Redeemed (30 page)

Jordan felt a tremor of panic deep in his gut.

“But Second said that secret ruined his world!” he protested. “I mean, I know he was just a hologram when he
told me that, but—what he said was true, wasn't it?”

“Second ruined his own world,” Mr. Rathbone said scornfully. “But I won't ruin ours. In his world, Second gave out his secret freely, to everyone who wanted it. He said he wanted everyone to have a chance to fix their mistakes, as quickly and easily as possible.”

“But . . . shouldn't that be a good thing?” Jordan asked.

Mr. Rathbone laughed scornfully.

“Don't worry—I won't make the same mistake,” he said. “I'll keep control of the secret always. Even when I'm selling temporary access to the highest bidders.”

Mr. Rathbone reached out and yanked the Elucidator from Jordan's hand.

Belatedly, Jordan realized he should have held the Elucidator hostage, refusing to hand it over until Mr. Rathbone gave Jordan what he wanted.

No, that would have just gotten me killed,
Jordan thought.
Or, at best, thrown into some sort of prison. Mr. Rathbone is holding all the cards right now.

Wasn't he?

Something tickled at the back of Jordan's mind, something his brain seemed to think Jordan should pay attention to. But Jordan couldn't figure out what it was.

Reflexively, Jordan tightened his grip on baby Kevin. Mr. Rathbone's eyes seemed to follow the action.

“Oh, you think you're going to be able to hold that baby back from me?” Mr. Rathbone asked. “You think there's anything you can keep from my power? Wouldn't you be better off begging me to deal with you kindly?”

“You've already told me I'm stupid and ignorant,” Jordan said. “I know I'm too stupid and ignorant for you to want to turn me back into a baby and sell
me
to the highest bidder. Anyway, I'm not a famous missing child from history.”

Mr. Rathbone shook his head, his eyebrows arched in scorn and amazement.

“You
still
think this is about famous missing children from history?” he asked. “That was the old business model. With Gary and Hodge gone, with the time agency making new rules right and left . . . that's over. But the key to business success is adaptability. You look at your assets and figure out what they're worth in the changing business environment. That baby you're holding might very well be the smartest human who's ever lived. You think selling him—I mean, adopting him out—is the best use of something like that? When there are so many other possibilities?”

Now that he wasn't holding the Elucidator anymore, Jordan placed his right arm over his left, adding another layer of protection to baby Kevin.

“He's not a thing,” Jordan said. “He's a baby. A human being.”

Mr. Rathbone rolled his eyes.

“The other versions of Samuel Kevin Chase were a little too human—too rebellious, anyway,” he said. “I think the life he lived his first thirteen years left him with no loyalty to anyone. Second Chance betrayed Gary, Hodge, Interchronological Rescue, JB, the time agency, and time itself. The boy I sent you and your siblings to rescue betrayed me. He was supposed to come straight back here, not go off to time hollows and hospitals. Fortunately, I anticipated that problem and embedded commands in the Elucidator that forced him back here anyhow.”

“As a baby,” Jordan said flatly. This was proof, then. The Elucidator had been set up to zap Kevin back to babyhood and off to Mr. Rathbone the minute he confided his secret idea. Even Kevin hadn't been brilliant enough to know that that would happen—or how to stop it.

“Right,” Mr. Rathbone said, nodding. “And now I can raise the child to adore me and tell all his brilliant business ideas to me.”

Jordan had seen Kevin/Second Chance/Sam Chase at various ages, and neither the teenager nor the man had seemed like the loyal, adoring type. Maybe it was because of the way he'd grown up; maybe it wasn't. Jordan didn't know how Mr. Rathbone's experiment would turn out.

But it kind of sounded like Kevin/Sam Chase/Second
Chance would once again have a miserable childhood.

“How do you know Kevin's idea about re-aging adults even works?” Jordan asked, because he still wanted to taunt Mr. Rathbone. That seemed to be the only power Jordan had left. “Maybe Second Chance knew what he was doing, but you killed Second. Right?”

Mr. Rathbone barely shrugged.

“He was expendable,” he said.

Jordan winced. He wished he hadn't brought up anything about Second dying. Did he really want to know for sure that it had happened—and that Mr. Rathbone had caused it? A cruel voice in his head whispered,
If that was how Mr. Rathbone dealt with Second, who was a genius, what's going to happen to me? What hope do I have?

“You don't see the precautions I took?” Mr. Rathbone asked. He still seemed to want to brag. “I made sure I had proof, of course. Using guinea pigs, you might say.”

Jordan didn't understand. Probably his face looked completely blank, because Mr. Rathbone sighed.

“Your parents?” he hinted.

Jordan's body seemed to catch on before his brain did. He clenched his fists, which was hard to do while still holding baby Kevin.

“You used my parents as guinea pigs?” Jordan exploded. “Like, like lab rats?”

Mr. Rathbone favored him with a thin, triumphant smile.

“Them, and JB, and some sixty other adults,” he said. “It was a bit larger of a sample than I intended. But that's what happens when you're using untested technology.”

“You used untested technology on my parents?” Jordan screamed. Baby Kevin whimpered at the noise.

Mr. Rathbone glared at Jordan.

“Now, now,” he said. “
Somebody
had to be first. And we couldn't alert the time agency in any way. As it was, we had them convinced that the whole experiment was a mistake, a simple error caused by Charles Lindbergh ignorantly fiddling around with an unfamiliar Elucidator.”

Jordan wished he were holding almost anything in his arms besides a live baby. It would have been so satisfying to throw something at Mr. Rathbone—preferably something huge and heavy and pain-inducing. It would have been so satisfying to punch the man.

“My parents should never have been guinea pigs!” Jordan yelled. “They're
people
. So were the other adults you changed—”

Maybe Jordan was screaming too loudly. Maybe, in his fury, he'd started squeezing baby Kevin too tightly. Either way, something set the baby off, and he began to wail.

“Now you've done it,” Mr. Rathbone said, frowning.
He reached behind him to the desk and picked up something small and silver. He pressed it into baby Kevin's arm.

Instantly the baby stopped crying. His body went limp in Jordan's arms.

“Sedative,” Mr. Rathbone said. “Very useful. Should I use one on you, too?”

Jordan decided not to answer that question.

But what would it matter?
Jordan wondered.
Mr. Rathbone's probably going to kill me in a few moments anyhow.

Somehow that thought made him reckless.

“Are you going to keep Kevin sedated his whole childhood?” Jordan asked. “I don't think that's how people turn out to be geniuses. I bet he won't grow up to have any brilliant ideas for you at all.”

Mr. Rathbone narrowed his eyes.

“What made you such an expert on raising kids?” he asked.

“Watching my parents,” Jordan said. He was just trying to taunt Mr. Rathbone again, but somehow this struck him as an incredible truth. He'd just watched a repeat of his entire childhood—and Jonah's and Katherine's entire childhoods. Living through it, of course, Jordan had been just a kid. He'd taken his parents for granted. They were so ordinary. Normal. But seeing his life in reruns—while his parents' lives hung in the balance—made him realize
just how great his parents had been. How patient, how kind, how loving.

How extraordinary.

Maybe watching his and Katherine's and Jonah's childhoods a second time around had actually made him wise.

Mr. Rathbone snorted. “You and Jonah and Katherine didn't turn out to be geniuses,” he said. “None of you did.”

“But we turned out to be pretty good people,” Jordan countered. “That's what my parents were aiming for.”

He thought about his dad putting up tents in the rain at Boy Scout campouts. He thought about his mom setting the alarm to get up early to take him and Katherine to Sunday school. He thought about his parents wiping tears and tying shoes and hugging all three of their kids, again and again and again.

“Look,” Jordan said, pushing his words past a huge lump in his throat. “I know you're going to kill me. But can't you give my parents a good life? Send them back home as adults, like they're supposed to be. And you could give Jonah and Katherine back to them, and maybe you could make it so that they don't even remember that they ever had another son. . . .”

He couldn't go on talking. But this seemed like the best he could hope for.

Mr. Rathbone laughed, and the sound echoed cruelly.

“Such melodrama,” he said. “And such idiocy. You
still
don't understand anything. Look. Here's a replay of something else that happened when Kevin whispered into the Elucidator.”

He tapped the Elucidator sitting on the desk behind him, and the wall nearest Jordan lit up, turning into a floor-to-ceiling screen. On that screen Jordan saw one of the images he'd seen back in the time hollow: his parents, frozen as thirteen-year-olds. And then, as he watched, they unfroze. In the blink of an eye, they grew up. It was a little bit like watching an Incredible Hulk transformation, because as adults they were too big for Jordan's Ohio State T-shirt and Katherine's
CHEER!
sweatshirt. Seams ripped; Dad's paunch stuck out below the bottom of the T-shirt. His bony ankles stuck out at the bottom of the jeans.

But Mom and Dad looked at each other and laughed joyously. And then they hugged each other.

“Shall I go on?” Mr. Rathbone asked, his finger hovering over the Elucidator. “Shall I let them keep aging—until they're ancient and infirm and struggling with dementia and incontinence and arthritic joints? Shall I take them to the brink of death from old age?”

“No!” Jordan shouted. “Don't do that!”

He squeezed baby Kevin too tightly once again. Even sedated, the baby let out a soft whimper of complaint.

Mr. Rathbone laughed again.

“It's so easy to torture you,” he said. “It would be so much fun to keep you here, and keep showing you images that make you scream.”

Would that be better or worse than dying?
Jordan wondered.

It kind of seemed like, as long as he was alive, there was still hope that he could fix things.

“You . . . ,” Jordan began, trying to figure out how to work that out.

“Oh, stop,” Mr. Rathbone said, his voice thick with disgust. “
Think
. Remember all the revelations you witnessed back in the time hollow. Much as I would like to keep you here to torture, there are certain requirements for keeping time alive.”

Jordan looked at him blankly once again. Mr. Rathbone saying “think” and “remember” only reminded Jordan of what Kevin had said, spinning through time:
You'll figure it out if you think hard enough. . . . I really did try to help your parents. I did what I could. Everything is up to you now. Remember your promise.

How could Kevin have thought anything could still be up to Jordan? Or that it should be? Kevin was a genius. He'd figured out how to outsmart an Elucidator the first time he'd touched one. How had he failed to figure out that Mr. Rathbone was going to turn him back into a baby?

Wait—what if he did know?
Jordan wondered.
What if he couldn't stop it, but thought I would rescue him?

Jordan was so stunned at that thought that he barely noticed Mr. Rathbone easing baby Kevin out of Jordan's arms.

But now Jordan's arms were empty.

Kevin would have known not to count on me for anything,
Jordan thought.
Wouldn't he?

Mr. Rathbone held baby Kevin carelessly in one arm. The baby's head lolled awkwardly, and he seemed about to fall. Maybe Mr. Rathbone wasn't used to holding babies. Maybe he was trying to taunt Jordan that there was nothing Jordan could do.

“It's exhausting to be around someone as stupid as you,” Mr. Rathbone said, turning back toward the desk again. “But I'll be kind. I'll tell you you're actually going to get everything you wanted. Well, almost everything. Your brother saved time by melding his dimension and yours, remember?”

So Mr. Rathbone did know about the different dimensions all along,
Jordan thought.
Or—at least he does now.

How could Jordan still be so confused?

He forced himself to pay attention to what else Mr. Rathbone was saying.

“Because of the blended dimensions, I
have
to send you
and your parents and siblings back to the twenty-first century,” he added. “Just so time continues normally, and so I get to have everything I want in
my
time.”

Mr. Rathbone leaned over the Elucidator on his desk.

“Carry out the rest of my plan,” he said. “Do it—”

Remember your promise
pounded in Jordan's head.
Remember your promise.

Jordan was usually terrible at multitasking, and not much better at thinking and acting fast. He didn't know if he had time for anything. But he was going to try. With one hand he lashed out at the Elucidator on the desk, trying to knock it to the floor.

With the other he grabbed for baby Kevin.