Thanks, Hollywood

Sometimes you simply know what something is. Even if you have never seen it before, it's obvious. Not only is it obvious to you but it's obvious to everyone else, too.

A zombie, for example. There is no doubt that if a zombie ambled down the street, bumping into cars, setting off the odd alarm and lurching slightly as it sought a brain or two upon which to dine, that every single person who saw it would know exactly what it was.

The same can be said for a vampire, too, probably. Even if you did not know what it was right away, it's fair enough you'd be certain soon enough but with a vampire, especially if you happen to be a virgin, at that point it's probably too late.

You see, the folk at Hollywood (and studios like it, of course) have done some quite marvellous things. Not only have they given us hours upon hours upon hours of joy, which may or may not be considered an understatement, they have also prepared us, instilled us with the knowledge to deal with quite literally any scenario.

They've shown us that if you see a zombie, you find the nearest baseball bat, crowbar or similar weapon, and bash the absolute shit out of its skull and for a vampire use a stake through the heart.

If you find yourself trapped in a house with a serial killer then don't go upstairs. Hollywood have shown us this is a very bad idea. Instead, smash a window, clamber through it and run like stink. You can tend to your relatively tiny cuts and scrapes at some other juncture without worrying that a dude in a hockey mask is going to bludgeon you to death.

When a race of alien super-beings land upon Earth, regardless of any prior communication it's entirely likely they are far from benevolent. Hollywood has shown us this, too, and to defeat them we simply need Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and a couple of cigars.

We, as a race, know all of this beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt.

With that in mind, the confusion that surrounded the appearance of a floating, shimmering ball of diamond-like light, glinting colours that defied the known spectrum, when it appeared seemingly from nowhere on the third level of the Lace Market car park in Nottingham City Centre really did defy all logic.

"It's... It's... Well I don't know what it is, Steve, and no one else seems to know what it is, either. There are no theories forthcoming... All that can be said for certain is that it's a floating, shimmering ball of diamond-like light, glinting in colours that defy the known spectrum and until... whatever it is has been subjected to further testing or, indeed, any testing at all, the Lace Market car park will remain closed... Now, back to you in the studio."

"Thanks, Steve. And now, a story about a cat with nineteen legs..."

And whilst the content might not be wholly accurate, the aforementioned was the general gist of the news report. In fact so little was being said about the floating, shimmering ball of diamond-like light that glinted in colours that defied the known spectrum, so little fuss was made that it did not even make the national news which is preposterous really, when it should have been quite obvious to everyone and the matriarchs of their respective families what it was.

Best Foot Forward

Tim sprayed Newcastle Brown all over his laptop. He snorted it out of his nose, too, a caught a great deal of it in his beard.

"Fucking hell, that's a portal!" he yelled to no one in particular, sending a much finer spray of brown ale all over his computer screen.

He spent the next several hours searching for additional footage of the portal but there did not appear to be any, not anywhere that he could find anyway.

Of course, he was well aware that if it was, indeed, a portal, and he was in no doubt at all that it was a portal, then potentially a shady and secretive government agency had probably confiscated everyone's mobile phones and scrubbed all evidence of it from the internet.

He was also aware that on the whole people were quite, quite stupid, and therefore the vast majority of them were probably blissfully happy and resting safe in the false knowledge that although they did not know what the portal was no one else did either, so that made everything all right.

"Haven't they seen fucking Primeval?" he asked, again talking to no one in particular, mostly because there was no one else there.

He awoke the next morning in exactly the same position as he had fallen asleep, but with the rather annoying addition of an painfully stiff neck. His laptop had died sometime during the night, too, so he picked up his phone and easily found the news report from the previous evening.

It was still there, untouched, which meant it was likely there was no government agency involved, a potentially shady and secretive one or otherwise. He fought the urge to mutter a line from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and instead sent out a couple of quick text messages, both of which read exactly the same thing.

Meet me in town. Just gonna shower an i'll be there

An hour and a half later Tim was in town and leaning rather casually against Larry the Left Lion - the only place to meet in Nottingham City Centre - chain-smoking his way through a packet of Benson Gold. In his pocket his phone vibrated.

Sry m8. Shagging

Out with the gf. Catch u later

"Oh you bunch of bastards!" he hissed, angry that not only were his friends not coming but that his phone had decided not to let him know until that point in time. "Fuck it."

Tim lit another cigarette with the still-smouldering nub of the other, stashed the packet and his phone in his pocket and set out towards the Lace Market. The walk was not a particularly long one though it took longer than he would have liked, thanks entirely to the fact the hour was fast approaching Saturday lunchtime. Ergo, the streets and shops were rammed.

Upon reaching the car park he could not quite believe his eyes. There was a couple of strips of police tape which technically put the area off limits but no physical presence, no armed guards or anything. Even a homeless man asleep against the wall with a hastily scrawled 'You Really Don't Wanna' Go In There,' sign would have been something.

Tim was well aware there was no way at all he should even be thinking about going into the car park, let alone to the third level but as he jogged up the ramp, the final such incline on his ascent, he was just as aware that had he not done so he would have regretted it for the rest of his life for there was the portal, directly ahead of him... A floating, shimmering ball of diamond-like light that glinted in colours that defied the spectrum.

It was truly, truly beautiful, and Tim very quickly found his feet were inching him towards it, taking him closer and closer and before he knew what was happening the portal was literally inches from him. Had he wished to do so Tim could have reached out and touched it.

It was hot, in fact it was giving off a tremendous amount of heat yet it was oddly calming; almost soothing.

He glanced around, more for effect than anything else. To be perfectly honest he did not care whether anyone was watching him. He was going through the portal. Despite the fact he knew it was almost certainly an incredibly foolish notion, that was exactly what he was going to do.

"Oh well," he said, quietly. "Best foot forward..."

That's The Second Time You've Mentioned Dinosaurs...

Strong fingers gripped Tim's shoulder and he felt himself being yanked back, pulled from the influence of the very portal through which he had quite literally just set foot. In fact not only was he dragged back from the portal but he found himself thrown, and he skidded for several feet along the floor.

"Revoke his damn access!" a man yelled, striding over to Tim attired in Army fatigues and big, heavy-looking combat boots. "Fucking thing's got itself inside Timmy's head, too!"

And that was the last thing Tim remembered before he hit one of those heavy-looking combat boots with his face and awoke, an indeterminable amount of time later, in what very much appeared to be some kind of cell.

The walls and floor were white and tiled and the front of the cell, where Tim assumed there should be a door, was a single pane of glass with no obvious doorway, hatch or a weak-point of any kind.

Beyond the glass was another much larger room, equally as white if one discounted the pearlescent black workstation and the items upon it.

A young woman was sitting at the workstation in question though as she caught Tim moving out of the corner of her eye, she quickly got to her feet and made her way towards his cell whereupon she crouched directly on the other side of the glass and removed her spectacles.

"Oh, Timmy! I'm so glad you're awake! Hoskins kicked you so hard I wasn't sure you'd ever wake up!"

"Dude I don't even know who you are," said Tim, rubbing his jaw as he positioned himself with the flat of his back against the rear wall and his buttocks firmly upon the tiled floor.

If the young woman was in any way offended she certainly did not show it. Instead she simply let down her hair so it hung rather attractively, and smiled.

"It's OK, Timmy. I know that's the virus talking. Terry and Tina are working on a vaccine right now."

"I don't know about any virus, I don't know who Terry and Tina are, I've no idea who Hoskins is and although you seem lovely I've no bloody idea who you are, either!" Quite understandably, Tim was insistent. He got to his feet and stalked the six feet across his cell and stood with his nose against the glass pane, so close that condensation from his breath formed upon it.

"Listen, I saw the portal on a news report and came down here, the Lace Market car park, to see it. The damn thing was completely unguarded so fuck it, I was about to walk through it when Hoskins, apparently, yanked me back... Now I'm here, trapped in a cell and you're talking about a virus and dropping names that mean nothing to me!"

"Timmy..." This time the young woman did appear to be offended, and she took a few steps away from the glass.

"What?!" he yelled. "What the fuck? Are you gonna' tell me I'm wrong?!"

"Timmy, this hasn't been a car park for seven years, not since the portal appeared. You've been working here the POP for as long as I have. We were recruited on the very same day, remember? A satellite portal opened in the living room at your parent's house and you went through it. I'm from a different time, a different future, but you found me there, saved me from a Spinosaurus and brought me back through to your time.

"We came back through the portal at this facility, that's the way the portal usually works, and very nearly got shot by Hoskins before he threw the two of us into this cell... We've been together ever since..."

Tim could tell the girl was being truthful, or at least she believed every word she had spoken and as one might expect this fact left him incredibly confused.

"But... But I don't remember any of that," he replied, much more calmly. "Honestly I don't, I mean I wish I did... But when I came here, to the portal, it was an abandoned car park and I almost stepped through it before I was pulled back."

"You did step through, Timmy... According to the logs you were through for a little over an hour but when Hoskins came through after you he just found you there, standing with your back to the portal watching a herd of hadrosaurs."

"See that's the other odd thing... That's the second time you've mentioned dinosaurs in an apparently serious sentence."

If the young woman was about to say something else, regarding dinosaurs or not, Tim never found out for at that very moment two individuals burst into the room.

"Terry, Tina," she said as she turned. "Please give me some good news. How's the vaccine coming?"

"Almost there, Alaina," Terry and Tina replied in unison.

Tim studied them closely, or at least as closely as his cell permitted. They were almost identical. Aside from the fact they were quite clearly of differing genders it was pretty obvious they were twins. "But Timmy doesn't need it. He's virus free!"

"But..." Alaina turned to face Tim, still locked as he was in his cell. "But if he's virus free then why doesn't he remember anything about the POP? Why doesn't he remember the last four years?"

She turned back to the twins with tears rolling down her cheeks and a lump caught in her throat. "Why doesn't he remember me?!"

Damnit, Man!

"I do have a theory..."

"Out with it then, Prof," said Hoskins, irritably. "'Cos I know I'm not alone in wanting to know what the hell's going on with Timmy and I bet he does, too!"

"Right!" replied Tim, nodding his agreement. "Professor Dickson, if you've got any kinda' theory that'd explain this then I definitely wanna' hear it."

"Right," Dickson replied. Pausing, he ran his fingers through his hair. "Timmy is correct, partially at least. What you say, Tim, about seeing a news report about the portal and coming down here to see it for yourself, I believe you and there's nothing in any scan we've run that shows otherwise.

"By the same token, I know full well that this facility has been here, Portal: Observe, Protect, has been here for seven years and that it is seven years since the Lace Market car park was actually that, a car park.

"You say, Timmy, that you barely set foot through the portal before Hoskins pulled you back yet the logs prove, as does the time-stamped CCTV, that you stepped through the portal and were brought back one hour and seventeen minutes later."

Once again Professor Dickson paused and retrieved an electronic cigarette from the pocket of his jeans. Within seconds the air in the room was filled with the scent of off-liquorice.

"I believe that all of those events happened just as we all say they happened."

"But how is that even possible?" Alaina asked. Her eyes were dry now, in fact there was no evidence at all that she had been crying, thanks to a little carefully reapplied makeup.

"Merging realities is my best guess," replied Dickson. "Timmy is the focal point... The Timmy who saw the news report merged with the Timmy we know and from him or more specifically, them, our two realities have become one.

"I don't have a timeframe, I'm afraid. If my theory is correct, which it may or may not be, then it's a first as far as I'm aware. But I believe Timmy will soon be both Timmy from our reality and Timmy from his... Timmy 2.0, if you will."

"What're you saying?" Tim asked. "That in a given amount of time I'll remember my own life and the life I would've led if this were my reality?"

"Precisely," replied Dickson. "I mean, I think. Damnit, man... I'm a paleontologist not a theoretical physicist!"

The team disbanded, as satisfied as they could be with Professor Dickson's explanation, leaving Tim and Alaina alone in the conference room.

"So pretty soon I guess I'm going to know what you're talking about," he said with a smile. The girl was beautiful with pale skin, jet black hair and deep blue eyes. It was plain to see why the other version of him had fallen for her. "More to the point, I want to know."

"Well that's definitely a good thing, Timmy," she replied with a sad grin. "I just hope it doesn't take too long for your memories to realign... I miss you."

"I'm sorry..." he said, quietly. "I'm sorry I don't remember... I'm sorry you're having to go through this."

"And that's one of the many reasons I fell in love with you, Timmy," she replied, her eyes welling as she spoke. "Selfless to a fault. You're the one going through this...this change, and you're apologising to me."

Tim shrugged quite helplessly, not entirely sure as to how to respond to her words.

"Hey, listen," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand, an act which really only served to smear her recently reapplied makeup. "I know you better than anyone else, Timmy, which means I know your absolute favourite part of this job is discovering and exploring new worlds, treading where no man or woman or y'know, very few of either, have ever stepped...

"Come with me... We'll see whereabouts the portal opens to right now and if it's a relatively safe time period we'll go through, and you can experience that most wonderful feeling for the first time, again!"

And what a wonderful feeling it was when a few hours later, accompanied by a pair of soldiers wielding futuristic-looking firearms, Tim and Alaina stood upon a grassy slope a few hundred feet above a deep and wide forested valley.

"I've never tasted air so clean and pure," he said in absolute awe. "It's as if... I don't even know!"

"I know, Timmy," said Alaina, her arm linked in his. "I know."

"Where are we, exactly?"

"You mean when, right?" she asked, chuckling. "We're in the Oligocene, some thirty million years into our past."

As they watched an enormous flock of birds rose, squawking and screeching, soaring only a few feet above the canopy. They swooped out, away from the forest and towards the four humans. Tim instinctively ducked, despite the birds being high enough to mean he was not going to get hit, and stared up, marvelling at the startling plumage of the birds' underbellies.

"Nothing to worry about, Timmy," said one of the soldiers, chuckling heartily. He was a big man with a beard equally as large. "The scariest thing you'll see in this period is a Paraceratherium... A big rhino, technically, but they're soft as shit."

"Sounds like..." Tim paused, staring out across the valley. The other side appeared much more rugged from this distance but something had caught his eye, the sunlight glinting off something metallic.

"Shit! Sniper!" he yelled. Turning as he did so he tackled Alaina to the ground as two gunshots cracked the sky, echoing off the mountains on either side of the valley. Far below another flock of birds, over double the size of the one they had watched, rose and scattered in a panic.

Tim and Alaina rolled to see both soldiers dead with a single bullet wound to each of their foreheads. Now was not the time to think, it was the time to do and of that, Tim was well aware. He and Alaina were very much in the open, hugely vulnerable to whomever was across the valley and instincts he did not know he had took over.

He quickly rolled to the dead soldiers and sat the larger fellow upright. Using his bulk as a shield he shrugged off the man's backpack and took his weapon, tossing both to Alaina.

"We go down towards the forest," he barked. "It's closer than the portal and covers less open ground."

He dropped his human shield and scampered the twenty feet or so to the other dead soldier and positioned his corpse in a similar fashion, turning to Alaina as he did so.

"Go!" he yelled. "Go, I'll be right behind you!"

Memories Are Made of This

The decline was much steeper than Tim had anticipated and as such his momentum carried him at quite a speed. There was no hope of him avoiding any obstacles, should such things present themselves, and a long way in front of him he could see Alaina had almost reached the treeline.

It was difficult to tell from such a distance and travelling with such velocity but he sincerely hoped the decline lessened closer to the trees else coming to a stop would likely be very a painful experience, indeed.

Thoughts and memories that belonged to the other Tim filled his head as he ran.

What he had done, using his companions' corpses to shield himself from injury and commandeering their gear had been instinct, muscle memory if you will, belonging to his fellow mergee and until that point he had not remembered a single thing about the alternate life he had apparently led.

That was no longer the case, however, and it was an incredibly odd feeling as his head flooded with memories of someone who, technically, was another man.

The shooter on the other side of the valley, for example, Tim knew was a Korean agent, just as he knew that the only other permanent portal and the facility housing it was based in what used to be a Tanchon railway station.

For as long as Tim had been at POP and for a number of years prior, the Koreans had been fighting for control over the portals, using them and their satellites to wreak havoc across prehistory, murdering POP agents who had the audacity to attempt to stop them from doing so.

The virus at POP was of Russian design. A nanovirus: it infected its host with nanites, tiny microscopic robots, that altered the host's brain chemistry and essentially created a double agent in the process and Tim knew there were three of his comrades at POP currently residing in cells whilst Terry and Tina perfected the vaccine, a nanite anti-virus.

But perhaps most importantly, for his sanity at any rate, Tim remembered Alaina and everything about her. He remembered her running for her life the first time he saw her as a Spinosaurus chased her down and he recalled being scared shitless as the threw sticks and rocks at the great beast, chasing after it yelling all manner of obscenities.

Eventually the creature had directed its affections towards him and Tim had run and run until he thought he was going to throw up both his lungs. The Spinosaurus chased him to the very edge of its vast territory where mercifully a Tyrannosaurus had been patrolling the edge of her domain so Tim had left the two titans to battle it out and gone back in search of Alaina.

He remembered the flat on the canalfront he and Alaina had bought together and the menagerie they had inadvertently developed it into. It was small orphaned dinosaurs, mostly, certainly nothing that would ever grow into anything larger than their Irish Setter, Bono.

Tim even recalled the pair of Dik-Diks they had rescued from a Korean facility in the Precambrian, when they had put a stop to their enemies efforts to combine the DNA of dinosaurs with that of more modern creatures in the hopes of, well, they had never actually worked out exactly why the Korean were doing that and that despite the fact he was a he, Bono had mothered the pair of tiny creatures as if he had given birth to them himself.

He imagined it was quite the sight; a young couple walking their dog and their Dik-Diks along the canal first thing in the morning, emerging from the early fog that rose from the surface of the water.

And he remembered proposing to her at sunset on a Jurassic beach with the perfectly timed vocal accompaniment of a distant herd of Brachiosaurs' evening chorus.

"Alaina!"

Tim yelled, snapping back to reality as he watched the love of his life just about manage to avoid a herd of small mammals, Gondwanatheres if Tim had to guess, a relatively large species of rodent.

And it was not at all long before he was having to avoid them, too, leaping where necessary and dodging left and right where he could. The creatures might well have been small but they were perfectly capable of sending him tumbling the rest of the way to the treeline if he was not careful.

Sun's Out Guns Out

The Sun beat down, bathing the Oligocene mountainside in a quite brilliant light. Even at the treeline where it was far cooler thanks to the forest of ginormous Oak and Elm temperatures were approaching those of the warmest summer's day, back up in the twenty-first century.

Tim dropped the backpack to the ground and stripped out of his sweat-soaked t-shirt, half-expecting Alaina to do the same.

"It'll dry in no time in this heat," she said, as if able to read his mind.

"Well y'know, Sun's out guns out."

"Ever since we watched that episode of Aussie Whose Line." She shook her head, chuckling gently as Tim dug into Grant's pack. "We'll get help and we'll take the bodies back through. Grant and Harris should be buried properly."

"Aye, I agree," he replied, though mourning their dead friends was going to have to wait because for as long as they were still in the Oligocene they both needed to be on their guard with their respective wits about them for what Grant had said about the placid Paraceratherium being the only thing they had to worry about was not the case whilst the Korean were around.

He eventually found Grant's radio and pulled it from the pack. He set it up quite expertly, ensuring the dual antenna was pointing as direct to the portal as the landscape permitted.

"I do wonder what the Korean are doing here," Alaina mused whilst Tim fiddled with the radio dials.

"Well we've already seen them capturing creatures for both meat and breeding," the young man replied. "It wouldn't surprise me if either of those were the case here... Plus Paraceratherium do come with an awful lotta' fur."

Alaina remained silent and after a few seconds Tim glanced up to see her grinning broadly at him, her big blue eyes as wide as ever.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied. "It's just... Well the whole thing about you merging with another you, not remembering who you were or anything about your life... It scared the shit out of me, Timmy..."

Now it was Tim's turn to remain momentarily silent as he leaned over and gently touched his lips to Alaina's own, lingering for slightly longer than would be considered fleeting.

"Now shush," he said, laughing as he pulled back from her. "I figure we can only have about four hours before the portal moves on and we're stranded here until the next time."

"There's plenty worse places to be stranded, Timmy," Alaina replied. "And you know as well as I do there'll be another portal around here somewhere."

"I'm not doing the portal to portal thing again, babe." He glanced towards her with a mock-stern look upon his face. "You remember the last time that happened, right? When we visited your parent's for Christmas dinner and your mother refused to let us leave without a third helping of dessert... We ended up getting home via a very roundabout route on that occasion, including a visit to the Cretaceous South-Atlantic, if I recall."

"Just making sure you remembered," Alaina replied, laughing. "Bono was so pleased to see us when we got home!"

"After having Hoskins looking after him for a fortnight can you blame him?"

"Speaking of Hoskins," said Alaina, nodding towards the radio as with a fizz of static she heard the military man's voice.

"Hoskins, it's Timmy. We're arse-deep in the kinda' shit that only happens when the Korean are around."

"Grant and Harris?"

"Sniper," he replied. "Alaina and I made a run for it. We're at the treeline roughly three and a half miles east-northeast of the portal."

"Weapons?"

"A couple of stunners, so we're all right for now. Can't be sure for how long though."

"Stay put. Hold your position for as long as you can. If you have to move go into the forest. I'll have Tina with me, she can track your stunner's energy signature."

"All right."

"We think we have about four hours before the portal moves on, Hoskins," said Alaina, adding to the conversation.

"It's more like two," was the reply. "That's why I need you holding station as long as you can. I don't fancy getting stuck there any more than you do."

Dino Riders

Tim and Alaina ran. Shrubs and bushes tugged at their clothes and low branches proved to be obstacles of a time-consuming variety as opposed to anything else.

It had not taken long for their enemies to find them but then again they had brought drones with them and apparently, as the young adventurous couple had discovered, those drones came equipped with some kind of shielding technology meaning their stunners, weapons that on full power would easily floor a T-Rex and generally fried any kind of tech even when fired on the lowest power setting, were useless.

"You ever get the impression we're being forced in a particular direction?" Tim asked as they ran, finding the physical exertion far easier on his body than he had expected it to be. "Those drones are coming in from all sides."

"If we go much deeper it's not gonna' make any difference whether Tina's able to detect the stunner signature or not. We need to lose these drones and we need to do it yesterday!"

"I got..."

What Tim had Alaina never knew for at that very moment an all-too familiar sound shook the forest to its very core and despite the fact they were being driven by the drones like a collie with a flock of sheep, they stopped in their tracks.

"That was definitely a roar, right?"

"Yeah," Alaina replied. "Yeah it was definitely a roar and whatever it belongs to definitely shouldn't be in this era."

"Carnotaurus," said Tim, quietly.

"Could be, definitely a theropod."

"No, I mean," Tim shook his head and nodded over Alaina's left shoulder. "Carnotaurus. A few of them, too... And they've been saddled."

Both Tim and Alaina levelled their weapons, each aiming at a different dinosaur and the rider sitting atop it. It was futile though, really, for there were at least a dozen Carnotaurus', each creature saddled and armoured, fully equipped with an armed rider.

"I guess this is where we're goin' out then," said Tim, grimacing as he spoke. "Pretty sure there's a damn EMP in Grant's pack, too..."

"Sounds like Grant thought of everything," Alaina replied as one of the dinosaur riders barked something in their general direction. "Shame he didn't think about how to get that EMP out of his pack without getting shot by Koreans, eaten by Carno's or both..."

Neither of them understood much of the Korean language but over the years the odd word and phrase had been directed at them on so many different occasions the meanings were clear.

"Speaking of getting shot, weapons down," Alaina continued. "I've got to be honest, Timmy... I don't like this at all."

"They want us to follow them," said Tim, nodding in complete and total agreement with his female companion. "'Least Hoskins and Tina will have a starting point, assuming the stunners stay relatively intact."

Tim's words were accentuated with a high-pitched whine as one of the Korean riders fired some kind of laser weapon, frying both stunners almost instantly.

"Or y'know, maybe I spoke too soon..."

"Backpacks, too," said Alaina. She glanced sideways at Tim, unable to prevent the smirk as it spread across her face.

No sooner did the Koreans use their laser weapons to destroy the backpacks and their contents, the EMP included, did the Carnotaurus' turn on their riders. When the EMP blew it activated, thus disabling whatever technology the riders were using to maintain an element of control over their respective charge's.

"Run!" Tim hissed, as he and Alaina turned on their heels and did just that whilst the drones dropped around them, their circuitry fried and behind them an angry pack of Carnotaurus tore into their Korean take-out as if it was the first meal of their lives.

Tim and Alaina retraced their footsteps as best they could and within half an hour they arrived, breathless, at the edge of the forest. The mountain looming before them was both daunting and humbling and having taken a few moments to catch their respective breaths they were about to begin their ascent towards the portal.

"Oi!"

Both turned at the shout to see Hoskins and Tina making their way quickly towards them, keeping to the treeline wherever possible.

"Was it you bloody idiots who set off the EMP?"

"Good to see you too, man," said Tim with a grin, slapping the man on the back as he spoke. "And no, that'd be the Koreans."

"Well whoever it was fucked us right up," Hoskins replied, gruffly. He was immensely pleased to see Timmy back to his old self, though he certainly had no intention of showing it. "Damn thing jacked the portal's electromagnetic field, probably screwed with a lotta' shit back at the POP, too. Means the only way home is going portal to portal an' I know you lot feel the same about that as I do."

"On the plus side we don't have to worry about the Koreans, not here anyways," said Alaina.

"No but thanks to them we've got a pack of Carno's caught out of their time, too."

"Oh this just keeps on getting fucking better, doesn't it?" Hoskins said, rolling his eyes. "So not only do we have to find another way home, we've gotta' detour to the Cretaceous and herd a pack of theropods along the way, and we gotta' do it without stunners?"

"Don't worry, Hoskins," said Alaina. "We'll think of something."

"Already did," said Tina. The redhead grinned and placed her large backpack to the ground. Flipping the flap back she reached inside and pulled out a rifle. "Plenty to go around, too."

"Like I said, Hoskins," Alaina said, grinning as she took a rifle from Tina. "No need to worry!"

"Right then," said Tim, cricking his neck as he spoke. "Let's go round us up some Carnotaurus!"

Volcano

Several miles ahead of the rest of the group and their roped Carnotaurus pack, Tina trudged onwards across Permian desert as in a clear and cloudless sky above, the Sun beat down ferociously.

She was not about to complain though. Despite the fact she had worked at the POP for almost eight years, she had been one of the first on the scene when the portal appeared though of course, she was in her second year of a degree in mechanical engineering at the time, dinosaurs still freaked her the hell out, as they did any sane and normal person. She was far more at home with technology, such as the device used to originally locate Timmy and Alaina's stun weapons since tweaked slightly to seek out portals by way of detecting their magnetic field.

As a group they had been going from portal to portal for weeks and the Permian was the fourth era in which they had found themselves.

It would have been an easy journey, too, had it not been for the fact portals were not in the same location, era to era. Over the course of history and prehistory there were many more of them, too, and no one knew exactly why though the working theory was that the amount of portals in a given era was directly proportionate to either strengths or weaknesses in Earth's electromagnetic field, so whilst there were only two known permanent portals in the early part of the twenty-first century there were scattered across the mid-Cretaceous, the POP's most well explored era, all of which led somewhere different.

She was following a rough route taken by those who had gone through the portal the first few times. Once the POP was formed the most logical course of action at the time had been to explore and that was exactly what had happened.

Hoskins had led eleven expeditions, visiting all manner of eras and plotting routes through time, should such a thing ever be necessary. He would have led more, too, had it not been for Korean involvement, but once it became clear the Koreans were looking to manipulate the portals, rather than protect them, a mission of exploration quickly became one of protection and preservation.

Soon Tina crested a rise and there was the portal, shimmering in all its glory at the bottom of what appeared to be a relatively easy, if incredibly rocky, slope. Matters were complicated, however, by the smoking volcano rising directly behind it.

From the portal's perspective the volcano was not an issue. Tina had witnessed a dozen eruptions in close proximity to a portal in a number of geological eras and every single time, the lava flow from those eruptions had somehow been diverted by the portal's magnetic field.

Should the volcano erupt before Hoskins, Timmy and Alaina arrived though, then actually getting to the portal could potentially prove to be a little tricky.

At least Hoskins knew the way. The only reason, apart from the whole herding Carnotaurus' thing, that Tina had gone on ahead was to ensure the route to the portal was clear and stable. Without radios, which they had but as there was no portal open to an era with any level of technology there was no signal, it was not as though she could call the others to let them know they needed to hurry but she had scouted ahead and intended to hold her station, watching for any change in the volcano's activity whilst being able to alert her companions of potential catastrophe as early as possible.

Release the Hounds

Shielding his eyes against the Sun, Hoskins stared at the figure stood atop what was essentially a mountain of gravel. It was definitely Tina, there was no doubt in his mind about that.

Two things though, were of great concern to him, the first of which was the vast amounts of smoke coming from somewhere behind the gravel mountain, quite obviously from a volcano. The second thing, and Hoskins suspected it was most likely directly related to the first of his worries, was the fact Tina appeared to be jumping and waving like a madwoman. He was almost certain she was shouting something, too, but the hot desert wind prevented him from hearing what, if anything, that was.

Out in front of him the Carnotaurus snapped at one another, something they had frequently done for the duration of their journey. He was incredibly glad, of course, that the ropes found in the remnants of the Korean camp back in the Oligocene were strong as all hell, and that the Carno's had paid him, Timmy and Alaina very little attention. It was almost as if they knew they were being taken home.

"Any idea what she's saying?" Alaina asked, turning to her right to direct her question towards Hoskins whilst simultaneously holding tightly to the rope in her left hand and by design, the trio of Carnotaurus under her care. "I mean, I assume it's something about that volcano..."

"If there's an eruption, or if there's about to be an eruption, it could make getting to the portal pretty difficult," said Tim. "You know, I remember almost getting caught in a Triassic eruption, and every creature in the vicinity whether they were foreign to the era or not headed straight for the portal. They ignored everything and everything else."

"I remember reading that mission report," Hoskins replied, gruffly. "Took us fucking months to put that right but it might be our best option, Timmy. Besides, this portal does take us to the Cretaceous. Wrong continent but right era... I could probably live with that."

"We're going to let these guys go then, and hope they ignore Tina?"

"They'll ignore her," Hoskins replied. "Besides, she's watching us like a damn hawk. She'll see what we're doing and make sure she's not on their path."

"Right then," said Tim, chuckling. "Release the hounds."

***

The very second Hoskins reached the top of the mound he received a surprisingly painful punch to the arm from an irate Tina.

"Do that again and it won't be a punch to the arm, it'll be a kick to the bollocks!" she said. "Seriously, do you know how fucking scary it is to have a thirteen-strong pack of Carno's running towards you?"

"You know as well as I do they were never gonna' bother you," Hoskins replied, defensively. "...probably."

"Yeah, and it's the probably I was worried about," she replied, breathing deeply of the air. So close to the volcano it was hot and acrid. "They all went straight through anyway."

"Then we'd best do the same," said Alaina. There was a definite reddish, orangeish tinge to the cloud of smoke as it rose from the volcano, and Alaina was most definitely not alone in wanting to get out of there before it became any more violent.

The foursome quickly made their way down the rocky slope, taking as much care as their pace allowed not to slip upon any loose gravel and they soon reached the portal. There was no time to waste, not least for the fact the volcano was now spewing actual lava.

Tim took the rear, passing through the portal after the rest of the team had done so.

"This ain't the Cretaceous..."

"Nope," Hoskins replied. "Definitely not."

"It's Tanchon. We're inside the Korean facility."

"How the fuck did that happen?" Tim asked as the four of them remained stationary but a few feet from the portal as it glowed and shimmered at their backs.

Before them lay carnage. Disorientated when they had passed through the portal several minutes before the humans, it seemed the Carnotaurus' had panicked and gone on the offensive. Several bodies, all of which had chunks of flesh torn from them, lay upon the ground.

And the blood.

There was so much blood.

"Door's open, and it wasn't the Carno's," said Hoskins, nodding towards the only exit from the room that housed the portal. "Damn idiots let the critters out. They'll wreak a shitstorm's worth of havoc."

"We should do something... though I really don't know what."

"Yeah," said Hoskins in reply. "We should head straight back through the portal, Tina, and take our chances with the volcano. I'd rather that than do time in a North Korean prison. Besides, if any of them survived they must have contingencies in place for a breach like this, just like we have."

"What if they don't have contingencies?" Alaina asked.

"They they're fucking stupid and will have Carnotaurus' running amok." Hoskins shrugged. "Either way, if we're discovered, nevermind if we get involved, we're screwed so let's turn on our heels and make like a big damn tree."

When Portals Become Public Knowledge

It was almost three months later when the team finally made it back to the POP and upon doing so they found it to be rather different. It was still the POP, there was no doubt about that, and Terry was still there as was Professor Dickson and countless other members of staff and personnel with whom they were familiar, but the facility was much busier than it had been when they left, and there were an awful lot more people there, too.

"What the hell happened out there?" Dickson asked. He and the four returnees were alone in the lounge area, the break room, as it was pretty much the only place in the entire facility that was not a hive of activity.

"Must've got turned around, Prof," Hoskins replied with a shrug. "That, or the damn Koreans hacked the portal somehow."

"Those are the only explanations we've managed to come up with, and we've had a lot of walking and talking with little else to discuss," added Alaina. "I take it you don't know, either?"

"No," replied Dickson, pausing to take a draw upon his electronic cigarette. "But what I do know is that for nineteen days, a pack of Carnotaurus were running free around North Korea and even in as tightly run a state as that, news of actual real and bona fide dinosaurs is going to get out."

"The portals are public knowledge?!"

"Yes, Timmy." Professor Dickson sighed, and scratched the side of his nose. "And because the portals are public knowledge, people and corporations looking to manipulate them are flooding out of the woodwork."

"Then the POP should be locked down," said Alaina, earnestly. "And what's with all the new faces?"

"They're just that; new faces," the professor said, shrugging. "And the POP will be locked down, but if we're to prevent prehistoric and future eras being destroyed, thus disrupting the present, we need to lock down every other portal found throughout those eras. That, my friends, is what is with all of the new faces. We're training new POP agents to man facilities across time, and Terry thinks he can make it possible to communicate between those facilities, even ones that aren't in the same era."

"He'll need some help with that," said Tina, getting to her feet. She left the room quickly leaving her three travel companions with the Professor.

"As for the rest of you, I have no problem giving you the decision as to which facility you run between you though as you are all the most experienced agents we have, I think it would be wise if you took a facility in what we suspect will be the era to see most activity; the Jurassic."

"Sounds fair enough," said Tim, nodding as Alaina squeezed his hand tightly. He knew how fascinated she was with that particular era and he could hardly blame her. The variety of creatures walking the Earth in the Jurassic, an era that began some two hundred million years prior, was incredible. "When do we leave?"

"Now, Timmy," the Professor replied. "Well, as soon as humanly possible anyway. Fill out a requisition form and grab your personal belongings. Facilities are already being built as we speak, though it will take several months before they are all complete so it's likely you'll be walking into a building site."

"Yeah, a building site with Sauropods baying in the distance."

"Sauropods I can take, Timmy," Hoskins replied, smiling. "It's the damn Allosaurus' I've got a problem with!"