The Impossible Race: Cragbridge Hall, Volume 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

saturn into his room? There was definitely some trespassing going on. “From what I’ve been able to figure out, which isn’t much, you and your sister came the closest to stopping Charles Muns.”
    She knew about Muns. Derick immediately looked around his room to make sure he was alone. That probably meant that she knew about the secret as well. And the keys. But she had said, “. . . came the closest to stopping him.” She was wrong. They had stopped him. They stopped him flat, dropped-unconscious-on-his-desk-without-any-keys flat.
    “Let me back up,” she said. “As crazy as this sounds, I think my history is different from yours. Parts of it anyway.” She rubbed her eyes. “Charles Muns changed it. That’s probably how he became what he is. He shouldn’t be. He’s caused this mess that no one should have to live in.” She frowned and moved her fingers in the air. She didn’t have rings, but perhaps something that worked on a similar principle. Maybe she could actually interact with the screen in the air on her end. “Here, let me show you.” The face moved and Derick saw a beautiful set of skyscrapers towering over a city. Rows and rows of homes filled the land beneath. “It doesn’t look too bad, I know, but glance this.” Derick saw person after person walking the streets. There was something about them that seemed dull. Sullen faces, subtly drooping eyes. It wasn’t like they were zombies, just missing something. Just living less.
    One of them doubled over. It was a middle-aged man. He groaned, loud and hollow, and pressed his arms against his belly as if he had just been sucker-punched in the gut. He grabbed the person next to him, but could barely whisper. “Help me,” he gasped.
    In under a minute, a tile in the ground in the weird world opened up. A long cylinder the size of a kitchen table floated out. This world really had the floating thing down. A small, egg-looking device detached itself and hovered over to the man. “No skeletal injury. Safe to move,” the machine announced in a professional female voice. It was some sort of floating doctor.
    A long board with mechanical arms slid out of the cylinder, carefully loaded the man onto itself, then returned into the cylinder. “You will be arriving at the hospital for medical care in forty-nine seconds,” the same female voice explained. Then the cylinder disappeared back into the ground. Apparently there was some sort of underground transportation system for the cylinders.
    That was a fast response to a medical emergency.
    A man with a long gray coat had paused to watch the whole incident. “I’ll bet you my stamps, it’s the Ash,” he said, and shook his head. “The poor guy will be gone within the hour.”
    “And more likely than not, no one will remember who he was,” a woman added. She sat on the ground, apparently a beggar. She reached out to the man for money or food. He simply shrugged and kept walking.

     
    The face of the girl sending the message returned. “This is reasonably common. They call it the epidemic of our time; a disease that causes people to fall terribly ill, then disintegrate from the inside out. He’ll be dead in an hour—and a pile of ash-like grains by morning. That’s where the name comes from. They say that the world’s best doctors are close to a cure, but people are definitely scared.” For the first time, Derick noticed the girl’s clothes as she talked. They overlapped at the cuffs and had a row of silver buttons. Strange style. Another row of buttons lined the trim around her neck.
    The message flickered again. Derick wondered if something was wrong with the saturn.
    “I know it’s all a cover-up,” the girl continued. “There is no disease.” She rubbed her eyes. “Wow. This is a lot to go over. Here’s the short version: Muns and his descendants change the past. They do it whenever someone tries to get in their way, or when someone simply does something they don’t like.