Loop

by Karen Akins

  “I can explain, Bree,” whispered Quigley, edging her way across the room with her hands up. “But you need to bend down below the window. Everything needs to look very, very normal if anyone looks in my classroom door.”

  Finn, who was inching my way from the opposite side, obeyed and slid down the wall. Of course he did. She was his aunt.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Quigley. “Are you a teacher here?”

  And with that, it became official. I had never been more confused in my life. One minute, I was finally about to get the answer to the question—well, one of the questions—that had been driving me bonkers since I’d first heard the name Muffy van Sloot. The next thing I knew, I was trapped in the gnarled branches of the world’s most twisted family tree.

  As if she could read my mind, Quigley said, “I realize you have no reason to trust me. And you’re probably questioning everything you know about Finn here as well. But I need you to believe me; he’s as confused as you are right now.”

  Either Finn was a fabulous actor or Quigley was telling the truth. All the color had drained from his cheeks. Quigley continued to move toward me. Finn’s eyes flitted back and forth between the two of us.

  “Take one more step, Quigley, and I’ll scream my head off,” I said. “I may not know everything, but I know enough.”

  “Wait. Aunt Lisa is … Quigley?” Finn froze for the briefest of moments, then lunged at me. He was so fast, I didn’t have a chance to brace my body for the impact. But he didn’t hit me. Or knock me down. Didn’t even jostle me. Instead, he crouched in front of me facing Quigley. He squared his shoulders in a defensive posture.

  “What’s going on here?” he all but snarled.

  Rather than look miffed or even surprised, Quigley maintained a serene expression as she walked to her desk and sat down.

  “My, my, Finnigan. Is that all it takes to turn on poor Aunt Lisa? A threat against your precious Bree?”

  “Yep.” Finn twitched as Quigley folded her hands across her desk.

  “Good.” She leaned back in her chair and smiled.

  I slid down the wall, not out of obedience, but out of sheer shock. The lamp tumbled from my grasp and smashed on the floor. Quigley winced at the sound, glancing out the door, and adjusted the overhead lights to compensate.

  “What are you talking about?” Finn asked, but I held up my hand to interrupt him.

  “I’m going to fire off some questions,” I said. “I don’t care who the answers come from. But, so help me, they’d better come.”

  My protector (or possibly traitor) and enemy (or possibly ally) both nodded their heads.

  “What did you do to my mom?”

  “Nothing,” replied Quigley without skipping a beat.

  Okay, perhaps best to take a different route.

  “What happened to my mom?”

  “That requires a bit of speculation, as she’s in a coma and can’t tell us, but I believe she was attacked.”

  “Yeah, I believe that, too.” I grabbed a shard of glass from the broken lamp and wielded it in a threatening way.

  “Not by me.” Quigley sounded genuinely shocked at the suggestion.

  “Who then?”

  “I … I don’t know exactly. From the times I’ve been able to sneak Nurse Granderson in to check on her, it appears her coma is medically induced.”

  “Meaning?” said Finn.

  “Someone’s drugging her. It’s true that her chip isn’t functioning, but that seems to be unrelated to the coma.”

  “Okay. Are you really Finn’s aunt?”

  “No.” Both Finn and Quigley answered at the same time, Finn with more vehemence.

  “She’s a friend of my parents,” said Finn. “I thought.”

  “Actually, I’m not yet. I’ve only met you once when you were much younger. I wouldn’t have recognized you if you weren’t the spitting image of your father. It doesn’t surprise me that I’ll befriend them at some point, though. I found them to be … admirable.”

  Sounded like she had some future self issues, too.

  Quigley turned to me, and her voice took on an almost pleading tone. “Will you let me explain? At least as much as I’m able.”

  There was something in the Quig’s eyes that had never been there before. Dare I dream, humility? Or friendliness? Whatever it was, I found myself saying a reluctant “Yes.”

  “About a year ago—”

  “You’ve known about this for a year and couldn’t save my mom?”

  “Let me finish.” Quigley went back to her usual clipped commands. “About a year ago, an object came into my possession. It’s a device—from the future—and I was tasked with hiding it. To keep it safe at all costs.”

  “What does it do?” I asked. “The device?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t told that. I know a lot of people are after it, and I know it’s the only one of its kind.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s … well, it’s Truth. But unfortunately, I—”

  “What did you just say?” Finn beat me to the question but had to hold me back from scrambling over to Quigley’s desk.

  “Were you the one who told my mother that saying? About Truth and the enigmatic grin?” I strained against Finn’s grasp. “Were you?”

  “No.” Quigley leveled me in her gaze. “I believe you were.”

  “Me?” I stopped struggling. I may have inadvertently also stopped breathing.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, you’ve just returned from a little heart-to-heart with your mother. I’ve never actually met the woman.” Quigley threw her hands up in a halfhearted shrug. “Well, conscious, I mean.”

  Oh, she would pay for that. Finn couldn’t hold me back. In a blink, I launched myself at her. Quigley didn’t flinch. As calmly as if she were applying a fresh coat of crimson lipstick, she pulled a QuantCom out of a drawer and zapped me at the lowest stun setting. My heart fibbed a beat from the jolt. I backed off.

  “Get. Down. You will be seen,” said Quigley.

  I rubbed the numb spot on my arm where I’d been stung as I slouched back to the corner. “But I heard it from her.”

  “Everyone heard it from her.” Quigley made no attempt to disguise her annoyance.

  Finn was too quick for me. He pinned my arms against my sides and held me tight. “Let’s hear her out. She obviously knows more than we do.”

  “As I said,” Quigley went on, “while your mother was busy announcing my clue to the whole world—”

  “Your clue?”

  “Yes, my clue. I told you I was the one that hid the device. Do you think I’d do that and not tell someone where I left it in case something happened to me?”

  “Tell who?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” she said.

  I swear, this conversation was like some never-ending game of Russian roulette with no bullets.

  “Nope,” I said. “Not obvious.”

  “Finn.”

  “Yeah?” He looked up in surprise.

  “Finn. That’s who I told,” said Quigley.

  “What are you talking about? You said you don’t know my family yet. You’ve only met me once when I was little.”

  “That was why I went back in time to meet your parents when you were a baby. To make sure they told you the clue.”

  “And that was the clue you came up with? ‘The Truth lies behind the enigmatic grin’? From that I was supposed to gather you’d hidden some device behind a photo of Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa? In the freaking twenty-third century?”

  “I was in a crunch. I wanted to take it back to Leo to stash away. He owes me a favor. But, in the end, I decided he couldn’t be trusted. That man would trade his own mother for a cool enough gadget.” She looked at the photo and frowned as she noticed the poked-out eyes and nose. “I assumed one of your descendants was destined to find it, especially after Bree’s midterm assignment to Chincoteague Island popped up. I never dreamed you’d come here posing as Bree
’s long-lost cousin. Which, by the way, was beyond reckless.”

  Amen.

  “But that clue is so convoluted,” said Finn. “How the heck was I supposed to realize that an ‘enigmatic grin’ referred to the Mona Lisa?”

  “I’m sorry. Did I not choose a famous enough painting for you, Finnigan?”

  “Why Finn?” I asked, my eyes drifting up to meet Quigley’s.

  She stared at me, her mouth ajar.

  I stated the question again, thinking she didn’t understand. “Why did it have to be—?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” she said. “I thought it was … obvious.”

  “No. Not obvious.” Opposite of obvious.

  “Because you told me to, Bree. When you brought me the device.”

  I hadn’t—dang it. Future Bree.

  There’s one Rule of Shifting most of us never stop to ponder. It goes without saying. Or at least it should: Never piddle in your own past.

  As I sat there, trying to assimilate this new scrap of information, I had a new appreciation for that rule.

  The not-ha-ha-funny part was that I wasn’t all that surprised. I should have been shocked. Flabbergasted. But somehow, in my mind, Future Bree had taken on a separate identity. Persona non exista.

  And yet she had held back information—important information. Kept it to herself. We were missing something. It didn’t add up.

  “Why did you fail my midterm? And Anchor me?”

  “You told me to do that, too. Although your initial report truly was a pathetic excuse for a—”

  “Hey. I had my reasons.” I gestured at Finn.

  “As did I,” said Quigley. “You have no idea how much scrambling I’ve had to do behind the scenes to buy you time for whatever it is your future self wants you to do. I’ve been deleting tru-ant readings left and right. Oh, and I had to alter the QuantCom data from your last two missions. That was a treat.”

  “Why did you alter my QuantCom data?” I asked.

  “Those surges. Your Com was picking up on another Shifter’s tendrils as they Shifted.”

  My theory was right.

  “I assume that Shifter was your father,” she said to Finn.

  “Or my sister.” Finn nodded. “But how did you find me in the first place? Bree couldn’t.”

  “He’s not in any of the databases,” I said. “I searched down to the tertiary level.”

  “Yeah,” said Finn. “What she said.”

  “He’s not in the system because I erased every trace of him when the device went missing. As a precautionary measure.”

  “Missing?” I said. “You mean you lost it?” I might not like the chick, but Future Bree must have risked a lot to bring it here, whatever it was.

  I could hear Pods moving around on the street below, and I looked at the clock. Four a.m. We needed to hurry.

  “When did you realize it was missing?” I asked.

  “You’re not going to like the answer,” said Quigley glumly.

  “Why not?” But even as I said the words, I knew why.

  “Your mother. As soon as she announced the clue, I ran to my hiding spot, but it was already gone.”

  Finn’s eyes widened. “How did whoever stole it figure it out that fast?”

  They didn’t.

  “They Shifted there from the future,” I said.

  “Precisely,” said Quigley. “There’s no way of knowing how long it took them to figure it out. Months, I suspect. Maybe years given the havoc they’ve wreaked throughout history to examine the Mona’s panel.”

  Quigley picked the photo up and traced the edges of the frame with a sad smile.

  “Have you never wondered why the Mona Lisa has been vandalized so often? The 2130 gashing attempt. The 1911 theft. Oh, and don’t forget that madman who doused it with acid in the 1950s. All trying to decipher the Truth clue. I just don’t understand how a fellow Shifter could be so reckless with our treasures from the past.” Quigley was really getting worked up.

  “But why?” I asked. “I mean, with the Doctrine of Inevitability, surely they knew that it was a moot point, that they wouldn’t succeed.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but still, someone figured it out eventually. They took the device before I had a chance to realize the threat. I’ve tried to go back and recover it so I could put it in another spot, but my timing is always off. I’m either too early or too late to catch them. They must have taken it immediately after I hid it.”

  The office darkened as a hazy shadow moved across the room. Someone had passed through the light in the hallway outside the classroom. The shadow came back in the opposite direction and paused. Quigley sucked a hiss of air through her teeth.

  “Keep low.” The words escaped without a twitch of her lips.

  chapter 28

  QUIGLEY SHUFFLED a pile of soligraphic files around her desk, all trace of emotion wiped away. The shadow loomed larger, and Quigley looked up and pretended to see it for the first time. Whoosh. My hair fluttered as the office door slid open. Quigley glided forward to lean against the entrance, blocking the path.

  “Any luck finding her?” she asked.

  “Nope. Shouldn’t be much longer, though.” I recognized Coach Black’s husky baritone. “Already got a preliminary fix. Definitely in the building. They’re pinpointing now. See, this is why chips need to be mandatory. Situations like these. Already knew she was a risk, what with her mom being a tink and all. Wouldn’t want to be her in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Or right now,” I whispered under my breath. Finn tapped my knee and held his finger to my mouth.

  “I’ll keep my eyes open, but I think we both know this is the last place she’d come,” said Quigley with a lighthearted laugh.

  “I’m gonna go grab some spare ants from the locker rooms. Wanna help?”

  “I would, but I’m combing through the proximity sensors.”

  “Good idea. Don’t work too hard.”

  “Is there such a thing?” Quigley let out a … was that supposed to be a girlish giggle?

  Oh, for the blarking love—was the woman attempting to flirt her way out of this?

  “Tell you what, Chuck, I’ll hunt you down for coffee in the morning after we get her shipped off to Resthaven.”

  “You’re on. Let me know if you find anything on the sensors.”

  She wiggled her fingers at him. The moment the door closed, she shook her hand like something nasty clung to it. Quigley walked back to her desk and collapsed into the chair.

  “It’s getting worse,” she said with a sigh.

  “What is?” asked Finn.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?” She directed the question at me. “You of all people. I see the way transporters look at you in the halls. I hear the whispers in class. Anti-Shifter sentiment is reaching a new high.”

  “Not my problem right now,” I said.

  Quigley gave me a strange look, like she was measuring something within me that no one else could see.

  “We should hurry.” She reached into her desk and began grabbing data buttons, compufilm, and her speak-eazy. “I’ll let them know we’re on our way.”

  “Let who know? Where are we going?”

  “Resthaven.”

  And with that, I was officially back to not trusting the crapwench.

  “Like blark you are!” I stiffened and was thankful that Finn, who had only heard of the place from my earlier rant but seemed to remember the vile nutso bin it is, pulled me protectively to his chest. He pushed his shoulder next to mine. I felt taller for it.

  Quigley stopped her hurried packing and stared up in surprise. “Where else would we go?”

  “Anywhere,” I snapped. “Anywhere else.”

  She leaned back in her chair and pressed her fingers to her eyes. I was about to grab Finn’s hand and make a run for it when she said the opposite of what I was expecting.

  “Bree, what do you know about the Haven Society?”

  “You m
ean green lights and hot meals? That Haven?” It was Finn who answered. I knew he was thinking about the candles above his own front door at home. As was I. And, for the first time, I was also thinking about the same green glow that came from the Resthaven brochure I’d been constantly barraged with since my mother’s accident.

  “Yes, that Haven,” said Quigley.

  “They’re extinct,” I said. “The Haven was founded hundreds of years ago, maybe thousands. But they’re extinct.”

  “Not extinct,” said Quigley. “And not founded thousands of years ago. Or even hundreds. They were founded in our future, Bree. Or, rather, they will be. They aren’t an ancient society that simply helps Shifters. They’re a futuristic society entrusted with safeguarding our secrets.”

  I tried to wrap my head around what she was saying but couldn’t. “But they’re all mad at Resthaven. Everyone knows that.”

  “That’s what I thought as well,” said Quigley. “I wrote them all off as unhinged. Until I received a visit a few months ago from someone I couldn’t ignore.”

  “Who?” asked Finn.

  “Myself,” said Quigley.

  “Your future self?” So I definitely wasn’t the only one with future self issues.

  “She’d disabled her microchip,” said Quigley.

  “What?” I gasped. “Was she—?”

  “Aunt Lisa’s not crazy.” It was Finn who said it, and he addressed Quigley. “You may not know me, but I know you. You don’t turn into some raving lunatic.”

  “Exactly. I was surprisingly coherent. Articulate, even.” She snapped her satchel shut and swallowed deeply. “But the Madness had still begun. I was confused on facts I should know. Simple things. Recent events.”

  “Then why trust anyone based on her recommendation?” I asked.

  “I told you that the Haven exists to safeguard secrets, but that’s not entirely true. She said that they exist to guard one thing.” Quigley pushed herself up from her seat. “Truth.”

  The Truth lies behind the enigmatic grin.

  “It has to be related to the device,” I said. “But what does it mean? What Truth?”

  Quigley blinked.

  “You don’t … know? I thought that was—”

  “Don’t say ‘obvious’,” I said.