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Chapter 1
Liam Mackenzie crawled out along the branch until it started to bend under him. The ground seemed miles below yet couldn’t be more than thirty feet. Still, high enough to break his neck if he fell.
And that was the point.
He glanced sideways over the lake. The small jetty looked even more rickety and ancient from up here, his tiny boat absolutely still in the shallow water among the reeds. The Weary Traveler belonged to him, as did the jetty and a stretch of marshy bank. Even this tree was his. He’d been climbing it for as long as he could remember and had stretched out on this very bough more times than he could count.
Today, however, was the first time he’d considered jumping.
He wasn’t depressed or suicidal. Far from it. He just happened to know he wouldn’t die. He’d already seen his future, and he knew for a fact he would live to be an old man. So unless he could actually change his destiny, it meant he could never be killed by a crazy, experimental dive from a thirty-foot-high branch. He was sure of it.
Pretty sure, anyway.
He reasoned it out for the millionth time. He’d seen his future. He and his future wife, the lovely Madison who lived next door, would send back messages about all these wormholes that kept opening, thus enabling him to find a time wand and make all this possible. If he didn’t survive this fall from the tree right now at the age of twelve, then the future he’d glimpsed would not be possible, which meant—
“Man, time travel makes my head hurt,” he muttered, staring down through the branches. “But not as much as smacking into the ground.”
He’d thought about doing this for the past few days. It had been a week since an eerie yellow fog had come down on his house and dumped monsters everywhere. There had been no wormholes since, or at least none Madison had been aware of. The idea of testing the limits of his paradoxical life had occurred to him late on Thursday night, and he’d spent Friday mulling it over. Now it was Saturday morning, and he was ready.
Or so he’d thought. Planning to leap to his death and actually doing it were two entirely different things.
“Come on, don’t be chicken,” he told himself. “Just close your eyes and roll sideways. You can’t die.”
But you might break an arm, a sensible inner voice said. Or a leg, or worse. Heck, you might end up paralyzed, spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair. Did you think about that, doofus?
“Yeah, except I don’t spend my life in a wheelchair.”
Then he frowned. Actually, he knew no such thing. Using the time wand, he’d glimpsed his future self lying in bed an hour or two after dying of old age. There had been no sign of a wheelchair, but its absence from the bedroom wasn’t exactly proof he would be fighting fit and healthy throughout his old age.
And what about Ant? While Liam and Madison were guaranteed long lives, their friend’s fate was a complete mystery, highlighting just how uncertain the future was.
Liam’s phone blared in his pocket, startling him. He looped one arm around the branch and tried to reach for the phone, but it was a little awkward to get at, and he decided it could wait. He let it ring until it went to voicemail, then sighed and stared down at the ground again.
Okay, so this was a dumb idea. He really wasn’t concerned about dying early—he remained convinced that he’d get to live a long life no matter what—but he still might break a few limbs without disrupting the balance of time. How would he explain that to his parents?
“What were you doing up a tree?” his dad would demand.
“I saw myself in the future, so I was testing to see if I was invincible.”
No, that wouldn’t go down well.
Liam gave it up. He’d already lost whatever nerve he’d mustered. He wriggled backward along the branch—and it snapped under him.
He yelled in terror as he tipped forward and dropped. He let go of the useless branch and grappled for another, the next one down and a little to one side. He managed to hook his arm over it, letting out a cry as he swung underneath. The snapped branch tumbled away as his flailing feet found something sturdy to put weight on. Gasping, he pulled himself into a better position, then perched there panting and trembling.
Yeah, this was definitely a dumb idea, he thought.
His phone bleeped at that moment, but he ignored it and instead started cautiously down the thick, gnarled trunk. He waited until he was safely down on the ground before digging the phone out of his pocket and checking his text messages. Maddy had sent one:
Another wormhole. Call me!
The jolt of excitement almost made him drop his phone. He gripped it hard, his heart thumping, then stabbed at the call button.
Madison answered after one ring. “Hey.”
“Hey, what’s it say?”
“I’m fine, thanks. How are you?”
Liam rolled his eyes. “I thought we were past small talk.”
“A simple hello would be nice.”
“Okay, sorry.” He put on his most polite voice. “Hello, Maddy, how are you today?”
“Never mind that. I have a new message! Don’t you want to hear what it says?” She barreled on before Liam had a chance to respond with a cutting remark. “I slept in this morning, and when I woke, there it was on my pillow, scrawled in my usual messy handwriting. First one in a week! And . . . you’re gonna be amazed.”
Intrigued, Liam stood absolutely still in the crisp morning air with the phone pressed tightly to his ear. “What do you mean?”
Annoyingly, she evaded the question. “Where are you right now? Are you home?”
“No.”
“So where?”
He faltered. “I’m—well, I thought I’d—”
“You know what, I don’t care. Life’s too short. Can you be home in twenty minutes?”
“No problem.”
“Good. Call Ant and tell him to come over.”
Sensing she was about to hang up, Liam blurted, “Wait, where’s the wormhole supposed to be showing up? And when?”
But the phone bleeped to say the call had been disconnected, and he stared at the screen in disgust.
* * *
He hurried along the lane toward home. It was only a short walk, and he called Ant immediately. “Hey,” he said when his friend answered. “You need to come over.”
“Say please.”
“What? No way. Get here now or miss it.”
A short silence followed. Then Ant sighed. “You make a good argument, sir. See you in ten.”
As Liam slipped the phone back into his pocket, he felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect of witnessing another wormhole. What would come through this time? Three-headed aliens from a distant galaxy? Elves from some parallel dimension where well-known fantasy creatures existed? All he knew for sure was that the visitors had the technology to rip a hole in the fabric of space and create a gateway between two distant points in the universe.
Liam still felt a little put out that his humble Planet Earth was deemed too backward to handle what was probably considered run-of-the-mill technology shared across countless galaxies. Sure, billions of other planets fell short of the cut too. Billions more were utterly uninhabited. But there was a sizeable community of intelligent beings out there in space where routine interstellar trade was commonplace. Liam imagined some kind of far-reaching internet where different planetary cultures kept in touch via super-advanced webcams, where the latest wormhole wands were snapped up by eager customers on some galactic ecommerce website, each new device costing a trillion creds or whatever the universal currency was . . .
One day, Earth would be invited to join the community, though Liam had a feeling that wouldn’t happen for a hundred years or more. NASA hadn’t even put a man on Mars yet. Maybe the humble Earthman just wasn’t trustworthy yet, like a child with a loaded gun.
Liam grinned. He was a child, and he owned a time wand. An echo projector to be exact, but either way, the power it wielded was astounding. He sobered at the very idea of it. After a trip back in time to his birth, then a few more into the future, he’d quickly recognized how dangerous the thing could be and buried it in Madison’s front yard. He was only twelve, but he wasn’t stupid. Too much knowledge could ruin his life.
And he’d nearly tested his so-called invincibility by throwing himself out of a tree?
He shuddered. What a dimwit.
As Madison’s house loomed through the trees just ahead, he picked up his pace and turned left into the Parkers’ horseshoe gravel driveway, casting a look toward his own house next door. Both his parents were home today, his mom in the house and his dad in the garage out back.
Madison had been watching from the window, and she came bounding out of the front door as he stamped up the porch steps. Liam glimpsed her five-year-old brother Cody in the living room behind her, staring with rapt fascination at Teen Titans Go! on the TV.
“Okay, let’s head out,” she said, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Your house.”
“But it’s a mess! We have people fixing the roof and—”
“Doesn’t matter. Come on.”
She brushed past him, heading for the narrow gate in the hedgerow between their properties. She wore all black again today: black leggings, short black skirt, and black t-shirt. Even her hair was black, making her face look pasty-white in comparison—but in a good way, her skin perfectly clear.
Liam’s heart fluttered every time he laid eyes on her. And he was destined to marry this girl? His mind boggled. Though she was only fifteen at the moment, he’d been to the future and seen her as an old lady—a jarring experience to say the least. She’d been wrinkly and ancient like all old people, yet he’d caught a glimpse of her youth within, something in her eyes or her voice, or perhaps in the way she’d spoken to his ghostly ‘echo’ form. She’d told him they’d led a wonderful married life together full of adventure.
Of course, she’d made him vow not to tell her younger self, a request he intended to honor. Even though she was his future wife, it might be decades before they finally got hitched. They each might date others first. Right now, she was three years older and way out of his league.
“You’re quiet,” she said, shooting him a glance over her shoulder.
“Just wondering where this wormhole is,” he lied as they headed up his front lawn. “Are you going to tell me or what?”
She grinned. “I will—as soon as Ant gets here.” She dug out her phone and checked the time. “Let’s hope he gets here soon. The fun starts in sixteen minutes.”
Chapter 2
“So why are we going to my house?” Liam demanded as they walked up the path. “You know my dad doesn’t like me getting in the way of the workers.”
“Then stay out of their way,” Madison said.
Roofers were hard at work. They’d ripped off a lot of the damaged wood sheeting and replaced it, and now they were retiling—and just in time, because the weather forecast promised rain all week.
The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. In fact, a giant, batlike monster had straddled the roof during last weekend’s wonderstorm, as Ant had called it. Being a one-story home, the massive winged alien had not only shredded the roof, it had knocked the ceiling through as well, and the kitchen needed a lot of repair work. It was serviceable, but the place was a mess.
Of course, only Liam, Madison, and Ant had seen the bat and the rest of the creatures that had wandered across the lawn. The thick, yellow cloud had masked the entire incident, and anyway Liam’s parents had been out. Everyone, the fire department included, had assumed some kind of freak tornado had struck.
Liam’s mom was standing perfectly still in the kitchen, staring at the wall next to the refrigerator, lost in thought. “You okay, Mom?” he said, pausing.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Mom?”
Frowning, she turned to him and held up two narrow cards, each with a colored square and tiny writing underneath. “I can’t decide. Thoughts?”
Liam let out a sigh. “Paint colors? Both look the same to me. Does it matter?”
“Sure it does.”
Madison nudged him aside and went to peer at the swatch cards. “Definitely the darker shade. It would contrast the white better. Otherwise it’ll all be a bit one-tone.”
Liam’s mom looked pleased. “Well, that’s exactly what I thought! Thank you, Madison.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, shooting a glance over her shoulder at Liam. “There’s no point asking mere boys about this sort of thing.”
“Nor grown men,” Liam’s mom agreed.
He and Madison escaped to his room, and while she went to the window and stared out, he quickly checked to make sure he had no underwear lying around. The roofers hammered away overhead.
“So?” Liam demanded. “The message?”
Madison raised an eyebrow at him. “Patience. Wait until Ant gets here.”
“But don’t we have to leave? How far away is this wormhole going to be, anyway?”
“Not far. We’ll get there in time—as long as Ant hurries.”
Luckily, Ant Carmichael arrived roughly seven minutes later according to Liam’s phone. Madison had at least advised when the wormhole would appear—at 10:33 AM.
Timing was a subject the three of them had discussed many times. What if their clock was wrong? What if the wormhole appeared a minute earlier or later? An argument could be made that most mobile phones were attuned to GPS signals, which in turn used incredibly accurate atomic clocks, but the truth was that it didn’t really matter. The wormhole appeared, Madison logged the time of its appearance in her journal, and her future self passed the same information back through time to her sleepy self.
Not that Madison knew that last part. She couldn’t know. It might change everything if she knew her mysterious sleep-written messages came from herself. Liam wasn’t sure how the knowledge might affect her; he knew only that future-Madison was adamant about keeping her younger self in the dark.
“It’s 10:28,” Liam said, watching out of the window and growing agitated as Ant climbed out of the chauffeur-driven limousine parked in the lane. The sleek, black car eased away, heading toward the lake where the driver, Barton, would turn the thing around and await further instructions. “Let’s head out, Maddy. We’re gonna be late!”
She shook her head. “Not yet. Ask him in.”
“But we only have five minutes!”
“Ask him in.”
Liam dashed through the house and yanked the front door open. His friend stood on the doorstep, his fist raised to knock. Though he had mega-rich parents who lived in a mansion and seemed quite aloof most of the time, Ant himself was fairly down to earth, red-haired and just a tiny bit pudgy, his clothes neatly pressed but typical of any twelve-year-old.
“Come on,” Liam urged. “We’re down to four minutes now. I get the feeling Maddy’s gonna tell us the wormhole’s opening up in the sky above the house again.”
Ant’s eyebrows shot up. “The roofers will see it, then.” He stepped backward and peered up into the sky. “It’s clear today. If a wormhole pops up—”
“Let’s find out. Come on, Ant—get in here!”
Liam’s mom appeared from the kitchen and opened her mouth to engage Ant in conversation, but the boys dashed past before she could get a word out.
In Liam’s room, Madison was peering at her phone. “It’s 10:30. Three minutes to go. Close your door, Liam.”
About to burst with frustration, he drew himself up to argue—and then paused. Suddenly he knew. “It’s here, isn’t it?” he whispered. “The wormhole’s going to open inside the house.”
Madison pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and turned it around for the boys to read. They hurried closer to peer at the pencil-scrawled words:
10:33 AM. Liam’s bedroom.
He gaped. “Right here? Are you kidding?”
“Close the door, Liam,” Madison said again.
He did so. And locked it.
Madison turned her phone around so they could see it. “Two minutes, guys.”
Ant was still staring at the sheet. “And it’s definitely today? Like, this morning?”
This was another subject they’d talked about. Madison never sleep-wrote a date on her notes, just an exact time, and she assured them it meant the very next instance of that time. “I woke just after nine,” she said, “and there it was on my pillow. It’s happening now. Or in a couple of minutes, anyway.”
Liam glanced around his room. This could be bad. These wormholes had a fairly powerful suction, like a giant vacuum cleaner, and he worried that his stuff would get pulled in. He dashed around the room cramming small things into drawers. “Come on, help me out here,” he urged.
Ant raced about with him, but Madison looked put out at the idea of such a mundane chore when a grand wormhole event was imminent. It was a hopeless task, only a minute to deal with an awful lot of stuff including numerous books on shelves around the walls. Liam crammed his laptop under the bed along with a few other small things, then wedged his Lord of the Rings Frodo sword under the mattress. As he did so, it occurred to him that his bed sheets might get whipped away too, which would not go down well with his mom.
It was too late. With a flash, a vertical slice of light appeared in the dead center of the room. Liam, Ant, and Madison staggered backward, and each pressed themselves into a corner of the room as the light spread outward and formed a disc about six feet in diameter, angled toward the door and tilted slightly forward. Madison let out a cry of exhilaration as the center of the disc sank inward and a tunnel appeared, swirling and flickering, jagged blue light arcing and zigzagging from one side to another.
As expected, though the wormhole was eerily silent, its suction was strong. Liam’s bed sheets rippled and billowed, and he left the safety of his corner and rushed to one side of the bed to tuck them in as firmly as he could while the wormhole tugged at his clothes and hair. The posters on his wall—mostly Lord of the Rings—flapped and tore loose, whipping noisily into the tunnel and spinning away in an instant, disappearing into the distance. Other items flew in too, though Liam didn’t have time to take note of them. His bedside lamp fell over and started rolling and wobbling. He leapt for it, and it hung in the air for a moment, pulling on its cord until it popped free and vanished into the wormhole as well.
He staggered back, his feet wanting to leave the floor. The suction was strong, and everything around it crashed and flapped noisily. Any moment now, his mom would be banging on the door demanding to know what was going on.
He glared at Madison. Why couldn’t she have warned him earlier? But she was grinning, her black hair whipping about as she jammed herself into the corner. In another corner, Ant seemed less amused, his eyes wide.
Liam, who was crawling on hands and knees across the floor while gripping the end of the bed, watched with chagrin as books started toppling off the nearest bookshelf. They fell but then seemed to bounce off the floor and into the wormhole in an angry flutter of pages, like a flock of startled birds.
After that, most of the noise died away. Liam climbed to his feet and staggered to the wall, pressing himself against it about halfway between his friends in the corners. He decided that a wormhole in his bedroom was a terrible idea. But worse was the prospect of aliens pouring through and traipsing about the place. What if they were dangerous?
Watching carefully, staring into the mouth of the swirling wormhole, he spotted a figure fast approaching. It was shiny, shaped like a man with no feet, its arms held rigidly to its sides, its face featureless. Just a second or two later, it burst out of the wormhole and into the room—a hovering robot that paused and turned with tiny blue lights flashing on its chest piece.
Liam would never understand the push and pull of a wormhole. Here he was, struggling to keep from being sucked in, and yet this robot had just been ejected! For a few seconds, it seemed unaffected by the suction, perhaps in an in-between state . . . but then it leaned forward, clearly fighting to avoid being pulled back in.
Most wormhole visitors came through and stepped well away. The robot had very little space to maneuver, so it simply held its ground as though running the wrong way on an escalator.
It focused on Liam, and something bleeped.
Ant whispered, “Watch out! You’ve got red on you!”
Looking down, Liam saw red light playing across his chest. The robot was scanning him. Before he had time to consider what this meant, the gleaming machine floated toward him, and he saw his own reflection in the smooth, rounded, mirrorlike surfaces of its chest and nondescript faceplate.
The robot gave him no chance to act. Its straight, powerful arms shot out and grabbed his own, and he yelped.
“Liam!” Madison shouted, her smile gone now.
Helplessly, he found himself lifted up and spun around as the robot swiveled and headed toward the wormhole. The silent suction yanked them in, and they rushed along the tunnel at breakneck speed.
Liam twisted around to see his bedroom already far in the distance. To his astonishment, the wormhole began collapsing in his wake. He’d often wondered what would happen if a person was caught unawares and the tunnel’s life abruptly ended. Presumably that person would be flung into space, halfway between two distance points. There, that person would perhaps have a few seconds to ruminate on life before freezing or asphyxiating a few billion light years from home.
Paralyzed with terror, he watched over the robot’s shiny shoulder as the end of the tunnel grew closer, the blackness of space widening at its center. The entire wormhole shimmered and flickered around him.
But then he and his captor shot out into a dull, metal-walled chamber with steel girders and gantries. Directly ahead, a massive window looked out onto a star-studded blackness. The robot released Liam even before they’d stopped moving, and he staggered and spun around just in time to see the wormhole flash and dissipate, leaving only spots of light and an eerie, empty silence.
Breathing hard and trembling, Liam watched the robot as it turned its back on him and moved away, floating easily toward an archway and disappearing through it. Its job done, it no longer cared about him.
Trying to ignore the fact that his personal belongings were strewn across the floor like litter from an upturned trash can, Liam looked around the fifty-foot chamber, taking note of the grid flooring and metal wall surfaces. He saw steel rafters overhead, several massive supports here and there, and numerous control panels laid out in front of the giant window.
A star-studded blackness, he thought with sudden excitement. He headed toward the impressive scene, his heart thumping. Was it deep space? Could he be on a spaceship? He’d been on one before, but he’d never got to look outside.
Stunned, he pressed his nose to the glass and looked down on the sharply curving horizon of Earth, bright and blue against the blackness above. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered, awestruck.
“Ah, you’re here,” a voice said behind him.
Liam spun around and gaped.
Chapter 3
The man—if indeed he was a man—stood seven feet tall, more machine than flesh. Impossibly thin, almost skeletal, his legs and arms were a strange mix of ivory bones and metal rods, all held together with what looked like oily-black tendrils wrapped tightly through and around his frame.
He had no lower abdomen. Liam saw right through to where a thick, knobby spine connected the hips to the upper torso. The man’s broad chest featured a couple of red blinking lights and a small vent that let out wispy vapors. Two flexible tubes linked from the underside of his pronounced rib cage to his narrow hips. Another stretched up one side of his neck and plugged into his head.
His head, Liam thought with horror.
It looked like a human face had been grafted onto an artificial skull. While the back of the head was shiny and black, with dull-silver earpieces flattened against the sides, the face stood out pale and surreal, hairless and perfectly oval-shaped. Like someone slapped on a flattened lump of raw dough, Liam thought, his skin crawling.
Nevertheless, the man’s facial features were intact—eyes, nose, mouth, all completely normal. He looked like a sad, middle-aged gentleman with eyebrows that arched over clear, grey eyes.
“Welcome,” he said softly, his voice reverberating slightly, amplified by artificial means. “Don’t be alarmed by the way I look.”
“W-who are you?” Liam stammered.
The man dipped his head. “My name was once Stamos Mort, but nowadays I am known simply as the Ark Lord.” He lifted a long, thin arm and gestured around the room. “You are aboard my ship.”
For a second, Liam thought the man had said Dark Lord, and any number of fantasy and science fiction movies sprang to mind. But then it clicked. He’d been on this ship before. It was where the yellow wonderstorm had sprung from, leaked via a wormhole over his house. “The Ark,” he whispered.
The Ark Lord smiled and took a few long-reaching steps toward Liam, servos whining as he approached. “Come with me. I’ll explain everything on the way.”
He strode past Liam toward a circular doorway. The door was already open, and the Ark Lord ducked slightly as he passed through. Bewildered, Liam hurried to catch up. He’d wanted answers, hadn’t he?
The Ark Lord said nothing for a moment, and his feet—bare bones and metal digits clanging on the grid flooring—echoed around the dingy, narrow corridor. Liam stared in morbid fascination at actual human ribs showing at the rear side of the upper torso. Black tendrils intertwined with the bones like an aggressive weed. A dull-black inner casing filled every available square inch of the rib cage.
“You can see that I have mastered cybernetic technology,” the Ark Lord said, twisting his head to speak to Liam. “The perfect blend of flesh and metal.”
Perfect? Liam thought doubtfully, running his eyes up the full length of the shiny, knobby spine. Evidently it was superior to the original human one, probably much stronger, but still . . . This hideous body was the Ark Lord’s idea of perfection?
“I’ve lived a long time, Liam,” the tall man went on, branching to the right into another endless corridor. “I retain a few human parts—my heart, my brain, and my face—but almost everything else has been modified or replaced.”
“You still have a heart? So blood is pumping through your body?”
“My heart is more symbolic than anything. I can feel its beat when I’m still, and it reminds me I’m alive and human. You can feel a heart, but you can’t feel a brain in the same way even though the brain is what makes a person who he is. Without a brain, I’d be a mindless robot with a few organic bits kept alive by a life support system.”
Liam couldn’t argue with the Ark Lord’s logic.
“And of course my face allows others to read expressions and assess my intent, to see my amusement, my anger, my sorrow, all those emotions that complete us. I don’t need the face. I would feel and think the same way without it. But it’s useful around others. When I’m wearing my hooded robe, people conveniently forget what’s underneath and see only the pale face of an earnest man.”
A massive door slid open a few yards ahead, and the Ark Lord strolled through without pause. To the left, a gigantic room stood behind a glass wall. A thick, yellow fog filled the room, though the fog appeared to have paused in time. Within the gloom, dozens of dark shapes lurked.
Liam suddenly recognized where he was. He’d been in a very similar room before, a temporary prisoner along with sixty-five otherworldly creatures. To be more precise, he’d arrived in an empty room from which sixty-five prisoners had been sucked out through a wormhole and dumped on his house. He’d watched as they’d all been captured and teleported back.
“Is this a prison?” he asked, suddenly fearful that he was about to be trapped and frozen himself. “Or a zoo?”
The Ark Lord stopped and turned to him. “Call it what you will. I make no excuses. I’ve painstakingly captured and trapped every single creature on the Ark, and I’m very proud of my work. Not many condone my methods, but none can argue that my unique fascination with the universe has culminated in a zoological treasure—an encyclopedia of life itself, if you will.”
Liam couldn’t help staring into the darkness of the Ark Lord’s mouth as the man talked. Was there a throat back there? Did the man eat? Surely not! Did he have a tongue? He had to in order to form the words . . . and yes, there it was, just visible behind his teeth. The face was fully formed and working, yet the sides and back of his head were artificial. Where did the flesh-and-blood throat end and the metal begin? What did the eyeballs connect to? Were they wired to the man’s brain, or was there some kind of integrated electronic system as well? How did the flesh of the face remain alive? Where did—
“Of course, my work is far from done,” the Ark Lord continued, interrupting Liam’s racing thoughts. “The universe is unimaginably huge, and there are numerous other realities to explore as well. I’ve barely scratched the surface with my meager efforts.”
Liam looked through the glass wall, trying to make out the nearest silhouetted figure, something hulking with long arms. “But why?”
The silence he received caused him to look up at the Ark Lord’s pale face. The man looked puzzled. “Did I not just explain why, young Liam? Weren’t you listening?”
“Well—”
“Never mind. Let’s concentrate on why you’re here and what I need from you. Are you paying attention?”
Liam nodded.
The Ark Lord gave a single, hearty clap. Up close like this, his hands were easily twice the size of Liam’s, bony fingers melded with shiny metal rods, all held together with the ugly tendrils that pervaded his entire body. Curiously, his fingertips were encased in sheaths of black, perhaps an extension of the tendrils but in a different form.
“You’ve witnessed your own future, Liam,” the Ark Lord said. “Your timeline is like a beacon. I spotted it as I passed through your solar system recently—last week to you—and the temptation was too great to resist. Though I have several of your kind in my small army already, one more can’t hurt. Another invincible warrior on the team!”
Confused, Liam blinked and tried to focus. “Wait, what? I’m not a warrior!”
“Oh, but you are. I could enlist an army of one hundred highly trained soldiers, and it would be a bloodbath on both sides. A small squad would be better, especially one that has already survived the mission.”
“What?”
“You saw yourself in the future, ergo you survived what is to come in the next few days. Do you understand?”
Liam stared with mounting apprehension. “And what exactly is to come?”
The Ark Lord grinned broadly, his teeth surprisingly white and even. They looked real, though. Did he brush and floss at night? It was hard to imagine.
“I’ll explain the mission soon. Right now I just need you to understand what you’ll be up against. I know for a fact you’ll survive, but that doesn’t mean you’ll complete the task to my satisfaction. Come with me.”
As he turned to stalk onward along the corridor, Liam held his ground. “Wait. Look, I didn’t sign up for any mission. I didn’t even ask to come here. Your robot grabbed me. You kidnapped me. What makes you think I’m going to help you with a dangerous mission?”
The Ark Lord paused, still facing forward. “I had hoped to persuade you rather than threaten you. I already regret this part of the conversation, and I hope we can move past it. Put simply, young Liam, you’ll help me because the consequences will be severe if you don’t.”
“W-what do you mean?”
Now the Ark Lord turned to him, first swiveling his upper body and then following through with his hips and legs. “A week ago, as a quick test of your capabilities in a dire situation, I opened up a rift in one of the containment units. That rift dumped a plethora of monsters onto the grounds of your Earthbound property.”
“You did that deliberately?” Liam gasped. “I knew they came from here, but I thought a wormhole had opened by accident.”
“No, not an accident. It was a spur-of-the-moment test.”
“But even your robots didn’t know what was going on!”
The Ark Lord smiled. “The experiment served as a test for them, too. What would they do in a real-life breach? I’m pleased to say they performed admirably and snatched back each and every last prisoner.”
“But you missed me,” Liam muttered.
“I wasn’t aiming for you. If you’d been snatched up accidentally during the confusion, then so be it. But you escaped and earned the right to spend the next week on Earth rather than here on my Ark while I waited to commence the mission. You passed the test, young Liam. You showed great courage in riding that gas-beast, and you fought well on the ground. Also, and more importantly, you strengthened my theory that you are indeed destined to live until a ripe old age. You are suitable for this mission.”
Liam stuck out his lip and said sullenly, “And if I don’t do as I’m told?”
“Then perhaps I’ll use your friend instead. Madison, I believe her name is. The time stream surrounds her too. Would you prefer that I put you back on Earth and take her instead?”
Liam ground his teeth with anger. "Leave her alone.”
"Perhaps I’ll dump another container full of subjects on your house and this time leave them there. What do you think about that?”
Liam knew he couldn’t risk another such occurrence. The only reason he and his friends had escaped with their lives was because the Ark’s robot prison guards had latched onto the escapees and teleported them back up one by one. Left alone, the outcome would be terrifying.
The Ark Lord was staring at him. As if reading Liam’s mind, a smile spread across his stuck-on face. “I see you’ve arrived at the most sensible conclusion. Come this way, Liam, and I’ll explain your mission.”
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