"So where are we heading?" Jordan asked trying to sound but the fear was still there.
"Remember what Second said, that Time or the Elucidators aren't working right." Katherine said.
"That's what I'm counting on. But as for where were going, back to the first landed." Johan answered.
"Why? What was so special about that lab?" Jordan questioned. Johan didn't want to answer but he knew he had to so he would trust him. At least a little bit.
"I've been there before." He replied quietly.
"So what? All of us have." Katherine said slightly snotty. There was no time for anyone else to talk. The light was blinding and he began to feel torn apart. Johan could feel the cold hard floor on his back. His body felt just like the floor, hard and stiff. Everything was fuzzy. There was something tall and dark colored next to his head. He could hear something as if it was coming from far away. At first he thought it was Katherine telling Jordan not to make a sound. But he quickly found he was wrong. It wasn't Katherine's voice but another female voice he did recognize. She can't be here. Can she? There were other distant voices but he couldn't understand what they were saying. One was rough and gritty, the other was sarcastic. The fuzziness became clear. The object next to his head was a table. He forced his stiff body to get up using the table as support. Three people were crowded next to a computer. A women dressed in dark clothes was muttering to the other two guys as she scrolled along. They all suddenly pulled back and looked at him.
"Geo. You stay here and let us know if anyone is on to us." The women said. She was clearly the one running the show.
"Don't forget ou-" He started but she quickly cut him off.
"Yea, yea. I know our deal." She sounded annoyed. They were suddenly gone. He was left alone in the lab with just the glow of the computer. Johan watched but wasn't sure what was going on. Suddenly there was the sound of heavy footsteps approaching fast outside the door. No, it was coming from the computer. They were coming for him. there was a burst of static in his ear before hearing the women's voice.
"You're on your own kid." It was cold and heartless. The footsteps become louder and shook his whole body.
"Johan! Johan!" Katherine's voice hissed in his ear as his shoulder moved. Johan cracked his eyes open. It was Katherine. Jordan was looking at him over her shoulder. In his hand was JB's Elucidator.
"Are you alright? You passed out." Katherine whispered. He passed out? So it was a dream. Good. But the fear of being found still haunted him. Before he got to respond she clamped her hand down on his arm. There was the sound of a door opening. Footsteps collided together.
"Are you sure this is a protected space?" A man asked. For a brief moment Johan thought the voice belong to one of the guys from his dream. "You're certain that no can detect our presences here?" Johan could feel the man's anxiety.
"Why? Are you afraid of that alleged break in two years ago?" An another man with a deep voice scoffed.
"It did happen!" The first retorted. A women's voice broke them up.
"This is where Gary and Hodge came when they broke out of time prison and the Time Agency never knew. So yes, where safe here." She assured.
"You have news about those two? Our top and richest performers?" The first asked. "I've been so worried about them." He added sarcastically. Johan recognized the sound of skin being slapped.
"Stop it. You know Interchorological Recuse would have gone bankrupt years ago if it hadn't been for Gary and Hodge." The women said.
"We're going bankrupt anyhow, if the Time Agency has its way." The first guy muttered.
"Yeah, they hate us, but do you think the Time Agency would actually resort to murder?" She asked. Maybe not them. Johan instantly thought. One of the men gasped.
"No one from the Time Agency would do that. It'd ruin their own sense of perfection. And they would have to file a lifetime's worth of paperwork to justify it." The deeper voice argued.
"Why are you making these wild accusations? What have you heard?" The first man asked.
"Gary and Hodge have gone missing. I haven't been able to reach them in any point in time, in any dimension. They vanished completely from August fifteen, 1932." The women said. Johan resisted smirking. Finally beating them was a huge victory for him. But what had JB none with their baby versions? He listened closer to their conversation and his heart fell. Everything they had done was still on course and time was going to end. He hadn't won at all and he was the reason everything would come to an end. Failure! Did you really think you could stop it when the best the Time Agency had to offer couldn't do it? Echoed in his head. Johan slouched a litter lower.
"I'll cover your tracks if want to go to your source at the Time Agency. Do you have any theories? Any leads?" Deep Voice asked.
"The Skidmore incident has to be the key. Gary and Hodge despised those two kids. They can't stand the boy most." She said. I hate them too! Katherine's nail dug deeper into his arm.
"Let's all see what we can find out, and then meet here again this afternoon. Does five o'clock work for both of you?" Asked the first man. Johan could only assume they nodded when their no reply.
"We're not telling Curtis Rathbone about any of this, right?" The said more than asked.
"Very funny." The deeper voice said. The door opened and closed again. Jordan said something muffled. Katherine released both of them from her death grip.
"Oh, sorry." She muttered. Johan stood up using the desk to support him. The room was exactly the same as before. He started feeling slightly dizzy by the sight. He took deep, slow breaths as Katherine and Jordan stood up next to him.
"We've got to tell JB, or, or -" Katherine rambled.
"JB probably already knows. Didn't you see how tense and stressed he was back at our house." Johan said feeling better. It felt so weird to say our house. Should he be saying your house instead? That thought made him feel even more of an outsider.
"Wasn't it enough to stress anyone out that Mom and Dad were the wrong ages? And that two- no, four dimensions were squished together." Jordan asked. There was a pause as if he was deciding to say something else. "Look. Why don't we just go back to Mom and Dad and let them figure out what to do?" Wow either he's really scare or a coward or is he just that dense? Johan marveled.
"Mom and Dad don't know anything about time travel or Gary and Hodge or how to save time." Katherine said with a little sting in her words.
"But don't you want to save them?" Jordan asked, a little whiny in Johan's opinion.
"Sure but what good will that do to fix them then everything ends anyway. We go on." Johan said.
"Why would Gary and Hodge want all of time to end? How does that help them? I thought they just wanted to get rich! What's the point of being rich if everything's just going to end?" Katherine asked.
"Revenge. Plain and simple. We've – I've messed them up a lot. They wanted me to end with our version of time. Hodge said it was going to end anyway. To unstable from the time crash. They were going to a dimension where nothing important changed. And they got exactly what they wanted except they didn't know about me." Johan answered. He shot a quick look at Jordan.
"But then you smashed all the dimensions together." Jordan said accusingly. Johan eyed him.