8

“Jack? Jaaaaack!”

“You’ll never wake him up like that.”

I can hear them. Sort of. It’s like I’m in a pool underwater and they’re yelling at me from the deck. Not that I’ve ever been in a real pool, except during swim competitions at St. Andrew’s.

“Maybe you’re right,” someone replies, shaking me a little. “But what else am I supposed to do? Jack! Hey, Jack! Hey—wait! Look, he’s getting up. See? His hands are moving!”

“His hands are twitching. Not the same.”

“Fair point.”

Ari? Yes! That’s Ari’s voice! Of course! It all makes sense now. I must be asleep! This whole thing has been a bad dream and I’m just lying in bed, having a hard time waking up. There’s no attack. No engine room. No laser guns. I probably blew through my alarm and Ari’s come back from class to get me. Or—even better—maybe it’s Sunday, and I’ve slept till noon, and Ari wants to play video games.

“My turn,” she says. Wait. No. That’s Becka’s voice. And the only way that Ari and Becka would be hanging out together is if we were in one of his dreams. “Pass me the water.”

I’m trying to open my eyes, trying to say something, but my body still won’t cooperate.

“Wake up!” Becka shouts, as I’m smacked in the face with a blast of ice-cold water, which—gotta hand it to her—works like a charm. The water is so freezing that I snap my eyes open and sit bolt upright.

Becka is standing over me, holding this weird, jagged, purply bucket. “Told you,” she says smugly to Ari.

I blink the water out of my eyes and look around. We’re in a small, closet-sized room, surrounded by shiny black walls on all sides. They’re smooth like glass and don’t have any grooves for doors, windows, or even air vents. We’re trapped inside a box. And while there aren’t any lights in the room, the walls seem to be letting in some light from whatever’s on the outside.

“Where are we?” I ask, looking around.

I’m not claustrophobic exactly. Small spaces don’t scare me. But they do make me kind of anxious. My heart moves a little faster, I notice every time I have to take a breath, and my hands get all clammy. Ari says that I get “claustronervous,” but I don’t think that’s a thing. I asked my mom about it once, but she just laughed and ruffled my hair. I close my fingers into a fist to calm down, feeling my nails dig into my palms.

“No clue,” Becka says.

So I try a different question: “How long have I been out?”

Ari opens his mouth to answer, but Becka interrupts. “Don’t. He needs to be told gently.” She looks me in the eye.

“Jack, I’m so sorry. You’ve been asleep . . . for two years.”

My heart practically stops in my chest. Two years? How is that possible? I look down at my shoes. Same size, I think. Is there a mirror in here? I need to see what I—

“Nah,” she chuckles. “I actually just woke up a few minutes ago, and Ari got up right after that. Hard to tell how long we’ve been unconscious, since our rings aren’t getting any service.”

“I wanted to use my Pencil to make a basic clock, but it’s gone,” Ari adds before I can tell Becka what I think of her sense of humor. “Someone must’ve confiscated everything in our pockets while we were unconscious. There’s food, though.” He pushes over a small pile of what looks like sawdust. “At least, we think it’s food.”

He takes a pinch and puts it on his tongue. “Definitely probably food.” He eats a little more. “Almost for sure.”

“Why would you eat something you only think is probably food?” I ask.

“It’s not bad,” he explains. “A little garlicky, but I don’t really mind it.”

“But how do you know it’s food?” I ask, lowering my voice to a whisper. “And how do you know it’s not poison?”

Ari eats some more sand out of his palm. “First,” he says with a full mouth, “it was next to the water when we woke up. And second, I figured it wasn’t poison because, if someone wanted to hurt us, they could just hurt us. Whoever shot us when we were on the 118 used a stun gun. And now we’re trapped here.” He knocks on the walls. “With no way out. Whoever’s holding us captive has all the power anyway.”

He’s got a point.

“Plus,” he adds, “I threw a little over my shoulder before I ate it, for luck. So we should be good.”

Not exactly airtight logic, but I’m starving, so I grab a fistful of the dust and shove it into my mouth.

“A little garlicky?!” I yell, spitting out clumps of sand. “Are you sure it isn’t just literally a pile of garlic powder?”

“Um,” Ari says, which is all the answer I need.

I grab the empty jug of water and try to pour the remaining drops onto my tongue. I consider leaning down to lick the puddle of water on the floor.

“It’s not that bad,” Ari says, licking his fingers like he’s finishing an ice cream cone.

I glance at Becka, who flares her nostrils. We’re on the same page about this, at least.

“So what now?” I ask, looking around and wondering if we could just smash the glass all around us. I push against the closest wall with both of my hands, but the surface feels rock solid.

“Don’t bother,” Becka says, rubbing her knuckles. They’re bright red. No point in me trying to punch through the walls if T-Bex can’t.

Suddenly, there’s a rumble—almost a growl—coming from the wall directly in front of me. An opening appears. Not a door exactly. Just a small open square that wasn’t there before, as if, in the blink of an eye, someone carved a hole in the thick glass.

“The scanners tell me that you are all awake now,” says a calm, female-sounding voice from all around us. “About time. Please exit your cells and proceed down the corridor.”

Cells? As in, more than one?

I’m suspicious of these instructions. I’m suspicious of everything. But Becka doesn’t hesitate. As soon as the opening appears—before the voice even finishes up—she lunges forward out of the cell like she’s diving for home base.

Ari runs out of the cell after her. And—what else am I supposed to do?—I follow close behind. We’re inside a long hallway, carved of the same smooth black rock as the walls of the room we just escaped. The hallway is closed at both ends, but all along the sides, people are emerging from cells like ours.

“Becka?!” someone shrieks. Diana runs toward her at full speed, and they collide in the kind of hug that would leave most people with broken bones.

Diana is crying. Maybe even Becka’s tearing up a little. (But she’s working so hard to block her face from view that you’d never know it.)

“Oh, thank goodness,” Ms. Needle yelps, grabbing me and Ari by the arms. “Are you all right?”

Everyone’s here. The students. The teachers. The three crew members. And Principal Lochner, who makes his way over to us.

“Where are we?” Ari asks. “What’s happening?”

“We don’t know,” Ms. Needle says, talking at a million miles an hour. “We were evacuating the 118, heading down to the hangar bay, when we started hearing that strange countdown. But—just as it ended—these people came out of nowhere. Right out of thin air. We couldn’t see their faces. They were wearing armor. Masks. I’m almost glad you weren’t there. It was terrifying. They shot us. Knocked us out and brought us here!”

“I think the same thing happened to us,” I say.

“I’m so sorry,” Ms. Needle continues, speaking even faster than before. She’s exploding with guilt. “We didn’t notice you were gone until it was too late! We were already boarding the shuttles when we took attendance again. I don’t know how I lost track of you three. You were my responsibility. But we wanted to get everyone off the ship. We were running so quickly. And that voice, it was counting down to—I don’t know what. We almost left the ship—left the ship without you . . .”

She trails off, her eyes swimming with tears. Now I’m exploding with guilt too. I mean, there’s no reason for her to feel like she abandoned us.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “We wandered off.”

She opens her mouth and leaves it open. Principal Lochner crosses his arms. “Where exactly did you go?”

But I can’t actually answer that question, right? Play it cool, Jack. Just play it cool.

“Um, we were in the bathroom?”

Ms. Needle raises her eyebrows so high, they look like they might fly off her forehead.

“He means,” Becka clarifies, “that I left my mother’s necklace—you know, Ms. Needle—the one she gave me for my tenth birthday. It was my great-grandma’s. Family heirloom.” She’s clutching a silver chain around her neck like it’s the most precious thing in the world. “I left it in my backpack outside the bathroom near the dorms. And I didn’t want to go alone. Didn’t think that was smart, you know? So Jack and Ari volunteered to come along. I’m so sorry. We were just gone for, like, two minutes. We should have told you first. But things were so crazy. I just wasn’t thinking straight. All I knew was that I couldn’t lose my Nana Sue’s necklace.”

Wow. Just—wow.

Principal Lochner glances from me to Becka to Ari and back again. I’m not sure he bought it, but Ms. Needle is nodding like Becka’s story makes perfect sense and is the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard. “Well, I’m just glad we’re all together now . . . Oh, Ming! How is your arm?”

She rushes over to check on Ming, who’s still holding their arm like it’s broken. I whisper to Becka, “Was that necklace really your grandma’s?”

She shakes her head. “Nah. Fished it out of the trash in the teachers’ lounge.”

“Gross.”

Becka just grins, which means that she’s now either lying to me for no reason or proudly wearing someone’s garbage jewelry.

But before I can ask any more questions, another opening appears at one end of the hallway.

“Next!” a voice says from all around us. The same voice from a minute ago. No one moves a muscle and it thunders again. “I said, ‘next’!”

Principal Lochner takes a deep breath. “You want to know what’s happening?” he says to Ari in a low voice. “I think we’re about to find out.”

He squeezes his way through the crowd to stand protectively at the front of the group, right in front of the opening. I see him adjust his tie and even try to button his jacket. But it won’t close and he gives up.