Blood is streaming down my right arm while my right leg is shooting sparks with every step I take, but I have to keep running. I'm not going to let them catch me. Not again. I keep sprinting until I reach my father's laboratory. I close my right, brown eye as the scanner scans my copper, left eye. The floor descends into the ground and I collapse as soon as it stops. I crawl into the bathroom to clean and wrap my bloody arm. I drag myself to the tool cabinet to get a wrench and a blow torch. I tighten the bolts on my leg until it stops sparking and then weld my leg shut. I feel inside the pocket of my shorts to make sure the paper I stole was still in there. Luckily it is.
I run over to my father's invention desk, fling open one of the drawers and dump all of its contents on the ground. I feel around until I find a spot that's slightly raised. I push down on it and a little platform rises up. On the platform is a glass case containing a shiny, metal sphere with a touchpad on the front of it. This is the Cosmo-ambulex. It's a machine my father made long before I was born. I run to the other side of the room and begin to slide it along the wall. I hear a click as the wall caves in around the little gadget. The device starts to glow as the wall slides open. I look at the touchpad. The screen reads Origin: Planet Catandro, Andromeda Galaxy. Destination: Planet ___, ___Galaxy. I fill in the blanks with Earth and Milky Way. I step into the opening in the wall. I stand in the middle of a circle made by little holes in the floor. The wall closes as white laser beams shoot up from the holes one by one as a vortex opens in the ceiling. As soon as the last beam hits the ceiling I am transported out of my father's laboratory.
ns 15.158.61.12da2