"...it's hard to prove the world's most important substance is missing when no one knows it's gone.""Substance? What substance?" asks thirteen-year-old Max Kellerman. "Why time itself!" exclaims the strange professor who Max meets in the back of his uncle's bookstore. In fact, he says, time is being sucked out of every living person by invisible thieves and stored away in a deep, dark netherworld. Could the professor possibly be right¿ or just plain crazy? It depends on whether Max can unravel the mysterious clues in the tattered manuscript the professor leaves behind. With the help of his best friends Derek and Samantha, Max begins a quest to find this dark realm and to discover its hidden secrets. But with the time clock ticking and the professor gone missing, Max uncovers a truth he never thought possible. Max must unravel the mysteries of Nemesis to save not just his world, but the very fabric of time itself.