Notes:

1) Cuthbert has a Scottish accent in the UK version of Lost Future.

2) Should probably clarify that evil!Layton here doesn't wear a monocle - that is to say, he looks exactly like his past counterpart. There's a good in-story reason for this.

3) I hope the story is making sense to everyone. There are, like, three different plotlines on the go at once. Clive and Flora; Layton and Luke; and the sequence of hidden memory flashbacks. It does all come together in the end.

Chapter 5: The Time Machine Facility

As soon as she saw him, Flora knew he was the future Layton. It wasn't because she had known beforehand that she had been going to meet him. It wasn't even because of his general appearance. Layton was exactly the same as ever - the man just looked young for his age.

It was because he was smiling warmly at her, but there was something in his eyes that was stand-offish, something in his stance that radiated distance.

It has been ten years, she reminded herself. Maybe he's become even more cautious over that time... if that's even possible.

It was for this reason that, instead of running up to him and giving him a hug (which was something she really wanted to do), she simply walked up to him and smiled back.

"Flora, my dear," he said. "You're from ten years in the past, correct?"

"Yes, Professor." All things considered, it was good to see him. Here, at least, they would be safe from those horrible gangsters.

Future Layton shut his eyes for a brief moment, before opening them again. "How strange it is, to see you so young again."

With all the excitement of exploring a future London, making a new friend, and running away from a group of mobsters, Flora had never even considered the possibility of a future her. She kept that thought and put it away to be called up again at a later date.

Future Layton turned his attention to Clive. "And what is your name, my boy?"

"Clive, sir. Flora's told me a lot about you, Mr Layton."

"I bet she has," said Future Layton, with a knowing smile.

"So this is your ship, Professor?" said Flora, leaning on the banister that surrounded the viewing platform.

"That's right. It is called Baryonyx."

"Ah, I see," said Flora. Some years ago the professor had discovered a fossil of a claw, which later turned out to be that of a Baryonyx, a fish-eating dinosaur. A picture of the creature was amongst many of the bits and bobs found in the professor's office.

Which reminded her...

"But how come you're not teaching at the university any more?"

"Oh, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. Five years ago I became Prime Minister. This is my second term in office."

"W-what?" said Clive, not quite believing his ears. "You're joking."

"Oh, absolutely not," said Future Layton. "A true gentleman never jokes."

Clive turned to face Flora. "You never told me this!"

"I didn't know," Flora insisted.

"I'm surprised no one told you," said Future Layton. "Perhaps they assumed you already knew. As you might imagine, being head of government brings great responsibility. As such, certain precautions must be taken."

Future Layton pulled out a rectangular device from inside his pocket, something like a remote control, and pushed a button on it.

Immediately, Clive put a hand to his forehead, crying out. "My head! What's happening?" He crouched on the ground, apparently in some kind of pain.

"What's wrong with him?" said Flora, putting a hand to her mouth. She bent down and put an arm around Clive. He had a glazed look on his face, as though he wasn't quite all there.

"I'm afraid you've both fallen into my trap," said Future Layton pleasantly.

On the word trap Flora jerked her head up, and when she did, it was to see a terrifying smile on Future Layton's face. It was a tiny smile, but it was filled with a cruelty that she had never seen from him before, and she gasped.

"Such a shame, really," he said, apparently oblivious to Clive's discomfort. "There was no challenge in it. Still, I have what I need."

Flora shook her head, realising that she had been more spot on about his aloofness than she'd initially thought. This wasn't the professor...! Not by a long shot! "You... you're not the professor!"

His smile broadened. "My dear girl... Did you honestly believe that nothing would change in the last ten years? That I would not use my superior intellect to steer this country towards greatness? Everything I do, I do for the good of this country. I am saving the fools from themselves."

Flora stood up, clenching her fists, and growling in defiance. "Take me to my Professor Layton!"

Future Layton dropped his smile, replacing it with a chilly frown that somehow managed to be even more frightening. "Foolish girl." He pushed another button, and she immediately felt drowsy, and her head felt heavy, as though a piece of cold lead was pushing down hard on it.

He bent down so that his head was level to hers, and he was looking her directly in the eyes. "I should kill you, really," he said in soft, gentle tones. She could barely react, only able to lift her eyelids ever so slowly. "You're merely a liability. You always were. But then... how would I get Luke to also fall into my carefully constructed trap?"

The sleepy feeling intensified, such that Flora passed out, but not before she asked a tearful why? in her head.

Meanwhile, the green parrot had teleported the younger Layton and Luke to another location entirely. Layton didn't know where they were, but wherever here was, it wasn't outside Gressenheller University. After a couple of minutes of disorientation, he was able to inspect his surroundings.

He was inside a small room, with metal worktops all around the edges. It seemed to be some kind of laboratory. Machines of different sizes grinded away on the worktops, powered by steam engines, and with lots of blipping noises and blinking lights, nuts and bolts, and moving gears. One of the machines on the far end was printing out a sheet of paper.

Luke was on the ground, out-cold. He seemed to have been badly affected by the trip through time this time. Layton bent down, gently shaking him in an attempt to rouse him, but there was no response. He frowned in slight concern, uttering a soft sigh.

He adjusted Luke's position so that he was comfortably lying down, and ruffled his hair a little.

Poor boy...

"Infinity," said the parrot, again. He was on a workstation just above Luke, and Layton stood up, folding his arms. The bird had a weird light in his eyes, a piercing look, and was staring straight through Layton as if he could see deeply within his soul... It was an unsettling look, to say the least - but Layton was determined to get to the bottom of this, and he stared straight back.

"Why do you keep repeating that word?"

"Because I have gone in the wrong direction."

"What do you mean? Can you elaborate?"

The strange light left the parrot's eyes, and the parrot shook his head, ruffling his feathers. "AWK. NOT AGAIN."

He noticed Layton, then, and he whistled a short, happy melody. "AWK. NEED HELP, POLLY DOES."

"Is that why you sought us out at London Zoo?"

"YES, YES. TOP HAT HUMAN, AWK. VERY SMART, LAYTON IS." He sung another happy tune. "YOUR HELP, POLLY NEEDS. CONTROL, POLLY CAN'T," he said, shifting from leg to leg in annoyance. "KEEP MOVING, POLLY DOES. EVERYWHERE. EVERY TIME. CONTROL, POLLY CAN'T."

Layton tried hard to make sense of this. If the parrot was unable to control his own teleportation, then one had to assume that the teleportation was being triggered by something else instead. Or someone else, remotely.

"Hmm..."

Was the bird was being used as a living time machine, taking them across time and space deliberately, to see events? Perhaps to deliver a message? But what?

"EXPLORE THIS PLACE, LAYTON SHOULD," said Polly. "MAYBE FIND SOMETHING, YOU WILL."

Layton smiled. "That, my friend, is an excellent idea."

He checked the printout to see if there was anything of use. It was a graph depicting temporal waves. Apparently, the device was recording temporal wavelengths from different timelines and comparing them. Interesting, but not particularly useful. However, there was one piece of information that was helpful: the current date. Apparently, they were still ten years in the future, but it was February instead of March. They'd been sent a month back.

He walked back to where Luke was lying on the ground, and bent down to ruffle his hair again. "I'll be right back," he whispered.

He opened the door, peering out into a long corridor with a few other doors leading out from it. This action turned out to be a mistake. A man was in the corridor to his left, and of course Layton's hat was instantly recognisable.

"Hershel? What the hell are you doing here?"

It was Dimitri!

He was wearing a white lab coat now, but he still had the red flower on his chest. Layton quickly shut the door behind him as the other man approached - he couldn't let Dimitri know the parrot was inside - and then he glowered at Dimitri, not about to give in without a fight. At least he could buy Luke and the parrot time to escape.

But Dimitri blinked in surprise in response to his glare, which in turn surprised Layton. There was no shrewd smile, just genuine astonishment, with some confusion mixed in there.

"What's wrong, Hershel? I haven't done something to upset you, have I?"

Of course not, you only just threatened us all, he thought sarcastically - but suddenly it occurred to him. It was a month earlier! Technically, Dimitri hadn't met them yet. And, judging by the now worried look on his face, this time Dimitri had mistaken him for his future self.

He looked away. "No, no, it's fine," he said, hoping he hadn't lost the opportunity and given himself away.

Now Dimitri frowned. He folded his arms and tapped his foot impatiently, as though he didn't have the time nor the energy to deal with this right now.

"What on earth is wrong with you? I can't believe you've come all the way here without sending a message first! I know what's wrong. You're getting restless. But there really is nothing new to report. Was there something so urgent that you had to come down here and see me in person?"

"No, not really," said Layton, more or less telling the truth.

Dimitri placed a palm over his head, rubbing his temples before letting out a sigh.

"Look, I do know how you feel. We're so close now... If you're after reassurance, I can show something that may put your mind at ease."

Layton nodded. He had a strong, gut feeling that he was right at the centre of the puzzle, here. Maybe the key to figuring out the time skips was right here, if he could just find out what exactly was going on here and how his future self was involved.

"Lead the way."

He followed Dimitri a short way down the corridor, to a small door with a key pad. Dimitri punched a code quickly into the pad, and the door hissed open.

The room behind the door was smaller than the lab, but it did have similar machinery churning away on a couple of tables. There was an electronic display of the United Kingdom on the wall at the back of the room, with what looked like some kind of network, similar to a train map - but somehow Layton had the feeling the criss-crossing lines weren't representing train routes.

Dimitri pointed to the map, tracing a line with his finger from the north of Scotland all the way down to southern England. "All the blue shows energy flowing from our underground steam fusion reactors, to be stored in our chemical energy plants. The energy we have collected will be more than sufficient to power our operation to tap into Infinity."

So it was a power grid. Presumably his prime ministerial self had approved of its installation throughout Britain, along with the mechanisation of London. But powering what? Just what was Infinity?

"Is there any reason why you haven't gone ahead with the operation already?"

"We've been through this before, Hershel. This is not something we can rush. Infinity is made of all space-times, not just our own. If we are the slightest bit off, even by the tiniest particle, we could end up causing another catastrophic event. We could trigger a perpetual time loop, or irrevocably alter the nature of physics within our universe, or we could destroy our universe entirely."

Another catastrophic event? What was the first one? Was that what the parrot had been trying to warn him about?

"But it will be going ahead, I presume?"

"Of course! Worry not. Everything is going according to plan. The time and date is still set as scheduled. Precisely 19 days' time. Clive will arrive in London in 17 days, though we won't be able to ascertain exactly where in London until the day itself."

"Ah. Well. Can't win them all," Layton said, bluffing his way through the conversation like the best of them. Every time the scientist spoke, a brand new piece was added to this strange jigsaw, and he couldn't always find where to make the piece fit. Clive was arriving in 17 days? Why was that important? Who was Clive?

"Indeed," said Dimitri. "I know we'll be on a strict time limit to extract the information we need once he arrives, but I have every confidence we can achieve this. So don't worry, we'll begin the operation as scheduled. You go back to running the country like you normally do, Hershel. Let me take care of the background details."

That seemed like an ending to the 'tour', so Layton moved towards the door and said, "As you wish. I shall leave things in your capable hands."

"Good." The scientist opened the door, and they left the room. There was another scientist down the corridor.

"Oh," said Dimitri, "it's Cuthbert. Wonder what he wants."

Cuthbert was a short man, with a sagging face and head held down that seemed to suggest a lack of confidence; but any preconceptions that he was a quiet, shy person were totally destroyed when he called excitedly across the corridor in a loud Scottish accent.

"Ach! There you are, Dimitri! Bin looking all over for ya!" He zoomed across the corridor like a penguin on rocket-powered skis. "Don't you answer your Com Link, man? They need you in the energy analysis lab, something urgent's come up. There's an energy surge in the time-stream! A large wormhole's opening out in Piccadilly Circus!"

"Apologies, Hershel," Dimitri said, with a slight bow of the head. "Duty calls."

"Not at all," said Layton.

"Cuthbert, would you escort the Prime Minister to the guest lounge?"

Cuthbert nodded. "Would ya like to come with me, sir?"

Dimitri quickly left to tend to whatever urgent situation had come up. Layton glanced back towards the lab. He couldn't leave Luke there by himself. He thought fast.

"Dimitri was just about to show me this lab here, I don't suppose you would be kind enough to take me inside?"

"Of course, sir. I'm the head scientist of that lab, actually."

Oh dear, thought Layton. How will he react when he sees Luke?

Ow, thought Clive. My head hurts...

He had his eyes closed. He was comfortable, lying in some kind of bed... He could lie here for a long time. He could hear bleeps and a soft mechanical grinding; and he felt something attached to his head and arms, and eventually curiosity won out. He opened his eyes.

He was indeed covered with tubes attached to a machine next to him, his shirt having been undone so that the tubes could be connected to his arms, almost as if he was in an intensive care unit. Had he been in an accident? He certainly didn't feel like he was in any pain, apart from his head. He didn't even remember falling asleep, nor indeed, how he even got here.

He tried to sit up, pulling all the wires up with him, and a man next to him gently put a hand on his shoulder to prevent him from standing up. The man had tired eyes, with a coldness behind them that made Clive shudder.

"W-who are you?" he asked meekly.

The man's eyes flashed with annoyance, and then he answered. "Doctor Dimitri Allen."

"What do you want with me?"

Dimitri cocked his head, smirking ever so slightly. "Why, didn't the Prime Minister tell you? You are a threat to national security. You are to be detained until such time that we can determine you are no longer a threat to society at large."

"M-me?" said Clive, still trembling. "But I'm just a child. You must have the wrong person!"

"Oh, no, no, no," said Dimitri, chuckling harshly. "You are definitely the one. You are the key to understanding everything."

"No, no, you're wrong! I haven't done anything, I swear!"

"It's not what you've done. It's what you're going to do. Or, what you would have done, had you not been sent forward 20 years."

"What do you mean?" said Clive, completely and utterly confused.

"I've studied your timeline extensively. If we let you return to your own time, then ten years will pass, after which you will destroy London. Willingly, I should add."

If the words Clive destroys London in ten years time were like a vicious mugger landing a surprise first punch to the face, then that willingly was the final stab in the chest. "W-what?"

"The damage was quite extensive. Over two hundred thousand homes lost... The third Great Fire of London, they called it."

Clive found himself restricted by the wires as he attempted to stand up, so he was forced to clench his fists instead. "You're absolutely barmy! I'd never do a thing like that!"

Dimitri's face hardened. There was no sympathy to be found there. "Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. And it appears you're far too disobedient for your own good. I'll have to fix that."

He pulled out a tiny device from his pocket and pushed a button on it, and a sharp pain hit Clive in the right temple. He cried out in agony. It felt like someone had drilled a hole in his skull, and was stabbing the inside of his brain.

"What have... you... done...?"

"Only what was necessary. I believe you were the one who said that the only thing a bully responds to is force, after all."

What...?

That was Clive's last thought before consciousness faded.

When Cuthbert and Layton entered the laboratory, Luke was awake, though he sat up with his back against one of the worktops.

"A boy? Now how on earth did you get inside here?"

Fortunately Layton was saved from having to come up with an excuse because Cuthbert answered his own question. "Ah, it's that bloody parrot again. No wonder. I expect you'll be feeling quite rotten too, eh, lad?"

"How are you feeling, Luke?" said Layton.

"Like I've been knocked over by a bulldozer and then stuffed inside a washing machine."

"That'll be the side-effects of travelling with birdie there. He's a bit of an unstable way to travel. I've got just the thing, though, a little something I've been working on." Cuthbert pulled a drawer open and took out a small ring.

The parrot was still just above Luke, sitting next to one of the machines, making squawking noises. He opened his wings and hissed when Cuthbert tried to put the ring around him.

"He doesn't trust you," Luke said groggily from the ground. "He thinks it's an animal control device."

"Animal control? Perish the thought. I'm a quantum physicist. See, it's only a temporal gyroscope. It'll stabilise him, keep him from disappearing willy-nilly."

Luke translated for Polly, and he stood up straight, responding in English.

"AWK. WANT TO STAY STILL, POLLY DOES. BUT POLLY WILL BITE YOUR FINGERS OFF IF YOU ARE LYING."

"Fair enough," said Cuthbert.

There was a satellite delay on Cuthbert's part. He clipped the ring around Polly's left leg, and said, "There ya go, little beastie. Now you won't be hopping all about the place." Then he blinked, and looked down at Luke.

"Wait a minute! You're the lad who speaks to animals, aren't you?" Cuthbert whirled round to face Layton, with an accusatory look in his eyes. "I see! You're both from the past."

Layton nodded. "Yes. I apologise for the deception. In order to minimise further disruption to this time, we would very much like to return to our own time." Actually, what Layton very much wanted was to see the working time machine.

"I'm afraid I cannae allow that. I'll have to inform -" He stopped short, his face creased up in thought, and suddenly, as if a button had been pushed, his expression changed to a much more cheerful, almost ingratiating one. As if continuing the previous sentence, he said "- but who am I to argue with the Prime Minister?"

Layton frowned. Peculiar didn't even begin to describe this, but it was the latest in a long line of odd behaviours people seemed to have whenever he spoke to them. The only person in this future who hadn't acted like he was some kind of super-man was Dimitri.

And what was with the Descole-like robots? Other than that and the animal control devices, there was nothing to suggest that his old foe was still around. Secretive though Descole was, he was also a bit of a thespian. He loved being dramatic. If he was working somewhere behind the scenes, Layton was sure he would have seen signs of it.

So had his future self somehow acquired Descole's old technology? To what end?

Suddenly, a light-bulb went on in Layton's head, accompanied by the sound of a microwave DING!

Oh, no... he thought. It can't be...

"I'm not Prime Minister yet," he said out loud.

"Of course you are! The previous PM resigned five years ago, don't you remember?"

"What?" said Luke, who now stood up, while stroking Polly on his head. "We just said we were from the past. None of that stuff has happened yet."

"Are you, now?" said Cuthbert, putting a hand on his chin in confusion. "I suppose it doesn't matter much. Wait here. I'll call the folks at the time machine facility and let them know we're coming."

"Can't we just ask Polly to take us there?" said Luke.

"Nice idea, laddie, but now that I stabilised his magnetic field, he can only travel back to a specific day 20 years ago."

And I wonder what happened on that specific day, thought Layton darkly. The more time he was spending here, the more he was convinced that a time machine did exist and they were actually in the future. Slowly but surely, his mind was beginning to form a picture of what was truly happening here.

Cuthbert walked over to the other side of the lab, pushing a button on both his Com Link bracelet and on an intercom on the wall by the door.

"What's going on?" whispered Luke. "It's like he completely forgot we're from the past! And then he said it doesn't matter?"

"Yes, his behaviour is rather puzzling," said Layton.

"And what's Dimitri got to do with all this? The way he's going around with those robots you'd think he was running the country, not you!"

"Indeed..." said Layton.

"Infinity," said Polly, suddenly.

The world blurred once more...

...and now Layton and Luke were standing in the middle of a giant expanse of white. No air flowed, no noise sounded. It was neither hot nor cold. A complete vacuum, a grand field full of nothing... except white.

Polly was not with them.

"Professor..." said Luke, his voice shaking. "W-what is this place?"

"I... honestly don't know," said Layton quietly. He took an experimental step forwards. He could feel the ground beneath his feet, but there was no ground that he could see. Maybe his eyes were just playing tricks on him? An invisible floor?

At least Luke wasn't invisible. He placed a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder, giving him a don't worry, we'll figure this out look.

After a few moments of thought, he said, "Luke, may I borrow a pen?"

Luke nodded, reaching into his satchel and handing him a gold coloured fountain pen. Layton took it, and then, opening his hand, he just let go.

The pen didn't fall. It remained in place, exactly where he had left it. You could say it was floating, except that floating implied that the pen was using some kind of force to keep itself afloat. It was probably more accurate to say that it had frozen in mid-air.

He reached out to grab it, and to his surprise, he found he was able to twist the pen round and move it quite freely. But every time it left his hand, it stayed exactly where it was in the air.

Hmm, he thought.

He next asked Luke for a bottle of water. He opened the bottle, held it at arm's length, and tipped it over. The water did fall, but only up to a certain point, where it too halted in mid-air. It was as if someone had paused a video of water being poured; you could see some of the individual drops of water, just hanging.

When he took his hand away from the bottle, the bottle stayed in mid-air in the same way that the pen had. The water began to move, very slowly spilling out of the bottle.

The final experiment was with a paper aeroplane. Layton chucked it as far as he could. This time the paper aeroplane flew... and kept going, and going, and going, until it was a tiny speck. Layton felt something brush against his neck, and when he looked he saw the paper airplane again - except now it was flying diagonally downwards in the opposite direction.

And it kept on flying. Diagonally downwards, until it was nothing but a little dot again.

Meanwhile, the water had yet to reach the "ground", because it had suddenly made a soft U-turn, a mini-stream of water flowing over nothing but air. From their perspective, it had gone from falling down to falling up; the upside-down bottle now looked like it had a curved hook coming out of it.

"Strange," said Luke simply, a weird sense of calm appearing to have come over him.

Yes.

Strange.

The laws of physics had taken one look at this place and decided: Nope, not going to function here.

The important thing, thought Layton, the important thing is not to panic. Yes.

[ - Hidden Memory #6 - ]

Becoming involved in organised crime hadn't been an easy decision to make, but Dimitri had had no choice. In order to secure the money he needed to fund his underground research, he'd had to break a few laws here and there. He didn't really care much for the law these days, anyway. A law was not necessarily right, it was just a set of rules people had to follow. But where had the law been when Claire died? Where was the justice? There had been none. Dimitri felt no obligation to uphold any kind of legal system which had allowed Bill Hawks to get into power.

Given that his own moral code was just slightly off-kilter, he wasn't surprised that Layton had refused to help him when asked two weeks ago. Hershel was straight as an arrow, of course. Would never harm a fly. That refusal had pissed Dimitri right off. Layton always had to be the perfect gentleman, didn't he? That's why Claire had chosen Layton instead...

So when Professor Layton came through the back door of the Chinatown restaurant that doubled as his base, Dimitri Allen was surprised. Gobsmacked, in fact.

The bouncer's response was to pull out a machine gun, but Layton made no outward reaction, other than to frown ever so slightly, as if inconvenienced by a minor nuisance. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. I have a proposition for your boss."

"It's fine," said Dimitri, "let him through."

The Family thug hesitated, giving Layton a suspicious look. "But... he's Professor Layton," he growled.

"I'm aware of that, thank you," said Dimitri curtly. Layton had gained a reputation within London's criminal underworld for putting an end to many illegal activities, and right now that was going against him. Still, Dimitri wanted to see why he had come back. What had changed his mind?

"Let him through."

He looked at Layton directly as he approached the table. "I take it you've reconsidered my offer?"

Layton nodded, and pulled out some paperwork, placing it on the table in front of him. Dimitri flicked through the pages. Among them were the time machine schematics that Descole had stolen from his lab, along with some plans for a device that he didn't recognise.

"What's this? One of Descole's inventions?"

"Yes." Layton sat down opposite him. "Do you think you can modify it to suit our needs?"

Dimitri frowned, looking closely at the papers once more. These plans... They were for something that he never thought Layton would ever approve of in a million timelines, let alone this one. But there was something about Layton that had changed; something must have happened in the past two weeks. He wondered whether Layton's encounter with Descole had unsettled him somewhat.

"If you want me to do what I think you want me to do... That should be possible, yes..." he said slowly. "But... Hershel, are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this? This is... rather unlike you..."

"I want revenge," said Layton simply.

[ - 6 - ]

Still standing on top of nothing in a white world that seemed to be made entirely of nothing, Layton reached out and grabbed the paper airplane out of the air. By now it had come and gone five times, each time from different directions, and had shown no signs of losing momentum. He unfolded it, placing the piece of paper in his pocket.

Was this place what happened when the universe was destroyed?

Or maybe it wasn't real at all. A reality within a dream, or a dream within a reality...

"I wonder... if it's possible to exist and yet not exist at the same time?"

"But we must exist," said Luke, who took his pen back and put it inside his bag. Understandably, he left the bottle and water where they were. "I can see you, and you can see me. We're both here. Even if it doesn't make sense."

"Ah, but how do we prove we're seeing each other? That could be nothing but a false construct of our minds. We think we're here, but in truth, we're somewhere else entirely."

Luke made a thoughtful pose, putting a hand on his chin as if solving a puzzle.

"Well..." he said slowly, after a long pause. "Even if this is a dream, it doesn't feel any less real than the real world. Why should our reality dictate what's real or not? Maybe the world we live in is the dream, and this is the reality."

Luke had earned an innumerate amount of picarats with that answer, and Layton smiled. "That's... a very good response, Luke. What do you propose we do about it?"

"Ask the parrot," said Luke, pointing at Polly.

The bird was spinning round like a quickly bowled ball in mid-air, and hecame to a stop in front of Luke and Layton. His eyes had become completely hollow. The glowing black of his eye sockets contrasted nicely with the whiteness of the world.

"Infinity," he said. Before their eyes, he grew slimmer, losing his hind legs and gaining a long tail. He was now a snake, with feathers in the same colours as Polly.

"What's going on?" said Luke. "Maybe this is a dream..."

"Infinity," the serpent said, now twisting itself into a sideways figure of eight: the symbol for infinity.

"The Ouroboros..." said Layton. "A snake eating its own tail. It represents the cyclical nature of the universe..."

"The dragon shows faith. The tiger shows power. The griffin shows courage. The snake shows the hour."

"Right," said Luke, somewhat sarcastically.

"Who are you?" said Layton. "What do you want?"

"Infinity," said the snake.

"Is that where we are now?" said Luke. He didn't look scared any more, but then the situation had long since passed the point where you could get surprised by anything any more. The abnormal was becoming normal.

"Yes."

So this is, in truth, the very place Dimitri is trying to reach, thought Layton. The place where all space-times meet.

"You brought us both here?" he asked.

"Yes. I am... responsible..."

"Why?" said Layton, keenly interested because these 'yeses' had been the first direct answer they had received since they had arrived here.

"To... help you see."

"But how?" said Luke. "Didn't the scientist stabilise you?"

"Infinity... is linked... to all space-times. He merely... dampened the magnetic field. He did not... completely extinguish it."

Despite the pauses, that had been the most comprehensive sentence the mysterious person had come out with yet, and Layton was suddenly in a rush to get as much information as he could.

"I understand. You can still travel here, and coming here gives you access to all times. But let me ask you this: why do you keep teleporting us across different times?"

"To show you... what must be done."

There was a flash of blinding white light. And Layton was once more in a very different place.