Leo hated the ocean.

Or more accurately, he hated travelling on the ocean. The undulating waves, the associated nausea and the infuriating ease with which everyone else seemed to endure the journey- all of this irritated him tremendously.

"Feeling sick?"

Leo turned around to see his mother approaching him on the deck.

"No, Mom. I am fine." He grumbled. His mother accompanying him was another source of irritation. As the only grandchild of famed physicist Herbert Cooper below the age of eighteen, his mother had flat out refused to allow him to come to this journey just under the supervision of his cousins.

"I don't trust those twins one iota." She had said with a tone of unmistakable disdain.

The "twins" were Henry Cooper and Charles Cooper. Leo could see them on the top floor, looking out to the sea. They were both twenty years old, and the rumours he had heard about them were quite chilling. Their father, Thomas Cooper, had been the eldest son of Herbert, and was something of a business tycoon. The twins however ran a different kind of business. Leo had heard his mother and father discussing the same multiple times, and though they never discussed the details, he surmised that it had to do with drugs and human trafficking. Leo himself had rarely met the twins, but he had always been creeped out by them. Something about their stare, especially when looking at women, made his skin crawl.

"Let me know if you feel nauseous, I have some medicines in my bag." His mother said, her voice still laced with concern.

"Sure Mom, I will." Leo reassured her, and then watched as she went back below decks. His mother, Sophie Bennet (formerly Cooper), was the youngest daughter of Herbert. She ran a successful business of her own along with his father, selling used cars. Normally Leo was extremely proud of both of his parents, especially when considering the tales he had heard about Thomas, but at the moment the rolling of the waves had soured his mood.

I should apologise to her later.

Not for the first time, Leo cursed the telegram which had prompted this trip.

He still remembered the day it had come. He was returning from school, when he had noticed a big brown envelope in front of his door. A neat postcard on top of the envelope had his name clearly written on it. Leo's first instinct was that it was some communication from his school, otherwise why would someone send a letter particularly addressed to him?

As he hastily opened it though, a sense of foreboding came upon him. The paper was too high quality, the lettering too glamorous for it to be a normal letter sent to him from school. He slowly unwrapped the paper to read the lines written on the page:

Dearest Grandchild,

I hide mine secrets in mine island.

Find them if you can.

Or if you dare

For if you decide to follow this path

You will mingle with forces incomprehensible

And then the letter ended. There was no signage or any indication otherwise as to who had posted this letter. Of course the wording on it implied that it was his grandfather but that was impossible.

Grandpa died ten years ago

Leo was only six at that time so he didn't remember much of the affair or his grandfather to be honest. But he remembered his mother crying, going to the funeral, and the somber mood that hung over the house for weeks afterward. He didn't know at the time how he had died, but when he grew up he had looked it up on the internet.

ENIGMATIC PHYSICIST FOUND MURDERED

SECRETS OF TIME TRAVEL LOST FOREVER?

POLICE NOT ABLE TO FIND THE RUTHLESS KILLER

His grandfather had been stabbed multiple times in the throat and then thrown in the ocean. His body washed up on shore about a week later. The police wanted to go and investigate the enigmatic island of Teracora, where his grandfather had been cooped up for two years before his death, but they were not able to set a foot there. As per the strict instructions of his grandfather, only members of his family were allowed to set foot on Teracora, even in cases of disaster or, as in this case, murder. And therefore the case got cold, with the police not being able to investigate the very scene where the crime occurred.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Of course, even members of the family.......

"There you are Leo!" A female voice cut short his reverie.

Leo turned around to see Margaret coming towards him with a smile. Margaret was the youngest daughter of Benjamin Cooper, who himself was the middle child of Herbert Cooper. Of all his three children, it seemed Herbert was most fond of Benjamin because he was the only one who followed his footsteps and became a physicist at CERN. Leo himself rarely met Uncle Benjamin, but his wife Carrie and his three children stayed close to their house. As such he had grown up with all three of them, but he was particularly close to Margaret, who was the closest to his age.

Still two years older, Leo thought ruefully. Even his mother would have been happier if there was someone like Carrie, close to her own age, on the journey. As it stood, she was much older than everyone else, though Leo hadn't seen her complain once about it.

Margaret had an older sister, Elizabeth, and an older brother, William. Both of them were probably asleep down in the decks. Leo knew William at least shared some of his misgivings about travelling in the ocean but at least he could sleep peacefully through the journey.

"Vomiting over the deck again?" Margaret asked with a playful smile as she stood beside Leo.

"Eh you know how it goes." Leo made a grimacing face and then turned to look outside again.

"Leave that little kid alone and come join us up here!" Henry's voice called out suddenly from the top deck. Leo and Margaret looked up to see the twins looking towards them and snickering.

"I'd rather not mingle with perverts." Margaret called out, quick as a flash, with a wink at Leo, who had to suppress his laughter.

"Suit yourself, bitch!" Henry retorted, as his twin Charles put a hand on his back, seemingly to calm him down.

"I wish those twins weren't also sent that invitation." Margaret said under her breath, and Leo nodded in agreement.

"What do you think it means?" He asked, more thinking out loud than expecting a concrete response.

Margaret shrugged, "As far as I can see it there are two possibilities."

Leo waited, and taking his silence as agreement to continue, Margaret said, "Possibility number one: Grandfather himself arranged for these letters to be sent out to us a decade after his death. Why wait a decade? Maybe he was waiting for us to come of age, maybe there was no reason, maybe the letters were lost--- or wait, the last one couldn't be true because it was addressed to us. All of us were mere children at the time of his death. We couldn't possibly have made this journey then."

"Why didn't he send a letter to our parents then?" Leo interjected.

Margaret shrugged. "To be honest I don't know. I heard from my father that Grandfather had shut himself off in his island for two years before his death. He didn't speak to anyone, he didn't come to the mainland, he did nothing. Maybe he went mad, and these are the ravings of a mad person."

"So you think he didn't invent some time machine?"

Margaret laughed. "Of course not!"

Leo looked at her astounded, "But why did you come if you didn't believe in the existence of a time machine?"

Here Margaret's face clouded over. "Because of the much more likely possibility number two: These letters were sent to us by his killer."

"What?! Why the hell would he do that?"

"I don't know. To mock us? Because he was looking for something and he didn't find it? And now he expects us to find it."

"You think this is a trap by the person who killed Grandfather?"

Margaret nodded gravely.

"Then there was even little reason to come no? You are walking directly into what you think is a trap?" Leo was incredulous.

"No no, if we know this is a trap, then it ceases actually being a trap no? We can spring a trap of our own on him. Think about it Leo! A decade old case! And we will be the ones solving it and catching the killer! Oh the thrill." Margaret's eyes were shining with excitement, but Leo felt nothing but dread.

If Margaret is right, then we are going to a deserted island inhabited by a killer!

"Wait, you said the killer expects us to find something. Find what? You don't believe there is a time machine on that island."

Margaret stayed silent for a bit. She looked up, making sure the twins were still staring out at the sea and not paying attention to their conversation. Then lowering her voice, she almost whispered, "Maybe you don't know this Leo, but Grandfather was born on that island! I have heard from dad that he had a treasury of gold and diamonds hidden on this island, with which he used to fund his expensive research. The last time Grandfather met dad, he told him that the gold stored in that island was more than the GDP of a few nations!"

This was all news to Leo. He had never heard his father or mother mention any gold hoard in Teracora.

"Are you sure about that?" He had lowered his voice to a whisper to match Margaret. "Is it even possible to hide such a large amount of gold on that island in such a place that your killer couldn't find it even after a decade of searching?"

Margaret shrugged. "It's possible. You know how much of a genius Grandfather was. A madman yes, eccentric yes, but also undoubtedly a genius. The man had the world convinced that he had cracked the code to actual factual time travel for goodness sake!"

"What's your point?"

"My point is that there may be biometric locks that the killer couldn't open. Locks that will only open for us!"

Leo shook his head. "But that doesn't make sense. If it were so, then why did the killer wait for us to grow up? Surely it would have been easier to send the telegram to our parents before that?"

"I don't know." She frowned, and Leo thought that this point would have also troubled Margaret a lot.

"There can also be a third or a fourth possibility that we are not thinking of right now." She added.

"Yeah, a simple variation is your second or first one with the existence of a time machine thrown in."

Margaret laughed. "Oh come on Leo. Surely you can't believe such a thing. Time machines are instruments of fiction! Sure Grandfather published some papers on feasibility, and asked for funding for building an actual machine, but all of those were just smokes and mirro-"

"Hey there's the island!" Henry's shout interrupted her and she looked irritatedly up at the twins.

"Always lacking such grace." She muttered, and this time Leo was the one who laughed.

His laughter was short-lived though as he turned to behold the island of Teracora. From the distance they were at, it was still only a small blip on the horizon, but Leo still felt a chill run down his spine.

An island uninhabited for a decade.

An island where a grisly murder occurred.

An island which hides numerous secrets......and a killer if Margaret's theory was true.

As the island got closer, Leo felt another wave of nausea come over him, this one caused more by the tightening knot of apprehension in his gut than the gentle waves of the ocean.