings. Slowly, the creature sank down on its haunches, stretching its neck and raising its head in the air. The strong jaws opened and an unearthly howl issued from its throat. To their credit, none of the soldiers or civilians reacted to the noise, even though it was enough to send an unwelcome pickle through Annie’s fingers, triggering a deep-seated flight or fight mechanism no doubt hard-wired into her psyche.
For a moment, she dared to hope that the exercise on animal-handling that Abby and Stringer were setting up between them would be successful and would result in the animals being returned to wherever they’d come from without a problem. Then without any warning, the largest of the creatures suddenly turned and sprang, as though startled by something, and in a matter of seconds a previously orderly scene turned into something from a nightmare.
* * * * *
Movement behind him caused Stephen to turn around, his borrowed M4 carbine levelled at the anomaly. As soon as he recognised Tim Marsden, one of Stringer’s team, Stephen lowered the muzzle of his rifle.
“The boss wants you all back,” Marsden said. He waited long enough to get a nod of acknowledgement from Stephen and then bobbed back through the anomaly like a jack in a particularly sparkly box.
Stephen cast a last, curious look in the direction of the other anomaly, sparkling like a fractured diamond in the darkness, and then gestured to Rees and Hennessy. Matt Rees took point, with Jake Hennessy bringing up the rear.
The familiar prickle of magnetic energy ran over Stephen’s body like a crackle of static electricity and then he was back in the late afternoon sun dappling through the trees of Epping Forest. A heavy blow sent him staggering to the ground as a grey and white striped shaped barrelled past him.
The staccato rattle of an assault rifle told him that in the few minutes they’d been gone, something had happened to send the situation to hell in a handcart.
“Hold your fucking fire!” Stringer yelled.
A pained cry from behind him told its own story. Stephen came up onto his knees, swinging the loaded tranquilliser rifle up to his shoulder. He caught a glimpse of Jake Hennessy staggering back towards the anomaly, propelled by the heavy body of one of the hyaenas, and then the struggling soldier and the snarling animal were both swallowed by the swirling fragments of light.
“Shit!” Matt Rees swore under his breath, swinging up his own rifle but obeying Stringer’s order to hold fire.
“Follow them!” Stephen told him, tracking one of the juveniles with the muzzle of his rifle by instinct rather than using the sights. A moment later he squeezed the trigger and saw the animal’s flank sprout one of his darts.
He reloaded smoothly, watching as Blade bundled Cutter into one of the vehicles, a long knife held in the soldier’s left hand. Stephen knew perfectly well that Blade wouldn’t hesitate to disregard the injunction against lethal force should it prove necessary. He could see Annie Morris’s frightened face inside one of the Range Rovers and Connor, flanked by another of Stringer’s men, scrabbling for the nearest place of safety, his mobile probe abandoned on the ground behind him.
The second of the adult hyaenas had its jaws wrapped around the arm of one of the soldiers, hanging onto it like a police dog who’d just grabbed a criminal. A low growl issued from its throat and it bit down hard. Stephen realised the man it had grabbed was Marsden, the soldier who only a moment ago had called them back through the anomaly.
As his mind was racing to process the scene, Stephen’s fingers had gone into automatic mode and were loading another dart into the rifle as he did his best to select and verify another target.
The hyaena had borne Marsden to the ground and the soldier was beating at its muzzle with his free hand, but that was, if anything, only making it bite down harder. Stephen was tempted to change weapons and bring the M4 onto play, but even with that it would be hard to get a clear shot in the melee without risking injury to Marsden. He dropped to one knee, steadying the rifle in both hands and got ready to take the shot.
He could see Abby and Lacey running towards the struggling man, with what looked like small canisters in their hands. Stephen drew in his breath and held it for that last moment before squeezing the trigger. They still needed the adult hyaena out of action even if they managed to prise its jaws off Marsden’s arm. Stephen couldn’t tell if he’d hit the mark or not as by then, Abby had started to discharge the small fire extinguisher, aiming the spray of white powder at the animal’s face.
Almost instantly, the hyaena loosened its grip and gave a loud sneeze. In an instant, Stringer was at Marsden’s side, hauling him out of the animal’s reach. The soldier’s bloodied arm trailed at his side like a limb on a broken puppet. From what Stephen had seen of the animal’s strength, its jaws would almost certainly have crushed bone.
“We have a man through the anomaly!” Stephen yelled, alerting Stringer to the plight of one of his team as he reloaded the dart rifle for the third time.
A smaller shape shot out of the bushes. He aimed by instinct and fired again. This time he saw the dart embed itself in the animal’s shoulder. It let out a yelp of pain and turned around, bolting back the way it had come. The Immobilon would work quickly and Stephen was confident that he’d be able to track the drugged animal down as soon as the immediate crisis was over. The adult female backed off, shaking her head and sneezing.
“She’s hit!” Abby exclaimed. “Two more juveniles to bring down!”
“Another one down, ma’am!” one of the soldiers yelled. “I’ve got a clear shot on the last one, can I take it?”
“No!” Abby’s voice held the unmistakeable whiplash of command and Stephen knew she would be obeyed.
He shouldered his tranquilliser rifle and jogged towards the man’s voice. One of the young hyaenas was on the ground at his feet, looking like it had been brought down with the butt of the soldier’s rifle. Stephen just hoped he hadn’t cracked its skull. The third of the youngsters was backed against a patch of dense undergrowth, clearly afraid, its jaws open, snarling, lips draw back over sharp teeth. As it looked like it had opted to remain still, it was the work of a moment to dart it.
“Keep an eye on them both!” Stephen ordered. “We need to be able to get them back through the anomaly as quickly as we can.”
“The other one’s just gone down!” another of Stringer’s men called.
“Status?” Stringer demanded.
A chorus of voices responded to him and as soon as the roll-call was complete, Stringer ordered, “Jaz, I want a medevac chopper here now!”
“Matt’s still through there,” Stephen told him, jerking his head towards the anomaly. “The male shoved Jake through and Matt went after them.”
With a more than unusually inventive stream of curses falling from his lips in his usual cut-glass accent, Stringer dived for the anomaly with Stephen hard on his heels. Stephen knew that Abby would take charge of the repatriation of the downed hyaenas, getting ready to administer the correct dose of the opiate antagonist they used to revive the creatures they’d knocked out. He’d used low dosage darts as the animals weren’t particularly large and provided he hadn’t miscalculated, they’d suffer no ill effects.
He arrived back into the darkness of what he presumed was the Pleistocene to find Matt Rees on his knees beside Jake Hennessy, a bundle of cloth that looked like the medic’s jacket pressed hard against the injured soldier’s leg. In the light of the anomaly, Stephen could see what looked like a lake of blood on the sand.
“Stay with me, Jake!” Rees demanded. “Talk to me!” He turned to Stringer and hissed, “He’s losing blood too fast, I need a chopper and I need it now!”
“We’ve already booked you a ride,” Stringer said calmly, his eyes taking in the widening pool of blood. “Can he be moved?”
“We’ve got no choice,” Rees said, his voice calm and controlled despite the situation. “Stephen, get a field stretcher from one of the vans and get it back here along with my medical kit.”
Stephen didn’t need to be told twice. Jake Hennessy’s face was pale and slack, his eyes open but unresponsive.
It looked very much like they’d be evacuating a body rather than a casualty, but Matt Rees – like Ditzy – looked to be the sort of field medic that wouldn’t easily admit defeat.
* * * * *
Annie watched as the helicopter carried the wounded soldiers away. The look of concern on the faces of the paramedics told its own story so far as the man with the leg injury was concerned. From what she’d heard, the hyaena had nicked an artery with its teeth and he’d lost a lot of blood. The man with the damaged arm had been in a lot of pain but the injury wasn’t likely to be fatal. The soldier-medic who had done his best for both men in the anxious wait for the helicopter had accompanied them.
The hyaenas had all been carried through the anomaly and released back into their own time after being administered a dose of whatever it was Abby used in such circumstances. Annie had been surprised to see how quickly the animals had come round after being injected with something their animal expert had referred to as Revivon. The one that had been rendered unconscious by a sharp blow from a rifle had also woken up, seemingly no worse for its experience, and had followed its mother and siblings off into the darkness on the other side of the anomaly.
According to the readings Connor had been taking, the anomaly was still producing a strong magnetic field and Stringer had reluctantly agreed to allow them to go through to the Pleistocene again to take the readings she wanted to obtain. She also wanted, if possible, to examine something else. Something that was very pertinent to the points she was trying to prove. Stephen’s description of a second anomaly, glimpsed at a distance, provided the first positive affirmation of her theory that twinned anomalies connecting different universes really did exist.
Armed with magnetometers, oscilloscopes and an extremely excited Connor, Annie stepped through the anomaly. A shiver ran through her body as she experienced the transition from one world – possibly even one universe – to the next. She’d been close to anomalies before in the course of her research with the ARC, but this was the first time she had set foot through one. She stared around in amazement and then her eyes were drawn inexorably upwards.
A gasp from Connor told her that she wasn’t the only one who was overawed at the sheer blackness of the Pleistocene sky dotted with what looked like countless tiny anomalies sparkling in black velvet. With no light pollution from towns and cities, Annie felt like she was seeing the sky for the very first time in her life. Seeing it the way her ancestors had seen it, before man had learned to overcome the constraints of the natural environment. Perhaps seeing it the way it would be seen in the future when homo sapiens sapiens would be no more than another extinct species.
The touch of Stephen’s hand on her arm dragged her thoughts back to the immediate present. He pointed and she followed the direction of his arm to where another light gleamed in the darkness, this one a lot closer than the ones she’d just been staring at.
“How far is it from here?” she asked.
Stephen shrugged. “Impossible to be sure, but maybe a mile, possibly more.”
“Can we reach it?” Annie asked.
“No,” Captain Stringer said from behind her. “I can’t sanction you going that far in a hostile environment, Professor. We’ve had one run-in with the locals already and I’m not risking another bout if they decide to play to best of three. Take what readings you need here and do it quickly, please, ma’am.”
Annie sighed. She knew Stringer well enough to be sure he wouldn’t allow her to push the point, especially not with two of his men already in a critical condition on their way to hospital. He was right, they couldn’t afford to take any unnecessary risks, but there was no mistaking the disappointment in Nick’s eyes as he too gazed longingly at the distant anomaly.
“It’s fading,” Stephen said quietly. “It was brighter than that when we first came through.”
“Then we’d better do as Captain Stringer says and take some readings quickly, dear,” Annie said, trying to hide the regret in her voice and hoping that they weren’t about to lose the best chance they might get to send Nick home. But with the frequency with which anomalies were now appearing, she doubted that this would represent their only chance of his repatriation. They had already identified seven other possible universes and she hoped the readings they were about to take would produce more data for analysis.
Under the watchful eyes of Stringer and Blade, she helped Connor to set up their instruments and then concentrated on taking as many readings as possible. They had already confirmed on many occasions that the anomalies transmitted on 86.7FM but they also knew that the rips in the fabric of space and time oscillated on slightly different frequencies when other universes were involved.
“We’ve had this one before,” Connor murmured, looking up from the readings he was taking.
Annie and Nick were by his side in an instant. Annie looked at the display on the oscilloscope. Connor was right, they had recorded this frequency before, on two separate occasions. Annie wondered what the odds were of this particular twinned anomaly being one that led back to Nick’s original universe. The creation of the world that Nick had found himself in on his return from the Permian – the only world that she knew – had, she believed, come about as a result of a sudden flare in the intensity of the anomaly’s magnetic field. It had stolen energy from Nick’s universe and expanded instead of collapsing back in on itself, creating a bubble universe almost, but not quite, identical to the original. If her theory was correct, this anomaly and the one she could see in the distance would oscillate on the same frequency, but with the other one fading, she knew it wouldn’t take long for theirs to follow suit.
“Stephen’s right, Connor, I can see the other one fading. Is this one doing the same?”
Connor checked a different instrument. “Yep, it’s down by 3,000 gauss in the last five minutes.”
Annie sighed. “Then we can't risk remaining much longer. Are you nearly finished, dear?”
Connor cast a regretful look into the distance. “We’re not going to be able to try anything now, are we?”
“No, dear,” Annie said firmly. She turned her attention to Nick and laid her hand gently on his arm. “There’ll be other opportunities to get you home. Trust me.”
He dredged up a smile but she could see it was an effort. Without a word, he turned and walked back through the anomaly.
Annie helped Connor pack away the equipment. She hefted the strap of one of the magnetometers over her shoulder and stood up. Stringer waited until Connor had picked up his pieces of kit and stepped into the lazily swirling shard of light and then followed him, leaving Annie alone for a moment with Blade.
Her young lover’s face wore the same look of uncertainty that she’d noticed earlier in the day and the previous night as well. “Niall?”
“I need to talk to you, Professor,” he said quietly. “Somewhere private where we won’t be overheard.”
“You won’t get more private than this, dear,” Annie said, checking her small hand-held magnetometer. “I would say this is good for another five minutes at least.” A moment later, when Stringer appeared again demanding to know what was taking them so long, Annie waved one hand imperiously. “I have one last reading to take, Captain. I’ll come to no harm whilst Niall is with me.”
Stringer frowned, but didn’t argue.
The relief on Blade’s face was palpable.
“Go on, dear,” Annie told him. “But you’d better make this quick.”
Blade started to speak, his voice low and calm, his eyes blazing with emerald intensity in the darkness, and Annie's heart started to race. Dear God, she thought in dawning realisation, what had they done?
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Nick, Stephen, Connor, Abby, Annie, Blade, Stringer, Lacey, Matt Rees.
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : The team have to deal a difficult anomaly call out.
Warning : Slave!fic.
A/N : The links to all previous parts can be found HERE. Tanya Lacey appears with kind permission of
reggietate and Matt Rees appears courtesy of telperion_15.Stephen stepped through the anomaly with a sense of mingled trepidation and wonder that he knew he’d never lose, no matter how often he made the transition from one time to the next.
One moment he was in Epping Forest on a spring afternoon, the next he was staring out into darkness lit only by the flickering shards of the time portal. Connor’s mobile probe had warned him what to expect, but that was no substitute for experiencing the transition for himself.
He flashed the beam of his torch around and the two soldiers who had accompanied him did the same with their rifle-mounted flashlights.
“Jesus Christ,” Lieutenant Matt Rees breathed in awe as beside him, Jake Hennessey simply stood and stared. It was the first time through an anomaly for both of them and Stephen knew how they felt.
He took a step forward, feeling stony ground beneath his feet. The torch beams revealed a stony, barren landscape with a cluster of jagged rocks standing like broken teeth about 200 metres to their right. Once Stephen had ascertained that they weren’t facing any immediate threat, he dropped to one knee on the bare earth and started to search for tracks, wanting to be sure that only the five animals he’d originally estimated had gone through.
The tracks were surprisingly easy to read, even with only the aid of the torches. He was able to follow the cloven tracks of some kind of hoofed ungulate and the pug marks of the hyaena group. There were more specks of blood on the sand, indicating that the creatures had been following an already injured prey. He knew hyaenas didn’t deserve their reputation for being cowardly, but they would certainly take advantage of defenceless prey that they could overcome easily.
“Hart,” Matt Rees’s voice held a note of concern.
Stephen looked up, wondering what the man had seen.
Rees gestured with his rifle-mounted torch into the darkness. To Stephen’s surprise he could see another light flickering some distance away from them, shining like a beacon in the darkness.
“Does that mean there are people here?” Rees asked quietly. “Is it a camp-fire?”
Stephen stared at the light for a moment and then shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He hesitated for a moment, confirming in his own mind what he was looking at before saying, “It’s another anomaly.”
* * * * *
Annie Morris drew in a slow breath, doing her best to remain calm in the face of the group of hyaenas staring at them out of the dark undergrowth.
The eerie chattering noise fell away into silence as the animals fixed them with their gaze, tracking every movement with their eyes.
Annie Morris couldn’t suppress a shiver as she returned their gaze. The creatures were beautiful, but this wasn’t a wildlife film. It was real, and they undoubtedly had the speed and strength to kill her all too easily.
“Striped hyaenas,” Abby said quietly. “They’re an endangered species now, maybe fewer than 10,000 left in the wild.” She shot Captain Stringer a hard look. “I want these animals sent back through the anomaly unharmed, Joel.”
The look on Stringer’s face could probably best be described as resigned. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. “But if there’s a threat to life…”
“Don’t go there,” Abby retorted. “We’re dealing with a family group here. They’re monogamous and these are their young. They’re out of their own time and it’s our job to get them back in one piece.”
“Tell me what we need to know about them, ma’am,” Stringer said quietly. “Help me out here, I need some hard facts. How do they hunt?”
“They’re nocturnal,” Abby said, her face a mask of concentration. “That’s why they’ve hidden in the bushes. If they’ve hunted something through the anomaly they will have come through from darkness into this…” She waved her hand at the softening shadows of late afternoon. “The daylight will have been enough to frighten them. They’ve gone to ground as best they can in the undergrowth. They’re primarily scavengers but they will take live prey if they get the chance, mainly taking young or old animals. We need to find what they followed through as well.” Abby spoke quickly in a low voice, never taking her eyes of the object of her monologue. “Don’t let any of them get hold of you; they’ve got jaws that would put a pit-bull terrier to shame…”
Annie glanced over her shoulder at the anomaly. If they weren’t careful, they would run the risk of Stephen and the soldiers coming back through the anomaly as Stringer’s men were trying to corral the animals back to their own time, but it was important to know that there weren’t any other pack members about to join the party. Annie stood her ground to one side of the anomaly. Blade had moved smoothly in front of her. He was easily as dangerous as the animals they were facing and she knew perfectly well that her escort would have no compunction in disobeying the combined orders of both Cutter and Abby if he perceived any immediate threat to her. That thought both comforted and frightened her at the same time. The fact that he would willing put his life on the line for hers was a weight on her conscience and for a moment made her doubt the wisdom of accompanying the team into the field. She was a scientist, unused to putting her life at risk. The adrenaline-fuelled siege, pitting their strength and wits against that of an army of future predators in the ARC, had been as much exposure as she wanted to the sort of dangers that the rest of the team faced every time they ventured out into the field.
“Spread out,” Stringer ordered, taking his cue from Abby to keep his voice low. “We want to make sure they can’t just bolt back into the woods. Professor Cutter, I want you and Professor Morris to move away from the anomaly. Temple, you can take your bloody readings later, when we’ve got rid of this lot. For now, I want the rest of you to make your way back to the vehicles. Move slowly and carefully. Abby… ma’am…” he corrected himself. “What’s the best way of getting them to move without spooking them too much?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Abby admitted. “But we could try waving our arms about.”
Annie saw a grin lighten Stringer’s expression for a moment. “The old methods are always the best,” he muttered, clearly amused.
“Take it nice and slowly, ma’am,” Blade said to her. “I’ve got you covered, just no sudden moves, that’s all.”
“Yes, dear,” she acknowledged, taking a small step backwards. When the hyaenas didn’t react, she took another one.
Under the watchful eye of Captain Stringer, his men started to fan out, clearly intending to get behind the creatures if they could and then drive them back in the direction of the anomaly. Annie could see Connor bend down to pick up his mobile probe, earning him a frown from Stringer and a hissed instruction to leave it. Connor grimaced, but did as he was told, stepping away from the small tracked machine, not much larger than a child’s toy, that was able to send images back to the base unit in his hands. Connor clearly didn’t take too kindly to leaving his toys behind.
Abby stood her ground next to Stringer, with Tanya Lacey at her side. Both women held the fire extinguishers they’d taken from the vehicles, ready to use them against the hyaenas should the need arise.
Annie was the first to reach one of the Range Rovers, feeling the metal of the door at her back. She groped with her fingers for the door handle and pulled it open before clambering inside and pulling the door closed behind her. A moment later, Cutter reached the vehicle as well, but remained outside, too stubborn to take refuge inside the hard, metal shell.
“Marsden, stick your head through the anomaly,” she heard Stringer order. “Tell Hart and Rees I want them back here now. We can’t afford to send this lot back with them on the other side. And I want to know if there’s any other threat on the other side.”
The soldier who had introduced himself to her earlier broke away from the widening circle of men and moved slowly and carefully towards the anomaly, his rifle held in readiness, but with the barrel pointing down at the soft, leafy floor of the forest. She could see the other soldiers moving into position as well. So far it looked as though the plan was working. The hyaenas were still standing in a tight knit group, their striped fur blending in almost perfectly with their surroundings, only the hint of silver-grey in their thick fur giving away their position.
The largest of the group, the male, Annie presumed, was tracking the movement with its eyes, the large blunt-muzzled head swaying slowly from side to side as it determined the level of threat posed by the unfamiliar scents and even more unfamiliar surroundings. Slowly, the creature sank down on its haunches, stretching its neck and raising its head in the air. The strong jaws opened and an unearthly howl issued from its throat. To their credit, none of the soldiers or civilians reacted to the noise, even though it was enough to send an unwelcome pickle through Annie’s fingers, triggering a deep-seated flight or fight mechanism no doubt hard-wired into her psyche.
For a moment, she dared to hope that the exercise on animal-handling that Abby and Stringer were setting up between them would be successful and would result in the animals being returned to wherever they’d come from without a problem. Then without any warning, the largest of the creatures suddenly turned and sprang, as though startled by something, and in a matter of seconds a previously orderly scene turned into something from a nightmare.
* * * * *
Movement behind him caused Stephen to turn around, his borrowed M4 carbine levelled at the anomaly. As soon as he recognised Tim Marsden, one of Stringer’s team, Stephen lowered the muzzle of his rifle.
“The boss wants you all back,” Marsden said. He waited long enough to get a nod of acknowledgement from Stephen and then bobbed back through the anomaly like a jack in a particularly sparkly box.
Stephen cast a last, curious look in the direction of the other anomaly, sparkling like a fractured diamond in the darkness, and then gestured to Rees and Hennessy. Matt Rees took point, with Jake Hennessy bringing up the rear.
The familiar prickle of magnetic energy ran over Stephen’s body like a crackle of static electricity and then he was back in the late afternoon sun dappling through the trees of Epping Forest. A heavy blow sent him staggering to the ground as a grey and white striped shaped barrelled past him.
The staccato rattle of an assault rifle told him that in the few minutes they’d been gone, something had happened to send the situation to hell in a handcart.
“Hold your fucking fire!” Stringer yelled.
A pained cry from behind him told its own story. Stephen came up onto his knees, swinging the loaded tranquilliser rifle up to his shoulder. He caught a glimpse of Jake Hennessy staggering back towards the anomaly, propelled by the heavy body of one of the hyaenas, and then the struggling soldier and the snarling animal were both swallowed by the swirling fragments of light.
“Shit!” Matt Rees swore under his breath, swinging up his own rifle but obeying Stringer’s order to hold fire.
“Follow them!” Stephen told him, tracking one of the juveniles with the muzzle of his rifle by instinct rather than using the sights. A moment later he squeezed the trigger and saw the animal’s flank sprout one of his darts.
He reloaded smoothly, watching as Blade bundled Cutter into one of the vehicles, a long knife held in the soldier’s left hand. Stephen knew perfectly well that Blade wouldn’t hesitate to disregard the injunction against lethal force should it prove necessary. He could see Annie Morris’s frightened face inside one of the Range Rovers and Connor, flanked by another of Stringer’s men, scrabbling for the nearest place of safety, his mobile probe abandoned on the ground behind him.
The second of the adult hyaenas had its jaws wrapped around the arm of one of the soldiers, hanging onto it like a police dog who’d just grabbed a criminal. A low growl issued from its throat and it bit down hard. Stephen realised the man it had grabbed was Marsden, the soldier who only a moment ago had called them back through the anomaly.
As his mind was racing to process the scene, Stephen’s fingers had gone into automatic mode and were loading another dart into the rifle as he did his best to select and verify another target.
The hyaena had borne Marsden to the ground and the soldier was beating at its muzzle with his free hand, but that was, if anything, only making it bite down harder. Stephen was tempted to change weapons and bring the M4 onto play, but even with that it would be hard to get a clear shot in the melee without risking injury to Marsden. He dropped to one knee, steadying the rifle in both hands and got ready to take the shot.
He could see Abby and Lacey running towards the struggling man, with what looked like small canisters in their hands. Stephen drew in his breath and held it for that last moment before squeezing the trigger. They still needed the adult hyaena out of action even if they managed to prise its jaws off Marsden’s arm. Stephen couldn’t tell if he’d hit the mark or not as by then, Abby had started to discharge the small fire extinguisher, aiming the spray of white powder at the animal’s face.
Almost instantly, the hyaena loosened its grip and gave a loud sneeze. In an instant, Stringer was at Marsden’s side, hauling him out of the animal’s reach. The soldier’s bloodied arm trailed at his side like a limb on a broken puppet. From what Stephen had seen of the animal’s strength, its jaws would almost certainly have crushed bone.
“We have a man through the anomaly!” Stephen yelled, alerting Stringer to the plight of one of his team as he reloaded the dart rifle for the third time.
A smaller shape shot out of the bushes. He aimed by instinct and fired again. This time he saw the dart embed itself in the animal’s shoulder. It let out a yelp of pain and turned around, bolting back the way it had come. The Immobilon would work quickly and Stephen was confident that he’d be able to track the drugged animal down as soon as the immediate crisis was over. The adult female backed off, shaking her head and sneezing.
“She’s hit!” Abby exclaimed. “Two more juveniles to bring down!”
“Another one down, ma’am!” one of the soldiers yelled. “I’ve got a clear shot on the last one, can I take it?”
“No!” Abby’s voice held the unmistakeable whiplash of command and Stephen knew she would be obeyed.
He shouldered his tranquilliser rifle and jogged towards the man’s voice. One of the young hyaenas was on the ground at his feet, looking like it had been brought down with the butt of the soldier’s rifle. Stephen just hoped he hadn’t cracked its skull. The third of the youngsters was backed against a patch of dense undergrowth, clearly afraid, its jaws open, snarling, lips draw back over sharp teeth. As it looked like it had opted to remain still, it was the work of a moment to dart it.
“Keep an eye on them both!” Stephen ordered. “We need to be able to get them back through the anomaly as quickly as we can.”
“The other one’s just gone down!” another of Stringer’s men called.
“Status?” Stringer demanded.
A chorus of voices responded to him and as soon as the roll-call was complete, Stringer ordered, “Jaz, I want a medevac chopper here now!”
“Matt’s still through there,” Stephen told him, jerking his head towards the anomaly. “The male shoved Jake through and Matt went after them.”
With a more than unusually inventive stream of curses falling from his lips in his usual cut-glass accent, Stringer dived for the anomaly with Stephen hard on his heels. Stephen knew that Abby would take charge of the repatriation of the downed hyaenas, getting ready to administer the correct dose of the opiate antagonist they used to revive the creatures they’d knocked out. He’d used low dosage darts as the animals weren’t particularly large and provided he hadn’t miscalculated, they’d suffer no ill effects.
He arrived back into the darkness of what he presumed was the Pleistocene to find Matt Rees on his knees beside Jake Hennessy, a bundle of cloth that looked like the medic’s jacket pressed hard against the injured soldier’s leg. In the light of the anomaly, Stephen could see what looked like a lake of blood on the sand.
“Stay with me, Jake!” Rees demanded. “Talk to me!” He turned to Stringer and hissed, “He’s losing blood too fast, I need a chopper and I need it now!”
“We’ve already booked you a ride,” Stringer said calmly, his eyes taking in the widening pool of blood. “Can he be moved?”
“We’ve got no choice,” Rees said, his voice calm and controlled despite the situation. “Stephen, get a field stretcher from one of the vans and get it back here along with my medical kit.”
Stephen didn’t need to be told twice. Jake Hennessy’s face was pale and slack, his eyes open but unresponsive.
It looked very much like they’d be evacuating a body rather than a casualty, but Matt Rees – like Ditzy – looked to be the sort of field medic that wouldn’t easily admit defeat.
* * * * *
Annie watched as the helicopter carried the wounded soldiers away. The look of concern on the faces of the paramedics told its own story so far as the man with the leg injury was concerned. From what she’d heard, the hyaena had nicked an artery with its teeth and he’d lost a lot of blood. The man with the damaged arm had been in a lot of pain but the injury wasn’t likely to be fatal. The soldier-medic who had done his best for both men in the anxious wait for the helicopter had accompanied them.
The hyaenas had all been carried through the anomaly and released back into their own time after being administered a dose of whatever it was Abby used in such circumstances. Annie had been surprised to see how quickly the animals had come round after being injected with something their animal expert had referred to as Revivon. The one that had been rendered unconscious by a sharp blow from a rifle had also woken up, seemingly no worse for its experience, and had followed its mother and siblings off into the darkness on the other side of the anomaly.
According to the readings Connor had been taking, the anomaly was still producing a strong magnetic field and Stringer had reluctantly agreed to allow them to go through to the Pleistocene again to take the readings she wanted to obtain. She also wanted, if possible, to examine something else. Something that was very pertinent to the points she was trying to prove. Stephen’s description of a second anomaly, glimpsed at a distance, provided the first positive affirmation of her theory that twinned anomalies connecting different universes really did exist.
Armed with magnetometers, oscilloscopes and an extremely excited Connor, Annie stepped through the anomaly. A shiver ran through her body as she experienced the transition from one world – possibly even one universe – to the next. She’d been close to anomalies before in the course of her research with the ARC, but this was the first time she had set foot through one. She stared around in amazement and then her eyes were drawn inexorably upwards.
A gasp from Connor told her that she wasn’t the only one who was overawed at the sheer blackness of the Pleistocene sky dotted with what looked like countless tiny anomalies sparkling in black velvet. With no light pollution from towns and cities, Annie felt like she was seeing the sky for the very first time in her life. Seeing it the way her ancestors had seen it, before man had learned to overcome the constraints of the natural environment. Perhaps seeing it the way it would be seen in the future when homo sapiens sapiens would be no more than another extinct species.
The touch of Stephen’s hand on her arm dragged her thoughts back to the immediate present. He pointed and she followed the direction of his arm to where another light gleamed in the darkness, this one a lot closer than the ones she’d just been staring at.
“How far is it from here?” she asked.
Stephen shrugged. “Impossible to be sure, but maybe a mile, possibly more.”
“Can we reach it?” Annie asked.
“No,” Captain Stringer said from behind her. “I can’t sanction you going that far in a hostile environment, Professor. We’ve had one run-in with the locals already and I’m not risking another bout if they decide to play to best of three. Take what readings you need here and do it quickly, please, ma’am.”
Annie sighed. She knew Stringer well enough to be sure he wouldn’t allow her to push the point, especially not with two of his men already in a critical condition on their way to hospital. He was right, they couldn’t afford to take any unnecessary risks, but there was no mistaking the disappointment in Nick’s eyes as he too gazed longingly at the distant anomaly.
“It’s fading,” Stephen said quietly. “It was brighter than that when we first came through.”
“Then we’d better do as Captain Stringer says and take some readings quickly, dear,” Annie said, trying to hide the regret in her voice and hoping that they weren’t about to lose the best chance they might get to send Nick home. But with the frequency with which anomalies were now appearing, she doubted that this would represent their only chance of his repatriation. They had already identified seven other possible universes and she hoped the readings they were about to take would produce more data for analysis.
Under the watchful eyes of Stringer and Blade, she helped Connor to set up their instruments and then concentrated on taking as many readings as possible. They had already confirmed on many occasions that the anomalies transmitted on 86.7FM but they also knew that the rips in the fabric of space and time oscillated on slightly different frequencies when other universes were involved.
“We’ve had this one before,” Connor murmured, looking up from the readings he was taking.
Annie and Nick were by his side in an instant. Annie looked at the display on the oscilloscope. Connor was right, they had recorded this frequency before, on two separate occasions. Annie wondered what the odds were of this particular twinned anomaly being one that led back to Nick’s original universe. The creation of the world that Nick had found himself in on his return from the Permian – the only world that she knew – had, she believed, come about as a result of a sudden flare in the intensity of the anomaly’s magnetic field. It had stolen energy from Nick’s universe and expanded instead of collapsing back in on itself, creating a bubble universe almost, but not quite, identical to the original. If her theory was correct, this anomaly and the one she could see in the distance would oscillate on the same frequency, but with the other one fading, she knew it wouldn’t take long for theirs to follow suit.
“Stephen’s right, Connor, I can see the other one fading. Is this one doing the same?”
Connor checked a different instrument. “Yep, it’s down by 3,000 gauss in the last five minutes.”
Annie sighed. “Then we can't risk remaining much longer. Are you nearly finished, dear?”
Connor cast a regretful look into the distance. “We’re not going to be able to try anything now, are we?”
“No, dear,” Annie said firmly. She turned her attention to Nick and laid her hand gently on his arm. “There’ll be other opportunities to get you home. Trust me.”
He dredged up a smile but she could see it was an effort. Without a word, he turned and walked back through the anomaly.
Annie helped Connor pack away the equipment. She hefted the strap of one of the magnetometers over her shoulder and stood up. Stringer waited until Connor had picked up his pieces of kit and stepped into the lazily swirling shard of light and then followed him, leaving Annie alone for a moment with Blade.
Her young lover’s face wore the same look of uncertainty that she’d noticed earlier in the day and the previous night as well. “Niall?”
“I need to talk to you, Professor,” he said quietly. “Somewhere private where we won’t be overheard.”
“You won’t get more private than this, dear,” Annie said, checking her small hand-held magnetometer. “I would say this is good for another five minutes at least.” A moment later, when Stringer appeared again demanding to know what was taking them so long, Annie waved one hand imperiously. “I have one last reading to take, Captain. I’ll come to no harm whilst Niall is with me.”
Stringer frowned, but didn’t argue.
The relief on Blade’s face was palpable.
“Go on, dear,” Annie told him. “But you’d better make this quick.”
Blade started to speak, his voice low and calm, his eyes blazing with emerald intensity in the darkness, and Annie's heart started to race. Dear God, she thought in dawning realisation, what had they done?