"How can we help?" Sera asked.
Duncan looked around a moment as if checking for any eavesdroppers, which Dak found odd since they were the only ones in the shelter and the air raid was still going on outside. It wasn't really a good time for eavesdropping. When Duncan was satisfied, he said, "He's no Hystorian, but my best mate works in London, in Room 13 of the Admiralty. He told me of a plan there. I've sworn to keep it stum, but I think I should tell ye lads."
To hear better, Dak leaned so far forward he almost lost his balance. He loved the idea of a secret plan!
"What do ye lads think of being spies?" Duncan asked, smiling.
As far as Dak was concerned, that sounded great. He started to tell Duncan about how espionage went back to the earliest days of recorded history, but was cut off by the sound of a woman crying for help out in the alley. Duncan poked his head out the door. "You lot stay here, and be cannie. I'll go help her!"
He ran into the night while Dak, Sera, and Riq watched from the door, hearts in their throats. He got the woman safely beneath an arched doorway, but as he ran back toward the shelter, another explosion went off and rock toppled from the skies above, filling the alley like an avalanche of destruction.
Riq pulled Sera and Dak to the far end of the shelter, and they watched as large chunks of granite filled the small doorway until, only seconds later, it was completely blocked and everything went silent.
FOR THE longest time, Sera didn't speak. She couldn't even begin to think of the words that should be spoken in such a moment. The air raid seemed to have ended, or at least, the explosions stopped and the sound of engines passed. But there were no other sounds either, and certainly not Duncan's cheery voice.
Finally, Sera whispered, "Do you think he's . . . ?"
She looked over at Riq, who slowly shook his head. "There's no way he survived that."
The three friends all dropped their eyes to the ground and shared a moment of silence.
"He died a hero," Dak said at last. "And he told us enough to get started here. We have a chance to save a lot of lives."
"Yes, but how?" Sera asked. "The Hystorians can't honestly expect three kids to conquer Sicily."
"We're not conquering anything," Dak said. "Duncan asked if we could do spy work. I think that means we're supposed to work behind the scenes. If we succeed, the Allies will do the conquering."
"So this will be easy," Riq said dryly. "I suppose we could just start asking around to see if anyone is hiring underage spies."
"That's not helping!" Sera sighed. "Listen, we still have the SQuare. It'll give us the clues we need." She looked around. "Where is it?"
Sera looked at Dak, who looked at Riq, who looked back to Sera. Suddenly, they were all talking and pointing fingers. Sera had given the SQuare to Dak when they ran into the crowd. Dak had dropped it to help a child that had fallen, but Riq had picked it up. He had tossed it into the shelter when they climbed in, but none of them remembered seeing it since they got inside.
Then Dak frowned and pointed to the entrance. "There it is."
"There it was," Sera mumbled. Sure enough, a corner of the SQuare could be seen in the entrance, crunched beneath tons of granite, wood, and bricks. Even if they could pull it out -- and they couldn't -- it was totally destroyed.
Sera blinked back the sting in her eyes. She wasn't going to cry, not about this.
"If you had the right materials," Dak said, "you could --"
"Somehow I doubt there's a wide availability of lanthanum or neodymium in 1943," Sera said, thinking of the metals she would need to properly repair the SQuare.
"It's okay." Riq seemed eerily calm. "We knew this moment would come. We need a new SQuare. You and Dak have to go home and get another one."
Riq was right -- a trip to the future was the only way to get another working SQuare. But she couldn't ignore how Riq had left himself out of the plan.
"Why not you?" Sera asked. "People back home will want to see you."
"How would you know?" Riq snapped.
Sera still didn't understand, but her eyes darted to Dak, who was staring at Riq and slowly nodding as if he had figured out some big secret. Whatever it was, it couldn't be worth breaking the three of them up.
Dak caught Riq's eye. "Okay, so where do we go once we get home? Last time we dropped in on the ol' HQ, we were blindfolded."
"It's not hard to find if you know where to look," Riq said. "Just outside of the city limits is an old shoelace factory."
"Tiny Worm Shoelaces?" Sera smiled. "Yeah, my uncle drives past that place every day on his way to work. He always makes fun of it."
"Everyone does." Dak scoffed. "Seriously, who wants to wear shoelaces that look like worms? So the headquarters are near there?"
"No," Riq said. "That is the headquarters. Tiny Worm Shoelaces is an anagram, a name lame enough to keep the public and the SQ away, but to let all Hystorians know they're --"
"Welcome," Sera finished. Once she knew it was an anagram, unscrambling the letters was easy. "Hystorians Welcome. That's what the building's name really says."
"Exactly!" Riq turned his attention to Sera. "You and Dak should find Arin there, and a lot of other people who can load a new SQuare for you."
"We'll all go together," Sera said. "It's too dangerous to leave anyone behind."
Riq pressed his eyebrows together and for a moment looked as if he was about to say something. Then he shrugged and said, "If we're going to be spies, someone has to stay here and start creating a cover story for us. I'll do that."
"We have a time machine," Sera said. "We can build the cover story when we come back."
"Trust me, it has to be this way." Riq's tone was more insistent this time. "Listen, you can warp back to London one week from today's date. That'll give me time to get there and start figuring things out."
"We could meet at the Tower of London, right at noon," Dak said. "Fascinating place. A lot of beheadings happened there, including a couple of queens. It was also a zoo --"
"No!" Sera felt angry that Riq wasn't budging, and that Dak wasn't helping her. "We're not leaving without Riq. What if he gets into trouble with the SQ?"
"I won't," Riq said. "Tower of London, one week from today. I'll be there."
"Plug in the coordinates to take us home," Dak said to Sera. Then he turned to Riq. "Stay safe, dude."
Sera reluctantly entered the coordinates, but she had no intention of pressing the button to send them away until she convinced Riq, and now Dak, that they must all stay together.
Dak put his hand on the Ring and shared a grim look with Riq that Sera didn't like. Whatever secret Riq had, it was big, and she was sure by now that Dak knew what it was.
"Take my hand," Sera said to Riq. "Whatever is wrong, we'll fix it together."
"See you in a week," Dak said. And then before Sera could stop him, he pushed the button that would send them away.
Sera was yanked into the warp still yelling at Dak and holding out a hand to Riq. Dak had a firm grip on her at first, but as they were pulled along the time stream he cried out in pain, and nearly lost hold of her and the Ring. Now it was Sera's job to grip Dak tightly. She wouldn't lose him to time the way he had lost his parents.
After what seemed like a particularly long trip, Sera was spat out of the warp onto solid ground. The usual shudder ran through her, but she shook it off and turned her attention toward Dak. He was curled into a ball beside her and visibly shaking.
"Wh-wh-what's happening t-t-to me?" Dak said.
"Oh," Sera said softly. "You've just had a Remnant."
SERA HAD experienced hundreds of Remnants in her life, some of them so awful they literally made her sick. They always left her cold and often in tears. Having become so familiar with them, it wasn't hard to recognize when her best friend had just experienced his first one.
Lying on the ground, Dak continued shivering like they'd just landed in the middle of an arctic winter.
"If you're st-st-still mad a
t m-me," he said through chattering teeth, "feel fr-fr-free to gloat."
She was still angry with him. He'd been wrong to leave Riq behind, and never should've forced her to leave that way. But it was hard to stay angry while he looked so pathetic.
Sera crouched down beside him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You never get used to it, but at least the feelings pass pretty fast." The Remnant was probably made worse by the stresses of time travel, which were already hard enough. At least he'd stopped shivering.
Dak rolled to a sitting position and wrapped his arms around his legs. "I'm sorry, Sera. I never understood before. Not really."
"I wish you didn't have to understand now." Then she smiled and bumped his side with her elbow. "But this is the point of what we've been doing. We're fixing things."
She had expected Dak to respond with his usual positive attitude, or at least something playfully sarcastic.
But now he only looked at her with eyes that had become hollow and hopeless. "Not this time, Sera. You said that Remnants are a feeling that something has gone wrong. That what you see with your eyes isn't what you feel is true." He turned away and shook his head. "Well, something's definitely wrong. I think coming back here was a mistake."
"We didn't have any choice. If we don't get a new SQuare, we'll have no way of knowing what else needs to be fixed."
"Then let's just get it and leave as fast as we can."
That was what they should do, yes. But Sera still felt haunted by what she'd seen in the Cataclysm. She longed to go home, just for a minute, just to check that everything there was okay. And maybe better than okay. Sera had learned, to her horror, that her parents were destined to die in the Cataclysm. But that meant they should be alive now. What if they were at home waiting for her? Or . . . what if they weren't? To go there and find her home as empty as before, it would almost feel like she was losing them all over again.
Dak shuddered, drawing Sera's attention back to him. "Can't you feel it, too, Sera? This is all wrong. Being here will ruin everything we've already done."
She squinted against the rising sun behind him. "How can being in the present ruin the past?"
"I don't know! But it does, okay? Something's going to happen that --" He stopped, as if choking on his own sentence.
"That what?" He didn't answer and Sera asked, "What's with you and Riq all of a sudden? Do you know why he wouldn't come back with us?"
"I think so." Dak shrugged. "He's been acting weird ever since 1850, with Harriet Tubman. And I think I figured out why." Then he turned to Sera. "But that's for him to talk about, not me."
"Is it bad?"
Dak nodded. "Yeah. If I'm right, it's pretty bad."
"And your Remnant, the one you just had --"
Dak got to his feet and began running down the quiet street. He called behind his shoulder, "Let's just get the new SQuare, okay?"
Sera ran after him, but her mind was racing even faster. She knew how hard it had been to tell Dak what she had seen in the Cataclysm. And Riq clearly knew something that kept him from coming here at all. What had Dak just experienced that he didn't want to share with her?
It only took one look at the Hystorians' headquarters to know it was completely destroyed. Maybe a tornado had driven right through the building, or maybe this was all that was left after the SQ had invaded.
That was a cheery thought, Dak realized. To not know the difference between an SQ attack and a natural disaster.
"When are we?" he asked. "I mean, how much time has passed here since we left?"
"It's only been a couple of days," Sera said. "I figured if we came back much later then there would be too many people looking for us. We did just sort of up and disappear."
Yeah, Sera would think of things like that. If it had been up to Dak, they would've come back early enough to save his parents, or at least in time to warn the Hystorians about the SQ attack on their headquarters. But maybe bumping into their old selves would create some huge time paradox. Probably not a good thing.
Still staring at the ruins ahead of them, Sera said, "The Hystorians won't be in there anymore. How far do you think it is from here to your house?"
Dak shook his head. "We're not going back there."
"Riq said the Hystorians watched your parents' lab. If we go there, they'll find us."
"Maybe the SQ watches it, too. I'll betcha Riq didn't think of that!"
Dak knew he'd scored a point there, but the look on Sera's face told him that she understood the real reason for his protests. He didn't want to go home, not yet. Wherever and whenever they'd traveled, Dak'd been too busy figuring out puzzles, dodging Time Wardens, and living the world's history to think too much about his parents. To wonder if they were still all right. And to worry about what would happen to them if he failed.
But if he went home, that was all he'd be able to think about. Losing them once was hard enough. He didn't want to go through that again.
"We don't even have to go inside," Sera told him. "Just make sure the Hystorians know we've come back. Then they'll give us a new SQuare, and after a quick stop at my house, we'll hurry back to 1943 again. Easy-peasy. No problem."
Dak caught the part about a visit to her house, but he wasn't going to argue with that. He knew she had questions that made her want to go home just as strongly as he wanted to avoid his own. So he began trudging along beside Sera. "Okay, we'll go to my house. But the one thing I'm learning about time travel is that there's always a problem."
IF IT really only had been a couple of days since they left, then Dak and Sera had barely missed some truly harrowing events. A gap in the earth had split open along Main Street and was so wide in some places that entire cars had been swallowed into it. Several windows of their school were boarded up with a CONDEMNED sign across the entrance. And the theater near Dak's home now had an uprooted tree lodged upside down through its roof. Where the current show's name had once been The Farthing Family's Music, the h in Farthing was now missing from the billboard.
Dak snorted out a laugh and pointed to the sign. "Look, Sera, now it says --"
"I can see what it says."
"That would make some interesting music, all right."
Sera only rolled her eyes while Dak continued laughing. "I need to hang out with more girls," she mumbled under her breath.
Dak sighed as they turned into his neighborhood. "Just trying to lighten the mood. I gotta say, this was not the welcome I was expecting. Where is everybody? And shouldn't things be a little bit better than when we left? I mean, we've done a pretty amazing job of fixing Breaks so far."
Sera nodded silently. This was almost harder than when she'd seen the Cataclysm. Because as awful as it was now, she knew it would only get worse. The streets were entirely empty, but eyes peered back at them from windows and doorways. She wanted to scream at the people to run, but where could any of them go? Everything, everywhere was going to be destroyed.
"We have to succeed," she said to Dak in a hushed voice. "No matter how tired, or scared, or worried we get --"
"We won't give up," Dak finished for her. "I agree."
There were no signs of any Hystorians when they approached Dak's house. Not that Sera had expected any, but it would've been nice to have some idea of how to get another SQuare. His parents' lab seemed quiet enough, though the door was slightly ajar. Maybe the Hystorians really were watching this place.
"Do you have the Infinity Ring programmed already?" Dak asked.
"Yes." No matter how badly she wanted to go home, the devastation had convinced her it wasn't a good idea. For all she knew, the Cataclysm could kick off at any moment. And besides, Sera didn't like the way Dak had looked after his Remnant. The minute that SQuare got into their hands, she wanted to leave for someplace safer. Like the battlefield of a world war, she thought wryly.
"Then let's get the SQuare and go," Dak said. "All we need now is a Hystorian."
"I'll bet Arin left us some sort of message inside the l
ab," Sera said. "Maybe even a code, like we always get on the SQuare, to tell us where to go next."
Dak's eyes darted left and then right as if he was uncomfortable. "Why don't you go check that out? I'll, uh . . . keep watch out here."
This time, Sera didn't push. She knew he didn't want to be reminded of his parents any more than he had to be. And maybe he was still shaken by the Remnant he'd experienced. Unfortunately, Sera understood how that could feel, too.
So she nodded and said she'd be back in a minute or two.
It was dark inside and the lights didn't flip on when she tried them. That wasn't a big surprise. That earthquake along Main Street likely destroyed much of the city's power grid. But the Smyths' private generator, which kept their computers running, was still humming along. She could see the dim light of the screens at the far end of the room and used it to guide her way forward.
"Hello?" a woman's voice called.
Sera froze as a chair that had been facing the computers slowly spun her way. She squinted, hoping to see whoever was seated there better, but with the only light coming from behind the chair, the person was cast in shadow.
"Sera, is that you?" the voice asked. "What a relief to see that you're still safe! Is Dak here, too?"
"He's waiting outside," Sera replied. "Who are you?"
"We met at the Hystorians' headquarters. I hoped you'd come back here."
Sera stepped forward a little closer. The voice did sound familiar, but everything had happened so quickly before they escaped the headquarters, it was hard to place it. She didn't think it was Arin's voice, or Mari's. What other women had they spoken to that day?
"I'm sorry, what was your name?" Sera asked.
The woman leaned forward and, for a moment, Sera thought she got a glimpse of an angular chin. But then the woman reclined and her face disappeared again into the shadows. "You haven't completed your mission, Sera. Why are you here?"
"Our SQuare was destroyed during an air raid in World War Two."
"And is the Infinity Ring okay? You have it with you?"
Sera clutched the satchel in her hands. "It's fine. We just need a new SQuare and then we'll hurry back there."
"Certainly. I have one right here. Come on over and I'll get it for you."