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knew anything about this technology,” she said, “you’d know that it would take months to make your own device. At least.”
    Brint and Mari exchanged a long, worried look. It was obvious they didn’t have that kind of time.
    “You need us,” Dak blurted out, the excitement sparking in his eyes as he caught on to Sera’s train of thought. “You need us to use our own device. We have to pilot the thing.” He turned to Sera. “We can do this. We can do all of it at once! Find my parents. Save the world. Maybe even get rid of the Remnants.”
    For some reason, that hit her in the gut like a punch. Would not having a false memory of her parents be better? Or worse? She didn’t even want to think about it.
    But she could see that Brint and Mari knew that Dak was right. The Hystorians
did
need them. “We’ll help you,” she said, “but we’ll only do it if you promise to help us find Dak’s parents. Take it or leave it.”
    “You’ll have to leave the dirty work to the adults,” Brint said. He turned to Mari, waiting until she gave a reluctant nod before he continued. “While we devote resources here to figuring out what happened to Dak’s parents, you can act as escorts for a crack team of Hystorians. Our people will do the actual work of fixing the Breaks, but their lives will depend on you two getting them where they need to be. And following their orders to the letter. There are the Time Wardens to worry about, after all.”
    “Time Wardens?” Dak repeated.
    “When I said the SQ had eyes and ears everywhere, I didn’t just mean in the present,” Mari explained. “You see, if it weren’t for the Breaks, the SQ might not hold all the power they do in the world today. Their Lady in Red may not be as omniscient, seeing all. So while we’ve been hoping all along for time travel to become a reality, the SQ has been dreading it. Just as we’ve sworn to someday go back and change the past, they’ve sworn not to let that happen. And they’ve had people trained in every generation to stop the mission we’re about to undertake.”
    “There are people in the past specifically on the lookout for time travelers?” Sera asked. “That’s crazy!”
    “It’s good strategy,” Mari countered. “They’re called Time Wardens. And if they ever even
suspect
that someone has come back from the future, they’re instructed to kill them without blinking an eye.”
    Sera felt a shiver of fear at that. The room fell silent, as if Brint and Mari wanted to give everyone a moment to process the danger they would be in.
    Dak broke the ice. “Fine. We’ll leave the scary stuff to the adults. Now are you guys ever going to let us eat this food?”
    “By all means,” Mari replied, smiling as she pushed the platter toward Dak. “There’s even some fine cheese hidden in there somewhere.”
    Dak and Sera dug in without saying another word. Mari seemed pleased with the outcome they’d agreed on, but Sera could feel anxious energy coming off of Brint. He was clearly ready to put them all to work.
    “Let’s walk to the operations center,” he said after everyone else had enjoyed a quick helping of treats. “That is . . . if you’re done eating?”
    Dak whipped his hand out and grabbed one last cube of Swiss then stuffed it in his mouth. “Now I am,” he mumbled while chewing.

    As they walked down a long, dimly lit hallway, Mari gave them a few more details about what lay ahead. Sera listened eagerly.
    “In addition to the trained members of our society that we’ll send back with you,” the woman said, “there’s also a local Hystorian already living in the vicinity of most of the Breaks. We’ve had a steady membership of Hystorians since Aristotle’s time, spread out in branches all over the world. Their locations are hidden, but every single one of us has always been trained to look for people from the future.”
    “Why can’t they just fix the Breaks themselves?” Sera asked. “Or prevent