MJF's Stories

The team were at the ARC, getting to know their new PR assistant, Lucie Campbell. It had been 2 days since their leader, Katie Smith, got stuck through an anomaly. The anomaly had not re-opened.

“Let’s hope she finds food and water”, Mike hoped. Lucie was a bubbly person, but also one who liked getting the job done. She took no nonsense, much like Katie. She had long brunette hair which was tied up in a ponytail. She wore a suit. Georgia said she’d find running really uncomfortable in that. Alex was the temporary leader until they got Katie back/they had had a permanent replacement. Ben Taunton, their boss, had a pile of people from the Minister that they could have. He didn’t particularly like any of the CVs he was sent.

DING DING! DING DING! DING DING!

“What’s that?”, Lucie asked. The team hoped it was at the local park. It wasn’t.

“It means we’ve found an anomaly”, explained Alex.

The Anomaly Detectors led the team to a lake. An anomaly was sitting on top of it.

“We need to start checking the lakes. Nothing could’ve got out of the lake yet, it’s been open 5 minutes”, Captain Allen said. He got right to it. The team were advised to do nothing. Just watch around the lake.

“Is this it?”, moaned Sasha.

“Well, at least it’s not life threatening”, Jimmy added.

“But that’s the fun of it”, Sasha replied.

“Why don’t you go back and look through those CVs that Ben has? You should be able to choose your leader”, a soldier suggested.

“Excellent idea!”, Georgia cried. They all got back into the car and drove off.

“Why are you back so early?”, moaned Ben as soon as the team arrived back at the ARC. 

“Nothing was happening with the anomaly, so we thought we’d look through these CVs for you”, Mike mentioned.

“I’ve already looked”, retaliated Ben.

“They’ll be our leader, we should be able to choose”, Alex replied.

“Why do I bother?”, Ben sighed.

Three hours later, the team had finished discussing the candidates. They had lowered it down to three people, but they weren’t up to Katie’s standard.

“This is hopeless”, sighed Georgia.

“Why don’t we just go and get bored at the anomaly site, instead of getting bored here?”, suggested Jimmy. The team agreed.

“I’ll call Allen”, Sasha decided. She dialled his number. No answer. She dialled another soldiers number. No answer.

“Must be too busy”, Sasha thought aloud. They all went to the cars.

Not long after, the team arrived. No-one was in site. The other cars had all doors open. There were drag marks in the mud.

“Something’s got them”, Alex stated.

“Well done for stating the bleedin’ obvious”, Mike sighed.

“Leave him alone, he’s doing his best”, Georgia scolded.

“Sorry, it’s just that I miss Katie”, Mike apologised.

”We all do, but we need to carry on. That’s what she’d do”, Alex decided. They all nodded. Suddenly, something that looked like a walrus jumped at them. They all ran out of the way. It chased them back to the cars. Another car pulled up, and distracted the creature. A pretty young woman with long blonde hair walked out and jumped straight of the way of the creature. Jimmy and Mike got their guns and started shooting it. It got hit, and lay dead on the floor, as lifeless as a blade of grass - until it woke up and grabbed Sasha. The woman dug her high heels into it, killing it stone dead, for definite this time. Sasha thanked the woman, and they introduced themselves and the team. The woman was Louise Hill.

“You’ll need to come back with us”, Alex commanded. Louise followed the team in her car promptly behind the team’s.

Louise had impressed Ben, so he asked the team if they’d like her to be their new leader. They all agreed, even though no-one would live up to Katie. They went to ask her. She said yes, after 10 minutes of non-stop thinking.

Monday morning: wake up, hit the alarm, shove a bowl of cornflakes into his mouth then drive to work. Alex hated mornings they made his life feel so normal. Maybe his life was normal...apart from the ARC part of course, although that now seemed like a dull office job. Since Katie got displaced on the other side of an anomaly work was just work. The day she disappeared he'd cried, he went home and got a call from the hospital, his mum had died. Alex hadn't cried and he certainly wasn't crying now.

He walked into the main operations room of the ARC and smiled at Georgia. No he didn't smile he made a curved shape with his mouth but it wasn't a smile, he wasn't smiling inside. Georgia curved her mouth back, he thought Georgia liked him but maybe she was just using him, maybe she wanted money, or company or someone to laugh at. Why was he thinking this! Where is the good Alex? He asked himself. He knew the answer; the good Alex was on the other side of the anomaly with Katie. He realised he was still standing in the doorway so he walked over and sat with the team. Good team, not so good Alex.

Alex was in his rubbish tip of a lab looking in the mirror, he saw a tired long haired man looking back at him. That hair, he'd have to get that cut then, they wouldn't laugh at him. Stop it Alex! They are your friends! His phone bleeped and he ran out the door.

Alex had wired his phone up to the anomaly detector so it would tell him when an anomaly opened. He'd had an argument with the team last week about whether to take the DNA from certain creatures to bring them back from extinction. He had delayed the alarm on the detector so the team would be a few minutes late. That's all he needed.

"5 chicken selects with fries and a coke, 2 McNugget Happy Meals and a double cheeseburger" said the obese Mother of the noisiest kids in the play area. Jason nodded and typed the order in the machine. He popped open the till to get the woman's change and found it empty.

"Bear with me ma'am, I just need to restock my till" he grumbled before walking into the back of McDonalds with all the speed of a Woolly Mammoth. A slightly faster Woolly Mammoth whacked him into the back of the chip fryer with its hairy trunk.

Jason woke up with a headache, he jumped up and looked round. He saw a hairy backside in the ball pit; he grabbed the closest thing to him and headed towards it. He'd picked up a bottle of fairy liquid and, when the mammoth looked at him, he sprayed it in it's eyes. The hairy beast shrieked then stampeded to the front doors of the store. And straight into an armoured truck.

Alex slammed the back doors of the truck and got into the drivers seat. He checked the camera in the back, a Mammoth, only a baby. He drove down the motorway then turned off into a small village. He pulled into a run down, spooky house with a fairly new garage. His Mum's house. He backed the truck up to the garage and pressed the door release button then opened the back of the truck. There lay the Mammoth; he let the last of the sleeping gas mix into the air before going into the garage. He had converted his garage into a lab for his studies away from work. He had all the equipment ready to take a sample of the Mammoth's DNA.

The Mammoth had died as soon as it entered the armoured truck. He'd used too much gas, amateur mistake! He couldn't bring himself to do anymore so he drove the truck back to the service station where McDonalds was located, dropped the Mammoth in the car park and went home.

He sat in his flat and cried for Katie, his Mum and the Mammoth. His doorbell rang and he went to answer it. It was Georgia - he invited her in and she laughed at him. He realised he had no trousers on but sat on the sofa with her anyway. " I saw you in the car park, Alex" she said, not sounding at all disappointed.

"I killed it! It was all my fault!"

"You made a mistake, it happens to everyone! But you shouldn't have gone off on your own, we're a team and we all have our skills"

Alex felt better, no he felt normal. Good Alex was back, maybe Katie will be back soon?

Guest Stars:

Lucy Brown and Lloyd Daniels.

Louise Hill was sitting at her desk in the ARC. She was settling in at her new job as team leader. However, her team weren’t happy about the change. Their previous leader, Katie Smith, got stuck through an anomaly to the same era the Raptors came from, the Cretaceous era. They bonded with her, especially Alex, so change was hard. Louise felt like an outcast at times. The team always said “Katie wouldn’t do that”, “Katie would do this”, and everytime they said that she felt upset.

”Let’s just hope they come round to it eventually”, Louise thought aloud.

Claudia Brown was at home, ill. She wasn’t really ill, she was upset that her sister, Katie Smith, was reported dead due to “unknown causes” on the news. She rang Alex, Katie’s friend and colleague.

“Hi”, Claudia greeted him in an upset tone of voice.

“Hi, I guess you’ve heard about Katie”, Alex replied.

“Yeah. How did she die?”, Claudia tearfully asked.

“She isn’t”, Alex answered.

“She’s not?”, said a shocked Claudia.

“Well, we don’t know. She got trapped through an anomaly, the same one that leads to the home of the Raptors”, Alex explained.

“Oh. When was this?”, Claudia had her hopes risen and dropped a bit. She knew there was still hope though.

“About a month ago”, Alex told her.

“A MONTH?! Why didn’t you tell me?”, Claudia exclaimed.

“We weren’t allowed. My boss said we couldn’t tell you. We wanted to make sure she was, well, not coming back before we told you”, Alex calmed Claudia down.

“I’m coming over”, Claudia said. She flipped down her phone before Alex could agree.

Tom Bradshaw was walking through the park. He saw a ginger haired woman walk past. He thought he recognised her. He just dismissed it and carried on walking, as his stomach was grumbling.

“Katie’s sister’s coming to visit”, Alex shouted out as he entered the Main Operations Room of the ARC.

“Who, Claudia?”, Mike asked.

“Yup”, Alex replied.

“Why is she coming?”, Ben shouted down from his office.

“She saw the news. She thought Katie was dead. And she wants to have a word with you about not letting us tell her the news”, Alex answered. Ben was not happy.

Tom was sitting at a bench eating fish and chips. He thought he was being watched. He looked up from his food and saw a pretty woman with long ginger hair - the same woman he saw earlier.

“I know you, don’t I?”, he looked around to see if anyone else noticed. He looked back. She was gone. No sign of her.

It was three long hours by the time Claudia had arrived, and she’d brought some friends. Jenny and Lloyd from the main ARC had come with Claudia. They were stopped at the security gate.

“I’m Claudia Brown, Katie Smith’s sister. Alex is expecting me”, Claudia told the security guard. He let them through. They got out of the black car and walked to the entrance and through the long ARC corridor. Claudia pushed open the doors to the Main Operations Room dramatically.

“Hey!”, Claudia shouted when she saw Alex.

“Hi. Nice to see you guys again”, he complimented them.

“Who’s your leader now?”, Jenny asked.

“I was temporary leader, but we now have Louise Hill, who’s new”, Alex explained.

”Is this Katie’s sister?”, Lucie Campbell asked.

“Yes, I’m Claudia, and these are my friends, Jenny and Lloyd. Who are you?”, Claudia introduced herself and her friends.

“I’m Lucie, the team’s PR rep. Are you twins?”, Lucie replied, pointing at Claudia and Jenny.

”No, it’s a long story. I’ll explain later”, laughed Jenny, “Oh, and by the way, you do my job here”.

“Cool!”, Lucie replied. She knew they were going to get on like a house on fire.

“Claudia”, came a booming voice from above. No, not God, it was Ben Taunton. Scarier than God.

“Ben”, replied Claudia.

“Why don’t you step into my office?”, Ben offered, faking a smile.

“I’d be delighted”, fake smiled Claudia.

Tom was just walking round the local park, eyeing some pretty girls.

“Tom”, called a voice. A female voice. Tom turned around. It was that same woman, hiding behind a tree. He went over to her.

“What do you think you’re playing at?”, Tom shouted at her.

“Listen. I’m not here, not fully. I’m bleeding through the faultlines. I’m stuck in the past. I need you to do me a favour”, the woman told him. Does she think I’m stupid? Tom thought, but he listened anyway.

Jenny and Lloyd were catching up with the team. Louise came out.

“Hi, you must be Louise. I’m Lloyd and this is Jenny”, Lloyd introduced them.

“Hi. Is Jenny Katie’s sister?”, Louise asked.

”No, that’s Claudia who’s speaking to Ben in his office”, Lloyd replied. Louise nodded.

“Come and join in”, Jenny invited Louise to come and join the conversation. She was a little wary at first, but she went and sat next to Jenny.

“You didn’t think to let me know?!”, shouted a furious Claudia. She was close to going as red as her hair and steam coming out of her ears.

“We didn’t know whether she was OK or not”, Ben shouted back.

“Yet you told the news stations before me. Do you know how hard it is to find out your own sister is dead on the news?”

Ben didn’t reply.

“I thought not”, Claudia finished. She stormed out and went to sit with the team.

Tom drove up to the ARC. The woman had given him directions to get there. He had a message to give them. He was stopped at the security gate.

“I’ve got a message to give the team. A woman called Katie Smith told me to come here”, Tom explained.

The team and friends were called out to the security gate. Someone apparently had a message to give them. An important one. They all had to go. The security guard left the man in the car to it.

“I’m Tom. Katie Smith told me to tell you that she wants to see you at the local park”, Tom explained. The team’s faces all went blank. 

Guest Stars:

Lucy Brown and Lloyd Daniels.

The team, Jenny, Claudia and Lloyd were utterly gobsmacked. They’d just been told that the team’s old leader, Katie Smith, once thought trapped through an anomaly, had got someone called Tom to tell them she is back. Well, partially back. Tom explained on the way to the park, where Katie was.

“She said she’s bleeding through the faultlines”, Tom explained.

“What on earth does that mean?”, Georgia asked.

“It could mean that something is happening making everything fall apart, people appearing in the wrong places or times”, Alex explained.

“So Katie’s not fully here yet?”, Mike questioned.

“Evidently not”, Claudia replied.

They arrived at the park. Alex felt relieved. He hadn’t been himself since Katie went, and the team knew that full well, especially Georgia. Alex didn’t just feel relieved, he felt over the moon. Katie wasn’t just his boss, she was a good friend, if not his best friend. He was always an outsider, being the “geeky one” at school. Katie and the team helped him connect a little, despite becoming even more of an outsider not being able to tell anyone about the job. With Katie gone, he didn’t feel he could fit in any more.

“She said to meet at this table”, Tom told them. The girls all sat down, and the boys stood up around the table. They left a space for Katie. Suddenly, something started to appear. They saw the woman with long way ginger hair, jeans and a top slowly fade in. She was sitting on the bench at the table next to Claudia and Georgia.

“Katie, where are you?”, Alex asked.

“I’m here, partially. I’m also in the same place as the Raptors. The desert-type place. I’ve fended for myself. I have a gun, so have been killing the Raptors and eating them. I found a lake aswell. Not the cleanest water, but it’ll do”, Katie replied, “I can’t stay too long, part of me is still back there. I don’t want a Raptor eating me!”. Everyone cracked a smile.

“How can we get you back?”, Jimmy questioned.

“You still need an anomaly for that, one of which doesn’t seem to be opening. Anyway, it could lead to anywhere”, Katie answered, “Or, we could wait until these faultlines end up breaking and things burst through into our world, well, yours at the minute. Not just me, deadly creatures too”. The team looked shocked. Katie shrieked. Then she disappeared. They all panicked.

“What if a Raptor got her?!”, quivered Alex.

“It wouldn’t be a shriek like that. Maybe the faultlines closed? Maybe something worse? But it’s nothing to do with Raptors”, Jenny denied.

“We need to get back to the ARC. Do another search for the co-ordinates. They may be deleted after a day from the Detector, but when things get deleted, they only get moved. Find that place, Alex!”, ordered Louise, who had been sitting there rather quietly.

“Let’s go!”, said a cheery Claudia.

They all got to work to try and rescue Katie. Alex was sitting at the Detector with Georgia. Her hand was around him, and he seemed to like it. Every now and then they would look each other in the eyes and smile. Louise was encouraging everyone, finally getting into the spirit of being the team leader. The rest of the team were searching through papers, seeing if the co-ordinates were printed.

Katie fell onto her back. The shock of being pulled back from 2010 was overwhelming.

“Something’s gone wrong!”, Katie thought aloud. She saw a Raptor running towards her. She started running to her hideout. She looked behind, and when she looked back, she was back in the park. She looked, and she was no longer a hologram. She was there in full. She looked behind, and so was the Raptor. The faultines were really bleeding through. It was overloading.

The team were working hard still at the ARC, until BOOM! The Detector gave a few sparks and went dead. The lights went off. No electrical goods worked.

The same was happening around the world. All TVs, computers, lights, fridges, etc. went off. And creatures were appearing everywhere. Everyone had to run and hide. No-one was safe…

Guest Stars:

Lucy Brown, Lloyd Daniels, Jason Flemyng, Douglas Henshall, Andrew-Lee Potts, Annabel Scholey, Hannah Spearritt, Laila Rouass, Lenora Crichlow and Ben Miller .

“What’s happened?!”, cried Alex in despair. The Detector had given in, and so had all the lights. Suddenly, they heard a roar from down the corridor…

“I know that roar”, quivered Sasha, “It’s a…”. She was cut off by the creature bashing through the doors.

”GORGONOPSID!!!”, screamed Jenny. The team ran as fast as they could in all directions, confusing the Gorgonopsid. They ran out the doors behind it.

“How did it get here?”, Mike asked as they were running.

“I don’t know”, Alex was confused, “We need to go to the park, that’s the weakpoint”.

Down in London, the other ARC team faced the same dilemma. The Detector broke down and all lights and electrical goods stopped working.

”What’s happened now?!”, moaned James Lester, head of this ARC.

“I don’t know!”, Connor Temple, the brainbox of the team, replied.

“We need to find out, it could just be a loose circuit”, Danny Quinn, the joint team leader with Nick Cutter, thought fast.

The Lincoln team arrived at the park. They had to run over a Raptor or two on the way there. The park was ridden with creatures of all sorts, but there was something, or someone, else there, hiding behind a tree. Katie. The team ran over there, with Mike and Jimmy tranquillising a Raptor on the way. Katie was terrified.

“The faultlines collapsed. I’m actually here, and so are they”, Katie explained.

“Can’t we just tranquillise them all and send them back through the right anomaly to their respective time periods?”, Lloyd suggested.

“And travel all around the world to do it?”, Katie added.

“You mean it’s global? No way!”, Georgia was shell-shocked.

“Yeah, the electricity, the creatures, everything. All around the world”, said Katie. The team were worried.

“I’m going to give Cutter a call”, Claudia decided.

“Hello”, Nick Cutter answered his mobile phone.

“Cutter, it’s me. This thing with the creatures, it’s worldwide”, Claudia explained really fast.

“Calm down. So, it’s all over the world. How?”, Cutter was confused.

“I’ll pass you over to my sister”, Claudia passed the phone to Katie.

“Hi Cutter, it’s Katie. I got trapped in the past a few weeks ago. I woke up one morning after my sleep and found I was in a park up here in Lincoln, in the present day. I looked at myself and I was like a ghost. No-one noticed me. Then I re-appeared back in the Cretaceous era. It happened at awkward times. The problem was, I was still visible in the Creataceous era, which meant Raptors could kill me and I would not be able to fend against them. But I survived. I realised that the Raptors sometimes did the same. I came to conclusion that the faultlines between times were collapsing around our time, and they have now collapsed. Creatures from all eras have spilled into the world, and this has caused the electricity to cut”, Katie gave a long explanation.

”Wow”, Cutter was surprised, “But what can we do to fight against it?”.

“We need to find an anomaly, any anomaly, and basically “shock” it”, Katie told him.

“How did you know that?”, Alex asked.

“I…don’t know”, Katie was confused, “Bye Cutter”, Katie finished her conversation with Cutter and threw Claudia her phone.

Cutter explained what happened to Katie and how they could stop this catastrophe.

“I can build something that can omit an electrical pulse into something”, Connor suggested.

“Good man Connor!”, Cutter was impressed.

“Alex, can you build some sort of device quickly to send an electrical pulse into something?”, Lucie asked Alex.

“Yeah, I think so”, Alex wasn’t confident, but Katie was confident for him. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. There were about 8 sleeping Raptors surrounding the team thanks to Mike and Jimmy. They all ran back to the cars and drove back to the ARC.

It was three hours later and both teams’ device was ready.

“All we need now is an anomaly”, Jimmy thought.

“I’ve got this”, Lloyd brought out an Anomaly Opener. He pressed a button and an anomaly opened in the middle of the ARC. Claudia got out her phone, making sure it didn’t get sucked into the anomaly.

“Hi Mia, it’s Claudia. Has Connor finished?”, Claudia asked.

”Hi. Yeah, Connor’s finished, but have you seen the news? It says thousands of people have died already”, Mia told Claudia.

“That’s why we need to do this now”, Claudia hurried Mia. She flipped down the phone.

“Connor, let’s do it now!”, Mia shouted. Connor ran to the device.

“Abby, open the anomaly!”, Connor ordered. Abby Maitland did so. This time, Sarah Page called Claudia as Mia and Cutter were behind Connor.

“Hi, it’s Sarah. We’re ready”, Sarah updated Claudia.

“OK, put me on speaker”, Claudia commanded. Sarah did that, “Right, on my command, we’ll both do it together. After the count of three…one…”.

Alex was nervous. If he didn’t do this, he could be responsible for a lot more deaths.

“…two…”

Connor was excited. He really wanted to be a hero.

“…three!”. Both Connor and Alex pressed the button and an electrical pulse was sent through the anomaly. The anomaly closed in on itself in both locations. The lights went back on, the Detector rebooted and, when they looked outside, all creatures had gone.

One thing the Lincoln team had noticed: Katie was fading away.

“It seems to know I was in the past before this, and it looks like I’m going back”, Katie was starting to cry. So were Alex and Claudia.

"Wait!”, Louise suddenly said. She had been pretty quiet since Katie came back, “Can we switch places?”.

“Maybe”, Katie thought, “Hold on to my hand, if it’s still here”. Louise held Katie’s hand. She had a tear running down her face.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”, Katie asked. Louise nodded, “They love you Katie. They prefer you to me, and that would’ve always been the case”.

“OK. Now concentrate really hard”, Katie commanded. Katie and Louise closed their eyes, and eventually, a light appeared that covered the whole room.

Alex woke up, “Katie?!”. He looked to see if the process worked. The light had gone. The process had worked, for Katie was lying on the floor.

”KATIE!!”, Alex smiled. He went and kneeled next to her. Georgia put her hand on his shoulder.

“Wake up Katie”, Alex hoped. He started to worry afterwards. He checked her pulse. There was no pulse. She wasn’t breathing aswell. Alex and Georgia hugged.

“It can’t be”, Alex couldn’t believe his eyes. Katie started coughing. Alex smiled again.

“Why am I down here?”, Katie was confused. Claudia got up and hugged her.

“Woah, what are you doing here?”, Katie had so many questions. She had forgotten it all.

It was two days later when Alex had a brainwave. Claudia, Jenny and Lloyd had all returned home.

“Hang on, can’t we open an anomaly and rescue Louise aswell?”, Alex felt pleased with himself.

”Who’s Louise?”, Katie asked.

”Brilliant idea!”, Sasha praised Alex’s brainwave. Lloyd left his Anomaly Opener for the Lincoln team, so Alex picked it up and got the co-ordinates for the era from the Detector. They all stepped through the now-open anomaly. They instantly saw the body of a blonde woman in the sand, with blood all over.

”That’s horrible”, Georgia cried.

“The Raptors got her”, Lucie stated.

They all stepped back through the anomaly.

“Why don’t you all go home and rest?”, Ben suggested after the team told him what had happened. They all did. Alex and Georgia decided to go out together for lunch. Neither really felt like eating though. Katie and the others went home to relax. Katie was still confused. She just shrugged it all off, despite remembering nothing of the last few weeks.