Mr. Hudson rushed at Captain Vincent, who whisked himself away again, holding on to Belamie’s tapestry. He reappeared right in front of Mr. Hudson, punched a fist inside his stomach, and yanked out his time tapestry. Both Belamie and Matthew were paralyzed.
Then everything happened at once. Ruby raced at Captain Vincent with her sword. “Let them go!” she shouted. She stabbed her sword at him, aiming for the heart.
At the same time Corey picked up one of Brocco’s guns. “Get away from my parents!” he shouted, and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the captain square in the chest at the same time Ruby’s sword pierced his heart, or where his heart should have been. Neither the gun nor sword had any effect. The captain whirled like a tornado, taking Matthew and Belamie with him, spinning into both Ruby and Corey. He yanked both of their time tapestries out of their heads so they hung like dolls from his hands.
Captain Vincent didn’t stop. He was on a rolling rage. He tore through the rest, ripping out time tapestries right and left. He yanked Uncle Chuck’s from his beard. He took Jia’s from her back, and Gaga’s and Haha’s. He even took Albert’s and Brocco’s and Wiley’s. He took them all, yanked and pulled and twisted them all together.
Matt watched all this in a trance. He couldn’t seem to move. He stared at his parents, his brother and sister, Jia, Uncle Chuck, Gaga, and Haha, who was frozen with the dagger still in his ribs, the blood now soaking most of his shirt. All their time tapestries flowed out of them, ghostly shadows and images floating inside the shimmering fabric. It looked so fragile, so tenuous, and all Matt could think was how could anyone expect to hold on to anything in this world when it was so easily broken, when everything you loved could just be ripped away from you in an instant?
Captain Vincent turned to Matt, his hands full of the time tapestries. Before Matt could so much as blink, the captain whirled right to him.
“Don’t worry, Marius,” the captain said. “It will all work out in the end.” He plunged his hand between Matt’s ribs and tore out his time tapestry.
It felt like he was ripping Matt’s lungs right out of his chest. All the air was knocked out of him. His life literally flashed before his eyes, every moment, every joy and pain, all the way to the very end. Because this was the end. He could feel it.
The captain wrenched all the time tapestries. He twisted them together and wrapped them around a pile of dynamite.
“Goodbye, Hudsons,” Captain Vincent said as he struck a match and lowered the flame to the wick of the dynamite. It sputtered and caught.
Just then Marta came running with a wriggling mass of white fur in her hands. “Råtta!” she said excitedly.
It was Santiago. That was the other time tapestry Matt had pulled through with him. The captain must have gotten rid of him for some reason. Or he tried to. Santiago squirmed in Marta’s grasp until he noticed Captain Vincent, and then he stilled. He focused his glowing red eyes on the captain and hissed. He leaped from Marta’s grasp and flew at the captain, startling him just enough so his hold on Matt’s time tapestry slipped. It spun back into him. He took a huge gasping breath, filling his lungs, just as the flame reached the end of the wick.
Matt only had a split second to dissolve himself.
Boom!
Searing heat rushed at Matt. His cells scattered and whirled in currents of energy. He felt everything unraveling, disintegrating, including himself. It was all falling apart. His family, himself, the world.
He tried to pull himself together, but he couldn’t. He was too weak. All his strength, the energy of every cell, was sapped.
He was fading. He was starting to lose consciousness, and he knew once he did, it would be over.
Don’t let go!
But what did he have to hold on to? He felt those around him, the other threads he’d unraveled with. His family. Corey and Ruby, especially. They were always there. He felt their beings, all their threads and cells weave in and out of his own, creating links and loops within him and between them. He felt it go on and on, this eternal chain, outside of time, beyond space, more substantial than matter. They pushed and pulled him together. At every point they were there. He could not hold himself together on his own, but they could.
And he suddenly knew what he had to do.
Don’t let go!
It wasn’t just about holding on to each other in the moment. They had to hold on for always. Forever. They had to stick together in the past, present, and future. A triangle in time. Matt, Corey, and Ruby, the three of them together.
Matt traveled through his own time tapestry. He sped through his future, touching down from time to time to gather his army. It didn’t take much. It was a domino effect. Once he got it started it just kept going. If he told one, then he told them all, and he knew they would all come because if they didn’t, they might cease to exist.
Matt traveled back to the Lost City. With the very dregs of his remaining strength, he pulled himself back together. His feet hit solid ground. He felt his lungs expand, his heart pumping blood.
He made it. He was back. Alive. But he was alone. Everyone was gone. There was no Corey or Ruby or any of his family. There was no Jia or Marta. No Brocco or Wiley or Albert, not even Santiago. There was only Captain Vincent. He stood in the center of the torn, ruined city.
“So,” Captain Vincent said. “It’s just us now.”
Matt’s hope vanished. He must have missed something, done something wrong. It hadn’t worked.
Crack!
“Ah! Stupid bushy plants!” Someone stumbled out of the brush in the nearby jungle, cursing the plants. They turned and jogged toward them. “Hi! Sorry if I’m late.” It was Corey. But different. He was slightly older, Matt thought, maybe by a few years. He was taller, a little more gangly, and he had braces. He looked around and frowned at the empty space. “Oh, dang. Am I the first one here? That’s lame. Now I have to wait for everyone.”
“Heaven forbid,” said another voice, “you should have to wait every now and then, as if the rest of us haven’t had to wait for you basically your entire life.” It was Ruby. She appeared out of thin air right next to Corey. She also looked older, even older than the older Corey, like early twenties. She had her hair pulled up in a messy bun. She was wearing stretch pants and a tank top, like she’d just come from yoga class.
Another Ruby appeared behind the first, looking more or less the same as the Ruby Matt knew, only different clothing, her hair in a braid. And then another Ruby came, and another and another, each of them at varying ages and fashions. There was Ruby with blue streaks in her hair and heavy eyeliner, Ruby in jogging clothes, Ruby with a sword at her side, Ruby wearing a suit and glasses, Ruby dressed up fancy like she was going to the prom. All of them were different, and yet they were all Ruby.
More Coreys appeared, too, though most of them after Ruby. His sense of fashion didn’t change much. He almost always wore a T-shirt and jeans and kept his hair long and shaggy. One version of him was even sporting a ponytail.
And then Matt saw himself. He appeared again and again, but instead of any random order, each version of himself seemed to appear in an orderly ascension, each Matt a little older than the last. He watched the evolution of his own life like watching a plant grow in fast motion. He got a little taller (though not as tall as he hoped), a little broader, then older and gray and shorter again.
“Hello,” said one of the older Matts. “Good to see you all again. Always a pleasure. Ah, and Captain Vincent! Look at you! You never change. Exactly the same after all these years. Please, won’t you share your secret? If I could bottle that up, I’d make a fortune!”
Captain Vincent just stared at the bizarre sight, completely stunned.
It had worked. They were all here, a version of themselves each year in the future. It was like a bizarre future family reunion.
“Dude,” said a wiry ponytailed teenage Corey to a middle-aged version who was a little more rotund. “What did you do to me?”
“Do
n’t judge, dude. You will be this before you know it.”
An older Corey with thinning hair and glasses shook his head. “Don’t worry. It’s only a phase. You’ll get yourself together eventually.”
“Oh, joy, look at all I have to look forward to,” said the youngest Corey, the one Matt knew best.
The earth started to rumble. Matt could feel the ground start to shake.
“Can we get this over with?” said the Ruby in the suit and glasses. She looked sharp and professional. “I have a meeting I can’t miss.”
The teenage Ruby wearing heavy makeup and blue streaks in her hair rolled her eyes. “Seriously, did you forget we’re, like, trying to save ourselves here?”
“We’ll have you back in time,” said an older Matt wearing a hoodie and glasses, his hair a mess. Clearly, hygiene was not his top priority at this point in his life. Matt felt that familiar buzz in his chest as he spoke.
More and more of them came. Twenty, thirty, forty Matts, Coreys, and Rubys. The wind picked up. The rain lashed down. Lightning cracked across the sky like a whip. And still they kept coming, growing older and older, until they were stooped and gray and looked like they were a minute from death. But still more kept coming. Not Matt, Corey, and Ruby, but there were more children, more teenagers, more adults in all stages, and he realized this must be the future generations of the Hudsons. These were their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. They went on and on, seemingly forever. Matt thought it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen or would ever see for his entire life.
The earth shuddered and groaned. Lightning flashed, illuminating the Lost City and the surrounding jungle. It was all shifting, breaking apart. The terraces rose and fell and then rose again, and the hills and mountains in the distance rolled like tsunami waves in a hurricane, crashing down, swallowing the jungle.
All the Coreys and Rubys and Matts circled one another, weaving in and out of each other. They spread around the city, shifting with the time storm as they surrounded Captain Vincent. The rain lashed against their faces. The earth shifted and groaned, and the wind blew in powerful gusts, enough to pick up Blossom and the Vermillion and send them careening into the raging jungle. But Matt and the rest remained steady. They moved with the storm. They were the storm.
Captain Vincent turned all around. He didn’t seem to comprehend what was happening. The ground split beneath him, and he stumbled and fell to his knees.
“You wanted immortality,” Matt said. “You wanted the powers of eternity, to rule the world, but you misunderstood the true key to unlock those powers. Eternity is not a power that can be held by just one person. Eternity is holding on to someone. Eternity is family. Eternity is friends. It’s connection. It’s sacrifice. It’s love. We will go on forever, because we have each other. You are the weak one. Because you’re alone, and no matter what you do, you can’t rip us apart. We refuse to let go.”
Matt clasped hands with Corey and Ruby on either side of him, and they clasped hands with those next to them, and on and on. All the Matts, Coreys, and Rubys held on to each other, forming one giant triangle around Captain Vincent.
Matt felt a buzz run through him like an electric current. It rushed through every part of his body, every vein and cell, and it continued to Corey and Ruby on either side of him, and on and on.
The three of them weren’t just supposed to fix the lock. They were the lock. And in order to fix the lock, they needed to break time. They had to make one giant glitch.
The earth began to spin. Matt trembled as the current grew stronger. They were all shaking. Matt wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on. He felt as though bolts of lightning were flashing through his body. But he knew they must not let go. Not yet. He doubled down. He squeezed Corey’s and Ruby’s hands.
“Don’t let go!” he shouted. “Hold on!”
Corey and Ruby squeezed him back. They held on as though they were melded together. The current running between them grew stronger, hotter. It burned inside his very bones, but Matt held on. His grip was ironclad. The world would fall apart before he let go.
And it did. The whole universe seemed to crack and implode on itself.
The sky ripped open, and stars fell from the heavens. They shot toward the Lost City in hot-blue streaks. But they weren’t stars, Matt realized. They were time tapestries. They came tumbling through the air, falling in gauzy, iridescent streams, and when they hit the earth they flashed and formed into people.
First came their parents, the young Belamie Bonnaire and Matthew Hudson.
“Oh!” Belamie said. “What’s happening?”
More time tapestries fell from the sky. There was Uncle Chuck, and Gaga, and Haha, still wounded and bleeding, but still alive.
Jia appeared, and Marta carrying a wriggling Santiago. Brocco, Wiley, and Albert came too. A time tapestry touched down on the high terrace of the city, and the Eiffel Tower bloomed into being. On the opposite terrace appeared the giant Ferris wheel from the Chicago World’s Fair. Someone hopped out of one of the rotating carriages. It was Annie Oakley, rifle in arms. She ran toward them.
“I’m coming, Captain!” she shouted.
Another time tapestry fell and Queen Elizabeth I of England appeared, wearing a golden gown, her red hair blazing in fiery waves all around her. She looked younger than when Matt had seen her.
“Elizabeth!” Belamie shouted.
“I warned you that man was no good,” she said, pointing her scepter at Vincent.
“I know!” Belamie said. “You were right all along! I should have listened to you!”
Another time tapestry touched down and another woman appeared. She was bundled in furs, a spear in hand. It was Tui, come back from the Ice Age.
“Rubbana!” Tui shouted. “I’m sorry, Rubbana! I shouldn’t have betrayed you! I was wrong. So wrong.”
More and more time tapestries fell, almost, it seemed, as many as there were stars. The Brooklyn Bridge appeared in the jungle beyond, an army marching across with shields and swords and spears. Next to the bridge appeared the golden Padmanabhaswamy Temple from India, and next to it a castle that looked straight out of a fairy tale. There was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Napoleon Bonaparte stood on its steps with his legion of soldiers.
“Le château est à moi!” he shouted.
And the Kangxi emperor appeared in his golden robes. He was holding on to a telescope.
“Father!” Jia called as she ran to him. He held his hand out to her.
The Louvre appeared next to the Met, and then a painting flowed out of one of the time tapestries. The Mona Lisa. A small man appeared. He wore a white coat and had a thin dark mustache. The Italian thief Vincenzo Peruggia! He grabbed the Mona Lisa and shouted, “Per l’Italia!”
A herd of woolly mammoths came charging through the city, followed by a roaring T. rex.
Last to come was a kitchen sink. It fell from the sky right before Captain Vincent in the midst of the human triangle with a resounding crack. The faucet was miraculously running. The sink filled up and overflowed, and then it was like a dam broke and the water gushed faster and faster. It pooled around Matt’s feet and ankles, soaking his sneakers and pants. A whirlpool formed around Captain Vincent. It grew bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper, and it began to pull at Captain Vincent, sucking him down with it.
“I’ll save you, Captain!” Brocco shouted. He ran to the captain, but before he could reach him, Annie aimed her rifle and shot him in the foot.
“Ooh!” he said, hopping around. “You little demon woman! I’ll blow your head off!” He reached for his own guns, then remembered that he’d dropped them. He backed away from the captain, away from Annie Oakley and her rifle.
The whirlpool spun faster. It was up to the captain’s waist now. He fought against it, grasping for anything that could save him. “You think you can trap me, defeat me?” Captain Vincent snarled at all the Matts, Rubys, and Coreys before him. “I have the Aeternum! I can
go anywhere, anytime. I can destroy all of you. I can change anything.”
“You can’t change yourself,” Matt said. “With the Aeternum, you will be the same forever and ever.”
“You’ll never change,” Ruby said, “and so you belong in a place that also never changes.”
“A place that goes on forever,” Corey added. “I like to call it Nowhere in No Time.”
Real fear came across the captain’s face now as the force of Nowhere in No Time continued to pull him in. He couldn’t resist it.
Matt felt a jolt like nothing he’d ever felt before, like a bolt of lightning shooting through every cell in his body, and he knew it was time.
“Let go now!” Matt shouted. He pulled his hands away from Corey and Ruby, and the universe seemed to snap back into place.
Captain Vincent roared like a wild beast as the vortex pulled him down and closed over his head.
The storm still raged, and others began to disappear. One by one, all the future Matts, Coreys, and Rubys left, sucked away into their own time tapestries, back to whatever time and place they’d come from. All the people and everything that had appeared now began to disappear. Queen Elizabeth, Tui, and Vincenzo Peruggia, holding the Mona Lisa. They folded back into their time tapestries and shot back into the sky.
“Father!” Jia cried, reaching for the emperor as his time tapestry wrapped around him and carried him off.
The Eiffel Tower went, and the Ferris wheel, taking Annie Oakley with it. The Louvre and the Met and the Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Brocco went, too, though clearly not willingly. He tried to pull off his own time tapestry as it wrapped around him. Albert shouted with terror as he was picked up off the ground, his time tapestry wrapping around his legs. Wiley caught him and held on to him.
“I got you,” he said. “Just hold on to me. We’ll be okay.” Their time tapestries intertwined and disappeared together.
Blossom suddenly came charging through the air, revving its engine. The Vermillion charged forward as well. Both vehicles spun around each other like boxers in the fighting ring. They shifted again and again, into ships, cars, buses, trains, and airplanes, each circling the other faster and faster, until Matt lost track of which was the Vermillion and which was Blossom. A small blur ran toward the two battling vehicles.
The Forbidden Lock Page 31