Running in sand was like trying to sprint through a nightmare. Every step required twice the effort, the loose grains shifting and giving way beneath
Lila’s sneakers.
Behind them, the shouts of the Egyptian guards grew louder. They moved with unnerving efficiency, bare feet skimming over the hot sand with practiced ease.
“Keep going!” Marcus yelled, grabbing Emma’s arm as she stumbled and hauling her back to her feet. “Don’t look back!”
Lila pushed her burning legs harder. The gleaming pyramids loomed ahead, impossibly huge, but still miles away. Their only hope was the sprawling city of mudbrick houses and narrow streets that lay at the base of the dune.
“How much time?” Jack gasped, his face flushed red from the brutal heat. “I don’t know!” Tyler yelled back, his arms pumping as he ran. “I can’t
look!”
They hit the bottom of the dune, the soft sand finally giving way to packed earth and scattered stones. The transition jarred Lila’s knees, but she didn’t slow down.
They plunged into the outskirts of the city.
It was a labyrinth of narrow, winding alleyways between flat-roofed houses. The air here smelled of baking bread, woodsmoke, and livestock. People in white linen kilts and
simple dresses stopped and stared as the five kids tore past them, their modern clothes covered in drying trench mud.
“Left!” Lila shouted, banking hard around a corner to avoid a group of men carrying large clay jugs.
They ducked into a narrow passage that smelled strongly of spices and dried fish. The shouts of the guards echoed off the mudbrick walls, bouncing around the alleyways so it was impossible to tell exactly how close they were.
“We need to hide,” Emma wheezed, leaning against a wall and clutching her side. “I can’t... my lung capacity...”
“In here,” Tyler said.
He had found a small, recessed alcove between two houses, partially covered by a woven reed mat. It looked like a storage space for dried palm fronds.
Marcus shoved Jack and Emma inside, then grabbed Lila’s shoulder and pulled her in. Tyler slipped in last, pulling the reed mat down to conceal them. It was cramped, hot, and smelled like dusty hay. They were pressed shoulder-to- shoulder, their chests heaving as they fought to catch their breath
quietly.
“Tyler,” Lila whispered, her voice barely audible. “The watch.”
Tyler raised his wrist. In the dim light filtering through the reed mat, the green numbers glowed clearly.
1:04:45 AM.
“Fifteen seconds,” Jack breathed, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the mudbrick wall. “Just fifteen seconds.”
Outside, the sound of running feet echoed down the alleyway.
Lila held her breath. Beside her, Marcus was tense as a coiled spring, his fists clenched at his sides. Emma had her hands clamped over her mouth to muffle her breathing.
The footsteps slowed, then stopped right outside their alcove.
A voice spoke in that sharp, unfamiliar language. Another voice answered. Lila watched the shadow of a spear tip pass over the woven reed mat.
1:04:50.
1:04:51.
1:04:52.
The reed mat rustled. Someone was pulling it aside.
A sliver of blinding sunlight pierced the gloom of the alcove. Lila saw a tanned hand gripping the edge of the mat.
1:04:55.
1:04:56.
The mat was yanked away.
An Egyptian guard stood there, surprise breaking across his face as he took in the five strange, mud-covered children huddled in the storage space. He opened his mouth to shout, raising his bronze-tipped spear.
1:04:58.
1:04:59.
The air vanished.
The brutal heat of the Egyptian sun, the smell of spices, the terrified face of the guard— it all disappeared in an instant, replaced by the sharp, freezing smell of ozone.
CRACK.
The green lightning struck, silent and absolute.
Lila didn’t fall this time. She simply materialized, slamming back into reality with a force that made her ears pop.
She was sitting on the top row of the bleachers.
The gym was exactly as it had been. The dim orange emergency lights cast long shadows across the floor. The parents were still huddled on their blue crash mats. Her mother was still talking to the arts committee head.
But something was different.
The roaring drum of the rain on the metal roof had stopped.
Lila looked around. Marcus was sprawled across two seats, his chest heaving. Emma was clutching her ruined binder, staring at nothing at all. Jack was sitting a few rows down, his hands shaking violently.
And Tyler was sitting in the shadows, his hood pulled up. “Tyler,” Lila whispered, her voice cracking.
Tyler slowly raised his wrist.
The green numbers glowed steadily. 1:05 AM.
The colon blinked. 1:05:01.
1:05:02.
1:05:03.
The seconds were moving normally. The hour was over.
Suddenly, the overhead lights flickered, buzzed loudly, and flared back to life, flooding the gym with harsh, fluorescent white light.
A collective cheer went up from the parents on the floor.
“Alright, folks!” Principal Higgins’s voice boomed over the PA system, no longer masked by static. “The National Weather Service has lifted the tornado warning. The storm has passed. You are free to return to your homes. Thank you for your patience.”
The gym erupted into chaotic movement as parents began folding up crash mats and gathering their coats.
Lila looked down at her hands. The thick, freezing mud from the trench was gone. The scorching sand from Egypt was gone. Her jeans were dry. Her sneakers were clean.
She looked at Emma. The color-coded binder in her lap was perfectly pristine, not a single drop of water or mud on it.
“It’s gone,” Jack whispered, looking at his hands. “The mud. The water. It’s all gone.”
“Because it didn’t happen here,” Emma said, her voice shaking. “We broke the hour. But when the hour ended... reality reset to the moment before the first jump.”
Marcus made a sound like he’d been hit.
His hand was already tearing into his jacket pocket, patting it down once, twice, his face going white in a way that had nothing to do with mud or sand.
Then he went still.
Slowly, he drew his hand back out. Sitting in his palm — small, carved, worn smooth at the edges — was the wooden horse.
“That should be gone too,” Emma said, staring at it. Her fear seemed to reroute itself into the puzzle without her permission, the way it always did. “If reality reset to before the first jump, that object doesn’t exist here. It was never in this gym. It shouldn’t have—”
“But it is,” Marcus said. His fingers closed around it again, careful this time, like it might still disappear if he wasn’t paying attention. “It’s right here.”
“The shard didn’t vanish either,” Lila said slowly, looking at the fourth object still cold and glowing faintly in her own pocket. She hadn’t thought to question it — the shard was the whole point, of course it stayed. But nobody had given her the shard. She’d just taken it.
Somebody had given Marcus the horse.
“Maybe it’s not about what matters to the mission,” Lila said. “Maybe it’s about what mattered to somebody. On purpose. Not just — mud that happened to be stuck to us.”
Nobody had an answer for that. Emma opened her mouth like she wanted to argue, then closed it again, filing it away instead.
“But we remember it,” Marcus said, standing up slowly. He looked at the four of them, his dark eyes intense. “We all remember it.”
“Lila!”
Lila jumped. Her mother was standing at the bottom of the bleachers, waving her purse.
“Come on, honey!” Mrs. Santiago called out, looking completely unbothered. “The storm’s over. Let’s go home. I need to draft an email to the school board about that cafeteria budget.”
Lila stood up. Her legs felt weak, trembling slightly as she walked down the metal steps.
She stopped at the bottom, turning back to look at the bleachers.
Marcus, Emma, Jack, and Tyler were all looking at her. Five strangers, bound together by four minutes of impossible time.
“Five watchers,” Tyler said quietly, his voice carrying over the noise of the departing parents.
Lila nodded slowly. She didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know who the scientist was, or why the tether had pulled them to a trench and a desert.
But as she walked out of the gym and into the cool, rain-washed night air, Lila knew one thing for certain.
This wasn’t over.
It was just the beginning.