A Mutiny in Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Do you have any clue what time it is? Your uncle’s having a hissy fit! He says he won’t cover for you if the SQ come around asking why you’re out past curfew.”
    She didn’t panic like he thought she would. Instead, she slowly stood up and turned to him. Somehow her face looked both exhausted and full of energy.
    Dak almost wanted to take a step back. “Um . . . you okay, there?”
    “The Infinity Ring is a time-travel device,” she said, as calm as he’d ever seen her. “And I figured out the missing piece. I know how to make it work.”

T IME TRAVEL. Dak didn’t know which was cooler: The idea that such a thing was possible, or the fact that his parents might have been the ones to figure it out. Although he didn’t know if he quite believed it, he couldn’t help being excited at the very idea.
    He spent almost every minute of Sunday with Sera, and he only understood about twenty percent of what came out of her mouth. She was working in the lab, reprogramming the Infinity Ring as he sat and watched. Making it even more annoying, she started half of her sentences with phrases like, “It’s really simple if you think about it” or “Obviously” or “As you well know . . .”
    And the
words
she used! “Space-time” and “relativity” and “cosmic strings” and “tachyons” and “quantum this” and “quantum that.” Dak had a splintering headache by noon and no amount of medicine would make it go away.
    Adding insult to injury, Dak was anxious that Sera’s uncle might be knocking on their door at any second. It turned out the authorities
had
stopped in for a random check at Sera’s house the night before, and they’d written her up for the violation. She’d been scolded by her terrified uncle and grounded, but that didn’t stop
her
. No siree. She promised to stay in her room all day and read but instead she climbed out the window and ran to Dak’s house before he’d even had a chance to take advantage of his parents’ absence to eat a plate of cheese for breakfast.
    And that still wasn’t the worst of it. Dak was all too aware he’d broken more of his mom and dad’s rules in one weekend than he had his entire life before that. And somehow he’d let Sera talk him into the ultimate sin against them.
    She’d taken their most prized possession — ranking just slightly above Dak, no doubt — out of its protective glass case and had been playing with it for hours. She was messing around with a thing that probably had cost every spare penny they’d ever earned and could end up being the most valuable invention of all time. He winced every time she took a screwdriver to it. He nearly fainted when she used the soldering iron. He’d either believed her speeches about what she could do or he was the single stupidest person who’d ever lived. Either way, if this didn’t work, he was going to be grounded for the next three thousand years.
    It was just past five o’clock, all of these thoughts going through Dak’s head on loop, when Sera put the device down on the desk and said one word:
    “Done.”
    Dak blinked a few times. “What do you mean,
done
? That’s the simplest word you’ve said all day, but it can’t possibly mean what I think it means.”
    “I’m done, Dak.” She pointed at the Ring. “That little thing right there will warp space-time and take a person into the past. I’m not sure why I should make it any more complicated than that.”
    Dak was finding her conclusion absolutely impossible to believe. He walked over and picked up the device. It was heavier than it looked, and cold to the touch. For the first time, Dak noticed a pencil-thin window that ran along the device’s entire length. Behind the window was an amber-colored liquid. Fuel of some kind, he guessed.
    “It wasn’t even that hard,” Sera said. There was no hint of bragging in her voice. It wasn’t some lame attempt to fish for compliments. To her, it was just plain true.
    Dak looked up at