Tony Abbott - Wade and the Scorpion’s Claw

Until last week.

Galina Krause, the Teutonic Order’s freaky-beautiful new leader, ordered the murder of the communications chief of the modern Guardians, an old man named Heinrich Vogel.

To me, he was Uncle Henry, my father’s college teacher and friend.

Don’t ask me how we did it, but following a number of clues Uncle Henry had left for us, we found the first relic before Galina did—a small blue stone called Vela—in that cave in Guam.

At that moment, we became Guardians of the Copernicus Legacy. I guess one part of that means having crazy dreams like this one. Another part is that members of your family get taken away from you.

“Wade, please …”

I handed Vela to Copernicus-Dad. He attached the triangular blue stone to the time machine.

“You see,” he said. “All things are possible …”

I knew it was my own mind saying that. I mean, it was my dream, right? But it felt like Copernicus-Dad was telling me, too. “Cool,” I said.

Suddenly, the big wheels of the time machine began to turn, and the cave became hazy around me.

“All things are possible, Wade,” he said. “Except one …”

“Wait. What?” I said.

Then she was there—Galina Krause with her nasty crossbow, the one she used to wound Becca. “Where is the twelfth relic?” she demanded.

I looked around frantically, but now I was alone. Darrell, Lily, Becca, even Copernicus-Dad had vanished. Galina closed in, her crossbow aimed dead at me. I tried to yell, but the oxygen in the cave was sucked away. I couldn’t breathe. The cave went pitch-black and as silent as a tomb, until Galina spoke.

“Die, Wade Kaplan, die!”

I heard the click of the trigger as the arrow left the bow.

I heard the whoosh in the air …

… and felt the arrow’s razor tip enter my chest …

“Ahhhh!”

I jumped like a jack-in-the-box. About an inch off my seat. My seat belt was fastened tight and dragged me down hard.

“Ahh … mmmph!”

Darrell had his hand clamped over my mouth. “Dude, really? Screaming in a jet? The pilot’s gonna ask you to step outside.”

I pushed his hand away. I was soaked with sweat, my head was throbbing, my heart was thundering, and everyone was staring. I’d just had … the dream .

“Sorry. Nightmare.” I coughed.

Darrell grunted. “Join the club. Except it’s no dream. We left Guam on Sunday, right? But guess what? It’s Saturday again. We just crossed something called the international date line, which turns today into the day before today. So instead of yesterday, Mom was kidnapped two days ago.”

He slammed his fist on the poor armrest. “Great, huh? We’re going backward.”

“Darrell …” I wanted to tell him that the international date line didn’t actually mean what he said, but what really struck me was that I’d dreamed about a time machine at the exact moment we—sort of—went back in time. Before my dream, it was Sunday. Now it was Saturday. A coincidence?

Except I don’t believe in coincidence anymore.

The plane descended into Honolulu, and it was good to feel the jolt of the wheels touching the ground. Before anyone else could, I grabbed Becca’s bag for her. After Galina had grazed her with the arrow in the cave, we helped Becca in little ways. Her wound was a day old—or two, if you were Darrell—and wasn’t close to healing. I shivered, remembering her lying on the cave floor in my dream. At the very least, Becca needed to see a doctor so we’d know she was really okay.

There was a rush of movement and new air and crammed bodies as we stumbled through the Jetway and entered the terminal, but the moment I set foot in the arrival gate area, I tensed up.

“Do you guys feel that?” I whispered. “Somebody’s eyes are on us.”

Becca glanced around. “I do. I’m pretty sure no one followed us from Guam, but someone’s watching us now.”

“They’re probably hiding inside recycling bins,” Lily muttered. “Or disguised as young moms with strollers. The Order is too smart to be seen, and they have to be, because otherwise everybody would know about them, but no one knows about them except us, of course, which goes without saying, but there you go, I said it anyway.”

That was a perfect Lily kind of sentence. I was getting to like how she got so much in before she ran out of breath and had to stop.

“Kids, look,” Dad said, slowing and facing us. “You’re right to be cautious, but sometimes people are just people, you know? It doesn’t help to see trouble where it isn’t. We have enough to think about without imagining enemies.”

Dad might have been right—he usually is—and by “enough to think about” he probably meant Sara. But ever since we attended Uncle Henry’s funeral in Berlin, we’d been squarely on the Order’s radar. Later, after we’d overheard Galina Krause say, “Bring her to me. Only she can help us now,” we knew that her ugly goons had kidnapped Sara.

What that meant was simple.

Finding the relics and rescuing Sara had become the same quest .

Looking as exhausted as I’ve ever seen him, Dad said, “We have a good bit of time in Honolulu before our flight to San Francisco. I know we’re all hungry, but I want to find a walk-in clinic where someone can take a look at Becca’s arm. Then we’ll get a bite to eat.”

“A clinic would be great,” she said, smiling. “Thanks.”

It was a quick hike past restaurants, souvenir shops, and newsstands to a little clinic, where an intern cleaned and changed Becca’s bandage. After he was done, and Becca gave us the thumbs-up, we headed slowly in the direction of our next departure gate, taking a roundabout route. I mean, we knew the Order would know where we were sooner or later, but we wanted to make it as difficult as possible for them. We started in the opposite direction, doubled back, entered shops and left at different times from different exits. It was probably overkill, but all part of our new way of doing things.

Luckily, there was no rush. Our flight to San Francisco was still several hours away.

I should mention that we’ve learned to travel light. Pretty much all I keep in my backpack are a change of jeans, two shirts, underwear and socks, an extra pair of sneakers, and a baseball cap. In a leather envelope, I carry the celestial map that Uncle Henry gave me on my seventh birthday. It was a major clue in starting us on the search for the relics.

Oh, and I also have two sixteenth-century dueling daggers.

Not your normal luggage, I know. One of the daggers belonged to Copernicus, the other to the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who turned out to be Vela’s first Guardian. I sort of argued with my dad that because he had Vela hidden in his bag, it was smart for someone else to hide the daggers. Besides, the security-evading holster the Guardian Carlo Nuovenuto had given me in Italy was so techie, I’d successfully brought both blades through several security checkpoints. Dad agreed.

Security had become a major priority, for obvious reasons.

Carlo had also given us a new cell phone, but we were pretty sure it had been hacked in Guam, so Dad stopped at a kiosk and bought us three new ones, another part of his plan to throw off the Order. He gave a bottom-of-the-line one to Darrell, kept one for himself, and gave a high-end smartphone to Lily.

“I feel like a spy,” she said, admiring its features. “I guess we make only essential calls and searches?”

“Exactly,” my dad said. “No way are these a gift. We need to take our situation seriously. We’ll keep only each other’s numbers, and every few days, we’ll get new phones. It’ll be expensive, but safer. It’s just one way to stay ahead of the Order.”