Loop

by Karen Akins

  I zigzagged across the net trying to throw him off. Didn’t work. For every move I made, he was three countermoves ahead. Like he’d done this before, I realized with a sinking sensation. I gave up on the zigzags and concentrated on putting as many inches between us as possible. But the higher I climbed, the fewer and fewer inches there were.

  “You’re snarling up the wrong tree,” I said. “I don’t have the reverter.”

  “You’re a liar,” he said in a cool, calm voice that was more disconcerting than if he’d kept yelling. “And don’t forget: I’m from the future. I already know how this is going to end.”

  “Then why do you look so nervous?” I smirked. Bergin knew I’d get away. Then I remembered that was probably the reason Wyck was sent here. To change that.

  But my words had their intended effect. Wyck looked like I’d slapped him. He paused mid-climb. There it was again, a brokenness.

  “I don’t remember everything,” he said in a quiet, fearful voice. “There are holes. But also … extra memories.”

  “That means you’ve changed something in the past and it’s been restored. Bergin’s using you as a pawn. To line things up perfectly before he uses the Pick himself. He’s going to let it drive you insane trying to get the reverter back while he stays safe behind his desk.”

  Wyck buried his face in his shirt. “I need your help.”

  “Wyck.” My friend. He was still in there. That or he was faking. No, I knew him. There was no way he would do something like this if he were in his right mind. Maybe that mind could still be reached.

  “Bree. Please.” His shoulders shook.

  “That memory gap—it’s only going to get worse unless you stop Shifting. Stop trying to change things.”

  “I … I will. But I can’t do it alone.”

  If there was any way I could help him, I had to try. “You’re not alone, Wyck.” I started to climb down to him.

  When I was a few feet above him, he lifted his head. His shoulders were still shaking. In laughter. He clamped his hand around my ankle. I tried in vain to kick Evil Wyck off my leg. His sinewy fingers dug in deeper. I yelped in pain. He tugged me down, and I had to loop my arm over the metal netting to keep from falling.

  “Oof.” Evil Wyck’s grip loosened. I kicked him in the head and clambered up a few more yards. From there, I could see Finn had crawled up next to Evil Wyck and hit him in the side. Real Wyck was a few yards below them.

  “Finn, behind you,” I said.

  Evil Wyck growled and shot up the scaffolding after me. “What is it with you and that parasite?”

  “Shut up!” I screamed. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  “I know he’s only good at holding on to you.”

  “That’s nothing on his kissing.” I lowered my head in a taunt.

  Evil Wyck swore and called me a name that boiled my blood. There was nothing left to throw, except the reverter. But even if there had been, I wouldn’t have thrown it for fear of hitting Finn instead.

  “He’s nothing!” yelled Wyck. “Nothing! Just a clueless prat who got tangled in your quantum tendrils.”

  “What are you talking about? Why would my tendrils have anything to do with him?”

  “I suppose they wouldn’t if your mother hadn’t gone whoring in the past with your father. Conceived in one century, born in another—your tendrils don’t seem to belong anywhere, now do they?”

  Something akin to a howl came out of my mouth. I was going to kick his blarking head blarking off! I scooted down a rung, ready to deliver a boot to the face.

  “Ignore him,” Finn urged. “Climb.”

  Blindly I obeyed Finn and dodged Evil Wyck’s outstretched hand. My mind tore through Wyck’s explanation—it made sense. My tendrils were equally drawn to two different centuries, equally connected to both. But Wyck was wrong on one point. This quiet pull I’d felt all my life—it didn’t mean that my tendrils didn’t belong anywhere. It meant they belonged everywhere. My parents loved each other against all odds. That kind of love doesn’t rip apart.

  It knits together.

  Finn’s tendrils weren’t clinging to the twenty-third century. They were clinging to mine.

  I was temporal Velcro.

  It wasn’t like I’d ever known another Shifter born to parents of two different times who I could ask. I’d never even heard of—

  “Aighh!”

  Evil Wyck slammed his fist into my knee. Splinters of pain burst around the joint. When I tried to move, it cracked and stiffened.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Real Wyck from below. “You said we weren’t going to hurt her.”

  Evil Wyck scaled the last few feet and curled his fingers around my throat. “I lied.”

  “No!” The cry came in unison from Finn and Real Wyck, who had nearly caught up with us. When I glanced down, I realized how Real Wyck had made it up so fast. He had his gravbelt on and was merely grazing the metal links for support. Looking down was a bad idea. We were over a hundred feet high. I raised my eyes. They met Evil Wyck’s savage stare and I regretted that, too.

  Finn darted the rest of the way up and slammed his fist against Evil Wyck’s jaw. But the ferocious grip on my throat didn’t loosen. Everything spun around in dizzy loops. Holding on didn’t seem as important as it had before. Air. Air was the only thing that mattered. I lifted one of my hands to pry his fingers off. Finn landed another blow, this time to Evil Wyck’s gut. I managed to wrench his hand off my throat. Coughing and gasping, I fought back a rush of vomit.

  Real Wyck had drifted his way up to the fray. He planted a hand on the back of his future self’s shoulder to gain balance as he bobbed up and down.

  “Just give me the device, Bree,” said Real Wyck. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Evil Wyck knocked Finn down a rung and kneed him in the head.

  “Looks like you do.” I tried to reach around Evil Wyck to steady Finn.

  “He’s not me. You understand that. You have to understand that.” Wyck reached out to me. “This was the only way Bergin would let me Shift. I thought no one would get hurt.”

  “What about Mimi?” I asked. “Is she no one?”

  “I didn’t do that. He did.” Wyck pointed at his future self. “It was supposed to be a warning to keep her mouth shut, only bruise her up a little. She saw him at the Institute yesterday on her way to breakfast, right before she found me with you when she came back to the room. It freaked her out. She thought he was a clone or something. But he didn’t push her hard enough to put her in a coma. That was the ICE guys. You have to believe me.”

  “I do.”

  It didn’t matter.

  Finn doubled over as Evil Wyck drew his fist back from a blistering blow. Our attacker turned his attention back to me, snatched a clump of my hair, pulled. My already-tenuous hold on the net slipped. The left side of my body flew away from the scaffolding. I flapped like a flag in the wind, holding on by one arm and my injured leg.

  “Stop!” roared Real Wyck. He catapulted himself at … himself.

  With a harsh yelp, Evil Wyck leapt off the netting to meet Wyck midair. The gravbelt that now buoyed both of them sagged a few yards under the sudden addition of weight. They wrestled, but I could tell Real Wyck was holding back. Nothing like the fear of killing your future self.

  Finn crawled up next to me. His right eye was swollen shut, and his nose looked broken. “We have to get off this thing,” he whispered.

  I winced when he brushed up against my hurt knee. I wished there was some way to know if all this had happened in the original time line. Or if Wyck was succeeding in changing it.

  “Do you still have my grappling hook?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Left it on your desk. We’ll take it slow.”

  We crept down at a snail’s pace. My bum leg caught on a tool belt that workers had left on the net. It plummeted to the ground with a crash. The noise woke both Wycks from their brawl.

  “We’ll get the dev
ice another way.” Real Wyck strained to hold his future self back from lunging onto the netting.

  Evil Wyck pulled a QuantCom out of his pocket and tapped it against Real Wyck. Instantly Real Wyck morphed into a floating statue, his eyes wide with terror. His future self turned to face Finn and me. Evil Wyck smirked. Using his stunned past self as some sort of bizarre hovercraft, he drifted toward us. He held up the QuantCom and fiddled with the controls.

  “Do you like it?” He held it up as if I wanted to admire it. “I built it myself. A custom design. Had Wyck steal the parts for it from the Launch Room that first Family Night that Finn showed up. I’ve improved on the current models. The stunner conducts through metal. Funny how I knew that feature might come in handy right … about … now.”

  “Let us go. I’m begging you,” I said.

  Wyck ignored me.

  “Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this?” He paused, and when Finn and I didn’t answer he roared, “Do you?”

  Prominent veins popped from his neck. He trembled head to toe.

  Finn turned to me and dropped his voice to a hush: “You asked me to protect you. Now I know how.”

  “It’s too late.” I gulped. “He’s going to change the story. He’s going to win.”

  “Not this time.” In Finn’s whisper, the rest of the world disappeared. “Do you trust me?”

  Yes.

  I didn’t get a chance to say it aloud. Evil Wyck thrust the stunner against the netting, his face more beast than human. But Finn had already wrapped his arms around me tighter than he ever had before.

  And jumped.

  chapter 33

  I ONCE READ that people falling from tall heights die of a heart attack before hitting the ground.

  Not true.

  Apparently, they drown first.

  There was a vague sense of a splash. My boots sank into gloppy sand. It sucked the soles down, trapping me underwater. I flailed and opened my mouth in a shriek. Salt water poured in. I kicked and kicked to escape the suction. The movement tore into my ripped-up knee.

  I gritted my teeth to keep from gasping in pain. I had no idea how far away the surface was. I reached up, but there was only more water. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I was going to drown. My arms thrashed around for a handhold in vain.

  With one final kick, I shoved off in the direction that felt the most like up. My head broke the surface. I coughed out the briny seawater and gulped in a mouthful of air. I stretched the foot of my good leg down, but it was no use. I couldn’t touch. Judging by the salt that stung my eyes, I was in the ocean. But I had no idea how.

  The moon hung low on the endless horizon. Water everywhere.

  Stay. Calm.

  I must have Shifted somehow. It was the only explanation that made sense. It had been so fast, I’d barely felt it. And I had no idea how I’d done it. I swung my head around to get my bearings. Finn’s lifeless body floated a few feet away.

  “Finn!” I screamed.

  No response.

  I screamed again, for anyone this time, before the waves sucked me under. My cries were useless, and I knew it. I managed to pop up once more and drink in another lungful of precious oxygen. The spot where Finn had been was nothing but bubbles. My head whipped around. The last plunge had disoriented me. He was gone.

  I took a deep breath and put my face under the surface, looking for him. It was no use. The salt battered my eyes, and I could barely keep my own body afloat as it was. My shoulders slumped in defeat, and the relaxation buoyed me for a moment before the panic set back in and I was pulled down again.

  No. Not pulled down. Pulled forward.

  Finn broke through the surface of the water. He shook his hair out like Triton returned from a refreshing midnight dip. He tugged me toward him, held me hard against his chest as he paddled through the water at the same time.

  “I can’t touch the bottom,” I gasped. Water shot up my nose and choked me.

  He stood to full height, his head above the water. “I know. But I can.”

  Land was visible. This would have calmed me if it weren’t a hundred yards away.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist to free up both his arms. “We’re going to drown.”

  “We’re not going to drown. But I am sorry.” He dipped his now-free hand in the water and slicked his hair back. “I thought a beach landing would be romantic.”

  “Landing? What are you talking about?”

  “We’re home.” He grinned. “Tide’s low. I could navigate these sandbars in my sleep. Although it would be easier if you could, ouch”—he pried my frantic nails out of his chest and swung me around to his back—“ahh, that’s better.”

  “Home?” I paused to spit some oh-so-tasty flora from my mouth. “As in Chincoteague Island?”

  “Yep.” He paddled forward in lunges.

  “You Shifted us here?”

  He nodded.

  “But you’re not a Shifter. When we stuck you on the LaunchPad, it had no effect on you, except the time when you were holding on to me.”

  “I didn’t feel called anywhere at that particular moment.” Finn shrugged. “And it wasn’t like I have one of your microchip doohickeys to force it.”

  “You’re really a Shifter?”

  He nodded again.

  “You knew that and didn’t tell me?” Unbelievable.

  “It started when I was staying at your house, but it took me a while to figure out what was going on. It was like bad déjà vu. I didn’t want to bring it up in case it was nothing.” His lips contorted into a guilty twist of a smile. “Then by the time I knew for sure what was happening, while I was staying in your, umm, in your closet, I didn’t want to bring it up, period.”

  “That day I came back to the room early, you weren’t talking to yourself. You were talking to yourself.”

  “You did hear us.” He splashed the surface of the water. “I knew it.”

  “So you decided to wait until we were a hundred feet in the air and test yourself out with a two-hundred-year Shift? You could have gotten us killed!”

  “Oh, I think Wyck was doing a pretty good job of that.”

  A sickle moon leered in the distance. On the one hand, I was so spitting mad. On the other, Finn was the only one who could protect me in that exact moment on the monument, a free Shifter who could pull us both to safety.

  “And it wasn’t a Shift,” he said. “It was a synch. The pull’s been getting stronger and stronger. But it wasn’t an overwhelming urge until Wyck was about to kill us. In that moment, it was like everything disappeared but you. And I just … knew.” He was quiet for a moment. “I never believed Dad when he said how hard it is to control his Shifting when emotions are high. But he’s right.”

  Gradually, the water receded, as did my anger. When it reached Finn’s knees, I hopped down and hobbled along beside him, clutching his arm to steady myself. In the distance the Mastersons’ house glowed, but I didn’t detect any movement inside. Dang if that boy didn’t have some natural talent. A crab scuttled over my toes in the shallows, and when my feet touched dry sand I collapsed. The warm grains clung to me but couldn’t quiet my shivers.

  Even under my jeans, I could see my knee was puffed up to the size of a cantaloupe. The throbbing was so intense, I pinched the inside of my arm, the side of my neck, just to feel pain somewhere else.

  Ha. Pain somewhere else. Yet no Buzz. I couldn’t help but let out a tiny laugh.

  “I really am sorry about the water,” said Finn, lying down next to me. “And for not telling you about the Shifts. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Worry me? Why would that have worried me?” I winced as I tugged off my boots and peeled down my socks. Water and grit poured out. “If I’d known you were able to Shift home on your own, it would have solved everything.”

  A wave rushed up and lapped our already-sopping legs. Finn ground the sole of my boot into the sand. “Right. Everything.”

  “Well, not eve
rything,” I said. “I mean, there are certified henchmen chasing me and, as far as I know, my headmaster is still bent on irreparably mucking up the space-time continuum. Oh, and let’s not forget the angry smugglers. But I wouldn’t have had to worry about what to do with you and—”

  “We need to get going.” Finn pushed himself up gruffly.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad.” Finn dug a trench on the beach with his heel. “I’m done.”

  “What do you mean, done?”

  “What do you think I mean? I’m not an idiot! We don’t have a future, Bree. I get that. Our future is in the past. All we have is the present—and that isn’t looking real hopeful. I don’t want to spend the rest of the time we have together fighting with you. And you won’t let me fight for you. Here”—he lifted something shiny from his pocket—“I’ve been carrying this around, waiting for the perfect time to give it back to you. It doesn’t look like that time’s coming.”

  I reached out and touched the silver object. It was my heart. My sterling bracelet.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In the grass outside the Pentagon. When I went back for the grappling hook.” He dumped the locket in the sand next to me and backed away. “Leave the reverter here. I’ll put it in our safe until I can figure out a better hiding spot.”

  “Finn, wait.”

  He turned around and ignored me.

  “Wait.”

  Still ignored me.

  “I said, wait.” I lurched forward and grabbed him by his ankles. He face-planted into the sand next to me. “Don’t do this. Please. I was wrong. I mean I will be wrong.”

  “Don’t do what?” He spit sand out of his mouth.

  “Don’t leave. I’ve already lost my mom. And Mimi. I can’t lose you, too. I don’t want it to end like this.” Then it hit me. I didn’t want it to end. Ever. “I know Future Me told you to break my heart, but not now. Not like this.”

  Finn’s expression softened, and he drew me close. “Shh … I’m not going anywhere.” He rested his chin on top of my head and took deep, sure breaths that calmed me. His stubble tickled as I leaned my head back so I could look at him. But he was gazing out at the ocean.