Sera took a few more deep breaths, nodding. “You’re right, Dak. You really are. I’ve been so caught up in wanting to do good, I’ve failed to include my . . . you know . . . best friend.”
Dak nodded. “Exactly. You know how helpful I am. I don’t mean to brag but I’m way more useful than Riq. You just have to give me a chance.”
Sera motioned around the tree. “This man, Dak —”
“Robert Goddard,” he said.
“Yes.” Sera peeked her head around the tree at the group of people gathered around the rocket. “By coming up with the first liquid-fuel rocket —”
“Three minutes until launch,” the flying can opener said. “The Pacifists will be coming out of the house in two minutes and thirty-five seconds.”
The Pacifists? Dak remembered the golden-robed men in China. Could the computer be talking about the same people? Did they have a time-travel device, too? And who were they anyway? A “pacifist” was a person who didn’t believe in violence, but that hardly described those brutal men.
“By coming up with the first liquid-fuel rocket,” Sera went on, “Dr. Goddard is paving the way for a number of terrible inventions. Think about it, Dak. Missiles, atomic bombs, even nuclear weapons. These are all things that threaten the well-being of everyone on the planet.”
Dak watched Sera prepare a second needle. Her knapsack was lying by her feet, and he saw the tip of the golden Infinity Ring peeking out. “When you said you wanted to help people,” he said, “I was thinking much more specifically. Like, imagine if we were able to stop Adolf Hitler from ever gaining power in Germany. Think about how much good that would do. The things we’re doing now are too general, aren’t they?”
“Not in my opinion.”
“Think about it,” Dak said. “Stopping the invention of gunpowder? Stopping rocket technology? These advancements are inevitable, Sera. I don’t see how this is helping anyone.”
Sera sighed and glanced up into the sky again. “The universe is so enormous, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Uh, I guess so,” Dak said. He had no idea what this had to do with anything they were talking about. Was she referring to the dream he’d told her about?
“One minute,” the flying SQuare said.
“Have you ever looked up at the moon and wondered what it would be like if all of humankind started fresh?” Sera looked at Dak. “Maybe we’ve messed it all up down here. Maybe it’s too late.”
When Dak looked into the sky, all he could think about was his dream. He felt nauseated remembering how he was trapped in the seat belt. The fire inching toward him. The weightlessness he felt when he bounded over to the window in time to see the asteroid. He wondered if this was what Sera used to feel when she had her Remnants.
“Sometimes, when I gaze at the sky,” Sera went on, “I feel like I’m looking into eternity. Do you ever feel like that, Dak?”
He shrugged because he didn’t know how to answer. Sera was back to acting weird.
“Try it,” she said. “Look up and tell me what you see.”
Just as Dak raised his head to look at the sky, Sera lunged at him with her syringe.
He was ready for it, though, and just as the needle came at his neck, he raised his arm to block it. The needle stuck him in the forearm instead, and before Sera was able to drive in all the sleeping agent, the needle broke off in Dak’s skin, and he pulled it out and tossed it into the snow. A third of the liquid had entered his arm, at most, but his brain still began to fog over. And his movements felt lethargic.
Sera pounced on him easily, pinning his arms under her knees. “You’re going to be okay,” she whispered in his ear. “We’ll talk it over when you wake up in the USSR.”
“U . . . ?” He tried to ask what she was talking about, but he couldn’t. His tongue felt like a dead fish in his mouth. His eyelids drooped.
The fog grew even thicker in Dak’s brain, and he closed his eyes. The dose hadn’t been strong enough to knock him out completely. He pretended, though, to buy himself time to think. Otherwise he was afraid Sera would stick him with her second needle. And then he’d be asleep for days.
There was a commotion near the rocket. And Dak could feel Sera shifting her body to look. He cracked open his eyes, just a fraction. Everything was blurry. And jittery. But he saw a flash of gold from inside her knapsack, just out of his reach.
“Thirty seconds to launch,” the flying disk announced.
Sera turned back to Dak, and he shut his eyes just in time. She slapped him across the face, saying, “You asleep, Dak? Hey, nerd boy? Can you hear me?”
Dak didn’t move or say a word.
He just lay there, barely breathing.
She slapped him a second time, and he still didn’t move, even though his heart was breaking.
“Good,” she said, getting off him. “At least I know how to shut you up now.”
Dak heard her fumbling with her second syringe and then he heard her step out from behind the tree, shouting across the farm, “Tie them up! I’ll handle the rocket myself!”
Dak cracked open his eyes. The world was spinning on him now. He saw tiny stars everywhere and he wondered if they were the microscopic cells that made up the world. He scooted his way to the right a few inches and snatched the Ring from Sera’s knapsack and shoved it down his pants and closed his eyes again, wondering if that’s what death was: You saw all the tiny molecules of life right before the life drained out of you, and then you were gone.
“Okay, Dacky Boy,” Sera said, “you stay here while I make sure the AB Pacifists have everything they need. Then we’re off to the Soviet Union.”
Dak heard Sera tying up her knapsack and he heard the flying SQuare buzzing away from him and then he felt something warm cover the top half of his body. When he heard Sera crunching through the snow away from him, Dak opened his eyes and saw that she had placed her jacket over him, to keep him warm.
His mind was in such a fog now, it was hard to form a coherent thought. But he knew he was hidden behind a tree so he slowly sat up, sucking in difficult breaths, and felt around him for the Ring. It took him several minutes to remember it was in his pants, beneath his robe. He pulled it out and set it on the snow. He was so exhausted now he had to slap his own face to keep from passing out. He pinched his arm and pried open his eyes with his fingers.
Dak looked at the Ring, and then he looked at the jacket Sera had covered him with.
He was so confused.
Would someone who planned to do him harm really try to keep him warm?
He tried to focus on the Ring. It was spinning in his hand, though he knew it wasn’t really spinning.
Where would he even go?
He felt like he was lost, without a friend or ally in all of history that he could turn to.
But that wasn’t entirely true.
There was still Riq.
He struggled to program the device, then aimed a shaky forefinger at the ACTIVATE button, but he was seeing three of everything now.
He heard the sound of bodies falling in the distance.
Dak had no idea which ACTIVATE was the right one, so he pushed them all, and everything around him began to spin more dramatically and the world went black, like his mind, and he knew it wasn’t from the warp this time. It was the drug Sera had injected into his throbbing arm.
11
Tamales from Scratch
SERA DIDN’T sleep at all the night she spotted the drone out the window. It wasn’t that she was scared of some Frisbee-size hunk of flying aluminum. She just wanted to know who was behind it. And the more she tossed and turned, thinking about it during the night, the more she kept circling back to one disturbing possibility.
Her parents.
She knew they had the tech skills to do it. But did they have the motivation? Wherever they had disappeared to, had they decid
ed to keep an eye on her while they were away? If so, she doubted they were acting out of parental concern. What if they had sent the drone to the barn to find out what she was working on in case it was something they needed to report back to the SQ about?
The idea alone was soul crushing, and Sera didn’t want to believe it. But part of her did. At first light, she decided to spend the day combing through every inch of the house, her new dog right by her side, in case her parents had left anything lying around that might give her some answers.
This was not what Sera had in mind all those years she’d dreamed of having her parents in her life. Be careful what you wish for, she remembered her uncle always telling her. But he was talking about the dangers of scientific advancement. A saying like that should never apply to someone’s own mom and dad.
Sera had already searched all the bedrooms and both bathrooms and the shed out back and the living room and the kitchen, and she still hadn’t found anything too suspicious. The only thing that was remotely questionable was the wax paper she found wadded up in the garage trash can. It was the paper her dad had used during the strange spitting game he’d insisted they all play during their dinner with Dak. There were two holes in the paper, like her dad had cut out the parts where their saliva had landed.
“Ew,” she said, plopping down on the couch. “What would he want with somebody’s spit?”
The dog barked in agreement.
Sera was just about to start rifling through the downstairs bookshelf when the doorbell rang. She stood up, crumpling the wax paper, and hid it behind the couch.
The bell rang a second time and as Sera started across the living room, the dog still following closely behind her, a familiar voice called out from the other side of the door.
She undid the chain lock and pulled open the door. “Dak?”
“Sera!” he said, a little too excitedly. He was wearing a backpack she’d never seen, and the big grin on his face put her on guard. He pushed past her into the living room, saying, “I’m glad I found you, Sera. We have so much to talk about.”
“We do?” Sera said.
“Of course we do.” Dak knelt down to pet the dog. “Hey, buddy. You missed me, didn’t you?”
The dog growled.
Sera watched this odd exchange, feeling about as confused as she’d ever been. “I thought you hated my dog,” she said.
“Not at all,” Dak said, standing up.
“But yesterday —”
“She’s a survivor, Sera. Like me and you.” When Sera didn’t say anything right away, Dak added, “We will always accomplish what we set out to accomplish. You know that, right?”
“I know you’re acting like a freak,” Sera told him. “What’s with the backpack?”
“I’m glad you asked,” he said, walking over to the couch and sitting down. He pulled the backpack off his shoulder and unzipped it. “I brought you a little gift. Three gifts, actually.”
Now Sera had moved beyond confused. She was concerned.
Dak had never, ever brought her a gift out of the blue like this. Which meant it had to be another ploy to get what he wanted. What else could explain Dak being so . . . nice?
Sera took the box he was holding out to her and lifted off the top. She was shocked to find three brand-new petri dishes wrapped in delicate tissue paper. She looked up at Dak. “How’d you know I needed these?”
Dak tilted his head. “Sera, it’s pretty obvious things haven’t been going so well in the barn. The trash is about ten feet away from my hammock, remember?”
Sera pictured all her batches of failed tachyon fluid. Maybe Dak was a little more perceptive than she gave him credit for.
Dak then pulled a book out of his bag. “I also brought this for you, but it’s for later.”
Sera saw the title: The Principia by Isaac Newton. A book that had changed her life in fourth grade. When she reached for it, Dak quickly shoved it back in his bag.
“Like I said,” he told her, “that’s for later. But this isn’t.” He then produced a brown paper bag. “I cooked a little something for you, too. It’s a sort of peace offering. I really shouldn’t have brought up Riq yesterday, Sera. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, this is getting to be a bit much,” Sera said, unfolding the top of the lunch bag. “Petri dishes. One of my all-time favorite books. And now”— she looked inside — “shut up, are these tamales?”
“Traditional Mayan tamales,” Dak corrected her. “I made them from scratch.”
Sera sniffed inside the bag of tamales. They actually smelled legit. “Okay, what’s the catch?” she asked.
“Just take a bite,” he told her.
Sera did just that, nodding as she chewed. “Wow, Dak,” she said with her mouth still half full. “This is really, really good. I’m shocked.” She swallowed and said, “Seriously, though, what’s the catch?”
Dak took a deep breath. “Well, actually —”
“I knew it,” Sera interrupted.
The dog growled at Dak and showed her teeth.
“Trust me,” Dak said. “You’ll want to hear this. I have some important information about your parents.”
“My parents?” Sera’s stomach sank.
Dak nodded. “They’re gone, aren’t they? They’ve been gone for a while now.”
Sera set down the bag of tamales. “How’d you know that?”
“You think I just sit around all day, but I work, too, Sera. In fact, yesterday I spoke to Arin. You remember her, right?”
“Of course I do,” Sera told him. “But I doubt she remembers us.”
“She absolutely remembers us,” Dak said. “Arin works for a small, secret division of the Hystorians. And you’re not gonna believe what she told me.”
“What?” Sera said. “Tell me!”
Dak looked around the room, like he was making sure they were the only ones around.
Sera’s dog snapped her teeth a few times and snarled. “Easy, girl,” Sera said, reaching down to rub her furry head.
“According to Arin,” Dak continued, “we actually haven’t fixed all the Breaks. We have to go back to seventeenth-century Italy, to the trial of Galileo.”
Sera gasped. Galileo was one of her heroes. His guiding principle was to follow knowledge wherever it led. No matter what. And that’s the exact kind of scientist Sera had always wanted to be.
Dak nodded. “And then she gave me this.”
Sera watched Dak pull out the Infinity Ring. Only it wasn’t silver, like the one she’d hidden. It was gold. “All right,” she said, feeling anxious all of a sudden. “And what does any of this have to do with my parents?”
Dak pointed at the tamale. “Eat up and follow me. I’ll show you.”
Sera didn’t know what was happening or what to think. She just knew she had to find out the truth. So she popped the rest of her tamale in her mouth and followed Dak out the door. The dog followed, too, hackles up.
When they arrived at the tree house Dak and Sera used to hang out in, back when life was simple, Dak nodded at the ground and said, “Go ahead, dig it up.”
She was shocked he knew where she’d hidden the Infinity Ring. She lifted a few weeds and dug with her hands until she came to the tin box she’d buried weeks before. She lifted it out and opened it, and her stomach dropped. It was filled with worthless rocks.
The Infinity Ring was gone.
Sera looked up at Dak. “My parents did this?”
He nodded. “Have you seen a drone hovering around the barn lately?”
“I have!” Sera said. “Just yesterday! Please don’t tell me . . .”
“Your parents, Sera.” Dak shook his head sadly. “They’ve been spying on us. I’m sorry to be the one who breaks this to you, Sera, but they still support the SQ agenda. They’ve gone back to the trial of Galileo to rewrite history . . .
and bring the SQ back in a big way.”
Sera’s breath caught. She knew her parents were up to something. But this was far worse than she’d imagined.
“I understand how tough this is to hear,” Dak said. “But they have a huge head start on us. We have to warp back to the trial right away.” He unfolded a piece of paper and handed it to Sera. “Here are the coordinates Arin gave me. I’ll let you do the honors.”
Sera felt devastated as she took the gold Infinity Ring and the piece of paper. She loved her parents, but she couldn’t let them get away with undoing all the work she and Dak and Riq had done.
She programmed the golden Ring with a heavy heart and watched the computerized screen flash their destination: ROME, JUNE 22, 1633. Right before the Age of Enlightenment. But she couldn’t even be excited about it.
“Grab on,” she told Dak.
He gripped the far side of the Ring and nodded to her.
Sera hit the ACTIVATE button, but just as everything was starting to spin, she saw her nameless dog reach a paw up for the Ring, too, barking, and the three of them were sucked into the dark abyss together.
12
Scientific Superstar in the Flesh
IT WASN’T the dog’s slobbery tongue lapping across Sera’s face that woke her out of a dead sleep. It was the dog’s awful breath. Sera’s nose instinctively wrinkled and she popped open her eyes and nudged her dog’s cold snout out of the way. She sat up, wiping her face on her shirtsleeve, saying, “No face licking, Ginger. Or Dixie. Or whatever your name is.”
When the dog lowered her head in shame, Sera hugged her tightly and added, “I’m glad you came with me, though. We’re a team now.”
The dog licked her face again, and this time Sera let it slide.
Sera got up from her simple cot to investigate her surroundings. She was in a small, dark room with heavy beige curtains, white walls, and dark wooden floors. Other than the large, gaudy cross above the door, the room was incredibly plain.
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