Loop (12 page)

“How are you alive? People can’t Shift into the future.”

“We didn’t.” He propped himself up on one elbow and pointed to the Washington Monument in the distance. His mouth split into a cocky grin. “I kept us in my time.”

I bent over, grabbed his finger, and moved it a few inches to the left, toward the western side of the Tidal Basin. When I removed my hand, his arm dropped. As did his jaw.

“What is that?” he asked.

“The Barack Obama Memorial fountain.”

“The
what
?”

“Obama was our nation’s first black president. He served in office from 2008 until—”

“I know who President Obama is … was … is.” Finn felt around in the grass for his sunglasses. He shoved them on and blinked at the shimmering fountain.

“Yep. It’s still there,” I said.

His head swayed from side to side. “How could it not have worked?”

“How could what not have worked?”

“I was supposed to keep you in the twenty-first century with me. Safe.”

“Is that what Future Me told you to do? Cling to me to keep me in your time?”

“No. I mean, yes.” Finn closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

I grabbed him by the shoulders. “What
exactly
did I instruct you to do?”

“Protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

“You didn’t say.”

I let go of him. “That’s it?”

Way to be specific, Future Me.

He hedged a moment, then nodded. “Yes. That’s it.”

“And this is your way of protecting me? Breaking every law of quantum mechanics to hang out with me in the twenty-third century.”

“Whenever Dad Shifts, he makes sure not to touch Mom or me. He says touching a nonShifter would stop him from going anywhere. I thought … I thought I was keeping you safe.”

“You’re lucky we didn’t land in the Institute. That’s where I’d be if this had been a normal fade. That’s where I’m supposed to be. A forced fade messes with your tendrils—wrenches them through the space-time continuum.” My vision was still fuzzy around the edges, and I fought back another wave of nausea.

“Where you’re supposed to be? Maybe you’re
supposed
to be back in Chincoteague with my family. Safe.”

“Safe.” I snorted. “You’re the reason I’m in danger.”

As if on cue, my Com vibrated again. I didn’t need to open it to know something was wrong.
Good grief.
Of course, something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

The face of it flashed red when I picked it up. I tossed it back to the ground like a steaming potato.

“They know.”

“They know what?” asked Finn.

“The value of pi. What do you think? They know I brought something back with me.”

It happened occasionally. A bottle cap stuck in the shoe, gum in the mouth, a forgotten wrapper in the pocket. They all shared the same fate.

Straight into the incinerator.

“Another one of your Shifter rules?” He smirked.

“Nope. Not a Shifter rule. One of our country’s laws, Finn.
Laws.
”

“So what … you just changed the future by bringing me here?”

“I didn’t bring you here! You
clung
to me. And it’s not that simple.”

“Explain it to me.”

“Do you realize the bacteria and germs and … general filth you have on you right at this very moment?”

Finn smirked. “The worst I have is a cold coming on.”

“From a virus that was likely eradicated forever ago. No one would have any immunity to it now. That cold could cause an epidemic. And the earth’s atmosphere is different now. What if it mutated into a new strain?”

“You don’t get sick every time you go back in time, do you?”

“Shifters are vaccinated. Then decontaminated when they synch. But there aren’t enough vaccines to protect the entire population against every disease throughout time.”

“So it’s bad that I’m here.”

“You think?”

“What you’re saying is you need
protection
.”

“Because of
you
! Oh my gosh.” I grabbed my head. It still felt like it was going to explode from the forced fade. At least my nosebleed had stopped. “A human being. From the past. I’ll go to prison for this.”

Finn’s gaze wandered off to the distance. He picked a blade of grass from the lawn and twisted it around his thumb. Technically, I could have made a citizen’s arrest of him for committing a misdemeanor, but I let it slide given the circumstances.

“They know it’s me?” he asked. “The object you brought back?”

“No.” I laughed.

“But they know it’s a person?”

“Trust me, if anyone in their right mind believed I somehow managed to bring a human back from the past you’d be in a lab already and I’d be in jail.”

An impish grin spread across Finn’s face. “Take off your shirt.”

“What? No.” Seriously, was there a single guy out there who had the ability to think with anything other than his hormones?

“Did you forget?” Finn took his own shirt off and threw it to me. “You fell in a mud puddle on your assignment and borrowed a random stranger’s shirt. Very nice guy. You’ll have to remember to thank him someday.”

I’d heard worse.

“What will you wear?” I pointed at my own formfitting T-shirt. It would fit around one of his biceps if we were lucky.

“A smile.” He waggled his eyebrows at me as I started to lift my shirt.

“Turn around.” I looked around to make sure no one else was looking our way.

For once, he didn’t argue with me as he swiveled his body away. “I was going to.”

“Yeah, right. After that kiss earlier?”

The tips of his ears reddened. “No, I was.”

The time for squabbling had passed. I pulled his shirt on. “Okay, you can look.”

He turned around slowly, and I made every effort not to look at his bare chest.

Okay, maybe not
every
effort.

“All right.” He clapped his hands together. “Where to now? Your school?”

He couldn’t be serious.

“
I’m
going to my school,” I said. “You’re going…”

Yikes.
Where
was
he going?

A siren wailed in the distance. Even if it wasn’t for me, it made my next decision easy. I snapped the QuantCom shut and grabbed Finn’s hand. We scurried across the autumn-faded lawn and down the wide white steps of the memorial. At first, Finn lagged behind. I didn’t know if he felt sick from the forced fade or nervous to be in the twenty-third century. And I didn’t give a mouse’s left butt cheek either way.

“Hurry up,” I said, clawing my nails into the palm of his hand.

Whatever misgivings he had, he put them aside. Soon his footsteps fell in with mine. We raced down to the edge of the Tidal Basin. I stole one final glance at my QuantCom and plunked it into the water.

“Whoa!” Finn jumped back from the splash. “Isn’t that, like, your security blanket?”

“It’s not providing me much security, is it?” Still, I couldn’t pull my eyes away as it sunk into the murkiness of the basin.

“They can’t track you now?”

“Of course they can. They’ll use my chip.” I dipped my hands in the water and wiped the blood from my face.

“Then why did you—?”

“To buy us some time. It’ll slow them down.” QuantComs weren’t waterproof. One of those weird quirks that came in handy sometimes. My friend Pennedy once panicked after a botched Chemistry final and shoved the whole thing in her mouth.

“Where are we going?” Finn asked.

To the only place I could think of. “My house.”

“You don’t think they’ll look for you at your own house?”

“They will. But they won’t be looking for you.” The plan had formed in my mind without much direct thought on my part. Step 1: Hide Finn. Step 2 … well, that part of the plan was still fuzzy. “It’s the perfect hiding spot.”

Finn’s hand slipped out of mine when he stopped moving. “Hiding?”

A breeze flapped my hair across my face when I turned to face him. I stuck out my lower lip and puffed it away. “What did you think you’d be doing?”

“I thought
we’d
be running, searching, fighting.”

“There’s no
we
. And there’s nothing to run from or search for or fight against.”

Another siren in the distance, louder this time, didn’t help my case.

“Make you a deal,” I said. “If something comes up that I need protection from, you will be my official go-to guy.”

My promise appeased him enough for him to start following me again.

“Are we near your house?” he asked.

“Not too far. We can take the Metro.”

“They still have that?” asked Finn.

I smiled my first real smile since I’d gotten back. “Oh, yes.”

chapter 10

IT WAS AS ENTERTAINING
as I’d always imagined it would be, watching someone from the past ride the Metro for the first time. Like a frontier woman stepping into a stratoscraper or a Roman soldier wielding a stunner.

“Hold on tight,” I said. The cylindrical cabin was half-empty, its eggshell smooth walls visible where people normally stood shoulder to shoulder, but I still kept my voice low.

“I’ve ridden the Metro before,” said Finn. “I don’t think I really need to—”

“Hold. On.”

The other passengers were already staring at Finn’s bare chest. The last thing I needed was him plastered against the back wall. He laid his hand loosely on the strap.

“Loop it through.”

His mouth turned down into a skeptical frown, but he obeyed. The strap clamped down on his wrist and tightened. And just in time.

The other few passengers, who had sensibly brought their MootBoots, swayed slightly as the train bullet-blasted out of the station. Like rogue pendulums caught in an upswing, Finn’s and my feet shot up behind us and smacked against the top of the coach. Finn let out a yelp, and I poked him in the chest. A man with an ample Afro at the front of the cabin looked up from his reading and shook his head, laughing.
Those crazy daredevil kids,
I could almost hear his thoughts. But then he did a double take when he noticed my face. He averted his eyes. To the ceiling. To the solographic ads bobbing along, bumping into riders’ shoulders. Recognition was smeared all over his face, though.

Her.

Like everyone else, he had seen the news stories. The theories. The accusations. My mom’s injuries were still a mystery. She’d gone on a last-minute Shift for work that morning, not out of the ordinary. Poppy Bennis was always chasing forgery leads. But she synched before she was scheduled, and she landed on the steps of the Institute of all places. Her chip had simply stopped working.

Everyone had a hypothesis. Most Shifters believed it was a spontaneous malfunction or inexplicable injury. They knew that no Shifter, or at least no sane one, would purposefully disable her chip. “Unless, of course,” they whispered, “she … but no, surely someone would have noticed the symptoms before now.” Most nons claimed she had tampered with it, another logical conclusion. I, who should have had the best guess of anyone, didn’t know what to believe. Nor did I care. All I wanted was to disprove the Shifters’ worries and the nons’ theories before I lost her forever.

I spared the guy any further discomfort and looked away, thankful none of the other riders had recognized me yet. Finn didn’t notice. He was too busy palming the smooth, clear top of the train, looking for another handhold. I considered hooking my toe on one of the foot latches on the ceiling but didn’t bother. It was a short ride. We’d be there any—

Moment.

With the sudden decrease in velocity, our feet swung in the opposite direction. I pulled my knees into my chest and dangled until the wrist strap loosened. Finn came precariously close to kicking a priest in the face with his lanky, flailing legs. When his strap came undone, he plummeted to the ground. Probably should have warned him about the stopping.

The other passengers swayed again, and a few reached down to deflate their leg stabilizers. Even though none of the other travelers were from the Institute, I was anxious to get out of the cabin and onto the open space of the platform.

The moment the doors opened, I took off toward the stairs. Three steps down, I realized Finn wasn’t behind me. Wearing a nasty pale pallor, he had staggered over to the railing on the platform and retched over the side.

“Nice.” I walked over to him and patted his back. “Y’know, for someone who took his first time-travel experience like a man, I’m surprised a little train ride did you in.”

“That,” said Finn, coughing and pointing at the quickly filling coach behind him, “is no train.”

Finn wobbled over to a bench and sat down with his head between his knees. I itched to get moving.

“Come on.” I reached over and tugged on Finn’s hand.

He squinted through bleary eyes. “Could you give me a minute? I’m in the future.”

“Yeah, I know. The question is
how
.” I counted to seven. “We have to go.”

Finn clutched his stomach but nodded. We emerged in the refurbished section of Old Georgetown, not to be confused with the slightly sketchy section where my house was. Out on the road, a police officer hovered on a dasher near the corner of the busy intersection, greeting the arriving Metro passengers with a friendly wave and monitoring Pod traffic. I walked as far as I could around the officer and turned my face away from her.

At the end of the block, I spotted a vacant double Publi-pod floating over its docking station. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t smack one of those nasty red orbs with a twelve-foot pole. They always smelled like urine or stale beer. At best.

But it was free, and anything was better than the increasingly curious stares of passersby. Finn was oblivious. Or maybe he just liked walking around without his shirt on.

“Come on.” I hurried over to the unoccupied Pod before someone else claimed it.

“We’re riding to your house?”

I nodded.

“In
that
?” One of Finn’s eyebrows drifted up his forehead.

The Pod bloomed open like a flowering bud when I waved my hand in front of the door sensor. One petal on each side bent into a stair-like ramp. “Sorry if it doesn’t meet your usual standard of luxur—”