“But what happened to Sam and Serina and everyone else?” I said. “Why aren’t they here? Did they not make it out of the Academy?” I asked, the very thought sending a ripple of fear down my spine as I pictured them holding their explosives in their ridiculous costumes.

Elliot shook his head. “Every one of them disappeared before we did. We saw it. They made it out of the Academy. I’m positive.”

“Then why aren’t they here?” I asked again, looking around the room as though they might be playing a very misguided game of hide-and-seek.

“Give me a second,” Elliot said, his face furrowed in concentration. “I can figure this out.”

“Maybe their cuffs malfunctioned?” I said, looking down at the set I still had attached to my belt.

Elliot snapped his head up and looked at me, his eyes wide. “They didn’t malfunction,” he said. “Their cuffs took them back to where they came from.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” I said. “We’ve been a lot of places recently.”

“It’s confusing,” Elliot said, “but you and I Glitched twice, right? Once from the collapsing mountain to the Academy, and then when we found out how many explosives there were, we Glitched back to the mountain to get everyone, and then back to the Academy.”

“The collapsing mountain,” I said, glancing around the room that was still mercifully intact. “We never warned anyone about Mayhem attacking here!”

“It wasn’t an attack by Mayhem,” Elliot said, and there was something about the way he said it, a tightness in his voice, that made it clear that I wasn’t going to like what came next.

“Just spit it out,” I said. “I can handle it.”

“It’s why Salzburg looked so shocked that night. The attack wasn’t one he planned. He had no idea the mountain was going to collapse around our ears.”

“Well, if it wasn’t him and Mayhem, then who attacked the mountain?”

“No one,” Elliot said, looking sick. “There was no attack. There was an accident.”

“That’s not spitting it out,” I said. “What happened?”

“I think our friends Glitched back to where we took them from. The dorm room inside the mountain the night after we found out the Academy was destroyed.” My mind raced back to that night, and everything clicked into place. “They brought the bombs back to the mountain,” I said. “So, when we were standing in the Glitch room that night, listening to all the professors debate about what to do . . .”

“They Glitched back to a dorm room with no way to dispose of the bombs. So, what we thought was an attack on the mountain by Mayhem, was really just our friends . . .”