Episode 5x01

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.

The shopping mall was busy as usual on a workday afternoon. The customers scurried to and fro, carrying out their usual activities: shopping like the majority of the visitors, or playing in the arcade (and eating fast food) as the birthday party in one of the corners of the mall in question was doing, or just lounging about as a group of older teens were doing, as they observed the setting-up of a stage of some charity event. It was a regular Wednesday afternoon, nothing seemed out of ordinary, when a sphere of shimmering, tinged, chromatic light suddenly appeared out of the blue, twinkling over the fountain.

In addition, it should be said that it was a massive fountain, which produced some rather impressive water plumes. As such, the shimmering sphere actually remained unnoticed for several long moments, until someone's pet puppy began to bark at it.

"Mommy, what is that?" the puppy's owner (looking barely older and scarcely bigger than the mini-mutt itself) asked curiously, pointing at the ball of light. "It's so sparkly!"

"I don't know, dear," the child's mother replied, thoughtful. "Must be a trick of the light, or perhaps a promotion of those new 3-D images that your brother has heard about. Either way, it looks rather impressive!"

The last sentence was heard by several other people who were passing by, but stopped to look at what was the excitement. Very quickly, they noticed the new development, and while some just took a brief look and went on, others took their time, either just looking and admiring the new mall attraction, or recording it on their cell phones, planning to send the pictures to their friends and family...

The crowd grew, the whispers and muffled discussions grew with it, and so, nobody was able to notice when the first batch of sea scorpions began to pour through. But once they were in the present, it didn't take long for the screaming to begin.

Meanwhile...

"Becker, uh, how are you doing?" Jess Parker said quietly, as the usually taciturn soldier just sat there, looking even less talkative than usual. "Is it because of Quinn? Well, both of them, really?"

"No," Becker replied, reluctantly. "It's not. I just like having peace and quiet here instead. It's so nice, so orderly – it is quite neat, really!"

Jess blinked. "You like peace and quiet? Why did you join the army, then?"

Becker shrugged. "It was either that or the jail, actually."

"Wha-?" Jess's mouth opened wide, making her look a bit like a fish. "Becker? Pardon?"

"Yes," Becker nodded thoughtfully. "That's why I never talked about my past. This sort of a reaction is really annoying. So how about you, Jess? Why did you embrace your career the way you did?"

"Um," Jess said slowly, "well-" She didn't finish. Abby Maitland came over to them, and she looked really despondent.

"Hey, what are you talking about?" she said, sounding much more depressed than the usual. "Connor called. He and Burton are at some conference, so he's not to be bothered for at least next couple of hours or so."

"And Matt?"

"In Emily's old room, he... they... I don't know," Abby leaned backwards in her seat. "Just a few days ago, we were talking to Jenny, and she was getting married, and everything seemed to be looking up, the hyenadon invasion notwithstanding. Now, Emily's gone, Danny's gone again... oh, Matt wants to talk to us about him, i.e. Danny, but first, I don't know..." Abby trailed away.

Jess and Becker exchanged looks. "Speaking of being gone," Jess said in an uncertain tone of voice, "I forgot to tell you – Lorraine has called."

"Yes? And?"

"She's sick with flu or something," Jess elaborated. "She's been absent since yesterday evening, as a matter of fact; Lester has already been notified, of course, but I forgot to tell you in all of the excitement..."

"Well, fair enough," Abby exchanged a look with Becker. "Lorraine is a good friend of ours, and we really should send her a get well card. What do you think?"

"Don't see why not, as long as it gets approved by Lester – he is in charge of all the finances," Becker replied, perhaps a bit predictably.

"Of course," Jess and Abby exchanged eye rolls. "Becker, sometimes your attitude is almost cute, but other times it's just exasperating. Still, I doubt that Lester will raise much of a fuss if we promise to pay for Lorraine's flowers by ourselves-"

"No argument from me," Becker shrugged, as he walked over to the communications system and pressed a button that connected to Lester's speaker phone. "Mr. Lester, sir?"

"Becker, Parker, and everybody on this motley crew of an ARC," Lester's answering machine replied instead. "This is your Noah, I mean captain, James Lester speaking. After winning a cruise through the Mediterranean via lottery, I'll be absent for the next several weeks, leaving you in Burton's capable hands. Try not to act as utter morons in the meantime? Lester out. PS: Don't try to call me – I'm on vacation!"

There was a pause as the three listeners exchanged looks between themselves. "I didn't know Lester played lottery," Jess finally admitted.

"Hey, neither do I, not regularly, but on occasion I did spend an accidental pound or two," shrugged Abby. "So does Connor, for that matter."

"Hah," Becker said, thoughtfully. "Burton's on a conference with Connor, Lester's gone, and so's Lorraine. So, who's in charge for the time being? Anderson?"

"That's a reasonable question," Abby admitted. "Jess, call Matt to come over – he can mope about Emily later-"

The calls of the time anomaly alarm locating a time anomaly interrupted whatever Abby was going to say.

"Oh, crud."

The office stood large and dark, clearly dominated by the large desk that stood in its rear half. "Hello?" Connor spoke in a rather insecure tone of voice, as his second thoughts regarding getting into Burton's car grew steadily louder and louder.

"Hello to you too – Mr. Temple." The woman who got from behind the large desk was quite tall and thin, with a rather sharp nose and a pair of tinted glasses perched upon it. She was dressed in some rather well-tailored clothes, but the overall effect of a rather strict and stern schoolteacher wasn't diminished one bit.

"Hello," Connor repeated dully, as his hand was gripped and shaken emphatically. Some of his instincts were telling him to flee because there was something wrong, and that wrongness included that grip, but he ignored them – a usual trick when dealing with his common sense.

"My name," the woman continued, grinning slightly, "is Geraldine, but please, feel free to call me madam minister."

"Um, eep?"

Matt caught to Abby and Becker as they were going over to their van. "Sorry that I didn't get to speak to you earlier, I just, I don't know, have you ever thought at least once that the whole purpose of your life was a mistake?"

"Just what is it with everybody today?" Becker suddenly erupted. "First Jess, now you – is there something in the air that makes everyone want to strike a conversation out of the blue? Seriously, it's bad enough that yet another bleeping time anomaly has ruined all of the peace and quiet yet again, you just have to wax poetic as well? Can't you just get to the point and return to mourning Emily later?"

Matt blinked and looked at Abby. "I'm guessing that Ethan getting the best of you is behind this?" the blonde asked, carefully.

"Yes!" Becker eagerly took the bait. "I'm an army man, damn it! With an H&K sniper rifle, even AR-15, it all would've been over, we'd just have to wash his brains off the wall, end of story."

"Danny wouldn't have been happy," Abby said quietly.

"Yes? Well, the ARC wasn't built to make Danny happy!" Becker shot back. "Plus it is always possible that the rifle butt in the face that he took from Ethan, or Patrick, or whoever, would've helped him change his view, and if it didn't...well, I know my duties, I have had disagreements with teammates in the army, and sometimes I was wrong. Other times, however, I was right. Blowing Ethan's brains over the wall is a risk I would be willing to take." Becker shifted and faced Matt more directly. "Now, what was it that you were going to tell us?"

Matt opened his mouth and closed it. With Becker being openly hostile at the moment it was risky to confess that Danny told him not to trust Burton – for all that Matt knew, Becker might decide to be purposefully perverse and do something unpredictable instead.

And then, of course – though Matt didn't consciously realize it – was Matt's own attitude to Becker. The two men were close enough in age to be naturally competitive – not about anything in particular, but just because. Later on, by the time of the therocephalian invasion, Becker, grudgingly, submitted to Matt's leadership, but the fires of resentment were still there, no matter how small and smouldering. And Matt's own resentment reciprocated in kind.

Plus there was all of Matt's training – throughout the better part of his life, Gideon Anderson had trained his son to be self-dependent though not very social, ready to do everything by himself, dependant on no one. The idea that he had to work with Becker... chafed. And now, well... So, Philip Burton is not to be trusted? Good, Matt will keep an eye on him. And if this will prove to be another red herring, just Ethan proved to be, and then Matt will be spared another embarrassment as he had been before.

Nodding quietly to himself, Matt settled in into his car seat and kept for the rest of the ride.

"So, let me get this straight," the minister said thoughtfully. "The time anomaly problem is growing quickly and steadily into a genuine threat?"

"Exactly!" Connor explained, after exchanging a look with Burton. "In this, latest instance we had two time anomalies fusing into each other, and this development had not only created a lot of secondary time anomalies that were all interconnected, apparently, but also showed that our equipment needs a lot of updating. Eh, what I am trying to say, here, is that we're in a literal race against time – and time is winning. Is this clearer?"

"You're saying," the minister replied, just as thoughtfully, "that the new developments of the time anomalies may render the ARC obsolete?"

"It's a very distant possibility, but a real one all the same," Connor replied after some deliberation. "The fused time anomalies were still the same time anomalies that we've dealt with in the past, and so our equipment is designed to deal with them... as it did in this instance. What worries us is the possible fallout the time anomalies could bring during their presence here."

"Sounds more like a matter of personnel than technology to me, then," the minister said, clearly thinking over Connor's words. "Is that what you're getting at?"

"Yes," Burton spoke up suddenly, after exchanging looks with Connor. "Connor's expertise is with technology, just as Jess Parker's is with computers and computer programming, and what we need is, probably, someone with a good knowledge of physics, as James Lester has pointed out."

"Physics," the minister said thoughtfully.

"Exactly. We don't know yet how the time anomalies exist, for a start," Connor said firmly. "We know that radio waves are involved, definitely, but how – that's the question."

"Very well, I'll think about it," the minister said, sitting once more behind her desk, clearly dismissing the two men. "Thank you for your time."

There was nothing left but to say good-bye and leave.

"Jess?" Abby's voice sounded less confident than the usual. "What's the data?"

"Let's see, it a shopping mall in the city's northern suburbs," Jess's voice came over the communications' link. "You'll be there in another fifteen to twenty minutes. There's only one time anomaly – I hope. Uh, everything is all right?"

"Yes, yes, we're fine," Abby replied in a voice that indicated that that wasn't so at all. "Matt and Becker are just being, you know, tense."

"Tense," Jess replied slowly. There was a sort of a not-quite-a-joke running in the ARC that if the tightly wound captain Becker would snap, then it wouldn't be pretty at all. Somehow, at this moment it no longer seemed to be a joke at all. "Right. Well, if anything – call me, immediately. Got it?"

"Yes," Abby replied, almost gratefully. "Got it."

By now, the mall appeared to be completely empty, devoid of people. The fountain was still pumping water into the air, and only a close inspection could tell that the water came not from it proper, but from the time anomaly instead – the mall was completely flooded. This didn't mesh well with various electronic appliances, devices and other man-made devices that were sold and used at the mall, so in several places there was a distinctive crackling of short circuiting electricity.

There was smoke too, coming mostly from the food court area, where the various cookers and burners, some of which had been initially on, and burning. Other sources of smoke came from above, where some of the potential electric fires were still burning.

The smell, however, was the worst. It could not be described, there were too many factors, too many sources contributing to it, both inorganic and not. Abby took one whiff and staggered backwards, feeling gloriously, stomach-wrenchingly sick. "What is this smell?" she managed to gasp between her heaves.

"Death," Matt replied curtly, remembering similar smells from his childhood in the faraway future. "Abby, I think you should stay here, as back-up, hmm?"

Becker opened his mouth, and then he changed his mind, as he clearly closed it and began to look into the stinking, darkened depths. "Jess?" he said slowly, as unwanted memories of his own began to resurface, "we don't see the time anomaly – do you have any better luck?"

"No," Jess's voice was grim, "not really. I have some plans of the mall, but right now their electronics don't work, there isn't much I can get into."

"Well, what info do you have? Please?" Becker softened his voice, remembering that Jess wasn't his subordinate, not really.

"Let's see. The mall is forty to fifty stores long and has 4 levels. There are several other establishments other than the stores per se. There are two fountains, one bigger, one smaller-"

"Well! That explains all the water," Abby spoke-up.

"Actually, it's sea water," Becker shook his head. "Smell the salt, if you will."

"Oh. So it's not just from the food court, then?" Abby tried to joke, but judging from the looks on the faces of both Matt and Becker, she wasn't doing a very good job on it. "All right. So, I'm guessing that we're dealing with sea animals?"

"What was your first clue? The strange-looking fish over there?" Becker pointed with his taser at the fish in question.

"What fish?" both Matt and Abby turned...just to see the fish getting snapped by something that was definitely not a vertebrate, but possessed way too many limbs instead.

"That's a sea scorpion, and it's big!" Abby exclaimed, sounding much more disgusted than the usual. "Bigger than Rex!"

"That's pretty big, all right," Becker admitted. "Jess, can you find out if this mall has any drainage systems, or pumps, or something?"

"On it," Jess's voice replied through the ear pieces. "Yes, they're there, but I cannot turn them on from here – I'll send you the details instead."

"Good. And keep trying to contact Connor – we could use another pair of hands here," Matt agreed. "Now. Is it just me, or first we seal the time anomaly and then we turn on the pumps?"

"No, that's pretty much it, I suppose," Becker admitted, thoughtfully eyeing the still-feeding sea scorpion instead. "Speaking of Connor, what does his dating calculator say?"

"Um, that it's about 490 – 443 MYA," Abby replied. "That's the Silurian, I think."

"The Ordovician, actually," Matt shook his head. "The Silurian came later. Well, enough stalling, let's go."

"Not so fast," Becker shook his head. "First I have to show you something." He cocked the barrel of his taser gun, aimed it at just some spot of water, and discharged a shot.

Abby and Matt blinked. "Shouldn't there be a discharge?" Abby said slowly. "Isn't that the whole principle of all those killer movies?"

"Only if the charge is grounded," Becker shook his head. "Here the water is deep enough for our shots not to be grounded, it's all in the angle of fire. We risk not only hitting ourselves, but also not hitting anything – if electricity won't get grounded, it'll scatter through the sea water instead-"

"Look!" Abby called out. "Look!"

A second sea scorpion had joined the first, and the two large invertebrates began to scout the area where Becker had fired his shot.

"They're sensing electricity," Abby said thoughtfully. "Well, bio-electricity – animals generate their own electric field: modern electric rays, eels, catfish, they sense that field and hunt animals in murky waters; modern sharks do too. Matt, Becker – I think we've got a strategy... but to make it work, we might need some objects, like, I don't know, carrots?"

"Carrots?"

"So. That was our boss," Connor said thoughtfully, as he and Burton departed from the ministry.

"James's boss," Philip corrected him, softly. "I'm in the private sector, remember? That said, well..." he trailed off, and finished, sounding thoughtful, "you may be onto something."

"Uh," Connor opened his mouth to say that he didn't say anything concrete, when his cell phone rang. "Jess? It's you?"

For the next several moments Connor just listened silently, and then he turned to Burton. "Philip? Abby and the others are dealing with a time anomaly in a flooded mall – can you give me a ride?"

"Hmm," Philip grew thoughtful. Frankly, he had no intention of ingratiating himself too closely to the ARC's field team, but on the other... well, he had plans regarding the Anomaly Research Center and Connor Temple in particular, so co-operation here was the key. "I think we can do something about this," he finally replied. "Tell me, Connor, do you get airsick?"

The waters in the mall just stood there silently, rippling only when a sea scorpion or a trilobite passed through them. "There aren't too many fish, are there?" Matt decided to make conversation, as he walked behind Becker and Abby, who periodically threw pieces of food into water and zapped them with the blasts of their tasers. The sea scorpions (and some of the trilobites) would immediately swarm in that direction, and gather around the food in a miniature feeding frenzy.

Matt, however, wasn't doing any of it – he was carrying the case with the device that would seal the time anomaly instead, and as such, he felt rather lessened. "You know?" he spoke, trying to lighten the mood, "the sea scorpions are tough, and the trilobites seem to have less common sense than a woodlouse, but the fish, I'm not sure, they seem to be acting strange."

"Well, they're jawless, so even with their bony armour they're hopelessly outcompeted by the invertebrates," Abby said thoughtfully, "but yes, you've got a point – they are acting strange, all of them."

"How?" Becker asked, slowly. "They're ancient bugs and primitive fish – how can they not act strange? I mean, even your dinosaur sometimes acts strange as far as we're concerned-"

Zap!

"They're sticking to the shallows, even the fish," Abby explained, willingly. "I mean, yes, there're theories that the sea scorpions and the such came to land to breed, but here-"

"Well, it's not quite land here, is it? There's plenty of water – maybe they just think that it's a low tide or something," Becker shrugged. "All right, we're here. Connor- oh, I forgot."

"That's okay, I'm sure that he'll come on time," Matt said reassuringly, "Jess told us that she'll tell as soon as she'll can. Right, now to seal the time anomaly..."

For several short moments the trio stared at the time anomaly as it just hovered there, its' chromatic light reflecting off the water in the now-damaged fountain pool. And then, several tentacles burst from out of it. The tentacles were dark in colour, covered in ridges rather than suckers, and were very, very big – but otherwise they were identical to the tentacles of a squid or a cuttlefish.

"Back, Abby, back!" yelled Becker, as he fired several taser blasts at the new threat. It seemed to do little good – the tentacles apparently were too far away from the main brain of their owner, and when one of them actually grabbed the barrel of Becker's weapon, the metal creaked and groaned in its grasp.

"Matt, turn on your machine – we've got to seal the time anomaly or we're screwed!" Abby yelled over her own desperate shooting. "Now!"

It was at this moment that a shadow fell over the area in which the trio struggled with their prehistoric foe. "What the Hell?" Becker managed to say as he looked up and saw Connor Temple open the mall's skylight and began to fire at the tentacles as well. This wasn't another taser, however, as one, then another, and then several tranquilizer darts hit the tentacles' flesh, causing them to withdraw in a hurry back through the time anomaly.

"Now!" Matt shouted to no one in particular, and pressed the right sequence of buttons on the sealing device.

The time anomaly snapped shut, leaving the tentacled stranger safely back in its own time.

"So, I leave you guys for a matter of hours, and behold – you're tangling with a nautiloid," Connor said, in mock disapproval. "Talk about embarrassing!"

"Yes, well, that's how it goes," Becker muttered, looking at his taser. For an outdated ancestor of the squid, the nautiloid had had quite a grip: the weapon was bent and broken beyond repair. "So how did your meeting go?"

"...Remarkably ambiguous," Connor admitted, after a brief inner struggle. "She was helpful and listened to my suggestions, but she was also very, very scary and intimidating."

"Considering that she has to deal with the likes of Lester and Burton on a daily basis, it's not too surprising," suggested Abby.

"Maybe," Connor muttered, remembering his handshake with Ms. Geraldine – there was something wrong with it, there was something wrong with the woman in total, but now wasn't the time to dwell on it. "Anyways, once the back-up crew is done capturing all of the sea creatures, it will be time to release them back into the past, right?"

"Well, yes," Abby nodded. "Are we going to use the time anomaly at hand?"

"Not sure," Connor admitted. "I don't know much about the Palaeozoic, but I do remember that the nautiloids lived in deep, dark water, and thus sending all the sea scorpions and jawless fish directly there might be tricky."

"Well, we'll figure something out – right, Matt?" Abby pressed on.

"Yup," Matt agreed carefully, deep in his own thoughts. He wanted to suspect Philip Burton, he really did, but after the fiasco with Ethan Dombrowski (or Patrick Quinn, depending on one's version), he was no longer as eager to jump to judgement as before. His desire to succeed was still there, just as strong as before... but so was his determination to fix it by himself, or at least try to. And so... he said nothing.

...As the quartet emerged from the still waterlogged mall and looked around, and saw several crews of reporters crowding around the barrier erected earlier by Becker's underlings.

"I think," Matt spoke instead, "that maybe we need to hire a PR agent or someone for just such an emergency?"

The others just winced, but Connor noticed then someone else. "Isn't that Mr. Burton amongst them?" he asked suddenly. "What's he doing here? I thought that after he got me that helicopter ride, he drove back to the Center?"

"That's a good question," Abby's own eyes narrowed, as she tried to figure out the older man's angle. "I don't like this."

Yet whether they liked it or not, the four friends were about to be surprised by their boss...

The minister was staring quietly at the TV, her spectacled glance rigid and enigmatic. Finally, she seemed to have made a decision and dialled a number on one of her telephone sets. "Get ready, for soon it will be time to strike, Caracacon," she spoke into the receiver in French. "Soon the ARC and all of its secrets will be ours!"

To be continued...