Free A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner Page B

red-haired lady to shake you up a bit
, Dak mused.
    Riq pulled out several small objects from a plastic cylinder he’d had in his shirt pocket. He held up a couple of them — one looked like a headphone bud, and the other a tooth.
    “What the heck are those?” Dak asked.
    “While your parents spent their whole lives playing around with time travel,” the young man answered, “mine worked on language-translation equipment. And this is so beyond what the rest of the world knows, you won’t even believe it works.”
    He stepped forward and leaned toward Dak, holding out the earpiece. Dak instinctively took a step backward.
    “Hey, quit being a baby,” Riq said. “Come here!”
    Dak had to push down his rising anger. “Fine.”
    He let Riq reach up and put the tiny device in his ear, shoving it down until it almost hurt. Then he put a second one in Dak’s other ear.
    “All right, this is the part you won’t like,” Riq said.
    Another explosion rocked the building, sending all of them teetering for a few seconds as the room shook. When the place stilled again, Dak glared at Riq warily.
    “Don’t worry,” the teenager said. “It’ll only hurt for a few seconds.”
    Dak was determined not to show any more fear. “Okay, what do I do?”
    “Open your mouth. Open wide.”
    Dak shot a questioning glance at Sera, who looked on impatiently, then did as he was told. Riq leaned forward and stuck his fingers in Dak’s mouth. Dak gagged — it was maybe the least pleasant part of a very unpleasant day. There was an uncomfortable
click
that he couldn’t tell if he’d heard or felt. Then a burst of pain shot through his body, and he jumped back from Riq — who was actually smiling.
    But the pain went away quickly, just as had been promised.
    “So what is —”
    Riq cut him off. “No time to explain. You’ll find out soon enough, when you’re able to talk to people in different languages. It’ll take some time to get used to, but you’ll be fine after some practice.”
    Riq did the same thing to Sera, who stood still and didn’t complain a lick. When Riq was finished, he stepped back and nodded to Mari.
    A thunderous boom sounded, and this time Dak and the others fell to the floor. They scrambled to their feet as muffled shouts rang out from the other side of the secret panel.
    “The SQ is in the HOC!” Mari yelled.
    “We can’t waste another second!” Brint shouted at Dak and Sera. “Get the Ring ready! You have to go now — hurry, before they storm in here and take it!”
    Mari seized Brint by the arm. “Brint, we have to wait for the insertion team. They’re just kids!”
    “There’s no time. For all we know, our team is dead.”
    Dak swallowed, the reality of it all hitting him hard and heavy now. “Where do we go?”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Brint answered. “Just away from here. I’ll come with you.”
    Mari clearly didn’t like it. “Riq can go, too. You’ll need all the help you can get.”
    “Now hold on —” Riq said.
    “But —” Dak began.
    “No more buts! We
do not
have a choice!”
    The woman pulled the satchel off of her shoulder and handed it to Sera. “Guard that with your life. You can’t do anything if you lose the SQuare! If for some reason you do, you’ll have to travel back here and get a new one. But that might get messy — there’s no telling what you’d be coming back to.”
    Dak nodded, then moved to stand close to Sera. Riq joined them, looking utterly put out. There were sounds of gunfire now in the other room. Gunfire, and screams.
    “You know how to do it, right?” Dak asked Sera, his voice tinged with hysteria.
    She simply nodded. He felt a pang of loss again when he handed over the Infinity Ring, as if he were throwing away his parents in some way.
    Sera immediately set to work on the programming function of the Ring. Her face was a mask of concentration.
    More shots rang out on the other side of the wall. A woman screamed, a sound of pain and