Chapter 401

Our wait for the portal to appear is a short one.

“Anomaly!” Radar shouts less than fifteen minutes after we arrived at the edge of the forest. She points to a spot about halfway up the hillside. “Up there.”

There’s no sign of any portal yet, but Radar is never wrong. We’re all ready to hurry up the slope, but my dad stops us.

“Not yet,” he says. “We stay here in the trees where it’s safe until we see it begin to open.”

Dad’s being smart and cautious to the end. Radar’s warnings sometimes come as much as ten minutes before an Anomaly actually occurs. There’s no need to expose ourselves just yet.

The wait now seems interminably long, but in reality it’s probably only three minutes or so before the air begins to shimmer right where Radar pointed.

“Okay,” Dad says. “Let’s go.”

We hurry up the ridge, being careful not to get too close to where the Anomaly is forming. All the Marines hold their weapons at the ready—there’s no guarantee this is the portal we’ve been waiting for. It’s possib