Work Text:
The cut across her knee stung, but Claudia supposed a grazed patch of skin was preferable to becoming a gorgonopsid’s dinner.
With a wince, she pressed an antiseptic soaked wad of cotton against the cut, dwelling on the events of the past few days. It was like something from a terrible movie. So many inexplicable twists and implausible turns which had culminated in her fleeing from a primeval predator… Claudia was no expert on the matter, but she was certain there had been a pretty large extinction event a few million years ago which no longer rendered dinosaurs a threat. And yet.
It was supposed to be a hoax. Some dumb children pranking their friends or a lonely man with too much time on his hands, their actions quickly dismissed as nonsense; allowing her to be back in the city in time for a couple of bottles of wine with the girls.
Instead she had spent hours on end running around the forest for dinosaurs and had stumbled across a portal to the past. The sheer audacity of events elicited a small, disbelieving laugh from the woman. Dinosaurs. Her job was now dealing with dinosaurs—and not just the ones who roamed around the Home Office making comments precariously situated between annoying work banter and grounds to file a harassment complaint.
In that regard Claudia supposed the scaly, murder machines were preferable…
“Are you alright?”
Interrupting her thoughts came Nick Cutter, a man whose company she was enjoying save for the context. He was insightful yet stubborn, bound to be butting heads with all the wrong people and making her workday a strenuous one. She quite liked him, and she found herself shooting him a small smile as she readjusted slightly to make space on the uprooted log she had taken to perching on.
“I’m okay.”
She wasn’t.
“I mean, it could definitely be worse,” she admitted, a flash of concern sparkling in Nick’s eye though he didn’t immediately voice any worries. Instead, they shared a comfortable silence—watching as the last of the government team dismantled the makeshift camp. It was only once he grew bored of observing the task unfolding before them that he continued, finding the words he hoped would provide some comfort.
“It’s not every day you get chased by an extinct apex predator. No one expects you to brush everything off and deal with it.”
Except she had no choice but to deal with it. Lester had already made her the official go-between when it came to Cutter’s ragtag team and the government response.
All she could do was hope that not everything which came through these so-called anomalies would be akin to the gorgonopsid. Maybe they could get something cute and harmless next time? You know, as opposed to a beast with teeth as big as her head bearing down on her. Thoughts still clouded with fear from the chase, Claudia instinctively turned to check nothing was stalking them in the darkness.
“If anything jumps out at us, I’ll let you have a head start,” Nick tried to get a laugh out of her—seeing through what she had intended to be a discreet display of her fears—and, though small, he succeeded.
“How noble,” she gave him a smile, which faltered as she continued, quite self-aware about not presenting as useless in front of their resident expert. A junior in her post and already taking up the damsel in distress mantle, Claudia despised the thought of appearing out of her depth. “Sorry, I’m probably being a bit silly—”
“Nah,” he shrugged her off, and though she felt he was being genuine, she still did not voice the depth of her fears—not even sure if she had the ability to put everything into words and utterly drained from the days’ events.
The sheer concept of the anomalies was scaring her, let alone the monsters coming out of them. So, what now? Was time just… broken? As for the gorgonopsid, now dead on the floor before her but once charging her down: that thing showed just how ill-equipped they were when it came to dealing with this new threat—
“How’s your knee?” Nick interrupted her thoughts, then beckoned for the wad of cotton in her hand. “Can I?”
Claudia allowed him to take over, his presence unexpectedly calming. As he dabbed the wound, she ruminated further on the man by her side. For all that gruff aloofness he presented to the world, he was an incredibly kind-hearted individual. That had been obvious from the plight he had put up for the creatures, but in that moment as he acted with an unexpected carefulness, she felt the safest she had felt the whole night.
“The good news is: I don’t think it’ll need amputating.”
Claudia laughed and the man seemed rather pleased to have elicited such a reaction. Though poised to try and push for another, Captain Ryan interrupted them with an update.
“Ma’am?” Ever a professional, if he had taken interest in the surprisingly tender scene he didn’t make it obvious. “We have the creature loaded up, we’re going to head off.”
“Alright, thanks Ryan,” Claudia said with a small smile. Unlike with Nick, it was fleeting—betraying both her physical and mental exhaustion. Somehow, the professor helped alleviate those burdens, but in the company of another she started to falter.
Meanwhile, Nick had not stopped working away on her knee as they had been interrupted, but froze at mention of the creature. As Ryan walked away, Claudia turned to look at the professor.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t like this.”
“What?”
“Destroying these creatures.”
“We had no choice. What did you want me to do, Nick? Just leave a dead dinosaur behind in the—”
“Gorgonopsids aren’t actually dinosaurs—”
“That’s hardly the point,” Claudia said, her exasperation breaking somewhat when she saw he was smiling to himself. “Are you trying to wind me up?”
“Not at all,” Nick claimed in a manner which confirmed he almost certainly was. “All I’m saying is: I don’t want this to be the precedent. Where we can, I want to keep everything that comes through the anomalies alive. I don’t want the approach to be killing them—and yeah I understand that was a necessity tonight—but who knows what we could do to the fossil record by not returning them.”
“Lester won’t like that.”
“I don’t give a toss what some government suit thinks.”
“I know you don’t,” Claudia sighed, keenly aware mediating between Nick and Lester was about to put her blood pressure solidly in the hypertensive crisis category. “I promise I’ll do all I can. I agree, where there’s no threat, our objective should be to get these creatures home safe.”
“Even where there is a threat our prime objective should be transporting them back.”
Silence settled between them again, more pointed than the previous. Much to Claudia’s surprise, despite the tension, Nick returned to dabbing at the cut on her knee.
“You should go home,” Claudia said after a moment. “It’s late.”
“Well you’re stuck here until they leave,” Nick said, nodding towards the last of the team tasked with taking down various pieces of equipment. “I don’t mind staying.”
“No, it’s fine. They’ll be done soon,” and when Nick went to object, Claudia added: “Once I’m done here, I have to head to the office anyway. Lester is expecting a report on his desk in the morning. Then I have to prepare the paperwork for installing a permanent watch here in case the anomaly reopens.”
She would probably manage a handful of hours of sleep before venturing into Central London, but she condensed her schedule to compel Nick home. Though she would have loved his company she had no idea when the team would be done and was keenly aware he probably had classes to teach the next day.
“Right,” Nick stood slowly, hovering for a moment before saying goodbye. Claudia watched him until the professor was swallowed by the darkness, his absence immediately felt.
It was just under two hours to get back to Central London from Gloucester by train, and in that time, Claudia attempted to write a coherent report on the events of the day. Occasionally she would read back over a line and laugh to herself. How were tales about running through the forest after flying lizards official government business? If anything, they belonged to the sort of awful comic books she imagined Connor consumed in his free time.
Sleep was fleeting and a cold shower didn’t help matters. Worse, her concealer failed to live up to its name when she dabbed a splodge over the dark circles that encased her eyes. She looked awful and felt more horrendous still. Coffee was her only salvation, and by the time she reached the Home Office, she was already on her third cup.
Lester gave her report a quick glance over and deemed it ‘just about acceptable’, before letting her know exactly what he thought of every decision she had thus far made. Everything was a problem to him, even though the majority of the time she was following his orders, but Claudia remained silent and allowed his rant to wash over her, repressing the urge to yawn.
“Well go on, you’re dismissed,” Lester finally said, much to her relief. Claudia nodded and quickly left his office, planning on making her next coffee run as she rounded the corner. It was with a particular venom that she jabbed the button to summon the elevator, taking her stress out on the machinery.
The bad mood her exhaustion and dealings with Lester put her in, however, began to be eroded away as the doors pinged open to her floor and with it, came an uplifting sight.
“What are you doing here?” Claudia smiled, feeling every muscle in her face bloom upwards as she came face to face with Nick Cutter. He followed her to her desk, making himself comfortable opposite her.
“I had to guess your order,” Nick said, placing a cardboard cup of coffee before her, then taking a sip of his own. “I figured you can’t go wrong with filter.”
“You are a lifesaver,” Claudia smiled appreciatively as she took the beverage. It went down hot, her tongue tickling long after the first sip. “Not to sound ungrateful but you never answered my question, what are you doing here?”
“Lester wants to talk about ‘the next stage of our response,’” Nick said, complete with quite bitter air quotations. “Conveniently enough, I was already on my way with coffee, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered.”
Claudia’s smile widened at that and while she drank, Nick outlined his vision for what he wanted the anomaly project to be.
Without voicing her concerns she found several problems with his wishes—not because she disagreed with them per se, but because she knew Lester would detest the humane, theoretical approaches Nick was proposing to her. Claudia ‘hmmed’ and ‘aahed’ while she drank, staving off the urge to yawn because she was genuinely interested in what Nick had to say and did not want to appear dismissive.
“You know, if I’m boring you, I can just go.”
So much for that tactic.
“Oh! You aren’t boring me at all,” Claudia said, a new alertness about her as she looked up to a smiling Nick, concern ebbing away when she realized he was winding her up again. “You’re an absolute nightmare.”
“I’ve been told. You look exhausted.”
“Well you know what they say: no rest for the wicked.”
“I know you’re a government sell out but you aren’t that bad,” Nick grinned, before faltering, clearly annoyed with the situation on her behalf. “Don’t let Lester overwork you. It wouldn’t kill him to prepare some paperwork himself. Or wait an extra hour for a bloody report.”
“You try telling him that.”
“Oh, I will,” Nick said, and Claudia knew that was a promise. She could already see the angry email she would open the next morning: Cutter has delusions of keeping the creatures alive, wants to go through the anomalies himself, and called me a useless government suit on no less than several occasions while demanding I do my own paperwork. It would be a miracle if she could keep the two from being at each other’s throats for more than five minutes.
“If you don’t want to be late you should set off now. Please don’t say anything I’ll be hearing about for the rest of the week.”
“I’ll be on my best behaviour,” Nick said, without making any effort to leave, really setting the tone for how Claudia envisioned the meeting would go. “But I’m not going to budge. This needs to be done properly, not in whatever way is most convenient for some arsehole holed up in an office.”
Claudia appreciated Nick’s devotion and was sympathetic to his stances, but it was hard to reconcile her empathy with the demands of her job. Long after he had set off for his meeting/verbal spar session with Lester, Claudia was still consumed by his words. There was no denying he was right about Lester’s approach prioritising convenience before all else: quickly dealing with the problem with silent force and no regard for wider implications beyond keeping the public in the dark.
She was no scientist, but since her discussion with Nick the previous night, she had been trying to empathise with the stance he was taking. The creatures still terrified her. Thinking about the damage one could do if they messed up was scarier still. Trying to find a balance between Lester’s cool outlook and Nick’s passions felt impossible, and she was still attempting to forge an inoffensive, balanced way forward over an hour later as she gathered her belongings and headed out of the office. Ultimately, before she could commit either way, she needed more knowledge.
Thankfully her new coworker was an expert in the field and, conveniently for her, was waiting by the exit as she descended the last flight of stairs.
“Want a lift?” He offered, and given she could barely keep her eyes open, she did not hesitate to accept. “Richmond? Fancy,” he mused as she gave him her postcode for the satnav.
“It’s not out of your way, is it?”
“Not at all,” Nick said as the car rolled out of the carpark and joined the main road. It would have been a nice route if not for the suffocating amount of traffic. “Do you want the radio on?”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Ask away.”
“Yesterday, you said gorgonopsids aren’t dinosaurs,” Claudia began, Nick clearly not anticipating that being the pressing issue.
“Yeah?”
“So what are they?”
“They are gorgonopsids,” Nick said simply, only expanding when Claudia shot him the most unamused look she could conjure. “They’re synapsids.”
“Right. Now assume I’m someone who knows absolutely nothing about all of this,” Claudia replied, earning a small laugh lacking any maliciousness from Nick.
“Okay. So the anomaly yesterday was connected to the Permian Period, which was the last period of the Paleozoic era and lasted for 47 million years. It was a time that saw the diversification of mammalian-like creatures and reptiles—no dinosaurs in sight—and our friend the gorgonopsid was at the top of the food chain.”
Claudia rather rapidly came to the conclusion she could have listened to Nick talk about the subject for hours.
“So they then evolved into dinosaurs?”
“No. Then, around 252 million years ago, the supercontinent endured volcanic eruptions that lasted hundreds of thousands of years. Anything in close contact was killed off and whatever survived had it worse. The amount of dust and gas getting thrown up from these volcanic eruptions was so great the sun was blocked out. Plants couldn’t photosynthesise and then this dust eventually fell back into the atmosphere as acid rain. Entire food chains collapsed. Severe erosion, mudslides, and wildfires were prolific. Carbon dioxide spewed out of the volcanoes and scorched the planet and left the oceans acidic. It was literally hell on Earth.”
“How could anything survive that?”
“They barely did, it’s the closest life has ever come to being wiped out. Around ninety percent of all species disappeared.”
“But life finds a way?” Claudia asked, taking the opportunity handed to her on a plate. Nick snorted before continuing.
“Exactly. As this volcanic hot spot in Siberia lost steam, less of the noxious gasses and dust were being expelled, which allowed for ecosystems to begin stabilising. We don’t see the gorgonopsids again, but as we enter the Triassic period, that is when dinosaurs emerge. Not immediately, mind. The first tracks you see emerge from the Permian-Triassic boundary belong to small lizards and mammal ancestors who we can assume adapted out of those creatures able to burrow underground and hide from the climate disaster on the surface.”
Claudia could not hide her intrigue, finding herself leaning forwards as Nick lost himself in his explanation. She understood almost immediately exactly the sort of professor he was—demanding and somewhat intimidating, but the man everyone wanted to be taught by for his passion and ability to make something so complex incredibly accessible. As Nick explained to her how evolution made it so creatures began walking upright, Claudia realized where he was going with the lecture.
“They sound like crocodiles.”
“Exactly! So these archosaurs forked into two groups—pseudosuchians, which are your modern crocodiles, and avemetatarsalia, which is the group dinosaurs are descended from.”
Claudia no longer felt tired. They were travelling at decent speed now and the conversation was incredibly riveting. For a moment she found herself wondering if she had chosen the right degree to pursue. Nick made the long, complicated terms and theories found in stuffy textbooks come alive. She also better understood his concerns about the direction the government wanted to take the anomaly research in.
“And that’s why it’s so important to keep whatever comes through alive? Because so many of these discoveries are interconnected?” He nodded, a clear look of relief on his face that he’d managed to sway one of those ‘government suits’ he detested to his side. She hoped she was higher up the pecking order than certain colleagues of hers, though. “So if we lose something from the record, it could utterly wipe out our current knowledge?”
“That, and who knows if taking even one creature permanently out of its time would cause a chain reaction that totally alters the development of life,” Nick said, with a gravitas that made her feel suddenly heavy. “Maybe it already has and what I am telling you now is an historical account I wasn’t actually taught.”
It was a scary, near unfathomable concept that their actions could alter millions of years worth of evolution and not even be perceived. It was the sort of problem you saw in movies, not something you encountered on a daily basis at work.
“So why did you get put on the hoax creature sighting case?” Nick asked, the question distraction enough to just about pull her back from the edge of a small meltdown at the extent of the problem.
“Nobody else wanted it and I’m junior enough to get bullied into taking the unglamorous cases. It worked out well in the end,” Claudia mused. However intimidating the anomaly project was, she felt fortunate to be on the team. They all seemed a nice bunch and, with every conversation she partook in with Nick, she only grew more intrigued. Maybe she had a lot to learn, and the obstacles would certainly be innumerable, but she liked working with them.
Well. She liked working with Nick, anyway...
And she wanted to know more—her taste of the Permian had really awakened an unexpected craving for knowledge on the matter. Maybe she could sit in on a couple of his lectures…
The car indicated off the roundabout and ambled down a tree lined drive, forking away into different streets; and eventually, turning to Claudia’s home. It was an impressive structure on the outside, speaking to a wealth she certainly did not possess: the grand, redbrick house a deceptive exterior for several rented flats.
“Thank you for the lift. And for the lecture.”
“Thanks for listening, usually the kids are busy texting and recovering from hangovers,” Nick said, winding the window down so they could still speak after she shut the car door on them. “I’ll see you around, Claudia Brown.”