by Karen Akins
I could feel the heat of my classmates’ stares as I made my way to the front of the room. Quigley took a seat off to the side.
“My, umm, my trip—”
“Mission,” interrupted Quigley. “You weren’t on holiday.”
“My mission was to early twenty-first-century Virginia.” I looked up and realized I might as well be talking to air. Mimi and Charlie were the only ones even looking at me. Charlie always sat up front with her rather than in the back with the other transporters. At least my fellow Shifters had their eyes open. Half the transporters were falling asleep. Except Wyck, who was actually taking notes. A first.
“And?” said Quigley.
Wyck looked up from his notes and bobbed his head encouragingly.
“And everything went fine. My launching transporter landed me down a deserted alleyway in Williamsburg. There was a redcoats reenactment going on.”
Quigley raised her eyebrows. I didn’t want to get Wyck in trouble, so I quickly added, “Which was actually a good thing. It kept me on my toes. I had to figure out where I was based on my surroundings because it took a few minutes for my QuantCom to quadrangulate my tendrils and register where I was. I had to use, umm, history skills.”
History skills. This was going great.
“I then took a bus to the location and left the package there. At the location.”
A couple transporters in the third-to-last row, Rab and Paolo, elbowed each other and started whispering.
“The location being?” said Quigley.
“The instructions sent me to a grave for a Muffy van Sloot. It was very … inconspicuous.” So inconspicuous I couldn’t find it. “Sorry. It was a routine mission. I don’t know what else to say. Nothing out of the norm or dangerous. All safety protocol was followed.”
“Sh’right,” coughed Rab.
Quigley must not have heard him, but Wyck sure did. He landed a well-aimed kick to the back of Rab’s chair.
“Umm.” I’d lost my train of thought with the taunt. “As I was saying, nothing of note happened. I observed typical twenty-first-century behavior around me and then Charlie faded me home.”
“Tendril tink,” murmured Paolo under his breath. Several transporters around him grunted.
“You got a problem with Bree?” Charlie leaned back and growled.
“I, uhh…” My throat constricted.
Quigley looked down at my report. “And you rode a school bus to this Chinco”—her tongue stumbled over the name of the town the way mine first had—“uhh, Chincoteague Island. What were the other students like?”
“Very normal.” I could feel a flash of color bloom across my cheeks. Finn and his family were anything but what my teacher would describe as normal. “The kid I sat next to loved movies. And action figures.”
Rab and Paolo were still whispering on the other side of the room.
“And your Buzz level?” asked Quigley as if nothing were going on. In fact, she acted as if she wasn’t interested in my report at all. This just might work.
“Was manageable.” As it was nonexistent. I started to add something else but then paused, struck by something I’d never thought of before. The Buzz is a by-product of the genetic mutation in a Shifter’s hippocampus that causes chronogeological displacement. It’s a payoff. Yes, Shifters can travel through time and space because of a glitch in our brains. But the price is the Buzz. It was only after we came out of hiding that we discovered that, unchecked, the eventual price is much more costly.
My Bio teacher once described the Buzz as like the vibration on a guitar string after you strummed it. Maybe if you had your head shoved up in the guitar. Thankfully, the microchip holds back the Buzz, for the most part. Like pressing your fingers on the strings to control the pitch and tone. The chip doesn’t take it away entirely, but it makes it manageable, almost unnoticeable. It also allows us to choose when and where we go. And then there was the real reason it was invented. (But there were nonShifters in the room, so of course I couldn’t mention that.)
After Mom’s accident, when it was discovered her microchip was no longer functional, most people thought she’d succumbed to some overpowering Buzz. But maybe it was the other way around. Her chip could have started overcompensating or something like that. My lack of Buzz might give us a hint of what went wrong on her last mission.
I was so excited by my new theory that I almost didn’t notice it when Rab took out his stylus and acted like he was slicing his skull open and yanking out an imaginary microchip. I bit my cheek to keep from saying something I’d regret. The snerk. It didn’t matter that there was no proof Mom had purposefully tampered with her chip. There would always be those like Rab and Paolo who claimed she did.
While I was zoning, Quigley had pulled up my QuantCom data. Translucent numbers and symbols streamed through the air in front of her. She seemed transfixed by them, but then I realized she was staring straight through them. At me.
“That’s all.” I scurried to my seat.
Quigley didn’t say a word about my midterm. She walked to her podium and launched into the day’s lesson.
When the end-of-class buzzer sounded, Quigley bellowed, “Twenty-kilobyte essay on the Chinchilla Flu Epidemic by Friday,” as she walked into her office at the far end of the classroom and shut the door.
The comments from my departing classmates were to be expected. Suffice it to say, some of the spicier words would have topped Charlotte Masterson’s “sweet Lord Baby Jesus” list.
As I gathered my things, Rab bumped into me and whispered, “Tink.”
Mimi sputtered, “You’re the … the…”
But I knew she wouldn’t actually say the word.
I grabbed her hand and said, “Ignore him.”
Right when we turned to leave, though, whish, Quigley’s office door slid back open.
“Miss Bennis, Miss Ellison?”
The Buzz question Mimi had asked earlier. No, no, no, no, no. No red flags.
“I need to speak to you two in my office.”
Blark.
Dr. Quigley sat down at her desk as we walked into the small room attached to the classroom. It was more like a closet than anything. The only things that suggested otherwise were a tiny window overlooking the street and a floor-to-ceiling wall of photographs behind her desk. Quigley sifted through the Specialization forms and didn’t look at us but began talking.
“That was an odd thing to ask today, Miss Ellison. Your Buzz question.” The Quig continued to look down, but a half grin hijacked her face. I felt like I’d seen that look before, but I couldn’t remember one instance of her smiling in class. She finally glanced up. “Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Bennis?”
I nodded.
“I’m curious as to why you would ask such a question, Miss Ellison.” Quigley may have asked the question of Mimi, but she kept her eyes trained on me.
“Just a hypothetical,” said Mimi.
“I see.” Quigley started to wave her off, but I couldn’t leave it at that. Not if there was a chance, however slight, that it could help my mother.
“If something like that did happen, hypothetically of course,” I said, “do you think studying the anomaly could help advance medical research for, umm, for—”
Quigley’s eyes narrowed to slits of fake pity. “For comatose patients?”
Once the words were out there—out loud—I realized how ridiculous it sounded. And how much I’d been harboring a secret hope there could be some truth to it. It wasn’t true, of course. No progress, no leads, no hope.
Quigley pushed back in her seat. “No. As I explained during class, the ‘anomaly’ would be easily explained by the distractability of human nature.
“So.” The Quig looked back down at her work. “Do you feel I’ve answered your question in such a way that it will never come up again in my classroom?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mimi.
“Then dismissed.”
Mimi and I slinked toward the door, but Quigl
ey added, “Not you, Miss Bennis.”
Mimi mouthed, Sorry, on her way out the door. As soon as Mimi left, Quigley tapped the console on her desk. My midterm materialized midair, inches from my nose. A bright red “D” glowed in the middle.
What? No. Any assignment but this one. Please. Anything below a C and Dr. Quigley could opt to go back to the site and review the entire mission. She’d see the Haven Signal. And someone in the family probably had found the black market flexiphone gizmo I left behind.
“I’m disappointed in you,” she said.
Not as disappointed as she’d be if she found out what I’d really been doing on that mission.
“I suppose I should send a review committee straight back to this little Chincotuck place to investigate.” She picked at the edge of her square-sharp thumbnail. Squirms of dread wiggled through my torso until Quigley spoke again. “But given your unique circumstances, I’m not sure that’s warranted.”
Unique circumstances. That was one way of putting it. Six months ago, my mom had landed on the steps of the Institute after an otherwise routine job assignment. Her microchip wasn’t working, and she was shouting incoherent gibberish. By the time help arrived, she’d slipped into a coma. So, yeah. Some people might go with “unique.” I preferred “sucktastic.” Still, thank goodness my teacher could see reason.
“This is your final warning, though. No more mistakes, Bree. You can’t afford them.”
Oh, she had no idea.
Quigley turned back to the forms she was sorting. “Dismissed.”
* * *
My rush of relief lasted precisely seven minutes.
I went straight to the computer lab. I knew I should let it go, but it still bugged me that my search results on Muffy van Sloot and the Mastersons had yielded zilch. As if they’d never existed. And if my assignment did come back up with Quigley, the more info I could give her the better.
Two other students were working, so I picked a station in the opposite corner. An audiovisual message from a sender I didn’t recognize popped up. Curious, I opened it and immediately wished I hadn’t.
“Hey, kiddo.” Leto Malone’s ugly mug materialized before me. His gravelly voice filled the air. “Just thought I’d—”
I slammed my hand against his soligraphic mouth and hissed, “Mute, mute, mute!”
The two students peered over at me, but I blocked their view of Leto as best I could. They turned back around to their own work.
“Shrink display. Readable Audio.”
Leto shrank to the size of a chipmunk and his message scrolled above him:
Hey, kiddo. Just thought I’d check in. The boys here’ve been taking bets over whether you went through with it. But I got faith in ya, kid. Little reminder, though. The bank code is due now. As in now. Of course, if you didn’t make the delivery, return the goods, no questions asked. But one of those things better be in my hands within forty-eight hours or I’m afraid some unpleasantness might occur.
Forty-eight hours? Every last drop of blood in my body drained to my toes as I trudged to my room. All I’d wanted to do was help my mom, pay her bills so she could get decent care. So she wouldn’t end up in that madhouse Resthaven. So there might be some slim chance of her being normal again. Of us being normal again.
I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t make up a pretend bank code. Leto’d check it before he let me out of his sight. But I didn’t have any device to give back.
“Unpleasantness.” That could mean anything. But like any good snake, Leto knew where to strike first to hit deepest. He knew my weak spots, my mom and her skyrocketing medical bills for starters. Or he could turn me in at the Institute and I’d lose the only home I had left. Of course, maybe he had even more—gulp—unsavory plans. He didn’t become a top chronosmuggler by passing out kittens and lollipops.
When I reached the room, I put on my everything-is-okay face. Mimi was sprawled on our couch in full mope mode.
“My life is over.”
I bent over and checked her pulse. “Dang it. So close to a single room.”
Mimi held up her QuantCom, lips all pouty. (And yet still magically perky. How did she do that?) “I got tomorrow’s mission assignment. Botany. It’s a full-dayer.”
“I can see why this has compromised your very existence.”
“I was supposed to go to the dance with Charlie.” She chucked her Com on the seat beside her. “So much for that.”
“He asked you to the dance?” About time.
“Yes. No. Kind of. He asked me if I was going. Does that count?” Mimi curled up in a ball and groaned. “I’m an idiot.”
“You are not. He’s into you; I can tell.”
“You can? Really?” Mimi perked up.
I laughed. “I bet old Bergin can probably tell.” When I said his name, I imagined our headmaster sitting at his desk, drawing matchy-match hearts between his pupils in the Institute roster. “Okay, maybe not Bergin.”
Mimi sighed. “It’s such a bumzoo. I thought maybe this was it, us finally … y’know.” She sat up and wiped away a nonexistent tear. Oh, to have Mimi problems.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now anyway,” she said. “I’ll be in twenty-first-century Maryland.”
Whah? I scooped Mimi’s Com off the couch and flipped to the top of the mission screen. The date was right around my midterm’s, about three months later. As long as the Mastersons hadn’t found the gadget and destroyed it, I’d be fine.
In the most nonchalant voice I could muster, I said, “Why don’t I switch with you?”
“You have a mission tomorrow, too?”
“Yeah, and mine’s a quickie.” I slid my own Com over to her. “You’d be home in time to primp.”
The glow of the mission screen made Mimi’s impossibly blue eyes even bluer. “Our transporters would be in trouble, too, if we got caught. And our teachers would kill us if—”
“Why should they find out? The people who hire Institute kids to do chrono work hardly ever request a specific student. They don’t care who does it as long as it gets done. Besides, if they catch us, we could feign ignorance. Oops, the roommates switched their QuantComs.”
Oh, there was no way Mimi was falling for this.
“Yeah.” She bit her lip. I braced for the no, but instead she threw her hands up in the air. “What the hoo? Let’s do it!”
* * *
The next morning, Mimi and I stood on adjacent Shift Pads, avoiding eye contact with both each other and our transporters. I said a silent prayer of thanks that Mimi’s transporter was Charlie, who wouldn’t turn her in even if it meant serving detention himself. And I was assigned to Wyck, who might not be fully awake yet.
“Ready?” Charlie winked at Mimi, and she nodded. Mimi liked the 2060s and loved the prospect of dancing with Charlie, so I only felt a tiny twinge of guilt as my roommate faded away.
“How ’bout you, sugar lips?” asked Wyck, looking at me.
“I, umm…” had an overwhelming urge to giggle and gave myself a mental slap. Focus, Bennis. “Push the button.”
He laughed. “I didn’t hear the special word in there.”
I cracked a small smile. “Push. The. Blarking. Button.”
“There you go. Happy landings.”
And then I was hurtling through time.
I squinched up my eyes tight as I could and held my breath like usual. But the typical prickles didn’t come crashing over me. Quite the opposite. It was the least painful Shift I’d ever experienced, a sensation of being pulled rather than pushed.
And then it was over.
chapter 6
OOF. The Shift may not have hurt, but the landing stung the soles of my feet like the frickens. I was in the middle of a field, far from prying eyes. My QuantCom registered a bus station half a mile up the road. I had to hand it to Wyck. The boy had good aim.
It was a nice afternoon for the walk, breezy and warm. I’d raided the cash vault before I left. I didn’t want to waste any time scouting o
ut free options, and there was more than enough for a bus ticket. The wizened counter attendant eyed the roll of bills as I peeled back a few layers.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Chincoteague Island.”
“Going for the Pony Penning, eh?”
“Pony—? I mean, yes.”
“Be crowded. You got somewhere to stay?”
I nodded, and he shot me a grin. His piano teeth had a few keys knocked loose.
“I’ve considered headin’ up to the island one of these years and buying myself a pony. Got the land for it, but don’t seem right somehow. Penning something up, what was born free like that.”
I thought back to the info I’d read preparing for my midterm, about the feral ponies that had roamed nearby Assateague Island for centuries. “But if people give them a good home, isn’t it a good thing?”
“I s’pose you’re right.” He handed my ticket over. “And it’s an unforgettable sight, what I hear, watching them ponies swim the channel. You enjoy yourself.”
“Thanks.”
The ride took a little over an hour. I kept to myself and curled into a ball as we passed over bridges. At least I didn’t have the Buzz making it worse. But the lack of Buzz only fueled my nerves. An elderly couple offered me a soda to settle my stomach, so my skin must have turned a queasy shade even if I thought I was handling the trip well.
When we arrived at the island, the same couple offered me a ride.
“Yes, please.” This was getting easier and easier. Wyck might as well have dropped me in the Mastersons’ backyard. I’d have Leto’s gadget back in no time.
“Are you headed to the festival?” the woman asked.
“Yes. I’m staying with a family here.”
“What’s the address?”
Crap. What was the address? I blanked. And I had Mimi’s QuantCom. It wasn’t like I could check.
“Umm, the house is in the Something Estates. Wilson or…”
“Woodman?” A crease formed in the man’s forehead.
“That’s it. Woodman.”
“And you know the owner of the house?” he asked, looking me up and down.