Free Risked (The Missing ) by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

Daniella stammered. “Are you sure this isn’t all a dream?”
    “Make Gavin visible again,” Jonah commanded.
    In a flash the other boy was back to normal. Daniella looked like she might faint, but Jonah decided this wasn’t the time to worry about that.
    “Let me talk to JB!” Jonah said into the Elucidator. “JB, are you there?”
    No answer.
    “JB? JB?” Jonah called.
    Nothing. Jonah might as well have been trying to talk into an ordinary toy soldier, one that was nothing but solid metal all the way through.
    “Let me try,” Katherine said.
    She took the soldier from Jonah’s hand and started trying out all sorts of commands: “Call JB!” “Call anyone you can reach!” “Tell us how to get home!” Jonah could tell by her disappointed snort after each command that none of it was working. Chip and Daniella joined her in bending over the toy, throwing out more commands, some ridiculous, some down-to-earth.
    “Bring me a Snickers bar!” (This was from Daniella.) “Show how much battery life you have left!” (From Chip.) “Wave at me and blink your eyes!” (Daniella again.)
    As far as Jonah could tell, the Elucidator wasn’t doing any of it. He turned his attention back to Gavin.
    “Where did you get that Elucidator anyway?” he asked.
    “What’s it to you?” Gavin retorted.
    “I just thought that might help explain—”
    Gavin grabbed the front of Jonah’s shirt.
    “I don’t have to explain anything to you!” he sneered. “Anything! Got it?”
    “Not even how to save your life if you’ve got internal bleeding that could kill you?” Jonah asked.
    Gavin’s surly expression slipped for only an instant.
    “I can handle my own bleeds,” he said. “Back home, sometimes I don’t even bother telling my parents for hours. And I’m fine! It’s just so annoying to deal with.”
    “But you can get good treatment in the twenty-first century, right?” Daniella interrupted quietly, looking up from the Elucidator. “Here, remember, it’s just ice and bed rest and—”
    “I’m fine!” Gavin protested.
    Jonah could hear Chip and Katherine’s requests to the Elucidator getting more and more desperate.
    “Well, if you can’t do any of that stuff, can you at least tell us what you can do for us?” Katherine asked, sounding totally exasperated.
    Out of the corner of his eye, Jonah saw a sudden glow of digital light near the toy-soldier Elucidator. He immediately crowded in beside Chip, staring at it.
    Above the soldier’s head, red computer-style lettershad appeared, as if on an invisible screen. They spelled out a single word: YES .
    Then that word vanished, replaced by a short list:
    I CAN:
    - TAKE PEOPLE TO 1918
    - GRANT INVISIBILITY
    - UNDO INVISIBILITY COMMANDS
    - LIST MY LIMITED FUNCTIONS
    “That’s all?” Katherine moaned.
    YES glowed again over the soldier’s head.
    “But why? Why not anything else?” Chip asked.
    Evidently, answering that question was outside this Elucidator’s “limited functions,” because the glow instantly disappeared and the Elucidator looked like an ordinary toy soldier again.
    “This is like . . . like those cell phones people buy for little kids, where they’re only set up to call Mommy and Daddy, and nobody else,” Katherine complained. “It’s useless!”
    Gavin stared at her.
    “You think this Elucidator was designed that way?” he asked.
    “Well, yeah,” Katherine said, with a defeated shrug.“Or programmed that way, or something. Have you gotten this Elucidator to do anything else for you?”
    Jonah waited to see what surly comeback Gavin would give Katherine. But Gavin just kept peering at her. He was squinting now, clearly puzzled.
    “Yes, I did,” Gavin muttered. “But that was before . . .”
    A change came over his face, disbelief and confusion slipping away into fury.
    “Oh, no,” Gavin said. “Oh, no. Gary and Hodge tricked me!”

FIFTEEN
    “I knew it!” Jonah exclaimed. “Gary and Hodge gave you this