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Attraction of Bonds “Ryan, my office.” James Lester watched as Captain Ryan handed Stephen Hart the stack of papers he was holding, adding it to the precariously balanced bunch that Hart was already carrying. Stephen’s mouth twitched slightly as he managed to get his chin over the top of the pile to stabilise it, and Ryan waved an amused Abby over to help. A quick word with both, and the captain was trotting up the ramp to Lester’s office. “Sir.” Ryan stopped at parade rest in front of Lester’s desk. Lester sighed and motioned him to sit. “I’ve received some disturbing news. My informant isn’t sure whether we have anything to do with this, but he wanted to give me a heads-up.” At Ryan’s curious look, Lester allowed his lips to tighten. “Charles Hemingway has disappeared.” “Good lord,” Ryan replied, leaning back in his chair. “Are the police involved?” Lester nodded. “Yes, of course. When a civil servant of his rank is suddenly not to be found, alarm bells ring everywhere.” He grimaced. “Health & Safety might not be on top of everyone’s list of likes, but the loss of an investigator as well-regarded as Charles is going to be noticed. The only thing different in Charles’ life in the last few months was his visit here. So, unfortunately, the focus has narrowed down to us.” Ryan whistled softly and Lester nodded in agreement. The captain was mirroring Lester’s own concern. “The ARC needs to remain anonymous to do its job properly, and some rather inconvenient questions are being asked. So, in the spirit of co-operation, we’re going to have a meeting with an investigator from the Home Office. Here. At that time, I will be offering the services of our Special Forces teams in whatever capacity is required.” He stared at Ryan, hoping that the soldier would understand. “We must find Charles, Captain. We can’t have too much scrutiny of what we do here.” Ryan’s lips pursed and he met Lester’s gaze unflinchingly. “Understood, sir. We’re not detectives, but we can certainly keep our eyes open. If Hemingway’s lost because of us, then we’re more likely to notice any relevant clues.” “Thank you, Captain,” Lester replied. Squeezing the bridge of his nose in a last-ditch effort to ward off his incipient headache, he added, “And please do attempt to keep Cutter from flying up into the boughs. We don’t need his loathing of authority figures to become the focus of their interest.” By the time Lester relaxed enough to reach out for his cup of coffee, Ryan had chuckled and disappeared. xXx The next few days were hard on everyone. The members of the ARC had become perhaps a little too used to being able to speak openly inside the building, and having the Home Office investigator hanging over their shoulders was turning out to be more than simply inconvenient as everyone tried their best to control the words that came out of their mouths.  Stephen grinned as Cutter once again strangled what he was about to say, the professor’s growl and baleful look at him bouncing off his back without even causing a pang. For the first time, he was actually thinking of his muteness as an advantage rather than a handicap. At least he didn’t have to watch his tongue. Even Connor was doing better, checking around before letting the entire world within earshot know that he'd worked out the glitches in the next phase of his experiments. In fact, things were going a little too well, as Stephen found out to his sorrow when the anomaly detector went off on the third day. The team met in the atrium and Connor slid into the seat in front of the ADD. “Right, let's see where you are this time,” he said cheerfully, then glanced guiltily over his shoulder. Stephen grinned as Cutter patted Connor on the back and said, “Don't worry, we've lost him temporarily,” only to cringe when a throat was cleared ostentatiously behind him. The professor looked around and smiled weakly. “Just joking,” he muttered. Not the best time to indulge your sense of humour, Stephen signed with amusement, his grin widening as the Home Office investigator narrowed his eyes at both of them. He turned to the man and signed slowly, If you need translation, I'm sure this room has video that can be replayed. “Stephen, behave.” Ryan's tone was severe, but there was a slight twitch at the edges of his mouth that let Stephen know he wasn't truly in trouble. He grinned merrily at the investigator who was now glaring suspiciously at him as Ryan added, “Connor, location?” Connor paled and gulped a little before answering quickly, “Um, the stadium.  It's the one that led to the junction last time.” Before Ryan could say more than, “What -”, Connor had slid over to his auxiliary screen and brought up the stadium schedule for the week. “We’re clear,” the young man said with relief. “No games until the weekend.” Stephen knew that his next step would be to piggy-back onto the CCTV to check the area, and he was about to reach out to distract Connor when Cutter beat him to it. The professor touched Connor’s arm and nodded with a look of finality on his face. “Right, thanks,” Cutter said, looking over at Ryan and tapping Connor again when Connor’s mouth opened. “Captain?” Connor glanced at Stephen with a lost look on his face, which cleared immediately when Stephen cut his eyes toward the Home Office man for a second and twitched an eyebrow, signalling that their game of ‘bamboozle and baffle’ was about to begin. “Right,” Ryan said. “Get your team ready.” He gestured for the Home Office man to precede him up to Lester’s office. When the investigator didn’t move, Ryan sighed and walked away, saying, “Mr. Tremayne, we’ll need to have you sign some updated Official Secrets paperwork before you can accompany us any further.” Tremayne gaped at him as Ryan climbed the ramp, then hurried after him, expostulating all the way to Lester’s door. That left Stephen free to trade grins with Connor and Cutter, start Connor on gathering the CCTV details, and happily lead Cutter away to gather supplies for their run while the Home Office man was occupied with as much red tape as Lester could wind around him. They might have to take him with them, but they weren’t going to give him any more information about their procedures and the anomalies themselves than they absolutely had to. xXx At the tap on his chest, Ryan opened his eyes and squinted at Stephen’s hands as his lover signed, He looked really angry. Stephen was lying sprawled across Ryan’s chest on their king-sized bed, still slightly damp from his shower, snuggled close and yawning into his shoulder. Ryan chuckled. The anomaly had turned out to be a bit of a bust, something that the entire team had been rather pleased about. By the time they arrived, the dancing shards of time were already flickering, weakening more on every orbit. Connor barely had his monitoring equipment placed and turned on when the anomaly gave one last, almost derisive flare, sucked itself inside out and disappeared. The team had looked at each other, sighed, and started packing up again. Tremayne, on the other hand, had headed straight for Ryan with determination. The captain had made sure they were off to the side before he allowed the investigator to start questioning him. Knowing the team had Lester’s backing, he was ready and willing to shut Tremayne down without mercy, but he didn’t want to cause the man any public embarrassment that could later redound on the ARC. “Not really angry,” Ryan replied, running his fingers through Stephen’s hair to make the dark strands stand up in spikes. Holding his returned Stephen, knowing that even though he’d lost the original he now had this silent clone with all the memories of his template, this was a gift that Ryan would treasure for the rest of his life. “More frustrated. He was expecting something dramatic to happen, and when it was a bust it set him back on his heels.” Stephen chuckled silently at the explanation, the movement vibrating against Ryan’s ribs. Looked more like he wanted to strangle someone. “Yeah, he did that,” Ryan agreed. “But it was a generalised fury rather than a specific one.” He stroked down and then up Stephen’s back, making his lover shiver a little and stretch, like a cat with its fur rubbed backwards. “Hemingway is popular. He’s a damned good man, and everyone just wants to bloody find him.” Ryan knew he’d given away a little too much with his tone when Stephen sat up and stared worriedly at him. “I know,” Ryan said softly. “I like him, too, and he’s an old friend of Lester’s.” Stephen’s eyes widened at that, and Ryan raised an eyebrow. Had Stephen not known? Casting his mind back, Ryan realised that Stephen hadn’t been present when Ryan was introduced to Hemingway. “Yeah. That’s why Lester chose him to rebut the H&S idiot who grounded you. He’s known the man for years.” Crap, Stephen signed unhappily. We really do need to find him, don’t we? “Yeah. And that’s why we’re doing this balancing act with Tremayne, rather than simply shunting him aside.” Ryan pulled Stephen down so they shared breath, the cobalt eyes so close to his own that he could see the tiny paler flecks in the rich blue. “And speaking of balancing, how athletic are you feeling this evening?” Stephen accepted the change of subject, grinned at him and leaned in for a kiss. He threw his leg over Ryan’s hip to press their crotches together, his erection obvious against Ryan’s. That was all the reply the captain needed. Ryan stretched out his arm to the bedside table for the lube, but Stephen shook his head. Don’t want to wait, he signed, and Ryan lay back and close his eyes. He felt Stephen wriggle around to align their cocks and then relax until he almost bonelessly rested his entire weight on Ryan’s lower body. Ryan moaned as his cock was squeezed between their groins, the heat of Stephen’s erection a solid line up his own. Stephen’s hips began undulating slowly, barely moving as his teeth raked softly along Ryan’s neck, scraping the skin, followed by a warm, wet tongue to soothe the rasp. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ryan whispered, almost reverently, and raised his arms to wrap them around Stephen, only to have his lover slide his hands down Ryan’s arms and press his wrists into the mattress. Ryan took the order and relaxed, allowing Stephen control of their lovemaking. Stephen usually allowed Ryan to take the lead in bed, and Ryan treasured the rare occasions when his silent lover directed their actions. Stephen’s hips sped up fractionally, the movement still much too slow for Ryan’s need. He whined. Then he begged. The only result was the feeling of Stephen’s lips stretching as he grinned against Ryan’s shoulder and bit down a little harder. The slow cadence, the weight on his cock and the heat of Stephen’s shaft sliding against his own was driving him closer and closer to the edge, but it wasn’t quite enough. He started writhing, just a little. Stephen stopped dead, and when Ryan opened his eyes, ready to plead, it was to see his lover frowning down at him with one eyebrow raised. “Sorry, sorry,” he said softly, “but I really am going out of my mind, here.” He tried to stay still, he really did, but he couldn’t help the little twitches his hips were giving, trying desperately to increase the friction again. His lover’s eyebrow dropped back down and he gave what Ryan could only describe as a particularly evil grin. Within a couple of seconds, he went from completely still to jackhammer thrusts against Ryan’s body. The sudden movement, the heavy pressure, the heat and friction acted like a match to tinder. “Holy fuck, Stephen!” Ryan yelled, and came so hard he almost convulsed. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t passed out for a second, because when he came back to the world, Stephen was slowly and leisurely licking the come from his stomach, his erection still pressed hard against Ryan’s thigh. “Jesus, Stephen,” he whispered. “I think you broke me.” Stephen looked up from his work and smiled slowly, then licked one last long stripe up Ryan’s belly and sealed their mouths together. Ryan didn’t think he’d ever tire of tasting himself on Stephen’s tongue. Once he’d thoroughly cleaned Stephen’s mouth, he pulled back and tugged Stephen upward until he had a leg on each side of Ryan’s chest, putting Stephen’s cock in a perfect position for him to reach without strain. He slid his mouth over the hard shaft and felt Stephen sigh. Looking up, he saw Stephen stretched out above him, hands pressed against the headboard to hold his back arched and his groin close to Ryan’s face. His head was thrown back and his eyes were closed, white teeth gripping his lower lip and chest starting to heave with shuddering breaths as Ryan sucked hard. Ryan slid his hands down Stephen’s flanks and spread his cheeks, pressing his index fingers to the puckered skin nestled between the firm muscles, and Stephen went absolutely still, his entire body locked as he pulsed and filled Ryan’s mouth with come. Ryan swallowed and sucked one last time as he released Stephen’s cock, eliciting a shudder and a near collapse from his lover. He reached up and guided Stephen’s limp body to lie down beside him. “Okay?” he asked softly. That had been a rather strained position to climax in. The only response was a yawn and the tiniest of nods before Stephen was gone. Ryan grinned, counted it as a good evening’s work, and joined Stephen in slumber. xXx Three hours later, Stephen woke with a start as Ryan’s mobile rang and the soldier answered it before it could sound off a second time. He watched as Ryan’s face went still and hard, a look of feral glee crossing his features. “Right. On my way.” He slid out from under Stephen and turned back to give him a quick kiss. “Helen’s been sighted.” Do you need me? Stephen signed. He was torn between wanting to be in at the capture, and wanting to be as far away from Helen Cutter as possible. Ryan shook his head. “Not tonight.” He glanced at the clock. 2 AM. “Get some more rest; we’ll need the scientific team to be in top shape in the morning if we manage to catch her.” Okay. Good luck. Stephen grabbed Ryan and gave him a tongue-tangling kiss. Stay safe. Ryan nodded and dressed quickly. “I will. See you in the morning.” Then he was gone. Stephen lay back on the bed and sighed. Helen Cutter. Every time they had any contact with her, the situation would go tits up and they’d have to scramble to save themselves. He scrubbed his face with his hands and closed his eyes. Sleep. Right. Sure. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have anything to worry about. He did try. For over an hour Stephen tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position without his lover. In the end, he snarled silently, threw the duvet back, and stalked into the kitchen to make some camomile tea. The flat felt empty and slightly disquieting without Ryan’s warm presence, so much so that he jumped in surprise when his mobile vibrated on the countertop where he’d left it before they went to bed. Intrigued, he picked it up and read the first sentence of the text message that was on the screen. Then he sat down, shaking, and read it again. His first impulse was to call Ryan immediately. His second impulse was to call Lester. Then he read the next two sentences and went cold. Biting his lip, he stared at the screen and thought hard as he read the rest. 
Stephen, your lover and his men are looking in the wrong place for me. I know where Lester’s friend is, but I can’t take the chance that I’ll be arrested if I’m found. I can’t get to him by myself, and he will be dead within a day if we don’t get him away. I need your help, but you alone. I promise I won’t hurt you, but you can’t tell anyone you’re meeting me. Please. Meet me at our old coffee shop in half an hour. Helen.
 Setting the mobile back on the counter, he checked the time. It would take him no more than twenty minutes to get to their old meeting place, so he had a few minutes to prepare. He was going to go; there was no doubt about that. No one else would be able to get to the shop in that short a time, but knowing Helen, he figured he’d better have a backup plan. Taking a deep breath, he pulled a sheet of paper from the desk and wrote a quick note to Ryan, leaving it on the kitchen counter with a big red mug on top of it. Then he dressed warmly, grabbed a torch, and headed out. Their old coffee shop was closed now, nothing left of it but an abandoned building not far from the CMU campus. No one had bothered to re-open the shop when the prior owner moved away, and the building had gone badly to seed. Stephen didn’t think that it had even been looked at in four or five years; it was just another casualty of hard times and chain shops. Helen had chosen well. xXx “Hello, Stephen.” Helen’s voice held its usual undertone of sensuality, and Stephen had to fight his body’s automatic reaction to her, the arousal at her tone that she had built into his DNA when she created him. Gritting his teeth and thinking about maggots crawling all over him, he stared at her, doing his best to hold control. Where is he? he signed abruptly. When she simply raised an eyebrow at him, he added, I know you understand me. Where is he? She smiled at him, moving closer to brush against him. He backed away. Stop. Now. I’ll help you with him but I don’t want you near me. Raising an eyebrow, Helen said, “Why should I trust you if you don’t trust me?” She turned and walked away, speaking over her shoulder. “You’re welcome to look around. You might get lucky and find him.” Left standing, Stephen stared after her, wondering just what the fuck was going on. She’d coaxed him here, now she was leaving without doing anything. The situation was too odd; he didn’t like it at all. Reaching into his pocket for his mobile, he mentally cursed when he found it was gone. Helen must have lifted it when she brushed against him. Damn it. Stephen dithered for a moment, not sure what he should do. Common sense told him to get out, right now. Leave, and come back with help. Common sense lost out to the need to know what was going on. If Hemingway was here, then leaving would allow Helen to move him elsewhere, and they’d never get another chance. Decision made, Stephen started down the hallway behind the tattered old countertop. He was going to take a quick look around, then he’d head out. If he couldn’t find Hemingway in the first few minutes, he would get help. Taking a deep breath, he opened the first door and quickly moved to the side. When nothing came rushing out, he poked his head around the corner and took a quick look. The room was empty, dust motes dancing in the light of his torch. There were three other doors. He opened them all, one by one. All the rooms were empty. Angry now, he slammed the last door hard. A creaking noise caught his attention. He looked around but couldn’t see anything. Opening the door he’d just slammed, he looked down the hall and slammed it again. A shake in the floor on the opposite end of the corridor made him stare. He walked close and found a ring inset in the floor. Tugging it raised a section of the flooring, showing a set of steps down into a basement. Stephen closed his eyes for a moment and nibbled on his lip as he wondered whether to take the chance and take the steps. After some thought, he nodded to himself. First things first. He examined the latch on the flooring, seeing that it was long-broken. That was good. Just on the off chance, he sliced the cuff off his right shirt sleeve and wrapped it around the rusty catch, just to be sure. He also left a tail that he could slip into the crack and have show between the floorboards when he closed the hatch. His first thought had been to leave the hatch open, but he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. Better to drop a small clue that might be overlooked by anyone other than Ryan, than to leave a gaping hole that could be covered over in a moment by Helen. After climbing into the hole and pulling the lid closed after him, he moved slowly down the steps, one at a time, keeping an eye out both in front and behind. When he reached the bottom, he saw a slight glow on the left through a cracked door, on the other side of what looked strong enough to be a bearing wall. Carefully making his way across the cluttered floor, he pushed the door open, stopped in the opening and gaped. Stephen knew what it was, but he never thought he’d ever see one. Connor had spoken of Faraday cages, and how they might hold the key to locking the anomalies. It looked as if he was right. There, in front of him, was an entire room that was a Faraday cage, and in the middle was an anomaly that quite obviously hadn’t set off their detectors, its shattered shards of time circling in their slow dance around the cloudy centre. “Lovely, isn’t it?” Stephen spun around, just in time to get a boot in the gut that shoved him through the door and all the way into the room. He sat down hard on the floor, gasping for breath. Slamming the door on the Faraday cage with a smile, Helen continued, “Don’t think that they’ll find you. The entire basement is Faraday as well.” She shrugged. “If you’d left the upper hatch open, they might have caught the anomaly, but you very kindly shut it before opening this one so it seems you’re out of luck. Again. They won’t find you, Stephen. Now you have a choice. Go through the anomaly and take your chances on the other side, or starve here. I’ve removed your little ‘flag’ from the door upstairs - which was quite intelligent of you, by the way. Just not quite intelligent enough. Good luck, Stephen.” She blew him a kiss, locked the door, and walked away. Stephen remained seated, stunned and staring at the place she’d been standing. What in the name of all that was holy was she doing? He couldn’t see any reason for her little game. Why had she taken Hemingway (if it had even been her who had engineered the investigator’s disappearance)? Why had she brought Stephen here, only to abandon him? What the hell was she playing at? And if she’d removed Stephen’s flag on the basement hatch, then there was no guarantee that Ryan would be able to find him even though Stephen had left the note with this address. He put his head in his hands and sighed unhappily. Ryan was going to be extremely annoyed with him. Standing up with determination, Stephen started checking out the room. After an hour of poking, prodding and pulling all he had managed to do was acquire five cuts on his hands, three bruises on his arms, and a large and healthy crop of splinters from one extremely obnoxious chunk of wood that sprang back when he yanked on it. He sank down onto the bench at the back of the room and stared unhappily at the blood welling around the myriad tiny slivers of wood embedded in his right palm. Picking them out one by one, he pondered his situation. The door was locked from the outside. There were no windows and no other exits anywhere. He was stuck inside a room with an open anomaly that led to God knows where, and he was armed only with his torch and a small penknife. And he had no food or water. The situation was not looking particularly bright. After going through his options, Stephen checked his watch and decided that at the moment his best bet was to wait. Ryan should be making it home soon, and the moment he read Stephen's message he would break land speed records getting here. Settling back against the wall with an old rug in front of him that he could hide behind just in case something came through the clouded rip in time, Stephen closed his eyes and tried to get some rest. He waited. And waited some more. After seven hours, Stephen had to admit to himself that something had gone wrong. Either Ryan hadn’t got his message, or he hadn’t been able to find the entrance to the basement. Stephen had been due to arrive at the ARC three hours ago, and there was no way that Ryan would ignore his tardiness. Not now, not with Helen in the area. He would have phoned Stephen, and when he got no answer, he would have headed home and found the message, which would have brought him here. Oh. Crap. Ryan would have phoned. Stephen mentally recited every filthy word he’d ever learned, and every filthy phrase he’d picked up from the extremely inventive Captain Stringer. Helen had his mobile. There was no telling what sort of dance she was leading them, but he could guarantee it would be a marathon. Suddenly frightened, he checked his pocket and was horrified to find his flat key missing. Now he had no way of knowing if Ryan had even read his message. Helen might have gone to their flat and found it herself. If she had, she would have burned it. He was quite possibly entirely on his own. Stephen paced the room one last time, then looked at his watch. Another hour had passed. It was almost noon and still no Ryan, no team, no rescue. If they’d found his message, they would have arrived by now. Stephen sliced the cuff from his other sleeve and wove it into the wire of the cage. Maybe Ryan would find it before Helen returned and cleaned up. He gripped his penknife in his hand and, taking a deep breath, he stepped through the anomaly to face whatever awaited him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“God damn it, where the fuck is he?” Ryan punched the redial on his mobile much harder than the innocent piece of equipment deserved. He glared at the screen as Stephen’s voicemail kicked in again, then transferred his vitriolic expression to the face of his watch. Noon. Stephen was supposed to be at work by 8 AM, and he hadn’t shown up. No one had noticed; they’d simply assumed he’d gone with Ryan, and since Helen had kept Ryan’s team running around town for eight hours like the stars in a bad Benny Hill skit he couldn’t disabuse them of the notion. Now they were back at the ARC, having given up on finding her, only to discover that Stephen was now missing as well as Hemingway. Ryan was beginning to wonder if the woman could open anomalies whenever and wherever she wanted. The ADD hadn’t sounded off, but they still weren’t sure how long it took to actually discover that an anomaly had popped into existence. Maybe, if she only had it open for a few seconds, it wouldn’t show? Never mind, that was beside the point right now. The important thing was to find Stephen. He turned to Connor. “Connor, can you track Stephen’s mobile?” Connor stuttered for a second, eyes wide as he stared over Ryan’s shoulder at the Home Office investigator. Ryan glanced at Tremayne, who was starting to look even more suspicious, then looked back at Connor. “I know, and you know, that Stephen had nothing to do with Hemingway’s disappearance. If anything, he’s been taken by the same person or persons who kidnapped Hemingway. Now, can you lock in on his mobile’s GPS or not?” Mouth firming, Connor nodded. “Sure thing. Give me a minute.” He turned back to his equipment and started typing rapidly. Ryan spun around and started up the ramp to Lester’s office, motioning for Tremayne to follow him. “You might as well be in on this,” he said shortly. “Whoever is doing this, they just made a big mistake. They took a friend of ours before, and that was bad enough, but now they’ve taken one of our own, and that we don’t forgive.” Ryan had his back to Tremayne, so he didn’t see the slight pallor on the man’s face as he followed the captain up the ramp. Ryan wasn’t aware that his face was stone, every tight muscle crying ‘no mercy’ toward the guilty. Having lost Stephen once, he was damned if he was going to lose him again. “Captain.” Lester was already looking at the door when Ryan and Tremayne walked in. “Tell me you’ve found something.” Ryan shook his head. “No, and what’s worse, we’ve lost someone else. Stephen’s disappeared.” Lester’s eyebrows made a break for his hairline. “He wasn’t with your team?” “No.” Ryan allowed the word to hang in the air, and Lester’s lips tightened as he nodded. “Find him. Find him and you’ll find Charles. Find them and you’ll find who took them.” Lester waved them out. “Whatever you need. There are now no limits.” Ryan gave one sharp nod and spun on his heel, heading down the ramp again with Tremayne one step behind. “Are you lot always like this?” Tremayne’s tone was more tentative than Ryan had ever heard. “Yes.” Ryan stopped and stared at him. Of course, the Home Office man wouldn’t know how close they all were after what they’d been through over the last few years. “We take care of our own.” “The military, yes, but you count the scientists as ‘your own’, as well?” Tremayne sounded surprised. “Bloody right, we do.” Joel Stringer walked up, startling both men. He looked at Ryan. “We went to your flat, found the police there.” When Ryan went white, he shook his head. “No, not that. One of your neighbours saw a strange woman trying to enter early this morning, and he ran her off. When he saw her hanging about again a few hours later he called the police. Luckily, we had Lyle with us, so he used his key to let us in. We found this.” He handed Ryan an envelope. Ryan turned it over in his hands. It was a plain white envelope with his name written on the front in Stephen’s tidy handwriting. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a moment, knowing pretty much what he was going to find. He was right. Stephen’s message was short and to the point. Helen had called, had given him an address couched in terms guaranteed to make him obey. But this time, he’d given himself some insurance. This time, he was playing his own rules rather than hers. “Well done, Stephen,” Ryan whispered. He whipped around, passing Stringer and Tremayne and making it over to Connor in less than two seconds. “Anything?” he asked the young man. Connor shook his head unhappily. “No, not a thing. It’s either turned off completely, which Stephen wouldn’t do, or it’s broken. Or -” he hesitated with a glance at Tremayne. “Or it’s not here.” Ryan gripped his shoulder comfortingly. “I have an address. Get us a route to there the quickest way possible.” Handing the note to Connor, he motioned for Tremayne and Stringer. “Tremayne, with me. Joel, have Lyle and my team meet me in the garage. Gather as much information about that area as you can and then follow us with your team. We’re going in hot.” He glanced up at Lester’s office to see the man standing in his doorway with his arms folded. He raised a hand, and Lester nodded. “Whatever you need,” Lester repeated. “Bring them back.” Ryan headed for the garage with Tremayne hard on his heels. They met Lyle beside the Lexus, and he had an expression on his face that was more untamed than Ryan had seen on him in years. “We’re set?” the lieutenant asked. “We’re set,” Ryan agreed. “The address is in your GPS. Let’s go.” Twenty seconds later, two ominous black vehicles pulled out of the garage, heading at speed for an address only blocks from Central Metropolitan University. A third followed a few minutes later. xXx Whatever Stephen had been expecting, it wasn’t this. He stepped out of the anomaly into what looked to be a modern world. On his left was an open plain, with some sort of herd grazing in the distance, on his right a forest, the trees looking almost like something that would be found in any temperate climate. He glanced around, then steadied his gaze on the herd in the distance. Fairly modern in evolutionary terms, yes, but those weren’t cattle, or horses, or anything that he knew personally. Looking vaguely like over-sized tapirs that were standing on their toes, the creatures calmly grazing on the grasses were definitely extinct in contemporary times. So he was in the past, then, but not as far in the past as they often were. Judging by the trees and grasses, and the tapir-like things, he was somewhen in the Oligocene. Relaxing a little, Stephen started to look around more closely. Oligocene was definitely better than Cretaceous or Jurassic, but there were still some rather nasty predators hunting these plains. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he turned to examine the forest. Then he stopped dead and held the next breath. There was a sound, a noise that shouldn’t be part of this ancient world. Grunting and a sharp clinking. The grunting could be anything, as the first primates were developing in this era, but the clinking was definitely metallic and those early primates certainly weren’t working with metal. He couldn’t call out, but he walked closer to the forest in the hope that he could find the source. It didn’t take long once he walked into the trees and the sound was suddenly behind him. He turned around and looked up, then smiled. If he could have, he would have laughed at the expression of baffled fury on Charles Hemingway’s face. The man was sitting on a platform lying across two branches of the tree, his hands cuffed behind him and a gag in his mouth. Stephen took a closer look and all desire to laugh fled. The gag was tight enough on Hemingway’s face that there was no way he could scrape it off. It looked as if he’d tried; blood streaked his jaw above and below the cloth. When Stephen moved to the side to climb up the primitive ladder attached to the bole of the tree, he could see that there was also some dried blood around the metal of the cuffs restricting Hemingway’s hands. Once he reached the platform, Stephen nodded at the sudden moisture in the other man’s eyes as he gently released the gag. He checked the edges of Hemingway’s mouth, and was relieved to see that there wasn’t much damage. The blood was from surface scrapes only. Are you all right? He signed. Eyes closing, Hemingway swallowed hard. “I am now. Bloody hell, Stephen, it’s good to see you,” he said, his voice gravelly. Stephen leaned forward and tapped Hemingway’s shoulder, and when the man’s eyes opened again, he signed, How long have you been here? Catching sight of something, he reached out for the handcuff key that was hanging from a branch a couple of feet outside Hemingway’s restricted range of movement, a level of torture that Stephen hadn’t believed that even Helen would achieve without good cause. Hemingway shook his head, eyes following Stephen’s movements closely. “I don’t know. Longer than I wanted to be but not as long as it felt.” Thoughts chased themselves across his face. “It was morning when she dumped me here, and it’s only mid-afternoon now, so maybe eight or nine hours?” Stephen sat back in surprise. So Helen had left Hemingway here only a few minutes before she’d contacted Stephen. He shook his head in disgust. If he’d gone through the anomaly when he first got there, Hemingway wouldn’t have had almost an entire day of lonely worry. After unlocking the cuffs, he gently helped Hemingway move his arms around to the front, and did his best to rub some circulation back into the tight muscles. “So, what now?” Hemingway asked as he bent and straightened his arms one last time. Stephen raised his eyebrows. We go home. Hemingway chuckled. “Sorry, no, we don’t. Look behind you, Stephen. The anomaly’s closed.” Stephen spun around so fast he almost fell off of the platform, before smacking his fist on the planks and signing a few very pithy phrases. Hemingway’s chuckle grew into a full-fledged snigger. “Thanks. I needed that,” he gasped out, then sobered. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” Stephen looked at him seriously, seeing not just Lester’s friend, but the seasoned investigator as well. There would be no need to hide from this man. Yes. We are, he signed gravely. This isn’t the worst period we could have been dropped in, but there are still predators out there that can easily take us down. And we have no weapons or supplies. Hemingway’s face tightened as he watched Stephen’s careful signing. “Bugger,” he sighed. “Okay, so what do we do?” Stephen cocked his head, surprised that the older man was deferring to him. Shrugging, Hemingway answered the unasked question. “I know nothing about the past. I’m more practised at urban investigations and hunting people. You know countryside, tracking, and hunting animals. You take the lead on this one.” Okay, Stephen started. First things first. We’re pretty safe up here, and we can see where the anomaly should open, so we make this our base for now. We need to find a source of water. We can go for a couple of days without food, but we have to drink. He looked at Hemingway, who nodded. “Agreed.” The investigator stood up and stretched. “I vaguely remember hearing what sounded like water trickling when she marched me over here. It was about three trees back and to the right. Will we be safe on the ground, you think?” Impressed by Hemingway’s ability to remember what he heard while under the stress of being kidnapped and dumped in the past, Stephen looked around, then nodded. Until dark, anyway. After that, we’d better be up here again. He signed the next words slowly and clearly. This time period had Terror Birds. And they were as bad as their name makes them sound. Think psychotic ostriches in a ‘roid rage, and even then you’re only getting close. Hemingway blinked at him, then sighed. “Wonderful. Terror Birds. I love it.” He started stiffly down the ladder and stretched a few more times as Stephen followed. It didn’t take long to find the water, a small stream trickling from a crack in some rocks. Stephen nodded happily. That meant the water was probably from an underground stream and the likelihood of contamination was slightly smaller. He made a cup of his hands, then placed them under the water and shivered. It was cold. He tasted it, even knowing that most contaminants wouldn’t give any sign of their presence until he developed dysentery or worse. Sitting back after a few swallows, he looked at Hemingway, grinned and motioned for the other man to drink. “It’s okay?” Hemingway asked doubtfully. Stephen smiled and shrugged. Definitely a city boy. We have no choice. There might be bacteria we have no immunity to, but since we don’t have any purifiers, we’ll have to take our chances. “Great,” Hemingway sighed as he drank from his cupped hands. “I’ll blame you if I break out in purple blotches and curl up like a bug.” Stephen’s shoulders shook with a silent chuckle. That’s a charming mental picture. He stood up and looked around. Water and sunlight in this period meant the possibility of - yes, there they were. Stepping over the rock pile, he found some ancient gourds that had fallen from their stems. He pulled out his penknife and hollowed out a couple, brought them back and filled them from the stream, Hemingway watching every move with wonder. “And that’s why you’re in the lead here,” the investigator said, and Stephen almost blushed. We should get back, he signed. Let’s take one more drink then head out. We should be up high before it starts to get dark. “Right.” Hemingway obeyed, and they quickly made it back to their perch and settled in for the night. “I’m glad you’re here, Stephen,” he said soberly. Me, too. Stephen smiled and shuffled closer as darkness fell and the temperature dropped. They lay down, backs pressed together for warmth, and slept peacefully. xXx “Damn it all to hell,” Ryan sighed unhappily, having run out of any more inventive curses. The address Stephen had left for them was deserted. They hadn’t had much trouble finding the basement, since Finn managed to catch his toe in the ring as they moved down the hallway. After that, they’d entered the room with weapons deployed, only to find it empty of all life and with no anomaly to be seen. The cage had them confused until Stringer’s team arrived with Connor in tow. The young man took one look around and whistled. “Faraday cage,” he said, eyes wide. “She’s made a bloody Faraday cage.” “What in the name of a pig’s preposterous pecker is a Faraday cage?” Stringer looked as if he was doubting Connor’s sanity. “It’s an enclosure that blocks electrical fields,” Connor replied absently, most of his attention concentrated on the walls. Ryan didn’t bother to ask anything else. He’d just seen Stephen’s shirt cuff. He walked stiffly over to the wall and removed it gently, then turned to show Stringer. Both teams gathered around, and Lyle reached out to touch it. “Stephen’s?” he asked, and Ryan nodded. “I thought I recognised the material.” The lieutenant took a deep breath. “Now what?” he asked. Ryan turned to stare at the centre of the room, where the anomaly had most likely been. “We set a guard in case the fucking thing opens again on its own. We search this place from top to bottom to see if she’s left anything behind. And we find her. I don’t give a fuck what it takes. We find her.” Two hours later they were back at the ARC and Ryan watched as Lester, backed up by Tremayne, talked the Home Office into putting out a warrant on Helen Cutter. They were through playing games. This time, she’d gone too far. With every law enforcement branch and officer in the country on the lookout for her, it took less than twelve hours to track Helen to her current digs. Stringer’s team was on duty when the call came, and they headed out before the echo of the words faded away. Joel had called Ryan in, and he met them at the garage entrance on their return. “Hello, Helen.” Ryan unconsciously echoed Helen’s greeting to Stephen as Stringer grinned and handed him a rucksack containing Helen’s equipment. Lips tight, Helen stared hard into his eyes. “You have no right -” “We have every right,” Ryan interrupted. “You’ve kidnapped our friends and sent them fuck knows where.” “You have no proof of anything,” she replied haughtily. That’s when Ryan dropped his bombshell. “Yes, we do. We have the Faraday cage, we have a piece of Stephen’s shirt, we have your fresh fingerprints in the same room.” He rooted through the rucksack and pulled out a small box that looked like a crystal mounted on a keyboard. “And we have this.” Waving it in front of her, he grinned tightly. “I think we have everything we need. Take her.” He turned away, ignoring her calls as the men marched her to the cells in the basement. Now all he had to do was get Connor and his team to figure out how to work the damned anomaly control. Ryan walked into the conference room to meet with Cutter, Lester, and the team leaders Lyle and Stringer to discuss how to handle Helen. Connor was waiting by the table, almost vibrating with impatience, and he snatched the controller and rucksack from Ryan and disappeared without a word, already turning the piece of equipment over in his hands before he made it out the door. Ryan stood and watched him go, torn between gratification that Connor cared enough to want to find answers quickly, and fear that something would go wrong during any experimentation on the device. Shaking his head, Ryan turned his attention back to the meeting. After mapping out a plan that they hoped might manipulate Helen into disclosing the location where she’d dumped Hemingway and Hart, Ryan scrubbed his face with his hands in a futile attempt to energize his brain. “Hang in there, boss,” Lyle said as he handed Ryan a cup of industrial strength coffee. “We’ve the upper hand this time. The bitch won’t know what hit her.” “We’ll see,” Ryan replied, sitting back with a sigh and almost inhaling the corrosive liquid. “She’s a twister. If anyone can figure a way out of this, it’ll be Helen. And I hate having to sit this out.” Lyle shrugged. “I don’t see her winning. And you’re too fucking close to this and you know it. Let Joel and James handle it. Let’s go listen to the fireworks.” The two men followed Lester and Stringer down to the cells and stopped outside. The voices were clear. “Let me go. Or at least give me a chair.” “Certainly not.” Lester’s tone held a wealth of mockery. “Tell us where Charles Hemingway and Stephen Hart are.” “How should I know?” Helen matched Lester’s manner and raised him a dose of sarcasm. Even Lyle’s eyes widened at Lester’s next words, which were spoken in a tone that was more shocking simply for its evenness. “You know. And you will tell us. We have full authority from the government to execute you without any penalties. You are a traitor to this country, and a traitor to the entire human race. You are the cause of any number of deaths. You have kidnapped a member of Her Majesty’s government, and a member of this facility. You have one chance. Tell us now where they are and how to get them back, and you will live.” “Christ,” Ryan whispered, meeting Lyle’s stunned gaze. “Remind me never to piss him off too badly.” Lyle nodded. “Me, too. I think I’m going to be a very good boy for the foreseeable future - or at least until I can block that speech from my memory.” They shared slightly shaken grins as Helen responded. “You’re lying. And even if you’re not, you kill me and you lose any chance you have of getting them back. If you punch one particular sequence on that controller, you could lock the anomaly permanently. If you enter a different sequence, you will wipe the controller. Let me go.” If anything, Lester’s tone became even colder. “You just lost your one chance, Helen. Now you reap your reward. When we walk out of this room, you will be left alone. You will receive no food and no water and you will have access to no sanitary facilities until you either give us what we want, or you die. That is your choice now.” The door opened, and Lester and Stringer walked out of the room, leaving Helen sitting on the bare floor staring after them. She had a look on her face that Ryan wouldn’t have wanted to see on someone he met in a dark alley. xXx Stephen woke with a start as their platform started shaking. He heard Hemingway gasp and felt every muscle in the man’s body tighten. Moving slowly, Stephen peered through a small gap in the boards of the platform, and went absolutely immobile. He reached back to place his hand on Hemingway’s arm and gripped hard in a signal for silence and stillness. They’d better not catch that thing’s attention. After a few minutes, during which Stephen could almost feel a few years being stripped from his lifetime, the Amphicyonid finished scratching its itchy back and wandered away. Stephen gave it another five minutes by his watch before he took a deep breath, sat up and stared wide-eyed at an equally nervous-looking Hemingway. “What was that?” the investigator asked softly. “It looked like the twisted offspring of a Rottweiler and a grizzly.” Stephen grinned. You’re not wrong. They’re called Daphoenodons, one of the early Amphicyonids, also known as bear-dogs. He sobered. We were lucky he wasn’t hungry. Hemingway shuddered and grimaced. “They’d better find us soon. My nerves won’t take much more of this.” Stephen reached over, picked up the gourds and handed one of them to Hemingway. After taking a long drink, he rested his elbows on his knees and turned the now empty gourd over in his hands as he thought. Coming to a conclusion, he nodded and set the gourd aside. We need some sustenance. He remembered that he had decided that honesty was the best policy, so he added, Unfortunately, I don’t know this time period too well. Especially the plant life. We can look for anything familiar, but we will have to keep an eye out for predators. Hemingway looked around and grinned wryly. “I’m not much of a botanist myself. I can barely identify the various veg in my salads at home.” Stephen chuckled at the other man’s attempt at humour. Agreed. And I’m not too sure about trapping animals. We have no matches or lighter to make a fire with, and the length of time it would take to start one from scratch might be prohibitive. “Yeah. I’d hate to be rubbing sticks madly together and have one of those bloody things amble up to investigate.” 
It’s still fairly warm, so I don’t think we’re too far into the Eocene. We might be able to find a few surviving primitive bananas or something. I hope.
 At Hemingway’s raised eyebrows, Stephen signed, Eocene was transition period, from tropical to deciduous, from thickly forested to plains. We seem to be in the early part of the middle. “Okay,” Hemingway took a deep breath and stood. “So, which way?” Stephen looked around and pointed along the edge of the forest. That way, I think. We have trees to climb in case of danger, and we’ll be able to see any nuts or berries that might work for us. And we’ll be able to avoid too much attention from the herds if we keep our distance. “Lead on, MacDuff,” Hemingway said determinedly. “Once more unto the breach.” Stephen chuckled silently. Mixing up your Shakespeare plays? How tawdry!  Hemingway laughed and followed him down the ladder.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two days after Lester’s ultimatum, Ryan escorted Tremayne and Nick Cutter down to the cells. Helen had been pounding on the door of her cell for three hours, yelling for her husband to be brought to her. The guard reported that the door was holding well, but Helen’s boots certainly seemed to be getting a workout. “You all right, Professor?” Ryan asked as they stopped in front of the cell. Cutter winced as a particularly virulent curse, followed by the meaty thump of a combat boot against the door assaulted their ears. “Yes.” He shook his head. “I really don’t see what good she thinks she’s going to do.” Ryan shrugged, not really wanting to go there. Since the professor had given in every other time Helen had worked on him, she obviously believed she’d be able to influence him again. “All you need to do is tell her to fuck off, and walk away. Don’t try to respond to any questions, and don’t let her rattle you with accusations.” “Right. Tell her we want Stephen and Charles back, and if she says anything other than ‘yes’, then walk out.” Ryan clapped him on the shoulder and motioned for Fiver to open the door. “Give her hell, Professor.” Cutter gave him a slightly nervous but determined grin and walked into the cell, Ryan and Tremayne listening unabashedly. Ryan was actually beginning to quite like the Home Office investigator. The man was honest, straightforward, and Ryan had discovered he was also a friend of Charles Hemingway. And it didn’t hurt that Tremayne had come to the conclusion that the ARC personnel were innocent of any complicity in Hemingway’s disappearance. Meeting Tremayne's slightly amused gaze with his own, he shook his head as the first words from Helen’s mouth were, “Nick, why are you letting them do this to me? I haven’t done anything. You know I would never harm Stephen.” Ryan almost walked into the cell to interrupt as Cutter replied, “You already have, Helen. You destroyed the original Stephen, and you made this one as a slave.” Then he relaxed when Cutter continued, firmly back on script. “Tell us how to open the anomaly, tell us where to find Stephen and Charles.” “I don’t know!” Helen sounded as if she was fighting back tears. “I don’t know where they are, Nick. Please help me.” Cutter sighed loudly enough that Ryan and Tremayne could hear him outside. “I’m truly sorry, Helen. You’re lying. Since you won’t help us and them, you can bloody well sod off.” Ryan refrained from showing the sympathy he was feeling toward Cutter as the man stalked out of the cell, face showing the anguish he was feeling. Helen Cutter had a lot to answer for in her quest to make the world do her bidding. As Ryan slammed the door again, he saw Helen’s face fall. Maybe, just maybe, she was coming to her senses. She had better. Ryan had the feeling they were running out of time. xXx “I’d rather not do that again any time soon,” Hemingway gasped, running his hands through his thinning hair. Stephen grinned, still breathing hard from their mad dash to and up into their tree. They’d found some very dry and woody primitive bananas, along with another type of gourd that Stephen thought might be more edible raw than the original ones they were using as water jugs. Just as they finished piling the lot into Stephen’s shirt, the bellows of the Pyrotheres herd as they reacted to danger brought both men’s heads up. Hemingway whispered, “Oh, that’s not good,” as he stared at the huge birds running after a young herbivore, attempting to cut it off from the rest of the herd, and Stephen did his best imitation of an owl as he tried to check every direction at once. The two men were at the edge of the forest, exposed, with no climbable trees in close range. Cursing himself for his carelessness in allowing them to become too fixated on their gathering, Stephen didn’t bother trying to catch Hemingway’s attention. He simply slung the filled shirt over his shoulder, grabbed the older man’s arm, and took off for their tree, accelerating from immobility to a dead run in only three strides. They almost made it without attack, but at the last possible second a Gastornis saw them and headed for them at top speed. Stephen threw his shirt full of fruit upward as hard as he could, hoping it would hit their platform, shoved Hemingway toward the ladder, and took off into the trees as bait. He heard Hemingway scrambling up onto the platform and, grabbing a branch to assist him, he cut around his current tree, making the turn more quickly than the fast but unwieldy bird could manage. Having opened up a slight lead, he made it back to the ladder and up it with less than a metre between his feet and the lethal beak of the Gastornis. The bird jumped up at them a few times, but after suffering at first a lack of success and then a nasty tumble, it gave up and returned to join its compatriots stalking the herd of Pyrotheres, leaving Stephen and Hemingway to sit and stare at each other in the safety of their high perch. I agree, Stephen signed. It was exhilarating, but I think I’d rather be bored. It was Hemingway’s turn to grin as Stephen started rooting through his shirt/bag to see if any of the fruit had survived their impromptu flight and abrupt landing. xXx “Fine,” Helen ground out. “You win. I’ll open the damned anomaly. But you might find something you don’t like, and if you do, don’t blame me.” Lester leaned back in his chair at the head of the conference room table and allowed one eyebrow to rise exactly two millimetres. “I always blame you,” he replied with no inflection in his voice at all. “It makes everything so much more convenient.” Helen opened her mouth, then closed it again without saying anything. Lester caught a glimpse in the corner of his eye of Gerald Tremayne, sitting between Captains Stringer and Ryan. The man was biting his lip as he fought an incipient snigger. Lester needed Helen to continue concentrating on him, so he made a moue. “What do you need? Aside from a shower, of course.” He was gratified to see that Helen was actually starting to lose her temper. If he could keep her off balance, she would be a trifle easier to control. Then her eyes narrowed and she relaxed back in her chair. Too bad. It would have been nice to have seen Helen Cutter wrong-footed. “I need the anomaly detector that you stole from me,” she purred. Lester chuckled. “Stole - now that’s a loaded word, Mrs. Cutter.” “Doctor Cutter,” she flung back immediately. “And it isn’t stealing to confiscate the possessions of a traitor,” Lester continued without acknowledging her interruption. “No, I would much rather you simply tell us how to use it.” “That’s not possible. The machine is coded to my fingerprints. Your little geek can experiment until he turns blue in the face and the stars burn out and he’ll get nothing from it.” “Fingerprints? How quaint.” Lester was becoming quite concerned about Tremayne’s well-being. The man was starting to look as if he were going to collapse in giggles at any moment. Unfortunately for the investigator’s obvious difficulties with self-control, Lester was rather enjoying himself. “I would have thought something from the future would have had a DNA lock, at least.” Helen’s eyes widened innocently. “It does. I simply chose not to use it.” She shrugged, breasts bouncing in their marginal confinement. Lester allowed a slight twitch of his lips to show her exactly how amused he was at her antics. “Very well. Captain Stringer, Lieutenant Owen, take Mrs. Cutter to the showers, get her some clean clothes, and meet us in the garage in twenty minutes. Captain Ryan, Mr. Tremayne, with me.” Without bothering to recognize Helen’s automatic response of “Doctor Cutter”, Lester rose and exited the room with all the dignity he could wrap around himself. It was rather gratifying to know that the immediate obedience to his orders by the Special Forces men and the investigator from the Home Office would rub her exactly the wrong way. xXx “Open it now, Mrs. Cutter,” Lester ordered as they stood in the basement room. After fifteen minutes, he had finally lost all patience with Helen’s mock fumbling and exaggerated difficulties with the anomaly device. Really, the woman might as well have been acting in a pantomime. Helen dropped her hands to her sides and turned on him. “Doctor Cutter, you silly little man,” she spat out. “If you’re not capable of remembering my title, I wonder why you’ve been put in charge of the ARC. Or maybe I don’t,” she sneered, eyes cutting over to Lieutenant Lyle, who, Lester was gratified to see, had the temerity to laugh in her face. So Lester smiled openly in return. “I’m perfectly capable of remembering what you call your title, Mrs. Cutter, I simply can’t see myself bothering to use a title that was rescinded a couple of days ago.” Eyes wide, Helen gaped at him. “What?” He allowed his smile to widen. “When you were put on the wanted list, your university revoked your doctorate. So, Mrs. Cutter, your traitorous actions have already had consequences.” Dropping his smile, he added in as lethal a tone as he could, “Now open the damned anomaly, or I’ll cut off your hand and let Captain Ryan use it to work the device himself.” White with mingled fury and fear, Helen turned and operated the keyboard that had suddenly appeared on the cloudy crystal screen. Within fifteen seconds, an anomaly began to open. It started with a cloudy sphere that grew slowly, expanding until the scintillating envelope could stretch no further. The envelope developed fracture lines, and then the fracture lines spread, widened, and finally, abruptly split into myriad shards of light. Even Lester was fascinated. It looked as if someone had dropped an incandescent light bulb onto a hard surface and filmed its explosion in slow motion. He pulled his gaze away from the newly opened fracture in time and looked around. Everyone there was staring, mesmerised at the sight. Which turned out to be a painful mistake. Helen spun around and kicked Finn, who was right behind her, in a place that made Lester wince in sympathy. She dodged out the basement door and slammed it behind her before anyone else could make a move. “Well, fuck it all,” Lester sighed as Lyle stared at him in shock and amusement. He watched the door for a moment, and added, “Don’t bother to chase her. We’ll never catch her, and we have more important things to think about.” He nodded at the anomaly that was still serenely circling like a burst disco ball in the middle of the room. “Ryan, take your team through. Stringer, please have your medic take a look at Finn, and deploy the rest to guard the building. We don’t want Helen opening any more gates that might allow annoying pests to infest the area.” Ryan nodded sympathetically to the groaning Finn, and ordered the rest of his men to follow him through. Lester watched, lips pursed, as the captain’s team faded from sight one by one, until only Finn, cursing angrily at his inability to even hobble, remained. Stringer’s team medic, affectionately known as ‘Betty Boop’ for her naturally full red lips and thick black hair, leaned over the stricken soldier and started talking softly to him. Lester watched out of the corner of his eye as Finn slowly uncurled and grunted his way to leaning against the wall. He was glad to see that the soldier didn’t seem to be desperately injured, but most of his attention was concentrated on the anomaly and his hope that Ryan’s team would find Stephen and Charles, safe and waiting for them on the other side. xXx Ryan stepped through the anomaly, having to fight to keep his eyes open this time. After Helen’s threats, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see what might be there. Walking out into a landscape that didn’t look too different from the New Forest in summertime gave him pause for a moment, then a piercing whistle brought his head around so quickly he almost got dizzy. “Stephen,” he whispered at the sight of his lover standing on a platform in a tree less than a hundred metres from him, with Charles Hemingway right behind him, a huge grin on his face. Both men dropped down from the platform at speed, and ran for the anomaly. Ryan saw the mixed joy and worry on Stephen’s face, and ordered quickly, “Lyle, Blade, eyes around us.” “We’re okay,” Blade responded quietly. “There’s a herd of somethings in the field, and more somethings that look a bit nastier on the other side of them, but both sets are concentrating on each other right now.” “You okay?” Ryan asked as the two men stopped in front of him with huge grins on their faces. Hemingway nodded rapidly. “Yes, thanks to Stephen.” He shook Ryan’s hand. “Home? Now?” Ryan chuckled and tipped his head toward the anomaly. “Go on through,” he said, his gaze still on Stephen, who was standing in front of him with his wide eyes almost devouring Ryan. He reached out and touched Stephen’s face, and the cobalt eyes closed for a second, before opening again, slightly moist. Ryan wrapped his hand around the nape of Stephen's neck, and took a moment to press their foreheads together and whisper, “I found you.” Stephen pulled back and signed, I knew you would. Let’s go home. Ryan put his arm around Stephen and stepped back through the drifting shards, followed by Blade, who had remained to guard them. They exited the basement quickly, making sure the Faraday cage was locked and the hatch to the ground floor was completely sealed. All they could do now was hope that the anomaly would close on its own without Helen’s device. Once they were clear of the building, Ryan stopped and pulled Stephen into a close hug. Stephen’s normal reluctance about public displays seemed to have deserted him, since he gripped back with equal fervour. When Stephen stopped shaking, Ryan released him slowly. The two men turned to watch Hemingway, hands waving in the air as he described their encounters with the Daphoenodon and Gastornis and Stephen’s heroics at the latter meeting in graphic terms to a horrified Tremayne and Lester. Ryan smiled at the blush on Stephen’s face, and suggested that they get the men back to the ARC so they could clean up and rest. Hemingway and Stephen were equally enthusiastic about that idea, Hemingway a trifle more loudly. Their cleanup and debrief took less time than Ryan had anticipated, since neither man could shed any light on exactly what Helen thought she was doing by dumping them in the past and leaving them there. Neither Stephen nor Hemingway was pleased about Helen’s disappearance, but Ryan was able to assure his lover that the locks had already been changed on their flat, and they could return home in safety. He waited by the door as Stephen said goodbye to his fellow time-traveller, watching as Hemingway pulled another blush from Stephen with his words and what Ryan was sure must be a rather uncharacteristic hug. Still slightly pink, Stephen joined him and Ryan gave Hemingway a nod as they left the ARC and headed home. The H&S man grinned back, and their last sight of him was as he headed for the ramp that led up Lester’s office, where Tremayne was waiting for him, also grinning happily. Lester, in his office, looked a trifle less pleased, but only because it would now be up to him to concoct an explanation for Hemingway’s return that would both pass muster and keep the ARC out of it. xXx Ryan dropped his keys on the kitchen counter and set the kettle on to heat, aware that Stephen was watching him slightly quizzically. Now that the two men had been found and were safe, Ryan was finding himself in the unenviable position of being both thankful and relieved that Stephen was uninjured, and right royally pissed that Stephen had taken it on himself to tackle Helen alone. He stiffened for a second, then relaxed as he felt Stephen’s warm body press against his back. The feeling of his lover’s arms around him, forehead tight against the back of his neck, breath warm against his skin, drained the fury away. “I can forgive you for taking off after Helen without backup,” Ryan said conversationally, and Stephen stepped back away from him at the words. He turned to look into the worried blue eyes concentrating on him. “I can, because you had the good sense to leave that note.” Reaching out, he stroked Stephen’s cheek. “If you hadn’t - my God, Stephen - if you hadn’t, we never would have found you. And that thought petrifies me.” Ryan wasn’t sure what set him off, but Stephen’s eyes suddenly filled with tears and his shoulders started shaking as he tried to hold back silent sobs. Pulling him close without judgement, Ryan held him and let him release the pent-up fear of the last few days. He was so like Ryan’s own lost Stephen that the soldier tended to forget these days that this Stephen still had a sense of inferiority over being a clone, that he had to fight sometimes to believe that he was worth listening to and caring for. To have been put in a position of authority, to be responsible for the life of another, must have been terrifying for him. Ryan held him until the kettle started whistling and Stephen’s grip loosened and he gave Ryan a rather watery smile. “You ready for tea?” Ryan asked, and was surprised when Stephen shook his head. 
No tea. I want you.
 Ryan turned off the kettle and held out his hand. “You have me,” he replied quietly. “Always.” He led Stephen to their bedroom and stopped him beside the bed. When Stephen started to pull his shirt off, Ryan reached out. “No.” Stephen’s eyes widened, then went dark as Ryan continued, “Let me.” He went still, and Ryan slowly unbuttoned Stephen’s shirt, stroking the bare skin that was exposed piece by piece. Stephen shivered under his touch, breath quickening and eyes closing. Ryan followed his fingers with his mouth, tasting and licking as he divested Stephen of the rest of his clothing. By the time Stephen was naked, they were both hard and erect, Stephen’s cock proudly jutting from the tangle of dark hair at his groin, and Ryan’s cock pressed stiffly against the zipper of his combats. He pressed Stephen gently back onto the sheets and shucked out of his own clothes as quickly as he could, dropping them into a pile beside the bed. He crawled onto the mattress and settled slowly between Stephen’s legs, groins pressed together as he gave his blue-eyed lover a leisurely kiss. Starting slowly, he brushed his lips against Stephen’s, and when they opened slightly, he pressed his tongue gently between and searched out Stephen’s tongue to lick softly at it. When Stephen’s mouth opened more and he sighed, Ryan allowed himself to be more aggressive, wrapping Stephen’s tongue in his own and pulling it back into his own mouth. By the time the kiss ended, Ryan was breathing as rapidly as Stephen was, and he could feel the slickness of pre-come mixing on their bellies. Moving away from Stephen’s mouth, Ryan gave a series of open-mouthed kisses down Stephen’s neck, tongue trailing wetly in little licks along the skin, raising goosebumps in a trail behind it. Stephen was getting restless, his hands alternating between stroking Ryan’s back and shoulders, and gripping the sheets in tight fists, so Ryan had mercy on him, and reached into the bedside table drawer for the lube. Slicking his finger, he pressed it to the puckered hole between Stephen’s cheeks and felt the instant relaxation of the normally tight sphincter as Stephen’s hips shifted impatiently under him. Stephen’s eyes opened, staring directly into Ryan’s, and he mouthed, “Now.” Never able to resist his silent lover when he was able to mimic speech, Ryan smiled and nodded. “Now,” he agreed as he wiped some lube on himself, placed the head of his cock to Stephen’s arse and pressed in gradually, knowing that Stephen would relish the slight burn of being stretched by Ryan’s slick length. When Stephen’s eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth went slack, Ryan started to move slowly inside him, keeping the pace leisurely and the angle perfect to just barely brush Stephen’s prostate. He wanted to make this last, to make Stephen fall apart under him. And he did, holding control as hard as he could, refusing to allow himself to let loose. He kept the pace slow, the stimulation building bit by bit to a crescendo as Stephen moved under him, rising to meet his every thrust, faster and faster until Ryan couldn’t tell where he stopped and Stephen started. When Stephen finally gasped and tightened around him, cock pulsing come onto their stomachs, Ryan let himself go and thrust hard and fast into the now pliant body, working himself to his own climax and filling Stephen’s channel with his own come. Finally able to let go of his own tension and fear, Ryan relaxed onto his lover’s length and rested his head on Stephen’s shoulder. When he felt a tug on his hair, he raised his head weakly and stared into amused and satisfied cobalt eyes. Stephen rolled him over onto his back and slid from the bed, yawning his way into the loo. He returned a couple of minutes later, fresh but still slightly damp, wiped Ryan clean with a moist flannel and dropped it onto the pile of clothes by the bed. Ignoring Ryan’s token protest, he slid back into the bed and nestled close. Ryan smiled and kissed the top of the dark head on his shoulder, wrapped his arms around the broad shoulders, and fell into a deep and relaxed sleep for the first time in days. They were home, and together. And in the grand scheme of things, that’s all that really mattered. End