Restored (The Missing: Book 9) [Formerly Titled Rescued]

Chapter Three

"Jordan!" Jonah, Katherine, and Chip simultaneously exclaimed, jumping out of their seats.

He just...vanished, Jonah thought as he dashed towards the artist.

"What did you do with my brother?" Jonah demanded, waving his arms through the spot Jordan vanished from, even though he knew he wasn't there.

"Where'd you send him?" Chip practically growled.

"You better not have hurt him!" Katherine added, narrowing her eyes at the mysterious man.

"Calm down, children. I assure you, he's alright," he replied, holding up his hands.

Now that he was closer, Jonah could tell that the man's beard was brown, and that he was wearing a plain button-up white shirt.

"He chose to go. I didn't force him," he continued.

"But he just disappeared in front of a bunch of time natives!" Katherine argued, waving her hands around the mall.

"But you're not time natives," he objected calmly, resting his hands on the table.

"I am," Katherine challenged, glaring at him with her arms folded across her chest.

"But you, my love, are a time traveler," he reasoned.

Katherine flinched, clearly unhappy about the man calling her, "My love."

"But all of the other people in the mall aren't," Chip retorted, picking up where Katherine left off.

The artist gave a long sigh and closed his eyes, the same way Jonah's teacher had when he just wasn't getting long division, no matter how she tried to explain it.

"Look around, and really look," the artist told them, rubbing his temple.

Jonah peeked to the right, just over Katherine's shoulder. He saw a woman bent over a stroller at an awkward angle to tend to the baby, and a man on his phone.

So what? He thought. But then, he took the man's advice and really looked. The woman was leaned over balancing on one foot while the man was hanging in the air with one leg stretched out to land on, as if he'd been running.

"You stopped time?" Jonah gasped. "Can't that be dangerous?"

"No, I didn't," the man replied curtly. "I just pulled us out of time, similar to going to a time hollow. I thought you had experienced this before?"

"Yeah, with Second Chance," Katherine mumbled, spitting the name out bitterly.

"Anyway, I suppose you want to know what happened to Jordan," he said, changing the subject.

Before any of them could answer, Jonah was struck with a thought. Instantly, he reached out and grabbed onto Katherine's arm.

"Grab onto Chip! That way, if he tries to send us back in time, we won't be separated," Jonah said urgently.

For once, Katherine obeyed without questioning him, and took Chip's hand.

"You don't trust me? I assure you, I'm not the bad guy here," the artist replied with a frown, placing his hand over his heart.

"Tell us," Chip demanded, ignoring Jonah's outburst and the man's declaration of innocence, "what did you show Jordan that freaked him out so much?"

"Oh, right. I suppose that's a good place to start," he muttered, leafing through his notebook until he came to the correct page. He set it on the table, the painted picture facing them.

Jonah leaned towards it and looked. His eyes instantly widened. A man with short brown hair dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans, and hiking boots sat on the floor with his back pressed up against a rock wall and his hands and wrists bound with rope. Without a doubt, it had to be JB.

Jonah heard Katherine gasp beside him.

"Did somebody kidnap him?" Jonah asked, beginning to panic.

"No," Chip said. "I think this is a painting of him in the time cave, back at the very beginning of everything."

"Chip's right. I mean, look at how young he is there! And his hair was a lot shorter in that picture than it was the last time we saw him," Katherine spoke.

"Right," Jonah mumbled, feeling a bit foolish for missing that. "I was the one that tied him up."

He looked at the picture for a few more moments. Chip and Katherine were right. Now that he realized that, he couldn't help but notice how true Katherine's statement was. While all of their adventures through time travel had elapsed over the course of a few months, JB's had been much longer. He'd spent years trapped in damaged time with Andrea, originally known as Virginia Dare, in the seventeenth century. Looking back to the first time they'd met, JB now seemed like a teenager. But not only the way had he looked physically. The glimmer in JB's eyes had changed as well, and made him look much older.

So much had happened in JB's life since he had met Jonah. He'd been trapped in damaged time with Andrea for five years, he'd been on the brink of time unraveling multiple times, and he'd found out that he was Albert Einstein's biological son. And that was just part of it.

I suppose living through multiple time travel disasters will make you more mature, Jonah thought, stealing a glance at Katherine. Three years ago, he remembered thinking about how silly and childlike she'd looked in her sixth grade school pictures, taken shortly before their first trip through time.

She still showed all of the experience in her eyes, although now it was difficult to tell because they were squinted at the artist.

"Why do you have a picture of JB? How is it related to Jordan?" Katherine demanded.

"I picked this moment of Alonzo's - well, you call him JB. But still, I picked this moment of his life because it figuratively represents the position he's in now. That is to say JB is very venerable right now, but he just doesn't know it." The man picked up his paint brush and began twirling it in his hands. "He needs your help now, which is where Jordan is going. To help him. Now, are you three up to the challenge?" He held the brush out, as if offering it to them. "This is an Elucidator, if you hadn't guessed that already."

"I don't trust you," Chip mumbled.

"But we have to save Jordan," Katherine replied quietly.

Jonah tightened his grip on Katherine's arm. He was tired of sitting around and talking. JB, and apparently Jordan, were in danger. He couldn't stand just standing around anymore, so he reached into his pocket with his free hand.

"Elucidator! Take us to whatever time period Jordan when to!" Jonah shouted.

"Wait! You don't know everything!" Jonah head the man yell, but it faded away as he felt himself floating through time.

"Jonah!" he heard Katherine whine beside him. "Why'd you do that? I wasn't done talking to him! You didn't even let us ask where he sent Jordan."

"But we had to save them!" Jonah replied.

"We were essentially in a time hollow, which means that there was no flowing time! We could've stayed longer," Chip said, joining in on their argument.

"Look, we could argue about this all day, but do you really want to go back? I don't trust that guy," Jonah told them.

"Me either," Chip mumbled.

Jonah expected Katherine to continue arguing, but instead he heard her gasp.

"What's wrong," Jonah and Chip asked simultaneously.

"I just realized something," Katherine said, her voice almost a whisper.

Jonah guessed that, if he could've clearly seen her face right then, she would have been as white as a sheet.

"Our Elucidator wasn't supposed to be able to time travel," Katherine continued, "unless somebody's life was in danger."

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P.S. I plan on uploading the next chapter in about a week.