Twist (6 page)

I'd debated between
Death Rumpus IV
and the
Spider-Man
re-re-re-re-re-reboot for a while now, but Finn hadn't been ready to see what had happened to a franchise he loved so much.

Finn dipped his hand into our popcorn bucket. “I'm still not sure what the point is if he just dies over and ov—” His voice trailed off. Up on the screen, Horatio Melendez had already experienced his first death/revival, and Finn bit his fist because it was such a good one. “Never mind, never mind, never mind!”

“Finn, we need to get you home. Now.”

“Huh?” He reached for a handful of popcorn, and his hand brushed mine. Finn lifted my wrist and mindlessly planted a kiss on my fingertips. It reminded me of the first time he'd done the same thing. On the roof of the Pentagon. I had thought he was in danger
then
. Ha.

I rubbed my hand against his cheek, and he pulled me in close, laid a kiss—gentle and satisfying—on my lips. One of those kisses that conveyed so much through so little.

I had no idea who would accuse Finn of doing something that would classify him as a chronofugitive or why. But if that person knew me at all, they'd know I'd do anything to protect him. And that protection started with getting him out of this century.

“Finn, I'm not kidding. You need to go. I'll meet up with you later and explain.” I had to find out what he was charged with.

“Let's finish the movie first,” he whispered and scooted back into his seat.

Suddenly, the screen changed. It was no longer showing
Death
Rumpus
. It had switched to a stupid romantic comedy that I had specifically told Mimi she would have to make me the world's sparkliest friendship barrette if she ever wanted me to watch it with her.

“What the blark?” No one else in the theater seemed to be bothered by it. But at least Finn might be willing to go now.

I looked down at the popcorn bucket and realized that it was no longer purple. It was glowing green. Then I felt it, a beeping and whirring.

“Dang it. The reverter's going off.” I didn't have time for some Richie McRicherson's whiny what-if right now.

“The what?” He leaned over and kissed me again.

It was only after I pulled my lips away from his that I realized those lips weren't Finn's.

They were Wyck's.

 

chapter 6

“AIGHH!
” I HURLED MYSELF
to the far edge of the viewing chamber. Away from him. Away from … Wyck. How was this possible?

“What's the matter, sweetie?” Wyck reached over and smoothed my hair back.

“Ummm … what are you … Aighh!” I yanked nodes off my head and body as fast as I could. What the blark had been changed? Where was Finn?

I clenched the reverter in my pocket. I had to fight the urge to click it right then and there. But if something went wrong on the reversion, I couldn't just disappear right in front of Wyck. He'd remember it, and the last thing I needed was for Wyck O'Banion to know I was an unchipped Shifter now.

The reverter was still going strong, and I pushed it down into my pocket. If Wyck saw it, I was a dead woman. The last time I'd had it in my possession around him, he'd tried to zap me and plunge me off the Washington Monument to get it back. Well, not him exactly. A future, evil version of him.

But this guy looked enough like that version of him to get me to push the emergency release button on the chamber and scramble down the ladder when it was still ten feet from the ground. I had to get somewhere private so I could revert this change.

“Bree, what are you doing?” he called after me.

I looked up at Wyck and shuddered. I couldn't believe I had just
kissed
him.

The path to the exit lit up step by step like luminescent lily pads as I pressed my way through the bases of the raised chambers.

“Bree!” Wyck had jumped from the chamber and was close behind me. I'm sure I was easy to spot, what with the way my pocket blazed green like it held a mutant asparagus.

“Wait up!” he said. “What's the matter?”

He caught up with me and grasped my shoulder. I flinched away as he touched me, remembering the way he had splintered my knee into bits six months before, the way he had crushed my windpipe with his bare hands.

Not him, I reminded myself again. Some twisted future version of him.

“Look, I don't know what's going on.” I grasped my QuantCom in my fist and flicked the stunner out just in case I needed it. “But you'd better leave me alone.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” He stepped into a shaft of light from the exit, and I gasped. His appearance was so different from the last time I'd seen him. He looked … great. His usual messy hair was carefully combed and parted in a neat line, like a cement sidewalk crack that had been poured with precision.

“Why is your pocket glowing?” he asked. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want to go back to the Institute?”

“With you?” I almost choked. After he'd been expelled from the Institute, last I heard he was going to some reform program. I pulled my jacket over my pocket to cover it.

“Who else would you go with?” He looked around. His puzzlement was palpable.

Yeah, well, that made two of us, buddy.

“I need some air,” I said, stumbling toward the lobby.

“Oh-okay.” He followed close behind.

“No. You”—I backed away—“you stay here.”

“All right.” He pointed at the spot where he was standing, like he was claiming it. No argument. No fight.

There was no telling where this new compliance came from. But it didn't make me feel one whit better. As soon as I had cleared the exit, I turned and ran to the women's bathroom. Clutching the sides of the sink, I stared into the mirror, gasping. A mom with two daughters in tow walked in and flashed me a sympathetic look when she saw my stricken face.

“Boy problems?” she said.

A noise that might have been a laugh in more appropriate circumstances escaped as I nodded and fled to the farthest stall. I pulled out the reverter and stared at it. Clearly, Wyck had gone back and changed something in the past, something that made me end up with him instead of Finn.

The door opened. Wyck's voice filled the room timidly.

“I know you wanted me to wait in the theater, but I'm worried about you, Bree. Are you sure you're okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “I'm fine. I think the popcorn disagreed with me.”

“Popcorn? You were eating Blinky Beans.”

“Blinky…” I hated those. But as I said it, I detected their aftertaste in my mouth. “Blinky Beans … yes. That's what I meant.”

“Okay. Sorry. Let me know if you need anything,” he said as the door slid shut.

What I needed.

I clenched the reverter, whirring merrily along.

What I needed was to stop this change from happening. ICE must have tasked Wyck with recovering the reverter again. In turn, Wyck must have decided it would be easier to pretend to be my boyfriend and go after it this way. And … then pretend that he didn't even know what it was when it was within easy reach. Yeah, that part didn't make any sense whatsoever.

The reverter's glow faded a tiny bit and snapped me back to the task at hand. It didn't matter why Wyck had done this. All that mattered was that I undo it. And quickly.

I brushed my thumb over the heart at the end of the reverter. BB
+
FM. The trigger was made from my old broken locket. Finn had scratched our initials in there himself. But they were so shallow, you couldn't even read them anymore.

I still wasn't entirely sure how everything worked with the IcePick. It was the device that the Initiative for Chronogeological Equality had invented to enable nonShifters to Shift. But everything I knew about nonShifters' quantum tendrils pointed to the fact that the Pick
shouldn't
work. The reason Shifters were able to travel through time and space was that our tendrils—those bits in everyone's brains that rooted them to their present—were mutated. Shifters' tendrils flexed and clung to different locations and time periods. NonShifters' tendrils progressed in a consistently linear manner. Point
A
to Point
B
. Minute
Y
to Minute
Z
. Shifters weren't held by such constraints. We could go from Point
A
to Point
Q
. Minute
Y
to Minute
J
.

At first, I had thought that maybe the Picks were like temporary microchips, but Shifters' chips guided (well, forced) our tendrils to stretch to a certain point. The tendrils had to be stretchable first. Everything I had learned in Quantum Biology taught me that nons simply shouldn't be able to Shift. Their tendrils weren't like ours.

I clicked the end of the reverter and felt the familiar tug to the past.

Oww.

My feet hit the ground so hard that I stumbled forward, my knees slamming with a crack into a cold, marble floor. It only took me a moment to realize where I was, so familiar was this place to me. I'd landed inside the Institute, near the History department, down a scarcely used hallway I wouldn't have recognized if I hadn't spent so much time scouring my school earlier this year in search of a route to sneak Finn in. Large, metal storage cabinets lined the edges of the hall, and I slipped into a space between two of them while I gained my bearings.

My QuantCom beeped as the date popped up—about six months ago. I racked my brain to think of what Wyck could have changed around this date so that I'd end up with him rather than Finn. I wasn't left guessing for long, though. Wyck himself—the version I recognized and remembered, Wyck from six months ago—ducked into the hallway. He was followed closely by another version of himself, his hair grown out long and shaggy, spilling from the edges of a ball cap. This Wyck who was making the change didn't look like the Evil Wyck I remembered from the Washington Monument. This Wyck's eyes were clear and alert, and when he spoke, there wasn't a hint of hatred in his voice. Instead, pleading.

“Look,” he said, “I know what I'm asking of you doesn't make sense, and I know you don't want to do it, but—”

“I'm still trying to figure out how you're even here.” Past Wyck leaned against one of the cabinets with a clang.

“It will all make sense later. I promise. But you have to do this. It's important.”

“She's my friend,” said Past Wyck.

“And … this way, she'll become more than that.”

I had my answer. He was doing this to force me to become his girlfriend. My fingernails bit into my flesh as I clasped the reverter, ready to jump out and shove it into his neck. But I also wanted to know
why
he was doing this. The device was still whirring steadily. I had a few minutes left.

“But it's a lie,” said Past Wyck. “Bree's one of the best students at this school. I haven't seen any signs that would make me question her fitness to Shift.”

“I know that.” A fist landed against the cabinet next to his past self. There was the Wyck I knew and loathed. But he regained his composure quickly. “Look, just go into Quigley's office and report that you've witnessed some instability in Bree lately. She won't get in trouble. Bree won't even be angry at you.”

Ha! I had to fight back the snort that built in my nose. I would show him angry.

“But it's her mid-term,” said Past Wyck.

I'd heard enough. I knew the when, I knew the how, and I didn't give a hoot about the why at this point. Past Wyck was going to go and tell Quigley I wasn't fit to Shift, stop me from going on my midterm last year, which was when I'd met Finn. This shaggy-haired Wyck must still be acting as a puppet for the Initiative for Chronogeological Equality. ICE thought that they could stop me from acquiring the reverter this way. But they were wrong. The reverter was immune to their changes because I'd activated it in Finn's time—outside of all this loopy mess.

“If Bree finds out I did this…”

“I told you. Don't worry about that.”

Wrong again, Wyck. You should definitely worry about that. I flicked the stunner out of the end of my Com, ready to pounce as soon as their backs turned. They walked to the end of the hall, turning the corner toward Quigley's office. I stepped out of the shadows in stealth mode. I didn't make it two steps, though, when someone pinned my arms to my side and slapped their hand over my mouth, trapping my scream. I struggled to get loose, but they held tight. For every move I made, my attacker had a countermove already prepared.

I bit the hand.

“Ow!” The person released my arm long enough to smack it. “I forgot I did that.”

I jerked away and spun around, my jaw dangling in disbelief. Because I knew that voice.

And I knew that face.

It was my own.

 

chapter 7

“WHAT DO YOU THINK
you're doing?” I asked in a sandpaper whisper.

“Stopping you from reverting this change.” Bree lifted her eyebrows in an unspoken challenge.

“Don't you realize what's about to happen?” I asked.

“More than you can comprehend.”

“Well, explain it.” I looked down at the reverter. The glow had grown weak—the whirring, feeble. “Never mind. There's no time.”

I turned to chase down Wyck, but she grabbed my wrist, holding me back.

“Have you gone insane?” I whisper-yelled. “He's about to take everything from me.”

Bree laughed—
laughed!
—at me.

“Don't be angry at him,” she said. “He's just following orders.”

“I. Know.” ICE wasn't the greedy, unethical organization I had feared. They were absolutely evil.

The end-of-class buzzer sounded, and students poured out of classrooms in the main passage ahead. I struggled against Bree's grasp. If I hurried, I could still catch Wyck and stop him. But even as I had the thought, I felt the reverter quiet to a gentle hum in my clenched hand. It fell silent and went still.