bigtitch | Flotsam (3/3) (Reply)

Title: Flotsam (3/3)
Author:

bigtitch
Word Count: 13,300
Rating: Gen
Characters/Pairing: Cutter, Elvis Harte (Our Girl), Ryan, Ditzy, OCs
Author notes: This is the sequel to Badlands. Cutter was on holiday on the Durham Coast as a way of recuperating after a bad anomaly shout left two young girls dead. That proved to be less than restful when he found himself in the middle of an SAS undercover operation targeting an organisation 'disappearing' refugees. The result of that has him in the Cretaceous with an SAS captain and three refugees. All they have to do is wait for the anomaly to return. But will it be that easy?

Big thank you to

fififolle for amazing beta work and saving my blushes on many occasions.

The troop walked over a low hillock to find a wide, shallow river stretching out in front of them.

'Well, that's one problem solved,' Elvis said. 'We have water and with a bit of luck the fish here will like Fadwa as much as the Cretaceous ones did!'

Fadwa smiled. 'Not many trees. Where will we stay?'

'One problem at a time. Best fill the water bottles.'

Fadwa and Elvis walked down to a shingle beach. Cutter looked around trying to find some species that could narrow down what era they were in.

'Cutter!' Something in Elvis' voice put Cutter on alert.

'What's up?'

'Look here.'

Cutter hurried down to the river to see what Elvis and Fadwa were looking at. He gasped when he saw it.

The print of a boot.

'There's been someone here.'

'Not long ago, either,' Elvis said.

Cutter looked around as though expecting the owner of the print to be suddenly standing in front of them.

'Arcteryx,' Elvis said.

Cutter was puzzled. 'No, it's human.'

Elvis snorted in amusement and pointed to a faint logo visible in the sole. 'Arcteryx, the outdoor clothing company. They're not cheap. Someone's come well prepared.'

'Maybe they'll have spares.'
++++
Omar came up to them and looked down at the footprint.

'Who is that?'

Elvis shrugged. 'We don't know.'

'Where is he?'

Elvis looked around. 'It might be possible to track him. I'm not sure.'

'What if he's hurt?'

Cutter caught Elvis' eye. 'That's the million dollar question isn't it? What do we do now we've found signs of other humans?'

'If they are hurt, we must help.' Omar was as definite as Cutter had heard him.

'Or maybe they can help us,' Fadwa suggested.

Cutter weighed the options. 'If they're here we should try and find them.'

Elvis studied the ground. 'OK. Maybe I can track them. But we go carefully. Let's have a look at them before we do anything stupid.'

He put his pack down at the edge of the river bank. 'Cutter and I will try and find our visitor. Omar, you stand guard while Fadwa can see if the fish here will bite. Naziah,' she looked up at his words, 'can whistle if anything goes wrong.'

He picked up his rifle. 'C'mon then.'
++++
Cutter had been around special forces enough to know how not to get in the way when they were tracking anything. He walked behind Elvis and made no attempt at conversation and tried to make as little sound as possible. As he walked as stealthily as he could he wondered if this was overkill in terms of tracking someone who was possibly more lost than they were. That was, he decided, an argument he was going to lose before it even started. The SAS had fixed ideas about caution with strangers and much preferred initial conversations to start with the stranger prone on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs.

He smelled the smoke before he saw it. Elvis froze and brought his fist up to his shoulder. Cutter didn't know many of the army's hand signals but he knew that one meant 'stop'. He stopped.

There was a small copse of conifers ahead on a little rise of ground. A thin column of smoke was rising from the middle of it.

Elvis beckoned Cutter towards him. 'Got the pistol?' he murmured in Cutter's ear.

Cutter nodded.

Elvis pointed to his right. 'You circle round and come in from the right. I'll go in the front door.'

Cutter grinned at the idea of a copse of trees having a door of any kind and nodded his understanding. He set off, trying to imitate the best stalking walk that he had seen the special forces guys and Stephen employ so many times. It came as a bit of surprise to him, then, that once he was at about the right position, Elvis just marched straight up to the copse with no apparent attempt at concealment.

'Hello in the camp,' Elvis called out.

Cutter crept closer.

'Who's there?' a stranger called out.

Of all the things Cutter had been expecting, a reply in a broad Birmingham accent had not been one of them.
++++
The man standing beside the fire was a lanky individual, with coarse brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a long, but patchy, beard. He was dressed in camouflage gear from head to foot. His small tent was also in a camouflage pattern. A tan, canvas rucksack stood at the door to the tent. A series of camping cooking equipment lay ready next to the fire. Cutter briefly wondered if he had planned this in advance or an anomaly had opened up in an army surplus shop and he'd just grabbed stuff on the way through.

The shotgun he held wasn't army surplus, though. And he looked, to Cutter's semi-trained eye, to be holding it in a professional enough manner.

'Hello. I'm Elvis Harte.'

'Ben Kesterton,' the strange man said in reply. 'Where have you come from?'

'The Cretaceous,' Cutter said moving forward into the camp.

'Funny,' Ben said without smiling. 'Before that.'

'A beach near Sunderland. Bit of a long story.'

'I'm from Cotteridge in Birmingham.'

'You look well-prepared,' Elvis said, looking round at the camouflaged equipment.

Ben nodded. 'Oh yeah. I planned a lot before coming through the portal.' He kept on nodding. 'Yeah. I planned this. Totally.' His face turned suspicious. 'How'd you find me?'

'We found a foot print down by the river,' Elvis said with a nonchalant tone to his voice. 'It was pointed this way, so we walked up see if we could find its owner. In case they needed help.'

'I've got to say, it doesn't look like you do.' Cutter decided to err on the side of flattery.

It worked. Ben's face softened and his stance relaxed. 'Thought you might be after me.'

Elvis shook his head. 'Nah, we're just trying to get home, mate. Finding you was a surprise.'

Ben looked a little superior. 'I see. I'm here because I want to be. Free. Lone wolf, me. Free.' He stared out over the Triassic landscape as though he owned it.

Elvis and Cutter exchanged a glance.

'Well, we're further down the valley for the night if you want some company,' Cutter said.

Ben sniffed. 'Thanks. I might come. I don't know. I like my own company.'

'Offer's there if you want it,' Elvis said.

He and Cutter turned and left.

++++
It was on the tip of Cutter's tongue to ask Elvis if he thought the 'Lone Wolf' was going to come to dinner when there was a call of 'Y'oroight?' and Ben stood outside the little circle they had made around the fire.

Elvis beckoned him closer and made the introductions. Omar made room on the log he was sitting on and Ben sat down.

'You're a bit of an odd group,' he said, 'If you don't mind me saying.'

'Bad men pushed us through the anomaly,' Omar told him. 'Elvis and Mr Nick came through to rescue us.'

'How did you come through?' Fadwa asked from the fire where she was watching the fish cook.

'These portals,' Ben stressed his correct term slightly, 'have been showing up under the railway bridge near me for years. All the kids knew about them. We used to dare each other to go through and come back.'

Elvis looked at Cutter with a silent question in his face. Cutter shrugged. He didn't know why the ARC hadn't picked them up. It was another thing he'd need to sort out when he got back. If he got back.

'So you went through for long time?' Omar asked.

Ben shrugged and looked a little shifty. 'Well, I wanted to. I needed a change.'

'Big change.'

Fadwa declared the fish ready to eat, which stopped any explanation Ben was going to give. Later on, as the light faded, he told his tale. He had been in the French Foreign Legion. He was one of their top soldiers. He implied undercover operations and dark secrets. Powerful people were after him and he'd decided to lay low for a while.

'Then I remembered the portal,' he said. 'It was the obvious place. No one would know to look for me there.'

They all nodded, but Cutter caught an appalled look on Omar's face that anyone would choose to put themselves in this situation. Elvis' face was unreadable and he didn't join in Ben's adventurous stories with ones of his own. Cutter thought he knew why and it wasn't because of the official secrets act.

Eventually the talking stopped and they lay down to sleep. Ben stayed with them rather than risk walking back to his camp in the dark. Cutter noticed that Elvis casually placed himself between Ben and Fadwa and Naziah as they lay down. It would, he thought, be a night of light sleep and many wakings. He hoped it would turn out to be just paranoia on his part.
++++
Cutter chased after Naziah. She was running ahead of him. An anomaly appeared in her path and she ran through it like she didn't even seen it. He tried to call out to her, but he couldn't form the words. He ran through the anomaly after her. The landscape barely changed. Naziah was still there running. Another anomaly appeared and she ran for it again. He tried to stop her, but he couldn't catch up with her and he couldn't shout.

This went on for three or four anomalies, until suddenly Nick found himself on a green hillside surrounded by anomalies. There were shining ovals all around. Naziah was nowhere to be seen.

Then one of the anomalies flickered and a future predator came through with Naziah in its mouth. He shook the child like a terrier shaking a rat and dropped the wounded girl at Nick's feet.

'You're too late, Nick,' the predator told him in Helen's voice. 'Always too late.'

Cutter woke with his mouth dry and his throat sore. He felt he had been shouting, but no one else was stirring so he must not have been in reality. He wished Helen would stop turning up in his dreams, but if there was anyone who would enjoy twisting the knife it would be her. There was the hint of light in the east. At least with the night nearly over he probably wouldn't dream again. Cutter lay back to wait for dawn.
++++
The next morning Cutter did his usual sweep of the area with the anomaly device without thinking about who else was in the camp.

'What's that?' Ben asked and came up close to have a look.

'It checks to see if there's an anomaly around.'

'That's what you call the portals isn't it?'

Cutter nodded.

'So it controls them?' Ben's face betrayed his interest although his voice was casual.

'No such luck,' Cutter said dismissively. 'It'll tell you if there's an open one nearby, but nothing else. It doesn't open them or even tell you what time period they lead to.'

'Still, useful bit of kit.'

'Only if you want to go home,' Cutter said pointedly and put the device away at the very bottom of his pack.

Ben gave a huff of amusement. 'True enough. Good luck with that.'

He went to pick up his guns and then walked to where Elvis was managing the fire.

'I'm off,' he said. 'Thanks for the hospitality, but I've got to get back to my camp.'

'You don't want to stay with us?' Elvis voice was neutral.

'Nah. Lone wolf, me. Been nice meeting you and all, but I'm here to be on my own.'

'Good luck, then.'

Elvis stuck out his hand and Ben shook it. Then the man waved a farewell to the rest of the group and walked off up the valley.

'Different,' Elvis said as he watched him leave.

Fadwa scowled after him. 'That one. He is not a good man. I saw him looking. Always looking. Trying to find a way to get something.'

'Well, he's gone now.'

'Maybe. Maybe not.'

Cutter came over. 'Do you think he was really with the French Foreign Legion?'

Elvis shrugged. 'I doubt it. If you show up to one of the recruitment centres and you pass the physical they'll give you a go, but I doubt he spent more than five weeks with them.'

'What do you mean?'

'Five weeks is the selection period. After that they boot out the rejects.'

'And he was a reject?'

'Yeah. Thinking about it, his camp was way too messy for him to have been a squaddy let alone a Legionnaire.'

'He's not wanted for his work in black ops, then?'

'Shoplifting more like!'

'So what do we do about him?'

'Nothing.'

'Seriously?'

'What do you want me to do? You can't go around shooting people for pretending to be in elite regiments. You'd empty half the pubs in Hereford if you did that!'

Cutter kept his eye out for Ben for the rest of the day, but he saw no signs of him. He noticed that Fadwa kept Naziah closer to her than normal. It was something else to worry about.
++++
Life had settled back into a routine similar to the first few months when they had come through the first anomaly. Fadwa caught fish, Elvis hunted and set traps, Omar carved things, Cutter gathered edible plants and watched the dinosaurs, and Naziah kept them amused. The Triassic was better than the Cretaceous in that there weren't any volcanoes erupting nearby and there was no threat of an express delivery comet, but Cutter refused to let himself get comfortable. They didn't have a guaranteed path back home here and he had to stop himself using the anomaly detector every hour or so to check if a new one had appeared.

The lack of a end point nagged at Cutter. They were surviving, but only just and he didn't know how long that would go on for.

They saw Ben occasionally over the weeks since they met him. He would stop and chat if they met on the trail, but he never sought them out or tried to prolong any conversation. He stuck to his camp and his 'Lone Wolf' persona. Cutter found that he didn't like him now any more than he had when they first met, so that minimal contact suited him fine.

Splashing in the river broke into his musings. Fadwa had caught another fish. Cutter ran down to the bank to help her land it. This was a big one about two feet long with a shiny coat of scales that resembled a mackerel. It was becoming a staple of their diet and Cutter had no idea what it was called. It was possible that it was unknown to science. It was also possible that Cutter couldn't remember it, but then Triassic freshwater fish had not been one of his main areas of expertise. It tasted good when grilled and that was worth all the Latin genus names he knew.

The fish was still flapping around as they were trying to wrangle it into the basket when they heard Naziah's whistle.

Toot! Toot! Toot!

Then again.

Toot! Toot! Toot!

Elvis had tried to teach her the morse code for SOS, but in the end had settled for patterns of three whistles.

Cutter met Fadwa's eyes and then they were both running for the camp. Cutter gripped his spear firmly, adrenaline racing through his body.

'Not again,' he whispered. 'Please not again. Please not again.'

They reached the camp at the same time as Elvis did. He held his rifle up and ready.

Naziah was crouching beside Omar who lay prone on the ground. Cutter raced to check him over. Fadwa scooped Naziah into her arms. Elvis surveyed the scene with his gun still at the ready.

Naziah was speaking in rapid Libyan to her mother as Cutter knelt beside Omar. The man was beginning to stir. There was a wound towards the back of his head.

'Stay still,' Cutter told him. 'I'll get a dressing.'

He ran to his pack and his first aid kit to find the contents strewn about the ground. He grabbed the green bag and rushed back to Omar. He pulled out a dressing pack and started to apply it to the wound.

'What happened?'

'It was that man,' Fadwa said.

'Ben?'

'He came here pointing his gun. He hit Omar with the back of the gun and made Naziah pull out the anomaly device from Mr Nick's pack. He took it and left. That's when Naziah started blowing her whistle.'

Elvis knelt down beside Omar and checked Nick's dressing skills.

'I'm sorry,' Omar said. 'I should have stopped him. I thought he was a friend.'

Elvis put a comforting hand on his shoulder. 'Not your fault.'

'What will we do without the device?'

Elvis met Cutter's eyes and there was anger and determination in them.

'That's easy. We get it back.'
++++
Cutter and Elvis left Omar in the care of Fadwa and Naziah. Elvis was tracking Ben's footprints and Cutter fell in behind as he had done when they had first tracked him. This time when they were out of site of the others Elvis stopped and turned to Cutter.

'You'll need this,' he said and handed Cutter his pistol.

'We aren't going to kill him?'

'Why not?'

'He didn't kill Omar and he didn't hurt Naziah.'

'It was only luck that Omar isn't dead, Ben didn't know what he was doing. And he left Naziah unprotected and at the mercy of any predator that fancied a snack!'

Elvis was very, very calm, but Cutter could see the anger inside him.

'We're not judge, jury and executioners here. Let me try and get the detector back. I don't think he's got much resolve. He'll give it back.'

'And if he doesn't?'

'Then we'll do it your way. But I've seen too much death to add to it if we have another choice.'

Elvis didn't look that convinced, but he nodded.

'All right. But he gets no second chances from me.'

Cutter took the pistol. 'Agreed,' he said.
++++
Cutter stared at the shotgun Ben was pointing at him and scowled. 'Don't be stupid.'

'Stupid? I'm not the one with the shotgun pointed at him!'

'No, you're the one with the rifle pointed at your head.'

Ben kept the gun up, but looked around quickly.

'You won't see him,' Cutter told him. 'You may or may not have been in the Foreign Legion, but Elvis is in the SAS.'

'Easy to say.'

A shot rang out and a rock a metre away from Ben's feet shattered. Ben jumped, but defiantly held his gun up.

'That was your only warning,' Cutter said. 'And I had to do some fast talking to get him to give you that. Frankly, if it was down to Elvis you'd be dead meat now and you wouldn't even have heard it coming. Put the gun down.'

Ben hesitated.

'I'm trying to save your life, you idiot! Put. The. Gun. Down.'

Ben did so. Cutter walked over and took it.

'Where's the anomaly device?'

'It's in my pack.'

Cutter spotted the rucksack and went over to it. The anomaly device was in it under a few evil smelling pieces of underwear. He picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket. He threw the shotgun as far away as he could into the bushes.

'Stay away from us,' he told Ben. 'You've had your last warning.'

He walked away without looking back.

++++

Elvis joined him half-way back to their camp.

'You should have kept his gun.'

'That's as much a death sentence as shooting him direct,' Cutter said.

Elvis' expression told him that this was the point as far as he was concerned.

++++
'I got it back,' Cutter held up the anomaly device as they came into their camp.

Omar and Fadwa came up to see it.

'Did you... ?' Omar let his question trail off.

'He's still alive,' Cutter said and Omar nodded.

'I hope something eats him,' Naziah said.

They all turned round to look at her.

Naziah folded her arms and looked as judgemental as only an eight year old can. 'He's a bad man.'

'Can't argue with that,' Elvis said. 'Now, let's get packed up and on our way. I want some distance between him and us.'

'What if he follows us?' Fadwa asked.

'I'll be waiting for him,' Elvis told her. His tone of voice left Cutter in no doubt that there would be only one outcome if that happened.
++++
The Triassic was a better time to move camp than the Cretaceous, Cutter decided. Instead of finding oases of river valleys among deserts of volcanic ash and rock, they were in lush vegetation with large stands of primitive conifers and tree ferns. Water was still a necessity so they followed the river for a couple of days until they came to large lake. There was a low hill with a few conifers on the top about a hundred metres from the shoreline. Elvis, who had been keeping an eye on how tired Fadwa and Naziah were, declared it a good place to camp for a few days.

They settled in to what was a well practised routine of making camp with the comforting knowledge that they wouldn't have to break it all up again in the morning.

Cutter went down the lake to fetch water and looked back at the campsite from the shore. It was actually quite high up with a good view not only of the lake, but the shoreline as well. It looked defensible. Cutter knew that Elvis had not forgotten the threat that Ben had been to them. Was he still a threat? Cutter didn't know. He worried about whether he had made the right choice in letting him live. Then he gave himself a shake. There was no way he could condemn a man to die like that. Not in cold blood. There was nothing else he could have done. Still, he wished he could find a way to stop it nagging at his mind.

++++

The next morning Omar was on water duty and he came back to the camp with a tale about a monster in the water. That brought them all down to the shore to look. At first there was nothing to see, but then about 40 metres out a long, thin, grey shape showed coming up to the surface.

'It's Nessie!' Cutter shouted, delighted at the sight.

Omar, Fadwa and Naziah looked puzzled, but Elvis slapped Cutter on the back, equally happy.

'What's it really?' Elvis asked.

Cutter squinted at the creature as it appeared and disappeared from view beneath the lake surface.

'It's difficult to say. Looks a bit thin for a plesiosaur. Nothosaurus, maybe.' Cutter shrugged. 'Or something we don't have a fossil for.' He peered at the creature again. 'I wish I had a camera.'

Naziah was standing on tip toe trying to get a better look at the dinnersaur. Omar bent down and put her on his shoulders.

'See, it's diving again,' Cutter told her. 'It's fishing.'

The creature disappeared from view, this time for a while. The adults kept staring out into the lake, but Naziah looked around.

'Look!' she shouted, suddenly. 'Look! Look!' She was bouncing on Omar's shoulders in her excitement, pointing along the shore.

Cutter looked and couldn't see anything.

'What? What do you see?'

'Nomaly!'

Cutter stared again. Was it? There was a faint glitter, far off along the shore. He squinted, trying to see.

'Bloody hell!' Elvis had his rifle up to his shoulder and was using the sight to see into the distance. He brought it down. 'It's an anomaly all right! Well done to Naziah for spotting it!' He reached up and brought her down off Omar's shoulders. 'It's a way off though - about two miles.'

'We have to go for it,' Cutter said. 'Even if it's no use to us, we have to try.'

Elvis nodded. 'Agreed. I'll go ahead. You pack the camp and come after me.'

'Good idea,' Cutter said. 'Let's go!'

++++
They walked along the shoreline as quickly as they could manage. Cutter and Fadwa carried the packs, Omar carried Naziah as a piggy-back. Apart from watching his feet, Cutter was entirely focussed on the glittering oval ahead of them as it grew slowly larger and clearer.

'Please be the way home. Please stay open,' he thought over and over. It was getting to be suspiciously like a prayer.

Omar was praying. Cutter didn't understand Syrian, but he recognised the pleading tone behind the words.

Fadwa was silent. Cutter suspected she was saving her breath for keeping up with the fast pace they were setting.

'Please be the way home. Please stay open.'

They were getting close. Close enough that Cutter could see the anomaly was over the water rather than the shore of the lake.

A few hundred metres ahead of them, Elvis was up to his knees in the water as he waded toward the anomaly and then disappeared through it.

'Please be the way home. Please stay open.'

Another hundred metres and Elvis reappeared. He was beckoning them urgently and yelling something.

'It's home!' Cutter heard. 'It's home!'

That was the first prayer answered. Now for the second. Cutter scanned the anomaly, searching for signs that it was fading.

'Please stay open.'

They were in the water now. Elvis waded back to help Omar carry Naziah and they went through the glittering shards. Fadwa was up to her thighs in the water and struggling. Cutter grabbed hold of her and pulled her along. When they got to the anomaly she hesitated and he pushed her through in his anxiety to get them to safety before the anomaly closed. She dropped the backpack she was carrying and Cutter reflexively turned to pick it up.

Suddenly pain sprang in his right back and he felt rather than heard the gunshot. He fell forward into the water, but struggled half up again in determination to reach the anomaly. A hand pushed him down and held his head under the water while something pulled his pack off his shoulders.

'Bastard!' a voice said in a Birmingham accent.

Ben. Of course.

He was let go, but Cutter was gasping for air and couldn't immediately get to his feet. Then more hands were on him, but these were lifting him up and pulling him forward. As he came through the anomaly he heard a rifle being fired twice in close succession.

The hands holding him up let him collapse to the floor. It was grass, Cutter noted. His mind tried to remember when grass appeared in the fossil record. It might be the Paleocene, but he'd need to check.

'Medic!' a voice yelled.

Cutter recognised it. He looked up and tried to focus.

'Ryan?'

'Welcome back, Nick.'

Cutter looked up. There was Ryan crouching beside him, solid and in charge. Cutter could have kissed him. Elvis was standing beside him, grim-faced, but triumphant. He held Cutter's rucksack in his hand.

'We did it, Nick. We did it!'

Ditzy ran up and started looking at his wound.

'Oh, Cutter,' he said. 'Worst place to get shot, mate. Right in the arse. You're never going to live this down.'

Cutter raised himself up enough to check that Omar, Fadwa and Naziah were being cared for. Then he put his head down on his arms in front of him and let it all be someone else's problem.
++++
Epilogue

Dr William's clinic was not on Harley Street itself, but just off it on Queen Anne Street. The taxi pulled up outside the black door set in a red brick building which sported large window boxes filled with brightly coloured flowers. Cutter eased himself out of the taxi and paid the driver. To the right of the door was a brass sign which said 'Queen Anne Clinic'. It was all very discreet, which was what you would expect from Harley Street. And then the clinic Dr Williams ran provided mental health treatment for the senior civil service and, Cutter understood, the secret services, which added a whole level of discretion on top of that provided by expensive private health care.

Cutter pressed the intercom button and gave his name when prompted by a strangled voice asking something unintelligible. There was a buzz and a click as the door unlocked. He pushed it open and walked into a wide, dark panelled hall. A desk was at the far end near the stairs. He walked up to it and gave his name to the young man sitting behind it.

'Dr Williams will be with you shortly, Professor. Please take a seat.'

The seats looked comfortable enough, but Cutter's right buttock was aching after his taxi journey so he stood beside them rather than sat. The receptionist glanced at him once, but said nothing. Cutter got the impression that things were being noted in his file for future reference, or maybe that was just his paranoia.

His phone buzzed and he took it out. It was a message from Fadwa. Naziah had been painting 'dinnersaurs' in school again. The picture was of a blue and green raptor with a broad smile on its face. Cutter smiled at it. If all Naziah remembered of those months in the Cretaceous were happy raptors then that was a good thing.

He didn't know who had arranged the lives of Fadwa and Omar, but there had been a touch more humanity in them than the normal bureaucracy. Fadwa and Naziah had been settled in a small Libyan community in North London. It was a wrench from Naziah's school friends but it was safer than her explaining what she had done on her holidays.

Omar had been given a job with a high-end cabinet maker near Woking. According to Lester, his new boss had taken one look at the carpentry work he was producing and doubled his salary. Omar had sounded happy on the phone and was enjoying the Surrey countryside.

He had only seen Elvis once, when he had visited Cutter when he was in hospital. Elvis was back to the smart, handsome youth he had first seen in the pub in Seaham Harbour. Now he was off doing something dangerous. It would be nice to work with him on a proper anomaly operation, but it wasn't up to Cutter if it would happen. The SAS was not noticeably sentimental about these things.

A small, white, dark haired woman appeared from down the hall. She walked up to him and held out her hand.

'Professor. I'm Jane Williams. How nice to meet you. Why don't you come through.' Dr Williams had a strong Welsh accent, which Cutter was not expecting.

William's consulting room was set up more like a comfortable living room in a country house than an office in the middle of London.

'Take a seat, please,' she gestured to the three, chintz sofas fighting for space around a dark wood coffee table.

Cutter took one of the cushions and put it under his right buttock as he sat down carefully. While he was performing this manoeuvre Williams retrieved a thin folder from the small desk in the corner of the room.

'How is the wound doing?' she asked as she sat down opposite him.

'Coming along. My doctor says it's healing nicely, but it's still sore especially when I sit for long periods. It's just typical, I suppose, I make it through two dinosaur infested time periods without a scratch and I end up shot in the arse by fake French Foreign Legionnaire!'

Dr William's brown eyes twinkled. 'I think sometimes that the universe has a sense of irony.' She let a little silence develop and then smiled. 'I have to say I was a little surprised that you requested an appointment, Professor. What can I do for you?'

Cutter had been rehearsing this reply all the way in the taxi. 'I've not been handling the stress at work very well. A friend of mine told me I should think about quitting, but I can't do that. I might be inflating how much the ARC needs me, but I need to stay. And to do that, I'm going to need help. So I'm here. Asking for help.'

William's smiled broadened. 'Very sensible. And you've come to the right place.'

The End