Behind Enemy Lines Read Online Free PDF

fabulous job of pretending she had been the victim.
    “Yeah, helpless little super villain,” Riq muttered when he glanced behind them. “That man had better not look her straight in the eyes, or I bet he turns to stone.”
    They ducked into a narrow alley to catch their breath, stow the Infinity Ring and SQuare, and brush themselves off.
    Sera turned to Riq. “Do I even want to know what that was about?”
    “Do I even want to know why in the world Tilda was with you?” he shot back. “What happened in the future?”
    “I don’t want to talk about that,” Sera snapped, then eyed Dak. “Not ever.”
    Dak turned his obvious frustration back to Riq. “Maybe you’ve had it easy resting here for the last week, but for Sera and me that was three trips through time in just a few hours with an aerial bombing, a nice bombshell of news,
and
an SQ attack in between.”
    Riq hadn’t been relaxing these past few days, but it certainly wasn’t anything compared to what Dak just described. Still, when Dak bent over with his hands on his knees, Riq did consider giving him a push to the ground. Just a little one.
    “Sheesh, sorry I asked,” Riq said.
    “Sera, I get it. I do.” Dak had turned to face Sera, and his voice was low, as if he didn’t want Riq to hear. Riq kicked at the ground, but aimed his ears in their direction to absorb every word he could. “My parents made mistakes, too.”
    “Really? And are their mistakes going to destroy the world?”
    “Well . . . no.”
    “Then you don’t get it.” She pushed past Dak and said, “Let’s just figure out what to do now. Are we going back for Tilda? Well?” Dak didn’t say anything and, with the mood Sera was in, Riq wasn’t about to be the first to speak. Sera folded her arms. “Someone answer me!”
    “Okay.” Dak glanced back toward the Tower of London. “Maybe it’s better if Tilda is stuck in this time for now. At least she’s not at home causing even worse damage. Without an encyclopedic knowledge of history, how much harm could she do?”
    “And you got a new SQuare,” Riq said.
    “Tilda had it, not the Hystorians.” Dak handed it to Sera. “I think you’d better check it out before we trust anything it says.”
    Sera made a face, then took it and started pushing buttons. “It’s password protected, just like the first one was. I think she must have been trying to hack into it when we dropped in on her.” She typed in a word. “The password is
password
, just like before. It’s booting up now.”
    Riq reached into his bag. “Since we have a few moments, maybe you can both change into some clothes that don’t stand out so much. Sera, I have a special surprise for you.”
    Sera looked up from the SQuare and narrowed her eyes as if she wasn’t sure whether he was serious or teasing her. Riq pulled two sets of clothes from the bag, one in each hand.
    He held up his right hand first. “Here we have a pretty polka-dot dress. Very nice.” But he saw that Sera was already eying his left hand and a smile was spreading across her face.
    “Pants!” she cried. “Girls
finally
wear pants here?!”
    “It was a growing trend in the forties,” Dak said. “Pants were more practical when so many women were going to work for the first time, to help the war effort.”
    “Not now, Dak!” Forgetting her bad mood, Sera thrust the SQuare back onto her friend’s lap and yanked the pants and sweater from Riq’s hand, then ran deeper into the alley. “If anyone comes back here while I’m changing, I’ll hurt you. Pants!”
    Riq chuckled to himself. “I knew she’d like that.”
    Dak pointed to the other clothes still in Riq’s hands. “Good for her, but if you think I’m wearing the dress now, you’re crazy.”
    Riq dropped the dress back into his bag and pulled out a pair of boys’ pants and a shirt for Dak. “They’re not fancy because everything is rationed here: clothes, food, supplies. But at least you’ll blend in better than you