****
"How would the statue of liberty not exist anymore?" she asked, feeling like her mind was swelling, "We were just there. Just seconds ago, we were standing in it. How can it suddenly not be there?"
"I need to know who you are," the man replied, ignoring her question.
His voice was slightly muffled by the mask in front of his mouth, but she could still hear the edge in it.
"Why do you need to know?"
"The portals are only meant to provide authorized transmissions. You are not an authorized transmission that I know of and you came through a portal without a predetermined transmission set for the next fifty years. I need to know now who you are and why you are here."
"I don't have any idea why we're here," she told him, "I told you, we were in the original torch of the Statue of Liberty and then we were here."
"I'm Josh," Josh said, startling Hava with his forwardness as he stepped toward the masked man and extended his hand toward him, "I'm a tour guide at the Statue."
The man looked at Josh's hand, but didn't take it. He looked over at Jake.
"Who are you?"
Jake extended his hand toward the man as Josh had.
"I'm Jake. I live on a farm."
He winced and stepped back so that he was partially hidden behind Hava.
"And you?" the masked man demanded, turning his attention to Hava.
"I'm Hava. I'm a history student." The man started to turn away and Hava raised her voice slightly, "Who are you?"
He paused and slowly returned his gaze to her.
"Makhahr."
"Where are we?"
Makhahr crossed the room and pulled what looked like a lever on the far wall.
"It doesn't matter where we are," he said, and Hava noticed that that wall behind them had started to glow and sparkle, "Because you are going back."
Hava felt the same sensation of someone grabbing her and pulling her that she did when she was standing in the torch near the orange disc and an instant later she, Josh, and Jake landed in a tangled heap onto a hard-packed wood floor.
She slowly rose to her feet, stood carefully and looked around. A fire in a fireplace on the opposite side of the space filled the room with light and she could smell damp earth, a sharp, nauseating chemical, and something strangely sweet. The adrenaline of the fear rolling through her sharpened her senses and she detected a sawing sound from behind her.
Taking a steeling breath, Hava turned around. A table was several feet away and a heavyset man stood with his back to them, hunched over something laid out on the wood surface. A lantern positioned in the corner of the table cast extra illumination on the area, making the man's shadow stand in stark contrast across the floor.
He seemed to be concentrating on whatever was on the table and hadn't noticed their presence. Hava stepped forward cautiously.
"Excuse me?"
The man didn't move and Josh stepped up beside Hava.
"Sir?"
He still didn't move, but before Hava could call out to him again, she heard Jake.
"Where the hell are we?" he shouted as if everything that was building inside of him from the moment they climbed up into the torch suddenly broke.
At that, the man whirled around and Hava's hand flew to cover her mouth. She was staring at Benjamin Franklin.
The four of them stood in stark silence for a few seconds before Benjamin closed the space between them with speed and intensity that startled Hava so much she stumbled backwards into Jake. He caught her by her arms and held them, keeping her against him as if trying to both protect her and feel protected by her.
"Who are you? When are you from? How did you get here?"
The questions came out so fast that it took Hava a moment to process them.
"We are just people who were in the Statue of Liberty. We don't know how we got here or why," she said.
"Statue of Liberty," Benjamin muttered to himself, looking down as if the words sounded familiar but he couldn't quite place them. Suddenly he looked up at them and Hava saw a blend of fascination and panic glittering in his eyes, "You are not an authorized transmission."
It was the same term that the masked man had used.
"What do you mean?" Hava asked.
"You should not be here. You must be an emergency transmission. There is a reason that you are here."
"What reason? How could there possibly be a reason for us being here when we don’t even know where we are or how we got there?"
"I need to show you something," Benjamin said.
He gestured for them to follow him and guided them toward the table. Hava gasped when she saw a body lying on the table, its face covered with a cloth but its chest cavity open. She felt nausea roll through her and she turned away. As she turned her back to the body, she felt Jake push past her toward the table.
"Where is his heart?" he asked.
"Are you a doctor?" Benjamin asked.
"I'm in medical school."
"I have eight more bodies just like this buried beneath this floor. You have just noticed why."
"Did you kill them?" Hava asked in a hushed voice.
"Of course, not," Benjamin snapped, "This is how they leave them."
"Who is 'they'?"
Benjamin met her eyes sharply.
"We need to go back. They need us."