Loop (5 page)

“Bree,” I whispered.

“It’s nice to meet you.” His hand was calloused but warm. “Charlotte mentioned you’re a student.”

“Ummm…”

“I’m sorry.” He took a step back. “Are my questions making you nervous? You probably don’t meet too many Shifters from before your time.”

“I haven’t met any. Once, I thought I saw a guy fade in my peripheral vision, but when I looked over it was too late to be sure.”

“Well, welcome. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.”

“Do you know where Muffy van Sloot’s grave is?” I only had a few more minutes, but it was worth a shot.

“Sorry. Don’t know that name.”

“Thanks anyway.” I shuffled my toe along a crevice in the marble floor, and we stood there in awkward silence.

“So the future, ehh?” John finally said. “You must have some cool technology up your sleeve.”

I froze. There were two directions this conversation could take. One included my involvement in a black market delivery. The other, a microchip in my skull. Either way, I could see the crack form on the thin layer of ice on which I tread.

“It didn’t take you long to synch up from your Shift,” I said to change the topic. That much I knew about pre-chipped Shifters. Like us, their quantum tendrils could only stretch for so long before they had to synchronize with real time.

He shook his head. “I haven’t synched yet.”

“What?”

“I only went back a few minutes,” he said. “It happens sometimes—an emotional response when I wish I could have a do-over. I’ll synch back up when things simmer down.”

“So you’re actually Future You?” I asked.

“Hmm.” He chuckled. “I suppose you could think of it that way.”

I didn’t like thinking about it, period, lest it make my brain cave in. As if on cue, the back of my skull began to tingle. Ahh, finally. A little Buzz. I fumbled through my pocket for the vial of Buzztabs. I took out the box of rocks and laid them on a desk that looked like it could have belonged to Louis XIV. Heck, probably did. I started to pick the rocks back up but then thought better of it. At least I could leave them in this time, if not on Muffy’s grave.

“What are you taking?” he asked.

“Oh, umm…”
Blark.
I could see the ice on which I tread crackle, the splinters grew even as I opened my mouth. I’d trespassed into dangerous, dangerous territory.
This
was why we had The Rule against speaking to Shifters from the past. If he knew his fate and, more important, if he knew I had the remedy for his fate buried in my skull … I popped a couple tabs in my mouth to give myself time to think. They dissolved on my tongue, the minty aftertaste not quite able to mask the acidic bite. The pills were a relatively recent development, only around for fifty years or so, since Shifters came out of hiding. But I could tell him part of the truth.

“They’re for the Buzz.”

“The what?”

“Oh, sorry, terminology’s probably changed over the years.” I tried to think of every slang term I’d ever heard to describe it. “Y’know, the Jolts, Electric Fuzzies, the Harsh.”

He must have had a different word for it, as he met my descriptions with a blank stare. “I’m not sure what you’re—”

A loud crash from the kitchen interrupted us. John sprinted across the living room and threw open the swinging door. I followed. Charlotte knelt on the ground, sweeping up a broken picture frame. She scowled at her husband at first but softened when she saw his look of panic.

“It was an accident. It fell when Finn knocked his hand against the wall.”

Finn clutched the edges of the island counter, resentment radiating off him. For a moment, all I could think was,
Poor guy.

That moment didn’t last long.

Georgie walked in. She paused in the doorway.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, then turned to face her brother. “What crawled up your—?”

“Georgiana Louise Masterson,” screeched Charlotte, “if another child of mine utters one more word today they wouldn’t say in front of the sweet Lord Baby Jesus himself, there is gonna be a reckoning.”

All four Mastersons started shouting at the same time.

Even Slug barked himself hoarse, chasing his tail in circles.

My QuantCom vibrated violently, and my head started to pound in waves of rhythmic pulses. Oww. I was wrong before. This was no Buzz. My timer had expired. Whoever was on transport duty was pinging me. Hard. I’d never cut it this close before. I backed away to leave.

Charlotte noticed me exiting and said, “Oh, no, no, dear. We’ll get this worked out.”

My foot was halfway out the door, but I paused as Finn’s voice rang out above the racket.

“How can you be more concerned about that crazy lunatic than your own son?”

“Don’t you dare call me crazy!” I’d hit my snapping point.

A hush, thick as wool, draped over the room. The dog stopped barking. Every eye bore into me, then Finn. Charlotte looked like she wanted to strangle him. John turned to me, his face full of compassion and … something else.

I didn’t want his pity. I got enough of that at home. And I had to get out of here before they questioned why I was uber-sensitive about my sanity.

“I have to go.” My wrist trembled as I opened my QuantCom. Relief at the prospect of going home mixed with dread. My entire body felt like a numb, stretched rubber band. One touch could snap it.

I pushed the center button and faded away.

chapter 4

“YOU DO REALIZE
how close that was?” said a familiar, if somewhat disgruntled, voice.

I opened my eyes and forced them to adjust to the cool, white lights reflecting off the silver panels that lined the circular room. I hopped down off the Shift Pad and shot Charlie a charming smile.

“Nice to see you, too, Mr. Wu.”

“Yeah, thanks for gracing me with your presence,” he said without looking at me.

I stepped through the decontamination chamber and held my breath as jets of hot air filled with this-and-thatacide removed every trace of twenty-first century from me. Charlie’s fingers slid deftly through the virtual data screens projecting in the air. He held out his free hand for my QuantCom, and when I didn’t pass it over immediately he clutched his palm open and shut like a toddler begging for a cookie.

As I handed my Com to him, he dropped his voice and said, “I almost had to trigger a forced fade, you know.”

“You
what
?” I swung around so fast, I almost rammed into his console. Charlie couldn’t be serious. But a forced fade, that’s not something you joke about.

“This wasn’t some Botany romp, planting acorns,” he said. “It’s your History midterm.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about me?”

“It’s
my
midterm, too, Bree,” he said, then quietly added, “And Wyck’s.”

I swear, where I had a Shifter gene Charlie had a guilt one.

“Did you hit a snag in the mission?” he asked. “Trouble finding this van Sloot person’s grave?”

“No snag. I left the package where it was supposed to be.” I didn’t meet his gaze. It wasn’t the first time I’d failed to complete an assignment. It was, however, the first time I’d lied about it. “Drop it, okay?”

“Fine.” After an awkward pause, he said, “So how about that Quantum Bio lecture on Monday?”

I just stared at him. Charlie’s mental clarity checks were always as subtle as a Tectonic bomb. Transporters had to assess for any confusion in Shifters and report it. Well, he wasn’t getting anything from me tonight.

“Tantalizing explication of hippocampal biorhythyms,” I said. “Do you want to know who won the last World Cup, too?”

“You know I have to check.” Charlie turned red, and we stood there in silence while he downloaded my QuantCom’s data.

“Huh,” he said after a few seconds.

“Huh what?” I couldn’t afford any “huhs.” Not on this mission. I tried to lean around the podium to see what he saw, but it was all wiggly floating numbers and symbols to me.

“You had some weird tendril surges toward the end of the Shift. Probably nothing. Anything unusual happen?”

“No.” Everything unusual happened.

He shrugged. “I’ll write it off as a data glitch.”

“Does that happen?”

“Never seen it with students. Occasionally with some of the teachers.” He popped my QuantCom out of its dock and handed it to me. “You should go find Mimi. She’s been paging me every three minutes to find out if you’re back.”

“Typical Mimi.” I smiled. My roommate would knit a penguin a sweater if you let her.

“When you weren’t at dinner, she was—well, you know how Mimi gets. She thought maybe you didn’t come because it was…” He blushed again. “You know.”

“Tofurky night?”

“No. It’s, umm…”

“Oh.”
Family Night.

“I’ll let Mimi know you made it back,” he said. “She’s in the rec room with her parents.”

“Thanks. Sorry I yipped at you.” It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t caused this bizarre failure of a midterm. “I’m just tired. I’ll grab a chomp, then call it a night.”

Every inch of my body loosened while it synched up to real time.
Aah.
The tension from the fade disappeared as my internal rubber band adjusted to the slack. Now that I was back in my own time, I was safe. There was no reason I’d get caught. All I had to do was research this Muffy Whoever tonight, squidge my way through the report tomorrow, and ask Leto for a new delivery.

I walked out of the transport room, stopped at the first food dispenser I passed, and slipped a section of my hair into the scanner. I placed my order, a slice of pizza and a fizzwater. When the panel door opened, the glass of water came out but no pizza. I looked back up at the order screen. A red
X
flashed in the corner—over my limit of solo meals for the month.

“Oh, come on!” I punched a few buttons at random, but the
X
only got bigger and brighter.

“Now, now, let’s not break anything,” a kindly voice chimed behind me.

I looked around to see Headmaster Bergin. He was like a cross between a mustachioed Santa Claus and Theodore Roosevelt—old, portly President Roosevelt, that was. Not to be confused with young, hot Rough Rider Teddy. (
Not
that I had developed the teensiest of crushes on him during a class field trip the year before or anything.)

“Sorry, sir.” I eked out a sheepish grin. “Just got back from my Pre-Tri midterm. I’m starving, but I’m over the limit.”

“There’s a reason for that rule, Miss Bennis. You Shifters live such solitary lives on your missions. You must embrace comradery where it seeks you, which is often around a crowded table.” Bergin chortled and stepped up to the machine, allowing it to scan his silvery strands. “But believe it or not, I was once a teenager myself. Override.”

Hard to believe. Bergin had been headmaster here forever, or at least since before Mom was a student. As a nonShifter, he’d been a controversial choice at the time of his selection. Shifters finally conceded when it was hire him or shut down the school. But he ended up being the right choice—a widower who threw himself headlong into his work, he’d been a better advocate for Shifters than most Shifters had been.

My face appeared on the screen as my nutritive stats adjusted. The front panel sprang back open, and a piping-hot slice of pizza popped out. True, it had a gluten-free rice crust and soy “cheez” on top, but I was famished and pizza was pizza.

“Thanks!”

“Thank
you
for all your dedicated training.”

A plaster grin spread across my face. Here in the Institute, we were all special, special snowflakes wrapped in a flower. Out in the real world, we were a curiosity, our ability embraced so long as we stayed in acceptable fields and followed the Rules.
But come on.
What was I going to do? Ignore the fact that I could time-travel and become a dentist instead?

“Time-travel” is such a misnomer anyway. I mean, technically
everyone
is time-traveling—moment to moment, day to day—their quantum tendrils suctioning them to their present like tiny, invisible octopus tentacles. Some of us just have a harder time staying put. Well,
had
a harder time staying put, that is, until the invention of the microchip.

Still, it was nice of Bergin to bend the rules. He bid me good night, and I headed to my room. The smell of antiseptic overpowered me when I walked past the newbie wing. Those first few missions could be disorienting. Nauseating, really. A mopping cart ran a continuous cycle up and down the corridor. As I passed it, a scared whimper rose above the whir of the pukemobile. I pivoted my head down the hallway and made out the form of Molly Hayashi, a first-year student who’d been in the Orientation group I’d led that summer. She was tucked in a dark alcove.

“Molly?” I called. “Are you okay?”

“Shhh!” someone else hissed from the alcove. A hand darted out and pulled the shaking girl back into the shadows.

The soles of my shoes hit the ground in a hard slap as I took off down the hall. I kicked some tru-ants, minuscule robots that monitored our school, aside. I rounded the corner just in time to see the person flick Molly on the ear.

“I mean it; you’d better do what I say,” said … another Molly.

Oh, sigh.

“Molly.” They both turned to look at me. “What on earth are you doing?”

Bullied Molly pointed at the other one. “She appeared out of nowhere and started yelling at me.”

Other Molly, who I now noticed had grown out her bangs, pointed straight back. “And
she
cost me a whole Christmas break of tutoring.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“Well, you certainly haven’t studied enough. And you won’t get to do anything—and I mean
anything
—over Christmas if you don’t get your butt out of a rut and study for the Intro to Chronogeological Displacement exam.” Future Molly leaned in for another ear flick, and this time Present Molly fought back.

Both girls had some scrap in them. It took all my effort to keep them apart. “Stop it! Molly.” Both girls turned. “Er, Mollies, what was the first lesson on your first day of classes?”