"I don't think this was a good idea, Nick." Annabel whispered as their small armed band was moving through the dead of night. The desert seemed empty and stretched endlessly into the distance blending together with the pitch-black horizon at a point blocked by a structure looking like a blimp from afar. It was floating calmly like a harbinger of destruction yet to come.

"No shit Bel." Helena groaned annoyed, she couldn't believe what she has gotten herself into. All because of Annabel and this idiot Nick. He had talked her into this idea to attack a lizard's convoy to free some of the captured resistance members. Of course, he desperately hoped to catch the convoy with Rob or his father or even better both.

It was a futile attempt, sure, but Nick had been really convincing back at the base, and with the weight of Annabel supporting his case it didn't take the teens long to gather some guns, and ammo and sneak out. It was next to Annabel and her Terry who accompanied them to protect Annabel. Terry had explained that he went with them because it was his duty as her boyfriend. At least that's what she understood through the broken jaw of his.

"Look at the ground, they will come." Nick said calmly.
"You mean the dirt?" sneered Helena.
"The tracks they… quiet now!" Nick quickly took cover behind a rock and the three other teens did the same.

Slowly a convoy consisting of just one vehicle approached the trap that was laid for it. Helena had suggested using more mines but Nick, of course, was against it. 'We don't want to destroy the vehicle, just make it stop' she rolled her eyes remembering his words.

The almost tetrahedron-shaped vehicle had come so close now that they could see the drivers in the front seat through the triangular windshields. Two lizards, seemingly not very heavily armored, stared boredly at the always similar-looking desert and its rocks. It would not take a lot longer until they would touch the mine.

Helena covered her ears expecting a not deafening but ear-piercing explosion. But instead, two more familiar sounds came muffled through her ears. She looked up and saw that Nick had left his cover with his weapon not only ready but already fired.

"Are you insane?!" She hissed and peeked out from behind her rock. Nick's shots have punched through the side windows of the vehicle sending the two drivers to eternal sleep.
She immediately checked the big hatch on the side of the vehicle. No movement. Was that already it?

"Nick that was… impressive… and dangerous." Annabel said as she stepped close to Nick shadowed by Terry who was ready to step between them any second.
"Oh don't worry… My mom taught me how to shoot when I was 12." Nick grinned. "Also my vision in the dark is pretty good."

"Figes fu a hal brd." rambled Terry through his shattered bones.
"What?" Nick asked with a smug smile.
"Your mom taught you?" Annabel said surprised and deliberately ignored whatever Terry tried to say. "I never got the feeling from her that she was such a gun nut."

"She loves shooting for sports." Nick explained. "But the guns stayed out of the house, except her service weapon."
"She was a soldier?"
"T.U.F.F. agent." Replied Nick and holstered the rifle. "The best."

"Y mm i te bess a sowin ou do." Terry immediately chimed in with more unintelligent mumbling.
"Pardon?" Nick grinned and then walked towards the big hatch at the side of the vehicle. The kids had seen often how to open up the lizard's vehicles and this wasn't an exception to the technique they knew.

Inside its loading bay were two coffins looking like they were made from a solid piece of black marble. It was the same design as the one his mother was transported in.
"Do we have something to create heat?" Nick asked the others.

"Wait a second." Annabel ran towards the front of the truck and returned with a black pill pyramid-shaped device. "I once saw Keswick open one of these with that." She stepped closer to the left of the two sarcophaguses and tapped it with the device.

The mysterious-sounding gong-like tone became audible then the black marble turned grey, and the lid opened. The teens winced back as what they saw was a lizard lying in there. It seemed like a soldier but he looked like he was in a bad state. A lot of scales from his face seemed to be pulled out and his hands seemed to be amputated.

"Is it dead?" Helena asked and pointed her gun at him.
"Probably…" Nick said also his weapon readied. "Annabel, can you open the second one?"
The dog nodded and after a second gong a second lizard became apparent in the exactly same state as the first.

"What are these…?" Nick mumbled confusedly. It was odd that the lizard's transported their dead in the sarcophaguses through the desert. As far as Nick heard they usually burnt them in some kind of ritual. He had a bad feeling about these two.

"We better leave…" Helena said, for her the case was closed. She wasn't here to investigate the fate of some lizards.
"No, we take this glider thing and drive it to the old sanatory. We can free more people by that."
"Do you want to get us killed?" She asked and placed herself in front of Nick. "This went far enough…we are going home."

"Nick I also think this went too far." Annabel said and laid her hand on his shoulder. Terry immediately took her hand and take it away from him.
"Stop that…" Annabel hissed angrily, something that happens so rarely that Terry took a step back.

"I cannot go home and sit around." Said Nick calmly and stared down at Helena. "So if you don't want to join me, at least help me to get out these coffins."
Nick moved to the back of one of the opened sarcophaguses and started pushing it to the open hatch.

It barely moved which made Helena sigh and help him. With their joint forces, they were able to free the loading bay from this weight. Annabel and Terry on the other hand had also used the time to shove the second coffin out so that the bay was empty.

"Thank you… I'll see you back at base then." Nick shrugged and looked into their faces searching for a decision they made. Helena, of course, wasn't joining him she had started walking back to the rocks they hid behind.

"Waeva, o an die ih yu wan." Were Terry's incomprehensible remarks.
"Excuse me?" Nick again had the smuggest smile possible on his face.
"Fug yu!" Terry mumbled louder but then winced in pain.
"Could you please repeat that?" Nick snickered.
Terry's final goodbye was the erect middle finger he held into Nick's face before he looked expectantly at Annabel.

"I can't let him go alone, Terry." She stated and her voice trembled for a moment.
Terry's answer was a confused look than an angry face.
"Look, I catch you two later in the base, okay?" She said to him and received an angry rolling of his eyes as an answer before Terry left to follow Helena.

"You don't have to stay you know." Nick said surprisedly, he seemingly hadn't thought she would follow him.
"I won't I will persuade you not to do so." She said sternly.
"Can we do this while driving?" Nick asked grinning and at that moment he reminded her of his father. The few times she saw him in a friendly or even playful mood he had the same grin that would make you grin back at him.

"Fine…" She groaned.
It took the two a bit to clean out the cockpit and figure out how to move the big vehicle but after a short learning phase, the transporter was easily drivable. Annabel immediately occupied the driver's position, she justified that with experience she had from before the apocalypse. Nick was okay with that, he has never driven a vehicle after all.

"I missed the feeling," Nick said as they were following the path in front of them. "You know just driving somewhere."
"I know right?" Annabel said. "Sitting inside the base also sometimes makes me feel I was buried."
"That's a good description… I'm sometimes afraid the ceiling will give in."

"Don't start that! You're making me not want to go back." She laughed and suddenly the situation didn't feel so bad anymore. They both didn't know why but just driving in the night with a destination they just barely knew, felt like something people their age were supposed to do.
"So to what high school did you go? Never seen you in mine." Nick asked casually as his eyes scanned the night.

"I… didn't go to any…" Annabel slowly said. "I'm a dropout."
"Come on… you're joking." Nick looked over to her as she stared through the windshield concentrated. "You are the most reasonable of your whole clique. I thought you would be in the gifted kids' courses."

"That's very nice of you but it's true…" She sighed with one of these tones in her voice that people had that was wrestled down by life multiple times. "After my mom died my dad fell into a depression and that not only made his life spiral out of control. I was thirteen when I applied for my first job so we had something to eat on the table… I.. I don't want to bore you."

"No, you don't." Nick quickly said. "What happened then?"
"Well, there's not much to say, I worked so we had food and shelter. It wasn't easy but better than being homeless…" She stayed silent for a moment but broke it with a burst of grim laughter. "The first real day off I had was when dad and I had a picnic near the mountain and, unbeknownst to us, near the bunker system. I can't belief how lucky we were…"

Nick fell utterly quiet for a moment, something seemed to brood inside of him. "I'm sorry to hear that. I so often think that my life was hard with not knowing my dad and the mobbing and so on but… I always had shelter and my mom to turn to, at least when she was there."

"Everybody has his own struggles… I think comparing them to each other is something idiotic." She said and gave Nick a quick glance. He was alternatingly looking into the night and at her.
"So you mean it's a matter of perspective?" He said pensively.

"Yes to a certain degree, of course, there a people who have it too easy and others who have it too hard." She giggled suddenly amused. "Like Helena, she was the daughter of one of the Fortune 500 company CEOs, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't!" Nick got instantly infected by her giggling. "In other words, without this war, she wouldn't have spat in our direction if she had met us."
"That's kind of mean." Said Annabel and took a turn to the left.
"I know, sorry."

"But… true." She giggled again. "On the other hand Terry was just a normal boy… although his father is kind of… he's something."
"Yeah, I heard stories… I never understood why you and he are…"
"The thing is," Annabel said sounding a little irritated now. "We are not… But he won't accept it."

"Really?" Nick straightened up in his seat surprisedly and now stopped looking into the night for a while. "But I saw you kiss and he's referring to you…"
"I know I know… it's kind of an on and of thing… he's annoying but he has his sweet sides."
"For me, his sweetest side is his new speech pattern." He laughed but this time he didn't hear her join in.

"It was not cool what your dad has done to him there." She stated in a very stern grown-up tone of voice. "Do you know that he still has nightmares about that?"
"I didn't know that," Nick replied without a bit of sympathy in his voice. "But… I agree that what my dad did wasn't right. I think that was his way to protect me…"

"He has a weird way doing that… although…" She took a deep breath. "Terry provoked it, from that point of view he kind of deserved it… Still, I think he should apologize to Terry."
"Do you really think that's smart?" Nick said and started chuckling. "I don't want to know what my father does to Terry's dad when he starts his weird rants."

"Well… he would deserve that treatment on the other hand." She laughed and Nick joined her.
They both hadn't felt so good for a while. Just two people joking around and enjoying the moment. Something deep down in them must have known that the universe they got to know was strictly against such pointless displays of happiness.

"Wait, stop the car." Nick suddenly said. "Do you see that?"
Nick pointed at something that looked like a little stone-made shed. For itself it didn't look odd, it very well could have been a few rock slabs that had made the entrance in a natural way. But the ominous white glowing coming from the entrance told the story of an unnatural occurrence.

Also, the two or three dozens of dead lizards lying next to the doorway were a sure sign that something else was going on there.
"Have you ever seen something like that?" Nick asked. Both of them were drawn to this shed so they got out of the vehicle and approached it cautiously.
"No, what is this?"

Nick walked towards the glow and said. "Only one way to find out…"
"Be careful Nick this feels not kosher."
Nick placed himself on the frame of the gateway and then carefully peeked into the insides of the stone.

It was a white glowing room spreading in front of him, and no one except a dead lizard lying in the middle of it. "It's just a room…" Nick said and put the first step into the room.
"Nick no you…" Annabel's words suddenly fell silent. Nick turned around to realize that the gateway behind him had suddenly and without a warning disappeared without a trace.

"Ah finally." A strange voice said, and Nick looked around the room. The lizard's corpse still lay there but adding to it an orangutan in a three-piece suit wearing a bowler stood there smiling friendly at him. Nick instinctively stepped back from him but the only thing that expected him there was a wall.

"I have been awaiting such an opportunity for a while now." The ape took the hat off his head and gave Nick a little nod that was meant as a greeting. "It is good to see you, young Nick."
"You… know my name?" The boy asked his heart in his mouth. "Why do you…?"

"Only a few things possess significance at this point in time. Who I am bares no gravitas but consequence. You have discovered this place in all space and time so that reality can straighten into a clear path."
"Reality… what?"

"You are not required to understand…" The orangutan said and stepped closer to him so that Nick could see his fur which had an unusually vibrant orange tone. "Space-time is expanding in front and collapsing behind you. You are captured right in the middle of this tempest and yet miss the faculties to fathom…" The monkey walked to the dead lizard and knelt down.
"Have you killed…"

"No, they merely did it to themselves as they broke into this chamber. Although I cannot say that I did not tempt them to their demise." The orangutan said and returned to Nick. "Open your hand."
Nick was too afraid not to comply with everything the orangutan said. He would have probably cut his own foot off if he had been asked to.

The ape dropped a little device into his hand, it looked like lizard technology, and due to the fact that lizard blood was still on it, it most probably was.
"Give that to your elder and tell him…" The monkey looked deep into his eyes, deeper than anyone should be able to. "Expect the unexpectable. And predict the unpredictable."

"Wha…" Nick wanted for the first time in this exchange end one of his sentences but this time instead of the orangutan a short but violent earthquake cut him short and swept him off his feet. Nick caught himself falling by landing on all force. He looked around in panic for a safe place to take cover in case the walls or the ceiling would give in. But the room just shock like a monolithic unit and in the middle of it the monkey, who seemed to be fused to the ground.

"Our paths part now, the events need to arrange to their inevitable outcome." The orangutan slowly walked to one of the walls and it simply opened like there has been a door all along. "Until we meet again, young Nick. Farewell."

Nick watched the orangutan walk into a black void before the wall closed again. What was that? Who was that and what has that guy given him?
"Nick?" Annabel stepped back into his acoustic perception and Nick turned around. The Gateway was there again, and he quickly left the odd stone arrangement.

"Have you seen this?" Nick asked still deeply unsure about what 'this' has been.
"Have I seen what?" She asked and Nick saw that she also looked quite shaken. "Look…" she turned her head towards the sky into the direction where Nick had seen the blimp-like ship not too long ago.

"Holy Lord…" He gasped as they saw the sky illuminated by an enormous red glowing explosion.
"Let's head home… something weird is going on here…"
"Uhm… agreed." Nick said and the two rushed back into the vehicle. Annabel hit the gas and they made their way home straight through the desert.

-Author's note: Ah I like these kinds of chapters, I hope you had fun with it too! I'm thinking about posting chapter 21 a little sooner than usual, but let's see. Anyway, tell me what you think and as always, stay tuned :)-