Ignatius MacFarland (30 page)

We squinted and held our hands over our ears and fell against each other as the sound and light and shaking became unbearable. And just when I thought I was going to pass out . . .

BOOM!

There was a blinding flash of light and I suddenly felt like all the air around my body exploded inward. I fell onto the ground and felt Karen fall down next to me.

And then suddenly everything was quiet.

I felt dirt under my hands. My eyes were temporarily blind from the burst of light, sort of like after somebody takes your picture with a flash camera. I was breathing heavily as I tried to get the oxygen into my lungs and the smoke out of them. The air around us was no longer hot from the fire, and a warm, wet breeze blew over my face.

Slowly, I sat up as I heard Karen stirring next to me. I looked over and as my eyes began to adjust, I saw that she was also sitting up.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding a bit disoriented. “Are you?”

“I think so.”

“Are we home?” she said as she rubbed her eyes to have a look at the frequency she had been away from for so long.

But that wasn’t what we saw.

Because we were someplace completely different, a place that was way weirder than the frequency we had just left.

I didn’t know where the heck we were, but we sure weren’t home.

And we were now, whether we wanted to be or not, officially Frequenauts.