“The first half of 1485, too,” JB interrupted, though his voice was almost gentle now.
“Okay, they’re there until 1485 … well, isn’t there more danger that they’ll do something to contaminate the time period?” Katherine asked. “Something like high fives, only worse? Or—what if the opposite problem happens? What if Chip and Alex forget the twenty-first century? What if they forget Jonah and me? What if—”
“Katherine,” JB said. “I already told you we were facing a lot of risks.” His expression was severe, then softened. “When we ran our first projections, we thought we had no choice but to let Chip and Alex ultimately meet whatever fate was waiting for them in 1485. I’m a time officer, sworn to uphold the sanctity of history. I had to send Chip and Alex back. But we never want to sacrifice anyone on the altar of authenticity. We never intended to return missing children to history just to see them die. We just … knew that that might be the inevitable outcome, in some cases.”
Now it was Jonah’s turn to gulp. He was a missing child too. What fate waited for him in a foreign time?
“Then you and Jonah grabbed Chip’s elbows back in the cave,” JB said, a hint of amusement creeping into his voice. “You should have seen the panic you caused at time headquarters! If it weren’t strictly forbidden by thirty-two separate time regulations, I’d show you a clip of it someday. But then everyone scrambled to run new projections and … you might have changed things just enough. If the time projections had shown you introducing rap music or the theory of evolution or, I don’t know, Coca-Cola, we would have yanked you out instantly. But they didn’t. They showed you having a chance to rescue your friends.”
JB sounded so earnest it was impossible not to believe him. It was impossible not to believe that he wanted to see Chip and Alex safe just as much as Jonah and Katherine did.
“What do we have to do?” Jonah asked.
“You probably need to know what’s going to happen between 1483 and 1485,” JB said. “We need to make sure that everything goes as projected, anyhow. And then …” He cleared his throat. “How do you feel about wearing armor?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jonah felt hideous wearing armor. It was heavy. It was hot. And it smelled like a locker room full of sweaty teenage boys. Trying on the suit of armor JB gave him, Jonah sniffed surreptitiously, almost gagged, and resorted to holding his breath.
JB said this was brand-new armor—could I really be producing that smell all by myself?
Jonah lifted the visor of his armor.
“Look,” he said. “You’re from the future. Can’t you give us something that just looks like fifteenth-century armor, but really weighs nothing—and has air-conditioning?”
JB laughed.
“Good idea,” he said. “But no.”
“Why not?” Katherine demanded. She had on armor of her own and was awkwardly trying to walk wearing, essentially, a forty-pound tin can.
“Against time regulations,” JB said curtly, bending over to examine a squeaky knee joint on Katherine’s armor.
“Why?” Katherine said again.
JB sighed. He straightened up but somehow wouldn’t meet Katherine’s gaze.
“Because I’m sending you into a dangerous area. And if … something happens … we can’t take the risk of having anachronistic items discovered,” he said.
“What? You mean if klutzy Katherine trips and loses one of her metal gloves, you couldn’t just yank it out of time, like you did with the Taser?” Jonah asked.
JB gave him a rueful half smile.
“That kind of thing isn’t as easy as it looked from your perspective,” he said. “And … we can’t do it in a battle zone.”
Those words, “battle zone,” just hung in the air.
“We could die, couldn’t we?” Katherine asked quietly. “That’s what you’re talking about. ‘If something happens’—you mean, if we’re killed, and we lie there with all the other dead bodies, in wrong-time armor … that’s the problem, right?”
Why did Katherine always have to say things like that? Jonah would have been perfectly fine not thinking about the fact that people died in battle zones.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he scoffed. “We’ll be invisible, remember? JB’s just being crazy overprotective. It’s like Mom and Dad practically making us wear bike helmets just to cross the street.”
JB stared off toward the wall where Chip and Alex’s fifteenth-century life was on display. They were still in sanctuary with their mother and sisters.
“I won’t lie to you,” JB said. “Death rates were high on medieval battlefields.”
“But you wouldn’t send us back there if you really thought we were going to die,” Jonah argued. “Right?” He adopted a joking tone. “Because then that’d ruin our time periods—Katherine and the twenty-first century, and me and, well, whatever time period I’m really from.”
JB winced.
“All the projections show the two of you surviving,” he said. “We wouldn’t risk this otherwise. It’s not worth it to just trade your lives for Chip’s and Alex’s. Or … to lose all of you. But I have to tell you … the projections aren’t always right.”
Jonah gulped and was glad that the armor still covered his throat so no one would see his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously up and down.
“We’re not scared,” he said.
“Speak for yourself,” Katherine said. “I am.”
“You don’t have to do this,” JB said. “Neither of you do. This is not a moral or an ethical dilemma. Chip and Alex are not entitled to any more time than fate gave them to begin with. They both believe in heaven—or, at least, their fifteenth-century selves both do. So neither of them would blame you if you chose the safe route. You could go home right now.”
Home …
Jonah was ashamed of how tempted he was.