Epilogue

The air was chilled, and a frigid wind shivered across her skin. Mel opened her eyes and pushed herself up. She still had tight hold of Quinn’s hand and as she pulled free, his grip tightened for a second, before he released her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Just about every inch of her hurt. The burn from the laser blast stung like fire, and she was bruised and battered from being flung around the space station. But she was alive. For how long, though, she didn’t know. “I’m fine.”

“Glad one of us is—I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. Or maybe attacked by a Bhaxian warship. Funny, I never thought I would say anything even remotely like that.” He got to his feet and looked around. “So are we where and when we’re supposed to be?”

She glanced at the transponder on her wrist. It was dead, completely inactive when she swiped her hand over the screen. Presumably, the time machines were gone in the future. Blown up? Or perhaps they had never come into existence. “I don’t know,” she said. “Have you any idea where we are?”

They were on a grassy hillside. In the distance, she could make out the skyline of a city.

“I think that’s New York,” Quinn said.

The sun was high in the sky, so it had to be around midday. No one was in sight, though she could hear the drone of traffic. The highway must be on the other side of the hill. She’d expected something here. Some sign, some idea of what they needed to do. Where was the time machine, with its bomb? Or Quinn’s friends? What were they supposed to do—just hang around and wait for something to happen?

“Holy shit,” Quinn said.

He was staring up at the sky. She followed his gaze and her breath caught in her throat. High up, she could make out a spaceship. It was distant, but hurtling toward them at great speed, its course erratic as it zigzagged across the sky, careering out of control but heading straight for Earth. Straight for them.

Now it filled the sky, blacking out the sun, turning day to night. It was huge, maybe a mile in diameter. A trail of fire followed in its wake. Could they run? But it was too big, they could never outrun it. She turned and wrapped her arms around Quinn, needing his closeness. Needing to hold him to the end.

Had they been wrong? Was this the Cataclysm?

It had nothing to do with the bomb after all.

She stared mesmerized. Now she could feel the heat from the fires that burned the great ship. This was the end. They were going to die. But at what must be the last second the ship veered away. It crashed to Earth about a mile from where they stood, the force of the blast hurling them both backward. She lay there, staring up at the sky, which was clear once more. She waited for another blast, one signaling the Cataclysm. Nothing happened, and she sat up and stared at the huge burning ship, the heat washing over them in waves. But as she watched, the fires were extinguished, leaving the ship almost unmarked.

“Wow,” Quinn said. “I wasn’t expecting that. Where the hell did that come from?”

She’d seen images of the ship in her history classes. “At a guess, and a long time ago, the planet Krell. That, I think, is the missing Krellian mothership.” And suddenly everything made sense. “That’s why the Krellians were sending the time machine back. To save their mothership.” Or maybe just to retrieve something from it. The DNA databases perhaps. A chance to rebuild their world.

“And presumably the Bhaxians found out and decided to stop them. That’s why they sent the bomb here and now.”

And they hadn’t cared that they’d nearly destroyed a planet in the process. Except the time machine and the bomb were nowhere in sight. “So where are your friends?” she asked.

Quinn shrugged. “Perhaps the time machine really was damaged and is stuck in Uganda. Or maybe Kane found out what his mission was and decided blowing up the world was a bad idea after all.”

But at that moment, off to their left, a hundred feet away, the air shimmered and rippled and the silver time machine appeared. She stared at it for a moment. Prickles shivered across her skin as she accepted that her whole world had been false, and if they succeeded now, it would likely never exist.

But she’d made her decision back in the future.

She held out her hand to Quinn. “Come on,” she said. “It’s time to save your world.”

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