Chapter 3: 7-9: 158,127
Chapter 7: The Correction Term
The portal didn’t open. It swallowed.
Rebecca felt the world dissolve around her, felt her stomach drop like she’d stepped off a ledge in the dark, felt Wayne’s hand tighten around hers with a grip that bordered on painful. Then the light took everything, sight, sound, the weight of her own body, and replaced it with something that had no name.
There was no floor. No ceiling. No direction that meant anything.
They were falling through a corridor of fractured light, violet and emerald and electric blue braided together like liquid glass in motion. The ribbons twisted and dissolved, reshaping themselves into impossible geometries that flickered at the edge of comprehension before collapsing into something new. Rebecca tried to track them, tried to apply mathematics to the chaos, but the equations slipped away before she could pin them down.
Sound arrived wrong here. Stretched. Doubled. Echoing back from angles that shouldn’t exist, carrying fragments of voices that might have been her own or might have been someone else entirely.
“Hold on.”
“Can’t breathe.”
“The page, I dropped the.”
Gravity came and went in violent pulses. One moment she was weightless, tumbling end over end through nothing. The next, something wrenched sideways, and she felt her organs shift against her ribs with bruising force. Wayne’s hand was still there, still gripping hers, the only solid thing in a universe that had forgotten what solid meant.
She caught glimpses through the walls of light. A city skyline she didn’t recognize, towers of glass and steel reflecting a sun that burned green. A field of bioluminescent flowers, their petals opening and closing in rhythms that matched her heartbeat. Equations scrawled across the darkness in handwriting she knew, her own, but older, shakier, the letters formed by a hand that had been trembling when it wrote them.
Time lost its shape.
Seconds stretched into hours. Hours compressed into a single heartbeat. Rebecca couldn’t tell if she’d been falling for minutes or days. Couldn’t tell if the pressure building behind her eyes was fear or something worse.
Becca tumbled past her, a blur of denim and tangled hair, her controller spinning away from her wrist on a frayed strap. Rebecca reached for her, missed, watched her disappear into a fold of emerald light.
“No.”
The word was torn from her throat, shredded by a wind that wasn’t wind, scattered into fragments that dissolved before they could reach anyone.
Becky was somewhere to her left. Rebecca couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her, but she could feel her, a presence, a weight in the void. Something about the three of them being versions of the same person made them visible to each other in ways the others weren’t.
Arthur screamed. The sound cut through the chaos like a blade, high and thin and absolutely terrified. Rebecca twisted, tried to find him, but the light was too bright, too everywhere, and she couldn’t tell up from down from sideways.
Vance was clutching something, his journal, or the page from Helena’s notes. His fingers were wrapped around it so tight they’d gone white, the paper crumpled against his chest like a talisman.
And then gravity slammed back.
Not the gentle return of weight, but a violent yank, like a hand had closed around her spine and hurled her at the ground. Rebecca felt the air leave her lungs in a single explosive gasp. Felt Wayne’s hand ripped from hers. Felt the world rushing up to meet her at impossible speed.
White. Everything went white.
She hit something hard, something that knocked the breath out of her and replaced it with cold, cold so sharp it burned, cold that bit through her jacket and her shirt and her skin, cold that settled into her bones like it planned to stay there.
Snow. She was lying in snow.
Rebecca coughed, pushed herself up on her elbows. The world swam back into focus. White. Endless white. A field of snow stretching in every direction, broken only by the dark shapes of mountains and the sprawl of bodies around her.
Wayne was on his back a few feet away, staring up at the sky with an expression of pure disbelief. His vest was crusted with frost. His flashlight had somehow survived the trip, still clipped to his belt, the cracked lens catching the weak sunlight.
Becca was already sitting up, brushing snow from her jacket with sharp, angry movements. Her controller dangled from her wrist, the screen flickering weakly. She checked it, tapped it, held it up to her face.
“Eighteen hours,” she said. “Eighteen fifty-three and forty-eight seconds.”
“Nineteen hours,” Rebecca repeated, pushing herself to her feet, wobbling, her sneakers sinking into the snow. The cold was immediate and brutal, cutting through her cargo pants like they were paper. “We’ve got nineteen hours until the next jump.”
Becky rose from a snowdrift like something crawling out of a grave. Her blade was already in her hand, and her eyes swept the horizon with that flat, assessing look she got when she was calculating threats. Her combat boots were soaked through, the double-knotted laces dark with moisture.
“Where the hell are we?” she asked.
No one answered.
Arthur groaned. He was face down in the snow, his suit jacket bunched around his shoulders, his injured leg twisted at an angle that made Rebecca’s stomach clench. She crossed to him, knelt beside him, touched his shoulder.
“Arthur. Can you hear me?”
“I want to go home,” he mumbled into the snow. “I just want to go home.”
“Soon,” Rebecca said. She didn’t know if it was true. “We just have to survive until the timer hits zero.”
Vance was on his knees, brushing snow from his journal with trembling hands. The page from Helena’s notes was still clutched against his chest, but it was wet now, the ink smeared and running. He stared at it with the hollow eyes of a man watching his life’s work dissolve.
“It’s ruined,” he said. “The equations. They’re ruined.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Rebecca said.
“How? We’re in the middle of nowhere, we have no supplies, no shelter, and the temperature is dropping by the minute.” He looked up at her, and something broke behind his spectacles. “We’re going to die here.”
The words hung in the frozen air.
Rebecca’s fingers found her thigh and started tapping. Tap-tap-tap. The rhythm was slower than usual, sluggish with cold, but it was still there.
“Not yet,” she said. “Not if we’re smart.”
She stood and turned in a slow circle, taking in their surroundings. Mountains ahead, jagged peaks scraping at a sky the color of old iron. White for miles in every direction, an ocean of snow reflecting the weak sunlight with an intensity that made her eyes ache. No trees. No buildings. Nothing to suggest anything had ever lived here except the wind, which moaned across the emptiness like something in pain.
The silence was total. Rebecca could hear her own heartbeat, could hear the creak of Wayne’s boots as he shifted his weight, could hear Arthur’s ragged breathing. Beyond that, nothing.
She could see her breath, white plumes swallowed almost instantly by the freezing air. She pulled her denim jacket tighter, but it was useless. The fabric was meant for autumn, not arctic. The leather patches she’d stitched on so carefully did nothing against this kind of cold.
Wayne had stopped shivering, which was worse than shivering. Rebecca knew enough about hypothermia to know that shivering meant the body was still fighting. When it stopped, that was when you had to worry.
“We need shelter,” he said. “Out of this wind.”
“And a fire,” Becca added. She’d moved to stand beside Rebecca, arms wrapped around her chest, teeth chattering despite the hard set of her jaw. “We need warmth. We need to dry our clothes.”
“With what?” Becky asked. She stood apart from them, blade still out, eyes on the mountains. “No matches. No wood we’ve found yet. No lighter. Wayne, is your flashlight still working?”
Wayne pulled it from his belt and clicked the switch. The beam flickered once, twice, then died.
“Battery’s dead,” he said. “Even if it wasn’t, it’s a light, not a heater.”
“Then what do we have?”
Silence.
Rebecca ran an inventory in her head. Her controller, dead except for the timer. Becca’s, the same. Becky’s tablet, dead except for its countdown. Wayne’s flashlight, dead. Vance’s journal, useless. Arthur’s briefcase, still clutched in his hand somehow, the leather warped and cracked from the crossing.
No food. No water. No tools. No matches.
They had the clothes on their backs and a countdown ticking toward zero.
“Okay,” Rebecca said. “We’re not dead yet. That means we still have options.”
“What options?” Arthur had managed to sit up, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his face pale beneath the snow. “We have nothing. We are nothing.”
“We have each other.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“It’s a start.” Rebecca faced the group, fingers tapping against her thigh. “First priority is shelter, or we all freeze before the timer hits zero. Second is warmth, fire if we can manage it, body heat if we can’t. Third is water. Snow can be melted, but we need something to melt it in and a heat source to melt it with.”
“The mountains,” Vance said. He’d stopped trying to salvage his notes and knelt in the snow now, hands hanging at his sides, face slack with exhaustion. “There might be caves. Overhangs. Somewhere to block the wind.”
“Then we head for the mountains.”
“That’s miles away,” Becky said. “Arthur can barely walk. We’ll never make it before dark.”
“We don’t have a choice.” Rebecca held her eyes. “We stay here, we die. We move, we have a chance. It’s not complicated.”
“It’s not that simple either.”
“Nothing ever is.”
Wayne crossed to Arthur, hauled him upright with a grunt of effort, and slung the man’s arm over his shoulder. Arthur sagged against him, his weight pulling them both sideways, but Wayne held firm.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Mountains. Now.”
The first step was the hardest. Rebecca’s sneakers were soaked through within seconds, the canvas no match for the snow. The cold seeped through her socks, numbing her toes, climbing her ankles like it was looking for something to eat. Her fingers had already gone stiff, the tips white, and she tucked them under her arms, trying to preserve what warmth was left.
Becca walked beside her, boots crunching through the snow crust, quiet since they’d landed. Rebecca could see her chewing the inside of her lip, a habit she recognized because it was her own.
“You okay?” Rebecca asked.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
They walked. The snow was deep in places, shallow in others, holding their weight sometimes and swallowing them to the knee other times. Each time, Rebecca pulled herself out, took another step, kept moving. The rhythm was almost meditative. Step. Sink. Pull. Step.
Becky walked point, blade tucked into her belt now, eyes scanning the horizon. She’d taken off her military-surplus jacket and tied it around her waist, which seemed insane in this cold, but Rebecca understood. The jacket was wet, and wet clothes against skin meant heat loss. Becky knew what she was doing.
“You’ve done this before,” Rebecca said. It wasn’t a question.
Becky didn’t answer right away. She kept walking, boots carving a path through the snow, breath fogging in front of her face.
“Two years,” she said finally. “After the gate opened. After the collapse. I spent two years scavenging. Fighting. Surviving.” She glanced back, and something old and tired and very angry moved behind her eyes. “I know cold. I know hunger. I know what it feels like to watch people die.”
“Your Wayne?”
Becky’s jaw tightened. She looked away.
“He died protecting me. First year. There was a raid on our shelter, soldiers, or what was left of them, and they wanted the supplies we’d scavenged. Wayne stood in the doorway, told me to run, and.” She stopped, swallowed. “I ran. I didn’t look back.”
Rebecca didn’t know what to say. She wanted to reach out, but something held her back, a sense that it wouldn’t be welcome, that Becky’s grief was a private thing, sharp-edged and dangerous to touch.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago.”
“It’s the same Wayne, though. You know that, right? He’s not your Wayne, but he’s.”
“He’s not mine.” The words snapped out. Becky stopped walking and turned, eyes blazing. “He’s not my anything. My Wayne died in a war. Your Wayne is a technician who fixes toasters. They’re not the same person.”
“I know. I just meant.”
“I know what you meant.” Her voice softened, just slightly. “But it doesn’t help. Seeing him, being around him, it’s like looking at a photograph of someone you buried. He has the same hands. The same voice. But he’s not him. He’ll never be him.”
She started walking again.
Rebecca followed, fingers tapping, tap-tap-tap, the rhythm keeping her going, keeping her from thinking too hard about the cold and the fear and the fact that they might all die out here before the timer hit zero.
The wind picked up, howling down off the mountains, carrying ice crystals and the smell of something old and dead. Rebecca pulled her jacket tighter, but it didn’t help. The cold was everywhere now, in her lungs, in her joints, in the spaces between her thoughts. She could feel her body slowing, conserving energy, preparing for something it understood was coming.
“We need to stop,” she called to Wayne. “We need to rest.”
“Not yet.” He was still carrying Arthur, still moving with a determination that looked almost mechanical. “We’re not far. Another mile, maybe.”
“There’s nothing there. There’s nothing anywhere. Just snow and mountains and.”
“We’re not stopping.”
“We’re going to kill ourselves trying to reach nothing.”
“We’re going to kill ourselves if we don’t try.”
He was right, and she hated it. Standing still in this cold was death. Moving was death too, just slower. The only difference was the illusion of control.
They kept walking.
Becca’s controller beeped. She checked it, frowned, tapped the screen. The glow lit her face from below, casting strange shadows across her cheekbones.
“Seventeen hours,” she said. “And something’s wrong with the signal. The resonance is.” She squinted. “It’s fluctuating. The stability index is dropping.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the portal might not open when the timer hits zero. It means we might be stuck here.”
“You don’t know that.” Rebecca heard how hollow the words sounded even as she said them. “The system could stabilize. We’ve still got time.”
“Time’s not the problem. The field’s degrading. I’ve seen this before.” Becca looked up, her expression flat and blank and terrified. “In my timeline. Right before the collapse. The resonance deteriorated over months. Here, it’s happening in hours.”
Vance stumbled, tripping over something in the snow, going down on his hands and knees. He didn’t get up. Just knelt there, his journal half buried, his spectacles askew, his shoulders heaving with breaths that sounded like sobs.
“Professor.” Rebecca crossed to him, touched his arm. “You have to get up.”
“I can’t.” His voice was hoarse. “I can’t move. I can’t think.”
“You have to.”
“Do I?” He looked at her, eyes wild behind the cracked lenses. “What’s waiting for us if we survive? More walking. More freezing. More jumping from one disaster to another. We’re not going to make it home, Rebecca. We’re not going to survive this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know the math.” He laughed, a dry, broken sound. “I’m a physicist. I know exactly how improbable our survival is. The cold alone could kill us within hours if we don’t find shelter. And even if we do, even if we somehow survive the next seventeen hours, what are the odds the portal opens? That it opens somewhere we can reach? That it takes us somewhere we can survive?”
“Not zero.”
“Not zero,” he agreed. “But close. So close it might as well be.”
Rebecca grabbed him by the shoulders. Her hands were shaking, from cold or fear she couldn’t tell, but she held him anyway, forced him to meet her eyes.
“Listen to me. I have spent two years building a machine that shouldn’t exist. Two years of failed experiments and dead ends and people telling me it was impossible. I didn’t stop. I didn’t quit. I kept going because the alternative was accepting that the universe had limits I couldn’t push against.” She tightened her grip. “I’m not going to stop now. Not out here. Not when we’re this close.”
“Close to what?”
“Close to proving them wrong.”
Vance stared at her. Something shifted in his face, not hope exactly, but something adjacent, something that might, with time and warmth and survival, become hope.
He got up.
Wayne had stopped walking to watch, Arthur still sagging against his shoulder, his expression unreadable. When Rebecca met his eyes, he nodded once. A small acknowledgment.
“Mountains,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The mountains didn’t get closer.
They walked for hours. The sun, if it was a sun, hadn’t moved since they’d landed, still hanging low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the snow. Rebecca’s legs had gone numb below the knee. Her fingers had stopped tapping hours ago, too cold to move. She could feel herself slowing, her thoughts going fuzzy, her body conserving energy for functions that mattered more than walking.
Becca had stopped talking entirely, just walked, head down, breath frosting on her collar.
Becky had taken point again, but even she seemed diminished, her steps shorter, her blade hanging loose like she’d forgotten she was holding it.
Arthur had stopped groaning, which was worse than the groaning. It meant he’d gone somewhere inside himself, somewhere the pain couldn’t reach. Rebecca had seen that look before, in the lab, on the faces of graduate students who’d pushed too hard for too long.
Vance was still moving, barely, spectacles fogged over, lips moving in silent equations.
They were dying. All of them. Slowly, one degree at a time.
Rebecca’s foot caught on something. She stumbled, went down on one knee, felt the snow bite through her cargo pants. When she looked back to see what she’d tripped over, she found wood. A piece of wood, half buried, its surface dark and splintered. The first wood they’d seen since landing.
“What the.” She brushed the snow away, and more appeared. Planks. Nails. The remains of something once built.
“Everyone, look.”
They gathered around her, five frozen figures staring down at ruins beneath their feet. Wayne knelt, brushed more snow away, revealed the shape of a wall. A foundation. A collapsed structure buried so long it had become part of the terrain.
“There’s more,” he said. “I can feel it. There’s a whole building here.”
“A building means shelter,” Becca said, her voice thin, barely audible over the wind. “If we can find a part that’s still standing.”
“Or dig into the snow,” Becky said. “Use the walls as a windbreak. It won’t be warm, but it’ll be warmer.”
Rebecca’s fingers found her thigh and tapped, slow and sluggish but still there.
“Start digging,” she said.
They dug. Wayne found a corner where two walls met, still partially intact, the wood held together by rusted nails and stubbornness. He kicked at the snow, cleared a space, created a hollow just big enough for six people to huddle together. Becky dragged over broken timber and propped it against the walls to make a rough roof.
Becca and Rebecca worked side by side, scooping snow with their bare hands, fingers burning with cold. Neither spoke. There was nothing to say. Just the work, the wind, and the slow creep of darkness as the sun finally started to move.
Vance found something. “What is this?” He held up a piece of metal, bent and rusted, its shape almost recognizable. “A hinge, maybe. Or part of a lock. This was a door. This building had a door.”
“It was a house,” Arthur said. He’d been propped against the wall watching them work, his voice dreamy with cold and pain. “Someone lived here. Someone built this. And now it’s.” He gestured vaguely at the ruins. “Nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Rebecca said. “Shelter. That’s something.”
She crawled into the hollow Wayne had made. It was dark and cramped, and the wind still found its way through the gaps in the makeshift roof, but it was better than outside. Marginally. The snow blocked some of the cold, the walls blocked some of the wind, and when the others crawled in after her, their bodies pressed close, their warmth a shared resource.
Wayne ended up beside her, his shoulder against hers, his breath warm on her cheek. Becca was on her other side, wet hair dripping onto Rebecca’s jacket. Becky sat near the entrance, blade across her knees, keeping watch. Vance and Arthur were tangled together at the back, both shivering, both silent.
“Fire,” Wayne said. “We need fire.”
“With what?” Becky asked.
“I don’t know. There’s wood. There’s.” He stopped. “No matches. No lighter. Nothing to spark with.”
“The flashlight,” Becca said. “The battery’s dead, but the contacts might still.”
“Too wet. The whole thing’s soaked through.”
Silence.
Rebecca closed her eyes. She could feel the cold settling into her bones, her body slowing, the edges of her consciousness starting to fray. Hypothermia. She knew the symptoms. Confusion. Drowsiness. A strange, peaceful willingness to stop fighting.
She couldn’t afford that.
“The controller,” she said, her voice sounding distant, like it belonged to someone else. “The battery pack. It’s still charged.”
“It’s dead,” Becca said. “I checked.”
“The screen is dead. But the battery.” Rebecca unstrapped the controller, held it up. The casing was cracked, the screen dark, but when she pressed the power button, she felt a faint vibration. A residual charge. “There’s still power in here. If I can reroute it, short the circuit, I might be able to generate a spark.”
“Might,” Wayne repeated.
“Better than nothing.”
She pulled the controller apart, fingers clumsy with cold, nearly dropping the components twice. The casing came off with a crack. Inside, the circuit boards were intact, miraculously, and the battery pack was still warm.
Warm. It was warm.
“Wayne. Your flashlight.”
He handed it over. She cracked the casing against the ground, pulled out the dead battery, and used the metal contacts as a makeshift wire. It took three tries to connect them to the controller’s battery pack, each one slower than the last, her fingers going numb, her mind going fuzzy.
On the fourth try, a spark jumped. Small. Barely visible. A flash of blue lasting less than a second.
But it was enough.
“Wood. Dry wood. Anything.”
Becky was already moving, out of the shelter and back with a handful of splintered planks, wet on the outside but dry within, preserved by the cold instead of rotted through.
Rebecca arranged the smallest pieces into a pile, touched the battery contacts to the wood, held her breath.
Nothing.
“Again,” Wayne said.
She tried again. The spark jumped, caught the edge of a splinter, flickered.
“Blow on it,” Becca said, leaning forward, her breath a warm gust against the tiny flame. “Come on.”
The flame grew. Small, fragile, but real. It spread from the splinter to the next piece of wood, then the next, and suddenly there was fire. Real fire. Heat that pushed back the cold and painted their faces orange and gold.
They huddled around it, all six of them, hands outstretched, faces slack with relief.
“We did it,” Arthur said, his voice cracking. “We actually did it.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Becky said. But even she was smiling, just a little.
Rebecca leaned back against the wall, shoulder still pressed against Wayne’s, fingers tapping against her thigh, slower now but steady.
Becca’s controller beeped. “Fifteen hours,” she said. “Fifteen hours until the portal opens.”
“If it opens,” Vance said.
“When it opens,” Rebecca corrected, looking around at their faces, dirty, exhausted, half-frozen, but alive. All of them, alive. “We’re going to survive this. We’re going to get home. And then we’re going to figure out what the hell is happening to the multiverse.”
Wayne snorted. “Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
The fire crackled. The wind howled. Somewhere in the distance, something moved, something that wasn’t snow, wasn’t wind, wasn’t the natural rhythm of this frozen, empty world.
“What was that?” Arthur whispered.
No one answered. The fire burned lower.
The fire was smaller than it should have been.
Rebecca watched it dwindle with an intensity that bordered on hostility, as if sheer will could make the flames burn more efficiently. They licked at the last splintered plank with pathetic enthusiasm, casting just enough light to paint the snow in shades of orange and black, just enough heat to keep their fingers from going numb.
“We need more wood,” Wayne said, already moving, boots crunching through the crust as he pushed himself up from their huddle. His movements were slower than they should have been, stiffer. Rebecca noticed the way he braced a hand against the wall to stand, the way his breath came in short, controlled bursts.
“Wayne.” She started to rise. “Wait.”
“I see a branch.” He pointed. “By the ridge.”
Something jutted from a snowdrift about thirty feet away, dark and angular, potentially wood, potentially just another piece of the collapsed structure. Hard to tell in the dying light.
“I’ll go,” Becky said, already on her feet, blade in hand. Rebecca noticed Wayne’s jaw tighten at the offer, noticed the look that said he wanted to argue. He didn’t. Just nodded and sank back down beside the fire.
Becky disappeared into the darkness.
Becca had her controller out, the cracked screen glowing faintly against her palm, frowning at it with the concentration of someone trying to read meaning into data that refused to cooperate.
“Anything?” Rebecca asked.
“The signal’s still degrading.” Becca kept her voice low, pitched so the others wouldn’t hear. “It’s not just fluctuating anymore. It’s losing coherence.”
“What does that mean in practical terms?”
“It means the portal might not recognize us as the same travelers. It might refuse to open. Or it might open somewhere else entirely.” She traced the edge of a warning icon with her thumb. “Or it might open all at once and collapse before we can get through.”
Rebecca’s fingers found her thigh. Tap-tap-tap, the rhythm slower than usual, weighed down by cold and exhaustion and the creeping certainty that they were running out of options.
“Twelve seventeen and fifty-five seconds,” Becca added.
Rebecca checked her own controller. The screen was still dark, the power she’d scavenged for the spark had drained the last of its reserve, but she could feel the countdown in her bones, a pulse beneath her skin.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “We always figure it out.”
“Do we?”
The question hung in the cold air. Rebecca didn’t have an answer that would help.
Arthur had pressed himself as far back against the wall as he could get, his injured leg stretched at an awkward angle, his good hand clutching the remains of his briefcase against his chest. The leather was cracked and peeling, the clasp broken, but he held onto it like it was the only thing tethering him to his old life.
“I can’t feel my feet,” he said, his voice distant, almost dreamy. “Is that bad? That seems bad.”
“Very bad.” Vance moved to his side, his own exhaustion forgotten. He rubbed Arthur’s ankle through the frozen fabric of his trousers, his movements methodical and gentle. “We need to get your shoes off. Get the circulation moving.”
“If I take my shoes off, I won’t get them back on. My fingers don’t work anymore.”
“Then I’ll put them back on for you.”
Vance’s hands trembled as he worked at Arthur’s laces, his spectacles fogged over, unwiped, squinting through the condensation with the patience of a man who’d stopped expecting things to be clear.
Rebecca watched them for a moment, the professor and the businessman, both so far out of their element they might as well have been on another planet, and felt something twist in her chest. They shouldn’t be here. None of them should. This was her fault. Her experiment. Her failure.
She pushed the thought away. Guilt was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
Becky returned with an armload of wood, wet and splintered but fuel all the same. She dropped it beside the fire and knelt to arrange the pieces, quick and efficient. Within minutes, the flames had grown, pushing back the darkness.
“Found something else.” Becky reached into her jacket and pulled out a handful of something that glinted in the firelight. “Metal. Looks like it was part of a lock or a hinge.”
Becca leaned forward, eyes sharpening. “Let me see.” She turned the pieces over in her palms, her expression shifting from curiosity to something harder to read. “This is machined. Not hand-forged. Look at the tolerance on the edges. This was made by a machine. A precise one.”
“That’s impossible,” Vance said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. No infrastructure. No industry.”
“Maybe there was.” Becca held one up, letting the firelight catch its surface. “Metal doesn’t rust overnight. This has been here for years. Decades. Maybe longer.”
“Which means someone was here before,” Rebecca said. “Someone with tools. Someone with technology.”
“Someone who might have left other things behind.”
The implication hung in the air. Helena’s notes. The possibility that they weren’t the first travelers to pass through this frozen wasteland.
“We should search,” Rebecca said. “When the sun comes up, if the sun comes up, we look for more. Supplies. Shelter. Something useful.”
“And if there isn’t?” Arthur asked.
“Then we keep walking until we find something else.”
The snow crunched.
It was a small sound, barely audible over the wind, but Rebecca heard it. She saw Wayne’s head snap up, saw Becky’s hand move to her blade, saw Becca’s fingers tighten around the metal pieces in her palm.
“What was that?” Arthur whispered.
No one answered. The fire crackled. The wind howled. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the firelight, something moved.
Rebecca counted shapes in the shadows. It was a habit from the lab, imposing order on chaos. Three shapes. No, four. The firelight flickered, and she lost count. They hung at the edge of visibility, outlines blurred and shifting, eyes glinting with points of reflected light that tracked the group with an intelligence that made her skin crawl.
“Wolves?” Wayne asked, his voice steady but strained underneath.
“Bigger than wolves.” Becky had her blade drawn, the steel catching the firelight. “Wolves don’t move like that.”
“Like what?”
“In formation. They’re surrounding us.”
The shapes drew closer. Rebecca could smell them now, musky and animal, cutting through the woodsmoke and cold. Something in it made her stomach turn, like the air before a storm.
“Don’t run,” she said. “Whatever they are, don’t run. If we run, they’ll chase.”
“And if we stay?” Arthur’s voice cracked. “They’ll eat us.”
“They haven’t yet. That means something.”
“It means they’re deciding.”
Wayne’s breathing had changed. Rebecca noticed it before anything else, a subtle hitch, a shift in rhythm. He was still on his feet, still facing the darkness with that stubborn expression, but his body was betraying him.
“Wayne. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.” She moved toward him, her own fear forgotten for the moment. Up close she could see the damage: his lips had gone blue, his skin waxy and pale, and when she touched his hands they felt like they belonged to a corpse.
“Wayne, you need to sit down. You need to get warm.”
“I need to protect the group.” His words were slurring. “That’s my job.”
“Your job is to stay alive.”
He tried to smile. It came out lopsided and strange. “Since when?”
His knees buckled.
Rebecca caught him, barely, dead weight, all muscle and bone and the sudden absence of the strength that usually defined him. They both went down, her knees hitting the snow, her arms wrapped around his shoulders as he collapsed against her.
“Becky! Help me.”
Becky was already moving, crossing the clearing in three strides, blade still in hand, eyes still on the shapes in the darkness. She dropped to her knees beside Wayne, pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Hypothermia. He’s been showing symptoms for hours. We just didn’t see it.”
“He was walking. He was talking.”
“Masking it. Pushing through.” Becky’s jaw tightened. “I’ve seen it before. Soldiers do it. They ignore the signs until they can’t anymore.”
Becca appeared on Wayne’s other side. She stripped off her jacket, the reinforced denim covered in leather patches, and draped it over his chest.
“That won’t help,” Vance said. “He needs core warmth. The jacket’s just going to keep what’s left of his heat from escaping.”
“Then we give him core warmth.” Becca was already pulling at Wayne’s vest, fumbling with the buckles. “Body heat. Skin to skin. It’s the only thing that works.”
“Skin to.” Arthur’s voice trailed off. “You mean.”
“I mean someone needs to hold him. Share body heat. It’s not complicated.”
Rebecca looked at Wayne, at his pale face and blue lips, at the slack, vulnerable expression he’d never let anyone see if he were conscious. He’d hate this. He’d hate needing help. But he wasn’t conscious, and she wasn’t going to let him die.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“No.” Becky’s voice cut through the cold. “You’re both the same size. You won’t generate enough heat. I’m bigger. It’s not a debate.” She was already unbuttoning her jacket, already peeling off the thermal shirt beneath. The cold hit her skin like a blow, but she didn’t flinch. “Get him out of his clothes. Get him close. And someone keep watching those things.”
Rebecca’s hands shook as she worked at Wayne’s vest, the buckles stiff with frost. She managed it anyway. Vest off, work shirt off, boots off. Wayne didn’t react, just lay there in the snow, his chest rising and falling in shallow, irregular breaths.
Becky lay down beside him and pulled him against her, his back to her chest, her arms wrapped around his torso. Skin to skin. Her breath fogged against the back of his neck, and Rebecca saw her eyes close, saw her jaw clench with the effort of sharing warmth she didn’t have to spare.
“Cover them,” Rebecca said. “Both of them. Everything we’ve got.”
They piled jackets and shirts and wet trousers over the two bodies in the snow. Vance gave up his tweed jacket, ice-crusted and useless as it was. Arthur handed over his suit jacket without a word. Becca laid her dead controller on top, as if it might do something, anything.
The fire crackled. The wind howled. The shapes in the darkness moved closer.
Rebecca counted. Nine, definitely nine, larger than wolves, closer to bears, or something that had no name in any world she’d visited. Their eyes glinted red-orange in the firelight, their breath rising in clouds of steam that hung like ghosts.
They circled, always circling, never coming closer, never retreating, moving in a slow, deliberate pattern that spoke of strategy and patience and the certainty that their prey would eventually stop running.
“They’re waiting,” Becca whispered, tense beside Rebecca, eyes fixed on the shapes. “For us to get too weak to fight back.”
“Then we don’t get weak.” Rebecca’s fingers found her thigh again. Tap-tap-tap. “We stay strong. We stay awake. We don’t let them win.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“It’s the only plan we’ve got.”
The fire burned lower. Rebecca found more wood, not much, just a few splintered pieces from the collapsed wall, and fed them to the flames. The light pushed back the darkness, but barely. The shapes adjusted, moving to the edge of the fire’s reach, eyes never leaving the group.
Becca held up her controller. The screen flickered, the battery icon flashing red. “Eight hours,” she said. “Eight hours and twenty minutes until the portal opens.”
“If it opens.”
“When it opens.”
Rebecca appreciated the correction, appreciated the way Becca kept trying to hold onto hope even though they both knew the odds, the way Vance had positioned himself between Arthur and the shapes despite trembling too hard to stand straight, the way Becky had wrapped herself around Wayne without hesitation, without complaint, without any of the walls she’d spent two years building.
They were all afraid. All exhausted. All probably going to die out here.
But they were still fighting.
The shapes retreated. It happened slowly, so slowly Rebecca almost missed it. One moment they were there, a ring of eyes and teeth and hunger. The next, they’d faded into the darkness like they’d never existed.
“What the.” Arthur started.
“Quiet.” Becky’s voice was sharp. “Could be a trick.”
They waited. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. The fire burned. The wind howled. The darkness stayed empty.
“They’re gone,” Becca said finally. “I don’t know why, but they’re gone.”
“Because they’re smart.” Rebecca exhaled, her breath fogging. “They know we’re not worth the effort. Not yet.”
“Or they found something better to hunt.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
Wayne stirred. A small movement, a twitch of his fingers, a change in his breathing, but Rebecca caught it. She was at his side in an instant, hand on his forehead.
“Wayne? Can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open, unfocused but open.
“Rebecca?” His voice was a rasp. “What, where.”
“You collapsed. Hypothermia. Becky’s been keeping you warm.”
He turned his head, slow and painful, and found Becky pressed against him, still holding him, still sharing what little warmth she had left. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow, but she wasn’t asleep. Rebecca could tell by the tension in her shoulders, by the grip that hadn’t loosened.
“You’re freezing,” Wayne said.
“You’re welcome.” She didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t move. Just lay there, holding him.
Wayne was quiet a moment. Then, so softly Rebecca almost missed it: “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For making you do this. For being weak.”
“You’re not weak.” Her voice had softened, just slightly. “You’re human. There’s a difference.”
“I should have said something. When I started feeling off.”
“You should have trusted us to help you.” Rebecca cut him off gently. “That’s the thing, Wayne. You’re always the one helping, always the one carrying. But you don’t have to carry everything. We’re a team.”
He looked at her, eyes still glassy, but something in them shifted, gratitude, maybe, or guilt, or just the simple human need to be seen.
“I don’t know how to do that,” he said. “I don’t know how to need people.”
“None of us do.” Becca had moved closer, her controller clutched against her chest. “We’ve all been alone too long. Fighting our own battles. Solving our own problems. But we’re not alone anymore.”
“And if we don’t make it home?” Arthur asked. “If we die out here, in this frozen hell, what then?”
“We don’t die.” Rebecca tapped her thigh. Tap-tap-tap. “We survive. We get home. We figure out what the hell is happening to the multiverse. And then we take a very long vacation somewhere warm.”
Wayne laughed, weak, barely more than a cough, but laughter. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“You’d better.”
The fire was dying. They’d burned through their meager supply of wood, and the flames were down to a few half-hearted flickers, just enough light to see the shape of each other’s faces. The cold crept back in, and Rebecca could feel it in her fingers, her toes, the spaces between her thoughts.
“Two hours,” Becca said. “Two hours and forty-one minutes.”
“And then what?” Arthur asked.
“And then we jump.”
Wayne’s breathing had steadied, but he wasn’t out of danger. Becky was still pressed against him, her lips blue-gray, her whole body shaking. She hadn’t complained once. Just held him, gave him warmth, kept him alive.
Rebecca watched them, and something clicked into place, something that had been forming for hours, maybe days, maybe since she’d first seen Becky’s photo in Vance’s notes. A connection. A recognition. A shared understanding that went deeper than words.
Becky cared about Wayne. Maybe not the same way she’d cared about her own Wayne, maybe not the same way Rebecca might once have cared about hers. But cared nonetheless. Enough to freeze herself. Enough to risk her own survival to save his.
That was something. That was more than something.
The fire died. Darkness swallowed them whole.
Becky reached over and took Wayne’s hand. Rebecca did the same.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Becca whispered. “I’ve been watching. Analyzing. The three of you, you’re not random. Not a mistake.” She paused, gathering breath. “You’re a resonance. Three identical frequencies in the same place. That’s the only reason the portal works at all. Individually, none of us is enough. All three of you together, that’s what the gate needs.”
“Three versions of the same person,” Vance murmured. “Linked.” He shook his head. “That’s not physics. That’s poetry.”
“Maybe they’re the same thing,” Rebecca said softly.
Wayne looked at Rebecca. At Becca. At Becky. Three versions of the same woman, standing in the darkness, holding him. Three heartbeats syncing to a single rhythm. He felt something loosen behind his ribs, something he’d been holding onto so long he’d forgotten what it was like to breathe without it.
He tightened his grip on Becky’s hand.
“How long did you say we have?”
The cold had teeth. It gnawed through Rebecca’s jacket, through her cargo pants, through the thin cotton of her shirt, found the gaps between her ribs and settled there, a constant, aching presence that made every breath feel like swallowing glass. She’d stopped shivering hours ago. She knew that was bad. But knowing something and doing something about it were two very different things.
Becca’s controller flickered. The screen was a mess of dead pixels and cracked glass, but the countdown still glowed through the damage. Rebecca watched the numbers shift, each second bleeding into the next with mechanical indifference.
1:10.44.
Seventy minutes until the portal opened, if it opened at all. Becca had stopped trying to read the signal data. The degradation had progressed too far, the resonance too unstable. Now she just stared at the timer, thumb tracing the edge of the cracked casing, lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line.
Wayne was still on the ground. He’d stopped shaking, which was worse than the shaking. Becky had wrapped herself around him like a second skin, arms locked around his chest, face pressed against the back of his neck. She hadn’t moved in hours. Hadn’t spoken. Just held him, gave him whatever warmth her body could still produce.
Rebecca could see her lips moving sometimes. Silent words against Wayne’s skin. Prayers, maybe. Or promises. Or just the simple, desperate repetition of his name.
The fire was dead, nothing left but ash and a few stubborn embers glowing orange in the darkness. Rebecca gathered them into a small pile, cupped her hands around them, tried to coax some life back. But the wood was gone, the embers fading, and there was nothing left to burn except themselves.
Vance sat apart from the group, back pressed to the frozen timber, journal clutched against his chest, spectacles fogged, maybe frozen, it was hard to tell. He didn’t bother wiping them. Just sat there, lips moving in silent calculations that would never be spoken aloud.
Arthur hadn’t moved in hours either, still propped against the wall, injured leg stretched out, briefcase clutched in his lap. The leather was cracked and peeling, the clasp broken, but he held onto it like the last remnant of his old life.
The wind howled, a constant, keening wail that sounded almost human. Rebecca had stopped listening to it hours ago. There was only so much terror a person could process before it became background noise.
She tapped her thigh. Tap-tap-tap. Slower than usual, sluggish with cold and exhaustion, but still there. Still keeping her anchored to something resembling sanity.
“Becca. What’s the stability index?”
Becca didn’t look up. “Dropping.”
“How much?”
“Point zero zero eight and falling.”
Rebecca closed her eyes, did the math in her head, didn’t like the answer.
“That’s below the threshold,” she said.
“I know.”
“Below the threshold means the portal might not recognize us.”
“I know.”
“Below the threshold means we might jump somewhere completely random. Or nowhere at all. Or.”
“I know.” Becca’s voice was flat, empty. “I’ve been staring at this screen for eight hours. I know what it means.”
The silence that followed was heavier than the cold.
Vance stirred. “I’ve been recalculating,” he said, hoarse, barely audible over the wind. “The three frequencies. The alignment. If we can synchronize them precisely.”
“We can’t.” Becca cut him off. “The controllers are dead. The tablets are dead. We have no way to adjust the frequencies.”
“We have the timers.”
“The timers are receivers, not transmitters. They can’t broadcast anything.”
“Then we’re stuck.”
“Yes.” Her voice cracked, just slightly. “We’re stuck.”
Wayne moved. A small thing, a shift of his shoulders, a turn of his head, but the first movement in hours. Becky’s arms tightened, her breath catching.
“Wayne? Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear.” His words were slurred, thick. “Wish I couldn’t. My head feels like someone used it for a hammer.”
“You’re awake.”
“Unfortunately.”
Becky laughed, wet and broken, half sob and half relief. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, her whole body shaking. “You scared me. You scared me so bad.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just.” She stopped, swallowed. “Just don’t do it again.”
“I’ll try.”
Rebecca watched the way Becky’s hands moved across Wayne’s chest, checking for warmth, checking for life, the way he leaned into her touch, eyes closed, breathing slowly steadying. Something passed between them, unspoken, fragile, something that looked almost like hope.
She looked away, fingers tapping. Tap-tap-tap.
0:51.22.
Fifty-one minutes.
“We need to get ready,” she said. “When the portal opens, we need to be on our feet. Ready to move.”
“Ready to move where?” Arthur hadn’t opened his eyes. “We don’t know where it’s going to take us. We don’t know if it’s going to take us anywhere at all.”
“We know it’s going to open. The timer’s counting down.”
“The timer could be wrong. The whole system could be wrong. We could be standing here waiting for a miracle that’s never going to come.”
“Then what do you suggest? That we lie down and die? That we give up because things might not work out?”
“I’m suggesting we be realistic.”
“I’m suggesting we be alive.”
Arthur opened his eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, but with something hard in them now. Something stubborn.
“I’ve spent my entire life being realistic,” he said. “Planning for the worst, preparing for the worst, expecting the worst. And you know what it got me? A job I hated. A life I didn’t want. And now this.” He gestured at the frozen wasteland around them. “Maybe being realistic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe sometimes you have to believe in something impossible. Maybe sometimes you have to hope.”
Rebecca stared at him. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Neither do I. But I’m willing to try.”
Wayne sat up. It took him three tries, Becky helping, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her body braced against his, but he managed, back against the wall, breath coming in short, controlled gasps.
“How long?”
“Forty-eight minutes,” Becca said.
“Then we’ve got time.”
“For what?”
Wayne looked at Rebecca, at Becky, at the space between them that had been filled with nothing but cold and fear and the slow, creeping certainty of death.
“To figure out what we’re doing,” he said. “To make a plan. To.” He coughed. “To say the things we need to say.”
“What things?”
He didn’t answer. Just looked at Becky, his eyes soft, his expression unreadable.
Becky looked back. And then she kissed him.
It wasn’t the kind of kiss that happened in movies, all sweeping music and perfect light. It was desperate, frightened, tasting of cold and exhaustion and the faint metallic tang of blood from cracked lips.
Wayne made a small sound, surprise or relief, and then his hands came up, cupping her face, pulling her closer. She leaned into him, her whole body pressing against his, her fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt.
Rebecca watched. Her fingers had stopped tapping. Her breath had stopped moving. Everything had stopped except the two people in front of her, tangled together in the snow, holding onto each other like they were the only things keeping the world from falling apart.
She should look away. She knew she should look away.
She didn’t.
She watched until the kiss ended, until Becky pulled back, her face flushed despite the cold, her eyes bright with something that might have been tears. Watched until Wayne touched her cheek, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw, his expression soft in a way Rebecca had never seen from him before.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” Becky whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
Rebecca’s chest hurt. It wasn’t the cold, wasn’t the exhaustion. It was something else, something she didn’t have a name for. She watched the way Wayne looked at Becky and felt a pang of something that might have been jealousy, or loneliness, or just the simple human need to be held.
She’d never thought about Wayne that way. He was her friend, her partner, the guy who sold her resistors and capacitors and listened to her rant about failed experiments. Solid and steady and reliable, and she’d never once considered the possibility of something more.
But seeing him with Becky, seeing the way he touched her, the way he looked at her, something twisted inside Rebecca that she didn’t examine too closely.
She looked away, fingers tapping her thigh. Tap-tap-tap.
0:40.53.
Forty minutes.
The howl came from the east. Different from the wind, sharper, more focused, a sound that cut through the darkness like a blade. Rebecca’s head snapped up, heart hammering against her ribs.
“What was that?” Arthur whispered.
No one answered. The howl came again, closer. Then another, from the west. And another, from the south.
They were surrounded.
“Not wolves,” Becky said, already on her feet, blade in hand, body positioned between Wayne and the darkness. “Wolves don’t hunt like this.”
“What hunts like this?” Vance asked.
“Pack hunters. Coordinated hunters. Things that know how to work together.”
The shapes emerged from the darkness, bigger than the ones that had circled them before, much bigger. Nine feet tall, maybe ten, massive frames covered in matted brown fur. Tusks curved from their jaws, yellowed and scarred. Horns swept back from their skulls, ridged and weathered. Their eyes glowed amber, their breath rising in clouds of steam that hung like ghosts.
“Beasts,” Rebecca breathed.
“What?” Wayne asked.
“That’s what they’re called.” She didn’t know how she knew. The word had appeared in her mind, fully formed, like a memory that wasn’t hers.
One of them stepped forward, the largest of the group, its fur darker, its tusks longer. It moved with a deliberate, lumbering gait, each footstep sinking deep into the snow, leaving impressions far larger than any known animal. A low, guttural growl rumbled in its chest, felt more than heard, vibrating through the ground itself.
“Don’t move,” Becky whispered. “Don’t run. Don’t do anything.”
The Beast stopped, ten feet away now, close enough that Rebecca could smell it, musky and animal, cutting through the cold. It tilted its head, studying them, and she had the distinct, unsettling feeling that it was thinking.
“Arthur,” Vance said quietly. “The briefcase. Open it.”
“What? Why?”
“Just open it.”
Arthur fumbled with the broken clasp, fingers clumsy with cold. The briefcase fell open, revealing a mess of papers, folded, crumpled, stained with coffee and something that might have been blood.
The Beast’s eyes tracked the movement. It took another step forward.
“Vance, what are you doing?”
“The briefcase. It’s the only thing we have from our world. The only thing that might.” He stopped, swallowed. “Helena’s notes. The ones I brought with us. They mentioned offerings. Things that might appease.”
“Appease what? Vance, these things aren’t.”
The Beast roared, a sound that shook the ground, that rattled Rebecca’s teeth and sent spikes of ice through her veins. The other Beasts joined in, their roars combining into a chorus of fury and hunger.
Then they charged.
“Run!” Wayne shouted.
They ran.
Rebecca’s legs were numb, her lungs burning, her heart slamming against her ribs like it was trying to escape. She couldn’t feel her feet. Couldn’t feel the ground. Just ran, blindly, desperately, the snow crunching beneath her sneakers and the Beasts pounding behind her.
“Where are we going?” Arthur screamed.
“Anywhere!” Becky shouted back. “Just keep moving!”
The landscape blurred past, skeletal trees, frozen mist, cracked black ice that groaned beneath their boots like the earth itself was holding its breath. Rebecca stumbled, caught herself, kept running. Her controller banged against her wrist, the dead screen a useless weight.
0:30.18.
Thirty minutes.
The Beasts were gaining. She could hear them, the heavy thud of their footsteps, the wet rasp of their breathing, the low, guttural growls that seemed to come from everywhere at once. They were faster than they looked. Stronger. And they knew the terrain.
Wayne stumbled. He’d been running beside her, face pale, breath ragged, his body still weak from the hypothermia. He caught himself on a tree, fingers scraping frozen bark, and for a moment his eyes met hers.
“Go,” he said.
“Not without you.”
“Rebecca.”
“Not without you.”
He pushed off the tree and ran again, slower now, steps faltering, breath a wheeze cutting through the cold.
The Beast was right behind them. Rebecca could see it in her peripheral vision, massive, glowing-eyed, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off its body, close enough to smell the rotten-meat stench of its breath.
Then it stopped. Just stopped, right in the middle of the clearing, head tilted, eyes fixed on something in the distance.
“What’s it doing?” Arthur whispered.
“Shh.” Becky held up a hand. “Listen.”
They listened, and Rebecca heard it. A sound, faint at first, barely audible over the wind, growing louder. A humming, mechanical sound. A sound she recognized.
“The portal,” she breathed.
The Beasts heard it too. They backed away, growls fading, bodies retreating into the darkness. The alpha paused at the edge of the clearing, its amber eyes meeting Rebecca’s for a long, strange moment.
Then it turned and disappeared into the snow.
“What.” Arthur started.
“No time.” Rebecca was already moving, pulling the others toward the sound. “The portal’s opening. We have to go. Now.”
They ran. Rebecca could see it now, a vertical seam of light at the edge of the clearing, violet and emerald and electric blue braided together like liquid glass, the same impossible geometry as before. The wind gusted, and for a moment she saw through the seam. A room. Her room. Her apartment, the familiar clutter of her workbench, the smell of solder.
“The apartment,” she gasped. “It’s opening back to the apartment.”
0:20.07.
“We need to get closer,” Wayne said.
They ran. The snow was deeper here, dragging at their legs, slowing them down. Rebecca could feel time slipping through her fingers, the countdown ticking toward zero. They weren’t going to make it. They were too far away. The portal was going to close before they reached it.
She pushed harder, lungs screaming, legs burning, every step agony, every breath a knife. She kept moving, kept pushing toward the light.
0:10.18.
“Becca! What happens if we don’t make it?”
“We die!” Becca shouted back. “We die and the portal closes and we never get home!”
0:08.47.
“This way!” Becky had taken point, moving with a purpose Rebecca hadn’t seen before. “There’s a ridge. We can jump down. It’ll get us there faster!”
0:06.12.
They reached the ridge. Rebecca looked down. A ten-foot drop, maybe more. The portal shimmered and pulsed at the bottom, its light painting the snow in shades of purple and green, surrounded by five Beasts, each positioned like a guard.
“Shit,” Arthur said.
“We can take them,” Becky said.
“No.” Vance grabbed her arm. “Look. They’re not attacking. They’re waiting. They’re drawn to the light, but they can’t touch it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. But it’s our only chance.”
0:04.33.
“Jump on three!” Rebecca shouted. “One.”
0:03.21.
“Two.”
0:02.09.
“Three!”
They jumped.
Rebecca felt the wind rush past her face, her stomach drop, the impact as her feet hit the ground and she rolled, came up running, kept running toward the light.
The Beasts didn’t move. They just watched, five massive shapes, amber eyes tracking the group as they sprinted toward the portal.
0:00.59.
“Go, go, go!”
Wayne grabbed Arthur’s arm, dragged him forward, pushed him through the portal. Becca went next, controller clutched against her chest. Becky followed, blade still in her hand, eyes wild.
0:00.17.
Rebecca grabbed Wayne’s hand and pulled.
They jumped together.
Chapter 8: What City Left Behind
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.