LITMIR.BIZ

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      Fear gripped Christopher as he suddenly realized where he was. The River Thames! No!

      Had Mistress Obsidian sent him back to that awful place? Had this whole second mission just been some kind of elaborate ruse, a way to get his hopes up only to dash them again by sending him to his watery grave? Terror began to consume him.

      Chris could feel the water against his skin and all the sticky residue from the toxins in the dirty river. The smell in his nostrils made his eyes water.

      He was swirling around and around and around, as if in a whirlpool. Then suddenly he saw a flash of someone else. He was not alone.

      “Oliver?” Chris cried in disbelief.

      His puny little brother was here, too, swirling around in the churning waters. What was happening?

      The waves crashed around them and forced them onto the banks. Christopher flopped into the mud, gasping for breath. Lights flashed like strobes around him.

      Looking up, Chris saw where the lights were coming from. There were two portals standing on the riverbank in front of him, both rusted and decrepit looking, flashing their electric light displays.

      As the lights flashed all around, making his vision flash in and out, Chris tried to get to his feet. He could see Oliver just a few feet to his side trying to scramble up, too.

      He was heading for the portal, Christopher realized.

      There was no time to waste. Still on his belly on the muddy bank, Chris threw an arm out toward Oliver, stretching as far as he could. He grabbed hold of his brother’s ankle.

      But Oliver was like a worm, writhing in the mud. His ankle was slippery from water and the toxic muck of the river.

      Despite Chris’s strength, Oliver managed to slither out of his grasp. In a second, he was through the portal. It zipped shut. The lights went out, plunging Chris into darkness.

      Chris took in a huge gasp of breath. He flew into a sitting position and looked around, completely dazed.

      Madeleine’s face materialized before him.

      “Are you okay, Chris?” she asked.

      Chris swallowed the hard lump in his throat and it dawned on him that he’d been dreaming. He’d been having a nightmare, his mind replaying the awful moment when he’d failed to kill Oliver on his last mission. He was more determined than ever not to let that happen again.

      He looked around to see Natasha and Malcolm a few feet away, dusting themselves off from the bumpy ride.

      “What happened?” Christopher asked Madeleine.

      “We just went through the portal,” she explained. “You must’ve fallen asleep.”

      Malcolm’s head started up and he scoffed, as if sleeping in a portal was a sign of bad manners or something.

      “How could I fall asleep in a portal?” Chris gasped, smoothing down his messed up hair.

      He’d traveled through portals before. They were not particularly pleasant experiences. Usually, they made him feel like his whole body was being pulled apart atom by atom. He must have been really exhausted to have slept during transportation through a portal! It was evidence of just how hard Colonel Cain had been drilling him.

      The sensation of panic Chris’s nightmare had induced began to recede. He glanced about.

      “Where are we then?” he asked Madeleine.

      “Rome, I think. Sometime in the fifteen hundreds.”

      “Huh,” Chris grunted. He had not exactly enjoyed going back to the sixteen hundreds and he had a feeling the fifteen hundreds would be even worse.

      Natasha and Malcolm had collected themselves and came over.

      “So, what next?” Natasha asked Chris.

      Chris didn’t want to waste a moment. He leapt to his feet and rubbed his hands together with delighted glee.

      “Now we find Oliver,” he said, grinning devilishly at his ragtag bunch of followers. “And cause a little mayhem on the way.”