“Not quite the reaction I expected,” the older boy said.
Sera got control of herself, but lost it when she made the mistake of meeting eyes with Dak again. After another round of the snickers, they finally stopped.
Riq shook his head. “The amount of laughing just now was nowhere near proportional to the humor level. You guys are weird.”
Dak stood up, then helped Sera do the same, just like a gentleman and his lady.
“Riq, you’ve got a lot to learn about life,” Dak said.
“Yep,” Sera added.
His baffled look made him more likable somehow. He stood to join them just as Sera slipped the Infinity Ring back into her satchel.
“So, what’s our mission?” Dak asked, bringing their duties back to the forefront. Suddenly, Sera couldn’t bring herself to smile and found it hard to believe she’d been hooting like a tickled six-year-old seconds earlier.
“The Prime Break,” Riq answered. “Plain and simple as that. We need to stop Alexander the Third from being assassinated. Sorry we couldn’t do the same for Abraham Lincoln.”
Dak looked at him sharply, as if he assumed the boy was mocking him, but the expression quickly softened. Riq had been genuine in respecting Dak’s all-out hero worship.
“It’s a weird mission, you know?” Sera said.
“What do you mean?” Dak asked.
“It’s 336 BC. We’re in Greece. And we have a mission. But things are so different now. There are no Hystorians here. Or SQ for that matter. No Time Wardens. Aristotle doesn’t even know about the society that he created yet. Or, I guess, creates. It’s just strange to think about.”
Dak’s eyes lit up like something had just clicked in his brain. “If we end up fixing all the Breaks, then Aristotle doesn’t even need to create the Hystorians, right? So how will our future selves know to come back and . . .”
He trailed off, and Sera knew why. “Pointless to talk about,” she said. “It’s the old go-back-and-kill-your-own-grandma argument. Somehow, it just doesn’t work that way. Time lines, the river, boulders in the stream, all that. Let’s just focus on getting the job done. And trusting the Hystorians.”
“First things first,” Riq said. “Dak, you’re the history dork.” He said the words the same way he’d compliment a nicely cooked steak. “Give us the scoop on what did happen to Alexander, and then we can figure out how to change things.”
Dak looked like a kid who’d just been given an eternal hall pass at school. “Well, Riq, I’m a little rusty on the subject, but —”
“Oh, please,” Sera inserted. “You know every little fact and figure. Spill it.”
“Your wish is my command, my lady.” Dak straightened and looked off somewhere in the distance, as if he were recalling an actual memory. “A man named Attalas was behind the murder of King Philip and Alexander. Attalas wanted his grandson, Karanos, to be the next king of Macedonia, and Alexander stood right smack in the way of that. The man who actually did the deed was named Pausanius, a nobleman who’d become a close bodyguard of King Philip. Pausanius poisoned both Philip and Alexander while they were in camp with the army, preparing to march against Asia Minor. Philip wanted to conquer the whole Persian Empire eventually.”
Sera felt her eyes starting to cross as her friend spoke. All she heard was a bunch of names and the drone of Dak’s teaching voice. Even after all she’d experienced, history just wasn’t her thing.
“It should be pretty simple,” Dak continued. “If I remember correctly” — Sera almost groaned at that; of course he remembered correctly — “Alexander had made a surprise visit to see his dad that day — Alex was actually living with his mom somewhere else. She’d kinda been exiled, but that’s a whole ’nother story. Anyway, all we have to do is make sure our boy Alex doesn’t make that trip. Then he won’t be killed. This might be our easiest Break yet!”
“Don’t say that, you goofball,” Riq said. “You’ll jinx us.”
Sera sighed, knowing without a doubt that the odds of things being easy were on par with the odds of Dak going on a no-cheese diet. “So when and where does the murder happen?”
“Three weeks from now,” Dak answered, “way up near the northern border of Greece. Just a few hundred miles, NBD.”
“NBD?” Riq repeated.
“No big deal.”
“Wait a minute,” Sera said. “Why are we that early, and so far away? Why did the Hystorians have us come to Corinth?”
Dak’s face split into an all-too-familiar grin. “I think I know exactly why. Because there’s no way we can do this before talking to The Man himself.” He paused for a dramatic effect that certainly wasn’t needed. “Let’s go find Aristotle.”
“YOU KNOW,” Sera said, “I’ve spent most of my life thinking I’d never hear the phrase ‘Let’s go find Aristotle.’”
Dak was beaming on the inside, and probably on the outside, too. Ever since he’d first learned that Aristotle had been the one to start the Hystorians, he’d been waiting to say those exact words.
“Well, it’s our lucky day, isn’t it?” he said, then he pulled the SQuare from his pants — he loved keeping it there for the sole reason that Sera made a disgusted face every time she had to touch it. “Now, let’s just check in with what our good friend Arin left us on here, if anything. Maybe she knew an exact time and place to find the dude.”
“‘The dude’?” Sera asked. “That’s what we’re calling one of the greatest philosophers of all time, now? The dude?”
Dak was fiddling with the SQuare and barely heard her. After he had logged in, a block of text popped up, with a complicated Art of Memory pictogram right below it. Of course, Dak thought. Of all the people they’d dealt with, Aristotle would be the one most likely to pass down a cryptic clue concerning the very Break that started it all. He was the source of the mnemonic learning system in the first place.
Dak showed the screen to his friends.
“Oh, boy,” Riq said. “That one looks like a doozy.”
“Exactly,” Dak responded. “Which is why I’m going to take the first crack at it.”
Sera reached out and ripped the SQuare from Dak’s hands. “Silly boys. How about we all do this together?” She sat down on the forest floor and held the device out on her lap for all to see.