MOTHER-SMELL was approaching.

Ed opened his eyes and twitched his claws, the sweet scent of Mother-smell entering his nostrils. Her eyes were soft and her teeth were blunt as she murmured sooth-noises, which prompted a slight chirrup from him. Other Friend-smells were walking around, but there was no fish beside him. He'd finished it all the day before.

Ed chirped again, baring his fangs as he swiped his stumpy tail. Hungry hungry, he nudged Mother-smell. Hungry food Mother-smell.

Mother-smell leant away from him, which made him tilt his head. Mother-smell smelled different that morning. It was morning, Ed could tell, because the Harsh Bright was glaring right into his eyeballs. He'd first seen the Harsh Bright when he had emerged from his Small Place, and he didn't like it very much. He had liked the Small Place better, because it was damp and warm even if it was small. And it smelled like ... like ...

Ed couldn't remember. Each day he forgot more about his Small Place, but Mother-smell was nice, and gave him food and sat with him. She made soft noises but they sounded good to him.

The day before there'd been a Not Nice-smell man who had roared loud noises. He had smelled like dinosaur blood, and Ed hadn't liked him. Mother-smell smelled scared at that moment. All Friend-smells did.

That confused Ed. Mother-smell was his mother-smell. She had to protect him, didn't she? Why was she scared? Did that mean Ed had to be scared too? Ed was scared, because he was hungry and Mother-smell had a sickly scent, like the one fish he had eaten only to spit it out later because it had been disgusting.

Mother-smell made more cooing noises, and that made Ed feel calmer. His small heart pattered in his chest, a steady thrum-thrum-thrum in his head. Mother-smell took something that smelled like small him, smelled more like the Small Place, and wrapped it around him.

Ed squirmed as she tightened the Small Place smelling-thing around him. He slashed his small claws and Mother-smell hissed. Why was Mother-smell angry, and why did she limp? It was a game, wasn't it? Play catch-the-limp-thing. Ed wanted to play, but the thing around him was tight and he squalled.

Play play catch limp! Hungry!

Ed's heart thrummed faster as Mother-smell took him deeper into the Green Dark place. Leaves batted at his snout and he opened his jaws and bit into them, but they tasted disgusting, like that fish! He shook his head and was annoyed. He was hungry and Mother-smell was not feeding him, only walking and taking him further into the Green Dark place.

Ed was happier when Mother-smell finally freed him from the Small Place-smelling thing. She dropped him on the ground and he looked around and back up at her, chirping a question. Play Mother-smell? Food? Catch game play?

Mother-smell made more noises. They sounded slower than usual. Why were Mother-smell's small eyes filling up with salty-smelling water? Was this a defense mechanism? Ed squeaked and puffed up his feathers. Catch, Mother-smell!

Mother-smell didn't want to play. He watched in confusion as she turned and limped away from him. He trailed after her, squeaking as his big feet caught over icky dirt. Mother-smell! He called.

Mother-smell?

"We're not ready!" Luca gripped his head in his hands like he could forcibly split his skull open. The frustration mounting up like the world on his spine was beginning to crack fissures through his calm — well. What could be regarded as his 'calm'.

"The device has to work," Des reasoned, though he was wringing his hands. "We have no choice! We did everything we could, under the circumstances ..."

The two technicians gazed at the terrestrial satellite, hidden beneath a tarp. Luca's mind raced through all the possibilities ... Choices and chances and last opportunities. The card from the volt-gun was barely connected to the transmitters, the silicone as unstable as a bauble in the wind. If any damage came to the satellite, then there was nothing to it.

Lale, and Amelia, and Tina, would die.

"Ichabod isn't launching the attack right now," Royson pointed out. She the only calm one of the three, though how she did it, Luca did not know. "He won't risk the time machine."

"But construction's nearly complete." Luca hated being the devil's advocate, but it was true. That morning, the power tools running on solar power had gone silent. The veterinarian had been loading crates into the structure; blood drawn from the mega-dragonflies that had attacked them at their first camp, and DNA of dinosaurs from the hunt Ichabod'd ventured on days before.

It was hardly a full delivery, Luca realized. A few vials of blood were not worth the metal the time machine had been built with, though Ichabod seemed to think otherwise.

"The last thing Ichabod needs is bacteria," Royson supplied. Luca looked to her sharply. A Jurassic germ could wreak havoc on 2039. If humans weren't immune to it, then all of them would be wiped out. "Victoria also told me Ichabod needed something else; something to be shipped back with his delivery."

It made sense, Luca acknowledged. One couldn't make money a million years behind the people paying them. But that bought them time, he was relieved to figure out. If Ichabod was still missing bits and pieces of his machine, then it was better for them.

At that moment, a man Luca had never seen around the refuge camp before entered the doctor's tent. His one arm was behind his back.

Luca darted forward, stepping in front of the tarp. Des locked eyes with Royson, who began talking about the dangers of fungal infection like they were totally not planning to ruin all of Ichabod's plans moments before.

The man's eyes narrowed, and Luca felt a lump in his throat. There's no way he didn't hear us, no way —

"My name is James." James blinked at all of them, before extending the arm behind his back. In his hand, he held a gun.

Not a volt-gun. A proper gun, glinting silver. Before Luca could even cry out or do anything, James pulled the trigger.

Tina, Luca thought desperately, as the crack roared through his ears, oh Tina —

But it wasn't him who was shot.

Des fell to the floor, sputtering, his chest ruined in a mangled mess of red. He landed face-down on the tent's ground, and his blood pooled around him. "No!" Luca threw himself to his fellow technician's side, still barely breathing at the realization that he was alive but Des, poor Des, who had only ever wanted to help, was dead.

Royson crouched, her hands shaking as she pressed a finger to his neck, but there was so much blood even Luca could tell there was no hope in saving him.

James stepped over, his gun still held out. Smoke rose from the nozzle, and Luca was transfixed on it, the only evidence that James himself was the murderer. Through his steamed-up glasses and the burning of tears in his eyes, he could see the man's twisted scowl.

"Consider this a warning," James snarled. It dawned on Luca that he was still in front of the tarp, and his hunched-over figure was blocking the murderer's view of the satellite. "Ichabod knows what you're up to. Don't try anything, and no one else of your little troop will end up dead."

He pointed the gun at Royson, who did not cower as she stared right at him (almost through him, it seemed to Luca) and then at Luca, who most definitely did shrink away in the face of death.

James' scowl turned a pitch darker, and he stepped away from them, spitting outside the tent before his silhouette vanished from sight.

Luca shuddered in a breath, the sob building deep in his chest. "Des ..." he moaned, gripping the man's shirt like that would wake him up.

"He died for this," Luca whispered after a few seconds. His fury could not keep from his voice, and he felt Royson's gaze on his face. "This has to work. I'll make it work, or die trying."

Tina hated getting classified as 'infirm' just because she'd gotten stabbed.

Like, come on! She'd dealt with period pain for the past decade or so of her life, and having a knife-sized wound in her stomach wasn't that much more painful ...

Okay, maybe she was stretching the truth a little.

Damn, this thing hurts like a dagger. Tina gritted her teeth as she sharpened the edge of a lengthy stick. Some of the ferns' stems, once the leaves were removed, were pretty inflexible and firm when chopped to size. Calling them 'spears', however, was a bit too far-fetched.

Amelia's paleontology skills had come in handy. Amongst the silt of the waterfall were harder, jagged stones shaped by the pounding of the waterfall. Most of the recruits used these to sharpen their various makeshift weapons, including a vast array of spears, smaller spears like hand-thrown arrows, more spears, and, well, not really much else.

It certainly wouldn't hold against the marines if Luca couldn't make the disabling device, though she knew in her heart that he would. He would. The only thing that worried her was James — the traitorous dank-eating marine whom Lale had just happened to include in discussions on plans and projects. If James told Ichabod that Luca was making something that could stop his marines in their tracks ...

She could barely think about it, so she tightened her grip on her jagged rock until it was practically cutting into her palm and sawed harder to sharpen the wood.

Do it for him, Tina whispered to herself, like will alone could save the man that she knew she loved. Love ... It almost seemed a trifle too pathetic to explain the feelings she felt for Luca; the feelings she was sure Amelia felt for Lale.

It was weird how life turned out, as Tina's thoughts rolled over to her friend's love life. Amelia had two gorgeous people to choose from, but it seemed to her like Amelia thought that that was two too many. Lale, the poor kid, had been butted out entirely. And Royson was possibly (very likely) dead.

Once upon a time, Tina might've been jealous of her friend. But at that moment she only felt pity for Amelia. She has two people that she wouldn't dare lose.

Tina lifted her eyes to the horizon; on the massive twisted structure that folded in on itself at Ichabod's camp. The cacophony of construction that had normally accompanied the view was quiet, but that almost felt worse.

"Let's get those spears sorted!" Lale ordered, breaking her out of her reverie. She gave the sharpened side one last cut for good measure, then piled it onto the rest of the completed weapons. Some other guys were already setting them up around the perimeter of the waterfall, like crude garden fencing.

That won't keep them out. Tina took another stick and started the process all over again. Her heart shuddered a little as she sawed away. But nothing will.

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