Chapter 12
A Momentary Maelstrom
The temporal loop, though brief, disorients Zorp and the bidders, creating a window of opportunity. Mia seizes the chance, snatching the Chronometer while Marcus inadvertently uses the confusion to jam Zorp's advanced, yet flawed, alien technology with a strategically placed spork.
The air in Zorp’s opulent, if slightly gaudy, reception hall crackled. Not with anticipation, but with a palpable sense of temporal distortion. The Cosmic Chronometer, nestled on its velvet cushion atop a pedestal that pulsed with an unsettling, iridescent light, was the nexus of this anomaly. One moment, Zorp was preening, basking in the avaricious glint of potential buyers’ eyes. The next, a dizzying ripple, like a stone dropped into a pond of time, washed over the room.
The chandelier, a monstrosity of spun nebula and captured starlight, flickered. A particularly portly bidder, mid-slurp of his iridescent space-cocktail, found himself suddenly back at the beginning of that sip, the liquid still poised on the rim of his glass. Zorp, who had just concluded a particularly dramatic flourish of their six-fingered hand, found themselves repeating the exact same gesture, their voice echoing a fraction of a second behind itself. A momentary maelstrom, indeed.
Mia, ever the observer, felt it first as a prickle behind her eyes. Her meticulously planned escape route, already etched into her mind with the precision of a laser engraver, wavered. She glanced at Marcus, who was currently attempting to look inconspicuous while simultaneously surreptitiously examining a particularly fascinating alien dessert that seemed to be levitating. His eyes, wide with a mixture of confusion and sheer, unadulterated delight, met hers. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. He’d felt it too.
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