He quickly caught himself. Technically, referring to the mess on his shoes as dinosaur poop was incorrect. What he’d meant to call it was pterosaur poop. It was a common mistake to refer to pterosaurs as flying dinosaurs when, in actuality, they were their own separate species.
Dak rubbed his eyes to be sure this wasn’t some twisted version of his space dream. But when he looked up, the pterosaur was still sitting in the tree above him, moving its head around. And his shoes still needed a good washing.
What the heck was going on?
Dak turned to call for Sera again, but just then the pterosaur flapped its massive wings and started flying away from him, through the treetops.
He took off after it.
The chase through the forest led Dak clear across town. Occasionally the pterosaur would get way ahead of him and he would assume he’d lost it, but then a hundred yards down the trail he’d find it sitting there in another tree. And it would always look down at him before flying off again, like they were playing some sort of prehistoric game of hide-and-seek.
Dak tried to imagine the conversation he would have with Sera later. “So, what’d you do all day, Dak?” she’d ask him.
“Oh, not much,” he’d answer. “Just tailed a pterosaur around the forest for a few hours.”
As Dak jogged along the path, he tried to figure out how this was even possible. A real, live prehistoric animal in the forest behind his house. Maybe it was some mutated strain that had lain dormant in a cave for millions of years. Or maybe this was the experiment Sera’s parents had been so hush-hush about. They were brilliant, and they were supposed to be working with Dak’s parents, but ever since his mom had started campaigning, nobody seemed to have any idea what the Frostes were up to. Cloning prehistoric animals seemed as likely as anything else.
Then another thought occurred to Dak.
What if he and Sera hadn’t actually fixed all the Breaks in history? What if they’d failed to tie up one or two minor loose ends and over the course of centuries those minor loose ends had become major loose ends that had resulted in strange anomalies in the ecosystem, like pterosaurs showing up in the modern world? If that were true, then they’d be forced to warp back into history and fix these loose ends, right? There was no way Sera would be able to argue with that.
Dak was so excited, he could hardly breathe — though the breathlessness could’ve also been the result of ninety straight minutes of continual running.
“Wait for me, pterosaur!” he shouted up at the trees.
And then, eyes fixed on the canopy, he collided with a teenage girl.
They both shrieked on impact and went tumbling to the ground, the girl’s books scattering everywhere.
Dak had the wind knocked out of him, but he still managed to glance up at the treetops. His ancient playmate was nowhere to be found.
“What could you possibly be in such a hurry about?” the girl shouted, standing up to brush herself off.
Dak opened his mouth to apologize, but quickly realized he knew this girl. It was the young Hystorian who had programmed the SQuare and helped Dak and Sera prepare for their first mission. “Arin!” he shouted. “What a pleasure! Please tell me you saw that pterosaur flying through the forest!”
“Uh, who are you?” Arin said, looking genuinely confused. “And how do you know my name?”
“It’s me. Dak.” When her face didn’t show any sort of recognition, he added, “You helped me and Sera before we warped back in time. And Riq, too. I know you remember Riq. You guys went through, like, Hystorian training together.”
“What’s a Hystorian?” Arin said, crinkling her nose. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m beginning to think you don’t either.”
Dak started picking up Arin’s books to buy himself a few seconds to think. How could she not know anything about the Hystorians? She’d dedicated her entire life to their cause. But he knew the answer. Once they had fixed all the Breaks, they’d also rendered the Hystorian movement unnecessary. Arin didn’t know about the Hystorians because the Hystorians no longer existed.
Dak’s parents had suggested that he and Sera try to ease back into present-day life. “If you try and dive in too fast,” his dad told him, “it’ll be overwhelming. Believe me.” Hence the hours Dak had been spending in the hammock. But now he understood what his dad meant. The world they’d returned to was different from the one they’d left behind, in both big and small ways.
Case in point, Dak thought as he studied the covers of Arin’s books. They weren’t the Hystorian guides or science textbooks he expected. They were teen novels about . . . vampires. He handed them back to her, saying, “Did you at least see the pterosaur? It flew right over your head.”
Arin studied Dak for a few long seconds. “You’re not seriously asking me if I saw a flying dinosaur, are you?”
“Well, technically,” Dak said, “I asked if you saw a pterosaur. Two totally different prehistoric animals. The one in question existed from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous period —”
“Okay,” Arin interrupted, “you’re officially starting to weird me out.” She crinkled her nose again and glanced down at Dak’s feet. “Is that . . . dog poop?”
Dak looked at his shoes and then back up at Arin. “Actually, it’s —”
“If you say it’s dinosaur poop, I’m calling 911.”
“— pterosaur poop.”
Arin set down her books and reached into her bag for her phone.
“It was there,” Dak pleaded. “I swear.”
“Oh, it all makes sense now,” Arin said, typing her pass code into her phone. “Those two farmers who reported seeing UFOs a few days ago . . . what they’d actually seen were flying dinosaurs.”
“Again, technically —”
“Look,” Arin interrupted again. “You seem like a nice enough kid. So I’m not going to call the cops, okay?”
Dak nodded, realizing he wasn’t going to convince this version of Arin of anything.
“It’s healthy to have a creative imagination,” she went on, “but it’s probably best if you keep that stuff between you and your little friends, okay? Try finger painting or scrapbooking.”
He looked up at the treetops again. “But . . .”
“Bye, Dan.”
“Dak,” he corrected her, but she’d already spun around with her books and started back down the trail.
Dak watched her go, knowing it was a lost cause. She didn’t know him at all because in this version of the present, they’d never met. And they’d never met because the Hystorians no longer existed.
What did exist, however, was the pterosaur he’d seen flying through the forest. He rubbed his eyes again and looked down at his own palms.
He wasn’t dreaming this time.
He was sure of it.
In order to prove it, though, even to himself, he needed to track that animal down.
4
Bad Science
“FINGERS CROSSED,” Sera said to the dog as she added a beaker full of isolated electrons to her latest batch of what she hoped would turn out to be tachyon fluid. She stirred the mix, watching closely through her safety goggles for the slight rise of smoke she knew would signify she was on the right track.
If she had done everything right this time, it would only be a few minutes now.
As Sera stirred, she realized why she’d been so annoyed with Dak. On her way to the barn this morning, she had decided to tell him about the sketch she’d found in her mom’s desk drawer a week ago. It looked suspiciously similar to the Infinity Ring . . . or the SQ’s Eternity Ring. Underneath the sketch was the beginnings of a formula Sera immediately connected to time travel.
Sera had slammed the drawer closed that day and hurried into her own room and shut the door. What could her parents possibly want with a time-tra
vel device? She had a feeling it wasn’t anything good.
After that, Sera began snooping in earnest. She found a large stash of hydrochloric acid in the bathroom medicine cabinet. That was unusual. Acid had a lot of legitimate uses, but it could be harmful if used the wrong way. That was also true of science in general, Sera thought to herself. And her parents were spending a lot of time locked in their lab.
And when they emerged, they were acting downright strange. One night they invited Dak over, and the four of them sat around the table, talking about recent science and history articles and listening to classical music. Everything seemed perfectly normal until her dad had insisted on having an impromptu spitting contest. Even Dak had thought that was weird. He’d run for the hills after the first round.
When Sera returned to her mom’s desk drawer the following morning, the sketch and formula were gone.
And so were her parents.
Sera had decided on the walk over to Dak’s that a week was long enough. She couldn’t keep all this to herself any longer. What good was having a best friend if you couldn’t tell him what was bothering you? And her parents’ disappearance was definitely bothering Sera. They had worked for Tilda at some point, one of the SQ’s most devilish leaders, but they’d never explained why. Or if they’d really had a change of heart. Now Sera couldn’t help but assume the worst, that maybe her parents had warped back in time to try to reconnect with the very people she had dedicated her life to fighting.
Too bad Dak turned out to be more concerned with joyriding through history than listening to his best friend.
The dog started whimpering a little, staring out the window of the barn, and Sera reached down to pet her. “At least you’ll listen to me, right, Lucy? Chloe? Lola?”
Sera remembered that first weekend she was back in the present with her parents. Everything had been so good. They’d started that company with Dak’s parents, Solving Quantum Physics. They made the house into a home. They’d even promised to get Sera a puppy. Her parents never came through on that, Sera mused, but she still ended up with a dog. So what if she had a flea or two?
Sera turned back to her latest concoction, but she already knew it was a failure. There definitely would have been signs of smoke by now. And this thick, goopy consistency was all wrong.
She stared at it, baffled.
Normally, she could figure out any science-related conundrum. All it took was a little experimentation, a little tinkering with ingredients. But this tachyon fluid was giving her fits. Maybe she’d lost her confidence. Maybe all that warping through time had done something to her brain.
Then she had another thought. On a whim, she tested the mixture for signs of hydrochloric acid. The results were positive. And a chill settled over Sera as she realized there was only one explanation: sabotage.
Someone had tampered with her equipment.
She threw the entire petri dish into a hazard bag, sealed it up tightly, and took it outside to the trash receptacle. She tossed it on top of at least a dozen other failed attempts and sighed. She almost wished she hadn’t figured it out.
When the dog started whimpering again, she knelt down and said, “What is it, girl? Are you frustrated I still haven’t guessed your actual name?” The dog barked and Sera realized she wasn’t staring up at the sky this time; she was staring at the window. Sera followed the dog’s line of vision. What she saw made her gasp.
Hovering just outside the barn’s window was a small floating disk. It looked like a miniature UFO built out of pure gold.
“What the . . . ?” Sera stared at it in wonder. When she moved toward it, though, to get a better look, the disk spun around quickly and zipped away.
Sera and the dog both hurried around the other side of the barn and searched all the treetops, but it was gone.
She knew what it was. It was a spy drone.
She’d seen something similar at a tech show she’d attended with Dak a few weeks before their first mission. The man presenting the drone said it was only a model of what a future tracking device might look like. He estimated that it would be another decade before they were ready for actual production.
So what the heck was one doing hovering over Dak’s parents’ barn, spying on her?
5
Apology Cheese
Dak didn’t waste the next morning lying around in his hammock. He rose early and went straight into the forest to look for his pterosaur. He brought with him a backpack with a half dozen skyrockets. The plan was to fire them off in the middle of the forest in hopes that the pterosaur would be drawn to the loud, crackling sound and bright lights.
Unless he was losing his mind, that is.
Dak had to admit, there was a little bit of doubt knocking around in the back of his head. Was he positive what he’d seen was an actual pterosaur? It’s not like he’d gotten close enough to touch its skin or look into its eyes. What if it was only a robotic replica some tech wizard had created in order to scare kids walking through the forest?
But that wouldn’t explain the poop.
The only other explanation Dak could think of was human error. His human error. What if all that warping around had altered his brain chemistry to the point that he was no longer able to differentiate between dream and reality? He recalled the look on Arin’s face when he’d mentioned the pterosaur. She thought he was crazy. Then again, she also thought he was crazy for mentioning the Hystorians.
After hiking around the forest for several hours, with no sign of the pterosaur, Dak lit his fourth skyrocket. He watched it arc above the trees, into the sky, where it exploded into a glittery mass of colors. Dak had always loved fireworks, but this was different. This was a “pterosaur call.”
He stood there for a good ten, fifteen minutes.
Waiting.
But his prehistoric pal never showed up.
Dak stepped off the trail to rest on a fallen tree trunk. He’d never felt so alone. Arin had no clue who he was, Riq was exiled in ancient history, his parents spent all their time campaigning, and now, he was fighting with Sera.
Just then, as if he’d summoned her somehow, Sera emerged from the bushes. She had leaves in her hair, and she was wearing a backpack he’d never seen before. “There you are,” she said, slightly out of breath.
“Uh, what are you doing in the middle of the forest?” he asked, making room for her on the tree trunk. He heard the same buzzing sound he’d heard the day before, near the barn, but this time it seemed to be coming from Sera herself.
That’s weird, he thought. He definitely needed to get his head checked.
“I was looking for you,” she said, plopping down next to him. “I followed the fireworks.”
Dak watched Sera reach into her backpack and pull out a brown paper bag. She held it out to him, saying, “Snack?”
He unfolded the bag and looked inside. It held a beautiful hunk of his current favorite cheese: aged Gouda. He looked up at Sera skeptically. “What’s this for?”
“What, I can’t bring my best friend a tasty treat?” she asked.
“Of course you can,” Dak told her. “In fact, I encourage it. But . . .”
“What?”
“It just seems a little out of the blue,” Dak said. “Considering you almost bit my head off yesterday.”
“Oh, right,” Sera said, her eyes dropping. “That’s actually the reason I was looking for you. Listen, I overreacted, Dak. I’m sorry.”
“You are?” Dak was more confused by Sera’s apology than his imaginary pterosaur sighting. In all the years he’d known her, she’d told him she was sorry exactly twice.
“Not only that,” Sera went on. “I’ve been hiding something from you, Dak. Something really important.”
That clinched it. There was definitely something strange going on with Sera. But he had a feeling he knew what it was. “Look, Sera,” he said, �
�if something’s going on with your parents, you can talk to me anytime. Seriously, my door’s always open. You know that, right?”
“What?” Sera said. A grin slowly came over her face, and she let out a laugh. “No, Dak. My parents are perfectly fine. Overworked, maybe, but all that matters to me is that we’re together.”
Dak stared at Sera like she had two heads. “Uh, okay,” he said. “Then what’s going on?”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I was one hundred percent sure it was going to work.” Sera looked over her shoulder and scooted closer. “I put the SQuare back together, Dak.”
“You did?” Dak said. “I thought you said it was destroyed beyond repair.”
“Yeah, well, I thought so.” Sera looked a little less certain now. “But I’m that good. Anyway, you’re not gonna believe what it said.”
“What?” Dak’s heart started beating faster.
Sera cleared her throat. “We missed one. We missed a Break. And it’s the most important Break of all.”
Dak’s eyes grew wide with excitement. “No way!” he shouted, leaping off the tree trunk. Butterflies flapped around in his stomach. Finally, some real action. “Where? When?”
“Ninth-century China,” Sera said, standing up. “Something went very wrong during that time period, and we have to go fix it.”
Dak wrapped Sera in a bear hug, lifted her in the air, and twirled her around, shouting, “Yes! Yes! I knew there was more for us to do!”
“Dak, please, let me down.”
“My bad,” he said, dropping her on her feet. He watched Sera pull the beautiful Infinity Ring out of her backpack. “Why’s it gold now?” he asked her.
“It’s new and improved,” she told him. “I thought it was time for an upgrade. Now all that’s left to do is program the coordinates.”
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