DO WHAT THE ROBOT SAYS. HE’S A ROBOT, THEY’RE SMART!

Owen growled in frustration as his body moved almost against his will toward the gigantic T. rex and the robot he’d almost finished undevouring. “We’re going to get eaten!” he hissed at Kara, who was in front of him.

“Look behind you, slowly,” Kara said, and Owen turned his head, then gasped. Several velociraptors had run straight at them backward, then turned around and begun walking toward them slowly, their eyes up on the T. rex. “This all makes sense if you think of it in reverse!”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Owen whispered, backing away from the raptors, hands held up in surrender. But they didn’t seem too concerned with him and were watching the T. rex warily instead.

“HUMANS, THE CREATURE IS REPLACING MY FOOT NOW, SO I WILL MOMENTARILY BE AVAILABLE FOR FLEEING BACK TOWARD THE AIR LOCK,” TIME-R said, still on the ground. “YOU HAVE OF COURSE FIGURED OUT WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?”

“No!” Owen shouted at him, while Kara nodded.

“Just follow me and I’ll explain as we go,” Kara told him, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the robot. The T. rex had put one last foot back into place as TIME-R slowly stood up. “See, this all happened already. The T. rex probably chased the three of us here, then caught the robot. While it ate him, that gave us time to get to the top of the volcano.” She turned around and nodded at the slowly advancing raptors. “And these guys probably were chasing us, then saw the T. rex and let him have us. But they must have stuck around to see if there’d be anything left, and only now decided to give up and turn to run away, since they figure they’re not going to get any part of us or the robot.”

Owen’s brain pounded, and not from the readers yelling at him. “Okay, fine,” he said as the T. rex began running away from them backward down the path. The raptors shortly followed, and the robot gestured for them to come too as it ran smoothly after the group. “But I want it on record that this is all clearly overcomplicated!”

“So recorded,” Kara said with a half smile as they ran down the path.

Up ahead several trees covered in giant leaves had fallen in the middle of the path, and TIME-R pointed at them. “THOSE TREES WERE PUSHED OVER. YOU CAN SEE THAT BY THE MARKS ON THE BARK. I HYPOTHESIZE THAT—”

“We were up in the trees, and the T. rex knocked them over!” Kara shouted, and pulled Owen toward one of the trees as the T. rex slowed and backed away. The raptors did the same, giving them lots of space around the fallen trees. Owen shook his head as Kara left the sign on the ground, then lay down on the trunk, grabbing for handholds. This was all just madness. But what else could he do but follow her lead?

Owen lay down just above her as Kara continued. “See, now we just need to wait for—”

The T. rex roared and came running at them, only to stop a few feet away and shake itself as if in pain. Both TIME-R’s tree and theirs rose magically into the air, theirs first pushing TIME-R’s tree into place, then slamming into the dinosaur’s head. The T. rex ran backward a few yards away as both of their trees planted themselves firmly into the ground.

“Cool, huh?” Kara said, grinning in spite of the danger.

“No!” Owen shouted. “And if you hadn’t noticed, now we’re stuck in a tree!”

On the ground now, raptors were appearing (backward) from the jungle, flowing out onto the path. Then more surprisingly, several shocked-looking prisoners poked their heads out from between the leaves. “You do not want to know what just happened to me!” one of them shouted.

“What is going on?” another said as the raptors began to run backward toward the air lock now, giving Owen, Kara, and TIME-R some room to climb back down. Once they hit the ground, Kara pulled Owen away, leaving TIME-R to explain the situation to the others.

“Don’t tell them about the sign,” she whispered, grabbing it as they moved down the path. “The last thing we need is for any of these other prisoners to escape. There’s a reason they got locked in here.”

“Hey, that girl’s got something in her hands!” the prisoner with the eye patch shouted. “Get her!”

“Run!” Owen screamed, and grabbed Kara’s hand, then sprinted off toward the retreating pack of velociraptors. A moment later the group of prisoners had moved to follow, and Owen really wished he had time to stop and just marvel at how odd this scene must be: two kids chasing a group of dinosaurs running backward while being chased by a group of prisoners forward.

All in all, this had to be the worst challenge. Had to be.

“There’s the air lock!” Kara shouted, and sped up. The raptors began to split off into the jungle to the sides of the path, which was good, since Owen had no idea what would have happened if they’d actually caught up to the creatures. More prisoners popped up out of the woods, and Owen had to try really hard not to think of how many of them had been eaten during this challenge.

“As soon as we get into the air lock, we need to lock the door!” Kara shouted as they got closer. Owen nodded, not sure he had the breath to answer, but ready to do whatever he could to keep the time prisoners from torturing them for . . . well, whatever the sign was. TAKE ME wasn’t exactly the clearest of instructions, but they hadn’t had much else to go on.

They passed into the air lock, only to have another bright light flash over them, strong enough to stop Owen in his tracks. “Kara?” he said, her hand slipping out of his.

“I’m here!” she said from his side as the light faded. “Also, uh-oh.”

The light faded, and they found themselves surrounded by prisoners.

“DINOSAURS ARE THE MOST EFFICIENT KILLERS IN RECORDED TIME,” TIME-R was saying. “I WOULD HAVE SUPPOSED THAT A HUMAN BEING MIGHT NOT WANT TO MEET SUCH A CREATURE, AS SHE WOULD SURELY BE EATEN BY IT.”

Owen’s eyes widened, and he glanced around at the rest of the group. None of the prisoners seemed particularly interested in him or Kara. In fact, they were all staring out at the path beyond the air lock.

“Well, let’s see what’s out there, then,” the woman with the eye patch said. “And hopefully there won’t be any dinosaurs.”

The prisoners began to file out of the air lock, while Owen and Kara slipped to the back of the group, waiting for the rest to leave. Finally, when all had, Owen turned to her and gave her a look of terrified confusion. “Huh?!” he said.

“I guess this is the forward version of what we just did backward?” she said. “I’ll tell you what, though . . . I say we just sit this one out. It might create a paradox, but stick by me and we’ll be fine.”

“I’m down for waiting in the air lock until midnight,” Owen agreed, then noticed something. “Wait. How do you still have the sign if we haven’t started yet?”

Kara looked down at it in surprise. “The writing’s changed too.” Instead of TAKE ME, the sign now just had a numeral “0” on it.

“That’s the exit code,” Owen whispered, and grinned at her. “The challenge must be set up to finish it in reverse, and it leaves you with the code! So . . . we did it?”

She smiled back, then hugged him. “Of course we did. What can’t we do?”

Other than get out of the prison? Owen sighed, then turned his thoughts inward. Did you get that, readers? The third number is zero. Three is zero. Three is zero. Got it?

There wasn’t a response, but right now, Owen’s brain couldn’t take a reader command anyway, so he happily slid down the air lock wall. Ignoring the screams outside, he and Kara waited out the rest of the day, until night finally came and reset the clock.

WELL, THAT WAS WEIRD. TURN BACK TO PAGE 1 . . . OR CHEAT A BIT, AND SKIP TO THE DECISIONS ON PAGE 259.