Twist (30 page)

Crap, crap, crap!

A smidge of red flashed in my peripheral vision, and out of a crimson red tube, a fleet of red scrubs began to pour out.

“Can I help you?” The tour guide, utterly bewildered, had stumbled over toward us. She barely looked at us, keeping her plastic smile focused on the group behind her. It was clear that her instructions had been to keep them happy and impressed at all costs.

“I…” Okay, there's no point in lying. What happened next was not my finest moment.

I realized there was no way they'd turn off her access as she led the group from impressive location to impressive location. I grabbed her around the neck and dragged her toward the door. I practically gave her a noogie as I rubbed her hair against the sensor.

“Ow,” she squealed, but I hadn't really hurt her. And it worked. The door slid open. I dropped her to the floor, and Finn hopped over her body as we sprinted down the steps away from the headquarters.

“Take a Pod?” he said.

“Too trackable.”

“Metro?”

“Snake in a barrel.”

“Actually, the phrase is…”

I shot him a look, and he said, “Running it is.”

I risked another glance behind us when we reached the opposite side of the street. A fleet of red poured through the ICE headquarters doors, scanning the area for us.

As if on cue, my fingers began to tingle, building up to a Shift. I smiled. So long, twenty-third century. I paused where we were, dragging Finn to a halt with me. I wrapped my arms around him, ready to leave this chase behind. But the usual sensation of our tendrils weaving together didn't meet me. Instead, it was like someone had doused my body with numbness. The urge to Shift simply evaporated. I backed up, shocked.

The urge to Shift returned.

“Finn, did you feel that?”

“I feel nothing.”

“But did you feel—?”

“I feel
nothing,
Bree. Usually when I'm on a Shift anywhere—here, the past—I can still feel at least a slight tug home. But right now, it's like … it's like they stripped something from me. I feel … nothing.”

When my chip was still active, and I'd been Anchored as a punishment, I'd felt heavy. Chained. But what he was describing was something else. Whatever they'd done to him, whatever it was that was still floating in those tanks back at ICE's headquarters—memories or tendrils—it was the essence of what made him a Shifter. Without it, he was trapped here.

“Bree, what if I can never get home? What if I never see my family again or—?”

“We'll get you home. I promise. But first, we have to get you somewhere safe.” And fast.

Whatever lead we'd gained had evaporated as one of the scrubs spotted us. They turned en masse to chase us like a school of red piranhas.

“Let's go!” I grabbed Finn's hand and sprinted down a side street until we were once again out of eyeshot. We still had the advantage of the gravbelt and grappling hook. The last direction I wanted to head was up, but in a pinch, I'd jump rooftop to rooftop if I had to.

We rounded a sharp corner and almost plowed into a Pod as it swerved to avoid a soakswitch. The two near-impacts must have shorted out its anti-collision mechanism because it shot straight up into the air about twenty feet and hovered there, like it was cowering.

“Crap,” I said. “That'll be like a homing beacon for ICE.”

I grabbed Finn's hand again and started to run in the opposite direction, but he just stood there, staring at the Pod with a look of utter amazement on his face.

“Is that a … a flying bubble?” he said.

“We don't have time for jokes,” I said. A snatch of red lit up my peripheral vision. “Come on!”

We reached the end of the block, and I almost ran headlong into a kid on a jet-propelled disk-dasher.

“This is like a movie!” Finn stumbled forward, not even attempting to hide the awe in his voice.

“Yes, yes.” A horror movie.

But then that gave me an idea. He'd made me watch this ridiculous (okay, fine, ridiculously awesome) trilogy of movies about time travel from the late twentieth century that he loved. There was a running gag of chase scenes with these archaic versions of disk-dashers that hovered a few inches off the ground that always made me laugh.

But Finn was pretty athletic. And I'd never met a better magno-grappler.

So, yeah. This was happening.

I shoved the kid off his disk-dasher.

“Hey!” the kid yelled.

“I need to borrow this,” I said. Steal it. Whatever.

Finn looked at me like I'd gone insane.

“Like those movies you love,” I said, praying he hadn't lost that memory, as I pulled the grappling handle from his pocket and aimed it at a passing Pod. I positioned the hovering dasher under his feet, and his face lit up in understanding.

“You are the coolest person ever.” He planted a kiss on top of my head.

“And you'd better be the most naturally talented at balancing on a speeding hoverboard.”

“Can't be that different from slalom skiing.” He wrapped one arm around me and held the other out to keep his balance, tipping the front of the board up to brace for the takeoff. “Guess we'll find out.”

Ping
. The target activated, and with a jolt, we were pulled forward just as the men in red reached the kid we'd stolen the dasher from.

I screamed, but Finn let out a whoop of elation. A whoop I'd heard many times before. Which made me feel better and worse at the same moment.

All our joyful wanderings, the thrill of visiting a time and a place never before witnessed by human eyes, had he lost any of those moments? Had he lost all of them?

I couldn't worry about that now. That's what new memories were for. The only thing that mattered was getting him to a safe place. Or at least safer. But where? My house was obviously out. The Institute, out. Taking him to Resthaven would put the Shifters there at risk, but I didn't see any other option. And Nurse Granderson might have additional insight into retrieving the memories and repairing Finn's hippocampus.

The Pod turned sharply at a corner, and Finn pulled me down close to the board in a squat to brace for it as we swung behind it in a swaying arc. We narrowly missed a street sign, and Finn had to kick off from a passing Pod to avoid hitting it. I glanced back and watched as the other Pod filled with foam, sensing the impact.

“That was close,” said Finn.

At least we'd lost the pursuing scrubs. I started to recognize the neighborhoods. We were only a few blocks away from Resthaven. The Pod that pulled us slowed for a pedestrian, and I took advantage of the pause to detach ourselves from it. Finn and I tumbled to the pavement, scratched and bruised, but alive and uncaptured. Finn shook the grappling handle and pointed at the Pod speeding away.

“There goes our last hook.”

“It's okay. We can walk from here. And the longer we stayed attached to that thing, the greater chance ICE could track us.”

“So.” He twined his fingers through mine. “Catch me up.”

As we walked to Resthaven, I filled him in on everything I had experienced, surmised, guessed, or feared in the last twenty-four hours.

“You're sure Mom and Dad and Georgie are okay?” he asked when I'd finished.

“They're all fine. Worried about you, but fine.”

“We'll figure out a way to help your mom, too.” He squeezed my hand. “She's no drug dealer. They have to realize that.”

“All they know is that she had all those drugs. Finn, she could have
died
. I already almost lost her once. If she … I can't … I…”

My voice had turned to spiky squeaks and Finn held me close.

“Shhh. Nobody's losing anyone. Your mom's a fighter. She's going to be okay.”

“How do you know that?”

“Hey.” He pulled my chin up. “Have a little faith in fate.”

“I have faith in a lot of things,” I said. “Fate hasn't been one of them lately. I mean, hello. It gave me Jafney as a roommate.”

“Told you that you'd be friends,” Finn said, but I didn't laugh. I couldn't after losing my friendship with Mimi.

“Well, turns out she's had a thing for Wyck this whole time. She was using you to try to make him jealous.”

Finn bristled.

“I didn't say I have a thing for him,” I said.

“Nah. It's just that I like Jaf. She's okay.”

“Hmm.”

“She deserves better than Wyck.”

“I wish you could have met the real Wyck.”

“What do you mean?” asked Finn.

“Before all this started, he was a good friend. For a while there, he was one of my only friends. ICE has ruined his life as much as mine.”

“Yeah. Still don't like him.” Finn wrapped his arm around me, and I could see what he meant about feeling nothing. Usually there was a slight flicker between our tendrils. But when he touched my bare skin, it was like dousing a bucket of water on a candle. Finn didn't seem to notice or care. Maybe he'd gotten used to the numb.

I felt around again, all along his neck, searching for a scar line. If it was only that they'd microchipped him, it would have made things so much simpler. Chips could be disabled. No such luck.

“Let's focus on helping your mom for now,” Finn said.

“Okay.”

Finn was the only person I knew who could be stuck in the wrong century and still think of others first.

“Is there any way to undo what happened?” asked Finn.

“No. Not unless a Neo changed the past back. Or if another Neo made a change that had ripple effects on Mom.” Not likely.

“So a nonShifter could fix things. Obviously, Wyck is out,” Finn said. “Charlie?”

“I can't do that to Charlie. My mom would never forgive me. And besides, I get the feeling I don't have many close friends, Shifter or Non, on this timeline. Even Mimi's cut off from me. And she's not dating Charlie now. In fact, I got the feeling from talking to her that things are deteriorating between Shifters and Nons.”

“From the way Lafferty was talking, it sounds like that's what she wants,” he said. “Does your mom need an attorney?”

“Yeah, but the ones who specialize in Temporal Law are bonks bucks. I guess I could sell the house or—wait! The bank account. I never told Leto the last number. You opened the account before all these temporal loop changes. The account should still exist.”

“Perfect,” he said.

“So what's the last digit?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.” The strain of empty recollection stained his cheeks. “I remember there's a bank account. I remember that I should know the last number. I just don't remember what it is. It's like it was plucked from my brain.”

“It must be one of the memories you lost,” I said. “Wait. I have an idea. Fast as you can, name a number, one through ten. Actually, zero through nine.”

“Seven,” he said.

“Let's try seven.”

“Really?”

“Better than nothing.” Which was precisely how much money I had otherwise. “If we get it wrong, it will lock the account, but it's worth a shot.”

“All right. Seven it is.”

I stopped at the nearest dollardock and entered the account numbers I knew and then hit seven for the final digit.

The account pulled up. “Woohoo!” Finn's original deposit was right there at the top. I scrolled down through two centuries' worth of interest accumulation down to the current account total.

$0.00

“What?” I scrolled back up to the last transaction. The account had been drained a few days ago. By Leto Malone. “That's impossible. This withdrawal was the day of our movie date. He didn't know the number then.”

“Maybe he guessed, too.”

I shook my head. “He wouldn't have risked it. One lock-out, and there would have been a mountain of paperwork and explanations.”

If I knew anything about Leto Malone, it was that he didn't do paperwork, and he definitely didn't give explanations.

“Maybe he figured it out some other way,” said Finn.

“How? You were the only person who knew that number. Even I didn't know it. Heck,
you
didn't know it anymore.”

“Do you remember anything dodgy about that conversation with Leto?”

“Hard to remember a conversation with Leto that hasn't been dodgy.” I screwed up my nose in concentration. Less than a week ago, and it seemed like years. I'd been so focused on the Finn-as-a-temporal-fugitive part of Leto's news that I hadn't paid much attention to the rest of it. But it had been same-old.

“He asked me about the number. I basically told him to go jump in a Pod's path. He started to harass me about it then … stopped. That was unusual. The next time I saw him was at ICE's headquarters where he had clearly come into a windfall. By that point, he didn't know who I was.”

“Did you give him a hint somehow?” asked Finn. “At the movie theater?”

“Couldn't have. I didn't know the number.
Only you did
. It was like he was reading your mind. Or—oh my gosh. Finn, when Leto was dying, he was talking about Chincoteague and sea grass and Ed.”

“Ed?”

“Ed. My pegamoo?” A feeling of dread set in as Finn shook his head. He didn't remember Ed.

No, no, no.

“That's not all,” I said. “Leto was acting so weird, all lovey-dovey. It was like he was channeling you.”

“Or stealing my memories.”

We stood there, longer than was safe, both speechless. Finn's memories weren't lost.

They were stolen.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

“It means ICE is an even bigger threat to Shifters than we realized.” And that was saying something. Not just the unchipped Shifters at Resthaven. Chipped Shifters with their unbearable Buzz. Shifters in the past, too.