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primeval-denial.livejournal.com/3159768.html?st...
читать дальшеTitle: Something Like Claudia Brown 6/?
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Still owning nothing of Primeval.
Rating: PG-13 at the outset, I may change it later.
Summary: Abby's going to get married. Then she goes through an anomaly, comes back out, and finds out just how upsetting the Claudia Brown phenomenon can be.
A/N: Booooo! I had this half written when Stephen and Connor took over my brain and made me write the thing I posted at four in the morning when I was so tired I couldn't remember how to spell maneouvre properly and had to default to the American spelling because I couldn't figure out where to put the 'o'. Anyhow, and then I tried to save what I'd written and it got deleted. All I can say is, thank God it's Victoria Day weekend and we've got Monday off.
****************************
Abby was woken the next morning by the sound of her mobile going off, calling her out to an anomaly. By now, after years of doing this, it was all routine. Grab a rucksack with snacks, something to drink, coffee from the machine she and Connor spent hours arguing over that made coffee for you at a preset time overnight (he'd won the argument for that gizmo and two weeks after they bought it she'd dressed up as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for him and the sex had been fantastic). It was habit to snag the black box that had been recharging overnight (also habit, that) and the EMD, she absently noted it was getting low on charge, and headed out the door.
It wasn't until she was on the road that she realised she'd been so caught up in routine she hadn't even realised what she was doing. The black box wasn't needed because there was going to be no Jess in her ear, telling them all where to go and covering up the CCTV footage. The EMD was technology no one had invented because Matt wasn't there to provide the impetus and demand it, and most of all, she didn't need the second rucksack with all of Connor's bits and pieces he never remembered, the second cup of coffee he'd normally be sucking down like an amped-up hoover and she'd turned the sat-nav to the passenger side automatically, just because it made Connor happy to fiddle with it.
But Connor wasn't there, wasn't drinking his coffee, the machine she must have simply wound up buying for herself in this strange new world, and the bits and pieces weren't going to be used because Connor wouldn't be there to need them.
"I've got to stop crying," she muttered to herself.
She arrived at the office building to see Stephen waiting outside, looking cool and composed and sexy as ever. Even now, in love with Connor as she was, she had to admit, the man was a stunning package of lean lines and handsome face. He brightened as she trotted up the steps. "Abby," he said with a grin. "You're looking quite . . ." he paused, looking her up and down, and Abby was forced to recall the masses of punk wear she had in her closet in lieu of the jeans and pretty, yet comfortable tops she'd taken to wearing since coming back.
Connor, with no Burton to impress, had gone back to his waistcoats, fingerless gloves and scarves at once. Jess and Matt had been taken aback, while Emily had taken it in stride and pronounced it quite dashing in her opinion. It had led to the first time she'd ever seen Matt do anything that looked like bowing to peer pressure, and she and Jess had giggled over his attempts to imitate Connor's style, of all people, clearly thinking to woo Emily with it. Connor had been clueless about the whole thing, simply happy to be himself again. Lester had gone about muttering, yet produced Connor's old fedora from somewhere-or-other.
She shook off the shades of a now-gone timeline. "What? Like an adult? Anyhow, are we going right in, or what?"
That slow, lazy grin that had once made her knees wobble spread over his face. "First," he said, "sexy. And second, we've already got everyone out, fake bomb threat, and the SFs are guarding the doors and checking through the building. We're just waiting on Nick and Claudia."
"I'm not getting together with you," she informed him. "For one, I'm not that Abby, for another, the other you was a complete berk to me about the possibility of us dating, and last," she looked at him sadly, showing the ring on her finger. "I was supposed to get married only a few days ago. I'm never seeing him again and I'm not about to leap into bed with anyone else."
The grin slid off his face and he straightened at once, taking her hand to look at the ring. "It's very nice, and I'm sorry, Abby." The seriousness and calm, the way he'd instantly eased back on flirting to that soothing friendship she did recall seeing between him and Cutter made her smile back. "I should have thought about that." He looked away. "It's just . . . when we broke up," he gave a bark of laughter, "I don't think anyone had ever broken up with me before that I was going to have to see again on such a regular basis."
"Then that's been an important experience for you," Abby told him with a grin. "Anyhow, this'll free you up to make a move on Sarah, right? Someone who'll actually want to hear about all the disgusting things you ate in Gambia or wherever."
He rolled his eyes. "You're all just so pedestrian in your eating habits," he told her. "Really, I can't imagine having access to nothing but roast beef and mashed potatoes for the rest of my life."
"After having to eat scavenged velociraptor and listen to Connor moan about writing his imaginary cookery book, 'Yummy Roots and Tasty Bulbs', I think I've earned the right to be left alone about it," Abby informed him.
He stared. "What exactly do you mean?" he asked. "You've mentioned being trapped in the past once or twice, but you really haven't go into any detail. How long were you there?"
"One really long, really awful year," Abby said with a sigh. "In the Cretaceous, if you're wondering."
"My God, Abby," he said. "That's . . . unbelievable. That wasn't . . . when you got here, when you . . . things . . . changed, you hadn't just come back from that?" he asked, looking worried.
The worry was palpable, and Abby saw his fingers flex against his car, reminding her of nothing so much as how she'd wanted to help Connor about in the Cretaceous, him too hurt to get safely about, too proud to ask her for help because he didn't want to be a burden. Stephen looked like the slightest encouragement would send him across the space between them to offer her comfort and anything else she asked.
For a moment she wanted that. He was right there, wanted her, was gorgeous and practically primed to be a new boyfriend, but Connor's request over the com system, that if the giant carnivorous bugs ate him she'd never look at another man again, flashed in her memory, along with the still-fresh loss of her Connor, and she pulled herself together. She might someday move on, but right now it would just be dating for the sake of dating, and everyone deserved better than that. "No, Stephen. That was a couple years ago, now. We'd been back for a fair while before this," she gestured vaguely about, "happened."
He instantly relaxed. "Good. Because I can't imagine what that might have been like, I wouldn't have wanted to find out that you'd been trying to readjust after something like that."
"Yeah, it wasn't easy," she admitted. "There were days when I think we both wanted to run off back through the anomalies, like Helen, only coming back if we wanted something-or-other." She looked around at the concrete and steel that surrounded her. "It really is incredibly different, in a way I don't even think getting lost in the wilderness could be, just because you know that no one will come."
He looked a little oddly at her. "Like Helen, Abby?" He took in a deep breath. "There's someone I've avoided thinking about for a very long time. I do wonder what happened after she went through the anomaly focal point."
"The anomaly . . . focal point?" Abby asked, hesitantly. He didn't mean . . .
"Yes," he said slowly. "You mentioned that time yourself, with the dodos?"
"The spaghetti junction of anomalies, right," Abby said. "Wait. You haven't seen Helen since then?"
"No," Stephen said shrugging. "I wonder what happened to her, sometimes."
Abby was saved from trying to answer that, because Cutter, Claudia and the SFs all showed up then, in a flurry of vehicles and uniforms, and they all marched into the building to find out what exactly had prompted the call. They only knew that it was "Some sort of weird, mutant dog-things!" Unfortunately, that left everything open from dogs to dozens of potential suspects from prehistory which were all the originating species of something else.
On the sixteenth floor, they found it. A large mammal of some type, snarling and heading for the door of the hastily emptied cubicle farm it had come out in. As they tried to scare it back through, Abby saw it taking lunges at them all, snarling, trying to get through the door. Eventually they hit it with enough tranqs to knock it out, but something about the reactions made Abby uneasy. While the others all congratulated themselves, she snapped a picture with her mobile, then went to Stephen.
"Did any of that seem odd to you?" she asked him.
He frowned a moment, then suddenly his face set in understanding. "You're right. Why was it so determined to get out that door?"
In perfect accord they went into the hallway beyond, where he spotted something they'd all missed on the way in. "Look at this," he said, kneeling down next to the streaks of mud on the floor. "Footprints."
They led out, but the mud had clearly been worn away by carpeting and dried up, and by the time they got to the bank of lifts, although they could tell the thing had come this way, there was no way of knowing where it had gone. Only that, "It's small," Abby said, looking at the width and lengths of the trackway. "I bet it's her baby."
They looked at the lifts, one of which dinged and opened on its own. "If someone had left a lift running when we cleared the building," Stephen said slowly, "It could have got on, then gotten off anywhere." He cursed, turned, and headed off to get Cutter.
Abby nipped down the hall, and dialled a number on her mobile. Connor had kept the same number the whole time she'd known him, before they'd gone to the Cretaceous. If she was right, he should still have it. "Hello?"
"Oh, thank God. Connor, I need your database. We've got something loose in an office building and we need an idea where it might go. I've got a picture I could email you-"
He cut her off, swearing softly, then she heard a clatter, and Connor's voice saying, "No, sir. Of course I'm not taking personal calls. It's just Tom down at the mainframe. There's some sort of issue he wanted me to consult on." A pause. "Of course, sir. I'll make sure he calls someone else next time." Another sound of a shuffling phone, then Connor saying, "Hey, Tom, you know we're not supposed to use our mobiles for this. You mind using the office line?" Her phone beeped, saying she'd gotten a text message. "Thanks, mate." Then he hung up.
The message was a number and an extension, and Abby didn't hesitate to punch in the number, then navigated her way through the system of a stock trading firm she forgot the name of the minute she was in the system. The phone barely rang before Connor was answering, "Temple."
"Sorry," she said. "I didn't realise, but I need the help."
"Abby!" shouted Stephen.
"Damnit," she hissed. "Conn, look, I'm sending you the picture, can you just email me something to narrow down where we should be looking for its young?"
"Got it," he said, all effeciency. "I'll look it up quickly. Do you need an assist at getting into the CCTV in the building?"
"Abby!"
Putting a hand over the mobile to muffle her voice, she shouted back, "Just a sec, I'm fine!" Then put the phone back to her ear. "I should be fine, you and Jess taught me enough to get by, but I'll text if I need something. Don't worry. Gotta run, and thanks," she told him, snapping her mobile shut.
"What are you doing here?" Cutter demanded.
She froze a second, then lied like her life depended on it. "Just seeing if there was a chance it had gone this way." She pointed at a carpet that had some tears in it. "I thought those might have been from claws."
Cutter's face cleared. "Alright then. Listen, Sarah just got here, and I want you to head down there and watch her back while she looks at the CCTV system to see what's about."
Abby sighed and headed for the security centre, while the manly men went about doing manly things, while the three women were delegated to staying out of the way with the tv screens. She missed having Connor there to do that while she got to be in the action. She missed Jess doing that, so both she and Connor were in the action.
Halfway to her destination, accompanied by an SF, as though she didn't know how to shoot a gun, her phone buzzed with a message from Connor.
Ambulocetus, semi-aquatic mammal, Eocene period. It's a sort of proto-whale. Best guesses at the moment are that it's like a mammalian crocodile. So it may head for water if there's any to be had. Otherwise, my best guess is treat it mostly like an adolescent croc. Most people think it's an ambush predator.
It came with a picture from his database that pretty much matched what she had, and Abby smiled to herself as she sent a quick 'thank you' back. She'd forgotten about the SF, when he said, "You've been talking to that Temple lad?"
Abby whipped around, her heart pounding. Yes, she wanted to bring the two teams together, but she hadn't put together a plan yet, she didn't want things to fall apart before she'd had the chance to try properly. "What do you mean?"
The look in his eyes was shrewd, but kind, as he said, "Nothing, only that I've seen the work he and his people do, and I'd love to have a chance to work with some of his people. They're good."
"Harry Jacobson, wasn't it?" she asked, as they started back down the hall. "I remember you. Becker always liked putting you on point in the field."
"Becker?"
"SAS and head of our security," she told him. "Dark hair that looks like it never moves?"
A look of enlightenment appeared on his face. "Oh, that one. We call him the android, because that hair is not natural."
Abby was still laughing as she slipped into the control room for the security and joined the other two, who were staring in horror at the password protected system, while Claudia explained to Cutter that, "I can't magic these computers on to show anything, Nick. We're not hackers, you know."
"Move over," Abby said to Sarah. "All right, if I were the passwords of a nearly computer illiterate security guard, where would I be?" A few minutes later she found it. The little bit of writing on a tiny slip of paper underneath a monitor. "Hah. Passwords." From there it was the work of moments to navigate the system, bring up the monitors and start looking.
Keeping Connor's advice about crocs in mind, Abby checked the decorative pools and fountains on the main level. Nothing there and she started working her way up, floor by floor. "How . . . since when can you do that, Abby?" Sarah asked.
"My fiance," Abby said by way of explanation. She didn't feel like defending Connor right then, they were working and the fight that could erupt, given Claudia's opinion of Connor, didn't seem worth it. She was no Jess Parker or Connor Temple, but she knew enough to know how to look.
Fifth floor, an odd sort of lower area and a pipe that had somehow burst, flooding the section of floor, and there it was. Claudia had been talking with Cutter the whole time, Abby not paying the least attention, but she snatched the phone from the older woman's hands, once again bemoaning the loss of the earpieces, she really had to talk to Lester about that, and said, "The calf's on the fifth floor, Cutter. There's a burst pipe, and it's turned that office into a pool, pretty much, there's some weird sort of steps there that are holding the water. And Cutter, tell everyone to watch out, it's probably an ambush predator."
"Why are you so sure?" Cutter asked her curiously.
It was absent-minded, it was what she'd always done when relaying Connor's information to Cutter or anyone else. "It's an ambulocetus. Protowhale and probably an ambush predator like a crocodile. The mother seems to be built like one."
"Got it. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it moves," Cutter said.
Abby handed the phone back to Claudia, who looked at her, impressed. "That is different. Normally we just have to rely on the hit or miss from Nick and look into it later."
Hastily, Abby said, "That was just luck. I'd looked through Connor's database once. I just . . . remembered."
"Connor's database?" Sarah asked, curiously. "Is this as in Connor Temple?"
"Yes," Abby replied. Then, figuring it couldn't hurt, she said, "He'd been building it since he was fourteen. It was already extremely comprehensive before the anomaly project started, once we started having real animals to use for adding information it grew. We had a pretty impressive amount of memory devoted to the thing," Abby told her with a smile.
Nodding, Sarah said, "I can see how that would be useful, having all that at your fingertips. I wonder why they didn't get that from Connor in this timeline." She shrugged. "Well, by now there's so much bad blood he'll probably refuse based on principle alone."
"Probably," Abby agreed.
The SFs, Cutter and Stephen wrapped up getting the animals back through and they all trooped back to the Home Office to file reports. Abby got to her office, shut the door, and after a moment's thought, shoved a chair in front of it to block it from opening unexpectedly, and texted Connor.
You free? I want to thank you.
A minute later her mobile rang. "Hello?"
"You get the ambulocetus back through?" he asked, all business. He sounded like Matt, no time on the job to go off on tangents or anything else.
She took her cue from that and replied, "Yes. It was a mother and its calf. We found it hiding out in a flooded office, but they got it back through. Did you want me to tell you anything in particular, or would you be fine if I just photocopied the report I'm writing for Lester, or what?"
There was an odd sort of hesitation in his voice as he said, "D'you think we could meet up? I think we need to talk more. About everything."
"Sure," she said. "We could meet at my flat, if you'd like."
"I think the others would be pretty unhappy if I monopolised you," he replied, sounding amused. "How about . . ." he named an unexpectedly familiar address.
"Jenny's house?" Abby asked, surprised.
"Er . . . yeah," Connor sounded taken aback. "You know where that is, then?"
"Yes," she said. "Tonight? Maybe sevenish?"
"That works," he said. "I'll text if it changes."
"Okay," Abby felt so awkward. If he'd been her Connor, now was the time she'd have told him she loved him. But he wasn't and now she just had to end the call without accidentally sounding just a bit mad. "I'll see you then. I have to get back to work."
"Yeah, me too," he told her. "Tonight."
There was a brusque click as he hung up, and Abby snapped her mobile closed as well. Then she resolutely turned to the computer on the desk to complete her report. Because people might come back from the dead, fiances disappear, half the world could go mad, but the paperwork would still be there.
читать дальшеTitle: Something Like Claudia Brown 6/?
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Still owning nothing of Primeval.
Rating: PG-13 at the outset, I may change it later.
Summary: Abby's going to get married. Then she goes through an anomaly, comes back out, and finds out just how upsetting the Claudia Brown phenomenon can be.
A/N: Booooo! I had this half written when Stephen and Connor took over my brain and made me write the thing I posted at four in the morning when I was so tired I couldn't remember how to spell maneouvre properly and had to default to the American spelling because I couldn't figure out where to put the 'o'. Anyhow, and then I tried to save what I'd written and it got deleted. All I can say is, thank God it's Victoria Day weekend and we've got Monday off.
****************************
Abby was woken the next morning by the sound of her mobile going off, calling her out to an anomaly. By now, after years of doing this, it was all routine. Grab a rucksack with snacks, something to drink, coffee from the machine she and Connor spent hours arguing over that made coffee for you at a preset time overnight (he'd won the argument for that gizmo and two weeks after they bought it she'd dressed up as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for him and the sex had been fantastic). It was habit to snag the black box that had been recharging overnight (also habit, that) and the EMD, she absently noted it was getting low on charge, and headed out the door.
It wasn't until she was on the road that she realised she'd been so caught up in routine she hadn't even realised what she was doing. The black box wasn't needed because there was going to be no Jess in her ear, telling them all where to go and covering up the CCTV footage. The EMD was technology no one had invented because Matt wasn't there to provide the impetus and demand it, and most of all, she didn't need the second rucksack with all of Connor's bits and pieces he never remembered, the second cup of coffee he'd normally be sucking down like an amped-up hoover and she'd turned the sat-nav to the passenger side automatically, just because it made Connor happy to fiddle with it.
But Connor wasn't there, wasn't drinking his coffee, the machine she must have simply wound up buying for herself in this strange new world, and the bits and pieces weren't going to be used because Connor wouldn't be there to need them.
"I've got to stop crying," she muttered to herself.
She arrived at the office building to see Stephen waiting outside, looking cool and composed and sexy as ever. Even now, in love with Connor as she was, she had to admit, the man was a stunning package of lean lines and handsome face. He brightened as she trotted up the steps. "Abby," he said with a grin. "You're looking quite . . ." he paused, looking her up and down, and Abby was forced to recall the masses of punk wear she had in her closet in lieu of the jeans and pretty, yet comfortable tops she'd taken to wearing since coming back.
Connor, with no Burton to impress, had gone back to his waistcoats, fingerless gloves and scarves at once. Jess and Matt had been taken aback, while Emily had taken it in stride and pronounced it quite dashing in her opinion. It had led to the first time she'd ever seen Matt do anything that looked like bowing to peer pressure, and she and Jess had giggled over his attempts to imitate Connor's style, of all people, clearly thinking to woo Emily with it. Connor had been clueless about the whole thing, simply happy to be himself again. Lester had gone about muttering, yet produced Connor's old fedora from somewhere-or-other.
She shook off the shades of a now-gone timeline. "What? Like an adult? Anyhow, are we going right in, or what?"
That slow, lazy grin that had once made her knees wobble spread over his face. "First," he said, "sexy. And second, we've already got everyone out, fake bomb threat, and the SFs are guarding the doors and checking through the building. We're just waiting on Nick and Claudia."
"I'm not getting together with you," she informed him. "For one, I'm not that Abby, for another, the other you was a complete berk to me about the possibility of us dating, and last," she looked at him sadly, showing the ring on her finger. "I was supposed to get married only a few days ago. I'm never seeing him again and I'm not about to leap into bed with anyone else."
The grin slid off his face and he straightened at once, taking her hand to look at the ring. "It's very nice, and I'm sorry, Abby." The seriousness and calm, the way he'd instantly eased back on flirting to that soothing friendship she did recall seeing between him and Cutter made her smile back. "I should have thought about that." He looked away. "It's just . . . when we broke up," he gave a bark of laughter, "I don't think anyone had ever broken up with me before that I was going to have to see again on such a regular basis."
"Then that's been an important experience for you," Abby told him with a grin. "Anyhow, this'll free you up to make a move on Sarah, right? Someone who'll actually want to hear about all the disgusting things you ate in Gambia or wherever."
He rolled his eyes. "You're all just so pedestrian in your eating habits," he told her. "Really, I can't imagine having access to nothing but roast beef and mashed potatoes for the rest of my life."
"After having to eat scavenged velociraptor and listen to Connor moan about writing his imaginary cookery book, 'Yummy Roots and Tasty Bulbs', I think I've earned the right to be left alone about it," Abby informed him.
He stared. "What exactly do you mean?" he asked. "You've mentioned being trapped in the past once or twice, but you really haven't go into any detail. How long were you there?"
"One really long, really awful year," Abby said with a sigh. "In the Cretaceous, if you're wondering."
"My God, Abby," he said. "That's . . . unbelievable. That wasn't . . . when you got here, when you . . . things . . . changed, you hadn't just come back from that?" he asked, looking worried.
The worry was palpable, and Abby saw his fingers flex against his car, reminding her of nothing so much as how she'd wanted to help Connor about in the Cretaceous, him too hurt to get safely about, too proud to ask her for help because he didn't want to be a burden. Stephen looked like the slightest encouragement would send him across the space between them to offer her comfort and anything else she asked.
For a moment she wanted that. He was right there, wanted her, was gorgeous and practically primed to be a new boyfriend, but Connor's request over the com system, that if the giant carnivorous bugs ate him she'd never look at another man again, flashed in her memory, along with the still-fresh loss of her Connor, and she pulled herself together. She might someday move on, but right now it would just be dating for the sake of dating, and everyone deserved better than that. "No, Stephen. That was a couple years ago, now. We'd been back for a fair while before this," she gestured vaguely about, "happened."
He instantly relaxed. "Good. Because I can't imagine what that might have been like, I wouldn't have wanted to find out that you'd been trying to readjust after something like that."
"Yeah, it wasn't easy," she admitted. "There were days when I think we both wanted to run off back through the anomalies, like Helen, only coming back if we wanted something-or-other." She looked around at the concrete and steel that surrounded her. "It really is incredibly different, in a way I don't even think getting lost in the wilderness could be, just because you know that no one will come."
He looked a little oddly at her. "Like Helen, Abby?" He took in a deep breath. "There's someone I've avoided thinking about for a very long time. I do wonder what happened after she went through the anomaly focal point."
"The anomaly . . . focal point?" Abby asked, hesitantly. He didn't mean . . .
"Yes," he said slowly. "You mentioned that time yourself, with the dodos?"
"The spaghetti junction of anomalies, right," Abby said. "Wait. You haven't seen Helen since then?"
"No," Stephen said shrugging. "I wonder what happened to her, sometimes."
Abby was saved from trying to answer that, because Cutter, Claudia and the SFs all showed up then, in a flurry of vehicles and uniforms, and they all marched into the building to find out what exactly had prompted the call. They only knew that it was "Some sort of weird, mutant dog-things!" Unfortunately, that left everything open from dogs to dozens of potential suspects from prehistory which were all the originating species of something else.
On the sixteenth floor, they found it. A large mammal of some type, snarling and heading for the door of the hastily emptied cubicle farm it had come out in. As they tried to scare it back through, Abby saw it taking lunges at them all, snarling, trying to get through the door. Eventually they hit it with enough tranqs to knock it out, but something about the reactions made Abby uneasy. While the others all congratulated themselves, she snapped a picture with her mobile, then went to Stephen.
"Did any of that seem odd to you?" she asked him.
He frowned a moment, then suddenly his face set in understanding. "You're right. Why was it so determined to get out that door?"
In perfect accord they went into the hallway beyond, where he spotted something they'd all missed on the way in. "Look at this," he said, kneeling down next to the streaks of mud on the floor. "Footprints."
They led out, but the mud had clearly been worn away by carpeting and dried up, and by the time they got to the bank of lifts, although they could tell the thing had come this way, there was no way of knowing where it had gone. Only that, "It's small," Abby said, looking at the width and lengths of the trackway. "I bet it's her baby."
They looked at the lifts, one of which dinged and opened on its own. "If someone had left a lift running when we cleared the building," Stephen said slowly, "It could have got on, then gotten off anywhere." He cursed, turned, and headed off to get Cutter.
Abby nipped down the hall, and dialled a number on her mobile. Connor had kept the same number the whole time she'd known him, before they'd gone to the Cretaceous. If she was right, he should still have it. "Hello?"
"Oh, thank God. Connor, I need your database. We've got something loose in an office building and we need an idea where it might go. I've got a picture I could email you-"
He cut her off, swearing softly, then she heard a clatter, and Connor's voice saying, "No, sir. Of course I'm not taking personal calls. It's just Tom down at the mainframe. There's some sort of issue he wanted me to consult on." A pause. "Of course, sir. I'll make sure he calls someone else next time." Another sound of a shuffling phone, then Connor saying, "Hey, Tom, you know we're not supposed to use our mobiles for this. You mind using the office line?" Her phone beeped, saying she'd gotten a text message. "Thanks, mate." Then he hung up.
The message was a number and an extension, and Abby didn't hesitate to punch in the number, then navigated her way through the system of a stock trading firm she forgot the name of the minute she was in the system. The phone barely rang before Connor was answering, "Temple."
"Sorry," she said. "I didn't realise, but I need the help."
"Abby!" shouted Stephen.
"Damnit," she hissed. "Conn, look, I'm sending you the picture, can you just email me something to narrow down where we should be looking for its young?"
"Got it," he said, all effeciency. "I'll look it up quickly. Do you need an assist at getting into the CCTV in the building?"
"Abby!"
Putting a hand over the mobile to muffle her voice, she shouted back, "Just a sec, I'm fine!" Then put the phone back to her ear. "I should be fine, you and Jess taught me enough to get by, but I'll text if I need something. Don't worry. Gotta run, and thanks," she told him, snapping her mobile shut.
"What are you doing here?" Cutter demanded.
She froze a second, then lied like her life depended on it. "Just seeing if there was a chance it had gone this way." She pointed at a carpet that had some tears in it. "I thought those might have been from claws."
Cutter's face cleared. "Alright then. Listen, Sarah just got here, and I want you to head down there and watch her back while she looks at the CCTV system to see what's about."
Abby sighed and headed for the security centre, while the manly men went about doing manly things, while the three women were delegated to staying out of the way with the tv screens. She missed having Connor there to do that while she got to be in the action. She missed Jess doing that, so both she and Connor were in the action.
Halfway to her destination, accompanied by an SF, as though she didn't know how to shoot a gun, her phone buzzed with a message from Connor.
Ambulocetus, semi-aquatic mammal, Eocene period. It's a sort of proto-whale. Best guesses at the moment are that it's like a mammalian crocodile. So it may head for water if there's any to be had. Otherwise, my best guess is treat it mostly like an adolescent croc. Most people think it's an ambush predator.
It came with a picture from his database that pretty much matched what she had, and Abby smiled to herself as she sent a quick 'thank you' back. She'd forgotten about the SF, when he said, "You've been talking to that Temple lad?"
Abby whipped around, her heart pounding. Yes, she wanted to bring the two teams together, but she hadn't put together a plan yet, she didn't want things to fall apart before she'd had the chance to try properly. "What do you mean?"
The look in his eyes was shrewd, but kind, as he said, "Nothing, only that I've seen the work he and his people do, and I'd love to have a chance to work with some of his people. They're good."
"Harry Jacobson, wasn't it?" she asked, as they started back down the hall. "I remember you. Becker always liked putting you on point in the field."
"Becker?"
"SAS and head of our security," she told him. "Dark hair that looks like it never moves?"
A look of enlightenment appeared on his face. "Oh, that one. We call him the android, because that hair is not natural."
Abby was still laughing as she slipped into the control room for the security and joined the other two, who were staring in horror at the password protected system, while Claudia explained to Cutter that, "I can't magic these computers on to show anything, Nick. We're not hackers, you know."
"Move over," Abby said to Sarah. "All right, if I were the passwords of a nearly computer illiterate security guard, where would I be?" A few minutes later she found it. The little bit of writing on a tiny slip of paper underneath a monitor. "Hah. Passwords." From there it was the work of moments to navigate the system, bring up the monitors and start looking.
Keeping Connor's advice about crocs in mind, Abby checked the decorative pools and fountains on the main level. Nothing there and she started working her way up, floor by floor. "How . . . since when can you do that, Abby?" Sarah asked.
"My fiance," Abby said by way of explanation. She didn't feel like defending Connor right then, they were working and the fight that could erupt, given Claudia's opinion of Connor, didn't seem worth it. She was no Jess Parker or Connor Temple, but she knew enough to know how to look.
Fifth floor, an odd sort of lower area and a pipe that had somehow burst, flooding the section of floor, and there it was. Claudia had been talking with Cutter the whole time, Abby not paying the least attention, but she snatched the phone from the older woman's hands, once again bemoaning the loss of the earpieces, she really had to talk to Lester about that, and said, "The calf's on the fifth floor, Cutter. There's a burst pipe, and it's turned that office into a pool, pretty much, there's some weird sort of steps there that are holding the water. And Cutter, tell everyone to watch out, it's probably an ambush predator."
"Why are you so sure?" Cutter asked her curiously.
It was absent-minded, it was what she'd always done when relaying Connor's information to Cutter or anyone else. "It's an ambulocetus. Protowhale and probably an ambush predator like a crocodile. The mother seems to be built like one."
"Got it. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it moves," Cutter said.
Abby handed the phone back to Claudia, who looked at her, impressed. "That is different. Normally we just have to rely on the hit or miss from Nick and look into it later."
Hastily, Abby said, "That was just luck. I'd looked through Connor's database once. I just . . . remembered."
"Connor's database?" Sarah asked, curiously. "Is this as in Connor Temple?"
"Yes," Abby replied. Then, figuring it couldn't hurt, she said, "He'd been building it since he was fourteen. It was already extremely comprehensive before the anomaly project started, once we started having real animals to use for adding information it grew. We had a pretty impressive amount of memory devoted to the thing," Abby told her with a smile.
Nodding, Sarah said, "I can see how that would be useful, having all that at your fingertips. I wonder why they didn't get that from Connor in this timeline." She shrugged. "Well, by now there's so much bad blood he'll probably refuse based on principle alone."
"Probably," Abby agreed.
The SFs, Cutter and Stephen wrapped up getting the animals back through and they all trooped back to the Home Office to file reports. Abby got to her office, shut the door, and after a moment's thought, shoved a chair in front of it to block it from opening unexpectedly, and texted Connor.
You free? I want to thank you.
A minute later her mobile rang. "Hello?"
"You get the ambulocetus back through?" he asked, all business. He sounded like Matt, no time on the job to go off on tangents or anything else.
She took her cue from that and replied, "Yes. It was a mother and its calf. We found it hiding out in a flooded office, but they got it back through. Did you want me to tell you anything in particular, or would you be fine if I just photocopied the report I'm writing for Lester, or what?"
There was an odd sort of hesitation in his voice as he said, "D'you think we could meet up? I think we need to talk more. About everything."
"Sure," she said. "We could meet at my flat, if you'd like."
"I think the others would be pretty unhappy if I monopolised you," he replied, sounding amused. "How about . . ." he named an unexpectedly familiar address.
"Jenny's house?" Abby asked, surprised.
"Er . . . yeah," Connor sounded taken aback. "You know where that is, then?"
"Yes," she said. "Tonight? Maybe sevenish?"
"That works," he said. "I'll text if it changes."
"Okay," Abby felt so awkward. If he'd been her Connor, now was the time she'd have told him she loved him. But he wasn't and now she just had to end the call without accidentally sounding just a bit mad. "I'll see you then. I have to get back to work."
"Yeah, me too," he told her. "Tonight."
There was a brusque click as he hung up, and Abby snapped her mobile closed as well. Then she resolutely turned to the computer on the desk to complete her report. Because people might come back from the dead, fiances disappear, half the world could go mad, but the paperwork would still be there.
@темы: Primeval, Ссылки, fanfiction