He strode past us, oblivious to our presence, and as though we’d decided it beforehand, we silently crept down the hall after him. We peered around the corner as Tramble quickly entered the passcode and placed his hand on the monitor. The door gave an audible click, and he flung it open and strode through. Before I even realized I was doing it, I was in a full sprint for that door, and it was as though I was watching it shut in slow motion. At the last possible second, I lunged and threw my arm out, my fingers sliding between the door and the frame with a painful but utterly satisfying pinch.

“Trust the door will open,” I said. “It’s open.” I carefully clambered to my feet, my fingers never leaving the space between the door and its frame.

“What’s your plan?” Elliot asked. “Storm in there and ask Callaway to be Glitched back to the past?”

“You keep forgetting we don’t have a plan,” I said as I grabbed his arm and slid through the door.

We slipped into the Glitch room unnoticed thanks to the full-scale argument that had every person in the room on their feet and shouting.

Elliot pulled me to the right and down so we sat with our backs against the cold stone wall next to one of the Glitch platforms. It wasn’t a great spot—most of our view was blocked by Glitching equipment and a costume rack—but it wasn’t horrible either. Especially since it successfully hid us from everyone else in the room. I noticed that some of the agents who had been retrieved today in our mission were there as well, with the exception of Agent Chris, who I could only assume was still in the medical wing. I caught sight of Salzburg again, and I felt a pang of regret that he was the one who had come to the mountain for security talks and not my mom. Had she been here, all of this would have felt so much more manageable.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Callaway called, walking into the middle of the room and holding up his hands for quiet. “I leave for five minutes, and you resort to shouting? Please remember to keep this conversation civilized.”

“But we are running out of time,” said the agent who Sam and Serina had rescued. He was young, probably in his early twenties, and his eyes snapped angrily as he glared at Callaway.

“Just because the Academy was destroyed does not give us permission to become the very people who we dedicated our lives to capturing,” Callaway said.

“So apparently our idea wasn’t very original,” Elliot whispered. I nodded, too gripped by the argument taking place in front of me to comment.