Riq felt powerless. He couldn’t even console James, who was sniffling, trying to dry the tears from his eyes with his shoulder.
It was then that he realized he had completely failed to accomplish his one goal: keeping Kissy and her aunt Minty safe so they didn’t get sold back into slavery. How could he have let go of the mission? He’d been arrogant again, and now look at them: Kessiah and John were in a cellar somewhere about to be auctioned off, and Aunt Minty . . . well, he supposed she was in this room somewhere.
He looked around at all the faces, and he was surprised that no one looked scared. They all wore expressions of extreme dignity. These were men and women who didn’t break under pressure. They didn’t give up when things got tough. They probably didn’t even complain when things got tough.
Riq felt pride building up inside of him. He thought of all the people throughout history — Hystorians, but other people, too — who had sacrificed everything to help others. The presence of so many heroes in one room gave him the motivation to keep going. He just had to get out of here — for James’s sake if for no other reason.
There were two African-American women in the room, one who was rather tall and grand looking, and another as short as Sera and somewhat plain. Riq thought back to the pictures from Grandma Phoebe’s album and knew by sight that the shorter woman was Aunt Minty — Araminta Harriet Ross Tubman — who he just knew was destined for greatness if it weren’t for the SQ. He caught the woman’s eye and she managed to make hers twinkle at him. He looked down at the floor, feeling awkward, and when he glanced at her again, she appeared to be asleep on her feet. Perhaps he’d imagined the twinkle.
While Riq was lost in thought and Dak was talking to himself in his newly created fourth language (English, pig latin, Spanish [one word], and now Mufflygag), Sera was kicking herself for not insisting they come up with a better plan before waltzing into an SQ stronghold. What were they going to do now, without anyone to help them? Without a key to unlock these shackles?
Wait a second, she thought. She looked up. “Ah hee!” she cried, though no one could understand her through the gag. Wildly, she kicked Dak. “Ah hee!” she said. “Ah hee!”
“Wha?” Dak scrunched up his face, trying to understand her. “Ahi?”
Sera shook her head violently. “Hee! HAY-HEE-WHY. Hee.”
Dak shook his puzzled face. “Wha?” he asked again.
“Ah hee frohm you pahents!”
Riq lifted his head, suddenly alert. He nodded at Sera and tried a different tactic. “Ih you pockeh!”
Dak tilted his head. “Oooh,” he said. “Ah hee.” He nodded thoughtfully. And then he looked down at his pocket . . . which was nowhere within reach of his shackled hands.
Sera soon realized the problem as well. Her shoulders slumped. There’s no way it could be the right key anyway, she thought. What are the odds? But like she’d said earlier, parents seemed to have a way of finding their children. And Dak’s parents had always been there for him. Always.
A clanging noise from between her and Dak startled her. She looked down at James, and then up at the now empty shackle that had once held his right arm. He shook his wrist, pulled the gag out of his mouth, and grinned. “I did it,” James said. He examined his freed wrist and frowned. “Got a scrape.”
“Oh!” Sera said. “Me, hoo?” She bent as close to James as she could and tried to say, “Can you take my gag out, too, please?”
James seemed to have no trouble understanding her, and he stretched toward her as far as he could, just barely able to grasp Sera’s gag while his left arm remained shackled overhead. He pulled her gag down, and Sera let out a relieved sigh. “Thank you,” she said in a whisper. “We still need to be quiet, okay?”
James nodded.
“How did you do that?”
“I made a stick with my hand and pulled it out,” James said, matter-of-factly. “This one is still stuck, though.” He tugged on the chain to prove it.
Sera smiled at him, then caught Dak’s eye. “Can you reach Dak’s gag?” she asked.
Dak leaned toward James, and James lunged for the gag, straining against his shackle. “Nope,” James said. And then he looked at Sera. “I can reach his pocket, though. Do you want me to get the key you were talking about?”
A burst of muffled chuckling rippled through the room, and Sera realized all the other prisoners had been watching intently. She grinned at the boy. “Yes, please.”
Now that he had an audience, James beamed. He strained away from Sera and fished the key from Dak’s pocket. Then he twirled around on his chain and strained the other way, trying to get more laughs. He held the key out to Sera, not quite able to reach her hand.
And so he tossed it.
Sera’s grin turned to a gasp as the key bounced off her hand and clinked to the ground.
JAMES COULDN’T reach the floor. He bowed his head in shame. “It’s okay,” Sera said. She closed her eyes and tried to use her shoulder to wipe the sweat from her forehead. When she opened her eyes again, she realized that everyone in the room had frozen at the sound of the key hitting the floor. Now they watched her, encouragement and praise beaming from the crinkles around their glistening eyes. Sera glanced at Gamaliel, Dak, and Riq, who were all nodding their encouragement. She looked at James, whose bottom lip was trembling. “No worries, kid,” she said. “We can do this.”
She placed her foot on the key and slid it to the wall. With that done, she took a deep breath and relaxed her muscles, and then she tensed up again and began the painstaking job of pushing a single key up a wall with her foot.
“Glad I’m wearing Grunder’s pants, or this could get awkward,” she muttered.
She had to move slowly. When her leg began to wobble and shake, Sera closed her eyes. Sweat dripped down her temples now, her thigh muscles burned, but she held her position, gathering her inner strength. And then she began moving once again, centimeter by centimeter, until finally her thumb and forefinger grasped the key. She exhaled, and a murmur swept through the crowd. So this is what it’s like to be on a sports team when you’re not the one messing up, she thought.
But it wasn’t over yet.
There was no way to get the key in the lock with a hand that was shackled, so she pulled her chained arm toward her mouth instead and yanked her head and torso toward it, straining her neck so that she could clench the key in her teeth.
With her mouth closed around the key, Sera tilted her head slowly, looking cross-eyed at the end of the key in order to line it up with the shackle’s lock. She prayed that her hunch was right, knowing that all her efforts could be for nothing.
The room was so silent she could hear mice skittering in the walls. Sera pushed the key into the lock and slid it as far as she could until it hit metal. She took a few breaths now that it was somewhat set in place, and then slowly she tilted her head the other way, eyes closed, listening, until she heard and felt a click, and the shackle opened, falling off her wrist and thudding against the wall.
“Hee hee!” she said, one wrist free. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. She grabbed the key from the dangling shackle, freed her other wrist, and looked around the room and grinned. The prisoners were waving their hands in silent applause, and she held a finger to her lips. She shook out her hands to get the blood flowing again, and then she moved around the room unlocking shackles like it was going out of style.
Dak turned to Gamaliel while Sera made the rounds. “Is everyone here a you-know-what?” he asked.
“Everyone present is a Hystorian in addition to being an abolitionist, yes. There’s no need for secrecy.”
Dak smirked. “Speaking of secrecy, aren’t you guys supposed to be a secret organization? How did the SQ manage to track everyone down?”
The short African-American woman answered as Sera unlocked her shackles. “It was the lanterns,” she said. “They figured out what the lanterns meant. We led them straight to us.”
Riq stepped forward. “Aunt Mi
nty, is that you?” he asked.
She raised her chin. “Do you have my niece?” she said softly.
“She’s here in the cellar with her husband and baby. Your journey to help them to freedom may be delayed, but it is by no means cancelled.”
Harriet Tubman smiled. “Your encouraging words will carry me.”
Gamaliel Bailey stepped forward alongside a large white-haired man wearing a suit. “Dak, Sera, Riq, this is Thomas Garrett. It’s his house that Ilsa has taken over as the hub for this entire plot.”
Thomas Garrett smiled. “At your service,” he said. “It is a pleasure to know you, although I would have liked it to be under better circumstances.” He roared in laughter and was subsequently shushed by a number of people in the room.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Dak said, rubbing his wrists, a grin playing at the corner of his lips. “You have a lovely home, despite your lack of furniture.”
“I apologize — I had to sell it all to pay a rather large fine for helping fugitives,” the man said.
“Well, that’s pretty cool of you,” Dak said. He paused. “Do you by chance know the way out of here?”
Thomas Garrett chuckled. “I believe I do. But we have one small hurdle remaining.”
Riq heard the concern in Mr. Garrett’s voice. “What is it?” he asked.
The man pointed to the door. “Ilsa has locked us in. And there’s no way to unlock that door from this side.”
DAK AND Sera looked at each other. “I guess this means we’ll have to make them open it, then,” Dak said. “Unless you have any non-life-threatening scientifically experimental ways to break this lock.”
“Come off it, Smyth,” Sera muttered. “It was one time. One time!”
“Eyebrows,” Dak reminded her.
“You’re kind of obsessed with your eyebrows. It’s weird.”
“Your face is weird.”
“Good grief,” Riq said. “Could you do this later, please? We’ve got stuff to do.”
“He’s right, knock it off,” Dak said.
Sera rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said, turning her attention back to the group. “Here’s the plan. Everybody, go back to your places and put your wrists back into the shackles — but for the love of mincemeat, don’t close them — just make it look like you’ve got them on. Gags loosely in your mouths, too. I know, I know, spit-tacularly gross, but this is what we do for the good of society.”
Everyone but Riq and Dak went obediently to his or her place and slipped their gags and shackles on.
“I really, really like this group of people,” Sera muttered. She looked at James. “If fighting happens, you stay out of the way, okay? Just hide in that corner.” She pointed, and then she addressed the group once more. “Good, now Ilsa and her thugs took something of mine — something they won’t know how to use. I’m going to pretend to offer her instructions in exchange for your freedom,” she said. “Just play along like you’re trapped there until I say the secret word, which means scream and attack. Once they’re in this room they’ll be surrounded, and we can overpower them. Capice?”
Riq leaned over and whispered, “What’s the secret word?”
“The secret word is . . .” Sera pondered it for a moment.
“Eighteen-abibble,” Dak said calmly.
Sera looked at him and grinned. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” She looked at the Hystorians. “Eighteen-abibble. Got it?” They all nodded.
Riq shook his head. “Stupidest secret word ever,” he muttered.
“Yeah, well, at least nobody will say it by accident. Let’s take our places and get ready for a fight.”
Just then, the door burst open. Ilsa marched into the room, followed by an entire squad of SQ agents, including the fake Mrs. Beeson. All were armed, and all looked extremely dangerous.
And in her hand, Ilsa gripped the Infinity Ring.
SERA, DAK, and Riq, the only ones not yet in their places, whirled around, and their eyes nearly popped out of their heads at the sight of the small army. “Great Wisconsin cheese hats, it’s a war Break after all,” Dak said. His lip curled at the sight of fake Mrs. Beeson.
Ilsa looked furious. “You’re too sneaky for your own good! But no matter. I don’t think you’re going anywhere without this.” She lifted the Ring into the air.
Sera’s heart sank to see the device in enemy hands, but she knew she could still fix this. She didn’t dare spring the trap yet, though. The SQ had weapons; the Hystorians had nothing. Not safe at all.
“Get her,” the woman said, icy calm.
The Time Wardens grabbed Dak and Riq, and pulled them aside. Sera glanced at Gamaliel and Harriet Tubman and Thomas Garrett, who looked poised to leap to her aid, and shook her head the slightest bit. No, no, no, she chanted in her head. She wasn’t giving up this easily. Wait for the signal.
Then Stuckey grabbed her by the arm and she gave him a weary look. “Not you again. Easy on the duds,” she muttered. Stuckey pushed her forward to face the red-haired woman. “You’ve got me. I’ll do whatever you say.”
Ilsa narrowed her eyes, regarding Sera for a long, suspicious moment.
“Can you tell dog breath to let go of me, please?” Sera asked.
“Settle down, dog breath,” Ilsa muttered, turning the Infinity Ring in her hands with the utmost care. “How does it work?” she demanded.
“Well,” Sera said, jabbing her elbow into Stuckey’s gut and leaning forward. “You program it to the time and place you want to visit and press GO, and then whenever you’re ready to return here just press GO again and it’ll bring you home automatically. That feature’s kind of like the LAST button on your TV remote.” She nodded knowingly. “It’s slick.”
Ilsa frowned at the strange words. “How do you tell it where to go?” Her tone was still harsh, but curious.
“It’s very precise, I’m afraid. I’ve spent forty years learning how to use it.”
“Forty years?” Ilsa spat out. “You’re a child.”
Sera gave Ilsa a strange look. “I beg your pardon? We all look like this at sixty-five.” She laughed. “I mean, I figured you must be at least a hundred and fifty years old, maybe one seventy-five, right?”
Ilsa’s face burned.
“No?” Sera’s voice faltered. “Oh, my bad. I apologize. I’m sure you’re, um, not bad looking for this day and age. Can I get a woof woof?”
“Just show me how to use it. Now,” Ilsa barked.
“I can’t do it on command. You have to prepare. For one thing, there’s the whole magnetic factor.” She tapped her lips thoughtfully.
“The — what’s that?”
Sera looked at Riq. “Tell her,” she said with a shrug.
“The magnetic factor,” Riq said, “is” — he glanced sidelong at Sera — “a force field.”
“What does it do?”
“It, ah, it pulls anything metal with you when you travel. Which can really mess things up,” he said.
“It’s why we don’t bring coins with us,” Sera continued. ”We can’t risk using the device at all until any coins or jewelry are stored in a separate room. Any loose metal at all.”
Riq looked at a Warden’s saber with disdain. “That includes weapons. But don’t worry, you’ve still got us outnumbered.”
Ilsa narrowed her eyes. “All right,” she said, her voice flat. She instructed her men to put their weapons, jewelry, and coins in the room next door. A few of them hesitated, but no one dared speak out against an order. Finally, Ilsa turned back to Sera. “Show me how it works,” she said more forcefully this time, holding the Infinity Ring out but gripping it tightly.
Sera didn’t take it. Instead, she tilted her head and shrugged. “Okay. Where do you want to go?”
“I want to go to the future to see myself and . . . and everything I’ve accomplished.”
“So, maybe twenty years into the future?” Sera asked with a sweet smile. “We need to be very precise.”
“Y-yes. Twenty yea
rs from today.” She didn’t sound totally confident.
“Great. Go ahead and program the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, and don’t forget to consider the tilt and speed of the Earth, daylight savings time, leap years, and Groundhog Day.” Sera clasped her hands behind her back. “Let me know if you have questions.”
Ilsa stared at the Infinity Ring. Her lips formed a thin black line. She shoved the Infinity Ring back at Sera, poking her in the stomach with it, which Sera thought was a bit on the rude side. “You do it,” Ilsa demanded. “You’re coming with me.”
Sera perked up. “Oh! Why, thank you. I’d love to.” She took the Infinity Ring and started working at it, plugging in numbers, looking off into space, adding and subtracting, tilting her head, thinking about Groundhog Day. After a few minutes of constant tapping on the instrument, she gave the Ring one last serious stare, and then she looked up. “All right,” she said solemnly. “It’s ready. Are you ready?”
Ilsa nodded, gripping one end of the Ring.
Sera flashed a glance at Dak and Riq, and smiled. “Okay, great. We’re going to December blahblah, eighteen-abibble!” And just like that, they were gone.
THERE WAS a moment of stunned silence. Even Dak was surprised — he hadn’t expected Sera to actually warp away with Ilsa. He could only imagine what the SQ agents must be thinking as they looked on with amazement at the spot where their leader had been.
The moment passed quickly. James ran immediately to the corner and crouched into a ball, while the Hystorians sprang into action at the utterance of the secret word.
Dak and Riq joined in the fight as Hake or Stuckey (Dak couldn’t remember who was who) reacted to the surprise attack by turning and punching Thomas Garrett in the mouth.
“Hey!” Dak yelled. “Don’t be messing with my friend!” He screamed into the jerk’s ear as Riq belted the guy in the gut.
Amidst the yelling and screaming, kicking and karate chopping, Sera and Ilsa reappeared in the exact spot they’d been standing in moments before. Ilsa looked traumatized. She screamed, pulling away from Sera and throwing herself against the nearest wall. Sera followed, neatly slapping a dangling shackle around the woman’s wrist, before collapsing practically at Ilsa’s feet.