Behind Enemy Lines

  The woman returned to face the computers and plugged a SQuare in, probably to update it with the most recent data. Still, Sera didn't walk any closer, and she kept an eye on the exit, just in case.

  "Marq is okay, too," Sera said casually.

  "Who?" The woman remained facing away as she worked on the SQuare.

  "Marq -- the Hystorian you sent to help us with languages."

  "Oh, yes . . . Marq. Fine young man."

  Sera's mouth pinched together. Whoever was seated in that chair, it was no Hystorian. All of them would've known it was Riq who came with them, and that there was no Marq.

  "There now, I have your SQuare ready," the woman said. "But there've been some big changes since you left. Call Dak in and I can explain them to you both."

  "Sure." Sera already had her fingers wrapped around the Infinity Ring. She would get outside, grab Dak's hand, and get them out of here. The explanations could come later.

  Only Sera had barely turned around before Dak burst through the door. "We have to go right now!" he cried. "There's SQ coming!"

  "Actually," the woman said, "we're already here!" And with that, she stood and her face was fully lit by the computers around her. Sera saw the fierce lines of her jaw, hard and square. The red glow of the SQuare in her hand deepened the bloodred tones of her hair, and as the woman came closer, her oily black lips whispered, "It will be less painful for you both if you just give me the Ring."

  "Tilda!" Dak hissed.

  Sera remembered Tilda all too well. The woman was an ambitious leader within the SQ, intent on clawing her way to the top. She had led the raid on the Hystorians' headquarters, a raid in which good people had been killed, and she had obviously been waiting for their return.

  "Now don't go anywhere, Sera," Tilda said. "Don't you know how much you've worried your parents?"

  Sera froze. Dak clutched her arm as if he wasn't sure whether she'd bull-charge the woman or faint on the spot.

  But Sera didn't move. "Where are they?" she asked through clenched teeth.

  "Mommy and Daddy?" Tilda laughed, a humorless, throaty laugh that screeched like nails on a chalkboard. "Oh, they're fine . . . for now. But they have a lot of explaining to do, and they won't be slipping away from us again."

  "Explaining?" Sera stepped forward. "About what?"

  Now Sera felt Dak tensing at her side. "Has the SQ done something to her parents?" he asked.

  "Oh, so you kids don't know the truth?" Tilda's laugh turned dark and sinister. "Sera, your parents are SQ! They work for me!"

  "No!" It was everything Sera could do to keep from attacking Tilda in that moment. "You're lying!"

  The voices of the SQ agents entering Dak's backyard carried into the lab. Soon, there would be no escape.

  "You let my parents go!" Sera cried.

  "No, Sera, we have to go," Dak said.

  Sera turned to look at him, then felt Tilda's hand on her arm, pulling her back. Dak lunged for the woman, knocking her down.

  "The SQuare!" Sera yelled. It was still in Tilda's right hand, waving wildly in the air.

  Dak put one hand on the Infinity Ring, and then stretched enough to grab the SQuare with his other. He wrenched it from Tilda's grip and said, "Get us outta here!"

  At that moment, the doorway was filled with SQ thugs, yelling and pushing to be first through the door to capture the two young time travelers.

  Sera had her thumb on the Infinity Ring's button. "Hold on tight!" she yelled at Dak. Instantly, she felt time grab on to her gut and yank her into the warp. She opened her mouth, but realized someone else was already screaming. She looked over at Dak, whose face was vibrating so hard he'd shut his eyes as if to keep them from being sucked out of their sockets. But his mouth was clamped shut, too.

  So who was screaming? Sera turned her head the other way.

  Before they left, Tilda had been holding the SQuare with her right hand. Sera had noticed that. But she had never thought to check for where Tilda's left hand had been.

  It was on the Infinity Ring. Tilda was traveling with them through time.

  RIQ HAD come early to the Tower of London, where he was supposed to meet Dak and Sera. Maybe there was no point in coming early. No matter when they left, they would arrive at the precise time that Sera programmed into the Infinity Ring, and not one minute before.

  This time and place weren't too bad for him to navigate on his own -- after all, he'd made it to London without any trouble. But the truth was that he'd gotten used to having Sera and Dak with him on these adventures. They were all friends now; even Dak was, though neither of them would ever admit it. But it was something more. Dak and Sera had become like family to Riq. And he hated the thought that one day, they would finish these missions, save Earth from the Cataclysm, and then go home. Eventually, they would have to leave him behind for good.

  But not today. Riq straightened his spine and paced for the twentieth time around the gatehouse that marked the entrance to the Tower of London. He had managed to get a job as a translator for the British Royal Navy. It was a civilian job, and the information he could access was so low-security that he could've put it on a billboard with flashing lights and no one would care. But it did get him inside the Admiralty building where the British spies worked, and that was a good start. Dak and Sera would have to be impressed with that move.

  Where were they, already?

  Somewhere in the distance, the chimes of Big Ben bonged out the change of the hour. One. Two. Three. Wasn't it time for them to show up? Six. Seven. Eight. It felt like each chime was longer than the last. Then, finally, ten and eleven.

  Just as the final chime sounded, with sparks coming from nothing but empty air, Dak and Sera tumbled into existence. And then a third body rolled through. Tilda!

  Riq actually stumbled backward. Were they crazy? Why would they bring Tilda here?

  Dak and Tilda seemed to be fighting over a SQuare, but Tilda was also fighting with Sera to keep a hand on the Infinity Ring. Riq dove between all of them and earned himself a hard kick to his chest and someone's elbow in his eye. He pushed between them again until Sera finally rolled free with the Infinity Ring and Dak separated on the other side with the SQuare.

  "You miserable brats!" Tilda growled. "Do you really think you have any chance of winning? Don't you know how strong we are here? This is where we took over the world!"

  "What are we going to do with her?" Dak asked.

  "We have to send her back, obviously," Sera said.

  Riq didn't bother asking how they would do that. It'd be nearly impossible when none of them wanted to risk letting her anywhere near the Ring. That could be a fatal mistake.

  He knew Tilda better than either of his friends did. As a child, he'd thought of her as a bogeyman -- he'd already learned six languages before he could bring himself to say her name out loud. Then, as a young man, he'd studied her, as all Hystorians did. She was the most dangerous person alive, and vicious beyond words. Most Hystorians believed that the SQ would loosen its grip upon the world if only they could be convinced that the Cataclysm was real and that it was coming. But Tilda was driving the entire planet toward the Cataclysm and it seemed like she wanted to step on the gas pedal to make it happen sooner.

  Then Riq remembered something else about Tilda. She came from the future. A future that their actions had already changed.

  "Do you know who I am?" he asked her.

  Tilda hadn't expected that. She stood there, recovering from her first warp through time, and blinked at him.

  "Do you know who I am?!" He yelled the question this time, lunging forward, gripping her arms and shaking her.

  "Oi, you there!" A policeman on the street behind them had noticed them surrounding Tilda, had heard him shouting at her. Riq could only imagine how this must look.

  "Run!" Sera cried.

  Dak started to protest that they couldn't just leave Tilda, but Riq and Sera grabbed each of his arms and dragged him off. The officer pursued only a few ste
ps before he returned to Tilda, who was doing a fabulous job of pretending she had been the victim.

  "Yeah, helpless little super villain," Riq muttered when he glanced behind them. "That man had better not look her straight in the eyes, or I bet he turns to stone."

  They ducked into a narrow alley to catch their breath, stow the Infinity Ring and SQuare, and brush themselves off.

  Sera turned to Riq. "Do I even want to know what that was about?"

  "Do I even want to know why in the world Tilda was with you?" he shot back. "What happened in the future?"

  "I don't want to talk about that," Sera snapped, then eyed Dak. "Not ever."

  Dak turned his obvious frustration back to Riq. "Maybe you've had it easy resting here for the last week, but for Sera and me that was three trips through time in just a few hours with an aerial bombing, a nice bombshell of news, and an SQ attack in between."

  Riq hadn't been relaxing these past few days, but it certainly wasn't anything compared to what Dak just described. Still, when Dak bent over with his hands on his knees, Riq did consider giving him a push to the ground. Just a little one.

  "Sheesh, sorry I asked," Riq said.

  "Sera, I get it. I do." Dak had turned to face Sera, and his voice was low, as if he didn't want Riq to hear. Riq kicked at the ground, but aimed his ears in their direction to absorb every word he could. "My parents made mistakes, too."

  "Really? And are their mistakes going to destroy the world?"

  "Well . . . no."

  "Then you don't get it." She pushed past Dak and said, "Let's just figure out what to do now. Are we going back for Tilda? Well?" Dak didn't say anything and, with the mood Sera was in, Riq wasn't about to be the first to speak. Sera folded her arms. "Someone answer me!"

  "Okay." Dak glanced back toward the Tower of London. "Maybe it's better if Tilda is stuck in this time for now. At least she's not at home causing even worse damage. Without an encyclopedic knowledge of history, how much harm could she do?"

  "And you got a new SQuare," Riq said.

  "Tilda had it, not the Hystorians." Dak handed it to Sera. "I think you'd better check it out before we trust anything it says."

  Sera made a face, then took it and started pushing buttons. "It's password protected, just like the first one was. I think she must have been trying to hack into it when we dropped in on her." She typed in a word. "The password is password, just like before. It's booting up now."

  Riq reached into his bag. "Since we have a few moments, maybe you can both change into some clothes that don't stand out so much. Sera, I have a special surprise for you."

  Sera looked up from the SQuare and narrowed her eyes as if she wasn't sure whether he was serious or teasing her. Riq pulled two sets of clothes from the bag, one in each hand.

  He held up his right hand first. "Here we have a pretty polka-dot dress. Very nice." But he saw that Sera was already eying his left hand and a smile was spreading across her face.

  "Pants!" she cried. "Girls finally wear pants here?!"

  "It was a growing trend in the forties," Dak said. "Pants were more practical when so many women were going to work for the first time, to help the war effort."

  "Not now, Dak!" Forgetting her bad mood, Sera thrust the SQuare back onto her friend's lap and yanked the pants and sweater from Riq's hand, then ran deeper into the alley. "If anyone comes back here while I'm changing, I'll hurt you. Pants!"

  Riq chuckled to himself. "I knew she'd like that."

  Dak pointed to the other clothes still in Riq's hands. "Good for her, but if you think I'm wearing the dress now, you're crazy."

  Riq dropped the dress back into his bag and pulled out a pair of boys' pants and a shirt for Dak. "They're not fancy because everything is rationed here: clothes, food, supplies. But at least you'll blend in better than you do now." Once Dak had taken the clothes, Riq went back to his bag and pulled out some bread wrapped in brown paper. "I also figured you'd be hungry."

  "Starving is more like it." Dak had a slice in his mouth even before finishing his sentence. "Is there any cheese?"

  "Are you kidding?" Riq asked. "I had to scrub a grocer's floor just to earn that!" He hesitated a moment, then quietly added, "Was she mad at me, after you two went to the future?"

  "She was mad at both of us," Dak said.

  "But you know why I couldn't -- why I can't . . . right?" Riq couldn't even say the words to Dak. It was hard enough just to think about his future, much less have to explain it.

  Dak only swallowed the food in his mouth and said, "It won't take long for Sera to figure it out, too. We're here, when you want to talk about it."

  That was good to know, but at least for now, Riq still hated even thinking about it. He put his problems to the back of his mind when Sera reappeared in her new outfit. She did a high kick in the air and laughed, then told Dak to get changed next.

  Once they were all ready, they gathered around the SQuare. Words had appeared on the screen.

  TROUT:

  HDMS2W EEMWTO LAAIHL PDNMEF

  "Trout? Like the fish?" Sera groaned. "And the rest is gibberish. It could mean anything."

  "And the number two is in the first word," Riq said, shaking his head.

  "Maybe Tilda uploaded false codes after all," Dak said.

  "I don't think so." Riq ran his finger across the screen. "This looks like Arin's handiwork to me."

  "I was hoping it'd be written in Navajo," Dak said. "You know, because this is World War Two and the Allies used the Navajo language for a code. It's one of the only wartime codes in history that was never cracked by the enemy." He looked up at Riq. "You know Navajo, right?"

  Riq shrugged. "A little. But there's a reason why Germany never cracked that code. It's a spoken language so, at least in 1943, there's no written record of it. Its details can change depending on the specific tribe, and a lot of words mean different things just by the way they're pronounced."

  "So . . . that's a no, right?" Dak said.

  "I know a little," Riq insisted. "At least enough that I was able to talk my way inside the Admiralty building as a translator. I only translate newspapers from other countries, so it's hardly top secret, but I figured if we're going to be spies, then we needed to get inside somehow."

  "Exciting!" Sera said. "You're like James Bond with a day job."

  "It's funny you'd say that," Dak said. "Because Ian Fleming, who created the James Bond character in the 1950s, did work for the British Secret Intelligence Service in World War Two. In fact --" Dak drew in a breath and grabbed the SQuare. "Let me look at this!"

  Sera scooted toward Riq to give Dak room for whatever thought was working its way through his brain.

  "Anyway," Riq said, "I've been working at the Admiralty -- a lot of spy stuff happens there. Once they found out I knew so many languages, they've been very happy to have my help."

  "Trout!" Dak interrupted. When he caught Riq and Sera staring at him, he added, "A few years ago, right at the start of the war, Ian Fleming wrote a list of ideas for how Britain might trick Germany, just like a fisherman lures in a fish. It was called the Trout Memo."

  "But Ian Fleming only wrote spy novels," Sera said. "This is real-life spying."

  "Maybe the reason he could write them is because he'd already lived them," Riq pointed out.

  "Exactly! Do you have anything to write with?" Dak asked. Riq handed over a loose sheet of paper and the pen that he'd been using for work. Dak started writing immediately, then after a minute scratched out what he'd done and started over.

  "Anyway again," Riq said, "maybe I could bring the SQuare's code in and ask some of their code breakers to look at it."

  "For the love of mincemeat!" Sera said. "We can't tell anyone about this code. Time traveling brings a whole new meaning to the term top secret."

  "Mincemeat!" Dak said. "Yes, Sera, you're brilliant! So am I, by the way. We're still waiting on Riq."

  Riq muttered something back to him in a language their translators didn't
pick up. In case Dak didn't know he'd been insulted, Riq added, "That was Navajo. And trust me, I got the meaning of my words exactly right."

  To Riq's surprise, Dak only chuckled and went back to his writing. After a moment he looked up and announced, "I know the code. I just lined up the first letter of each word, then the second letter of each word, and so on. Six words, four letters each."

  Sera and Riq looked to Dak's chicken scratch.

  "Oh, good," Sera said. "That clarifies everything."

  "You've made a mistake," Riq said, then chuckled. "What's an M-man? A mailman? Marshmallow man?"

  Sera nodded, and with a snort of laughter, added, "Maybe it's the Muffin Man."

  But Dak only shook his head. "Here's a tip for telling jokes, dudes. They're always better if they're funny." Then he stood and stuffed the SQuare into his pants. "The M-man is real, and it's the key to the Allies winning this war. C'mon, we've got work to do!"

  DAK WASN'T sure where he was going, only that he had so many ideas turning in his head that he needed to move, just to keep things flowing. Riq and Sera were on either side of him, and as they walked, he tried to explain the code.

  "Hitler's first name, Adolf, means wolf. He used to call himself that sometimes, like a nickname."

  "Charming," Sera muttered.

  "And we have to help a dead guy swim to him?" Riq asked. "Because I'm not going near any dead bodies."

  "Well, I'm not going anywhere near Adolf Hitler!" Sera said.

  Dak stopped and turned to Riq. "When you were inside the Admiralty this week, did anyone ever talk about Room 13?"

  "No, but Duncan mentioned it during the bombing, so I found it, but I'm not allowed to go inside. Why? What's in that room?"

  "I sort of hoped that by now, you could tell me," Dak said.

  "What?" Riq asked. "So, you don't know everything?"

  Sera interrupted them. "Oh, for the love of mincemeat!"

  Dak slapped a hand to his forehead as ideas moved like pinballs inside his brain. " 'For the love of mincemeat' -- exactly. You're always saying that, Sera."

  She followed behind him as he started walking again. "I only say it when you two are fighting."

  Dak grinned. "Like I said, you're always saying it. Anyway, I connected that with the word Trout in the code. M-man is Mincemeat Man. Mincemeat is a code of its own."