Crossover by Jack Heath

tear off his arms and leave him to die of
shock. So he stayed, shivering in the darkness, listening to the
approaching monster.
    Soon it was visible
through the gap. Its skin glistened with grey sweat. Its gigantic
three-fingered fists clenched and unclenched by its sides.
    It walked past him.
    Six kept holding his
breath. He could slip out now, and try to get to the machine while
the creature's back was turned. But once it reached the end of the
corridor, it would turn around and see him.
    The safer option was to
stay where he was until the Taur had gone back to wherever it came
from. But he could already hear the whining of Byre's machine. She
had switched it on. In minutes, this building and everything around
it would be shattered into microscopic pieces. He didn't have time
to play hide and seek.
    Six eased out of his
hiding place and crept down the corridor, away from the Taur,
toward Byre's machine. He moved as quickly as he dared, ignoring
the pain from his head and his legs.
    Something hissed behind
him. No – sniffed. The Taur could smell him.
    Six broke into a
desperate run. The beast bellowed behind him, shaking the walls
with its furious cry, and dashed after him. Six could hear each
footfall denting the floor as the monster came closer and
closer.
    The hatch in the floor
was just ahead. Open.
    An enormous arm swiped
at the back of Six's head – but he heard it whooshing through the
air and dropped to his knees. The beast's clutching paw swept over
him as he slid along the floor for the last few metres and tumbled
down into the hatch, where the Taur was too big to follow.
    He plummeted through
the blackness as the Taur shrieked with rage, slamming its fists
into the metal floor above. The echoes bounced and faded and
bounced some more and then Six hit the ground and blacked out.
     
    * * *
     
    It was the whining
which awoke him. So much louder than before. Six felt like a fly,
trapped inside a screaming jet engine.
    He pushed at the dirty
floor with his palms. Get up! he told himself. Get up!
    The world was still
spinning around him. The best he could manage was a crawl, toward
the noise at a painful pace. Bile rose in his throat. He choked it
back down.
    There was probably
another way into these lower floors. The Taur could arrive at any
minute. But if he could shut off the machine, it didn't matter what
the beast did to him.
    By the time he reached
the door to Byre's room, he was less dizzy. He stood. Pushed the
door open.
    It was like travelling
back in time for real. Byre stood exactly where she had before, her
knuckles white around the two metal cylinders, her eyes wild with
excitement and fury.
    'Six,' she said. 'I'm
not going to lie – I'm surprised to see you.'
    Six ignored her and
staggered over to the console. A timer was counting down from 48
seconds. A readout told him that she had set the machine to blast
her 81 years into the past. He reached for the shutdown lever.
    It wasn't there.
    'Given what happened
last time,' Byre said, 'I thought it was safest to remove the
emergency shut down switch. Now I'm glad I did.'
    Six couldn't believe
it. He had failed. The machine couldn't be stopped. And now he was
going to die.
    He hoped Kyntak had
made it outside the blast radius.
    'For what it's worth,'
Byre said, 'I'm sorry. I know you'll cease to exist when I kill the
founding members of ChaoSonic. But they've done much, much more
harm than good.'
    Six was barely
listening. Kyntak had told him that the blast would be proportional
to the spacetime distance – the further Byre tried to go back, the
bigger the explosion would be. If he could change her destination
to something more recent, perhaps only this building would be
destroyed. He and Byre would die, but probably no-one else. The
Taur might survive the blast, thanks to its thick, leathery
hide.
    However, if he touched
the controls, Byre would overpower him. He was in no condition to
fight her off. He would have to wait until the last second, when
she