The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

Gravity had hold of him and was determined to smash him into the water that would be as hard as concrete at this speed.

He needed time to think! He needed to stop falling. To stop everything, because if he didn’t stop everything he was dead at the age of twelve, a pulpy mess to be eaten by sharks, his bones to be coated with coral.

He needed to stop time.

He could see individual waves now, fluorescing in the starlight, the tallest tips just touched with pink sunrise.

“Ret click-ur!”

That’s what Mack shouted, with eyes closed, his body clenched tight for the impact that would snap his bones and pop him open like a water balloon. The words bubbled up out of some pocket of memory, a once heard and almost forgotten phrase in a tongue he did not recognize or know.

The wind stopped. That was the first thing he noticed.

The wind stopped.

He pried one eye open. The waves were still there, still below him. And so close below him, so close he could smell the salt.

But they were not getting closer.

Mack hung in midair, balled up as if he were hoping to cannonball and make a big splash and then swim back to the diving board.

His body was trembling, shaking so hard from cold and fear he thought the shaking might pop his shoulders out of their sockets.

Amazingly, the ocean was no longer rushing toward him at four times the speed limit on most freeways.

Mack twisted his head around. He saw stars. And outlined by those stars, Stefan. The bully of all bullies was hanging in midair, just like Mack.

The girl, Risky, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the bizarre craft Mack now recalled slowing down and coming to a near stop.

“Huh,” Stefan said.

“We’re alive,” Mack whispered. “It worked.”

“What worked?” Stefan asked calmly.

“I just said the words that the old dude—Grimluk—said when he made everything stop.”

Stefan thought about that for a while and said, “Huh.” Then, “Now what?”

Mack wasn’t ready to think about “now what?” His heart was still trying to beat its way out through his ribs. His stomach was about twenty thousand feet behind him. His entire body was shaking like the rough-road simulator in an arcade racing game.

“How high up do you think we are?” Mack asked.

“Not as high as we were,” Stefan said reasonably. “Probably if we dropped from this high we wouldn’t get totally squashed.”

Mack peered through the darkness all around. He could clearly see the coastline, with the bright lights of Sydney and all its suburbs spread in a north-south line.

And in the other direction the sun was definitely coming up and pushing the darkness back. In fact, it was kind of pretty in a pinkish, pale purple kind of wa

y.

“Here’s the thing,” Mack said when he had regained his composure. “I don’t exactly know how to turn it off. The spell or whatever it is.”

“Huh,” Stefan observed.

“Maybe I need a whole different thing to say. But I have this feeling Grimluk just said the same thing over again. You know, like if you push a power button to turn something on, you turn it off by pushing the same button. Right?”

“Huh.”