1442497564 (8UP) by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix [Haddix, Margaret Peterson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Nine

“Those cheaters!” Doreen exclaimed.

“Oh, but they had deniability,” Tattoo Face argued. “You saw what happened. They could always claim they were only following customary behavior of the time, one male bragging to another about the superiority of his cell phone. They can claim they had no way of knowing that Second would grab it. Or that he would know how to operate an Elucidator.”

“Didn’t they see what happened when he was a teenager and he stole the Elucidator from Jonah?” Jordan asked, whipping his head back and forth between Doreen and Tattoo Face and the screen, which now showed only an empty room.

Jordan was confused anyway: How could Second have been twenty-six back in the twenty-first century, if he had stolen the Elucidator from Jonah and left from the ravine as a teenager? How could the FBI have rescued him from the ravine when he’d already escaped on his own?

“Gary and Hodge didn’t see that,” Deep Voice told him. “Because it hadn’t happened yet when they went back to intervene in Second’s life at the FBI headquarters.”

“But he was twenty-six then,” Jordan said. “He was only—what? Thirteen?—when we saw him disappear.”

It seemed perfectly logical to him that Second would be twenty-six after he was thirteen. But maybe Jordan shouldn’t rely on that, considering how old his own parents were right now.

“Second grabbing Jonah’s Elucidator is probably going to make it so that none of what you just saw actually happens,” Deep Voice said, waving his arm in the general direction of the screen. “The changes just haven’t been released yet, so we can still see what would have been.”

Jordan saw Jonah and Katherine exchange glances. Was there something they didn’t want to say in front of Deep Voice and the others?

“Where did Second go with Gary and Hodge’s Elucidator?” Katherine asked, as if she was trying to distract the adults. “Where did he go when he stole Jonah’s? Was it the same place? Was he the same age when he got there?”

“That’s what I’m looking for right now,” Doreen said, bending over a keyboard that seemed imbedded in the table in front of her.

“And why didn’t JB or anyone else at the time agency know where Second had come from, when he worked for them?” Jonah asked. “Or—did they know?”

“That one we can answer without research,” Tattoo Face said, smirking. “Who do you think always did JB’s intelligence work for him?”

“Second,” Katherine said.

“So don’t you think it was really easy for him to determine what JB saw and what he didn’t see?” Tattoo Face added.

“But after Second—” Jonah began.

Jordan saw Katherine dig an elbow into Jonah’s side.

What’s that about? Jordan wondered. What’s she trying to keep him from saying?

All three of the grown-ups were hunched over the keyboard, so they probably didn’t notice.

“This says Gary and Hodge took Second to a time before the time agency had all its regulations in place,” Doreen said. “So he was never registered as a time immigrant. And . . . Gary and Hodge were the ones who set Second up to work at the time agency.

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