Risked (The Missing ) (8 page)

And, oh yeah, she was speaking Russian now. That was proof.

“You’re right—there’s Daniella/Anastasia. But what about Gavin?” Jonah whispered back to Katherine as he tiptoed past her and Chip, on into the room.

And then Jonah gasped.

Gavin/Alexei lay on the bed in an old-fashioned nightshirt, his covers kicked off to reveal a swollen, bandaged knee. One of his elbows hung at a painfully awkward angle, also swollen and engorged. Even in sleep his face was twisted in pain.

If the rest of his family had looked defeated, Alexei looked completely destroyed.

Behind Jonah, Chip murmured in dismay, “Is that what I did to him? Is he going to die?”

Chip had spoken too loudly—Anastasia/Daniella glanced up at the sound of his voice.

No,
Jonah corrected his own perceptions.
It’s just Daniella looking this way. Not Anastasia. See the tracer?

The original version of Anastasia continued peering down at the book, her lips still moving in what seemed to be the even cadence of reading aloud. But Jonah couldn’t hear anything she was saying now, and her lips glowed with tracer light. Daniella’s face pulled away from the tracer’s ever so slightly, bafflement spreading across her expression.

“We’ve got to pull her out,” Katherine muttered. “What do you bet she’s confused beyond belief?”

Without waiting for an answer, Katherine went over and tugged on Anastasia/Daniella’s shoulders. A moment
later Daniella lay sprawled on the floor, once again looking like a twenty-first-century girl in her jeans and Michigan sweatshirt. The Anastasia tracer, meanwhile, continued silently reading, sedate in her simple dress.

“What in the world is going on?” Daniella thundered.

Jonah dived toward her and clapped his hand over her mouth.

“Shh!” he hissed. “We’ll tell you, but you have got to keep your voice down. You don’t want those guards coming back, do you?”

Daniella’s eyes got big, and she quickly shook her head no.

“I’ll be quiet,” she whispered from underneath Jonah’s hand.

Jonah moved his hand back.

“And I thought moving to Ohio was a nightmare,” Daniella groaned, in a much softer voice. “Wait—that’s what all of this is, right? A nightmare? You’re all practically invisible, and everything’s freaky, so of course this is just one big bizarre dream, and all I’ve got to do is wake up and then—”

Her voice was inching upward again. But all Jonah had to do was scowl at her and she stopped.

“Daniella, I’m sorry there’s not more time to explain, but all of this is real,” Katherine whispered, leaning down
to pat the other girl’s shoulder sympathetically.

“Of course it is,” Daniella said sarcastically. “Oh, I get it . . . if this isn’t a dream, then I’ve gone totally nuts. I told my parents I wouldn’t be able to stand the move, and I was right. I’m crazy now.”

“You’re not crazy,” Chip said softly.

“How else do you explain the fact that it’s like I’m two people at once now?” Daniella challenged. “Everything Anastasia would know, everything she would do, I—” She turned around, getting her first glimpse of her own tracer. “Eek! Th—that’s me! It’s her! It’s me!”

Her voice was a little too loud again, but Jonah thought it would only make things worse if he grabbed her once more.

“Let’s just get out of here and then tell her everything,” Jonah said. He moved toward Gavin/Alexei. The boy moaned in his sleep.

“But do you think Gavin is safe to travel?” Chip asked.

Jonah hesitated. He turned to Daniella.

“What do you know . . . I mean, what does Anastasia know about her brother’s hemophilia?” he asked.

Daniella clenched her jaw.

“We don’t talk to outsiders about Alexei’s problems,” she snapped. “We don’t even acknowledge they exist . . . Gah! It’s like she’s inside my brain, thinking for me!”

She began hitting the palm of her hand against her
forehead, as if that could knock the Anastasia identity out of her mind.

“Daniella, it’s okay to tell us,” Katherine suggested.

Daniella kept her mouth shut.

“Can you at least tell us how long Gavin’s looked this bad?” Chip asked. “Gavin, not Alexei?”

Daniella squinted at Chip, confusion playing across her face.

“Only since . . . he and Alexei became the same person?” she said hesitantly. “Like Anastasia and I kind of became the same person? The guards put us in this room, and then, I don’t know, it was like I
had
to walk into that ghost-person Anastasia, and I did, and suddenly it was like I
was
Anastasia, and I knew everything she knew, even Russian. And Gavin just kind of fell onto the bed and became Alexei, and . . . that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?”

“Yes, it does,” Chip said comfortingly. “I know exactly what you’re talking about. Because I went through exactly the same thing more than four hundred years ago.”

Daniella just gave him another confused look.

“Do you think maybe that means it’s Alexei who’s in such terrible shape, and it’d be safe to pull Gavin out?” Katherine asked.

“I think we have to try it,” Jonah muttered.

He put his hands on Alexei/Gavin’s shoulders and
gently pulled upward. The boy on the bed winced and moaned. But after a moment Gavin was sitting upright, apart from the Alexei tracer. He once again had the black sweatshirt on; his hair was slightly longer than Alexei’s, with a dyed dark-purple streak on one side. He blinked and looked around.

“Have a heart,” he begged. “Pull me the rest of the way out.”

Jonah tugged, and Gavin rolled over onto the floor, landing on top of Jonah. Gavin instantly pushed away. He stood up and massaged first his elbow, then his knees.

“I didn’t know it could feel that bad,” he muttered. “What that kid puts up with on a daily basis . . .”

He shook his head in seeming disbelief.

His joints were all normal-size now, no longer swollen, no longer bandaged.

“You’re not bleeding?” Chip asked. “You’re not going to bleed to death because I tackled you?”

“You thought I was going to bleed to death?” Gavin sneered. “Do you
see
any blood on me?”

He held his elbows out at odd angles, as if inviting Chip and the others to look. Then a flash of fear spread across his face.

“Is it happening?” Daniella asked. “Are you getting that feeling?”

Gavin whirled toward Daniella.

“You know about that?” he asked.

“I think . . . I think we really are brother and sister,” Daniella said. “It’s like I’ve known you practically my whole life.
This
whole life. . . . Er,
are
you okay?”

Gavin didn’t sneer at her.

“It’s not that bad,” he said.

“What are you two talking about?” Katherine asked.

“If you must know, I think Chip might have started an internal bleed in my hip when he tackled me,” Gavin snarled. “I’m really good at sensing these things.” He punched Chip’s arm. “Thanks a lot!”

So, it’s a problem for Chip to tackle Gavin but okay for Gavin to punch Chip?
Jonah thought.

He decided against saying that out loud.

“Oh, well, bleeding inside isn’t as bad, is it?” Katherine asked. “If the blood doesn’t actually leave the body . . .”

“Idiot, internal bleeds can cause even worse problems, if you don’t get treatment,” Gavin said, sounding even surlier. “So, yeah, I could die from your stupid friend over there tackling me!”

Jonah stepped up between Gavin and Chip.

“Stop arguing,” he said. “Let’s just get out of here. So you won’t die.”

He was about to ask Gavin to just hand him the
Elucidator, but then he remembered that Gavin might still want to go to the future. So Jonah went with Chip’s strategy: He slammed into Gavin, matching his arms and legs against Gavin’s, and called out: “Take all five of us back to the twenty-first century! To the time where Katherine belongs!”

Katherine and Chip must have had the same thought, because they also rushed toward Gavin.

Chip cried, “Take us all back where we were when Gavin grabbed us to begin with!”

And Katherine called out simply, “Take us home.”

Out of the three of them, one of them had to be touching the spot where Gavin had hidden the Elucidator, somewhere in his clothes.

But absolutely nothing happened. The world around them stayed firmly, stubbornly 1918.

Angrily, Gavin pushed Jonah and the others away.

“You think I didn’t try that?” he snarled. “You think I didn’t try to escape the minute I figured out where we are? Especially when I found out the date?”

“The date?” Daniella repeated, glancing back toward her tracer, who was still calmly reading. “What’s wrong with July 16, 1918?”

Gavin looked at her, and for the first time his expression softened.

“Nothing,” he said, almost sounding kind for once. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing happens today.”

Daniella kept staring back at him. Jonah couldn’t tell what was passing between them without a single other word being spoken. He lost patience with trying to guess.

“Well, we know the Elucidator worked before, when
it brought us here and made Chip and Katherine and me invisible,” Jonah said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. “Can you at least let us see the Elucidator? Katherine and I have used Elucidators a lot—maybe we can get it to work again.”

“Fine,” Gavin said, snarly again.

He reached inside his sweatshirt, maybe into a pocket of his T-shirt underneath. He pulled out . . .

A metal toy soldier.

“What the . . . ,” Gavin muttered. He patted his sweatshirt, all along his chest. “Is this a joke? I had the Elucidator right
there
. It looked like a cell phone. Did one of you just steal it?”

“Alexei loves his toy soldiers,” Daniella murmured, as if trying to explain her brother to everyone. “He always carries a handful in his pockets—and bits of paper and chalk and string, anything for his little games. . . . Did you just carry that off from when you stopped being Alexei?”

“It doesn’t work that way!” Gavin snapped at her. “Does it?”

He was appealing to Jonah and Katherine and Chip for the answer.

“No,” Jonah assured him. “I bet that really is still the Elucidator. It’s just, the Elucidator changes shape to fit in with the time period. So it won’t look out of place.”

“It is really freaky,” Katherine said soothingly. “Our Elucidator looked like a compass in 1903.”

“And a rock in 1483,” Chip said, making a face.

“But how would you program it like this?” Gavin asked frantically, poking at the metal base of the soldier with one hand, the painted-on cap with the other. His efforts did nothing but chip off a tiny fleck of paint from the cap, exposing the bare metal underneath.

“Let me try,” Jonah said, taking the toy soldier from Gavin. He was a little surprised that Gavin let him. Jonah squeezed his hand around the Elucidator and demanded: “Take all of us back to the twenty-first century!”

Nothing happened.

“Make me invisible!” Jonah tried again.

“You already
are
invisible,” Katherine reminded him.

“Oh, right,” Jonah said, feeling foolish. He already felt silly enough, talking to a little toy soldier. “Make Gavin invisible!”

He looked up just in time to see Gavin blink out of sight: The black sweatshirt, the purple streak in his hair, the surly expression on his face—all of it went see-through, all at once.

“It works!” Katherine cheered.

“Wh—what—?” Daniella stammered. “Are you
sure
this isn’t all a dream?”

“Make Gavin visible again,” Jonah commanded.

In a flash the other boy was back to normal. Daniella looked like she might faint, but Jonah decided this wasn’t the time to worry about that.

“Let me talk to JB!” Jonah said into the Elucidator. “JB, are you there?”

No answer.

“JB? JB?” Jonah called.

Nothing. Jonah might as well have been trying to talk into an ordinary toy soldier, one that was nothing but solid metal all the way through.

“Let me try,” Katherine said.

She took the soldier from Jonah’s hand and started trying out all sorts of commands: “Call JB!” “Call anyone you can reach!” “Tell us how to get home!” Jonah could tell by her disappointed snort after each command that none of it was working. Chip and Daniella joined her in bending over the toy, throwing out more commands, some ridiculous, some down-to-earth.

“Bring me a Snickers bar!” (This was from Daniella.) “Show how much battery life you have left!” (From Chip.) “Wave at me and blink your eyes!” (Daniella again.)

As far as Jonah could tell, the Elucidator wasn’t doing any of it. He turned his attention back to Gavin.

“Where did you get that Elucidator anyway?” he asked.

“What’s it to you?” Gavin retorted.

“I just thought that might help explain—”

Gavin grabbed the front of Jonah’s shirt.

“I don’t have to explain anything to you!” he sneered. “Anything! Got it?”

“Not even how to save your life if you’ve got internal bleeding that could kill you?” Jonah asked.

Gavin’s surly expression slipped for only an instant.

“I can handle my own bleeds,” he said. “Back home, sometimes I don’t even bother telling my parents for hours. And I’m fine! It’s just so annoying to deal with.”

“But you can get good treatment in the twenty-first century, right?” Daniella interrupted quietly, looking up from the Elucidator. “Here, remember, it’s just ice and bed rest and—”

“I’m fine!” Gavin protested.

Jonah could hear Chip and Katherine’s requests to the Elucidator getting more and more desperate.

“Well, if you can’t do any of that stuff, can you at least tell us what you
can
do for us?” Katherine asked, sounding totally exasperated.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jonah saw a sudden glow of digital light near the toy-soldier Elucidator. He immediately crowded in beside Chip, staring at it.

Above the soldier’s head, red computer-style letters
had appeared, as if on an invisible screen. They spelled out a single word:
YES
.