“She’s the only thing we care about,” Mrs. Froste countered. “How do you think Tilda got to us in the first place? She threatened Sera. She said she could get to her any time. Even find her as a baby in her crib.”
Riq’s anger faltered.
“We’ve done the best we could,” Mr. Froste said, “with a bad situation. When Tilda forced us to reproduce the Infinity Ring, we made sure the DNA lock remained in place. When she worked around that by pulling alternate versions of the kids from branches of the time stream, we sabotaged her by making it so that the Rings could tell the difference between the real Sera, the real Dak, and the alternates.”
“Think of it as temporal DNA,” Mrs. Froste said. “Those duplicates have the same genes as the kids, but their chronal signatures are totally different.”
“If you say so,” Riq said. It was a lot to swallow.
“But that’s not the best part,” she added. “Riq, you’re our secret weapon.”
“Me?” he said.
“Let me ask you a question,” Sera’s mom said. “Don’t you think it’s odd that you’re able to warp around through time without an Infinity Ring?”
“It’s because I splashed tachyon fluid all over myself,” Riq said.
Sera’s dad shook his head. “That alone wouldn’t get you anywhere. That’s the fuel, but it’s useless without an engine. But we knew we could trust you to undermine Tilda and keep her busy while we made our move.”
“So we found you in Greece when you were asleep one night,” his wife said. She pointed at Riq’s shoulder. “And we planted a microchip in your arm that would allow you to warp anywhere at any time.”
“Including the twenty-first century,” Mr. Froste said. “You can go home again, Riq.”
Riq remembered the inexplicable scar on his right shoulder. He realized he’d just visited the future, messed up though it was, and hadn’t suffered any ill effects. Maybe they were telling the truth. He watched as the dog sniffed around a fence a few yards away. “And you abducted Sera’s dog because . . . ?”
“We’re the ones who left the dog for her in the first place,” the woman explained, pulling a small silver device from her pocket. “Watch this. Here, girl!” She pressed a button on the device and the dog vanished, reappearing a moment later at Mrs. Froste’s feet.
“Quantum leash,” she said. “For the Soviet space program to continue as it’s meant to, this dog has to go up in that ship. But there’s no reason she has to die up there.”
“You were right about one thing, Riq” Sera’s dad said. “We weren’t there for our daughter. And we owe you more than we can say for standing by her through all of this.”
“But if we beat Tilda once and for all, we can finally be the parents she deserves,” Mrs. Froste said. “What do you say?”
Riq only hesitated for a moment. Then he broke out into a smile. “I say let’s do this. For Sera. And everybody else.”
Dak stopped to watch the men meditating in the Buddhist temple in ancient China. He wondered if they’d ever defeat Tilda once and for all. Because this seemed like a better, more peaceful way to live. Imagine if everyone had inner peace. Not just the people who entered temples like this. He then walked through the entrance of the dark and dingy warehouse for a second time.
A flood of images jockeyed for position in his brain as he moved through the long hallway. The alchemist. The boy with the birthmark. The bad piece of Gouda. When he approached the door to the alchemist’s workshop, he saw the boy standing there with a less-informed version of himself. Now it seemed idiotic to him that he hadn’t known he was trying to track down a fake Sera. But at the time he’d genuinely thought it was his best friend.
He looked over the shoulder of the boy and the naïve Dak and saw, once again, the alchemist add a chemical to a small bowl made of stone, which resulted in a minor explosion that made the old man and fake Sera leap back from the workbench. The man spoke excitedly, and this time, Dak could understand him.
This man had just discovered the chemical composition of gunpowder, which would change the world forever. Except the fake Sera wanted the AB Pacifists to have that technology first. Dak wouldn’t let that happen.
He reached out and tapped his younger self on the shoulder, ready to make his move. But it turned out he didn’t have to do much. He watched in shock as the other version of himself disintegrated into thin air. Dak stood there, eyes bugging out of his head, until he noticed the boy bringing the piece of Gouda up to his mouth. That’s when Dak sprang into action.
He reached for the kid and knocked the cheese out of his hand, saying, “Don’t eat that; it’s poisoned.” The boy gave him a strange look but after a few seconds he nodded, and Dak knew the translation device was doing its job.
When Dak turned his attention back to the workshop, he saw Sera pulling out her syringe and aiming it at her victim’s neck. Dak ran toward them and dove through the air, tackling Sera’s duplicate just before the needle penetrated the old man’s flesh. The syringe crashed to the ground and rolled to the wall, useless.
Dak and Sera tumbled to the ground together, and Dak rolled on top of her and pinned her arms. Sera looked up at him and shouted, “What are you doing, Dak?”
“Making things right,” he told her.
He motioned to the boy. “Bring me the rope from the shelf by your feet. Hurry.”
The boy came with the rope, and together they tied up the fake Sera’s arms and legs, and Dak stood up.
“You’ll never get away with this,” she told him. Although she was tied up so thoroughly that she couldn’t even move her hands and feet, a smile came over her face. “There are thousands more just like me. And we will win. And when we win, you will pay.”
“We’ll see about that,” Dak said. Then he turned his attention back to the boy. “Get this man to safety. I will take care of the girl.”
He watched the boy take the alchemist by the arm and start leading him away. He looked at Sera, whose eyes were furious. With her detained in China, Robert Goddard would be safe in Massachusetts.
That meant they had only one task left. But it was a big one.
23
Prelaunch
“WELL, THIS is a new one,” Sera said. She and Dak were standing outside the towering barbwire fence that protected the AB Pacifists’ launch site.
“What do you mean?” Dak said.
Sera motioned toward her gear from seventeenth-century Rome. “Usually, we’re trying to find clothes that make us look like everyone else,” she said. “This time, Riq’s out there trying to find us clothes that’ll make us look like . . . us.”
Dak glanced down at his robe from ancient China. “I just hope he hurries. It looks like these Pacifist dudes are close to getting started.”
The first part of their plan had worked perfectly. The three of them had fixed their respective Breaks — separately — and then successfully warped to Santorini, on July 16, 1969. Now for the most important part: stopping the Pacifists from getting to the moon.
Through the fence, Sera watched several dozen Dak and Sera dupes milling around, doing checks on their spacecraft, and observing the weather and transporting supplies into the cockpit and fueling the engine. Sera knew what was at stake. They all did. Even with the other Breaks fixed, if they let this vessel get into orbit, Tilda would colonize the moon with her Pacifists, and once their settlement was up and running, they would turn their attention toward the Earth.
“I still can’t believe we doubted each other,” Dak said, looking at Sera. “Never again, okay?”
“Never again,” Sera agreed. It was still strange to hear Dak being so . . . nice. She remembered the fake Dak apologizing to her back home. But this time was different. She knew it was really him, and it meant so much. “I have to admit something,” she told him. “I’ve never felt so alone as when I thought I’d lost my bes
t friend.”
“It was the same for me,” Dak said.
“Let’s not start patting one another on the back just yet, okay?” Riq said, walking up behind them. He tossed them each some clothes and stepped up to the fence. “We still have to make sure we can get you two inside this fortress.”
It didn’t matter how many times Sera came to this island; she didn’t think she’d ever get used to how weird it was watching so many people who looked just like her running around. People who were just like her, probably, before Tilda had gotten her claws into them. It saddened her to think of it: infinite possibilities, and so many of them ruined by one woman.
“So when are you going to fill us in on this plan of yours? Dak asked Riq.
“On the way to the portables.”
“Portables?” Dak said. “As in . . . portable bathrooms? I think I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Just come on,” Riq said.
Sera shrugged and followed Riq.
Dak did, too. Reluctantly.
Sera put on the clothes Riq had given her and studied herself in the tiny portable-bathroom mirror. She looked just like herself, which meant she looked like every other Sera cruising around on the entire island. Even though technically it was 1969, the Daks and Seras were all from the twenty-first century, and they all had scarily identical fashion sense.
Sera left her clothes from Rome on top of the toilet and left her portable. On her way to meet up with the two boys, she reviewed her part of Riq’s plan. She and Dak were going to try and get past security by pretending to be technicians. Once they got inside, they were going to split up. Again. Her job was to talk her way into the control center. Dak was the one who had the more dangerous job. He was going to try and get onto the actual spacecraft.
“You ready?” Riq asked when Sera caught up to them.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.
“And you?” he said to Dak.
“One day, you’ll figure this out about me, big guy,” Dak answered. “I’m always ready when it comes to saving the world.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Riq said. “Okay, the security checkpoint is about a hundred yards to my left. Remember what I said: As long as you act like you know what you’re doing, people will assume you belong. Obviously you both look the part. But you’ll have to hurry. There’s not much time.”
Dak and Sera barely spoke on the long walk to the security checkpoint. For Sera, it was nerves. She knew this was probably the most ambitious thing they’d ever tried to do. It wasn’t every day you tried to hijack a space mission. But she was also nervous for Dak. She had faith in him, and he’d grown a lot since they’d linked up with the Hystorians. But this was one tough job Riq had assigned to him.
Then again, they were going to war. And Riq had experience winning wars. She had faith in him, too.
Sera pulled the wristband out of her jeans when the checkpoint was only about a hundred feet away. She slipped it on and said, “Ready?”
She watched Dak slip his wristband on, too. “Ready,” he said.
But he looked scared. And that made Sera scared. She grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. “Hey,” she said. “You okay? I’ll be right there in the control center, watching everything.”
“Eight minutes until launch!” a woman’s voice said over the loudspeaker. “Positions!”
“I know you will,” Dak said.
They walked up to the checkpoint, making small talk, and tried to walk right through.
“Excuse me?” an older version of Sera said. “Wristbands?”
“Oh, sorry,” Sera said, moving her arm toward the teen girl.
The girl checked her wrist and rolled her eyes. “You should know better than to try and just walk through a checkpoint.”
“I totally wasn’t thinking,” Sera said.
“Obviously,” the girl said, looking at Dak’s wristband. “You should surprise us all and try it sometime.”
Sera grinned through the whole exchange, even though she really wanted to give the teen version of herself a piece of her mind. But what did it matter? The girl waved them through the gate. And that’s all they really wanted. The wristbands Riq scored for them were legit.
They found themselves surrounded by dozens of duplicates, maybe hundreds, all of them rushing around doing some job. All of them pulled from their homes, their realities, by Tilda. It was surreal. Sera couldn’t believe how much things had changed from their first warp.
But there was one thing Dak, Sera, and the AB all had in common. They liked order. The movement of the crowd wasn’t as chaotic as it appeared. Everyone had a task. Everything was labeled. And signs led the real Dak and Sera to the ready room, where they easily overpowered a Dak dupe as he suited up for space travel.
Dak took the gear for himself as his double vanished, returning home.
“Five minutes until launch!” the announcer said. Something about the voice made Sera’s skin crawl.
“If I die up there,” Dak said, “you can have my hammock.”
“You’re not gonna die, Dak.” Sera patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. “You’re like a roach. Nothing can kill you.”
“Oh, great. Thanks.”
“You know what I mean,” Sera said. “Seriously, though, be careful.”
Dak nodded. “You’ll be able to make it to the control room yourself?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sera said. “You can count on me.”
“I know,” he said.
He started to leave when Sera said, “And, Dak?”
He turned around to face her.
“I really do feel lucky to have you as a best friend.”
A small smile broke on Dak’s face. “Thanks.”
A whole sea of butterflies started flapping around in Sera’s stomach as she watched Dak hurry out of the room. Not because their mission depended on what happened next. But because Sera wanted more than anything for Dak to be okay.
Sera made her way quickly and quietly to the control room. It was set up like a NASA control center she’d seen in movies. In fact, it reminded her a little bit of the Hystorian Operations Center, where she’d first met Riq and Arin way back when this had all begun.
She wasn’t surprised to find the room populated with versions of herself. After all, if you had to put either Dak or her in front of a computer, she was the obvious choice.
What did surprise her was the woman at the very center of the room, overlooking the entire operation. The woman was old. Very old. And frail-looking. She sat hunched in a wheelchair. She had plastic tubes running fluids into her arm.
Sera might have assumed she was getting a glimpse of herself in old age. But there was no mistaking the hate burning in the woman’s cloudy eyes. Or the shade of red she’d used to dye the very tips of her stringy white hair.
It was Tilda. And she had to be a hundred years old.
“Commence countdown!” she barked, and her raspy voice was broadcast across the base. “Ten! Nine . . .”
Sera had expected a fight. She had expected to face Tilda one last time in heated battle. But this woman had already lost. She’d spent her entire life warping back and forth through time and across dimensions, manipulating everyone she came in contact with. She’d been consumed with hatred and jealousy and master plans. And now all she had left was a final, desperate gambit to control Earth’s future by controlling the moon.
Sera felt pity for the woman, but there was no way she would sit back and let that happen.
The spacecraft’s engine began to roar as Tilda counted down. When she reached zero, there was a sound of explosions as huge balls of fire flared from beneath the ship. Sera knew the solid rocket booster had ignited. She knew she was witnessing the almost-miraculous result of millennia of human progress. She felt a sense of wonder at how many little moments in history had all led
to this one great moment.
Her heart climbed into her throat as the spacecraft launched into the air, speeding toward space.
“Good luck, Dak,” she said.
And then she leisurely strolled up to a control panel, right under the nose of her greatest enemy, and steered her best friend’s spacecraft into the path of an oncoming asteroid.
24
Trip to the Moon
THE HEAT from the fire was unbearable as Dak tried to claw his way out of the elaborate seat belt. Sweat streamed down his face. It soaked his shirt and pants underneath his bulky suit. It even soaked the protective diaper he’d been forced to wear by the Pacifist space authority — which turned out to be an ideal hiding place for the golden Infinity Ring. It was the diaper that triggered his memory. Dak realized this was exactly like the dream he’d had while he was safe in his hammock.
It had been a Remnant of a sort. A glimpse of things that could or would or should happen. A sign that history had been manipulated again. That it was breaking.
But this time, he was happy for it. Because he knew almost everything that was going to happen before it happened.
He knew when he glanced at the fire, it would be inching closer to the control panel, which meant it was inching closer to him.
He needed to get out of the way now!
He knew the fire had started when a few exposed fan wires shorted, igniting the Teflon insulation in the pure oxygen environment. But he now also knew the fire caught because he’d started it. It was all part of their plan.
“Come on!” Dak shouted, like he knew he would, as the belt slipped out of his sweaty fingers again. A drop of sweat ran into his right eye, momentarily blurring his vision. He blinked away the stinging sensation, knowing that when he looked to his left, he’d find two other astronauts — both Dak clones only a year or two older than him — peering out the window, screaming like little babies. “Uh, little help over here?” Dak shouted.
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