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.”
15. A Hastening of Plans
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.
“Come on,” Brint said tightly, throwing a worried glance at Mari. “We don’t have any time to mess around.”
He grabbed Dak by the arm and escorted him roughly up the aisle that rounded the room. Mari and Sera were right behind them — Dak noticed that Mari had retrieved the SQuare, and was hurriedly placing it back into her satchel. Brint came to a panel in the wall and pushed. The whole thing pivoted open. The four of them slipped through into a hidden room that was only about eight feet across and completely empty. Dak turned to see Riq follow them inside, then Brint shut the panel.
“Language is going to be your biggest barrier,” Mari said. “We need to get that taken care of before we can send you off. We just have to hope our defenses hold until we can get you to the insertion team.”
Dak tried not to show how terrified he was. “What’s going on anyway? Who was that woman?”
“We call her the Lady in Red,” Brint answered. “Her name is Tilda. You’ll never meet a viler, more hateful woman. I don’t think she cares one whit about anything except amassing power and moving up the ranks. She won’t be happy until she’s the leader of the SQ. And she’s convinced that wiping out the Hystorians is the best way to make that happen.”
“Riq, quickly,” Mari ordered. “Tell them about the devices.”
The teenager seemed to have lost some of his arrogance from before. Nothing like an invasion from an evil red-haired lady to shake you up a bit, Dak mused.
Riq pulled out several small objects from a plastic cylinder he’d had in his shirt pocket. He held up a couple of them — one looked like a headphone bud, and the other a tooth.
“What the heck are those?” Dak asked.
“While your parents spent their whole lives playing around with time travel,” the young man answered, “mine worked on language-translation equipment. And this is so beyond what the rest of the world knows, you won’t even believe it works.”
He stepped forward and leaned toward Dak, holding out the earpiece. Dak instinctively took a step backward.
“Hey, quit being a baby,” Riq said. “Come here!”
Dak had to push down his rising anger. “Fine.”
He let Riq reach up and put the tiny device in his ear, shoving it down until it almost hurt. Then he put a second one in Dak’s other ear.
“All right, this is the part you won’t like,” Riq said.
Another explosion rocked the building, sending all of them teetering for a few seconds as the room shook. When the place stilled again, Dak glared at Riq warily.
“Don’t worry,” the teenager said. “It’ll only hurt for a few seconds.”
Dak was determined not to show any more fear. “Okay, what do I do?”
“Open your mouth. Open wide.”
Dak shot a questioning glance at Sera, who looked on impatiently, then did as he was told. Riq leaned forward and stuck his fingers in Dak’s mouth. Dak gagged — it was maybe the least pleasant part of a very unpleasant day. There was an uncomfortable click that he couldn’t tell if he’d heard or felt. Then a burst of pain shot through his body, and he jumped back from Riq — who was actually smiling.
But the pain went away quickly, just as had been promised.
“So what is —”
Riq cut him off. “No time to explain. You’ll find out soon enough, when you’re able to talk to people in different languages. It’ll take some time to get used to, but you’ll be fine after some practice.”
Riq did the same thing to Sera, who stood still and didn’t complain a lick. When Riq was finished, he stepped back and nodded to Mari.
A thunderous boom sounded, and this time Dak and the others fell to the floor. They scrambled to their feet as muffled shouts rang out from the other side of the secret panel.
“The SQ is in the HOC!” Mari yelled.
“We can’t waste another second!” Brint shouted at Dak and Sera. “Get the Ring ready! You have to go now — hurry, before they storm in here and take it!”
Mari seized Brint by the arm. “Brint, we have to wait for the insertion team. They’re just kids!”
“There’s no time. For all we know, our team is dead.”
Dak swallowed, the reality of it all hitting him hard and heavy now. “Where do we go?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brint answered. “Just away from here. I’ll come with you.”
Mari clearly didn’t like it. “Riq can go, too. You’ll need all the help you can get.”
“Now hold on —” Riq said.
“But —” Dak began.
“No more buts! We do not have a choice!”
The woman pulled the satchel off of her shoulder and handed it to Sera. “Guard that with your life. You can’t do anything if you lose the SQuare! If for some reason you do, you’ll have to travel back here and get a new one. But that might get messy — there’s no telling what you’d be coming back to.”
Dak nodded, then moved to stand close to Sera. Riq joined them, looking utterly put out. There were sounds of gunfire now in the other room. Gunfire, and screams.
“You know how to do it, right?” Dak asked Sera, his voice tinged with hysteria.
She simply nodded. He felt a pang of loss again when he handed over the Infinity Ring, as if he were throwing away his parents in some way.
Sera immediately set to work on the programming function of the Ring. Her face was a mask of concentration.
More shots rang out on the other side of the wall. A woman screamed, a sound of pain and terror. Dak felt utterly useless, knowing that if he tried to help Sera he’d only get in the way, slow her down. So he braced himself and waited for the next terrible thing to happen.
It only took about ten seconds.
The secret panel tore from its hinges and flew through the air, windmilling until it smacked into Brint. He cried out and crumpled to the ground as Mari dove for cover. Dak looked back at the now-open passage to the HOC. Two men in soldier’s gear stood there with guns raised, a red beam blazing out from each of their scopes.
“Get on the ground!” one of them yelled. “Now!”
Dak dropped, bringing his arms up to cover his head — like that’d do any good if one of these thugs decided to shoot a bullet in his direction. Sera cowered in the corner, working on the Infinity Ring nestled in her lap, hidden from plain view. Riq crouched right next to her.
“How dare you come onto our property like this!” Mari shouted. “We’ll report this to every media —”
She wasn’t able to finish before one of the men struck her with the butt of his weapon. She cried out and fell next to Brint, who lay still where he’d dropped.
A rage roared inside Dak — a fury that he never knew was possible all those years he’d spent reading in his room. That already seemed a lifetime ago. He charged the soldier who’d hurt Mari. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he dove and tackled the man, knocking him off balance. The second man was on Dak in an instant, dragging him by the hair across the floor while he kicked out with his feet and wailed from the pain.
The man dumped him into a heap. “One more move or remark that I don’t like, and someone gets shot. Do you understand me? Now where’s the Ring?” Dak saw in horror that the soldier had finally noticed that Sera was not just sitting there, but busy working on something. “Hey! What’re you doing?”