Relative Strangers (Book 2) No Man Is An Island

28. The Artifact

E wasn't one for goodbyes, so after saying farewell to Matt she collected her things without another word, and vanished once again.
She had more than one house in the present, but she decided to head to the one closest to the ARC.
It wasn't technically a house, as it was just an abandoned building, but E had taken it over to make it serve her needs.
The locks on the doors and windows prevented anyone from breaking in, but E didn't keep anything in there that was overly important to her, just in case anything happened to it.
In order to keep herself distracted, E threw herself into her work.
It had been a long time since she had worked on her anomaly project. But she decided it was time to finish it.

Fear had stopped E from continuing with her work, as she had been scared that she would die shortly after finishing it.
But eventually she decided that not completing it, wouldn't actually keep her alive. So she decided to continue with her project.
The artifact they had found in the future had brought so much pain and destruction to E's life. And it was the thing that had let to her mother's downfall.
When they had first found the artifact they'd had no idea what it was or where it had come from.
But when E started doing her own anomaly research, she realised that she was going to become the creator of the artifact.
When she thought more about it, she realised how much sense it made.
No one else knew more about the anomalies than her, so of course she was going to be the one to plot every single anomaly and create the artifact.

As the weeks went by, E hardly even stopped to rest, as she was desperate to finish her project.
Matt rang her every couple of days, but followed E's request not to visit.
She knew that he could easily track the phone signal to find her, but she just had to trust that he wouldn't do it.
Normally, E never would have carried around a device that could give away her whereabouts.
But E trusted Matt, and she trusted that even if he did track her down, he wouldn't tell anyone else where she was.

It took 7 weeks for E to finish plotting her anomaly map. But she had succeeded.
There had been a lot of ups and downs throughout the process, but eventually she had done it.
She had worked out where and when every single anomaly would appear.
A lot of the work was theoretical, since E had not seen every single anomaly in the world, in person, but she felt confident that her research was sufficient to back up her theories.
All anomalies followed a basic pattern, before leading to a conversion of anomalies where dozens would appear at one time.
Once that was over, the anomalies would go back to their normal routine, until the next conversion event hundreds of years later.
This meant that they could be predicted.
Her father had created his own research model many years earlier, and Helen had worked out when and where all the anomalies in the present would appear, so that she could use them to her own advantage.
But E had been the one to bring all the research together and place it into one device.

Holding the artifact for the first time in years, was very unnerving for E.
She had no proof that her's was the original, and not just a copy made with the original design. But she had a hunch that it was.
E felt very protective over it, as she had spent years creating it, and she knew that at some point Helen was going to destroy it.
She had all the coordinates on several devices, so that she would never lose all her work.
But she was still terrified of the artifact falling out of her possession.
When they had found the artifact, it was abandoned in the future. And E didn't want that to happen any time soon.

At the end of the 7th week, E received word from Matt telling her to return to the ARC.
He hadn't said exactly why, but E trusted that he wasn't calling her back for no reason.
Once she had packed her bag she stepped through an anomaly into the ARC, where the team was waiting for her.
"Did you miss me?" Asked E, after she had closed her anomaly.
Matt approached her and threw his arms around her, locking her in a hug.
E squeezed him back and made no attempt to leave his embrace until he released her.

"Well?" She questioned, staring straight at Lester who was stood directly in front of her.
"It's done" revealed Lester.
"The last of the paperwork was finished this morning. Elizabeth Island officially belongs to Britain, and is not to be sold at any point, because of the dangerous nuclear materials still on the island" added Matt, as he winked at E.
"So, Harold can't buy it from us?" Asked E, who almost couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"No one can. The creatures will be safe forever" reassured Abby.
"And no one will be able to tamper with the anomalies" added Connor.

"So, has Harold ordered his men to leave the island yet?" Quizzed E.
"We don't know" answered Lester honestly.
"Why don't you know?" Frowned E.
"We couldn't reveal that we know what he's up to, or that he has already started building on the island. You're the only one who has seen the truth, but we couldn't exactly say that you told us could we"
"So Harold might still go ahead with his plans in secret?"
"He might. But more likely he will try and move as many creatures as he can from the island, before erasing any trace that he was ever there".

"Then we have to stop him before he transports the creatures somewhere else. Because if he takes them, we'll never get them back" admitted E.
"Don't worry. He won't take anything that doesn't belong to him" replied Abby.
"So, we are going to go there and stop him?" Asked E.
"Well, we aren't going to go in there all guns blazing, like you would have us do. But we are going to head to the island, and one way or another, we are going to stop him" answered Lester.
"We'd better get going then. We need to stop him before he takes even one creature from my island" announced E.
"And so we shall" promised Matt.