Dark Nine [18+]

Chapter Thirty

Danger somehow returns with a very silly smile on his face, while I'm sweating and stressed out. Around his finger is a chain looped to a metallic ET key that he twirls around and around.

"Why do you look so happy?" I ask, feeling a need to laugh at the twinkle in his eye. He was seriously the most carefree person I'd ever met and we'd only known each other, what, all up, ten minutes in all of history?

"Oh, I'm happy, Diana, because I just capitalized on a favour that the mayor owed me," Danger squats down in front of me, "I have access to his top-secret brand new latest warp drive, which conducts undetectable travel across the universe. You coming?" He holds out a hand for me and I take a moment to breathe heavy before I reach and he grasps my hand, pulling me up, "You'll owe me for this one, Diana," Danger sounds entirely cheeky, mischievous and extremely proud of himself at the same time. I can't hate him for asking for a repayment at some point.

"Okay, you got it," I answer non-hesitantly, while I waddle with him down the ramp into the live gamescape.

Danger no longer seems to care about being seen and I guess I know why. As we exit the Lazer Tag and head up a stair case to the roof, the warp drive has already been delivered.

"Won't they detect us through satellites or something?" I ask him, worried.

"Sure, they might see us up here on the roof, but they can't follow us, so doesn't matter," Danger shrugs one shoulder, as we stand by the machine which has just been left here for us with no security team, no nothing. It's all his to play with, and he knows it.

Danger looks to be in his element as he navigates the controls and I just stand back feeling helpless.

"Where are we going?" I ask him.

"To visit my mother," Danger smirks, "You coming?"

"Yes."

"Well come on," Danger holds out his elbow for me.

I quickly step closer and link my arm through his as he walks me through the new portal that opens for us.

We don't even feel the suction of space time warping, as we go from the rooftop, to the inside of a tree house.

That's what it looks like to me.

When I adjust my ears, I feel a sense of familiarity. Birds. Bees?

I shuffle toward a window, overlooking a forest scape.

We're very high up. It really is a tree house.

We're on Terra. Earth.

I'm back home.

I turn to see Danger has already leaped over a couch and is reclining, kicking his legs up and taking a spontaneous 'nap'.

Meanwhile, I hear footsteps from the connecting kitchen.

A young woman, wearing a pale green dress, with her curly blonde hair tied up in a bun, aside from the one or two curls framing her face, looks around to us with huge wide light blue eyes. First she looks at me, and then spots her son on the couch.

"Another girlfriend?" Orlai whispers, looking distraught.

"Mum," Danger snaps as he grins and sits up suddenly from his ten second nap, "She's not my girlfriend. She's a special friend."

It's weird seeing a twenty something year old, look and act like a twenty something year old, when she is literally six destines old. 60,000 thousand years.

The Earth wasn't even connected to the Intergalactic Alliance back then.

She was an ancient human. I do wonder if Danger lied about growing up in Light Metro – that was impossible – although who knows what he considers to be a young age when he will also be as ancient as his sweet mother.