“PLEASE, JUST talk to me,” Bacab said to Sera.

Tears were falling down her cheeks, but she didn’t care. Bacab was badly hurt. He said he knew he wouldn’t make it and refused to let her take him to the village medicine man.

“Talk about what?” Sera asked, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

“It does not matter, little sister. Tell me about your life. Your family.”

Sera watched the way his entire body shivered in the warm, humid air. She looked out from behind the large ceiba tree they had ducked beneath, trying to figure out what she could tell a dying man. Rain poured down all around them. Large drops sometimes slipped through the thick tree leaves and landed on their heads. She had tried the door to the hut in front of them, but it was locked. And nobody had answered when she knocked, even though she was sure there were people inside.

“Please,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the trunk of the tree. “Anything.”

Sera squeezed Bacab’s cold hand until he opened his eyes again. “It’s only me and my uncle Diego,” she said.

“No parents?” Bacab asked in a strained voice.

Sera shook her head. “I never knew them.”

The wind picked up, swirling around Sera and Bacab and their tree. The leaves rustled wildly. Sera heard a thick branch snap, but when she looked up she didn’t see anything.

“Tell me more,” Bacab said.

“I had a dream about them,” she said, wiping mud from Bacab’s brow. “My parents. I was in the future. Thousands of years from now, when the world was ending. I went to my uncle’s barn and opened the door. And there they were, sitting in chairs, waiting for me.”

“That’s right,” Bacab said.

Sera wiped the tears from her face again and said, “They came back because they cared about me.”

“Of course they did.” Bacab coughed and reached down to touch the arrow in his thigh. “You will see them again.”

Sera let out a sob and then quickly stopped herself. “I’m sorry, Bacab. This was all my fault. You were trying to help me.”

“Since I was a little boy,” he said in almost a whisper, “I wanted to be a leader of people. My people.” He coughed and wiped his mouth. “My father always warned me, though. He said, ‘Bacab, if you want to be someone special you must have strong shoulders.’ I didn’t understand until now.”

Sera’s heart was pounding in her chest. It was exactly what her grandfather had said to her. The one time they’d met. She stared at Bacab, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

The sky lit up in a massive flash of lightning.

Thunder rumbled directly overhead.

“What about you, little sister?” Bacab asked. “Do you have strong shoulders?”

Sera sobbed again, and this time when she tried to catch herself, she wasn’t able to. She just kept on crying.

“I think you do,” he said, grinning a little. “And I sense things.” He coughed hard and then pulled in a deep breath. “About people.”

Tears streamed down Sera’s face, and she tried for a deep breath, too. But she couldn’t get one. She was too upset. “Bacab,” she said. She wanted to say something important, something meaningful and comforting. But the words weren’t coming into her head and all she could think to do was say his name again. “Bacab.”

When he didn’t answer, she let herself sob into her own hands.

Because she knew.

He was gone.

After several seconds she leaned his head back against the trunk of the ceiba tree and pushed closed his eyelids. “I’m proud to come from you,” she whispered.

Then she leaned her head against the tree, too, and watched the growing storm.

A few minutes later, Dak and Riq were there. Dak gripped the Infinity Ring in his hands. Riq was fiddling with his bracelet.

Sera looked up at them, both soaking wet. She wiped her face and climbed to her feet.

“Sera,” Dak started. But then he noticed Bacab and said, “Oh.”

Riq gently patted her on the shoulder. “Some of the villagers have warned us that the storm will be getting much worse,” he said. “But we can stay here a little longer if you want.”

“It’s a storm,” Dak said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as they were saying.”

Sera took the Infinity Ring from Dak and programmed in the new coordinates Riq showed her on the SQuare. She looked up at Dak and Riq and said, “If the Maya say a great storm is coming, then a great storm is coming.”

They nodded.

“Better hold on if you’re coming with me,” she said.

Dak and Riq both put their hands on the Ring next to hers, and she pushed the button that would send them warping through time yet again. The Ring began to vibrate, and the liquid inside lit up and swirled. Sera looked out at the blurring Mayan landscape, feeling sad but also incredibly full. She turned to look at Bacab, thinking how the next time someone in school drew her great-great-great-grandmother sitting on a Mayan temple, she would not feel embarrassed. She would feel proud.

Everything around them began to blur. Dak said to Riq, “Show her.”

Riq held up an open locket. Sera expected to see a Mayan glyph in the last second before they warped away. But it was something else altogether.

“Is that . . . Chinese?” she asked.

Just as Dak opened his mouth to answer, they were whisked away into blackness.