“Ew, no!” Riq had never understood why the kid had to carry it in his pants.
“I’ll take it,” Sera said, stretching out her hand. “It’s been acting funny ever since I had to take it apart in Baghdad, so I’ll probably have to tinker with it anyway.”
The three of them huddled beneath a streetlight and Sera powered on the device. The screen was slower to come on than usual, which worried Riq. Even in the twentieth century, technology was still very basic. The best computers of this era filled entire rooms and were only capable of simple math. Where were they supposed to get another SQuare if this one failed?
He knew the answer to that: the future. In fact, the Hystorians had already told them they would have to return to the future for a new SQuare before they could fix the Prime Break that had started it all. But Riq wanted to put off that trip as long as possible. He’d interacted with his own ancestors several Breaks ago, and he was terrified of facing the consequences of his actions. Especially if the consequences meant that when he returned to the twenty-first century, he would no longer exist.
Sera pounded on one side of the device and words faded onto the screen. One word, actually, and she leaned in to see it better.
“It must be broken,” she said. “We only have one piece of the code.”
“What’s the word?” Riq asked.
She shrugged. “Run.”
Riq folded his arms, wondering what sort of clue could be embedded in that word. “Run? Yeah, that could mean anything.”
“On this date, in Aberdeen, that means only one thing,” Dak said. “RUN!”
He bolted down the street with Riq and Sera on his heels. They hadn’t gotten far before Riq detected the faint buzz of engines coming toward them. Airplane engines, and plenty of them.
“Bombers!” Riq cried.
Dak paused long enough to turn around. There was fear in his eyes, and Riq couldn’t help but follow his gaze. Silhouetted against the night sky were the forms of several planes, flying low enough that the black Nazi swastika was clearly visible, outlined in white on their tails. A shudder went through him just to look at it.
“It sounds like people screaming,” Sera said, using her palms to block out the horrible noise.
“Those are sirens on the planes,” Dak said. “It’s psychological warfare, meant to scare people.”
“Because bombings aren’t scary enough?” Sera called back.
“Everyone was scared of the bombings,” Dak called over his shoulder. “The German air force was one of the strongest in the world at this time.”
“Stop yelling history facts and run faster!” Riq said.
Dak’s retort was drowned in another siren, this one coming from nearby. The earsplitting sound pierced the night, warning the sleeping town of the raid.
And then the planes were upon them.
Dak dodged toward a street on his left, but from the corner of his eye, Riq saw a plane drop something in that direction. He grabbed Dak’s sleeve and yanked him the other way. Sera screamed as another bomb landed down the street on their right. Glass shattered nearby, and the entire wall of a building crumbled to the ground.
There might have been people in that building, Riq thought.
“C’mon!” Sera made a run for a church straight ahead of them.
“No!” Dak shouted. “No, I’ve seen pictures of that exact church . . . afterward.”
Other people were swarming into the streets by then. Half-dressed men and women carried children in their arms or hurried them hand in hand down the streets. The children wailed as explosions echoed throughout the town in a deadly fireworks show. Riq, Dak, and Sera found themselves overtaken and forced to move in the direction of the crowd. But Riq had no idea where the crowd was headed and didn’t like the feeling of being wedged against so many panicked bodies. When he saw a way out, he grabbed Dak and Sera and pulled them into a side street.
They ran straight into a squadron of soldiers rushing to help what people they could. Riq and Dak backed against the wall in time, but Sera was slower and was knocked to the ground. One of the soldiers stopped, a lanky young man with an easy smile and red hair shaved close to his head. He reached out a hand to help Sera to her feet.
“Ye’re not from Aberdeen.” His eyes scanned their clothes and then flicked to the SQuare in Sera’s hands. “Where’s ye fowk?”
“Our families?” Riq responded. While Sera brushed herself off, he said to the soldier, “We’re on our own, very far from home, and we need shelter.”
“My name is Cadet Duncan Shaw,” the soldier said. “I’ll help you lot, but keep edgy for the bombs.”
Duncan steered them down an alley. Riq looked up at the high stone walls and thought if a bomb landed up there, it’d bring the surrounding buildings down on their heads before they had a chance to escape.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked.
“Bomb shelter.” He hurried them forward until they came to a small metal structure with a rounded roof, half buried in the ground. “On yer knees now.”
He practically pushed Sera to the ground. Dak and Riq crawled into the shelter right after her. Something exploded behind them, and they crawled faster. Duncan followed them, and only seconds later the sound of granite walls and other debris falling into the alleyway blew into their shelter, along with dust and small bits of rock.
“It’s a gubbing from the Nazis tonight!” Duncan said.
“Gubbing?” Dak mouthed to Riq.
Riq sighed. “A beating.”
“My translator isn’t picking up on some of the words,” Sera whispered to Riq. “Maybe it’s broken, too.”
“It’s working fine,” Riq said under his breath. “It just considers this English.”
They sat there a moment in silence, in a space barely big enough for six or seven people. Riq wondered if anyone else would follow them into the shelter, but no one did. Then Dak started to squirm. By now, Riq recognized why. Dak was thinking about some history factoid that just had to be shared, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not.
“Spit it out,” Riq said. “You look like you’ll hurt yourself if you don’t.”
Dak grinned. “The German planes are impressive and all, but the really interesting ones were the British Spitfires. Did you know they were painted pink? That allowed them to fly almost invisibly below the clouds at sunset. Imagine that — pink warplanes!”
“The only warplanes that interest me right now are the ones over my head,” Sera said. “Why couldn’t we warp into someplace quiet for once?”
Duncan sighed and leaned forward with his hands at rest on his knees. “Aye, it’s as I thought. I ken what ye need. Sit down, lads, and let’s have a blether.”
“A long talk?” Riq rephrased it for Sera’s benefit only. Dak could figure it out on his own. “Talk about what?”
“Ye’re a very long way from home, eh? Measured in years, not miles.”
“How did you know —” Sera started to ask.
But Duncan only smiled. “I recognized ye at once. I’m yer Hystorian.”
Matthew J. Kirby is the author of The Clockwork Three, The Lost Kingdom, and Icefall, winner of the prestigious Edgar Award in 2012. He was born in Utah, but with a father in the military he has lived in many places, including Rhode Island, Maryland, California, and Hawaii. A former school psychologist, he now writes full-time from his home in Idaho, where he lives with his wife.
Copyright © 2013 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, INFINITY RING, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
e-ISBN 978-0-545-48461-9
Cover illustration by Michael Heath
Cover design by Keirsten Geise
First edition, September 2013
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