“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.