It was almost like seeing the plane vanish all over again. The entire Skidmore family instantaneously disappeared from Angela's sight.

Jordan, Jonah, Katherine, Linda, and Michael. Gone.

Angela gaped at the empty space where they'd all been standing, then looked up at JB and Chip, both of whom looked as stunned as she felt. "Jonah?" JB called out, as if he thought Jonah could somehow still hear him. "Katherine? Jonah?"

"Where did they go?" Chip demanded, the pitch of his voice edging up in fright.

JB was frantically patting his pockets as if he expected a replacement Elucidator to just show up at any moment. "This is bad. I wasn't expecting—I don't know where—and now I don't even have an Elucidator—"

"Oh! I have an Elucidator!" Angela remembered, pulling the lanyard over her head and holding it out to JB. "I don't know how well it works; I think it was having some of the same iss—"

She felt a sudden lurch, like she was thrown forward by an invisible force. The feeling was familiar to her, but before she had a chance to recall why, JB and Chip were both shouting her name. She straightened up to look at them—

And found that JB's eyes were exactly level with hers.

A tingle of hope found its way through her body. Does this mean— Am I—

Chip confirmed her suspicions. "Angela!" he exclaimed in surprise. "You're an adult again!"

Angela hadn't even begun to process this miraculous new development, or to wonder how it had happened, before two people appeared right where the Skidmore family had been standing moments before. A man and a woman, both of whom looked vaguely familiar, sprawled on the floor.

"What happened?" JB asked hurriedly, rushing over to them. "Where did you guys go? How long were you gone? Where are the kids?"

Angela made the connection. Those are Michael and Linda. Whatever had reverted her to her normal age must have done the same thing to them. But what was it? How did it happen? Did the Skidmores manage to do it at some point during their trip to the future? Why aren't Jonah, Katherine, and Jordan back yet?

Michael had his eyes shut and was moaning in the throes of timesickness, but Linda had struggled into a sitting position. She stared at JB, then glanced over at Angela, her face furrowing in confusion for a moment before comprehension dawned. Her eyes flickered to Chip, then swept around the kitchen expectantly, presumably looking for her children.

"Linda, I need you to tell me—"

JB was cut off by the sudden appearance of two more figures: Jonah and Katherine, appearing practically right on top of their parents. There were several cries of shock, and then Linda was wrapping both children tightly in her arms, as they looked around dazedly, and Michael finally opened his eyes and began attempting to sit up.

"What's going on?" Chip asked in bewilderment.

"Where's Jordan?" Angela wanted to know. Had the Skidmores, on their trip through time, somehow managed to revert things to how they used to be, with everyone being the correct ages and Jordan living in a separate dimension?

No, because I still remember both dimensions, she reasoned. Or all three. Or—

Linda was struggling to her feet now. "Where is Jordan? And where did you all go? One moment all five of us were standing in that room, talking to that man, and then next thing I knew it was just Dad and me, floating in space, and we were our right ages again, and then we were here..."

Jonah cut her off. "JB!" he shouted urgently. "Second's back. We saw him. He's at Interchronological Rescue headquarters. And—there's a teenage version of him—and he has an Elucidator—and—"

JB's face went white. "Second?"

Katherine nodded, her eyes wide with panic. "He has Jordan! And he already turned Mr. Rathbone into a baby, and he took away Mom and Dad, so who knows what he's doing to Jordan…"

Angela stepped forward and put a hand on Katherine's shoulder, attempting to soothe her, although her own head was spinning with confusion and disbelief. Second was in the picture again? Sam chase, JB's former projectionist, who'd nearly destroyed all of time back in the sixteen hundreds? "Your parents are here now, and everyone's back to their normal ages, so it seems like things are moving in the right—"

Whump. A fifth figure appeared on the floor in front of them. Jordan, looking dizzy and timesick but otherwise all right.

In his arms was a baby.

"A-And now Jordan's back too!" Angela stammered, staring at the baby in his arms. One of the babies from the plane? Or—wait, what did Katherine just say about Second turning someone into a baby?

"But what happened?" Michael exclaimed. "How did it all work out?"

"And who's the baby?" added Linda.

Jonah, Katherine, Chip, and JB were stammering questions of their own, as Angela's mind ran through possibilities, each more ludicrous than the last. Jordan was trying to sit up, his movements still clumsy and uncoordinated due to the effects of timesickness. "Hey, take it easy, sport," Michael advised soothingly. "We're all okay now. You've got some time to recover before you tell us anything."

"No, I don't!" Jordan yelled. "Grab onto me! Everybody grab on!"

Before Angela even had a chance to decide whether or not to follow his instructions, she felt the now-familiar lurch behind her navel, and her surroundings disappeared. Someone started screaming in her ear. Actually, it sounded like multiple people were screaming, but it was difficult to determine exactly who was with her here in the darkness. Her hand was still resting on Katherine's shoulder—Katherine must have grabbed onto Jordan when Jordan had instructed everybody to do so. And Jordan must have known that he was about to travel through time.

Where are we going? Angela wondered, wishing whoever it was would stop screaming so she could ask.

Suddenly, the words, "Everybody shut up and listen!" sounded from somewhere in front of Angela, and the screaming stopped. "In a minute we're going to be back in Rathbone's office," the voice continued. Jordan, Angela realized. "We have to overpower him. And he's got an Elucidator and we don't…"

"Tell us what happened," JB's voice instructed, his words coming out in a rush.

"I don't think there's time to tell anything. But we've got to protect this baby…"

Angela opened her mouth to ask who the baby was, but Jordan wasn't done speaking. "Mr. Rathbone is going to expect me to be holding Kevin. It'll be safer for the baby if he's in someone else's arms..."

It was just light enough for Angela to see Jordan hand the baby over to Jonah. "Jordan!" Katherine exclaimed. "You and Jonah look exactly alike! That's not going to change anything!"

"Mr. Rathbone can tell us apart. He knows what clothes we're wearing," Jordan explained.

"Who is this?" Jonah protested.

"Your worst enemy," Jordan replied. "But take care of—" The rest of what he said was lost as they reached the turbulent part of the time-travel trip, in which it felt like every piece of Angela's body was being pulled apart particle by particle.

To her surprise, she found that she was still standing when she arrived at her destination. That might have had something to do with the fact that she was surrounded by quite possibly the entire group of people who had just been in the Skidmores' kitchen—Jonah, Katherine, Jordan, Chip, JB, Linda, and Michael. They were all clustered together, leaning against each other for support as they swayed back and forth. Angela fought to blink the timesickness-induced blurriness from her eyes. Something about Jordan's tone and hurried instructions indicated that this situation was one in which she would need her wits about her.

And what had he said about where they were going? Oh yeah—we're going to be back in Rathbone's office. We have to overpower him.

Her eyes fell on the lone stranger in the room, a red-haired man in an ivory robe. Curtis Rathbone, CEO, she realized, remembering him from the Interchronological Rescue propaganda video JB had shown her eons ago.

This is the man who Gary and Hodge work for, she thought. The one who started the practice of kidnapping children and selling them to wealthy families who only want to be able to boast about their lineage. The one who Jordan just said we have to overpower.

"You dared defy me!" Mr. Rathbone was screaming. "Fool! And you thought it would do any good to bring back this pack of other worthless, ineffectual people? Fr—"

Angela lunged for him, not entirely sure what she was intending to do, but knowing that she probably didn't have much time to make a decision. She eyes caught on motion from either side, and she saw that Michael and JB had both had the same idea.

Then her body locked up as Mr. Rathbone finished his sentence. "—eeze in place for interrogation! All of you!"

Angela couldn't move her arms or legs to cushion her fall or change her trajectory. Her upper body smashed into Mr. Rathbone's chest at the same time JB and Michael slammed into his shoulders, the combined force of all of their dead weights slamming the man to the ground. Angela felt the weight of several bodies landing on top of and around her, and deduced that the others must have lunged for Rathbone too.

"Get off me!" Rathbone was flailing around beneath the pile of frozen people, unable to escape from underneath all that weight. "Get off!"

"That's not really possible, when you've immobilized us," JB spoke up, sounding surprisingly calm.

"Elucidator," said Mr. Rathbone's muffled voice. "Move all the interlopers' bodies to—"

"Scream!" It was either Jonah or Jordan who yelled; Angela couldn't see who because they were both behind her. "Drown out Rathbone's words so the Elucidator can't hear them! AHHHHHH!"

Angela joined in, her ears in agony as everyone else did the same. She could feel, more than hear, Mr. Rathbone talking beneath her, though she couldn't decipher exactly what was being said. She hoped his Elucidator couldn't either.

What about my Elucidator? she thought suddenly. As Mr. Rathbone began squirming below, trying to get out from under the pile of bodies, Angela stopped screaming long enough to say firmly, "Elucidator, freeze Mr. Rathbone and unfreeze everyone else. Oh, and freeze Mr. Rathbone's vocal cords so he can't talk," she added, remembering one of the most unhelpful suggestions the Elucidator had given her back in 1932, which would certainly come in handy now.

Nothing happened. With a sinking feeling, Angela remembered that she was no longer wearing the necklace Elucidator that had been her constant companion for almost half a year. She had taken it off to give it to JB back in the kitchen, and when she'd been hit by whatever had returned her to her proper age, she must have set it down on the counter.

She went back to screaming, even as her brain was still whirring, searching around for options. What could eight frozen people do against a man with an Elucidator?

The screaming went on and on. Mr. Rathbone continued speaking inaudible words, continued struggling out from underneath everybody. Soon Angela was lying face-down on the room's plush carpet, Mr. Rathbone having extricated himself entirely from underneath her. We're not going to be able to keep screaming forever, she thought despairingly. And as soon as he's completely free from all of our weight, he can do whatever he wants to us. We're helpless.

Was there any chance Hadley was still watching what was going on in relation to her or the Skidmore family, even though the 1932 mission was over? He'd fixed JB, and might have been the one to fix everyone else—didn't that have to mean he was still keeping an eye on things?

Or did he assume that now that JB was himself again, he could take care of everything on his own?

All of the sudden, all of the screaming stopped, including Angela's own. She felt a clenching in her throat, a sensation that reminded her of holding her breath, though she could still breathe. No, she realized in horror, as she attempted to force sound out of her throat, to no avail. Mr. Rathbone got a command through to his Elucidator. He froze all of our vocal cords.

She fought to turn her head—the only part of her body that was still mobile. Mostly all she could see was the top of Michael's head, right beside her. But if she tilted her chin upward, she could see past him, toward the bottom of an ivory robe that seemed to be moving away from her. The robe disappeared from view for a couple seconds, then came back, stopping a few feet away from her face. "I defeated all of you," Mr. Rathbone's voice intoned. "It was nine against one, and I still came out ahead. Nine and a half against one, if you count the baby."

Nine? But there had only been eight of them, back in the Skidmore's kitchen. Who was Angela forgetting? Unless—Oh, please don't let him have captured Hadley.

"Yes, I see that too, Jordan," Mr. Rathbone continued, and Angela strained her neck to try to catch a glimpse of what he could be talking about. "After everything else I've done, don't you think I'm capable of reassembling a mere Elucidator? Even… Even the best Elucidator in the world?"

Reassembling? Does that mean someone managed to break Mr. Rathbone's Elucidator? Angela thought hopefully. It was maddening not to be able to actually see what was going on.

The robe strode out of sight, and a few seconds later, Angela heard Mr. Rathbone's voice commanding, "Repair mode!"

Oh no, thought Angela. Even if Mr. Rathbone's Elucidator had been broken, it wasn't anymore. What was he planning on doing to all of them? Did he still want to turn the kids into babies? Did he want to turn all of them into babies?

Angela's stomach lurched as she remembered the baby Jordan had been holding. Was that someone we know?

"Victory!" Mr. Rathbone sounded delighted. "Now I have everything I wanted. And you actually thought you could defeat me?"

We can still defeat him, Angela thought desperately. We can—we can—there has to be something we can do.

But what could they do, completely immobilized with no Elucidator and no way to call for help?

Suddenly, Mr. Rathbone spoke up again—at least, Angela thought it was still Mr. Rathbone, but he sounded different. Older. His voice was wobbly, and in place of the manic glee from a moment before was a dismayed panic. "What's happening to me? Stop it! Stop…"

A thud sounded a few feet away. The sound of something hitting the floor.

Then silence.