Prayers to Broken Stone ((The Meddler VI/Allison Castiel))

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

Rob nodded at Danny, then handed him one of the MREs. "Go on," he said. "Tuck in, and tell me what's on your mind."

Danny examined the MRE, turning it over and over in his hands without actually seeing it. "I..." he began, then swallowed. "This... temporal epicenter thing. I'll... I'll remember this? All of this?"

Rob ate another bite of cheese tortellini. "Yep," he nodded. "Temporal reincarnation, it's called. You aren't changed, but circumstances adapt to fit you into the new history. If we, say, went back and taught the Romans to build jets then you'd find yourself in the new history as a Praetorian Guard. Or something like that. Things..."

"I don't want that," Danny said, flatly.

Rob stared at him, then nodded. "Yeah. Kinda thought that'd be what you'd say." He ate another bite, chewing thoughtfully. 'It's suicide, you know. You will die, even though another Danny'll carry on." He reached out, tapping Danny on the forehead. "All of this, gone. Like resetting from a backup."

"I don't care," Danny said, voice hollow. "I..."

Rob nodded again. "Yer daughter, right? An' yer wife?"

Danny swallowed hard, and nodded. "It's... I..."

"It ain't easy, watching loved ones die," Rob agreed. "And it's hard seeing them die, then seeing them alive again and remembering you couldn't help them the last time round." He finished off the MRE. "All right."

"All right?" Now Danny sounded puzzled. "I thought..."

"What? That I'd try to talk you out of it?" Rob shrugged. "Yer a big boy, Danny. It's yer life, and yer decision. But I'm gonna ask you two things."

Danny turned the MRE again. "What?"

Rob held up a finger. "First, you think about it. You think about it, and you decide for sure once we get up and running. Don't go thinking that the decision you make now, when yer emotional and depressed, has to be the one you stick to through hell and back."

Danny sighed. "That's fair."

"Good." Rob held up a second finger. "Don't go slackin' off, just because yer thinkin' of killin' yerself. You help me, or you get lost right now, 'cause I've got serious work to do an' I ain't nursemading yer Mylene while I'm doin' it."

Danny snorted at that. "Hell. If I don't help, then you don't put me in a position where I have to decide. So, yeah. I'll help."

"Good. Eat up. We've got work to do."

[Allison Castiel]

But Danny hadn't quite finished. His eyes were fixed on the ration pack on his lap, his rough, calloused fingers – so different from the soft, manicured lawyer's hands he'd once possessed – fiddling aimlessly with the foil wrapping.

“Thing is,” His voice was determinedly calm, but there was a fine network of cracks running beneath it, like a devastating undercurrent. “It's not as simple as that. While I appreciate what you're saying, it's not going to be me that has to make the decision.”

He hesitated for a long moment. “Back when the War began, back when there were still scientists and labs and governments who gave a toss, they rounded up some of the Creepers for clinical testing. They found that once a host gets infected with the wasp parasites, their biology mutates. The majority of the eggs end up in the stomach and intestinal tract, where they eventually hatch into larvae. But some of them.... some of them find their way to the salivary glands, where they remain dormant.”

A short, sharp bark of laughter forced its way from his throat. “They may be parasites, but the wasps were far from stupid. It's their way of making sure their species never dies out, see? No matter how hard we try to eradicate them. One bite, and they pass themselves on, from host to host. And then, one day, when all the normal humans are gone and the GK-50 effect has faded, the Earth will be left to them.  All the characteristics of a true survivor - outwit, outplay, outlast.”

His voice trailed away, and he set the MRE aside, a bleak expression on his face, while his hand went to the collar of his grubby shirt and drew it wordlessly aside. There, on his left shoulder, was a swollen, angry-looking injury, with a distinct half-circular shape, obviously sustained during his tussle with the Creeper.

“I don't know how long I've got,” he said gruffly. “Before I start to go mad. I don't want Castiel to know. And that's why I'm talking to you. I'll help you for as long as I possibly can. But when it happens... when I start to turn... I want you to shoot me dead. Put me out of my misery, before I lose myself.  I don't want her to have to do it.”

Tugging his shirt back into place, he covered the dreadful, tell-tale wound, and put his head in his hands. “Maybe it's for the best. Like I said, I don't want to remember. I don't want to see my baby girl like that inside my head for the rest of my life. When I first met you, I thought you were crazy. To be honest, I still do. But now... I'm starting to believe that your kind of crazy is the only thing that can save us. And when you do, I want to be like everyone else on this planet. I want all of this never to have happened for me.”

His eyes rose to meet Rob's, too-bright and challenging. “So, Goodfellow... it's you that has to make the decision. Will you help me? Because if you don't... it's going to have to be her. And I don't think either one of us could bear that.”

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"They're contagious?" Rob finally said, looking at the bite. "Bugger." He considered Danny's request. "Yeah, I can do it. Don't know how yet, exactly, but I can do it. Unless I can figure a cure, first." He gestured at the university. "Might be a hospital there. If there is, it's amazing what you can do with antiparasitics. But... yeah." He nodded. "If I can't, and if you start to turn, I'll do it."

He started to say more, but stopped as Alley opened the door and clambered in. Instead, he chucked a random MRE back towards her. "Chow down," he said. "We've got a busy day ahead of us."

---

It took longer to locate than he'd expected. The buildings were in better shape than was reasonable to hope, probably because nobody really hung around universities when mutant monster wasps were killing everyone, but the roads were still collections of potholes held together by a lacework of asphalt, and "better than expected" didn't mean "good". Still, after a few hours of slowly creeping over wrecked pavement and backtracking, Rob parked them outside one building that looked a little like a concrete and glass ocean liner.



"Here we are," he declared, killing the ignition and pocketing the key. "The Duke of Kent building. Primarily the home of the faculty of health and medical sciences - which could be a handy thing, hey?" He grinned, then clambered back into the back and grabbed a rucksack he'd stuffed with useful odds and ends from UNIT, as well as the strange old book. To this, he added several packs of MREs. "It also has the less public distinction of being the home of the ARC."

"Right," Danny said. "I've been meaning to ask. What's this 'ark' thing, and how's it going to help us?"

"ARC, not ark," Rob corrected, both words sounding the same. "Short for Anomaly Research Center. An independent research body until it got folded into UNIT-UK after the Saxon government collapsed." He had no idea where all of this was coming from, but he didn't let on. "They studied, and tried to control, rips in space-time."

"Rips in space-time..." Danny snorted. "That's some science fiction stuff, that is."

"Look around, Danny-boy," Rob answered, sliding the door open. "You live in some science fiction stuff." He hopped out, boots slapping against the broken pavement. "Come on. They're in the basement, and I want to see how much we've got to fix while we've still got daylight."

[Allison Castiel]

As she climbed back inside the ATV, Allie got the distinct feeling that she had interrupted something. Rob had a tense look to his jaw and Danny wouldn't meet her eyes. Had they been arguing, she wondered? Danny had been sceptical of Rob from the beginning, but she'd hoped he was over it by now. Looking back and forth between them, however, she couldn't detect any overt hostility. Given what Danny had just been through, perhaps it was simply that. A discussion of pain and loss. He'd never been one to wear his emotions on his sleeve. It made sense that he would find it easier to talk to Rob, a virtual stranger, than to pour it all out to her.

With a brief nod of acknowledgment to her, Danny returned to his place in the back, leaving the front passenger seat free once more for her.

Rob tossed her one of the ration packs and she pulled a bit of a face. “Beef and black beans.”

"Chow down," he said. "We've got a busy day ahead of us."

With a small sigh, she opened the packet and began to pick at the unappetising food. In the new world, after all, it was a fact that beggars couldn't be choosers.

---

She was sick to death of driving and aching to stretch her legs, by the time Rob found the place he was looking for, and drew the vehicle to a halt. The building itself had probably been the triumph of some architect's career, she reflected, back when such things mattered. Very modern-looking and distinctive.

"Here we are," [Rob] declared, killing the ignition and pocketing the key. "The Duke of Kent building. Primarily the home of the faculty of health and medical sciences - which could be a handy thing, hey?" He grinned, then clambered back into the back and grabbed a rucksack he'd stuffed with useful odds and ends from UNIT, as well as the strange old book. To this, he added several packs of MREs. "It also has the less public distinction of being the home of the ARC."

“It looks like it is an ark,” Allie muttered, referring to the nautical shape of the building, towering over them like the bow of an enormous boat.

"Right," Danny said. "I've been meaning to ask. What's this 'ark' thing, and how's it going to help us?"

"ARC, not ark," Rob corrected, both words sounding the same. "Short for Anomaly Research Center. An independent research body until it got folded into UNIT-UK after the Saxon government collapsed."

Allie nodded. She remembered Harold Saxon, everyone did. The Prime Minister everyone had thought was going to usher Britain into a new age of prosperity, and instead had gone mad shortly after being sworn into office, and had assassinated the President of the United States on national television. That had been a scandal of such proportions that even an apocalypse couldn't quite bury the memory of it. Looking back on it now, Allie couldn't put her finger on the reasons she had voted for Saxon. And she certainly couldn't have told anyone what his policies had been. Just that everything he'd said had seemed... good.

"They studied, and tried to control, rips in space-time,” Rob continued.

"Rips in space-time..." Danny snorted. "That's some science fiction stuff, that is."

"Look around, Danny-boy," Rob answered, sliding the door open. "You live in some science fiction stuff." He hopped out, boots slapping against the broken pavement. "Come on. They're in the basement, and I want to see how much we've got to fix while we've still got daylight."

“Wait, Rob!” Allie called urgently. “The sun's too high. You can't go out in it unprotected.”

Scrabbling about in one of the boxes they'd brought with them, she produced three long, whitish cloaks, hooded, and woven from a coarse woollen fabric. “These are burnouses. We wear them when we're scavenging, if we ever have to go out in the sun.”

She tossed one to Rob and one to Danny, and started to don the last one herself. The flowing garment covered her from head to toe, and gave her the look of a very small Bedouin. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and peered at the two men from under the cowled hood.

“Now we're good to go.”

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"Brilliant!" Rob chortled as he examined the robe. "Just brilliant!" He shrugged into the garment with a sort of shimmying little dance, drawing the hood up over his head. "Stilgar!" he barked, grinning at Danny. "Do we have worm-sign?"

"What the hell are you on about?" Danny grunted.

Rob rolled his eyes. "Classics, Danny-boy. You should read more. Expand your horizons." With that, he pushed open the door. "But for now, come on. We've got work to do."

Outside the APC, the air was hot and dry. Small puffs of dust kicked up as Rob's boots hit the broken pavement, hanging in the still air before settling down across the pavement and his clothes. Without any wind silence hung over the campus, punctuated by the small sounds of cooling metal and rustling cloth and footsteps - noises that were swallowed up by the vast silence of the dead buildings around them. "What we're lookin' for," he said as he trudged a line parallel with the wall, "is the secure facility entrance round the back there. And there's probably no best case scenario, is there?"

"What do you mean?" Danny asked, unconsciously whispering in the sephulcural silence.

"What I mean, Danny-boy, is that the best case scenario is that the ARC's still up and running, with' UNIT staff workin' to achieve the very same goals we're heare to achieve. That way, there's real live living people here to let us in and give us aid and comfort and all that." He shook his head, gesturing around. "Ain't bloodly likely, though, is it? So we're left with the unappetizing prospects that everyone inside is dead, and the doors are either open or shut." He grimaced. 'Ain't neither good, cos it's a secure facility it is. So, if the doors are closed then we gotta jimmy the lock on a security door. And if they're open, then things'll be a mess."

Danny considered that. "Do you ever have any good news?"

"Oh, I ain't sayin' this is hopeless at all." He flashed a grin. "Just wonderin' which flavor of aggrivation we're gonna have to deal with." He patted the rucksack he was carrying slung over one shoulder. "If it's closed, I can probably jury rig a key with some of this. And if it's open... well, we might have more breakages inside, but at least we'll... hello. What have we here?"

They'd rounded the corner, and now the security doors were visible. They were massive things of segmented steel, once able to be withdrawn into the ceiling like great window blinds. Now they lay scattered across the broken, filthy asphault, revealing the parking garage and internal access doors beyond. Rob squatted on his haunches, examining the damage to the steel segments with curiousity. "Hacked at," he declared, tapping a rent. "Like massive spikes hammered in from outside, and then used to tear the segments out. Take construction equipment to do that, or something big and strong." He paused, looking at it. "Like maybe a giant mutant murder wasp."

He glanced back over his shoulder. "This happened years ago, though, from the dirt on them. So I ain't worried about this. No, those worry me." He pointed, showing marks in the dirt like huge footprints. If the feet were faintly conical in shape with large hooks, and big enough to support something the size of a horse. "Wasp tracks," he murmured. "And... recent. Recent enough that the wind hasn't worn down the edges."

Rising, he scanned the surrounding buildings and the sky. "I don't think you got them all."

[Allison Castiel]

"Brilliant!" Rob chortled as he examined the robe. "Just brilliant!" He shrugged into the garment with a sort of shimmying little dance, drawing the hood up over his head. "Stilgar!" he barked, grinning at Danny. "Do we have worm-sign?"

"What the hell are you on about?" Danny grunted.

Allie exchanged a bewildered glance with Danny, then gave a little shrug. She had no idea what Rob was talking about, but that wasn't unusual. A lot of what he said went completely over her head. The word 'brilliant', though – that resonated with her, and her heart gave a little skip. The Doctor had used it so often, back when she had known him. More and more, she was becoming convinced that Rob was indeed her lost friend. That her prayers to the stars... to the broken stone all around them... had at last been answered.

Rob rolled his eyes. "Classics, Danny-boy. You should read more. Expand your horizons." With that, he pushed open the door. "But for now, come on. We've got work to do."

Wriggling out the door in Rob's wake, she jumped down to the ground outside, pulling the hood of her cloak down against the glaring sun. It was strange to think that this dead, deserted place had once been a bustling campus of students. Now it was eerie in the extreme, nothing but a wasteland, a stage for the imagined ghosts of the past.

"What we're lookin' for," [Rob] said as he trudged a line parallel with the wall, "is the secure facility entrance round the back there. And there's probably no best case scenario, is there?"

"What do you mean?" Danny asked, unconsciously whispering in the sephulcural silence.

"What I mean, Danny-boy, is that the best case scenario is that the ARC's still up and running, with' UNIT staff workin' to achieve the very same goals we're here to achieve. That way, there's real live living people here to let us in and give us aid and comfort and all that." He shook his head, gesturing around. "Ain't bloody likely, though, is it?”

Gazing at the desolation that surrounded them, Allie shivered. “No, not likely at all,” she murmured, remembering the state of the Black Archive, and the Creeper wearing Osgood's white lab coat.

“So we're left with the unappetizing prospects that everyone inside is dead, and the doors are either open or shut." He grimaced. 'Ain't neither good, cos it's a secure facility it is. So, if the doors are closed then we gotta jimmy the lock on a security door. And if they're open, then things'll be a mess."

“Or there will be someone in there that's not welcoming at all,” Allie added flatly.

Creepers, Raiders, Los Ninos... any of those could have holed up in Rob's ARC. Or a maverick survivor, maybe – she'd heard of those, solitary wanderers who refused to join a community. Most of them were borderline insane and considered dangerous by the established groups. Even, possibly, another settlement. These buildings seemed in reasonable repair. It was possible that a ragged clutch of survivors had gravitated here. If so, there would be hidden traps to keep strangers out. The settlements had little enough to call their own, and they fiercely defended their borders from outsiders.

Uneasily, Allie shifted the rifle at her back, her eyes trailing over the blank, unrevealing faces of the crumbling buildings, trying to spot any telltale anomalies, any indication that they were being watched. She couldn't see anything, but that didn't make her feel any better. A settlement's defences were always well concealed.

"Do you ever have any good news?" Danny asked Rob in a wry tone. His eyes too were everywhere at once, sweeping the terrain constantly, with a practiced scavenger's surveillance.

"Oh, I ain't sayin' this is hopeless at all." [Rob] flashed a grin. "Just wonderin' which flavor of aggrivation we're gonna have to deal with." He patted the rucksack he was carrying slung over one shoulder. "If it's closed, I can probably jury rig a key with some of this. And if it's open... well, we might have more breakages inside, but at least we'll... hello. What have we here?"

Allie tensed as she saw the torn and shattered doors. Instantly her rifle was in her hands. Danny reacted at the same time, both of them sighting down the barrels of their weapons. Danny faced inwards, training his gun on the gaping entrance to the building, while Allie faced outwards, covering their backs from the wasteland beyond. Their movements were smooth and automatic, with no consultation needed, their partnership forged from years of working together.

Rob squatted on his haunches, examining the damage to the steel segments with curiousity. "Hacked at," he declared, tapping a rent. "Like massive spikes hammered in from outside, and then used to tear the segments out. Take construction equipment to do that, or something big and strong." He paused, looking at it. "Like maybe a giant mutant murder wasp."

He glanced back over his shoulder. "This happened years ago, though, from the dirt on them. So I ain't worried about this. No, those worry me."

Allie flicked a glance down, to see what he was talking about. Under the shadow of her hood, all the colour drained from her face. She didn't need to be told what she was looking at. She'd seen plenty of them before, patterned across the dust as the world went to hell.

"Wasp tracks," he murmured. "And... recent. Recent enough that the wind hasn't worn down the edges."

Rising, he scanned the surrounding buildings and the sky. "I don't think you got them all."

"That... that isn't possible,” Allie croaked, forcing the words out from her constricted throat. “The GK-50...” She broke off, as the implications swarmed inside her brain. “Oh dear God... if they've become immune...”

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

Rising, he scanned the surrounding buildings and the sky. "I don't think you got them all."

"That... that isn't possible,” Allie croaked, forcing the words out from her constricted throat.

"It's right there in front of yer," Rob pointed out, tracing the path of the tracks with a pointing finger until they stopped. "So it's clearly possible."

"But..." Danny stammered out, eyes wide. "But... that is... they..."

“The GK-50...” She broke off, as the implications swarmed inside her brain. “Oh dear God... if they've become immune...”

"Oh, they've clearly built up a tolerance," Rob pointed out calmly.

"What? I mean, how do you know?" Danny demanded, looking around wildly as if he expected the wasp to descend from the sky at any moment.

"The creepers," Rob pointed out. "You lot saturated the Earth with GK-50, poisoned the dirt and killed just about all life but humans. And yet... the larvae are still alive." He grimaced. "Still squatting in people, riding them like particularly loathsome horses."

"But... they die!" Danny insisted. "The larva... they can't survive, when they hatch."

Rob shook his head. "Evolution in action, Danny-boy. The creepers, assuming that the mutant murder wasps are like normal Glyptapanteles, could hatch around 80 little bably mutant murder wasps. They lay a lot of eggs, is what I'm saying." He glanced at the sky. "There was, what, fifteen creepers we ran into? Twenty. That's... twelve hundred mutant murder wasps, just in that little band. And the way you tell it, there's a whole lot of creepers. Let's say we ran into one percent of the creeper population - that sound fair?"

He waited, and Danny nodded. "Right, so that means around fifteen hundred creepers for a hundred twenty thousand mutant murder wasps. If one tenth of one percent of the larvae are resistant, then 120 wasps could hatch. Or 12, if a hundredth of one percent of the larvae are resistant. Heck, if a thousandth of one percent are resistant, that gives you one wasp still." He sniggered, a grim sound in the silence. "99.999% effective sure sounds good, when you don't do the math." He glanced at the sky again, then shrugged. "Stil, we've work to do. And now we have a time limit."

With that he turned and headed for the yawning doorway. As he did, Danny hustled to catch up. "We do? Why?"

"Well, you can answer that better than I can," Rob pointed out. "And also, we want to get things up and running before the wasp gets back."

The garage was a disaster area. Several civilian vehicles sat near one wall, tires rotted and useless. A couple were crushed and and broken, and all had their windows shattered and their bodies riddled with bullet holes. Three large military trucks sat near the far wall, overturned and burnt into skeletal wrecks. Soot and smoke stained the bare concrete around them, proof of the damage that had been inflicted in some forgotten fight.

More disturbingly, there were bones. Not all human, either. A few leathery, disarticulated mummies lay scattered about, one draped across something that resembled a femur the size of a grown man. There by the car was a ithered mummified arm larger than a human's, with wicked talons tipping the three fingers. In the corner, upside down, a peculiar skull stared at them upside down. And weapons were scattered among the bones, some prosaic British Army assault rifles and others more exotic-looking.

Rob ignored it all, making for the smaller of two doors in the opposite wall. One was large enough to drive a truck through, the other scaled for humans. Both stood open, the truck door torn loose and the human door standing ajar. "Well," he commented, "this is promising. For very disturbing values of promising."

Danny scooped up one of the exotic weapons. "What's this, then?"

The question kicked something loose in Rob's patchy memories. "EMD rifle. Uses electrical pulses to cause convulsions and temporarily scramble the brain. A stun rifle, if you like. Batteries are probably dead now, though." Experimentally, he flicked a switch. No response. "Like the rest of the power. Assuming the labs are intact, we'll need to do something about that."

[Captain Jack Harkness]

Far behind Rob's little group, back at the Chiswick Park settlement, a tall, dark-haired figure in a long grey coat stood motionless on top of the circular ticket hall of the old station, staring intently at the horizon.

Unlike the other survivors, Jack didn't need to bother with a burnous. His immortal skin resisted the poisonous sun, shrugging off death, just as he had so many times and in so many ways before. He raised his hand to shade his eyes against the clear, unforgiving blue of the sky.

Nothing yet. Had he been wrong? Had he misunderstood? He hoped with all his heart that was true, but the cold feeling in his gut persisted nonetheless.

When he'd woken on the floor of his erstwhile prison, he had only the haziest memory of what had happened. He had found two bodies in the next room, the remains of Captain Langley and another of his soldiers, their corpses twisted and dry, almost mummified. Jem, of course, was long gone, much to Jack's fury and frustration. There was nothing he wanted more than to make her pay for the harm she'd wrought, the trust she'd betrayed, the good people she'd murdered.

His first instinct was to go after her, to track her down, wherever she might run. But then he'd heard it. The whispering in his head. The buzzing sound, like a continuous conversation, rising and falling; softly at times, almost inaudible, as when he'd first awoken, and then louder and louder, impossible to ignore. To his horror, little by little, he began to discern clear thought patterns in the humming, pictures crystallizing and coalescing in his mind. His body had somehow been purged of the infestation, clean for the first time in endless months. Nevertheless, from what he could gather, a residual connection to the mental collective of the wasps remained. An insight into a cold and implacable hive mind, that was far from extinct. And what he saw there chilled him to the bone, chasing all thoughts of Jem from his agenda.

The wasps were far from dead. They were coming back. As impossible as it seemed, the nightmare was about to begin all over again. A second Armageddon.

Jack wasn't in the habit of second-guessing himself. He had acted quickly and decisively, taking control of the settlement, giving his orders, gathering in the survivors to shore up their defences and to prepare for war.

Now came the most difficult part. The waiting. The watching. Adrenaline-filled anticipation, mixed with the insidious hope that the sounds inside his head meant nothing at all. Far below, in the depths of the tunnels, the survivors scurried back and forth like a disturbed ant's nest – probably an apt simile under the circumstances. But it was much better for him to have brought them to a state of battle-readiness for nothing, than for the wasps to take them by surprise ever again.

And then he heard it. The drone across the sky, coming from the west, the unmistakable soughing of metallic wings beating against the air. He swung around in the direction of the sound, his far-sighted blue eyes steady on the horizon. Far away, he saw a silver flash, the sun winking off a mass of glittering carapaces. The swarm was small, compared to the multitudes that had filled the sky back during the first War. Jack estimated that there were less than a dozen of the giant wasps. Nevertheless, it was enough – more than enough – to spell the end of the already decimated human race.

He flicked a glance to his left. Fitz should have been standing there, smoking a cigarette, his long, lanky body slouched as he waited for his commander's orders. Instead, Jack saw a slight, coffee-skinned woman, with a halo of dark frizzy hair, who talked a mile a minute and answered to the unlikely name of 'Bill'. Fitz's absence stabbed at Jack like a knife. Just one more crime that he swore he would one day lay at Jem's door.

“Sound the alarm,” he said to Bill, his tone curt and grim. “They're coming.”

[Allison Castiel]

Allie didn't exactly know what Rob meant by a time limit, or why the look in Danny's eyes turned so bleak when he mentioned it. But she couldn't argue with the Time Lord's maths. The cold, inescapable knowledge settled in her stomach like a stone. The human race had been fooling themselves all along. They'd never won the war. All they'd ever done was to buy themselves some time. And now that time was nearly up.

For a few moments, despair seemed to cripple her. So many people had fought so hard, so many people had died so horribly, and for what? Just so they could lose in the end. The enormity of what she was asking Rob to fix suddenly seemed insurmountable.

However, then her eyes fell on her new friend's face, as he turned in the doorway to answer Danny's questions. Rob didn't look daunted in the least. In fact, if anything, he looked energised, even more full of purpose and determination than before. A small tendril of comfort crept into Allie's heart. If Rob hadn't given up hope, perhaps there was still a chance. Besides, she told herself firmly, nothing had ever been achieved by curling up and waiting to die. If the world truly was going to end, she'd much rather go out with a bang than a whimper. With a last wary look over her shoulder, she followed the two men into the boat-shaped building.

The wasp had obviously been there before them – or something had, at any rate – because the parking garage was completely trashed. Once, the bones and mummified bodies scattered about might have frightened and appalled Allie. These days, such things were so common, she barely even registered them, being more interested in making sure there was nothing alive lurking behind the burned out vehicles. Nothing stirred, however, and upon edging around the perimeter of the room, she found herself looking at the weird-looking skull. Two curving tusks protruded from the front of it, reminding her of an elephant. A little further on was the withered, three-fingered arm, looking like a discarded prop from a Halloween party. It wasn't a prop, though. It was alien. Probably, both items had been specimens acquired for study by this ARC that Rob kept talking about. Maybe they had once been considered top secret scientific finds. Now they were nothing more than ruined garbage.

Rob ignored it all, making for the smaller of two doors in the opposite wall. One was large enough to drive a truck through, the other scaled for humans. Both stood open, the truck door torn loose and the human door standing ajar. "Well," he commented, "this is promising. For very disturbing values of promising."

Danny scooped up one of the exotic weapons. "What's this, then?"

The question kicked something loose in Rob's patchy memories. "EMD rifle. Uses electrical pulses to cause convulsions and temporarily scramble the brain. A stun rifle, if you like. Batteries are probably dead now, though." Experimentally, he flicked a switch. No response. "Like the rest of the power. Assuming the labs are intact, we'll need to do something about that."

Allie picked her way through the debris to join them. Unlike Danny, she didn't grab up any of the unusual weaponry. She was happy to stick with her familiar old rifle. “Perhaps there's a back up generator,” she suggested optimistically. “Danny's good with generators.”

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"Hang on, hang on, it's coming back to me..." Rob muttered aloud, smacking himself in the side of the head with the heel of his hand.

The trio stood at the bottom of a three story circular well of glass-fronted office spaces, ringed with walkways and connected by stairs. Hallways opened off the well, leading deeper into the complex, and the floor of the well was ringed by elaborate computer networks and inscurtible electronic devices. Once, it must have appeared high-tech and efficient and impressive. Now, it was dead. Cold and silent, with the dead grey of disfunctional computer monitors staring at the group like accusing eyes.

"That," Rob finally said, pointing at a heavy set of open double doors large enough to emit semis, "led to the menagerie. No point going in there, they already let the dogs out - so to speak - to fight yer wasps. And... that way," he pointed at a hallway at a right angle to the menagerie door, "that way - I'm certain - leads to poor Connor's lab. I wonder if he was here, when it all went down? Or maybe he and... and..." He snapped his fingers, frustrated as he tried to remember. "His trouble, wassername. Maybe they scarpered?"

Damnit. This was worse, in a way, than not knowing at all. This patchwork nonsense, remembering bits and drabs and having everything else drifting in a fog that might part for a few seconds. He remembered young Connor Temple, all shaggy hair and geek chic. And he remembered Connor's young wife clearly - blonde and pixiesh and damn smart and tough - but he couldn't remember her name for the life of him. Or why he knew either of them. "Yeah," he finally snapped, stomping towards the hallway in a haze of irritation, "the lab's this way. And he's got a generator in there, I'm sure of it. Might need to prime the pump, though, cause the diesel's gonna be stale after all these years."

He stepped over wrecked computer equipment and bodies, because of course there were bodies. Disarticulated leathery mummies, dessicated and gnawed but not rotten, still wearing dark blue battle dress that was stained rust brown with dried blood. Was he just numb to the old carnage because of the dying gasps of the Earth itself, he wondered, or was there something about his past that had made him familiar with death? He didn't like the sound of that last option, he decided.

Alley-cat and Danny-boy played flashlights around, illuminating a darkness that he didn't notice unless he stared into the beams they cast. It had been like that in the tunnels as well, he knew, and last night when he'd driven through the night without bothering with headlights. Some sort of Time Lord thing, perhaps? Alley and Danny needed the lights, but they were human. But from the way Alley-cat talked, he wasn't. Maybe all Time Lords could see in pitch darkness? And shoot bloody fire from their fingertips, like Jem did? Because she was a Time Lord as well, it seemed.

He made a fist and pushed it out suddenly, punching the air. No blood-colored fire erupted from his hand and scorched the far wall. Probably just as well.

"Oh, hey! Here we are!" he declared, shoving a door open. The room inside was huge, and sectioned off into three different subrooms. Banks of dead computer equipment lined one wall, and a thick observation window stared into a room with heavy industrial machinery. A beige filing cabinet sat in one corner, and Rob bounded towards it with a cry of delight. A cry that faded into disappointment as he touched it, feeling nothing more than cold, dead metal beneath his grimy hands. Pain and loss creased his features as he looked back and Danny and Ally, and his next words were thick with emotion. "Don't... don't know what came over me, there," he mumbled, looking at them with eyes like glossy black marbles. "Just... expected something, I think."

With a sigh, he shoved the mood away. "This was my office first, I think," he said, looking around. "They gave it to Connor, once I left to..." He scratched his head, thinking. "To work for the Septics, maybe?" A fuzzy memory of men in heavy armor swam in his vision. "Something in cybernetics, I think?"

He shook his head. "No matter, we've got work to do! Danny-boy, generator's through that door over there! Go work yer magic with it, cause we need it up and running we do!"

Danny started towards the door. "And then what?" he asked.

Grinning again, Rob bounded towards the thick plexiglass window. "And then I fix that thing up," he declared, pointing through at the industrial equipment, "and get it calibrated and targeted, and then we're going to Rio!"

[Allison Castiel]

The world gone to hell...

Allie bit her lip, as she gazed around her at the abandoned office space, eerie and disturbing in the narrow-beamed discs of torchlight.

Mostly, in the daily struggle for survival, she could shut it all out, somehow forget that her life had ever been any different. It was the only way she could stay sane, just putting one foot in front of another, letting one day slide into the next, grateful every time she saw a new sunrise. But there were times like this, when despite her best efforts, the horror crept in around the edges.

Oddly, it wasn't the obvious things that were the worst. Not the leathery, mummified bodies, or the ragged gouges torn out of the walls, or the ochre-coloured smears of long-dried blood. It was the smaller things that stayed with her. Objects of day-to-day living that no longer had any relevance in the new world. A pair of wire-framed glasses, lying on the dusty floor, one of the lenses crushed into powder by a careless, panicked boot. A coffee cup, still sitting on the edge of one of the desks, as if waiting for its owner to return. A photo of a small, curly-haired child, stuck to one of the computer monitors, the little boy's cheeky smile juxtaposed with the blank, shattered black screen beside it, like some kind of tragic artistic statement. Those were the things that made her want to cry; to grieve all over again for everything the human race had lost.

"That," Rob finally said, pointing at a heavy set of open double doors large enough to emit semis, "led to the menagerie. No point going in there, they already let the dogs out - so to speak - to fight yer wasps.”

Allie thought back to the strange skull back in the garage, and the three-fingered hand. Not dead specimens, then, as she had thought, but live creatures. Held here, in some kind of zoo, and then unleashed on to the wasps, in some last-ditch attempt to defend the building and all it contained. An attempt that had apparently failed. The air in here still seemed to resonate with the terror and desperation of the besieged humans, left with nowhere to run, as the wasps methodically tore open the front doors.

“And... that way," [Rob] pointed at a hallway at a right angle to the menagerie door, "that way - I'm certain - leads to poor Connor's lab. I wonder if he was here, when it all went down? Or maybe he and... and..." He snapped his fingers, frustrated as he tried to remember. "His trouble, wassername. Maybe they scarpered?"

“You had friends here, Rob?” she asked softly. “I... I'm so sorry.”

There was, as he'd said, a slim chance they'd survived, she supposed. But looking at the carnage and chaos that surrounded them, she doubted it very much.

“But at least you're starting to remember some things. That has to be good, doesn't it?”

"Yeah," he finally snapped, stomping towards the hallway in a haze of irritation, "the lab's this way. And he's got a generator in there, I'm sure of it. Might need to prime the pump, though, cause the diesel's gonna be stale after all these years."

The blonde girl sighed and gestured to Danny. Together, they followed Rob through the ruined corridors, picking their way carefully through the dusty remnants of the battle, studiously ignoring the worst of the debris. Allie couldn't help noticing that Danny was very quiet – even for his usually taciturn self – but she put that down to the poignant, haunted atmosphere of the building. She didn't feel much like idle chit-chat either. It was if a heavy weight had settled on her shoulders that she couldn't shake.

Rob's patchy memory had obviously kicked up a gear, since he was navigating through the place as confidently as if he'd been here only yesterday. Had he worked here, Allie wondered, with Connor whoever-he-was? She couldn't imagine Rob's wild, free spirit being confined inside an office building, no matter how glamorous and hi-tech it had once been. But what would she know? Ruefully, she fingered the rifle strap slung over her shoulder. The old Allie would have been frightened by it and would have refused to go anywhere near it. The Allie she was now refused to go anywhere without it.

She glanced across at the scruffy, disheveled man at her side, with his long, matted curly hair, and his ragged clothing. Daniel Beckett, LLB, up-and-coming corporate lawyer, on the brink of becoming a full partner in his prestigious law firm in London's West End. Her heart clenched inside her almost painfully. No, none of them were what they had once been.

"Oh, hey! Here we are!" [Rob] declared, shoving a door open. The room inside was huge, and sectioned off into three different subrooms. Banks of dead computer equipment lined one wall, and a thick observation window stared into a room with heavy industrial machinery. A beige filing cabinet sat in one corner, and Rob bounded towards it with a cry of delight. A cry that faded into disappointment as he touched it, feeling nothing more than cold, dead metal beneath his grimy hands. Pain and loss creased his features as he looked back and Danny and Ally.

“Rob, what's wrong?” Allie asked, her brow creasing into a concerned frown. “It's just a filing cabinet.”

[His] next words were thick with emotion. "Don't... don't know what came over me, there," he mumbled, looking at them with eyes like glossy black marbles. "Just... expected something, I think."

Instantly, Danny shoved Allie protectively behind him. “Expected what, exactly?” he asked warily. Every one of his muscles were tensed, his hand automatically reaching for the exotic gun he'd picked up in the garage. “And what's up with your eyes, mate?”

With a sigh, [Rob] shoved the mood away. "This was my office first, I think," he said, looking around. "They gave it to Connor, once I left to..." He scratched his head, thinking. "To work for the Septics, maybe?" A fuzzy memory of men in heavy armor swam in his vision. "Something in cybernetics, I think?"

Danny wasn't reassured, or any less suspicious. “I've got no idea what you're talking about.”

Peering around her friend's bulk, Allie studied Rob's face carefully. His eyes were strange, indeed, but no stranger than when she'd seen the tongues of lightning flash in them back when they'd first met. She couldn't remember the Doctor's eyes ever doing that – but who knew what other changes he may have been through since they last met?

[Rob] shook his head. "No matter, we've got work to do! Danny-boy, generator's through that door over there! Go work yer magic with it, cause we need it up and running we do!"

Danny hesitated, unsure whether to follow the instructions or not.

“It's all right, Danny,” Allie said softly, emerging from behind him, her gaze frank and unafraid as she looked at Rob. “It's what we came here to do, after all.”

Danny started towards the door. "And then what?" he asked.

Grinning again, Rob bounded towards the thick plexiglass window. "And then I fix that thing up," he declared, pointing through at the industrial equipment, "and get it calibrated and targeted, and then we're going to Rio!"

Rio. Even the name seemed mystical and magical to Allie.  As Danny finally vanished into the other room, she stared at the machinery through the plexiglass window, and tried to get her head around the magnitude of what they were about to attempt.

Travelling back in time to the Amazon, back to where it all began.

And from there, to rewrite the history of the world....

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

The lights flickered on, died, then flared into life once more. Danny sighed heavily, stretching his back as he did. "There. Finally done." He glared at Rob. "Finally."

Rob shrugged, looking unabashed. Unable to get to work until Danny had gotten the generator back online, he'd stuck his nose in and begun offering unsolicited advice and opinions. At first it had been helpful, but he'd rapidly drifted off into a barrage of technical-sounding gibberish and had - at one point - even begun to disassemble the generator while insisting he could make it more efficient. Finally, Danny had waved a wrench at him and told him to bugger off.

Rob had buggered off, wandering away to explore the tomb-silent ARC building. He'd returned nearly twenty minutes later, wearing scavenged clothes (khaki slacks a little too long for him, and a loose flannel shirt over a white t-shirt, and a brown overcoat) and carrying a bundle of assorted tools in a satchel he'd found, and smoking a cigarette. Then he'd perched himself on a work bench, blowing smoke from his nostrils and staring morosely at the buff-colored filing cabinet. "Thought it was mine," he commented aloud, answering Ally's earlier question. "Thought it'd feel... I dunno. Alive, I guess."

He took another drag, blowing a smoke ring this time. "Dunno quite what I expected, really. Like... she'd welcome me home. Barkin', I know, expectin' that of a filing cabinet. But..."

That's when the lights had flickered. Rob lit another cigarette off the butt of the one he was smoking, then hopped off the desk and rose. "Right, right, lovely work there Danny-boy. Oily?" he added, offering the pack round.

Danny started to reach for the pack, then hesitated. "Where'd you..?"

Rob grinned. "Got bored, kimmied a few lockers. Not like the owners'll be back lookin' for things, right? Baccy's a touch stale, but there you go."

Danny hesitated again, then shook his head. "Thanks, no. I quit. About five years ago."

At that, Rob pinched the lit end of the cigarette and stuck it back in the pack. "Right, then. No fair wavin' it in yer face, then." The pack disappeared into his new coat as he headed into the next room, walking a circuit and visually inspecting the apparatus before touching anything.

Danny followed, gazing around curiously and skeptically. "Right. What's all this, then?"

"Well," Rob said, gesturing at the central table and the matching disk above it, "those are counter-rotating petagauss electromagnets. And these," he patted one of four equally-spaced camera-like objects, "are petawatt x-ray lasers. And the whole thing, Danny-boy, grabs spacetime like a dishrag and twists it like playdough until it rips."

"And then what?" Danny asked.

"And then you step through," Rob replied, cheerfully. "Unless you muck it up, and then create a cascade effect that destabilizes the m-brane substrate of reality and makes the universe unravel in an 11-dimensional hypersphere with a radius equal to the seperation of the two points you were trying to connect. But cheer up, we won't bollix this up."

"How do you know?" Danny sounded worried, now.

"Still here, ain't we? Besides, Conner was a sharp boffin, he was. Worked ninety percent of it out before I showed up, didn't he? Safe as houses, it is." He threw several knife switches and sparks erupted in glittering showers from multiple circuit breakers, followed by a stench of burning insulation. A low humming filled the air, vibrating through bone and setting teeth on edge, and loose metal objects began tugging towards the central table. Whistling a merry tune, he tapped at one and then another keyboard for several minutes, running diagnostics and checking calibrations.

"Right, right, good news and bad." He tapped a little longer at a central terminal. "Good news is, it'll work. Bad news, we've only got one shot. Once I fire it up, we've got a three minute window to get through before everything burns out and the field collapses."

"And you destroy the universe," Danny answered, flatly.

"Nah," Rob answered cheerfully. "That's fer cock-ups establishing the field in the first place. This'll be different. Normally, the anomalies just... die. Fade out. But this? Artificial ones, if you don't close them, implode. And then blast back out." He shrugged, gave Danny a guilty glance, then tapped out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth. "Bit of a mess, when that happens."

Danny's eyes narrowed. "Define 'bit of a mess'."

Sparks flashed as Rob lit his cigarette. "Bit of a mess, as in it'll blow this building apart. Maybe the whole university. I'd have to do the maths, to be sure. So..." His voice trailed away as he cocked his head, a sound catching his ear. Then another. A sound like steel scraping over stone. Slowly, he turned to stare out the window. Staring back at them was an enormous, bronze-colored wasp.

[Allison Castiel]

More than aware of her limitations, Allie didn't even try to assist the two men with the generator. Mechanical know-how just wasn't part of her skill-set, and never would be. Instead, she stayed out in the main work area, listening to the muffled but oddly comforting sound of Rob and Danny bickering back and forth in the next room. She'd pushed back the hood of her burnous as soon as they had entered the building; now, she took the enveloping garment right off and hung it over the back of a chair. If Rob's plan succeeded – if he got that mass of circuitry behind the observation window running again – she would no longer need it. They'd be sent back in time, back before the human race became forced to shun the sunlight and live in darkness. She tried to remember what that had been like, but it wasn't easy. In the five years since the War began, the things she had once taken for granted had become blurred in her memory, like a dream she'd had long ago.

She drifted around the room, not wanting to go far, opening desk drawers and exploring cupboards, to see if she could find anything useful or interesting. There were sheaves of hand-written notes scattered around, scrawled in a bold, untidy hand, as if someone had been in a hurry to jot down their thoughts or observations, before they lost their train of thought. Most of them were incomprehensible to Allie, long in-depth dissertations peppered with technical jargon and mathematical formulae. Other than that, all she found was the usual office detritus – pens, staplers, boxes of paperclips, and so on.

At one point, Rob emerged from the generator room and stomped past, vanishing back out the main door into the maze of corridors. Allie could hear Danny grumbling and swearing to himself in the next room, and she couldn't help a small smile. A case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, she supposed. Danny had never liked anyone watching over his shoulder while he worked, and she couldn't imagine Rob playing the role of a passive observer. He'd probably been driving Danny nuts.

When he returned, newly-attired and smoking a cigarette, Allie was in the process of examining the filing cabinet that had so upset him when they first arrived.

[He] perched himself on a work bench, blowing smoke from his nostrils and staring morosely at the buff-colored filing cabinet. "Thought it was mine," he commented aloud, answering Ally's earlier question. "Thought it'd feel... I dunno. Alive, I guess."

“Alive?” She echoed the word curiously. It was definitely an odd thing to say, even for Rob.

He took another drag, blowing a smoke ring this time. "Dunno quite what I expected, really. Like... she'd welcome me home. Barkin', I know, expectin' that of a filing cabinet. But..."

She. At the word, said in just that way, in just that tone, another memory tickled Allie's brain. A tall, lanky man in a brown pin-striped suit, fondly stroking the console of his ship, as if it were alive.

“Perhaps not,” she said hesitantly. “The Doctor – when I knew him – had a ship that looked like a blue police box. It was bigger on the inside, and he'd travelled the universe with her, for centuries. The point is, Rob... it looked like an every day Earth object, from the outside. But inside, it was marvellous. And if the Doctor could change his face...” - here, she took a deep, steadying breath, wistfully eyeing the long, brown overcoat he was now wearing - “...perhaps his TARDIS could too. Perhaps she's now a filing cabinet, for instance. Perhaps that's why you remember it when you think of coming home.”

At that moment, the lights flickered and Danny appeared in the doorway. "There. Finally done." He glared at Rob. "Finally."

After a bit of chat about smoking and cigarettes, the Time Lord led the way into the chamber beyond the plexi-glass observation window. Allie stared nervously at all the equipment, keeping well away from it, as though worried that it might bite her.

Again, she let the two men handle the technical discussions, quietly listening as Rob explained the concept of the device to Danny. She had to admit, she wasn't very reassured by all the talk of ripping holes in space-time. Just the thought of it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Especially when Rob started in about the possibility of unraveling the entire universe. After all, they were supposed to be trying to fix things, not make them worse.

Rob, however, was very nonchalant about the whole thing. If it wasn't for the occasional flashes of anger and compassion she'd seen from him during their journey, she'd wonder whether he ever took anything seriously at all.

"Still here, ain't we? Besides, Conner was a sharp boffin, he was. Worked ninety percent of it out before I showed up, didn't he? Safe as houses, it is."

“I think I found some of his notes,” she spoke up, producing the scattered papers she had collected, and handing them over. “They're all out of order, and I'm not sure if they're complete. And I don't even know what they're about, really. But maybe you can use them, Rob.”

Shortly thereafter, he set to work, tinkering with the controls on the circular console. Danny was rapid-firing questions at him, trying to determine the probability of their success. It was the lawyer in him, she supposed. Needing to know all the facts, all the possible outcomes. For Allie, it was more a question of faith. She had faith in Rob. She couldn't have explained why, exactly. It was a visceral reaction from deep inside – an instinctive trust that he would get this right, and that he would save them all. And besides, it wasn't as if they had a lot of choices here.

Deliberately, she tuned out all their talk about explosions, and wandered over to stare out the window at the unappealing view of the dried-up lake. There was an odd scraping noise, and the floor beneath her feet seemed to vibrate slightly.

Puzzled, she stepped closer to the window, only to give a strangled cry of shock, as two enormous black mirror-like eyes rose into view, staring directly at her, barely inches away from her face.

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"Allison!"

Danny's voice was a cry of horror and panic as he threw himself into motion. The wasp, seemingly in response to his shout, reared up and slammed clawhammer feet into the plexiglass of the window. There was a loud thump, and cracks spiderwebbed the reinforced material. In the time it took Danny to cross the room the wasp drove its claws into the window twice more, and on the third impact a leg smashed through into the room. Hooked talons raked for Allison as Danny grabbed her by the arm and yanked her away, all but throwing her back towards Rob. "Get her out of here!" he roared, giving Rob a desperate look.

Rob, for his part, had already moved to the keyboard and begun typing. The table and the disk above it began to hum and vibrate as the magnets came online, and the lenses erupted into actinic light as the x-ray erupted into lambent life. "C'mon... c'mon..." he muttered darkly, eyes darting between the table and the wasp. "Nearly there... just another," he eyed the display, "thirty seconds."

Danny looked at him, then turned to watch the wasp. It had torn its foreleg free, along with a span of plexiglass the size of a dinnerplate, and was now battering at the shattered window. "Ain't got that long, Rob. Can you..?"

"No." Rob sounded frustrated. "There's no way to speed it up."

Swallowing hard, Danny nodded. "Right. Only one thing to do, then." He forced a grin as Rob looked at him over Allison's shoulder. "Save the world, you two. Don't make me regret this." And then, before he could change his mind, he tore open the door and dove through it. The assault rifle he carried came up, and the sound of the three-round burst was deafening in the lab as he fired ineffectually into the side of the wasp. "C'mon and have a go, if you think you're hard enough!"

Blindingly swift, the wasp rounded on him. Equally swift, Rob's hand snapped out and caught Allison's wrist in a grip of padded iron. Behind them, the air twisted and tore into a million, million whirling shards.



"We have to go," Rob hissed, tugging Allison towards the anomaly. Outside, Danny dove across the table and rolled towards the door back into the base and fired again. The wasp smashed the central table out of the way and Danny dove backwards through the door to avoid its lunge. "Alley-cat, we have to go! Now!"

Inexorably he dragged her backwards, then spun her and pushed her hard through the anomaly. A second later he was on her heels, diving into a heartless instant of tumbling and falling and disorientation, reliving his peculiar dream of falling through an infinity of ameythist and amber skies, and then he staggered out onto a multi-colored outdoor flight of stairs flanked by apartment buildings. At the top of the hill, a tangled knot of nut-brown children pointed and gaped at the swirling mass of crystalline lights.

"Rio," Rob guessed, looking around. "We did it." Behind him, the anomaly pulsed once and collapsed.

[Allison Castiel]

She wanted to move, she wanted to run, but she couldn't. It was as if those enormous, multi-faceted eyes had paralysed her. Fear turned her insides to water and her legs to jelly. Wide-eyed, she could do nothing but watch as the serrated, claw-tipped legs slammed repeatedly into the glass, over and over again. Fate had caught up with her, her life ticking away into an endless void, and there was nothing she could do.

But then, Danny was there, his hard hands closing around her upper arms, dragging her backwards away from the shattered window. Before she could even register what was happening, she was spinning back towards Rob, propelled by a mighty push. Everything still seemed to be flowing in slow motion. She could see Rob's hands racing frantically over the console, see his mouth moving as he shouted to Danny, but she couldn't hear what he was saying over the roaring in her ears. The wasp was breaking through, she could see the glass cracking and falling away. They had seconds left at best.

The look on Danny's face was anguished, his dark eyes full of unspoken apology. "Save the world, you two. Don't make me regret this."

"Danny?” She forced his name out, struggling to inject some sound into the deafening silence.

It was too late, though. He was gone, throwing himself through the door, yelling belligerently at the enormous wasp. No last words. No parting touch, apart from that last, hard shove. No time for goodbye, just the staccato sound of gunfire.

“DANNY!” Her voice rose to a piercing scream.

Something locked on to her wrist, a grip as vice-like as a shackle.

"We have to go," Rob hissed, tugging Allison towards the anomaly. Outside, Danny dove across the table and rolled towards the door back into the base and fired again. The wasp smashed the central table out of the way and Danny dove backwards through the door to avoid its lunge.

“We can't!” And now, as if a switch had been flicked in her brain, everything was running much too fast, events spiralling wildly out of control. “We can't leave him! I won't leave him!”

She began to struggle, lunging against Rob's hold, striving desperately to break free, so that she could get back to Danny. “Let me go, let me go, I have to help him!”

"Alley-cat, we have to go! Now!"

Inexorably he dragged her backwards, then spun her and pushed her hard through the anomaly.

In the blink of an eye, the air around her seemed to crystallise and to shatter into a billion glittering, whirling shards, twisting and tumbling her through an impossible whirlpool of disorienting sensation, until it spat her out again, endless moments later. Tears pouring down her cheeks, she fell to her knees, only vaguely aware of the bright, glaring colours of the hard surface that rose up to meet her.

"Rio," Rob guessed, looking around. "We did it." Behind him, the anomaly pulsed once and collapsed.

Allie barely reacted to the sound of his voice. All she could think about was that last rueful look on Danny's face, as he went to meet his death, buying them the precious few seconds they had needed.

“Danny...” This time, his name was nothing but a numbed whisper of grief as it escaped her lips, only to be caught by the capricious wind and blown away.