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

Chapter Seven

"Founding Fathers?" Jonah mumbled.

Weren't those people from Colonial times, like Benjamin Franklin and James Madison? He wondered, trying to pull all of the information he'd learned in history class to the front of his mind.

"Like George Washington?" Katherine queried. "Do you think we'll get to meet him?"

"Not him particularly," she replied. "But you will get to meet some."

"Who?" asked JB with narrowed eyes. "And what exactly do you want us to do?"

"Well, during an experiment, something was traded in the past. All that you have to do is make a quick swap. You'll just be replacing the foreign with the original."

Simple enough, Jonah thought.

"I don't like the sound of this," Katherine said to JB and Jonah. "Not at all."

"It's too suspicious," JB mumbled.

"Yeah," Jonah agreed before continuing. "So, what exactly would we be replacing, you know, if we decided to do this?"

"I think it'd be easier if I just showed you," she said. Instantly, a video popped up in the place she'd been seconds before.

A woman was lying in an old-fashioned bed. She had hair glued to her forehead with sweat, and she was gasping for air. Another woman was holding a tiny baby.

"It's so quiet," Katherine commented darkly.

"You're right. The baby would be crying if it could breathe," JB mumbled, rubbing his chin.

Are we going to watch a tiny baby die? Jonah wondered, his stomach tightening. Throughout his travels, he'd watched grown people die, but never something so tiny and helpless.

"C'mon, baby. Breathe," he mumbled tensely.

As he said those words the woman on the screen must have patted his back just the right way, because the last word Jonah spoke was muffled by the infant's shrieks. Jonah let out a sigh of relief.

"He's a boy, Rachel," the woman mumbled quietly, quickly swaddling the crying baby in cloth. She brought the child around to the head of the bed for his mother to see.

"A boy," his mother mumbled, casting her eyes away.

"She just had a baby. Shouldn't she, uh, be more excited?" Jonah asked. He looked to JB for an answer, but the time agent continued staring at the screen, his blank face unreadable.

"Maybe she's too tired?" Katherine offered, exchanging his glance for a moment.

By the time he had focused on the screen again, Rachel was the one holding the baby.

"I'll get the father," the midwife explained, heading out of the room.

A moment later she returned with a man who sat down in a wooden chair beside Rachel's bed.

"You have done well, Rachel. You bore a son," he said softly, gazing at the tiny baby.

"James," she mumbled, locking eyes with him.

He softly placed his finger over her mouth. "Don not fret. The past is behind us and cannot be changed. We must continue forward."

"Foreward," she repeated quietly. "My sweet James, I fear for our future, and the future of our son. We have committed a great sin."

"Could this be about..." JB whispered, his eyes glued to the screen.

"JB, what's she talking about?" Jonah asked, watching him. He was just staring at the screen with a faraway look in his eyes, as if he was trying to remember a particularly difficult answer. Receiving no answer, he frustratedly huffed and turned back to the screen.