“I can find it,” Ellen said. She walked along the passage, hands outstretched. “It’s here.” There was no door frame or any hint of an opening, but Jayden rubbed the patch of wall, and a tall chunk of cinderblock swung inward.
Sarah ducked through the door. “Close it after us—it will keep us safe a little longer.”
I ran to catch up with her, but Harold caught my arm. “Bad turn—no—guards ahead,” he mumbled. He rubbed his bald head. “Too many possibilities.”
“Maybe you should just focus on our group,” I said. “Where are we going now?”
He looked up in surprise, then peered down the tunnel. “Why—forward, of course.”
“And who will we meet at the end?”
He started mumbling again. “Three people…or… no one…or the doctor…or….”
A lantern flashed ahead.
“Ahoy there,” a voice called out. “What’s been keeping you?”
Harold perked up. “Definitely three people.”
A giant of a man emerged from the shadows, holding the lantern high, and two more people in white lab coats followed. One lab coat featured the monogram of an “M” and the other a “C.” They were barely older than us, and they were identical twins.
“I had to twist their arms to make them leave,” the large man said. “Melvin was close to a breakthrough, and Calvin was programming it on the computer.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, we don’t want a breakthrough,” Sarah said.
Melvin scratched his forehead. “When we’re working, we forget everything else.”
His brother shrugged. “We can’t stop ourselves.”
“It’s time to escape,” she continued briskly. “Cliff, these are the young people we were waiting for.”
Cliff strode forward and shook our hands. “Freedom at last.”
“How are you planning to escape?” I asked.
Sarah’s eyebrows rose almost to the orange scarf she wore in her hair. “Harold said your team would know.”
“Us?” I asked.
Harold began sputtering. “It is a possibility.”
I peered through the dimness—thick cinderblock walls, miles of passageways and hidden doors we knew nothing about. What were they thinking?
The lights flashed again, three flashes this time, and I shivered. If we were going to escape in time, we needed to collect everything we knew. I remembered Lindsey’s story about her class. “Lindsey, can you help us share information?”
Sarah stepped toward her. “Share my information first.”
Lindsey closed her eyes, and the next moment, images began flowing through my brain. They came rapidly, like snatches of a movie in fast-forward: Dr. Card and his men, people wearing lab coats, and dozens of blinking machines.
“Me next,” said Harold.
The movie slowed for a moment. These pictures seemed murkier. Several times the sequence of events started over and ended differently.
“Wait,” I said. “I see a pair of shoes.”
“They wouldn’t do you any good,” interjected Melvin. “They have to be programmed to go somewhere.”
“Could you do that?” I asked.
He stared at me wonderingly. “Well, I suppose it’s possible.”
“Once we start working on something…” Calvin said.
“We can’t help figuring things out,” Melvin finished.
Cliff set the lantern on the ground. “The prototype pair is with the other inventions in cabinets, but they’re locked. We wouldn’t have time to search them all.”
“We can do it,” I said. “Ellen can find things, and Jayden will take care of the lock.” I looked at the twins. “Could one pair of shoes transport all of us?”
“Oh yes,” Melvin said. “If we’re going to the same place.”
Sarah stared at me with a peculiar expression. “Harold was right about you.”
I felt myself blushing and hoped she didn’t notice in the dim light.
“We have to hurry,” Cliff said. “I’ll take these two. If we don’t make it back, continue without us.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Melvin pulled out a small apparatus and began typing on it. “We’ll program the code for our escape,” he explained.
I held Aunt Winnie’s hand and softly called her name. Slowly, she opened her eyes. “Are you okay?”
Her face wrinkled in a smile. “I’m fine, child. They drugged me when they brought me here, but I’m feeling better.”
The lights were signaling more urgently now—four flashes after each interval. With every set of flashes I worried the lights would cut off permanently. I got the rest of the group to sit in a circle so we’d be ready when the others returned.
Lindsey sat next to Harold, who rocked back and forth, his head bowed in his hands. “I just don’t know,” he said.
“Don’t think about it,” she said. “Cast your mind the other way and concentrate on something happy in your past.”
He raised his head. “There was my mother’s chocolate cake, and mashed potatoes and gravy.”
“That’s the idea.” Lindsey gave him an encouraging nod.
He closed his eyes, and his face grew calm, but Lindsey jumped to her feet. “Ellen says to get ready.”
We stood and held hands with Sarah supporting Aunt Winnie, whose eyes sparkled with determination. She winked at me, and I felt an extra surge of courage.
Jayden appeared first, running toward us with the shoes tucked under his arm. I’d forgotten how fast he could run.
“Melvin, are you done programming?” I asked.
His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Almost.”
Jayden handed the shoes to him and joined the ring.
Cliff and Ellen arrived, and eager hands grasped theirs to complete the circle while from the far end of the tunnel a light exploded.
“Now!” Cliff bellowed.
“Program uploaded,” Melvin said. “Everyone concentrate on our destination.”
Lindsey sent the image. She held Harold’s hand, and he was muttering again, but when he got her picture, he stopped and grinned. “It just might work.”
Melvin jammed on the shoes, and I grabbed his hand. The familiar buzzing sent a tingling like electricity through our circle. The cinder block walls turned transparent, and the hazy outlines of Ivan’s bed began to form.
But something was wrong. We were moving too slowly. A concrete wall rose in front of us, and we slammed into it as a white light pulsed and wind whipped us backwards.
Harold kept repeating “Oh no,” until with a jolt we stopped, and the shoes sparked on Melvin’s feet. We were standing, still holding hands, in the laboratory with Dr. Card and his men surrounding us.
“Trying to escape?” Dr. Card said.
“Unbroken,” muttered Harold “Let the circle be unbroken—unbroken still the ties…” I took a tighter grip of Melvin on my other side.
“Ah, the beauty of the override function,” Dr. Card said. “And what is this? You repay my hospitality, Stella, by taking my best workers?”
“I’m not taking them. You’re breaking the law—holding people against their will.”
“Against their will? I thought my people were happiest here.” He flicked his wrist, and two of his men pulled me from the circle and shoved me toward him. “And you are going to be the happiest of them all.”
He stared at me, and I wondered how long I could hold out with the pressure of his thoughts trying to invade my brain.
“You are a nuisance, Stella Harski, but fortunately for you, my laboratory has almost perfected reading the future.” His voice was quiet, but his eyes reminded me of Buckeye when he stole the Pandora Device. “We have a 98% certainty that you will bring the machine here.” His white teeth flashed again.
“You can’t control me,” I said, trying to sound confident.
“Actually, I can. What do you want more than anything else in the world? Perhaps you want to be a scientist—push ba
ck the borders of knowledge?”
Lindsey’s words floated into my mind. It’s not what he thinks. I blinked, and the force of his probing grew weaker.
Dr. Card brought out a thick binder. “We’ve been watching you for years. You live in a house that should have been condemned, with your elderly grandmother, who is not quite fit to take care of you, is she?”
That old heavy feeling in my chest returned, but I resisted the urge to take a deep breath. I stared at the ground and mustered every image I could of Grandma. Her face beaming with delight when she brought home a treat for me… her soothing voice reading from the newspaper. Grandma, sitting in her recliner, eating from a TV tray while I told her about school.
Dr. Card’s voice glided on, but I barely listened until I caught the word parents. “We could do that, you know—send you back in time to be with them, when they were first married and happy. Before the accident took them away.”
I glanced at Lindsey, and she frowned. Everyone was still holding hands, but the circle seemed to wobble. Her voice shot into my head.
Trust yourself.
My double vision cleared, and the truth exploded in my brain. “It wasn’t an accident that killed them, was it?” I said. “Your organization did it. You did it to get something.” And I knew what it was—the Pandora Device.
I wanted to yell, but I forced my voice to stay calm. “Problems aren’t solved by going backward. Even if you sent me back, we wouldn’t have long to live.” Dr. Card’s gaze felt like it was boring a hole in my head, making me feverish. I had to do something before I lost the ability to think. “If your experts know I will bring you the device, let everyone else go,” I said.
Dr. Card raised an eyebrow, as if I was holding him up for all his money. “What? Let my best workers go? And who knows what your little friends might accomplish for me?”
A swift thought shot from Lindsey. What are you doing?
I gritted my teeth and continued. “We can do quite a lot, and you won’t get what you want if you keep the rest of them here. Do you really want that machine?”
Dr. Card studied our group. Harold was muttering, Melvin and Calvin were looking vacantly into space, and Ellen glared back at him.
He turned to the man beside him. “What do you say, Henri? Are the probabilities higher with or without the friends?”
Henri stared at my face for an entire minute. I raised my chin in the air and tried to look like Ellen when she was determined.
“Without friends,” he said at last.
“Very well. I know where to find them, after all.” Dr. Card brushed his hand toward our circle. “Be gone.”
The shoes on Melvin’s feet glowed, and sparks ran up his legs and out his arms until the entire circle appeared to be on fire.
Jayden says we’ll bring help—Lindsey sent the message so powerfully that blue spots danced in front of my eyes. The circle shimmered in space for a moment and then disappeared.
I exhaled slowly.
“Now,” Dr. Card said. “We wait for the device.”
His men closed in around me. I stared at the floor, trying to keep Dr. Card from prying into my mind. I concentrated on Lindsey’s message—Trust yourself. Somehow I’d known what to say to Dr. Card to convince him to let the others go. Was that what she meant?
My thoughts were like a wall against Dr. Card, and around me the lab grew quiet. Only the whirrings and clickings of machines told me I was still there. I glanced up warily.
Dr. Card was watching me as if I was an insect under glass. A sly smile curled his lips. “Have you ever wondered why your grandmother was so different?” he asked. “Stockpiling newspapers and socks and pans?”
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“She has all the symptoms of being caught in a time loop, but until your invitation to camp, we couldn’t discover why. That’s why you’re so important, Stella. You’re going to bring me the device.”
I tried to steady my voice. “A 98% chance sounds pretty certain to me. I should have it any time now.” The relief over sending my friends to safety was making me giddy. “Of course, it’s an interesting fact about probabilities. You can have a 90% chance of sunshine, and it rains anyway.”
Dr. Card glowered, and I forced a giggle. I was trying to come up with more to say when the key chain around my neck seemed to spark. I pulled it out and felt it burning in my palm. The next moment, the room shook and lights flashed. Gusts of wind blew hundreds of papers through the air, and the men rushed to protect Dr. Card.
I leaned against the wind and edged away from them until my back pressed against one of the lab tables. With a final blast of thunder, a cluster of people appeared beside me. The wind stopped, and the papers fluttered to the ground. In the stillness I saw our team: Jayden, Lindsey and Ellen, and with them—a girl and a boy. They were older, about the age of Cecily and Eugene.
The boy was holding the Pandora Device.
He turned, and I recognized him. It was my father. And the girl was my mother. My knees sagged, and I gripped the table.
My mother was a little taller than me and had the same fringe of brown hair, but where my chin was square, hers was pointed. Her wide-spaced eyes met mine. I’d always thought I must be a lot like her, but in that glance I saw the face of a dreamer, not the practical scientist I’d always imagined.
My father was one of those gangly guys, whose arms seem too long. He grinned at Dr. Card, the corners of his mouth curving upward as though he thought this was a joke. “How nice to see you again, Dr. Card.”
Dr. Card moved toward the machine, but my father put up a hand. “Not so fast. We need to know you’ll let us go unharmed.”
Dr. Card took another step. “If you don’t give me the device…”
“What? From where I’m standing we’re pretty untouchable.” The boy tapped his forehead. “I can see the possibilities, you know.”
A faint smile passed across my mother’s lips, and she reached out and took my hand. “I’m Franny, and this is Dan,” she murmured.
When she touched me, a jolt of excitement flowed through my skin. I wanted to hug her and tell her who I was, but Ellen grabbed me from the other side. “Not now,” she said, her voice urgent. “I’ll explain later.”
Franny stretched out her arms and two tables slid into place, separating us from Dr. Card. At the same time, Jayden raised his hands, and the shiny instruments on the tables launched themselves at Dr. Card and his men. They yelled and tried to fend off the attack of screwdrivers and wrenches, which swarmed around their heads like hornets. The thug, who had been our cook, swiped his arms through the air, and the tools fell to the ground in a pinging clatter.
“GIVE me the device…it belongs to me,” Dr. Card demanded, his voice so low it practically vibrated. The words repeated over and over, and I realized I was hearing them in my head. My hands twitched toward the device, and Dan edged forward, but Lindsey stepped in front of us. The droning stopped as quickly as if headphones had been ripped from my ears.
Ellen pulled us back toward the group, talking quietly as she did. “There’s a tunnel under this room, and they’re sending men to surround us. We need to leave now.”
“Got it,” said Dan. “I’m almost ready.” He typed frantically into the device.
“No!” yelled Dr. Card. He snatched up a screwdriver and leapt across the table, swinging it at Dan. The screwdriver punctured his arm. I screamed, and Jayden launched himself at Dr. Card, pinning him to the ground. His men started forward, but he growled at them to stay back. “Don’t wreck the possibilities.”
Blood trickled from Dan’s wound, and I pulled out the screwdriver and clamped his arm with my hand. As I touched him, my brain exploded. It was like a slide show gone crazy with images popping up one after another faster than I could fully take them in: our team running with the device, Dr. Card’s face washed with a greenish light, me with my parents alive—eating dinner together, going to the beach, riding in a car
. Then, a horrific crash, a car beneath a giant truck, another picture of Dr. Card holding the Pandora Device, a crowd of people cheering and waving flags.
Dan looked at me, astonished. “You’ve got the gift,” he said. “Sort the possibilities before they get away.” He gripped his good hand over mine. “Start with Dr. Card—what does he want?”
I was still in shock over what was happening, but I concentrated on the last image of Dr. Card. “He wants the device. No, there’s more—he wants power.”
The slide show reversed in slow motion, and the picture of Dr. Card clutching the device returned.
“Hold that one,” said Dan. “And work backwards.”
It took all my strength, but I felt the energy from Dan, pushing the slides back, one by one. At last we reached a slide I hadn’t seen before—a picture of me with the device.
Dan was sweating and his face turned a pasty white. “Branch forward,” he whispered. I didn’t know what he meant, but his fingers curled more tightly around mine, and slowly the picture split in two. In the one on the left, I gave the device to Dr. Card, and in the other I gave it to Dan. The two branches began to advance through a series of images, slow at first and then faster and faster, and only one branch led to stopping Dr. Card.
Dan was breathing heavily now. He nodded his head. “Do it.” He pushed a few keys on the device and handed it to me.
I stepped forward and placed it on the floor by Dr. Card.
For a moment time seemed to stand still. Then Dr. Card, his face wild, wrenched his arm free from Jayden and pressed a button on the machine. A light flashed and thunder cracked.
Jayden sprang away from him, and Ellen grabbed his hand. “I’ve got the shoes—everyone together!”
We caught hands, completing the circle, just as a trap door flew open, and Dr. Card’s thugs poured out.
“Go to Jayden’s house,” I shouted. Flames spurted from the shoes, running in a fiery path around our circle. Then a roaring filled my ears, and the lab zipped away into blackness. The rumbling grew until we landed with a final shock in Jayden’s yard, where the first pink streaks of dawn stretched across the sky.
The Pandora Device Page 12
