Loop (34 page)

Granderson yelled a word that wouldn’t get past Charlotte no matter what.

“I’m sending Bree and Finn to hide the reverter,” said Quigley. “I’ll be there as soon as I can with Poppy.” She ended the conversation with Nurse Granderson right as we reached the main entrance.

“Right then. Let’s go.” She reached toward the door button, but I slammed my hand against the panel.

“What makes you think Resthaven can protect my mom? They can’t even protect themselves from the Madness.”

“Don’t you see, Bree?” She pointed to the reverter Finn still clutched in his free hand. “There is no Madness. Bergin said everyone’s tendrils adjust seamlessly to the changes they’ve brought about, but what if that’s not true? What if unchipped Shifters’ tendrils are clinging to the correct time line? They’d be aware of all these small changes. And it would come off as appearing—”

“Crazy,” I whispered. “And the timing makes sense. The Madness didn’t begin until Shifters came into the open, so nonShifters wouldn’t have changed anything before then. The worst cases of the Madness are from Future Shifters.”

“Who would have experienced the most changes,” said Finn.

Quigley curled my fingers around the reverter.

“This is our only hope to spare Future Shifters from the Madness. To return the time line to how it should truly be.”

“The Truth.”

“You have to hide it. I don’t want to know where. I’ll do everything in my power to keep your mother safe.”

I lowered my hand from the panel, and Quigley brushed Bergin’s hair against it to open the door. There was a nip in the moist, pre-dawn air. Finn handed me his sweater, and I wrapped it around my mother’s flimsy gown. I wiped a spindle of drool from her cheek. We scurried down the Institute steps toward a docked Publi-pod.

“Where should Finn and I hide the—?”

“I told you I don’t want to know,” Quigley almost shouted, but then brought her voice back down. “As soon as we get to Resthaven, we part ways. Get it out of this time if possible.”

She turned to Finn. “Whatever happens, keep Bree safe.”

I leaned over to give my mom a kiss. She lifted her head an inch as my lips met her warm cheek. Her eyes shone in a way that I could only describe as Mom-ish.

In a voice of mere breath, she said one word: “Safe.”

“Soon, Mom. Soon.”

As Finn situated my mother in the Pod (it was a double and would be a tight squeeze with all of us), I turned to Quigley.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

Quigley’s face relaxed into an actual smile, be it small, and that was when I saw the resemblance. With her lipstick smudged off and her hair pulled loose next to her heavyset eyelids.

“
You’re
Mona Lisa.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Their secret.

“Told you he owed me one.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

Quigley stepped into the Pod and scooted over. There would be just enough room for Finn, and I could squeeze onto his lap. He had a foot in the Pod and was pulling me toward it when the tinkle of shattering glass destroyed the last shreds of daybreak quiet. A blast of whirs, buzzes, and beeps, exploded behind it.

A swarm of tru-ants had blasted through the front doors. They pulsated in one giant blob. Coach Black stood in the middle of the metallic cloud, sneering. Bergin was hunched over behind him.

“Oh, blark.” We all three said it.

I had to get my mom away from them. I stuck my head in the Pod and whispered, “Destination: Resthaven. Go.”

“Keep it safe!” I could barely make out Quigley’s muffled shout as the Pod sealed up. Finn and I jumped out of its path, and it shot down the street. It disappeared into a dot as it turned the corner past the Capitol.

“Two on two,” said Finn. “We can take them.”

Spoken by someone who’d never been stung by a tru-ant.

I grabbed his hand and ran.

chapter 31

“NOT THAT I’M TRYING
to pee all over this parade,” said Finn, “but you do realize I’m going to be no help with hiding places.”

His cheeks had turned all splotchy, and he drew a deep breath when we slowed our sprint to a jog. Nice thing about tru-ants, the longer they’re at it, the more apathetic they get about the chase. After three blocks, most were like “meh.” After five, I started stomping the few remaining motivated ones. But as soon as Bergin locked my position through my microchip, we’d have a lot worse than ants after us.

I desperately needed that position to be a few centuries away.

Where the heck was I going to find a Shift Pad to use? There was one at Mom’s work, yes, across the National Mall, but if I tried to break into the National Gallery of Art … Might as well head back to the Institute.

The PayPads wouldn’t open for a few more hours. Not that I had any money. Or even knew where the nearest one was. I’d have to access a database to find out. That would give away our location, sure as a strand of hair.

We needed to find a private Pad. It was the only solution.

Easier said than done. Their cost was astronomical—more than our house, Mom’s hospital bills, and my Institute tuition combined.

I’d never even heard of anyone who had their own Pad. Well, except for … “Molly!”

Finn looked at me like I’d yelled something in Bulgarian.

“Molly Hayashi,” I said. “She’s a First-Year student, and she likes me.” This could work; this could actually work. “Her family owns a Shift Pad.”

I ran harder. I had no idea where Molly’s family lived. Guess I could talk a stranger into using their hair to search for her address. That way our location wouldn’t pop up automatically. Okay, maybe
I
couldn’t talk someone into it, but Finn could. That boy could needle a nudist into a nightgown.

We’d reached the edge of the Mall, halfway between the Smithsonian Castle and Freedom Orb. As I dashed past the floating sphere, the irony didn’t escape me. I’d never felt more ensnared in my life. The sun crested the horizon and turned the many monuments along the wide-open expanse a fiery orange. It was normally my favorite time of day. Sometimes, when I returned home from a mission near dawn, I would go sit in the greenhouse and watch the city glow. Today, running on much confusion and zero sleep, it had a disorienting effect.

A few hundred yards to the west, the Washington Monument rose above everything, its long, thin finger set ablaze. The compass of the city. That great bastion of democracy.

I always thought it looked like it was flipping off the politicians.

But, more important, it was out in the open. Soon, joggers and early morning commuters would descend on the area. It would be harder for the ICE goons to attack us here. I clutched Finn’s shoulder and steered him across the street toward the lawn.

“I think Molly lives nearby. She must be in the city or not too far, because her parents come every Family Night. There’s a database search station up by the Lincoln Memorial.”

We raced along the edge of the Reflecting Pool. The excitement of getting to the Hayashis’ private Pad sped me along and I didn’t even shudder at the water a few feet to my right. Luck had finally turned to my side when I remembered that the Hayashis had their own private Shift Pad.

I halted mid-step. My big toe jammed against a crack as I stomped the sidewalk. All my pain and frustration funneled out my mouth in a muted howl.

A private LaunchPad that Molly wouldn’t receive until Christmas.

I sank to my knees and pounded my fists against the ground. Tears blurred their way out. After the night I’d had, it was a shock I had any left.

“We can’t cut a break. It won’t work,” I said. “She doesn’t have it yet. I don’t know what else to do.”

And why should I? Who appointed me She Who Must Fix Everything? Oh, wait. I knew exactly who: Future Bree.

“I could really use some help here!” I yelled to the sky. “Come on. Tell me what I’m supposed to do! What? You’ll talk to Finn? Confide in him but not me?
I’m
the one who needs you.
I’m
the one whose life you’re screwing with.”

Finn knelt beside me. “She can’t hear you.”

“Yes, she can. She remembered this moment, Finn. She … she left all these half clues and nothing hints. She knew, Finn. She knew what she was doing. She knew you had no future with her. It’s impossible, don’t you understand that? We’re an impossibility. And yet she went back and she toyed with you. She convinced you she cared about you to get you to do what she wanted.”

“She isn’t a liar,” he said. “You don’t become that.”

“Then how do you know my tell?”

“One time.” His jaw stiffened. “She lied once, the last time I saw her.”

“What did she say?”

“That we would never see each other again.” He nudged me gently with his foot. “It’s pretty clear she was wrong.”

“Oh, Finn.” I couldn’t bring myself to point out the obvious. Nothing was clear anymore. ICE could change the past. Which meant ICE could strip us of our future. Future Bree knew that.

Fog rose above the surface of the water and licked the edges of the sidewalk. We were alone except for two joggers on the far side of the pool. Finn sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulder.

“It
is
going to be okay,” he said. It wasn’t. But that was still the right thing to say.

It was chilly out. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. The heat of Finn’s body softened my shivers. He wrapped his hands around mine and lifted them up to his mouth to blow on them.

I leaned my head against his shoulder. If it weren’t for the whole being-chased-by-an-evil-organization-bent-on-warping-the-time-line thing, it would have been a nice moment.

The two male joggers across the way stopped running and began to argue with each other. I glanced up at them. That must have been what Finn and I had looked like so many times. What a waste. Pointless bickering. I would have been lost these last twenty-four hours without him. Kind of hard now to remember why I’d pushed him away for so long. Might as well throw him a scrap.

“You’re not bad, you know,” I said in a tiny voice.

“Hmm?”

“As a kisser,” I blurted, “you’re … not that bad.”

Finn tightened his arm around me. “‘Not that bad.’ High praise.”

“Okay. Fine. Quite skilled.”

“Well, I learned from the best.”

“Who have you—?” Jealousy flared before I realized who he was talking about. Warmth flooded my cheeks. “Oh. You’re being nice. I’ve never even kissed anyone.”

“You’re, uhh, you’re good at it, all right. But maybe you need to practice between now and our first kiss.”

Our first kiss.

The warmth moved down my neck and chest. I
would
survive this somehow. I would see Finn again. Well, not my Finn, but
a
Finn. We might not have a future, but at least we would have a past.

If I could stop ICE in time.

“I’m sorry for all this,” I said. “I never meant to drag you into it.”

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t force me here against my will. And I realize I haven’t exactly been the most cooperative of accidental time travelers.”

“But I’m still the one who—”

“Bree,” Finn said reproachfully, and took his arm off my shoulder, scooted away from me.

The warmth vanished. It left a cold hollow where my heart should have been. After all we’d been through, he was rejecting me. Not that I blamed him. I’d been so horrible at times. But it still stung. I shrank from him, but then he pulled me close against his chest.

He brushed my bangs away from my face. “Anything you want. Anything.”

The glow worked its way back to my heart. A fleeting moment of perfection in chaos. Anything I wanted.
Anything.

“I … I want you to—”

My breath cut off. Across the Reflecting Pool, one of the joggers turned to face us.

Wyck.

He must have followed us here. To warn us. Or … something.

“Finn.” I poked him in the rib and jerked my head in Wyck’s direction.

Finn swore under his breath. “How did he find us?”

I started to defend him, but somehow I couldn’t. I had a bad feeling. Then a horrible realization slammed me.

“He’s the only one who could have told Bergin about our Shift earlier. And—”
Oh, crap. Ohcrapohcrapohcrap.
When I had still suspected Dr. Quigley of something heinous, it was because I thought she was the only person who had overheard my conversation with Mimi at the Pentagon. But there
was
another person who had heard it. Mimi must have seen something odd with
Wyck,
not Quigley. He’d been standing right by her at the time.

“Hand me the reverter,” I whispered.

“No. It’s safer with me.”

“Which is what he’ll assume as well. Y chromosomes haven’t changed that much in two hundred years. Give it to me. You just said anything I want.”

“Is there ever going to be a point in the past, present, or future when you don’t get your way?” He slipped the reverter in my pocket as he pulled me to stand. “I’ll distract him. You—”

Finn didn’t finish his thought.

I didn’t blame him.

The other jogger had turned around.

It was another Wyck.

*   *   *

We stayed there for a few moments, all four of us, darting back and forth like we were dancing a complicated tango. It gave me the chance to look at the other Wyck, the Not-My Wyck. It was surreal—Wyck’s body, but gaunt and emaciated. Wyck’s hair, but scraggly and unwashed. His face, but the vicious sneer it wore was one I had never seen on another human before. And certainly not on my wisecracking friend.

Something terrible had happened to him. With a nauseating lurch of my stomach, I realized what it was. One of those Wycks was from the future. He must have used the IcePick to Shift here.

As I tried to decide what to do, one version of Wyck turned to the other and said something in a low voice I couldn’t hear. I shook my head. This situation could get ridiculously confusing. Fast. So I decided to separate them in my mind as Real Wyck and Evil Wyck. Although, given the look of scorn on Real Wyck’s face, he didn’t look like he planned on snuggling kittens or herding unicorns anytime soon.