APOCALYPSE: WHEN THE PAST RETURNS

Chapter 5

Adrian stared at the computer monitor, his mind reeling.

Fear crept across his pale face as he stared at the glowing numbers. He raised a hand, his trembling fingers counting back and forth between his hand and the screen.

“Two days...” The words barely escaped his lips in a ragged whisper.

Two days until the full moon. Two days until the species turned aggressive and the apocalypse began, and no one in Evergreen City had any idea what was coming. People were still sleeping in their beds, completely oblivious to the ancient nightmare waiting to break out of the woods.

Adrian’s chest seized. Henry Scott thought he was slipping into madness.

He abruptly stood up from the computer chair, his heart hammering. “What am I supposed to do? How do I stop this?”

His mind raced through every possible scenario, but every path led to a dead end. Then, like a bolt of lightning, a thought hit him.

The other half of the book.

If his father’s manuscript contained the biological records of the extinct species, the missing second half locked in the Archives had to contain something more, maybe even a way to survive them. But the Archives were sealed to anyone without high-level security clearance. He couldn't just walk through the front door.

His gaze shifted toward the hallway. There was only one option left.

Adrian sprinted down the hall and threw open the door leading to the lower level. He rushed down the steps and pushed open a heavy, reinforced door at the bottom. It creaked loudly as it swung inward, revealing a sprawling underground laboratory.

Heavy steel shelves lined the concrete walls, stacked high with dusty leather volumes, glass vials, and spools of copper wire. In the center stood a massive steel worktable. And at the far end of the room stood Adrian’s life's work.

A massive cylindrical frame rose toward the ceiling, wrapped in thick power conduits. Flickering indicator lights cast a cold blue glow across the metal structure. His time machine.

Adrian stepped closer, inspecting the metal frame. His surge of hope collapsed instantly. It wasn't finished. Not even close. Exposed wires hung from the primary control console like tangled vines, and the main temporal coil sat unmounted on the worktable.

“How am I supposed to finish this in forty-eight hours?” he muttered, clenching his jaw till it ached.

He knew it was insane. But he didn't care.

Without pausing to rest, Adrian threw himself directly into the work. He grabbed a soldering iron, the hot tip hissing as he fused loose circuitry onto the main control board. Hours bled together in a haze of smoke and glaring blue light. His back throbbed with a dull, stabbing ache, his fingers burned from accidental slips, and his eyes stung from exhaustion, but he refused to stop. Every time his hands slowed down, he pictured the pale, glowing eyes of the beast in the forest.

By the time the first faint rays of dawn filtered through the narrow ground-level vents, he had managed to mount the temporal coil and hardwire the primary power grid. Stepping back, he wiped sweat and grime from his forehead, let out a ragged breath, and headed upstairs.

He stepped out onto his front porch, breathing in the crisp morning air. For a moment, he just stood there, looking out over the neighborhood. After everything he had uncovered, he half-expected the city to be in ruins, to hear screaming, police sirens, or the roar of the beast echoing from the tree line.

Instead, Evergreen City was completely oblivious.

The morning sun cast a golden light across the paved streets. Cars drove past at normal speeds, and neighbors walked their dogs along the sidewalks. A school bus squealed to a stop at the corner, picking up laughing children.

Everything was peaceful. Quiet. Normal.

Adrian watched them silently, a profound sense of isolation washing over him. Nobody knew. Nobody was preparing.

“Adrian!”

He turned. Four figures were walking up his driveway. Leah, Sean, Sam, and Jake.

Adrian’s eyebrows pulled together. “What are you doing here?”

Leah stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, taking in his pale face, soot-stained shirt, and dark under-eye circles. “You look terrible. Did you sleep at all?”

“Not really,” Adrian said quietly.

Sean crossed his arms, looking at him suspiciously. “What happened out in those woods last night, Adrian? You sounded terrified on the phone.”

Adrian looked at their bright, expectant faces, then back toward the house. “We need to talk inside.”

The sheer gravity in his tone silenced them immediately.

“About what?” Sam asked, clutching her bag.

“Just follow me.”

Adrian led them inside, walking straight to the hidden basement door at the back of the hallway. The teenagers exchanged uneasy glances. Although they had visited his house before, none of them had ever been inside the basement.

Leah hesitated as Adrian grabbed the brass handle. “You have a basement?”

Adrian pulled the heavy door open. It groaned on its hinges. “Down here.”

They descended the concrete stairs, stepping into the dimly lit laboratory. The moment they crossed the threshold, all four of them froze.

Sean’s mouth dropped open. “What... what is this place?”

Sam slowly turned in a circle, her eyes wide as she took in the wall-to-wall diagnostic equipment and server banks. “You’ve been hiding a full research lab down here?”

Leah stepped past them, her gaze locking onto the massive steel frame at the back of the room. Her breath caught in her throat. “Adrian... is that a machine?”

Adrian walked over to the main console. “A time machine.”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

Sean let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. “A what? Are you joking?”

“I’m completely serious,” Adrian said quietly.

Leah took a cautious step forward, studying the tangled wires. “You built this?”

“I’m trying to finish it.”

“Does it work?” she whispered.

“Not yet.”

Sam’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Adrian, why would you build something like this?”

Adrian looked each of them in the eye. “Because it’s the only way I can get inside the National Scientific Archives.”

The teenagers looked at one another, utterly lost.

“The Archives?” Jake asked. “Why do you need to break in there?”

Adrian took a deep breath. There was no holding back now. He told them everything about the purple-veined plants, the ancient reptilian beast that had hunted him through the dark, his father’s manuscript, and the terrifying warning hidden on the final page.

When he finished, the room was dead silent. Leah’s face had gone ghostly pale.

“You’re telling us... extinct monsters are alive in the forest?” she breathed.

“Yes.”

“And they’re going to attack the city?”

“My father’s research says they turn violent when the full moon rises,” Adrian said, his voice tight. “And the full moon is in two days.”

Sean shook his head violently, stepping back. “No. No way. This is crazy, Adrian! You expect us to believe we're sitting in a secret basement with a fake time machine because of some ghost story?”

“I saw the creature with my own eyes, Sean!” Adrian snapped, his control slipping. “It snapped fully-grown pine trees like twigs! I barely made it out alive!”

Sam looked at the basement ceiling, her hands trembling as she clutched her bag. “What happens when they leave the woods?”

Nobody answered. They all knew what a wave of prehistoric predators would do to an unsuspecting city.

“We have to tell the Mayor! We have to call the police!” Sean insisted, his voice rising, his protective instinct warring with pure panic.

“I went to Henry Scott last night,” Adrian said bitterly. “He laughed in my face. He thinks I’m losing my mind just like my father did.”

Leah looked down at the old brown manuscript sitting on the worktable, her eyes wide with shock and fear. “So what do we do?”

“There’s a second half to this book,” Adrian explained, pointing to the volume. “Henry told me it’s locked inside the Archive’s restricted vault. I need to complete this machine so I can get inside and pull those pages.”

Jake stepped closer to the worktable, staring intently at the faded leather cover. His expression shifted from fear to sharp concentration.

“Wait,” Jake said softly.

Everyone turned to look at him.

Jake pointed a finger at the book. “What if we’re looking at the missing pages all wrong?”

Adrian frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We keep assuming the second half just explains how the creatures got here,” Jake said, looking up with intense eyes. “What if the second half of the book contains the actual solution to stop them?”

The words hung heavily in the air. The solution.

Adrian stared at them, then slowly turned his eyes toward the unfinished steel ring of the time machine. Two days. They had forty-eight hours before the sky turned bright and the monsters tore Evergreen City apart. And their only hope was sitting behind the heavily armored doors of the National Scientific Archives.

Sean looked at Leah, his jaw clenched, still struggling to accept the terrifying reality. But looking at the dark circles under Adrian's eyes and the massive machine humming in the background, the terrifying truth settled over them all.

They were out of time. And they were in this together.