I open my eyes. At first, I think I’m in heaven because everything’s shiny and white. Maybe Millennia tracked our leap and killed me when we supercharged or everyone dies when they leap to 2100. But a second later I know I’m alive. We’re still in Le Temps’s office but it’s much, much bigger, the size of our assembly hall at school. And it looks like a chemistry lab with white tables and everything made of glass. There’s nothing on the tables, though; it’s like the scientists cleared everything away and went on holiday. The overhead lights are so dazzling I want to be sick but maybe that’s just the leap. At least they don’t hum like the ones at school. I try not to move my head. MC2 and GMT loosen their grip.

‘You OK, honeybee?’ GMT hands me a sweet. Strawberry. But it’s then I realise it isn’t the leap that’s made me feel sick. It was Millennia shouting at me. Her words are still clanging in my head. The sound AND the sense.

‘Leaps, you’ll never guess—’ MC2 checks his Chronophone.

‘I don’t want to guess,’ I say. ‘Le Temps made me guess the name of his cannibal meat.’

‘28 Feb 2100,’ says MC2 and raises his eyebrows at me. ‘Elle, I know it was you. How d’ya do it?’

‘I tried to think of the 1st of March but Ama said the 28th of February was closer to a leap day on a non-leap year so my brain couldn’t help it.’

GMT smiles. ‘You outthought us, man. Like you leapt solo. When I tried, couldn’t get past ’99. MC leapfrogged all the way back to 1860 an’ his phone died. You got The Gift in daisy chains.’

I smile. I didn’t know I had such a strong Gift. Maybe it’s all my athletics training. Big Ben and I train harder than anyone else in the club. I wish he was here now. I suddenly feel sad. So much happened after he left, I forgot he’s a missing Leapling too. Where is he?

‘What time is it?’ I’m trying not to think about missing Big Ben or Millennia’s threat. MC2 shrugs his shoulders.

‘Don’t know. Signal’s gone. Place smells of number two.’

‘What’s that noise?’

In the far corner of the room is a cage. I don’t want to look in the cage in case there’s a man-beast hybrid in it with the body of a sheep and the face of a Leapling or vice versa. But MC2 is already there.

‘Just a sheep,’ he says.

I look at it out of the corner of my eye. It has a black face and white woolly coat. And it certainly LOOKS like a sheep and SOUNDS like a sheep. But it isn’t just a sheep. It can’t be.