Leo woke up, for the second time that day, in a complete daze. His sleep had been fitful, polluted by nightmares of William and his mother juxtaposing on top of a corpse. He sat up on bed, trying to forget, trying to convince himself that he was still in a nightmare.

The sunlight slowly creeping in through the windows proved otherwise though, and Leo had the urge to scream into his covers.

Instead he got up. It wouldn't do to wallow in self-pity. He didn't know whether his mother was alive, but if she were she certainly wouldn't have approved of the current Leo.

With that sole thought driving him, he walked over the door and opened it. The mansion was silent. Elizabeth and Margaret were outside, probably still investigating the place that used to house five corpses. The twins.....

Leo didn't know, and at this point he didn't care, where the twins were. Most likely on the third floor above.

He made for the stairs, slowly walking down. As he had surmised, he found Elizabeth and Margaret out behind the mansion, where the graves had so recently been dug up. Margaret was looking at something in the ground, when she saw Leo and her expression brightened.

"Hey there Leo. Feeling better now?" she asked with concern.

Leo nodded, and managed a weak smile. "What have you found?"

Elizabeth looked up. She had had her head down, deep in thought.

"Nothing much. Or rather nothing incriminating." she said, somewhat disappointed.

"We don't know when the graves were dug up. Without actual forensic tools, it is impossible to even make a guess. It could be today, it could have been yesterday." Margaret added gravely.

Leo nodded. He had expected as much.

"What do we do now? The last clue at our disposal is also of no use." He said dejectedly.

"I wouldn't say that." Elizabeth said slowly, her eyes roving over the empty graves. Leo looked up sharply.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the killer went to the effort of digging up the graves. And taking the bodies. Which means two things - one that the bodies are hidden somewhere on this island, and two that if we find them we will obtain a clue to the identity of this killer."

"Meaning?" Margaret asked, looking at her sister in confusion.

"Meaning," Leo said, finally understanding what Elizabeth meant, "that the killer had to find someplace hidden on the island to stash these bodies, and by chance we are aware of four such locations on the island."

"The crosses!"

"Yes. Now the question is do we want to recheck the first cross we found yesterday? We didn't see anything then, but the killer may have hidden the bodies there after we visited it."

"No." Elizabeth's reply was swift. Leo looked at her quizzically, and she said. "Let's leave that one for the end. For now, the second cross on the map is near the mansion. We should check it out now."

Leo and Margaret both agreed, and they set off towards the location of the second cross.

The area of the island behind the mansion was much less densely forested. There were still trees yes, but these were more like bamboo trees and palm trees found in beaches rather than the thick trunked mess that surrounded the mansion in front. The path here was also much smoother, rarely having places where you could stumble and fall down.

Leo had an eye carefully on the map, slowly making his way along the indicated path, Margaret and then Elizabeth behind him. The cross seemed to be quite near to the sea, almost on the seashore itself.

Eventually, after about fifteen minutes since they had left the mansion, they came across the place where the cross was marked.

And it was empty!

There were no rocks here, no cliffs or otherwise any indication where to go. There was just a vast expanse of sand and dirt beneath their feet, and the ocean to their left.

"That was kinda anticlimactic." Margaret said, frowning.

"That cant be it." Leo muttered, looking around. They must have missed something. Some hidden contraption, some cleverly concealed door.

But there was nothing. The area was barren, even the nearest tree was quite far away.

In fact.....

The area was too barren. Leo looked in the distance to confirm. Yes, indeed even a little distance in front of them, there were bamboo and palm trees growing almost upto the beginning of the ocean. Here however there were no trees around, no rocks, no cliffs, no nothing. Except sand.

"Almost as if someone had to remove everything here." Leo though out loud, looking more intensely at the ground. Nothing at first was visible to him, so he began to stamp his feet on the ground, to the utter puzzlement of the two sisters.

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"What are you doi-"

CLANG

Margaret's voice was cut off, her mouth open in surprise. Leo looked up, excitement across his face, and then stamped his foot down on that same spot again.

CLANG came the sound again. Leo got down on his knees, and began clearing that part, removing all the sand obfuscating the ground. After a moment Elizabeth and Margaret joined him. Soon all the sand was cleared, revealing the source of the sound.

"A metal door." Elizabeth said wonderingly.

Gulping to steady himself, Leo slowly crouched once more and tugged on the door. He didn't expect it to open, but unexpectedly it did. The door opened with a loud creak, revealing a hole in the ground, and a ladder attached to help get down the hole. Leo immediately started towards the ladder, but Elizabeth stopped him. She was frowning down at the door.

"What's the matter?"

"We don't know how deep this hole goes. Or how long it has been kept shut. What if there is no oxygen down there?" Elizabeth asked.

Leo paused. They were indeed valid concerns, but they couldn't stop now. Not now! At the precipice of discovery.

"If there is, we come back straight away. We can identify it a lot earlier right? While going down?" Margaret piped up.

Elizabeth did not look convinced at all. She pursed her lips and looked at the hole going down into the Earth.

"Cmon sis. We can't go back now." Margaret said softly, almost echoing Leo's thoughts.

Elizabeth sighed and nodded. "If I go along with you two, at least I can stop you from doing something stupid."

The descent began.

Elizabeth's worries seemed unfounded. Leo didn't understand how or why but not for once did he feel suffocated during the journey downwards. The walls, and even the rungs of the ladder were a bit moist, making him grab onto it a bit tighter. But there was no lack of oxygen.

However the ladder did seem to go on forever and ever. Leo started the journey by keeping a count of how many rungs they were going down, but gave up after a hundred.

Eventually that turned out to be roughly the halfway point of the journey. Leo breathed a sigh of relief as his feet touched ground again, already dreading the eventual climb back up. Once he had taken his breath, he looked around taking stock of his surroundings.

It seemed that they were at the beginning of a corridor. It was very dark, as it had been in the cave of the first cross. But this time there was a smidge of light coming from two places - one high above them, and the more interesting source was right in front of them. The corridor was dimly lit by some source of light further ahead. There were several twists and turns in the corridor itself, so Leo couldn't place where the light was exactly coming from.

"We should move ahead." Elizabeth whispered, automatically lowering her voice even though there was no one there.

Correction. The killer might still be here. Leo reminded himself silently. Thinking about the killer gave rise to some dark, tumultuous feelings in Leo, so he quickly suppressed them, forcing himself to think of something else.

"We need to find where the light is coming from." Leo said. Superfluously, since Elizabeth had just said much the same thing, but essential for his own sanity.

So they began moving forward through the corridor, feeling their way along by the walls. As Leo touched them, he realized that the corridor was not a man-made structure. In stead it felt more like the cave they had explored previously - a natural structure repurposed for some other reason.

What secret are you hiding here Grandfather?

The light source was surprisingly far away. The corridor snaked along, turning and twisting so many times that Leo wondered how the hell the light had managed to come this distance. Slowly though they could feel it getting brighter and brighter, and realized that they were coming closer to that elusive secret hidden here.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the three of them came in front of another door. This one was made of glass, and it was very bright. It was almost shining with light, and this was the light which had illuminated their way till here. Margaret was the first to move, gingerly touching and feeling the glass, until Elizabeth almost slapped her hand away.

"Don't touch anything here Marge! We don't know what these things are made out of." She snapped.

"We have to touch it to open it anyway." Margaret said pouting. Elizabeth sighed, and gently pushed Margaret away. Then she herself pushed slightly at the door. Unlike every single door previously, this one slid open without a sound, almost as if it had just been constructed, revealing the room behind the glass.

Elizabeth was the first one through, closely followed by Leo and Margaret.

Leo blinked his eyes. The light inside was very bright, and it would take some time for his eyes to get used to the glare. Slowly the objects in the room came into focus. He was able to see the chairs, the desks and it became apparent to him what this room was.

"Grandfather's Laboratory." Leo whispered, half in dread, half in awe.

There could be no mistake. There were figures scrawled on the walls, notes strewn about, mathematical formulas written on a board. This was the place where Dr. Herbert Cooper worked his magic. This was the place where he had conceived the time machine, if there even was one.

Leo looked around the room, not knowing exactly what he was looking for, but admiring the drive and genius of a man he barely knew. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Elizabeth and Margaret doing the same. The laboratory itself was huge, Leo couldn't even see the end of the room from where he stood, and there were huge shelves of books on either side from the door, which undoubtedly led to other parts of the lab, other calculations, other figures.

Absent-mindedly Leo began looking through the formulas and figures on the board. He didn't know what he was looking for, nor did he understand half the formulas written there. It seemed a lot of proofs, or attempts at one, were made for some complex equation. Leo turned his head, trying to see if he could make sense of any of the symbols, but a large part of it was written in shorthand, without any context or information given about what the variables represented. Somehow though it seemed familiar. Leo couldn't place why. He had certainly never seen these formulas before, but he was certain that he had. Or rather he had seen something which reminded him of these formulas.

A shriek broke his reverie. Leo turned around abruptly. Elizabeth was just behind him, also looking up with alarm. Therefore the shriek had been from Margaret. Leo had heard it from the book shelves on his left. Nodding towards Elizabeth, he took off towards that shelve, with her close behind.

The shriek had come from behind one of the huge bookshelves. Squeezing his way past the almost impossibly thin gaps between two bookshelves, Leo found himself in an area which was a bit more open, like a sitting area in the middle of a library.

In the middle of that area was Margaret, her eyes wide open with disbelief and awe. Leo looked towards where she was looking at and almost shrieked out himself.

Right in front of him was a chair which was slowly revolving in the air. There was a different aura about the chair. It seemed almost like a regal throne, but one which was covered in some kind of protective filament. There was a belt on the chair, and there were harnesses which seemed to bind it to the ground. However the chair itself was somehow revolving in the air, seemingly without any external force on it.

In front of the chair was a small placard. On it, written in the unmistakable hand of his grandfather were the words:

Time Machine: Prototype 134