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Title: Several Miles from the Sun: Book 1 (Part 2 of 4)
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Abby/Connor eventually
Rating: 15
Spoilers: This is an AU from 2.04, so spoilers up until the end of that episode
Author's Notes: Written for the Primeval Ficathon for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
temaris. Full notes and disclaimer on part 1.
The title - and quotes - are from 'The Sun' by Maroon 5.
Summary: The first step is always the hardest. After that, it's all downhill.
Chapter Listing
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 1
~*~
Day 3
They dimmed the lights of the ARC at night. Nick hadn't realised that before. He'd worked late, sure. More than once. And yet he'd never been here this late - this early - at least not without an active anomaly to deal with. It was odd to think that on those occasions, someone had come ahead and metaphorically put the kettle on, waiting for him and the rest of his team to turn up.
Now he was metaphorically keeping that kettle on for them, just in case the rest of his team managed to find their own way home.
He had no idea where Stephen had gone to in the wake of their argument. There was no sign of him as he trudged down the seemingly endless white corridors until he reached the glass door labelled 'Animal Research'. It was deserted here too, the lab assistants having gone home for the night. He pushed it open, and the lights came on automatically, stark and white, and he blinked, clearing his vision.
The room was large: clean and clinical in a way that seemed to have no relation to the cluttered, battered labs at the university. It was all cold still, white walls, empty and barren. The shark they'd captured - the one Stephen had shot saving Jenny's life - was lying on one of the large autopsy tables. The research team had already started to examine it in more detail than he'd managed when his focus had been on Lucian's fate; its guts were spread neatly out around it, some parts of them already tagged with tentative comparative markers, based on the schematics of similar modern species, which were neatly pinned to the wall around the room.
He paused for a moment as he passed it, trying to imagine a world that produced such marvellous, terrible things, things that had teeth in their tongues. A world so savage and hostile that the creatures that inhabited needed those things, an extra edge in an ocean that must be filled with teeth to make that necessary.
A world that Abby and Connor were now trapped in.
He told himself that the shiver that went through him was simply because they kept the place too damned cold, but at least that meant that the bloody thing didn't stink.
It grew warmer when he moved to the area at the back, behind another door where they kept the cages for any live specimens they might capture. The cages ranged in size from the small to the bloody huge and he hoped to God they never had to use the bloody huge ones to store anything living and probably - knowing their luck so far - incredibly pissed off at being caught.
This room wasn't empty of the living, although, at the moment, there was only one prehistoric specimen in resident, one who was being kept company by his more modern relations.
"Hey, Rex."
He kept his voice low. It was superstitious, perhaps, but the area did feel like a hospital this early in the morning. Or maybe a morgue, one for creatures long dead and those not yet even thought of.
He had no idea if Rex recognised him but the small reptile tilted his head for a moment, almost as though he were considering Nick's appearance and what it meant, and then chittered at him. It was an oddly subdued sound. Nick had no idea if that was because the little creature missed Abby or whether he, too, had been affected by the strange sombre air of the ARC after hours.
He absentmindedly pushed a piece of apple through the bars for Rex to munch on before crouching down until he was as close to eye level as he could manage. Rex met his gaze, oddly serious for something so small and green.
"You miss her, too, don't you?" This time he pushed a piece of orange through, just for a bit of variety, but Rex seemed disinterested in that, too, still focused on watching Nick. It would be nice to think he was listening, but it was probably simply wariness for an unknown entity. "Miss both of them, I suppose. I bet they were good flatmates. Fed you on time and played with you and kept you entertained."
Maybe he was going crazy, talking to a prehistoric lizard like it understood him. He rubbed at his eyes again, tiredly, and swayed on his feet as he fought to keep his balance.
"We'll get them back, Rex, I promise."
This time Rex's gaze moved from him, his head tilting again and another soft chitter escaping him. Nick didn't turn his head until Stephen's shadow fell over him and a cup of coffee was lowered unceremoniously down to his level.
When he did look up, half torn between apologising for his outburst earlier and ignoring it and moving on, Stephen's gaze was as steady and unyielding as Rex's had been. He held it for long moments and in the end it was Stephen who looked away, his eyes tracking Rex's movements as the Coelurosauravus took a tentative few flaps across his cage to land on the sidebars, gripping them tightly with his curved toes and craning his neck to get a better look at them.
"Yeah, Rex," Stephen said, his voice gravelly from lack of sleep and maybe something more. "We'll get them back."
---
Water was still a pressing issue, although the storm had at least bought them some time. When its fury had spent itself, they'd straightened up, dazed, with fingers numb from the tension and clothes and hair dripping wet, and all around them had been puddles, formed in the pitted rocks.
She'd splashed in puddles like this when she was six and had Wellington boots shaped like ladybirds. She didn't remember drinking out of puddles before - and her Mum would have had a fit - but there could be no such qualms here. They'd lapped them up eagerly, manners forgotten in the rush to wet parched throats, scooping up what they could with cupped hands and bringing them to their mouths until the water ran down their chins and she'd thought they'd burst.
It had quenched their first but it hadn't been enough to ease their fears, at least not her fears and probably not Connor's. She could read him easily enough, which is why she hadn't been surprised when he'd taken his jacket off and soaked it in the last puddle they could find, glancing at her sheepishly, his face burning with more than the sun.
"Smart idea," she'd said, her voice still sounding too croaky, and he'd given her a smile that was still sheepish but also Connor.
They hadn't got far before night had started to fall again, and this time they'd found a cave that probably deserved the name, huddling together in the back of it like frightened sheep while lightning again tore across the sky, without the rain to make it worthwhile. Instead, they'd had to suck their next drink out of the fabric of Connor's wet jacket, which had been gritty and foul. There'd been a weird sense of embarrassment about it, like she was doing something filthy, something her mother wouldn't approve of, although her mother didn't approve of much it seemed. She could picture it, her Mam, saying in an outraged tone, "You sucked his what?" It should be funny, and under other circumstances might have been, but all she'd felt was that sense of shame.
She hadn't shared that with Connor, just turned her face away from him, closed her eyes and tried not to lose any of that hard won moisture to anything as stupid as tears. Eventually, she'd managed to sleep, conscious of his form, silhouetted against the stars that were brighter than she was used to - bright and strange.
They moved on again when the sun rose, and the day only grew hotter the more they trudged along the shoreline, trying to stay away far enough from the water to avoid those creatures. She could hear them sometimes though, even when she couldn't see them, the mournful melodies drifting up towards them, muffled by the water and the rocks.
The sounds still made her shudder, in spite of the heat.
There seemed to be no way up away from the beach - the cliffs rose above them, pale and severe, burning blindingly bright in the sun. She added sunglasses to her mental list of things to always, always be taken with her to an anomaly site along with a really big knife, some sunscreen and water.
Lots and lots of water.
She stumbled again, and Connor caught her, his fingers closing firmly around her arm. She'd have bruises there, to go with the blisters on her feet and Connor's incipient sunburn. They were both tired, both clumsy and sooner or later one of them was going to take a header into the sea. As long as they did that when they were close to the shore rather than clambering over the rocks higher up, pushed upwards by the fact that there was no way through lower down. If they fell from up there… well, it wasn't like there was a nearby A&E Department to put them right.
It was starting to scare her, how far they were moving from the original anomaly site. Their pace was slow, but even so, there was no guarantee that the route back would be any quicker. Even if the anomaly reopened, surely they'd never make it back before it closed. And if anyone else made it through behind them, tried to follow…
She glanced back over her shoulder but any gleam from the anomaly would have been lost in the bright garish sunlight, reflected from the rocks.
If anyone tried to follow, they may not reach them in time. May even be trapped with them, or worse, much worse.
They might give up on them entirely.
She and Connor still stopped occasionally, the pair of them working together to fashion something like an arrow where they could - where there were darker rocks on the shoreline and a flat place on the rocks they were scrambling over where they could lay them out. She wasn't sure it would help, but it was better than nothing. At least they were doing something beyond just looking to their immediate survival.
She wasn't sure how long their markers would last - it didn't look like the water reached up this far, not any more, but it obviously had in the past. Every so often they passed caves, eaten into the cliff face by the waves at some point, but they were dry now, empty and deserted. That was something to be thankful for, and she made a mental note of each and everyone just in case the storms that seemed to lurk constantly on the horizon came closer. She had no wish to relive the previous day's storm, trapped out in the open with nowhere to run.
So far, however, they had stayed on the horizon, but even from here she could see the lightning streaking across the sky and hear the thunder as it rumbled towards them. It mingled with the sounds of the waves until sometimes it was like being hit by a never ending wall of white noise.
None of it helped the headache that threatened to split the back of her skull, brought on by the heat and the dehydration.
She stumbled again, and this time Connor reached out too late to catch her. She fell to her knees, the jar causing her teeth to catch her tongue and she tasted blood. Just another ache to add to the many.
Connor dragged her to her feet, only drawing his hands away reluctantly when she pulled away, angry more with herself and her clumsiness than she was with him. He took a couple of steps back and swayed on his feet, almost stumbling himself.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine," she snapped, brushing the sand from her knees, more so that she didn't have to look at him than because it made her any less dirty. "How long do you think we should head in this direction before we head back? It's already been a day, Connor."
That was snappish of her too, but he didn't take offence at it, at least not as far as she could see. Instead, he glanced up and down the coast, as though that was going to help.
"Dunno." Well, that was helpful. "I mean, even if we head back now, there's no guarantee that we're going to find any water in the other direction. At least not that we can drink." He looked out over the ocean, his eyes scrunched up against the sun. "And we don't know if there'll be more rain again. There wasn't last night, even with the fireworks display."
"Water, water everywhere," she observed ruefully, moving over to stand next to him. Again, she had to fight the urge just to reach out and grab a hold of his hand, a mute apology for taking it out on him, all the fear and the panic she was drowning in.
"I dunno about that either," he said, seeming oblivious to her dilemma. His eyes were scanning the horizon but when Abby looked out over it there didn't seem to be anything that could have caught his attention.
"I'm pretty sure that drinking sea water is bad, Connor." Sometimes it paid to spell things out to him.
He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe in our time, yeah." 'Our time'. How weird was it to think in terms like that?
She frowned, peering out at the ocean again, still not seeing what he was. Sometimes he wished he'd spell things out to her given the convoluted twists and turns his brain took sometimes. There was probably some sci-fi reference she was missing.
He glanced at her and seemed - for once - to pick up on her confusion.
"My mum used to take us to the seaside when we were little." Okay, still not helpful. "We used to go rock pooling with her, you know? She liked that. So did I. It was… fun."
The look he gave her was a little bashful and Abby couldn't help giving him a little smile in return, not just because of her own childhood memories - living on an island had some advantages - but because she could just picture Connor as a child, crouched over some rock pool or other, poking around in the seaweed fringes for hermit crabs.
He nodded at her, obviously taking it as read that she knew exactly what he was talking about. "Well, you know when the tide had gone out, and it was sunny? And the rock pools started to disappear?"
"Yeah." The smile she gave him this time was a little more rueful. "Gotta be tough to live in a rock pool, with all those shifts in temperature and salinity." Maybe they should take lessons.
"They left salt behind."
Now he'd lost her again. "Course they did, Connor. And your point?"
"You see much salt around the ones here?"
She stared at him for a split second before peering down, her eyes tracking over the rocky shoreline for evidence of what he was talking about. She couldn't be sure - what had once been a rock pool and what hadn't wasn't clear - but he was right about one thing. Where there were small pockets of water left behind - from either the rain or the tide - there weren't any crystallised rings of salt around them, the way you'd expect when there had been deep rock pools but no seaweed growing around the edges, limiting evaporation. And most of yesterday's rain had evaporated even before they had stopped for the night, hadn't it? So any pools left on the shore should be sea and not rain water; salty sea water leaving salty rings behind.
Right?
She couldn't be sure and her head ached too much to think about it too much.
"You think it's safe to drink then?" Her tone was dubious and she didn't bother trying to hide it.
He shrugged again, shifting a little uncomfortably under her gaze. "I dunno. But it's something to think about. You know…" He met her gaze this time, more candid now and the look in his eyes didn't do anything to soothe her own fears. "In case it gets worse."
It might well get worse, but she wasn't going to sit around waiting for it to happen. She stared around, peering up and down the coastline much as he had while he just stood and watched her, waiting for her to make some sort of decision. She could have resented that but this was Connor. In spite of their problems recently - and she was woman enough to admit that her dislike of his girlfriend was the root of a lot of them - they made a good team. Give and take, and if she had to give this time, that was okay.
He'd followed her through an anomaly, with no thought of his own safety. He'd given her more than enough recently. More than she'd suspected, even.
"Let's head the way we were going for a little longer," she said finally, eyeing the way they'd come - and the ocean - a little uneasily. "We might find a way inland, or even a river. Especially if you're right about the salinity. Water's got to be coming from somewhere and feeding into it, right?"
He nodded, looking relieved that she'd made the decision for both of them.
"Onwards and upwards, then?"
She nodded, trying to project an air of confidence she was far from feeling. Once again, she had to fight the need to reach for his hand as they started to clamber over the rocks again, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible.
They'd find a steady and constant source of water soon. They had to. The alternative was unthinkable.
---
"Go home, Cutter."
Lester's cut glass tones cut through his fugue and Nick jerked upright, the world snapping into focus again.
"Go home," Lester repeated. "You're making the place look untidy and Lord knows we pay you enough to be able to afford to put a roof over your head." He seemed to consider that thought for a moment and added, "Although at London prices, it's probably not much of one."
Nick blinked at him blearily, managing to focus just in time to catch Lester indulging in his normal eye rolling.
"If the anomaly opens again…"
"If the anomaly opens again, we have a crack team of commandos on site ready to leap into action and save the day. Let's leave it to the professionals, shall we? It's what I'm paying them for. I'm paying you to be the brains of the outfit and frankly, judging by the way you look right now, I'm half expecting them to start dribbling out of your ears at any moment." The look he gave Nick was half brusque and half sympathetic, and the latter didn't sit well on Lester's face. He wasn't a man much suited to anything human in his interactions with others.
"Jenny." Bang on cue, or maybe simply responding to Lester's barking of her name, she stalked into the room, her too high heels click-clacking across the floor. Nick half expected Lester to click his fingers at her, too, like one would summoning their guard dogs, but judging by the look of hell currently residing on Jenny's face, maybe even Lester knew that there were some battles he wasn't going to win and some fights he shouldn't pick.
It didn't help that that look was currently aimed in his direction rather than Lester's.
"Why don't you escort the good Professor home? His or yours, I don't really care. Just get him off the premises before we start being hit by the Working Time Directive people, hmmm?"
He half expected Jenny to rip Lester a new one at that, but the glare stayed aimed at him.
"Look, Jenny…"
"Lester's right." Of course he was. What had Jenny called him? A great man? A great man who'd just banished him like he'd banished Connor from the dockside for making a scene. It hurt to realise that it was for the same reason - grief and loss, although Nick, at least, wasn't quite so open about his pain.
Besides, Abby and Connor weren't dead. He'd made that mistake with Helen and he wasn't making it again.
"I want to stay here, keep on working out when the anomaly might open again…"
"By snoring at your desk?" she asked sweetly. He wasn't fooled. He knew her well enough by now to know that the sweetness was just because she was scenting victory.
"I was… I don't snore."
"Yes you do. I heard you from the break room." Then her expression softened, and that was even more terrifying than the glare. Not the idea that Jenny had a softer side but the idea that Jenny thought that he needed to see it.
"Look, I promise. As soon as we have news…"
"You'll call me, I know. It's not good enough. I've got to be here. I can't… Look, I have to be doing something. You might not understand that, Claud -"
He cut himself off, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the diatribe that was sure to follow. She surprised him, but then she'd been doing that a lot recently.
"And if that wasn't a sign that you need some sleep, I don't know what is."
"I'm not a child, to be sent to bed."
"No." And there was no softness in her tone this time; it was hard as steel and as deadly as any blade forged from it. "What you are is someone who is stupid and arrogant enough to put everyone else at risk because you don't trust anyone else to do their jobs."
The words - and the tone they were delivered in, all brute force and no tact - were enough to stop him in his tracks. The anger would come once the shock had worn off - was already building in fact - but she cut him off at the knees there, too.
"I get that you want to do something, but even if you did figure out whether the anomaly is going to open again, and even if you figured out roughly when, we're still reliant on the detector to tell us the exact moment when it does - the detector and the men on the ground, who are watching and waiting and a damned sight better at both of those things than you are. Face it, Cutter. Even if a miracle happened and the anomaly opened in the next five minutes, you're in no fit state to go through it. You need sleep and probably a hell of a lot of coffee after that to function, and frankly you need a shower as well. So for once in your stubborn, unbelievably arrogant life, just do what you're told."
He blinked, opened his mouth and shut it again, finally settling on, "Do you ever stop bossing people about?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously and one hand rose from her side, the perfectly manicured nail pointing towards the door in a way that left no doubt as to what she wanted.
"No. I'm very good at it. So let me tell you how this is going to play out. You are walking out of that door. I am then going to drive you home and if you give me any trouble I won't even stop before I throw you out at the other end. I suspect it will make things a little more difficult for you to play the heroic martyr with gravel rash on your hands and knees so don't think for one second that I won't make good on my threat. Frankly, I don't want to hear it any more. We have… temporarily mislaid two members of our team. But - as you keep repeating - we are going to get them back. Personally, I'd like to think that by the time we do, we aren't short another team member because Stephen and I have decided to beat you into submission and hide the body somewhere. Do you understand me?"
It was an interesting choice of words for Jenny. 'Our team'. He stared at her for a long moment, trying not to let the inner debate he was having about whether or not to risk more of her wrath show on his face.
"Okay," he said eventually. "But if there's any sign…"
She rolled her eyes, looking scarily like Lester for a moment. Perhaps on this world there was a finishing school somewhere that churned them all out like this, all cultured tones and smart arse commentary.
"If there is any sign, we will call you. Provided," and she snapped the word out, her lower lip jutting out afterwards pugnaciously, "that you do what you are told to do right now." And then her voice softened again, just to deliver the killer blow.
"We need you to be fit and ready for when we have to bring them home, okay?"
It would be easier to buy if he hadn't watched her turn on the charm innumerable times before now, using it to persuade those members of the public she hadn't already terrified into submission to do exactly what she wanted them to do. But even if she was using her PR charm voice, she'd made her stance on this one perfectly clear. The delivery may have rung a little false but the message rang true.
"Fine," he said, finally capitulating. "I will get some sleep. And a shower. As long as it's understood that the second - the second, Jenny - that there is any news, I'm informed."
She rolled her eyes again. "I'm afraid that once again you've mistaken me for your secretary, but I'll make sure that I call you - haul you out of bed if need be - if it's necessary. Deal?"
He half expected her to hold out her hand for him to shake on it but instead she folded her arms, glaring at him again over the top of them, and he swallowed a tired smile, giving her a nod.
"Lead on, MacDuff," he said.
"It's lay on, actually. But I get the drift."
Of course she did.
He swallowed down another smile but, for once, he followed where she led without any more argument.
---
It was another two hours, by Abby's admittedly random reckoning, that they finally found what looked like it could be a path up the cliff face, at least one that wouldn't result in them breaking their necks. It took them another hour or so to clamber their way up it, and she had to admit she was surprised that neither of them were particularly out of breath by the time they'd reached the top. Maybe Connor had made good on his threat to go to the gym.
But when they did reach the top, the sight that stretched in front of her did what the climb couldn't and took her breath away. She'd never seen anything like it. Couldn't imagine anything like it, not on their Earth, although maybe there were vistas like this in places she'd never got around to visit. The earth curved down towards a huge basin, the sides carpeted in what looked like grassland, and then…
"Wow," said Connor, coming up to stand beside her. She glanced sideways at him, tracing the line of his profile with her eyes. His nose was red from the sun, and his lips had started to crack, especially at the corners where he kept licking at them convulsively, trying to keep them moist when the heat and the spray were conspiring against them.
She wasn't much better - she'd been protected a little more from the sun thanks to the hood of her sweatshirt, but her feet were sore and blistered and her fingers scratched and bleeding from the climb.
"That's…"
He trailed off, for once shocked into silence.
"Yeah." It kind of summed it up really.
"Well," said Connor eventually. "There's obviously water down there." He glanced over at her before his eyes were drawn back to the sight laid out in front of them. "A lot of it."
"Yeah," she said, staring down at the forest that stretched out across the horizon as far as the eye could see; never ending rolling shades of green for mile after mile after mile. If it was a basin, she couldn't see the other side - had no idea if there were cliffs beyond the forest or whether the one they were standing on was a freak of geology, pushed up by volcanic activity or by the shift of tectonic plates on the sea floor.
And to the east of them, their cliffs finally folded down towards the sea, smoothing out into yet more greenery, darker this time. She made a half turn, squinting to focus and thought that the water down there might be darker too, silt maybe, pouring out into the sea and forming a delta. Which meant that those trees may be this era's equivalent of a mangrove. Which meant, in turn, a river to carry the life giving nutrients down into the bay. If there was one, she couldn't spot it, couldn't tell where the river ended and the sea began, but it was more hope than they'd had before.
She turned back towards the carpet of greenery, eyes watering a little from the sun. There was other life down there too; as she watched, small black dots pin-wheeled up from the forest canopy, a flock of birds taking flight, although their path was oddly erratic and they moved like no flock she'd ever seen. But where there were birds there was water and there was meat and maybe even eggs, depending on the season.
And where there were those things, there was a chance that she and Connor would make it through until they could make it home.
Feeling more confident, she finally started down the slope, Connor following and keeping pace with her, his footsteps sending up little clouds of dust as he angled downwards.
This time she did catch hold of his hand and held it all the way down.
Day 4
Nick dreamed, although it was the last thing he wanted, needed. The exhaustion should have dragged him down into the dark depths of slumber, far beyond the reach of nightmares but instead, he dreamt of something else dragging him down, down into the murky depths as the water closed over his head.
His arms floated above him, wavering in the dim light that grew more distant, fading until it was nothing but shades of silver and green.
And all around him they sang, the sorrowful song of the sea while he sank down, down, down.
He woke with a gasp, fingers clutching the sheet as he tried to claw his way back up to the light, tried to breathe through lungs that…
Weren't filled with water. He took a deep breath, then another, his heart pounding a rapid rhythm in his chest, so fast it came close to pain.
When he looked at his alarm clock, it read 03:00, the light shining greenly in the dark and making his stomach lurch again until he could almost taste salt water on his tongue.
He kicked off the covers. There'd be no more sleep tonight, and he'd stayed away from the ARC for a whole six hours. Surely that would be enough to keep Jenny and Lester silent. And if it didn't, tough shit.
But he took the time to shower again before he left the house, letting the warm water wash away the night sweats, letting it soak into him until the ice melted from his veins.
He tried not to listen to the melody of the water as it fell.
---
It took them a lot longer to reach the edges of the forest than she'd figured it would, her sense of distance distorted by the sun and by the never ending vista of green. They had to watch each step down, the footing on this side of the escarpment more treacherous, with the scree threatening to shift under each step.
They'd stopped at the foot, even though there was a good hour or so of light left, and came the closest they had to an argument on this side of the anomaly. Connor had wanted to push on, cross the grassland to try and reach the forest before nightfall, or just after if they could, where there might be water, food even. She understood where he was coming from - the hunger was a tight, painful knot in her belly, growing worse with each step, and her lips were cracking again, the blood sharp and salty against her tongue when she licked to moisten them. But all she could think of was the lions that haunted the savannahs of Africa, lying in the long grass, just waiting for something to wander by. The land here was more like scrub, but it wasn't even - it rolled gently and each rise, each clump of taller grass, could hide something they'd never see in the dark, at least not until it was too late.
She was exhausted - hungry and scared and aching - and Connor wasn't fairing any better. His jacket was slung over his shoulders, almost like a scarf, dry as a bone now. His cheeks were starting to hollow out and there were dark bags under his eyes, his gaze dull and his skin dry and peeling over his nose, where the sun had caught.
Everything was wrong, like it had taken a sharp step to the left and pushed her off balance. The ease of her interactions with Connor had just gone and she wanted it back. It wasn't all because of where they were and the heat and the thirst and the hunger. There was something else lurking at the edges, the kind of thing that you caught out of the corner of your eye as you turned your head.
She knew what it was - the elephant in the room, the thing they weren't talking about. The many things they weren't talking about, like the fact that Connor had a girlfriend and she'd had a crush on Stephen and everything was wrong and…
And Connor loved her, as in really loved her and as more than just a mate. She thought. She was sure that had been what he'd meant.
Hadn't it?
So everything was wrong, and that, more than anything, was what had laced her words with a venom she didn't have the energy to feel otherwise, throwing the words out until Connor had moved away from her, turning away from her and sitting down, the line of his back stiff and resentful, an echo of everything he'd said and everything he hadn't.
They stayed there, hidden in the boulders that had fallen from the escarpment over the millennia since it had risen, and they barely spoke all night, any conversation limited to variations on, "It's your turn to watch," and, "Fine." She couldn't sleep even when it was Connor's turn to watch, too scared of the things that might lurk out in the darkness and too angry at Connor for not understanding that - and herself for not letting it go. She spent most of the night staring at his back and aching for things she couldn't quite pin down let alone say out loud.
It was easier when day broke, the sun rising to the east of them, over the sea. They still didn't talk about it but at least they were back to being polite, skirting around all of the elephants in the room, it seemed. The grassland proved easy to cross - no sign of herds of grazers or anything that stalked them - and she half expected an 'I told you so' from Connor, but he was eerily silent on that point too.
But it was still wrong, both this world and the silence between her and Connor. When they finally approached the forest, grew close enough to differentiate the trees from the wood, it shouldn't have been a surprise that that was wrong too. The sense of alienation that had been nagging at her, worrying around the edges since the second she'd been yanked through the anomaly, grew stronger, until it was almost as oppressive as the heat.
She'd expected a rainforest, somehow, maybe just because of the size of it, or the heat and the storms that seemed to rage every night. She'd expected trees that towered over them and bright birds calling from the canopy, water dripping down from broad leaves and the air to be close and humid. But just like the flocks they'd spied from the cliffs, there had been something off about the forest as they approached, something just not quite right about the picture that it had presented.
She'd expected a forest of trees, stretching up into the sky. What she got was a forest full of giant ferns that towered over the pair of them, branching out, fronds twisted and curling upwards until they blocked out the sun.
"Oh… wow."
It wasn't exactly the turn of phrase she was thinking - oh shit would have been closer to the mark - but she could appreciate the sentiment anyway. When she turned to look at Connor, his face was rapt. It was amazing, the way that he could still find wonder in this when he was exhausted and filthy, dehydrated and hungry. He took a step closer, leaning in to examine it, and she had to fight the urge to grab him, yank him back. There were shadows lurking behind the ferns, deeper into the forest. Places where things could hide and when she didn't pull him back, and he took one, then two steps into the dark, she had to fight back the superstitious shiver that shook her, her hindbrain taking over for a moment and bringing back ancestral memories of cowering in the dark from the things with teeth and claws.
She took a step after him, her eyes darting warily about, constantly searching for any sign of movement, of danger, and she had to suppress another shudder, this time because the air under the canopy was noticeably cooler than it had been outside.
"Do you think there are still trees somewhere?" Connor's voice drifted back to her, sounding ethereal in the gloom. "I mean, real trees rather than these ferns?"
She opened her mouth but had to swallow before she could answer him, her throat tight with that same ancestral fear. "Maybe. I mean, this can't be the only continent, or the only forest. There are even places on Earth where ferns still dominate, although I can't think of any this big."
"The carboniferous." Connor answered a question she hadn't asked. When she didn't say anything, he looked up at her but she couldn't quite make out his expression with the shadows falling over his face. "Huge ferns covering most of the planet. But that was before flowering plants - true flowering plants, I mean." He took a step back towards her and her knees went a little weak with relief. It also meant that he stepped into a gleam of sunlight, penetrating the canopy, which wasn't as thick here as it seemed to be further in, and now she could see his expression, a confused frown on his face, the one he got when he was trying - and failing - to figure something out. "I think, anyway" he added. "Got to say, paleobotany? Not my strong point."
She gave him a weak little smile, rubbing at her arms.
"You cold?"
"A little," she admitted, not wanting to admit the real reason for her shivers. She prided herself on being tough - tougher than Connor, and even he'd admit as much. Usually. If she let her fear rule her now, it wouldn't only be herself she was letting down. But it was difficult when something uttered a shrill cry to the right of her. She started, her heart jumping in her chest and ice water beginning to trickle down her spine.
"If…. Um…." Connor's face was torn and he took another step towards her, flushing. She stared at him for a moment, confused herself at what was going through his mind, and his flush deepened. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before his hands came up to unknot the sleeves of his jacket, tied loosely around his neck and shoulders. He held it out to her with a weak smile. "Here."
She wondered if that had been what he'd originally intended but there was no way for her to ask, not without acknowledging that thing they weren't talking about. All she could do was take what was offered and give him a weak smile of her own in return.
She began to pull it on over her hooded top and took another step when something bright green and fast darted past her foot. She swore, almost tripping in her attempt to avoid it, her heart racing as she finally recognised it for what it was.
A lizard, a small one. Almost like a gecko in the shape - and speed - of it but not quite, something off about it too. Maybe it was the small spines studding its back. The form was fairly typical though, like a myriad of small lizards the world over - her world. The familiarity of that made her throat ache, spines or no.
She tracked it as it scurried through the undergrowth, all four legs moving rapidly, two by two in a typical lizard fashion. It swerved to avoid a small hole in the ground, and then, something else - something big and black and wrong - came out of the hole, fast and vicious, and grabbed hold of the lizard she'd been watching.
"Jesus." Connor swore in her ear even as he grabbed her and pulled her back, catching her when she stumbled. He almost fell over himself just after that, too busy concentrating on the hole in the ground to pay any attention to where his feet were going. "That… that…"
"I really hate spiders," she said weakly.
"Yeah. I never, ever want to run into something like that in the bathroom."
For some reason - some stupid, adrenaline fuelled, scared shitless reason - that made her laugh, gasping for breath until they turned into sobs. She bit it back though, forced it down while Connor watched her, his face suddenly scared. She didn't think it was the spider that had put that look on his face but it acted like a shot of cold water anyway, sobering her up. She pulled herself together, hiccupping and turning her face away so that he couldn't see the tear tracks on her grimy face.
"That… that was one hell of a big spider," she said when she could speak again. He watched her for a moment, his face still open and scared, then nodded, seeming reluctant to speak. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, finding her centre, that place of peace. When she spoke again, it was calmer, more reasonable. "Think that that's typical? I mean, do we need to keep a watch out?"
He stared at her for a moment longer before reluctantly taking his eyes off her to look around. She didn't know what he thought he'd see - the foliage was thick, the giant ferns seeming to harbour much smaller varieties around their roots. There could be anything lurking in there.
"Maybe," he said finally, his eyes tracking up to the canopy. He frowned, and pointed something out to her, his hands moving slowly, steadily to avoid attracting attention, or maybe startling something.
"Look."
As stage whispers went, Connor needed practice, but she didn't hear anything take flight. So she did as he asked, turning slowly, her heart pounding every second of the way, until she could see where he was pointing.
She didn't spot it at first, her eyes still adjusting to the dim light in the forest, and then it moved, its wings waving gently.
It was the biggest dragonfly she'd ever seen. Its wingspan was easily a foot across, as far as she could tell. Maybe even bigger. Big enough that she took another step towards Connor - a slow one this time.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Connor's voice was just a breath in her ear. "You have those mermaid-like things, and sharks that have evolved to have teeth on their tongues, and then you have these. Dragonflies and spiders, whose shape hasn't changed much in millions and millions of years. They predate the dinos, and yet here they are, still going strong now. Whenever 'now' is."
She turned her head to look at him - still slowly - and his face was fascinated again. He took a step towards them, and she grabbed hold of his t-shirt, giving him a glare that warned of retribution if he did anything stupid. More stupid than usual.
"As dragonflies go, that's really… bloody… huge!"
He blinked at her, either taken back by her swearing or perhaps just the vehemence of her whisper. Then he caught hold of her - his jacket - and tugged her back towards the forest edge. She resisted at first, angling their direction of travel so that they made as large a detour as possible around the spider's lair.
She had no intention of getting caught up in the 'majesty' of something that had no right to be that size and hungry as she was, she couldn't imagine eating it or anything like it - her stomach rebelled at the thought.
When they reached sunlight again, he pointed towards the clouds gathering ominously in the distance. "See that?"
"A storm's coming." Big deal. She was getting used to them - they were nothing special, not here.
"Yes. And have you noticed anything else?" He turned towards her, the look on his face expectant, but his expression rapidly fell when he finally twigged that she wasn't in the mood for guessing games. "The air. It's like… I dunno. Like you could almost get drunk on it. No, sorry. That's a really bad analogy. Like…" He waved his hands vaguely in the air and there was no mistaking his frustration at not finding the exact words. But she got it.
"It's a little weird, yeah." Weird how they got tired but seldom seemed to get out of breath.
Connor's hands fell but his eyes stayed focused on the clouds roiling on the horizon. They weren't close enough to worry about, not yet, but Connor had got her thinking.
"You think that's causing the storms? The air?"
He frowned, still not looking at her. "I think maybe, yeah. I dunno. I could be wrong, but I think that maybe the oxygen levels might be a bit higher than they are in our… back home." He shot her a look that bordered on sheepish. "It just… it was just an idea. But, you know… the plants and the huge insects. It's very like the carboniferous and the oxygen levels then were thirty, thirty-five percent. Something like that. Much higher than we have - had. That's why the insects got so big then."
She gave it some more thought, turning the idea over and over in her mind until it settled in, seemed less fantastic. It shouldn't be a surprise that this world could be more different from the one they'd left in more ways than just the creatures inhabiting it. It was too easy to think that things in their time, things they took for granted like the fact it always rained on a Bank Holiday and that they didn't really get tornados in Essex, had always been that way. That they always would be. That even less superficial things, like the composition of the atmosphere or the constellations, would stay the same over the millennia. But it made sense that given the size of the forest, there'd be more oxygen in the atmosphere. Connor was right about one thing. She may not have been a palaeontologist - her specialism ran to current creatures, or at least those that had been 'current' in their time - but even she knew that the composition of the atmosphere hadn't always been the same, changing as the face of the planet changed.
And millions of years must have passed since their time. The stars had told her that much.
Unless…
"We haven't gone back in time, have we? I mean, this isn't the carboniferous, is it?"
He shook his head, facing the forest once more. Once again his eyes searched among the trees and this time what he pointed out was a bird, or something similar to it, not an insect.
"Didn't have those in the carboniferous. Birds weren't going to be around for nearly two hundred million years. So even if those mermaid things did come through to our time and then we've all travelled back to much earlier, it doesn't explain them."
"So what does that mean, then?" she asked slowly. "If you're right?"
He shrugged again, shoving his fingers into his trouser pockets. "Make sure we don't build a really big fire?"
"Well, that's helpful, Connor."
"It means," he said, his voice now as slow as hers had been, "that in the short term we might find it's easier to climb and to run like we have, I think…" She nodded at him when he looked at her, seeking her confirmation that she'd experienced the same effects that he had. "But I think our bodies might adjust quickly. It'll be different when - if - we get home. Then I guess it will be like moving from sea level up to the mountains… we'll need time to adjust."
"When," she said firmly and he glanced up and met her eyes. "When, Connor. Not if." He didn't nod but he didn't look away though and she took that as a minor victory.
He shrugged. "It should be just like that - moving to a high altitude. If I'm right. I might be completely off the track, Abby. It was just a thought. It's just… it makes sense."
She considered it for a moment, turning it over and over in her mind for its relevance, and then filed it away with the other things to deal with later, to ponder to their hearts' content when they had time. There was only one thing that might need their attention now.
"Think the storms are going to be a problem?"
Another one of Connor's shrugs, one shouldered this time as he leant back on one arm, eyes still focused out onto the sky.
"Maybe," he said. "Means shelter stays up there on top of the list. From what I remember from lectures and journals, there's evidence of a lot of forest fires in the carboniferous. The atmosphere was more turbulent, lots of lightning, lots of lightning strikes. And, like I said, fires burn hotter and for longer with more oxygen in the air." He hadn't quite said, once again leaping ahead and assuming that everyone else kept up, but she got the drift.
"Yeah," she agreed softly. "And you think it will be like that here?"
He shrugged again. "Maybe."
They fell into silence for a moment and this time Connor was the one who broke it.
"What now?"
She mimicked his shrug. "We've got a forest. I'm not sure I want to venture in far, but it would be nice to find something to eat." Nice didn't even begin to cover it. "Maybe watch what the birds eat, see if there's any fruit or anything that we want to risk. Then, water. And we need somewhere we can… I don't know. Sleep. Be safe." She stole another look at him, pleased when he met her eyes seriously, no trace of the buffoon this time.
He nodded, not saying anything, and she felt a sudden surge of selfish gratitude that he was there, just accepting it all. At least for the moment. It was enough to have her edging closer, nudging him gently with her shoulder and, when he looked at her, saying, "We'll be okay, Connor."
"Yeah." He seemed to give it some thought and then gave her a small smile. "Yeah, we will. And in the meantime, we get to play Robinson Crusoe. Since we're next to the ocean, do I get to be a pirate? Or now we're closer to the forest, do I have to be Robin Hood?"
She snorted. "You only get to be a pirate if I get to be a ninja. And you're not really cut out for Robin Hood. Apart from anything else, no one to rob."
He ducked his head and gave her a sidelong grin then folded his arms, scuffing his toe in the dirt. "Want to go exploring, then? Map out our new domain?"
"Yeah, just… let's… Let's be careful, yeah? Stick close to the edge so we don't get lost." She couldn't help the pleading tone that crept into her voice, no matter what it gave away, but he didn't call her on it, not this time. He just nodded again, but this time the accompanying smile was more genuine.
"C'mon," he said, holding his hand out to her. She took it this time without question and followed him back into the dark.
---
Stephen and Jenny were talking quietly together in the break room when Nick walked through the door. The fact that they both stopped as soon as he entered didn't do anything to soothe his nerves, jangled as they were by lack of sleep and the nightmares he'd had when he had finally slipped under.
"What?" he asked ungraciously.
Jenny's eyebrows rose and her hip cocked the way it always did when she was about to trample over some poor sod. Stephen, in contrast, just looked vaguely amused, but it was Stephen who broke the silence first.
"I thought you were going to get some sleep," he observed mildly, bringing his coffee cup back up to his lips and eyeing Nick over the top of it.
"I did." Coffee seemed like a remarkably good idea, even the burnt sludge that they served at the ARC. The coffee machine hadn't quite worked right since Connor had cannibalised it for some part or another. Connor kept promising to give it a complete overhaul, making it even better than it had been before he'd raised it, but somehow he'd never really got around to it.
It was all Nick could do not to think that maybe now he never would.
"Any news," he asked, lacing his coffee with copious amounts of cream and sugar, just to make it drinkable. It was Stephen's turn to raise an eyebrow this time, eyeing Nick's efforts with something like distaste, but he shook his head. Nick couldn't be surprised at that but he'd had to ask anyway.
"So am I allowed to ask what you were talking about?" The coffee was just as disgusting as it always was and he pulled a face, adding another spoonful of sugar.
"Cover story," Jenny said succinctly but she - frustratingly - didn't elaborate further. Exasperated, Nick turned his attention to Stephen.
"I ran into Caroline last night," he explained. It meant nothing to Nick until Stephen added, a little pointedly, "Connor's girlfriend."
Oh. "What did you say?"
"He lied," Jenny interjected. "He was quite good at it actually." She looked suitably impressed and Nick had to swallow down the biting remark that he could almost taste on his tongue.
"Oh?" he said, waving his cup interrogatorily. The coffee slopped over the sides and down his hand. He swore, thankful that the coffee was about as hot as usual, which meant he wasn't burnt.
"I said that they'd been called away with work urgently and at short notice, which was why I was retrieving Abby's lizards."
"Did she buy it?"
Stephen shrugged. "She didn't seem to be that interested, to be honest."
He should feel for the girl, but he was too tired at the moment to feel anything but numb. "Maybe she's used to it, Connor rushing off at short notice."
"Maybe." Stephen was noncommittal on that point.
Jenny snorted inelegantly. "Maybe she's finally twigged that the pair of them are joined at the hip and is cutting her losses." Nick looked at her blankly and she rolled her eyes. "Connor and Abby."
Nick opened his mouth, possibly to argue, possibly not. He'd never quite remember which because at that moment the blare of the anomaly detector sounded throughout the ARC and his cup hit the floor, shattering.
He barely registered it, racing Stephen out of the door, Jenny close behind them even in her heels.
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 3
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 4
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Abby/Connor eventually
Rating: 15
Spoilers: This is an AU from 2.04, so spoilers up until the end of that episode
Author's Notes: Written for the Primeval Ficathon for
temaris. Full notes and disclaimer on part 1.The title - and quotes - are from 'The Sun' by Maroon 5.
Summary: The first step is always the hardest. After that, it's all downhill.
Chapter Listing
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 1
~*~
Day 3
They dimmed the lights of the ARC at night. Nick hadn't realised that before. He'd worked late, sure. More than once. And yet he'd never been here this late - this early - at least not without an active anomaly to deal with. It was odd to think that on those occasions, someone had come ahead and metaphorically put the kettle on, waiting for him and the rest of his team to turn up.
Now he was metaphorically keeping that kettle on for them, just in case the rest of his team managed to find their own way home.
He had no idea where Stephen had gone to in the wake of their argument. There was no sign of him as he trudged down the seemingly endless white corridors until he reached the glass door labelled 'Animal Research'. It was deserted here too, the lab assistants having gone home for the night. He pushed it open, and the lights came on automatically, stark and white, and he blinked, clearing his vision.
The room was large: clean and clinical in a way that seemed to have no relation to the cluttered, battered labs at the university. It was all cold still, white walls, empty and barren. The shark they'd captured - the one Stephen had shot saving Jenny's life - was lying on one of the large autopsy tables. The research team had already started to examine it in more detail than he'd managed when his focus had been on Lucian's fate; its guts were spread neatly out around it, some parts of them already tagged with tentative comparative markers, based on the schematics of similar modern species, which were neatly pinned to the wall around the room.
He paused for a moment as he passed it, trying to imagine a world that produced such marvellous, terrible things, things that had teeth in their tongues. A world so savage and hostile that the creatures that inhabited needed those things, an extra edge in an ocean that must be filled with teeth to make that necessary.
A world that Abby and Connor were now trapped in.
He told himself that the shiver that went through him was simply because they kept the place too damned cold, but at least that meant that the bloody thing didn't stink.
It grew warmer when he moved to the area at the back, behind another door where they kept the cages for any live specimens they might capture. The cages ranged in size from the small to the bloody huge and he hoped to God they never had to use the bloody huge ones to store anything living and probably - knowing their luck so far - incredibly pissed off at being caught.
This room wasn't empty of the living, although, at the moment, there was only one prehistoric specimen in resident, one who was being kept company by his more modern relations.
"Hey, Rex."
He kept his voice low. It was superstitious, perhaps, but the area did feel like a hospital this early in the morning. Or maybe a morgue, one for creatures long dead and those not yet even thought of.
He had no idea if Rex recognised him but the small reptile tilted his head for a moment, almost as though he were considering Nick's appearance and what it meant, and then chittered at him. It was an oddly subdued sound. Nick had no idea if that was because the little creature missed Abby or whether he, too, had been affected by the strange sombre air of the ARC after hours.
He absentmindedly pushed a piece of apple through the bars for Rex to munch on before crouching down until he was as close to eye level as he could manage. Rex met his gaze, oddly serious for something so small and green.
"You miss her, too, don't you?" This time he pushed a piece of orange through, just for a bit of variety, but Rex seemed disinterested in that, too, still focused on watching Nick. It would be nice to think he was listening, but it was probably simply wariness for an unknown entity. "Miss both of them, I suppose. I bet they were good flatmates. Fed you on time and played with you and kept you entertained."
Maybe he was going crazy, talking to a prehistoric lizard like it understood him. He rubbed at his eyes again, tiredly, and swayed on his feet as he fought to keep his balance.
"We'll get them back, Rex, I promise."
This time Rex's gaze moved from him, his head tilting again and another soft chitter escaping him. Nick didn't turn his head until Stephen's shadow fell over him and a cup of coffee was lowered unceremoniously down to his level.
When he did look up, half torn between apologising for his outburst earlier and ignoring it and moving on, Stephen's gaze was as steady and unyielding as Rex's had been. He held it for long moments and in the end it was Stephen who looked away, his eyes tracking Rex's movements as the Coelurosauravus took a tentative few flaps across his cage to land on the sidebars, gripping them tightly with his curved toes and craning his neck to get a better look at them.
"Yeah, Rex," Stephen said, his voice gravelly from lack of sleep and maybe something more. "We'll get them back."
---
Water was still a pressing issue, although the storm had at least bought them some time. When its fury had spent itself, they'd straightened up, dazed, with fingers numb from the tension and clothes and hair dripping wet, and all around them had been puddles, formed in the pitted rocks.
She'd splashed in puddles like this when she was six and had Wellington boots shaped like ladybirds. She didn't remember drinking out of puddles before - and her Mum would have had a fit - but there could be no such qualms here. They'd lapped them up eagerly, manners forgotten in the rush to wet parched throats, scooping up what they could with cupped hands and bringing them to their mouths until the water ran down their chins and she'd thought they'd burst.
It had quenched their first but it hadn't been enough to ease their fears, at least not her fears and probably not Connor's. She could read him easily enough, which is why she hadn't been surprised when he'd taken his jacket off and soaked it in the last puddle they could find, glancing at her sheepishly, his face burning with more than the sun.
"Smart idea," she'd said, her voice still sounding too croaky, and he'd given her a smile that was still sheepish but also Connor.
They hadn't got far before night had started to fall again, and this time they'd found a cave that probably deserved the name, huddling together in the back of it like frightened sheep while lightning again tore across the sky, without the rain to make it worthwhile. Instead, they'd had to suck their next drink out of the fabric of Connor's wet jacket, which had been gritty and foul. There'd been a weird sense of embarrassment about it, like she was doing something filthy, something her mother wouldn't approve of, although her mother didn't approve of much it seemed. She could picture it, her Mam, saying in an outraged tone, "You sucked his what?" It should be funny, and under other circumstances might have been, but all she'd felt was that sense of shame.
She hadn't shared that with Connor, just turned her face away from him, closed her eyes and tried not to lose any of that hard won moisture to anything as stupid as tears. Eventually, she'd managed to sleep, conscious of his form, silhouetted against the stars that were brighter than she was used to - bright and strange.
They moved on again when the sun rose, and the day only grew hotter the more they trudged along the shoreline, trying to stay away far enough from the water to avoid those creatures. She could hear them sometimes though, even when she couldn't see them, the mournful melodies drifting up towards them, muffled by the water and the rocks.
The sounds still made her shudder, in spite of the heat.
There seemed to be no way up away from the beach - the cliffs rose above them, pale and severe, burning blindingly bright in the sun. She added sunglasses to her mental list of things to always, always be taken with her to an anomaly site along with a really big knife, some sunscreen and water.
Lots and lots of water.
She stumbled again, and Connor caught her, his fingers closing firmly around her arm. She'd have bruises there, to go with the blisters on her feet and Connor's incipient sunburn. They were both tired, both clumsy and sooner or later one of them was going to take a header into the sea. As long as they did that when they were close to the shore rather than clambering over the rocks higher up, pushed upwards by the fact that there was no way through lower down. If they fell from up there… well, it wasn't like there was a nearby A&E Department to put them right.
It was starting to scare her, how far they were moving from the original anomaly site. Their pace was slow, but even so, there was no guarantee that the route back would be any quicker. Even if the anomaly reopened, surely they'd never make it back before it closed. And if anyone else made it through behind them, tried to follow…
She glanced back over her shoulder but any gleam from the anomaly would have been lost in the bright garish sunlight, reflected from the rocks.
If anyone tried to follow, they may not reach them in time. May even be trapped with them, or worse, much worse.
They might give up on them entirely.
She and Connor still stopped occasionally, the pair of them working together to fashion something like an arrow where they could - where there were darker rocks on the shoreline and a flat place on the rocks they were scrambling over where they could lay them out. She wasn't sure it would help, but it was better than nothing. At least they were doing something beyond just looking to their immediate survival.
She wasn't sure how long their markers would last - it didn't look like the water reached up this far, not any more, but it obviously had in the past. Every so often they passed caves, eaten into the cliff face by the waves at some point, but they were dry now, empty and deserted. That was something to be thankful for, and she made a mental note of each and everyone just in case the storms that seemed to lurk constantly on the horizon came closer. She had no wish to relive the previous day's storm, trapped out in the open with nowhere to run.
So far, however, they had stayed on the horizon, but even from here she could see the lightning streaking across the sky and hear the thunder as it rumbled towards them. It mingled with the sounds of the waves until sometimes it was like being hit by a never ending wall of white noise.
None of it helped the headache that threatened to split the back of her skull, brought on by the heat and the dehydration.
She stumbled again, and this time Connor reached out too late to catch her. She fell to her knees, the jar causing her teeth to catch her tongue and she tasted blood. Just another ache to add to the many.
Connor dragged her to her feet, only drawing his hands away reluctantly when she pulled away, angry more with herself and her clumsiness than she was with him. He took a couple of steps back and swayed on his feet, almost stumbling himself.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine," she snapped, brushing the sand from her knees, more so that she didn't have to look at him than because it made her any less dirty. "How long do you think we should head in this direction before we head back? It's already been a day, Connor."
That was snappish of her too, but he didn't take offence at it, at least not as far as she could see. Instead, he glanced up and down the coast, as though that was going to help.
"Dunno." Well, that was helpful. "I mean, even if we head back now, there's no guarantee that we're going to find any water in the other direction. At least not that we can drink." He looked out over the ocean, his eyes scrunched up against the sun. "And we don't know if there'll be more rain again. There wasn't last night, even with the fireworks display."
"Water, water everywhere," she observed ruefully, moving over to stand next to him. Again, she had to fight the urge just to reach out and grab a hold of his hand, a mute apology for taking it out on him, all the fear and the panic she was drowning in.
"I dunno about that either," he said, seeming oblivious to her dilemma. His eyes were scanning the horizon but when Abby looked out over it there didn't seem to be anything that could have caught his attention.
"I'm pretty sure that drinking sea water is bad, Connor." Sometimes it paid to spell things out to him.
He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe in our time, yeah." 'Our time'. How weird was it to think in terms like that?
She frowned, peering out at the ocean again, still not seeing what he was. Sometimes he wished he'd spell things out to her given the convoluted twists and turns his brain took sometimes. There was probably some sci-fi reference she was missing.
He glanced at her and seemed - for once - to pick up on her confusion.
"My mum used to take us to the seaside when we were little." Okay, still not helpful. "We used to go rock pooling with her, you know? She liked that. So did I. It was… fun."
The look he gave her was a little bashful and Abby couldn't help giving him a little smile in return, not just because of her own childhood memories - living on an island had some advantages - but because she could just picture Connor as a child, crouched over some rock pool or other, poking around in the seaweed fringes for hermit crabs.
He nodded at her, obviously taking it as read that she knew exactly what he was talking about. "Well, you know when the tide had gone out, and it was sunny? And the rock pools started to disappear?"
"Yeah." The smile she gave him this time was a little more rueful. "Gotta be tough to live in a rock pool, with all those shifts in temperature and salinity." Maybe they should take lessons.
"They left salt behind."
Now he'd lost her again. "Course they did, Connor. And your point?"
"You see much salt around the ones here?"
She stared at him for a split second before peering down, her eyes tracking over the rocky shoreline for evidence of what he was talking about. She couldn't be sure - what had once been a rock pool and what hadn't wasn't clear - but he was right about one thing. Where there were small pockets of water left behind - from either the rain or the tide - there weren't any crystallised rings of salt around them, the way you'd expect when there had been deep rock pools but no seaweed growing around the edges, limiting evaporation. And most of yesterday's rain had evaporated even before they had stopped for the night, hadn't it? So any pools left on the shore should be sea and not rain water; salty sea water leaving salty rings behind.
Right?
She couldn't be sure and her head ached too much to think about it too much.
"You think it's safe to drink then?" Her tone was dubious and she didn't bother trying to hide it.
He shrugged again, shifting a little uncomfortably under her gaze. "I dunno. But it's something to think about. You know…" He met her gaze this time, more candid now and the look in his eyes didn't do anything to soothe her own fears. "In case it gets worse."
It might well get worse, but she wasn't going to sit around waiting for it to happen. She stared around, peering up and down the coastline much as he had while he just stood and watched her, waiting for her to make some sort of decision. She could have resented that but this was Connor. In spite of their problems recently - and she was woman enough to admit that her dislike of his girlfriend was the root of a lot of them - they made a good team. Give and take, and if she had to give this time, that was okay.
He'd followed her through an anomaly, with no thought of his own safety. He'd given her more than enough recently. More than she'd suspected, even.
"Let's head the way we were going for a little longer," she said finally, eyeing the way they'd come - and the ocean - a little uneasily. "We might find a way inland, or even a river. Especially if you're right about the salinity. Water's got to be coming from somewhere and feeding into it, right?"
He nodded, looking relieved that she'd made the decision for both of them.
"Onwards and upwards, then?"
She nodded, trying to project an air of confidence she was far from feeling. Once again, she had to fight the need to reach for his hand as they started to clamber over the rocks again, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible.
They'd find a steady and constant source of water soon. They had to. The alternative was unthinkable.
---
"Go home, Cutter."
Lester's cut glass tones cut through his fugue and Nick jerked upright, the world snapping into focus again.
"Go home," Lester repeated. "You're making the place look untidy and Lord knows we pay you enough to be able to afford to put a roof over your head." He seemed to consider that thought for a moment and added, "Although at London prices, it's probably not much of one."
Nick blinked at him blearily, managing to focus just in time to catch Lester indulging in his normal eye rolling.
"If the anomaly opens again…"
"If the anomaly opens again, we have a crack team of commandos on site ready to leap into action and save the day. Let's leave it to the professionals, shall we? It's what I'm paying them for. I'm paying you to be the brains of the outfit and frankly, judging by the way you look right now, I'm half expecting them to start dribbling out of your ears at any moment." The look he gave Nick was half brusque and half sympathetic, and the latter didn't sit well on Lester's face. He wasn't a man much suited to anything human in his interactions with others.
"Jenny." Bang on cue, or maybe simply responding to Lester's barking of her name, she stalked into the room, her too high heels click-clacking across the floor. Nick half expected Lester to click his fingers at her, too, like one would summoning their guard dogs, but judging by the look of hell currently residing on Jenny's face, maybe even Lester knew that there were some battles he wasn't going to win and some fights he shouldn't pick.
It didn't help that that look was currently aimed in his direction rather than Lester's.
"Why don't you escort the good Professor home? His or yours, I don't really care. Just get him off the premises before we start being hit by the Working Time Directive people, hmmm?"
He half expected Jenny to rip Lester a new one at that, but the glare stayed aimed at him.
"Look, Jenny…"
"Lester's right." Of course he was. What had Jenny called him? A great man? A great man who'd just banished him like he'd banished Connor from the dockside for making a scene. It hurt to realise that it was for the same reason - grief and loss, although Nick, at least, wasn't quite so open about his pain.
Besides, Abby and Connor weren't dead. He'd made that mistake with Helen and he wasn't making it again.
"I want to stay here, keep on working out when the anomaly might open again…"
"By snoring at your desk?" she asked sweetly. He wasn't fooled. He knew her well enough by now to know that the sweetness was just because she was scenting victory.
"I was… I don't snore."
"Yes you do. I heard you from the break room." Then her expression softened, and that was even more terrifying than the glare. Not the idea that Jenny had a softer side but the idea that Jenny thought that he needed to see it.
"Look, I promise. As soon as we have news…"
"You'll call me, I know. It's not good enough. I've got to be here. I can't… Look, I have to be doing something. You might not understand that, Claud -"
He cut himself off, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the diatribe that was sure to follow. She surprised him, but then she'd been doing that a lot recently.
"And if that wasn't a sign that you need some sleep, I don't know what is."
"I'm not a child, to be sent to bed."
"No." And there was no softness in her tone this time; it was hard as steel and as deadly as any blade forged from it. "What you are is someone who is stupid and arrogant enough to put everyone else at risk because you don't trust anyone else to do their jobs."
The words - and the tone they were delivered in, all brute force and no tact - were enough to stop him in his tracks. The anger would come once the shock had worn off - was already building in fact - but she cut him off at the knees there, too.
"I get that you want to do something, but even if you did figure out whether the anomaly is going to open again, and even if you figured out roughly when, we're still reliant on the detector to tell us the exact moment when it does - the detector and the men on the ground, who are watching and waiting and a damned sight better at both of those things than you are. Face it, Cutter. Even if a miracle happened and the anomaly opened in the next five minutes, you're in no fit state to go through it. You need sleep and probably a hell of a lot of coffee after that to function, and frankly you need a shower as well. So for once in your stubborn, unbelievably arrogant life, just do what you're told."
He blinked, opened his mouth and shut it again, finally settling on, "Do you ever stop bossing people about?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously and one hand rose from her side, the perfectly manicured nail pointing towards the door in a way that left no doubt as to what she wanted.
"No. I'm very good at it. So let me tell you how this is going to play out. You are walking out of that door. I am then going to drive you home and if you give me any trouble I won't even stop before I throw you out at the other end. I suspect it will make things a little more difficult for you to play the heroic martyr with gravel rash on your hands and knees so don't think for one second that I won't make good on my threat. Frankly, I don't want to hear it any more. We have… temporarily mislaid two members of our team. But - as you keep repeating - we are going to get them back. Personally, I'd like to think that by the time we do, we aren't short another team member because Stephen and I have decided to beat you into submission and hide the body somewhere. Do you understand me?"
It was an interesting choice of words for Jenny. 'Our team'. He stared at her for a long moment, trying not to let the inner debate he was having about whether or not to risk more of her wrath show on his face.
"Okay," he said eventually. "But if there's any sign…"
She rolled her eyes, looking scarily like Lester for a moment. Perhaps on this world there was a finishing school somewhere that churned them all out like this, all cultured tones and smart arse commentary.
"If there is any sign, we will call you. Provided," and she snapped the word out, her lower lip jutting out afterwards pugnaciously, "that you do what you are told to do right now." And then her voice softened again, just to deliver the killer blow.
"We need you to be fit and ready for when we have to bring them home, okay?"
It would be easier to buy if he hadn't watched her turn on the charm innumerable times before now, using it to persuade those members of the public she hadn't already terrified into submission to do exactly what she wanted them to do. But even if she was using her PR charm voice, she'd made her stance on this one perfectly clear. The delivery may have rung a little false but the message rang true.
"Fine," he said, finally capitulating. "I will get some sleep. And a shower. As long as it's understood that the second - the second, Jenny - that there is any news, I'm informed."
She rolled her eyes again. "I'm afraid that once again you've mistaken me for your secretary, but I'll make sure that I call you - haul you out of bed if need be - if it's necessary. Deal?"
He half expected her to hold out her hand for him to shake on it but instead she folded her arms, glaring at him again over the top of them, and he swallowed a tired smile, giving her a nod.
"Lead on, MacDuff," he said.
"It's lay on, actually. But I get the drift."
Of course she did.
He swallowed down another smile but, for once, he followed where she led without any more argument.
---
It was another two hours, by Abby's admittedly random reckoning, that they finally found what looked like it could be a path up the cliff face, at least one that wouldn't result in them breaking their necks. It took them another hour or so to clamber their way up it, and she had to admit she was surprised that neither of them were particularly out of breath by the time they'd reached the top. Maybe Connor had made good on his threat to go to the gym.
But when they did reach the top, the sight that stretched in front of her did what the climb couldn't and took her breath away. She'd never seen anything like it. Couldn't imagine anything like it, not on their Earth, although maybe there were vistas like this in places she'd never got around to visit. The earth curved down towards a huge basin, the sides carpeted in what looked like grassland, and then…
"Wow," said Connor, coming up to stand beside her. She glanced sideways at him, tracing the line of his profile with her eyes. His nose was red from the sun, and his lips had started to crack, especially at the corners where he kept licking at them convulsively, trying to keep them moist when the heat and the spray were conspiring against them.
She wasn't much better - she'd been protected a little more from the sun thanks to the hood of her sweatshirt, but her feet were sore and blistered and her fingers scratched and bleeding from the climb.
"That's…"
He trailed off, for once shocked into silence.
"Yeah." It kind of summed it up really.
"Well," said Connor eventually. "There's obviously water down there." He glanced over at her before his eyes were drawn back to the sight laid out in front of them. "A lot of it."
"Yeah," she said, staring down at the forest that stretched out across the horizon as far as the eye could see; never ending rolling shades of green for mile after mile after mile. If it was a basin, she couldn't see the other side - had no idea if there were cliffs beyond the forest or whether the one they were standing on was a freak of geology, pushed up by volcanic activity or by the shift of tectonic plates on the sea floor.
And to the east of them, their cliffs finally folded down towards the sea, smoothing out into yet more greenery, darker this time. She made a half turn, squinting to focus and thought that the water down there might be darker too, silt maybe, pouring out into the sea and forming a delta. Which meant that those trees may be this era's equivalent of a mangrove. Which meant, in turn, a river to carry the life giving nutrients down into the bay. If there was one, she couldn't spot it, couldn't tell where the river ended and the sea began, but it was more hope than they'd had before.
She turned back towards the carpet of greenery, eyes watering a little from the sun. There was other life down there too; as she watched, small black dots pin-wheeled up from the forest canopy, a flock of birds taking flight, although their path was oddly erratic and they moved like no flock she'd ever seen. But where there were birds there was water and there was meat and maybe even eggs, depending on the season.
And where there were those things, there was a chance that she and Connor would make it through until they could make it home.
Feeling more confident, she finally started down the slope, Connor following and keeping pace with her, his footsteps sending up little clouds of dust as he angled downwards.
This time she did catch hold of his hand and held it all the way down.
Day 4
Nick dreamed, although it was the last thing he wanted, needed. The exhaustion should have dragged him down into the dark depths of slumber, far beyond the reach of nightmares but instead, he dreamt of something else dragging him down, down into the murky depths as the water closed over his head.
His arms floated above him, wavering in the dim light that grew more distant, fading until it was nothing but shades of silver and green.
And all around him they sang, the sorrowful song of the sea while he sank down, down, down.
He woke with a gasp, fingers clutching the sheet as he tried to claw his way back up to the light, tried to breathe through lungs that…
Weren't filled with water. He took a deep breath, then another, his heart pounding a rapid rhythm in his chest, so fast it came close to pain.
When he looked at his alarm clock, it read 03:00, the light shining greenly in the dark and making his stomach lurch again until he could almost taste salt water on his tongue.
He kicked off the covers. There'd be no more sleep tonight, and he'd stayed away from the ARC for a whole six hours. Surely that would be enough to keep Jenny and Lester silent. And if it didn't, tough shit.
But he took the time to shower again before he left the house, letting the warm water wash away the night sweats, letting it soak into him until the ice melted from his veins.
He tried not to listen to the melody of the water as it fell.
---
It took them a lot longer to reach the edges of the forest than she'd figured it would, her sense of distance distorted by the sun and by the never ending vista of green. They had to watch each step down, the footing on this side of the escarpment more treacherous, with the scree threatening to shift under each step.
They'd stopped at the foot, even though there was a good hour or so of light left, and came the closest they had to an argument on this side of the anomaly. Connor had wanted to push on, cross the grassland to try and reach the forest before nightfall, or just after if they could, where there might be water, food even. She understood where he was coming from - the hunger was a tight, painful knot in her belly, growing worse with each step, and her lips were cracking again, the blood sharp and salty against her tongue when she licked to moisten them. But all she could think of was the lions that haunted the savannahs of Africa, lying in the long grass, just waiting for something to wander by. The land here was more like scrub, but it wasn't even - it rolled gently and each rise, each clump of taller grass, could hide something they'd never see in the dark, at least not until it was too late.
She was exhausted - hungry and scared and aching - and Connor wasn't fairing any better. His jacket was slung over his shoulders, almost like a scarf, dry as a bone now. His cheeks were starting to hollow out and there were dark bags under his eyes, his gaze dull and his skin dry and peeling over his nose, where the sun had caught.
Everything was wrong, like it had taken a sharp step to the left and pushed her off balance. The ease of her interactions with Connor had just gone and she wanted it back. It wasn't all because of where they were and the heat and the thirst and the hunger. There was something else lurking at the edges, the kind of thing that you caught out of the corner of your eye as you turned your head.
She knew what it was - the elephant in the room, the thing they weren't talking about. The many things they weren't talking about, like the fact that Connor had a girlfriend and she'd had a crush on Stephen and everything was wrong and…
And Connor loved her, as in really loved her and as more than just a mate. She thought. She was sure that had been what he'd meant.
Hadn't it?
So everything was wrong, and that, more than anything, was what had laced her words with a venom she didn't have the energy to feel otherwise, throwing the words out until Connor had moved away from her, turning away from her and sitting down, the line of his back stiff and resentful, an echo of everything he'd said and everything he hadn't.
They stayed there, hidden in the boulders that had fallen from the escarpment over the millennia since it had risen, and they barely spoke all night, any conversation limited to variations on, "It's your turn to watch," and, "Fine." She couldn't sleep even when it was Connor's turn to watch, too scared of the things that might lurk out in the darkness and too angry at Connor for not understanding that - and herself for not letting it go. She spent most of the night staring at his back and aching for things she couldn't quite pin down let alone say out loud.
It was easier when day broke, the sun rising to the east of them, over the sea. They still didn't talk about it but at least they were back to being polite, skirting around all of the elephants in the room, it seemed. The grassland proved easy to cross - no sign of herds of grazers or anything that stalked them - and she half expected an 'I told you so' from Connor, but he was eerily silent on that point too.
But it was still wrong, both this world and the silence between her and Connor. When they finally approached the forest, grew close enough to differentiate the trees from the wood, it shouldn't have been a surprise that that was wrong too. The sense of alienation that had been nagging at her, worrying around the edges since the second she'd been yanked through the anomaly, grew stronger, until it was almost as oppressive as the heat.
She'd expected a rainforest, somehow, maybe just because of the size of it, or the heat and the storms that seemed to rage every night. She'd expected trees that towered over them and bright birds calling from the canopy, water dripping down from broad leaves and the air to be close and humid. But just like the flocks they'd spied from the cliffs, there had been something off about the forest as they approached, something just not quite right about the picture that it had presented.
She'd expected a forest of trees, stretching up into the sky. What she got was a forest full of giant ferns that towered over the pair of them, branching out, fronds twisted and curling upwards until they blocked out the sun.
"Oh… wow."
It wasn't exactly the turn of phrase she was thinking - oh shit would have been closer to the mark - but she could appreciate the sentiment anyway. When she turned to look at Connor, his face was rapt. It was amazing, the way that he could still find wonder in this when he was exhausted and filthy, dehydrated and hungry. He took a step closer, leaning in to examine it, and she had to fight the urge to grab him, yank him back. There were shadows lurking behind the ferns, deeper into the forest. Places where things could hide and when she didn't pull him back, and he took one, then two steps into the dark, she had to fight back the superstitious shiver that shook her, her hindbrain taking over for a moment and bringing back ancestral memories of cowering in the dark from the things with teeth and claws.
She took a step after him, her eyes darting warily about, constantly searching for any sign of movement, of danger, and she had to suppress another shudder, this time because the air under the canopy was noticeably cooler than it had been outside.
"Do you think there are still trees somewhere?" Connor's voice drifted back to her, sounding ethereal in the gloom. "I mean, real trees rather than these ferns?"
She opened her mouth but had to swallow before she could answer him, her throat tight with that same ancestral fear. "Maybe. I mean, this can't be the only continent, or the only forest. There are even places on Earth where ferns still dominate, although I can't think of any this big."
"The carboniferous." Connor answered a question she hadn't asked. When she didn't say anything, he looked up at her but she couldn't quite make out his expression with the shadows falling over his face. "Huge ferns covering most of the planet. But that was before flowering plants - true flowering plants, I mean." He took a step back towards her and her knees went a little weak with relief. It also meant that he stepped into a gleam of sunlight, penetrating the canopy, which wasn't as thick here as it seemed to be further in, and now she could see his expression, a confused frown on his face, the one he got when he was trying - and failing - to figure something out. "I think, anyway" he added. "Got to say, paleobotany? Not my strong point."
She gave him a weak little smile, rubbing at her arms.
"You cold?"
"A little," she admitted, not wanting to admit the real reason for her shivers. She prided herself on being tough - tougher than Connor, and even he'd admit as much. Usually. If she let her fear rule her now, it wouldn't only be herself she was letting down. But it was difficult when something uttered a shrill cry to the right of her. She started, her heart jumping in her chest and ice water beginning to trickle down her spine.
"If…. Um…." Connor's face was torn and he took another step towards her, flushing. She stared at him for a moment, confused herself at what was going through his mind, and his flush deepened. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before his hands came up to unknot the sleeves of his jacket, tied loosely around his neck and shoulders. He held it out to her with a weak smile. "Here."
She wondered if that had been what he'd originally intended but there was no way for her to ask, not without acknowledging that thing they weren't talking about. All she could do was take what was offered and give him a weak smile of her own in return.
She began to pull it on over her hooded top and took another step when something bright green and fast darted past her foot. She swore, almost tripping in her attempt to avoid it, her heart racing as she finally recognised it for what it was.
A lizard, a small one. Almost like a gecko in the shape - and speed - of it but not quite, something off about it too. Maybe it was the small spines studding its back. The form was fairly typical though, like a myriad of small lizards the world over - her world. The familiarity of that made her throat ache, spines or no.
She tracked it as it scurried through the undergrowth, all four legs moving rapidly, two by two in a typical lizard fashion. It swerved to avoid a small hole in the ground, and then, something else - something big and black and wrong - came out of the hole, fast and vicious, and grabbed hold of the lizard she'd been watching.
"Jesus." Connor swore in her ear even as he grabbed her and pulled her back, catching her when she stumbled. He almost fell over himself just after that, too busy concentrating on the hole in the ground to pay any attention to where his feet were going. "That… that…"
"I really hate spiders," she said weakly.
"Yeah. I never, ever want to run into something like that in the bathroom."
For some reason - some stupid, adrenaline fuelled, scared shitless reason - that made her laugh, gasping for breath until they turned into sobs. She bit it back though, forced it down while Connor watched her, his face suddenly scared. She didn't think it was the spider that had put that look on his face but it acted like a shot of cold water anyway, sobering her up. She pulled herself together, hiccupping and turning her face away so that he couldn't see the tear tracks on her grimy face.
"That… that was one hell of a big spider," she said when she could speak again. He watched her for a moment, his face still open and scared, then nodded, seeming reluctant to speak. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, finding her centre, that place of peace. When she spoke again, it was calmer, more reasonable. "Think that that's typical? I mean, do we need to keep a watch out?"
He stared at her for a moment longer before reluctantly taking his eyes off her to look around. She didn't know what he thought he'd see - the foliage was thick, the giant ferns seeming to harbour much smaller varieties around their roots. There could be anything lurking in there.
"Maybe," he said finally, his eyes tracking up to the canopy. He frowned, and pointed something out to her, his hands moving slowly, steadily to avoid attracting attention, or maybe startling something.
"Look."
As stage whispers went, Connor needed practice, but she didn't hear anything take flight. So she did as he asked, turning slowly, her heart pounding every second of the way, until she could see where he was pointing.
She didn't spot it at first, her eyes still adjusting to the dim light in the forest, and then it moved, its wings waving gently.
It was the biggest dragonfly she'd ever seen. Its wingspan was easily a foot across, as far as she could tell. Maybe even bigger. Big enough that she took another step towards Connor - a slow one this time.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Connor's voice was just a breath in her ear. "You have those mermaid-like things, and sharks that have evolved to have teeth on their tongues, and then you have these. Dragonflies and spiders, whose shape hasn't changed much in millions and millions of years. They predate the dinos, and yet here they are, still going strong now. Whenever 'now' is."
She turned her head to look at him - still slowly - and his face was fascinated again. He took a step towards them, and she grabbed hold of his t-shirt, giving him a glare that warned of retribution if he did anything stupid. More stupid than usual.
"As dragonflies go, that's really… bloody… huge!"
He blinked at her, either taken back by her swearing or perhaps just the vehemence of her whisper. Then he caught hold of her - his jacket - and tugged her back towards the forest edge. She resisted at first, angling their direction of travel so that they made as large a detour as possible around the spider's lair.
She had no intention of getting caught up in the 'majesty' of something that had no right to be that size and hungry as she was, she couldn't imagine eating it or anything like it - her stomach rebelled at the thought.
When they reached sunlight again, he pointed towards the clouds gathering ominously in the distance. "See that?"
"A storm's coming." Big deal. She was getting used to them - they were nothing special, not here.
"Yes. And have you noticed anything else?" He turned towards her, the look on his face expectant, but his expression rapidly fell when he finally twigged that she wasn't in the mood for guessing games. "The air. It's like… I dunno. Like you could almost get drunk on it. No, sorry. That's a really bad analogy. Like…" He waved his hands vaguely in the air and there was no mistaking his frustration at not finding the exact words. But she got it.
"It's a little weird, yeah." Weird how they got tired but seldom seemed to get out of breath.
Connor's hands fell but his eyes stayed focused on the clouds roiling on the horizon. They weren't close enough to worry about, not yet, but Connor had got her thinking.
"You think that's causing the storms? The air?"
He frowned, still not looking at her. "I think maybe, yeah. I dunno. I could be wrong, but I think that maybe the oxygen levels might be a bit higher than they are in our… back home." He shot her a look that bordered on sheepish. "It just… it was just an idea. But, you know… the plants and the huge insects. It's very like the carboniferous and the oxygen levels then were thirty, thirty-five percent. Something like that. Much higher than we have - had. That's why the insects got so big then."
She gave it some more thought, turning the idea over and over in her mind until it settled in, seemed less fantastic. It shouldn't be a surprise that this world could be more different from the one they'd left in more ways than just the creatures inhabiting it. It was too easy to think that things in their time, things they took for granted like the fact it always rained on a Bank Holiday and that they didn't really get tornados in Essex, had always been that way. That they always would be. That even less superficial things, like the composition of the atmosphere or the constellations, would stay the same over the millennia. But it made sense that given the size of the forest, there'd be more oxygen in the atmosphere. Connor was right about one thing. She may not have been a palaeontologist - her specialism ran to current creatures, or at least those that had been 'current' in their time - but even she knew that the composition of the atmosphere hadn't always been the same, changing as the face of the planet changed.
And millions of years must have passed since their time. The stars had told her that much.
Unless…
"We haven't gone back in time, have we? I mean, this isn't the carboniferous, is it?"
He shook his head, facing the forest once more. Once again his eyes searched among the trees and this time what he pointed out was a bird, or something similar to it, not an insect.
"Didn't have those in the carboniferous. Birds weren't going to be around for nearly two hundred million years. So even if those mermaid things did come through to our time and then we've all travelled back to much earlier, it doesn't explain them."
"So what does that mean, then?" she asked slowly. "If you're right?"
He shrugged again, shoving his fingers into his trouser pockets. "Make sure we don't build a really big fire?"
"Well, that's helpful, Connor."
"It means," he said, his voice now as slow as hers had been, "that in the short term we might find it's easier to climb and to run like we have, I think…" She nodded at him when he looked at her, seeking her confirmation that she'd experienced the same effects that he had. "But I think our bodies might adjust quickly. It'll be different when - if - we get home. Then I guess it will be like moving from sea level up to the mountains… we'll need time to adjust."
"When," she said firmly and he glanced up and met her eyes. "When, Connor. Not if." He didn't nod but he didn't look away though and she took that as a minor victory.
He shrugged. "It should be just like that - moving to a high altitude. If I'm right. I might be completely off the track, Abby. It was just a thought. It's just… it makes sense."
She considered it for a moment, turning it over and over in her mind for its relevance, and then filed it away with the other things to deal with later, to ponder to their hearts' content when they had time. There was only one thing that might need their attention now.
"Think the storms are going to be a problem?"
Another one of Connor's shrugs, one shouldered this time as he leant back on one arm, eyes still focused out onto the sky.
"Maybe," he said. "Means shelter stays up there on top of the list. From what I remember from lectures and journals, there's evidence of a lot of forest fires in the carboniferous. The atmosphere was more turbulent, lots of lightning, lots of lightning strikes. And, like I said, fires burn hotter and for longer with more oxygen in the air." He hadn't quite said, once again leaping ahead and assuming that everyone else kept up, but she got the drift.
"Yeah," she agreed softly. "And you think it will be like that here?"
He shrugged again. "Maybe."
They fell into silence for a moment and this time Connor was the one who broke it.
"What now?"
She mimicked his shrug. "We've got a forest. I'm not sure I want to venture in far, but it would be nice to find something to eat." Nice didn't even begin to cover it. "Maybe watch what the birds eat, see if there's any fruit or anything that we want to risk. Then, water. And we need somewhere we can… I don't know. Sleep. Be safe." She stole another look at him, pleased when he met her eyes seriously, no trace of the buffoon this time.
He nodded, not saying anything, and she felt a sudden surge of selfish gratitude that he was there, just accepting it all. At least for the moment. It was enough to have her edging closer, nudging him gently with her shoulder and, when he looked at her, saying, "We'll be okay, Connor."
"Yeah." He seemed to give it some thought and then gave her a small smile. "Yeah, we will. And in the meantime, we get to play Robinson Crusoe. Since we're next to the ocean, do I get to be a pirate? Or now we're closer to the forest, do I have to be Robin Hood?"
She snorted. "You only get to be a pirate if I get to be a ninja. And you're not really cut out for Robin Hood. Apart from anything else, no one to rob."
He ducked his head and gave her a sidelong grin then folded his arms, scuffing his toe in the dirt. "Want to go exploring, then? Map out our new domain?"
"Yeah, just… let's… Let's be careful, yeah? Stick close to the edge so we don't get lost." She couldn't help the pleading tone that crept into her voice, no matter what it gave away, but he didn't call her on it, not this time. He just nodded again, but this time the accompanying smile was more genuine.
"C'mon," he said, holding his hand out to her. She took it this time without question and followed him back into the dark.
---
Stephen and Jenny were talking quietly together in the break room when Nick walked through the door. The fact that they both stopped as soon as he entered didn't do anything to soothe his nerves, jangled as they were by lack of sleep and the nightmares he'd had when he had finally slipped under.
"What?" he asked ungraciously.
Jenny's eyebrows rose and her hip cocked the way it always did when she was about to trample over some poor sod. Stephen, in contrast, just looked vaguely amused, but it was Stephen who broke the silence first.
"I thought you were going to get some sleep," he observed mildly, bringing his coffee cup back up to his lips and eyeing Nick over the top of it.
"I did." Coffee seemed like a remarkably good idea, even the burnt sludge that they served at the ARC. The coffee machine hadn't quite worked right since Connor had cannibalised it for some part or another. Connor kept promising to give it a complete overhaul, making it even better than it had been before he'd raised it, but somehow he'd never really got around to it.
It was all Nick could do not to think that maybe now he never would.
"Any news," he asked, lacing his coffee with copious amounts of cream and sugar, just to make it drinkable. It was Stephen's turn to raise an eyebrow this time, eyeing Nick's efforts with something like distaste, but he shook his head. Nick couldn't be surprised at that but he'd had to ask anyway.
"So am I allowed to ask what you were talking about?" The coffee was just as disgusting as it always was and he pulled a face, adding another spoonful of sugar.
"Cover story," Jenny said succinctly but she - frustratingly - didn't elaborate further. Exasperated, Nick turned his attention to Stephen.
"I ran into Caroline last night," he explained. It meant nothing to Nick until Stephen added, a little pointedly, "Connor's girlfriend."
Oh. "What did you say?"
"He lied," Jenny interjected. "He was quite good at it actually." She looked suitably impressed and Nick had to swallow down the biting remark that he could almost taste on his tongue.
"Oh?" he said, waving his cup interrogatorily. The coffee slopped over the sides and down his hand. He swore, thankful that the coffee was about as hot as usual, which meant he wasn't burnt.
"I said that they'd been called away with work urgently and at short notice, which was why I was retrieving Abby's lizards."
"Did she buy it?"
Stephen shrugged. "She didn't seem to be that interested, to be honest."
He should feel for the girl, but he was too tired at the moment to feel anything but numb. "Maybe she's used to it, Connor rushing off at short notice."
"Maybe." Stephen was noncommittal on that point.
Jenny snorted inelegantly. "Maybe she's finally twigged that the pair of them are joined at the hip and is cutting her losses." Nick looked at her blankly and she rolled her eyes. "Connor and Abby."
Nick opened his mouth, possibly to argue, possibly not. He'd never quite remember which because at that moment the blare of the anomaly detector sounded throughout the ARC and his cup hit the floor, shattering.
He barely registered it, racing Stephen out of the door, Jenny close behind them even in her heels.
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 3
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 4
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You paint a beautiful picture of the characters.
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