Time Maze

Herculean Task vs. Noble Heart

"Are we there yet?" Marcus asked after they had been going through the twists and turns of the tunnel for a while.

"Are you sure that you are an adult? You often sound like a spoiled child," Anastasia asked more harshly than she intended.

After all, she was worried about her family, about their survival, and the guy was acting like a two-year-old. She couldn't stop her annoyance with him from coming out no matter how much she tried.

"Well, excuse me, princess, if I am sick and tired of these endless mazes and dangerous adventures," Marcus said bitingly.

Anastasia was about to make a clever retort when it occurred to her that her family was probably terrified and tortured. Yet, there she was in a pointless conversation with a guy who knew nothing about real struggles. He couldn't understand that the real pain was hearing your family scream in fear and being unable to do anything about it. No one truly knew but her.

"Marcus," Tyson said warningly. "Now is definitely not the time for that. Anastasia is worried about her family, and she doesn't need you adding to it. How would you feel if that was your family in the hands of the bad guys?"

That managed to shut Marcus up, to Anastasia's utter relief. She wasn't sure what she would have said or done if he continued to annoy her with his trivial issues that paled in comparison to what she was going through.

"We are close. The basement is just around that bend," Anastasia said sometime later, pointing straight ahead.

"Alright, why don't the two of you stay here, and I'll go and check things out?" Tyson said, starting to move down the passage.

"Ahem, do I have to stay with him?" Anastasia said, finding it loathsome to stay with a guy who never seemed to think before he said anything.

Tyson pulled Anastasia aside just far enough so that Marcus couldn't hear them. Although the point wasn't really in being secretive. It was about doing everything in his power to avoid the girl becoming even more traumatized than she already was. Tyson also preferred not to anger Marcus as there was no telling what he would say if he felt like he was purposefully left behind. He couldn't guarantee that Marcus wouldn't do something stupid to prove himself.

"Marcus can be very clumsy at times. If I bring him with me, he might give away our position. If that happens, we won't be able to save your family," Tyson said.

He was trying to keep his explanations honest so that they ring true to the clever girl that Anastasia was. "If we leave him here alone, he is bound to find another way to get himself in trouble. That's why I need you to stay here with him, to keep an eye on him."

"Great, my whole family is in danger, and I am stuck babysitting," Anastasia said, annoyed but reconciled with her fate.

"I know it's a lot to ask, but as I said, I will just check everything now. When we come up with a plan, you will be a part of it. I can promise you that," Tyson said.

What he failed to mention was that he would find the safest task for her, the one where she would avoid any possibility of getting killed. What happened to his little sister wasn't about to happen to anyone else, and he was determined to be the one to stop the past from repeating itself.

"Fine, but what am I even supposed to do if your friend decides to do something stupid while you are gone?" Anastasia asked.

"Give him some food. That usually does the trick," Tyson said and then turned his attention to Marcus raising his voice. "You take care of her. It's your job to keep her safe if anything goes wrong."

As he said that, he winked at Anastasia conspiratorially. Marcus missed the exchange as he was preoccupied with the idea of him guarding someone from danger.

"You can count on me," Marcus said, puffing up his chest.

Anastasia could barely suppress giggles at the idea that he could protect her from anything. However, one look from Tyson told her to play along, and she did. It took but one second to remind herself that everything she did was for the well-being of her family.

"If I don't come back in fifteen minutes, take him someplace I don't know about," Tyson said.

He remembered what he saw in the spy movies that dealt with those situations and just went with it.

Moving forward alone didn't sit well with Tyson, but he still did it. It was the one chance he got to take things into his own hands, and he was determined to change past for the better. What encouraged him was that he had heard many stories of women claiming to be Anastasia. Those rumors were about Anastasia having survived the cruel fate her family had suffered.

Thinking about it, he wondered if he was doing her more harm than good because no one ever doubted the death of her family. It was as fixed as everything they had seen in the past, and none of those events had changed.

Could he change something that was such a big part of Russian history? Did he really believe that he could help not only the girl but her whole family?

The truth was that he didn't.

He was determined to keep his promise, to try to save her family if possible, but above all else to keep Anastasia from harm's way.

Once he reached the wall Anastasia told him about, he used her counting technique to find the brick in which the whole was hidden, and Tyson carefully peeked through.

At first, the light was too strong for him to see anything, but as he got used to it, he could see that there were many people in the basement, far more than he anticipated.

In the corner, there was a group of people huddled together. From their position, he understood that was Anastasia's family even before he started distinguishing the different shapes. He could guess those were her parents, sisters, and a brother. Having seen only a few pictures of the Romanov family, Tyson could only recognize Anastasia's father. Probably because he wore his uniform, and he was holding himself the way only an emperor could.

He couldn't really tell the difference between Anastasia's sisters, but that didn't matter. They were all accounted for, and that gave him a certain comfort because although he knew the date of their deaths, he wasn't sure if some of them were murdered earlier or not.

The number of guards surrounding the unarmed family was far greater than Tyson had anticipated. The Romanovs seemed terrified, and rightly so. Those people killed them in cold blood, the young age of the children not mattering to them in the slightest.

Having gathered all the information that he thought he could from that little mission, Tyson knew one thing for sure. It was an impossible task to save everyone. The most he could hope for was to at least try.

"Alright, this will be harder than I thought," Tyson said once he returned to where Marcus and Anastasia were impatiently pacing. "There are way too many guards, and they are armed to the teeth."

"So, what are we going to do?" Anastasia asked, ready to do anything to save her family or die with them if need be.

"We will create distractions," Tyson said. "I think that if we make enough distractions in different parts of the house, they will have to send more men to check them out. Since your family doesn't really present a big threat for them, they won't think twice about leaving them with fewer guards if it means catching you."

"Tyson, my man, this sounds like way too much work for a chick we barely even know," Marcus said, sensing the potential danger they would be putting themselves in.

"Would you have thought the same thing if it was your sister we were talking about?" Tyson asked, his eyes full of tears.

"Wait a minute, is this all about Nicole?" Marcus asked with shock. "Is that why we are helping her?"

"She was all alone, Marcus. She needed her big brother, and I wasn't there for her," Tyson said with desperation and more pain than Marcus had ever seen. "If I couldn't be there for her, at least I can try to be there for someone else's sister."

"Okay, okay, we'll do whatever you come up with," Marcus said in a hurry.

He remembered how closed off his friend had been after Nicole's death, and he never wanted to see him in such a dark place again.

"You two sure are a strange pair. Still, I am glad I don't have to do this alone," Anastasia said as they sat down to come up with a proper plan.