[RATING MA 15+]
The twenty-first day dawned with blood on his hands that wasn't his own.
Sekitanki woke to find himself clutching the scorpion's severed claw—when had he taken it?—knuckles white around chitin still warm from the kill. His body had moved through the night on autopilot, some primal survival mode operating while his conscious mind retreated into static.
He was becoming something else. Something that killed without thinking. Something that wore prehistoric death like a second skin. Is this evolution? Or devolution?
The question felt academic. Irrelevant. What mattered was the temporal core still strapped to his forearm, miraculously intact despite everything. What mattered was the memory surfacing through fog and exhaustion: the original centipede. The one that had destroyed his time machine on day one.
It had eaten parts of the machine. Including—the quantum oscillator. It swallowed the oscillator whole.
The realization hit like electricity. That component was critical. Irreplaceable. Without it, the temporal core was just expensive metal. But if the centipede had swallowed it, if the oscillator had somehow survived being in It's stomach, if he could recover it...
I need to find that centipede. The thought should have been insane. Hunt down one specific massive prehistoric predator in an endless forest where everything wanted to kill him. With no weapons except a scorpion claw. While his body fell apart piece by piece.
But insanity had become his baseline.
He stood, testing his weight. His shoulder was still dislocated—he could see the unnatural angle, feel the grinding wrongness. His ribs sent fresh pain with each breath. His right arm remained mostly useless.
He was a walking catalogue of injuries that should have killed him.
But they haven't. Not yet. Using a tree trunk for leverage, Sekitanki reset his shoulder. The pop was audible. The pain was transcendent—white-hot agony that whited out vision for three full seconds. When consciousness returned, he was on his knees, vomiting bile.
"Okay," he gasped to the empty forest. "Okay. That was... okay." He forced himself upright again. Tested the arm. Still painful, but functional. Good enough. Nothing was ever better than good enough anymore.
Tracking the centipede meant returning to the original crash site.
The journey took most of the morning. Sekitanki moved like a ghost through vegetation he'd learned to read—which plants were safe, which hid predators, which paths offered escape routes. The forest that had seemed like incomprehensible chaos three weeks ago now had structure. Logic. Deadly logic, but logic nonetheless.
He'd become fluent in the language of survival.
The clearing appeared through morning mist like a memory made solid. The wreckage was still there—twisted metal slowly being reclaimed by vegetation. But something had changed. The area was marked. Territorial markers in patterns he'd learned to recognize.
The centipede claimed this space. It's still here. Somewhere close.
Sekitanki's pulse quickened. Not fear—he'd burned through fear weeks ago. This was something else. Anticipation. The electric feeling before confrontation. Before the universe decided whether he lived or died.
He began searching for tracks. The centipede's passage would leave signs—crushed vegetation, the distinctive pattern of hundreds of legs, chemical markers his human nose couldn't detect but his eyes could see in disturbed earth.
Found them leading east, into the densest part of the swamp. Of course. Why would anything be easy? He followed. The centipede's lair was a collapsed club moss tree—ancient wood hollowed by time and decay, creating a tunnel system large enough to house something massive.
Sekitanki crouched at the entrance, peering into darkness that smelled of chitin and rot and something chemical his modern mind couldn't classify. Somewhere in there: the creature that had destroyed his machine. And inside that creature: the component he needed to go home.
This is suicide. Even by my standards, this is suicide. But going home meant confronting his mother. Meant telling his father he understood now. Meant becoming someone who could feel connection without losing himself. And that was worth dying for.
He'd brought fire—primitive torch made from resin-soaked wood—and held it high as he entered the tunnel. The walls were smooth, polished by the centipede's passage over days or weeks. The floor was littered with remains: bones, exoskeletons, the picked-clean husks of meals.
Sekitanki moved deeper.
The tunnel opened into a chamber—natural cavity in ancient peat, maybe ten meters across. And there, coiled in the center like a living fortress, was the centipede.
It was larger than he remembered. Seven meters? Eight? Its segmented body reflected torchlight in patterns that seemed hypnotic. Hundreds of legs folded beneath it. The head rested on its own coils, mandibles closed, antennae twitching in slow rhythm.
Sleeping. Or resting. The distinction probably didn't matter.
Sekitanki's eyes tracked the body, counting segments, calculating. If it had swallowed the oscillator three weeks ago, where would it be now? Digestion in arthropods could take days, weeks, depending on the meal's composition. Metal and circuitry wouldn't digest at all.
Which meant it was still in there. Somewhere in that massive body. I need to kill it. Cut it open. Find the oscillator before I become the next meal. The plan was simple. The execution would be nightmarish.
Sekitanki gripped the scorpion claw—his only weapon—and stepped forward. The centipede's antennae stopped moving. Time froze. Then the creature's head lifted, mandibles spreading, and released a shriek that made the chamber walls vibrate. Here we go.
The centipede struck like a train derailing. Its front segments uncoiled with impossible speed, mandibles snapping shut where Sekitanki had been standing. He rolled left, felt wind from the impact, came up running along the chamber wall. The creature pivoted. Its body moved in waves—each segment independent yet coordinated, creating fluid motion that shouldn't be possible for something so large.
Sekitanki threw the torch at its face. The centipede flinched—just a moment's hesitation—and he moved. Inside its reach. Under the mandibles. Against its body where the head couldn't turn fast enough. The scorpion claw came down.
Ichor sprayed. The centipede shrieked and thrashed. Its body coiled around itself, trying to crush the thing causing pain. Sekitanki rode the movement, stabbing again, finding another gap, another weak point.
This is insane this is insane this is—a leg caught him across the stomach. He flew backward, hit the wall, felt something crack. Ribs. Again. Always the ribs. The centipede came at him, mandibles wide enough to swallow him whole. No time to dodge. No room to run.
Sekitanki did the only thing left: he attacked.
Drove the scorpion claw upward into the roof of the creature's mouth as it closed around him. Felt the point punch through soft tissue. Felt hot breath that smelled of decay. Felt mandibles beginning to close—then the centipede convulsed. Its head whipped back. The claw, embedded deep, tore free from Sekitanki's grip but stayed lodged in the wound.
He scrambled backward as the creature thrashed, its body slamming into walls, bringing down sections of the chamber. Ancient peat rained down. The tunnel entrance collapsed.
No. No no no—they were sealed in together. Predator and prey in a tomb of their own making.
The centipede's movements became more erratic. The wound in its mouth leaked greenish ichor. But it wasn't dying fast enough. And the air in the sealed chamber was already growing thin.
Think. You're supposed to be a genius. THINK. His eyes found the weakest point in the ceiling—where roots had penetrated, where light filtered through in thin beams. If he could reach it, could widen it, could create an exit—the centipede lunged again.
This time Sekitanki didn't dodge. He jumped. Planted his foot on the creature's head and used it as a springboard, launching himself upward. His fingers found roots, gripped, held. He pulled himself up as mandibles snapped shut below him.
Then he started digging.
Hands tearing at peat. Widening the gap. Feeling the centipede's massive body slam into the wall below, trying to reach him. Feeling his grip weakening. Feeling everything converging on this single moment.
The gap widened. Sunlight flooded in—actual sunlight, yellow and warm and impossible. Sekitanki pulled himself through and collapsed on the surface as the chamber below collapsed completely. The ground shuddered. Dust and debris fountained up. Then stillness.
He lay there gasping, covered in mud and blood and ichor, and started laughing. Because he'd survived. Because the universe kept trying to kill him and he kept refusing.
Because—The oscillator. I didn't get the oscillator. The laughter died. Three weeks of survival. Of becoming someone who could kill prehistoric predators with his bare hands. Of evolving into something harder and sharper and more desperate.
And he'd failed the one thing that mattered. Sekitanki rolled onto his back and stared at the Carboniferous sky through the canopy. Wanted to scream. Wanted to give up. Wanted to let the next predator win because what was the point of fighting if hope was just another cruelty?
Then he heard it: clicking. Mechanical clicking from the collapsed chamber.
The centipede wasn't dead. Something massive moved beneath the rubble. Pushing up. Breaking through. And Sekitanki realized: the creature was trying to escape. Would escape. Would continue living while he had nothing except—no. Not nothing.
He still had himself. Still had the stubborn refusal that had carried him this far. Still had the core strapped to his forearm and knowledge in his head and hands that had learned to kill.
The centipede's head emerged from the rubble. Sekitanki stood to meet it. No weapons. No plan. Just two living things that refused to die, facing each other one final time. Let's finish this.
TO BE CONTINUED... [NEXT EPISODE: "The Last Calibration"]