ON THE horizon, the shadows of dinosaurs loomed. Fire spun through Amelia's veins as the darkness engulfed her; only it wasn't a dinosaur above her.

It was Ichabod, lifting his gigantic foot like she was a roach that needed to be squashed —

"Amelia." Tina nudged her awake as her eyes shuddered open, her lungs rasping for oxygen. The air around them was hot and sticky, but Amelia's leg burnt with even brighter ferocity. Her curly hair was plastered to her forehead, and she wiped it away, ignoring the goose bumps across her arms.

Tina moved slightly, and a quake went up Amelia's spine. She felt her friend's gaze boring into her as she tried to catch her breath, like she'd been running a marathon instead of sleeping. "You okay?" Tina was concerned, Amelia could tell as much, but what could she do when she figured out Amelia was ill?

Amelia herself had realized that, and her throat grew even drier as she thought about what was going to happen if she didn't get help. (From who? She blearily wondered. Her good mood that had been so vibrant before had evaporated completely under her fever, and she felt sick to her core. Ichabod won't be helping us, that's for sure.)

Amelia couldn't worry Tina, or Lale. They both had bigger things to worry about, and Tina had her own wounds to deal with. What sort of friend would she be weighing them down with worries that they couldn't help?

"Yeah," Amelia finally croaked. "Just thirsty."

Tina didn't look convinced, and Amelia didn't meet her eye as she stiffly got up, fighting against dizzy vertigo as she caught hold of her crutch. To emphasize on her point, she began to move towards the pond where most of their water had been coming from. It felt like a bloody cattle prodder was being dug into her ankle with every step she took, but Amelia gritted her teeth and barreled through it.

Denver, the one dude who had helped bandage up Tina, had been declared the unofficial water guard. Seeing her face, he handed her a small water purification tablet in a dissolvable capsule. Amelia just watched, too tired to offer help, as he rinsed a plastic bottle out in the water before filling it.

"Just wait a few minutes for the tablet to dissolve," he told her, popping the pill into the cap. Amelia took hold of the bottle gratefully. She didn't realize her hands were shaking until he, too, asked if she was okay.

She tightened her grip on the plastic to keep from fainting or snarling out a reply or both. "You look like you need something stronger than water, honestly," Denver said skeptically, which took her by surprise. Her anger vanished just as quickly as it had come as Amelia snuck a small, dry smile.

"You think ERAA's got anything stronger?"

"Besides from cough medicine? Nah." His eyes twinkled kindly. "Though, maybe if they'd have known what was gonna happen, they'd have packed something with a little more punch."

Amelia laughed, then took a sip of her water. It was lukewarm, and had a rougher, wilder taste than the rationed water they'd had from the start, but it did a great job of making her sound less like an old man who'd been smoking for thirty years and more like the almost-twenty-year-old woman she really was.

Almost twenty. She nearly dropped the water in surprise. "You think some of us have missed our birthdays?" The question popped out before she could stop it. Amelia's mind worked into overdrive trying to calculate. They'd left 2039 and had traveled for six months through time ... which meant that it was August-time for them at that moment, in the Jurassic.

August. Amelia had missed her birthday, by just a couple days. She was twenty! And you'll die twenty, too, an unwelcome thought hissed. Your leg's infected. How long d'you think you'll last?

"That slipped my mind, actually." Denver tousled back his cropped hair, eyes widening as he came to the same conclusion as she had. Despite her traitorous thoughts, Amelia couldn't help but grin. (Daryl, she forced out of her mind. Did he celebrate for me?)

"Dank." The guy looked around, at the other recruits who were bustling about. Even though it hadn't struck her before, Amelia realized then that they seemed relaxed. Relaxed enough to think that there wasn't a war brewing ... She sighed a wistful wish that she could be so oblivious.

"I wonder if anyone else has thought about that yet."

"Probably not," Amelia reasoned, taking another slurp of her water. There was the buzz of a bug by her ear, and she swatted it away irritably. Thank goodness it's a small one. "We've had bigger things in our minds."

"Yeah, of course." Denver trailed off, and Amelia kept quiet, thinking (again) on how all of this had started. The recruits could've been wiped out completely ... And yet they weren't.

She didn't know if she believed in fate, and hadn't really had time to ponder it between running for her life from dinosaurs and Ichabod alike, but it was dawning on her that maybe, just maybe, there was rhyme and reason in the pattern of life. Maybe, because they had cycled backwards, everything would start again.

The fever's getting to you, Amelia chided herself. She handed the near-empty water bottle back to Denver, who accepted it with a smile. "Thanks," she offered, a little awkward on what to say. She hadn't really socialized with the other rebels before, which made a pool of guilt form in her gut.

"No problem. You and Lale have big things going on, and most of us are just trying to follow after you two and help." Denver tilted his head and motioned to the other recruits again.

When you put it like that ... They were all floundering. She didn't correct him, though, and thought that was a good enough way to leave without looking rude.

As Amelia hobbled back to the cliff — Tina had moved elsewhere, which made her good humor sink a little, but she supposed she and friend couldn't be conjoined at the hip all the time — she felt someone's eyes sinking into her, like the fangs of a tiger into an antelope.

It wasn't a nice feeling. Amelia turned to face the source of it, and spotted a familiar figure standing at the edge of the vegetation that had crept up along the side of the waterfall. Lale looked away almost immediately, and her mood went from a jolt to nosedive downwards.

Lale, she thought, like he was a telepath. But he wasn't, and he didn't lock eyes with her again.

Amelia looked away too, back to the tree where she'd left Ed to lie. Some of the other recruits had gotten friendly with him, or at least borderline tolerant, and he'd been spoilt with more fish than he could eat in a day in an hour. It wasn't exactly what she'd have imagined for her very first dinosaur ... subject, though that sounded hard, and cold, and like something Ichabod would say, but there was nothing much she could really do about it.

Amelia joined the small dinosaur as he held his clawed paw over his face, his feathers twitching while he slept. He made little snoring sounds, but that didn't really bother her as she leant against the fern beside him, listless for something to do and yet content with not getting hounded with questions.

She looked out across the marsh, and in the afternoon light could see the shadow the warped structure Ichabod had constructed (within two days!). Her heart tightened a little as she let her eyes travel over the glints of the malevolent metal.

Movement further to the west caught her eye. She felt the gasp build up and release before she could even stop it at the sight of the broad-shouldered man and the dreadlocks that cascaded down his shoulders like black tar. Even from more than five hundred yards away, Amelia could tell when he locked eyes with her. A shiver ran down her forearms.

"Ichabod!" She managed to cry, though it was way too soft for the circumstances. Ed stirred and released a growl at getting awoken, but Amelia pulled away from the fern, feeling a whole lot stickier than before.

"He's coming!"

the Thermal Lake
one click from the Refuge

━━━━

It had been too easy to arrive, unnoticed and mostly unannounced, at Lale's li'l rebel camp. He felt that their gazes were on the horizon, staring at the TimePod he was building, rather than at the ground below where he had been walking.

Their mistake, Ichabod waved away dismissively. That was the art of the game, of course. Take advantage of others' weakest links. Lucky for him, all of the rebels were weak links. Wimps and daggers that stared peevishly at him as he finally stood at the center of the base where Lale and Amelia had presumably been plotting and planning useless ways to try and foil him.

Lucky for him, he knew about those, too.

(Another's weakest link the enemy's strongest ally. Ichabod had to bite back a grin and look solemn. He was still in uncharted territory, no matter how relaxed he made himself look. He'd have to be careful.)

Then there were the few, he couldn't ignore, who had brimstone and flames in their eyes when they glared at him. Eyes were narrowed, scowls forming premature wrinkles.

Lale and Amelia were such examples of that, and then, he had to chain in his surprise — Tina, too. Unlike her comrades, though, she wore a growing smirk.

I've grown lax. That realization made him grit his teeth together. He'd forgotten how to finish a job and finish it well. He'd become like the marines who did his dirty jobs for him; lazy. Tina should've died. But she hadn't, and he could already feel the prods of his father's ingrained disappointment in his mind.

Lale clapped his hands together to try and mask his unnerved posture, though he was certain Tina had already spotted it. "Hello, everyone!" He forced his voice to be perky, like a preschool teacher rounding up ragtag students. "So good to see some faces again."

Ichabod surveyed them all, then came to a stop at Lale. The other man's neck was corded, like he was constipated in his effort to stay calm. Ichabod could appreciate that, but his lips twisted into a sneer. "And others, not so much."

"Murderer!" Someone called from the semi-circle around him. Ichabod turned around, in the direction the word had been flung from. A few others were standing and blocking his exit; a brave attempt at trying to make him feel intimidated.

"You wound me," Ichabod said, not wounded in the slightest, though the slump of dejection was very real. When will these people see reason ... "Did I personally kill any of your friends?"

There was silence at this, though he could feel Tina's gaze slicing into him, and slicing him apart. It was one of the rare moments where his cool began to slip, and he paused to collect himself. The tension increased tenfold.

Carefully, Ichabod.

"The casualties were unfortunate," Ichabod's voice was stiff, and it was like the silence released an exhalation. The rebels around him began to murmur. Amelia gripped hold of Lale's arm. Ichabod tilted his head and followed the wounded girl's hand up to her face.

Smart. But sick. Her cheeks were drawn, her hair wet with fever rather than humidity.

"They could've been prevented," Ichabod declared louder, silencing the murmurs. "With this in mind, I'm proposing an ultimatum."

The word was like a crack of thunder to the rebels. James (oh yes, he knew who James was) lifted his hands for silence, even while Lale tore his hand from Amelia's grip. Ichabod spied her fist tightening around her crude crutch.

But maybe Ichabod was growing lax, because his attention had been on Amelia's hand rather than right in front of his face.

Lale was on him within seconds, taking hold of his shirt's collar. Just a few inches shorter, Ichabod held his ground and fought against the stirring in his stomach in surprise. The other man held his face close to Ichabod's own, close enough that he could smell the sweat and anger pouring from the American.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't rip your throat out," Lale snarled. Ichabod's chin brushed against Lale's tightening fists, which bunched the material of his shirt so tight it began to chafe.

Ichabod kept his tongue still of any words that could further anger Lale (he didn't want to kill Lale. He knew what the marine had done for his country; could guess at what he had sacrificed. Ichabod reckoned that could come in handy, if he could convince Lale to join his side) and gazed at him coolly. The tips of his toes were only just touching the ground.

Ichabod pricked a brow. A bead of sweat ran down it. "You really can't afford to."

━━━━