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As the words left his lips, he realized she was going to die. He wasn’t sure whether she would die there in the nuclear reactor, within the time stream, or in the dark waters off the coast of North Korea, but there had only ever been one survivor, a boy. And that was the answer to the calculations. What was the consequence of traveling through time with a ruptured shield? The answer was that any matter that travelled through the wormhole reverted to its then current form. But that couldn’t be the whole answer. His body had retained its magnificent genetic changes, but where had those genetic enhancements come from? Were they the result of exposure to radiation while traveling through time? But surely, he thought, such radiation would be destructive. There was some other hidden element he didn’t yet understand. Some other influence swaying the course of the mighty river of time, and that puzzled him.

“We should run,” Lily said, pulling away from him, dragging him from the dome of the creature. “We need to get back to the truck. If you go back in time, this will never end. We need to get back out the way we came.”

Jason never saw the shooter, but he heard the shots ring out, echoing around the vast dome.

Lily’s body convulsed as three bullets ripped through her abdomen. Bright red blood sprayed across the dark hide of the creature. Lily sank to her knees and fell to one side clutching at her bloody stomach. She screamed in agony.

“No!” Jason cried. Crouching beside her, he raised her head and cradled her in his arms. “Oh, no. Not you too!”

“You have to run,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “You can’t go back. If you do, you’ll never escape. Your only hope is to get out of here.”

Her body spasmed, but the spasms were only from the waist up. Holding her, he could feel her shattered spine. She was paralyzed from the waist down. Blood and fluids poured from her wounds, soaking his hands.

“No, no, no,” he murmured, brushing her hair to one side and inadvertently smearing blood on her forehead. “It can’t end like this. Please, don’t let it end like this.”

“Don’t you see,” she gasped, squeezing his hand. “This has to end. You have to break out of the time loop.”

“No,” he whispered. “I can’t leave you.”

“You have to,” she said, closing her eyes as she whispered, “Run!”

Like Lachlan before her, Lily’s body went limp in his arms. Her eyes flickered open, but they stared blindly up at the vast ceiling of the reactor dome.

“Nooooo!” he screamed, arching his back and tensing every muscle in his body in a futile bid to roll back time, but there was nothing to be done for her.

Run!

Lily’s last word seemed to echo in his mind.

Run?

Sitting there, he trembled, trying not to collapse beside her lifeless body. Jason was shaking uncontrollably. Standing seemed impossible, let alone walking or running. Here he was, sitting on a time machine, unable to roll back just one minute to save the young woman. He couldn’t explain the connection he’d forged with Lily over those past few days, but it had been severed violently and abruptly, tearing at his heart.

Soldiers dropped onto the edge of the UFO. They were shouting, waving, firing their rifles. Bullets whipped by his head, passing just inches from his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said, resting her head gently on the thick hide of the interstellar beast. With two fingers outstretched, he closed her eyelids. It seemed only decent and proper. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t care. He couldn’t pretend that just moments before, her body hadn’t been animated, radiating a life he found deliriously intoxicating. The realization that Lily was dead caused a knot to form in his chest. A knife through the heart couldn’t have felt more painful, he thought.

Run!

Again, her soft admonition reverberated through his mind. She was right. He had to run.

Jason grabbed the pickaxe and ran. His legs felt weak, drained of strength, but he forced them on. Bullets whizzed by, cracking through the air as they shot past him at supersonic velocities.

Jason ran on blindly, but he was running around the center of the UFO, not away from it. If he wanted to escape, he should have run toward the walkway. His mind felt drugged and lethargic, still reeling from shock.

He climbed into the shattered dome on top of the vast creature.

Immediately, the alien animal responded to his presence. Light began pulsating out from the center of the craft, running in ripples across the immense hide in much the same way as a cuttlefish displayed a variety of colors. The soldiers were thrown backwards, as if hurled outward by a massive electric shock.