With Emily asleep in the bed beside him, Matt was finding that it was impossible for him to sleep. That night should have been one of the most sound sleeps of his entire existence, but after stopping New Dawn, he still couldn't sleep. Had the other version of him in the hallway been him or had it been some sort of vision or his mind playing tricks on him? One of his greatest fears was causing the end of the world by stopping New Dawn instead of letting it happen. Did the world of his future still exist? Had he only made it worse?
Sighting, he rolled over in bed and was about to wrap an arm around Emily when something across the room on the floor caught his eye. It shimmered in the moonlight underneath the window, and he frowned. Almost as if it was calling to him, Matt carefully got out of bed and walked silently over to the window. A coin. It wasn't anything he recognized, but maybe it was something Emily had dropped after bringing it back with her from her past.
He planned to simply pick it up and place it over on the counter to ask her about in the morning. Except that's not what happened as soon as his fingers touched the coin. He felt a strange pulling sensation and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in a room he didn't recognize even in the slightest.
"Emily?" He called out and looked around. He'd been transported somewhere, but this wasn't anything like the anomalies he'd known about his entire life. Soon after he'd stood up, a hologram appeared before him and started explaining why he was here and what happened in order to bring him here.
"What in the bloody hell?" Matt said to himself after the hologram had disappeared. There were two EMDs on the table next to his bed, so he picked one up, ready to fire, and slowly went to the door to try to see what might have been on the other side. He didn’t sense anyone out in the outer room, so he crept through and ended up out in the hallway and taking the stairs until he ended up in the downstairs lobby.
Rose didn’t usually head into the body tower, her brother lived in the same tower she did and she usually met people elsewhere but today she had a few things she was planning to drop off to Roman for work that she’d borrowed earlier.
Rounding the corner to the stairs she came face to face with a man holding what shew as sure an EMD that Becker had given her a lecture on when she’d first started at the base, it was among a lot of other weapons from different worlds.
“You must be from Becker’s world,” Rose said with a soft smile. “Personally I don’t want to find out what it feels like to be shot by one of those, I’m Rose.” She said offering her right hand to him with a smile.
When he was suddenly in front of a woman he didn’t recognize, Matt immediately paused and lowered his weapon so that it wasn’t pointed straight at her. Despite what the hologram had explained to him about why he was here, he still expected to come into some sort of creature or predator rather than another human being. He was even more surprised when she dropped the name of one of his team members from home.
“Becker,” he repeated cautiously and shook the hand that she offered. “Yes, I suppose I am.” He looked at the gun that he held. They were fairly distinctive as opposed to other weapons, so he assumed she’d already seen one from Becker himself. “I’m Matt.”
Stepping back, he took another look around. “The hologram wasn’t lying then, was it? This is the strangest anomaly I’ve ever encountered.”
She vaguely remembered a mention of Matt, maybe Sharon had mentioned him as someone Becker knew and had shot him or something, but she wasn't going to show how much information she had.
"It's nice to meet you, Matt," she said observing his actions carefully, noting how and where he looked around.
"It's telling the truth, and as far as I know it's not an anomaly, most people pick up a coin, and that's what brings you here. Becker's probably at the base if you want me to take you there."
Matt gave a small nod of recognition. “Yes, the coin. I do remember one of those. I never expected picking it up would bring me here.” He doubted that anyone would expect that, but here he was. No anomaly or creatures in sight - yet. It hadn’t send him to his original home time, though, and he was more than grateful for that.
“Yes, going to be the base might be for the best.” From what he understood, he was going to be spending a lot of time there anyway after hearing what his ‘job’ here would be. It was a similar role compared to what he held at home although the jobs and missions sounded like they might be much different than what he was used to now.
“Have you been here long?” He asked her as they started walking. Matt kept the EMD down at his side, but he was still on alert just in case anything popped out at the unexpectedly.
“I came because something went wrong with the technology or magic or whatever it is brought some people here, I decided to stay.” She wished she’d gotten a coin. “I guess I’ve been here since March now. Time goes by fast here.” She couldn’t believe it really had been that long already.
Nodding she waiting for a moment for him to fall into step. “I take it they’ve put you in some kind field agent role.” It was a statement, not a question. The way he moved and the way he stayed on alert as they walked, and the little she’d heard Sharon say about Becker’s world.
“I should warn you, you might see some lifesized teddy bears around today, they’re people.”
“I see. Time often moves faster than we think it does sometimes.” Something going wrong with technology and pulling people through time, space, whatever. Matt silently raised a brow and took in all that she was saying. It sounded a little too familiar even if he was being assured from multiple sources that the anomalies didn’t exist here. Her decision to stay in this timeline also reminded him of something, or someone, else but he also kept that to himself.
“Yes, field command, I think it was called? From what I could gather, it sounded a lot like what I was used to at home. A different objective and different responsibilities, but I led a team there.”
Matt expected to see strange things here, but her comment about teddy bears caught him by surprise. “Teddy bears,” he repeated, clearly not quite believing her. “I don’t suppose that’s a metaphor for something else?”
Rose nodded, time did have a way of surprising people.
Smiling she tilted her head to the side. “You’ll be working with some good people,” she didn’t know much about all of them, past what she’d read it some cases and if he wanted to know more he could ask. “You’ll be reporting to either Becker or Sharon or both, depending on what’s going on.” That much she did know.
Laughing at his surprise she smiled with a shrug of her shoulders. “I wish I could say it was, but it isn’t, they are actually life-sized teddy bears today.” Scrunching her nose up she added. “Too bad Becker isn’t one of them, that would have probably made it easier to believe.”
Matt couldn’t help it. He let out a short laugh. “Reporting to Becker, huh? Oh, he’s going to bloody love that.” He shook head. It didn’t surprise him that Becker had worked himself into a nice position here. He always did his job and did it well.
“If he had been one of them, I’d be sincerely praying that it was true so I could see it for myself.” Matt was smiling when he shook his head. He could hope for something like that to happen eventually. Even Lester might crack a smile overseeing that.
“So, what do you do here, Rose?” He asked her curiously. “Do you work in the field or behind the scenes? Or something else completely?”
Smirking as he laughed, Rose made a note to do a little bit more research but figured the dynamic was at the very least going to be interesting to watch, she’d have to warn Sharon.
“Just wait a few days, I’m sure something weird will happen.” That seemed to par for the course.
“I work as a linguist and a floating agent,” she answered with a shrug. “Mostly I think they send me out when they think languages will be necessary although there is a good number of people here with good language skills.”
Matt gave a nod as she spoke and figured having a few people on hand who were lingual in multiple languages was likely a strong asset given the nature of what was happening. In his line of work, knowing how to communicate with a raptor or predator would have probably been more beneficial over a spoken language.
“I can scrape by with another language or two, but those weren’t my areas of study. I can see that being a great asset here.” He looked over at her. “I suppose I may see you in the field then if the mission calls for it?”
He smiled a bit. “I’ll know who to call if I find myself needing a translator.”
As they got to the base she put in the right floor to get to Becker’s office in the elevator. “Yeah, it’s been useful, although most of the time we’ve ended up in English speaking worlds.” She did wonder about a time when they might not end up somewhere they spoke English and she’d actually be useful.
“I guess you do,” She smiled. “His office is three doors down to the left. Careful though, there might a couple little dogs in the office, sometimes they seem to go to work with him.” Rose was really curious about all of that.
“Dogs?” Matt asked and gave her a questionable look but didn't expect an answer based on the smile that appeared. Becker had dogs and brought said dogs to work? Now, that he hoped to see.
With her directions for the short rest of the way, Matt was confident he could make it on his own. “Thank you for the escort and insights into my possible new boss,” he said with the hint of a smile of his own. “I'll see you around.”
Nodding to her, Matt turned down the hallway towards Becker's office and kept the EMD low so not to cause alarm. Once he was there, he had no idea if his colleague would know he'd arrived yet, but he knocked on the door and casually leaned against the doorway as if his appearance was no big deal.