by Laura Martin
“Did it work?” Regan asked.
“He was never caught, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “But what we are about to do is really dangerous. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, well, last I checked so was getting blown up, so . . .” Regan muttered, and I snorted. She had a solid point. “Get on the platform,” she said as she hit the activation button. Above our platform a countdown started from ten, and Regan sprinted over to join me. Without saying a word, we grasped hands. There was a time that I’d do just about anything to get some distance from Regan Fitz, but right now, at this moment, there wasn’t anyone else I’d rather be hurtling through time beside.
“At what point are you going to tell me the plan?” I asked as the numbers ticked down toward zero.
“There is no plan,” Regan said as everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Regan
I opened my eyes back inside the mountain. To my relief, Elliot was still right beside me, his hand clutching mine with a death grip that made my bones ache.
“What?” he asked, looking around. “Are you serious? We were just here!”
“Come on,” I said, bolting down the hallway toward the dorms. We were almost there when I heard something and threw an arm out to catch Elliot as I skidded to a stop. He let out a muffled grunt as my arm caught him in the stomach. Before he could say anything, I slapped my hand over his mouth and dragged him into the shadows. My heart was hammering hard inside my chest, but I could just make out the sound of two hushed but all too familiar voices. Elliot tensed; he’d heard us too. I carefully took my hand off his mouth as a second later a different Elliot and Regan emerged from the darkness, creeping down the hallway in their pajamas. Not a different Regan and Elliot, I reminded myself as we watched the figures disappear around the corner—a past version of ourselves. That was us earlier that night, heading toward the Glitch room with no idea how we were going to get the door open. Present Elliot’s jaw had dropped open, and I reached over and put my hand under his chin, closing his mouth with a faint click of teeth. Roused from his shock, he turned to look at me.
“Come on,” I said, darting out of the shadows and toward the dorm rooms the past versions of ourselves had just left. Elliot caught up to me right outside the door. “Get Sam, Corban, and Blake and get back to the Academy,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you.” To his credit, Elliot didn’t try to ask me a million questions; instead he just turned and disappeared through the dark doorway of the boys’ dormitory. I realized that it was because he trusted me. I let that sink in for a second before entering the dorm that I’d left only an hour ago. Well, I amended, the Regan I’d just seen in the hall had only left it a minute ago. I shook my head, choosing not to think about how muddled and confusing time traveling was if you really thought about it long enough, and slipped into the dark dorm room.
My first instinct was to turn on the lights, but as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I decided against it. I was outnumbered, and the element of surprise was going to be key. I moved quickly over to Tess’s and Eliana’s beds, clicking the Chaos Cuffs onto their wrists before they were even awake. I was just turning to Serina’s bunk when I felt an arm snake out around my neck and squeeze.
“Drop it,” Serina hissed in my ear as something sharp pressed against the small of my back.
“Serina, it’s me, Regan,” I said.
“Regan?” she said, removing whatever had been stuck in my back and letting go of my neck. Before she could ask anything else, I had the cuff on her right arm. A second later I was pressing the activation button on her cuffs. Leaning over, I quickly activated Eliana and Tess. Everything went dark, and to my utter relief I found myself back on the platform in the Academy’s Hub, but this time instead of Elliot, I was standing next to Tess, Eliana, and Serina. To my surprise Tess was somehow still asleep. Eliana was blinking groggily at the room while Serina stood frozen, her eyes flicking from platform to platform so fast I wondered if she was making herself dizzy. A moment later Elliot appeared mid-struggle with a very angry Sam and an equally confused Corban and Blake.
Appearing on the platform distracted Sam for a moment, and Elliot managed to pull himself free from the headlock Sam had him in to come stand by me.
“Are we—” Serina said, and Sam whipped around to face his sister, his expression relaxing just a hair at the sight of her, and for the first time I understood, because I’d felt a tangible weight lift off my shoulders the second Elliot reappeared.
“Listen up,” I said, and everyone jumped as my voice bounced back at us in the cavernous hub. Tess sat up with a start, looking around herself with such a baffled expression on her face that I almost laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “But we don’t have much time.”
“Are we at the Academy?” Sam asked.
“We are,” I confirmed. “And in less than an hour this entire island is going to explode, unless we do something about it.”
Sam was the first one to catch on, and he walked over to stand next to Serina. “What do we need to do to save the Academy?” he asked.
“Wait a second,” Corban said, his head still on a swivel as he looked around. “Is this the past? And if it is, then that makes us . . .”
“Criminals? Butterflies? Time-traveling trespassers?” Elliot said. “All of the above, welcome to the club.”
I held up a hand before anyone could say anything. “Listen,” I said. “We’ll explain, and then if you want to go back to the mountain, that’s your call. We can’t force you to be a criminal.”
“But, spoiler alert,” Elliot said, “the mountain is about forty-five minutes from collapsing in on itself from an attack. So, there’s that.”
“So, no matter what, in less than an hour, we could all be dead?” Tess said with a nervous glance at her cousin.
“Right.” I nodded, hoping my face wasn’t giving away how nauseous her words had just made me feel. “But if you stay here, we have a chance to save the Academy and ourselves.”
“A very small chance,” Elliot added.
“So, what’s the plan?” Serina asked, and I thought I heard Elliot snort, but I ignored it and pulled the schematics page for Salzburg’s prototypes from my pocket. All too aware of the time we were currently wasting, I jumped into a condensed version of what had happened so far, from the mountain getting attacked, to our initial jump back to the Academy, my deduction about the cameras, and borrowing my mom’s key.
“And this guy, Salzburg or whatever,” said Blake when I was done. “You really think he’s the one responsible for all this? I mean, he’s an officer, right?”
“Ten to one says he’s a Mayhem member,” Corban said. “They are the only ones big enough and awful enough to plan something like this.” His eyes went wide as he turned to us. “Whoa, what if there are lots of professors acting as secret double agents? Professor Treebaun was a real jerk back at the Academy, I could totally see him as a double agent. Couldn’t you, Blake?”
“Treebaun?” Blake said. “Dream on. That guy’s never broken a rule in his entire life. Besides, I’m not convinced this Salzburg guy has anything to do with Mayhem. I mean, isn’t it totally possible that he was just stupid and manufactured bombs on accident?”
“He’s not stupid,” I said, feeling my jaw clench as I remembered his oh so timely transfer to the mountain.
“He might be,” Elliot said, and we all turned to look at him.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, he transferred himself right out of the frying pan and into a fire, didn’t he? Why go to the mountain if he was just going to attack it next? It makes no sense.”
“Maybe it was an unrelated attack,” said Serina.
“One attack at a time,” I said. “We fix this one, and then we figure out how to deal with the mess at the mountain.”
“So just to clarify, we have less than an hour to find twenty-five bombs,” Sam said.
“Twenty-four,” Elliot said, removing the small black explosive
from his pocket.
“Gah!” I yelped, jumping backward, my hand to my heart. “I forgot about that one.”
“I didn’t,” he said, turning it over in his hands.
“So that’s a bomb?” Tess said, leaning in to get a better look at it.
Sam took it out of Elliot’s hand and peered at it for a few seconds like it was a bug under a microscope before handing it back to him.
“It’s a bomb,” he said.
“We can’t disarm it?” Eliana asked.
Elliot shook his head. “It would take too long, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.”
“So, we don’t disarm them,” I said. “We find them, all of them, and we get them off the island. We can meet at the West Gate,” I said, thinking about the boat we’d used to get to the mountain.
“Wait a second,” Elliot said, turning to me. “We can’t just send everyone out in their pajamas.”
“We can’t?” I asked, because honestly, that had been my plan. Elliot and I had been running around in our pajamas.
“That’s a good point,” Sam said. “If we manage to pull this off, we don’t want to be recognized.”
I shared a glance with Elliot, because we’d already been recognized by my mom. It was too late for us. Even if we survived this, we were looking at a life behind bars. For a second that thought made my insides go cold, but then I gritted my teeth. It was better than the alternative, and it would be worth it if we could save lives.
“Right,” Serina said, nodding at her brother. “Otherwise we’ll Glitch back to the present and find ourselves under arrest.”
“Speaking of arrest,” I said, jerking my head toward the Chaos Cuffs we’d used to bring them here, “keep those on you. After we get rid of the bombs, we are going to need a quick exit out of here.”
“Good thinking,” Sam said.
“Well, if we need disguises, we’re in the right place,” Serina said, already jogging over to the far wall, where rack upon rack of costumes sat, waiting to outfit Glitchers as they traveled to the past. She turned to see everyone else hesitating on the platform and rolled her eyes.
“You said the Butterfly alerts went off on campus, right?” she asked. “So, if they want Butterflies, let’s give them Butterflies.” She ripped a bloodred ball gown off a hanger along with the matching red feather masquerade mask that went with it. “Try to cover at least part of your face, folks,” she said, holding it up so only her blue eyes showed through. “The less of us they can see, the less they can identify.”
“Good call,” Sam said, vaulting off the platform to join his sister. “I think there are some World War One gas masks in here somewhere.” With that everyone sprang into action, grabbing costumes off the rack and yanking them on over their crumpled pajamas. Elliot tossed me an Alcatraz prison uniform, and I glanced up at him, eyebrow raised.
“Trying to be funny?” I said, yanking the shirt on and buttoning it up.
He stared at me in confusion for a second before realization dawned on him and his face went pale.
“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot you’re not really funny. Probably too soon to joke about life in jail anyway. My bad.” Before he could respond I caught sight of the clock on one of the computers, though, and the smile fell off my face. I quickly yanked on the rest of the disguise.
“Everyone ready?” I asked, tying the red bandanna Elliot had handed me into a knot so it covered the lower half of my face. Looking up, I saw the weirdest mismatched group I’d ever seen. There was Alcatraz Elliot and Serina in her full ball gown and mask. Sam had found two World War I gas masks, and he and Corban both were wearing the ratty uniform of a soldier fresh from the trenches. Tess and Eliana had taken a different route, disguising themselves in the raggedy washed-out clothing of Dust Bowl victims, complete with large circular goggles and cloth-wrapped faces. Blake was dressed like Elvis complete with oversized sunglasses and sideburns that took up half his face. It would have to work.
Beside me Elliot snorted, and I turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. For a guy who spent the majority of his life with a scowl permanently embedded on his face, how in the world was he possibly finding this funny?
“Sorry,” he said, flapping a hand. “It’s just that this went from the worst Easter egg hunt ever to the weirdest Halloween group I’ve ever seen.”
“No trick-or-treater has ever been this historically accurate,” Corban said, stepping forward to peer over my shoulder at the map.
“Or good-looking,” Blake said as he gave his black Elvis wig a twist so it curled down his forehead in a perfect spiral.
“You two are impossible,” Sam muttered as he jerked his head at the map. “Let’s get a move on.”
I nodded and ripped the piece of paper three times so I was left with four equally sized pieces. “Time to divide and conquer,” I said, handing one piece to each of the partner groups. As they studied their section of the map, Elliot leaned in and together we stared at our own section.
“The Revere and Roosevelt Building and my old dorm,” Elliot murmured. “Those are big buildings. We need to hustle.”
“See you at the gate,” Serina said as she and Sam dashed out the door in a swish of bloodred skirts. To my surprise, Tess and Eliana both stopped to give Elliot and me a quick, fierce hug before flying out the door after Serina and Sam.
“What was that for?” Elliot asked, looking after them in confusion.
“It’s a friendship thing,” Corban said, clapping Elliot so hard on the back he stumbled forward a step. “Don’t let it freak you out.” With that, Corban and Blake disappeared out the door too.
Elliot watched them go. “Are they our friends?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said.
He nodded and turned his attention back to me. “Do you think this will work?”
“Only one way to find out,” I said as I jumped off the platform and together we ran for the door. We were outside in the cold night air within seconds, and I pushed myself to run faster. Even with our new reinforcements, we were going to be cutting it close to find our explosives in time.
The first one was located in the Roosevelt Building, and we took a sharp right and raced down the short path, through the dark playground and up the stairs to the wide glass double doors. I’d attended all my elementary-level classes in this building, and I knew the halls well. I gave the doors a firm yank, but nothing happened. I groaned in exasperation. Of course, the building was locked. I was just fumbling for my mom’s key when Elliot threw out a hand to stop me. I turned to see him pointing above the door, where a familiar black camera was mounted to the red brick. Bingo.
The next four explosives proved to be easier to find than I’d ever hoped. Instead of being hidden in the heart of the buildings, they were located outside. “Hidden in plain sight,” I muttered as I yanked the fifth and final one off the concrete wall of the Revere Building and carefully tucked it inside the backpack I’d found abandoned on the playground. The cloth over my mouth was making it hard to breathe, and I yanked it down around my neck so the cold night air could fill my lungs.
“We might actually pull this off,” Elliot said, just as we rounded a corner and ran full force into a group of security officers.
My face collided with the first officer’s chest plate, and my nose gave a sickening crunch. Black spots erupted momentarily in my vision as I was knocked flat on my back. A second later, I was blinking up into the faces of four very concerned security officers.
“Cadet Fitz,” said one, holding out a hand to help me up. “What are you doing out past curfew? Dressed like that? We had a Butterfly alert. It isn’t safe.” I let him help me up, my brain going a mile a minute as I worked to think my way out of this. A quick glance at Elliot revealed him clutching his right eye as another officer helped him to his feet. They obviously had no idea that we were supposed to be miles away inside a mountain. That was good. I could use that. I held my hand up to my nose to stem the stream of blood that I
could feel running hot and wet down my chin.
“Oh geez,” said another officer. “She’s bleeding. We just made Commander Fitz’s kid bleed.”
“Can we get fired for that?” whispered another one.
“Not you,” said another one. “Jones, maybe. She ran into him.” And then it clicked.
“Quick,” I said. “My mom. The Butterfly. He attacked us. I’ve been trying to find help.” I gestured frantically back in the direction of my house, and that was all it took. All four guards snapped to attention at my words and took off at a full sprint toward my house, yelling commands into their communicators as they took my story hook, line, and sinker. Elliot came to stand beside me as they disappeared around a corner.
“I’m impressed,” he said. “You didn’t even really have to lie.”
“I know,” I said, swallowing hard. I’d just left out that the Butterfly was me. Before I could think any more about what my mom would say when those officers showed up, I spotted the clock tower. We had five minutes left.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Elliot
There was only one main path that led to the West Gate, and as we raced down it we were joined by Tess and Eliana. Tess held up a lumpy pillowcase, and I felt myself relax the tiniest fraction of an inch. One more section of campus safe. A minute later we almost ran right into Corban and Blake as they burst through the shrubbery and onto the path in front of us. They hadn’t managed to grab a bag, and their hands were full of the small black explosives. The sight was unnerving. But where were Serina and Sam? I wondered as the rest of us hurled around the last bend in the path and saw the West Gate.
It felt like a lifetime ago that Regan’s mom had walked us out of those doors and onto the boat that would take us to the mountain. Tonight, though, those thick steel doors were shut tight, and I could only hope that Regan was right and her mom’s card would open them. As we hurtled closer, I saw that security officers were standing to either side of the gate, and I felt what little hope I’d managed to muster fizzle.