

SpyCam:

The Time Team

By Zoe Wynns

Stop Right Here! This book is the fourth in a series. If you haven't read the first, second, and third books, SpyCam: The President Plot, SpyCam: The Android Attack, and SpyCam: The School Secret, you can download them from these links:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/734413 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745656

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/763305

Or search the names on the iBook store. This book will make more sense and be more enjoyable if you've already read the first three.

Praise for Zoe Wynns

"Zoe Wynns is a talented young writer who is off to a terrific start with SpyCam: The President Plot. This is an entertaining and well-paced read, driven by spirited 14-year-old Cam and her plucky BFF, Stella. Zoe's novel has suspense, adventure and a lot of heart — a combination that will leave readers eager to take more fictional journeys with Cam and crew!"

—Tracie Fellers (fiction and nonfiction author with work in Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-Five of North Carolina's Finest Writers, and 27 Views of Raleigh)

"Zoe Wynns is an amazing author. Her first two books were well written and interesting. I have read Journey to the End five times. Her book, Flicker, Fade, Soar, that I recently just finished, was awesome. This new book is obviously another masterpiece. Keep going Zoe!"

-Caleb McLamb (CEO of M-Tech)

"Zoe Wynns has done it again. Her SpyCam books are the sort of chair-gripping page-turners that grab you at the prologue and continue to hold on after the final page has been read. But it's not only the 394 unexpected plot twists that make her writing impossible to put down; her characters, too, are unforgettable. Whether it's selfless Cam, spunky Stella, or power-crazed Shardstorm, Zoe's characters don't just come alive off the page -- they jump out at you with every witty remark or infamous almost-kiss, throwing confetti into the air (or in Shardstorm's case, bombs). In short? Zoe's novels are the rare, wonderful kind that will touch your heart and stay there forever."

-Luna Hou (winner of Wake County's annual Teen Poetry Contest)

"If you are into spies, youth fiction, and adventure, Zoe Wynns is an up-and-coming author you should definitely check out. Her SpyCam series features a strong, bright female protagonist who faces a world of conquering the bad guys with ingenuity, humor and a minimum of blood and gore. Wholesome excitement that will keep you turning pages until the end... and then you start the next book!"

-Kathryn Tinsley, former college psychology instructor

### This book has been republished in 2019 with minor edits, but the original message to readers has been left below.

I am fifteen years old. SpyCam: The Time Team is my seventh self-published book. Feel free to send me feedback if you find a mistake in the book, but know that I tried my best, worked very hard on the book, and I am very proud of the final novel. Thank you for downloading or purchasing this book.

If you enjoy this book, feel free to download my six other self-published books. Journey to the End is available on Kindle, iBooks, and Smashwords. Flicker, Fade, Soar is available on iBooks and Smashwords. SpyCam: The President Plot, SpyCam: The Android Attack and SpyCam: The School Secret are available on iBooks and Smashwords. Awaken Illusionia is also available on iBooks and Smashwords.

Now, in 2019, I'm sixteen years old! I've written a total of eight books, and you can check them out on iBooks or Smashwords.

Please rate this book or write a quick review if you enjoy it! Thanks in advance!

I hope you enjoy SpyCam: The Time Team!
This is a work of fiction. While some businesses and places do exist that I've mentioned, any interactions inside those places or any descriptions of those places are purely fictional. All persons are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is published by Smashwords. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced without the consent of Zoe Wynns. All questions to thewynnsfamily@gmail.com.

Summary: Cam goes back in time with her spy friends to rescue her best friend who was murdered by the supervillain Shardstorm.

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Copyright © 2019 Zoe Wynns.
Prologue

The time machine sputtered and spit out sparks as the supervillain approached it.

"This doesn't look like it's in very good working condition," the villain growled as he gave the shimmering surface of the portal a poke.

"It always does that, Father," one of his sons spoke up hesitantly, letting his sandy-blonde hair dangle in his face, shielding his deep, dark blue eyes from seeing what the father was about to do.

"It does not," snapped the supervillain. "When my scientists completed it, it didn't spark at all."

The villain grew bored of playing with the shimmering surface. "When will my second and third in command arrive?"

His sandy-haired son checked his watch furtively, but his other son, a tan, handsome young man with blue eyes like the ocean and light brown hair as soft as silk, spoke up first. "They say they're already here."

Like they'd been summoned by his words, a man and a woman walked through the low doorway. The woman was tall, with black hair so frizzy it looked like she'd put her finger in a socket and gray eyes so hard they might well have been made out of stone.

Beside her, an even taller man flipped his dark blonde hair out of his face as he strode, his dark brown eyes glittering with malice. His once-handsome face was marred by scars from the bomb that had almost killed him... and almost killed that pesky girl Cam.

Well, this time, the villain thought, there wouldn't be an almost.

"Do you understand that there's a chance you won't make it out of this alive?" the supervillain asked the scarred man.

"Anything for the pursuit of your most high goal," the tall scarred man murmured, looking down at his burned, battered feet. The villain could see that he wasn't fully committed like he used to be.

Well, that would change soon enough.

"What are we waiting for?" the woman spoke up.

"Let's go make sure Shardstorm wins."

As they all steeled themselves, exactly seven agents from the very organization they were fighting against, one of them the very girl that they were talking about, began to stride down the hall towards the time machine.

"Master, we've got company," hissed the bolder son.

"Then let's go." The supervillain thrust himself through the portal.

All that was in his vision for a moment was shimmering, sparkly blue. Then he saw a small control pad in front of him. April 17, 2017, he typed in. The portal whirred a bit, hissed a bit, and then violently thrust him back in time- to the day he kidnapped a class and brought them to the White House.

The villain suddenly found himself lying on his side, arms and legs sprawled out, on the muddy ground. The supervillain picked himself up from the familiar soil outside West Oliver Paige Transitional School much faster than most people would have been able to recover. Behind him, his two sons and second and third in command were spit through the portal and onto the dirt. The portal stayed open behind them, until the villain hit a button and it folded into the size of a small chip.

"That hurt," the sandy-haired son said through a mouthful of dirt.

"It doesn't matter if it hurt, we're here!" the villain said gleefully. As he watched, a former version of himself and the scarred agent were loading the unconscious bodies of students onto a bus.

He recognized one in particular—a tan, slender girl of medium height with short brown hair. He felt his sense light up as he started forward with anger—cold, unforgiving fury—

"Cam."

### Chapter One

I stood in front of the time machine and stared into its glittering blue surface with determination.

On one side of me, my ex-sort-of-boyfriend, Lukas, glanced at me, and gave me a nervous smile when I glanced back.

On my other side was one of my best friends, an android named Emmi. Her dark hair and chocolate skin were illuminated and bright in the harsh lighting of the room.

In front of me were two senior Agents from the spy organization I worked for (the Spies That Protect Our World, or the STPOW), Agent Rivers and Semaj. Agent Semaj's red hair was plastered to his head with sweat, and Agent Rivers' wavy chestnut hair was stone-still. They held each other's hands tightly, their hazel and gray eyes hard, an engagement ring sparkling on Agent Rivers' finger.

On the other side of Emmi was Aury, a bad-girl-gone-good whose mother was the villain Shardstorm's second-in-command. She stood strong as she whispered math equations under her breath, her bright blue eyes were fixed on the time machine as she swept her dark blonde hair with fading dyed-green tips out of her face.

And on the other side of Lukas, a new STPOW Agent, Marlee, swished her bubblegum-pink hair nervously as she prepared to step into a new era.

And there was me, sometimes the leader of our group, sometimes the one needing to be rescued. Sometimes the hero, sometimes not. Sometimes selfless, sometimes selfish. But I knew that I could be brave when I needed to be, and that my heart would always be completely invested in the STPOW, my family, forever. My short brown hair swished and my chocolate brown eyes glittered.

I was ready.

But one vital person was completely missing from our group.

My eyes blurred with tears as I imagined her light blonde hair and green eyes, her incredibly big smile, and her jokes that we could all definitely use right now.

But she's not dead forever, I reminded myself. If we can go back in time and save her, she'll be alive again.

How did I get to this point? My mind took a little time-traveling trip of its own as I remembered the fateful day that the STPOW had asked me to become a member...

It had been a seemingly normal day in eighth grade when I received a message from the STPOW asking me to go on an urgent mission. Agents Semaj, Rivers, and Wolf debriefed me. The supervillain Shardstorm was planning to kidnap my class and take them to the White House under the pretense that he was a teacher bringing kids to a field trip. He planned to plant a bomb that would kill the President... and us. But with my classmates Taylor and Jai and my best friend Stella, we thwarted his plan... or so we thought.

It turned out that Jai and Agent Wolf were traitors working for Shardstorm, and they managed to capture Taylor and I and trap us in a room with a live bomb. We had just enough time to disable the bomb, warn the rest of the White House, and begin to escape before it went off. I barely made it out with my life, and Taylor sacrificed hers so I could make it. Agent Wolf was killed. Or not, but we didn't know that yet.

A few weeks later an attack was launched by Shardstorm on the STPOW headquarters where I had been staying to train. After fighting the enemy agents off, we discovered Shardstorm had captured a young trainee, Zoey, and he threatened to kill her if I didn't come willingly to train at his headquarters. He also wanted my friend Emmi for reasons no one could guess. But while trying to save Zoey and escape from Shardstorm's headquarters, I discovered that Emmi was an android created by Shardstorm. I also learned that Emmi had a code in her that allowed her to take over all the androids in the world. Shardstorm wanted to use Emmi to take over vital organizations from the inside, but the STPOW and I stopped him before he could. At that point, Shardstorm also revealed that Agent Wolf, now called Agent Survivor, had actually survived the bomb. We also learned that Asher, one of our current STPOW trainees, was actually Shardstorm's son and Jai's brother.

Not long after, summer was over and school was starting. The STPOW had been planning to spend the school year training me at their headquarters, but that was before they discovered intel that Shardstorm was sending Jai and Asher to the same high school that I was assigned to go to. The STPOW sent me there with a mission: find out what big thing Shardstorm was building. One of my close non-spy friends from school, Violet, had turned out to be a traitor, and we followed her to Shardstorm's headquarters. And there, my beautiful best friend Stella had been murdered. But then I learned what Shardstorm had been building: a time machine.

And now, here we were, about to step into another day, another year, another era.

"Are we all ready?" Agent Semaj asked all of us, an unusual note of fear in his voice.

I nervously rubbed my arms. "Where are we going first, again?"

"To the day Stella died," Agent Rivers replied. "The plan is to replace the Stella here now—" (the dead Stella, I thought furiously) "with the live Stella seconds before she was shot with the first bolt. Then time won't be completely ruined, Stella can still have her short death, but we'll be able to have her back immediately."

"Smart," Aury said with a nod. I could almost see the calculations whizzing through her brain. "That way, the space-time continuum—"

"Save it," interrupted Lukas. He looked at nervous as I felt. "Let's just go."

"Who would like to go first?" Agent Rivers asked sarcastically, like there would be any volunteers. But my hand shot up immediately.

"Cam," Agent Semaj nodded approvingly. "We've already mapped the course, all you have to do is step through the-"

But step through the what, I never knew, because before he finished talking, I thrust my entire body through the glittering blue sheen.

I'd only ridden on an airplane once in my life, but the one time I did, I hated the first ten minutes, because my ears filled with pressure and my whole body felt wavy and weird.

Stepping through a time machine was basically that times a million.

I could feel my body disintegrating into small particles, ready to be put back together again at my destination. My ears filled, then popped. My vision was a mixture of dark blue and black. As I felt my feet reappear, I stumbled and fell, but what I fell onto I had no idea because the world was spinning faster and faster and faster and...

The time machine spit me out into Shardstorm's lair, in an empty, dark conference room.

I lay there on the cool tile, feeling exhausted even though I hadn't done anything. My whole body screamed at me, and it felt like I'd been stretched like a rubber band.

Suddenly, Lukas fell on top of me. Then Marlee piled on top of him, then Agent Rivers, Agent Semaj, Emmi, and finally, Aury.

"I don't think I like time traveling," groaned Lukas, attempting to untangle himself from the mass of people currently crushing my lungs.

"Me neither," Marlee gasped, rolling off Lukas and managing to pull a chair out from a small desk and slide into it.

"We've got to move fast," Agent Semaj told us, standing up, wobbling, and hiding it by grabbing onto a desk. "There's only two minutes until it all goes down."

That got me moving. I managed to get to my shaky legs and help Marlee up from the chair, then Lukas. Our hands met and I felt like crying for a split second when I remembered the time when he was mine.

Agent Rivers, the only one out of us who had ever time traveled before, stood up much faster than the rest of us and headed towards the door, only pausing to trip over Aury, who was still lying on the ground, the teal and pink notebook that I'd bought her clutched tightly in her hands.

Agent Rivers pitched forward and caught herself on the black walls. "Really, Agent X? Come on now. There's work to do."

"Not all of us are time-traveling experts like you are, hon," Agent Semaj panted, giving her a quick kiss and then quietly opening the door.

I heard Darkblaze's voice floating from down the hallway, "It's useless," she crooned. "It's locked."

"We noticed." I listened carefully through the crack of the door, and jumped when I heard my own voice. Past-me was cocking my stun gun at past-Shardstorm.

"Oh, this is weird," I whispered, just as past-Violet said, referencing Stella, "This one's sassy. Let's kill her first."

"We better move!" Agent Semaj said, flinging open the door and whirling towards the place where the showdown was taking place, just as past-Agent Rivers growled, "No one is going to be killed today."

"Past-me had that right," Agent Rivers said smugly, just as past-Shardstorm said, "Oh, sure. Except for they are."

In the split second before he fired the trigger, I jumped out of the shadows, ducked the bolt, and grabbed the live and conscious Stella just as Agent Semaj replaced her.

Stella wobbled a little. "Whoa. Oh my gosh. What just—"

"Shhh!" I whispered, trying not to grin, seeing my best friend alive again.

I couldn't believe it had been that easy.

Then I heard Shardstorm say, "Don't let her get away with the live Stella!"

"I don't remember past-Shardstorm saying that," Marlee said, confused, just as another Shardstorm burst out of one of the conference rooms.

"Frick."

"So much for time not being ruined!" screeched Agent Semaj. "We've got to get back to the time machine!"

I saw my past self look at the extra Shardstorm, then at the dead and live Stellas. Past-Marlee smacked past-me on the arm. "Cam! What's going on?"

I felt a bruise blossom on my arm and I looked at it with wonder. "Marlee, you just... changed time."

Marlee looked at me, horrified. "I didn't mean to, obviously!" she said, just as past-Shardstorm sent the "fatal" bolt towards Stella and the current Shardstorm grabbed past-Lukas, whipped out a gun and snarled, "Hand over the live Stella, or he dies!"

I looked at Lukas's terrified face, and then past-Lukas's confused face. My heart raced, and I started striding towards them, not sure what to do but sure that I had to do something. Lukas couldn't die.

I couldn't lose my other best friend.

As I drew nearer to Shardstorm and Agent Semaj showed no sign of giving up Stella to save Lukas, Shardstorm reached out his hand, fast as a whip, and grabbed my arm. I let out a surprised breath and quickly used a Taekwondo maneuver to attempt to break free, but Shardstorm's hand felt like it was made of iron. I struggled weakly, but knew that there was nothing I could do.

Just as everything came to a breaking point and Shardstorm aimed his gun at Lukas's heart, past-Asher punched Shardstorm as hard as he could in the head.

That boy could not make up his mind.

Shardstorm reeled, stumbling backward and falling over. A normal human would have been knocked unconscious ten times over, but Shardstorm was no normal human. Still, it gave us the break we'd been looking for.

"Let's move!" screamed Agent Rivers.

I bolted towards the time machine room pulling the live Stella along behind me, but before I reached it, I couldn't help but give one last glance back at the scene in front of me, somehow unable to wrench my eyes away. All of our past selves looked incredibly confused.

I felt a lump rise in my throat as a new memory suddenly took shape in my mind. My vision blurred and my knees buckled as I felt the memory worming its way into my head and replacing my old memory of the day when Stella was murdered - or was she?

I was holding my dead best friend, but live versions of both of us were standing in front of me. I had hope that they would escape and fix the mess that we'd gotten into. Suddenly that dark, dark day when Stella was killed flared with a faint spark of brightness and hope in my mind.

I had thought I was crazy then- but I wasn't. Now I understood.

I shook myself out of the memory and looked around me. All my friends and the Agents looked as confused as I felt. I could not recall for the life of me what had actually occurred when Stella was killed. It was simply gone- replaced with today's crazy version of things.

And that's when I realized we had a huge problem. If none of us remembered what had truly happened on that day, how could we fix time to how it was supposed to be?

But I couldn't think about that now. Shardstorm had recovered and was standing up, hard anger in his gaze.

"We've got to get out of here," Agent Semaj shouted, sounding as confused as I felt but still trying to keep us all together.

I turned on my heel and sprinted towards the room we'd emerged from, dragging Stella close behind. She broke free of my grip and ran beside me herself, muttering, "I'm not a ragdoll, Cam."

But I couldn't make myself look away from her. There was no way I was losing her again...

Again?

I'd never lost her in the first place.

Or had I?

Suddenly memories of her funeral, memories of her hysterical parents, memories of crying for her by day and having nightmares about her by night spiraled from my mind like the fleeting remnants of a dream. She'd still been killed in my arms, but I'd seen a live version of her escape, holding my hand... the same hand that was holding hers right now.

She was never dead. She was always just missing.

As I turned the corner into the room with the time machine, I tried to shake the confusion from my mind. The glittering surface was so close, yet so far.

In three more strides, I made it, hurling myself into the nothingness of the time machine.

My head swirled and whirled as I felt the bodies of my fellow Agents beside me. My ears filled and I tried to stay on my feet, but I couldn't and everything spun faster and faster and I felt like this time I was seriously going to black out and it was going to be embarrassing and it all hurt so, so much—

The time machine spit me out onto a cool, dark, dingy carpet floor.

### Chapter Two

My legs felt wobbly and unsteady. A moment later, the rest of my team (time team? Hey, that sounded cool) collapsed onto the floor beside me.

I stared up at the ceiling, trying to get my breath back. My fellow Agents were spit out around me, and they didn't seem to have any more motivation than me to move. Well, we deserved a short break, even if it was lying down on an uncomfortable floor in... in what? Where were we?

I looked around the room. It was small, dim, and dusky. Dust was suspended in midair, so thick I felt myself breathing it in. There was a door off to the side, slightly ajar and leading to a small closet. A small table sat in the middle of the room, a rickety wooden chair beside it, the only visible pieces of furniture in the cramped area. The time machine lay against one wall, looking ominously still and silent. Its shiny blue surface seemed to be fading slowly.

"That was so weird, it felt like I just died. Wait, did I just die?" Stella asked. She squinted up at the ceiling. "If so, dying is really overrated. All it does is make your legs feel like Jell-O."

Then she paused. "Hold on, if I'm dead, then why are you all here? Did you seriously get yourselves killed with me?" She shook her head. "Come on now. Now there's nobody to fight Shardstorm!"

Stella pursed her lips. "Man, I'm mad at him for killing me. Oh well. At least I won't be alone in ghost-land, if that's where this is. Is that where this is?"

My face broke into a grin. Stella was back.

For now.

"You're not dead," Lukas panted, heaving himself into a sitting position and wiping sweat off his brow. Then he seemed to reconsider his words. "Well... you kind of were. Uh, can we talk about that for a second? What just happened?"

"Yeah," voiced Marlee. "Am I the only one who can't remember what happened originally when Stella was killed?"

"No, I can't either," I sighed, sitting up. We looked to the senior Agents, as if somehow their brains hadn't been affected by the time travel and they could fix the whole mess we had just made.

"We screwed up," Agent Semaj admitted. "We messed up what really happened with a new version of Stella's death day, and now nobody remembers what actually occurred."

"Great," grumbled Aury.

There was silence for a moment, then Emmi spoke up quietly.

"Where are we? I don't remember any place in Shardstorm's headquarters that looks like this."

Agent Rivers, who had recovered much more quickly than the rest of us, seeing as she'd time traveled before, checked a small panel on the time machine. Her face grew pale. "Oh, no. It says there's been a major malfunction and it's shutting all power down."

"Shardstorm really does not have very good scientists, does he?" Lukas shook his head and stood shakily, walking over to Agent Rivers. "Where does it say it sent us?"

Agent Rivers glanced at Agent Semaj, like she didn't want to break the news. "1972."

Crap.

The time machine whirred and hissed. A wire popped out. Its surface went black.

"Okay, that's... pretty horrible," I said slowly. Then I shook my head. "No, it's fine. We can fix this. It's going to be okay."

I looked at Aury, who was slowly getting to her feet beside me. "Aury, can you do something to the time machine to start it up again?"

Agent Rivers smacked the time machine. It spat out sparks, but no shimmering blue surface appeared. She sighed. "No use. It's officially broken. We've just got to somehow fix it, fix time, and figure this wreck out. All before Shardstorm manages to ruin everything in time."

Aury struggled to her feet, pushing up her glasses awkwardly as she stumbled towards the time machine. Agent Rivers stepped back a little to allow her to examine the loose wires and control panel. "I can fix it," Aury said slowly, taking out her notebook and making a calculation.

"You can??" Marlee gushed. "Oh, Aury, thank goodness, you're—"

"But it will take time," Aury continued, ignoring Marlee. "Hours. Maybe even days."

"And we're in 1972. Cool," Stella said with a grin. "This is the year my dad was born."

"Mine, too!" Marlee said cheerfully, giving Stella a high-five. "We should try to find them!"

"We won't have time for excursions," Agent Rivers said brusquely, pulling out her cell phone from her pocket and turning it on. I couldn't see the screen from my angle. "We've got to spend our time in this decade wisely, keeping on the lookout for Shardstorm and his entourage until we can get the time machine fixed."

Agent Semaj groaned, throwing his phone onto the small table in the room we'd landed in. It made a hollow clatter. "My phone's useless. I think taking it through the time machine ruined it."

"Well, it's to be expected," Agent Rivers told him, tossing her phone so it landed perfectly beside his. "The only reason we took them with us through the time machine was on the small bit of hope that they would still work in different time periods."

"Glad I didn't bring my phone," I muttered. "My mom would kill me if I broke it."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

I realized what I'd said. "Sorry, sorry, not kill," I hastily amended.

Our brush with Stella's death had left everyone edgy about using the word so casually, myself included. I'd just slipped and forgotten. I mentally smacked myself.

"It's fine," Stella said with a shrug. "I'm the one who died, and I don't care."

I breathed a small sigh of relief. "Thanks, Stells."

Aury frowned from across the room, writing something in her notebook. Dust was quickly settling on her glasses. She opened a panel and an electrical spark lit up the duskiness for a moment, illuminating the loose nails and wires inside the panel.

"Wow, Shardstorm's scientists suck," she muttered. "Or maybe not. A crappy time machine is better than no time machine, I suppose."

I crossed the room and put a hand on Aury's shoulder. "How long do you think the repairs will take?"

"I think around eight hours of nonstop work. Maybe six if someone could stick around and help me," she added, blowing inside the space of the opened panel. Dust and dirt flew into the air.

"I can," offered Stella, Marlee, Lukas, Emmi and I all at the same time.

"Cam and Stella, you two ranked at the top in your spy class. I'm not letting you hole up in a dark room when we desperately need your expertise," Agent Rivers snorted.

Lukas and Marlee looked hurt.

"Oh, you two were close behind," Agent Semaj assured them.

"I should stay with Aury," Emmi said emotionlessly, simple logic in her words as she said, "I'm the smartest out of you all, and I can do things more easily." If anyone else in the room had said that, we all would have been offended, but Emmi was a top-notch android. She really was the smartest of us all.

"No, Emmi, we will need you when we leave the room," Agent Rivers told her definitively. "You have a unique skill set that cannot be matched."

"Then I can stay," Marlee voiced.

"Or I can," Lukas hastily added. Disappointment settled in my stomach as I realized he likely just didn't want to spend hours on end in this decade with me. We'd made amends to our friendship when Stella had died, needing to lean on each other in our grief, but I doubted things would ever be the same as they once were between us.

"Marlee, you're the best at technical expertise other than Aury and Emmi, so I think you should work on the time machine while the rest of us do a bit of spying," Agent Semaj decided.

She shrugged. "Works for me."

Aury nodded from her place crouched near the time machine. "Marlee, oh good. You'll be a lot of help."

"Well, if that's all worked out..." Agent Semaj said, looking around the room for everyone's approval.

Suddenly, loud voices sounded from down the hall, quickly coming closer and closer.
Chapter Three

"I told you, Michael, you need to find out what's happening to the boy at school!" came a shrill woman's voice from the hall.

"Hide!" hissed Agent Rivers.

I threw myself towards the closet off to the side just as Lukas lunged the same way. But the voices were getting louder and there was no time to change course to avoid awkwardness. We'd just managed to shove ourselves into the tiny space, pulling the door shut with a slam, when I heard the telltale creak that meant the main door in the room had opened.

"Holy cow!" exclaimed the deep voice of a man that I hadn't heard before. "Jennifer, dear, did you put some strange... thing... in the study?"

Lukas shifted next to me. I pressed my ear to the door to listen to the couple's conversation, trying to ignore the blush that was rising on my face. This closet was certainly not meant to be walked into, let alone shared by two people. I felt the warmth of Lukas's body on mine and I willed myself to ignore it. There were other more important things to be focusing on, not the feeling of his hand on my leg, or my shoulder touching his.

"What's that, honey?" the shrill voice sounded again. I winced from the sheer high pitch and shrillness of it.

"There's some newfangled... thing in the study!" the man said again, seemingly unable to comprehend what had actually landed in his room.

"Don't be ridiculous," the piercing voice of the woman said condescendingly. "What could possibly be..." a short pause, then, "darn it all, Michael, where'd this come from?" She pronounced from like frum. I stifled a laugh.

"Well, I didn't put it here!" Michael said angrily, pronouncing here like her. "Son of a gun, bet it was the boy."

"Don't be so quick to accuse, Michael!" shrilled Jennifer. "You know that's why he's gone so wrong, he's been accused for somethin' he hasn't done too many times!"

Well, it was crazy uncomfortable in this closet, but all of the spy in me was screaming, Stay hidden! Do not open that door and reveal yourself!

Lukas let out a short breath and put his hand on the closet doorknob. I shook my head urgently. "What are you doing, Lukas?" I hissed.

"We can't hide from them forever, can we?" he retorted. "And no offense, but it's really awkward being this close to you after..."

The look in his eyes made me worry a little. He didn't need to feel bad about simply being close to me unless...

"Lukas... you're not... with... someone else, are you?"

Lukas looked at me like I was crazy and I cursed myself for my stupidity. Why had I asked that? We'd only broken up a few weeks ago. And why did I care if he was seeing someone else? I had thrown my chance with him out the window anyway...

But then I felt my stomach drop as the mask of confusion on Lukas's face fell away, leaving a shell of nervousness and honesty. "I don't know, Cam. I've been too angry with you to think much about other girls. But so what if I had? You don't control me."

"I know I don't control you," I interrupted quietly, even though I was shaking. Why was I shaking? "And I'm not mad. It's too bad you still are."

"You look mad," Lukas observed, turning the doorknob.

"Stop it!" I growled, putting my hand on his to halt his movement.

Lukas looked at my hand for a moment before swiping it off. "What are you doing?"

"Um, stopping you from ruining this mission before it starts?" I responded, raising my eyebrows disbelievingly.

"We can't hide forever," Lukas said again.

"Why do I hear voices in the closet?" the deep voice of Michael said incredulously. "Am I imagining things, Jennifer dear?"

"Shut UP!" Lukas groaned softly, his eyes way too terrified for someone who was all too ready to be discovered the moment before.

"So, you don't want to be found after all? You just want to get away from me?" I said, my voice rising with anger.

The closet door opened, and I found myself staring into the shocked face of a middle-aged man with a short beard and thin mustache, with a tall, horsey woman with a thin neck and large hands standing beside him.

My spy instincts kicked in (for once). I quickly shot out a hand and jabbed the man's pressure point. He slumped to the floor, immediately unconscious. Lukas did the same to the woman, and lowered her to the ground.

"Let's put them in their beds and make them think this whole thing was a dream," I gasped.

The rest of my team emerged from their hiding places. Agent Rivers crawled out from behind the time machine and said angrily, "Why, may I ask, did you two deliberately reveal us?"

"It wasn't deliberate," Lukas answered, annoyed.

"Well, I'll handle putting them in their beds," Agent Semaj voiced, appearing seemingly out of thin air. I knew I probably didn't even want to know how he'd done it.

"Agent Semaj... I'm sorry," I said quietly. "We got out of control. It could have jeopardized the mission and I feel terrible."

"It's okay, Cam—in the long run, we probably would have had to knock them out anyway to undo the damage that had been done by seeing the time machine," Agent Semaj reasoned.

"What were you talking about in that closet?" Stella asked slowly, a strange look on her face.

"Just... stuff," I said quickly.

"Like what kind of stuff?" Stella said, raising her eyebrows.

"Like stuff stuff," I said awkwardly.

"Like stuff, that's like stuff? Or just... stuff?"

"Stuff, okay??"

"That's not helpful!"

"GIRLS!" roared Agent Semaj.

"Sorry," Stella said quickly, shooting me a look that plainly said we will finish this later.

But I really hoped Stella would forget about this conversation and never come back to it.

Because that girl had a way of ruining things with boys before they started.

"Agents Star and Hope! We can work this out another time," Agent River barked. Uh-oh, she usually only called us by our Agent names when she was really ticked off at us. Which was a bit ironic, seeing as our Agent names were supposed to instill respect in our comrades, not be used as some kind of angry-parent thing.

"You're right. We've got to get out into the city and find Shardstorm, if he's here," Marlee said determinedly.

"Yep. Let's go," I said hastily, opening the door.

I found myself staring right into the face of Charles.

### Chapter Four

The very same boy that had fallen asleep next to me in Creative Writing class, comforted me after a whole blowout with Jai at lunch one day, and who had almost kissed Marlee after telling her stories about a different era... that same boy was staring me in the eyes in 1972.

He didn't look quite the same. His hair was arranged differently, his face was dirty and gloomy, and his clothes were rather more old-fashioned than the clothes we'd seen him wearing at West Oliver Paige Top School. But it was definitely, undeniably, one hundred percent Charles.

"Well," I said, stumbling backwards and falling into the only rickety chair in the room. "That's... Charles."

"What?" Marlee exclaimed, rushing to the door. "Oh my gosh!" She threw her arms around him, her bubblegum pink hair bouncing joyfully.

Charles, however, pushed her away. "Who are you?" he growled. "What invaders have somehow managed to find their way into our house?"

"You... don't remember me?" Marlee asked, slowly and confusedly.

"Why would I recall this lady that I know I haven't seen before?" Charles asked, obviously unnerved.

"What is going on?" I groaned, feeling like I was going to pass out. Or die. Or scream. Or maybe all three.

"It appears... it appears that Charles lives in the 1970s, and somehow, he made it the present day," Aury said slowly, turning to look at Charles. "The only way he could have done that... would be by hitching a ride with us when we went back in our time machine."

Charles looked confused. "Time machine? Do you mean that weird..." he gestured, "thing... sitting in my father's study?"

"What is it with you people and the word 'thing'?" Stella muttered.

I smothered my laughter.

"You really don't remember me?" Marlee asked softly, turning the mood more somber with a single sentence.

Charles looked at her, complete honesty and sadness in his face. "I really don't."

A tear rolled down Marlee's cheek. "What are we going to do? How are we going to save time? And... save Charles?"

"I don't need saving," Charles protested.

But the pain in his eyes said otherwise.

"Your parents were talking about... things..." man, I was starting to talk like I lived in the seventies, "that happened to you at school, and that they thought they were too hard on you," I finished awkwardly. "I'm sorry. I know what that can be like."

Charles heaved a deep sigh, looking at me, then at Marlee, who was still clinging to him with a single hand like her touch might bring back his memories of what they'd done together.

But I suddenly realized that Charles' memories weren't erased or anything... they simply hadn't happened yet.

As Stella asked Charles, "So, how's life in the seventies?" I discreetly scooted over to Agent Semaj.

"Agent Semaj, what will happen if we don't take him back to the present day with us?" I hissed under my breath.

"Time will be ruined," he hissed back. "Possibly."

"Possibly?" Lukas said nervously, coming up from where he had been talking quietly with Aury.

"Right. The only reason that we would be able to go back and not completely destroy time is if we knew how the events that we were attempting to visit were going to play out. We don't know how time is supposed to go in this scenario, so we have no idea what actions of ours will or won't ruin it," Agent Semaj said, rather quickly.

It made me think that he was just as nervous about how this mission was going as I was.

"Well, that's just fantastic," Lukas said slowly. He shook his head as if he was trying to shake the hopelessness out. "Alright. Do we have a plan? What are we going to do?"

"We're going to wing it," Stella said loudly, winking in our direction as she said to Charles, "So, can you show us around this place?"

"I..." Charles looked around nervously.

Aury frantically tinkered with the time machine. "Can Marlee help me now? I still have a lot to do before this thing is going to get anywhere near where we want to go."

Agent Rivers spoke up. "Well, I see no reason to change our original plan. Marlee and Aury can still stay here to fix the time machine and we can look around the city. We'll just have a... guide... with us."

"Should we change our clothes?" Stella suggested, looking down at her off-the-shoulder pale blue shirt and leggings that looked nothing like clothes from the seventies.

"That would be wise." Agent Semaj glanced at Charles. "Do you happen to have a sister whose clothes we could borrow for these young ladies?"

"No," Charles said nervously. "You know, you people haven't even told me who you are. Or what you're here to do."

All the members of the STPOW looked at each other, silently debating what to say.

After a tense moment, I took a deep breath.

"We're spies. And we've come to save the world."

Charles looked at me incredulously.

Stella turned to look at him. "What?" she asked huffily. "Too cliché for you?"

"No, I just don't believe it."

Anger filled Stella's face. "Cam really wasn't even supposed to tell you that, but she did. And you don't even believe her?"

"Stells..." I started.

"Nope," Charles said before I could finish.

"Well, that's stupid," Stella snorted.

"Stella!" chided Marlee.

"I'm sorry," Stella said quickly. Then she seemed to reconsider. "Eh, no I'm not."

"STELLA!" Agent Semaj and Agent Rivers said, more strictly.

"Stells! It's okay!" I said, a little exasperatedly.

In the month and a half or so I'd been without my best friend, I had missed her desperately.

But now that she was back, I forgot how much she annoyed me, too.

### Chapter Five

Awkward silence ruled over the small, dusty room for a moment. Somebody coughed. I thought it might have been Lukas.

"So," Agent Semaj finally said. "Shall we leave? Marlee and Aury, are you guys going to be okay here alone?"

"We'll be fine," Aury muttered.

"Just fine," Marlee said quietly.

"Well, great," Agent Semaj said, a bit uncertainly. Then he motioned to the whole group. "Let's head out."

"I can show you around, I guess," Charles mumbled.

"Thank you," Agent Rivers said quickly, flinging the door open and ushering us out into the dark hallway.

"This is going to be sooo awkward," I heard Stella whisper to Lukas.

Before the door slammed shut on the shadowed forms of Aury and Marlee, I heard Marlee say quietly, "I bet you five dollars three of them are going to come back angry, one is going to come back injured, and the rest are going to freak out and ask us why we aren't done fixing the time machine yet."

The door rattled on its hinges.

Agent Semaj rested his hand on the door for a moment, as if steadying himself. For a single moment the mask of calm and collectedness that was usually perched on his face fell away. The pain, worry, and anxiety about the mission showed through. And his love... I knew that Agent Semaj cared for all of us, but in that moment of vulnerability I saw it even more openly. It was the kind of love that a husband had for a wife, a brother for a sister. It was the kind of love where you knew you'd be lost without that person.

Sure, I'd seen Agent Semaj show that much tenderness for Agent Rivers, his fiancée, but I'd never seen it directed towards us before. For the first time, I wondered how the loss of Taylor, of Jai and Asher to Shardstorm's side, and finally, of Stella, had affected him.

Then the moment passed. Agent Semaj took a deep breath and the mask materialized again. He was calm, like always. He was collected, like always. He had everything under control, like always...

But now I knew differently. Behind the face of bravery was fear, pain, and worry... but there was also love. I think it was that fact that made me walk up to Agent Semaj, the fun, kind, Agent who had been there for me since the beginning, and say, "We've got this."

Agent Semaj gave me a true smile. "I know."

Charles, oblivious to the feelings hovering under the surface of everyone's thoughts, looked at us curiously. "Um, you've got what?"

"This," I said cheerfully.

With that, I led the way down the dark hallway.

"Stop! Don't go that way, it's just—" Charles said frantically as I headed towards a dark greenish doorway and twisted the rusty steel doorknob.

"Whoa, what is..." I just had time to hear the first few words of Stella's exclamation before I walked into the room and everything else fell away.

"That is... a lot of baseball posters," Lukas said with a laugh from behind me.

"No kidding," I managed.

It was like I'd walked into a different world. Every single inch of this room was devoted to the sport of baseball. The floor was covered with strips of baseball posters, yellowed and old but still stylish, like an antique vintage wallpaper found in a super-expensive store in the mall. I had no idea what color the walls were; the baseball posters were stuck so closely together that not an inch of the original wall color showed through. It was oddly lovely.

"Well," Charles said, a bit sheepishly, "you've found out my secret."

"Secret?" Agent Rivers asked, raising her eyebrows.

"I keep all these posters... and all my dreams... even though my parents say I could never play baseball. I'm too..." He looked down at his slightly chubby figure. "Um."

Stella snorted, then covered her mouth sheepishly, looking fleetingly up at Agent Rivers who gave her a warning shake of her head.

I shoved her. "I think you'd be great at playing baseball!"

"Thanks," Charles said gloomily, obviously not believing me.

I carefully closed the door to his room. "So, that's obviously not the way out of this house. Maybe I should have let you lead in the first place," I said to Charles with a bit of a grin, trying to take his mind off his hopeless dreams.

"You know, there's only one more possible way out," Emmi told me, "calculating the number and angle of the doors and the—"

"Android, let one of us feel smart for once," Stella interrupted with a laugh. She pointed to the doors. "Eh, probably that one. Wild guess."

Agent Rivers rolled her eyes.

"Wrong," Charles said, a little more loudly than necessary, perhaps.

"Wonderful," Stella responded sarcastically.

Agent Semaj looked sternly at her. "Focus on the mission, Agent Star."

"That's what I was trying to do."

Did sort-of dying make a person grumpier or something? Stella had been a pain in the butt since we'd rescued her from certain death. I would think she would have been full of joy at her second chance at life, but instead she was full of bitterness.

I shook off my dark thoughts. "Charles? So, how do we get out of here?"

Charles grudgingly gestured to a nearby door, directly to the left of the one Stella had gestured to.

"I was close," Stella muttered, marching towards the door and yanking it open.

Lukas glanced at her but didn't say anything.

Stella gasped as the light hit her eyes and she could see what was outside. "Whoa. It's... very different here." She took a tentative step out onto the porch.

I raised my eyebrows and followed her, stepping through the wooden doorframe onto brick stairs and into a whole new world.

### Chapter Six

"That is... exactly how I would imagine the seventies," Lukas said with a bit of a laugh when he emerged from the dank, dark house.

It was almost as if everything was in black and white, the colors were so muted. It reminded me of a cheesy photograph of the seventies in some kind of weird filter, maybe Sepia. The houses were medium-sized and a little drab. A few scraggly shrubs dotted the driveway in a few homes. The roads were very bumpy and gravelly, and I half expected to see a horse-drawn carriage bumping its way down the lane.

What I did see were a lot of people walking. People with some very odd outfit and haircut choices.

"We're gonna stick out like a Fruit Loop in a box of Cheerios," Stella groaned. "We better find a way to blend in, and fast."

"Where'd you get that expression?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"The poster in Agent Semaj's classroom. BE A FRUIT LOOP IN A BOX OF CHEERIOS!" Stella said loudly.

Charles whipped around. "Shhhhh!" he hissed. "Do you really feel like being the first 21st century people murdered in the 20th?"

"Would that make it in the Guinness Book of World Records?" Stella mumbled defiantly, but when Agent Rivers gave her another hard glare, she shut up.

"Why did we think it would be a good idea to save Stella first?" Lukas groaned.

Nobody responded to that, but I know we were all thinking the same thing I was.

I had no idea.

Emmi broke the silence, pointing to something on the end of the street. "Is that what I think it is?"

I squinted at the building. "Um, what?"

"IT'S A DAIRY QUEEN!" shouted Stella gleefully, starting to race down the sidewalk towards it.

"Yes, it's a Dairy Queen," Charles said, looking at us. "Do you all not have that anymore?"

"Nope, we have plenty of them," I said with a laugh. "We just didn't expect 1972 to have it!"

Stella was already halfway to the Dairy Queen, her short legs pumping madly as she raced towards it. I glanced at Charles again. "I think Stella is going to explode if she doesn't get herself a Blizzard there. Have any money?"

Charles looked confused. "A blizzard? Why would she want a sudden snowstorm to overcome her in the store?"

I didn't have time to respond to that because Agent Rivers suddenly gave a loud groan and stumbled over a crack in the bumpy road.

Agent Semaj immediately was next to his fiancée, catching her by the waist and straightening her up. "Elena, are you okay?"

Agent Rivers didn't respond, just grabbed her head and sat down hard right in the street.

A car was approaching rapidly, honking its horn loudly.

"STELLA!" Agent Semaj bellowed. She turned back from her wild sprint towards the ice cream shop and noticed something was wrong. "DON'T GO IN THERE WITHOUT US, IT COULD BE DANGEROUS!"

Then without giving her a second glance, he knelt down to Agent River's level. "Honey, you need to get up. A car is coming."

Lukas speed-walked towards the car, waving his hands to warn them to slow down. But now another car was heading towards our group. I didn't even have time to take in the strange model of the car (bright green with a loooong hood) before I scrambled towards it, screaming "STOP!" and waving my arms. It gave me a long horn blast.

Emmi rushed towards me as well, prepared to stop the car with her bare hands if she had to.

Agent Rivers suddenly stood up. "I'm fine," she said quietly but brusquely. "Let's go."

Agent Semaj looked unconvinced, not taking his arm from around her waist. "Babe... " But he let logic win and hustled his soon-to-be-wife out from the street and to safety on the sidewalk.

We got some very odd glances from passersby and the drivers of the stopped cars did not look pleased, but normal traffic resumed without incident.

"What was that, hon?" Agent Semaj asked, extremely concerned. Agent Rivers very rarely showed her pain, if she experienced it, but to show it in such a big display was extremely unlike her.

Agent Rivers glanced at us. "Ever since I went through the time machine for the first time... I've been having headaches."

"That was more than a headache," Lukas said softly.

Stella ran up to us. "Rivers! What happened? Are you okay??"

"Call me by my Agent name, please and thank you," barked Agent Rivers. "I'm fine. Just a headache."

"A headache induced by the time machine," Emmi muttered. "I know Shardstorm's scientists didn't take the time to do the time machine job well, but... none of the rest of us are having side effects of the time travel."

"Except for that fun moment when you arrive where it feels like you're going to die," Stella mentioned.

"Agent Rivers... there's usually one thing for women that is listed on pretty much every roller coaster, medication, and other stuff, where it tells you not to do it if..." Lukas started, then blushed.

I bit back a laugh. Who knew Lukas would be the one to bring this subject up?

Agent Rivers and Semaj looked at each other and I could not for the life of me read their faces. "I don't believe that's it, but thanks for your... concern, Lukas," Agent Rivers said with a slight smile in her voice.

And that subject was officially closed.

Emmi seemed to be pondering Lukas's words. I opened my mouth to say something to her but Stella let out a screech. "We're here!"

Our crew had arrived at the 1972 Dairy Queen.

Stella flung open the door. Two young men glanced over at her, startled. She gave them a sheepish grin and marched up to the counter, not even bothering to look at the menu. "One Cookie Dough Blizzard, please!"

The woman taking her order looked confused. "Excuse me?"

I took three quick steps towards Stella, gave the woman an apologetic smile, and hissed in Stella's ear, "I think Blizzards haven't been invented yet!"

"What?" Stella said loudly, not really listening to me. She turned back to the woman. "You know, a Blizzard. Like a milkshake, kinda, with ice cream and blended candy pieces in it."

"I can try to make that for you," the woman said kindly. "What candy would you like in it?"

"Cookie Dough!" Stella said with a grin. "Thanks!"

We fished a couple dollars from Stella's pocket and gave them to the lady (who looked delighted, and I remembered money was a fair bit worth more back then), then stepped aside from the ordering station. "What are you DOING?" I asked her fiercely and quietly. "Are you trying to give us away?"

"I'm just trying to have a little fun, while we're stuck here! What's the problem with—"

I tuned Stella out for a moment as the man in line behind us stepped up to order. "What the little lady had in front of us sounds wonderful. Could you possibly do some M&M's in mine?"

Stella hummed happily. "I'm a trendsetter! Look at me!" She huffed. "And you tried to stop me."

My eyes widened as I came to a realization. "Uh, Stella?"

She looked at me expectantly.

"You just invented the freaking Blizzard."

She blinked. "What?"

"Order number 59!" the lady yelled, then noticed us standing there and handed Stella a Dairy Queen cup. "Here you go, hon. Great idea, by the way, the manager told us he wants to try this out as a new product! Blizzard, you said it was called?"

Stella's jaw dropped. Then she pulled herself together. "Yes, yes, the Blizzard," she said hastily, giving me a wide-eyed look.

I grimaced. "Yes, thanks for your very kind service. Bye bye!" I said hastily, hustling Stella towards the door, motioning for the rest of my crew to follow. Charles glanced at Stella with awe and confusion as he followed.

I pushed open the glass door and took a deep breath of chilly air. "Stella... that was really bad."

"What?" Stella asked with a cocky grin. "Jealous that your BFF invented the Blizzard and not you?"

Well, a little, but... "That's not the point, Stells! You're rushing into places like a madwoman, giving no thought to if it might reveal us. Don't screw up time more than it already is!"

"If I hadn't gone into that Dairy Queen, we would go back to the present and there would be NO BLIZZARDS," Stella shot back. "How would you like that?"

"That would be better than the alternative, which would be that you COMPLETELY ruined this year because of your stupid ice cream craving!" I groaned.

"Calm down, girls," Agent Semaj said calmly. "Stella, that was dangerous to walk into a strange place in the past alone."

"It was a flipping DAIRY QUEEN!" bellowed Stella. "What bad thing could have happened there?"

"We could have walked in five minutes later and run into him," Emmi said urgently and quietly, pointing to a different side entrance, or rather, who had just walked in it.

Shardstorm had entered the Dairy Queen.

### Chapter Seven

"Of all the places that he could possibly go, how the heck did he end up in the exact same Dairy Queen as us in 1972?" I hissed nervously.

"Who is that?" asked Charles, craning his neck to get a better look at Shardstorm.

Emmi quickly and gently pushed him away. "Don't let him see us. He's a... bad person."

"Let's move," Agent Rivers barked, ushering us away from the Dairy Queen, but I held my ground.

"Why are we running away? This could be our best chance to defeat Shardstorm with the element of surprise before he does any more damage in time," I countered.

"Yes, but we are unarmed, unprepared, and we don't want to ruin time any more than we have to," Agent Semaj told me, placing a calming hand on my shoulder.

Emmi looked thoughtful. "How did he know we were here?"

"I don't know if I want to know," Lukas sighed. "Agent Semaj is right, we should tackle Shardstorm another time."

"Ugh," I groaned, frustrated with my team. "There might not be another time to take him on! Plus, we still have a couple hours until the time machine is supposedly fixed. We at least should follow him to see what he's up to."

Agent Rivers and Semaj looked at each other. "All right," Agent Semaj said finally. "We can follow him. But no unnecessary risks—we came into time to rescue Stella, not get other members of our team killed for little reason."

"As the person who was dead, I think that we should follow him. If he knows where we go with the time machine, we're not particularly safe anyway, no matter where we are," Stella spoke up.

"Stella always gets the final say because she died," Lukas sighed, but no more objections were voiced.

Agent Rivers motioned to Stella, Lukas, Emmi, Charles and I. "Follow me... but silently."

"Maybe you are really spies," Charles muttered. Stella slapped a hand over his mouth as we made our way towards the Dairy Queen.

Shardstorm had just exited the building from the opposite side. I couldn't see him well from this angle, but the sight of his face, the long, pink, angry scar that stretched down it, sent shivers of fear and anger though me. If it wasn't for the time machine, Stella would be dead. Shardstorm killed her.

I forgot just how much I loathed him when Stella was rescued, too overcome with joy at her revival, but this heartless man didn't deserve to believe he'd taken Stella's precious life from us, even for a second.

"Cam, pull it together," Stella hissed. I snapped out of it and realized I'd been staring at Shardstorm, fists clenched, giving no regard to if he saw me.

"Sorry," I said quickly, taking Stella's hand. I nearly reached for Lukas's too, out of habit, but then I remembered.

Charles shook his head. "What have I gotten myself into?"

"The world of the spy," I said with a grin. "Come on."

We carefully made our way along the side of the Dairy Queen. Shardstorm glanced behind himself a few times, but he didn't look too carefully, making me believe he felt safe enough in this strange time, though he stuck out with his odd scar and strange attire.

His fairly confident attitude made me nervous. What did Shardstorm know that we did not?

The blinding sunlight above us darkened a bit. Clouds began slowly rolling in. "Just what we need, a storm," Lukas said exasperatedly.

That was when Shardstorm noticed us.

It was very quick. He turned around for one of his checks, and we flattened ourselves to the wall, but his eyes locked onto mine.

A slow, menacing smile spread across his face. "Hello, Cam," Shardstorm said softly, but somehow I could hear him perfectly fine as he stalked towards us.

"Shoot. We're freaking unarmed," Stella said quickly and quietly. "I doubt he is."

"We might have to fight our way out of this one the old fashioned way," Agent Rivers said calmly, stepping in front of the teen Agents. Agent Semaj joined his wife in her defensive position. "Fitting, since we're in 1972."

Charles looked at me wide-eyed. "What's going on?"

"Don't look so nervous, I just want to talk," Shardstorm said mildly as he drew closer.

"I bet you do," spat Stella.

"I'm not concerned about killing you here," Shardstorm said with a hint of a smile in his smooth voice as he looked into my chocolate-brown eyes.

I stared back into his deep blue ones. Our eyes had the same depth, and I hated that. If only his were shallow and watery, or large and round. But ours were both medium and deep. So deep.

But his were filled with darkness, trenches of evil and gore. Mine were full of justice and passion.

At least, I hoped they were.

"No, not worried at all about killing you here," Shardstorm said again, projecting quiet confidence as he came to a stop in front of us. "However, I might need to silence you for a while so my team can have ample time to do the job elsewhere in time."

Before I could react, Shardstorm pulled out a stun gun. Cold fear laced through my mind- this weapon had killed Stella. A few shrieks sounded near us from civilians, and I couldn't help but wonder why Shardstorm cared so little about preserving time when he knew firsthand how fragile it was.

"Shardstorm, put that away, I'm warning you," Agent Rivers said, with deadly seriousness in her voice, prepared to lash out with her hands if she had to. "I'm armed."

Shardstorm chuckled coldly. "No you're not, silly woman. You're completely unarmed and vulnerable. Now, go to sleep," he growled, shooting a bolt at her, but Agent Rivers dodged it, aiming a kick at his gun as I quickly ran towards Shardstorm, knowing he was outnumbered but still could take us down fairly easily with his power and weapon.

Shardstorm ducked the kick, then locked eyes with me with a cold smile, shooting three quick bolts in my direction and turning to shoot another at Agent Rivers. This time, he didn't miss and Agent Rivers slid to the ground.

Agent Semaj, who had tried to block the bolt, gave Shardstorm a look of pure hatred, spinning and landing a kick on his stomach. The villain barely even took a breath of recovery before he'd aimed two shots at Agent Semaj's heart. Lukas, Emmi, Stella, and I had reached Shardstorm, and moved to grab and restrain him with martial arts maneuvers, but at close quarters we were easy prey for his bolts. Shardstorm thrust his gun into Lukas's stomach and fired. With a groan, Lukas's eyes rolled back and he hit the concrete hard.

Passersby were taking notice now, pointing and shouting. I really did not have time to pay attention to them when lives were on the line, but I also knew that any interference from normal citizens now could be deadly.

"Charles!" I gasped in his direction, as I used a quick maneuver to avoid a bolt and spun behind Shardstorm, aiming a kick at his head. "Charles, make sure no bystanders get involved!"

Charles was currently huddled, scared, by the Dairy Queen still, but at the sound of my words he jerked up. "Okay," he said nervously, running at the group of people who had gathered.

I didn't have any more time to worry about him. Shardstorm had managed to shoot a bolt at Stella, who was also now on the ground, while I was commissioning Charles. But now it was only me, Agent Semaj, Emmi, and Charles (if you counted him) who were conscious. No, make that Emmi and me—Agent Semaj was hit by a bolt in the head as he crumpled beside his wife.

Emmi was safe as an android from the stun gun bolts, but I was not. I was suddenly terrified. Shardstorm could kill me right now, and there was little I could do about it, as I was not leaving my unconscious team.

We were unarmed, unprepared, and it was completely my fault; I had suggested following Shardstorm.

Shardstorm gave me a cruel smile. "Bye, sweetie. I've got places to be. I've already made plans to kill you in another time, and who knows what will happen if I kill you twice- maybe it will backfire and you'll stay alive."

He raised his eyebrows with mocking thoughtfulness. "We don't want that happening. So let's just put you to sleep for a while," he said with three shots of his stun gun.

I dodged the first, but the second two were good shots and they weren't going to miss. In the one second I had to react I choked out, "Emmi—keep them safe!"

Then two bolts of electricity slammed into my skull and I blacked out.

### Chapter Eight

"Hey Cam."

Taylor's voice cut through the fog of darkness in my mind.

My head was so foggy, I could barely remember why I was knocked out in the first place. "Taylor?" I said groggily, my voice thick and unsteady.

"Yep," Taylor said with a smile in her gravelly voice.

I took a deep breath and heaved myself into a sitting position. I winced as my body screamed and rebelled. My eyes found Taylor. "Agh," I groaned, "everything hurts."

"I'll bet," Taylor said sympathetically.

I smiled, a little confused. "I haven't seen you in so long, Taylor. Where have you been?"

She smiled sadly. "Oh, just around. You haven't come to visit me in a while. I thought you'd forgotten about me."

"No, I hadn't," I said vaguely. My head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton.

"Why haven't I seen you?" I asked, stumbling on the words. My tongue felt so heavy. So did my eyes.

"I had to go away for a little bit," Taylor told me carefully, putting her hand on mine. "Somewhere you couldn't see me. But now that you're here, I don't have much time."

"Why not?" I asked. I looked around at the small, gloomy room. The air was hot and stifling, but I had missed Taylor and she was back, so why couldn't I stay awhile? There was a nagging feeling in the back of my head, like I was forgetting something.

"Listen to me, Cam. You're here because Shardstorm succeeded in another time. You're dead."

Cold fear shot through my veins, clearing some of the fog from my mind and fluff from my thoughts. "I don't want to be dead."

"I know you don't. That's why you have to listen closely. You get one chance at this."

I was silent.

"My sacrifice for you means the rules of time are all screwed up. Shardstorm's crew couldn't kill you during the President Plot. Agent Survivor took your injured body before the STPOW Agents could rescue you and put you back in the flames in the wreckage of the White House. Your heart stopped beating, but time rebelled and spit his entire team back into the present, and time sort of... unraveled back to its old version of things."

Taylor took a breath. Why did she need breath if we were dead? "Time... oh, it's so complicated. But it noticed my sacrifice and it made sure the sacrifice wasn't in vain. You were only gone for a minute. Nobody noticed your unconscious body disappear from the 1972 ground except Emmi, and she thought it was a malfunction with her vision when you reappeared a few minutes later."

Taylor sighed. "Cam, time favors you. I don't know why or how, but it's on your side. But it was already a stretch for it to save you once. You get one more chance. You have to go to the White House, right now, back through the time machine, and save yourself."

"But that means I have to watch you die again," I whispered.

The nightmares. The wracking sobs for days afterwards. The fear.

Taylor's icy blue eyes were filled with sadness. "Yes. You can't change that without killing yourself, so please don't try. You have to promise me you won't try to save me. Okay?"

I looked at Taylor. "But... there has to be a way."

Taylor sighed in frustration. "If there was, I would tell you. I swear. But there's no saving me. It was specifically my sacrifice that gave you this second chance at life. If you try to save me, we're both going to die, and most likely time will be forever broken. Promise me, Cam," Taylor murmured, taking my face in her icy hands that would never see life again. "Promise me."

"Okay," I shuddered and exhaled the word. "Okay. I won't save you."

"Good," Taylor said with a sigh of relief. "Okay, Cam. I won't be able to talk to you again until you're dead for good, so for your sake, I hope it's a long time before I see your face once again."

"Oh, Taylor," I said quietly, a tear running down my face as I took her hand. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," she said, a sad smile turning her lips ever-so-slightly upwards. "I made my decision, and it was the right one. It was my time to go. But Cam, you have so much in store for your future. It's your time to live..."

It's my time to live. The words echoed in my mind as sleep pulled me under again and I fell onto my knees, then forward onto my face. But I didn't slam into the cold, unforgiving ground.

I fell into soft oblivion, murmuring the words one last time.

"It's my time to live."

>>>

Something cold and wet trickled down my face. I tried to reach up for it, but my arms didn't move. I shifted, trying to fight through the fog in my mind and the ache in my bones.

"Cam!" Stella's voice said, happiness and relief laced in her tone.

"Ugh," I groaned, "hi. What's happening?"

I opened my eyes. Bright sunlight poured into my eyes and I reflexively lifted my heavy arm to shield my eyes.

"Agh, sorry Cam. You've got something on your face... we didn't want to move you in case your head was injured," Stella said with a grimace, reaching for something and coming back with a napkin. She gingerly wiped my face as I summoned the strength to sit up. I winced as the rough napkin found raw skin.

"Ice cream and blood, what a combination," Stella muttered. Well, gross ice cream on my face was not how I wanted to wake up from being unconscious, but oh well.

I looked around. I was outside, lying on the concrete ground still, right outside of Dairy Queen. My friends were gathered around me, all of them conscious. Charles and Lukas were talking and Emmi was having a conversation with Agent Rivers, but Agent Semaj and Stella seemed to have been focusing on me.

"How long have I been out?" I asked, scooting closer to Stella.

"I've been awake for about ten minutes, we were worried about you and why you were unconscious so much longer. Emmi said that someone called an ambulance and it came, but she wouldn't let them take you, so it drove off. Eventually we started waking up and the bystanders dispersed," Stella told me.

She shook her head sadly. "What a mess. That was the worst battle ever."

"Yeah, we kinda sucked," I said, managing a small laugh. "Unarmed, we aren't the greatest, it turns out."

Emmi turned to me, noticing I was awake. "Hey Cam," she said with a smile.

Something sparked in my mind. "Someone just said that."

"I don't think so," Stella said, laughing a little.

Suddenly, my entire encounter with Taylor came flooding back. I stood bolt upright, breathing heavily.

"Shoot. Guys, I was dead. I saw Taylor. She told me that Shardstorm had succeeded in killing me in another time, but her sacrifice made time unravel to the way it was before. That's why I was unconscious so much longer than you guys... because I literally died for about five minutes."

I looked Stella dead in her eyes. "We've got to leave to stop Shardstorm from killing me in the White House right now!"

Agent Semaj, who had been listening, put a hand on my shoulder. "Cam, you're still not steady on your feet. You need to rest for a minute."

I swayed a bit but stayed determinedly upright. "No, guys, we need to go now. Taylor said it was my time to live. Those were her dying words to me. I am going to live... for her. For all those who have lost their lives because of Shardstorm. We have to leave now."

At this point, everyone on our team was listening to me. "Okay, Cam," Stella said with a nod, wrapping her arm around me. "Even if the Taylor experience was just a dream, we know Shardstorm wants to take you out, and the President Plot is a logical place to do it. We should head there now."

Agent Rivers looked at Agent Semaj. "That seems like the best course of action," she said with a nod to Stella.

"Yes, but this time we need to be more careful," Agent Semaj responded, giving each of us a long look. "It's a miracle nobody died here. I don't want that to happen again."

"Okay, Agent Semaj," I said respectfully. "We'll be careful, I swear."

I neglected to mention that I had died here. Momentarily.

Charles was silent. "Does that mean you all are going to leave?"

I looked at Charles and thought of Marlee. "Yes, but I think you might be meant to come with us."

I braced for a strong negative reaction, but Charles looked at me thoughtfully. "That girl with the pink hair... I think she really knows me. I believe that you're right, I'm meant to come with you and live in the future." He looked around his drab neighborhood sorrowfully. "There's nothing left for me here."

Poor Charles. I hoped to figure him out more someday. But for now, we had to make a decision, and fast. I looked at the senior Agents. "Can he come?"

"I think that the only possible explanation for him being in our time is that he came through the time machine. So, yes. He can come," decided Agent Rivers with a confident nod.

Charles' face broke into a grin, and I hoped that this decision would mean things changed for the better in this unique boy's life.

"Well, come on then," Lukas said, punching him lightly and playfully. Charles grinned.

I felt a surge of affection for Lukas, always making everyone feel wanted. Then I pushed it down.

We walked slowly back towards Charles' house. My face had stopped bleeding, but I felt the raw scrapes from where my cheek had slammed against the hard concrete and vowed that it wouldn't happen again.

I was not going to let Shardstorm win again.

So much had happened since we had walked out Charles' front door that it felt like we were entering his house again for the first time. I hoped Aury and Marlee were all right and they had managed to fix the time machine in their intended timeline.

Charles took the lead as we approached his front door. He sighed a little as he quietly turned the front doorknob, leading us into a dark hallway that we'd walked before.

"I'll miss this place," Charles said quietly as he led us to the dusty stairs and up into the upstairs hallway. Nobody answered, but I put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Which room was the time machine in, again?" I asked, looking around at the doors. All were closed.

"The guest room," Charles answered, heading towards the door diagonal from us and slowly turning the knob.

I sighed, utter relief in my chest, as Aury and Marlee looked up from tinkering with the time machine. "Hi guys," Marlee said with a smile. Her eyes fell on Charles and she turned away quickly.

"Marlee," I said gently, walking into the room. "Charles is coming back with us."

Marlee's eyes lit up before she could stop herself. "Really?"

"Really," Agent Rivers said with a small smile.

"Well, that's good timing," Aury said, grunting as she screwed in a piece. "We're pretty much done here. All that's left is that we need to find the on button."

Everyone looked at each other. "You can fix a freaking time machine but you can't find the on button?" Stella muttered.

"Alright, everybody look for it," Agent Semaj said, rolling his eyes. We all gathered around the empty portal and searched for an on button.

Five minutes later, Marlee had found it. "Yes!" she screeched, not stopping to confirm or verify with us before punching the button.

The time machine's surface lit up, blue and shimmery. "Oh man," I said with a relieved sigh. "Okay."

Charles had been busily writing his parents a note. He now looked up at us. "I'm going to put this on their bedside so when they wake up they'll see it," Charles told us. He sighed. "Goodbye, house."

Marlee took his hand with a smile. "I'm glad you're coming back with us."

Charles blushed. "Me too."

Maybe Charles and Marlee's relationship could work out in this strange world we lived in after all.

We quickly filled in Aury and Marlee on what had happened outside and what our plan was next. Aury plugged in a time and destination to the time machine, then lightly hit the outside of it. "I don't think this thing has more than a couple more trips left in it."

"White House, then back to the present," I said with a nod. "Then hopefully this thing is conked out for good and we don't have to worry about Shardstorm ever going back in time again."

"Yep," Agent Semaj responded with a grin. "We have enough to worry about when he's in the present."

Agent Rivers went first, stepping in with a mock salute and being whisked away. The rest of my time team jumped in, leaving just me and Charles on a dusty 1972 floor.

"Do you think I'll ever fit in back in the present?" Charles whispered as he glanced into the iridescent surface of the time machine.

"I know you will," I answered with a smile, remembering the first time I met Charles.

It was in Creative Writing with a teacher named Mr. Ender. Charles had looked up at the teacher, and with dead seriousness, responded, "As in Dragon?"

Yep, he would fit in just fine.

"You first," I told Charles, wondering if we left him for last if he might have second thoughts and never jump in at all. But he didn't hesitate, taking one last glance around him and jumping into oblivion.

I followed, putting one foot in before being sucked back to the place where my first spy mission took place.

### Chapter Nine

This ride felt a little better than the last two. I was able to stand on my two feet—well, at least until the end, when the time machine starting tearing me apart, atom by atom, in a whirl of light and color and sound. I tried to stay strong, but I couldn't even tell who I was anymore, let alone tell where my feet were. I reached out, trying to grasp for something solid, but everything real seemed just out of my reach.

I closed my eyes and waited for it to stop.

And suddenly, it did stop.

But unlike the last two times, the time machine didn't spit me out onto some foreign ground in time. I didn't feel a little rubber-bandy but perfectly intact and whole, ready to conquer the next mission.

Instead I slowly reassembled in darkness, still floating in the void of time and space.

"Uh, what's going on?" I asked out loud.

To my surprise, a voice answered me, somewhere off to my left. "Cam?"

"Agent Semaj?" I asked, relieved, kind of air-swimming towards the sound. "Where are you?"

"Guys!" This time it was Stella's voice that sounded out of the gloom. "Where the heck are we?"

"Stells!" I shouted. I still couldn't see Agent Semaj or Stella. But their voices sounded near. "Where are you guys?"

Suddenly I heard a sound like air being sucked into a vacuum, then a slight popping. Then a familiar gasp. Marlee. "This isn't the White House," Marlee's voice muttered, somewhere to my right.

"Young Agents, I believe the time machine is gathering us all for a reason here. Perhaps it has malfunctioned and cannot take us to our next destination. But let's wait a minute and see if everyone else arrives," Agent Semaj's voice said calmly. I still could only see darkness and grayish gloom, but it was comforting to know that my teammates were close.

Agent Semaj was right, for in just the next minute, every other member of our team had arrived close by in the darkness. I did a quick tally in my head. Agent Semaj, Agent Rivers, Marlee, Lukas, Stella, Emmi, Aury, Charles. And me. We were all here.

I took a deep, calming breath, fully aware that any moment Shardstorm could kill me again at the President Plot, this time for good. But I forced myself to stay calm.

"Okay. So what the heck happened?" Stella asked loudly. "Why are we in some sort of—" I heard her thrashing around— "dark creepy crap-pit instead of at the White House?"

"I believe the time machine malfunctioned," Emmi said with a frown in her voice. "It seems to be vibrating and humming, trying to speak to me."

She stopped talking abruptly. I imagined her in front of me, eyes closed, brows furrowed in concentration. "Oh... yes, it's very clearly communicating with me now," Emmi told us, a little nervously. "The repairs were good, but they weren't enough. The time machine does not have much life left in it. It may have enough for only one more trip."

I rubbed my eyes in the gloom. "Okay. How does it help us to know that we might be stuck at the White House in the past forever? We already knew that. We want to know why we aren't at the White House."

Emmi sighed a bit. I imagined her locking her dark brown eyes on mine in the blackness. "I'm trying to see. One second."

Aury groaned from somewhere further off. "Oh, I'm trying to reach the code, but it's so complicated in this place. How can you tell what this thing is saying at all?"

"I'm an android," Emmi said simply. "Machines communicate in ways that they don't communicate with you." Then she gave a sharp intake of breath. "Oh. It's giving us one chance to change our destination."

Silence.

"Well obviously we're not going to do that," Stella said with a groan. "We have to risk being stuck in the past, because obviously otherwise Cam is going to die. I refuse to be saved from death just to let my best friend take my place."

And suddenly, I had an idea.

And my heart fell into my shoes but I knew what I was supposed to do.

"Guys," I said quietly.

"Yeah, that's so stupid," Marlee added. "Didn't we already know the risks when we signed up for this thing? Yeah, we might be stuck a few weeks in the past. What's the harm in that?"

"The space-time continuum would reject our double selves if we were in the past for longer than a few hours. It would basically spit us into empty time and space. We would die," Emmi said simply and softly.

"Guys," I said again.

Nobody paid me any attention.

"To heck with that," Lukas spoke up. "Cam has risked her life for us who knows how many times. The least we can do is pay her the same courtesy." A little spark of warmth shot through me without my permission.

Charles was silent.

"There is a good chance you all will be unable to return to the present," Agent Semaj said with concern in his voice. "I don't know if that's a necessary risk. If we go to the present now, we might be able to damage the time machine so that Shardstorm's team will be unable to complete the mission and Cam's life will be spared."

I couldn't take it anymore. "GUYS!" I bellowed, letting out all my fear, anger, and frustration in the word.

There was awkward quiet for a moment. "Yes, Cam?" Agent Rivers said with a slight air of amusement.

I took a shaky breath. "I'm going to the White House alone."

There was an immediate chorus of "No, Cam!" "You're crazy!" "No way, girl!" "Quit talking like that!" "We won't let you!" "JUST SAYING, DYING IS NOT FUN, DON'T RECOMMEND!" (Yep, that last one was Stella.)

When it quieted, I sighed. "I thought you might say that."

Agent Semaj looked at me. And suddenly, I could see him. I could see everyone. All my beautiful friends, my teammates, with concern and fierce protectiveness on their faces. A lump rose in my throat. "I love you guys," I whispered, my voice catching on the last word. "But I'm not letting you die for me."

Then I closed my eyes, reaching into the depth of the time machine's abyss of code. "Take them back to the present."

"Cam, stop what you're saying right now!" Agent Rivers barked, moving towards me.

"And take me to the original inputted destination."

The time machine started humming and whirring. "Cam, stop!" Stella cried, racing towards me. I saw Lukas's face out of the corner of my eye, yelling, "NO!" in a way that did not sound like a boy that was over me. My team all started yelling, telling me to stop it, to cut it off, but it was too late.

In the blink of an eye, the time machine whisked me away. And I was gone.

Hopefully not forever.

>>>

This time, as I traveled through time and space, I was afraid. There was no team behind me this time. I'd left my time team behind. And I really hoped that I made the right decision.

Because if I didn't, I was going to die. Plain and simple.

The time machine might not have had much life left in it, but it still managed to twist and twirl and knock me off my feet, filling my ears and making me want to throw up.

I closed my eyes and waited for relief.

And then the time machine spit me out face-first onto dewy, bright green grass.

I skidded for a second, the front of my shirt tracing a muddy path in the grass, then I slid to a stop. We were on the White House lawn and I had about a second to collapse the time machine before I made national news in a not-so-good way.

Funnily enough, I thought, my friends at this point knew whether or not I was going to make it back alive, because I planned to go next to the exact same time they were going to once I was done here. We would arrive back in the present at the same time. My time team knew if I was going to live past today or not.

Weird.

I quickly took a few steps back towards the time machine, groped for the collapse button, and smacked it. The time machine crumpled into a small cube, which I carefully placed in my pocket. "Okay," I sighed to myself. "Let's do this."

I had about five minutes until the bomb went off, so I took off at a fast clip towards the White House. At this point in the past, I had made my announcement to the East Wing of the White House to evacuate, and with all the confusion and threat of a bomb, nobody noticed a teenage girl sprinting towards the place where it was all about to go down.

I was scared. I was really scared. If I failed here, and the time machine failed, I would die. If I failed here but the time machine worked, I would die. If I succeeded but the time machine couldn't get me to the present, I would die.

The only possible way I would survive the day is if I stopped Shardstorm's team from killing my past body, the time machine worked, and it got me to the present fast enough and then failed, stopping Shardstorm from harming any of us back in time again.

The odds weren't looking good for me. But they usually weren't.

I steeled myself as I raced towards the place of my nightmares, the place where I nearly died, the place where Taylor lost her life.

Taylor. I almost stopped running. I had promised not to try to save her. I was really regretting that promise now. Why was it so important, anyway? Sure, time might be a little screwed up, but it already was anyway.

If I had the opportunity, I'd save her. I promised myself that.

But time was running out, and fast. I checked my spy watch before remembering the time machine had broken it. "Shoot," I muttered angrily, running faster.

Then I heard a shout, and a loud, familiar voice cursing. "Hey, Agent Survivor! It's a future Cam!"

Jai. Present-Jai. He was about fifty feet to my left on the grass, in between an evacuated White House maid and Agent Survivor.

I heard a sigh, then the smooth voice of Agent Survivor answered, "Jai, don't let her follow me. It's time for me to put her past body back in the flames."

Agent Survivor took off towards the White House. I heard Jai sigh, "Why do they always ask me to deal with Cam?" and then a whizzing sound as he sent a stun gun bolt towards my head.

I ducked, still sprinting, ignoring his approaching footsteps and the footsteps of two more people, who I guessed were Asher and Violet. I had no clue where Darkblaze was, but I had a bad feeling about it.

"J-ai! She's getting closer to the White House!" Violet's voice sang, now from behind me. She didn't seem out of breath in the least, and I had to remind myself that she wasn't the chubby girl that I thought I knew from school. That was an act. The real Violet was wickedly in shape and wickedly evil. She would have killed me in the bathroom of my high school after I discovered her to be a Leaguer if she hadn't gotten a call that the time machine was finished, and if Stella and a preppy not-spy girl named Sophie hadn't come to my rescue soon afterwards.

They sent bolt after bolt at me. Adrenaline coursed through my veins and I kept dodging, running, ducking, and running more.

The White House was near, maybe thirty feet away now. But I knew I couldn't have more than sixty seconds before the bomb exploded, and Agent Survivor had a big lead. I knew the entrance to the secret basement in the East Wing was near, but I could only hope that Agent Survivor had trouble finding it, though I knew he likely wouldn't.

BOOM. Shardstorm's bomb went off, shaking the whole foundation of the East Wing. Immediately the ceiling crumbled and caved in. The fear that I'd felt the first time I was here laced through my veins again, choking my senses and ensnaring my feet.

Suddenly, I was there, there at the secret entrance. Jai sent one last bolt at me and it almost hit my chest, singing my shirt and stinging my skin. "NOT TODAY," I screamed at Violet, quiet Asher, and Jai, wrenching open the door and slamming it behind me, latching the padlock.

Darkness and pure, blissful silence for a moment.

Then I smelled the smoke and started coughing.

I tried to cover my mouth to avoid Agent Survivor hearing me, but it was too late. A pair of gleaming eyes full of malice turned towards me in the darkness and a flash of red electricity lit up the black room as he sent a knockout bolt at my legs. I jumped over it, and raced towards where the rubble began, knowing that I probably wasn't going to make it, that Agent Survivor would hit me with a knockout bolt and it would all be over.

But suddenly my past self burst free of the crumbling White House and stumbled down the stairs towards us. I knew that my past self was in great pain, my ankle was sprained and my dust inhalation had nearly killed me, and that it was a miracle I had survived. She... or I... sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious.

Agent Survivor and I both lunged for her at the same time. "Stop it!" I growled, using a quick Taekwondo maneuver to trap his hands. I made a grab for his stun gun, but he broke free, shooting a quick bolt at me, which I sidestepped.

"Why do you..." I gasped, kicking him in the stomach, "want me dead so badly?"

Agent Survivor shot two bolts at me, which I ducked, and a kick, which I didn't. As I doubled over, gasping, he answered, "You get in my Master's way."

"I wish you had died back here in the past like we all thought you did," I said furiously, standing back up and making a wild grab for my past self.

"Stop getting in my way!" Agent Survivor growled, knocking my hands away.

We stood for a moment, looking at each other, breathing heavily. "You stupid girl. Always sacrificing yourself for others."

And I had an idea. I shook my head. "Well, aren't you like that too? I know you're dedicated to Shardstorm, but I never imagined you'd sacrifice yourself for him," I said carefully.

"What?" Agent Survivor growled. "As soon as I kill you, I'm taking the time machine and getting out of here."

Here came the leap of faith. Time was on my side, and I hoped that it could do me one last favor. "Well, you know, when I came into this same place with the time machine, it wasn't able to split itself in two. Your little condensed time machine disappeared, and I have the only one," I said cheerfully.

My heart pounded as Agent Survivor's face turned into amusement. But then he patted his pockets and his face slowly turned to fear.

And I silently thanked time for helping me one last time.

"Give me the time machine," Agent Survivor growled, lunging for me.

"Uh-uh-uh," I chided, jumping away. "I'm going to put the time machine out right now, and you have one chance to get in it and head right back to the present. If you try anything funny, I'll collapse it and leave and you're stuck here for a few more hours until you die."

Agent Survivor's eyes were wild. "No."

"Alrighty, well, have fun dying!" I said with a laugh, reaching into my pocket.

"Wait!" he said, seeming desperately torn for such a tough guy.

The door burst open, but it wasn't Agent Rivers to rescue past-me yet. It was Jai, Asher, and Violet.

"Oh, hi guys," I said cheerfully. "Come join the fun."

"She says that unless we get into her time machine now, she's ditching us in the past and we die," Agent Survivor told them quickly, his smooth voice registering anger and fear.

Jai and Violet looked at each other, then at the agent of evil. "What? Where the heck did your time machine go?" Jai asked angrily.

"It disappeared," he said defensively.

"Five seconds to make your choice," I said calmly. "Five, four..."

"I'm not killing myself just to make your lovely daddy happy," Violet scoffed at Jai, then turned to me. "I'll jump in the time machine, Cam." She spit out my name with hate.

"Three, two..."

"I'll do it," Asher said quietly.

"One. Okay, Violet and Asher are coming with me. Jai and Agent Survivor are staying in the past to die. Bye!" I said with a smile, pulling out the time machine and hitting the expand button.

Immediately, Violet and Asher thrust themselves into the shimmering field. Jai, after looking wildly around for a minute, followed them. Finally, Agent Survivor shook his head. "You're a clever one, girlie. I'll give you that. But know that as soon as you jump out of the time machine with us, all mini truces are off. I'm killing you."

"Feel free to try," I said cheerfully as Agent Survivor jumped into the shimmering field.

The door began to creak open again. Past-Agent-Rivers was coming to rescue past-me.

I sighed deeply, prayed the time machine would hold out for one final trip and that Shardstorm was now in the present, and thrust myself into the shimmering blue surface just as Agent Rivers opened the door.

Past-me was safe. But Taylor was still dead. I had failed her... again.

A tear ran down my face as the time machine sucked me into oblivion.

### Chapter Ten

I couldn't make myself watch as the time machine worked at getting me back to the present. I closed my eyes and chanted "Please, please, please, please," over and over in my head. Please, Time. Please, God. Please, any force that's listening, just get me back to the present.

A hissing sound came from the time machine just as it split me into a million pieces. The ride slowed and jerked for a moment, then shot me forward at twice the usual speed.

"Please, please, please please," I groaned, fear in every part of my body.

And then, it was over. The time machine stopped.

I was floating in oblivion, in the abyss of time and space. My atoms had not been reassembled. I was nothing. I had nothing. I felt nothing.

The time machine couldn't do get me back to the present. If I wasn't dead now, I would be soon.

An odd sense of relief rushed through me.

Well, that was it. No more worrying about spy missions, about boys, about my parents, about Shardstorm. No more pain, no more heartache.

But also no more happiness, no first kiss, no more laughs with friends or crazy lunchroom fiascos. No chance to see what happened to Shardstorm, no more time to be Agent Hope.

I floated for what felt like forever, wondering, hoping, thinking. I had all the time in the world now to ponder things.

Would I be with Taylor again soon? I hoped so. I'd rather be dead and with her than alone, hanging onto a shred of life in the abyss of time.

After what must have been hours if not days, something subtly shifted in my little world.

I was being put together again, not quickly like the time machine, but slowly, like a sculptor taking pieces of me and lovingly, painstakingly making something out of nothing. It hurt. With each new piece of me that was added, on a stab of pain would shoot through my limbs. What was happening? I longed to go back to the peace of floating through nothingness.

The pain built. Now every piece of me added on felt like someone sticking a knife in my body. I groaned in agony, writhed in pain, willing it to stop. Blackness swam in my head as I cried out for someone to save me, to make it stop.

I couldn't take it anymore. I started to shut down. I didn't know what the abyss was doing to me, or why, but now each piece of myself felt like a hot dagger through my bones. I jerked with involuntary movement with the agony, like a puppet who couldn't control her limbs.

My eyes starting to slip closed as I crumpled, but before everything went dark and silent, the last piece of me was complete.

I passed out and my unconscious body shot through time and space again towards the light.

>>>

I woke up with a start as I was flung onto a piece of hard, cool, unforgiving ground.

"Oh my GOSH!" screamed a very familiar voice. "Aury, I could KISS you right now."

I became aware of many familiar voices, talking excitedly around me, all loudly, all overtop of each other. I opened my eyes slowly, preparing for the worst.

But it wasn't the worst. What I opened my eyes to was the best thing that could have possibly happened.

I was in the present, my team surrounding me.

I was home.

"CAM!" Stella's green eyes swam in front of my own, and she bent down to my level and wrapped me in a giant bear hug.

I was still very sore and achy and confused, but my happiness overtook all that as I sat up and practically tackled Stella with a hug of my own. We both died laughing as we fell to the ground again, hugging so tight that my circulation was practically cut off.

Finally we broke apart breathlessly, laughing, both talking at once, and she helped me to my feet.

Marlee came at me next and we spun around together, giggling. Emmi couldn't resist anymore either and we shared a girls' group hug. Aury came up and stood awkwardly to the side but Marlee brought her into the group and we all squeezed each other, feeling so lucky to have our little girl group. Even Charles came up and gave me a pat on the back.

I pulled away and held Aury's shoulders, remembering Stella's words when I was flung out of the time machine. "Aury... did you save me?"

And Aury, the sometimes-unfeeling, calculating, loner of a girl, blushed bright red and looked down. "It was nothing. Just a little coaxing of the time machine's code to push you into the present."

My jaw dropped. I flung my arms around her again, burying my head in her soft hair. "Oh, Aury," I said, my voice catching. "Thank you."

I knew "thank you" would never be enough, but there was nothing else I could manage to say.

Then I noticed Agent Semaj and Rivers waiting off to the side, a little misty-eyed, and I felt a lump in my throat as I ran towards my favorite Agents and threw myself into their arms, sobbing.

Agent Semaj held me tight as Agent Rivers smoothed my hair in an uncharacteristically maternal moment. "Shh, shh. You're okay, Cam. You're okay."

I couldn't stop crying. I didn't even know why. Maybe it was the fact that I'd almost died, again. Maybe it was that we were all safe and our mission was a success. Maybe I was just tired, so tired of all the fighting and death and fear. I didn't know.

But when I final pulled away, I felt a lot better. And I looked around the room and realized there was one person who I hadn't hugged yet.

Lukas looked at me. And in that moment, all of our fighting, our anger, our hurt and pain at each other, all of it fell away.

And I looked into Lukas's eyes and all I saw was love.

And dang, I might have tried to crush the feeling, but I took a deep, shuddering breath and my mask of not caring fell away.

I loved Lukas. And I knew he loved me too.

We ran towards each other, arms outstretched, tears running down both of our faces. And then he had me in his arms, against his chest, rocking me as I cried into him, his light brown hair brushing my face, his green eyes looking deeply into mine.

And I leaned up and kissed him.

I kissed him with all I was worth, and after a moment he kissed me back, his hand on my back, my tears stopping as I closed my eyes and stopped thinking about anything else.

After a few seconds, I reluctantly pulled away. I stared into Lukas's eyes, knowing right then that this boy was mine, and I would be so stupid to ever lose him again.

"Wow," Stella said, then tried to cover a snort of laughter. Marlee bent over and lost it laughing, and those two's laughter were contagious, because a minute later the entire room was guffawing.

"KISSING TIME!" bellowed Stella, still dying of laughter. Agent Semaj kissed Agent Rivers, Marlee gave a sheepish grin and kissed Charles on the cheek, Lukas kissed my forehead, and Stella made a mock kissy face at Aury since they were the only girls in the room not paired up. (Unless you counted Emmi.)

She looked so much like a fish that it was my turn to snort.

"When you finally find your perfect boy, Stells, please kiss him like that!" I called to her teasingly. "No fair you had your first kiss before I did."

"Nah! I think I'll stick with the normal person way," Stella yelled back with a giant grin. "I have more experience, you know! But you both have one rule- no kissing each other on missions."

I snapped my fingers in mock annoyance. "Darn," I giggled, looking up at Lukas. "Well, I guess we'll have to get as much in as we can now."

"Noo!" Stella howled, but I ignored her and leaned into Lukas again with a grin.

But it seemed like I had to be interrupted at least once every couple of months when I was trying to kiss someone, because at that moment Shardstorm stumbled out of the time machine. With a gigantic CRACK, the time machine split down the middle into two pieces.

And I knew it was never going to be used again.

Shardstorm looked around for a moment, taking in everyone's happy faces, my lips an inch away from Lukas's, Stella's teasing grin.

"You broke my time machine," Shardstorm said smoothly. "And you rescued the brat."

Stella seethed with anger, and so did I. "We rescued my best friend, who you murdered," I said calmly, trying to keep the anger from making my voice shake as I pulled away from Lukas's lips but still held tight to his hand.

"Yes. She should have stayed dead," Shardstorm answered with a growl of malice and cruel hate in his eyes. "My idiotic agents didn't even manage to kill you," Shardstorm hissed, whipping his head towards me. Lukas held my hand tight, his warmth a comforting presence, practically daring Shardstorm with his eyes to even try to hurt me.

"Your idiotic agents stumbled out of the time machine, saw us, and ran for their lives," Agent Semaj snapped. "From what I gathered from them, Cam had mercy on them and saved their lives when she could have trapped them in the past to die. You owe us for that."

Well, if I'd trapped them in the past to die, I knew that they would kill my past self for sure before they were gone. So that wasn't the most selfless thing I'd ever done.

Oh well, I had my moments.

"I owe you nothing," Shardstorm growled. "If I had a weapon, I would stop your idiotic STPOW once and for all right now. But since I don't, you're going to let me through right now."

I glanced at my fellow Agents, a hint of a smile on my face. "I don't think so. I think you're going to stay right here."

And with that, I ran to the wall and pulled the red emergency switch.

A siren blared. "EMERGENCY," a women's voice bellowed calmly over the loudspeakers. "EMERGENCY."

Shardstorm cursed. "You little..." he cursed again at me.

"Thanks," I said with a grin. "Now try getting out of here."

"I will. And when I return, your meddling, weak, excuse of a spy organization better be ready. This war has gone on too long," Shardstorm said softly. "It's going to end soon. Very soon."

He looked at us with hatred. "You better make sure you're on the right side of the battle when the final fight comes."

My time team looked at each other, finally back where we belonged, ready to take on the final challenge. And, like we could read each other's minds, we all struck a Taekwondo pose, ready to take down the villain.

"Oh, we are."

We raced towards Shardstorm, hands or legs outstretched. I have no regrets, I thought as I landed a kick into Shardstorm's stomach. He twisted and spun at the speed of a tiger, but he was no match for our time team. I had never for a moment considering switching sides.

If Shardstorm thought he could still convince us now, he was sorely mistaken. I was part of the STPOW until the day I died.

But as I fought side by side with my team, I realized that Shardstorm was correct about one thing.

The final fight was approaching rapidly.

And it was going to be deadly.

### Epilogue

I guess my parents didn't understand that today was not the greatest day to drop a big bombshell of a realization on me.

I had just taken on the world's biggest supervillain with my bare hands twice, traveled in a time machine to three different times, died twice, and had my first kiss. My first several, actually.

After our little fight with Shardstorm, he'd gotten away into our headquarters. We believed that he had escaped, as our security was more heavily concentrated around the time machine. We weren't sure, though. Things were very up in the air, and nobody was certain who would make the next move or when it would happen.

One thing I did know, though, was that we were all unconsciously preparing for that soon-to-be-moment where we knew everything would come to a head in the final battle.

But, before we could deal with that, I had to go home.

And I did. It was weird that after all the time I'd been through, not a moment in the real world had passed, though we'd been through almost a full day in different times. Everything was exactly the same as I'd left it.

And so were my parents.

"Cammy!" I heard my mom's voice as I pushed open our front door. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't brought my phone, knowing the time machine would ruin it. Hopefully she hadn't texted me during the day.

"Hey, Mom!" I said brightly, closing our old wooden door behind me and pulling off my muddy blue sneakers at the door. Whoops, there was another thing I'd have to explain.

My mom strode up to the door to meet me. That was unusual, usually she'd wait until I came into the room to talk to me. "Hi, Cam," she said with a smile.

I pulled off my socks and studied her face. Her smile seemed kind of forced. Maybe I was imagining it. "Hi... is everything okay?"

My mom gave another one of those forced smiles. "Yep, everything is fine. Dad and I just have something we want to talk about with you when he gets home."

Well, I don't know about other girls, but when my mother and father needs to talk to me, my mind flashes to boys, getting in trouble, and (guess what) my second life as a spy. My day had included all three of them, so I had absolutely no idea what this talk was about.

"Oh," I said uncertainly, grimacing to myself and heading towards the kitchen. "Okay."

My mom followed me in. "I made you a snack! I thought you might be hungry after your big day. How was it?"

My mother thought that I was going out with friends to explore downtown today, not jump in a time machine and almost die. "Oh, yeah! It was great. We had a lot of fun," I said with a smile.

"Good," my mom answered quickly, still a little nervously. Man, what did she need to talk to me about?

My mom didn't usually make snacks for me after just a normal Saturday out, but there was a bowl of apples and peanut butter at my spot at the table. "Wow, this is great. Thanks, mom," I said with a forced smile of my own.

She was acting so strangely. Butterflies started to flit around in my stomach.

I chowed down on my apples as my mom slid into the chair next to me, sitting down with a sigh. Her brown hair with streaks of red hung loosely around her tired face. She hadn't gone out at all today, I could tell. Well, that shouldn't worry me. My mother needed days off too.

"Where did you all go today?" Mom asked, brushing her hair out of her face and fixing me with her kind brown eyes. Hers were lighter than mine, with flecks of gold, while my chocolate brown eyes glittered with speckles of green.

"Well, we went to TJ Maxx first," I said with a grin, already having planned out my fake day in my head. "Lukas was not happy."

"Oh, really?" Mom said with a laugh. "Poor kid, having to be dragged around with you crazy girls. How is he nowadays, anyway?"

Welp, I couldn't keep every part of my life a secret. I steadied myself and said, "He's good. We got back together recently, actually. So it was pretty nice."

My mom tried to hide a giant grin. "Oh, really? That's great, Cam. He seems like a very sweet boy."

"Yes, he is," I said, now trying to hide a grin of my own.

Oh, if only my mother knew how amazing, supportive, strong, and sweet Lukas really was, fighting by my side and taking down enemies with every shot he took and still knowing how to lift me up into a tender kiss, his green eyes sparkling, looking lovingly back at mine.

I smiled to myself, momentarily forgetting about the talk soon to come.

That's when my dad got home.

The front door opened with a bang. My dad clomped through the door, his work shoes clacking on our worn hardwood. My mother abandoned me with my remaining apple slices and went to meet my father. "Hey, babe," she said with a smile, giving him a quick kiss. "How was work?"

My dad heaved a long sigh. "Long," he admitted, taking off his shoes and walking into the kitchen. "How was your day, sweetie?"

"Great, great," my mom said, nodding quickly.

Hm, my parents were trying extra hard to be affectionate. "Hi dad!" I said brightly, finishing my last apple and hugging my father.

His two-day stubble was coarse against my forehead as he kissed me, his bright blue eyes sparkling with a kind gaze. His wavy salt-and-pepper hair lay flat against his head as he let me go and pushed his slightly nerdy glasses up. "Hey, Cam. How was your day?"

"Good," I said with a smile, hoping he wouldn't ask for elaboration.

He did not. In fact, he looked a bit nervous too as he pulled up a chair to the table. "Well, Cam, hopefully your mother already said that today was the day we needed to tell you something big. We were waiting until you were old enough, because—" he coughed, breaking off.

My mom took over, her coffee-colored eyes sparkling with worry. "Because, Cam, it's hard. It's going to be hard for a while, I'm sure."

My heart raced in my chest. I genuinely thought I'd never in my life be as nervous as I was when I was given my first mission by the STPOW, but this rivaled it.

And, very suddenly, I knew what my mom was going to say next.

I knew it before she said it. I knew it in my bones, in my chocolate-brown eyes that didn't quite look like my mothers, in my short, straight bobbing brown hair that didn't quite match my fathers, in the lack of baby stories but the abundance of toddler ones, in the looks that my parents gave me every so often when they thought I wasn't looking. Looks of sadness and love.

Looks like they were proud to have my as their own, but at the same time, I wasn't.

Shardstorm could have come into the room right then and shot me in the chest, but it would not have been the same pain I felt with my mothers' next words.

"Cam. You're adopted."

The end... but wait! SpyCam continues! Keep watch for THE FINAL FIGHT: BOOK 5 coming soon!

Now turn to the next page for acknowledgments and an exclusive extra: The Lukas Page!

### Acknowledgments

If you're still reading because you're frantically hoping that that wasn't the last line of the fourth book, then SO SORRY! I probably should have quit with the cliffhangers on book three with "When Stella was still alive," but I couldn't help myself.

Anyways, this section isn't about my apologies to any readers hoping for more. This page is about thanking the people that made this happen!

As ALWAYS, thanks to my crazy supportive family! Thanks to Logan, my sis, for the literal HOURS of talking out plot twist ideas and more (fun fact: the idea of Cam being adopted was born at Stonehenge in Europe when we were bored walking around it!). Thanks to my dad for the good talks as well, and to my mom, who is always so supportive of my dream as a writer (and who just published her own parenting book! Eek!)

Thank you to the peeps on the Youth Writers Program of National Novel Writing Month! It's an awesome site with lots of young people who love writing like I do, and that site gave me a couple awesome prompts that helped me past writers block! (Prompt: Take your character to their favorite restaurant. Prompt: Have your character wake up in a puddle of.... Something. Stella's DQ extravaganza and Cam's valiant fight against Shardstorm and her ice-creamed revival.)

Thank you SO SO MUCH LUNA- one of my best friends, one of my biggest fans, and the absolute BEST editor on this planet! So many grammar errors fixed, and so many sentences worded better than they would have been otherwise. She's a true lifesaver, and I'm so grateful to her!

And finally, thanks to Smashwords for being my amazing publisher!

Now turn to the next page for "The Lukas Pages!"

### The Lukas Pages

Okay, so I was stupid to break up with Cam. I know.

It was heat of the moment anger and I didn't think things through like I usually do.

But I've never wished more that I didn't break up than when Cam, selfless, stupid, gorgeous Cam, sent us all back to the present and went to the President Plot herself.

As we all floated there, in the dark abyss, Cam looked straight into my eyes. "I love you guys," she whispered. "But I'm not letting you die for me."

She closed her eyes and I knew what she was going to do a split second before she did it. "No," I tried to say, but my voice caught on the word. I tried to swim towards her, but it was too late. A tear leaking out of her perfect chocolate-brown eye, Cam said, "Take them back to the present."

"NO!" I screamed it now, reaching out for Cam, reaching out for the love that I knew we'd never have now, reaching for the memories lost. "Cam," I cried as the time machine whisked us away through a sea of worlds, my eyes blurring with tears. "No, Cam."

When we arrived back in the present, I stumbled out onto the ground, falling flat on my face with absolutely no will to get up. Cam could be dying right now. Hurt. Needing my help. And there was nothing I could do.

Nobody else seemed too inclined to leave their spots on the cold tile floor of the STPOW headquarters either. But slowly, we all inched ourselves up into sitting positions, nobody saying a word, knowing that within the next few seconds we would know one way or another if Cam was alive.

Seconds passed. The time machine flickered, and suddenly Agent Survivor, Jai, Violet, and Asher were thrust out. I immediately scrambled up, but by the time I got to my feet, they were running for their lives in the opposite direction. "Ah, let them. They'll never make it out of here," Agent Semaj said worriedly.

Where was Cam?

The seconds grew to minutes. I started pacing around the room. "Come on, Cam," I muttered, blinking away tears.

Hope was fading fast from the small room after ten minutes past.

But Aury. Bless that girl.

Aury marched right up to the time machine. "I can try something," she murmured, still SOMEHOW clutching her notebook full of formulas after all the time machine trips with it.

"Oh Aury, can you?" Stella asked breathlessly. I noticed her eyes were glistening too, with the crippling guilt that her best friend had traded her life for Stella's if Cam was dead.

"Can't promise..." Aury said with a grunt, ripping off a part of the time machine, "but... if I can hijack this machine for one last push, it'll shove everything left in transition to their final destination, breaking the machine once and for all with its last bit of power."

"That's perfect," I said softly, not daring to hope. I crossed the room to Stella, taking her hand. There was nothing romantic in the gesture, just two friends, hoping for a hopeless miracle, clinging to each other in the darkness of fear.

And finally, after another minute, Aury gasped. My heart rose. "Did you do it?"

"I think I set it up right, now I just have to basically break all the inner workings of the time machine perfectly in one fell swoop for the machine to give an involuntary shove," said Aury nervously. "Alright, well, here goes."

And that beast of a girl shoved her entire fist into the control panel as hard as she could.

One second.

Two seconds.

The time machine gave a mechanical screech, and extremely suddenly, thrust out one beautiful, perfect girl.

She was alive.

And as I waited for my turn to be hugged, and Cam finally looked at me and mirrored the love in my eyes with her own, I knew.

This girl was a precious treasure. I would hold onto her tight and never let go again, because I was the luckiest guy alive to have a brave, courageous, selfless, beautiful spy queen love me.

And she was pretty freaking good at kissing, too.

Yes, I was lucky. And I knew that times would come when I wouldn't feel the same undying love for Cam, but I hoped those times stayed few and far away.

And I knew that whatever happened next in our crazy lives, this time we would conquer it together.

I hope you enjoyed SpyCam: The Time Team! I have other books available on Smashwords if you are interested. Just go to tinyurl.com/readzoe for more unique books written by an indie teen author!

Now, in 2019, I've published eight total books! Check them out on Google, iBooks, or the Smashwords store by searching "Zoe Wynns" or going to the link above.

Thank you for reading and supporting!
