Loop

by Karen Akins

  As we neared Finn’s house, a headache started pounding across my temples. It wasn’t the usual spot as the Buzz. Probably a result of the crash mixed with wanting to cry.

  I rubbed at my silver locket bracelet, wishing, wanting, needing my mom in that moment. The last sliver of sun glinted off the topmost windows of the Masterson home as we reached their driveway. A lace of clouds melted from orange to red to pink. The view would have been magnificent if I were able to focus on anything but the increasing pain that pummeled my head. It was a strange sensation, like a gnawing from the inside out.

  “See? Not far at all.” Finn turned to look at me. A paper-thin smile strained his lips.

  Charlotte was pacing on the porch with her cell phone. As we crunched down the gravel driveway, Finn waved to get his mom’s attention. I caught the tail end of the phone conversation.

  “Never mind. He’s here.” She ran down the front steps and called, “Where’s your car?”

  “Bay,” said Finn.

  “What?”

  “In the bay.”

  “You mean the water? Why is your car in the—?” She stopped when Finn coughed and shook his head from side to side, pausing on my side with an extra cough.

  “Was Bree driving?”

  “No. It’s a long story, Mom.”

  “Are you two all right?”

  Finn nodded. I started to, but a new wave of agony seized the base of my skull. Jagged shards sealed my eyes shut. I couldn’t escape it. This was no Buzz.

  I reached out and grabbed Finn’s shoulder. “Hurts … hurts.” The words came out in a choke and seemed distant, like someone else had spoken them. Even my tongue wasn’t immune to the pain.

  “Is Dad back?” asked Finn. He cradled me against his shoulder. My limbs went stiff, then limp.

  “He’s in the house.”

  “Get him!”

  Finn’s dad came running out the door a few moments later. But it was too late. I was being pulled inside out. Pulled with a ferocity I’d never experienced before in Shifting.

  The tips of my fingers tingled. I reached for my QuantCom but couldn’t make out the screen. The world around me darkened by the second. In the distance, John shouted something. I couldn’t understand him.

  I was dying. Was already dead. This must have been what had happened to my mom.

  Wait.

  No.

  It hit me. I wasn’t dying, though in that moment I wished I were. This was a forced fade.

  I was in so much trouble when I got back.

  But then I became aware of another sensation, that of being held. Finn lowered me to the ground. Warm, strong arms wrapped around my cold and lifeless ones. He held me against his chest slowly rising and falling, so different from my own panicked panting.

  “No!” I pushed Finn as hard as I could, but he only held tighter. I had to get him off me. He’d never survive the Shift.

  “Trust me,” he said quietly.

  Trust him?

  “Let go of me.” I tried in vain to get away from him. “Get him off of me!” I shouted to Finn’s parents.

  Charlotte struggled to reach out to Finn a few yards away, sobbing. “Not like this. John, can’t you—?”

  “Not yet, Char.” John held her back. “It has to happen.”

  I thrashed like a salmon who thought it could escape the bear. It was no good. Finn was a persistent bear.

  I rolled over. I would squirm off of him, push him away from a death sentence. As the pressure became unbearable, I gave up and let myself fade. My last coherent thought was, This must have been the mess Finn’s father was referring to.

  Killing his son.

  chapter 9

  THE FIRST TIME I ever witnessed my mother Shift, I was six. Our neighbor Mrs. Jacobs had to back out of babysitting at the last minute, so Mom lugged me along to her lab at the National Gallery of Art. She’d discovered a potential ink discrepancy in one of the early Impressionists’ signatures—or something like that—and she needed to run back to 1864 and check it. Settled into a corner of the room with a bag full of be-good-or-else bribes and the other Art Historians fawning over me, I was in heaven. Until my mom stepped onto the Shift Pad and disappeared. Just like that. Gone. She’d told me it would happen that way, but to see it—to see her vanish—was too much for my six-year-old brain.

  Mom’s transporter, Jex, was one of the old-old-old-timers. He had fuzzy white tufts growing out of his ears, and when I asked him about the hair he said it was to filter out the whiners. Mom had told me to give him a wide berth when I visited her in the lab. She needn’t have bothered. He smelled like pickles and cheap cologne.

  As soon as my mother Shifted, I started whimpering. Then crying. Then wailing. Jex was not what one would call sympathetic.

  “She’s only gone back a few hundred years. Stop yer bellyaching.”

  “But … but … but…” Each sob turned to a painful burr in my throat.

  “Do you want me to force her fade?”

  The way he said it, even at that age, I knew there was only one answer to that question. But still, I couldn’t stop the tears. Mom’s assistant Amelia had to scoop me up and rush me out of the room until I calmed down.

  “Did I get Mommy in trouble?”

  “With Jex?” Amelia planted me on a bench in front of a portrait of a girl sitting quietly with stockinged feet hanging off the edge of a bed. Maybe Amelia hoped to inspire me. “You don’t need to worry about him. He snarls, but he doesn’t have any teeth.”

  “He doesn’t have any—?”

  Amelia sighed. “I mean, he would never follow through on that threat, a forced fade.”

  “Is a forced fade bad?”

  “Very.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “You’ll never need to worry about something like that.”

  “But does it?”

  Another sigh, this one without looking at me. “Yes.”

  I thought she’d elaborate, but she didn’t.

  * * *

  Amelia had told the truth.

  “Hurt” didn’t cover it. I gasped for breath. My lungs had been crushed into a tiny ball. Everything had been crushed into a tiny ball. My head had somehow simultaneously caved in and cracked open. And my stomach …

  Oh, blark.

  I turned my head and heaved, but nothing came up. I forced my eyelids open.

  White stone loomed overhead. I curled my fingers into the ground, and they met grass, but not the cool, soft green I’d tromped through in Chincoteague. It prickled, scratching against my wrists. I blinked and willed my eyes to focus. The Jefferson Memorial stretched out above me, fuzzy, then sharp, fuzzy, then sharp.

  There was no denying the “forced” in the forced fade. So different from the normal synch sensation, that of a taut rubber band slackening. My band had snapped. I brushed my trembling palm across my face, and when I pulled it away a streak of red stained it. I pressed my fingers to my nose. Blood. Gushing out. Oozing down my wrist. This couldn’t be happening. I pinched my nostrils shut and fought back another dry heave.

  When I reached my arms out to push myself up, my right hand brushed against something soft. I looked over to see what it was, and vomit crawled back up my throat.

  Finn.

  No. This couldn’t be real. He was a hallucination. But when I touched his cheek it was solid.

  “Finn.” My voice was hoarse and hysterical. It built to a scream. “Finn!” I shook his shoulders. He didn’t move.

  Panicked, I pressed my lips to his. Still warm. Soft. But motionless.

  I buried my ear in his chest, listening for breath, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my own head. What had I done? Future Me knew about this. Knew about this! I should have found a way to stop him.

  “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead.” I rocked back and forth.

  Help. I had to go for help. I stood, like a marionette pulled upright. But I had no one I could turn to. Not for this.

&nbs
p; My QuantCom vibrated and started beeping. I threw it as far away as I could with a roar. Given how worn-out I was, it wasn’t far. Fury spread to my core, but there was nothing to pummel, no one to scream at. I alone had caused this.

  I gulped a mouthful of air but couldn’t draw it down my throat. This. This was what drowning felt like. Finn’s hair had fallen into his eyes. I knelt down next to him and brushed it away. And then the sobs started, plump tears splashing across his chest, his arm. No, I thought bitterly. His corpse.

  The corpse sat up and rubbed its head.

  “Aiggh!” I flung myself backward against the cold stone of the memorial.

  “That hurt like a—” muttered Finn before he spotted me. “How long have I been out?”

  “You’re alive.”

  “Barely.”

  “You. Are. Alive.” I dug my thumb into a crack in the marble beneath me. Something real, something solid.

  Finn looked at me as if he was walking into a trap. “Yes…”

  “How are you alive? People can’t Shift into the future.”

  “We didn’t.” He propped himself up on one elbow and pointed to the Washington Monument in the distance. His mouth split into a cocky grin. “I kept us in my time.”

  I bent over, grabbed his finger, and moved it a few inches to the left, toward the western side of the Tidal Basin. When I removed my hand, his arm dropped. As did his jaw.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “The Barack Obama Memorial fountain.”

  “The what?”

  “Obama was our nation’s first black president. He served in office from 2008 until—”

  “I know who President Obama is … was … is.” Finn felt around in the grass for his sunglasses. He shoved them on and blinked at the shimmering fountain.

  “Yep. It’s still there,” I said.

  His head swayed from side to side. “How could it not have worked?”

  “How could what not have worked?”

  “I was supposed to keep you in the twenty-first century with me. Safe.”

  “Is that what Future Me told you to do? Cling to me to keep me in your time?”

  “No. I mean, yes.” Finn closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. “What exactly did I instruct you to do?”

  “Protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “You didn’t say.”

  I let go of him. “That’s it?”

  Way to be specific, Future Me.

  He hedged a moment, then nodded. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “And this is your way of protecting me? Breaking every law of quantum mechanics to hang out with me in the twenty-third century.”

  “Whenever Dad Shifts, he makes sure not to touch Mom or me. He says touching a nonShifter would stop him from going anywhere. I thought … I thought I was keeping you safe.”

  “You’re lucky we didn’t land in the Institute. That’s where I’d be if this had been a normal fade. That’s where I’m supposed to be. A forced fade messes with your tendrils—wrenches them through the space-time continuum.” My vision was still fuzzy around the edges, and I fought back another wave of nausea.

  “Where you’re supposed to be? Maybe you’re supposed to be back in Chincoteague with my family. Safe.”

  “Safe.” I snorted. “You’re the reason I’m in danger.”

  As if on cue, my Com vibrated again. I didn’t need to open it to know something was wrong. Good grief. Of course, something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

  The face of it flashed red when I picked it up. I tossed it back to the ground like a steaming potato.

  “They know.”

  “They know what?” asked Finn.

  “The value of pi. What do you think? They know I brought something back with me.”

  It happened occasionally. A bottle cap stuck in the shoe, gum in the mouth, a forgotten wrapper in the pocket. They all shared the same fate.

  Straight into the incinerator.

  “Another one of your Shifter rules?” He smirked.

  “Nope. Not a Shifter rule. One of our country’s laws, Finn. Laws.”

  “So what … you just changed the future by bringing me here?”

  “I didn’t bring you here! You clung to me. And it’s not that simple.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “Do you realize the bacteria and germs and … general filth you have on you right at this very moment?”

  Finn smirked. “The worst I have is a cold coming on.”

  “From a virus that was likely eradicated forever ago. No one would have any immunity to it now. That cold could cause an epidemic. And the earth’s atmosphere is different now. What if it mutated into a new strain?”

  “You don’t get sick every time you go back in time, do you?”

  “Shifters are vaccinated. Then decontaminated when they synch. But there aren’t enough vaccines to protect the entire population against every disease throughout time.”

  “So it’s bad that I’m here.”

  “You think?”

  “What you’re saying is you need protection.”

  “Because of you! Oh my gosh.” I grabbed my head. It still felt like it was going to explode from the forced fade. At least my nosebleed had stopped. “A human being. From the past. I’ll go to prison for this.”

  Finn’s gaze wandered off to the distance. He picked a blade of grass from the lawn and twisted it around his thumb. Technically, I could have made a citizen’s arrest of him for committing a misdemeanor, but I let it slide given the circumstances.

  “They know it’s me?” he asked. “The object you brought back?”

  “No.” I laughed.

  “But they know it’s a person?”

  “Trust me, if anyone in their right mind believed I somehow managed to bring a human back from the past you’d be in a lab already and I’d be in jail.”

  An impish grin spread across Finn’s face. “Take off your shirt.”

  “What? No.” Seriously, was there a single guy out there who had the ability to think with anything other than his hormones?

  “Did you forget?” Finn took his own shirt off and threw it to me. “You fell in a mud puddle on your assignment and borrowed a random stranger’s shirt. Very nice guy. You’ll have to remember to thank him someday.”

  I’d heard worse.

  “What will you wear?” I pointed at my own formfitting T-shirt. It would fit around one of his biceps if we were lucky.

  “A smile.” He waggled his eyebrows at me as I started to lift my shirt.

  “Turn around.” I looked around to make sure no one else was looking our way.

  For once, he didn’t argue with me as he swiveled his body away. “I was going to.”

  “Yeah, right. After that kiss earlier?”

  The tips of his ears reddened. “No, I was.”

  The time for squabbling had passed. I pulled his shirt on. “Okay, you can look.”

  He turned around slowly, and I made every effort not to look at his bare chest.

  Okay, maybe not every effort.

  “All right.” He clapped his hands together. “Where to now? Your school?”

  He couldn’t be serious.

  “I’m going to my school,” I said. “You’re going…”

  Yikes. Where was he going?

  A siren wailed in the distance. Even if it wasn’t for me, it made my next decision easy. I snapped the QuantCom shut and grabbed Finn’s hand. We scurried across the autumn-faded lawn and down the wide white steps of the memorial. At first, Finn lagged behind. I didn’t know if he felt sick from the forced fade or nervous to be in the twenty-third century. And I didn’t give a mouse’s left butt cheek either way.

  “Hurry up,” I said, clawing my nails into the palm of his hand.

  Whatever misgivings he had, he put them aside. Soon his footsteps fell in with mine. We raced down to the edge of the Tidal Basin. I stole one final glance at m
y QuantCom and plunked it into the water.

  “Whoa!” Finn jumped back from the splash. “Isn’t that, like, your security blanket?”

  “It’s not providing me much security, is it?” Still, I couldn’t pull my eyes away as it sunk into the murkiness of the basin.

  “They can’t track you now?”

  “Of course they can. They’ll use my chip.” I dipped my hands in the water and wiped the blood from my face.

  “Then why did you—?”

  “To buy us some time. It’ll slow them down.” QuantComs weren’t waterproof. One of those weird quirks that came in handy sometimes. My friend Pennedy once panicked after a botched Chemistry final and shoved the whole thing in her mouth.

  “Where are we going?” Finn asked.

  To the only place I could think of. “My house.”

  “You don’t think they’ll look for you at your own house?”

  “They will. But they won’t be looking for you.” The plan had formed in my mind without much direct thought on my part. Step 1: Hide Finn. Step 2 … well, that part of the plan was still fuzzy. “It’s the perfect hiding spot.”

  Finn’s hand slipped out of mine when he stopped moving. “Hiding?”

  A breeze flapped my hair across my face when I turned to face him. I stuck out my lower lip and puffed it away. “What did you think you’d be doing?”

  “I thought we’d be running, searching, fighting.”

  “There’s no we. And there’s nothing to run from or search for or fight against.”

  Another siren in the distance, louder this time, didn’t help my case.

  “Make you a deal,” I said. “If something comes up that I need protection from, you will be my official go-to guy.”

  My promise appeased him enough for him to start following me again.

  “Are we near your house?” he asked.

  “Not too far. We can take the Metro.”

  “They still have that?” asked Finn.

  I smiled my first real smile since I’d gotten back. “Oh, yes.”

  chapter 10

  IT WAS AS ENTERTAINING as I’d always imagined it would be, watching someone from the past ride the Metro for the first time. Like a frontier woman stepping into a stratoscraper or a Roman soldier wielding a stunner.