“I’m going to have to shift you,” Mike said apologetically, and then — without waiting for approval — adjusted Mairi so that she was slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He took a deep breath and the next thing Mairi knew, they were running up the wall of the lighthouse!
To her, hung over Mike’s shoulder, watching from behind, it was if someone had suddenly jerked the ground from her. She watched it fall away as Mike’s breathing got heavier and heavier, his feet pounding on the wall of the lighthouse and sending jolts and jostles through her.
Just when she thought his strength was about to give out, Mike lunged forward, grabbing the railing that ringed the gallery that ran around the Lantern Room with one hand, steadying Mairi with the other. He heaved her unceremoniously over the railing, dumping her on the gallery floor, and then hung there by his fingertips.
“Mike!” Mairi grabbed at him, catching him by the wrist. She felt incredible strength there, incredible strength that was now flagging.
“I’m KO’d,” he assured her, and then between the two of them, they managed to wrestle him next to her on the gallery.
The gallery encircled the lighthouse entirely, bordered on the outside by a railing and on the inside by glass panels that surrounded the Lantern Room. They lay panting on the floor for a while before it occurred to Mairi to make sure they could get inside. She found a glass panel that swung in and hustled Mighty Mike into the Lantern Room. It was small — the tip of a needle — and empty except for the giant lamp and lens.
There was no one there. The great big lantern flashed again, all on its own, as if desperate to guide some invisible ship only it could perceive. Mairi blinked in astonishment. She’d only ever seen the lantern lit during special celebrations, when her mother was at the controls….
Exhausted and still nursing a twisted ankle, Mairi crawled over to the trapdoor, which was shut.
“Does it lock?” Mike asked from where he lay.
“Not on this side, at least. But it should hold. It sticks all the time.” To demonstrate, she tugged at the ring that opened the trapdoor and the door swung up easily, revealing the Watch Room below.
Oops. Mom must have finally gotten around to fixing the trapdoor. Great job, Mom!
The Watch Room was empty, too. Mairi had half expected to see her mother down there, working the computer that ran the lantern. Once upon a time, the lantern would have been activated manually by a lighthouse keeper, but Mom had upgraded to the computer so that she could set the lantern to run automatically, if necessary. Had she set a program to run for the time capsule burial? Mairi didn’t think so. Mom would have mentioned it. And the lantern wouldn’t just be pulsing out random bursts of light — it would be some sort of specific show for the event.
Mike struggled to his feet. “They’ll come right up through there. Eventually.” He gently guided Mairi away from the trapdoor, then closed it solidly and stared at it. Just as Mairi wondered what he was doing, the black beams of Mighty Vision wobbled from his eyes. Usually, they were strong and powerful blasts of energy, but now they seemed more like limp noodles. Still, as they struck the seam between the trapdoor and the floor, the wood there sizzled and melded into a seal.
Once the trapdoor was totally secure, Mike staggered back, exhausted. “Now …” he gasped, “… we’ll be safe.”
“What’s going on?” Mairi asked. “What’s going on with you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know for surety. After I left you and the sheriff, I flew around, trying to see who I could help. I saw some of the bomzies and tried to collect them and take them where they couldn’t hurt anyone, but …”
“But what? What happened?”
He spread his arms wide. “I don’t know. My powers started … stopping. My strength. My speed. My flight.”
Mairi shivered, and not just from the cold at the top of the lighthouse. She had been counting on Mighty Mike to save her — to save the town — the way he had done so many times before.
But now he was turning into just another kid.
A time capsule!
Bouring was crazy for time capsules. The town buried one every year around this time, so Kyle knew what they looked like. Time capsules came in all shapes and sizes, but the town of Bouring always used the same kind. And they were identical to the one Lundergaard had just hoisted onto his shoulder. As Kyle watched, the man carefully made his way back up the slight grade he’d come down, struggling a bit with the heavy weight of the time capsule, but soon enough disappearing into the darkness.
That’s the 1987 time capsule, Kyle thought. The one that disappeared. Now I know who took it. But why?
What should he do about it? Kyle was tempted to fly through the room and go grab the time capsule from Lundergaard. But would that create one of the time paradoxes Erasmus was so worried about? Kyle was no longer certain. And hadn’t —
“My turn!” Max said suddenly, grabbing for the Walkman.
“Go put your hair in curlers,” Sammy said, dodging his brother’s swipe. “I’m not done with it yet.”
Right. Danny’s Walkman. Kyle had to stay focused. He cleared his throat, stepped out from concealment, and planted his fists on his hips.
“Surrender the Walkman!” he commanded in his deepest, loudest voice. “Now!”
Sammy and Max turned to him in surprise. Then Sammy started giggling. “Is that you, Camden? Nice mask.”
“Yeah,” Max sneered in echo of his brother’s tone, “nice mask.”
“Last chance,” Kyle threatened. “Give it over right now.”
Sammy and Max stalked to him and loomed over him, glaring down. “Or what?”
“I’m not Daniel Camden,” Kyle intoned. “And you are about to be very, very sorry.”
“Oh, rea —”
Before Sammy could even finish the word, Kyle snatched the Walkman from his belt at superspeed, his hand a blur as it moved. Sammy yelped in surprise as the headphones jerked his head forward.
Kyle could have just sped away before they could react, but the opportunity to teach these guys a lesson was too ripe. And for the first time in his life, he had the upper hand on Sheriff Maxwell Monroe. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t even a sheriff yet — it just mattered that Kyle could finally be the one in power over him.
He clipped the Walkman onto his own belt, then grabbed the Monroes by their wrists … and took off!
The cavern was small, but even so, the ceiling was at least ten or twelve feet up, hung with stalactites. He shot up there with the Monroes in tow, then zipped back down to the floor, narrowly missing impaling them on stalgmites. Then he blasted up to the ceiling again. The brothers screamed in terror and struggled to break Kyle’s iron grip. It was useless.
“Maybe now you’ll learn a lesson about bullying,” Kyle told them in a stern voice. “Maybe now you won’t make a kid cry again!”
“Cr-cr-cry?” Max stammered as they hovered near a massive stalactite. “We never made anyone cry!”
“Yeah!” Sammy agreed, staring down at the floor in terror. “We never —”
“Shut up,” Kyle told them. He drifted down to the floor and dropped them in a crumpled heap on their old sofa cushions. Of course. The Monroe boys hadn’t made Danny cry. They’d stolen his new Walkman, but that hadn’t made him cry.
Only Gramps had been able to do that.
Kyle shook his head to clear it. “Leave Danny Camden alone from now on,” Kyle warned them. “In fact, leave everyone alone. Got it?”
He took their cowering for a yes.
So. Mission accomplished. But …
What was Lundergaard up to? And was he the same guy who founded the company? More important, could Kyle finally do what no one else in the history of Bouring had managed to do: solve the mystery of the missing time capsule?
He grabbed one of the lanterns and sped off in the direction Lundergaard had headed, ducking rock outcroppings and twisting through tunnels that sloped gently up, until finally he saw sunlight
ahead. Yes — the other entrance to Carson Cave.
Popping up from the ground, Kyle realized he was about a half mile from where he’d planted Danny at the first entrance, right on the edge of the cornfield. A dirt road wound its way through the corn and away from Bouring. In a couple of decades, Kyle knew, that dirt road would end up being an extension of Major Street, connecting Bouring to the main interstate that ran past town. He floated ten feet in the air, looking around. Carrying that heavy time capsule, Lundergaard shouldn’t have gotten very far, but he was nowhere to be seen.
And then Kyle spied a pair of tire tracks in the dirt. Lundergaard had had a car waiting.
He fished in his pocket for the tiny Bluetooth earpiece he’d built, then slipped it into his ear. Switching on Erasmus, Kyle said, “I need information. You still have all of Wikipedia stored on your hard drive, right?”
“Of course I do,” Erasmus said in a wounded tone, as if Kyle had insulted him. “Wait a minute. No satellites … No cellular … We’re still in the past, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. For now.”
“Did you build that charging cable?”
“No,” Kyle said guiltily.
“My battery is now at twenty-two percent.”
“I know. But look — something strange is going on here. I can’t put my finger on it, but it has something to do with Lundergaard….”
“Kyle, I don’t care about Lundergaard!” For the first time ever, Kyle heard complete panic in Erasmus’s voice. And since Erasmus’s voice was patterned after Kyle’s, the sound was utterly unnerving. “I only care about making sure I don’t fade into oblivion, and getting you back to the present before you totally wreck history!”
Kyle landed near the entrance to the cave. “I’m not going to wreck history,” he assured Erasmus.
But was that true? Kyle felt the weight and bulk of the Walkman at his hip. Was Danny supposed to get the Walkman back? Or was it a matter of history that Sam and Max Monroe would get away with their bullying and keep the Walkman? Maybe Danny was destined to get it back, but some other way — maybe Kyle had only changed the details of history, not its general bend.
Or maybe he was rewriting things as they happened.
Did it matter, though?
He decided it didn’t matter. The Monroe brothers stealing Danny’s Walkman was wrong, whether it took place in 1987 or not. Kyle was just fixing it. What was wrong with that?
“I need you to look up Lundergaard,” Kyle told Erasmus. “Something weird is going on here.”
“Are you kidding me? You want me to waste processor cycles and battery power on —”
“You could have done it already, if you weren’t so busy arguing with me.”
“Fine. Fine.” A moment later, Erasmus said in a very snippy voice: “Lundergaard the company or the guy? I have files on both.”
“Start with the guy.”
“Walter Lundergaard,” Erasmus started, “founder of Lundergaard Research. Now, this is strange: His birth-date isn’t listed on Wikipedia. They usually at least have a guess, but there’s nothing listed.”
“Is there a picture?”
“Now you want me to turn on my screen? In full color? Do you know how much power —”
“Show me the picture.”
Erasmus flashed the picture on his screen, at the lowest brightness possible, Kyle noticed. Still, it was clear enough for Kyle to make out. This was definitely the man the Monroes had dealt with, the man who had taken the time capsule.
“When was this picture taken?”
Sulkily, Erasmus answered, “About three years ago.”
“Wait. Three years ago as in 1984 or three years ago our time?”
“As in 1984. Can I turn off the picture now?”
“Sure, go ahead. No, wait! Do you have a more recent picture? One from our time period?”
“Doing an image search through my terabytes of data —”
“Just do it.”
If Erasmus could have rolled his eyes (if he’d had eyes in the first place), he would have done so. Instead, he paused and then, a moment later, flashed an image on his screen. It was a screen-grab from the bouringrecord.com website the day Kyle had left his own time period. He always had Erasmus archive the news, just in case there was mention of Mighty Mike or the Blue Freak. Or maybe even a return of the Mad Mask, who was still out there somewhere.
This particular image belonged to a story that said, “Walter Lundergaard Junior to Attend Time Capsule Burial.”
“This is a picture of Junior,” Kyle said. “Not Senior. He’s the same age as his father is in 1987 in this picture….” He drifted off. “Show me the Senior picture again.”
With an astonishing minimum of grumbling, Erasmus did just that, showing the two pictures side by side.
They were identical.
Kyle swallowed, hard. If he still had his supersmarts, he wouldn’t even need to ask the next question, but …
“Erasmus, what are the odds of a father and son looking exactly the same at the same point in their lives?”
Erasmus said nothing, and for a moment, Kyle thought maybe something had gone kerflooey in the AI’s subsystems, but then Erasmus said, “That’s a ridiculous question. With genetic variances and environmental factors, a child would have similar features to one parent, but not identical because of the influence of the other parent. Now may I please shut down my screen?”
“Go ahead,” Kyle said.
As Erasmus’s screen went black, Kyle rubbed his jaw, thinking. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. If the man he had just seen with the time capsule was Walter Lundergaard Senior, then he must have already had his son, in order for his son to be roughly the same age in Kyle’s own time. But like Erasmus said — how could it be that a son would look exactly like the father?
“Something’s fishy,” Kyle murmured. “Either Walter Lundergaard Junior had some serious plastic surgery in order to look like his father …”
“… or he’s a clone …” Erasmus said.
“… or maybe there’s just one Lundergaard and he’s a time traveler, too,” Kyle finished.
They were both silent for a moment as that sank in. Could it be possible? Could there be another time traveler?
“What would a time traveler want with the time capsule?” Kyle asked. “That doesn’t make any sense….” But wait. Wait. Maybe it did make sense.
The time capsule … Something about the time capsule tickled a spot in the back of Kyle’s brain. What was it? What was it about the time capsule …
We left the present when they were supposed to bury the annual time capsule. But then something happened. Something went wrong. And I ignored it….
He thought of the crowd he’d seen in the present, of the way they’d lunged at everything that moved. Like zombies with some sort of hive mind.
“Erasmus, I need you to play back the police scanner audio from the night we left our time.”
“Kyle, my battery is —”
“I know. I know. I swear, just play this back for me and I’ll shut you down again.”
“Battery power is at seventeen percent,” Erasmus complained, but queued up the recording. Kyle listened for the second time:
“Received word 2213 at time capsule burial. Sheriff on scene.”
“Reporting in, uh, Deputy Travers. On scene at the — What the heck is —”
Babble and confusion and then:
“They’re moving too fast! I can’t even —”
“— did they come from? Who the —”
At one point: the sound of flesh on flesh, those knuckles. Someone being hit. Hard.
And then someone else.
And then the thing Kyle hated hearing, a sound that chilled his blood: that adult, screaming in absolute terror.
Finally: dead static.
“And what did this prove?” Erasmus demanded. “Battery power at thirteen percent, by the way.”
“Lundergaard. He’s mixed up in the
time capsule somehow. He stole it here, in 1987. And did something to it.”
“Something that caused the zombie horde in our own time. I get it. But that isn’t helping you build a charging cable for me any time soon. I have a standard 30-pin dock connector. Ground is pins 29 and 30. FireWire power is on pins 19 and 20. You can assemble —”
“Let me think! Maybe it’s not a coincidence that we ended up here in 1987. Maybe time travel —”
“Kyle! Charge me up first, then think later!”
“But —”
“No buts! You need my computing abilities to get back home. It’s no good if you figure out the time capsule mystery and then never get home!”
“What if there’s some sort of quantum entanglement going on? What if our chronovessel was attracted to this time period because of something Lundergaard is doing here?”
“It still doesn’t matter. We can’t interfere. You’ve already done too much. You have to stay focused on —”
Just then, a police siren screamed, shrill and piercing in the blank air.
The siren echoed from over the hill. Kyle ran to the top of the hill, then hit the dirt, flattening himself against the ground. From here, he could see down the gentle slope to the main entrance to Carson Cave, where he’d left Danny.
Danny. Who was now in the clutches of Sammy Monroe!
Sammy held Kyle’s father by the collar of his shirt, shaking him. Max was tugging on his brother’s arm, trying to pull him away, but Sammy was in a rage, a fury, and nothing could dissuade him, not even the wail of the siren and the slow trundle of the Bouring Sheriff’s Department cruiser as it made its way along the dirt road toward the three boys. Kyle wondered briefly why Erasmus hadn’t picked up the coming cruiser on the police band, but then realized that the 1987 band must be on a different frequency than the one Erasmus was used to.
The last thing Kyle needed was trouble with the law in 1987. He kept his head down and watched as the police cruiser drifted to a stop, its siren cut off mid-wail. The lights on top kept spinning, though, flashing blue and red along the ground.