Chapter Five

Lucas sighed as he leaned back in his chair, crossing one foot over the other as he rested them on his desk. His hands behind his head, he thought for a moment. He was busy in the lab, both with Terra Nova science division stuff and his own projects, and he had a lot to think about, but one thing was consuming his mind. Something was not right about Holly Carroll. He had expected her to confess to working for Hope Plaza eventually, because he knew how persuasive he could be, but it just all seemed to... easy. Frowning, he put his legs down, sat forward and wheeled his chair closer to his desk. Typing in an eight digit code he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk, reached in and pulled out a brown file. He had taken the pieces of paper he had found in her office- just a handful of them, and had put them in the file without really looking at them. The equations he'd seen on the walls of her office were almost identical to his own, except for a couple of them hers were slightly off of what his were in how they ended up. That was only to be expected- she was a medical doctor, not a physicist. It was pretty impressive that she had gotten as far as she had. Opening the file, he rifled through the papers, reading them quickly. There were several with just numbers and diagrams on, and then there were graphs and arrows and symbols. Coming to the last few pages, Lucas froze. Flipping through the last four or five pages he had grabbed, he frowned even deeper and slammed them down on the desk. He hadn't seen that coming.

Pushing the button on his communications unit, he called for one of the security guards near the infirmary.

"Yes?" said a voice at the other end of it. He wasn't sure who it was, but it didn't really matter.

"Bring me Holly Carroll," he said, aware that he was being slightly snappy. "Now."

"Yes sir, Dr. Taylor," the soldier answered.

The line went quiet for a few minutes, and Lucas scanned the papers in his hands twice more.

"Dr. Taylor?" said the soldier, the line a little fuzzy.

"Yes?"

"She says she's working."

Lucas gritted his teeth and stabbed the button with his finger.

"Well tell her that if she wants to continue doing so, she'd better get over here right now."

"Yes sir."

It went quiet again, and Lucas sat back in his chair once more. About five minutes later, the soldier he had spoken to rounded the corner and entered his lab, accompanied by Holly. She was still wearing her white doctor's coat and her dark curls were pinned back elegantly. Her cheeks were a little pink and she looked irritated. Lucas nodded at the soldier, who nodded back and left.

"I was treating a patient," Holly snapped, folding her arms and staring at him angrily.

"Was it serious?" Lucas asked, feigning that he was remotely interested.

"Oh no," she waved a hand sarcastically. "He was only bleeding heavily from a puncture wound in his abdomen."

"He'll live," Lucas snapped. "There are other doctors." Clasping his hands together, he stared at her evenly. "Sit down," he said, his tone of voice conveying that it wasn't a choice he was giving her.

She looked like she was having trouble biting back what she wanted to say, but she sat opposite him slowly, her cheek twitching with irritation.

"You knew I was coming," Lucas said calmly, leaning back in his chair.

"What?" she said, sounding impatient.

"You knew I would come and find these," he said, waving a hand absentmindedly at her work which was scattered all over the desk. She looked at the papers, spotting the four he had closer to him. A satisfied smile crept across her face, and she too leaned back in her chair, looking up at him.

"I didn't know," she said. "But I suspected. You can't be too careful."

He blinked.

"Is that what this is?" he asked, his voice a little louder than before. Holly could tell he was angry, despite his calmness and his attempts to hide his irritation.

"Yes," she said, smiling at him with satisfaction. "That's me being careful. Come on Lucas, you're a clever man. You didn't need it easy. In fact," she said, leaning forward. "I think you prefer it difficult."

He stared at her, fighting to keep himself calm. She knew he was irritated purely because he couldn't understand something that she could, because she was the inferior, less experienced one. He felt defeated, and by a novice. He felt humiliated.

"Tell me what this is," he said quietly. He didn't need to make threats- his tone of voice did that for him.

Holly looked at her lap. She knew she couldn't afford to irritate him much more, but she had to admit that it was extremely satisfying to know that on this occasion she had won.

"I assume you mean the ones that you can't read," she said, taking care not to smile anymore. She didn't need to.

Lucas's cheek twitched and he clenched his jaw. He said nothing.

"Well, it's my conclusions. I do the math and the equations, factor them, and write my findings and conclusions separately using figure numbers and codes. The reason that you can't read it is because it's written in another language. I wrote it in Icelandic, so that if you found it you wouldn't be able to read it."

Lucas frowned. He had seen nothing in her records about her being Icelandic. She seemed to read his mind.

"My mother was Icelandic," she said, the smugness gone suddenly. "I grew up in Reykjavik. I spoke their language as a child. I like to write my findings in it because then no-one knows what they say."

"Unless they're Icelandic," Lucas muttered. Holly sat forward in her chair.

"Which you are not," she said with a charming smile. Again he said nothing, but instead rifled through the papers once more.

"What do they say?" he said finally, looking up at her slowly.

"Well, if you're working on the same thing, I'm guessing at a much faster pace than me, then you should already know."

He smiled, laying the papers down.

"Well, your equations are a little off, so I'm guessing your conclusions will be too."

Holly sighed, not sounding particularly bothered.

"You know, I had to factor all of those by hand, so if they are out by a few numbers then I think you could let me off. After all," she sniffed, clicking her eyes to his face, aware that she was bordering on flirting.

"It's your job, not mine."

He blinked.

"How's it going?" Holly pushed. This was the perfect opportunity to try and find out how close he was to figuring out how to make the portal go both ways.

"Are you any closer?"

Lucas clasped his hands together in front of him, leaning his elbows on his desk.

"I last checked in with Hope Plaza yesterday," he said, cocking his head on one side. "Did you expect me to be any further?"

Holly's stomach lurched a little. She had no way of knowing when he interacted with Hope Plaza, or what information he gave them. He would surely pick up that she wasn't working for them. To add to her fear, he looked at her curiously.

"Do you not have any contact with them?" he asked softly.

"Of course not," she snapped. "Taylor would see the transmissions and track them back to me. It was too dangerous."

There was silence for a few seconds, and she hoped that he would buy it. Seemingly he did, because he nodded, shifting in his seat.

"Well. I check in with them every five days, or if I make any major breakthroughs that they need to know about. Last night I updated them with my latest report."

"Which said..." Holly pushed, her heart still thumping. She was glad he could neither hear nor feel it. She knew it was ludicrous, but it almost felt as if it were sending vibrations through the floor.

"Which said that I am no further forward," he said with irritation. "I hit another wall."

She watched him for a minute. Was he telling the truth? His body language said he was, and the notes she had copied from his lab implied that he was. And then there was the anger and irritation he was displaying at not being able to read her notes. Was that because he was afraid she had gotten further than he had? He was looking down at her papers, his expression calm and steady.

"So, care to share?" he asked casually. "I don't like one sided conversations."

Holly swallowed.

"If you must know," she said awkwardly. "I am not even as far as you. I got as far as factoring the preliminary equations and realized I had miscounted something, so I had to go back and check all the weights and numbers. Those are just the documentation of that," she said, waving a hand at her papers in his hands.

Lucas looked at her for a minute, and then seemingly decided she was telling the truth. Smiling, he opened a desk drawer, laid her papers inside it, closed it and locked it with a pin code. Folding his arms, he looked her straight in the eye.

"So," he said. "Why don't you join me for dinner? We can talk about Iceland," he said, and for the first time Holly thought she saw a glimpse of something human in his eyes. He seemed genuinely intrigued- interested, even. Maybe Henry was right. She was his new mystery, and he was like a child at Christmas- he just couldn't wait to start figuring her out.

"Seriously?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Because last time I went out with you you tied me up and threatened me, and acted like a total..."

"Seriously," he said, blinking.

Holly thought for a moment. This was a good opportunity to find out more.

"Where?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "We're not going OTG again, I don't trust you."

He laughed.

"Holly, there are no restaurants OTG. It's not like we can just build McDonalds and Olive Garden out there and just hope that the wildlife happen to not see them."

"Naturally," she said, raising her eyebrows again. "So where?"

"My place," he said.

She bit her lip.

"What are you doing?" she said, her tone and her expression giving away her suspicion.

"Building a bridge," he said, leaning back. "After all, we're on the same side, you and me. Why shouldn't we get on? Then, when the portal opens we can sit and watch together as our work is praised and remembered forever, and we become very rich."

Holly smiled.

"Well, when you put it like that. What time?"

"Meet me here at six. I'll drive us both back."

She nodded.

"Six it is."

With that, she turned and approached the door of his lab, her eyes closed as she took a deep breath. The security guard looked at Lucas, who nodded. With that he escorted her out, leaving Lucas alone in his lab. Once outside, Holly leaned against the wall for a moment, breathing regularly. What would he do if he found out the truth? If he found that they were on totally opposite sides, and that she had been employed to stop him from figuring out the portal instead of to help him? He would kill her for sure. And right now, she had no idea how she was going to stop him anyway, short of killing him first. That she was sure she could never do, for many reasons. Hoping Henry was right, she breathed in and began to walk back to work, her mind already on the evening ahead.