The island in total was a total of a kilometre and a half wide and three kilometres long so it did not take them long to find a trail to follow, a broken tree branch here, another there, a few claw marks on this tree and that, which snaked through the forest, deeper and deeper into the middle of the island.
“So what exactly does a Time Worm look like?” Scorpio asked as she lifted a limp branch that had been snapped off and way dangling by a strip of bark, “because I'm guessing it's not exactly a worm.”
Hacker and tapping away at his laptop again, “not a worm, no. That's just what they call it because of how it travels through time, like a worm through earth. I'm not entirely sure. By the size of the broken branches I would guess it was reasonably big, and that it has claws, big ones. And I'm guessing that it can defend itself and attack as well, seeing as it was meant to kill all three of us. But I don't know what it was like in it's natural environment, or how it hunts.”
“Hunts?”
“Yeah, it might well be hunting...” Hacker lost all the will to finish that sentence, he gulped, it could be hunting us, he thought, oh God. Scorpio had picked up on the idea as well and was carefully examining the claw marks in the nearest tree. They were located half way down the tree stump. The lowest branch was a metre or so above it. Oh God, thought Hacker.
“It moves from tree to tree in the branches, so these claw marks make no sense, it would have to reach down to make these marks. It's like it's keeping track of where it's been.”
“Or maybe it's keeping track of where we are.”
That was when they heard the growl, the metallic grinding of a growl. The air shimmered ahead of them, and there in front of them it stood, the Time Worm.
“General?” The Commander shook the General awake, his eyes were slits.
“Commander?” he smiled, leaned forwards and then let himself fall backwards again, the effort too much. “I'm dying?”
The Commander shook her head, “no, of course not General. You'll be up and about in a few days.”
“In heaven?”
The Commander sighed.
The General continued, “I'm not an idiot, Ruby.” He smiled, “I know what happened. I already got diagnosed with lung cancer a few years ago, the timeline just speeded up the process.”
“I'll miss you Geoffrey,” she said, pulling her chair closer to the General's body.
“I know you will, I will too.”
The Commander let out a forced laugh at the General's weak try at a joke. The mood lifted a little, and then fell again.
The General manoeuvred himself into a better position, “ah, that's much better,” he said, and shut his eyes.
They had not expected it to be as big as it was. On its back legs it stood just less than two metres tall. In all it looked similar to a giant armadillo with bigger claws and instead of a protruding nose its face was a series of holes and divots, two for eyes, one for the nose and a wider one stretching from one side of the face to the other for the mouth. The mouth was the exception, while the others did not have anything in the holes the mouth piece was lined with inward facing needles. Its skin was mottled and its back and stomach were patched with metal bolts and panels which had been screwed into position. When the Worm turned its skin stretched horrifically around those panels, pulling tight and making the Worm moan with pain.
Suddenly its whole structure blinked out of existence, they heard a groan from behind them and turned to find it behind them.
“What the-?”
