I hadn’t realised I’d packed my phone and yam, stood up, put my bag on my back, walked over to the door and opened it. Run round the track, I told myself. Do ten laps of the track. But instead I stood in the yellow corridor with all the thoughts spinning round my head. I closed my eyes, my body went fizzy and I leapt through time.

SOS L

Someone’s in trouble in 2048 and I have to save them.

Chapter 03:00: MC2

Chapter 03:00

MC2

At the beginning of Seventh Year, a criminal came to our school. He was a skinny black boy with clumps of hair sticking out of his head like antennae. His eyes turned up at the edges and he had an infinity tattoo on his left hand which looked like a number 8 sideways: . He wasn’t in school uniform because he was a criminal, so his trousers and top were white with graffiti all over them. I tried to read what it said but it gave me a headache. His name was MC2, the boy we’d see months later in the Time Squad video. But we didn’t know that at the time.

Mrs C Eckler had given us investigative homework on MC2 the night before, so we could ask sensible questions. She gave us a ‘secret link’ and reminded us of our Oath of Secrecy. That’s when I found out he was a Leapling who’d committed lots of Anachronisms. Normal bad people commit crimes in their own time, but bad Leaplings steal things or kill people in the past so it’s harder to trace the crime. All these crimes are called Anachronisms. MC2 was nicknamed the Mixer of Chronology but I didn’t have time to find out what it meant because Grandma wanted me to fetch the comb and pomade.

Mrs C Eckler smelled of perfume that day rather than Pears soap. She had her ginger hair down to her shoulders rather than piled up on her head as usual and was wearing bright blue eyeshadow. I didn’t like this. I kept thinking she was someone else who’d stolen Mrs C Eckler’s voice.

‘Now Seventh Year, we are EXTREMELY lucky today.’ She was pacing up and down rather than standing still, which was really distracting. ‘We have a very special visitor . . .’ I think I zoned out during her introduction, but the next thing I knew everyone was cheering like he was a pop star.

MC2 blinked all the time. He blinked so fast you might not even notice. I think he was scared. I tried to hate him because he’d broken the law but I felt bad for him because he was scared. And he spoke in rhyme so it was more like a rap than a talk.

‘To the power of 2, I deliver my apology,
I committed intricate crimes against chronology . . .’