Risked (The Missing ) (21 page)

“But—,” Katherine began.

The bearded man cut her off.

“This is
reality
,” he said. “Every action has
consequences.
Let me just show you . . . oh, I don’t know. How about scenario three thousand four hundred eighty-two? Roll it, Humphrey.”

Whoever was controlling the image at the front of the room—Humphrey?—must have followed the order, because suddenly the word “simulation” appeared across the image, and the action began to move forward. A shadowy figure appeared next to Gavin and Daniella and
clasped a hand over each of their mouths. Then the figure and both kids vanished.

“Looked fine to me,” Katherine said.

“Of course,” the bearded man said sarcastically. “Now zoom in and slo-mo it.”

The scene replayed, but this time the view was changed so that the focus was on Gavin’s right elbow. Right when the shadowy figure put his hand over Gavin’s face, Gavin’s elbow jolted out, knocking the barrel of the nearest gun sideways. In excruciatingly slow motion, the gun went off, sending a bullet up and then into the neck of a nearby guard. The image froze on that guard’s anguished face.

“So,” the bearded man said, “we kill this man in 1918—and, believe me, that
is
a fatal wound—and this is what happens during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963.”

Jonah saw a quick flash of people dying: soldiers, men in suits, women in silly-looking netted hats, children sitting at school desks, hunched over books about kids named Dick, Jane, and Sally. Hundreds of people died before Jonah’s eyes—no, thousands. Millions.

The word “simulation” stamped across all those deaths didn’t exactly make Jonah feel any better.

“That’s only one scenario,” Katherine said, and Jonah could tell that she was trying to hide the tremble in her voice. “One out of—what was that number? Three thousand
something? I bet, from that many possibilities, there’s got to be at least one or two where nothing bad happens.”

“The problem is, in the original setup, you just can’t tell for sure what is going to lead to disaster and what is going to be fine,” a kinder-looking man explained from the opposite side of the room. “Things were so dicey in 1918 that everything’s a huge risk. We’d have to have a very experienced time agent on the ground, guiding the events. We’ve run the projections thousands of ways, and there’s just too much of a disruption, because of the time it would take any of us to get Chip and the others to see us and trust us and leave with us. . . .”

“Then what if you just send Jonah and me back?” Katherine asked.

“What? You think
children
can fix this problem
?
” the bearded, sarcastic man exploded.

Jonah heard others gasping and exclaiming, but the noise seemed to come from far away. He was mostly just aware of his own heart, pounding dangerously hard. He had to press his hand against his head just to keep himself sitting up.

Hope nobody’s looking at me,
he thought.
Hope they’re all just listening to Katherine.

She was still arguing. Jonah forced himself to focus on her words.

“Chip and Daniella and Gavin already trust us,” she was saying. “And Leonid and Maria at least met us already, and they could tell the rest of the Romanovs—”

“You want to see what happens if we send you and your brother?” This was the bearded man again. He seemed to have dialed up his sarcasm to its highest level. “Fine. Go sit down and we’ll set up the projection.”

Jonah hoped that he was the only one who could see that Katherine was shaking as she returned to the chair between Jonah and JB.

Or maybe the problem was that Jonah’s vision was still a little messed up?

“Katherine,” he whispered to his sister. “I’m not sure that I—”

“Shh. It’s starting,” Katherine whispered back.

This time the simulation in front of them showed Jonah and Katherine suddenly appearing beside Gavin and Daniella. The Jonah figure collapsed to the floor as soon as he landed, and a pool of red blood circled his body. The Katherine figure turned and began screaming. Just at that sound—even though Jonah and Katherine were invisible, even though they were hidden in the smoke anyway—the guards pointed their guns in their direction and began shooting.

The image froze and faded into black.

“Surely you don’t want to see more,” the bearded man said.

“Maybe you should show us a projection where you don’t put me in the path of a bullet in the first second,” Jonah said angrily.

He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach. It really wouldn’t help his argument if he fainted or threw up right now.

“My dear boy,” the bearded man said, as if he were talking down to a toddler. “We stopped that
before
any bullets struck you. All that blood? That’s just from the injuries you already have, reopened by the strain of time travel.”

The injuries I already have are that bad?
Jonah thought. And then he couldn’t focus on anything anymore, because he was too busy telling himself,
Don’t vomit. Don’t faint. Please, don’t let them see how awful I feel. . . .

“Then wait until Jonah heals,” Katherine argued.

“He can’t heal as long as he’s in this time hollow,” the bearded man answered. “He’d have to go back into regular time for that. And none of us can leave this time hollow until we have a decision.”

Jonah was ashamed of the relief that flowed through him. But Katherine scraped back her chair and stood up and kept arguing.

“All right then,” she said. “Show what happens if you send me all by myself.”

Jonah peered at his sister in dismay.

No, no . . . That wouldn’t be safe. . . .

He tried to catch Katherine’s eye, to get her to understand without him having to say anything. But she had her chin held high and all her attention focused on staring defiantly at the bearded man.

“Very well,” the bearded man said. “Humphrey?”

He looked up, possibly toward someone at a control panel at the back of the room. Jonah turned around just in time to see a young woman shaking her head at the bearded man.

“No—you know what? Forget that,” the bearded man said. “That would just be ridiculous. Young lady, of course we appreciate your concern, but truly, you must leave this matter to the grown-ups. I don’t even know why JB brought the two of you here.”

Jonah noticed that all the grown-ups in the room, including JB, instantly dug into their pockets and pulled out Elucidators. Even as the life-size frozen image of the 1918 cellar reappeared at the front of the room, all the grown-ups peered intently down at their miniature screens. JB seemed to have to poke at his Elucidator a little longer than the others—
turning off the triple security coding?
Jonah wondered. JB didn’t seem to have time to turn the security back on, because mere seconds later he and all
the other adults were looking back up, their expressions a mixture of thoughtfulness and worry and . . .

Hope?
Jonah thought.
Is there any reason why any of them should be feeling hope right now?

What was going on?

“My apologies,” JB said, standing up to address the bearded man. “Of course there’s no reason to run a projection with just Katherine going. It’d be too dangerous. She’d have to carry a modern, fully functioning Elucidator, and in such a dicey situation, that’s directly prohibited by about fifty different regulations. And she’d have to leave it on voice-command mode—again, totally forbidden under the circumstances. And she’d have to get in and out in the thirty seconds before damaged time resumes. And of course she’d have to be prepared for the possibility that her presence would short out some of our controls, and the likely result would be that all the Romanovs would become visible once more. . . .”

“I’m glad you’re actually being sensible for once,” the bearded man said.

Jonah turned to glare at JB—what a traitor! Jonah didn’t want Katherine going back to 1918 by herself either, but he hated how all the time agents acted like he and Katherine were incompetent just because they were kids.

JB wasn’t looking toward Jonah, so the glare was
pointless. JB seemed to be concentrating very hard on taking his seat again, aligning the legs of the chair very precisely with the table in front of him. Evidently this was a harder process than JB had expected, because he moved the chair, gave a frustrated sigh, and then put his Elucidator down on the table so he could use both hands to pull the chair into place.

As soon as JB let go of the Elucidator, Katherine snatched it up.

“Voice commands!” she screamed. “Take me back to 1918! Take me there!”

She pointed to the frozen image at the front of the room.

A split second later Katherine was gone.

Instantly Katherine reappeared in the scene at the front of the room.

“No!” Jonah screamed.

He frantically looked around, desperate to find somebody else’s Elucidator so he could go rescue his sister. But the nearest Elucidator had just disappeared into an old man’s pocket three seats away.

In his current condition, it would take Jonah more than thirty seconds just to get over to that old man.

He whipped his head back to the scene at the front of the room.

As far as Jonah could tell, no bullets had hit Katherine yet.

“If you want to live, grab on to me!” Katherine screamed.

Then she dived down to the floor, flattening her body
against the wood planks. Chip and Leonid hit the floor beside her, each of them clutching Katherine’s shirt. It took Jonah a moment to realize that Chip had pulled Daniella along with him, and that Leonid had a grip on Maria’s hand.

Numbers appeared at the bottom of the projected scene: a countdown.

18 . . .

17 . . .

16 . . .

“Don’t wait too long!” Jonah screamed at the screen before him, as though Katherine could actually hear him. “Get the others and go!”

Gavin, who was still over by all the guards, had whirled around at the sound of Katherine’s voice. But he hesitated.

“Mama!” he screamed. “Papa! Olga! Tatiana! Come with us!”

Daniella and Maria were yelling the same things. But either the other Romanovs failed to hear the three teenagers, or they were too terrified and confused—or already too close to death—to respond. Nobody stepped out of the smoke. But their forms seemed strangely solid in the midst of all the smoke.

All the Romanovs and their servants lost their invisibility, just like JB predicted,
Jonah realized, a jolt of terror striking his heart.

His terror magnified: Chip and Katherine were fully visible too.

But—the smoke,
Jonah told himself.
Surely the smoke will still hide them from the guards. And they won’t be there long. . . .

“Gavin, hurry!” Katherine screamed. “We only have ten seconds!”

No, nine,
Jonah thought.

8 . . .

7 . . .

6 . . .

“Katherine, get out of there!” Jonah yelled.

All the dignified grown-ups around him were yelling too.

Gavin stood frozen on the screen, so still that Jonah wondered if time had stopped again. His face was a study in agony and indecision. Then he turned his head and saw the guards.

Four of them, at the sound of Katherine’s voice, had pointed their guns in her direction. Whether they could see her through the smoke or not, all four of them were pulling their triggers.

“No! Don’t shoot her!” Gavin screamed.

He threw himself in front of the guns.

He landed on the floor, sprawled between the guards and the other kids. Jonah couldn’t tell if Gavin had fallen
because he’d been shot or if that was just the natural end to his dive.

Of course he was shot,
Jonah told himself.
He was standing in front of four guns, and all four of them were going off.

The countdown on the screen continued.

3 . . .

2 . . .

1 . . .

Leonid laid his hand comfortingly on Gavin’s shoulder.

And then the whole pile of downed children vanished from the screen.

They reappeared almost instantaneously in a heap at the front of the room.

Maria and Leonid were the first to sit up and pull away. They were completely disheveled, their clothing torn, their faces dirty, their hair sticking out at odd angles. But except for a few random cuts and scrapes, they didn’t seem to be injured.

They stared around in awe and confusion, their jaws dropped, their eyes wide with wonder.

The bearded man stood behind them and patted their shoulders.

“You’re safe now,” he assured them. “No one will shoot you here.”

Daniella scrambled up beside them. One sleeve of her dress hung in tatters from her shoulder, and she had a smear of dirt or ash on her face that ran from her forehead down to her jaw. But she also looked like she hadn’t been hurt.

Physically, anyway.

As soon as she stood up, she began looking around and screaming, “Papa? Mama? Tatiana? Olga?”

She evidently caught a glimpse of the wall behind her, still playing out the scene from the cellar room in 1918. It was hard to see past the haze of dying smoke, but it appeared that the guards had stopped shooting and shooting and shooting.

Now they were moving in with bayonets.

Like before,
Jonah thought in horror.
Like what we saw playing out with tracers. When the tracer guards made sure that all the tracer Romanovs and their tracer servants were really and truly dead. Only this time we’re watching it happen for real.

Jonah couldn’t be sure how much Daniella had seen or understood of the tracers’ movements before. Maybe she’d understood only what would have happened to Anastasia.

But she clearly understood everything she was seeing now.

“No!” she screamed. “No! Not my family! Save them! I’ve got to go back for the rest of them!”

She looked frantically around, her eyes lighting on Katherine, who was still lying on the floor. She dived toward Katherine, screaming, “Give me that Elucidator! Does this one look like a toy soldier too? Take me back! Take us all back!”