Twist (21 page)

“You'd better not have kissed her like that.”

“Well, not like
that,
but my point is, don't you think it's odd? Her affection all seems to be for show, and it all seems to be for your benefit.”

“Mine?”

“Who else? You're the only one she's done it around. And then the fact that she even took that picture of you kissing Wyck. What was that about? Why did she even care?”

“So then why were you so upset at the thought of her getting into trouble for bringing you here?”

“Part of it was that I was scared if I got busted I'd have no choice but to synch to Chincoteague. And the other part, well, I really do feel kind of guilty about using her. She's not that bad. I think you guys could even be friends.”

I gave him a withering look.

“Okay, maybe friends in an alternate universe.” Finn grinned, and his dimple took a dive into his cheek. Adorable. And yet delusional.

Maybe Jafney wasn't the spiny-hulled sea urchin of a man-thief that I thought. But no way in blark did that mean we would ever be friends.

“Well, you're sticking to me now.” I wrapped my arms around him.

He kissed the top of my head. “Always.”

We stood there, resting in each other's embrace for a beat longer than was probably safe. “So.” Finn's shoes squeaked against the cold metal floor as he pulled away to survey our surroundings. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them. “You've clearly been busy. What do we know?”

I only had time to give him the stunner-zap version.

ICE had been kidnapping Shifters. No clue why.

Wyck changed my past. No clue why.

My future self stopped me from reverting that change.
Really
no clue why.

“And you're sure it was Future You that stopped you from reverting the change that Wyck made?” Finn asked.

“I think I know what I look like.”

“No, I mean, it couldn't have been some evil clone of you?”

“That's the thing. She didn't seem evil. She seemed…” My voice trailed off as I realized the first word that came to mind.

“Seemed what?” His brow knit together in the middle. “Confused? Angry?”

“She seemed desperate.”

“That's not good.”

“I know.”

“Well, what did she say when you asked her about the clue?”

“What clue?”

“The clue.” More brow knittage. “
To save his, destroy yours
and all those numbers and letters?”

“Oh, umm. I didn't really pin her down on details about—”

“You
did
ask her?”

“I may not have gotten around to it, per se.” I squinched up my face. “As in, I didn't.”

“What the huh, Bree?”

“Everything happened so fast!”

“You receive an ominous-sounding message from your ominous-acting future self in ominous conditions, and then you don't bother to question that same future self about it when you run into her?”

“I was preoccupied.”

“You had the note in your pocket!”

“I had Wyck's tongue down my throat!”

Wrong. Thing. To. Say.

Finn's face turned purple. He clutched the edge of the soligram in front of him until the pixels fell apart like confetti. One by one, I unclenched his fingers.

“I should have been there to protect you,” he said.

“There was nothing you could have done. It was Future Me that stopped the timeline reversion. He hasn't hurt me. I don't know exactly why she wants me hanging around Wyck, but she does. She hasn't been wrong yet, has she?” I hooked my pinky around his, and it relaxed. “She was right about you. About us.”

“I am rather fond of her.”

“I heard a rumor she has a crush on you.”

“What can I say?” He kissed the bridge of my nose. “We're compatible.”

Compatible.

The word snapped me back to the task at hand.

“That's what she said.”

“Is that joke still around?” Finn chuckled.

“What joke?”

“That's what she … never mind.”

“Compatibility,” I said. “That's the word Lafferty used the other day when she was talking to Raspy.”

“Raspy?”

“The guy in the silver suit.” I'd already explained to Finn that Raspy was the kidnapper. “Lafferty said an unchipped Shifter has been feeding her information. I think she means him.”

“Why would he do that?”

“No idea.”

“And compatible with what?” Finn asked.

“Or who,” I said, almost without thought. But once it was out there, it seemed plausible. “Lafferty said they have to trick Neos' tendrils to allow them to Shift. Maybe ICE is kidnapping Shifters to study their tendrils, figure out how to force the Neos' tendrils to act the same way.”

“Well—”

“It makes so much sense.” I was on to something here. “That could be why they've been kidnapping Shifters from the past rather than the present. They know that after Shifters came out of hiding, people would notice if large numbers of them went missing. But in the past…”

“I don't know. It seems like—”

“No one would know the difference.” I held up a finger to Finn. I didn't want to lose my train of thought. “Even the kidnapped Shifters' families probably think that they were killed in another era. As an unchipped Shifter, Raspy would know where to find Havens, and then he burns them down to keep other Shifters from the future from putting the pieces together. They'd just think it was a normal fire. And it's not like their families could go to a chronocrime investigator like they could now. The Shifters just—poof—disappeared. No one to miss them.”

“
No one
misses them? As a pastling, I find that a little—”

“No. That's wrong.”

“Exactly.”

I pushed past Finn toward the cryochambers that lined the wall.

“Nava's from the present. Why would they have taken her?” I thought back on all my time spent at Resthaven. She didn't have a lot of visitors. The woman was 107 years old. I couldn't recall any outside friends. Then again, she'd been in Resthaven a long time. Longer than anyone else there, probably. It's not like she could disappear with nobody noticing. Nurse Granderson loved her like she was his own mother. And nothing got past Quigley.

Maybe ICE took her as a not-so-silent threat to the Haven. Just to prove that they could.

“Knock, knock,” said Finn.

“Who's there?” I answered automatically.

“Ahh. You remember I'm here.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It's like I've slipped into lone wolf mode the last few days, trying to figure out a way into this place.”

“Rawrr.” He slipped behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Yeah, that growling thing is going to need to stop.”

“My point is”—he took my hands in his—“you're not alone. But I would like to get out of this creeptastic place as quickly as possible.”

“Agreed.”

“What were you hoping to find?”

“I don't know.” I traced my index finger along the smooth bubbles. About twenty of them were lit up now, the top of each kidnapped Shifter's head visible through the front glass. “An off switch?”

I paused at one of the middle bubbles, counted the ones to the top and bottom of it. It was the one that had held Nava the last time I was here. It was empty now.

“Nava's gone.”

“The old lady from Resthaven?”

“She was right here.”

“Maybe they moved her.”

I went and looked in all the other compartments for her shock of white hair.

“No.”

“Maybe she's…” Finn gestured toward the center tank, the body inside twitching as the cloudy substance swirled around it.

I'd avoided looking closely at it until now. But, no, the person in that tank was too big to be frail Nava.

“Or she might be…” Finn gulped rather than finish pointing out the most probable outcome. I mean, she was 107 years old. There was no telling what was involved in ICE's experiments. And it had been fifty years since I'd seen her here.

“How far back do you think some of these victims go?” Finn was trying to change the subject, I could tell. And I was grateful for it.

I shrugged. “They could be from any time period. And just because they were taken from a Haven in a particular year doesn't mean they actually live in that era.”

I moved over to sift through a pile of personal effects that were stacked off to the side. None of it looked like it was from the recent past. Clothing that stank of smoke, a leather satchel with a singed strap, a waterproof wallet with any identification removed.

“I know this man.” Finn held up an engraved silver pocketwatch. “Alonso Ontiveros. My dad is friends with him. He was born forty-something years into my future. He's a historian, I think. Specialized in the Renaissance, maybe? He came over for dinner a few times, and I met him once when I Shifted with my father to—” Finn snapped his fingers as he tried to recall where he'd seen Alonso. His face fell.

“At the Haven from the 1666 fire. He stayed there a lot,” he said. “He's a good guy. He didn't deserve this.”

“No one deserves this.” I gestured to the bubbles where row upon row of Shifters were now frozen. “Whatever exactly
this
even is.”

“But how did the kidnapper bring them here?” Finn dropped the watch back into the pile of goods. “I'm only able to Shift into my future because of your wonky tendrils.”

“I prefer ‘exceptional brain,' thank you very much.” But he made a good point. “There's only one way that I can see. We already know that Raspy is an unchipped Shifter. But he must be like me. Conceived in one time and born in another.”

“How often does that happen?” asked Finn. “I mean, I know you and Jafney have that in common. Are there many others?”

“No, it's rare. Not unheard of, but rare. There might be more than we know. Most people keep it quiet.”

I shuddered. The thought of another Shifter willingly doing this sickened me. My Com gave a beep to let me know that forty minutes had passed. It felt like it had been so much shorter than that.

“We'd better go,” I said. We'd need to find an alternate way out. I couldn't go back through the transportation tubes. There'd been a few portholes lining the hall outside this room. Hopefully, one of them was an exit to the outside.

As we walked past the center tank, the cloudy fluid still sloshing, I pressed my hand to the glass. The jerking movements inside had whimpered to occasional twitches. A tear leaked from the corner of my eye.

“I wish we could get them out of there,” I said.

“I know, but we don't know how this equipment works. We could end up hurting them worse.”

“How did it come to this?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Where did we go wrong?” I wiped the smudge of my fingerprints away. “In your time, being a Shifter is so uncomplicated.”

“Less complicated, but I wouldn't say it's uncomplicated. It's hard hiding. And Mom has serious angst over how many plates to put out each night.”

“But she's not single-handedly fighting an evil organization which doesn't give a flying blark about screwing up the space-time continuum.”

“Hey,” he said, stopping me in my tracks. He tilted my chin up. “You're not doing anything single-handed. You are never going to face this alone.”

I wanted it to be true. But we both knew he couldn't make that promise. No one could. There were plenty of things I had to face alone. There was only one reverter, and it was mine. If there was any good from this timeline change, it was that ICE didn't seem to know about the reverter's existence now. They didn't know I was a threat. But if we got caught here, that could all change.

I didn't let any of my fears splash onto him, though. He didn't need that. Instead, I gave a resolute little nod and walked with him to the exit that led to the hallway I'd entered from. We crouched to the edge of the doorway as it slid open just in case there was someone on the other side. We were fine. No one there.

My spirits boosted as we made our way down the hall. Each porthole was marked with a small icon at the bottom signifying its destination. Fork for cafeteria. Leaf for outside … or greenhouse? Couldn't risk it. And then there it was, the last one, about ten feet away from the opening to the transport tube. Emergency exit.

I put my foot through the exit hatch and immediately knew something was wrong. My foot stuck like it had been locked into concrete. A red warning light began to flash in the hallway. Apparently, they were more concerned with preventing escape than entry.

Finn grabbed me by the armpits and tried to pull me out. No luck. “What now?”

“Don't panic.” I shot my magno-grappling hook at the ceiling, latched my palms onto the handle, and triggered the device. It jerked my arms to the edge of their sockets and my Com slipped from my grasp and fell to the floor, but it was no good. I didn't move an inch.

“Okay, panic a little,” I said.

“We'll just tell them we got lost.” Finn picked my Com up.

“Finn, that might work for me, but the second they ID you, they'll discover that you're a chronofugitive.”

“I haven't done anything wrong yet,” he said. “Surely getting lost won't count as a crime.”

“Doesn't matter,” I said. “They could chip you just to make sure you don't flee to another century after you commit the crime.”

“But what if it turns out to be something simple? Like a parking ticket?”

“We already know it isn't some minor infraction, Finn. Level Five means kidnapping, murder, or arson.”

Before I could think of any way out of our (literally) sticky situation, burly men in red scrubs slipped through the porthole closest to the entrance to the Lab. One of them was a Shavie, whom I recognized from our altercation in Bergin's office last year. I'd nicknamed him Baldy. Even though I knew he hadn't done it on this timeline, and therefore had no memory of it, I bristled at the cruelty he was capable of. The guy had tried to decapitate me.