Acacia Thalia Lykaious has been with the ARC team since the very beginning but her walls begin to crumble after watching Stephen lose his life. She's struggling to come to terms with the loss of Stephen and her mother and the years of emotional abus...
The city was a ghost. London, usually a symphony of honking taxis and chattering crowds, was eerily silent. My eyes scanning the deserted streets from the driver's seat of my Range Rover felt a familiar prickle of unease.
"Jess, I'm in the city and it's completely empty" I say as the empty streets start to freak me out.
"People are probably are in hiding or trying to leave the city, Matt says the road to New dawn are jammed and it's taking him longer to get there and the ADD is over run by anomalies and I don't have enough people".
"Jess calm down you know what you are doing, I'm sure -"
I rounded a corner onto a normally bustling Regent Street, expecting more emptiness. Instead, a sea of rough, leathery hides blocked my path. Dinodontosaurus. Huge, herbivorous reptiles with tusks like overgrown daggers, a species I've only ever encountered in textbooks. They milled about, confused and placid, munching on phantom foliage that shimmered with an unnatural, iridescent glow. An anomaly, then. A big one.
I gripped the steering wheel, my stubborn nature warring with a surge of something akin to awe. These creatures, impossibly out of time, had somehow stumbled into modern day London. I couldn't just leave them. With a sigh that was half exasperation, half determination, I put the car in park. "Alright, you overgrown lizards" I murmured, voice a low rumble in the quiet "Let's get you home".
I opened the Rover's door, the engine a defiant purr in the stillness. The dinodontosaurus barely registered my presence, their massive heads still lowered in their bizarre grazing. I pulled one of the fake plants from the street and walked towards one and used both of them a bait to lead them back to the anomaly.
One by one, I coaxed them through. It was a slow, painstaking process, my heart aching for their displacement. The air thrummed with the energy of the portals, each one a fleeting window to another era. As the last dinodontosaurus disappeared into the golden light, the shimmering sparkle continued to flicker but hoping that no more creatures come through again. The street was empty again, save for the lingering scent of ozone and something ancient. I got back into my Rover, the silence now feeling less like a scream and more like a held breath. One job done on to the next.
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I squinted at the swirling vortex of emerald light, around me, a chorus of high-pitched chirps and frantic scrabbling filled the air. Ten baby Tyrannosaurs, no bigger than overgrown chickens, skittered and bumped against flower pots and lamp poles their tiny, sharp teeth nipping at each other and at the flowers.
"Alright, you little terrors" I muttered getting out of the car "you're going home and you're going now" the anomaly pulsed, a beacon in the heart of what looked suspiciously like Hyde Park. Clearly the reports had flooded in about strange seismic activity and inexplicable dinosaur sightings and luck must have been on our side as nobody was out looking for the creatures but I know there will be a few idiots looking.
