Free A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner Page A

Hystorian who left behind a numbered collection of soup-can wrappers. I still can’t figure out if it’s an important cipher or if the poor man was simply a very organized hoarder.”
    Mari gave Arin a warm smile. “It’s been daunting, but Arin’s done a marvelous job.”
    “I thought I’d have more time, that’s all,” Arin said softly, and then she wished them luck and scurried away.
    Dak realized too late that he should have thanked her. By the time he thought of it, they’d already made their way around the room, returning to the platform with the podium.
    Brint turned to Dak with a satisfied smile on his face. “Now that we’ve done that, we want to take you to meet the people going with you on your trip. They’re highly trained —”
    The sound of an explosion cut off his words. The entire operations center rocked, throwing half of the people to the ground. Dak stumbled into Sera and they crashed into the wall. She wrapped her arms around him to keep both of them from toppling over.
    There was a second boom, followed by another jolt to the room. This time Dak and Sera
did
fall — he landed on top of her and heard her grunt despite the ringing in his ears.
    Brint and Mari both stumbled over to Dak and Sera and helped get them to their feet. For the moment the explosions had stopped, but the Hystorians were shouting, running around with panicked expressions on their faces. It was mass confusion.
    “What’s going on?” Dak asked. His heart rate had skyrocketed, and he noticed Sera was holding his hand. He pulled away, embarrassed.
    Before anyone could answer his question, the huge monitor that dominated the room went black. When it came back online a moment later, a face filled the screen. It was a woman with flaming red hair and lipstick the color of black oil, her face all hard edges. The room hushed as everyone stared at the screen in horror.
    After all was completely silent, the fierce-looking woman spoke.
    “You really thought you could hide such a thing from the SQ?” she asked, her voice biting with hate. “We’re coming, Brint. We’re coming for your precious Infinity Ring.”

T HE LADY IN RED’S announcement was immediately followed by a series of shattering explosions that rattled the operations room and sent ceiling tiles raining from above. Clouds of dust arose where pieces of ceiling hit the floor. Dak cradled the Ring to his chest protectively. That nasty woman had threatened to come take it from him, and no way would he ever let that happen.
    “Come on,” Brint said tightly, throwing a worried glance at Mari. “We don’t have any time to mess around.”
    He grabbed Dak by the arm and escorted him roughly up the aisle that rounded the room. Mari and Sera were right behind them — Dak noticed that Mari had retrieved the SQuare, and was hurriedly placing it back into her satchel. Brint came to a panel in the wall and pushed. The whole thing pivoted open. The four of them slipped through into a hidden room that was only about eight feet across and completely empty. Dak turned to see Riq follow them inside, then Brint shut the panel.
    “Language is going to be your biggest barrier,” Mari said. “We need to get that taken care of before we can send you off. We just have to hope our defenses hold until we can get you to the insertion team.”
    Dak tried not to show how terrified he was. “What’s going on anyway? Who was that woman?”
    “We call her the Lady in Red,” Brint answered. “Her name is Tilda. You’ll never meet a viler, more hateful woman. I don’t think she cares one whit about anything except amassing power and moving up the ranks. She won’t be happy until she’s the leader of the SQ. And she’s convinced that wiping out the Hystorians is the best way to make that happen.”
    “Riq, quickly,” Mari ordered. “Tell them about the devices.”
    The teenager seemed to have lost some of his arrogance from before.
Nothing like an invasion from an evil