Part 2: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-327-cyoa2-part-2.html
Part 3: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-328a-cyoa2-part-3-ridgeway-is-ally.html
Part 4: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-329a-cyoa2-part-4-martin-doesnt-know.html
Part 5: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-330a-cyoa2-part-5-martin-plays-along.html
Part 6: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-331a-cyoa2-part-6-everything-is.html
Part 7: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-332a-cyoa2-part-7-martin-goes-quietly.html
Part 8: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-333a-cyoa2-part-8-experiment-begins.html
Part 9: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-334a-cyoa2-part-9-martin-enters.html
A guard approached Hodge with a status report. Martin
watched the guard carefully. There was something about the man’s demeanor that
made him seem vulnerable. Martin saw Hodge give the guard an order. As the
guard turned to leave the room, Martin understood what his captor’s weakness
was. Hodge was a scientist, not a soldier. If he’d been commanding the rogue
staff of the Nautilus for two years, their training wouldn’t be as efficient as
it could be. Martin knew the advantage in a straight fight would be his.
All he needed was a distraction. Hodge seemed like a talker.
Maybe that would work. “Do you remember coming through the time-barrier all
those years ago?” he asked the scientist.
Hodge turned to face the prisoner. He shrugged. “I was
young, then, only nine. One minute I was at home, the next I was in a strange
place, like a factory. Somebody with a gun threatened me, and I tried to run,
only to stumble back into a giant light. I thought I’d fallen in fire. But,
instead, I was home. Unfortunately, it seemed that almost a year had passed. My
mother had died in that time, and my father had started drinking.”
“I see,” said
Martin, as he struggled surreptitiously to escape from the handcuffs. “Do you
know what happened to the man that was sent from the Chernobyl side?”
“Yes,” said Hodge. “I killed him. He would have been the
only other person who knew that we weren’t from the distant future. If he had
reported back to the people in charge of the time-barrier, they would have
hunted me down and prevented me from achieving this,” he concluded with a
grandiose sweep of his hook.
Martin had freed himself from the cuffs and made his move
while Hodge was mid-swing. He dove at the smaller man, tackling him to the
ground while at the same time trying to avoid the dangerous pointed claw.
“Ridgeway,” he shouted. “Hold on.”
Ridgeway shook her arm weakly against her restraints. “No
problem,” she said sarcastically.
Hodge was quickly subdued. Martin ran to the door to make
sure the guard wasn’t on his way back, then he released Ridgeway. She gave him
a light kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Martin told her. “We’re still not
where we’re supposed to be.”
Hodge was screaming at them from the floor. “Cowards! You
won’t defeat me! I am the master of time!”
Martin laughed. “You aren’t two years ago. I’m going back,
and we’ll make sure you don’t get the chance to get close to the Core again.”
Ridgeway was less impressed. “’Master of Time?’” she said
with a smirk. “That’s what you’re going to go with?”
Martin pulled her toward him. “Come on,” he said. “We can
taunt him in the past.”
She didn’t disagree, but she gave Hodge a swift kick on the
way out. The pair hurried down the stairs toward the shining barrier.
“Are you sure this is the way back?” she asked Martin right
before the passed through it.
Martin checked his watch. “He said it would line up with the
day we left in ten minutes, ten minutes ago.”
“Okay,” said Ridgeway.
They stepped forward together.
They arrived in the past instantly. But there was a problem.
“Where’s the Nautilus?” asked Martin, confused.
Ridgeway surveyed the dense jungle that surrounded them. “I
think we’ve gone back too far.”
“How far do you think?”
Ridgeway lowered her voice abruptly before she answered.
“All the way back,” she whispered. “Judging from that Tyrannosaurus,” she
finished, pointing at the fearsome beast.
The Tyrannosaurus saw the pair and turned to attack.
“I hope ‘Jurassic Park’ was right about staying still,”
Martin hissed out of the corner of his mouth.
But “Jurassic Park” was incorrect. The dinosaur closed the
distance in no time. Ridgeway was the first to go, swallowed in one swift
motion. Martin was less lucky. He felt the Tyrannosaurus’ teeth grip him around
the belly and rip him in half. He watched his legs go down the monster’s throat
before he bled to death, sixty-five million years before he was born.
Part 10: http://aroundgray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-335a-cyoa2-part-10-martin-fights-in.html
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