As the ship comes to life around you, you feel every muscle freeze in place as if trapped by invisible electric current. There is an immense pressure, then sudden lightness. You almost black out, then blink until your vision begins to clear. When you look out the window, you feel like you have tilted over the precipice at the height of a rollercoaster: the Earth, a glowing blue-and-green marble, is hanging motionless below you. Is this a dream? How could that happen so fast?
The Spinner closer to you waves a leg almost apologetically, then gestures upwards. You look and realize that your small vessel is being drawn smoothly upwards into a far larger vessel that is otherwise the replica of this one. You are too afraid, too excited, to say anything, but silently you grab Alex’s hand and hold on for dear life.
Soon, with a metallic thunk, your ship comes to a halt, and the roof hinges backwards. You are in a vast chamber, filled with swirling golden light. Coming towards you are dozens of Spinners, surrounding a figure whose very familiarity is jarring in its ordinariness: a tall human woman in her late seventies, with chin-length white hair, wearing some kind of shimmering silver robe.
“Welcome,” she says. “I’m sorry about all the theatricality and fuss, but I thought it best for us to meet here, given the circumstances.”
You blink in confusion. You know that voice. It is warmer, and far more human, but it is unmistakeably the woman’s voice that has spoken to you before. And her face – fifty years older, of course, but so well-known to you now. “You’re—” you whisper, but Alex says it first.
“You’re Dr. Ellen Valentina.”
She smiles gently. “But of course. And I’ll be asking for my journal back, soon, if it’s all the same to you. But I have one more task for you first, I’m afraid. One more journey into the labyrinth. And I’m afraid it’s an urgent one.”
She reaches into a fold of her robes, fishes out a single sheet of paper, and gives it to a nearby Spinner, who scuttles over and deposits it in your hand. You stare at it in disbelief. All of this work, this impossible journey, and she’s giving you another puzzle?
“It won’t be long, now,” she says, raising a hand in farewell. “You must go.”
“But wait!” Alex says. “We have so many questions! What happened to you last time? Why did you fail? Where have you been all this time? What are we supposed to do?”
“I feel like I don’t have enough time to get things straight,” you say, half to yourself, half to her.
As the roof on your ship begins to lower over you, she smiles again, gently, and shakes her head. “Don’t worry,” she says, and with the click of the roof closing her voice transforms to the strange inhuman one again. YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED.