Redeemed (22 page)

If he did, he'd probably figure out a way to outsmart me this time around,
Jordan thought.

And would that be a good enough reason to abandon Second?

No,
Jordan thought.

He sighed. “I have to take care of teenage Second before I go anywhere else,” Jordan told the Elucidator. “Where exactly did he tell you to take him?”

HIS INSTRUCTIONS WERE IMPRECISE
the Elucidator spelled out in glowing letters.
HE SAID, ‘TAKE ME WHERE I CAN BE CURED.' SO I'M TAKING BOTH OF YOU TO THE NEAREST HOSPITAL IN THE NEAREST TIME PERIOD AFTER 2035, WHICH IS WHEN MEDICAL EXPERTS FIGURED OUT HOW TO HEAL THE KIND OF SPINAL INJURIES HE HAS.

“That sounds okay for Second,” Jordan said.

All Jordan would have to do was leave the teenage Second on the doorstep of some hospital, and he'd be taken care of. And then Jordan could go wherever he needed to go.

But Jordan's stomach twisted. If he were Second, would he really want to be treated in the
first
year they knew how to handle his type of injuries? And . . . what was that thing Jonah and Katherine had talked about, saying people couldn't be duplicated in time without creating serious problems? What if Second was already supposed to be alive in 2035?

Forget Second—wouldn't I be alive myself in 2035? Assuming I get back from all this time travel safely?
Jordan wondered.

“Wait, no—don't send us there,” Jordan told the Elucidator. “Take us to a time period where doctors know how to solve Second's problems, but after any time when Second and I might already be alive. I mean, if we survive this trip.”

SO BE IT
the Elucidator glowed back at Jordan.

Jordan liked an Elucidator giving him that kind of answer. He slipped it into his back pocket and held his hand over it so there was no danger he'd lose it traveling through time.

They seemed to speed up instantly, zooming toward lights far off in the distance. Jordan's thoughts became jumbled:
Mom . . . Dad . . . Katherine . . . fix time . . . make Mom and Dad the right ages . . .
Then he hit the moment of time travel where he couldn't think.

The next thing he was aware of, he and the teenage Second were tangled together on a soft carpeted floor. Someone was screaming above him, “Time travelers! Unauthorized time travelers! You're under arrest!”

Jordan actually thought,
What would Jonah do?

All those time-travel disasters Jordan and Jonah had dealt with back in the futuristic lab—hadn't Jonah navigated each of them almost perfectly?

Because they were all disasters he'd already lived through,
Jordan thought.
And maybe even he didn't do so well the first time around. . . .

But thinking about Jonah made him want to at least not shame himself too badly. Even though his head swam and his vision and hearing still swung in and out of focus, he forced himself to sit up. This made the teenage Second slump down even lower against the floor. He was still unconscious; his eyelids didn't even flutter.

Jordan realized that the person screaming “You're under arrest!” was not some sort of police officer or other law enforcement expert—not unless those officials in the
future wore uniforms that looked like candy-striper volunteers in twenty-first-century hospitals.

The person glaring at Jordan looked to be, at most, high-school age. She had pigtails hanging down on either side of her face.

“I'll have you know, I am a time traveler authorized by the Interchronological Rescue agency,” Jordan said, trying for the same confident tone that Jonah had used with the medieval monks back in the lab at Interchronological Rescue. And it wasn't like he was even lying—Mr. Rathbone had authorized him and Jonah and Katherine to rescue the teenage Second. This was just . . . a detour.

What if Interchronological Rescue has been shut down in this time period?
Jordan wondered.
What if those time-agency rules about not bringing anyone back from the past are already in effect here?

Jordan decided to ignore his own brain.

“What kind of a hospital is this, where you're more concerned about yelling at people than treating seriously injured patients?” he asked. “We've just escaped from, uh, extreme danger in the past. This boy has a spine injury. Aren't you going to help him before he dies?”

The girl jumped.

“Oh! Oh—of course,” she said. “I'm so sorry. Of course patient care is our first priority.”

She glanced anxiously toward a corner of the room—toward some sort of video camera, maybe? Could it be that everything was going to be recorded in the future? And maybe people at hospitals were punished for any mistake?

She lifted her wrist toward her mouth.

“Stretchers!” she called out. “Emergency personnel! Stat! Spinal injury in the lobby!”

Would people in the future have microphones imbedded in their wrists, so they could call anyone they wanted, anytime they wanted?

Jordan decided that must be the case. Before he even had a chance to blink away the last of his blurry vision, people in scrubs and face masks were swarming around him and Second. Voices went in and out:

“. . . located site of damage . . .”

“. . . into spinal-reconstruction surgery immediately . . .”

“Are you injured too?”

Jordan realized this last question was directed at him.

“No, no,” he said quickly. He didn't think he could manage standing yet, but he made himself sit up a little straighter. “I'm fine. Just bringing, uh, Kevin there in for treatment.”

He thought “Second” or that other name Jonah and Katherine had said—Sam Chase?—might be recognized.
And thanks to Gary and Hodge, Jordan knew that Second really had been called “Kevin” as a teenager.

“Let me show you to a private waiting room, then,” someone replied. Jordan realized it was the candy-striper girl. “It will probably be about fifteen minutes before your friend is back on his feet.”

Fifteen minutes!
Jordan thought.
That's all?

He guessed that meant they were far into the future, long past the time when doctors had first figured out how to fix spinal injuries like Second's. Er—Kevin's.

Jordan decided to just start thinking of the other boy as “Kevin.” It made him seem less scary. And less likely to hunt Jordan down when Jordan left him behind.

“Here's a detox suit, so you're not bringing in any germs from the past on your clothes,” the girl said, handing him a thick wad of rubbery material. It didn't seem to have any openings in it.

Oh, great,
Jordan thought.
How would somebody put this on? She's going to know I'm lying when I can't figure it out!

But it was like the detox suit had a mind of its own: It unfurled and then slipped around Jordan's body, somehow covering his T-shirt, sweatpants, and tennis shoes completely.

“Don't worry—that's one of the newer models that just breathes up an area of sterile air around your head,” the girl
said. “It won't cover your face like the old models used to.”

Jordan nodded, pretending he understood. He tried not to show panic at the thought of thick rubber covering his face. But she was right: The detox suit stopped at his neck. He glanced around quickly. He didn't see anyone else wearing this kind of dark rubber suit, but maybe that just meant that he was the only person here who'd just traveled through time.

The only other person besides “Kevin.”

“This model works faster too,” the girl said. “It will finish and completely disintegrate by the time the other boy is out of surgery. Of course, his clothes will have to be detoxed separately. . . . Does your friend work for Interchronological Rescue too?”

“Oh, no,” Jordan said, thinking of the older Second in Mr. Rathbone's office, the broken golf club between them. And then—Second turning Mr. Rathbone back into a baby. “Kevin is . . . a kid rescued from the past.”

That seemed like the easiest story to use. And it was sort of true. Even if Kevin had mostly just rescued himself.

But the girl's eyes widened, gazing at Jordan with even more interest.

“Which famous historical kid is he?” she asked. “The tsarevitch from Russia, maybe? Though I heard rumors about some problem rescuing him—”

“You wouldn't have heard of Kevin's original identity,” Jordan said quickly. “It's not like he's famous here.”

Jordan hoped that was true.

And . . . have I done enough now to take care of Kevin? Now can I just zap my way out of here and go rescue the rest of my family? Even with this stupid detox suit on?

Could he just say,
Get me out of here!
to the Elucidator, and then give better directions as he was floating through time?

Before Jordan had a chance to do that, the girl wrapped her hand around Jordan's arm and tugged him to his feet. If Jordan said,
Get me out of here!
now, the girl would end up going with him.

Jordan tried to shake her hand off his arm.

“No, no, I've heard that time travelers get timesickness sometimes, and may have trouble walking,” the girl said. “Let me help you.”

“Um, I need to go to the bathroom,” Jordan said.

Surely she wouldn't follow him there.

“Don't worry,” she said, still holding on tightly. “There's one in the waiting room. You can't use the restroom until the detox suit's done anyhow.”

Jordan remembered how she'd yelled, “You're under arrest!” just a few moments earlier. Maybe he needed to play along with all this just to keep from attracting even
more attention, and having the time agency come after him for real. He wouldn't mind being a little steadier on his feet before he made any dramatic moves. He could walk into that waiting room she was talking about, then go to the bathroom and disappear from there.

Jordan let the girl pull him down a hallway and into an elevator. It didn't seem to move at all, but a split second later the door opened and a cheerful-sounding voice said, “Twenty-third floor.”

Don't act spooked,
Jordan told himself.
If you really worked for Interchronological Rescue, and you were really from this time period, you'd probably expect elevators to move that fast.

When they stepped out of the elevator, Jordan didn't let himself look too closely at anything around him. If he was really from this time period, wouldn't he act like he took everything for granted?

And it's not like you have to pay attention to know how to escape,
he reminded himself.
You've got the Elucidator in your pocket. All you'll have to do is ask it to zap you away to find the rest of your family and fix everything.

They got to a door, and the girl waved some sort of authorization card at it. Or maybe she just waved her hand—maybe it was reading her fingerprints or DNA or something like that. The door slid open.

The room that appeared behind it held two beds rather
than the couches or chairs Jordan would have expected in a waiting room. But what did Jordan know? Maybe that was typical for hospital waiting rooms in whatever time period they were in. Jordan stumbled across the threshold, and the door swooshed shut behind him.

“Where was that bathroom?” he started to ask. He'd figure out some way to get the detox suit off if he had to.

But the girl's expression had changed so much it frightened Jordan. She was smirking at him the same way soccer or basketball opponents did when Jordan's teams lost by huge margins.

“I brought him in,” she said. “I tricked him into coming with me without making a scene. Nobody thought I could do something like this, but I did.”

“This is highly unusual,” a man's muffled voice said from behind them. Jordan hadn't realized there was anyone else in the room, but apparently someone was standing beside the door, in a corner Jordan hadn't glanced toward. “And it's suspicious. Are you sure—”

The man broke off the instant Jordan glanced his way. And Jordan knew why.

The man by the door was JB.

JB!
Jordan started to shout.

But JB's eyes went all wide and panicked and he shook his head quickly during the moment the girl turned toward Jordan.

Jordan swallowed his exuberant
JB!
and turned it into a cough. The girl looked back at JB, and JB instantly smoothed out his expression and stopped shaking his head.

“Interchronological Rescue is getting desperate, and desperation makes them dumb,” the girl said scornfully.

“Perhaps,” JB said. He seemed to be trying to hide a strain in his voice. “Or perhaps something else is going on. Why don't you let me interrogate the suspect, and then we'll draw conclusions.”

Suspect?
Jordan thought.
Wait—they're treating me like a criminal? So . . . I really am under arrest?

The girl's smirk collapsed.

“
I
brought him to this room,” she said forlornly. “I thought I could do the follow-up.”

“Cira, believe me, you'll get full credit for this,” JB said. “You are an excellent undercover agent. But so much is hanging in the balance right now—I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to pull rank on you on this one.”

Undercover agent?
Jordan thought.
Do undercover agents dress like candy stripers?

JB patted the girl on the back. She didn't exactly look comforted.

“I'd let you sit in and help, but there may be information revealed that's beyond your security clearance,” JB said, sounding truly sorry.

“I know, I know,” the girl muttered. “Follow procedure. Everything in its own time. I'll finally be allowed to do the fun jobs with the agency by the time I'm eighty and on the verge of retirement.”