A few grumbled words of gibberish came out of the dude’s mouth before the translator in Dak’s ear kicked back into gear. It had taken a nasty hit.
“— out sliver by sliver.”
Dak didn’t want to know the first part. He struggled, squirming to get his body out from under the soldier, who had a knee placed directly in the middle of Dak’s chest, pressing him into the hard steps below.
“Can’t . . . breathe . . .” he sputtered out, hearing the odd echo of the device in his mouth translating the words for the jerk who held him down.
“Don’t . . . care . . .” the jerk replied. The dagger pressed against Dak’s chin, its pointy tip flicking to draw a droplet of blood — Dak felt it trickle down his neck.
Desperation gave him one last burst of adrenaline. He threw his knee up, slamming into the man and making him groan — a sound Dak knew he’d remember with glee the rest of his life if he somehow survived the mess. Off-balance on the precarious stairs, the soldier fell back when Dak threw all his strength forward in a final shove.
Suddenly free, Dak’s elation didn’t last more than a half second. Even before he could get a look around him, he remembered just how many of the armed men there had been, and just how big they were. And sure enough, to his dismay, Sera and Riq had been captured by two or three soldiers each, struggling despite having no chance at all. But Dak refused to give up. Kicking his feet until he finally found purchase on the steps, he vaulted himself forward and ran toward two men who had Sera pinned to the ground by her arms and legs.
He yelled — screamed was more like it — as if that would give him any more of a chance. At the last second, he leapt into the air, flying for what felt like a full minute, until he crashed, shoulder first, into the soldier holding Sera’s arms. Dak bounced off him like the guy was made of solid stone. He landed hard, feeling as if both his clavicles had broken, trying to focus on the spinning world of marble and stone around him, dread deflating his heart.
Then there were soldiers on him, grabbing at his limbs, and Dak reacted on instinct, punching and kicking worthlessly, squirming like a baby who’s decided a diaper change is not in the cards. In those few seconds before defeat finally settled in to stay, thoughts flew through Dak’s mind:
Had history been changed somehow?
Was the League of Corinth not what he’d read about in all the books?
Had Aristotle gone mad? Evil?
Tilda.
The guy at the fountain, with the scars and the chrome dome.
The SQ.
Had the SQ come here? Messed everything up? Had it all been for nothing?
The spin of questions stopped on a dime when someone punched him in the cheek, sending a swirl of stars around his head, even brighter than the marble on which he lay.
All Dak could do was look up at the soldiers and say the first thing that popped into his head.
“Why are you guys so mean?”
SERA SAT on a hard floor with her back against a hard wall, looking at iron bars through the scant light of a window she couldn’t see. She was alone, her friends taken somewhere else.
It had been a while since she’d had a Remnant. She didn’t know why, but assumed it was related to the fact they’d been changing the Breaks one by one. Whatever the reason, she didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse. At least phantom memories of parents she’d never met were memories. During a Remnant she could see her mom and dad, feel them, long for them. And what did she have now? What did you call the memory of a memory?
None of it might matter anyway. She and her friends were once again behind bars — she couldn’t help but think back to the tiny, dank cell in the lower decks of Christopher Columbus’s ship — and things were not quite what Dak had expected at this so-called League of Corinth. She could tell that much just by looking in her friend’s eyes as the three of them were dragged away by those less-than-kind soldiers.
Less than kind. That was being kind. They’d all been snakes, bordering on bloodthirsty. How could someone as intelligent as Aristotle have anything to do with such a group of bullies?
Time ticked on. Sera sat, her rear end getting sore, her muscles stiff all over, a bruise rising on her arm from where one of the men had punched her. A young girl. She thought of cataclysms and wormholes and time paradoxes to keep the boredom at bay. Eventually, her eyelids started to droop, and then finally sleep snuck in and took her.
Sometime later — in the middle of a dream where she and Dak were jumping on a trampoline and Dak kept yapping about the “long and sordid” history of metal springs — Sera was awakened by the clank of the door to her cell opening. After she rubbed the blurriness out of her eyes, she saw a soldier standing at the opening, looking slightly abashed. He reminded her of a kid who’d been caught picking his nose.
“Come,” he said, looking at the floor instead of her. “Our master wants to see you.”
Odd, Sera thought, but she jumped to her feet, not wanting to lose the chance to get out of the rank little prison. When she reached the soldier, he half-turned to leave but then stopped. After a long pause, he said, “I’m . . . sorry.”
“You are?” She immediately wished she could take it back, but the words had practically leapt out of her mouth. Why was this big, scary man apologizing?
“Just follow me.”
He headed off down a low-ceilinged tunnel, a perfect setting for a dungeon. Sera followed as they made their way through a few twists and turns and up a long, winding set of stairs. Neither one of them spoke as they walked. Sera breathed a satisfied sigh. It felt good to get the blood pumping and stretch her muscles a bit — not to mention seeing brighter walls and light from outside as they ascended from the depths of the building.
Soon, they reached a dark wooden door that led out to a balcony, where several chairs faced the railing and the city of Corinth beyond. To the far left Sera could make out the statue of the hegemon, where they’d met the bald stranger.
Dak and Riq were already sitting in a couple of the chairs, and they turned to see her as she walked onto the balcony. Riq waved, and Dak nodded, but neither said anything.
“Happy to see you guys are safe and sound, too,” she muttered. They both smiled as if they had completely missed her sarcasm. She plopped down in the chair between her two friends, wondering if they’d refused to sit by each other on purpose. “So, what in the world is going on?” she asked.
Dak shrugged, his face far too giddy for the situation. He’d obviously been scanning the city, relishing every moment of their latest peek into the past.
“Seems like someone goofed up,” Riq said. “A big, burly soldier told me how sorry he was for mistreating us, then brought me here.”
“Me, too,” Dak added. “My dude was so sweet about it we almost ended up hugging.”
Sera stared out at the twinkle of the sea beyond the city, enjoying the breeze that had just picked up. “It’s weird” was all she said in reply. That seemed to sum everything up just fine.
Several minutes passed before the person they’d been summoned to see finally arrived. Sera heard movement behind her and turned to see a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and a beard walk in, his broad shoulders draped in flowing gray robes that made him look like a wizard. He regarded her gravely but didn’t say anything as he walked around the chairs to stand before them, his back against the railing.
Ever since the day they’d met the infamous Amancio brothers and Christopher Columbus, the novelty of meeting people from history had slowly but surely waned for Sera. She knew who stood before her, and she waited patiently for either him to announce it or for Dak to blurt it out himself. In the end, it proved to be very anticlimactic.
“My name is Aristotle,” the stately man said. “I understand that you had a little mistreatment from our guards today. Let me be the first to apologize. It’s not often we get children around these halls, and I think the soldiers got a little . . . overzealous in dealing with such an unexpected threat.
If we could do it over again, they might’ve treated you in a more genteel manner.”
Genteel manner? Sera thought. I guess that’s how philosophers talk. She looked over at Dak, whose earlier expression of glee had melted into a perplexed frown. The poor guy surely hadn’t thought his first encounter with the great Aristotle would go like this.
“Why did they treat us like a threat at all?” Riq asked. A bruise on his cheek showed he’d gotten more than his fair share of it. “What did they think we were going to do, bomb the place?”
Dak groaned the very instant that Sera guessed he would.
Aristotle sighed. He obviously couldn’t understand the reference to a bomb, but he didn’t ask for clarification. “We’ve had some troubling events of late, and, honestly, I don’t feel comfortable speaking about them among strangers. Please don’t mistake me. My apologies to you should not be taken as a welcome. I find no reason for you three to be here, and I can’t imagine a fitting explanation. But none the less, you are young, and the soldiers should have treated you better.”
“We really need to talk,” Dak blurted out. “About history and time travel and the SQ and Great Breaks and Remnants and the Infinity Ring and Tilda and —”
“Dak,” Sera said sharply, giving him one of the nastiest looks she’d ever had to give. But he’d lost control. “Hardly the best way to start the conversation. He’s going to kick us out for being lunatics.”
Riq’s head was in his hands, slowly shaking back and forth. Their first meeting with the founder of the Hystorians was getting more disastrous by the second.
Aristotle cast a long, lingering gaze on each of the three strangers. His face said nothing, but his eyes were like pools of knowledge, full of wisdom and deep thoughts. Finally, he took a sharp breath and called for the soldiers at the door.
When one of them stepped onto the balcony and asked what was needed, Sera felt a thrilling rush at Aristotle’s response.
“Bar the door and let no one through, no matter the cause. I obviously have a lot to talk about with my new friends here.”
DAK HAD yet to move a muscle from his chair, still transfixed by the fact that Aristotle was standing in front of him. Scolding him even. He’d always pictured the first Hystorian as a philosophizing dude who sat around reading books and every once in a while pointing his finger toward the sky and saying something wise. But the man who’d just ordered the doors to the balcony sealed was a leader if Dak had ever seen one. A hard, weathered man who’d obviously been around the block a couple of times.
Aristotle moved to the right — the guy even walked with a certain air of grandness — and grabbed a wooden stool, then brought it around so he could sit in front of the three newcomers. After taking a seat, he still towered over Dak and the others, sitting in low chairs. Something told Dak that the man had done that on purpose.
“I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t spent a lifetime trusting my instincts,” Aristotle said. “A minute ago, I was ready to throw you out, hoping you’d have been scared enough to never pull such a prank again. Hoping your parents would take you back in and do some serious . . . correcting. But you” — he nodded his grizzled, bearded head toward Dak — “the things you said . . . I can’t ignore them. Something is going on here that I want to know about. And I want to know about it immediately. So start talking.”
Riq said nothing. Dak looked at him just in time to see his Adam’s apple visibly jump up and down.
Sera said nothing. Dak could actually hear her gulp.
As for Dak himself, he just wanted to make up for the ridiculous onslaught of nonsense he’d tried sputtering out the first time he spoke. But he couldn’t find the words to start.
Aristotle took each of them in with another long glance, then shook his head. “I guess no one ever taught the three of you what the word immediately means. Someone speak, or I may call back my soldiers and tell them I was wrong to reprimand them after all.”
A burst of courage lit up Dak’s heart. “I’ll go. I’ll . . . try to explain why we’re here.”
From his right, he heard Sera let out a relieved breath she’d been holding in her chest. Riq reached around her to pat him on the back and whispered, “Go for it.”
“Thank you,” Aristotle replied. He folded his arms and leaned so far back that Dak thought he might topple off of the stool. But his balance held steady. “I have a feeling you’re going to make a bit more sense this time around — you look to be a smart one.”
Dak smiled a forced, sad little smile. Had the creator of the Hystorians just complimented or insulted him? Both, it seemed. He took a deep breath and did as Riq had told him to. He went for it.
“Sir, I promise you I’ve never said something more important in my life — we need your help or the future of the world is in serious trouble. I’m talking, like, lots of people dying and bad guys ruling the world and everybody falling into fiery cracks in the planet’s crust as earthquakes destroy the world. That kind of trouble.”
Aristotle said nothing, which was the best Dak could hope for so far.
“This is the hard part,” he continued. “I know this is going to sound crazy, and you might get up and order those jerks to come chop my head off, but I don’t know what else to do but come out and say it and hope that you will be able to accept it.” He paused, and Aristotle’s bushy gray eyebrows rose so high they almost collided with his hairline.
“We’re from the future,” Dak finally said, working hard not to let his face squeeze up into a pathetic wince. “Far, far in the future. Like, more than a couple thousand years. As . . . I’m sure . . . someone as smart as you” — he was losing it, he was losing it — “I mean, from what we know, you’re the kind of man who wouldn’t be surprised to learn that humanity advances far enough for such a thing to happen someday. Time travel. Am I right?”
Aristotle leaned forward, those same eyebrows now crashing down to half-cover his eyes. “Boy, I’ve said before that the high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think. And I can tell you that the number of people in this cluster of buildings who would believe you are, well, less numerous than the nostrils on your face. But if anyone will believe, and if anyone will preach it once he does, then you are looking at him now.” A huge smile started to form on Dak’s face, but Aristotle wiped it away with a quick and sharp look. “If, I said. If. A word with only two letters, but as important as all the words of language combined.”
Dak, in awe of the man’s sage words, could only bring forth a nod.
Aristotle turned to Sera. “I think the boy has opened up a floodgate. Let us see if you can channel the waters. Tell me more.”
Dak looked at his friend, hoping she didn’t mess things up.
Sera cleared her throat, obviously unprepared for the sudden shift in Aristotle’s attention. “Um, well, I can vouch for what he said. We used a time-travel device to come here, to meet you, and to warn you about something really bad that’s going to happen to —”
Aristotle leapt to his feet and held his hands out to silence Sera. “Now, wait, please. I’m not sure any of us are ready for such a leap. I believe time to be a fragile thing, as well as the fabric of reality from which it’s woven, and it worries me to hear of what may be or what may not.” He sat back down, his face troubled, looking at the floor as if for answers written in the stone. “My teacher of teachers . . . Years ago, we talked about such things, he and I. I’m not sure if he’s known in your . . . time.”
“Plato,” Dak blurted out before he could pause to think. “You and Plato will be known throughout history as two of the brightest minds . . . ever. You guys are totally famous.”
The philosopher relaxed once again, leaning back on his stool. “Like I said, I’ve always trusted my instinct, and the fact that we still sit here, speaking to one another, means that it has yet to warn me against your words. But . . .” He trailed off, scratching his beard and looking up into the sky.
Dak couldn’t let Arist
otle make the same choice Lincoln had. If they were going to fix the Prime Break, they needed the man’s help. Dak glanced over at Sera, then at Riq. “You haven’t said anything yet. Pipe in and help us out a little.”
“Yes,” Aristotle added, seeming almost hopeful as he focused on Riq. “You appear older than these two. Perhaps we’ve saved the best for last.”
Dak felt a prick of jealousy, and expected a smug look from Riq. When the older boy didn’t throw it at him, Dak decided once and for all that their issues were officially a thing of the past. At least for a few minutes.
“Listen,” Riq began as he leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “This is really hard for all of us, I think. It makes me feel better that you seem so worried about time and messing it up. It shows you get it. But we’re here to tell you that things are already messed up. With . . .” He faltered for a second, looking to Dak and Sera for support, then surging ahead. “With your permission, we want to tell you about the future. Because we need your help to make things right. You’ll just . . . have to trust us that it’s okay to talk about. But we won’t until you say it’s okay.”
A long moment of silence passed, Aristotle passing his eyes from Riq to Sera to Dak, then starting all over again. And again. Dak could almost see the wheels spinning behind those eyes.
“I’ve made my decision,” the man finally said. “I want you to tell me everything you came here to say. And then we shall see where we are and what may come.”
Sera and Riq both looked at Dak. It was his moment to shine.
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