#mischchenko

All around them, orbs of light shimmered… scintillating, glittering, blinding. Spinning, hovering, glowing, flashing, flickering. Some of them flared up, growing brighter. Others dimmed. One of the Anomalies flickered and vanished, and another opened seconds after, like an exploding sun.

Dozens and dozens of Anomalies surrounded the agents. So many Anomalies that their combined light engulfed the world around them.

The trio had landed on some kind hilly grasslands. Something resembling a blue sky almost shone through the brilliant curtain of anomalous luminescence. The light drowned out anything beyond their immediate environs.

Even their black body armor and jumpsuits looked bright gray under such brilliance.

The sights were stunning and invited Grant to ponder what this meant. Mischchenko cut those ponderings short as she yanked at Grant’s arm, helping her back up.

The three operative scrambled.

Just like the light, noise also surrounded them. Even through the helmet, the Anomalies sounded like they were singing. Like a choir of wind chimes. Amplified by their numbers in close to proximity to one another, and… eerily pleasant to the ear.

Through that soundscape, the skittering and scuttling sliced through. The swarm of mutant insects poured through the anomaly atop the hill down which the agents had tumbled. Chitinous bodies with flightless wings scampered and poured out like pulsating waves of black tar, flowing down the hillside.

Acting on instinct, Grant and Ruiz fired more shots. Their futuristic EMD rifles hurled bright blue electric blasts at the small creatures—and the Anomalies reacted. Lightning arced between the blasts and Anomaly orbs, crackling and flashing ever brighter. A pulse of pure pressure pushed the agents and insects both backwards, away from the reactions, staggering and stumbling the agents and dispersing the front rows of the living flood of insects.

Then the mad chase continued.

Ruiz swore.

The dog-sized bugs hit by blasts immediately fell, only for the living tide to wash over them and sweep them up in pursuit of the three human agents.

The volley of shots had accomplished nothing but a strange chain reaction—

Mischchenko yelled something at them; something about conserving their batteries, though her words were otherwise incomprehensible—static crackling and fuzzy clicks almost eclipsed the speech Grant heard in her headset.

The agents turned tail and ran.

They ducked past another Anomaly, swerved past yet another, and the tide chased them. The humans had no idea where to go, avoiding the Anomalies on instinct. They were just trying to outrun the insect swarm. Its horrid buzzing mixed in, tainting the pleasant chimes of the Anomalies.

The coppery taste of blood only grew in Grant’s mouth, coating her tongue in a terrible film. She wanted to spit, but couldn’t because of the helmet. And she suppressed her instinct to unload her EMD’s battery for more suppressing fire against their pursuers, as another survival instinct kicked in. Having seen the chain reaction between EMD discharge and the Anomaly cluster was almost like…

Touching the stove. She still had the scars to show from touching a hot stove as a kid.

The chain reaction now resembled that hot stove, so she wasn’t going to place her hand on it.

She was going to keep her hands off it. And like that, she stopped her finger from squeezing the trigger.

Ruiz and Mischchenko must have shared that sentiment. Their run took them outside the cluster of hovering, star-like orbs, though black spots remained in Grant’s vision, long before and after she screwed her eyes shut.

The grassy hills sloped down to a wide and serene beach of bright white sands, with no signs of humanity or life otherwise.

The mutant insect swarm chased them from the cluster of Anomalies. Their hundreds over hundreds of black bodies glistened in the broad daylight of this age—wherever, whenever they were now.

The creatures looked like a crossbreed between locusts and wasps. Sleek, deadly, and with snapping mandibles, their flightless wings glistened in beautiful rainbow colors. Had they come from the future to feast?

Once they had gained distance from the cluster of Anomalies, Ruiz decided to belay Mischchenko’s previous order. He took more potshots at the swarm, downing another handful of insects. It wasn’t even close to making a dent in the unstoppable onslaught on their heels.

All those snapping mandibles, working together, could probably strip the armor from their bodies in seconds, then eat the flesh from their bones even faster.

Mischchenko shouted, “What the hell did I just say?”

Ruiz stopped firing.

“This way!”

The team curved away from the Anomalies, running for the beach.

Without mercy, without stopping, the insects changed direction in perfect harmony, like a well-drilled army. They honed in on the three agents without fail. The living tide curved in the exact same direction, giving relentless chase.

“Water! Get… get in the water,” Mischchenko shouted, losing more and more wind as they ran and ran from the unyielding swarm.

Grant didn’t hesitate. Didn’t question it. Her mind was too busy imagining the swarm, all around her, suffocating her. Eating her alive. Thus, she ran. Mischchenko’s orders were as good as any others to secure their survival now.

The soaking sensation inside her combat boots immediately turned her socks into sponges, while water splashed up to their waistlines. In a frenzied charge into the ocean waves, the agents sloshed and splashed, all holding their EMD rifles up high to secure them from exposure while backing up from the swarm. Even so, even with how useless the weapons seemed against this menace, they all aimed at the big bugs.

The ocean afforded them time to breathe. They panted in their helmets. And their labored, winded breathing still fizzled with static.

This swarm would not follow them into the water. The living tide had stopped just short of entering the watery waves where they lapped against bright white sand. The locust-wasps scuttled up and down the beach, searching for a way to reach or find their prey, and always shying away, backing up from the wet waves like frightened animals.

The tide shook Grant, but its waves weren’t strong enough to sweep any of the agents away.

Against the coppery taste in her mouth, she had never been so glad over the stinging scent of saltwater, burning in her nostrils.

Still, the insects refused to wade into the water like the humans had.

The three field agents waited. Watched.

The insect swarm flooded up and down the beach, visibly confused over having lost their free lunch.

This finally afforded Grant some glimpses of the Anomalies. So blinding was their combined light, and so erratic their patterns of flaring up, flickering, and dimming, that Grant gave up on counting after thirty orbs.

One of the Anomalies flickered, then vanished entirely. Grant suppressed the urge to swear out loud, in case that had been the one they fell through to get here—potentially stranding them in a time millions of years ago. Or thousands of years in the future? Who knew?

Yet the many Anomalies remained.

Where did they all lead? How was this even possible?

None of the records she had pored over at Future Proof could have prepared her for this. And Grant sensed the same air of fascination from her colleagues, who, like her, stood in stunned silence.

They stood in the ocean waves of this alien beach, waiting as minutes passed them by like the elements, and the briny water soaked them, while the mutant-insect swarm slowly changed direction, dispersing, turning, and eventually leaving. They had given up on their prey.

The flood of creatures poured back uphill, heading towards the Anomalies. Were they responding to the sounds?

Only once the swarm was far out of sight, did anybody speak up.

“Good thing they don’t like water, huh?” Ruiz mumbled into their radio intercom.

Mischchenko cackled. Without doubt a stress response. Grant followed up with her own: a litany of profanities without rhyme or reason, just venting into the void of their closed radio comms, as they were stranded somewhere in another era of Earth’s history, or somewhere in Earth’s future.

The swarm crawled its way back up the grass hills, pouring into an Anomaly at the edge of the cluster, until the last ones of them vanished. Even the ones that had been stunned by EMD shots were gone, dragged along by the living avalanche. Perhaps devoured.

Hard to tell.

“I hope one of you got an idea which Anomaly we just exited from,” Grant grumbled, “because I sure as shit can’t tell them apart.”

Ruiz said, “On the bright side—sorry, pun not intended—those bugs went in a different one, right there at the edge of the Anomaly… crossroads? This is like a crossroads, huh?”

Mischchenko emitted a shuddering sigh.

“We better not waste any time—get back to those Anomalies—start knocking on different doors till we find the one back home. I don’t know about you two, but I am not getting stuck here, wherever ‘here’ is. I got family to get back to.”

Dripping with oceanwater, they slowly marched back up the beach, then the hills. Their advance started cautious, slowed by the weight of their drenching. Then courage or fear drove their pace, swifter steps into the blinding jungle of light.

The rest of the landscape around them looked so familiar and yet so alien. So untouched by mankind, so distant, yet so vibrant—its grass glistened bright green in the sunlight and the light of Anomalies.

Grant’s mind reeled with the possibilities, as to what time they had wound up in. What if there was a way to navigate these wormholes?

And she wondered how it was even possible for so many Anomalies to appear in a single spot like this. Connecting different eras, bridging disparate worlds that had existed and would exist on their planet. Crossing all through time.

Crossroads.

On cue, halfway back up the hills, an Anomaly flared up brightly. A man ran from it.

He wore armor. Ancient armor. In his hand, he clutched a sword, and sandals clung to his bloodied feet. Cloth on his body was dyed in a bright blue, while the rest of him was covered in a slick, dripping crimson. Whose blood it was would have been impossible to say, leaving no space for examination, for this stranger from the past ran headfirst into the next Anomaly, vanishing as abruptly as he had appeared.

A monster followed. Chased him.

Its appearance froze the blood in Grant’s veins. And all three field agents from Future Proof froze where they stood, standing rooted to the grassy grounds like statues.

At the size of a horse, the terrible creature chasing the ancient warrior featured four long, stalky limbs, all ending in deadly claws. Its upper torso was hunched and the silhouette of its gaping mouth revealed long, jagged teeth that could mangle and entrap their prey. This predatory beast crossed the hills in frightening, leaping bounds. It vanished into the next Anomaly that the ancient man in armor had run into, gone again as fast as it had appeared.

A streak of crimson amidst the blinding light, from the blood that had coated its gray and slender body.

“Holy what the hell?” Grant blurted out.

“My word,” Mischchenko said with trembling voice, “my cue. Let’s get the hell outta here!”

Neither Ruiz nor Grant needed to be told twice.

With EMD rifles raised, ready for any threats to leap out at them from the Anomalies, they waded into the maze of glowing orbs, seeking one atop a hill.

The eerie singing chimes welcomed them like a heavenly choir. Now, though Grant’s heart pounded like a drum, she sensed a deep resonance between these Anomalies.

A hum. A thrum, resonating with her own pulse, all the way down to her very bones.

It was both menacing and soothing somehow. Awesome in the original sense of the words. Like standing in the presence of something divine—something that could wink you out of existence by accident, and very prone to such mishaps.

“This one, I think,” Ruiz said.

“Wait,” Mischchenko answered.

Too late. Ruiz walked into an Anomaly atop a hill.

“Shit.”

They followed him in.

No crossroads awaited them on the other side of the blinding light. The resonance also felt weak here.

Fierce winds howled all around them, strong enough to shake them in their boots, and cold as ice. The sky was red and bleak, drowning in clouds of dust on the wind, and ominous thunder rolled in the distance.

Only a desert of rock and sand yawned all around them.

A monstrous shriek echoed across this wasteland.

Mischchenko shook her helmeted head and was first to back right out, returning through the Anomaly to the crossroads. The others followed.

“One down, huh,” Ruiz muttered, “how many more to go, now?”

“Shut up,” Mischchenko said, leading them to the next hill, with confidence and dread alike in every stomping step of her stride.

EMDs still raised in anticipation of the worst, they walked into blinding light.

Grant’s heart fluttered. She stifled a shuddering sigh of relief at the sight of Solomon’s new Anomaly Stabilizer, the upgraded Anomaly Locking Device.

They were back in the foggy Appalachian woods. The generator attached to the ALD chugged with merry rhythm. And no insect swarm in sight.

“Shit, I can’t believe it,” Ruiz said. “Holy shit.”

“Stay on your damned toes,” Mischchenko said. “Ruiz, you and me, quick sweep. Grant, you lock that Anomaly now.”

Wait—

Something inside of Grant screamed to rebel, to resist. She could barely believe what she herself was thinking, yet it couldn’t be helped.

They had stumbled upon something incredible. If Future Proof’s R&D department—or really anybody among humanity at large—if anybody could study all of what they had just experienced, who knew what revelations awaited them?

Grant finally gave her protest a voice. “Wait, wait, what—what about—what about the pterodactyls, putting them back, or stabilizing this Anomaly? I mean, we got everything recorded on helmet cams, but I think R&D should investigate this place.”

“Grant,” Mischchenko sighed. Shades of disappointment, grief, and despair turned her next words sharp, sharper than Spencer had ever spoken to her. “Are you out of your damn’ mind? Do you realize how dangerous that place is?”

A crossroads of Anomalies.

“Yeah,” Ruiz butted in, “you wanna hear my two cents, I say we send the big birds to containment, get this bad boy locked up. I’m with Mischchenko on this.”

“Thank you,” she replied to him.

Grant shook her head. She was torn. She agreed with them, and every fiber, every survival instinct in her was screaming at her to just lock up the Anomaly.

Yet she could not help but wonder what they might lose by losing their connection to that crossroads.

She turned to stare at the Anomaly. Much fainter than with the resonance amplified between the many of them hovering together in a cluster, the one’s solitary presence here still emitted an eerie, pleasant chime, nearly inaudible, though Grant now almost felt more sensitive to it.

A nervous laugh escaped Mischchenko’s throat. Then she said, “Shit, whatever, I know how you’re feeling, Grant. I wanna know more, too, even if it’s just so we can deal with these things more safely, hell, save more lives, maybe. And, hey, like you said, we got it all on headcams. Trémaux’s going to have a field day with it, let’s—”

Burch had warned them about the pterodactyls.

That it might only be at the last moment when the beating of their wings heralded their presence.

In line with the warning, a huge flap echoed across the mountain woods like a thunderclap, and a winged beast descended upon them.

Mischchenko was the first to react, but her EMD’s shot missed, hitting only a pine tree.

The pterodactyl screeched in response.

Their EMD rifles had been set to low power output, to conserve energy and slow the onslaught of the insect swarm prior. Now, those settings were too low to incapacitate either pterodactyl outright. As Carter once put it, until they readjusted settings, the two field operatives were currently wielding glorified cattle prods.

The winged dinosaur on the ground shook its head, as if to regain its bearings in a very human fashion. It was far from unconscious, only somewhat stunned, and that sensation would wear off soon.

Its wings spread with a menacing span, matching that of the one swooping down.

All in the blink of an eye.

How was it that time ever stretched into infinity when things were unbearably slow, while being contracted into painful shortness whenever pressure was at its worst, and the danger overbearing?

Ruiz was caught off-guard, busy adjusting his rifle to maximum output. Grant saved his hide by taking a potshot at the second pterodactyl, in the split-second before it could pounce on him in its crashing descent.

This, too, was not enough to stop the beast outright. It wasn’t even enough to change its trajectory. The only good thing that came from her shot was how it alerted Ruiz to the pterodactyl in the nick of time.

He ducked. Shouted in pain. His EMD rifle went flying in a different direction than the creature as it curved back upwards with another mighty flap of its wings, another gale from the leathery thunderclap. The pterodactyl had winged him, but he had been more fortunate than Mischchenko, emerging from the hit without any broken bones.

Mischchenko’s crawling had taken her to retrieve her own EMD rifle. Unfortunately, her now broken right arm afforded her only poor aim. The shot she took at the ascending pterodactyl missed, singing the firs around their clearing.

Ruiz dove for his rifle while Grant carefully lined up a shot at the same time. The pterodactyl’s deadly shadow circled high above in the fog.

He pulled the trigger first, fast. Then he uttered a string of profanities—as sparks flew from his EMD instead of a shot, and the weapon fizzled and crackled with electricity from its short-circuiting. The dinosaur had damaged it on impact, rather than breaking his bones.

“Ground team, come in,” Pruitt spoke on the radio. Alarm shook his voice. “We lost you there for a while, what’s going on down there? Over.”

Too high and far away to understand the gravity and danger of their situation, and too distant to offer them any immediate help, answering Pruitt needed to wait.

And Grant was too high on adrenaline, too driven to survive.

Where Mischchenko missed and Ruiz was prevented from shooting altogether, she shot the flying pterodactyl. Her rifle still only had the output of a cattle prod.

The flying dinosaur therefore flinched. Once, twice, then it screeched in a pitch so high as to pierce the heavens above the wintry Appalachian forest, while completing another circle with another flap of its thundering wings.

“We need backup,” Ruiz spat in response, “Mischchenko needs evac on the double, and Spencer fucking needs to hire more personnel! Over, motherfucker!”

More shots from Grant’s EMD caused the flying creature to circle around with another angry flap of its wings, and it served to draw its ire. Yet another circle, and it screeched again.

She felt that screech, deep down, shaking the marrow in her bones, and curdling her blood.

The pterodactyl was not deterred. Its killer instinct had focused on her.

And the other one on the ground, it flapped its wings again—no longer so stunned, it responded to the flying one’s screech, and spread its wings, preparing to pounce—

Grant ran. She ran to Doctor Solomon’s Anomaly locking device.

She wasn’t thinking clearly, but could imagine no other way. She punched in the three-digit security code, and the device’s locking system shut down.

The nearby basketball-sized floating orb exploded into a big sphere of glittering light. It chimed mysteriously, slowly rotating, inches above the ground… the Anomaly once more connecting two periods in time.

The portal of the Anomaly was once again open.

Worst case scenario, even worse things could now come through. The mutant insect swarm could potentially return. Maybe the ancient warrior covered in blood, with the mutant beast chasing him, would dash through. Maybe a raging wooly mammoth would arrive, or perhaps a hungry T-Rex.

Best case scenario, Grant was going to send these dinosaurs elsewhere.

Elsewhen.

She shot at the pterodactyl in the air, then at the one on the ground, alternating between her EMD’s shots at them both. One, two, three, and a fourth shot to fully anger both “big birds”, drawing their attention towards her.

It worked without fail.

The shadow in the misty sky flew at her with deadly trajectory. The other made two leaping bounds, frozen grounds crunching after every jump. Both screeched in unison as they descended and lunged.

She had already turned. Ran.

Right into the open Anomaly. She dove into the shimmering sphere and tumbled down a sandy hill—

A sandy hill?

What had happened? A minute prior, this side of the Appalachian Anomaly had been a grassy hill near an idyllic beach in an undetermined era.

The crossroads of Anomalies, with dozens over dozens of Anomaly spheres, still hovered all above the ground here, now…

But the environment had changed. A different biome welcomed Grant on this side of the Anomaly.

She had no time to dwell on this new phenomenon. Grant had witnessed such a shift or paradox before—history changing in the blink of an eye—simply by traveling back and forth through another Anomaly. Airlift pilot Sears had entirely ceased to exist the last time it happened, and only she remembered him ever having existed.

In the new here and now, Grant rolled down the sandy dune of a hill, with neither grass nor ocean in sight. Only dust and bleached stone and cracked earth surrounded her in this new Crossroads of Anomalies.

She grunted at the final impact of her rolling descent when she crashed into a boulder and it knocked the wind out of her lungs. Further robbing her breath, a gale swept over her as one pterodactyl flew over her on this side of the Anomaly, its wings spread with frightening majesty. The other stumbled past her, then tumbled down the other side of the dune as it lost its footing after its leap through the Anomaly, emitting a pained screech when it fell with as little grace as Grant had.

The other already began circling, high above the glittering spheres of the manyfold Anomalies here.

Time froze for Grant. The look she took at her environs was short-lived yet rich in detail.

A jagged rock jutted out of the sand near the Anomaly they had crossed through. A chunk of it was broken off, dragged down with the pterodactyl that had tripped over it.

And the trails they both left in the dune’s sands pointed her in the direction of the Anomaly. Her only way back home. The trails would help tremendously in choosing the right way to go.

Time was no longer frozen and she needed to act.

Pain flared up all over her body from her many falls. The pain only centered her and spurred her on, granting her greater speed. She ran for another Anomaly—any would do, really—but she chose one that flagged in its chimes, with a flickering light that faded in and out as its stability waned.

A Flicker.

A deadly stunt to be sure, as it could trap her with the pterodactyls in a time stranded beyond humanity, but it was the only way she saw to keep these two dinosaurs out of her town time.

She charged into the Flicker, not even wasting time to check if the pterodactyls continued their pursuit of her. She gambled on it. Needed to act quickly. That Flicker could close any moment now.

She crossed the flickering, blinding light into another time.

With a pounding heart, and gasping desperately for breath, she barely managed to take in any thorough glimpse of her new environment, this new world.

Its apocalyptic vision would haunt her with nightmares beyond nightmares.

A city of ruins. Empty buildings, missing all windows, surrounded her. The street she stood on was only recognizable as such from the rusted husks of overgrown cars dotting its length.

Everything in this era was blanketed with creeping vines, and lush with abundant green. And utterly devoid of all human life wherever she could see. This was a world, a time after people.

Grant scrambled away from the glowing sphere, and without fail, one pterodactyl flew through the Anomaly, chasing her into this apocalyptic future. Its flight corrected course before it threatened to crash into a crumbling wall, swerving upwards into a dreary gray sky at the last second.

She clambered up half a wall and rolled through a window. Remnants of glass shards cracked and crunched where she landed.

The other pterodactyl followed, now flying again. It screeched—no longer in pain—but with wrath ringing in its piercing tone.

The hunter’s wrath.

Grant ducked behind the wall, staying in cover, knowing very well the first pterodactyl would locate her and pounce if she made one wrong move.

The Flicker flickered. Her heart skipped a beat. The Flicker was about to close, and she needed to dive back out, and run for it, across the overgrown street, underneath the pterodactyls circling above.

Then something howled. A blood-curdling howl, more terrifying than the two pterodactyls’ screeching in its sound.

Grant had heard it before… in the other wasteland past another Anomaly of the Crossroads. In that barren, ghastly wasteland, even more apocalyptic than these city ruins.

She had no intention of finding out what kind of future mutant creature could make such a sound.

The Flicker flickered again. Almost collapsed. The Anomaly was on the verge of closing.

Counting the breaths she suppressed, she waited till a silent number five crossed her mind, then she made her move. No second too soon, as her fear came true, and she witnessed the creature that had howled its horrific howl in these apocalyptic times.

Spindly limbs displayed uncanny strength, supporting a powerful and muscular body. Its every digit ended in deadly claws, piercing the very stone of the wall above her, roosting on the ledge, and capable of leaping down. Everything of this mutant’s body screamed one message clearly: it could and would tear her limb from limb if it caught up to her.

A strange, gray-splotched head with too many unblinking eyes crowned the future mutant’s slender frame, and a maw of jagged teeth, like a sawblade, opened.

Those teeth glistened in the gloom.

Grant glimpsed this future predator only long enough before new hell and chaos broke loose. It leapt—not at her, but at one of the pterodactyls circling above the building’s crumbling wall. It leapt with such staggering force that the two creatures crashed into a wall on the other side of the overgrown street.

And the other pterodactyl screeched in response, high above, kept out of Grant’s sight by the canyon of crumbling, overgrowing city blocks.

The Flicker flickered. The Anomaly’s subtle chimes faded.

She would not stay to witness more, to learn more. In the shadows beyond a broken wall, the future predator flew with feral ferociousness as its claws mangled the pterodactyl’s flailing wings. Blood sprayed everywhere. They screeched and shrieked and howled and thrashed.

Grant fled. She ran towards the Flicker. It flickered and blinded her as she ran through it, back through the Anomaly.

Black spots clouded her vision, but a wave of relief washed over her as her environment had changed. The Flicker flickered, the Anomaly collapsed behind her.

The relief died as the Flicker’s chimes were snuffed out with its vanished light.

She no longer stood in a desert among the Crossroads of Anomalies.

“Fuck!” she yelled into the void of this new world.

Trees swallowed any echo.

No longer grassy hills by an unknown ocean, nor was she standing among a desert’s barren dunes, either.

She stood in a jungle, teeming with life, and glowing with the light of the dozens of Anomalies all around. The Crossroads persisted, but the world had changed again.

Almost drowning out the chiming sounds from the glowing Anomalous spheres, chirping, chittering, and rustling assaulted her senses. Her heart almost leapt from her chest as she dreaded the return of the mutant insect swarm. Though the Flicker had separated her from the future predator and the pterodactyls, all manner of new danger awaited her here, now.

Nearby, another Anomaly flickered, then closed. Her heart skipped another beat, a dreadful reminder that she may become stranded in this everchanging Crossroads.

Certain death, by all her accounts.

There were no trails in the sand to guide her, no jagged rock.

Between the trees of this fresh green hell, she glimpsed no clues as to where to go.

Time froze again. Despair awaited.

Before despair could overwhelm her, a familiar figure stepped through an Anomaly. Though the helmet on his head concealed his face, she recognized his movements, his shape: Valentín Ruiz stood in the jungle, emerging from an Anomaly. He waved to her and shouted.

“Come on!”

She did exactly that.

Grant pushed past dense foliage, nearly tripping here and there, and followed Ruiz through the blinding light. She stumbled back into the Appalachian forest.

No longer were these woods foggy. Fir trees almost glowed in bright sunlight.

“God damn, am I glad you made it!” Ruiz said, EMD rifle in hand. The weapon didn’t look damaged anymore. To Mischchenko, he waved and then shouted, “Quick, lock it down!”

Mischchenko punched in the three-digit security code, and the spiky orb topping Solomon’s device clicked and clacked and reconfigured its form, aligning to seal the Anomaly. The glittering sphere of the chiming Anomaly froze, then collapsed, shrinking back into the basketball-sized orb, floating immobile, several feet off the ground.

The generator chugged, the Anomaly Locking Device hummed, and the other—

This place, this time—it too, had changed.

A sinking feeling brought Grant’s stomach low, and the world started spinning around her with an incoming onslaught of sudden nausea.

More Future Proof agents surrounded them. Unfamiliar figures. Since when did they have so many operatives to field? Dozens of spotlights were set up, other generators hooked up to power this new camp. Silvery tents had been pitched in a matter of time impossible for the short amount of time Grant had been away in the Crossroads to shake the pterodactyls, and dozens of researchers in winter jackets and Future Proof ID cards clipped to their chests now swarmed this camp that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere.

And Mischchenko’s arm… it wasn’t broken. She had used her broken arm to operate the Anomaly Locking Device, as if the pterodactyl had never broken her arm. Mischchenko extended her now-healed-or-never-before-broken arm—to point at Grant.

“A round of applause for Agent Grant! That was one hell of a stupid move! But a bold one, and I can’t say I ain’t glad it worked out.”

Half a dozen black-armored Future Proof agents lifted their EMD rifles, no longer aiming at Grant and the Anomaly.

Grant didn’t know what to say.