“Regan?” she said, removing whatever had been stuck in my back and letting go of my neck. Before she could ask anything else, I had the cuff on her right arm. A second later I was pressing the activation button on her cuffs. Leaning over, I quickly activated Eliana and Tess. Everything went dark, and to my utter relief I found myself back on the platform in the Academy’s Hub, but this time instead of Elliot, I was standing next to Tess, Eliana, and Serina. To my surprise Tess was somehow still asleep. Eliana was blinking groggily at the room while Serina stood frozen, her eyes flicking from platform to platform so fast I wondered if she was making herself dizzy. A moment later Elliot appeared mid-struggle with a very angry Sam and an equally confused Corban and Blake.

Appearing on the platform distracted Sam for a moment, and Elliot managed to pull himself free from the headlock Sam had him in to come stand by me.

“Are we—” Serina said, and Sam whipped around to face his sister, his expression relaxing just a hair at the sight of her, and for the first time I understood, because I’d felt a tangible weight lift off my shoulders the second Elliot reappeared.

“Listen up,” I said, and everyone jumped as my voice bounced back at us in the cavernous hub. Tess sat up with a start, looking around herself with such a baffled expression on her face that I almost laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “But we don’t have much time.”

“Are we at the Academy?” Sam asked.

“We are,” I confirmed. “And in less than an hour this entire island is going to explode, unless we do something about it.”

Sam was the first one to catch on, and he walked over to stand next to Serina. “What do we need to do to save the Academy?” he asked.

“Wait a second,” Corban said, his head still on a swivel as he looked around. “Is this the past? And if it is, then that makes us . . .”

“Criminals? Butterflies? Time-traveling trespassers?” Elliot said. “All of the above, welcome to the club.”

I held up a hand before anyone could say anything. “Listen,” I said. “We’ll explain, and then if you want to go back to the mountain, that’s your call. We can’t force you to be a criminal.”

“But, spoiler alert,” Elliot said, “the mountain is about forty-five minutes from collapsing in on itself from an attack. So, there’s that.”

“So, no matter what, in less than an hour, we could all be dead?” Tess said with a nervous glance at her cousin.

“Right.” I nodded, hoping my face wasn’t giving away how nauseous her words had just made me feel. “But if you stay here, we have a chance to save the Academy and ourselves.”

“A very small chance,” Elliot added.