LOST IN TIME!

Author's Note: Please this is the third story of the END TIMES series. Go check out, VANISHED! and ESCAPED!

Lydia's gasps came out in short spurts. It felt like she was being drowned in fire, if a phenomenon of such exists.

The air was choking, smelling of sulphur and ash and overaged soot. The walls, which seemed more and more to cave in, had a slimy, gratty feel when she touched it.

Actually, touching it was like a dream. The wall was more or less alive, and it squeezed her, taunting her, letting her know there was no means of escape.

She couldn't reach out to touch anything; her hands were chained in the most uncomfortable angle to her feet.

When it stopped, she didn't sigh in relief. Lydia knew what was to come next. The pulling of her soul further down into a greater degree of darkness.

As it happened yesterday, and the day before, and the two days before.

Lydia grimaced, gnashing at her teeth. How long had she been stuck here in this, this abyss?

She had lost a sense of time and direction. All she felt were the growing avon and the growing darkness. Time did not exist in this frame. She was lost in time.

She let out a soul wrenching sob.

"It's too late! I sold myself to the devil. I collected the mark! How did I become so foolish?"

"Yes, you did. And now there's no going back!" that sly voice, that sounds awfully similar to Jez's, whispered into her fast-ebbing mind.

Echoes of disembodied laughter bounced back and forth on the walls like a rubber ball, thriving on her pain.

She would have blocked her ears if she could. But no, she was still chained, slipping down fast into the darker void beneath.

As she fell, she remembered the time when everything was good, when their father was still alive, when she had believed and trusted in God.

It was too painful to recall, but it was a means of temporal escape from her present hell into her past paradise.

~~~~~~~~~~

"See those stars?" His burly, hairy right peeked from behind his head where it had been tucked as a cushion.

"Yes Papa!" she said.

"They tell of God's faithfulness."

Her six-year old self looked up to stare at the stars that seemed to twinkle the more, to validate her father's statement.

They had gone camping. It was what they always did every year. Mother and teenage Alexia were in the makeshift tent that was perched between a cluster of lofty Flame-of-the-forest trees.

"These fireflies too..." Her dad had said, tickling her nose when he touched one adventurous firefly that had lighted its glow on the tip of her nose.

Then his warm fatherly eyes stared into hers. She turned to her side and cuddled into her father's arms.

"Jesus loves you, Lydia," he said. "I hope you grow to love him too."

Fast forward to years later, she had grown. She explored the world. She sought love in the wrong places, forgetting the words of her dad. She had been very subtle about it.

Her father's death broke the last bit of restraint in her. She despise God, although secretly so as not to increase the hurt of their grieving mother.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alexia woke up with a small yelp of alarm in her throat.

Kevin, who had been staring at the arching ceiling of the fortress, rushed immediately to her side.

At last she had woken up!

His heart was overwhelmed with joy.

Despite the tumult going on in the outside world, the arrests and torture of careless Remnants, despite the panic, and the news telling them that the beast had been unveiled, he always stayed by Alexia's side. Watching her, praying over her, just being with her.

He had become her personal nurse.

It had been hard for him, watching her on her bed, neither stirring nor responding.

But he had to be strong. For her. Watching her became a lovely pastime. For she was beautiful.

With soothing strokes of his hand on her hair, he comforted her.

"Shuuush! It's okay! I'm here!" he cooed as he rocked her.

"Where am I?" Alexia asked, wide eyed. Kevin could feel her heart racing.

"Where am I? What is this place?" she asked again, looking frantically around her.

The fortress was old, nothing too pleasant.

Kevin could understand her trepidation. She probably thought she had been transported to another location, to a more grievous level of torture.

"You're safe here," he said. "This is the the Fortress. We're in Israel."

Alexia's eyes widened the more, threatening to swallow up her whole face.

"Israel?!"

"I busted you out of there," he said, referring to Nephert Corporation. "Don't you remember?"

Her eyes began to relax as recollection washed over her features.

"You fell unconscious on the way to meet the others."

"What day is it? How long have I been out?" she asks as she rubbed her temple.

"Close to a year."

Her eyebrows constructed. "One year?" That long?

"Did I fall into coma?" That was the only possibility she could think of.

"No. Our doctor said it was a sort of your system hibernating after all that torture."

Alexia fell silent and then tears streaked down her eyes.

Kevin was perplexed. He held her closer, hoping she could not hear the way his heart was racing at her proximity. She felt frail and small in his arms.

"Oh Lydia!" She wailed, her heart crying for her sister who was lost. All throughout her time of torture by those hideous robotic tormentors, she didn't see her.

"It's ok!"

"I caused it. I misled her. I was a bad elder sister."

Kevin sighed. He didn't want to go back and remember why he had also been left behind, but her statement triggered the memory.

He had been misled into believing the once saved forever saved theory, by his false friends.

He dabbled into secret sin against his body, thinking it didn't matter since he was saved. Even though on several occasions, he had felt the twinge of guilt, he had shoved the feeling aside, silencing the Holy Spirit, stabbing his conscience.

He gripped Alexia by her shoulder and tipped up her chin to look at him.

"Don't blame yourself. It wasn't your fault. We all made wrong choices."

With the back of his hands, he wiped the tears of her cheeks.

He had to admit that her eyes looked more alive, more beautiful, shimmering with remorseful tears. The tears he had seen in her eyes in Room665 had been of the kind that made her eyes look hollow with unthinkable pain.

"We still have a long way to go. The time is slower now than ever."

"I hope we get the strength to come through this. When I see Jesus, I will apologize for all my foolishness. I will tell him how sorry I am that I rejected his grace and love. I will tell him that I have learnt my lesson," Alexia said in between sobs. Kevin nodded his head slowly in agreement.

"Thank you for coming back for me," she said.

She held his hands and gazed into his eyes. What was that light she saw in his eyes? The way he was looking at her made heat to creep up her neck.

She felt the squeeze of his hands and she smiled.

"We're going to make it," he said. "We've gotta hold on."

Together, holding their hands, with strong determination, they looked up and said, "Maranatha."