Chapter 1: Alert

DISCLAIMER: Don't own, don't sue.

A/N: Possible Spoilers if you haven't seen Series 3 yet!!!!!

A Danny/Jenny, Abby/Connor, Sarah/Becker fic like I promised. (I'm still a die-hard Nick/Claudia/Jenny fan though) No flames please!!

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Danny lay awake in his bed, he couldn't sleep. Not with all these thoughts turning inside his head. He'd lost his brother to the anomalies 14 years ago, never finding out if he was actually dead or not. Then, by pure chance, his life was turned around, by them.

The ARC and Jenny Lewis.

He decided that he no longer had any reason to be on the police force. It had nothing to do with the excessive amount of paperwork he had to constantly deal with because of his obsession with that house. It was just that after he'd helped Jenny, Connor, and Abby defeat the camouflage creature, he realized that chasing down creatures was loads more fun than chasing after a bunch of juveniles looking for a good time at a haunted house. He wouldn't have to be the loner anymore because he was sure he'd found his calling with the ARC team.

Of course, following Jenny and the others around on a motorcycle didn't exactly earn him any brownie points with Lester, it did, however, come in handy and allowed him to save Connor and the others in many tight spots.

Jenny was constantly telling him to stay away, but he'd taken that as flirting, because to be honest, he fancied her. She was Miss Independent and he was Mr. Wide-Boy (as Lester had once put it) a perfect match. Or so he thought.

The day he broke into the ARC and later became part of the team was the same day they lost Jenny. That day was still so fresh in his head and was the reason that he couldn't sleep as well as he used to anymore.

After he broke into the ARC, Becker and his men escorted him to James Lester's office where Lester and Jenny had tried to reprimand him for his actions.

"I warned you to stay away from this Danny." Jenny had said behind him with her arms crossed.

He turned around to face her, a big grin on his face, "See, I thought we were flirting, it's so difficult to read women these days."

Then he was taken to the operations room where he was to stay until they could come up with some way to deal with him. Connor tried to impress him with the anomaly detector which went on the fritz because of some wire mishap. Then the anomaly alert came.

They eventually figured out that some flesh eating fungus had managed to come through and infected some guy named Bentley and had turned him into a fungus creature. He and Jenny had managed to transport it back to the ARC where Connor had prepared the operations room to freeze it but it had managed to escape into the building and they had to back to the operations room before it could infect anyone or anything else.

Unfortunately, when he called Jenny to tell her that the creature was on its way to the operations room, she'd given the bad news that she was still in there, he'd told her to get out of there, but by the time he'd made it back to where the creature was he found Jenny fighting for her life in the subzero temperature room and losing.

Connor warned everyone to stay out of the room because it was to dangerous, but he'd be damned if he let a creature take someone else he cared about away from him.

"Give me a minute!" he called behind him as he ran into the room with the fire extinguisher and attempted to distract the creature to buy Jenny some time, but even he could see that she might not make it.

Suddenly, the creature crumbled and the team rushed to Jenny's side. Connor shoved him away from Jenny telling him that Jenny had to freeze just enough for the spores to die. Once it did, they raced Jenny back to the room where they'd viewed the horrible ordeal.

She was dead. No vitals. They tried their best to revive her as Connor cried praying that Jenny live.

They got a pulse and she woke up gasping for air and he grabbed her hand.

"Welcome back." he said grinning widely.

"Oh, Nick." she gasped for another breath.

That drove a dagger straight through his heart.

"He's gone, remember?" Abby explained.

Jenny looked up, "You can have that back now" she said referring to his hands clinging on her hand.

He quickly let go and smiled.

He was later made head of the team, much to Christine Johnson's dismay. He wanted to share the great news with Jenny that Lester was only kidding about throwing him through an anomaly, but Connor and the others explained that the day's events were too much and she resolved to leave.

He raced to the locker rooms and leaned against the wall as Jenny finished packing her things. "You can't leave."

She didn't look at him and continued to pack "I have to."

He came into the locker room and sat on the bench. "It's your team."

She finished packing and looked at him forcing a smile. "No, it was Cutter's, and now it's yours. I don't belong here anymore."

"Of course you do." 'This wasn't what was supposed to happen, he was supposed to join the team and they were supposed to save the world together.' he thought.

She sat down on the bench "Danny, I died today, I think I should probably quit while I'm ahead."

"I know you and I know all about Claudia Brown, and I'm sure there's some perfectly rational explanation."

She rolled her eyes, "Yeah, that's what I used to think."

"Maybe we've all lived other lives, but what's important is who we are right now."

She shook her head in agreement, "You're absolutely right. That's exactly why I have to go. Danny, if I stay here I'll always be looking back wondering who I really am, I just want to go and try and forget about the ARC and forget about the creatures and the anomalies, and most of all I really want to try and forget about Nick Cutter and Claudia Brown. You said it yourself. You only live once."

She stood up and held out her hand. He took her hand into both of his as a goodbye gesture and noticed that she placed a piece of paper in it. He let her go. Out of the ARC. Out of his heart. But not out of his mind.

The paper was a note. It had her number on it and detailed that if anything should happen to anyone from the ARC she wanted to know. Basically, only call her if it was an emergency, not for a date or even a drink.

He glanced at the clock. 5:30 am. Great, he had to be at work in an hour and a half and he still hadn't managed to get a wink of sleep. It had been like this ever since Jenny left and he kicked himself every minute of everyday for letting her leave. He could only hope that one day she'd sort out the Claudia Brown and Cutter situation and come back.

On a more positive note, the only thing that made his life more interesting was showing up everyday to work at the same time as Becker and make his life a living hell by blasting different boy band songs in his car and make reckless decisions.

He didn't personally have anything against the man, it was just that he'd never seen anyone get so annoyed by music the way Becker did. There was one incident that Lester seriously thought about firing Danny for, because he'd manage to push Becker so far that Becker actually destroyed a perfectly good radio; but Danny had convinced Lester that if he fired him, he'd have to put up with Wilder and Johnson for the rest of his career or life whichever came first.

Danny rolled out of bed, got a shower and headed toward a dinner, picked up a couple of coffees to go and arrived at the ARC by 6:30 am.

Just as Danny sat down at his desk and began to put the cup of coffee to his lips Lester interrupted him.

"You're here rather early aren't you, Quinn."

"Ah, you know me gov, always ready to go at a moment's notice."

"Right, just don't expect a bonus because you suddenly decide to show up early." and with that, Lester went up to his office leaving Danny to his coffee.

The rest of the team was there by the time he was finishing his third cup and not a moment too soon as the anomaly detector went off.

Everyone else ran to the detector as Danny casually walked up to it finishing the rest of his drink.

"So, where is it, Connor?" Danny asked.

"Oh my God, it's in Jenny's house!" Connor cried as he turned to look at Danny, he saw Danny running down the hall and probably hopping into a truck.

He looked down and saw a puddle of coffee on the ground and looked at Abby, Becker, and Sarah. "I'm not cleaning it up."

Abby grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the garage with the others as they hopped into the trucks and raced toward Jenny's townhouse.

Danny got there minutes before the others and pounded on the door.

"Jenn! Jenny! Open the door!" He kicked in the door.

The place was a mess! The others soon stumbled in the room and gasped at the wreckage.

"Oh no!" gasped Sarah.

"Do you think a creature did this?" Abby asked searching everywhere for claw/teeth marks.

Danny remembered Jenny's number and called it.

They all stopped what they were doing as a happy ringtone went off and Danny found a flashing, buzzing, object under a handkerchief.

"That's Jenny's phone." Connor asked not even caring at the moment that he'd just stated the obvious.

"A creature did this alright, a huge snake in the grass named Helen Cutter." Danny answered holding up a white handkerchief with the letters "H.C." elegantly embroidered on it.

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