Chapter 5

Connor stared at the wall opposite him. Abby was quiet now. Asleep. She had worn herself out crying and lay curled up in his arms. Even though she was sound asleep, he couldn't bring himself to lift her onto the bed and leave her. He had held her close all evening, stroking her hair and whispering comforting words, and in some cases the many and varied ways he could think of to inflict pain on Jack when he finally caught up with him. No matter how bizarre he made these suggestions, however, he still couldn't raise a smile from Abby: the betrayal had been so utterly complete.

Sleep was proving elusive for him, tired as he was. It was a combination of the somewhat uncomfortable position he was in and the fact his brain wouldn't stop trying to work out how to find Jack, and what to do with him when he did. He might not even have to worry about the former: Becker had also heard Abby's initial cry and come running, maybe too fast in Connor's opinion, but he wasn't sure he was being entirely rational on that front. The tough army captain was fine with giant man-eating insects, but apparently less so with crying human females, and he'd left soon after, leaving Connor to deal with Abby and promising to get on Jack's case straight away.

XXXX

Becker sat in the lab at the ARC, bending over the keyboard and resting his head in his hands. He'd contacted friends in the police force, ironically contacts he'd made through Danny at a time when neither he, nor said contacts could stand the man. How things had changed! For once, he actually missed the guy. He was no detective. He left it up to the geeks like Connor to find stuff, then he went round and did his action man stuff. He'd promised Abby he'd find her brother though. It was the least he could do, after failing so miserably to find her and Connor in the first place. And Danny.

A squeak from his side roused him from his reverie and he looked round. The not-a-rat-honestly, Colin, was sticking its furry, long-whiskered nose through the bars of its new cage. Meg had made good on her word and brought the old rat cage in ahead of time. Perhaps she'd been anxious to keep out of Sarah's way too.

"How did I get myself into this?" Becker asked the protruding nose, spreading his hands, palms upwards. "Why do I always make such an utter mess of everything remotely normal? Order men around: easy. Hunt down and kill or capture dinosaurs: not a problem. Take on a few dozen of the future's scariest predators and come out on top: simple! Talk to girls?"

The nose shifted and a pair of large eyes came into view in the dim light. Colin squeaked sympathetically. At least Becker chose to believe it was sympathetically. For all he knew, that squeak could be the proto-whatsit version of hysterical laughter. Or just plain indifference.

"I know, I know: I should be concentrating on this," Becker continued, gesturing at the computer monitor in front of him. "I'm getting nowhere with that either, though. Last known address: empty. All contact numbers have been either cut off or switched off. I have no clue where to go from there! It's a complete dead end!"

Colin chirped, turned round and snuffled around in the sawdust at the bottom of his cage. A quiet crunching told Becker the little fur-ball had found one of the dead crickets that had been hidden around the cage to make sure its hunting instincts remained intact, just in case Lester made them try to send it back.

"Yeah, you're right," Becker sighed, pushing his chair back and standing up. "I should probably see if there is any food left in this place and go to bed."

Locking the computer, Becker replaced Colin's cage in its hidden corner and brushed the blanket back down over the sides. It was a good three minutes after he'd left before a figure entered by the door on the other side of the lab and made its way over to the computer.

With deft fingers, the shadow unlocked the computer, hacking into Becker's login and bringing up the pages the captain had been looking at. After a few moments perusing the pages, the shadow brought out a mobile phone and pressed a speed-dial button. The phone rang a while, then an abrupt voice answered.

"I know what time it is," growled Mack's voice into the phone. "D'you really think I'd contact you at this hour if it wasn't important? There's been a development." Mack paused while the voice bit off a few more curt words. "They've started looking for the boy. The soldier has, anyway, but it won't be long before he gets the others involved. He hasn't found anything concrete, but to anyone with half an ounce of sense it's enough to look suspicious. You'd better move him."

The voice buzzed angrily through the phone, like a bluebottle trapped between a window and a curtain.

"Of course I mean now!" Mack replied sharply. "I don't care who you have to pay to get the job done, just get it done. Make sure your tracks are covered. If the Maitland boy is found, or if his disappearance is linked back to me in any way, shape or form, getting enough beauty sleep will be the least of your worries!"

The buzzing voice on the other end of the line clicked off into sudden silence as Mack hung up.

XXXX

Danny clung to the arm supports on either side of his seat, his knuckles white. A shudder ran through the hovercraft. It wasn't the first and it probably wouldn't be the last either. He wasn't sure whether it was the crashes themselves, or the fact that he now knew what was causing them, that worried Danny so much.

The journey had been uneventful at first. Kiran and Lena had talked him through the history of the planet, from his time to theirs with as few gaps as possible. It hadn't taken as long as he expected: there seemed to be quite a lot of gaps. The section on the formation of, and various dynasties in charge of, the City had probably taken longer than the rest of the known history of the world he now found himself in. History had made way to zoology with the first of the alarms. They had barely had time to strap themselves into the wall-side seats that had escaped his notice until then before a crash and a sense of sudden sideways movement dragged a ripe swearword from Danny's lips. Kiran had laughed at that.

"You haven't changed much!" Kiran said wryly.

"What was it?" Danny asked.

"You don't want to know," Lena had assured him.

"Tell me anyway," said Danny between gritted teeth as another collision shook the hovercraft.

"Swamp beasts," Kiran replied, flipping open a set of controls on the arm of his seat. "Here. Take a look."

An image flashed up on the holograph table in the middle of the room. It was in three dimensions and rotating, but Danny still had to frown at it for a while before he could work out what it was.

"It's an insect," he concluded aloud. "I've seen something like it before."

"It's a springtail, of a sort," his brother supplied. "You got them in our time too, but ours were a bit smaller. A hundred time smaller! They're still not much of a size, but they travel in packs and can jump high enough to get onto the hovercraft."

"They can't get in though, right?" Danny asked, his eyebrows raised.

"Not this thing, no," Kiran reassured him. "But they have learned that these things have nice juicy humans inside, and they've worked out that jumping onto the craft, or into the side of it, messes with the steering. They're trying to crash us."

"Those things are intelligent?" Danny checked. "How? I thought insects didn't have brains"

"They don't," Lena cut in. "They have neural ganglia. Several of them. As body size increased, so did the size of the ganglia. Just because we have evolved big brains for intelligence, doesn't mean its the only way of getting there. Evolution is an expert when it comes to finding new ways to solve old problems!"

XXXX

Sarah yawned. It was early, but the ARC always had somebody on duty and she wanted to get an hour or so of research done on Jenny's movements before her disappearance before the official work began. Her route from the locker rooms to the labs took her past Lester's office and she looked in. She wasn't the only person getting an early start: Lester sat behind his desk, a frown of concentration on his face as he perused the screen of the laptop in front of him. Sarah knocked and opened the door.

"It is customary to wait until the other person says 'come in' before you intrude into a person's workspace, Doctor Page," murmured Lester, his attention still on the screen before him. "Since you're here, though, come and look at this."

"What is it?" Sarah asked, stepping round to the other side of the desk and taking the chair that Lester vacated for her.

"It is CCTV footage from the cameras around the residence of Ms Jennifer Lewis," said Lester pensively. "I do have some contacts of my own, you know."

Lester leant down and pressed a few keys on the laptop. Eight images appeared across the screen, the single image that had been hiding them reducing into the last of the eight boxes. Another few keys put each of the camera feeds back to the start of their clips.

"Play them together and follow her through them," said Lester, indicating the 'play all' button on the screen. Sarah clicked it and sat back.

The first camera looked straight down Jenny's street. After a few seconds she could be seen opening her front door and stepping out. She was dressed as Sarah had never seen her before: sturdy boots had replaced the trademark stiletto heels and the outfit she was wearing with them was more suited to a hill walker than a city PR agent. A sizeable and well-packed rucksack was slung over her shoulder. Sarah noted, as Jenny turned and locked the door, that there was what looked like a bedding roll attached to the top of the rucksack.

Jenny walked down the steps before her house and turned onto the pavement, walking away from the camera. She turned out of the street and was lost to view. Sarah's gaze moved to the next camera. It took a few seconds, but soon Jenny showed up there, making her way purposely and deliberately along that street, then the next and so on until the eighth and final camera feed.

It took longer for her to appear on this one. The feed showed garages built under the arches of one of London's many bridges. Jenny walked across to one of the garages, unlocked the door and walked inside.

Lester leant down and paused the camera feeds. Sarah looked round and met his grave eyes with a frown of confusion.

"My contact has put this set together for me," said Lester, "but he also sent me the entirety of the camera data from this last camera. Nowhere on it does Ms Lewis exit that building."

"Maybe there's another exit?" Sarah suggested.

Lester shook his head. "I've been down there myself, off the record of course. There is no sign of Jenny inside the building, and no other way out that I can find."

"Are you sure you looked everywhere?" Sarah pressed.

"I did not get where I am today, Doctor Page, by cutting corners," said Lester acerbically. "I assure you there is nothing that I could possibly have missed."

"Then where is she?" Sarah shrugged.

"I fear the question now," Lester sighed, "is not so much 'where' Jennifer Lewis may be, but 'when'."