Crocodile - -2000-
The disc spat out a man. Not a reed-man or a mud-man. This one wore a smooth, white skin over his body and a clear shell over his face. He carried a stick that sparked.
The answer lay in the Nile, sleeping in the sun, with a taste of chrome on his tongue and all the time in the world.
But somewhere, in a timeline that would never exist, a team of scientists stared at a blank screen and whispered: “What happened to Unit 7?” crocodile -2000-
K’tharr rose from the river an hour later, mud dripping from his snout. The fog was gone. The tadpoles wiggled. The fish swam. And in his ancient, aching gut, he felt something new: a small, hard knot of wrongness. A piece of the future, digesting.
K’tharr’s jaws, strong enough to crush a turtle’s shell, strong enough to hold a drowning ox, closed around the man’s middle. The white suit cracked. The clear helmet shattered. The stick flew into the water, hissing impotently. The disc spat out a man
He did not think attack . He simply moved.
He dragged the man under the dark water. The silver disc on the man’s wrist blinked. ERROR. Temporal anchor lost. Paradox imminent. He carried a stick that sparked
He was not a guardian of history. He was not a hero. He was just a crocodile, doing what crocodiles do.
Year: 2000 BC. Location: The lush, unnamed delta of a river that will one day be called the Nile.
