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“Understand what?” Lachlan asked.

“I’m still figuring that out,” Jason replied. “But this is deliberate and it’s meant for us, I’m sure of it.”

“Who wrote these words?” Lily asked.

Jason shrugged. He ran his fingers over a series of words.

Beautiful

Lonely

Scared

Hurt

“The formulas,” Jason said, letting the words speak for themselves as he referred to a jumble of calculations to one side. “I know what they are. They’re not calculations for time travel, they’re trying to understand the impact of unshielded travel of regular matter through a wormhole comprised of exotic matter. They’re trying to determine the consequences for anyone passing back in time.”

Lily had a pickaxe as well. Like Jason earlier, she ran the tip of the ax gently over the scars, tracing the words, seeming lost in thought.

“We need to get up higher,” she said, pointing toward the center of the UFO. There was a dome on top of the creature, barely visible from where they were on the rim of the gigantic beast.

Jason began climbing up the scaffolding hanging over the living being. Lachlan and Lily followed. Vacili hung back a few yards, catching everything on video.

Down below, gunfire erupted. Jason caught a glimpse of Bellum firing an M4, rattling off shots in rapid succession. The crack of each round being fired echoed through the dome. Stegmeyer was already heading back for the walkway.

“We have to go,” Lachlan cried. “We’ve got to get out of here while we still can.”

“We can’t,” Jason replied, dropping down from the scaffolding and onto the sloping flanks of the vast interstellar creature. “We can’t leave her. Don’t you understand? She’s waited. She’s endured. She’s held on for us, waiting for us to free her.”

Lily followed Jason, landing just a few feet away from him. She crouched as she absorbed the jump, and came to a rest with one hand reaching out and touching the thick, scarred hide. Even here, numerous formulas tattooed the skin of the animal.

Lachlan hesitated.

“Come on,” Jason cried, gesturing with the pickaxe still in his hand. “You want answers. They’re all here. They’re all around us, written in plain sight.”

“But it makes no sense,” Lachlan cried. “Who would leave these messages?”

Jason didn’t have an answer, but he’d already figured out that all of these markings were made by only a couple of people. Although the carvings were crude in places, they were unmistakably related, as though the same people had written different messages at different points in time. One person had been preoccupied with the science, the other had focused on emotions.

Free

Release

Mercy

Jason watched in horror as the professor lurched forward. A bullet ripped through his shoulder, spraying blood over them. Lachlan struggled to hold onto the railing. He fell to his knees as a second bullet tore through his thigh.

The old man tumbled from the scaffolding, falling awkwardly onto the creature. The massive beast responded to his presence, wailing in a tone deeper than a fog horn. Lachlan slid to one side. He was in danger of rolling off the edge of the wing when Jason grabbed his wrist. A single finger, a thumb and three mutilated stubs grabbed desperately at Jason’s hand. Lily grabbed her father’s other hand. Together, the two of them hauled the old man further up the steep incline on the flanks of the beast. The thick hide on which they stood trembled, shaking as the creature groaned.

Jason fought to get beneath the professor, hoisting Lachlan’s arm up over his shoulder. Together, they staggered up the craft.

As they approached the dome, the gradient lessened, making the climb easier. Down below, explosions rattled the scaffolding.

Jason had no idea how many armed men had stormed the nuclear reactor building, but Bellum was holding his own, that much was clear. Handguns cracked as they fired, rifle shots echoed around them. A flash of light lit up the shaking scaffolding, followed by a thunderous crack.

“No more,” Lachlan cried as Jason dragged him roughly up toward the dome of the UFO. “I … I can’t take any more.”

Jason swung the professor down, resting him gently against the dome.

The central dome of the creature was easily thirty feet in diameter, but it was torn and damaged. The front portion had been ripped open, but the wound was old. Jason could see inside the cavity. There were electronic monitors and computers set up on tables. Wires snaked their way out from inside the dome, leading over to the scaffolding on the far side of the craft.

Lily crouched by her father, pressing on the wound in his shoulder.

“I’m dying,” the old man said.

“Don’t say that,” she cried.

“They’ve hit an artery,” he managed. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Jason took his mentor’s hand. Immediately behind Lachlan’s head there were more words, only this time they were in complete phrases.

You cannot save him

You can save him

Listen to him