Chapter Three: What emails do

After school, me and Lina parted ways to go home. I stopped off at my parent's workshop to drop my hover board there so they could fix it...again. When I got home I ate some snacks, changed into some comfortable clothes and checked my emails on my computer. I had a couple emails from Lina and some spam, but I deleted those. I checked the mail from my friend...chain mail. Lina loves to send me chain mail any chance she gets. The only thing different about this one is that it had an attachment to it. I tried to open it but it said "compatible with swatch mark 2 only." I downloaded the file to my swatch via my SD card and opened it. This is what it said

Dear receiver of this file,

We are not trying to alarm you, but there is a dire need of your assistance! please respond to this message by resending the attachment through the system, it does not matter to whom you send it, as long as it is within twenty four hours. We implore you! Please help us!

Sender: unknown.

At first, I thought it was just a prank, a silly attachment to a silly email, but then I realized that most freshman (of which I am one) wouldn't use the word implore in a prank email. That realization just left me with more questions than I could count. I had arrived at Lina's house to show her the weird attachment to that email. We sat down near her computer and I showed her the attachment on my swatch.

"Ter, the key thing to ask is, when was this sent, and who was it sent by?"

"Exactly, Lin, so I looked up the time, and guess what?"

"What?"

"It was sent at five o'clock p.m. yesterday." we both slowly turned around to look at the clock in Lina's room. It said four fifty five.

...

Two minutes after we looked at the clock, I was pacing furiously around Lina's room.

"Lin, we still don't know who sent it, but what I'm more concerned about is...why me? I mean, you didn't see the attachment when you sent it to me, you said so yourself." Lina nodded.

"So...are you going to answer it?" she asked nervously. I waited a while before answering her to look at the clock, a minute and a half left. I felt my heart pounding, I was sweating, and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders.

"Yeah, I will" I walked over to her computer and logged on to my email I uploaded the file and sent it to Lina. Lina's computer said "message sent" and we waited. There was still thirty seconds left until five, and both I and Lina were expecting something big. And big is what we got.

...

When the clock struck five, we saw something beyond the furthest reaches of the imagination. The computer Lina has is a good one, the main thing though is that the screen is hooked up to a projector, which is where the fun began. The screen on the wall turned completely blue. I silently hoped I hadn't just broken Lina's computer. Then the screen started swirling and gained depth, it looked like a portal. I heard a voice...inside my head...calling me. I yelled at Lina, since the sound from the portal was quite deafening

"Lina! I'm going' in!"

"You can't! What will I tell your parents!"

"Tell them I slept over! If I'm not back by tomorrow, I don't know!" I slowly walked toward the portal. The voice was getting stronger, I knew it wanted me. I turned around and waved goodbye to Lina and she waved back. I stepped through...