Chapter 5
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Ellie's eyes flickered open.
She laid nestled in a thin blue blanket, with Joel next to her on a battered mattress, and Cutter on the sofa. Both men were unconscious, sporting bloodstained bandages on their right arms as trophies of the prior brawl. Fortunately, she herself only carried a dull ache and light bruising on her stomach where she had been kicked twice.
Ellie's first instincts were to either locate her knife and stab the stranger to death, or to wake Joel. What stopped her performing either of these actions was a realisation of the careful way in which the three of them had been placed here. Such hospitality indicated that they had friends rather than enemies.
Hushed voices reached her ears. Determining that the sounds came from an adjoining room, Ellie approached the connecting door and pushed it open apprehensively.
"Well, well" said an unfamiliar voice. "One of them's awake. Take a seat and we'll ask you some questions."
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Victor Sullivan sat back in his chair, disbelief etched across his face.
"Well she seems pretty sincere, Nate, but come on? Zombies? Magic portals? I'm not buying it."
"I'm not sure, guys" said Chloe. "However preposterous it is, there's a lot supporting the story, and nothing disproving it."
Nathan Drake nodded his head thoughtfully. "That's true. And it's not like we haven't seen our fair share of the supernatural. Mutated, zombified Spaniards, anyone?"
"Don't forget, considering we're being besieged by bloody dinosaurs, a little time travel story shouldn't sound quite so bizarre" added Chloe.
"Okay" conceded Sullivan. "Fine, but proceeding under the assumption that all that really is true, what happens now?"
Ellie interrupted the adults from her spot at the opposite end of the table they were seated at.
"We tried going back to where we first appeared but there was no sign of it. The... portal... is gone. We're... stuck here."
"But is that such a bad thing?" asked Drake. "If what you've said is true, you've spent your entire life growing up in an apocalypse... We don't have any of that here."
"You're forgetting something" said Chloe. "For them, the epidemic started in 2013. For all we know, that's set to happen here in two years' time."
"Shit, you're right" said Sully, stunned.
"Slow down a minute" protested Nathan. "With all this crazy shit going on, dinosaurs and portals or whatever, how do we know anything's going to happen logically from now on? Clearly something big has happened. Really big. We need to be able to assess the situation. The first step is to get out of this chateau, to somewhere where we can figure all this out. We can't be the only ones; while we're running around out here, there's probably scientists running tests, armies fighting threats, all of it. We just need to focus on ourselves and get out of here."
"Well said, mate."
The four turned to see Cutter standing in the doorway.
"The old man's stirring now" he pointed back into the other room. "I think they should come with us."
"Sounds good to me" said Chloe, standing up and stretching. "The more the merrier."
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Anywhere, Anytime
FanfictionThe very fabric of space and time has collapsed, and every location and era that has existed or ever will exist have been merged together to form a new world, teeming with anything from dinosaurs and cowboys to cyborgs and aliens. All of these are...
