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

Chapter Five

A/N: Sorry it took so long to publish this chapter!

"Was— I mean, is Jordan okay?" Katherine all but whimpered.

"He's still at the hospital with Cira right now, but it looks like he's going to make a full recovery," JB answered with a stern face. "He saved my life. I would be dead now if it wasn't for him."

"So, if the dart would have killed you, why it didn't affect Jordan like that?" Chip asked with a confused expression.

"The dart would have hit me in the back of my neck. Nobody would have been able to do anything for me, because the poison would have made it to my spinal cord and shut down my central nervous system," JB explained, his expression still grim. "But instead it hit Jordan's hand, so we had some time to work with before... before it would have killed him."

"Jordan's so brave," Katherine said in an admiring tone, as if she was proud to be his sister.

"Yes, he was. And really, this was the best outlook we could have hoped for," JB agreed.

"But what if it wasn't Jordan that was sent first?" Chip asked. "What if Katherine, or Jonah, or I had decided to go talk to the artist, and he sent one of us instead?"

"I'm not sure yet," JB sighed. "After the incident I talked to my bosses, and they agreed not to suspend me but to let me continue investigating. Then you three showed up, and after you told me what happened, I had my projectionist begin working on that. I can show you those projections, if you like."

Chip nodded, and JB began typing again before he finally pulled up two videos with the word "PROJECTION" written across them.

"Look, I haven't seen these myself yet, but you might find them... difficult to watch," JB warned.

"But we've seen lot of things that were 'difficult' to watch during our trips through time," Katherine replied, adding air quotes with her hands.

"Yeah, I'm sure we'll be fine," Chip agreed.

JB nodded and hit a single button on the keyboard.

The first video showed Katherine.

"Oh my goodness! JB, you're okay! I thought you were in danger!" Projection Katherine exclaimed after popping through the door and dashing over to them.

"Katherine, what—" JB sputtered, his eyes widening.

"Wait— who's that?" Katherine interrupted, pointing at the assassin with the dart.

"Get down!"Cira shouted, tackling both JB and Katherine.

The assassin fired it and vanished, leaving Cira lying on the floor, twitching with a dart in the back of her neck.

"I wouldn't have done that," Katherine complained after the video stopped. "I would have noticed the guy sooner."

JB just shook his head. "With hindsight. it's easy to say things like that, because you know what to expect."

The next projection showed Jonah, which turned out to be very similar to what Jordan had actually done. Only, with darker results.

"Jonah? Or Jordan?" Projection JB asked, just like he had when Jordan burst in.

"JB!" Jonah exclaimed. Before anything else could be said, Jonah noticed the figure and the dart. He put everything together a fraction of a second before Jordan had.

"No!" he shouted, flinging his body between JB and the dart, instead of his hand only.

"No, don't touch it!" JB yelled, but it was too late.

This time it was Jonah who was lying on the floor with a dart in his neck.

Katherine looked over at Jonah after the screen went black. "You're brave, too."

Even though he knew it was a compliment, he felt like rejecting it. 

I didn't actually do that! he wanted to shout. I'd be dead if I had.

"Chip's actually doesn't have a video. There was a ninety-seven percent chance of Chip being so time sick that he wouldn't even be able find the room in time," JB explained.

He continued showing the teens projections of the three of them, excluding Chip of course, coming to the room in different pairs and groups, but they all had similar results.

"If Jordan being sent was the only way everybody could survive," Katherine began, but drifted off mid-sentence, not quite able to articulate her thought.

"Jordan chose to go, but it could have easily been any one of us," Jonah finished for her. "One little decision, and everything changes."

"That's how time travel's always been. You know that," JB said as he canceled out whatever program it was that they were using to view the projections.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Chip asked suddenly, drawing everybody's attention. "I mean, the only reason Jordan was sent to the future was to save JB, and we came to save Jordan and JB, but you're both fine."

"Well, I'm not comfortable sending you back to the twenty-first century yet," JB said, then quickly continued after seeing the excited look on Katherine's face. "But you're absolutely not leaving this room to go sight-seeing. Not even just around this building. Especially Chip. I don't want to contaminate you three any further."

"Fine," Katherine replied, her voice full of sass, "but I'm not going to just sit in this little room and wait around forever until you decide that it's okay for us to go home."

JB let out a long sigh, but flashing lights and loud beeping distracted all of them from further conversation.

In an instant, JB forgot his squabble with Katherine and was quickly swiping and tapping at his Elucidator.

"What's going on?" Chip asked nervously.

"Something's happened," JB mumbled, all of his attention focused onto his device. "Oh, God no!"

"What? Tell us!" Jonah prompted.

"It's your brother," JB whispered.

"Jordan? He didn't— he didn't take a turn for the worse, did he?" Katherine gasped, growing pale.

"What? No, he's fine. It's Kevin. He just... vanished from the twenty first century," JB replied with a stern face. "But that's not the only problem."

A/N: So, we're really starting to get into the plot with this chapter! I've got it planned out pretty well so far, but this is the first draft so if you do notice any plot holes that I've missed in the upcoming chapters, please message me. 

As always, thanks for reading! Please vote and comment if you liked. <3