“Can’t you open it with magic?!”
“Can’t you break it?”
“We have magic, too—if we hit it all at once?—”
“Impossible.” His voice rang in my ears like a bell. “It’s impossible. All these locks are made of sequences, not just magic. Ineedmy tools.”
Master Talik looked on the verge of tears.
I had two options before me—start crying, start panicking, running—or.
Or I could think of a solution.
Yes, it seemed like the end—we were in the tower and there were soldiers out there and chances were they were going to ring the alarm when they saw the panel, and we couldn’t get out in time without the tools—but that’s the thing.
The tools weren’t justgone.They were up there still.
They were up there.
“I’ll get them.”
The others had been talking, but I didn’t hear anything. When I spoke, though, they all fell silent. They all looked at me.
“I’ll go get the tools, and you wait here.”
“No.” March. “The soldiers?—”
“I can take care of the soldiers,” Silas cut him off, moving closer to us through the others. “All I need is magic—I can take care of the soldiers while Ora gets the tools.”
And that was enough for me. “We can do it.”
In fact, the very idea that I would bedoing somethinginstead of sitting here, waiting, diluted my panic and my fear almost all the way, replaced it withexcitement.
“Then I’ll come with.” March turned to Russ with the plaques, “Hold onto these till I get back.”
Russ grabbed them from his hands without hesitation.
“I’ll go, too. Just in case,” Mimi said.
“Here,” said March, offering Silas something next—his chronobank. “Use every last second of Sparetime if you need to.” Then he nodded his head back to Mimi and me. “They come first.”
“Agreed.” Silas took the chronobank from his hand eagerly. “I’ll lead, you follow. Let’s do it.”
“Be careful,” Master Talik said. “Just…be careful. Watch the floor and mind your every step. Run if you have to—butdon’tget caught.”
Don’t get caught.The words echoed in my mind, wiping out all other thoughts. The four of us nodded.
“We’ll be waiting,” the Timekeeper whispered.
Then we were on our way.
We moved fast.
Silas led, far from the boy he was yesterday, who needed a cane to walk—farther still from the boy we’d found in that pocket in the Labyrinth with a grinning cat on his lap.
March’s chronobank was firmly in his fist now, and he took us right back where we came from—the stairway, the only way up and down other than the platform hanging on the chain, which was down there on the seventh floor still. The soldiers hadn’t used it—they’d chosen the stairs. I wasn’t sure whether that was for better or worse.
My legs burned and my lungs ached, but I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t panicking. I was focused, running the same speed as Mimi as we followed March and Silas—which was saying something, since she was a Club.
