“Urgh!” Corey grunted. “Not so tight, Gaga!”
“I’m sorry,” Gaga said, releasing the twins. “But how . . .”
“Matt brought us back,” Ruby said.
“By blowing himself up,” Corey said.
“What?” the three grown-ups said at once.
Matt did not have the energy to explain one more thing to anyone. Luckily, Corey was eager to tell the tale. He made a few embellishments that made the whole thing sound like a comic book adventure, but Matt didn’t mind. It wasn’t far off the mark.
“Is that why you’re so blurry?” Uncle Chuck asked. “Parts of you are still in outer space or something?”
Matt shrugged. “More or less.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I thought my eyesight might be going.”
“So what are we doing now?” Haha asked. “Have you figured out how to beat that maniac yet?”
“Almost,” Matt said.
“We need to go to Colombia,” Ruby said. “We need to find Matt as a baby and keep Vincent from adopting him, because if he does, he’ll make him his own son.”
“And then we’ll really be in deep doo-doo,” Corey said.
“We won’t be at all, actually,” Ruby said.
“So . . . we’re going to fight?” Haha said, looking a little uneasy. Uncle Chuck and Gaga did too.
“You don’t have to come with us,” Matt said. “I can take you someplace safe, and you can wait until it’s all over.”
“And let you children go off on your own to fight Captain Vincent?” Gaga said. “Are you kidding? That maniac messed with my family. I’m not going to hide when I’ve got the chance to mess with him. Right, Henry?”
Haha smiled at his wife with glowing admiration. He took her hand. “Right, Gloria. I’ll fight with you and for you, all the way to the end.”
Gaga blushed a little, but she patted Haha’s hand in appreciation.
“Me too,” Uncle Chuck said resolutely. “Nobody messes with the Hudsons and gets away with it. It’s time to take this maniac down.”
Matt felt an overwhelming love for all his family right now, but at the same time, a pang of sadness that they weren’t all here. His parents . . . he needed them. He didn’t care what state they were in, if they remembered them or not. They needed to be together.
“We need to get Dad back,” Matt said. “I think Mom needs to see him, to remember, or foremember, at least. I think that’s important.”
Ruby nodded. “We can help her remember too. If all of us are together, she’ll have to feel it somehow.”
“Yeah,” Corey said. “It’s, like, destiny.”
But Matt still wasn’t sure. Captain Vincent had the Aeternum. The lock was broken, and Matt still did not know how to fix it, where it was, or even what it looked like. But they had to move forward. He had to believe that answers would reveal themselves along the way.
“All right, bro,” Corey said, “Let’s get out of here. Work your magic.”
“It’s not magic,” Matt said. “It’s science, cellular manipulation.”
“Tomato-potato,” Corey said. “Just do it.”
Matt dissolved himself.
“So freaking cool,” Corey said.
Matt spread his cells throughout Blossom, breaking it all down, pulling it all into himself and into the web of space and time. Somehow it was easier to carry an entire vehicle full of people than it was to carry a bunch of individual people, just like with the compass. It was like mass-time-travel transit. He was the driver, the captain, and they were on their way to war. He just needed to pick up one last passenger before they reached their final destination.
As they traveled through the web, he felt for those other cells still hovering in that state between existence and nonexistence, clinging to those other threads. He connected the rest of his cells to them, pulling them along for the ride. It didn’t feel as hard this time. Maybe because he was getting better at it, or maybe having the rest of the family with him somehow helped, like the collective energy of all their cells was somehow helping him gather and hold on. This time Matt didn’t have to wait to weave the threads together. Marta was ready. Even though he couldn’t see her, he could feel her weaving those threads, pulling them back into existence as they traveled.
30The Undoing of Santiago
1880
Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany
Santiago was hiding in a chest, gnawing on a bag of peanut butter–filled pretzels. He was getting dangerously close to the end. Soon he would have to venture out to find something else to eat. He dreaded it. He did not want to cross paths with her. That woman, the one Captain Vincent had obsessed over for the past twenty years.
The Hudsons were no more. The captain had unraveled the father and thereby the two children, leaving only the mother and the boy Mateo (who wasn’t really Mateo). Captain Vincent said they would soon forget the life they’d had. They’d forget that they’d ever been Hudsons or had any other life. Everything would be as it always should have been. For the captain, anyway. Santiago wasn’t so sure about himself.
The Hudson woman hadn’t appeared to them right away. Captain Vincent started to worry. Santiago could feel it. Perhaps they’d made a mistake. Perhaps they’d done things wrong and erased the woman too. But then she appeared, quite out of nowhere, with Albert in tow. Albert, of all people! He had been the one to bring her back to them. Apparently she had gotten stuck somewhere in China. It was all very confusing, but the captain didn’t seem to care so much about all that. His Bonbon was back! There was such happiness and celebration! The captain embraced his Bonbon and she embraced him, and Santiago was feeling all the happy feelings between them until the Hudson woman laid eyes on him sitting on the captain’s shoulder. She screamed so high and loud it pierced his ears and vibrated through all his fur.
“There’s a rat on you!” she screamed. Before Santiago knew what was happening, she shoved him off the captain’s shoulder. He fell
