Eternity

by Matt De La Peña

  Riq shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure about that part yet. Or what Tilda’s plan is. I just know it’s up to us to stop her.”

  “Us?” Dak asked uncertainly. He looked at Sera and then looked at Riq again. A few hours ago, he’d decided there was no more “us.” It surprised him how badly he wanted to believe Riq’s outrageous explanation.

  Dak watched Riq glance at the other prisoners, who had made off with the basket he’d brought in. The only one who wasn’t huddled around it, wolfing down food, was the old man. Dak was still starving, but he wasn’t exactly in the mood to argue over a few olives right now. He had a feeling Riq was about to drop another bomb on him and Sera.

  “Yes, the three of us fixed all the original Breaks,” Riq started. “And in doing so, we saved the planet from the Cataclysm. But Tilda’s up to something else now. She’s gone missing just as a new group of thugs has begun twisting events throughout time. I don’t know what she’s setting up exactly, but I do know she’s been using you to help her cause. And from what I’ve gathered, she’s just a few moves away from enacting the final stages of her plan.”

  “How do you know all this?” Dak asked.

  “Never mind,” Riq said. “There’ll be time to discuss that later.”

  “I don’t understand why they’d need us for any of this,” Sera said. “Wouldn’t Tilda want to keep as far away from us as possible?”

  “I don’t fully understand it,” Riq said. “But for some reason, all the traditional time-traveling devices have stopped working for the clones. Don’t ask me why. The Ring was always keyed to your DNA, but clones should have the same DNA as you. Exactly the same. Anyway, in order for the AB to make their final few stops, they needed to trick you two into helping them. Which . . . didn’t prove to be the most difficult task.”

  Dak walked toward the cell door, which was closed again, and locked. This was all too much to handle. How did Riq know all this? And was there really a Dak clone out there somewhere? And what were they supposed to do to stop Tilda when they no longer had a SQuare or Hystorians to help them? He spun around to Riq and said, “I’ve heard some crazy things in my life, but this . . . I mean, the idea of time travel alone is nuts if you actually stop and think about it.”

  “Not really,” Sera said. “It’s all just science. It only seems impossible until someone figures it out.”

  Dak threw his hand up in the air. “The point is, I’m having a real hard time wrapping my head around the idea of me and Sera having a clone.”

  Riq started laughing quietly.

  “What now?” Dak said.

  “Oh, you have more than just one clone,” Riq said.

  Sera wiped her hands down her face and said, “Why do I have the feeling I’m not gonna like what you’re about to say?”

  “Because you’re not,” Riq said. “There’s an entire clone factory of you guys on a small private island off the coast of twentieth-century Greece.”

  Dak almost choked on his last grape. He coughed and spit it out and stared at Riq. “Wait, what?”

  “I’ll prove it,” Riq said.

  Sera smacked her own forehead and said, “Let’s take a step back here for a second. We destroyed Tilda’s Eternity Ring. How is she leading anything?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Riq said. “But let me ask you guys something. Did you happen to notice anything a little out of the ordinary in the present? Before you went on your separate warps?”

  Dak’s eyes grew wide. “Dude, I saw a pterosaur in the forest,” he said. “Or at least I thought I did. But then I just figured it was my mind playing tricks on me.”

  Riq grinned. “No, that was probably real.”

  “I saw this strange disk hovering in the air near the barn,” Sera said. “Like it was — wait a second, are you telling me that was Tilda’s people spying on me?”

  “The fake you had one of those, too,” Dak blurted out. “She called it her pet, ABe.”

  Riq took the leather satchel off his shoulder. He pulled it open and passed Dak and Sera each a gold Infinity Ring as well as a new translation device. “Here are your Rings back. Put the earpieces in now. You’re gonna need to hear and see this for yourselves. Then we’ll come up with a plan.”

  Dak followed Riq and Sera out of the prison cell, feeling his pulse quicken. In China, and then Massachusetts, he had felt so worthless. He was just standing on the sidelines while Sera — or who he thought was Sera — did all the work. But now he felt like he was needed again. And even though he didn’t exactly understand what they were trying to stop, he knew it was something big, something important, and it made him feel like he mattered again.

  He stood aside as Riq locked the door behind them, the other prisoners protesting in their ancient language. After a few seconds, his translation device kicked into gear, and he could actually understand what they were saying. Most of them were demanding that Riq let them out. But the old man was saying something completely different. “You have to listen to what I’m saying!” he pleaded. “The heavens! She claims she’s going to take over the heavens!”

  As Dak followed Sera and Riq down the long hall, he tried to wrap his head around the old man’s message and everything else he’d just heard. The heavens. Clones. The AB Pacifists. New Infinity Ring technology. And then he recalled something that seemed like it could be related. Sera’s dad had made them play that strange spitting game in the middle of dinner. What if he’d taken their spit back to Tilda? And what if that spit somehow factored into the production of these clones?

  Dak watched Sera as they continued walking. He was no longer mad at her. In fact, he now felt sorry for her. Because it was possible that her parents were at the front lines of Tilda’s new regime.

  All the poor girl wanted was her family back. And look where that got her.

  It didn’t seem fair.

  The three of them popped out into a courtyard, and Riq looked all around, making sure they were alone.

  “What exactly do you know about these AB Pacifists?” Sera asked. “Are my parents . . . ?”

  Dak was surprised that Sera had been thinking about the exact same thing.

  “I’ll explain everything I know,” Riq said, “once we get to Santorini.”

  Dak frowned. “Santorini?”

  “The Greek island we’re about to visit.” Riq scanned their surroundings again.

  Dak and Sera both pulled out their gold Infinity Rings, but Riq waved them off, saying, “I got this one, guys.”

  “Since when do you have a Ring?” Dak asked.

  “Technically, I don’t,” Riq said. “Now, grab on to my arms and hold on tight.”

  “Wait,” Sera said. “What about my dog?”

  “Don’t worry,” Riq said. “I gave her the run of my entire sleeping quarters. One of my guards is looking after her. Now, grab on.”

  Dak felt a little strange reaching out for Riq’s arm, but he did it anyway. His chest flooded with excitement. He looked to Sera and nodded. And it made him happier than he expected when she nodded in return.

  He had his best friend back.

  Riq closed his eyes and tilted his head up toward the sky, and all of a sudden his entire body started shaking and his eyes vibrated behind his eyelids, like he was having some kind of seizure. Before Dak could even react, though, everything began spinning around them and he felt a familiar weightlessness come over his entire body. As they slipped into the darkness of their strange warp, Dak tried to imagine what he might find on the other side, but his thoughts were soon lost as he was sucked up into the void.

  19

  Before the War

  SERA HAD never warped so many times in such a short amount of time, and it was starting to wreak havoc on her body. She had a dull headache now that followed her everywhere. And the tips of all her fingers and toes tingled. And this time, when she came to, i
n the middle of what looked like some kind of high school campus, there was a loud ringing in her ears.

  She stood up and looked at Dak and Riq, who were both staring back at her, holding fingers in their ears.

  So it wasn’t just her.

  The ringing sound stopped just as suddenly as it had begun.

  “I take it that was some sort of school bell,” Dak said.

  Riq rubbed his temples, saying, “Of course it was a school bell. I warped us back to the AB Academy in 1955, on the island of —”

  Before he could finish, the doors of the large building behind them swung open and a stream of students began rushing out, funneling around Sera, Dak, and Riq.

  Sera’s eyes grew wide as she focused in on their faces. “What the heck?” she managed to mumble under her breath.

  Half of them looked exactly like her.

  The other half, like Dak.

  And all of them were wearing shiny gold bracelets.

  As Sera stared at the endless stream of faces, her stomach felt like it was floating up into her throat, like it did when she went on roller coasters.

  “Told you,” Riq said.

  The students were all hurrying past them, toward what looked to be some sort of cafeteria across the perfectly manicured lawn. They barely paid any attention to Sera, Dak, and Riq because they fit right in. At least Sera and Dak did. And Riq was with them. It was the first warp Sera had ever been on in which she wasn’t the least bit worried about blending in.

  She was these people.

  She turned to Dak, whose mouth was hanging open like an old sock. It was the first time in ages she’d seen him speechless.

  “They’re all over the island,” Riq said, waving his hand around. “There are literally hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”

  It was weird enough for Sera to be looking at clones of herself at her current age, but there were Seras of different ages, too. Kindergarten versions and third-grade versions and even high school versions. What freaked her out most of all were the adult versions who walked by, more leisurely. One of them, who looked like she was about fifty, even smiled at Sera and gave a little wink. It was like looking in a twisted fun-house mirror.

  “Uh, you were right, Riq,” Sera said. “I’m not sure I was ready for this.”

  Dak spun all the way around, looking at all of the students. “Well, at least now I know I age well,” he said.

  “Are you kidding me, Dak?” Sera barked. “We’re standing here in a never-ending stream of our own clones and that’s what you’re focused on?”

  “What?” Dak whined. “Look at this twenty-something me right here.” He pointed toward an older Dak clone walking past them, arm in arm with an older version of Sera, eating string cheese. “Let’s be honest. I turn out to be a handsome, handsome man. Check out that physique, Sera. I’m ripped.”

  All Sera could do was shake her head. “Please understand, Dak. The only reason the older me is walking so close to the older you is because there’s not a whole lot else to choose from.”

  “Whatever you say,” Dak told her. “Come here, let’s hook our arms together and see if it’s a good fit.”

  “Gross,” Sera said. “I’d rather make out with my dog.”

  “Let’s focus,” Riq said. “Do you guys have any idea what all these clones are doing here?”

  “Making the population a little smarter?” Dak said. “And easier on the eyes?”

  Riq shot Dak a dirty look. “The AB Pacifists are sending the clones all over history to carry out their plan. At least they were, before their bootleg time-travel devices stopped working.”

  “What’s the plan, though?” Sera asked.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out.” Riq gazed up the small staircase, toward the open doors. “Follow me,” he said. “We need to see what’s happening here.”

  Sera and Dak trailed Riq through the quiet halls of the school, peeking into empty classrooms as they walked.

  “You’ve been here before?” Dak asked.

  “Just last night,” Riq said in a low voice. “I found a phony Dak wandering around seventeenth-century Rome, furious at being stranded.” He gave Sera a rare smile. “Nice job ditching him, by the way. Anyway, he pretended to be the genuine article and asked me to bring him to this island on this date. I left him behind but decided to check out where his directions led. That’s when I realized you two had been duped.”

  “In more ways than one,” Dak said.

  Riq gave him a blank look.

  “I mean duped like tricked and duped like duplicated,” Dak explained.

  “Yeah,” Riq said. “I got it. Language guy, remember?”

  Sera grinned. She’d really missed how Riq handled Dak. “What else did you learn?” she asked.

  “Not much,” Riq said. “I got close enough to hear about the bogus Rings not working without you two, and that you’d both given them the slip. Then I got spotted and had to book it. In case you didn’t notice, I don’t really blend in here. I’m hoping having you with me will buy me some time. If anyone asks, I’ll say I’m your uncle.”

  Dak shook his head. “Not sure that’s gonna fly.”

  “So you don’t know what they’re being taught here?” Sera asked. “Are they learning how to be . . . us?”

  “Dude, you can’t learn to be me,” Dak said. “You have to be born this way.”

  “They were born that way,” Riq said. “They’re identical to you in terms of IQ, height, weight, vision, hearing. . . .”

  “But they’re total jerks!” Dak countered.

  Riq shrugged. “Maybe the SQ isn’t training them to think like you. Maybe they’re training the yous to think like them.”

  Right after Riq said this, a whistle wailed through the long hall. Sera spun around and saw a large older man in a gold-trimmed security uniform march toward them, spastically blowing his whistle.

  “Come on!” Riq shouted, pulling Sera and Dak the other way. The three of them took off running. They rounded the near corner and sprinted a long stretch of hall and then ducked around a second corner.

  “In here,” Dak hissed, pointing toward a classroom door that was slightly ajar.

  Sera followed the two boys into the classroom, where they found two Daks, approximately the same age as Dak was now, hovering over a model of Dak’s actual house and barn back home.

  The real Dak’s eyes grew wide as he stared at the barn and then looked up at his clones. “Uh . . . hey,” he said.

  One of them stepped away from the model and gave Dak and Sera a head nod. “Mason hassling you guys about getting to class?”

  “Yeah,” Sera said, hoping she wouldn’t give them away. “He’s always . . . hassling people, isn’t he?”

  “Tell me about it,” the other clone said, shaking his head. “We’re stuck in this place, like, eight hours a day. Why can’t we take a little time for ourselves here and there?”

  Mason’s whistle sounded closer.

  “Cube of cheddar?” the other clone said, pulling a napkin out of his pocket.

  The real Dak glanced at Sera and Riq before reaching his hand out. “Don’t mind if I do, my good man.” He popped a couple of cubes in his mouth and grinned while he chewed. “You guys are all right,” he said with his mouth half full.

  “So, what’s up with this guy?” the first clone said, pointing at Riq. “He cool?”

  “He’s cool,” Sera said.

  “I’m cool,” Riq agreed.

  Mason was right outside the door now, shouting into his walkie-talkie, “I’ve got a possible code silver here. I repeat: code silver. Two sixth-grade versions on the run. No visible wristbands. Accompanied by an older boy who’s not a student. Last seen heading west down Smyth Hall. Requesting backup.”

  The first clone opened a closet and said, “Get in! You do
n’t want him to send you home.”

  Sera, Dak, and Riq squeezed into the closet, and the clone slid it closed. Sera stood beside Riq, trying not to make a sound, and listening. She heard the door open and Mason ask the clones if they’d seen anything out of the ordinary. They assured the man they hadn’t, and Sera heard Mason leave and start blowing his whistle in the hall again.

  “Thanks,” Riq said to the clones as he stepped out of the closet. “Well, we should be going. I’ve gotta go tutor these two.” He pulled Dak and Sera with him toward the door.

  “Dude,” one of the clones said to the other. “Doesn’t he look like that language guy they taught us about last semester?”

  “Oh yeah,” the other one said. “The dope who used his genius to advance the Hystorian agenda and mess up this timeline.”

  “Dude,” the real Dak said, “this is totally a clone of that dope.”

  Sera elbowed Dak in the ribs.

  The two clones looked at each other. “A clone? Cool,” one of them said.

  “Yeah, sweet,” the other one added. “Mad science.”

  Riq opened the door, and Sera and Dak followed him back out into the hall, where they looked both ways, but Mason was nowhere to be found. “Dude, this is getting a little creepy,” Dak said.

  “A little?” Sera said.

  Dak shook his head. “Maybe wasting the day away in a hammock isn’t such a bad idea after all. They should teach that here.”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Riq barked, and the three of them hurried back the other way.

  “You’re not a dope, by the way,” Sera said as they continually passed empty classrooms.

  “I’ve been called worse,” Riq said. “I assumed part of the instruction here would be anti-Hystorian, and that confirmed it. They’re being brainwashed.”

  In a few minutes, they came across a large lecture hall. They peeked through the window and saw that every seat was filled with Seras and Daks who looked to be a year or two older than Sera and Dak were now. Sera stared at another Sera through the window. She was taking notes in a notebook that looked exactly like the kind she used back in school.