Tina gasped and Bette took her hand, offering comfort.

“Do you have to be so dramatic, Al?” Shane asked quietly.

“I’m not dramatic, Shane, I’m realistic. We need to be vigilant and prepared for anything. And…” she paused and looked around, “we need to have a counterplan. I have some ideas but I want to hear from all of you, too.”

“Since you claim to have a brilliant plan, I think you should go ahead and tell us all about it, Alice,” Shane answered.

“Ditto,’ Dana added with a smile.

Alice grinned and nodded, “You won’t be disappointed because I have Plan A and B. And if all else fails, I have Plan C, as well.”

“You are a strange little bird, aren’t ya?” Shane grinned.

“You don’t know the half of it, Shane,” Alice winked and opened a notebook. “So here we go, Plan A. I’m going undercover back to professor Kroll’s lab to see what they have planned. We need to make sure they don’t know about the exact location of the portal and they don’t know Bette is the blast from the past.”

Tina frowned and looked at Alice with worry, “Al, it just occurred to me. Remember when you told Kroll the last time you saw him that you went through the portal so we can see his reaction and figure out the number of openings…he never asked you where the portal was. I thought it was strange at the time but all I could think was Bette and if she would make it back home, back to me.”

Alice slapped her forehead dramatically, “Damn, I totally forgot about it. I was so relieved that he didn’t ask more questions because I didn’t want to bring up Bette.”

“Why in the world did you tell him about your time travel?” Bette was utterly confused. “He’s the enemy right now and if he has even the slightest idea…”

Alice shrugged, but her face was filled with remorse, “It sounded like a good idea at the time because I didn’t think he will reveal any information about portal openings and we were really worried that your wouldn’t be able to come back. But now, come to think of it, after my very dramatic but brief narrative of my time travel adventure, the very important research he’s been working on for years, all he said was that he needed to go back to his lab and do more analysis as he adjusted the formula to include my experience. I think he didn’t really believed me, because, let’s face it, our first meeting wasn’t very promising. He thought I was under the impression that he was crazy to believe in time travel.” Alice looked at Bette, “I didn’t tell him about you, though, so even if he knows more about the portal that he admitted, he doesn’t know about you.”