Sent by Margaret Peterson Haddix
For Todd, Tyler, and Austin
PROLOGUE
Jonah was falling, tumbling over and over, down and down, through nothingness and absence and void.
“Noooo …,” JB’s voice echoed around him, even though JB himself had vanished. So had the other adults. So had the other kids. So had everyone and everything familiar.
Except Chip and Katherine.
Jonah pressed in closer to his friend and his sister. Both he and Katherine had linked their arms through Chip’s at the very last minute, just as Chip was being sent away. Jonah wished he could hold on with his hands—hold on as tightly as possible—but his hands were full. In his left hand Jonah held a Taser. In his right hand he held the Elucidator.
Jonah wasn’t even sure what the Elucidator was, but all the grown-ups had acted like it was important. There hadn’t exactly been time to ask for a tutorial, not that JB or Gary or Hodge would have explained anyway. What were they going to say? “Now, this button here, if you press it, you’ll beat us. You’ll win.”
Yeah, right.
Still, even without any explanations Jonah had managed to disarm the grown-ups. He’d ended up with all the weapons. He’d foiled Gary and Hodge’s greedy baby-smuggling scheme. He’d, well, at least … interrupted JB’s plan.
Interrupting wasn’t the same as winning.
“Jonah, there’s been a mistake,” JB said. His voice was coming from the Elucidator, loud and clear and deeply troubled. “You and Katherine have no business going into the fifteenth century with Chip and Alex. You’re not allowed. You could cause even more damage. And you can’t take the Elucidator or the Taser there—”
“You should have thought of that before you zapped Chip,” Jonah said. “You should have known that we’d stick together.”
It was a miracle of teenage defiance that Jonah’s voice could come out sounding so bold and confident. When he’d opened his mouth, it’d been a toss-up what he was going to say. He might have even whimpered, “I want my mommy! I want my daddy! I want to go home!”
He still might. This nothingness was frightening. And—fifteenth century? Had JB really said “fifteenth”? Was that what they were falling toward?
Jonah couldn’t think of a single thing that he knew about the fifteenth century. At the moment, he couldn’t even remember how the whole century-numbering thing worked. Was the fifteenth century the 1400s or the 1600s?
Jonah probably could have figured that one out, if he’d been able to calm down enough to concentrate. But he was distracted by a hand suddenly clutching his shoulder.
Katherine’s hand.
Katherine was a sixth grader, just a year behind Jonah and Chip. Since hitting middle school, she’d become one of those stupid giggly girls who talked about hair and makeup and cheerleading tryouts. But Jonah could remember earlier, younger versions of Katherine, even the cute (though he’d never admit it), sweet (not even on pain of death), adoring little sister who would grab his hand when she was scared and blink up at him and whisper trustingly, “You’ll protect me, won’t you, Jonah?”
Jonah would never in a million years let Katherine do that now. But her hand on his shoulder made him feel like the protective big brother again. If he was frightened, she must be terrified out of her wits.
“Look, I’ll tell you what to do so you and Katherine can come back,” JB was saying, his voice strained.
Katherine tightened her grip on Jonah’s shoulder, pulling him closer so that, with Chip, they formed a circle. In the near darkness around them he could barely see her face, but her features seemed to be twisted into a distorted expression. Was she crying? She turned her head—no, she was shaking her head, her jaw jutting out stubbornly. She wasn’t crying. She was mad. Maybe even too mad to speak.
“No,” Jonah told JB, and somehow his voice came out sounding every bit as fierce as Katherine looked. “Tell us what to do so we can all come back.” Jonah remembered that it wasn’t just the three of them floating through this nothingness. Chip was actually the second kid that JB had tried to zap back into the past. Another boy, Alex, had disappeared first. “Even Alex,” Jonah added.
The dimness around them was easing a bit. They seemed to be falling toward light. Now Jonah could see Chip’s face clearly, the gratitude in his expression. Jonah felt like he could practically read Chip’s mind: Chip was thinking how much worse it would be to tumble through this nothingness alone.
“Jonah,” JB protested. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Certain things have been set in motion. Chip and Alex have to go to the fifteenth century.”
“Then, Katherine and I are going too,” Jonah said. He didn’t know how it was possible, but he could feel time flowing past him, scrolling backward. He felt like he had only a few more seconds left to convince JB. “What if … what if we could fix the fifteenth century? Make everything right again? Then couldn’t Alex and Chip come back to the twenty-first century with us?”
Silence.
Jonah had nervous tremors in his stomach. The hand holding the Elucidator was shaking. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking for. But he couldn’t stop now.
“You have to let us try,” Jonah argued. “Let us try to save Alex and Chip and time. Or else …” He had to come up with a good threat. Or else what? Oh. “Or else we’ll do our best to mess up time even worse than Hodge and Gary did.”
The silence from the Elucidator continued. Jonah worried that they’d floated out of range, or that the battery had stopped working, just like a defective cell phone.
Then JB’s voice came through again, faint but distinct.
“All right,” he said wearily. “I’ll let you try.”
ONE