"I knew it!" Kevin screamed at all three of his siblings. "I knew you were all hiding something from me!"
They lay in a heap inside an empty, plain room with white walls and floors. This is where they'd landed after Kevin grabbed onto Katherine's wrist and the air around them seemed to swallow them up and spit them out into some type of spinning vacuum. They'd landed here, in this strange room, dizzy and nauseated.
"Shh!" Katherine hissed at him. "Someone might be listening."
"This…never…gets…easier…" came a moan from a pretzeled up wad of limbs at Katherine's left. It sounded like Jonah, though it was hard to to confirm, as he took several minutes to untangle himself and lift his head.
"Kev," Jordan whispered from Katherine's right, "I'm sorry we never told you, but I swear we planned to as soon as you turned eighteen. Mom and Dad said it would be best if—"
"Wait, Mom and Dad were in on it too?" Kevin felt his rage burn up from his stomach into his face. "Let me guess, you have Angela and Hadley keeping secrets from me too?" He wasn't serious, but when the others' faces sank, he knew it must be true. "How many more?"
Katherine twisted her hands together nervously and kept turning her head to different corners of the room as if expecting someone. "We'll explain everything," she said, "but everybody needs to keep their voices down until we know for sure we're alone."
"Start explaining now, Katherine," Kevin hissed, "or I promise I'll scream and alert whatever it is you're afraid of."
"Kevin, we could be in danger!"
"I'm screaming in, one, two—"
"You're an unaged genius from the future, okay?" Jordan blurted. "Or, well, kind of from the future. Kind of from the past. Technically you're supposed to be thirteen years older than me and Jonah, not the other way around."
Kevin might have thought it was all a joke if they didn't all three look terrified. Not that it would have made for a very funny joke. "That doesn't make any sense," was all he could think to say.
Jonah rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times, but he spoke with confidence when he said, "Elucidator, play out the events that lead to Kevin's adoption by our parents—starting an hour before the time crash—the original time crash."
Bright lights and color burst from the emptiness in what Kevin could only describe as astonishing. For a moment, he lost track of where he was, amazed at the detail, wondering how much advanced technology must have gone into creating such an encompassing experience. Then his mental calculations screeched to a halt when he recognized the messy-haired boy on the screen. Kevin was staring at the spitting image of himself.