A Mutiny in Time (4 page)

He saw that Sera had gotten Fraderick pulled up safely as well, and everyone scooted as far away from the gap as possible. The building continued to shake, creaking and groaning all the while. But the hole in the floor had stopped growing. No one was screaming anymore.

We’re going to make it,
Dak thought.

Then something snapped, like a loosed rubber band cracking through the air. Then again. Then again.

“Up there!” someone yelled.

Dak looked toward the ceiling and saw that the thin wires holding the Viking ship upright were breaking free from the walls, whipping out to smack into the wooden craft. Its port side abruptly tilted downward several feet, sending a spray of broken drywall snowing down on top of the crowd. Shouts and screams again filled the air as everyone half-staggered, half-crawled out of harm’s way.

He rejoined Sera as they moved toward the far wall. They were still a dozen feet away from safety when the floor lurched upward several feet then slammed back down again, as if the whole building had been picked up and dropped. Sera sprawled onto the floor as more
snaps
and
cracks
whipped through the air — this time followed by a terrible, creaking groan. The ship had torn loose and was tilting away from its perch, falling toward the ground as its final supports broke free.

Dak could see where it was headed and wasted no time thinking. He grabbed Sera by the hands and yanked her across the floor so hard that she slid ten feet and slammed into the wall. Then he dove after her. He didn’t have to look because he heard it well enough — the ship crashed into the ground right where he and his best friend had just been.

And as if that had been nature’s exclamation point on the whole affair, the earthquake ceased a few seconds later, everything almost instantly growing still. Dak twisted around to sit with his back against the wall, right next to Sera, who was pulling in heavy breaths, just as he was. They both stared at the smashed ancient longboat, now nothing but a pile of firewood with a carved dragon’s head sticking out at the top. Dak felt as if he’d just watched history itself being shattered.

“That was close,” Sera whispered.

“Yeah,” Dak agreed. “Good thing you have someone watching out for you. I’ll take your thank-you payment in cash, credit, or fine cheeses. Your choice. I just wish I could’ve done something about that poor boat.”

Sera shoved him gently. “If it was a choice between me or the boat, I’m okay with how it turned out.”

Mr. Davedson was the first one to stand up, and he walked around the broken ship toward the large crack in the floor, brushing dust and debris off of his shirt and pants. He reached the edge and looked down, then turned to face the students crowded up against the wall.

“I can’t believe it,” their teacher said in a dazed whisper. “I just can’t believe it.”

“What?” Dak asked.

Mr. Davedson shook his head slowly back and forth. “Seven earthquakes this month. And now they’re happening
here
.”

No one responded, and his words hung there for a moment.

“The SQ has everything under control,” the dust-covered docent insisted harshly.

Dak and Sera exchanged a quick glance. They’d never admit it aloud, but they couldn’t quite believe him.

T
HREE DAYS
later, Sera suffered one of the worst Remnants of her life.

Her uncle Diego was out running errands, so Sera was home alone when she had an overpowering disturbance inside her head. An uncomfortable itch that made her stop and rub her temples, as if she hoped to dig deep down enough to massage it out. She couldn’t explain it — she never could — but she knew with absolute certainty that she needed to go outside, to the backyard and fields behind her home, and walk to the old barn that was half a mile down the old dirt lane.

The sun shone in a sky without any clouds, but a grainy haze darkened the light to an orange glow, surreal and otherworldly. The haze came from forest fires in rural Pennsylvania, their fog of smoke drifting toward the sea on a light breeze like a noxious storm. Sera ran along the lane, enjoying the warmth despite the weirdness that had settled inside her, that pull to run to the barn for the umpteenth time in her life.

So she ran harder.

Dust billowed up from her footsteps and stuck to the sweat that had broken out on her legs. The dry heat nearly sucked her breath away. As she made her way down the lane, she thought of the earthquake at the museum and the SQ officials who’d insisted it was no big deal and all the other things that seemed to be wrong with the world. She also thought of Dak, her BFF Forever (which was redundant, but she still liked to say it that way) and how something deep inside her felt that there was a reason for their friendship. That something great waited on the horizon of their lives.

She reached the little grassy meadow that circled the barn, and stopped in the same spot she always did. A single granite boulder had stood there longer than anyone could remember — it probably went all the way back to the Precambrian age. It would probably outlast people. Leaning against it, Sera stared at the barn’s warped wooden slats and the faded red paint that flaked away a little more with each passing year. And then she waited.

She waited for the Remnant.

There was a part of her — a rational side — that knew she didn’t have to do this. That she could choose to ignore the craving to come here, could go do something else, avoiding the pain that was about to envelop her. But in some ways she welcomed the pain. Did she understand it? No. Did she enjoy it? No. But she welcomed and relished it because she knew it had something to do with a life that should’ve been. She knew it like she knew her hands were connected to her arms. And she couldn’t pass up the only opportunities she’d ever have to experience it. Not even if it hurt.

And so, she kept waiting.

It began just a few minutes later.

There was a rushing behind her ears, within her head — a pressure that wasn’t audible but was there all the same. An ache pierced her heart, a sadness that opened like a gate within her, a gaping maw of darkness that wanted to suck the life out of her and pull it down to the depths. She stared at the double barn doors, and even though they didn’t budge, every part of her yearned for them to do so. She could almost see it, could almost feel the breeze that would stir as they swung open and slammed against the side of the barn.

Nothing happened, of course. But something should have. Those doors should have opened and two people should have walked through, calling her name with smiles on their faces.

Sera didn’t understand it. She didn’t understand it in the slightest.

But she knew. Those two people were her parents.

She’d never met them, and she never would.

T
HE FIRST
thing Sera wanted to do when the Remnant faded was go tell Dak about it. She always did. He himself had never experienced a major one — nothing that couldn’t be explained away as déjà vu or a simple forgotten memory — so he didn’t totally understand. But he tried to, and for her that was good enough. Plus, his parents were out of town for the weekend, so she knew he could use the company. Usually his grandma came over when his parents were gone, but she was older than most trees and spoke about as often as one.

Dak was in a lawn chair when she arrived, sitting under the branches of an apple tree as he read from a gigantic book. Normal people used their SQuare for such a thing, but not Dak. He’d search every library in town until he found the printed version of what he wanted, no matter how old it was or how battered.

“What’re you reading?” she asked him.

He didn’t answer, his nose buried in the pages and his eyes’ focused stare moving across and down, across and down. This was classic Dak. She waited a few seconds to be polite, then kicked him in the shin.

“Ow!” he yelled. The book slipped out of his hands and tumbled off the chair to land in a heap of brown leather and torn paper. The book was so old it had completely fallen apart.

“Oops!” Sera said. “Sorry. That’s why you should do your reading on a SQuare.”

“Yeah, because it’d be way better to drop an expensive computer. Mrs. Pierce is gonna kill me!”

An empty chair stood on the other side of the tree, and Sera dragged it over to sit and help collect the destroyed book’s remains. “What was this anyway?” she asked, turning over the yellowed pages to get a look.

“It’s called — it
was
called —
The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Roman Empire
. I don’t need to tell you how fascinating —”

Sera held up a hand to cut him off. “Yeah, you’re right, you don’t need to tell me. I can only imagine the magic you felt as you tore through its riveting pages.”

“Quit being a smart aleck,” he said with eyes narrowed. “It
was
riveting. Only you could think making guesses about junk that’s smaller than an atom is more exciting than reading about evil emperors cutting people up and bathing in their blood.”

She stared at him, blinking once in exaggerated disinterest.

“Hungry?” he asked with a sly grin.

She tried to grin back but nothing came. “I had another one today,” she said.

“A moon-sized pimple?” he asked.

She punched him in the arm. “A Remnant, you jerk.”

His face fell a bit. “Oh. Sorry. I know those are hard on you.”

“Sometimes I think they’re getting worse. It’s so hard to explain. But it hurts like nothing else.”

“Weird.”

Sera had been called weird before, and not always nicely. But she knew Dak meant it in a completely different way. And he was right. “Yeah, it
is
weird.”

Dak gave up on the pile of paper and leather and shoved it all under the chair. Then he stood up. “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you to pieces in a heartbeat.”

“You do, huh?”

“I do.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “My mom and dad left the keys to the lab out.”

Sera had never heard such beautiful words in all her life. She didn’t even bother responding — she was already on her feet and sprinting toward the back of the house.

The lab was a separate building in the back corner of the Smyths’ property — a three-story brick structure with no windows and a single door made of black iron and sealed shut with about 197 locks by the look of it. When Dak had said that his parents left the keys out, he’d skipped the mundane details — that the keys were
usually
in a sealed box that was kept in a fireproof safe within a huge wall-sized gun locker. Sera thought it was all a little OCD — but Dak’s parents had always been a bit odd.

Sera got there first, waiting impatiently in front of the imposing door as Dak approached, jangling the keys in his hand. “It looks like something out of the Dark Ages, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“How in the world did they forget to put the keys away?” Sera asked. “I’d expect them to catch their flight to Europe completely naked before letting something like that happen.” Dak’s parents went overseas at least once a month for some kind of business venture that no one had ever fully explained to Sera. It was how they made money to support their
real
passion — the oddball experiments and silly research projects rumored to be taking place inside the lab. Sera couldn’t wait to check them out.