It pulls it's gun out and I try to run away, but I get pulled back. I look at my hands that are still chained to the concrete wall. I tug and tug on my hands, but the only thing I get is swollen and bruised wrists. It lifts it's gun and points it at my heart. I scream and keep pulling on the chains. I look up just in time to see it pull the trigger.
ten years and nine hours earlier
I set my sister’s plate down on top of mine and pick them up. I walk carefully to the kitchen, my wavy brown hair trailing behind me. I set the plates in the soapy water and start scrubbing the leftover food off them.
“Allina! Allina! You have to come play with me!” my little sister Emilia exclaims.
“I can’t right now.  I have to get the dishes done before mom gets home,” I tell her sadly. She frowns, but nods her head and runs to the living room where The Little Mermaid is playing.
Just as I finish washing the dishes my mom pulls into the driveway of our small one story house. I dry my hands and go to  help her with the groceries.
“Hi mom!” I greet her at the front door.
“Hi sweetie. Could you go get the rest of the groceries?” she asks peeking over the grocery bags she is carrying now. I nod and go to grab the rest of the groceries. I walk down the steps to the car. As I walk to the car I see a metalic gold ring on the ground. Assuming it is my mom’s I pick it up. I look up, but I don’t see the car. I spin around and the house is gone. I look all around, but all I see is swamp land. I take a small step forward, and the ground squishes underneath my bare feet. I look up, but instead of seeing the sunny cloudless sky that was there a minute ago it’s a stormy grey. I take a few more steps forward.
Suddenly the ground is pulling me in. I scream and try to grab onto the mossy floor, but it slips out of my fingers. I fall and my back hits something that feels like concrete. I sit up slowly and look around. At first I can’t see, then my eyes adjust, and I realize I am in a cell. In the back corner is a rusted bed. In front of me is a concrete door with a small window. Above me is a small light bulb that keeps flickering.The floor is rough and scratches at my hands and feet. The walls are stained with blood and vomit. I try not to throw up myself just looking at it. I push myself off the ground and try to stand up, but pain shoots through my leg. I look at my ankle, and it’s red and swollen. I pull myself over to the bed that has a dried blood stain on it. I push myself up onto the bed and prop my leg on the pillow.
The door swings open and I wake up from my one minute nap. Something walks in, but it isn't human. It has the body structure of a person, yet it is a dark, moldy green and scaly. It has a long tail with a spike at the tip. It swings back and forth as the creature walks. It looks shiny, but as it comes closer I can tell that it is slime.
“Get up, human!” the lizard commands.
When it talks it has a low, gravely voice that irritates your ears when it talks.
I slowly sit up, but the lizard gestures for me to get up more. I rise to my feet and hold onto the bedpost to stand.
“Come on!” it says and walks out of the cell.
I try to move, but once I let go of the bedpost my ankle twists and I crumble to the ground. The lizard turns around and groans. It walks over to me and throws me over its shoulder like I weigh nothing. It carries me out of the cell and down a dark corridor. I try to see where we are going, but it’s too dark.
I don’t know how long we've been walking, but I know it's been a long time since we left the cell. I still can't see anything, all I know is that we have turned left eleven times and right thirteen. The lizard comes to a halt and knocks three times on a thick concrete wall. The wall slides away making a screeching noise that hurts my ears. The lizard puts me down and I look up to see an office. It has black wall with a blood red couch in the corner. In front of me is a wooden desk with another lizard sitting at the chair behind the desk. It looks up from a book and smiles wickedly.
“What do you have here, soldier?” the lizard behind the desk asks.
“A human. It fell through the trap into a cell,” the lizard holding me responds.
“Well, we can't have intruders. Can we?”
“No sir.”
“Good. Eliminate it.”
I scream and try to run away, but it's no good. The lizard has a firm grasp on my bicep. I finally pull my arm away and start running. I rush down the long corridor as fast as I can. Soon I get to a dead end, and I turn around just to run into the lizard. It grabs my arm and touches my forehead. I start to feel drowsy, but I don't know why. After a minute I go limp in the lizards arms.
I wake up back in the cell. I can’t tell if it is the same one I was in earlier, but it looks about the same. I stand up and limp to the door. I bang on the door as hard as I can, holding onto the door handle to keep myself up. I scream with tears running down my face. Thoughts running through my head. I’m wondering if I will ever see my mom again. If I’ll ever get to play with Emelia ever again. My knees buckles under me, so I am crouched in the corner sobbing.
The door slams open, almost hitting me. The lizard from earlier walks into the cell, and looks at me disgusted. He grabs my forearm to pull me up. This time I don’t have the energy to fight back. It drags me down the corridor to a small room. The lizard handcuffs me to the wall,and I stand limply against the wall. By now I have stopped crying and I'm just hiccuping. The lizard pulls out a gun that I have never seen before, and my eyes widen. There is a small see through barrel on the side that is emitting a bright orange light. The lizard points it's gun at me and pulls the trigger. A ray of orange light shoots out towards me. I duck down as fast as I can and the ray misses me by a millimeter. I look at the wall behind me and there is a scorching hole in the wall. I gasp and look back at the lizard who is reloading his weapon. I scream and try to run away. I am pulled back towards the wall. look at my hands which are still chained to the wall. I try to pull my hands out, but I just end up with swollen, bruised wrists.
I look back at the lizard who has finished loading his gun. I tug on my hands as it points the gun at my heart. I pull and pull on my hands, but to no avail. My hands are stuck. The lizard pulls the trigger. I brace for the impact, but nothing comes. I look up and see a woman, who looks in her mid twenties, with wavy, light brown hair pulled into a bun. She is fighting the lizard who has now dropped his gun. I go to grab it, but I am pulled back again. I groan and lean against the wall. The woman has leather gloves with spikes on them and is punching the lizard. There is black goo oozing out of his wounds. I quickly look away in disgust. The woman grunts as the lizard finally gets in a punch. She flies across the room and hits the wall next to me. She falls to the floor holding her stomach. I look at her eyes which look so familiar and gasp. She slowly makes her way to the gun that I had forgotten about. I look at the lizard who is also making it's way to the gun. I look between her and the lizard. The lizard seems to be going quicker, but the woman's determination to beat his is unmissable. She slides across the floor and grabs the gun  just before the lizard can. She points up and shoots. The lizard falls to the ground, a hole going all the way through his chest. Black goo is pooling around his as the woman makes her way to me. She pulls a key out of the back pocket of her black jeggings and undoes the handcuffs around my wrists.
“Come on. Don't just lay there. More will be coming soon,’ she says as I sit on the floor rubbing my wrists.
I nod and stand up. We start walking down a corridor on the other side of the room that I hadn’t noticed before. She glances back at me and I see her eyes again. She quickly looks away once she sees that I was looking at her eyes.
“Who are you?” I ask curiously.
“Doesn’t matter. We have to go faster,” she replies.
I look skeptically at her trying to decipher where I knew her from. I rack my brain, but I can’t remember.
We are running down the corridor when we run into two lizards. I start to turn around, but the woman has different plans. She starts fighting both lizards at the same time. I see them trying to fling her off, but she won’t let go. Black goo starts oozing out of the lizard and I close my eyes. After a few minutes I hear a loud thud and my eyes fly open to see the lizards on the floor.
“Don't just stand there!” the woman says and gestures for me to hurry.
I scramble to my feet and start running after her.
I see a light at the end of the corridor. After twenty minutes of on and off running we get to the end of the tunnel, but she is still running. I, of course, keep running, my feet squishing into the swampy ground with each step.. We stop when we get to a big rock.
“Why are we stopping?” I ask looking all around us for more lizards.
“Because, we are here,” she replies in a duh tone.
I roll my eyes at her voice.
“Where is here?” I ask.
“You'll see,” she says smirking at me.
I roll my eyes again more annoyed than earlier.
She crouches down and wipes away a small pile of leaves. I look down to see what she is doing and see something silver under the leaves. I look closer to see it is a pin pad. She puts in a couple numbers and it takes me a second to realize that the pin was my birthday. I'm about to ask her about it when the rock lifts into the air. Under the rock is a staircase. The woman starts walking down them and I quickly follow behind her. Lights turn on around us as we walk down the steps. We reach the bottom of the staircase and we are in a kitchen like room. The woman walks over to a cupboard and opens it.
“Want anything?” she asks pulling a mug out the cupboard.
I nod quickly and she pulls another mug out of the cabinet. She walks over to the stove that has a tea kettle on it. She turns the stove on and gets two hot chocolate packets out of the cupboard. I sit down at the table as she walks over to the table and sits down. She looks down at her hands as if she is thinking, then looks up like she has made a decision.
“My name is Allina. I was born in 2015 and my parents are Taylor and Michael Anderson,” she says and I stare at her wide-eyed.
“I… How?” I ask astonished.
“The ring you touched when you were getting the groceries transported you into the future. It is currently the year 2040. I am twenty-five years old. Emilia is fourteen. She lives with mom on the other side of the country. They had to leave because we were being hunted by the Limans,” she says and I look at her confused.
She continues, “They are half lizard and half man. They were made on accident. Some scientist finally drilled into the middle of the Earth and decided to see what it would do to a lizard. He accidently stood to close to the experiment and became part of it.”
I nod my head as if I understand when I really don't. I'm still trying to comprehend meeting my future self. I have so many questions, but right now I have to focus on getting back to my time.
“Now let's focus on getting you back to your time. I'm still trying to find the ring that brought you here, and I know I'm close. Follow me, and I'll show you,” she says breaking me out of my trance.
I nod and follow her back up the stairs leaving my hot chocolate on the table. We go to the other side of the rock and walk about a mile to the left. She stops walking and looks down. I can’t see what she is looking at until I walk closer. She is looking at a hole that is about a mile deep. At the bottom there is a gold. The ring!
“Is there any way to get it out?” I ask taking a step back, so I don't fall into the hole.
“I haven’t thought of anything yet. I was hoping you could help me,” she says looking at me hopefully.
I look around and see a bunch of branches and vines and an idea comes to me.
“We could attach all the branches and vines together and hope it reaches the bottom,” I say hopefully.
Future me shrugs her shoulders and starts to pick up vines and branches.
We finish putting them together and future me grabs the last vine.
“Lower me down gently,” she says looking down into the hole.
I know she is scared because I was always scared of heights. I lower her down into the hole until she gets to the bottom. She bends down and grabs the ring. I bring her back up and she is about to hand me the ring.
“Take care of Emelia,” she says.
“I will,” I promise her.
She hands me the ring and I am back on the driveway of my house. I look around and everything is back to normal. I grab the groceries out of the car and head into the house. I see Emelia watching The Little Mermaid and mom making dinner. I smile and set the groceries down on the counter. I go into the living room and hug Emelia. She immediately hugs back and we watch The Little Mermaid over and over for the rest of the day.