Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop

2

The Heist

Pearl

Approximately five hours later, the whole world was green.

Pearl was crawling through the dusty, narrow air—conditioning ducts of the British Museum with night—vision goggles strapped to her face. An advantage of being young and small was that she and her brother could fit places that no adult could. They slithered through the ducts on their bellies like ninjas in black jumpsuits and balaclavas to hide their faces. Or rather, Pearl slithered like a ninja, and Patrick crawled after her, wheezing and muttering into his earpiece about the dust, the cobwebs, the tight space, and how he’d much rather be in the library with a book open in front of him, thank you very much.

It was just past six p.m. The last visitors had left the museum an hour earlier, and it was now locked down like a fortress for the night, windows shuttered, alarms set.

“Hold,” Pearl whispered, raising a gloved hand. There was movement up ahead in the darkness. Though she couldn’t see Patrick behind her, she could feel that he’d gone still. Squeaking and skittering sounds echoed from somewhere in front of them. Pearl waited and watched—and then let out a breath of relief as a rodent scurried past. “Just a rat,” she said as she started crawling again.

Patrick moaned. “I hate rats,” he said into his earpiece.

Which was unfortunate, considering there seemed to be rats in every building they broke into. Buckingham Palace? Rats. Fort Knox? More rats. Area 51? Genetically modified rats the size of dogs, if you could believe it. Rats were a far bigger part of being an intrepid adventurer than Pearl had ever anticipated (as was breaking and entering). Luckily, rodents didn’t bother her too much, nor did heights, the dark, or tight spaces.

Pearl considered herself to be the best kind of girl: plucky, adventurous, curious, smart, and deeply uninterested in all the silly things her peers seemed to care about, like fashion and makeup and jewelry and social media.

“We’re here,” Pearl said a few minutes later, after a bit more crawling and a lot more grumbling from her brother. She pushed open a grille and caught it with her fingertips before it could tumble the twenty meters to the dark museum floor. “Phew. That was close.”

Patrick looked down through the hole—then promptly scrunched his eyes closed, his skin taking on a slightly green hue. “You first.” (That was another thing Patrick said quite a lot.)

Pearl rappelled down in one smooth drop, bringing herself to a soft stop an inch from the floor.

Next, it was Patrick’s turn. “I bet the president of the Council for British Archaeology doesn’t have to break into the British Museum in her spare time, oh no,” he complained as he clambered out of the duct and shimmied down his rope. “I bet she gets to sit in a quiet library and read about nice old ruins without having to break the law.”

Pearl had once tried to remind her brother that the most famous archaeologists—Howard Carter, Heinrich Schliemann, Indiana Jones—all seemed to have loved going on adventures. Patrick reminded Pearl in turn that Carter and Schliemann—the men who’d “discovered”
Tutankhamen’s tomb and Troy, respectively—were considered reckless and destructive at best, grave robbers at worst, and that Indiana Jones wasn’t even real, let alone someone to look up to. (Patrick’s voice had gone quite shrill at the end.)

Still. Pearl knew that he wanted to be brave, so she tried to offer him opportunities to challenge himself. Maybe, she thought, if he felt bold and daring on their adventures together, he’d feel bold and daring enough to stand up to Digby.

So far, her plan had failed to work.

Patrick landed without a sound. He paused for a second, crouching in the shadows. No alarms were tripped. No security guards came hurtling toward him with Tasers. He really wasn’t a bad accomplice, for a bookworm.

So far, so good.

Pearl did a sweep of their surroundings while Patrick wound up the ropes. They were in a cavernous exhibition hall, surrounded by stone statues and rusty artifacts in glass cases. The twins had visited the museum a hundred times (mainly at Patrick's insistence), but everything looked different after hours. The statues threw enormous mutant shadows onto the walls. The bustle of daytime crowds and camera clicks was replaced by an eerie silence.

“We need to move quickly,” Pearl said as she pulled up a 3D model of the museum on her tablet. “If Owen’s blueprints are correct, there are fifteen security cameras and five motion sensors on the way. We need to tread carefully past the Mesopotamian pottery, turn left at the Rosetta Stone, duck down for precisely thirteen seconds to let the laser beam pass, then sprint to the end of the corridor. Got it?”

“No,” Patrick said. “I do not ‘got it,’ Pearl.”

“Just follow my lead.”

Pearl ducked under one laser alarm, cartwheeled over another, then slid across the polished marble floor just under a camera’s field of view. Patrick followed close behind her, almost as agile, but with a grimace on his face the whole time. Eventually they arrived, panting, in a smaller chamber. The walls here were lined with dark statues that seemed to watch them as they tiptoed in. A huge black falcon, a slender cat with golden eyes, and a man with a jackal’s head holding a spiked scepter that sent shivers down Pearl’s spine.

“Terrifying,” she whispered. “Who is that?” Nothing lifted Patrick’s spirits like talking about some long—dead ancient civilization.

“Anubis,” Patrick whispered back. “Ancient Egyptian god of funerary rights and protector of graves. He carries you to the underworld.”

“Fitting.” Considering who they were here to see.

Pearl crept toward the center of the room, where a gleaming golden mask stood upright on a pedestal in the dim light. It was covered with intricate turquoise and azure stripes. The serene face of a long—lost pharaoh looked down at them. A handsome, boyish face. Its gaze fell on a glass case below, which contained a shriveled, mummified body lying on a bed of bandages.

“King Tutankhamen,” Patrick said as he approached the mummy. “Son of Amenhotep IV. The boy king.”

Pearl stood in silence for a moment as she looked into the hollow eyes of the long—dead teenager. The mummification process had left the flesh of his face sunken and leathery, but he was preserved enough that she could still make out his nose, his lips, his teeth. The museum had dressed him in the traditional funeral jewelry and headdress that were found in his tomb. It was hard to believe he’d been dead for more than three thousand years.

Suddenly an electronic ding sliced through the silence. Pearl’s blood froze as the noise echoed through the marble halls. She held her breath, expecting an alarm to go off at any moment.

When nothing happened, she rounded on Patrick, who was looking very sheepish.

Silent mode! she mouthed, eyes wide.

“Sorry,” Patrick whispered back as he took out his phone and read the message that had arrived. “Amma wants to know when we’re going to be home for dinner. Thatha’s cooking.”

“Tell her we’ll be back in under an hour,” Pearl said, grimacing at the thought of another curry. Their dad was obsessed with “exposing them to Sri Lankan food and culture” and “making sure they had a deep appreciation for their heritage.” Pearl just wanted to eat fish—and—chips or spaghetti Bolognese like everyone else. “Now, focus. Let’s get the talisman.”

Pearl opened her backpack and pulled out a small metal device with a black suction cups on one side, which she fixed onto the display case. The machine sprung to life, carving a perfect circle into the glass. “Your turn,” she said to her brother as she lifted the piece out.

Patrick let out a long breath—he still looked quite queasy. Pearl watched unbreathing as her brother reached in and slid one of the golden rings from King Tut’s mummified fingers, careful not to snap off the delicate bones. She was always impressed with how gentle and precise Patrick was with old treasures: He held them with reverence.

“Got it.” Patrick withdrew his arm from the case and handed the ring to her.

Pearl felt the weight of it in her palm, then held it up in the dim light. So strange that such a little thing could have so much power. But here it was—finally—in her hand. The last link in the chain. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Okay, Pearl,” Patrick said. “Do your thing so we can go home.”

Pearl knelt and set up her Replikator on the floor next to King Tut’s mummy. The Replikator was a summer invention from a few years back, a sleek black cube with an inner compartment that could scan anything and print out an exact copy in 3D. She’d originally built it to make infinite chocolate cookies (they always ran out too quickly), but the replicas tasted more of glue than cookie dough, which defeated the purpose.

She opened the Replikator hood and pulled out an identical copy of the ring, still warm from the oven.

Patrick leaned in and licked it. “Still tastes like glue.”

“Now it has your DNA on it. Smooth.”

“That’s not going to matter—no one is ever going to know it’s been stolen.” Patrick slipped the replica ring onto King Tut’s hand. “We’ll keep the real one safe, I promise,” he whispered to the mummy as he popped the glass back in. It slid in like a puzzle piece, so perfect that there was no sign of a cut ever having been made. It might be years before the museum figured out they’d been robbed. Maybe they’d never even notice.

“Let’s get out of here,” Pearl said.

They tiptoed out through the darkened corridors, along Pearl’s carefully planned route. Getting out was harder than getting in because they couldn’t use the air ducts to sneak around undetected. Instead, they moved silently through the exhibit halls, ducking behind suits of samurai armor and weaving between towering stone heads from Easter Island, toward the main entrance. This was a classic Amarasinghe move—the most stylish way to rob a place was to walk straight out the front door undetected. If Pearl’s calculations were correct, they had a forty—seven—second window when the security guards changed shifts.

They were almost there now. Pearl’s muscles relaxed as they reached the final hall, full of ancient Greek statues. This was familiar territory. Patrick had a particular fascination with the history of the Greeks, their lavish mythology and temperamental gods. They paused briefly as they passed his favorite statue—the twins Artemis and Apollo in their hunting chariot, frozen in elegant white marble with robes billowing out behind them as if they were made of silk instead of stone.

That’s when she heard it. The click—clack of footsteps around the corner and then, suddenly, the beam of a flashlight heading in their direction.

“Someone’s coming! Hide!” Patrick whispered—but there was nowhere to go. They were right out in the open and would be seen any second.

Pearl frantically scanned the plans. “Guards that way. Cameras there. We’re stuck.” She looked around desperately and then: “There!” She tugged Patrick by the shirt, and they darted toward a sliding metal door on the far wall. It was locked—but a locked door had never stopped Pearl Amarasinghe before. She whipped out what looked like a thick silver credit card and scanned it over the badge reader next to the doorframe. The door buzzed open, and the twins slid into the darkness just as the footsteps entered the room.

Through the slit at the edge of the door, Pearl caught sight of a tall Black woman in a puffy—sleeved blouse, vest, and tweed skirt nipped at the waist. She had white dreadlocks tied in a high bun, fine golden spectacles perched on her nose, and a string of pearls around her neck. She looked very elegant—and very worried.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” the woman said into her phone. “Don’t throw away your career over this.”

“That’s Professor Greenwich,” Patrick whispered.

“She’s a professor?” Pearl asked. “Why is she dressed like a Victorian cosplayer?” Part of the reason Pearl dressed the way she did—in jeans, a T—shirt, and a baseball cap—was because she knew everyone would take her more seriously if she didn’t look too frilly or feminine or girly.

“She’s head of the Conservation team here at the museum. Greenwich is a real big cheese in the study of ornamental Renaissance timepieces.”

Pearl raised an eyebrow.

“I know at least two people who would pay good money for her autograph, okay?” Patrick said. “Myself included.”

“I have a bad feeling about this, Owen,” Professor Greenwich continued. “I don’t trust Tempus. Promise me you’ll sleep on it.”

Pearl and Patrick shared a look. Tempus. Twice in one day.

For an instant, Pearl thought the professor’s gaze met hers through the darkness. The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly into a frown—then she shook her head and turned around. Pearl slid the door shut softly and held her breath as Greenwich’s footsteps faded away from them.

“That was way too close," Pearl said.

Patrick was clutching his heart. “Oh, you think?”

Pearl checked her phone and grimaced. “We’ve missed our window with the guards. The next one isn’t for eight hours. Looks like we might be sleeping here tonight.”

Patrick’s stomach growled as if on cue. “No dinner?”

“No dinner—and we’ll have to come up with a good cover story to tell Amma and Thatha.”

“That’s going to be tricky. They’re getting more and more suspicious.”

Pearl opened her social media. The first story was of Harriet’s sleepover birthday party, which was currently underway. Pearl thumbed through all the videos. There was an extravagant pink balloon arch. A table stacked high with cupcakes dusted with glitter. Girls in sequined outfits lip—syncing to Taylor Swift. Girls lounging by a pool, drinking sugary mocktails. Girls laughing together, smiling together, playing together. Friends.

Pearl looked down at her tactical uniform. There was nowhere else she’d rather be in the world right now than here, in the British Museum, stealing the very final piece for the project she’d worked on for so long—so why did she suddenly and desperately wish she was there?

“You know they would invite you to things if you were friendlyto them,” Patrick said, glancing over her shoulder.

Pearl quickly locked her phone. “Ido not want to be invited to silly sleepover parties. I would much rather be changing the world than wasting my time with cupcakes and sparkles.”

Patrick raised his eyebrows. “You sure do look at Harriet’s account a lot for someone who doesn’t care at all. Why don’t you try to be friends with her?”

“We have nothing in common.”

Patrick shrugged. “Harriet is pretty good at math.”

“I said no, Patrick. I don’t need friends. I’m far too busy being brilliant.” Pearl leaned back against the wall—but something in her peripheral vision startled her. A ghostly figure stood behind her in the shadows, staring unblinkingly at her through the dark. Her heart skipped a beat as she gripped Patrick’s arm.

Patrick turned on his flashlight. The empty eyes of an old man peered down at them from a marble statue. The words carved into the pedestal read ARCHIMEDES. CIRCA 287–212 BCE. FATHER OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE.

“Goodness Grecians,” Patrick said (a catchphrase he was trying—and failing—to get Pearl to adopt). “This must be the new exhibit I’ve been hearing about. It’s not open to the public yet. A History of Genius: The Greatest Artifacts from the History of Science.”

Pearl’s gaze drifted to the glass display case below Archimedes, which contained an incredibly old leather—bound book with fraying parchment pages.

“Archimedes’s codex!” Patrick said in awe. “It was lost to history for hundreds of years. The writing was even scraped off so the parchment could be reused. Then it was rediscovered last century, and scientists scanned it using X-rays and found some of his lost theorems. Infinitesimals, Pearl: a precursor to calculus! It’s one of the most significant mathematical manuscripts in history!”

Normally, Pearl struggled to muster much enthusiasm for old bits of paper, no matter how “significant” Patrick thought they were. But one containing the ideas of Archimedes, the ancient Greek genius, was an exception. Pearl looked down at the scrawled handwriting in the codex (it was even worse than hers) and thought of her plans for their secret project.

Would her own notebooks end up in a museum one day?

Pearl cast the beam of her flashlight around the room. It was a grand wood—paneled space with a chandelier hanging overhead, but the floor was a mess of wires and crates still being unpacked. From Archimedes, marble statues stretched out in a semicircle around the twins, each with a glass display case at their feet.

Pearl spotted Galileo, father of physics. Kepler, father of astronomy. Vesalius, father of anatomy. Father of this and father of that. Beard after beard after mustache after beard, peering down at her. She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the window. Her black hair and dark skin and rainbow braces that she’d chosen to match the color spectrum of visible light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). She definitely had no beard or mustache.

“Where are all the mothers?” she wondered aloud.

“What?” Patrick replied.

“Where are all the mothers of science? Thegirls who changed the world and made discoveries and kicked butt. Where are they?”

“Well, Marie Curie is over there.” Patrick pointed to a solitary female figure way down at the end of the hall.

Pearl felt a pinch in her gut. Something between anger and despair. Or was it hunger? (She’d missed lunch, after all, and was now staring down the prospect of a night with no dinner.) Without noticing, her hands had curled into fists. She squared off at Archimedes and met his gaze.

“I’m going to be up there one day, Patrick.” She took a step closer to the statue. It was going to be worth it, in the end. Not being invited to the silly, glittery pink parties. One day, it would be Pearl throwing the parties. She could invite whoever she wanted, and they would all come, because she’d be famous and popular, and everyone in the world would know how brilliant she was and want to be friends with her. “Just you wait.”

That’s when it started. A loud siren smashed through the silence, and red lights flashed from the ceiling.

Pearl looked down to see her foot planted right in the middle of a laser beam. Fortunately, what she said next was bleeped out by the wailing of the alarms.

“Ruuuunnnn!” Patrick cried. Metal grates had started to descend over the windows and door. Their only escape routes. Pearl felt her body move before her mind kicked into action. Patrick had pulled her forward, and they skidded through the door just as the grate slammed shut.

“Hey you! Stop!” Three hulking security guards were already barreling toward them.

“Not good, not good, not good!” Patrick said into his earpiece. “I’m not built for prison, Pearl. My bones are far too dainty!”

“They’re not catching us,” Pearl replied as they sprinted back into the bowels of the museum, all the corridors now steeped in a threatening red glow. “Not today.”

“Well then, we need a way out. NOW!”

Pearl chanced a look behind her. The guards were gaining on them. They were almost as broad as they were tall, and the three of them side by side filled up the entire width of the corridor like an approaching tsunami of muscle.

Rats. She tried to remember the security maps, but her head throbbed with the sirens. It was so hard to think. “There’s no other way!”

The twins careened around a corner to find another troop of guards running straight at them. More angry muscle. Pearl and Patrick skidded to a stop, then doubled back, leaped down a set of stairs three at a time, and found themselves in the sprawling museum cafeteria, a dark jungle of tables with chairs stacked atop.

“I have an idea,” Patrick panted.

Pearl followed him through the cafeteria into the kitchen, right to the back near the sinks and dishwashers.

Patrick pointed at a circular hole in the wall. “Jump.”

Pearl looked down into the dark tunnel. It smelled horrible. There was a clatter of voices and running footsteps closing in on them. Before she had a chance to think, she felt a push on her back, and then she was sliding down a metal chute, tumbling face—first into a dark abyss. It was a soft landing, thankfully, but a wet one. Her clothes were splattered with some kind of foul—smelling juice, and she felt something slimy clinging to her face.

A moment later, Patrick came hurtling out of the chute and landed next to her with a loud squelch.

“You alive?” Pearl peeled a piece of fish skin off her cheek. They were neck deep in a dumpster that, judging by the smell, seemed to have not been emptied in several days.

There was no reply.

She turned to look at Patrick, who was glaring at her. He rolled awkwardly across a stack of black bags as the sirens continued to blare into the night. “I hate getting dirty—and I hate going on adventures,” he said as he scrabbled to get out of the bin.

“I don’t know why,” Pearl said with a grin. “You’re actually very good at them.”