Sabotaged (31 page)

Then the ground began to shake.

“What’s that?” Katherine screamed.

“Time’s reacting. Too much change all at once,” JB said curtly. “Here.” He held out his Elucidator. “We’ve got to get you kids to safety. Everyone grab on. I can only send you as far as the site of the next time barrier, but as soon as I fix things here, I’ll come and get you. Or”—he seemed to very carefully avoid looking directly at anyone—”somebody will.”

None of the kids made the slightest move toward JB’s Elucidator.

“But this is our time period,” Andrea said stubbornly.
“You need us to fix it. And to take care of my grandfather.”

“And Katherine and me, we came to help Andrea,” Jonah said, just as stubbornly. “We aren’t finished yet!”

“I was pretty sure you’d feel that way,” JB muttered. “Fortunately, I don’t need your cooperation.”

He hit something on the Elucidator. Jonah caught one last glimpse of JB standing on sand, with Dare huddled against his leg.

And then everything went black.

Jonah could feel the time speeding past him: seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years. . . . He was aware of the time passing before he could draw in a single breath, before he could open his mouth to complain, “No, wait, JB, don’t send us away. . . .”

He could hear the other kids protesting too.

“No!”

“Stop!”

“Don’t!”

“Please!”

Jonah blinked. They weren’t actually in total darkness: A dim light glowed off to his left. It was just bright enough that he could make out shadowed figures nearby—four of them.

So just us kids,
Jonah thought.
Not JB. Not Dare. JB and the dog stayed behind.

Jonah and the other kids were all zooming forward in time together, in a loose circle around the light.

The light must be coming from the Elucidator.

Jonah reached toward it.

“JB, I’m going to reprogram the Elucidator,” he threatened. “If you don’t tell me the right code, I’ll just hit numbers at random, and who knows where we’ll end up!”

“I thought you might try that.” JB’s voice came from the Elucidator. “So I locked out any changes.”

“Why?” Jonah asked. “You probably just ruined time, sending us away!”

“But I’m keeping you safe,” JB said.

Jonah remembered way back at the beginning, when he’d wondered what JB would do if he had to make a choice between saving kids and saving history. This was his answer.

Who would have thought that Jonah would disagree?

“It gets harder and harder to care only about abstract issues like history when you get to know the people involved,” JB continued.

“Right, and this is about my grandfather, too,” Andrea yelled. “Please . . .”

“Don’t worry, Andrea,” another voice said.

This voice also had the tinny, slightly distorted sound of an Elucidator transmission, but it wasn’t JB speaking.

“Second?” Andrea whispered.

It
was
Second’s voice. Jonah saw Andrea looking down; he saw the surprise register on her face as she realized that she was still holding Second’s Elucidator.

“I planned for this, too,” Second continued. “This is a pre-recorded message, set to be triggered if you were sent forward in time. I knew what JB would do. If you hold on to your friends’ hands and press the glowing button, you can all go back to 1600.”

“Yes!” Andrea cheered.

“Can we trust him?” Katherine asked.

Jonah leaned closer to the Elucidator that JB had programmed.

“Do you hear that, JB?” he yelled. “If you don’t bring us back, Second will.”

JB didn’t answer.

“JB?” Jonah yelled.

The Elucidator made a whirring noise and clicked out an automated-sounding voice: “Subject you are attempting to reach has been knocked unconscious. Danger! Danger! Alert! Rescue mission needed!”

“That’s it,” Andrea muttered. “I’ll take my chances with Second’s plan. Brendan? Antonio?”

“I’m in,” Antonio said, grabbing Andrea’s hand. “I miss my tracer already.”

“I’m all for saving the world with art,” Brendan said, grabbing for Second’s Elucidator as well, his hand landing right on top of Andrea’s and Antonio’s.

“Me, too!” Jonah said, reaching forward. He hesitated. “But maybe Katherine shouldn’t—”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Katherine screamed in his ear. She clutched her brother’s arm. “You’re not going to protect me! I’m going back too!”

Jonah’s fingers brushed Andrea’s, but at the last
moment she yanked her hand away.

“What are you doing?” he yelled.

Andrea stared at him, her eyes sad in the dim light from the Elucidator.

“I don’t know if I can save my grandfather,” she said. “Or myself. But I know I can save you.”

“What? No!” Jonah screamed. He was dizzy suddenly. Did Andrea really mean that she was willing to take chances with her own life, but not his and Katherine’s? Was
she
protecting
him
?

“It’s supposed to be the other way around!” He yelled at Andrea. “Katherine and me, we’re supposed to be saving you!”

Andrea gave him a wistful half smile.

“If you really care about somebody, it works in both directions,” she said.

And then she was gone.

“No!” Jonah screamed. “No!”

“Wait!” Katherine screamed. “Andrea? Brendan? Antonio?”

All of them had vanished.

Jonah grabbed the Elucidator that JB had programmed.

“JB?” he yelled into it. “Andrea?”

Silence. They kept zooming through the darkness.

“At least you got what you wanted,” Katherine said after a few moments.

“What are you talking about?” Jonah asked. “We’re floating through time! We don’t know where we’re going! We don’t know what’s happening to Andrea and the others! I don’t have anything I want!”

“You got to hear Andrea say she cares about you,” Katherine said.

“She didn’t—” Jonah began. Then he stopped. He remembered Andrea’s last words:
If you really care about somebody, it works in both directions.
And then she’d protected him, just as he’d been trying all along to protect her. Was that like saying she cared?

“But that’s not how I thought it’d work!” Jonah complained. “When you and Chip had your big boyfriend-girlfriend talk, he ended up coming home with us. It fixed everything!”

“Yeah, well, it’s different this time,” Katherine said.
“And—aaahhh!”

Something hit Jonah just then, a force powerful enough to spin him around and somersault him head over heels. He clutched the Elucidator with one hand; with the other, he grabbed Katherine’s arm while she held his.

“Wh-what was that?” Katherine asked when they’d both stopped spinning.

The Elucidator clicked and whirred.

“That would be the ripple,” a voice said from the Elucidator. “Flowing from all the changes in 1600. It’s come this far.”

“Is that Second
again
?” Jonah asked incredulously.

“On JB’s Elucidator?” Katherine added.

“If you’ve reached this point, you know I prepare for every possibility,” the voice continued. It was definitely Second’s. “I don’t want to brag, but I preloaded 6,582 different messages onto JB’s Elucidator, and I covered my tracks so thoroughly that I’m 99.994 percent certain that he didn’t find any of them. Although, if it’s you hearing this message, JB, I apologize for underestimating you again.”

Second paused.

“Still with me, Jonah and Katherine? I thought so.” Jonah could hear the smirk in Second’s voice, the overconfidence. “This message was triggered by a very exact
set of circumstances, some of which may leave you a bit anxious about your friends’ fate.”

“No, duh,” Jonah muttered.

“Oops, did I say
fate
? That’s not really the right word anymore,” Second continued. “I can’t offer anyone as much certainty as I once could, but it’s most
likely
that your friends’ nobility and self-sacrifice and talent and, well, sheer goodness, have paid off. I believe you’re passing the year 1602 right about now, and by then, odds are that Brendan and Antonio have already finished their first major masterpiece, and Andrea has nursed her grandfather back to health. Everyone’s doing great. Even JB.”

“Then let us stop in and see for ourselves!” Katherine hollered at the Elucidator.

“Now, now,” Second said. “I’m sure you’re clamoring for some proof of this, but the fact is, I can’t do everything. And, well, there are a few teensy problems I sort of created when I released the ripple in 1600. Some would even accuse me of being reckless but, let me just say, I have every confidence that the two of you are going to be able to fix my mistakes. Or, at least, as much confidence as possible, given this new uncertainty.”

“Wait a minute—what? What are you talking about? What are we supposed to do?” Jonah sputtered.

He began spinning again: up, down, left to right, right
to left, head over heels, heels over head.

“No-o-o-o-o,” Katherine moaned.

“Sorry about that,” Second said. “You’ll be leapfrogging back and forth through the ripple for a while. It will be a race, to see who gets to 1611 first. The two of you, on your mission to fix time? Or the ripple, changing everything?”

Jonah began spinning again.

“I did check, and it appears that neither of you are particularly susceptible to motion sickness,” Second said. “Which is a very, very good thing.”

More spinning.

“I will never go to an amusement park again!” Katherine screamed.

“Isn’t this fun?” Second asked, his voice entirely too cheerful. “I’ve never been a betting man—what was the point of betting when I always knew the outcome? But now, when anything could happen . . .”

Jonah missed the rest of Second’s sentence, because the spinning started all over again.

“So I was thinking a little bet is in order,” Second was saying when the spinning stopped. “You succeed in cleaning up the problems in 1611, and I’ll guarantee your friends get safely out of the 1600s and back to the twenty-first century. Safely
and
happily, even in Andrea’s case.”

“And . . . JB’s,” Jonah mumbled, fighting back dizziness. He couldn’t tell if the spinning had begun again or if it all was in his head. “Save JB, too.”

“What’s that you say?” Second asked. “You say you count JB as your friend now too? Aw, how sweet. I can throw him and the dog in as a bonus. So the bet is, you succeed, and everyone’s safe. You fail and—well, anything could happen then! Time itself could end!”

“Jonah,” Katherine whispered, tugging on his arm. She pointed.

Jonah had been too focused on the spinning to notice, but there were lights directly ahead of them, zooming closer and closer, faster and faster.

“We’re about to land,” Katherine whispered.

“My message can only last the duration of your trip through time,” Second was saying. “So I’ll leave you with this final thought: How many times did you cross the ripple?”

“Five?” Jonah said. “Six?”

“I wasn’t counting!” Katherine fumed.

“The actual number doesn’t matter as much as whether it’s even or odd,” Second said cheerfully. “Even numbers mean you’ll beat the ripple to 1611; odd means you’re starting out behind.”

“But we don’t know!” Jonah screamed.

“Either way, best of luck!” Second continued. “I’ll be waiting for you after 1611!”

“He can’t be sure of that,” Katherine complained. “He passed out, remember? By now, JB will have him in time prison!”

“Don’t you think—” Jonah began, but they hit the last part of their journey just then, the part where everything sped up and it felt like they were being torn to pieces, down to each individual atom. The re-entry into time was harder than ever because they kept hitting the ripple. Spin, stop, spin, stop, spin, stop . . .

Even if Jonah had had an accurate count before, he would have lost it through all that spinning and tumbling.

And then everything stopped for good.

“Numb,” Jonah mumbled. “Can’t see. Can’t hear.”

Or maybe Jonah couldn’t speak, either, and he only imagined that his mouth was moving. Could he
feel
anything? It took a moment or two, but he could tell that the Elucidator was still in his right hand; he could feel Katherine’s hand still clutched around his right arm; he could tell he was lying flat on his back on some hard surface. And then something hit him in the face. Something light—a feather? A leaf?