Signal Strength

"This Frank Morgan, who claimed he was from Hyde. He came after you, didn't he?" She had stopped at the door of the pub, as a thought occurred to her.

"How do you know?" Hunt answered suspiciously.

"Just a feeling."

"Not good enough. I need to know what you know."

The Controller sighed. She felt like an idiot not having put things together sooner. And even though she knew she probably shouldn't be telling these men too much, she also knew that they had already been dragged into the whole mess and deserved to know what was going on. She just wondered what, if anything, any of them would be able to do about it.

"Morgan had a daughter, Amanda. She wanted to follow him into, um, law enforcement, but he didn't feel like she was up to the task."

"Smart man."

She gave Hunt a sour look. It was that kind of attitude that had caused so many problems in the first place. Finally she continued, "Regardless of what he thought, she was determined. So she went through the training program and was finally given her first field assignment. Sam was her partner."

"Well, there was the problem," Ray snorted.

"Morgan agreed with you on that point then." She paused to give Ray a glance to see how that statement went down. He rapidly averted his eyes from her intense glare. After an uncomfortable pause, she continued. "It wasn't considered a particularly difficult or dangerous assignment, and no one, except for Morgan, was worried what might happen."

"The investigation was going nowhere, and the officer in charge decided to pull the plug on it. Sam was reassigned and Amanda was left to tie up a few loose ends." Her voice trailed off.

"So," Hunt finally snapped impatiently, "what happened?"

"No one really knows for sure. Amanda Morgan disappeared without a trace and was never found. An independent investigation was mounted without success. No one really knows for sure what happened to her. All I know is, after she vanished, Frank Morgan went on a personal vendetta against Sam Tyler, trying to prove that he was an unfit officer so he could have him removed and prosecuted in the case. It appears to me that he followed Sam here...and is trying to punish Sam and anyone associated with him."

"But what does that have to do with us?" Chris asked pensively.

"Don't you see? Morgan thinks that Sam took away his family, so he's going to try to take away the people Sam loves from him."

*********

"I've been waiting for you, Sam."

They turned towards the voice from behind them, Sam straining to see the face he knew must be in the shadows.

"What do you want from me? Why are you following me like this?"

"You really don't remember, do you? What you did to me? What you did to her?"

A sudden memory shot through Sam's head, painful, like white hot metal pushing into his brain. "Amanda."

"Ah, you do remember."

"I remember her. Working with her. But I did nothing to her."

"Oh that's true. You did nothing, nothing at all. Nothing to help her, nothing to protect her. You didn't even stay and help her finish her first case, did you?"

"That had nothing to do with me. I left because I was ordered to, I was reassigned."

"Oh, and is that why you abandoned Maya, too? Left her to be kidnapped by a killer?"

"What do you know about that?" Sam snarled, jumping towards the voice in the shadows.

Morgan laughed sarcastically. "You really are quite experienced at doing nothing, aren't you, DCI Tyler? You left Amanda, you left Maya, why you even let a gun-toting psycho walk into your squad room and shoot young Annie, here, didn't you?"

Annie started at the comment, at his knowledge of what had happened in a different time and place, at the offhand manner in which he referred to someone being shot, at *her* being shot. She shook her head. Had she been shot? What was going on?

*********

"Nelson, I need your help."

Nelson leaned across the bar towards the controller, beckoning her to come closer. "Do you suppose it would be better to talk about this somewhere else, eh?" He eyed the detectives behind her nervously.

"There's no time to be wasted. I just want to know one thing. Do you still have your transporter?"

*********

"I tried so hard to kill you, you know, Tyler, but you just wouldn't die. Do you know, Annie, why you're still alive? It's that lovely necklace that you're wearing, the one he gave you. It's what they use to travel to their assignments."

Annie looked down at the pendant around her neck, fingering it nervously.

"Yes, child, that's the one. It has an interesting little feature. It monitors the wearer's vital signs, and if it detects a life threatening state, it will immediately transport the wearer to safety. When I sent my man into the squad room to shoot you, for instance, it detected the trauma and transported you back to the Hyde base. By deconstructing and then reconstructing your very molecules, the bullets you took are no longer there. Quite an amazing technology actually. I still don't fully understand it myself." He glaced down at the pin stuck to his jacket lapel.

"But I do know this much. It can only transport the wearer to safety when there is an active beacon to follow. And how hard I worked to have those beacons turned off after I had him where I wanted him! Do you know how long it took me to stage the whole thing? All of the research I had to do in the databases, just to create an incident that would be serious enough to convince the program to send in an investigator, keeping him there long enough for them to believe the investigation was a dead end, making sure the beacon was turned off? Luring him onto that road, timing the turn, and then, seeing him standing there! Oh, that was just too good to be true. I had been completely prepared to die myself that day, simply ram him head on, but there he was, just standing in the road, like a dream come true." Morgan's voice trailed off, he stood looking towards the ceiling of the hospital room.

"It was you? You ran me down in the road? On *purpose*?"

"But you wouldn't die, would you? I couldn't believe my eyes when I stopped and got out of the car. I wanted to see you, I wanted to see you suffer and die for what you did to my Amanda, but you didn't die. You just disappeared, and I couldn't believe it. I knew I had turned off the return beacon at the base, but it took me months of further research to figure out that the advance logistics team had already activated the beam for your next assignment. I didn't tell them what had happened, I just knew I had to come back there and make your life as miserable as you made mine. You took my little girl away from me, and now I'm taking her away from you."

A single shot rang out before Sam could move.

**************

"Well, Mr. Evans? Are you prepared to file your report?"

"Yes, sir."

"And all personnel are accounted for?"

"The cleanup and logistics teams have returned with Morgan's body. They found this on the floor next to him." Evans held out a small lapel pin for the supervisor to examine. "His transporter. He removed it for some reason."

"He wasn't planning on coming back."

"Or he simply wanted it to all end there. Whatever the case, he wasn't wearing it when he was shot. I don't know how he did it, but Hunt arrived on the scene at exactly the right time and took him down with one shot. Saved Tyler's life."

The supervisor shook his head. He had never seen so many tangled timelines in all the assignments he had handled. "So what was Hunt doing with a transporter?"

"He told me he borrowed it from Mr. Nelson, sir."

"We've found Nelson, now, have we?"

Evans shuffled nervously. "Well, he was in 1973. When we managed to return everyone there to sort the situation out, he apparently took his transporter back and went on his way. I don't really think he wants to be found, sir."

"Well, then Evans, by all means, don't look for him. What about the rest of them?"

"It seems that Hunt and his team want to join the progam now, sir. Now that they know about us, it seemed prudent to move them to a different timeframe, for a while anyway. Somewhere in the 1980's, I understand. The Controller volunteered to stay with them. For training purposes, of course."

"Of course." The supervisor smiled at the thought of her in the field. He doubted that training was the real purpose, but who was he to question her motives? "Tyler and Cartwright?"

"They've been moved to an undisclosed time and location." Evans clutched the pendant Sam had turned over to him in his hand, reluctant to hand it over to the supervisor. "Neither of them retained transporters. As far as anyone is concerned, they are now living a linear timeline in the normal stream of time." If there was such a thing, he added to himself.

"Well, then, Controller Evans, if you are satisfied that everything is taken care of, I'll leave it to you to file your report and close the cases."

"Thank you, sir."

***********

Evans sat down slowly at the controller's desk, fiddling with the small pendant that had been in his pocket. He didn't think he would turn it in, not quite yet. Everything should be fine, but he thought he would hold onto it for a bit longer, just in case.

He leaned forward and keyed the communicator. "All clear, controller?"

There was a brief crackle of static, then the controller's voice. "All clear from here."

"Then we are declaring this case closed. This is Hyde base, signing off."

"Roger that, Hyde. Over and out."

Cross Talk

Can you hear me, Sam?

What was that noise?

Come back, Sam. Don't leave me.

The voice echoed through his head, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Sam? Where are you, Sam?

The voice, her voice, was so familiar. He turned to see her but all around him the world swirled in impossible shapes and colours. Suddenly a name formed in his mind. He called out to her. "Amanda? Where are you?"

I'm here waiting for you, Sam. Why didn't you come back to me?

Sam could feel his throat tightening, and as he tried to answer, reaching desperately towards the sound of her voice, he suddenly realized that he couldn't breathe. Gasping, he tried to call out, but his voice caught in his throat. All at once, everything went grey.

***

Gulping loudly for air, he sat bolt upright in the bed, arms flailing. When he realized that he could, in fact, breathe, he calmed down enough to look around him. A dream, it was only a dream.

It was a perverse fact of life among the field agents that the more assignments they took on, the more dreams they reported having about previous (or sometimes, they sarcastically reminded the psychotherapists, future) assignments. It was difficult enough to keep times and dates straight as it was, and the dreams of past and future sometimes jumbled together into an unintelligble mass. Even the most stable and seasoned veterans admitted that at times they simply didn't know where they were for days.

Sam glanced around the darkened room. His bedroom. In 2006. He pressed his hands hard against his eyes to try to kill the throbbing headache, then ran a sweaty palm through his hair. It seemed so stuffy, and he felt wet through and through. He threw off the bed covers and started at the sight of the outline of someone lying next to him. As he reached a tentative hand toward the sleeping form, a loud horn blast woke him rudely from a sound sleep.

***

Annie laughed to see Sam jump so high at the sound of the horn, and while he didn't appreciate the feeling of being so suddenly awakened from such strange dreams, he had to admit that it was good to see her smile. She turned away from his intense gaze to look again out the window of the bus at the changed city. Some of it she recognized, but most of the scene had changed drastically. She focused her attention on the passing buildings, resisting the urge to ask Sam who "Amanda" might be.

*******

"Amanda Morgan!"

The name had come to her suddenly, like a beacon shining through a moonless night sky. She remembered now, the girl who had been paired with Sam on her first assignment. Her name had been Morgan, Amanda Morgan. Her father had not wanted her to go on assignment, thinking it too soon. He had argued that she was too young, that she had not completed enough training. And when she had gone missing, he had blamed them all. But mostly, he had blamed Sam. She couldn't believe that she hadn't put it all together sooner. She just hoped there was something they could do from where they were.

She reached down and grabbed a nearly comatose DCI Hunt from his resting place partway under the table next to her. "Come on, I think I just figured out who was behind the shooting in the squad room." The big man lurched up to a standing position with startling speed, all at once all business and ready to go. He looked down on Ray and Chris, who were sitting strangely quiet, looking slightly dazed. "Coming ladies?" Ray suddenly smiled and stood up. He looked like he would be ready to follow Gene Hunt to the ends of the earth. Chris, he knew, would follow them both without questions.

"Where are we headed, and why?"

"I'll try to explain on the way."

******

"Why are we going to this hospital again?"

Sam hesitated. It was awkward enough to be going back into this place. He wasn't sure he could explain why he wanted to go back there. It was just a feeling that he had. He felt somehow like the answers were there. "This Morgan character that we're chasing after. The last time I saw him was here."

"Surely he wouldn't still be here, would he? Just hanging around waiting to be found?"

"I'm not really sure. But I think that he wants to be found. And I know that I want to find him. This is between the two of us, but he has tried to bring all of you into it. It has to stop."

Annie looked up at the cold grey building as she stepped off of the bus. It didn't much look like a place of healing to her.

Dust to Dust

How was he supposed to live with this? How was he supposed to live with himself?

She had always been there for him, the rock of his existence, the anchor of his soul. No matter how ugly or uncertain or utterly meaningless the world around him had become, he had known that he could come home to her and she would take him in her arms and assure him that everything would be alright. In his head, he had known that was not true, but when she held him close, in his heart he had believed it.

And now she was gone. How was he supposed to go on without her?

He knew it was his fault. Oh, the doctors had had some 5 pound word for it. Carcinoma something or the other. But he knew better. He knew that years of taking all of the cares and pressures and worries from his shoulders and carrying them on her own had finally taken their toll.

"Ashes to ashes..."

How was he supposed to sit here and listen to this?

"Dust to dust..."

Before he even knew what he was doing, he found himself struggling unsteadily to his feet. He felt a hand on his arm, trying to steady him, and looked down to see Chris looking up uncertainly. Chris, with is puppy dog look, staring up at him just like a faithful dog wanting to comfort its master and not knowing how. He shook his hand away, mumbling that he was alright and just needed some air. Nevermind that they were already outdoors. He just needed to get away. He lurched away from the group gathered around the grave and stumbled across the grass towards his car.

His beloved Cortina. Even if everything else in his life had turned upside down, at least it was still there for him. He wedged his bulk behind the wheel and started the car.

It was the last thing he remembered doing before he woke up in hospital.

----------------------------

He blinked slightly at the bright white light, uncertain of where he was or what was happening. He could hear faint voices whispering nearby without understanding the words. He turned his head slightly, slowly, carefully, not wanting to increase the screaming pain in his head but overcome by curiosity. He could see a small table next to the bed in which he was lying, but it seemed at the same time as if it were a million miles away. There was a small green plant in a plastic pot sitting on the tabletop, and even from this distance he could easily read Phyllis' name written in her large, commanding hand on the card stuck in the dirt beneath the greenery. Next to the pot, there was a gaudy postcard proclaiming "Greetings from Mexico." That would be Sam and Annie on their honeymoon. They had left over two months ago, and had not yet heard the news. Chris had faithfully brought Gene's post in every day when he visited, and he had kept a silent vigil next to the hospital bed every evening now for weeks. He didn't know what else to do with himself.

Gene's stealthy gaze now fell on Chris, sitting in an uncomfortable chair near the foot of the bed, trying hard to whisper quietly to Ray about the results of the day's tests. He was being, Gene thought, about as quiet as a cat in heat. For some reason, the random thought amused him, and he laughed slightly in spite of the splitting pain that resulted. At the foot of the bed, Chris and Ray started up like pheasants at the noise, then Ray bolted for the door to find the nearest nurse. "You're awake!" Chris enthused, much too loudly for Gene's comfort.

"Still as observant as ever," Gene mumbled, and Chris smiled to hear that the Guv was at least partially back to his old self.

---------------------------

"I'm not going to tell him, you tell him."

"No way am I telling him."

"Well, someone has to tell him. He can't just find out for himself."

Despite the fussing of the doctors and nurses around him, Gene could clearly hear the argument taking place in the hallway. What exactly was it that he needed to hear so badly and that no one was willing to share? When he had finally had enough, he waved away the nurse trying to take his blood pressure with a growling expletive that made the young woman blush. "Now, Mr. Hunt," the doctor said severely, "there's no need for that kind of language towards the nursing staff!"

"Then tell them to leave me the..." but a stern glare from the doctor cut him off in mid-sentence. That and a rather wicked looking needle that he held up in Gene's face. He decided to change the subject quickly. "What's all that noise in the hallway, anyway? What aren't they telling me? What am I doing in here at all?"

The doctor gave him a disapproving look, thought about it for a moment and finally opted to answer the questions rather than administer the jab. "You, Mr. Hunt, are here because you got falling down drunk and wrapped your vehicle around a telephone pole."

---------------------------

Now what was he supposed to do?

His car had been his independence, his identity, practically his manhood. It was not a question of replacing it. Nothing could replace it. What would the Lone Ranger have been without Silver? You certainly wouldn't have caught him going around yelling "Hi, Ho, Ginger!" or somesuch nonesense.

It was as irreplaceable as...she was.

----------------------------

"What's wrong, Gene, luv?"

He punched the pillow sharply in a vain attempt to reshape it into a more comfortable blob. "Nothing," he answered sharply.

"I can tell."

He threw his head back hard on the pillow and winced at the resulting pain. When he tried to stay awake, all he could do was think of her. If he fell asleep, he dreamed of her. He couldn't go back to work yet, but there was nothing to do but rattle around the place like an old age pensioner. He gave the pillow another punch for good measure, then turned over and reached out to touch her, but his hand fell on the empty bed beside him. Too many memories.

He had to get out of this bed, this room, this house. Out of this city, with all of the memories.

-------------------------

Gene stood outside of a building that would have passed for a rather poor version of a warehouse in his day. Apparently this was the type of place that the current generation looked upon as desirable , or even 'cool.' He had been told that this 'club' was where he could find Chris tonight. He shook his head at the thought that any of his officers might even consider entering such a place for a reason other than banging up a few drug-addled lowlifes. But after a few minutes of soul-searching deliberation, he finally brought himself to open the door and enter what seemed to him to be the gaping maw of hell.

It was not the blast of smoke or the overwhelming smell of booze that bothered him. That was almost comforting! No, it was the incessant throbbing, the pounding of the music in his chest, the flashing lights, the crush of bodies moving frantically. He wasn't even sure he would see Chris if he were standing next to him, or be able to talk to him if and when he found him. He stood for a minute, considering a strategic retreat, but suddenly there was a lull in the music, and he could see Chris across the room waving to him, calling him over to join him.

Gene pushed his way roughly through the crowd, determined to go through with his purpose for coming and then leave as quickly as possible, when the music resumed. An irritating electronic beat flooded out of the speakers, causing even more revilers to push their way onto the dance floor. The heat of the lights and the mass of dancers rose up and hit him as hard as an actual punch in the gut. He suddenly felt dizzy and light headed. Strangely, the calm voice of the singer intruded on his thoughts.

"...how do I feel, tell me now, how do I feel?"

He finally reached the far side of the dance floor and caught hold of the edge of a table, nearly knocking it over. Chris reached out and caught his arm. "You alright, Guv?"

"...if it weren't for your misfortune, I'd be a heavenly person today..."

Gene shook his head. "No, no, I'm not alright, Chris. I don't think I ever will be again." Chris stared up at his without comprehension.

"I'm leaving here, Chris. I can't stay here any longer. Can't stand it. An old friend of mine has offered me a job down in London, and I'm going to take it. I just wanted you to know I'm leaving."

"...how does it feel when your heart grows cold?"

Intermission

Annie looked down from the window of the apartment on the street below. The view was not so overwhelming as the fact that she knew where she was standing, knew where she *had been* standing; the knowledge that they were the same place, separated by decades of time for some people, but less than a year for her, was enough to make her almost physically ill. She wondered if it was something a person could become used to.

She could hear Sam rummaging in the next room. He had left her side the instant they had materialized in this place. Perhaps he didn't feel like explaining anything to her just yet. Perhaps he too was overwhelmed to be back in this place that he thought he would never see again. For her, this was merely an almost impossible place. She wondered what kind of emotions it held for him.

Annie turned away from the window and surveyed the rest of the apartment. It was everything that Sam's flat in 1973 was not; sleek, modern, uncluttered, shiny, it seemed almost as if it were not even lived in. Perhaps he spent so much time working in this time that he didn't think of this place as home at all. Perhaps he never did really live here.

She bent down to examine the sole decoration in the living room, a small framed photo of Sam with a dark-haired young woman. As she was wondering if this was perhaps 'Maya,' she suddenly realized that the sounds from the next room had ceased. She turned around to locate Sam and found him standing still in doorway, staring at her in a faraway manner. Straightening up abruptly, she stepped away from the photo, hoping that he hadn't seen her looking at it.

"Nice place you have here," was all she could think to say.

"You saved my life, you know."

"What?"

"You saved my life. That day on the roof."

"It was only the right thing to do. I couldn't just stand there and let you jump." She suddenly felt awkward. It didn't seem right to her to be talking to Sam about this. She began to turn away, but Sam stepped towards her urgently, taking one hand in his and turning her back to face him.

"No, that's not what I mean. If I had jumped, my transporter would have activated anyway. And I would have ended up...I don't really know for sure where or when I would have ended up. Maybe back here, or maybe back at base. I don't know, but that's not the point. Annie, I wanted to be a policeman because I wanted to help...people. I thought I could make a difference in the lives of families, of children. And I joined this program when I had the chance because it seemed as if..." His voice trailed off, the look in his eyes betraying the emotions he had been fighting to keep in. He shook his head and his eyes cleared.

"But somewhere along the line, it became just a job. Just a series of names and dates and facts. I was bouncing around from place to place without really going anywhere. I lost sight of what I was doing and why I was doing it." He dropped her hand. "I was tired of the life I was living, but I didn't want to die. And then I found you. You reminded of what was important, of why I wanted to do this job in the first place. You gave me a reason to live." He brushed her cheek lightly with his hand. "How can I ever thank you for that?" Then he turned away and added angrily, "Why did I bring you here?"

"We came here to find some answers. So let's find them. If that can let you leave this place in peace, that's all the thanks I need."

_____________

She remembered now why she had stopped working in the field. It was this direct interaction with other people, these complicated social customs, the messy emotions, the sheer untidiness of it all that had finally driven her from the front lines to behind a computer terminal. She liked to keep herself and her relations with other people under control, that was why she had opted to be a Controller, for heaven's sake! So what was she doing here, face down on a table in a pub, head aching, as she listened to these inebriated neanderthals droning on about a woman's place? She was not drunk, far from it, for she had only ingested one of the noxious brews that Nelson was handing out. But since she was not in the habit of partaking of any intoxicating beverages under normal circumstances, merely one had had been enough to induce a distinct feeling of discomfort. She was not in control of the situation, and she didn't like it one bit.

She held her head up slightly to see if there might be any way she could slip out of her seat unnoticed, but Ray, who had been going on loudly to Chris about something or other, suddenly turned to her with an intense stare. "And what I want to know, is..." He stopped awkwardly in mid-question and leaned closer to her face. "What did you say your name was again?"

That flustered her. Her name? She hadn't gone by any name for so long she wasn't even sure if she remembered it herself. But in her semi-smashed state, she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind, "I don't have a name, I am the Controller!"

Ray jerked his head unsteadily towards Chris. "She what?"

Chris strained to gather his concentration, and after considerable effort finally offered blearily, "Connie? I think?"

Ray turned his gaze back to her and continued his tirade, "Right, Connie, what I want to know is this, who were you talking to back at the station earlier? Him or me?" And he pointed an unsteady finger at Gene, who was gently gliding towards the floor even as they spoke.

The controller was confused. "What on earth are you on about?"

He leaned even closer. "Who were you talking to when you said 'pretty boy' earlier?"

Oh, that. Perhaps it was the lack of practice with social skills, or maybe it was the influence of the 120 proof alcohol, but she couldn't seem to stop herself from saying it. "I was talking to you," and she leaned over and gazed into those eyes. "And what's more, I might even consider kissing you if I thought I could find your mouth amongst all that foliage."

Not Ninja Style

Chris was nervous.

It was not so much the court appearance itself that had unnerved him. He had simply stood up and plainly stated what he had seen. He had told the truth, and that was nothing to worry over.

It was the look in the gangster's eyes, the cold stare that followed him down from the witness box, his face an expressionless mask, that had bothered Chris. He had not shouted or cursed him or hurled threats at him. He had not said a word. And that was perhaps the most frightening thing he could have done.

What, Chris wondered, did he have planned? For him to sit there like that, so calm, so confident, it had to have meant that he felt in complete control of the situation. The doubts plague Chris' mind all day. He nearly jumped out of his skin every time the telephone rang, and an innocent slap on the back from one of his fellow detectives had sent him scampering to the gents, barely holding back the urge to heave up. He wondered how he was ever going to survive the walk home.

-------------------------

It was not a long walk from CID to his parents' house, nor was the neighborhood a seedy one, but the route Chris usually took generally involved a few shortcuts through some back yards and at least one alleyway. He stood uncertainly at the top of the alley, torn between taking the shortcut, getting him safely home that much quicker, and sticking to the well lit street, which would take longer and expose him to more strangers. As he tried to make a decision, he suddenly had the feeling that someone was watching him.

"Who's there?" he called out, his voice cracking despite his best effort to sound unafraid. He took a step backwards, ready to flee the scene, but suddenly he felt a hand on his arm. A short, dark-haired man dressed in black with a wicked looking curved sword strapped to his back regarded him from the half shadow of the alley's edge.

The stranger seemed to be deciding whether or not to answer Chris' question, when a rush of pounding feet from the opposite end of the alleyway made up his mind for him. In a heavy Japanese accent, he told Chris, without any hint of sarcasm, "My name is Hiro Nakamura, and I have come to save your life."

----------------------------

By the time Chris regained consciousness, the brief but intense fight was already over. He gawked up at Hiro from the ground and asked the only question he could think of. "Are you a ninja?"

Hiro gave him a look of consternation as he sheathed his sword. "Ninja? No, not Ninjutsu, Battōjutsu."

Chris shook his head without comprehension as he stumbled to his feet. Looking around the alley at the fallen thugs who had been waiting in ambush, he gestured and asked helplessly, "But, why?"

Hiro clapped a hand on Chris' shoulder and looked at him earnestly. "Chris Skelton, you are a good cop. Soon, you will be a great one. That's all I can say." And before Chris could answer, Hiro was gone.

---------------------------

Sam surveyed the scene in the alley grimly. "Tell me again what happened, Chris."

Chris shook his head vaguely. "I was just walking and suddenly this man jumped out from behind the bins. That's all I remember."

"So you're telling me that one person fought off five hired killers with what appears to be a large knife?" He examined the vicious stab wounds in one of the bodies. "So what, are we looking at ninjas again, Chris?"

"Oh, no, boss," Chris answered before he could stop himself. "Not ninja style."

Phase Shift

Cadet Evans had barely had more than a minute or two to calm Annie down when another figure unexpectedly materialized in front of him. He was nonplussed, but Annie greeted the new arrival with enthusiasm. "Sam! I can't believe all of this! What's happening?" Sam did not answer immediately, but cast a dark look around the room. "Sam, where are we? What is this place?" Annie's voice had a slightly pleading tone about it. She recognized the look on Sam's face, and she knew she needed to pull him back to earth. Or here. Wherever that happened to be.

"Can't you even guess, Annie?" Sam turned from surveying the control room to face her. He had heartily wished he would never see this place again. "I told you where I was from."

"What? What do you mean? From the future, or from Hyde?"

"Yes. Both. I mean..." He trailed off. From the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice, he could tell she didn't want to hear any wild stories, she just wanted to be reassured that she wasn't going insane. He knew the feeling well. "I mean, this is where I came from. This is where I work. Where I used to work, anyway."

Cadet Evans brightened at the statement. "You're a member of the project? A field agent?"

Sam turned to him as if he had just become aware of his presence. "Yes, I was. Why?"

"You must be the reason why the controller went back!"

"What *are* you talking about?"

"I'm sorry, I'm just so excited to be seeing all of this." The young trainee tried to calm himself. The thought of merely meeting a field agent was almost too exciting for him to contemplate, and now here he was, talking to one in the flesh. "The controller was just demonstrating how the transporter and transponder would follow a guide beacon, and the next thing I know, here you both are!" He turned to Annie. "It's a great honor to meet you both."

But before Annie could respond, Sam interrupted. "What do you mean, 'the controller was demonstrating guide beacons'?"

"Well, she was giving me the basic orientation, and then suddenly she went off on a tangent about guide beacons. No, that's not it exactly. It was a specific kind of beacon she was talking about. What was it she said..."

"Return beacons?"

"Yes, that's it! Return beacons. And for some reason, she started asking me about them. I don't really understand why. We didn't cover that in our basic instruction. I thought she was just testing my knowledge."

"What exactly did she ask you about return beacons?"

"She said something like...um, she asked, 'Why weren't they turned on?' Does that make any sense to you?"

"She didn't know they weren't on?"

"Apparently not. But she must have gone ahead and activated them, because she told me to stay here and make sure that this," and he gestured to the control panel with the steady light still shining "that this stayed on no matter what happened. But it must be working now, because here you both are." And he smiled at them both, obviously pleased with himself that he had successfully completed his first assignment.

His satisfaction was lost on Sam. "She didn't know the return beacons were off. No wonder I was bouncing all over. My transponder was just following the closest active beacons." He turned back to Annie. "Come with me, I want to show you something." And, taking her by the hand, he headed towards the door. As an afterthought, he glanced back at the bewildered trainee hovering uncertainly behind. "Coming?" The cadet jumped up to follow them.

"Where are we going?" Annie asked. She allowed Sam to guide her down the seemingly endless hallways and openly gawked at the array of machinery on display through several open doorways.

"If my controller didn't know that the beacon..." he glanced at Annie and decided to simplify his explanation, "if the person responsible for bringing me back didn't know I couldn't come back, I want to find out the reasons why. Why the way back wasn't working, and why she didn't know about it."

"But how could you ever find any of that information?" Annie wondered aloud.

"I don't know if we can find all of the answers, but this is the place to start looking." And Sam turned aside into a doorway that seemed to Annie to have appeared out of nowhere.

"What is this place?" She looked around at the small space. The bare walls gleamed and there wasn't so much as a single cabinet or storage container in evidence. There was a small console and chair near the center of the room, but not much else. "And how could possibly find anything here? It's empty!"

"Annie, do you remember that I once said to you that I'd give anything for a good search engine?" She nodded uncertainly. "Well, I'm going to show you what I was talking about right here and right now." And he guided her gently into the seat. "I'm going to show you how to use this, and you're going to be surprised at just how much you'll be able to find." With that, he jabbed at a few keys on the console, and the monitor in front of Annie flickered to life. She gasped in sudden comprehension.

"Is this a computer?" Sam smiled at her despite his mood. Her talents were going to waste in 1973. He would have to see to doing something about that. "It is, isn't it? I heard about how them at university, about how much information could be stored on them. But I never imagined they were so small!" He wondered how she would ever react if she saw a mobile phone.

"Here, Annie. Just type in the name you're looking for, which would be me, and press this key here." He indicated the location on the keyboard and continued. "This will show you all of the most recent files on cases I worked on, and it will also show who looked at them most recently. We want to find out who was accessing my case files and maybe we can find out who may have known where I was and why I couldn't come back. While you're doing that, our young friend here and I are going to look at some other files."

Annie felt nervous about using the machine without Sam nearby, but before she could object, they had gone up the hallway and she was left on her own. She carefully typed Sam's name into the computer and pressed the key he had indicated. The screen filled with information, and she began reading. The first thing that struck her was the personal information. Date of birth, 24-05-1969. How was that possible? "I was 4 in 1973, Annie." Graduated from police academy training, 1986. She shook her head. Was this some elaborate prank?

She read further with growing apprehension. The list of cases carried random, and in some instances impossible, dates. The final entry stopped her cold. "Extended assignment, 2006," she read aloud to herself from the screen. 2006. "...from 33 years in the future..." From 33 years in her future.

"Investigate possible serial killings." She was unsure of the wording, but meaning seemed ominous. The entry ended abruptly, with only a single line at the bottom of the screen. Annie gaped in disbelief at the words. "File last viewed: 10-04-2612 Frank Morgan."

-------------------------------------------

"Frank Morgan? Are you sure?"

Nelson was irritated. Why did no one believe anything he said anymore? "Yes, that's what I said. Frank Morgan."

The controller was not amused. Who was this that Nelson was talking about, and what was he doing interfering with the program? "You say this Morgan character came in claiming to know Sam and to be from Hyde?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. But there's definitely something wrong with the man, you know what I'm saying?" Nelson leaned over the bar and dropped his voice even lower. "I was told that the mission was to clean up the CID here and to introduce and promote updated methods of policing. I don't know what that might mean where you come from, but I'm thinking it wouldn't include trying to frame DCI Hunt for murder. He may be many things, but he's a good cop."

She wasn't so sure about that from what little she had seen of the man, but if what Nelson was saying was true, then something very strange was going on. And she had worked with Nelson before. He had been a field agent himself for a short time, before he had decided to stay put on an assignment in the 1960's. What he was doing in this place was anybody's guess, but she was glad he was there. She knew he could be trusted.

Which was more than could be said for this man Morgan. He had turned up at the base as an observer shortly after Sam had departed on his mission to 2006. She had disliked the idea of having a complete unknown poking their nose around one of her active cases, but the supervisor had insisted that he be allowed to view case files and be briefed on the mission. He seemed to have some knowledge of the murders that were being investigated. At the time she had thought he had been there to help. Now the beginnings of an ugly thought were beginning to form about why he had been there. But before she could say anything more, a loud voice at her elbow announced, "That's right, I am a good cop. And you'd all do well to remember that." Gene Hunt turned to face her. "Buy me a drink, we need to talk."

She thought that a drink was about the last thing he needed, but before she could object, he leaned a little closer and added, "About Hyde."

She managed to talk Nelson into loaning her some local currency and a few free drinks and steered herself uncertainly to the table where Hunt was holding court at the center of the room. Well, it wasn't really in the center of the room, but his presence seemed to demand that the center of the room was wherever he happened to be sitting at the moment. Ray looked distinctly disappointed when Gene shoved him aside to allow her to sit next to him. "So," she asked as calmed as she could manage as she handed him his drink, "just exactly what about Hyde did you want to talk?"

"I've been doing some checking up. I know our Sammy boy graced us with his presence after they got sick of him there," (she nodded in agreement as he spoke, silently congratulating the logistics team on their thoroughness in creating Sam's backstory) "but, you, you're most definitely not from Hyde. And neither is your friend Frank Morgan."

-----------------------------

"What was Morgan doing here?" Sam was leaning over Annie's shoulder, reading the screen with equal amounts of confusion and something approaching fearfulness. The two men had returned quickly to the computer room when Annie had called out to them, but he had had no idea she would find such an outrageous result.

It was Annie who finally voiced the thought that Sam was fearing. "He's been two places you've been."

"Three, actually. He was there in 2006, also."

Annie looked at the screen again and finally asked the question that had been bothering her. "What does it mean when it says you were born in 1969, Sam?"

He shook his head slightly in something resembling surprise. Of all the questions he had expected after she had read the case file, that was not one of them. He had thought he had explained that to her, but apparently she had only been humoring him. How else could it be explained? "It means just what it says, Annie. I was born in 1969. Shortly after I finished my police training, I was approached by the program, as I suspect Cadet Evans here also was," to which Evans nodded in agreement. "I was sent on this particular assignment because it very closely matched my actual timeline." Annie looked confused at that statement. "It was close to the same time I would have actually been in if I hadn't joined the program." He suddenly looked wistful. "My mum just thought I had been away on long assignments..." But he shook his head at the thought. He couldn't afford the luxury of going down that particular road at the moment.

"Cadet Evans, you have proved yourself an expert at manning the return beacons. We're going to go finish some unfinished business, and you can be of help."

"What did you have in mind, sir?" Evans snapped to attention as if on parade review.

"Annie and I are going to complete this assignment in 2006."

Oscillation

Oscillation

It were times like this, Chris Skelton mused to himself from beneath the safety of his desk, it were times like this that made him really wonder why he had ever wanted to become a copper. It had been difficult enough to even get on the force to begin with. He had always been a clumsy child; there were vivid memories of hearing his nan talking to him mum. "It's just a phase he's going through, he'll grow out of it." But he hadn't. It wasn't that he was stupid, it was just that he was comfortable in his own little world. But sometimes he simply got tired of being lonely. From the time he had first met them, he had always wished he could be as cool as Ray or as fearless as the Guv. The truth was, he was happy they even tolerated his presence, and he was terrified that they would someday tire of him.

What would Ray think of him if he saw him like this, hiding beneath his desk at the first sign of trouble? He had been picking up the stack of file folders he had carelessly knocked on the floor when the nutter with the gun had started shooting in the hallway. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world at the time to just dive beneath the desk and stay put. But now that the shooting had stopped, he wondered how he was going to get out from under there with his dignity intact. When he heard the Guv bellowing at someone nearby, he knew that would be impossible, so he swallowed his pride (yet again) and pulled himself unsteadily out from his hiding place.

The squad room was strangely empty. He could have sworn he had heard Sam and Annie talking to someone just a few minutes ago, but neither of them were anywhere to been seen. Chris looked around carefully to see if he had missed anything important before approaching his DCI, who was at the present glowering down upon a young woman he had never seen before. He was fairly certain that he was going to get yelled at, but he figured he might as well be as prepared as he could before he put his foot in his mouth.

"What happened? Where is everyone?"

"Trust the boss to disappear at a time like this," came Ray's voice from behind him. Chris nearly jumped out of his skin. It was if Ray had appeared out of nowhere.

"A time like what?" was all Chris could think of in reply. But before Ray could answer, the Guv resumed his tirade, this time including Chris (and he had feared) and Ray.

"Some fat load of good you lot are! A shooter comes prancing into my squad room...my squad room! and where are you? You..." (Chris cringed as the Guv poked his finger in his face) "You were hiding, you..." (now it was Ray's turn) "were off only God knows where and Tyler has pranced off with Cartwright as usual, leaving me here alone with this one..."

"Excuse me? 'This one'? I'm standing right here, you know!" The controller had just about had it with this caveman and didn't particularly care who knew about it. "I am perfectly qualified to care for any policing task you might see fit to assign me! What is more, I am apparently the only person here who did not run away when the shooting began!" (She knew that was only a half truth. She had merely hit the floor when Agent Tyler had told her to. And had apparently hit it too hard, judging by the throbbing pain in her head and a missing 5 minutes or so of her memory. But she was not going to back down from this, this cretin, now.) "If there is anything that needs doing while Ag...Inspector Tyler is away, I assure you that I am more than equal to the task!"

"Oh, really?" A dark, sarcastic voice from behind her. She turned to face the voice and was struck numb by the fierce blue eyes burning at her. "Why don't you prove it?" Fire and ice. She had to almost visibly shake herself to break the spell of those eyes, but after a few seconds, she regained her composure.

"All right, pretty boy. Come with me and I'll show you how to do this job properly."

----------------------

Under normal mission circumstances, the logistics crews would be notified when an agent arrived on scene. They would have already prepared a cover story, with all of the necessary documentation and any supporting items that might be needed for the duration of the mission. Sometimes all that was needed were a few items of clothing or paperwork. Sometimes, they would have to construct nearly an entire lifetime, especially if an agent was going to being staying for a matter of months or years. A vehicle, a dwelling, financial records, maybe even a family member or two would be rounded up and waiting for the operative's arrival. The agent would arrive, the crew would hand over the necessary items and then they would leave. (The crew in Agent Tyler's case had been presented with a somewhat touchy situation. He had arrived on scene unconscious; while this was not entirely unprecedented, it was highly unusual and there was no clear direction on how they should proceed. They had tried their best to revive him, but when they had not been able to bring him back around after a few tries, they had to decide on a course. Should they simply leave before they were discovered by a random passerby? The crew chief had finally decided that it would be prudent for them to do their job to the best of their ability and then clear out. So they had dressed him as discreetly as they could [The crew chief's assistant had even had the absolute cheek to insist that he put his own jacket on the unconscious man, since it was 'cold and wet and they didn't want him to catch his death out there.'], thrown the paperwork in a nearby vehicle and had transported on to their next assignment. The chief had wondered the rest of his days whatever became of his beloved leather jacket.)

So there had been no one to meet the controller on her arrival in 1973. She hadn't really thought about her appearance or what she would do for food or shelter once she had arrived. She hadn't thought past finding Sam and bringing him back. Now she was going to have to do some fast thinking and even faster talking. She wondered just how gullible these locals might be and what kind of story she could feed them. As she sat in the front passenger seat of a frighteningly rickety vehicle of dubious road worthiness, her mind was more on the predicament in which she found herself than on where they were going. Apparently, the driver of the vehicle was having the same problem. He kept stealing sidelong glances in her direction, then quickly looking away if she seemed to notice.

It wasn't that Chris was intimidated by this woman. No, he was intimidated by all women in general. But this one in particular had very plainly and openly talked back to the Guv and stood up toe to toe to Ray. And she was dressed like something from...

"Woodstock?" he finally asked.

"What?" She stared at him blankly.

"Your clothes. You look like a hippie or something. Did you get to go to Woodstock?" He felt stupid asking, but he had seen footage on the telly, and he finally felt that he had pinned down her look.

"Well, um..." The controller didn't know what to say. She actually had been at the famous festival, had been backstage listening to Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townsend arguing about who would go on first, had been covered in mud and deafened by the sounds. That wasn't why she was there, of course, but still... "Actually yes, I was there. You would have loved it. Chris, you said your name was?" And she smiled at him broadly. He smiled back, both at the fact that he had gotten it right and that she had remembered his name.

"Chris, will you watch where you're going?" Ray snarled from the back seat.

"Oh, why don't you leave him alone? You're just jealous because you can't drive!" She had observed carefully and honed that barb for maximum hurtfulness. Ray folded his arms even tighter across his chest and mumbled something to himself. The controller turned her attention back to Chris. "And where are we headed now, Chris?"

"Well, we got a name from the shooter on a bloke who might be running some guns, so we're supposed to be headed down to find him. But we thought..."

"Yes?"

"Well, we thought we'd head down the pub since it's on the way. If that's alright with you."

That was more than alright with her. She felt like she could eat the covering off of the seats of the vehicle. And she was also sure that she could convince one of these two to pay for her meal. So when the vehicle came to a halt outside of a small establishment, she was the first one out of the vehicle and through the door. "The Railway Arms," she read out loud. "How quaint." She stepped up to the bar confidently and was about to speak when a familiar voice stopped her. "What are you doing here?"

"Nelson?" She was stunned. She hadn't seen Nelson since her first assignment. "What are you doing here?"

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."