Free Divide and Conquer by Carrie Ryan Page A

the Parisian sewers during the French Revolution — and he was miserable. Time and time again, he looked for an opportunity to sneak away, but nothing ever presented itself.
    Until he overheard a few men discussing their next brilliant plan: lighting a few ships on fire and guiding them down the river toward the bridge. And one of the ships they planned to use was the very one on which he’d hidden the SQuare.
    Dak’s heart sped up. The SQuare was their only lifeline to their own time period. If they lost the SQuare, they might as well give up on fixing any other Breaks.
    They might as well give up on looking for his parents.
    “I’ll help,” Dak volunteered, almost tripping over his own feet as he raced to catch up with the group of soldiers making their way to the ships. He waited for them to brush him off, but then he realized that two of them were men he’d saved the day before. They didn’t turn him away but instead welcomed him with hearty slaps on his back.
    Dak was surprised by how good it felt to be accepted into something so easily. He’d always been more of an outcast at school, made fun of for his habit of spouting random bits of history. That’s one reason he and Sera were such good friends — being outcasts gave them something in common.
    He’d have never guessed that he’d ever feel at home with a band of Viking warriors. As they made their way to the ships, gathering dried grasses and sticks, Dak watched his companions. Many of them weren’t much older than Riq, but they had a look in their eyes that said they’d lived very different lives.
    For them, there was no such thing as school or hanging out at museums or going to lectures given by world-renowned physicists. But the Vikings’ lives also weren’t only about war, as Dak had once thought. Most of these men were simply looking for a place to settle — land to work and women to marry. But because most of the Viking history was oral rather than written, so much information about them was lost over time. What written details did survive tended to be recorded by those who lost battles against the North Men, which made it easy to see why the portrayals were mostly negative. Sure, some of the Vikings were bloodthirsty, only interested in pillaging and killing, but that wasn’t the majority.
    Dak marveled at how he’d almost describe some of these men as friends. Which was why it was that much more difficult to share their food and camp, and yet also try to figure out ways to thwart their efforts at getting into the city.
    The longer the Vikings were kept at bay, the better chance the Hystorians had of keeping Siegfried from amassing power, and of fixing the Break. Which meant Dak had to sabotage the very people who’d accepted him as one of their own.
    They split into several groups and spread out among the chosen ships to stuff them with the dried debris and prep them to be set on fire. Dak made sure he was assigned to the boat where he’d hidden the SQuare.
    His heart pounded hard. What if someone else had found it first? What if it had somehow slipped free and was now on the bottom of the river, broken beyond repair? He climbed aboard and checked the shield he thought he’d hidden it behind.
    It wasn’t there.
    Had it been moved? Did he just have the wrong spot? As Dak started to search the boat, someone tossed a flaming torch into the aft hull. The fire sparked instantly, eating along the deck and across benches. Overhead the sail roared, its fabric catching quickly.
    Dak was running out of time fast. Heat buffeted him and sweat broke out across his forehead and neck. Twice he shied away from the crackle of the hungry fire, but he couldn’t give up on finding the SQuare.
    The boat started to make its way down the river away from the group of Vikings and toward the bridge. Dak was stuck on board, still frantically searching behind every shield. There were twenty-five along each side and so far he’d only checked out half of