“You’re awake!” Jia jumped up, dropping some book she’d been reading. He hadn’t noticed that she’d been sitting right by his bed. She was back in her regular clothes—pants and a T-shirt with her vest, the many pockets bulging with tools and supplies. Matt decided, even though she had looked beautiful in her dress last night, he liked her better this way. Last night she had been Princess Quejing. This was Jia, his best friend.
Jia rushed to his side. “Does your head hurt?” she said.
“A bit,” he said in a raspy voice. But it was much more than a bit. It felt like someone had dropped a twenty-pound bowling ball on his head. “How long was I out?”
“All night and then some. It’s noon now.”
The events of the previous night came back to him slowly, but remembering them didn’t make him feel any better. It wasn’t just his mother who had left him. Albert had stolen the compass for her, effectively working around her solemn oath to him that she wouldn’t steal it, and they just . . . left. And Gaga and Haha and Uncle Chuck. Vincent had taken them too. How long before he forgot them? There were others that had left him, he thought, but he wasn’t sure who. His memory felt clouded. His head ached. He pressed his fingers to his temples.
“I’ll get you some tea,” Jia said. “You’re probably dehydrated.”
Jia forced about ten cups of ginger tea down him, claiming it could cure any headache, but the pain persisted, as did the fog in his brain. Maybe those particles were still a bit separated, buzzing around inside his skull like a bunch of gnats.
“Matt, I’m so sorry,” Jia said.
“It’s okay,” Matt said, his voice hollow. “It doesn’t matter, really.” And there was part of him that felt that was absolutely true and another part of him telling him that it was a complete lie. It was like there were two beings inside of him, fighting for control.
“Oh, Matt,” Jia said. “Of course it matters! It’s all right to feel sad, you know. And you must know your mother truly loves you. She’s just . . . not herself right now.”
Matt nodded, even though he wasn’t sure what that meant. What did it mean to be yourself or not yourself? Was he himself now? Would he become someone else eventually? Marius Quine . . . and who was he?
Jia picked up the book she’d been reading. It was a book about scientists. It looked vaguely familiar to Matt. He remembered Pike had been reading it somewhere, sometime. But where? Maybe on the Vermillion. The book must be from Wiley’s library.
“Doing some research?”
“A little. I found something I thought you should see.” She opened the book and pointed to a picture. “Doesn’t he look familiar to you?”
Matt squinted at the black-and-white photograph of a man, then looked at the caption. “Alfred Nobel? I’ve certainly heard of him. He invented dynamite, and there are very prestigious prizes named after him.” Ever since he’d learned what they were, Matt had secretly wished to win a Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry or mathematics someday.
“But I think we’ve seen him before,” Jia said. “He was the man on the Vermillion, wasn’t he? The one who was with Vincent when he was chasing us.”
Matt studied the picture again and realized she was right. Nobel was the man he’d seen on the Vermillion, the one holding the case of the strange dynamite.
“I think he’s the reason Pike left us,” Jia said. “I think she knows him somehow.”
Matt nodded. “Pike could definitely be Swedish.”
“Anyway, I think he has something to do with what’s been happening, your family disappearing, the forbidden lock breaking. I think if we could visit him, he might be able to help.”
“Or not,” Matt said. “Clearly he was helping Captain Vincent.”
“We don’t know what he was doing,” Jia said. “Or why.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? We can’t visit him. Nobel’s not alive yet, and I don’t have the compass anymore.” Matt felt at his chest where the compass should have been. It didn’t just feel like something was missing from the outside, but from the inside too.
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Jia said.
Tong interrupted them with a tray of food. Matt was doubly grateful, both because he really did not want to discuss losing the compass and because he was starving. Plus, he desperately needed to pee. Triply grateful.
Matt got out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom. His legs felt like they would crumple beneath him, like dry pillars of sand. But he managed to hold himself together. After he was finished in the bathroom, he glanced out the window and did a double take.
“Is that the Eiffel Tower?” he said.
“Yes,” Jia said. “It showed up while you were asleep, among other things. China is experiencing time rifts. The emperor says it will only get worse.”
Matt frowned at the tall metal spire reaching above all the buildings of the Forbidden City. This was not a good sign.
“Listen, Matt,” Jia said. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you don’t need the compass to time-travel.”
“What do you mean? Of course I do. No one can travel without the compass.”
“Marius Quine can,” Jia said.
Matt frowned. That was true. Marius Quine could apparently travel without the compass. He could make himself disappear and reappear wherever and whenever he wanted. Matt remembered the time he’d accidentally traveled to him in the future. Quine said he would teach him how to do it at some point, but it wasn’t until this moment that Matt realized what he might have meant is that he would teach himself.
“You’re right,” Matt said, “Marius Quine can disappear and reappear, but it’s not helpful to me at the moment, because I’m still Mateo. I don’t know how to do it. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“I think you do.”
Matt scoffed. “You think you know what I know better than I do?”
“I know you are constantly underestimating yourself. Just think about it,
