G.VI: Omen

As the doors of the time machine slide open, Geo gratefully exhaled the fresh air. There was something different about the time fog, or should he say, fumes. Rather than misty cold as he remembered, the fog was now humid and heavy.

And the first word that escaped his mouth was, "SOPHIA!"

But there was not a single response.

Geo dashed out into the porch after a glance of the inside tells him that Sophia was not around. He wondered what time or day it is but he had no time to check.

Upon stepping outside, he saw Sophia's favorite convertible parked out front. The presence of the car and the absence of it's owner made him more worried about the fact that she's nowhere to be found in his house.

Hopeful, he assured himself that she must have left her car here on purpose.

Geo immediately headed towards the town to search for Sophia. He prayed hard that he was not too late to get a hold of her. Because after what he saw from Vingcanti's memories, he had to, had to, HAD TO stop her from time travelling at all cost.

Geo dropped by the consignment store where Sophia worked and was disappointed to find Timothy, a co-worker, standing behind the counter instead of her.

"Hey, you're Geo, right?" said Timothy. "Long time no see."

"Uh, yeah, hi, Timothy," Geo had no time catching up. "Is Sophia around?"

"You mean the heiress who think she can just quit without notice?" Timothy's tone changed when he heard her name. "Ever since she left a month ago, I had to take on triple shifts! Don't ask me where she went, I'm not her information center guy."

"A month?!"

Geo couldn't stomach the time passing differently than he actually experienced. And the worst of news came to him when Timothy was being nosy about what Geo's new year resolution was.

It took him quite a while to level with Timothy.

By the time Geo figured he had been gone for a whole eight months, he was about to vomit his spleen out in disbelief. Without losing a moment, he barged out of the shop in full haste, leaving Timothy bewildered by all his date-time questions.

On his way back, his mind was torn in two, between heeding his grandmother's warning or return just approximately a month earlier through time and tell Sophia everything about him and who his grandmother really was.

Geo found himself standing before the time machine again. Only this time with a different intention. A different agenda; to intervene the past, to rewrite the present, to change the future. Whatever you call it.

To be safe with the one month timing, Geo keyed in to return two months earlier. While doing so, the beacon vigilantly blocked the keys from Geo's finger. It knew so well that Geo should not be doing what he's trying to do now.

"I have to do this," Geo insisted despite Vingcanti's persistence. "I can't just stay here and do nothing about it!"

Sensing how determined Geo was, Vingcanti has no other choice but to stop the similar mistake from happening all over again. One mistake was already enough.

A second intervention to correct the first mistake would only result in a more complex future.

Vingcanti instantly released his powers in a surge of sparks.

And before Geo could react to it, the sparks grew into a blinding light. The same bright light he got in back at the ruins.

At the same moment, the door of time split open and ecto fumes spilled forth as if it were filled with life. As if the fumes had a mind of it's own, trying to drag Geo in it's chamber by force.

Luckily, Vingcanti managed to complete the teleportation before the time machine could suck them in like a hungry beast.

__________________________________________

Meanwhile, in another dimension of the space-time continuum, Sophia was running for dear life with a little boy she tried so hard to keep close to her side.

"GEO, WATCH OUT!"

As soon as she screamed, the startled little boy stopped in his steps and in a split second, flames bursting from beneath the tiles!

Panicked, he shrieked. Face as pale as a ghost sheet.

Sophia griped him to another corner, finding their way deeper into the dungeon.

"It's a dead end!" the boy gasped.

"No, it's not," Sophia assured. "There's a tunnel under this pool. We just have to hold our breath long enough to get to the other side."

Sophia got into the pool before she could attempt to get him in.

"No, I can't," the boy sobbed, stricken with fear. "I'll drown!"

"No, you won't drown. Trust me," she try not to snap in order to keep him calm. She had never liked kids but right now it was a matter of life and death. "Come now, we have to hurry before he catch up on us."

Back at the spot where the tiles were spitting bursts of flames, a blinding light emerged out of nowhere.

And as the light diminished into sparks, it revealed a pale male in a dark suit with a pair of bloodshot eyes that spells murder. - Right beside him, a dark beacon floats.

"How did they manage to escape this far?" the man frowned. His voice was as thin as ice yet it rumbles like a rolling thunder. "It is only I! I, who knows the way around this deadly maze of mine!"

Leading the intruder into the dungeon proved to be a handicap on his side. He failed to see it coming. This has never happened before, therefore anguish swept over him like a mockery. He felt his ego had been battered with humiliation.

"See to it that the witch will pay for her trespassing," he instructed the beacon. "And give me that boy alive, understood?!"

The beacon nodded with precision a loyal minion possess.

"NOW GO!" his voice echoed throughout the dungeon.

__________________________________________

"This is it!" Sophia exclaimed as she pants for breath. "Stay close to me, Geo!"

Fumbling in his steps, the boy obeyed without much question. She had gone through all the trouble to rescue him from his blood thirsty stepfather, Damascus Vanderghast. Whoever she was or where she had come from, it didn't matter.

Right now, she's the only person he got. After his own mother had offered him to Damascus, Sophia was the last person he could trust.

"Almost..." Sophia struggled to search for a lever deep inside the hole. "Almost... - "

Suddenly, a mechanism clicked, "GOT IT!"

Once her relieved chirp escaped her dry throat, cold mist cloaked the both of them like a blanket. And they vanished with it.

Back in Twinbrook, the time machine hummed to life. But the doors were not sliding open. For a long time, there were several vibrations and anxious knocks from within...

Finally the doors opened, even though it seemed like the automatic mechanism had ceased to function.

Sophia emerged out of the ecto fumes with so much strain.

Apparently, the fumes got heavier and harder that it was difficult to come out of it. But Sophia was not going to lose to some time fog. Not ever.

She heaved herself out with all the strength she could muster.

"Geo? GEO?!" she called out for the child once she managed to pull herself away from the wretched machine.

"Geo, where are you?! Answer me!" She looked around in panic and expected the worse.

Could he have been left behind?

Just when she was about to head back into the fog to search for Geo, Damascus' dark beacon charged out towards her.

She had been followed.