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Next: "Business As Usual"
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Series 5 Episode 9
"Taken"
Guest Starring: Lloyd Daniels
The Future Predator snarled as it crept over to a terrified Lloyd and Jess, who both knew to be absolutely silent. They backed against a wall, and Jess felt something against her leg, she looked down, and saw some sort of metal pole.
WHAM!
Jess hit the Predator’s head as hard as she could with the metal pole. Lloyd breathed a sigh of relief as the Predator fell lifeless on the floor. The anomaly closed afterwards. Lloyd and Jess hugged each other, relieved to still be alive.
“Thanks. You saved our lives”, Lloyd smiled.
“No problem. You can pay me tomorrow”, Jess laughed.
Bleep bleep! Bleep bleep! Bleep bleep!
The sound of the handheld Anomaly Detectors went off.
“It’s in the field, just about 10 minutes away”, Sarah told them, by looking at her Detector.
”Wait, there’s a music festival there today. I’m performing later on”, Lloyd told them.
”We better get down there, pronto”, Danny made a click-click noise with his mouth.
Backstage at the festival, the crew were busy making sure their performance went as smoothly as possible. But their job wasn’t made easy, when a bright light appeared in the corner. Each person backstage went over to it to investigate.
One person reached their hand out to touch it, and they felt nothing. He moved closer, and closer…
The person was submerged into the anomaly, much to the other people’s shock.
The people backstage heard a really loud scream from through the anomaly, and they were joined by a snail-type creature. It slithered over to them, leaving a trail of slime behind it. It was massive, about as tall as an average person. It opened its mouth, and a tongue like a frog jumped out, and wrapped itself around the nearest woman. She was pulled inside its mouth and devoured.
The team arrived and heard screams straight away. They ran round the back and through the back door.
”Split up, keep in two’s at least”, Cutter ordered. He and Jenny went round to the left, with the rest of the team splitting up aswell.
”Round here!”, Claudia shouted. Her and Danny had found the anomaly, in the corner of the room. In the opposite corner, two people stood, terrified. Claudia went over to them.
”Don’t worry, whatever was here has gone now. Can you describe what you saw?”, Claudia asked them. She was given the description of some massive snail with a tongue like a frog. Jenny then escorted the team out.
“What type of creature is that?!”, Connor was confused. He couldn’t think of anything that matched the creature in the fossil records.
“It’s either an undiscovered prehistoric creature”, Cutter explained, “…or a future one”.
“Wait, the anomaly, it closed, and this one opened. Coincidence?”, Connor brought up.
”The anomaly faultlines. It didn’t close, it moved here”, Cutter added.
“So that means the Predators could come through there?”, Mia verified.
“Yup, so let’s get this anomaly locked. Chop chop!”, Danny smiled.
The locking mechanism was set up, all ready in place, when Connor noticed something weird about the anomaly. It was slightly more blue in colour. He had seen this before, at the Oxford Street anomaly, when it re-opened.
But it wasn’t like this a minute ago?, Connor thought. He locked the anomaly, but it unlocked itself. Connor tried yet again.
“What’s wrong?”, Abby asked, walking up to him.
“I don’t know. It’s not locking”, Connor was getting a tad annoyed.
“Wait, that anomaly’s blue. It wasn’t earlier. Is this new?”, Abby fired another question at Connor.
“Err…yeah, it’s just happened. The colour of an anomaly isn’t quite the top of my priorities right now, Abby”
“Sorry. You just keep trying”, Abby smiled, patted him on the back and walked off.
“Right, I need to go to makeup now, I’ll catch you all later. Good luck with the anomaly”, Lloyd smiled. He ran off round the back to find the makeup department.
“See! Things didn’t turn out too bad after all”, Harry nudged Jess.
“You were right. Thanks Harry”, Jess smiled, and she hugged her.
“At least there’s one person here who’s the expert in relationships”, Cutter mentioned to Harry, once Jess had bounced away.
“Jealous?”, Harry joked.
“I’m the one who married a psychopath who’s tried to kill me many times, and apparently has in another universe. You think I’d be jealous?”, Cutter told Harry.
“Gosh”, Harry was in amazement, “I knew she was bad, but I didn’t think she’d actually kill you, you know what I mean?”
“Ask Abby, Connor, Sarah or Jenny. They know more than I do”, Cutter smiled, before walking over to Connor. Harry was intrigued, and decided to talk to her best friend, Sarah.
“Cutter’s just told me about him being killed by Helen once before, and said you’d know more?”, Harry asked her.
“Yeah, that was in another universe. Jenny’s world. Without Claudia. Cutter died. The ARC was formed long before it was here. Things were just so different”, Sarah explained.
“Was I there?”, Harry was interested.
“Yeah, you were there. Pretty much the same as you are here. Don’t worry, you’re no different”, Sarah told her.
“Phew. I thought you’d be best friends with that Marion woman in that world! What’s happened to her, anyway?”
“Not sure about here, but in the other world, she was killed by a creature”
“Oh. Sorry about that”
“Don’t worry. Wasn’t your fault”, they were interrupted by another large scream, this time loud enough to be heard by the audience.
Lloyd was inbetween songs when the scream was heard. People in the audience started wondering what that was.
“Don’t worry guys, just a technical difficulty”, Lloyd lied.
“What the hell was that?”, Mia asked, running up to Connor. The others joined, and were greeted by the large snail creature.
“What is that?”, Jenny looked disgusted at the creature.
“I HATE snails!”, Jess screamed.
“I’m going to have to shoot it”, Cutter decided. He pulled out his tranquilliser, but before he could shoot, the creature shot its tongue out, and it wrapped it around Cutter.
”NO!”, Jenny shouted. She took the gun from Cutter and fired at the creature. Unfortunately, just one tranquilliser didn’t work on this creature, and it let go of Cutter and took Jenny instead. It pulled her through the anomaly. Connor held Cutter back.
“It’s too dangerous to get her. We’ll go through in a bit”, Connor told him.
Lloyd finished his set of songs, and ran off stage.
“What’s happened? What was that scream?”, he asked as he met the team.
“It was a creature. It took Jenny”, Connor announced.
“Oh dear. Are we going to go and get her?”, Lloyd asked.
“I am. I’m taking Abby, Connor and Harry with me. The rest of you, stay here and watch this anomaly”, Cutter decided.
The Home Secretary strolled into the Minister’s office.
“Why are the ARC team at the scene of the anomaly again? My soldiers are fed up of sorting them out”, she moaned.
“Oh, did you not get my e-mail? They’ve been reinstated, thanks to James Lester, Lloyd Daniels and Captain Mitchell”, the Minister explained.
“You think you can get away with it?”, she asked him.
“You have no authority here. Security!”, the Minister called out.
“No-one’s going to help you”, the HS said, before clicking her fingers. The two soldiers either side of her took the Minister away.
“Mission accomplished”, the HS spoke into her earpiece…
Cutter, Abby, Connor and Harry stepped through the anomaly, into the familiar place of the future town. Buildings were destroyed, cars were rusty, and no sign of anyone or anything.
“Keep extremely quiet. Don’t make a sound”, Cutter whispered to his small team. They crept through the down, keeping an eye out for Future Predators, amongst other creatures. This place was also the home to Megopterans, and Future Mutts. Connor tripped over something on the ground, but managed to regain his balance before hitting the floor. He still made a slight bang. The team started moving slightly faster than before, incase Predators were on their way.
They spent half an hour searching, looking in every place they could see, but saw absolutely no sign of Jenny, or any creatures for that matter.
“We’re going to have to go back. We’ve looked everywhere”, Abby said.
”No. We’ve not checked underground”, Cutter thought.
“HELP!”, Jenny cried out. She was underground, as Cutter suspected. The snail had left her there, and she was terrified of the larvae creature just nearby. It was like the Giant Worms that they had faced in the past. But then she noticed something else, coming down the wall. A more familiar creature.
”Oh my god”, Jenny whispered.
Abby and Connor led the way to where they found Jack (Abby’s brother) when he was lost in this world.
“He was down there”, Abby whispered.
“Right, I’m going in”, Cutter decided. Cutter climbed down the stairs, and was greeted by a terrified Jenny, aswell as a Future Predator about to attack her.
“Damn”, Cutter said, as he saw the Predator. He jumped from the rope down to the ground, which was only a few feet, and ran to Jenny.
“My leg”, she told him, “It’s trapped”. He tried to move the plinth, but he couldn’t do anything. But that didn’t stop him. He heaved and heaved, and the plinth budged off her leg.
“Come on, I’ve got you”, Cutter lifted up Jenny. He tried to carry her up the stairs, but it wasn’t working.
”I think I can go myself”, Jenny thought.
”Off you go then”, Cutter tried to hurry her. He would watch her back. He took out a gun (bullet, not tranquilliser) and shot the Predator. It fell on the floor. Jenny slowly reached the top and was helped out by Connor. Abby and Harry then helped Cutter.
”Run!”, he ordered. They ran as fast as they could, with Cutter carrying Jenny, back to the anomaly. They shot a few Predators here and there, but as they reached the blue anomaly, there were an army of the snails forming in front of it.
“Wait, I’ve got a notepad! I’ll write a message, throw the pad through the anomaly and the team can help us!”, Harry thought.
“Brilliant idea!”, Cutter praised. Harry wrote “Surrounded by snails. HELP!” on the pad, and aimed it at the anomaly. She threw it as best she could, and it went straight through.
Waiting on the other side of the anomaly, Mia jumped back as the pad fell through.
“Surrounded by snails. HELP”, Mia read.
“What are we waiting for?”, said Danny.
Cutter and his team were crossing their fingers and toes that the others would come through soon. The snails were approaching, rather fast.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Danny shot the snails one by one.
“Great, you’ve just alerted loads of Predators”, Harry shouted.
“You’re welcome, by the way! I just saved your life and all you can say…”, Danny was cut off.
“The anomaly’s closing!”, Connor shouted. They then legged it to the anomaly, and jumped through. One by one, they landed on the floor, backstage of the festival. The anomaly snapped shut.
“Welcome back to the ARC”, Captain Mitchell said, as he and the team walked back into the New ARC for the first time since they were sacked.
“Feels like we’ve returned home after a long holiday”, Connor compared. Jess ran over to her chair, and sat down. Lloyd went over to join her, as she booted up the Detector again.
Waiting inside his office was James Lester. He had recovered from his Predator injury and was discharged from hospital. Claudia walked in, as it was her office too.
“Are you OK?”, she asked him.
“Never better. I never thought I’d say this, but I actually missed normal work”, he remarked.
But during this, the Home Secretary was meeting her real boss, Helen Cutter. She had the Minister tied up, and now she wanted Lester. He was the next highest figure associated with the team. With them gone, they’d have no-one to run to…
WHAM!
Jess hit the Predator’s head as hard as she could with the metal pole. Lloyd breathed a sigh of relief as the Predator fell lifeless on the floor. The anomaly closed afterwards. Lloyd and Jess hugged each other, relieved to still be alive.
“Thanks. You saved our lives”, Lloyd smiled.
“No problem. You can pay me tomorrow”, Jess laughed.
Bleep bleep! Bleep bleep! Bleep bleep!
The sound of the handheld Anomaly Detectors went off.
“It’s in the field, just about 10 minutes away”, Sarah told them, by looking at her Detector.
”Wait, there’s a music festival there today. I’m performing later on”, Lloyd told them.
”We better get down there, pronto”, Danny made a click-click noise with his mouth.
Backstage at the festival, the crew were busy making sure their performance went as smoothly as possible. But their job wasn’t made easy, when a bright light appeared in the corner. Each person backstage went over to it to investigate.
One person reached their hand out to touch it, and they felt nothing. He moved closer, and closer…
The person was submerged into the anomaly, much to the other people’s shock.
The people backstage heard a really loud scream from through the anomaly, and they were joined by a snail-type creature. It slithered over to them, leaving a trail of slime behind it. It was massive, about as tall as an average person. It opened its mouth, and a tongue like a frog jumped out, and wrapped itself around the nearest woman. She was pulled inside its mouth and devoured.
The team arrived and heard screams straight away. They ran round the back and through the back door.
”Split up, keep in two’s at least”, Cutter ordered. He and Jenny went round to the left, with the rest of the team splitting up aswell.
”Round here!”, Claudia shouted. Her and Danny had found the anomaly, in the corner of the room. In the opposite corner, two people stood, terrified. Claudia went over to them.
”Don’t worry, whatever was here has gone now. Can you describe what you saw?”, Claudia asked them. She was given the description of some massive snail with a tongue like a frog. Jenny then escorted the team out.
“What type of creature is that?!”, Connor was confused. He couldn’t think of anything that matched the creature in the fossil records.
“It’s either an undiscovered prehistoric creature”, Cutter explained, “…or a future one”.
“Wait, the anomaly, it closed, and this one opened. Coincidence?”, Connor brought up.
”The anomaly faultlines. It didn’t close, it moved here”, Cutter added.
“So that means the Predators could come through there?”, Mia verified.
“Yup, so let’s get this anomaly locked. Chop chop!”, Danny smiled.
The locking mechanism was set up, all ready in place, when Connor noticed something weird about the anomaly. It was slightly more blue in colour. He had seen this before, at the Oxford Street anomaly, when it re-opened.
But it wasn’t like this a minute ago?, Connor thought. He locked the anomaly, but it unlocked itself. Connor tried yet again.
“What’s wrong?”, Abby asked, walking up to him.
“I don’t know. It’s not locking”, Connor was getting a tad annoyed.
“Wait, that anomaly’s blue. It wasn’t earlier. Is this new?”, Abby fired another question at Connor.
“Err…yeah, it’s just happened. The colour of an anomaly isn’t quite the top of my priorities right now, Abby”
“Sorry. You just keep trying”, Abby smiled, patted him on the back and walked off.
“Right, I need to go to makeup now, I’ll catch you all later. Good luck with the anomaly”, Lloyd smiled. He ran off round the back to find the makeup department.
“See! Things didn’t turn out too bad after all”, Harry nudged Jess.
“You were right. Thanks Harry”, Jess smiled, and she hugged her.
“At least there’s one person here who’s the expert in relationships”, Cutter mentioned to Harry, once Jess had bounced away.
“Jealous?”, Harry joked.
“I’m the one who married a psychopath who’s tried to kill me many times, and apparently has in another universe. You think I’d be jealous?”, Cutter told Harry.
“Gosh”, Harry was in amazement, “I knew she was bad, but I didn’t think she’d actually kill you, you know what I mean?”
“Ask Abby, Connor, Sarah or Jenny. They know more than I do”, Cutter smiled, before walking over to Connor. Harry was intrigued, and decided to talk to her best friend, Sarah.
“Cutter’s just told me about him being killed by Helen once before, and said you’d know more?”, Harry asked her.
“Yeah, that was in another universe. Jenny’s world. Without Claudia. Cutter died. The ARC was formed long before it was here. Things were just so different”, Sarah explained.
“Was I there?”, Harry was interested.
“Yeah, you were there. Pretty much the same as you are here. Don’t worry, you’re no different”, Sarah told her.
“Phew. I thought you’d be best friends with that Marion woman in that world! What’s happened to her, anyway?”
“Not sure about here, but in the other world, she was killed by a creature”
“Oh. Sorry about that”
“Don’t worry. Wasn’t your fault”, they were interrupted by another large scream, this time loud enough to be heard by the audience.
Lloyd was inbetween songs when the scream was heard. People in the audience started wondering what that was.
“Don’t worry guys, just a technical difficulty”, Lloyd lied.
“What the hell was that?”, Mia asked, running up to Connor. The others joined, and were greeted by the large snail creature.
“What is that?”, Jenny looked disgusted at the creature.
“I HATE snails!”, Jess screamed.
“I’m going to have to shoot it”, Cutter decided. He pulled out his tranquilliser, but before he could shoot, the creature shot its tongue out, and it wrapped it around Cutter.
”NO!”, Jenny shouted. She took the gun from Cutter and fired at the creature. Unfortunately, just one tranquilliser didn’t work on this creature, and it let go of Cutter and took Jenny instead. It pulled her through the anomaly. Connor held Cutter back.
“It’s too dangerous to get her. We’ll go through in a bit”, Connor told him.
Lloyd finished his set of songs, and ran off stage.
“What’s happened? What was that scream?”, he asked as he met the team.
“It was a creature. It took Jenny”, Connor announced.
“Oh dear. Are we going to go and get her?”, Lloyd asked.
“I am. I’m taking Abby, Connor and Harry with me. The rest of you, stay here and watch this anomaly”, Cutter decided.
The Home Secretary strolled into the Minister’s office.
“Why are the ARC team at the scene of the anomaly again? My soldiers are fed up of sorting them out”, she moaned.
“Oh, did you not get my e-mail? They’ve been reinstated, thanks to James Lester, Lloyd Daniels and Captain Mitchell”, the Minister explained.
“You think you can get away with it?”, she asked him.
“You have no authority here. Security!”, the Minister called out.
“No-one’s going to help you”, the HS said, before clicking her fingers. The two soldiers either side of her took the Minister away.
“Mission accomplished”, the HS spoke into her earpiece…
Cutter, Abby, Connor and Harry stepped through the anomaly, into the familiar place of the future town. Buildings were destroyed, cars were rusty, and no sign of anyone or anything.
“Keep extremely quiet. Don’t make a sound”, Cutter whispered to his small team. They crept through the down, keeping an eye out for Future Predators, amongst other creatures. This place was also the home to Megopterans, and Future Mutts. Connor tripped over something on the ground, but managed to regain his balance before hitting the floor. He still made a slight bang. The team started moving slightly faster than before, incase Predators were on their way.
They spent half an hour searching, looking in every place they could see, but saw absolutely no sign of Jenny, or any creatures for that matter.
“We’re going to have to go back. We’ve looked everywhere”, Abby said.
”No. We’ve not checked underground”, Cutter thought.
“HELP!”, Jenny cried out. She was underground, as Cutter suspected. The snail had left her there, and she was terrified of the larvae creature just nearby. It was like the Giant Worms that they had faced in the past. But then she noticed something else, coming down the wall. A more familiar creature.
”Oh my god”, Jenny whispered.
Abby and Connor led the way to where they found Jack (Abby’s brother) when he was lost in this world.
“He was down there”, Abby whispered.
“Right, I’m going in”, Cutter decided. Cutter climbed down the stairs, and was greeted by a terrified Jenny, aswell as a Future Predator about to attack her.
“Damn”, Cutter said, as he saw the Predator. He jumped from the rope down to the ground, which was only a few feet, and ran to Jenny.
“My leg”, she told him, “It’s trapped”. He tried to move the plinth, but he couldn’t do anything. But that didn’t stop him. He heaved and heaved, and the plinth budged off her leg.
“Come on, I’ve got you”, Cutter lifted up Jenny. He tried to carry her up the stairs, but it wasn’t working.
”I think I can go myself”, Jenny thought.
”Off you go then”, Cutter tried to hurry her. He would watch her back. He took out a gun (bullet, not tranquilliser) and shot the Predator. It fell on the floor. Jenny slowly reached the top and was helped out by Connor. Abby and Harry then helped Cutter.
”Run!”, he ordered. They ran as fast as they could, with Cutter carrying Jenny, back to the anomaly. They shot a few Predators here and there, but as they reached the blue anomaly, there were an army of the snails forming in front of it.
“Wait, I’ve got a notepad! I’ll write a message, throw the pad through the anomaly and the team can help us!”, Harry thought.
“Brilliant idea!”, Cutter praised. Harry wrote “Surrounded by snails. HELP!” on the pad, and aimed it at the anomaly. She threw it as best she could, and it went straight through.
Waiting on the other side of the anomaly, Mia jumped back as the pad fell through.
“Surrounded by snails. HELP”, Mia read.
“What are we waiting for?”, said Danny.
Cutter and his team were crossing their fingers and toes that the others would come through soon. The snails were approaching, rather fast.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Danny shot the snails one by one.
“Great, you’ve just alerted loads of Predators”, Harry shouted.
“You’re welcome, by the way! I just saved your life and all you can say…”, Danny was cut off.
“The anomaly’s closing!”, Connor shouted. They then legged it to the anomaly, and jumped through. One by one, they landed on the floor, backstage of the festival. The anomaly snapped shut.
“Welcome back to the ARC”, Captain Mitchell said, as he and the team walked back into the New ARC for the first time since they were sacked.
“Feels like we’ve returned home after a long holiday”, Connor compared. Jess ran over to her chair, and sat down. Lloyd went over to join her, as she booted up the Detector again.
Waiting inside his office was James Lester. He had recovered from his Predator injury and was discharged from hospital. Claudia walked in, as it was her office too.
“Are you OK?”, she asked him.
“Never better. I never thought I’d say this, but I actually missed normal work”, he remarked.
But during this, the Home Secretary was meeting her real boss, Helen Cutter. She had the Minister tied up, and now she wanted Lester. He was the next highest figure associated with the team. With them gone, they’d have no-one to run to…
Next: "Business As Usual"
|