When Avery's gaze found the source of the reddened sky, his jaw collapsed; and no amount of energy from Ada's possession could pull it back up.

A giant, black-hole-like portal swirled in the air, lightning and scarlet electricity surrounding it. It loomed in the middle of the sky, pumping, pulsating, as if it were breathing. And with every breath, it sucked up the earth's oxygen, and spat out a new deadly being for the Guides to fight off.

Deadly beings.

Avery shuddered.

Some were small, flying creatures that looked straight out of a fantasy novel; some were enormous monsters dropping to the ground, shaking it as their paws hit the dirt.

Avery's hands tightened over the wheel. He'd stopped the car, parked it, and scanned the horizon where Ada told him to look. The portal was situated above a vast expanse of flattened crops, and that field was littered with Guides of all shades and sizes. And humans—all glowing. All surrounded by an ethereal blue halo.

"Are those..." Avery gulped. "Guide-possessed humans?" He peered at his own body; was he glowing, too?

Ada hummed in response, likely still in shock at the vision before them. With her energy, she urged him to park the car, shut it off, and get out.

Avery unbuckled his seatbelt with a shaky hand, and exited the car. The air was chilly, despite the dominant red coloring of the scenery that had given Avery the impression the area would be warm, hot as a volcano.

"So they got all these people to participate?" He cupped a hand over his forehead.

Ada recovered from her temporary surprise. "There was a heavy amount of convincing, I'd assume. The only human who fully knows of our existence and purpose is you, Avery." She fidgeted inside his mind, sending tiny pangs of pain to his temples. "Don't dawdle about. Go meet the other Guides."

Despite his legs barely stable enough to keep him upright, Avery marched to a cluster of blue beings at the beginning of the field. They all gaped towards another group, farther ahead, fighting off a few winged creatures. Their screeches pierced the air and made Avery cringe, worsening the agony already flaring up in his head.

His ears popped as he walked, a cool sensation coming over him. "What was that?"

"A barrier." Ada made him crane his neck to the side, and he caught a faint outline around the perimeter of the field. Like a bubble, a semi-circle curving overhead and protecting anything within; or stopping anything exterior from getting in. "They've enchanted the area to prevent people from coming within reach of the invaders. That's good. And we were able to get through it because I'm inside you."

The first gathering of Guides spun to Avery as he neared it. They sniffed him; some nodded and turned away to refocus on the battle, and a handful lingered near him, preparing their explanations.

"Ada," one said, inclining its head at Avery.

It knows she's inside me?

At his lifting brows, another Guide smiled. "We can sense each other, of course."

"Thank you for coming so fast," said the first Guide, its glowing blue gaze stabbing into Avery, reading through him.

"Forgive me, Avery," said Ada, her energy becoming more overpowering. "I need to take over for a moment, to make this conversation easier."

Avery didn't have a chance to protest or delay her before he found himself thrown into the back of his mind. He became an observer seeing through his own eyes, but unable to control any of his body's movements. He groaned, and would have rolled his eyes had he kept the ability to do so.

"What's the status here?" Ada's words came out in Avery's voice; he'd never get used to a possessor taking over his mouth, his thoughts. "Is this the only portal in the area, or are there more?"

Avery recalled they'd driven into Arizona, but couldn't remember where. When he'd sighted the fiery sky, he'd lost track of highway signs and got too absorbed in his conversation with Ada, then the silence that followed as he digested all she'd said to him.

"In this area, yes," said the second Guide, spinning towards the Guides overpowering the flying beings. "Others popped up in the northern hemisphere, a couple in Africa, more in Europe. Those in South America were handled, we heard. We're going in the right direction, but the humans..." It winced as it returned to Ada and Avery. "They're tired. Their bodies aren't quite formatted for this."

Ada used Avery's arm and pointed at his chest. "This one is used to the possession. He's able to help with whatever is needed. I'll relinquish command of his speech and body to him, and you can explain what he needs to do."

She transitioned out of the driver's seat and confined herself into Avery's mind, shoving his consciousness back out.

"Uh," he cleared his throat, reestablishing himself as the one in control, "hi. I'm Avery."

"We will push the creatures back with all our energies combined," said one Guide, ignoring Avery's attempt at an introduction. Its mouth was thin, its voice stern, with little emotion considering the intense battle going on nearby, the state of the sky, the portal seeking to devour everything in sight. "Though the portal spewed them out, it'll take them in just as easily. Once they're close, the portal begins to suck them up. But..."

"But," another Guide poked between the original two, having remained in the background until now, "we need humans to finalize the transaction, basically. Only human touch can completely seal the portal, and it's a tad tricky."

"How do you know this?" Avery folded his arms, squinting towards the portal, the beings crawling out of it, those being absorbed back into it. And the Guides, shoving energy into the winged creatures. And the humans standing in the backdrop, looking around aimlessly, no clue what they'd been enlisted to do.

The Guides snickered at Avery's question, dismissing it. They turned to the fight, ending the conversation. That was it—that was all they'd allow Avery to know.

Special human or not, willing participant or not, he wouldn't be advised of anything more than any regular human. Whatever their knowledge of portals and creatures was, they wouldn't share it with him.

"The knowledge is indoctrinated in us, Avery," said Ada, seeping into his thoughts. "Follow them; they'll tell you more as you get closer."

"Closer?" Avery startled as his legs moved, not of his own volition. "How close do I have to get?"

The Guides waited for him to catch up, then led him to the side of the blue beings combatting the flying beasts. As he passed the invaders, Avery noticed they had lengthy, sharp teeth that dragged along the ground, and large, yellow eyes that bulged out like marbles.

Thank fuck I'm not fighting those.

"You won't be fighting at all," said Ada, using her energy to twist his head away from the monsters. "You're only here to zip the realm back up."

"Zip it?" Avery peered up at the portal, sensing its pull as he approached. It hovered yards and yards above him, yet didn't appear any bigger from closer up. It was a perfect circle, an endless black on the inside, rimmed with neon-purple. The sucking sounds it made caused him to gag, thinking of suction cups or those annoying smooches given by invasive grandmothers.

"It closes with a zipper-like motion, yes." One Guide gestured up at the floating black gate, but Avery couldn't tell what exactly it was pointing at. "Once we get the invaders close enough, they'll be swallowed up, and it's on you to hurry and zip the portal back up."

He gawked up at the hole, hypnotized by its darkness, imagining what lay beyond. "Okay, but how? It's pretty high up there."

The Guide scrunched its nose, sizing Avery up from head to toe. "Ada, you sure this one's up to parr? He's coming off a bit stupid, to me."

Inside his brain, Ada grunted. "Isn't it obvious?" She paused, her voice lost in his neurons, somewhere. "Some of us will have to fly."

"What?" Avery shot backwards, falling through a Guide that had been floating behind him. "Fly? No." He sliced a hand through the air. "Nope. I'm not flying, you hear me? No."

His protests were in vain; Ada took charge of his limbs and forced him forward. "You don't have a choice. This is what you consented to, Avery. Deal with it."

On the other side of the battle between Guides and winged monsters, another fight took place—one with an enormous, leathery-skinned beast that Avery only saw the back of. It resembled a monster-sized elephant, its legs the width of a truck, its height that of a building of a dozen stories.

His chin wanted to drop to the ground, and his eye-sockets had widened to such an extent that he wasn't sure his eye-balls would remain in his skull for much longer.

Blue-bodied Guides were hurling attacks at the monster, pushing it backward, towards the portal. Pushing it towards Avery, who was approaching from the rear.

"Fuck, no," he said, resisting Ada's control, refusing to float any further. "I don't know what that is, but no. I'm not getting anywhere near it, and I'm not... no."

"Avery," Ada seemed to grab him by the shoulders, but internally, forcing him to a complete stop, "you signed on to do this, remember? You're not fighting that thing; you'll be above it, at a safe distance, waiting for it to be slurped up. And when that process starts, it'll be too busy trying to escape; it won't notice you."

Another swallow of acidic saliva, and Avery was hefted higher into the air, his feet no longer touching the soft earth. He panicked as he went up, up, up, and Ada twirled him to face the portal up close.

It was the stuff of nightmares, a monster in its own right; a gaping hole the size of a small building, its edges electrifying, zapping at anything in its proximity. It didn't, however, zap at Avery.

Once he was high enough to get into a defensive, preparative stance, Ada turned him to the battle below. A handful of winged creatures came rushing over, and he swerved to the side to dodge them as the portal consumed them. He was about to make a zipping gesture, but Ada held him back.

"Not yet," she said, having to nearly scream because of the portal's deafening sound; like loud chewing and constant buzzing all at once. "Wait until the dinosaur is sucked in, and then we seal it up."

"Dinosaur?" Avery gasped as he refocused on the monstrous beast below, understanding what it was, at last.

Not an oversized elephant, not a creature from outer-space; a dinosaur. A living, breathing, real prehistoric monster, growling and glaring and shoving its large horns at the Guides, using the pointy edges of its frills to scoop Guides up; or try to, at least. It didn't seem to understand it couldn't touch them, couldn't pick them up. But it kept at it.

Avery's eyebrows bunched as he studied the creature. Horns? Frills? Pointy edges? Lumps lined his throat.

Is that... what I think it is?

Ada emitted a tiny laugh inside his head. "A triceratops, yes." She must have been fascinated too, for she kept quiet after that, watching through Avery's eyes as a real-life dinosaur fought a horde of blue-bodied, untouchable beings.

Something crackled nearby; not a noise coming from the portal, but from farther off. Above, to the side—it echoed around him, and he couldn't pinpoint its source.

Ada rotated his head and fixed her gaze on what she'd figured out—the bubbled veil protecting the field was cracking, its surface looking like an egg shell about to shatter.

"Shit," he said, zooming back in on the dinosaur fight. "That's bad, right?"

"It's weakening, but we have some time before it breaks entirely. I do hope they hurry, though." Ada's tone trembled, and if she'd hoped to sound confident, she'd failed. Avery perceived her discomfort, her doubt, and it filtered through him, making him tremble. If she was afraid, he was afraid, too.

But he was also shocked, fascinated, in utter awe of what happened in front of him. Never in his lifetime, not even in his wildest dreams had he ever thought to come close to a dinosaur. Maybe those fake, reconstructed ones in museums, or even animated, AI-operated ones for entertainment purposes. But never a true, fresh-from-a-portal one that roared and rumbled right before his eyes.

He almost wanted to get closer now that he'd had a minute to process it; he'd love to touch it, sense its skin, feel the pulsing beneath its shell. And a triceratops, of all dinosaurs—those were his favorites!

"I understand your fascination, but please concentrate," said Ada, her shaky tone bringing him back to reality. Back to a time where dinosaurs, cool as they were, were also incredibly dangerous and capable of stomping entire civilizations to death.

He couldn't interfere. He could only watch from afar as the Guides struggled to push this being back. Though the triceratops couldn't touch the Guides, it was fierce, menacing, its horns like jagged daggers ready to draw blood. The Guides had to avoid its blows, and kept losing momentum, the dinosaur's heavy feet leading it forward, gaining on them.

Avery gritted his teeth, and Ada was quiet as a mouse as they witnessed the once-in-a-lifetime event, both praying for success.

More Guides arrived from all corners. Some zoomed over from an adjacent forest, some came swooping down from above, and a few slithered over from where Avery had parked his car.

"Reinforcements," said Ada, raspy from not speaking for a while.

One Guide drifted up to Avery, shading its eyes as it gave him a nod of acknowledgement. "Getting in from the east coast," it said, in a strangely distinguished New Jersey accent that almost made Avery laugh. "We got news that this is the final gate; all others have been successfully sealed, including the terrifying ones in Africa. This is the only one in America that's unleashed a dinosaur. This gigantic thing is why we're struggling; but I've brought a team that knows how to deal with them. Be ready; the portal is going to get agitated when the beast is on the verge of being pulled in!"

It swished downward, joining the crowd of Guides now winning their plight: the triceratops had lost its footing and was being nudged backward, inch by inch. It would soon be standing directly under the portal.

When it arrived in that position, its giant feet lifted off the ground, and its ginormous body hovered upward, being tugged into the black hole.

Ada jolted Avery aside, to not be bumped into by the triceratops on its way. It struggled, kicking its feet, at first; but it seemed to have accepted its fate, and gazed up at the portal with wide, black, soulless eyes. As it flew by Avery, their gazes locked—for a split second, Avery made contact with the prehistoric being, and tears swelled at his lash-line. What an incredible story—one he'd never get anyone to believe, he knew. A dinosaur on earth, being absorbed into a sky-portal, transported back to its realm. Dinosaurs weren't extinct—they weren't on the planet anymore.

The triceratops' head slipped into the hole first, followed by its body, then its legs, feet. It disappeared, and Ada raised Avery's arms as she hurried to the lowest point of the portal. A few more winged beings and otherworldly monsters crept in, sucked up by the blackness. "Pinch your fingers, like you're holding a zipper," she said, her tone impatient, her presence heavy on Avery's soul. "We'll zip it up, like the others said. Then we'll be rid of all these invaders, once and for all."

Avery grimaced as he obeyed her command, and together they sealed the portal up. Once he'd reached the top, he released the imaginary zipper, and the black hole collapsed on itself, vanishing.

He floated there, staring at the now empty space, watching as the sky's redness diminished, its regular beautiful blue slowly returning.

Once and for all—how sure are we about this?

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