A Mutiny in Time (Infinity Ring #1)

“They warped out with us, but they didn’t warp back in. That means they were lost in transit. Without the Ring to steer them, they’ll be completely unanchored, hopping through the time stream like skipping stones. But I don’t think their movements will be entirely random. As untethered anomalies, they should theoretically be drawn to other anomalies in the time stream.”


“Theoretically?” Dak echoed. “I’m getting so tired of that word!”

“What I mean to say is that I think they’ll be drawn to the Breaks. Which means, as big a place as time is, there’s a very real chance we’ll encounter them in the course of our mission.”

Dak took a moment to consider what she’d said. Then he held out the satchel. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

Sera couldn’t have agreed more. She sat down, pulled the SQuare out of the satchel, and turned it on. Dak and Riq crowded around her to see what appeared on the screen. There were just two sentences, white letters on a black background, with an input box below them:

You have one chance to type password.

Fail, and device will explode.





“YOU’RE KIDDING me,” Sera said. “All of that talking, and they forgot to give us the password?”

Dak had felt a little quiver in his gut, too. Here they were in ancient Egypt — he took yet another look at the Great Pyramid of Giza, still in disbelief that he was standing at the foot of something he’d dreamed about seeing for years — with nothing to guide them on what to do next except a SQuare device that was locked to them. But, man, the air smelled clean and fresh, like it hadn’t been tainted by a few thousand years of humans doing what they do. Everything looked sharper, too. He couldn’t help feeling optimistic.

“We’ll just have to take a guess,” Dak said. “Maybe it’s Hystorian.”

Riq scoffed. “Yeah, why don’t you go ahead and type that in. Give it a whirl. If it blows up, oh well!”

Dak would’ve loved to punch the guy right in the stomach — if only there wouldn’t be consequences, like, for example, getting beaten up in retaliation. “I didn’t mean to just go ahead and do it, moron. I was throwing out ideas — maybe you should try to actually contribute something.”

“I’m about to smack the both of you,” Sera said evenly, and her hardened face showed she meant it. “You two haven’t even known each other long enough to be enemies. Cut it out.”

“Seems plenty long enough to me,” Dak grumbled.

“I mean it,” Sera snapped. She returned her attention to the screen. “The more I think about it, the harder it is to believe they would’ve sent us away with this if we couldn’t find a way to figure out the password. We just need to think about it for a while. Once we agree on something, all we can do is try it.”

“But it has to be logical,” Riq said. “We can’t take any wild guesses.” He didn’t look at Dak when he said it, but Dak knew it was a jab at him.

Sera turned the device off and folded her hands on top of it. “All right then. Let’s all think. No talking for a few minutes.”

Dak pressed his back against the bottom of the pyramid — Seriously, he thought, how cool is this? — and put his head in his hands, closing his eyes. He’d memorized the two sentences and ran through them in his mind. Thinking back to their short time at the Hystorian headquarters, he tried to remember if either Brint or Mari might’ve said something that could’ve been a clue to the password. But nothing came to mind.

Frustrated, he wondered if maybe the message on the SQuare itself was a clue. He pictured the words in his mind. You have one chance to type password. Fail, and device will explode.

“I think I might know what we need to do,” Riq said. “It has to be related to explosives somehow. Bombs. Fail-safes. Bombs have fail-safes, right? A way to make sure they don’t explode?”

“Um” was all Sera got out. “I doubt any of us are experts on that.”

“Well,” Riq replied, “maybe we can hike our way to a local village and ask someone around here about it. Get them to help us figure it out.”

Dak was astounded. “You’re a Hystorian? You really think people in ancient Egypt had bombs? Especially electronic bombs with fail-safes built into the device?”

Riq looked up at the pyramid. “Well . . . no, I suppose not. Got any better ideas?”

Dak went back to brooding with the others. He closed his eyes again to block everything out. Then it hit him, fast and hard. “I’ve got it!” he yelled, standing up.

Sera and Riq jumped at his sudden exclamation, and Dak relished the briefest hint of wounded pride that flashed across his new rival’s face.

“What?” Sera asked. “Spit it out!”

“We’re thinking too much,” Dak said. “Just like anyone else would. But because we know absolutely nothing about this, there’s no way they’d let us risk destroying the thing by guessing at passwords. So they told us what to do, right in front of our eyes!”

He saw a flicker of understanding in the others, and he hurried to spit out the solution before either of them could claim they’d figured it out, too. “Password. We need to type that word. Password. That’s it.”

Sera and Riq exchanged doubtful looks.

“What else could it possibly be?” Dak asked them.