Twist (29 page)

His breath sped up. He was starting to hyperventilate.

“It's okay. It's okay.” I squeezed into the space beside him, careful not to get too wedged in lest we get stuck here. “Take a deep breath. Everything's going to be all right.”

Calm words came out of my mouth, but my insides were screaming. Even if I could figure out a way to recover his lost memories, he could be stuck in my time forever. I mean, I loved him. I wanted to be near him, but he had a life outside of me. He would never see his friends again. He would never see his family. But I needed to keep him calm.

His breathing returned to normal.

“We'll figure this out.” I pressed my forehead to his. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You ready to move?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Wait.” I undid my gravbelt from my waist and handed it to Finn. “Makes more sense for you to wear it. You're stronger—it would be easier for you to hold on to me rather than vice versa.”

“Good point,” he said, fastening it around his middle. But I could tell he was still focused on his tendrils.

We came to a fork in the airshaft. One path took us up. Another down, down, down. Cool, bright white lights lined the upward shaft. It practically screamed, “Follow me!” The downward shaft flickered with the blue goop, fading with each pulse. I didn't hesitate for a moment. I followed the goop, praying with each forward lurch that it was the path that led to a whole Finn.

Heck, it wasn't like I was going to find a herd of teddy bears grazing on daisies down either path.

The air staled as we trudged along. The tunnel itself was more worn the deeper we went. Smooth and scratched at the same time. Older.

We reached a dead end. Above me, a ladder steered the tunnel straight up—the only way out of what was beginning to feel more and more like a never-ending snake nest.

“I think we chose the wrong way,” I said. Before we had a chance to back up though, a beam of light shone in the curve of the tunnel behind us. They were following us through the vents.

There was only one way out now. Misgivings churned in my stomach, but it was too late. I counted the rungs as we climbed but lost track around seventy-five. Finally, we reached another vent, this one thinner and taller. It was barely wide enough for me to crawl through, and Finn had to scoot sideways.

The metal grew warm under my palms.

Strike that.

Hot.

I curled my hands into fists and ambled along like a gorilla until we reached a grate. I peered through. The room below was small, maybe fifteen feet square. Something about the room struck me as off, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The tube we had followed entered the room next to the grate and branched into three separate skinnier tubes, each no wider than my pinky. These wended to separate reservoirs in three corners of the room. In the fourth corner was a control panel. Not soligraphic—real buttons and levers.

That's when it hit me, why this place seemed odd. Every other piece of technology in ICE's headquarters was on the sharpest cutting edge. But this room was old. Fifty years, at least.

Fifty years. Right when Shifters first came out of hiding. Right when the Madness began. And right when they'd taken Nava back to. It was all tied into that point fifty years back.

This room wasn't for public eyes. This room had no observational deck. And whatever happened in here had been happening for a very long time. Longer than ICE had been advertising their services on splashy billboards and tempting rich, bored housewives with fixing their every regret.

This room scared me.

The plasmic memory danced an azur tango as it entered the reservoirs. Mesmerizing to watch, terrifying when I realized it was what had come out of Finn.

Kneeling there, my knuckles near blisters from the hot metal, I got angry. No, not angry.

Furious.

Whatever that blue stuff was—memories, bits of his brain—it belonged to Finn. ICE had taken it. Even if I had to crack open those tanks and waft the blue stuff back into Finn's head myself, I would. ICE had stolen it, and I was going to steal it back.

I had already pried my fingernails under the air grate to loosen it when Finn put his hand over mine and pointed down. From his angle behind me, he could see what I couldn't. Four people stood near the doorway. I held my breath, hoping they hadn't heard me. From the loud clanks and whooshes coming from below, it appeared that they hadn't. One of the people I recognized immediately as Lafferty, and she didn't look happy. Which, of course, made me exceedingly so.

“This had better not shut down my Neo schedule!” she barked. The three red-clad workers—two women and a man—each took a place at one of the reservoirs. The woman nearest Lafferty mumbled something in return.

“What did you say?” Lafferty asked as she messed with the control panel.

“It shouldn't,” the woman repeated, her voice a mousy squeak. “The boy was highly compatible to several clients. We extracted enough to hold us for some time. If the emergency override hadn't kicked in when the intruder smashed the container, we'd have more, but…”

They were talking about Finn, about the experiments they were doing on Shifters.

“But the extraction tank is destroyed,” Lafferty said.

“We'll have a new one operational within days,” said the man.

“We needed a more efficient one anyway,” said the mouse woman. “Some of these Shifts burn through blue matter like bonks. I don't understand it.”

What? Burn through blue matter? I thought they were just experimenting on the kidnapped Shifters. What was she talking about? What were they using it for?

Lafferty's cheeks bloomed with a crimson that matched her shoes.

“We'll upgrade the tank,” she said.

“But that doesn't answer the question of why certain Shifts are using more of the—”

“Never you mind that,” said Lafferty. “We have a bigger concern. That Shifter girl could have gotten to this equipment.”

“Impossible,” said the man.

“Not impossible,” said Lafferty. “It's already happened once.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “But we stopped her. It was a long time ago, and there was no harm done. Besides, that's why we have it divided in three. For an extra safeguard. Only one of these vats is active at any given time. If that one should fail, we have the other two as backup.”

“This is half a century's worth of irreplaceable work. This is my parents' legacy.”

I followed her gesture to the glowing blue reservoirs. Her parents had studied quantum tendrils in vitro. That must be what the blue matter was. Shifters' tendrils that she was experimenting on. Her brother Xander had claimed that his parents were worried about their research falling into the wrong hands. I wondered if I was looking at the very hands they had worried about.

“If this had been damaged…” she said.

“But it wasn't,” said the second woman. Her voice was less of a squeak than the mouse woman's, yet still quiet. I think she was trying to placate Lafferty, but it stirred the opposite reaction. Lafferty stomped over to the woman and held something up in her face. I craned my neck to see what it was. An IcePick.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A Neo's Interchron—”

“This is the future.”

The woman gulped.

“Not just your future. Not just mine,” said Lafferty. “The game has changed. Shifters are no longer the only players. And soon enough, they won't even be the sought-after players. Why would someone pay a Shifter to be a chronocourier when there are Neos lined up out the door willing to make the same delivery for half the price? Why would someone trust the word of a Shifter of how history happened when they can go observe it for themselves? Shifters aren't better than us. They're not special.”

Sounded like she had nursed a deep wound. Two celebrated Shifters for parents. A twin brother who had inherited the same genetic mutation and who was on the same track to becoming a respected researcher like them. And then her. A nonShifter with a sharp mind, a bone to pick with her family, and the ability to go back and change her own past.

Lafferty walked over to the man. She held up the Pick. “Do you know what this is?”

“The fut—”

“This is your next paycheck. And mine. The past belongs to Shifters. The future belongs to us.”

Money. And power. I know I shouldn't have been surprised. Those two things had motivated more than their share of unethical megalomaniacs over the course of history. But this was a megalomaniac who had the ability to change the course of history. I had to hold myself back from jumping down there and clobbering the crapwench.

Lafferty fanned herself. “This room is an oven. Let's get on with this.” She held up her palm. “Wait for my mark. Perfect unison. Three-two-one. And, mark.”

The three workers inserted their IcePicks into ports at the base of the reservoirs. The blue matter seeped into the empty cylinder on each Pick.

“Display Neo,” said Lafferty.

A life-sized soligraphic figure arose in the middle of the room. When I saw who it was, I turned to Finn.

“It's Wyck,”
I mouthed.

He nodded.

The soligraphic Wyck shuffled his feet and checked his Com. He looked like he was waiting for something.

“He's getting impatient,” said the male scrub. “He's been waiting for a while.”

“He's a freebie,” said Lafferty. “He can wait.”

That was a live feed! Wyck was here at ICE's headquarters, about to Shift. Lafferty hit some controls, and the soligraphic Wyck's hippocampus lit up like a glowing seahorse in the very center of his brain.

“Are we calibrated?” asked Lafferty.

At first, I thought she was asking the workers, but they didn't respond.

“Useless old computer,” she said. “Are. We. Calibrated?”

“Calibration confirmed.” The speaker must have been close to the air vent I was perched near because the noise made me jump. My position on the grate was more precarious than I realized, and it let out an ominous creak before it gave way. The last thought I had before plummeting toward the ground headfirst was, “Wish Future Bree would have left me a clue about this one.”

 

chapter 23

“GOTCHA!
” FINN CAUGHT ME
by the ankle. He started to heft me back up but shouts sounded from behind him in the vent. The goons had caught up with us.

“I'm gonna jump,” Finn said.

He tightened his grip on my wrist and dove out the hole. At the same moment, I jerked my hand up and switched his gravbelt on. It caught us when my head was a foot from the ground.

I dangled there in the center of the room, my body oddly meshed with the soligraphic Wyck's. Blood rushed to my head, but I knew if we didn't get out of here, my blood would be flowing in more outward directions.

For a moment, Lafferty seemed stunned by our sudden appearance, but only a moment.

“Grab them!” she screamed. In any other circumstances, it would have come off as cartoonish, comical even.

Right now, it was pretty blarking terrifying.

I swung my legs away from Finn in a round kick and knocked Lafferty off balance. I didn't hesitate, didn't think about the consequences—I dug my fingers into Lafferty's perfectly formed coif, wrapped them around a few strands of her black hair, and yanked. The hair held tight. I pulled harder and lifted a strand up in triumph.

World, meet Bree Bennis, future Shavie inmate.

I didn't bother to turn off Finn's gravbelt. Instead, I grabbed his hand and ran for the door. He bobbled behind me like some sort of bizarre parade balloon. The entrance slid open with the help of Lafferty's hair, and on the other side, I held the hair against the scanner and screamed, “Lock, lock, lock!”

The clank of boltlocks reverberated behind us. But I knew it would only take Lafferty a few seconds to get free. We were at the base of a spiral staircase. I pulled Finn toward the ground and tapped the gravbelt so he could run up it with me. Plain emergency hatch portals lined the sides of the stairs. There was a single door, a real door, at the top landing. We were halfway to the top when the first red scrub jumped out of one of the hatches. Then another. And another.

Up, up, up we raced. I held out Lafferty's hair in front of me like an offering to the patron saint of getaways. It had barely registered on the scanner when I shoved the door open with all my might. I'd braced myself for a hallway or more stairs.

Hadn't braced myself for the central Atrium, chock full o' people.

I slammed the door shut behind me and shoved Lafferty's hair against the scanner. “Lock.”

A guide in a pert little skirt, who looked not much older than me, led a tour group. There was no point trying to blend in. Finn and I crashed through the people like a bull elephant on the rampage. They scattered and yelped in their snooty tones, and I wasn't too gentle in shoving them aside to get to the front doors. It was hard to believe that ICE hadn't gone on full lockdown mode to trap Finn and me in, but at the same time, they had visitors—influential visitors—who they didn't want to alarm.

“Move,” I yelled, pushing a middle-aged woman with more diamond rings than fingers out of my way as Finn and I scrambled for the entrance a mere thirty feet away. It shocked me that they'd built that critical room so close to the front atrium, but then again, depending on how long it had been there, this space might not have been an atrium at the time. At the time it was built, the room we just came from might have been the only thing in existence. I ventured a glance over my shoulder to look at the door we'd emerged from, but it blended seamlessly, invisibly, into the wall.

Finn and I rushed the front entrance, but the doors wouldn't budge. I tried Lafferty's hair. Nope.

Dang it.

They must have deactivated her access.