by Morris, Chad
• • •
Abby stared at Dr. Mackleprank approaching the console of the Bridge. It had only taken him moments to throttle her to the ground and overtake Carol. Now Abby was tied up on the floor. Mackleprank had used Abby’s father’s belt to harness her. After he made Carol put the keys back and twist them again, Carol joined her.
Mackleprank stepped across the middle of the room into the Sahara Desert hundreds of years ago. Several of the soldiers gasped and even shouted, triggering their guns. Abby couldn’t blame them. It must very strange to suddenly see someone step into your reality out of nowhere. After a gesture from Mackleprank indicating where they could enter, the men crossed from the desert in the past and flooded into the basement of Cragbridge Hall. Muns had an army right where he wanted them.
“I need two of you to stay here,” Mackleprank commanded, selecting two of the soldiers. “The rest of you have several more soldiers to rescue in cells in the basement. I have sent you the coordinates. Use whatever means necessary to free them. Arm them and give them more instructions. I’ve also sent you information about teachers I suspect have keys for you to capture and bring back. I believe most of them keep them on their person. I’ve sent you each files showing you who they are and where their quarters are.”
No! He knew about members of the other council. With an ability to use various avatars to spy, there was no telling how many he had discovered.
“Bring the teachers back here as soon as you can,” Mackleprank said.
“But we had a different rendezvous point,” one of the soldiers objected.
“Yes, we did,” Mackleprank said. “But I have discovered something. We will no longer have to fight our way out of here. I will explain later.”
What had he discovered? What was their way out?
“But your first worry is that outside this door are two avatar gorillas,” Mackleprank explained. “Be ready for them. You will take them by surprise, but after that, they will be a force to reckon with. Though it is always a shame to damage such brilliant inventions, you may need to destroy them. They will likely be the only force you face. Any security above will be something you can easily handle with your extensive training.”
Mackleprank used one of the keys to open the massive door. Covering one another, eight soldiers ran out of the room. Abby prayed that somehow Derick and Rafa could defeat them, but with the soldiers’ weapons, it didn’t seem likely. Abby waited to hear guns firing and gorilla grunts, but she never did.
“The gorillas are here, but no one is in them,” a soldier called back.
Abby felt dizzy. That was their only chance to stop the men—the soldiers who were going to hunt down the other teachers. Where were Derick and Rafa? Had they received her message?
Mackleprank thought for a moment. “It looks like they decided to run. Smart boys.” He called to the soldiers in the hallway. “Act quickly in case they have raised the alarm with anyone.”
He turned to the last two soldiers. “As for you two, we need to deliver the keys we already have to Muns. That is our first priority.” Mackleprank reached his hand into his pocket and after a few seconds of jingling pulled it out again. Abby counted in her head, figuring out how many keys Mackleprank had: Grandpa’s, Mom’s and Dad’s, the two coaches’, the Trinhouses’, and hers—eight. Not only would that give Muns more than enough to start changing history without having to store up energy bursts, but if they grabbed more keys from the other teachers, then it was over. The only other key she knew about was Derick’s—and one key could not operate the Bridge. As far as Abby knew, there would be no more ways to stop Muns. He would have them trapped—checkmate.
31
Capybara
Derick looked down at his avatar—definitely not what he expected. Stubby legs and a thick middle. He caught his reflection in a sheet of metal leaning up against the wall. He looked like a giant chunky squirrel with no tail.
He heard a quiet laugh. Not in the room somewhere in Brazil, but in the avatar lab at Cragbridge Hall.
“A capybara,” Rafa said. “Looks like my mom has spent some time making the largest rodent in the world.”
They needed to go face a group of elite warriors and Derick was a rodent. He was probably just under four feet long and two feet tall, but he was still a rodent. How come Rafa’s mother couldn’t have been working on a mountain lion or an elephant? Heck, he would even have taken a giraffe.
Derick looked up at Rafa. He was in some sort of human avatar, but it wasn’t finished. It didn’t have a shirt, and metal plating and even a databoard were exposed on portions of its face and chest. They stood in a dimly lit room. It was long and rounded on the corner—maybe a trailer. A few rows of avatars stood in the room. At a glance Derick saw a tiger, a frog, two birds, a large beetle, and a crocodile.
Derick moved over toward a door, his large paws scuffling over the hard floor.
“Shhhhh,” Rafa whispered. “I think we’re in some sort of trailer. But there could be soldiers anywhere around here. I’d guard it right outside.”
“What do we do?” Derick asked.
“We’ll have to check it out.”
“Can I change into something better first?” Derick asked, moving again to see what other avatars were in the room.
“We both might want to,” Rafa said. “Look around. With the codes I passed on to you, we should be able to access any of it. It just may take a few tries to figure out which is which. “
That was what Derick wanted to hear. He looked over at the crocodile. He could control that, right?
The lock on the door twisted. That was not what Derick wanted to hear. He whirled around to see someone crack open the door. The enemy had heard them.
• • •
Mackleprank turned back to the two soldiers in the room. “I have discovered that there is a way to use the Bridge to travel through the present.”
Oh no.
“Through a little spying,” Mackleprank said as he approached Grandpa. He pressed Grandpa’s thumb at the bottom of the Cragbridge Hall insignia on Grandpa’s blazer. The insignia shifted forward, showing a secret compartment behind. Mackleprank pulled out a small sphere. No wonder Grandpa wore his blazer all the time; it kept his sphere. “I discovered that with this disc one can see the recent past or even the present. I watched as Oscar Cragbridge used it to find out where Muns had sent his men in the Hindenburg.” He then plucked two more spheres from Abby’s parents.
Mackleprank put three keys in the console and then selected the three arms to collect the spheres. A soldier helped him twist the keys.
“This is bad. So bad. So very, very, very bad,” Carol mumbled.
Mackleprank moved quickly to select his place. The other half of the room changed. It became a study with screens covering the walls, a few desks, and a variety of gadgets on top of the desks. There was a chess set on the corner of the largest desk, and Charles Muns sat behind it. Two guards flanked him. Abby hated the sight of him. He had masterminded this whole thing and was going to win—he was going to be able to play with history as he saw fit. This could be the moment that changed the world’s future from its potential to its destruction.
Mackleprank instructed a soldier to watch the keys and then approached the threshold from the basement to Muns’s study. Abby held her breath. This was it. There was little hope left. Unless someone could come crashing in right now, Muns probably would win this war; he would get everything he wanted.
No one came crashing in.
Mackleprank stepped into Muns’s study.
The two men beside Muns quickly engaged their guns, which slid out of their sleeves and lined up with their index fingers. They were fast on the draw. It took less than a second.
“Stand down,” Muns commanded his guards, a huge grin passing over his face. He looked at Mackleprank. “You have done well, so marvelously well. I knew you could discover who had the keys and where they kept them. And you confirmed my suspicions that the Bridge can also
be used in the present. Splendid.”
The Bridge started to shake under the pressure of entering into somewhere else in the present. It hadn’t taken long at all.
Mackleprank reached out and dropped the keys into Muns’s palm.
The Bridge rattled stronger.
“You will have all that I promised,” Muns said. “And more.”
The Bridge shook violently, as if a mini-earthquake had hit just the one spot in the basement of Cragbridge Hall. She expected it to blow apart at any moment.
Mackleprank simply nodded and stepped back into the basement, quickly signaling for the soldier to twist the keys back.
It took several seconds for the Bridge to stop its quaking. As she watched it settle, Abby realized that three keys still rested in the console. Mackleprank had to leave three keys in this Bridge, using them to cross over to Muns’s office. Maybe Abby could somehow get those keys back—maybe there was hope.
“I’m glad the Bridge could take the stress,” Dr. Mackleprank said. “We still need to transfer one more group of keys and the rest of you. After that I can stay behind in this avatar to make sure the Bridge rattles itself into oblivion and then destroy the three remaining keys.”
• • •
As soon as the man in the jungle camouflage saw him, Derick did the only thing he knew how to do; he raced forward. Of course, in a large rodent it didn’t quite feel as much like racing as he would have hoped.
“What the—?” the man cried out. Another soldier was soon by his side. Guns rose out of their sleeves and aligned with their pointer fingers. They fired at Derick, who quickly decided to try to weave through the trailer to avoid getting shot. Because the men were distracted by Derick’s capybara, it took them a moment to see the unfinished human avatar sprinting toward them. A moment was all Rafa needed. He grabbed one man and threw him against the wall. With a follow-up strike, the man was soon unconscious on the floor.
While Rafa attacked, Derick rounded toward the enemy. He got there in time to crash into the other soldier’s legs and let out a strange squeal. Rafa whirled over and kicked the man to the ground. He was out cold.
Yells echoed in another trailer.
“We need to find my mom, but there are more men coming,” Rafa said. He looked down at the men on the ground. “And these ones might not stay down long. We are outnumbered and outgunned.”
They couldn’t hide, and they couldn’t waste any time. At any moment one of these soldiers could alert Mackleprank they were coming. They were desperate. They needed something now. “Bayonets,” Derick said, remembering his desperate charge on the enemy in the Civil War.
“What?” Rafa asked.
“Remind me to tell you the story sometime,” Derick said, back in the lab at Cragbridge Hall. “But we charge them. I really wish I had time to change avatars, but we need to go now—take them by surprise.” He barked and started running through the jungle floor toward the nearest trailer. Rafa came right behind him.
Half a dozen men filed out of a trailer in time for Derick to jump and ram one right in the torso, sending him sprawling into another. They were definitely surprised. Rafa was on another two.
One man kicked Derick, sending him rolling several feet. That was sure to hurt. Nothing like kicking a mound of metal. Derick rolled over and rushed back to meet the soldiers. He scurried and dove the best he could, trying to knock them to the ground, trip them, or at least bite their toes. But—aagh! He felt a bullet enter into his back thigh. Then another in a shoulder, and another. His pathetic squeals were louder and uncontrolled now. A large rodent versus armed men didn’t have much of a chance. He tried to find cover, but he was too far away from the trees. Each bullet stung, feeling like a hot iron ramming into his flesh.
Derick bit another soldier on the shin, bringing a shout from his victim. Then he felt a huge pain between his shoulders and he was suddenly back in the avatar lab. The capybara must be completely out of order. The rodent had been exterminated.
Derick had failed—again.
• • •
Could this get any more hopeless? Abby’s heart raced, fear pounding it faster and faster. She couldn’t think of anything they could do.
“And now, Abby,” Mackleprank said. “It is time to pay you some attention.”
“I don’t think she wants any,” Carol said.
Mackleprank only sneered. He removed the spheres and put them in his pocket. Then he had a guard help him twist the keys again to show a massive blimp gliding through the sky. A sky that was now the other half of the basement of Cragbridge Hall. If someone slipped at the edge of the divide in time, they could fall to their doom.
Mackleprank brought the perspective of the Bridge to a space just outside the baggage area, where the two imposters inside the Hindenburg waited.
“I thought they were going to try to change history,” Abby said.
“No,” Mackleprank said. “That isn’t their job today.” He stepped into the past and invited the intruders into the basement. Now there was Mackleprank and four soldiers. His army was increasing.
“You see,” Mackleprank explained, “Muns wanted to change this event and other tragedies in history, but your grandfather would not allow it. Muns would like him to learn a lesson.” The avatar of the zoology teacher shifted the perspective of the Bridge ahead slightly, into the baggage storeroom. He then crossed the basement, lifted Grandpa over his shoulder, and approached the divide in time.
“No!” Abby cried out. He was going to put Grandpa on the blimp that burst into flames and fell over thirty stories.
“You had your chance, Abby. Your grandfather didn’t change this history, now he gets to experience it. Fitting, isn’t it?” He crossed time and set Grandpa on top of a steamer trunk.
Fitting. The word echoed in Abby’s mind as she stared at the terrible scene.
“Muns has enough keys and no longer needs your grandfather.” Then Mackleprank, with his strong robot arms, picked up Abby’s father with one arm and Abby’s mother with the other.
Abby screamed.
“And your parents failed to produce the result Muns wanted when they were last back in time.”
Mackleprank took several steps toward the past then turned. “You can probably guess the drill, Abby. You are now in the same situation your grandpa was at the beginning of the semester. Again, it is very fitting. And you can either change the past or watch them die.”
He continued, “I will allow you to use the keys only to stop the entire dirigible from sinking,” Mackleprank said. “You can warn the crew. You can urge them to not circle around before docking, allowing the passengers to get off. There may even be some ways of stopping the explosion itself. But you must change it. If at any moment you try to simply remove your grandpa and parents, we will turn the keys from this side and leave you stranded in the past on a blimp that will go up in flames.”
Abby couldn’t breathe. She had to fix this.
32
Relay
Dumb giant squirrel thing. Dumb guards who invaded and took over this avatar station. Dumb Muns. Derick pounded the ground of the avatar lab.
Wait. A smile crept over Derick’s face as a realization flashed in his mind—this could be like the avatar relay. He could keep going back in other avatars. He searched through the names and couldn’t do anything more than pick another one at random.
He opened his eyes and looked down. Please be something more ferocious than a rodent.
Spots. Oh, he loved spots.
Derick stood up on all fours and raced out of the avatar storage trailer. He found Rafa fighting with several men, gunshots ricocheting off him in every direction. He fell back several steps and almost fell over.
Derick growled in his jaguar and raced the distance between the trailer and the soldiers. He felt so fast, so light. He might not run very smoothly, but he could sprint forward. Men began firing. He felt several more stings, one in his chest, another in his shoulder. He leapt in the air and cam
e down hard on one of the men. He used his hard metal snout to slam into his enemy’s forehead—a jaguar avatar headbutt. The man cried out in pain.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rafa knock another man to the ground. Then he whirled to attack another.
Derick bit a soldier’s leg, and careened into another.
More bullets.
Derick bit his lip, trying not to scream. He would never get used to this.
He got up and pounced toward another soldier, but could feel his avatar waning. It was almost out of commission.
Derick pressed the button on the back of his neck and selected another avatar. He soon raced out of the trailer as some sort of boar. He bounded forward, snorting and biting.
“Hey Rafa,” Derick said.
“This avatar is almost done, Derick,” Rafa responded, panting.
“Bring out another and after you attack, bring out another,” Derick said. “We can keep switching, like the relay race. They won’t know which avatars we are and which ones we aren’t.”
“You’re a genius,” Rafa said. Derick saw him punch a soldier and then fall limp.
Derick managed to plow into one of his enemies with the boar, and then he switched again. He attacked in a tiger, then moved back to the boar, and once again back to the tiger. Rafa came out as a large bird, swooping down at the men, then an orangutan, and then found there was a little more power in the human.
“How many of them are there?” A soldier cried out.
When the boar was out of commission, Derick selected another avatar. He tried to look down but couldn’t. He had a large snout on the front of his face. Yes! Derick shuffled as best and as fast as he could through the opening of the trailer and toward the men, his crocodile jaws opened wide.
• • •
Abby couldn’t look away. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing them. Almost seeing her parents go down on the Titanic had etched that thought and feeling on her heart. And her grandpa—she loved him too. He had so much trust in her. “Stop this,” Abby cried out.