“I’m afraid you can’t. I have to get to a meeting shortly.” He tucked his phone into the pocket beside the buttonhole that held the carnation. The bright pink, perfectly fresh carnation.
“Don’t worry,” Emerson said. “We’ll be speedy. Just come with us.”
She reached out to take his hand.
He dissolved.
Denial came first. A white-hot burst of adrenaline in our chests that flooded out to our arms and legs, making us weak and dizzy.
Reality kicked in, the image outside reconciling with our brain. Panic sped up our breathing, broke us out in a sweat, made us shake.
I’d never felt another person’s emotion so strongly in my life.
“Dr. Turner?” Em turned to me. “Kaleb? Was he …”
“No,” I said, reaching out for her before she turned around. I knew where she was going.
“Rip.” Her breath heaved in her chest. “Dr. Turner was a rip. He was a rip, and he didn’t recognize us.”
“It could have been a future rip,” I said, trying to stall her, calm her down. Work out a way to stop what I knew was about to happen.
She shook her head in protest. “No. Michael and your dad said they haven’t seen any future rips since all this started.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Kaleb, he was wearing the exact same thing he had on yesterday. He had the pink carnation in his buttonhole. It was fresh. He should have recognized us. Oh no.”
“Emerson, don’t.”
“Oh please, God, no.”
She didn’t wait for me, just took off running at top speed. My legs were longer, but she ran distance and had fear as a chaser. “Stop! You don’t know what happened up there—stop—Em!” She skidded through the entrance to the science building. I was two seconds behind because of the time it took to open the door she let slam behind her.
Her footsteps echoed up the stairwell. I heard her wrench open the door to the second floor. I caught it right before it closed.
The receptionist from yesterday sat at her desk, her mouth opening to ask us where we were going. We were too fast for her.
Em opened the door to Dr. Turner’s office and stood, frozen, just outside. I stopped in time to keep from running into her.
The fedora he’d worn to meet Teague was on the floor.
The pink carnation was wilted in the pencil holder.
The pipe was cold.
o;Wait. Dr. Turner was there, too?” Michael looked from me to Lily and back again. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”
We explained everything, including the crowd of freaky rips.
“So now we have a device that we don’t know what to do with, and we still don’t have any leads on how to find Jack,” I said.
“Obviously, we have to go back to talk to Dr. Turner.” Em felt the edges of the Skroll, looking for a way to open it. “We’re taking this with us. First thing in the morning. And we aren’t leaving until we get answers.”
Chapter 26
Early the next morning, Em and I hurried across Bennett’s campus toward the science department.
“Are you just going to plop it down on his desk and say, ‘Hey, my best friend stole this from the same office where you were seen with the head of Chronos. What’s that all about? And also, do you know how to open it?’”