“Now!” the boy cried.
Everything else around them disappeared.
FOUR
“You set us up!” Katherine screamed at Daniella.
“I did not!” Daniella screamed back. “I didn’t know . . . Where are we? What’s happening? Where are we going?”
Her voice held pure, stark terror, so Jonah was inclined to believe that she was telling the truth. Or that if she had set them up, she hadn’t known where it would lead.
“Relax,” Jonah said. “You’re not in any danger. Well, not right at this moment. I know it’s hard to believe, but we’re traveling through time right now.” He looked around at the familiar blank darkness of Outer Time. The only lights were far off in the distance, rushing toward them. “There’s a lot that somebody should explain to you, but for now you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“How can you be so sure?” Daniella screeched. Jonah could barely see her, but he could tell that she was whipping her head from side to side in panic. If she wasn’t careful, she might end up giving herself whiplash.
“Me and Katherine—well, and Chip, too—we’ve got a lot of experience traveling through time,” Jonah said, trying for a soothing tone.
“Not like this,” an unfamiliar voice growled near Jonah’s ear. “Not in this direction.”
Jonah turned his head to the side and made out the dim outline of a black hooded sweatshirt.
“You mean—” Katherine began.
“That’s right, Katherine,” the boy said mockingly. “This time we’re going to the future.”
Katherine gasped. For all Jonah knew, Chip and Daniella might have done the same thing, but Jonah blanked out of the conversation for a moment.
The future . . . ? Why . . . ?
Jonah wormed his right arm out of the boy’s grasp and reached out to knock the other kid’s hood back from his head. The boy’s face shone pale in the dim light, his hair unnaturally dark.
“You!” Jonah snarled.
“You know who I am?” the boy taunted.
“Alexis Romanov!” Jonah accused, because he’d just figured that out. “And—”
Before Jonah could explain the other identity he knew for the boy, the boy suddenly let go of Katherine and Chip and Daniella. They floated ever so slightly away. But the boy kept his hold on Jonah. He slid his hands up until he had them cupped around Jonah’s neck.
“Don’t call me that!” the boy screamed. “Anyway, it should be Alexei, but—I am not Alexis or Alexei Romanov! I refuse to be him!”
Chip and Katherine and Daniella struggled back toward Jonah and the boy. They began tugging on the boy’s arms, pulling him back from Jonah.
“What is wrong with you?” Daniella asked the boy. “You never said anything about wanting to choke anyone to death! Or about traveling through time—”
“You were one of the kids with skulls on their sweatshirts, weren’t you?” Katherine asked. “That day at the time cave—”
“And you were the one who helped Gary and Hodge!” Chip accused.
Jonah rubbed his hands against his neck, trying to rub away the soreness where the boy had grabbed him. He felt dizzy. Could he be suffering from oxygen deprivation just from the one second the boy had had his hands around Jonah’s neck?
No, I’ve just got a lot to figure out, Jonah decided.
He thought back to the time cave, the day of the adoption seminar at Clarksville Valley High School. It seemed centuries ago, even more distant in time than the 1400s. And really, in Jonah’s life the adoption seminar was more remote and long ago than his trip to the 1400s or any other time period he could remember visiting. He had lived through the time-cave experience first.
The boy in the black sweatshirt had been there that day, part of a group of surly kids who’d been mean to Jonah and Katherine. Jonah hadn’t seen the kid’s resemblance to Alexei Romanov at the time, because he hadn’t been looking at hundred-year-old pictures back then. But Jonah remembered this kid in particular because, at a moment in the time cave when the kids had taken control from all the conniving adults, this boy had secretly tipped the balance of power back to Jonah’s enemies Gary and Hodge.
Didn’t that make this kid Jonah’s enemy too?
And Daniella—whose side is she on? Jonah wondered. How does she know this kid? And—if he’s working for Gary and Hodge again, does that mean they’ve escaped from time prison somehow? And sent him to do their dirty work? Does JB know about this?
There were too many questions to deal with all at once. Maybe that was why Katherine and Chip had fallen silent too.
Not Daniella.
“Where’s the information you promised me about my birth parents?” she demanded, staring at the boy in the black sweatshirt. “Or was that just a lie to get me to talk to these kids? Do you even—”
The boy flicked his gaze from Daniella to the others and back again.
“Later,” he growled.
“Why should I trust you, anyway?” Daniella asked. Even floating through Outer Time she looked and sounded fierce. She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t think you even told me your right name. You said you were Gavin Danes. Who’s this Romanov person they’re talking about?”
“I am Gavin Danes!” the boy shouted back at her. “I’ve got nothing to do with any Romanovs!”
“Gavin,” Katherine said softly. “When Gary and Hodge offered to send you to the future, they were going to turn you back into a baby again, to be adopted by total strangers. So you wouldn’t be Gavin Danes anymore. You’d be somebody else.”
“That was the deal for other people,” Gavin said wildly. “They offered me a special deal! In exchange for—”
He broke off, as if afraid to reveal too much.
Yeah, look around, Jonah thought. Regardless of what side Daniella’s on, you’re still outnumbered.
At the moment, anyway. Who knew what would happen once they landed wherever they were going?
Jonah could see the lights beyond them, spinning closer and closer, brighter and brighter. What if Gary and Hodge had done something to make him and the other kids younger? When would it start? How much time did they have left?
“Are Gary and Hodge back?” Jonah asked quickly. “Did they break out of time prison? Did they give you your own Elucidator, so you could come and kidnap all of us?”
Elucidators were the devices time travelers used to move from one time period to another. But they were tricky things, able to take on the appearance of any common item from any century. They might look like a cell phone or a candleholder or a compass or a rock.
“Where is it?” Chip demanded. “Where’s the Elucidator?”
He grabbed the other boy and began ransacking his clothes. He shoved his hands into Gavin’s sweatshirt pockets, turned his jeans pockets inside out, even grabbed his shoes and felt around the laces.
Good idea, Jonah thought, and joined Chip in patting down Gavin.
“Elucidator, don’t take us to the future!” Jonah screamed, just in case it was still on some voice-activated control. “Don’t make us babies again! Take us back where we were! Where we’re supposed to be!”
Jonah was hoping for some sense of instant reversal, of gliding backward. But it was impossible to tell what direction they were going. Because right at that moment they hit the point in the trip where Jonah always felt totally disoriented. Everything sped up. The lights ahead of them—or behind? Or just surrounding them?—whirled closer and closer.
“What’s happening?” Daniella screeched. “What did you do?”
“I—” Jonah wanted to explain, but he was being flipped about so violently he couldn’t force the words out. He knew he was still tumbling freely, but he felt pinned in place, his jaw forced open, his face distorted. He felt like he was being pulled apart and put back together, and every cell in his body hurt.
And then he landed.
FIVE
“Where . . . ,” Daniella whimpered. “Where are we?”
> Jonah’s vision swam in and out, unable to focus on anything.
Need to remember . . . something important . . . need to warn Daniella . . . , he thought vaguely.
He hated the symptoms of timesickness that always greeted him when he arrived in a new time period. It wasn’t just that all his senses went on the fritz for the first few moments; his brain blinked out of service too.
Like now. There was something he should be telling Daniella, something he should be concerned about. But his brain couldn’t come up with anything but Shouldn’t you worry about . . .
“Shh,” he heard Katherine whisper to Daniella. The sound seemed to come from a million miles away, but Jonah was relieved to be able to hear it at all. And he was glad that Katherine had figured out she needed to warn Daniella.
“Don’t make any noise until you’re sure it’s safe,” Jonah tried to whisper too. But he hadn’t regained enough control of his body yet. The words just came out as a long, drawn-out “unnhhh . . .”
And, anyhow, wasn’t there something else he should be worrying about too? Something that he or Katherine or JB almost always tried to do to prepare for landing in a new time? What was it?
Jonah’s brain seemed to be going unnhhh . . . as well.
Maybe it would help to try to see where they were? To figure out what they might be facing?
Jonah blinked hard, willing his eyes to work properly again. Fuzzy shapes moved around him. He remembered arriving on Henry Hudson’s sailing ship in James Bay in the year 1611: the way they’d been surrounded by fog, and the way the only sound he could hear was the thump-thump, thump-thump of wet rope against wet wood.
This wasn’t like that.
These fuzzy shapes around him seemed to be swaying in and out of sunlight—blocking the sun, unblocking it, blocking it again. Jonah could feel the pattern of shadow and glare sweeping across his face.
So those shapes . . . are they maybe tree branches? Or . . . some other kind of plants? Are we in a park or garden? Or just someone’s yard?
Jonah felt like a genius for figuring out that much. Now if only he could think of the important thing he needed to remember . . .
“You!” someone suddenly screamed nearby. “You aren’t supposed to be out here now!”
Jonah remembered what he’d forgotten before: invisibility. It was always wise to get the Elucidator to make you invisible before you arrived in a new time period. Otherwise you never knew what you might end up having to deal with.
But it was obviously too late to scream out, Elucidator! Make us all invisible! Right now! Especially if that “You’re not supposed to be out here now!” was aimed at one of them.
But it sounds like the “you” being yelled at is someone the yeller recognizes, Jonah told himself. Maybe . . . maybe we’re all still safe? Maybe I’m just overhearing some other, unrelated conversation?
Jonah turned his head slowly toward the sound of the yelling. His vision was improving. He could see thick green stalks around him now, and beyond that, Daniella lying sprawled in the middle of a pathway.
And what was that above her? Connected to the big yellow M on her blue Michigan sweatshirt?
No, not connected, Jonah thought, blinking again and again, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. More like . . . pointing toward her? Pushed against her?
His vision cleared. His brain unscrambled, and he decoded the sight before him.
Daniella was indeed lying on the path, her face twisted with terror.
Above her, a man in a khaki uniform bent menacingly over her body.
And between the two of them . . .
Between them, the man had a gun jammed against Daniella’s chest.
SIX
“What are you doing out here? Who gave you those bizarre costumes?” the man screamed at Daniella.
For a moment Jonah thought he was suffering from double vision as a side effect of the timesickness, because now he could see two uniformed men holding two guns against two kids’ chests, and both chests were rising and falling in panicky breaths. Then he realized there really were two of everything: two men, two guns, and two kids—both Gavin and Daniella were pinned to the ground by soldiers holding guns.
But—just those two? Jonah wondered.
He turned his head silently, looking all around for Katherine and Chip. He saw no sign of them. Maybe, if they were lucky, they were hidden from everyone’s sight.
And—what about me? he asked himself. He guessed that the green stalks around him, whatever they were, had sheltered him from the uniformed men as well as the sunlight. But maybe that was just because the men hadn’t looked his way yet.
He held his breath, not wanting to make the slightest sound to draw attention to himself.
“Answer me!” the man hovering over Daniella screamed in her face.
Was he a guard? A soldier? Jonah decided to think of the uniformed men as guards, because that seemed slightly less threatening.
“I—I’m sorry!” Daniella wailed. “I don’t understand what you’re saying! I don’t know what you want!”
What language was the guard speaking?
Long ago, before one of their earliest trips through time, JB had made it possible for Jonah and Katherine to understand and speak any language they encountered in any foreign time. Jonah didn’t fully understand how it worked, but he’d gotten so used to the help that he often didn’t even bother paying attention to whether he and the people around him were speaking English or Serbian. (Which was a language he’d become very accustomed to on his last trip through time, to 1903.)
Obviously, Daniella had never gotten that language help—and neither had Gavin. He was also flailing about on the ground under the point of the gun, screaming, “Stop! Please! I don’t understand!”
“Quit that foreign garble!” the guard above Gavin screamed. “Speak Russian!”
Okay, so I guess that’s Russian, Jonah thought.
His body was hit with a wave of chills.
The guards are speaking Russian, and . . . those guns don’t look like they’re from the twenty-first century or the future, and . . . where in time would Russian guards have worn uniforms like that? They look old-fashioned but not centuries-and-centuries-ago old-fashioned. . . .
With a jolt, Jonah remembered what he’d tried to get the Elucidator to do when they were floating through time: Take us back where we were! Where we’re supposed to be! Those instructions might have worked fine if they had all been like Katherine, bona fide twenty-first-century Americans. But they weren’t. Even though Jonah still didn’t know who or where he was supposed to be, he knew Chip was really supposed to be Edward V in the 1400s.
And Daniella and Gavin are really supposed to be Anastasia and Alexei Romanov from the early twentieth century, Jonah thought, horror breaking over him. The Elucidator would know that too.
Every Elucidator Jonah had ever used had had an annoying way of interpreting commands a little too literally. Jonah could see perfectly well how the Elucidator might have decided that since two of the kids in their group “belonged” in the twentieth century, that’s where it would send the entire group.
Beyond the protective green stalks around Jonah, Gavin was begging the guards, “Please! Stop hurting me! I don’t know what you’re saying!” And Daniella was pleading, “English? Can’t you speak English?”
“Russian!” the guard above Daniella roared. “Speak Russian now, or we will shoot you both!”
It would be my fault, Jonah thought. It’s all my fault we ended up here!
He shoved himself off the ground. His legs were still trembling from the timesickness, but they were sturdy enough to bring him upright. Now he towered over all the plants around him.
“Stop!” he screamed in Russian. “Don’t shoot!”
SEVEN
Instantly both guards whipped their guns away from Gavin and Daniella. Instead they pointed the guns directly at Jonah.
“Uh, hi?” Jonah said weakly. He was pretty sure
this also came out in Russian, but it was hard to analyze something like that with guns pointed his way.
So what year would the Elucidator think Alexei and Anastasia belonged in? Was it 1918? How accurate were guns in 1918? Jonah wondered.
He decided they were probably much too accurate to risk trying to run away.
Not that he had anywhere to run to.
And not that he would be capable of running right now. He was doing well just to be able to stand up.
He swayed a little dizzily.
“Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you get in?” one of the guards barked at Jonah.
In? Jonah thought confusedly. Maybe he was wrong about being in some park or garden or yard? He looked around. Trees, grass, sky . . . he was definitely outdoors. But was that a wooden fence off to his right, encircling this yard and a fancy-looking building nearby? Was “inside the fence” what the guard meant?
“Well, uh, you see . . . ,” Jonah began. “I was just . . .”
Just what? His brain stalled. How could he explain anything when he didn’t know where he was or why the guards were so upset about him being there?
“He’s bizarrely dressed too,” the other guard pointed out. “Perhaps he brought them those clothes to help them escape.”
The first guard took a step closer to Jonah. Jonah could see straight down the barrel of the gun.
“You were plotting an escape attempt?” the guard accused.
“N-no?” Jonah said. But his uncertainty came through in his voice. Even to his own ears, it sounded like he was lying.
The gun he was staring into inched even closer. How close would the guard have to be before he just decided to shoot without asking any more questions?
Suddenly, off to his left, Jonah saw Katherine pop up from behind a bush.
“Oh, there you are!” she cried.
She strolled toward Jonah, her motions as casual as if she walked in front of loaded guns all the time.
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