Don’t act spooked, Jordan told himself. If you really worked for Interchronological Rescue, and you were really from this time period, you’d probably expect elevators to move that fast.
When they stepped out of the elevator, Jordan didn’t let himself look too closely at anything around him. If he was really from this time period, wouldn’t he act like he took everything for granted?
And it’s not like you have to pay attention to know how to escape, he reminded himself. You’ve got the Elucidator in your pocket. All you’ll have to do is ask it to zap you away to find the rest of your family and fix everything.
They got to a door, and the girl waved some sort of authorization card at it. Or maybe she just waved her hand—maybe it was reading her fingerprints or DNA or something like that. The door slid open.
The room that appeared behind it held two beds rather than the couches or chairs Jordan would have expected in a waiting room. But what did Jordan know? Maybe that was typical for hospital waiting rooms in whatever time period they were in. Jordan stumbled across the threshold, and the door swooshed shut behind him.
“Where was that bathroom?” he started to ask. He’d figure out some way to get the detox suit off if he had to.
But the girl’s expression had changed so much it frightened Jordan. She was smirking at him the same way soccer or basketball opponents did when Jordan’s teams lost by huge margins.
“I brought him in,” she said. “I tricked him into coming with me without making a scene. Nobody thought I could do something like this, but I did.”
“This is highly unusual,” a man’s muffled voice said from behind them. Jordan hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the room, but apparently someone was standing beside the door, in a corner Jordan hadn’t glanced toward. “And it’s suspicious. Are you sure—”
The man broke off the instant Jordan glanced his way. And Jordan knew why.
The man by the door was JB.
THIRTY-SEVEN
JB! Jordan started to shout.
But JB’s eyes went all wide and panicked and he shook his head quickly during the moment the girl turned toward Jordan.
Jordan swallowed his exuberant JB! and turned it into a cough. The girl looked back at JB, and JB instantly smoothed out his expression and stopped shaking his head.
“Interchronological Rescue is getting desperate, and desperation makes them dumb,” the girl said scornfully.
“Perhaps,” JB said. He seemed to be trying to hide a strain in his voice. “Or perhaps something else is going on. Why don’t you let me interrogate the suspect, and then we’ll draw conclusions.”
Suspect? Jordan thought. Wait—they’re treating me like a criminal? So . . . I really am under arrest?
The girl’s smirk collapsed.
“I brought him to this room,” she said forlornly. “I thought I could do the follow-up.”
“Cira, believe me, you’ll get full credit for this,” JB said. “You are an excellent undercover agent. But so much is hanging in the balance right now—I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to pull rank on you on this one.”
Undercover agent? Jordan thought. Do undercover agents dress like candy stripers?
JB patted the girl on the back. She didn’t exactly look comforted.
“I’d let you sit in and help, but there may be information revealed that’s beyond your security clearance,” JB said, sounding truly sorry.
“I know, I know,” the girl muttered. “Follow procedure. Everything in its own time. I’ll finally be allowed to do the fun jobs with the agency by the time I’m eighty and on the verge of retirement.”
Jordan almost felt sorry for her.
Though, geez, do people really wait until they’re eighty to retire in this time period? he wondered.
Dejectedly, the girl turned and walked out the door.
As soon as the door shut behind her, JB called out, “Set security screens at highest levels.”
Then he grabbed Jordan by the shoulders.
“What are you doing back here so quickly? What happened? Are you all right?” JB cried.
“Um . . . ,” Jordan said, because his brain wasn’t quite catching up. Why did JB look so worried? And what did he mean by “back here”? How could Jordan be back in a place he’d never been before? And “so quickly”? It’d been forever since Jordan had last seen JB.
Oh, wait, Jordan thought. With time travel, it could be that for JB, we were together just a moment ago, even though I’ve been all over the place since the last time I saw him.
Time travel really messed things up. And it still didn’t explain the “back here” part of what JB had said.
“You were just here,” JB said, like he was trying to prompt Jordan to agree.
“No, I wasn’t,” Jordan said irritably. Because if Jordan could figure out all that about time travel, wouldn’t an actual time agent know it, too?
JB dropped his hands from Jordan’s shoulders and took a step back. He seemed to be making a great effort to stay calm.
“I just sent you and Gavin home,” JB said. “You just left. That wasn’t the last time you saw me?”
“No,” Jordan said with great scorn. “The last time I saw you, you were in my kitchen. This morning. I don’t even know . . .” He was about to finish with who Gavin is. But something jarred in his brain.
Back home, back in my own kitchen, didn’t that Chip kid say something about someone named Gavin? Jordan remembered.
It’d been when Chip was asking if Jordan and Jonah were famous. And then he’d listed people who were royalty, or the children of famous people, or people who were going to be famous in the future.
Gavin was someone Jonah knew. Maybe he was even one of the other kids who’d been on the plane with him.
Does JB actually think I’m Jonah? Seriously? Again?
Maybe if Jordan and Jonah had grown up together their whole lives, Jordan would have gotten used to people getting them confused. Maybe if they’d always been brothers, Jordan wouldn’t mind it.
No, I think it would make me mad regardless, Jordan thought.
He opened his mouth to really yell at JB, to demand, Can’t you see my chin dimple’s in a different place from Jonah’s? But in a flash JB clamped his hand over Jordan’s mouth, keeping him from saying anything.
“Stop,” JB said. “We have to be careful. You’ve seen me since the last time I saw you, so there’s a huge danger of paradoxes. You know this.”
Probably time-expert Jonah knew it, but Jordan was a little iffy on what was dangerous in time travel and what wasn’t.
No, I know—everything is dangerous, Jordan thought.
“I’ll admit, things worked out when we were dealing with the sixteen hundreds, and you and Katherine gave me information out of the proper sequence of time,” JB said cautiously. “And then I was able to change a situation you’d already lived through. It was practically a miracle we didn’t ruin everything. The odds against us being able to do something like that again—they’re astronomical.”
He really does think I’m Jonah, Jordan thought.
What if it was dangerous for JB to find out that Jordan wasn’t Jonah? What if he was seeing JB in a time period before JB had even heard of Jordan?
But this is the future! I know this is after my time in the twenty-first century. . . .
Jordan’s brain was inching toward a weird thought: Because of time travel, something in the future could happen before something in the past. Maybe this moment had happened in JB’s life before JB had seen him in the twenty-first century, or even in the nineteen thirties.
Jordan remembered how Deep Voice and Mr. Rathbone had seemed not to recognize Jordan. Maybe they’d just been psyching him out, trying to make him feel worthless, but maybe they really hadn’t known about him. Maybe it was because of the different dimensions. So could there be danger in JB recognizing Jordan now? Even if JB knew Jordan existed, even if there was lots of information available in this time period
about Jordan, maybe JB wasn’t supposed to know everything about him yet.
But clearly JB in this time period had already met Jonah. So would it be less dangerous if Jordan just acted like Jonah?
Now Jordan started worrying that maybe JB would notice Jordan’s chin dimple being in the wrong place.
Jordan lifted his hands and shoved JB’s away. Then Jordan made a show of keeping his own hand over his mouth and chin, as if he were only trying to show JB he would be careful not to blurt out anything that could ruin time. Really, he was hiding his chin dimple.
“Good,” JB said. “You understand. Think carefully before you answer these questions. You being here . . . was that on purpose? Did you plan to come here, right now, or did somebody set you up?”
Was that supposed to be a trick question?
Jordan lowered his hand a little, so it covered only his chin.
“You mean, did anybody set me up besides that candy-striper undercover agent?” he asked. “I came to this time period on purpose, just not to this exact room.”
“Whose Elucidator did you use?” JB asked, then waved his hands frantically, as if trying to erase his own words. “No, no, don’t answer that. Too much potential for paradoxes.”
“Could you . . . ,” Jordan began. But he was lost. What if anything he asked JB might ruin time?
“I’ll just go,” Jordan said. “I’ll go back to my own kitchen a split second after I last saw you, and if I talk to you there—I mean, then—that won’t create any paradoxes.”
Could he do that? Jordan hadn’t liked JB much back when all of this mess first started. But Jordan really liked the idea of handing off responsibility to some trustworthy adult. If Jordan explained everything, surely JB would want to help. And he had to have a better idea of what to do than Jordan did.
But JB was shaking his head.
“You’ve been arrested here and now,” he asked. “There’s a whole time-agency file being put together automatically. We’re just lucky Cira didn’t recognize you, because she’s so new on the job. I’ve delayed things a little by setting up this private interrogation, but as soon as we step out of this room, we’ll both face an official investigation into how and why you got back here.”
“Fine,” Jordan said. “I’ll just leave without stepping out of this room. Tell that girl she imagined everything about seeing me and arresting me. It’s not like she has any proof.”
Even as he spoke, he was pretty sure he was wrong. Probably every step he’d taken through the hospital had been captured on some sort of security camera. For all he knew, that girl might have a security camera embedded in her wrist along with a microphone.
There might even be some kind of tracking device in the stupid detox suit he was wearing. It felt weightless and unnoticeable, but who could say what it was capable of?
JB was still shaking his head.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked. “This room is a dead zone. Nobody can time-travel directly into or out of this room. We set it up specially to protect you and Gavin while you were healing.”
Just what happened with Jonah and this Gavin kid that they had to take so many precautions? Jordan wondered uncomfortably. What were they healing from?
“And Cira confiscated your Elucidator, anyhow,” JB added.
“No, she didn’t!” Jordan protested, reaching for his back pocket, where he’d stowed the Elucidator for safekeeping while he and Kevin were traveling through time. Somehow the detox suit was flexible enough that he could still dig into his pocket.
He shoved his hand deeper and deeper. He twisted around and reached into his other back pocket, just in case he’d gotten confused.
Both of them were empty.
“How could she . . . ?” he began. “Did the detox suit . . . ? I didn’t notice anything!”
“It may only be Cira’s first week on the job, but she was first in her class in Elucidator Recovery Training,” JB said wryly.
Jordan stopped trying to dig into his pockets.
“Then give me your Elucidator,” he said. “I’ll run out the door before Cira notices, I’ll yell for that Elucidator to take me . . . uh . . . someplace else . . .”
JB shook his head at that, too.
“My Elucidator is an agency-issued model that would be completely traceable,” he said. “You and I would both end up in time prison before we had a chance to blink. I’m already on thin ice over that trick with giving Katherine access to my Elucidator so she could go back to 1918. Nobody believes that was an accident.”
Jordan realized he’d heard Katherine talking about that same episode back home. Right before Jordan himself had snatched JB’s Elucidator and soared off toward the future with his whole family and Jonah.
“We’ve got to plan this out before we take any action,” JB continued. “Was there . . . was there anything specific you wanted to tell me first?”
Jordan remembered the problems he’d gotten his family into. Could he just make it so they never happened in the first place?
“Take a working Elucidator with you when you go back to the twenty-first century the morning of November, uh . . .” Would Jordan mess up everything just because he couldn’t remember the exact date he’d stayed home sick from school and everything went crazy?
“I’m a time agent,” JB said, as if he were offended. “I always take a working Elucidator with me when I travel through time.”
“Not—” Jordan began. But JB cut him off.
“I promise, I’ll double- and triple-check from now on,” JB said quickly. He winced. “Jonah, where you came from—the time you came from—were you in danger?”
Jordan had to hold back an instant retort: I’m not Jonah! But he considered JB’s question.
I don’t even know where the real Jonah and Katherine are, he thought. Or Mom and Dad. And I know I don’t trust Second. Or Kevin.
“Yes,” Jordan said. “And it’s not just me. All of us are in danger.”
“All the missing children from history?” JB asked.
Before Jordan could say, No, I mean all of us Skidmores, a loud buzzer went off and a mechanical voice intoned, “Agent in peril! Your assistance is urgently needed outside!”
JB slammed his hand against the wall.
“Shields down!” JB screamed. “Let me see what’s going on!”
The door slid away.
Cira the candy striper/undercover agent was down on the floor, wrestling with someone in a futuristic-looking close-fitted hospital gown.
Kevin? Jordan thought in amazement. The teenage Second? He healed that fast?
Kevin was facing away from Jordan, so he couldn’t see the boy’s face. But the shock of messy yellow hair looked right.
“Help! He’s trying to steal the Elucidator!” Cira yelled.
“Use the evasive tactics you learned in your training!” JB called to her.
Jordan wasn’t quite sure what happened next—maybe time travel was involved. But the next thing he knew, Cira stood triumphantly over Kevin, one foot on his back.
“I got it,” Cira told JB. “I knew what to do. I just hadn’t done it yet.”
“Of course,” JB said wryly, as if he didn’t quite believe her.
Jordan took a step closer to Cira. She seemed a little distracted trying to convince JB that she’d done everything right. Jordan could see the outline of an Elucidator—his Elucidator, small and round and battery-like—in the front pocket of her candy-striper smock. What if he just grabbed it himself and screamed, Get me out of here! Wouldn’t that solve his problems? His Elucidator wasn’t a time-agency one with all the tracking info. It had come from Mr. Rathbone.
Jordan slid his right foot just a bit closer, ready to launch himself at Cira and the Elucidator.
And then something—no, someone—slammed into Jordan. It was Kevin, springing up from the floor.
“Everybody freeze!” Kevin screamed, as he wrapped his arms around Jordan’s shoulders. “Give me that Elucidator or I’ll snap this
boy’s neck!”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“I saved your life!” Jordan protested. “Or—at least your spine! You passed out from the pain and I brought you here! This is how you thank me?”
“Sometimes life sucks,” Kevin mumbled in Jordan’s ear.
The boy cowered behind Jordan’s shoulder. Jordan recognized this pose from a million TV shows and movies: Kevin was using Jordan’s body as a shield. Kevin wasn’t even showing his face. So JB and Cira wouldn’t dare try to shoot Kevin, because Jordan was in the way.
“Slide the Elucidator across the floor,” Kevin demanded. “Right to me.”
He stuck out a foot, making it clear that that was where he wanted to catch the Elucidator.
They can’t even shoot him in the ankle because . . . what are those, army boots under his hospital gown? Jordan wondered. Or is that just part of the hospital outfit in the future?
It was horrifying how much Jordan didn’t know. And how powerless he felt right now. How paralyzed.
“You think taking a hostage is the best approach?” JB asked in a cautious, measured tone that sounded like every hostage negotiator Jordan had ever heard on TV or in the movies.
“Seems to be working so far, doesn’t it?” Kevin taunted. “Quick! Give me that Elucidator!”
Cira eased the small, silver Elucidator from her pocket. She held it high, as if to show Kevin that she was doing exactly what he wanted.
And then she screamed, “Think again, time primitive!” and aimed the Elucidator right at Jordan and Kevin.
Jordan didn’t hear anything—not even a ping—but suddenly Kevin slumped toward the floor, pulling Jordan down with him.
“He didn’t know our stun gun setting can work on the second body it encounters,” Cira crowed triumphantly. “It’s so fun dealing with time primitives!”
“Uh . . . are you sure you didn’t knock out both boys?” JB asked, a bit too loudly.
Even as he spoke, JB strode across the floor. Jordan could hear the footsteps. Then the toe of JB’s shoe nudged Jordan’s shoulder in a way that didn’t seem accidental.