“Stop, Sydney,” pleaded Zack. “It’s bad enough you disappeared when Alexa needed you. You don’t have to make up some stupid cover story.”

“I’m not making this up!” insisted Sydney.

“Shhhh!” Zack put a finger to his lips. “You want to wake everybody?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Sydney before she stopped, frowning, and added, “Well, not Aunt Gladys.”

Zack sighed. He was bone-tired, partly from arguing with Sydney and partly from being awake at three o’clock in the morning. Which was also Sydney’s fault. She’d come down and shaken him awake with a wild story about a magic door and blue lightning and Aunt Gladys appearing out of thin air. It was all a bit much to handle at three in the morning. As much as he generally tried to be patient with her, this was pushing his limits.

“Go back to bed,” he snapped, lying down on his bedroll and hoping she’d get the hint.

“No!” she insisted, punching him in the gut in such a manner as to show that she had not, in fact, gotten the hint. “Get up! You have got to see this!”

“See what?” came a little voice from the doorway.

Brother and sister momentarily halted their skirmish as little Alexa entered the room. “Good job, Sydney,” Zack said, coating his voice with a thick layer of sarcasm. “You woke Alexa.” He was about to try to coax Alexa back into bed but stopped short after one look at his little sister’s beaming face.

Beaming? he wondered. At this hour?

“She’s up,” stated Sydney enthusiastically. “Now we just need to wake Janice—”

Zack turned back to the currently-more-annoying sister. “Stop! You’re not waking Janice. You’re not sneaking into that room. You’re going back to bed.”

“You got into the room?” asked Alexa.

Sydney spun and zeroed in on the youngest Rothbaum. “You have to see it! There are all these machines and wires and a big door in the center of the room with this weird blue lightning all around it, and it’s a portal to another world!”

“Come on, Sydney,” chastised Zack. “It’s not a portal to another—”

“I wanna see! I wanna see!” chanted Alexa.

Zack groaned as control of the situation slipped through his fingers. “No. Guys, just no. It’s the middle of the night!”

“Which is the only time we can get in!” argued Sydney. “Aunt Gladys is asleep! This is our chance!”

“Chance for what?” asked Janice, walking into the room.

“Sydney got into the forbidden room, and there’s a big space door there—” began Alexa.

“It’s not a space door!” interrupted Zack.

“Could be a space door,” interjected Sydney.

“What’s a space door?” asked Janice.

“I wanna go through the space door!” cheered Alexa.

“Everybody, stop!” yelled Zack, shoving his arms out as if to hold back the encroaching barrage of chatter. “I don’t care if it’s a space door or an interdimensional door or a door to the linen closet. It’s the middle of the night, this whole house is creepy-dangerous, and we’ll get in big trouble if Aunt Gladys catches us. What was the one rule she hammered into our heads all day?”

“If you have to go, go in the potty,” offered Sydney.

“Okay, yeah,” agreed Zack. “But besides that? Stay out of that room!” He folded his arms and threw his best “I’m totally serious” glare at his sisters to drive his point home.

Alexa looked down at the ground, somehow managing to look both chastised and totally jazzed at the same time. Sydney glared right back at him but for once held her tongue. Even Janice folded her arms, which Zack hoped was a mild form of agreement.

“Back to bed, people,” he finished. “This conversation is over.”

“I agree,” said Janice.

“Thank you,” said Zack, relieved.

“This conversation is over,” she continued. “I’m going to go check out the room.”

“Wait. What?” said Zack, no longer relieved.

“I want to know what’s going on in this house if I’m gonna stay here till Dad wakes up,” she declared. “Who’s coming with?”

Sydney and Alexa quickly ran to their big sister’s side.

Defeat looming over him, Zack made one last attempt to reason with his sisters. “Please,” he said. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

“Time to find out,” replied Janice.

“It could be dangerous,” he countered.

“It could be awesome,” she countered right back.

With that, she turned and marched out of the room, Sydney and Alexa falling excitedly in line behind her. Zack swayed back and forth on his feet, debating with himself. He didn’t want to race after them and give Janice a victory, but he also didn’t want his sisters to go running headfirst into danger without him. What if something happened? Something he could have prevented?

He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, growled.

Then took off after his sisters.

The vault door was not locked. In fact, as far as he could tell, it didn’t lock at all. By the time Zack caught up with his sisters, Sydney and Janice were pulling the massive hatch open, Alexa cheering them on with cries of “Go! Go!” like they were about to score a touchdown.

Zack walked past everyone and stepped through the doorway before anyone even noticed he was there.

“Hey!” burst Janice. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Rather than answer, Zack shoved the truly nasty curtain aside and got his first look at the room. The sheer size of the place froze him in his tracks. It had to be bigger than every other room in the house combined, and what was with all the scaffolding? His eyes swept around the walls, taking in the piles of broken and shattered wooden doors, the weird weblike glass skylight, the strange bank of what looked to be really old computers—basically every detail of the room except for the big, fancy door standing in the center, which he was doing his very best to ignore.

Because it was covered with dazzling sparks of blue energy.

“Told you,” stated a defiant Sydney, pushing her way past him.

“Huh,” he answered.

“Wow!” exclaimed Alexa. “Look at the door! So cool!”

Zack did not find it cool. Truth be told, Zack found it terrifying.

“She just stepped right out of this?” asked Janice, circling the platform. “You’re sure?”

“Swear to God,” answered Sydney, approaching reverently.

“But…” Zack’s voice caught in his throat. He swallowed and tried again. “But it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just standing in the middle of the room.”

“Like I said. A portal to another world.”

The four children soon found themselves standing in a line at the foot of the platform, eyeing the slightly ominous door with varying mixtures of wonder and apprehension.

Finally, Sydney, who leaned more toward the wonder side of things, stepped up onto the platform. “Let’s go,” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Janice. Zack noted with satisfaction that, faced with an actual door that was actually covered in actual blue lightning, his older sister didn’t seem so gung ho on her idea. “That actually looks kind of creepy.”

Zack smugly crossed his arms. “As I said, not a good idea.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Janice shook the caution away and glared at him. “You mean it’s not a Zack idea,” she said. “It’s a Janice idea.”

She marched up to the door, reached out, and grabbed the chunky glass doorknob.

The instant her hand touched the glass, the random sizzles of energy focused their wrath on the knob and, by extension, Janice’s hand. There was a sudden, high-pitched, zaplike sound as Janice gave a yelp and was shot backward, tumbling off the platform.

“Janice!” cried Zack, instantly dropping any pretense of annoyance and rushing to his sister’s side.

“Gah! Eeuaahh! Ow!” Janice sat on her rump, shaking her hand in the air as if swatting an annoying mosquito away from her face.

“What happened? Can you feel your hand? Did you lose any fingers?”

“I’m fine, Zack!” she sputtered, despite faint wafts of smoke rising from her palm claiming otherwise. “It was the biggest static electricity shock I’ve ever felt, is all.” A hush fell over the children until Janice burst into a chuckle, adding, “Did you just ask if I’d lost any fingers? Seriously?”

Zack blushed as the others shared a smile.

“Aunt Gladys wore gloves,” remembered Alexa.

Sydney snapped her fingers and ran to the archaic bank of computers. “Gloves!” She held up Aunt Gladys’s rust-colored rubber gloves that had been resting on the chair.

“Wait a sec,” said Zack, standing. “Janice just got zapped. Let’s stop and think—”

“Not gonna happen,” replied Sydney, shoving the gloves over her hands.

Zack could only watch, his breath caught in his throat, as Sydney approached the door, reached out a gloved hand, and grabbed the knob.

Once again the blue sparks attacked the knob with a vengeance.

Janice gasped. Zack cringed. Alexa shrieked.

Sydney turned the knob without a care in the world. “It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t feel a thing through the gloves.”

Zack’s momentary relief at his sister’s well-being quickly shifted to alarm as Sydney yanked the door wide, releasing a burst of white light that nearly blinded him. Everyone turned and covered their eyes from the relentless assault of brilliance blaring into their pupils.

“Close the door!” yelled Zack.

“Don’t be a wuss, Zack!” Sydney yelled back.

“This is a bad idea!”

“It’s the best idea I’ve ever had!”

His eyes acclimating to the intense glare, Zack peeked through his fingers at his middle sister. “Please!” he begged. “Close the door!”

But Sydney did not close the door.

She walked through it.

“Sydney!” cried Zack, panic threatening to consume him.

“Sydney?” called Janice from the floor.

“Sydney?” echoed Alexa, unconsciously stepping away from the open door.

Sydney did not answer. Sydney was no longer in the room.

“Did she really just vanish?” asked Janice, struggling to her feet.

“Sydney?” Alexa’s voice was catching, and Zack recognized the start of a meltdown.

A jumble of emotions poured into his head, momentarily paralyzing him with indecision. Then, through it all, a single thought swam to the surface.

My sister’s in trouble.

Nothing else mattered.

Before his rational mind had a chance to talk him out of it, Zack dashed into the light.