Watching his friend snore away in their constantly precarious situation was oddly relaxing for Tyson in its familiarity. Things could change, danger might lurk at every corner, but nothing seemed to be able to break Marcus's carefree nature. Tyson wasn't sure if he envied him or thought him a fool. Probably both.

Instead of resting Tyson couldn't help but try to create a whole picture of the parts of the puzzle they already had. The information he had wasn't reliable, but it at least gave him some idea of what they were dealing with.

Time maze was broader and more encompassing than he assumed, but that actually made more sense to him, that a time maze would include both the future and the past. What worried him was where the present was. Why didn't they stumble upon it by accident? Did it matter who the traveler was? More importantly, if Beor could see the future (from his point of view), why couldn't Tyson do the same?

The intensity with which the questions were whirling around his mind started making Tyson dizzy, so he decided to change his perspective. Clearly, the portal refused to take them to their future for whatever reason, but it helped to know that people were taken from different times and places. It wasn't anything they did that caused them to get stuck. It was dumb luck or the lack of it.

"Tyson?" Marcus asked after a while, still half asleep.

"Yes?" Tyson said.

"What are we going to do now?" Marcus asked.

"Be on guard even when we are here and hope that the next portal will take us to some peaceful place where we won't be in constant danger of being killed?" Tyson said thoughtfully.

"Hm, that doesn't sound like much of a plan," Marcus said, stretching lazily.

"Well, it's the best I've got!" Tyson snapped, getting tired of being the good guy and overlooking Marcus's useless comments.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you are doing anything wrong," Marcus said, moving a strand of his hair aside nervously. "I just meant that we've found ourselves in a pickle, and there isn't much we can do about that."

"I guess that's true enough," Tyson said, pacified. "Still, please be careful once we get out there."

"What do you mean?" Marcus asked.

"Well, the last two times you got us in trouble, it was because of a pretty woman who was faking that she needed help," Tyson said.

"No more helping hot women. Got it," Marcus said, nodding his head vigorously.

"I didn't say that," Tyson said, exasperated by Marcus's black and white view of the world. "I am just saying that we should be more careful in the future and not help every woman just because she has a pretty face. We should make sure that we aren't falling into a trap first."

"But how do we know if someone really needs help or if they are trying to trick us?" Marcus asked, honestly confused.

All his life Marcus had lived on the premise that everyone was telling the truth, and he couldn't really judge if someone was lying to him or not. That was one of the reasons he got himself in a lot of problems as he had the best of intentions but didn't realize that he was being played by people.

"Why don't you just follow my lead, and when I tell you not to do something, you listen to me?" Tyson asked, unsure how else he could ensure that Sunshine-like women didn't get them into trouble.

"I can do that!" Marcus said eagerly.

He was ready to listen to what his friend said and avoid causing him an additional nuisance. He planned to be on his best behavior, but his plans and hormones rarely agreed with each other.

"Let's hope so," Tyson murmured to himself.

After all, Marcus had promised many things in the past, and he meant it. However, he could seldom keep his promises as his trusting nature always got the better of him.

"Why don't you take a nap, and I'll stand guard?" Marcus said, getting up and standing as straight as possible, the way he saw the soldiers in the movies stand.

"Maybe that's not such a bad idea. Who knows where we'll end up next?" Tyson said, although he was hesitant to leave guard duties to Marcus.

His attention span was quite limited, and he got bored quickly. Those weren't the best of qualities for a good guard. Still, Tyson realized that if danger approached them, he would hear it even in his sleep. Then he would hopefully be able to do something, even if it's just standing in front of his friend to save his life once again.

Barely ten minutes later, Tyson was woken up by the familiar sensation of a portal opening up. Tyson was so utterly tired that he contemplated just staying there, sleeping forever.

"Yo, Tyson, wake up! Our ride is here," Marcus said, far too eager for someone who had barely survived the Alamo.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Tyson said grumpily.

He was hoping beyond hope that it was another Sarajevo. A place where they could find safety in their rooms or another castle where they could eat cake and hide in secret passages.

"What do you think? Where does it lead?" Marcus asked as Tyson joined him on the edge of the portal.

"Somewhere cold," Tyson said, feeling the cold seeping through even though he was pretty sure that he could see a room through the portal.

"Marcus, does that look like an inside of a house to you?" Tyson asked, surprised that he could see so much before actually entering the portal.

He was pretty sure that they could never do that before. It was like looking through a thick layer of water, but he could still see the vague outlines of furniture and even vaguer contours of the walls.

"Wow, that's so cool! Why is it different?" Marcus asked.

"I have no idea, but I am guessing it's not good that we'll be inside a house," Tyson said.

"Why do you think so?" Marcus asked, thinking about a warm bed and delicious food.

"Well, every time we've ended up inside places, it was more trouble than it was when we landed in open spaces. It always turned out more dangerous," Tyson explained.

"What about Alamo? It was an open place but still dangerous," Marcus said stubbornly.

"True, but it was still in a way a closed space, like a huge room with no way out. I am afraid that this place might be similar," Tyson said, silently praying for the best but preparing for the worst. "Let's go!"

"You just said it might be more dangerous, and you expect me to just jump in?" Marcus asked, looking at Tyson with incredulity.

"No, I expect us to do this together," Tyson said, offering his hand to Marcus.

Marcus took his hand, and together, they stepped into a place like no other, a room that was something the two of them had never seen before.

Everything was so richly decorated and shiny in its utter unfamiliarity. Tyson was pretty sure that they weren't dealing with American or British architecture. There was something unique about the shape and the colorful ornaments and figures that decorated the room they were in that he wasn't very familiar with.

The grandiosity of the place would have made him assume they were in a palace. Yet, something about it made Tyson think that it might not be a palace but an old-fashioned mansion.

"Where are we, Tyson? Why is it so cold?" Marcus asked, shuddering in his newly acquired suit and a long warm coat that didn't help Marcus adjust to the sudden temperature change.

Tyson had no idea how to answer either of the two questions. The clothing they wore didn't differ much from the ones they wore in Sarajevo. Except for the coats that were clearly made for winter and almost reached their knees.

Neither architecture, nor fashion offered any clues to where or when they were. All Tyson could say for sure was that they were in a freezing place where a rich person or family lived.

"I am not sure, but we better not let them see us," Tyson said, pulling Marcus behind a nearby sofa as distant voices started reaching them.

"Где она? Мы должны найти ее!" one of the voices said as they rushed past Marcus and Tyson's hiding place.

"We'll find her. She can't escape us for long. She is just a child, after all. She'll join her family soon enough," Tyson heard the guy say.

His brain refused to distinguish between the two languages for longer than a few moments. So, after the first sentence, everything went back to sounding like English.

"Well, no wonder it's so cold," Tyson said when the people had gone far enough so as not to be able to hear them.

"What do you mean?" Marcus, who didn't hear anything unusual, asked.

"We seem to be in Russia," Tyson asked. "The question is when and in how much trouble we are in."

"I am guessing a lot of trouble," Marcus said as a female scream pierced the air.

Even though it was far from their hiding place, it was clear that it was coming from the same building.

"It seems so," Tyson said tiredly. "Well, I always did want to visit Russia."