Time Synchronizer

Three days later, the sky split open.

Mark sat in class, enduring the hypnotic effects of trigonometry. The teacher at the podium derived formulas amid the squeak of chalk, while Mark's thoughts had long since drifted away, replaying the calm, certain words of that black-haired man.

Smart Atoms. Infinite potential. A gift from his mother.

Those words took root in his heart like a cryptic spell. He wanted desperately to grab his father and demand answers, but whenever the words reached his lips, memories of that night closed around his throat. The fleeting coldness and scrutiny in his father's eyes had not been the way a father looked at his son, but the way someone assessed a weapon. That look chilled him to the bone.

Suddenly, the light outside the window dimmed, as though an eclipse had arrived early.

Mark jerked his head up. A savage purple rift had appeared out of nowhere in the blue sky, its edges crackling with ominous electricity. The rift was like the gaping maw of some monster, being torn wider and wider from within by an invisible force.

"What is that?!"

"The sky's falling!"

Screams instantly shattered the classroom's calm. Panic spread like a plague.

Mark did not hesitate for even a second. He launched himself from his seat. He was no longer the high school student struggling with math; his body's instincts overrode everything else. With a deafening crash, he smashed through the third-floor window and shot toward the sky as a blur.

His yellow-and-black uniform covered his body as he rapidly ascended. Like a cannonball, he flew straight toward that scar in the heavens.

The next second, countless spacecraft poured from the rift like a swarm of locusts, more than ten times as many as before. Each ship was cloaked in a