Redeemed (13 page)

“That was Charles Lindbergh,” Jonah said. “He just needed proof. I was scared to death we'd need to give him an Elucidator, too, and I couldn't decide which one to hand him, which one to keep . . .”

Jordan could barely listen. He had to stay braced for the next emergency, the next moment that would put him and Jonah on the verge of yet another disaster. He was so much on edge, so ready to make the next hair-trigger response, that it took him a moment to realize that the scene around him was the futuristic lab once again.

The flames!
he thought, looking down at the floor. But all evidence of them was gone. Even the smell of smoke had vanished, as if there'd never been a fire.

Jordan looked back up, his eyes searching the dim
room for the next threat to his life. He could see clear to the opposite corner now.

No danger, no danger, please, no more danger . . .

Something moved in the corner where Katherine's cubicle had been. But—Jordan squinted—the cubicle was gone now.

Katherine came stepping out of the shadows.

“Did I miss anything?” she asked.

Jordan cracked up.

“Did you miss anything?” he repeated. “Are you kidding? Jonah and me, we're lucky to be alive! We just survived bears and battlefields and guns and bows and arrows and fire and—”

Katherine looked toward Jonah with an expression that seemed to ask,
Has Jordan completely lost his mind?

Jordan realized his laughter sounded a little maniacal.

“It's true!” he said. “It was all real! It—”

“—was definitely not real,” Jonah finished for him.

Now Jordan and Katherine both squinted at Jonah. Jonah leaned gingerly against the desk behind him.

“I think Second just sent us through either the training program or the final test—or something like that—for people trying out to be kidnappers like Gary and
Hodge, working for Interchronological Rescue,” Jonah said. “I think that's what the plastic-card Elucidator is for, testing like that. It was like some virtual-reality thing, giving us different scenarios and different time-travel problems.”

“No—I
felt
that bear's breath on my face! I felt his slobber! That wasn't just some
training
exercise,” Jordan protested. “You know, with virtual-reality stuff—you can always tell it's not real!”

“A
bear
?” Katherine repeated. “And fire? And a battlefield . . .”

She looked questioningly at Jonah.

“Oh, yeah, and it was like we were in Albert Einstein's living room, talking to him too,” Jordan remembered. “Like we were supposed to be scared of
him
. And on a plane with Charles Lindbergh . . .”

Katherine raised an eyebrow.

“So it was stuff Jonah and I already lived through, rescuing our friends,” Katherine said. She seemed to turn a little pale. “Please tell me you didn't have to kill a bear with a tiny knife again.”

“No, Jordan asked the Elucidator for a gun, and that gave me the idea to ask for something that would work even better,” Jonah said.

Jordan could have been annoyed that Jonah thought
his ideas were so much better than Jordan's. But his mind was still stuck on Katherine's words.

“You . . . you rescued other people in the midst of fires and bear attacks and battles and all that other stuff?” Jordan asked. “You didn't just . . . barely manage to keep yourself alive?”

Jonah and Katherine exchanged a look.

“Yeah,” Katherine said softly. “We did.”

Jordan waited for her to start gloating. The Katherine he'd known his whole life would normally have added something like,
See, Jordan, that's why I'm so much better than you, so superior. You go through all those dangers, and you just barely come out of it alive. Jonah and me, we were like superheroes doing all that. We saved ourselves and lots of other people too.

Somehow having her not gloat actually made him wonder,
Are she and Jonah truly better than me? Going through the fire, the battle, the bear attack, and everything else, pretty much all I could think about was how I could keep from dying.

“How many people?” Jordan asked. “How many of your friends did you rescue?”

“Katherine saved Chip and Alex in the fourteen hundreds,” Jonah said.

“Jonah saved Andrea, Brendan, and Antonio in the sixteen hundreds,” Katherine said. “And, oh yeah, he also saved JB and Dalton and Andrea's grandfather and an entire Native American village.”

Jonah winced, like this brought back bad memories.

“But Katherine, you're the one who went back to save the Romanovs and Leonid. And Chip,
again
,” Jonah said.

Was that why that Chip guy seemed so thrilled to see Katherine?
Jordan wondered.
Because she keeps saving his life?

Katherine gave a rueful frown.

“Actually, if you count all the stuff that happened with the plane, Jonah deserves every bit of the credit,” she said. “Just about everyone I saved would have died anyway if it hadn't been for Jonah. Because he saved all the other thirty-five kids from his plane. And me. And you, Jordan. He saved you.”

Was that true?

“Second said Gary and Hodge saved my life by kidnapping me,” Jordan said.

“That was just the first time your life was in danger,” Katherine said. “Jonah saved you the second time.”

“Jordan wouldn't necessarily have died that time,” Jonah protested. “He just . . . probably would have been adopted by somebody else.”

“And see, that would have been a fate
worse
than death,” Katherine teased. “Jordan, it would have killed you not to have me for a sister!”

Jordan wanted to zap her with a witty comeback that made it clear his life would have been better without her.
But he'd just lost her and regained her. He'd had that moment with the line of flames between them when he'd felt certain he'd never see her again.

“Right,” he mumbled. And the way he said it, it really could have been taken two different ways: sarcastically—or as if he really couldn't imagine his life without her.

Jordan didn't want to watch Katherine's face to see how she interpreted his comment. He turned to Jonah.

“So was
everything
we went through something that already happened to you before?” Jordan asked.

Jonah nodded.

“So why train or test you for something you've already lived through?” Jordan asked.

“I'm not sure,” Jonah said slowly. “Either Second's trying to catch you up with Katherine and me, or . . . or it's based on my fears. Maybe the training program read my mind and gave me the scenarios I would be most afraid of.”

“You're still afraid of stuff you already survived?” Jordan asked. “Why? You survived! It's over!”

“Nothing's over,” Jonah muttered.

Jordan held back a shiver. After what they'd been through—all three of them—he didn't want the others seeing that two words uttered in a spooky voice could frighten him.

“You're talking about Second, aren't you?” Katherine
asked. She turned to Jordan to explain. “Second got everything he wanted from us the last time we had to deal with him, back in the sixteen hundreds. He outsmarted us, every time.”

“We've got to outsmart him this time,” Jonah murmured. He gritted his teeth. “We have to.”

He looked around the room that only moments before had seemed like a medieval castle, a battlefield, an icy sea, and Albert Einstein's living room. Jordan followed the other boy's gaze. The room just looked like an empty, quiet lab once again. It didn't even seem so wildly futuristic anymore—Jordan was starting to get used to the suspended images that seemed to glow from TV screens that weren't even there. But Jonah was pivoting his head frantically, as if he saw potential danger at every turn.

“I know what we have to do next,” he said.

Before Jordan and Katherine could respond, Jonah took off running. In three strides he was beside the door.

And then he yanked open the door and ran out into the hall.

“Are you nuts?” Katherine cried, scrambling after Jonah.

“You yelled at me when I did that, and now you're . . .” Jordan realized no one was listening. “Wait for me!”

He ran after Jonah and Katherine. Both of them were halfway down the hall before Jordan caught up.

“At least give us some warning before you make sudden moves like that,” Jordan panted.

Jonah glanced quickly toward Jordan, then snapped his head back toward the front. Jordan realized the other boy was studying everything around them.

“I can't warn you, because that warns Second, too,” Jonah said. “He spent his whole life making predictions about what people would do—so we have to be unpredictable.”

“This is unpredictable all right,” Katherine muttered. “Are you
trying
to get caught?”

“It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world,” Jonah said calmly.

They reached an intersection with another hallway, and Jonah plowed right on through as if it didn't matter if anyone saw them.

“You're nuts,” Katherine said, running a little to catch up. “Could we at least tiptoe? And whisper?”

“We have to show confidence,” Jonah said. “Fake it, anyway. That's the only way this is going to work.”

“
What
is going to work?” Katherine wailed.

Jordan felt a rush of air behind him. He turned around, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But something made him reach his hand out.

His fingers hit a solid wall, even though his eyes told him he was waving his hand through empty air.

“Oh, no,” he moaned. “Not again. Katherine, Jonah, look. Er—feel this, I mean.”

But when he turned back toward the other two, he saw that they seemed to have encountered an invisible wall ahead of them as well. Jonah bounced back from what looked like empty air; then he and Katherine put their hands out flat in the space right ahead of them.

Either both of them were very talented mimes, or Jordan, Katherine, and Jonah were all trapped inside the same kind of sometimes-invisible walls that had held
Jordan prisoner back in the interrogation cubicle.

Jordan stretched his hand toward Katherine, and was relieved when he brushed the tip of her ponytail. At least each of them wasn't trapped in an individual cubicle again.

“Intruders have been isolated,” a robotic-sounding voice intoned above them. “Intruders, do not try to escape. It is impossible. Our security forces will be by to collect you within the next twenty-four hours.”

A sudden wind that felt as strong as a tornado seemed to hit Jordan out of nowhere, tugging his clothes upward and making his hair stand on end. He had to grab the bottom of his shirt to keep it from flying up against his face. So he almost missed seeing the plastic card and fake cell phone zip past his head.

“The Elucidators!” he screamed.

He swiped his hands uselessly through the air, trying to catch the two Elucidators that had flown out of his pocket. He missed. He bent his knees and jumped and tried again, but it was too late. The Elucidators slammed against the ceiling. No—they were being sucked up through the ceiling, along with the ponytail rubber band that had been holding back Katherine's hair.

All three items vanished completely. The wind stopped.

“We have retrieved all items that might provide you any assistance during the next twenty-four hours.” The
robotic voice spoke again. “They will not be returned to you. Ever.”

Geez, what could we have figured out to do with that rubber band?
Jordan wondered.
And how could those three things, which are solid, pass completely through a solid ceiling?

“You just made us lose the Elucidators!” Jordan accused Jonah.

“They didn't work right, anyway,” Jonah said defensively. “And . . . I bet Second could track everything we did with them. So it doesn't matter.”

But his voice trembled, making him sound like he wasn't sure.

Katherine smoothed down her freed, tangled hair, and hit the palm of her hand against one of the invisible walls.

“Didn't you think about something like this happening?” she demanded, glaring at Jonah. “Is this what you
wanted
?”

Jonah rolled his bottom lip up over his top lip, a motion that Jordan recognized.

Isn't that what I do when I want people to think I know what I'm doing but I really don't?
Jordan thought.

But Jonah cocked his head and started talking back to the ceiling. “We are in possession of information that could be crucial to the future well-being of Interchronological Rescue,” he said, and he had control of his voice again.
Anyone who didn't know him would probably think he was completely at ease. “We were on our way to see Curtis Rathbone, your CEO. It would be in your company's best interest to take us there immediately.”

Jonah's supposedly thirteen, just like me,
Jordan thought.
How can he talk like that?

It was almost as strange and impressive as when he'd talked in a medieval way with the virtual-reality monks.

Then Jonah's words sank in, and Jordan realized what Jonah was asking.

Was Katherine right?
Jordan wondered.
Has Jonah totally lost it?

Katherine still looked like she thought Jonah was nuts. Her eyes were practically popping out of her head.

“You
want
them to take us to Curtis Rathbone?” she asked incredulously. “What exactly are you planning to tell him? Which piece of information do you think—”

“Shh,” Jonah said. “I'm sure they can hear everything we say. Don't give anything away yet.”