THE CHINESE boy with the birthmark led Dak to a dark, wooden warehouse shoved right up against a Buddhist monastery. Dak had read about these early monasteries, but seeing one in person was astonishing. It was beautifully landscaped with flowers everywhere, and several monks were walking in silence along a cobblestone path, heads bowed.
Dak felt like he should be tiptoeing out of respect.
The boy unlatched a thick wooden door and led Dak inside, where it was extremely dark and damp. They had to pass through a long, narrow hall lit up by a few dull torches. When they came upon an open door, the boy pointed inside and said in a quiet voice, “Waidan.”
“Thank you,” Dak told him, bowing slightly. He didn’t know where the bow had come from but it felt right, especially after seeing the monastery. Dak expected the boy to spin around and hurry his sack of legumes and Gouda back home to his family, but he just stood there behind Dak, nodding.
Dak shrugged and ducked his head inside the door.
He spotted Sera immediately. She was standing next to an older Chinese man, who had to be the alchemist. His dark workroom was set up like an ancient version of Dak’s parents’ barn. There were dozens of stone bowls filled with powders and plant clippings, and a faint smell of sulfur hung over the room.
Sera and the ancient alchemist were both leaning over an old wooden table, and the man seemed to be explaining something in his ancient Chinese tongue. Sera was nodding, which meant she had to be wearing a translation device. Dak wondered where she got it and why he didn’t have one, too.
The man then added a chemical to one of the small stone bowls, which resulted in a minor explosion that made both of them leap back from the workbench.
“Waidan,” the boy whispered over Dak’s shoulder. His breath smelled like Gouda, which Dak found surprisingly pleasant.
“Yeah, I kind of gathered that,” Dak whispered back.
All the pieces finally came together in Dak’s mind. Fireworks. Ninth-century China. An anonymous alchemist toiling away in a dark room. Dak had just witnessed history. This man had just discovered the chemical recipe for gunpowder!
Dak was about to step into the room and congratulate the man when Sera did something he never would have expected. He gasped in disbelief as she took a syringe out of her knapsack and jabbed the long needle into the old man’s neck.
Sera caught the alchemist as he collapsed and lay him gently on his back. Then she stood up in front of the workbench and started collecting all the man’s stored chemicals, shoving them into her knapsack.
Dak stepped out from behind the door, shouting, “What are you doing?”
“Dak!” Sera said, startled. “What are you doing? I told you to wait for me in the hut.”
“I came looking for you,” Dak barked.
The boy raced past Dak to get inside. He pushed Sera away, and held up the old man’s head and started speaking to him in a quiet voice.
Dak marched over to Sera and pointed at the syringe in her hand. “What’d you do, kill him?”
“No, I didn’t kill him,” Sera said. “It’s a perfectly safe chemical blend that will put our friend to sleep for several hours. When he wakes up, he won’t remember anything about the dangerous elements he was experimenting with.”
Dak looked down at the man, trying to understand what was happening. Things seemed to be spiraling out of control, and he didn’t know what to do. “Why are we here, Sera?” he finally demanded. “What’s the Break we’re fixing? I need to know now.”
Sera sighed, shoving the syringe back into her knapsack. “Fine, here’s the situation, Dak. Remember back home, near your barn, when you said you wanted to go back into history again?”
Dak nodded.
“It got me thinking about what a great opportunity we had. Instead of just fixing Breaks this time, we could actually make life better for people.”
“Funny,” Dak said. “I wouldn’t think that involved stabbing old people in the neck.”
“Look,” Sera said. “We can’t do it all the time because, you know, every little change we make creates massive ripple effects throughout time. Which is incredibly dangerous. Blah, blah, blah. But I decided maybe we can alter a few key moments in time for the better. Do you know what this man was doing in here?”
“Of course,” Dak said. “He was inventing gunpowder.”
“That’s right.” Sera grabbed Dak by his shoulders and stared right into his eyes. “And do you realize how much death and destruction the invention of gunpowder ultimately leads to? Think about it, Dak. Guns, explosives, war, horrific acts of terrorism. And we have the opportunity to stop it all right now. Today, Dak. Me and you.”
Sera had a point. The invention of gunpowder would lead, directly and indirectly, to a ton of horrible historical events. But he still didn’t see how putting one man to sleep in some dank, ancient Chinese warehouse was going to stop anything.
Sera gestured at Dak’s shoes. “You stick out like a sore thumb with those checkered Vans, by the way.”
Dak glanced at his shoes, then cleared his throat and said, “Someone’s going to figure out the formula eventually, Sera.”
“Of course they will,” she fired back. “But our responsibility is to make sure the inventor is someone more trustworthy, someone who will aim to use this advancement for the greater good. In this case, actually, it’s a group of people.”
“But how do we know —”
“Come on,” Sera said, cutting him off. “We have to hurry up and get these chemicals into the hands of the ancient pacifist group known as the AB.”
“The AB?” Dak said, more confused than ever. “Who the heck is the AB?”
“Just follow me,” Sera said.
Dak looked down at the alchemist again, the man he’d been searching for all morning. He was shocked to find the boy with the moon-shaped birthmark asleep on the dirt beside the old man. Dak reached down and tried to wake up the little thief by jostling his arm, but the poor kid was out cold. He was even snoring a little. All the excitement of the day must have finally caught up with him.
“Dak, let’s go,” Sera said, tugging at his elbow. “We don’t have time to mess around.”
As they left the warehouse, Dak found the sack of legumes next to the door. He ran it back inside and lay it next to the boy so he’d have something to eat when he woke up. Before he turned to leave, he saw that the boy was still clutching a small piece of Gouda in his right hand. He’d eaten almost all of it.
Dak shook the kid again.
Nothing.
He stared at the remaining Gouda again, thinking about how he’d slept through an entire day. And he remembered the cheese was the last thing he’d eaten before nodding off.
“Are you coming?” Sera called to him from the door.
Dak spun around and looked his best friend up and down. He nodded, climbing to his feet. He followed her back through the hall, pretending like everything was perfectly fine when really everything was perfectly messed up. Had Sera given him a bad piece of cheese?
Had she known it was going to make him fall asleep?
It hurt his chest to think that his best friend in the world might be involved in some dubious mission that she was keeping from him. But she had outright lied about there being another Break. What else might she be hiding?