Static

Static

DI Sam Tyler was on his knees on the floor yet again, and frankly, he was sick of it. It seemed to him that he had spent the better part of the last two years of his life viewing the world from a perspective approximately 18 inches lower than everyone else. When would it end? He was tired of being punched, kicked, handcuffed to furniture, tied up, beaten up, yelled at and generally abused. Why was he even putting up with it?

Two reasons came to mind. Annie, of course. And, he had to admit, Gene. He genuinely liked Gene, although he would never confess it out loud. It was hard to not like Gene, actually. He was a force of nature that swept over you like a storm. You simply couldn't resist him. He wouldn't let you.

Annie, on the other hand, had gently found her way into a corner of his heart that he had been previously unaware of. He could close his eyes and remember every outline of her face, her hair, her eyes. He had honestly loved Maya, but he had always kept her at a distance, knowing that he would have to leave her someday. She had felt that distance and had tried to fight it, but in the end it wasn't enough. Annie, on the other hand, had been unwilling to be satisfied with only a part of Sam. She had asked him to stay with her, and he had promised he would. He had even given her token of his sincerity. And after all of that, now she was...

"Gone. She's gone." He reached out to the spot where she had been standing seconds before and grasped the empty air. He had never felt so helpless or alone in his life as he felt at that instant. His hands dropped to the floor to steady himself as room began spinning around him. How could this have possibly happened?

He turned part way around to see his misson controller sprawled on the floor next to him. He didn't know for sure what feeling was stronger at the moment, his shock at seeing her or his complete and bitter anger at what had happened. He wasn't sure how, but it had to be her doing. He reached down and pulled her partially from the floor. "This is your fault," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Why did you have to come looking for me? Why couldn't you just leave me alone?" She looked at him with a dazed expression, uncomprehending. He let go of her and slumped further to the floor, covering his face with his hands.

The controller struggled to a sitting position, trying to remember what had happened. It had all transpired to quickly, she wasn't certain she could trust that it had happened at all. She recalled transporting smoothly into 1973 without incident. She had found herself in an undeveloped wasteland, but that was as it should have been. It would not do to transport into the middle of a crowded city center with hundreds of civilians looking on. She had known that she would find him at CID, so she had gone there without a second thought, and she had been shown into the squad room without so much as a second look. It was at this point that things had gone downhill quickly.

Sam had seen her standing there and come over to where she was waiting, demanding to know what she was doing there. A young woman sitting at a nearby desk had taken a sudden interest in their conversation and had walked quickly over to a nearby filing cabinet, making a great show of looking for some report, then turning to ask Sam where she might find it. Even after he had told her where to look, she had continued hovering there, eyes glaring in her direction.

Then suddenly, there had been shouting in the hallway, and she had heard a gunshot. The young woman who had been jealously guarding Sam had cried out, but when they had turned to her to see what was the matter, she had slumped to the floor clutching her chest. Sam had fallen to his knees next to her, calling her name, reaching out for her, but in an instant of time, she had disappeared. Someone somewhere had cried out a warning to get down, and she had complied without thinking or even looking around her to see where she might land. When she finally came around, it was to hear Sam screaming an accusation at her as he shook her awake. Her fault? How could any of this be her fault?

"My fault? What are you talking about?" She looked around the room unsteadily. "Where is everyone?"

"She's gone, and it's your fault. If you hadn't come looking for me, this wouldn't have happened."

"What? What were we supposed to do? You disappeared and then reappeared in another time, you wouldn't respond to our attempts to contact you. Did you think I would just give up?"

"Give up? You didn't even activate a return beacon! Do you know how long it took for me to figure out what happened? I was bouncing around like a pinball, not knowing what was happening or why, until it finally, finally, occured to me that it was all a stupid accident, every bit of it. I wasn't supposed to have come here when I did in the first place, and I wasn't supposed to have gone back to 2006. When my life was in danger, I was supposed to have gone back to Base. But you didn't bother to switch on the beacon to bring me back, now, did you? Once I realized that, I came back here, and I was going to stay here. Forever. With Annie. But now she's gone, because you finally decided to switch on a beacon and come looking for me."

The controller looked around the room again, searching for a sign of the young woman she had vaguely remembered seeing earlier. Where was she? What could possibly have happened to her? It seemed as if she had been shot, hit by a stray bullet flying randomly through the squad room. How could she have just disappeared...

"Surely she didn't transport back to the base...I mean, how could she have? She didn't even have a transponder."

"I gave her mine. Didn't tell her what it was, of course. I just gave it to her as a token that I was serious when I said I'd stay with her. She wore it all the time."

"Why on earth did you do something like that?"

"I didn't have any more use for it." He stopped to consider. It had been a foolish thing to do, he realized now. But he was sure he had deactivated it before he gave it to her. He was sure of it. "You've got to bring her back."

The controller nodded gravely. That much was very true. "I'll do my best." She reached for her transponder, preparing to activate the transporter. But Sam's hand suddenly shot out and caught her wrist. "No. You'll do better than that." And before she could react, he had snatched her transponder from her hand. "You can stay here and explain to him what's going on." And an instant later, he was gone.

"Explain what to who?" she said out loud to the empty air.

"Well, you could start by explaining just who you think you are and what you're doing in my department!" The bellowing voice from behind her made her nearly jump out of her skin, and she whirled around to find herself staring at the god-awfulest tie she had ever seen in any decade of any century she had ever been in. She found herself looking up and then up again in an attempt to find a face to talk to.

"I'm, I'm..." she groped for words. "I'm filling for Sam. He had to take care of something. Emergency came up."

"What, a bird filling in as my DI? No way I'm having another woman on my team. I've already got Cartwright, and that's one too many as it is. Where is she, anyway?"

"Um, yes, about that. She and Sam had to go..."

"Oh, let me guess, back to Hyde?"

"You know about, about Hyde?"

"More than you might think, sweet cheeks. More than you might think."