“I can see those wheels spinning in your head,” Brint said to him. “I know this all must seem unlikely. But I swear to you, with all my honor as a Hystorian — and I’ve devoted my life to this — that what we’re telling you is true.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than we’ve laid it out,” Mari added. “But this is the gist of it. Aristotle created a society that would diligently track and pass down records of the Great Breaks throughout the years, hoping that someday the Hystorians would pioneer time travel and go back to correct what went wrong. And that’s where we stand today.”
Brint tapped his finger on the table. “Of course, there’s an even more immediate danger than earthquakes or Remnants.”
Dak waited, wondering, What now?
“The SQ,” Brint announced. “They’ve been around just as long as the Hystorians, though they’ve been known by many names. And where the rest of the world has suffered, they’ve actually benefited from the Breaks. As you might imagine, they’re not thrilled with the idea that somebody might change that.”
“What Brint is trying to say,” Mari continued, “is that the SQ has eyes and ears everywhere. And if they were to catch wind of what we’re up to here, they’d kill us all without hesitation.”
“We can keep you safe,” Brint said. “But only if you give us that Ring.”
SERA DIDN’T like Brint’s tone — she didn’t like this turn in the conversation at all. She quickly squeezed Dak’s hand before her friend could say anything. They had to play this right.
“I think the stakes are well-defined here,” Brint continued. “We need that Ring so we can reverse engineer it. Make our own. And begin the process of fixing history.” He and Mari looked squarely at Dak, who held the Ring clutched to his chest.
“Um,” Dak started before Sera could stop him. “I don’t know. All this stuff you’re saying makes sense, I guess, but . . . I need the Ring. I have to find my mom and dad.”
Sera knew Dak could be talked into anything — he was trusting to a fault. That meant it was up to her to protect their interests here, and she had no problem speaking up. “How did you people even know we had an operating time-travel device? Were you monitoring the area for stray chronon particles?”
Brint’s eyes flickered to Mari’s. “Um, yes, that’s exactly how we knew what you were up to.”
Sera scoffed at how easily she’d tricked them. “There’s no such thing as a chronon! The Hystorians have been spying on the Smyths all along, haven’t they? You’re no better than the SQ!”
Brint stuttered and stammered. Mari cleared her throat, stepping in to take charge of the conversation. “Okay. Yes. We’ve been . . . monitoring Dak’s parents. But we’re not like the SQ, I promise you. We’ve only done what we have for the good of the world. How do you think the Smyths got the money they needed for their research, anyway? The Hystorians have been funding them all along, in secret, providing grants that they didn’t know came from us.”
“Which, by the way,” Brint interjected, “gives us partial claim to the Ring technology.”
Sera took a moment to consider her next move. Brint and Mari seemed genuine enough. But she didn’t dare let the Ring out of her sight — not until Dak’s parents were safe. And if Brint and Mari had been monitoring the lab, they knew that the Ring was all but useless without Sera’s know-how . . . and without Dak or Sera to activate it. That was an advantage she could use.
“If you knew anything about this technology,” she said, “you’d know that it would take months to make your own device. At least.”
Brint and Mari exchanged a long, worried look. It was obvious they didn’t have that kind of time.
“You need us,” Dak blurted out, the excitement sparking in his eyes as he caught on to Sera’s train of thought. “You need us to use our own device. We have to pilot the thing.” He turned to Sera. “We can do this. We can do all of it at once! Find my parents. Save the world. Maybe even get rid of the Remnants.”
For some reason, that hit her in the gut like a punch. Would not having a false memory of her parents be better? Or worse? She didn’t even want to think about it.
But she could see that Brint and Mari knew that Dak was right. The Hystorians did need them. “We’ll help you,” she said, “but we’ll only do it if you promise to help us find Dak’s parents. Take it or leave it.”
“You’ll have to leave the dirty work to the adults,” Brint said. He turned to Mari, waiting until she gave a reluctant nod before he continued. “While we devote resources here to figuring out what happened to Dak’s parents, you can act as escorts for a crack team of Hystorians. Our people will do the actual work of fixing the Breaks, but their lives will depend on you two getting them where they need to be. And following their orders to the letter. There are the Time Wardens to worry about, after all.”
“Time Wardens?” Dak repeated.
“When I said the SQ had eyes and ears everywhere, I didn’t just mean in the present,” Mari explained. “You see, if it weren’t for the Breaks, the SQ might not hold all the power they do in the world today. Their Lady in Red may not be as omniscient, seeing all. So while we’ve been hoping all along for time travel to become a reality, the SQ has been dreading it. Just as we’ve sworn to someday go back and change the past, they’ve sworn not to let that happen. And they’ve had people trained in every generation to stop the mission we’re about to undertake.”
“There are people in the past specifically on the lookout for time travelers?” Sera asked. “That’s crazy!”
“It’s good strategy,” Mari countered. “They’re called Time Wardens. And if they ever even suspect that someone has come back from the future, they’re instructed to kill them without blinking an eye.”
Sera felt a shiver of fear at that. The room fell silent, as if Brint and Mari wanted to give everyone a moment to process the danger they would be in.
Dak broke the ice. “Fine. We’ll leave the scary stuff to the adults. Now are you guys ever going to let us eat this food?”
“By all means,” Mari replied, smiling as she pushed the platter toward Dak. “There’s even some fine cheese hidden in there somewhere.”
Dak and Sera dug in without saying another word. Mari seemed pleased with the outcome they’d agreed on, but Sera could feel anxious energy coming off of Brint. He was clearly ready to put them all to work.
“Let’s walk to the operations center,” he said after everyone else had enjoyed a quick helping of treats. “That is . . . if you’re done eating?”
Dak whipped his hand out and grabbed one last cube of Swiss then stuffed it in his mouth. “Now I am,” he mumbled while chewing.
As they walked down a long, dimly lit hallway, Mari gave them a few more details about what lay ahead. Sera listened eagerly.
“In addition to the trained members of our society that we’ll send back with you,” the woman said, “there’s also a local Hystorian already living in the vicinity of most of the Breaks. We’ve had a steady membership of Hystorians since Aristotle’s time, spread out in branches all over the world. Their locations are hidden, but every single one of us has always been trained to look for people from the future.”
“Why can’t they just fix the Breaks themselves?” Sera asked. “Or prevent them?”
Dak gave her a look that, even in the relative darkness, left no doubt she had said something ridiculous, and she quickly blurted out the answer to her own question before he could. “Oh, duh. Wasn’t thinking. They don’t know what a Break is until after it’s happened.”
“Exactly,” Mari responded. “The Hystorians have always analyzed major events of the world, and, aided in part by the appearance of new Remnants, decided well after the fact if an event is an official Break or not. But they also know that someone may show up one day and tell them of an event that is about to t
ake place. They’re trained to prepare for that possibility. You’re the pilots, mainly. Messengers. Remember that. The adults will be ready to do what needs to be done.”
Dak bristled. “Hey, we’re not moron wimps, ya know. We can help, too.”
“I don’t doubt that at all,” Mari said as they came to a halt in front of a large steel door. She pulled something out of a leather satchel she had slung around her shoulder — a SQuare slate device — and held it up for them to see.
“All of the information you need will be downloaded to this,” she said. “Don’t worry — we’ve completely overwritten the SQ software, and there are so many firewalls built around this thing that it’s more secure than your own brains. It will have all the information your team will need, although, again, it’ll be encoded.”
“It’s all part of a system called The Art of Memory,” Brint added. “Or TAM for short. It was actually devised by Aristotle so that data could be passed down from generation to generation without risking it falling into the hands of our enemies. Trust me when I tell you that it’s gonna drive you bonkers sometimes. But you can do it.”
“I’ll bet I can do it with my eyes closed,” said Dak.
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” said Sera.
Mari slipped the SQuare back into the satchel then gestured at the menacing door. “This is the HOC — Hystorian Operations Center. Are you two ready?”
Sera glanced over at Dak, who was actually smiling. Smiling. Maybe he’d survive his parents’ disappearance after all. They both nodded at each other with knowing looks.
“We’re ready,” Sera said, right before Dak added his own confirmation:
“The Time Nerds are a go.”
MARI ACTIVATED a touch screen to the right of the door and input a long series of numbers and letters, a longer password than Dak had ever seen anyone use before. This Art of Memory thing seemed for real, and he found himself wishing he hadn’t been so boastful about it. Now he had to live up to the expectation.
A hiss sounded, followed by a hollow, grating scratch as the metal bars of the lock pulled back. Then the door popped open and swung outward with a heavy groan.
“In we go,” Mari said, holding an arm out to indicate the two kids should go first.
Dak gripped the cool surface of the Infinity Ring in his hand and stepped through the opening. Applause broke out and he saw at least twenty people standing up to clap from their various stations of computers and radar screens and monitors and other equipment. They all had hopeful smiles, and for the first time Dak felt the pressure of what they were being asked to do.
Save the world. No biggie, right?
Mari and Brint led them around a wide walkway that skirted the outside edge of the massive operations center. The central focal point was a monitor as big as a movie screen, but instead of displaying a single image it was broken up into dozens of views — everything from live video feed to running numbers to Doppler radar maps.
While Brint plugged the SQuare into a computer, Mari stepped up to a podium that overlooked the crew of workers at their stations. “I want everyone to meet our new Hystorians, granted membership without the usual years of proving ground. Urgent times call for urgent doings. This is Dak, and this is Sera.”
Another round of applause met this statement, and Dak suddenly felt like the biggest idiot ever born. He’d just wanted to whip out the Ring and start touring history. Save the world and find his parents while he was at it. But here was an entire room full of people who were devoting their lives to a noble cause, hoping all along that someone would come along and give them the means to stop an unending series of tragedies.
Mari continued her speech. “We have a lot to do over the next couple of days before we send Dak, Sera, and our insertion squad back in time to fix the Breaks. Our current plan is to begin the operation at 0800 hours on Thursday. I know everyone’s eager to begin, but we need two days to fully prep our new associates.”
She went on to say more, but Dak tuned out. He was having a heavy episode of missing his parents, worrying about what could’ve happened to them. Two days was a long time to do nothing. And while he was here, they were out there somewhere — lost, possibly hurt, maybe running afoul of one of the Time Wardens. Finally, he understood a little about Sera’s haunting Remnant. Loss, mixed with a maddening uncertainty.
He noticed Brint was looking at him expectantly.
“Um, oh, sorry,” Dak stuttered. “Did I miss something?”
Brint smiled. “I asked if you were ready to start meeting people.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
And so they started making the rounds, but all the names and faces quickly became a jumble to Dak. Some dude who was in charge of tracking natural disasters and their frequency. Some chick who watched for anomalies in weather patterns. Some other dude who mapped out daily world events and analyzed them for potential Break material. Some other chick who tracked SQ activity overseas. Other dudes and other chicks who did other things.
Dak kept yawning even though he tried not to — which meant he kept doing that weird contorted face trick. Sera shot him dirty looks about every thirty seconds.
One Hystorian they met stood out from the pack. His name was Riq and he was far younger than everyone else, with dark skin and darker eyes. He was a kid compared to the rest of the geezers in the room.
“Riq is an absolute prodigy when it comes to languages,” Brint said when he introduced him. “He learned five languages by the age of five, and he’s set a goal to pick up one a year since then.”
“You guys are supposed to be smart,” the young man said. “I’m sixteen. You’ve got three seconds to guess how many languages I know. Go.”
“Sixteen,” Sera said, her voice laced with annoyance.
“Wow,” Riq responded. “Stunning. No wonder they chose you for this.”
“They didn’t choose us,” Dak said. “We invented a time-travel device and no one else can make it work. Ever done that before? Invent a time-travel device?”
Riq rattled off something in another language. All Dak knew was that it had a lot of clearing of the throat.
“You need to spit somewhere?” Dak asked him. “Or did you swallow part of your oversized brain?”
“If I did, maybe I should spit it out. It’d still be bigger than yours, apparently.”
“Okay,” Brint said as he stepped between them. “Good to see you two hit it off so well. We’ll be coming back to Riq tomorrow for some language-device training.” He mumbled, “That ought to be fun.”
Next they were introduced to Arin, a young woman with thick blond hair. Of all the Hystorians they’d met so far, she seemed the most stressed, clutching a disorderly stack of papers to her chest.
“Arin is in charge of creating a Hystorian’s Guide for each Break,” Brint explained. “She’s been combing through our archives, gathering the information that will be most useful to you in different time periods.”
Arin shook hands with Dak, then Sera. “Archives sounds impressive, but what Brint means is that I’ve spent months rummaging through boxes full of mildewed papyrus and crumpled bamboo scrolls. There was one twentieth-century Hystorian who left behind a numbered collection of soup-can wrappers. I still can’t figure out if it’s an important cipher or if the poor man was simply a very organized hoarder.”
Mari gave Arin a warm smile. “It’s been daunting, but Arin’s done a marvelous job.”
“I thought I’d have more time, that’s all,” Arin said softly, and then she wished them luck and scurried away.
Dak realized too late that he should have thanked her. By the time he thought of it, they’d already made their way around the room, returning to the platform with the podium.
Brint turned to Dak with a satisfied smile on his face. “Now that we’ve done that,
we want to take you to meet the people going with you on your trip. They’re highly trained —”
The sound of an explosion cut off his words. The entire operations center rocked, throwing half of the people to the ground. Dak stumbled into Sera and they crashed into the wall. She wrapped her arms around him to keep both of them from toppling over.
There was a second boom, followed by another jolt to the room. This time Dak and Sera did fall — he landed on top of her and heard her grunt despite the ringing in his ears.
Brint and Mari both stumbled over to Dak and Sera and helped get them to their feet. For the moment the explosions had stopped, but the Hystorians were shouting, running around with panicked expressions on their faces. It was mass confusion.
“What’s going on?” Dak asked. His heart rate had skyrocketed, and he noticed Sera was holding his hand. He pulled away, embarrassed.
Before anyone could answer his question, the huge monitor that dominated the room went black. When it came back online a moment later, a face filled the screen. It was a woman with flaming red hair and lipstick the color of black oil, her face all hard edges. The room hushed as everyone stared at the screen in horror.
After all was completely silent, the fierce-looking woman spoke.
“You really thought you could hide such a thing from the SQ?” she asked, her voice biting with hate. “We’re coming, Brint. We’re coming for your precious Infinity Ring.”
THE LADY IN RED’S announcement was immediately followed by a series of shattering explosions that rattled the operations room and sent ceiling tiles raining from above. Clouds of dust arose where pieces of ceiling hit the floor. Dak cradled the Ring to his chest protectively. That nasty woman had threatened to come take it from him, and no way would he ever let that happen.