“I’ll save you, Captain!” Brocco shouted. He ran to the captain, but before he could reach him, Annie aimed her rifle and shot him in the foot.
“Ooh!” he said, hopping around. “You little demon woman! I’ll blow your head off!” He reached for his own guns, then remembered that he’d dropped them. He backed away from the captain, away from Annie Oakley and her rifle.
The whirlpool spun faster. It was up to the captain’s waist now. He fought against it, grasping for anything that could save him. “You think you can trap me, defeat me?” Captain Vincent snarled at all the Matts, Rubys, and Coreys before him. “I have the Aeternum! I can go anywhere, anytime. I can destroy all of you. I can change anything.”
“You can’t change yourself,” Matt said. “With the Aeternum, you will be the same forever and ever.”
“You’ll never change,” Ruby said, “and so you belong in a place that also never changes.”
“A place that goes on forever,” Corey added. “I like to call it Nowhere in No Time.”
Real fear came across the captain’s face now as the force of Nowhere in No Time continued to pull him in. He couldn’t resist it.
Matt felt a jolt like nothing he’d ever felt before, like a bolt of lightning shooting through every cell in his body, and he knew it was time.
“Let go now!” Matt shouted. He pulled his hands away from Corey and Ruby, and the universe seemed to snap back into place.
Captain Vincent roared like a wild beast as the vortex pulled him down and closed over his head.
The storm still raged, and others began to disappear. One by one, all the future Matts, Coreys, and Rubys left, sucked away into their own time tapestries, back to whatever time and place they’d come from. All the people and everything that had appeared now began to disappear. Queen Elizabeth, Tui, and Vincenzo Peruggia, holding the Mona Lisa. They folded back into their time tapestries and shot back into the sky.
“Father!” Jia cried, reaching for the emperor as his time tapestry wrapped around him and carried him off.
The Eiffel Tower went, and the Ferris wheel, taking Annie Oakley with it. The Louvre and the Met and the Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Brocco went, too, though clearly not willingly. He tried to pull off his own time tapestry as it wrapped around him. Albert shouted with terror as he was picked up off the ground, his time tapestry wrapping around his legs. Wiley caught him and held on to him.
“I got you,” he said. “Just hold on to me. We’ll be okay.” Their time tapestries intertwined and disappeared together.
Blossom suddenly came charging through the air, revving its engine. The Vermillion charged forward as well. Both vehicles spun around each other like boxers in the fighting ring. They shifted again and again, into ships, cars, buses, trains, and airplanes, each circling the other faster and faster, until Matt lost track of which was the Vermillion and which was Blossom. A small blur ran toward the two battling vehicles.
“Marta!” Jia called. Marta paused for just a moment. She smiled and waved at Jia, and then she jumped right into the fray of the two vehicles as they melded together. Matt had a feeling she would next show up in a pantry on the Vermillion, eating a sack of sugar.
The jungle waves softened and stilled, returning to their natural hills and mountains. The Lost City was re-formed. The terraces rose and the ground smoothed. The rain and wind stopped, and the sky cleared. The earth gave a deep shudder and all was quiet.
Ruby let out a breath. “Did we do it?” she asked.
“I think we did,” Corey said.
Matt walked over to the spot where Captain Vincent had been, right in the center of the city. All that remained was a small puddle of water. Something caught the sunlight and sparkled beneath the water’s surface. Matt reached down and picked up a small, shiny black stone. He held it in his hand. It was smooth. There were no markings on it, but he knew exactly what it was.
Jia gasped. “The Aeternum?” she whispered in a reverent tone.
He nodded. Even now he felt its stabilizing effects, like it was grounding him, holding him together. It must have been formed by all their collective cells coming together, that searing jolt. He slipped it inside his pocket.
Matt heard a groan. He looked to his right and saw two forms on the ground. Matt raced to them, Corey and Ruby too. “Mom? Dad?” They were still their younger selves, but right before their eyes they began to change. Both Belamie and Matthew clutched at their heads as their bodies shifted ever so slightly. Mrs. Hudson held out her hands before her, watching them age. Her eyes shifted, too, as her brain seemed to expand and reclaim the memories she’d lost. Matthew Hudson touched his face as a few wrinkles settled in his eyes and the lines around his mouth deepened. His hair grew a bit longer, his shoulders rounded as all his years of reading and research caught back up to him. He glanced at the woman beside him.
“Belamie, are you all right?”
She nodded. “I . . . I think so. You?”
Mr. Hudson nodded, and then they both looked at the children before them. Belamie glanced at each of them in turn. Her chin quivered, her eyes brimmed with tears, and then with one swift motion, she gathered all three of them in her arms, crushing them against her chest. Mr. Hudson wrapped his arms around them from the other side, so all three children were sandwiched between their parents. Matt felt all the love and happiness in
