Helen Cutter arched her back as she laid over the mossy rock. It was cold and damp from the heavy mist of the waterfall beside her, but she did not mind. There was something about the roughness beneath her, the moisture in the air and that faint trace of sulphur from the hot springs behind that made this place hers.

Three-hundred and twenty-two million years in the past, yet to her it was the present. Times existed within themselves, experienced moment by moment. One day she would find a place to make her own time slip, become a forgotten turn of the universe’s sand.

A crackled drone rose over the roar of the waterfall. She smiled, hearing the sound hitch and wane.

Helen rolled off the rock in a sleek movement. Running her free hand around behind it, she found her jacket, water bottle and scarf. Dressed, she folded in the aerial on the portable radio, grabbed it firmly by the cheap plastic handle, and ran.

Ahead, the forest opened up into a grassy flat bordered by black mountain ranges freshly coated in ash. In the centre of the field, light split into a thousand pieces, scattered by the fragmented edges of the anomaly. Time splintered into sheets of improbability. You could see it move like glass braking in slow motion, suspended above the grass.

* * *

Paint dripped down his neck, mixing with his hair and drying into a thin skin. Nick turned his head and the paint crackled. He felt like an oil painting, especially as he brought his hands up for inspection and found them to be Taj Mahal cream instead of a sensible human pink.

He had meant to redecorate when Helen left. He bought the paint twelve months after they gave up looking for her. He moved the paint from the garage to the living room two years later. Five years on, he realised he needed paint brushes for the job. Six months later he bought them and threw them in the bin. Then Helen showed up and he finally opened the paint tins only to throw them at the garage walls in frustration. He should have known a woman like her would cheat. He could handle her and Stephen, but this was a different kind of cheating.

Yesterday Nick went to the Hardware store on the corner of his street and bought paint, brushes, a screwdriver for levering open the tin, a ladder, paint sheets, turps and a lock for the garage door. He was going to redecorate Helen away especially as it appeared to be the only closure he would be getting.

Nick dipped the paint brush into the tin of paint and slapped it onto the wall leaving a trail of drips down the wall and on the paint sheet. His wedding ring gathered dust under the sofa behind as he painted over a lipstick mark made when they had…

“Knock, Knock… Nick, are you there or not?”

Nick swore and dropped the paint brush into the tin, not caring as it submerged. He crossed the room muttering, and unlatched the door.

“Ms. Lewis,” he said, surprised and a little embarrassed by the look she gave him. He imagined he was reminiscent of a Yeti.

“Nice look,” she quipped, glancing past him into the living room. “And I thought we agreed on ‘Jenny’, though I suppose anything is better than ‘Claudia’.”

Nick leant on the door, leaving a white smudge. “Did you come all this way to talk about what you’d prefer me to call you or was there something else on your mind?”

“Actually,” she smiled, reaching into his pocket and pulling his phone free. “I wanted to have a chat about your phone, and why it’s been off for the past hour…”

“Oh that,” he lowered his head, resisting the urge to scratch his neck.

“That’s what I thought,” said Jenny, switching it back on. It beeped immediately. She selected the, ‘play messages’ option and put it on speaker phone.

‘You’ve reached Nick Cutter. Leave a message.

‘BEEEEEEP

‘Nick? Nick… Turn on your phone. An anomaly has opened up and you won’t believe who stepped through it. You’ll want to see this. Meet me at the HUB as soon as you get this.

‘And Nick, TURN ON YOUR PHONE!’

The message ended and Jenny handed Nick back his phone, informing him that there were at least a dozen identical messages that he might want to delete later. He rolled his eyes at her devilish smile and said that he would join her as soon as he had a shower.

“I don’t know, it kind of suits you,” she said, as a couple of flakes of paint drifted off. “Lester and I could auction you off for a profit to pay for that new chair he’s been drooling over.”

* * *

“Absolutely not, loathsome creature – I’m definitely going to have it destroyed.”

“Come on Lester…”

“Sir,” he corrected Abby as he shuffled through a couple of creature profiles.

“But it’s our pet. You can’t kill him!”

Sir Lester ran his hands over the scratched arms of his leather chair, a distasteful glare stretching over his face as he found a sizable hole. “Sorry kids; regulations, guidelines, politics…”

“Politics?” Abby frowned.

“Can’t be done I’m afraid. You’ll either have to return it or kill it and since there’s no anomaly it looks like you’ll have to kill it.”

Conner and Abby’s mouths fell open as Lester raised his crystal eyes to them. Lester held a steady gaze as he brought both of his hands together, his fingers slotting into each other and folding back onto his knuckles.

Lester’s table had a new engraving running along the outside edge. It matched the inscription on the floor of the HUB and the one on the steering wheel of the van. Stephen Hart – throughout time.

Without warning, Abby’s knees bent and a smile cracked across her blushed cheeks. “You devil,” she giggled, hurrying around to the other side of the table and enveloping the shocked Lester in a hug.

Conner’s hands went up in protest, “Abby, what’ya doing? He wants to kill Rex and you’re making out with the man!”

Abby released Lester and shoved him playfully.

“All right,” Lester sighed, “you can keep the lizard.”

“What just happened?” asked Conner, but no one had a chance to answer.

The glass doors of Lester’s office flew open with surprising ease as Nick strode in, trailed by a high heeled Jenny. “Well this is friendly,” said Nick, as Abby scooted back next to Conner. “Anyone going to tell me why I’ve been dragged here on my weekend off?”

“Nice of you to join us, Cutter.” Lester straightened his suit – another unsightly tie nestled under his collar, and glanced out the window of his office which overlooked the HUB floor. “Well, since you’re so late in arriving, I guess there’s no point in a dramatic pause.”

Nick shifted his weight on his booted feet whilst casually trying to ignore Jenny’s choice of low V neckline.

“An anomaly has opened up and Major Ryan has stepped through it.”

“Captain Ryan…” Nick corrected, but dropped the point when he saw Lester rub the bridge of his nose and mutter dark things. So many things had changed since Claudia’s time that he had given up fighting them.

* * *

Nick leapt back from the transparent wall of the interrogation room as a drinking glass smashed into it, its contents dripping down the wall.

“Friendly, isn’t he?” smirked Lester, nudging Nick forward.

“How long have you had him here?”

“Four – no wait, five hours.”

‘Why won’t you let me speak to anyone!’ screamed out of the room as they opened the door and then stopped abruptly as Nick entered. “Finally!” sighed Ryan, pulling himself free of the other soldier’s hold. “Nick, tell me what’s going on before I go mad.”

Nick’s mouth may not have fallen open, but his brain had definitely paused. With his hand on the door, he glanced down at the ground, listening, but not believing the man in front of him.

“You’re dead,” he said at last, taking a step into the room. “You’ve been dead for a year.”

Ryan placed his palms on the interview table. “What did you say?”

“The creature from the future, it ambushed us – ripped you to pieces.”

“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “No that was Anders. It dragged him off and tore into him. I buried him with my own hands after you left me there!”

“I left you because you were dead.” It said, ‘Major’ on the breast of his uniform and now that he looked closely, Nick noticed a faint scar running down the left side of Ryan’s face. “Where did you get that?” asked Nick.

Ryan frowned, his breath coming fast with his anger. “What?” Nick ran a hand over the side of his own face then pointed at Ryan. “This? I was ten, turned a corner too fast and fell off my bike. What does that have to do with your lot leaving me behind?”

“A lot,” replied Nick, picking up one of the seats from the ground and placing it in front of the table. He sat down and after a brief pause, Ryan did the same. “The present keeps changing,” began Nick, more to himself than to Ryan. “These anomalies are interfering with our timelines in ways that we cannot predict. Last time it was Claudia Brown –”

“Who?”

“Never mind. This time – it’s you. I think you’re from a different time line because in my memory, you were attacked by that creature and we buried you there in the Earth, just like we found your skeleton on our first mission through the anomaly. But if you’re alive, that means that something else has changed. Things could be changing all the time and we wouldn’t even know. Are you even listening to me?”

Ryan’s eyes were locked on the door to the interview room were Jenny Lewis had just slinked in, file in hand. She was busy whispering to an amused Lester when she noticed Nick and Ryan staring at her.

Ryan leant over the table and pulled Nick closer to him so that he could say, “This must be another time line, because the last time I saw Jenny Lewis she was dangling off the roof of a skyscraper. That woman,” he nodded in her direction, “is dead. I saw her fall – I wish I hadn’t but I did.”

* * *

After a bit of gentle persuasion, Lester agreed to let Ryan rejoin the operations at the HUB as their head of security. Dead or not, he was the most qualified individual for the job and more than capable of blackmailing his way through the red tape.

He told Nick the story of his survival a million times. Nick picked through each version, comparing it to his own memory of events until he was satisfied that both versions appeared solid. He was particularly interested in what happened after he had left.

“…so I wake up, lying on this rock and covered in dust. I cough a bit and roll over onto my side and that’s when I saw it. Hideous thing, scurrying behind a boulder. It was one of the babies out of the crates. I don’t know how it survived, but it was laughing and crying or whatever that noise is that it makes.

“I went for my gun, but it must have been thrown clear during the scuffle. When I looked back up, it was gone. When I stumbled back to the camp, I found it deserted except for a soft mound of earth – a shallow grave. There was small scavenger clawing at the dirt so I shooed it away and piled some of the nearby rocks on top.

“I searched for the anomaly, but there was nothing. If Helen hadn’t of found me I don’t know –”

“Helen?” Nick interrupted.

“I was asleep, and when I woke up she was standing over me –smiling. She made sure I was awake and then disappeared into a new anomaly. I called after her and, naturally, followed her through the anomaly. Next thing I know I end up here.”

The thought of Helen roaming about in the present was less than comforting, but unless she wanted to be found, there was nothing that any of them could do about it.

“I don’t see how going back to the camp site is going to help,” said Ryan, sliding a cartridge into place. He laid the gun gentle on the bench top while he clipped his bullet proof vest on.

“If the future creatures changed the timeline – killed Claudia Brown, then if we get rid of them out of that time line maybe things will go back to way they were.”

“My way or your way? And who is this Claudia person.”

“My way – and Claudia is Jenny, sort of.”

“Bet she loves that,” chuckled Ryan. “She hates that name.”

Nick smiled. Some things never seemed to change.

* * *

‘The Team’ as they had come to know themselves for lack of a better name, stood in front of the newly formed anomaly. It looked innocent enough, spinning silently in the soft light. This one had opened up thirty yards south of the one Nick had stepped back through on the previous year. According to Ryan, less than a day had passed since then on the other side of the anomaly.

“Time’s a funny thing,” said Nick, as the team approached the anomaly. “It’s fickle and inconsiderate of linear deadlines.”

Ryan had not been kidding. The other side of the anomaly was exactly as he remembered it. A rough track across a desolate volcanic ridge led directly to the camp. Conner looked away when he saw the rock covered grave, freshly dug, peak out from one corner. Abby was carrying the untested portable anomaly detector, lifting it up and panning it from side to side. Every few seconds Conner appeared over her shoulder to check the readings and listen to the static through the headphones.

“Any sign of it?”

Conner shook his head. “Nothing here at all except the one behind us.”

“And it’s holding steady?” asked Nick, scanning the perimeter.

“Looks like. For the moment anyway.”

“All right everyone, spread out and see if we can’t find these horrible things.”

Ryan flicked the safety off his gun and headed off in the opposite direction to Nick.

“You two,” Nick turned to Abby and Conner. “Stay here and keep an eye on the anomaly. Abby, keep your side arm ready. No – Conner, you can’t have one.”

Nick took the upper slope behind the camp. There was a distinct set of human foot prints up this way, but their clarity was soon lost in the leaf litter. He did not know much about tracking but guessed that the owner was about 5f8, brown hair, push up bra and carrying bad attitude.

“Come on Helen,” he muttered to himself. “What do you want me to find?”

They met back at the camp site to the sound of Conner’s yelping.

“The anomaly’s weakening!” he repeated over and over as people filtered back in at a run, guns drawn.

“Anyone find anything?” A lot of heads shook back and at Nick. He looked back at the empty cage where the creatures had been.

“Hate to interrupt,” said Conner, tapping the screen of the detector, “but we really have to go. The anomaly is fading and I would rather not be trapped in the Pre-Cambrian. Ow.”

“Permian,” Abby corrected him.

They met the anomaly at a run, what was left of it anyway.

Ryan swore, and pushed the rest of the team up the last hill toward it. “We got to move people,” he said, picking Conner up off the ground and shoving him forwards. Abby was first through, followed by most of the military unit. Conner stumbled through mid run and Ryan jogged in after a quick check on Nick who was no more than a stride behind.

They landed in a heap on the other side. The anomaly had shifted slightly and was suspended a foot in the air. Nick was on his feet straight away, facing the unstable vortex of time fragments. He could see bits of each reality – even a glimpse of his own face flickered past.

“I’m sorry,” said Ryan quietly to Nick as he hauled the rest of the group up.

“Not your fault,” he replied, brushing his fingers over the anomaly. A fleck of grey hopped across one of the fractures and disappeared. Nick frowned and cocked his head, trying to follow the splinter of time. He could have sworn that was…there it was again, clawing the edge of a boulder. A future creature child, laughing silently at him.

“It’s about to close,” said Conner, holding the device at the anomaly.

“I understand,” whispered Nick, slipping his hand around his weapon. He took a deep breath of familiar air, and then leapt forward into the closing anomaly. Time solidified as he rolled through to the other side. The horizon shimmered and the anomaly was closed.

Conner, Abby and Ryan yelled after him while the closest armed man threw himself at the anomaly, hitting the forest floor in a grunt.

“It’s too late,” said Conner. “The anomaly’s gone. He – he trapped himself there.”

* * *

Chapter Two: Preservation of Chaos

Nick groaned at the ground. Dust sucked into his nostrils was exhaled sharply as he forced himself to roll over onto his back. As the anomaly vanished it had risen several metres in the air leaving him to fall the extra distance.

He blinked away dirt made moist by his eyes and searched his immediate surrounds. Dust, rocks, more dust… A short walk ahead he could see the land fall away toward the camp site, but it was the curious conglomeration of rocks to the left that held his attention. Miniature spillways of dust poured from the top boulder as something behind it scratched about. There was a horrid gurgle of laughter and Nick knew that an infant future creature was the cause.

“Right,” he breathed to himself, rolling off his slightly bloodied arm. The sharp rocks he had fallen on left nicks and dents across his skin not to mention the destruction of his best jeans. There was a gaping void where his knee used to be which revealed a deepening bruise and a splash of red.

A scrawny grey body darted from behind the rock pile and scampered out across the barren ground. Unable to rise quickly enough, Nick swung his gun around with his free hand, levelled it up and pulled the trigger. The gun shot echoed, startling the creatures living in the scattered trees toward the camp. The future creature jumped, skipping its legs high and quickened its pace.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nick muttered, dragging himself to his feet. “Wait up you ugly brat.”

* * *

“What the hell sort of solution is that!” shouted Ryan at the void where the anomaly had been.

“A ‘Nick-cut’ that’s what,” sighed Conner, handing the portable anomaly detector to a roving scientist.

Ryan paced irritably, “So what do we do now?”

“Well,” Lester emerged from the shadows of the forest with his arms crossed over his chest in a distinctly frustrated manner. “We can either excavate the scene for million year old Nick remains or head back to the HUB and monitor the area for new anomalies.”

* * *

The HUB buzzed quietly as it did on Friday afternoons. With Nick roaming about in the past, the present seemed just that little bit quieter – saner, even. Jenny glanced at the lockers as she paced down the hallway. She let her hand brush against the door of the one labelled, ‘CUTTER’. It was beyond her why she cared so much. Be reasonable she would tell herself, you hardly know him.

She found her desk buried beneath a fresh pile of papers and the sticky stain of coffee on the floor beside. Frankly, she was beginning to think of it more as a post office than a desk.

“Have you got a minute Ms. Lewis?” Lester placed another folder on the tapered pile.

Jenny frowned. “That depends on what you want.”

“Oh nothing,” he slinked behind her desk and made use of her chair. “Just a chat.”

“Well chat fast,” she quipped, fishing through the pile for a bright blue folder.

Lester raised his eyebrows as his folder slipped off the table onto the floor where its contents spilt, unnoticed. “I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on Claudia Brown.”

Jenny stopped what she was doing to glare. “You mean this delusion Nick keeps raving on about. My thoughts are that he’s been through the anomalies one too many times.”

“I thought that too,” he replied. “But then I found this.”

Lester reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small piece of paper held together by criss-crossed segments of sticky tape. Jenny took it from him, gently straightening it out in the palm of her hand.

She frowned, nudging it with her finger.

“Where…” she began, breathlessly. “I don’t-”

“My guess is that we are looking at a photograph of Claudia Brown. I couldn’t be sure of course, until I showed you.”

“You think Nick was telling the truth?”

“After spending an hour debriefing a dead Major in my office, I’m starting to think that anything’s possible these days.”

Jenny put the photograph down. “That is not me,” she said, not looking at it. “It means nothing.” She stopped for a moment, swaying slightly as she leant on the desk. Her eyes were shut tightly against the brightness of the overhead lights. She brought a hand to her forehead, wiping away beads of sweat.

Lester stood quietly, motioning towards her. “Are you all right?”

“Dizzy,” she replied. “I haven’t eaten yet.”

“You go do that,” said Lester, prying himself from her chair. “We can’t have our PR guru collapsing at the next press conference.”

He left quietly and headed towards his office. It seemed that hunger had become a contagion as the corridor walls moved slightly in his vision. Flashes of light played at the edges of his vision and a sick feeling in his head quickly turned into a dull throb.

“Urgh,” moaned Lester, suddenly feeling awful. He pushed against the glass doors of his office, slipping from their metal handles.

Lester fell into his office, hitting the floor hard.

* * *

Nick followed the creature around the camp site and into the dense forest at the edge of the volcanic landscape. Trees with bulbous bark towered above him, filled with the creatures of his childhood fossil books. There was a claw mark through the bark of one. Sap leaked out through the wound like honey, tumbling down. The viscous liquid consumed a winged insect which now floated, motionless, trapped in the translucent tomb.

A rustle to the left caught his attention. He thought he saw a fern shiver and a shadow vanish.

“You want to play?” he asked the forest. “I’ll give you play.”

* * *

Jenny sat behind her desk with her head in her hands. Beside her a glass fizzed with a dissolvable painkiller and a sandwich sat, untouched. She felt atrocious.

She closed her eyes if only to dim the world around. When had the HUB become so bright? She could hardly bear it. Jenny had been without breakfast before, it was the nature of her job to miss meals and snack on the run, but she had never felt like this before. Something was wrong with her, but she simply didn’t have the strength to call a medic.

* * *

Nick sat perfectly still, his gun trained on the base of a fern. There was something moving behind the crosshatched bark, disturbing the dark green fronds that scraped across the ground with passing currents of air.

There was pollen in air. Nick could smell its sweet scent as it was knocked from above and rained down like red snowflakes. He blinked away the maroon dust that fell on his eyelashes. The fern moved again, and Nick gripped the butt of his gun more tightly.

A dash of grey snuck between the foliage. Nick was sure it knew it was being followed. The future creatures were smart – ‘gifted’ as Helen had once said. They knew you were hunting from the moment the thought formed. Humans though, they were smart too. Evolution may not have given them super powers, but it had bestowed blind determination.

“There you are,” he whispered. The creature believed itself to be hidden, but Nick had just enough space to execute a clean shot. “This is for Claudia Brown…”

Nick squeezed the trigger and a thunderous crack split the air.

Chapter Three: The Unwanted Future

The future creature gurgled and cried out in a shriek of laughter. It threw its head backwards and looked up at the brightly lit sky, absorbing the warmth of the young star.

Nick Cutter watched it turn its skeletal head. Its grey eyes settled on his and seemed to snicker. A second later it was gone, vanished into the jungle behind, unharmed.

It was only then that he noticed his gun had been moved and that someone’s hand was settled on his, diverting his aim.

“Helen…?” he whispered, finding his ex-wife’s eyes fraught with panic. Her grip was tight, painfully melding their hands to the gun.

“Hello Nick,” she said, but not as brazenly as she had done in the past. There was blood mixed in with the mud smeared indiscriminately across her skin. A weeping gash dribbled down her bare shoulder and claw marks crossed her neck, angry and red.

Despite the strength of her grasp, she stumbled slightly and soon Nick realised that she was using him to remain upright.

*   *   *

The ground shook. Lester gulped and stumbled back, landing in the soft leaf litter. The earth was warm as he clawed his way through it, scanning the encroaching tree line with panic. He was trying to hide, bury himself into the ground to escape the rumbling sound.

A slender pine bent down toward the ground beside him with its topmost leaves grazing the dirt. There was a crack through the air as its trunk snapped, showering Lester in splinters.

“No…” he whispered, as two white tusks pierced through the greenery. The scene faltered for a second, its pieces fracturing like glass. Then it fell away and Lester woke up on the floor of his office, covered in sweat.

He moaned and rolled over onto his back, basking in the brightness of the lights.

“Get a grip,” he said, pressing his hands to his forehead. “You have to get a grip…”

*   *   *

Abby smiled and lightly tapped the glass enclose. Rex ‘purred’ as best he could, placing his feet on the glass.

“You’ll be home soon,” she told the creature, who appeared to understand her tone. It flapped its wings and paced about the enclosure in restless circles.

“Am I comin’ too?” Conner’s head popped up from behind the table. He was drowned in wires and bits of electrical tape. There was a set of metal clips on his collar which shined under the lab lights. “It’s just – you said that I had to be gone in three months and it’s been…”

“Nine?”

“Seven.”

She snorted – he seemed genuinely unaware of the passage of time. It was a bizarre flaw in a man responsible for managing its most complex fluctuations.

“Is all your stuff out on my front step?” Abbey asked, pacing around to the other side of the table to get a better look at what he was up to.

“Ah…” he scanned the room nervously for help, but they were alone. “Not that I can recall.”

“Then you haven’t been kicked out.”

*   *   *

“I can see that you’re still angry at me,” Helen let go of Nick’s arm and took a few shaky steps back. There was excess oxygen in the air here and after a while it made her feel light-headed and ill. She wished that she had time to duck back to her old tie line and stock up on pain killers but, ironically, there wasn’t time.

“You could say that,” replied Nick, re-aiming his weapon at her.

She would have protested but she seriously doubted that he would pull the trigger – not now, not while he was curious.

“Listen Helen,” he said irritably, as something grey darted in the foliage – no doubt escaping, “is there a good reason for this visit or were you just bored with your lonely landscapes?”

There was once some truth to that. Before she had seen the future Helen had been lost in the past. All those beautiful scenes and yet, with no-one to share them with…

“Nick – as much as I’d love to listen to your bleeding heart,” she watched as he flinched, “there are bigger things at stake.”

“Don’ start with that kind of –”

“By all means, kill these few infant future creatures. Heaven knows I’ve seen enough of them to want them well and truly extinct.”

“I hope you have a point.”

“Time is linear,” she drew an imaginary line in the air with her hand. “The universe is meant to flow from start to end without interruption. Every time something stumbles between the pages the end shifts – new realities are created – realities which supersede the others. We’re not dealing with parallel timelines, Nick.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

“Don’t you see – it doesn’t matter what you do, our timeline is gone. The world in which Claudia Brown lived has been erased and there is nothing that you can do to bring it back – or her.”

“I refuse to believe that,” he said firmly. “If I can just fix what it was that we did wrong the first time, everything will go back to the way it was before.”

She lowered her head with a half-smile traced over her lips. “Oh Nick, you were always smart but you are no physicist. You can never arrange the water molecules in a glass the same way again. There are too many factors at play. Trying to restore the timeline by killing these creatures is like stepping on butterflies.”

The thought crossed Nick’s mind that he could end it all right here, pull the trigger on Helen and cease these games that she played with him and all the world.

“If I don’t kill these things,” Nick continued, “then the future has no chance. At least this way -”

Helen snapped her head back up and laughed cruelly. “I have seen the future,” she said, “believe me, you wouldn’t want to protect it.”

“And what are you doing, Helen? Trying to change things for the better? You are such a hypocrite.” She didn’t respond – only stood there with eyes that were rapidly beginning to redden. “I don’t think that you’re evil Helen, I think you’re scared.”

“We’re all scared Nick,” she snarled. “But you’re nowhere near scared enough.”

*   *   *

Jenny could have sworn that she had seen a bright speck of gold flash in the air beyond her desk. It may have only been for a moment, but it had been enough to catch her eye. Now she was slumped over her desk, head resting in her hands as she stared dumbly into nowhere.

Then it happened again – another flash of gold at the very edge of her vision. She whipped her head around, spinning in her chair as she searched for the light but it was gone again.

“Argh…” she grimaced, as her headache made a sharp return. Pain throbbed its way through her skull with such ferocity that she feared it might break. It was crippling. All around her the air lit up with tiny fractures of time. Anomalies were clustering around her, screaming at her as they grew large enough to wall her in.

“Jenny?”

She shrieked, startling Ryan who had come over to see how she was. It had been a long time since he had seen her die. Jenny had simply vanished over the edge of the building, falling out of sight without a sound. He had lived that moment every day and now here she was, safe and alive yet.

“Oh,” Jenny took a second look at the room and found nothing but a co-worker shifting files. There was no trace of the anomalies or the screeching in her ears.

“I came to tell you that we’re heading back out to the anomaly. It hasn’t opened or anything, but judging by the fragile nature of these anomalies it would be better to be nearby.”

*   *   *

Helen’s radio crackled.

“It starts five days from now,” she began, backing away from him toward the tree line. “An anomaly opens up and five unrelated people slip through. From that moment on, everything is different.”

“Helen, stop,” Nick raised the gun to remind her it was there. She seemed unconcerned.

“Five days, Nick,” she repeated, and then she was gone.

Nick wanted to shoot her – he really did but something new had overtaken him. Worry. He worried that there was some kind of twisted truth in her words. She had a habit of mixing fiction with reality and that made her dangerous too ignore. There was, however, one thing that he could be sure about – Helen knew more about this phenomenon than anybody and it had her running scared.

*   *   *

Five Months Earlier

“Oh, that’s not good,” Helen muttered to herself, as she teetered on the edge of the cliff.

She had miscalculated her escape by several metres and now it was too late. A glittering sea stretched lazily out in front of her. It was shallow, maybe three or four metres deep and about fifteen metres below the sharp rocks she was standing on. Not a chance. If she jumped she would cut straight through the water and shatter on the seabed.

“I presume it’s too late to apologise…” she addressed the Coelophysis bauri. It was taller than her and light on its feet. There was a row of razor sharp teeth curved back from its lips which it brandished expectantly, inching closer to her. It really was a beautiful predator – lean and perfectly camouflaged in the lightly forested area. “Thought as much.”

Given a choice between being ripped to shreds by an angry carnivore or snapping her neck in a warm sea, Helen did not hesitate. She bid the creature adieu, turned to the water and leant forward until the pull of gravity tugged her over the edge into freefall.

Hitting the ground hurt – she hadn’t expected that at all. There was no splash or rush of water, just an ‘urmph’ as her body impacted the dirt. Dazed, she opened her eyes to find that she was not in a Triassic sea, but rather lying rather ungracefully in the pitch black. Indeed, she could see absolutely nothing.

She must have fallen through an anomaly – a random shred of luck which she had spent her whole life earning. Helen would wait to find out where she was until she decided how lucky she was.

Helen fished out her torch and found that she had been deposited on the stinking floor of some kind of cave with the flat static of her radio blaring. The first thing she did was flick off the radio and roll onto her knees. It hurt, but not too badly. The air was cold and thick around her like it was compressed – extra atmosphere no-doubt.

The cave itself continued either side of her well beyond the reach of her torch. All around her water trickled and dripped to the floor via limestone stalactites. There was a magnificent array of these features chocking the cave like a coral reef. Beautiful, really – but it worried her that she was under ground. That had never happened before.

“Something new, I guess,” she said, clawing her way up the cave wall until she made it to her feet. Helen withdrew her knife in case the local wildlife decided to introduce themselves. Helen didn’t see the creature curled around one of the stalactites, blending into the pale grey stone as if it too were just another lifeless statue.