TIMESCAPE

14

 The climb was agonizing. Evelyn was huffing and puffing and they weren't even halfway to the top yet. She knelt on the rocky surface of the volcano, gazing up the steep slope ahead of them. This was madness! They were climbing up a live volcano! Ahead of her, Will and Lincoln scanned the ground, looking for the box. Evelyn was content to let them look. Let them have the glory. All she wanted was to survive.

She sat down in the ashy dust, resolved to rest. The ground shook under her again. It was almost like a roller coaster. Evelyn hated roller coasters. They made her sick and they made her head hurt. She coughed. The volcano was spewing ash from it's opening at the top. A giant cloud of black soot was billowing out and depositing a light layer of ash over everything in sight, including Evelyn. She shook her head, ash falling from her hair like snow. But it was pointless. As soon as one layer of ash left, another took its place, perpetually falling from above. Hells bells! She coughed again. It was getting hard to breathe without sucking in a lungful of ash. This can't be good for my lungs, she thought, and to think all those years I avoided smoking, only to get a full dose of lung cancer now.

Evelyn looked to her right. There was something there, something lying in the rocks. She used what remaining strength she had to crawl her way over on her hands and knees to see what it was. Her muscles ached and screamed at her, but she ignored them. Evelyn picked up one of the rocks and moved it aside, revealing a small hand carved, wooden box. This was it, she realized. This was what they were looking for. She picked the box up, it was surprisingly light. There was a lock on it, preventing anyone from opening it without a key. She admired the craftsmanship of the carvings; skulls and angels of death interwoven with intricate patterns. She shivered. What kind of a box was this? And what was inside it? She knew what Professor Campbell said was inside it, but what was inside it really?

Evelyn was just about to shout out to the others that she had found it when a giant roar distracted her. It had come from the volcano. The ground shook again and Evelyn clutched the box tightly. She wasn't going to lose this, not now. Will and Lincoln were shouting from above. She looked up toward the top of the volcano through the smoke and ash to see what was going on, and what she saw terrified her.

The volcano was erupting. Now, instead of ash, molten rock and a thick, black cloud was spewing from the opening! A wave of boiling lava was slowly winding its way through the rocks towards the bottom of the volcano. Will and Lincoln were racing down as fast as they could. It was time to leave.

Evelyn stood as best she could despite the shaking, sloped earth beneath her. She held the box aloft in her hands so the others could see. They ran toward her, sliding to a stop beside her.

"You found it? Will cried "Good timing!"

"Come on, what's the code? We got to get out of here." Lincoln was tapping at the leather band around his arm, bringing the screen to life.

"What about the others?" Evelyn asked. They were still out there, somewhere. What if they never found Paige? What if they missed the window? What if they got stuck back here?

"Screw the others! We have to leave now!" Lincoln roared.

"He's right," Will said, typing in the code to the monitor on his wrist "We can't help them. It's us or them."

Evelyn and Lincoln's screens lit up after Will input the code. On their screens was a timer counting down from ten minutes and a button that said Return?

Lincoln and Will both vanished in a flash of light, leaving Evelyn by herself. It seemed the world around her was being destroyed. Flaming rocks and ash surrounded her. She couldn't stay here. She pressed the button on her monitor and the world around her turned to light.