Redeemed (25 page)

Cira and Kevin and the hospital melted away, and Jordan watched JB floating through time.

“Can't you just summarize this a little, so I only see the important parts?” Jordan asked the Elucidator.

OF COURSE I CAN
the Elucidator replied.
YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IN A TIME HOLLOW. I THOUGHT YOU WOULD WANT TO BE THOROUGH, BUT IF NOT . . .

“I don't want to die of old age waiting for your video to get to the important parts,” Jordan complained.

TECHNICALLY, NO ONE COULD DIE OF OLD AGE IN A TIME HOLLOW
the Elucidator said.

“You know what I mean,” Jordan said.

Evidently, the Elucidator did, because the next thing Jordan saw was JB and a tall, beautiful African-American woman riding in a car together. The woman looked vaguely familiar, and Jordan couldn't figure out why. Then she winced as if deeply worried, and Jordan recognized her.

Angela
? he thought. This had to be the girl who'd shown up at his house with the teenage versions of his parents. Only in this scene, she was an adult.

She'd been really pretty as a teenager. As an adult, she was intimidatingly gorgeous. If Jordan had been JB, he would have been stammering and blushing and having trouble putting two words together.

JB was just slamming his hand against the dashboard.

“Yes, I'm certain that something's going to happen this morning!” he shouted. “I can't tell you the nature of the warning we received—it's incredibly complicated—but all the missing children from the plane are in danger! We've got to make sure Jonah and Chip are okay!”

Why does he think all those kids are in danger?
Jordan wondered.

Could it possibly be because of what Jordan told him?
When Jordan actually meant that his whole family was in danger?

Jordan started to say,
Elucidator, is there any way I can get a message to JB, so he at least worries about the right things?
But just then Angela and JB both jerked back, as if they'd been hit by some mysterious force. The camera's focus narrowed to Angela. By the time she'd straightened back up to her original position, everything had changed. She was a teenager again, crying out, “Why can't I reach the gas pedal anymore? What happened?”

A kid suddenly sitting beside her yelled, “I'll help! I'll hit the brake!”

He dived down for the pedals at Angela's feet.

“No!” Angela yelled back at him. “You're going to make me crash! I just need to scoot down a little! I've got it! Stay back!”

She took one hand off the steering wheel and grabbed the kid by the shoulder, shoving him so forcefully that he slammed against the door on the opposite side of the car.

Shouldn't he have knocked into JB instead?
Jordan wondered.
JB was on that side of the car.

His brain was just slow catching up. This was like some logic problem they'd hand out in school:
A man and a woman are riding together in a car. Suddenly the woman turns back into a teenager. There's a teenage boy sitting beside her now, and the man is
missing. What happened to the man? Where did the teenage boy come from?

No, that was way too strange to be a logic problem they'd hand out in school. But Jordan knew the answer: The adult JB had turned into a kid again too. Now that Jordan was thinking that way, he could see the resemblance between the adult JB and the gawky, skinny kid sitting beside teenage Angela.

Jordan took a step back from the images spread before him on the wall.

“Explain!” he yelled at the Elucidator. “JB was turned back into a teenager again, but there was a cure for him when there wasn't one for Angela or my parents? Why? Why can't whoever helped JB help Mom and Dad, too? Why isn't this problem already solved?”

The Elucidator seemed to be taking forever to answer. Then it flashed two words:

KEEP WATCHING.

At first it was excruciating for Jordan to force himself to sit down and pay attention to the continuing scene playing out on the wall. JB and Angela were in a panic over turning into teenagers . . . they were arguing over who was safest driving the car . . . they were turning corners recklessly . . .

Come on!
Jordan thought impatiently.
Show JB changing back so I know how it can work for my parents!

Then Jordan realized Angela and JB were speeding down the streets of his own neighborhood. Moments later they were face to face with . . .

That's not me,
Jordan had to remind himself.
That's Jonah.

Jordan was kind of impressed with how forceful Jonah was with JB, demanding help for Mom and Dad and a vanished Katherine.

So this was after Katherine was kidnapped by Charles Lindbergh,
Jordan realized.
Jonah doesn't know yet that she's going to come back, safe and sound and sassy as ever.

Jordan didn't let himself think about how quickly she would vanish again, kidnapped by Second this time.

Keep watching,
he told himself.
Keep watching.

On the screen JB and Angela, and now Jonah, too, were running around in a panic, then speeding away in a car with an unconscious—and teenage—Mom and Dad. Seemingly just moments later JB, Angela, and Jonah were dangling from the side of an old-fashioned airplane, high above an endless stretch of water.

Okay, I guess Jonah really did have to endure a lot of problems, traveling through time,
Jordan thought grudgingly.

He found himself watching in awe as Jonah endured more time-travel dangers, lost JB and Angela, and had to face off against Gary and Hodge all by himself. Meanwhile, the young JB seemed to be slipping into madness, overcome with guilt and worry.

Jordan himself showed up on the screen as an infant, and Jordan watched as Jonah struggled to deliver Jordan to their parents.

Would
I
have worked so hard to do that, faced with all the same odds Jonah faced?
Jordan wondered.

Now Jonah was challenging Charles Lindbergh. Now
Lindbergh was leaving Jonah with a planeload of babies, the fate of every single one of them—and time itself—in Jonah's hands.

I'm glad it was him and not me!
Jordan thought.

Jonah sent the planeload of babies away from the nineteen thirties. And then the scene shifted back to teenage JB, who was sitting in a car, staring off at nothing, his expression blank. Jordan could tell it was the same car JB had been in with Angela, but it seemed to be parked in a cave now, and JB was alone.

Suddenly a hooded figure appeared beside the car door and leaned in through an open window toward JB.

“JB, I'm going to take care of you,” the figure whispered. “The time agency must never find out. You and I both know they wouldn't approve.”

And then, before Jordan's eyes, JB turned into an adult again. The figure slipped something into JB's hand: a familiar-looking cell phone.

Could that be the exact same cell phone JB had in our kitchen?
Jordan wondered.
The one I stole, that was actually a faulty Elucidator?

Being an adult again seemed to startle JB out of his blankness. He glanced down at the cell phone/Elucidator in his grasp. His gaze seemed to linger on his own hand, as if he was figuring out that he wasn't a teenager anymore.

“Angela?” he called. “Jonah?”

He turned his head to the right, toward the hooded figure standing beside the car. Jordan was eager for JB to see the figure; maybe JB would know who it was. Maybe he'd call out the person's name, and Jordan could go find that person and get him or her to cure Jordan's parents, too.

The figure spun away from JB, his motion exactly synchronized to JB's. At the instant JB's head turned far enough that he would have seen the figure, the figure vanished completely.

But not before Jordan got a view of the figure's face. Not before Jordan got his biggest surprise of the day—which was really saying something, given that his day had included so many surprises.

Because Jordan knew the person who had returned JB to his proper age.

It was Second.

“This doesn't make sense!” Jordan screamed at the Elucidator in his hand.

WHY NOT?
the Elucidator asked. But the words sounded aloud, as well as glowing above the Elucidator. Either the Elucidator had reset itself, or someone behind him had also asked, “Why not?”

Jordan whirled around. The adult Second was standing right there. Second dropped a hood from his head, revealing his familiar shock of bright blond hair. Jordan guessed he was wearing the same hooded cloak he'd had on when he'd helped JB.

Jordan took a step back, but that only meant he was trapped against the wall.

“Aren't . . . aren't you and JB enemies?” Jordan stammered. “Aren't you on opposite sides? Why would you help him?”

Second tilted his head thoughtfully.

“Is it possible for you to see the, shall we say, multiple dimensionality of this situation?” Second asked. “I know your recent experiences—and your siblings' prejudices—have convinced you to think of me as a villain. But what if I'm capable of being a hero, too?”

“Why would I trust you?” Jordan asked, his back against the wall.

“I know how to cure your parents,” Second said.

Jordan could feel the wall digging into his spine. Or his spine digging into the wall. Whatever.

See, I can see the—what did Second call it? The multiple dimensionality?—of this situation,
Jordan thought.

He had a choice of how to answer Second. He went for the default mode of a seventh-grade boy: sarcasm.

“Oh, right, and you're the only person in the whole world who can do that,” Jordan said.

He was about to add,
So, thanks, but I'll find someone else to do that. Someone I really can trust!

But Second wasn't reacting in a predictable way. The corners of his mouth turned up into a slow, sad smile.

“You could twist yourself into knots over the exact definition of ‘only' in that sentence,” Second said. “But yes, that's pretty much the sum of it. I am the only one who can help your parents.”

Was he lying? Telling the truth? Just trying to trick Jordan?

Jordan decided the last option was the likeliest.

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Then why didn't you just help them right from the beginning? Why didn't you change them at the same time you changed JB?”

Second didn't move a muscle, but somehow his smile looked even more forlorn than before.

“Remind me—what did Jonah and Katherine tell you about me?” he asked.

“That you're their worst enemy,” Jordan said, and it felt strangely good to say that out loud. “That you rearranged time and split it and created some other dimension. You almost ruined everything. And then you taught Gary and Hodge how to mess things up too.”

“And you trust Jonah and Katherine's opinions,” Second said. He toyed with the button on his cloak.

“Are you trying to convince me I shouldn't trust them?” Jordan asked. “You think I'm more likely to trust you than my own . . .”

He stopped.

“Were you about to say ‘brother and sister'?” Second asked, leaning closer. “Have you grown to feel that way about Jonah?”

“Are you trying to manipulate that, too?” Jordan asked, trying to distract Second.

He
had
been about to say
brother and sister
. Did he really think of Jonah that way? When had that happened?

Second confuses me too much for me to know what I think,
Jordan told himself.

Second didn't answer Jordan's question.

“Jonah and Katherine have good reason to despise me,” Second said instead. “I did . . . push them to the brink. Mostly just for my own entertainment. I nearly destroyed all of time just because I was curious about what would happen without all the time-agency regulations. I craved that knowledge beyond all reason.”

Jordan didn't know what to say.

“A well-educated young man might point out that I'm describing my errors—my sins, you might say—in very recognizable ways,” Second said. “I was Pandora, bound and determined to open that box. I was Adam and Eve, unable to resist the temptation of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

“I
have
heard of Pandora and Adam and Eve,” Jordan said. He wasn't going to admit that he hadn't been thinking about any of them. He'd still been thinking about Katherine and Jonah.

“You probably think I'm confessing,” Second said. “You probably think I'm trying to convince you to tell Jonah and Katherine to forgive me.”

“Then will you help my parents?” Jordan asked. “Then can we all just go back to normal life?”

He'd seen the expressions on Jonah's and Katherine's faces every time they'd encountered Second. He didn't think it would be easy for them to forgive Second. But maybe they would do it to help their parents.

Or maybe we could just trick Second into thinking they'd forgiven him?
Jordan wondered.

Second sighed. “Let me show you something,” he said, turning to the wall where Jordan had just watched JB return to his proper age.

Jordan stepped back from the wall and away from Second as the man ran his fingers in a careful pattern against the wall. Jordan guessed he was programming in some sort of command.

“You know from Jonah and Katherine that I created my own dimension, my own little world,” Second said. “This is what it ended up looking like.”

On the wall, a scene sparked to life: two men in heavy wool coats leaning over the edge of a boat.

“You—” one man said.