Santa Command—Portal Room
December 25th
0225 hours
Phil stared at the portal with his arms folded across his chest and his face pinched into a frown.
Beth nudged her shoulder against his. “Didn't anyone ever tell you your face will freeze like that?”
He knew that she was only trying to get him to relax, but the way she said it, super fast, blending all the words together, only stressed him out more.
He glanced at the time on his phone. “Jared's been gone for five minutes. Shouldn't they be back now?” He was afraid that if Tracy stayed too long, she would run into something interesting. And by “interesting” he meant something Tracy shouldn’t be seeing at all.
Jared was different. When he went to live with Beth, she told him everything about Santa Command in order to gain his trust, but Jared didn't believe her. In fact, Phil and Beth had lied to him about why they needed him to go get Tracy, because for Jared, the lie was easier to believe than the truth. The kid had created his own reality about Santa Command, and no one could convince him otherwise. He would never tell anyone their secrets, because he thought he'd sound like an idiot.
Tracy, on the other hand, was dangerous. He could see that now. She didn't try to hack their main frame out of pure curiosity. She planned to tell someone. When she got back, Phil knew what he had to do. “Just wait a few more minutes,” Beth said. Again, it was like her voice was being played in fast forward.
“Why are you talking like that?” Now it wasn't just her voice. He sounded like a recording of Alvin and the Chipmunks. What was going on? It was like time itself were malfunctioning. That couldn't be happening. Could it?
He reached for his phone again, but before he could check it, the ground rumbled beneath them, and the room lurched. He grabbed hold of Beth's arm as the two of them stumbled.
“Whoa!” she said. “Was that an earthquake?”
“I don't think it—”
His statement got swallowed up by another shift that knocked both of them to their knees. When Phil looked up a second later, he wished it had been an earthquake.
The portal was gone. The connection was severed.
Did that mean…?
He punched in a number on his phone, which should have connected him to the command center in Virginia. It didn't ring or go to voice mail, and his fears were confirmed.
They'd been knocked out of time. Their entire sector, three states, thirty four million people, was disconnected from the rest of the world.