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"How much time?" Michael asked anxiously

"When did I become our official stopwatch?" Sarah responded, but even so, she checked her NetScreen "She should be pulling us out in twenty minutes Keep your diapers dry"

Michael held back a siven her too oing to be twenty long minutes," Bryson muttered under his breath

As if some cosmic holder of the code heard his rean to swirl into wispy clouds of a darkening blue The gusts, stronger and stronger, tugged at Michael’s clothes, his hair The lights continued their dance, flaring, then dying More than two-thirds of theone now, the darkness almost co picked up

The wind bleith the force of a hurricane, ripping at Michael and his friends Clouds and streaks of black mist swirled around them, and a discordant sy to deafen Michael once and for all

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it He jerked his head around to get a better look A hole of darkness, deep and pure, the blackest thing he’d ever seen, yawning wider and wider until it was dozens of feet in diaht he saw yellow eyes

A boom sounded behind him, a concussion of noise that shook the substance he floated in, pushed him several feet forward in the purple code He turned around to see another hole opening, maybe a hundred feet away, but this one wasn’t black This one gloith an ethereal orange light that cut through the darkness Figures appeared within it--silhouettes of people of all shapes and sizes They were ht for Michael and his friends

He spun again to see the black hole--the eyes Shadow upon shadow There were figures there, too; he could sense the fast Dark shapes suddenly leaped out of the gaping hole

Stunned, Michael didn’t have tirabbed his friends, pulled them closer

"What in the world!" he shouted

"What do we do?" Sarah shouted "We still have ten minutes before Weber Lifts us out!"

Bryson wrenched free of Michael’s grip and held up his fists "We have to fight That’s not long to hold theet in a defensive position hiures eht, creatures of darkness from the black hole What would happen, he wondered, if they did get killed? This place seemed like a wild card And what if Kaine was behind it all? What if the life could be sucked out of theo The wind roared, noise filled the air, and froed in

His life was ridiculous

There was but an instant of tied at Michael and his friends Fro and slithering and pouncing, all shapes and sizes, no beast the same as another, and none Michael had seen before They looked like KillSims morphed into twisted, unnatural shapes with yellow eyes