“Quirg, get up,” Ignatia commanded. “You will receive a fair trial for your misdeeds. But I appreciate your honesty. We will consider your case at a later date. Until then, you will be held on house arrest. Ira, please escort our disgraced delegate back to his home dimension and keep a close eye on him until further notice.”
“Yes, Your Eminence.” Ira nodded and led Quirg down the aisle, aided by a set of guards.
“And you, young Earthlings? Will you accept my apology for wrongly accusing you of heinous crimes and doubting your motives?” Ignatia asked. Her braids swirled in silvery eddies at her shoulders, her horns flushing pale pink.
“Of course,” Maeve said. “We understand, and we want to help.”
Ignatia’s face brightened. “Very well. We have much work to do in the coming months. Together, I believe we can combine our skills and resources to advance the multiverse in wonderful, productive, and sustainable ways. But before we do so, I believe I must return something that belongs to you.”
Seemingly out of thin air, she produced an oboe, a trumpet, a clarinet, a saxophone, and a set of drumsticks. “You may need these in days to come,” she said. “And I am still awaiting a performance.”
“We would love that,” Maeve said, retrieving the instruments with her fellow cadets.
Tessa’s wrist vibrated. She looked down at the messages streaming in.
The Syntropitron gizmo worked!
The quantum collider is fixed!
Dr. Khatri says you need to get an exit point or gate thingamajig as soon as possible.
Did you get that? ASAP! He’s not sure how long the collider will be stable.
It’s sort of glitching out, but it’s mostly good to go … we think.
Anyway, HURRY!
Tessa bit her lip. “I think we’re going to need a raincheck on the concert.”
“Why is that?” Ignatia asked.
“We have to get home. Our families are worried and waiting.” Tessa caught Duna’s eye. She smiled. “We have to go,” she repeated, “but we would love to come back. Soon. We promise.”
Duna gave a quiet nod of agreement and understanding.
“Ah.” Ignatia sucked in a breath. “About your return journey …” She looked at the cadets. “Unfortunately, there are no active portals that currently connect your home dimension to the Station. We can expedite the construction of a new Gate, but it will take some time. I’m afraid you’re stuck with us here a bit longer.”
“Actually, we may have found a solution,” Dev said.
73
EARTH
“Where are they? Why aren’t they responding? Do you think something’s wrong? Are they hurt? Are they sick?” Mayor Hawthorne paced back and forth across the lab.
“Mom! Enough. Please.” Zoey gave her mother a reassuring hug. “I know you’re worried, but there’s nothing we can do right now except wait. I’m sure Tessa will send us a message as soon as she can.”
Dr. Khatri tinkered with some buttons on the collider’s control panel. Professor McGillum inspected the metal panels and rivets for the third time.
“Transfer: Initiated,” a robotic AI voice said.
Dr. Khatri blinked. “We’re ready to go whenever they are.”
The collider hummed and vibrated; the crystal sphere overhead began to spin.
“Gate Materialization: Initiated,” the robotic voice announced.
Dr. Khatri examined the console’s curved screen. Coordinates appeared. He clapped his hands together. “Tell Tessa and the others to proceed to Gate FJC0629. According to this, a blue wooden door should appear within some sort of central transit node any minute now.”
“Got it.” Zoey quickly typed the message and hit send.
The ceiling-mounted crystal sphere spun faster. A web of light fell across the room.
“They need to hurry,” Dr. Khatri said, becoming frazzled. “I can’t seem to pause the countdown.” He pressed a combination of buttons. Nothing worked. “If the kids miss this window, the collider may self-destruct again.”
“Then what happens?”
“They’ll be trapped outside our dimension for the foreseeable future,” Dr. Khatri said, his hands beginning to tremble. “We don’t have enough fuel to repower the Syntropitron a second time.”
Mayor Hawthorne paced some more, nervously biting her manicured nails.
Zoey looked down at her watch, tapping its glassy surface impatiently. “Come on, sis. Come on, come on.”
A second later, the watch buzzed.
74
STATION LIMINUS
“Our ride back to Earth has arrived. Sweet!” Lewis said, skidding to a stop.
“Zoey was right!” Tessa ran through Gate Hall. She stopped beside Lewis at a blue wooden door. Above the transom, a code ticked across a narrow digital plaque.
“Gate FJC0629. This is it!” Dev cried, jumping up and down, high-fiving Lewis.
“Are you sure?” Maeve asked. “This door is red.”
“Huh?” They blinked and the door morphed back to blue.
“What is going on?” Isaiah asked, his nose inches away from the color-shifting paint.
“The Gate may be unstable,” Duna said, jogging to catch up with them. “This happens sometimes.” They touched a finger to the blue door. It turned orange for a split second, then blue again.
“Okay, this is freaking me out,” Lewis said. “Is this the right door or not?”
“You should wait and see if the atoms settle,” Duna said. “There is a lot of entropic activity.” The door shimmered.
Isaiah didn’t mind waiting. He looked down the hall, hoping Ming would arrive, worrying about what had happened to him back on L’oress. Maeve followed his gaze.
“It’s going to be okay,” she told him, reading his face. “We’ll find Ming. Ignatia and the council will help look for him and bring him home.” Isaiah nodded, but he wasn’t so sure.
Just then the door warped, its hinges sparking. Tessa jumped back, shaking her head. “We can’t wait any longer.” She glanced at her watch. “Zoey said the collider sequence has been initiated. They can’t figure out how to stop it. Either we go now or miss our chance.”
Dev turned to Duna. “Thanks for your help.” The others nodded in agreement.
“Thank you,” Duna replied graciously. “I know we will see each other again soon. Safe travels, Earthlings.” Duna pulled the door open. “Go,” they said. “Hurry.”
In the blink of an eye, the door changed from blue to red, then back to blue again.
Dev nodded. “They’re right. We have to go, before the Gate disappears completely.”
“I agree,” said Tessa.
Duna stepped aside and gave an encouraging wave.
“Okay, on your signal.” Lewis smiled at Maeve. She reached out and held his hand.
“Aten-hut!” Maeve stepped closer to the Threshold, singing loudly, her voice rising above the fierce quantum wind and bursts of searing yellow lightning.
“We are Conroy Cadets, hear us roar. Look to the skies, watch us soar …”
75
EARTH, SORT OF …
“Home, sweet home!” Lewis said, stretching out his long limbs. His legs were tingling with pins and needles.
The whooshing, rumbling sensation stopped. The Transfer was complete.
“Isaiah, are you puking again?” Tessa asked.
“I can’t help it if I suffer from extreme motion sickness,” he said woozily.
“Let’s get him some fresh air.” Dev pushed against the walls of the shiny copper capsule they were encased within. It hissed and peeled open. Instead of floating in a foggy white oblivion, it sat in the center of a laboratory.
“We made it!” Dev shouted, looking around. “We’re alive! I recognize that.” He pointed to a bunch of cardboard boxes. “And that!” The NASA logo was painted on the wall. “Ha! Ha! We did it!” He gave his saxophone a happy honk.
“Hey, Dev?” Maeve said hesitantly as she helped Is
aiah to his feet and then picked up both of their instruments. “Where is your dad?”
“Wait.” Tessa stopped in her tracks, almost dropping her sister’s clarinet. “Where is Zoey? And my mom? I thought they’d be here, too.”
“Maybe they’re down the hall?” Lewis suggested, kneeling to grab his drumsticks. He was happy that both of them had made the journey this time. “Let’s take a look.”
The kids exited the room. The building was empty. It was decaying and poorly maintained. The windows were smashed, the paint chipped.
“Did we cause all this damage?” Lewis asked, wide-eyed. “We have a habit of doing that …”
“No.” Maeve sucked in a breath, studying the cracked floor. Thick black root tendrils snaked between the tiles, cleaving them apart. “This is not the same NASA building we were in before, during the field trip.”
They wandered down the abandoned corridor until they found an exit. They pushed the door open and coughed. Gray smog hung like a thick, noxious blanket across the skyline.
“Guys, I don’t mean to get all gloomy and doomy again, but something is very wrong here,” Isaiah said, peering out across the valley.
Smokestacks rose up where the Conroy city center should have been. The plazas, the parks, the commerce center were all razed, replaced by brutal concrete structures. Brush fires burned in the old soy and corn fields to the east, ash darkening the sky. Rusted cars with flattened tires were parked haphazardly along the road. Invasive vines ruptured the asphalt, strangling nearby trees.
“Where is the school? Where are our homes?” Tessa said, staring off into the distance. “Where are all the people?”
It was Earth, but not their Earth. It was like the apocalyptic visions and nightmares Isaiah sometimes had, come to life. Like a warning, a precursor to what their home would look like, if they didn’t do something to stop the Empyrean One.
Dev’s voice was weak and despondent. “I think we somehow crossed into a parallel dimension.”
The roots at their feet twisted, sensing the presence of living creatures. A whispering sound, like a thousand small, quiet voices, drifted hungrily through the air.
“Are we the only ones here?” Lewis asked, listening.
“I don’t know. It looks like someone, or something, is down there.” Dev gestured to the puffing smokestacks and blinking yellow lights in the valley. “We should go and see if they can help us.”
“Wait,” Maeve threw her arm out in front of him. “Do you remember what Ira told us? If we cross paths with our doppelgängers in a parallel dimension, we could mess up the space-time continuum.”
The whispering voices grew louder. Motes of dust and ash floated in the air. As his nausea faded, Isaiah felt a thrumming within his chest, like a premonition. Or maybe it was a call to action?
A gust of wind swept dry leaves into the sky. A scrap of paper fluttered to the ground and landed at their feet. Dev picked it up.
If you think you can stop me so easily,
you are gravely mistaken.
The Empyrean One
Lewis guffawed. “That’s the cheesiest prank I have ever seen. Isaiah, your uncle is hysterical!” He slapped his knee and doubled over laughing.
“I know Uncle Ming sent me some cryptic notes in the past, but I don’t think he left that one for us,” Isaiah said, feeling a pang of sadness. “I wish he were here, but I think he’s still stuck on L’oress. He never arrived on the Station, remember?”
The cadets were silent, all of them thinking of Ming and their own families, who seemed farther away than ever.
Isaiah removed the cipher Ming had given him. He ran his finger over the symbols, sighed, then returned it to his pocket. Before the field trip, Benni the bus driver had wished Isaiah a bold journey, one that might lead him to the answers he was seeking. And he had found answers, about the multiverse and more. He’d reunited with his beloved uncle and discovered an untapped power inside himself. He knew he should be grateful, but somehow all those answers only led to more questions.
Lewis’s smile drooped. “So, let me get this straight: We’re trapped in a parallel world? Pursued by a mysterious enemy? All by ourselves?” He blinked. “Honestly?”
“Tessa, does your eChron still work?” Dev asked.
She looked down. The face was shattered. “No,” she said. “I think it’s broken. For good this time.” Tears pricked her eyes. She wished she could hop in a time machine and reverse everything that had happened. But then she realized that changing the past wouldn’t make anything better. She had to set her sights on the future. She had found her voice and now she needed to use it, even if it meant getting out of her comfort zone. Way out.
“Well, Captain,” Lewis said, turning to Maeve. “What exactly do we do now?”
“That,” she said, “is an excellent question.” She took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts, formulating a plan. “We find another portal. We get home. We fight this thing with everything we’ve got. We save the world.”
“Right, that sounds easy enough,” Lewis said. He was surprised by the feeling in his chest. A competitive drive, a fierce desire to win. He thought about his family, the silly motto they always repeated: Wynners never lose. But it didn’t seem quite so silly anymore. It felt important.
Only two days earlier, Dev’s mother had told him that if he wanted to be a knight, he would need dragons to defeat. Well, the Empyrean One wasn’t exactly a dragon (not that he knew of, at least), but Dev understood that whatever came next would be the biggest challenge he had ever faced. He was grateful to have his friends by his side.
Maeve put on her best game face. She was a performer. A survivor. A leader. She straightened her shoulders and looked her friends in the eyes. “All I know is that the show must go on. Aten-hut!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some books take years to write, simmering slowly, emerging line by line. This was not one of those books. This story rocketed onto the page at warp speed, propelled by the guidance of my fearless editor, Anne Heltzel, and the fantastic team at Abrams. Thanks to Amy Vreeland, Jessica Gotz, Margo Winton Parodi, Laura Bernier, and everyone else who worked hard behind the scenes to bring this book to life. I’m grateful to Christa Heschke and Daniele Hunter of McIntosh & Otis for championing my work and opening up portals to new creative opportunities. Thanks to Chris Skinner for creating such dynamic and beautiful cover art, and Marcie Lawrence for excellent design work.
I’m thankful for the insight and friendship of my trusted critique partners, especially Erin Cashman, Diana Renn, and Sandra Waugh, who read each draft with the keenest eyes and fullest hearts. Shout-outs to my wonderful community of creative friends and collaborators, including the Lucky13s, the Electric Eighteens, the Concord and Littleton kidlit writing groups, NESCBWI, The Room to Write, and The Writers’ Loft. Utmost appreciation to the librarians, teachers, and booksellers who help put books in the hands of young readers. High fives to all the independent book-stores, especially the Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Massachusetts, and the magnificent middle grade book clubbers.
There are numerous theories about the multiverse, each more mind-boggling than the next. When I began writing this book, I immersed myself in the research and writing of Carl Sagan, Brian Greene, Stephon Alexander, Barry Parker, Bernard Carr, Tom Siegfried, and many other brilliant thinkers. Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations provided the perfect musical backdrop while drafting this story.
Most importantly, I offer a galaxy of love to my family, especially my wonderful parents. Thank you for your encouragement, unwavering support, and patience. Writing and revising a book is an exhilarating but difficult process, and there were many times when I felt as though I had stumbled into a black hole. Thank you, Stefano, for pulling me back to Earth, calming my nerves, and feeding me lots of snacks. I couldn’t ask for a better partner in love and life. Lastly, to my bold, brave, musical daughters: My love for you is infinite. If anyone can save the world, it will be kids like you.
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