Loop (25 page)

Finn nodded. “You made me promise to do both. You said, ‘When all else fails, you have to break my heart,’ and I told you I would.” He gritted his teeth. “So I guess that means I’ve lied to you twice now. Well, once to you, once to Future You. Because I can’t do it. I can’t break your heart.”

It didn’t make sense. One of the things that had bothered me the most about the whole “Protect me” thing was how selfish it was. But “break my heart”? I might not be a martyr, but I wasn’t a masochist. Neither sounded like me at all.

“To be honest,” said Finn, “I thought Future You was a little crazy when she said that. Crazy hot.” He let out a nervous laugh. “But still crazy. Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t be making sanity jokes.”

It comforted me somehow to hear Finn refer to my future self in the third person. Dang straight. I wasn’t
her
.

“Did I—did she tell you why she wanted you to break my heart?”

He shook his head.

I wasn’t her
. But I needed to widen the gap. Me from her. So we’d never touch.

“Ask me something you don’t know about me,” I said.

“Apparently, there’s a lot I don’t—”

“Anything.”

“Really? Okay. Umm, what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”

“I don’t have one. No dairy. My diet is optimized to provide nutritional balance for—”

“Yeah, yeah, active synergy for blah, blah, blah.” His face contorted with mock disgust. “No favorite ice cream. Sad. Umm, what’s your favorite time period?”

“I don’t have one of those either. Some I like more than others. Anything before the invention of deodorant is iffy.” The Pod hit a puddle and wobbled. A spray of muddy water clouded the front-view window. The backs of my legs ached from balancing on Finn’s knees. I scooched back and settled into the crook of his shoulder. In this tiny space, I couldn’t avoid his body. Or the flutters that went through mine being so near him.

“Don’t tell me they restrict that, too. You have to have a favorite. Your mom had a favorite.”

“Yeah, but that’s because my—” I shut my mouth and watched the raindrops race one another down the window. Maybe I could go back to the ice-cream question.

“That’s because your…?” Finn prompted.

He might as well know. Given how he claimed to feel about me, he deserved to know. “When my mom first started working for the National Gallery of Art—it would have been, well, seventeen years ago now—her first assignment was assisting on this high-profile Picasso counterfeit. It was an extended mission. Weeks at a time for several months.” I drew a deep breath. “And that’s when she … met my dad.”

“Your dad was on her research team?” Furrows formed along Finn’s forehead.

“No, my dad was—”

“Pablo Picasso is your
father
?” Finn tried to stand up, but instead he whacked his head on the ceiling and sent me sprawling to the floor.

“No.” My elbow smeared against something sticky, and I used Finn’s shirt to wipe it off. “My mom never even met Picasso. My dad was a Brit Lit professor at Georgetown in the 1910s where her team was doing some of its research. My parents fell in love. She knew she was breaking all the Rules to be with someone from the past, but she thought if she married him they’d let her go back and visit him.”

“And?”

“They didn’t.”

My mother’s heart would forever be tied to the twentieth century. As would my quantum tendrils. Genetically, I was just as much a child of my father’s present as my mother’s. Sometimes, it felt like my tendrils clung to every moment in between them—a bridge—trying to pull my parents together.

The sprinkle of rain had stopped. The windows clouded. Our Pod suddenly felt like a humid tomb.

“So you’ve never met your father?” Finn finally said. “That’s so wrong. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

“The authorities have their reasons. Security. NonShifter relations.”

“But it’s so senseless. If two people are in love, they shouldn’t be held apart over a little thing like time. I mean, if she didn’t have her chip, she could go back and see him whenev—oh.”

“Exactly. Now you see why people think she tinkered with her chip.”

“And why people might suspect you of wanting to do the same thing. You must miss him a lot.”

I shrugged. “It’s hard to miss someone you’ve never known. I mean, he died before I was born. By about two hundred and fifty years. I guess you could say I miss the
idea
of a father.”

Yet here was Finn, dead for … well, I had no idea how long he’d been dead, since we still hadn’t figured out why he wasn’t in any databases. I had a new appreciation for what it must have been like for my mom, walking away from the love of her life. Not that I was in love with Finn. Or anything like that. At all.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Did you believe them? The people who thought your mom tampered with her chip? I mean, before you found out she was attacked.”

“No. She loved my dad, but she also loves me. She never would have risked it. She knew I’d have no one if…” I choked up. “And she knew it would have been too risky for my dad, too. She obviously never told him she was a Shifter. It would have put him in danger, having that knowledge.”

“Why? My mom knew about my father while they were still dating. And the Haven’s existed for millennia.”

“In secret. In hiding. Would you want that for someone you loved?”

“I guess not.”

“Things are so much better now that Shifters are able to live out in the open.”

Finn didn’t look like he believed me.

“What?” I said. “It’s the truth.”

“Truth.” He chuckled and faced the window.

We fell into a solemn silence until we rounded the corner to the Pentagon. My shoulders started to unclench. But even from a distance, I could tell something was wrong. The Publi-pod slowed at the entrance, but I barked, “Passenger request: Circle the building,” before it had a chance to stop. As the Pod window cleared, I could see a cluster of people on the lawn. Three Institute staff members stood among a crowd of Pentagon workers, pointing back to the ticket gate. She had her back to us, but I recognized one of them instantly as Quigley. A few red-scrubbed medics, like the ones at my house the other day, were also wandering around, holding speak-eazies up to their mouths.

“They’re definitely searching for something,” said Finn, peering out the back-view hole, “but it might not be us.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, one of the workers lifted something from his pocket. He tapped it; a ten-foot soligraphic version of me appeared on the Pentagon lawn.
Eep.

“Okay, scratch that,” said Finn. “Maybe the Infobank already notified this Quigmire person that someone was impersonating her.”

“Quigley. And maybe.” I wasn’t convinced. “Why would she jump so quickly to the conclusion that it was me?”

“Video surveillance?”

“Impossible. There are strict privacy laws. Image capture is illegal on public property.”

Finn grabbed the data button and held it up. “So we’ll get rid of the proof. They can’t fingerprint it if they can’t find it.”

“Fingerprint?” A snort escaped me. “Are you kidding?”

“Are you telling me they’ve lost the ability to check for fingerprints?”

“I think you’d have to miss something to say it’s been lost. Fingerprints are über-easy to alter, destroy, steal…”

“I don’t know. Your brilliant hair system seems a bit flawed. I managed to pretend to be you. And you stole Quigley’s hair.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think there are many people who are willing to risk the consequences of getting caught.”

“Death?” His voice slipped to a hushed horror.

“No. They laser your hair off. Permanently.” Eyebrows, eyelashes, body hair. Everything.

Finn laughed as if I’d told the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the Martian.

“Laugh all you want. Shavies are social pariahs. You can’t get a job. You can’t use public transportation. I doubt you’d be able to find someone to sell you a used Pod.”

His smile faded. “Bree, I had no idea. Why did you risk it?”

The obvious answer was to get rid of him, but if I was being honest with myself, the other reasons had outweighed that. It wasn’t like sneaking into the Infobank had triggered the answerpocalypse, but I’d hoped for at least a little insight into what was going on—who attacked my mom, proof that she hadn’t tampered with her chip, proof that she wasn’t a victim of the Madness. If anything, I had more questions than before.

I scratched my fingernail across the dashboard. “I guess after so much numbness of not knowing, I thought truth—any truth—would hurt less.”

“We’ll tell them I did it,” he said.

“Finn, you don’t even exist.”

“Even more reason they’ll believe me. They’ll think I’m some lunatic who held you hostage for your identity.”

I dug my nail farther into the Pod, prepared to argue. After a few more seconds of scratching, though, the Publi-pod must have decided it wouldn’t stand for the abuse. It stopped in the middle of the street and popped open. We were three hundred yards or so from the entrance, far enough that we wouldn’t be immediately noticed. Close enough to see we’d need another way back in. All the entrances would be monitored. There was only one direction left.

Up.

“We’ll have to sneak back in through the roof.” The building was five stories high. I was all of five feet high. Finn was a sturdy six, but something told me those extra twelve inches wouldn’t prove all that useful in this situation.

“We could run,” said Finn.

“No, I don’t want to give them any reason to track my movements today.” I was scared enough that they already had.

No matter what, we couldn’t sit there in the stalled Pod any longer. I motioned to Finn to follow me toward the edge of the building, around the corner from the entrance. I kept one eye peeled for tru-ants, but they must have all been swarming inside the amusement park. As Finn and I neared the exterior wall, I grasped for the first time why the fortress of fun represented military might for so long.

Finn mistook my silence for deliberation. He flew into solve-it mode. “We could jimmy one of the windows open. Or I could hop ledge to ledge. Or we could—”

“Or we could use my grappling hook.” I pulled a metal tube, four inches long, from my pocket.

“Who carries a grappling hook?”

“Standard issue. A girl has to be prepared.”

I heard shouts in the distance and pulled us flat against the building.

“What
don’t
you have in that pocket?” asked Finn.

“Patience.”

Finn rolled his eyes.

“You know you love me.” I chuckled. As soon as the words flew out, I felt my cheeks flame. I puffed them full of air and blew it out as slowly as I could.

Finn had the good sense to pretend not to hear. A crack in the wall was suddenly the most interesting thing he’d ever seen, and he only looked up when I stepped away from the building. I aimed the end of the tube at a spot under the roof’s overhang. It would be like the training exercises in Gym class. Only four stories higher. With people chasing me.

A pea-sized target shot out the end when I pressed the trigger switch.
Ping.
It found its mark. I pushed a second button on the tube, and it telescoped in length, soft-grip handles poofing out of the ends. I peered around the corner of the building. The searchers had turned in the other direction for now. Hoping they wouldn’t look up, I grasped one end and held out the other to Finn. “You ready?”

“It’s broken.” He pointed at the place where the target had landed. “There’s no wire.”

“It uses electromagnetic pulses.”

“You’re telling me I’m supposed to trust a pellet gun and a broken car antenna with my life?”

“It’s perfectly safe.” There was nothing like arguing the contraption’s merits with Finn to attempt to convince myself as well. Skepticism marred his usually calm features.

“Look, I’m terrified of heights,” I said. “If I can do this, you sure as heck can.”

“I thought it was water you were afraid of.”

“I’m not exactly president of the Altitude Fan Club either.” The target was so far up I couldn’t even see the blink of its operational light. What I wouldn’t give for a gravbelt right now. I drew a deep, steadying breath. “You with me or not?”

He laid his hand on the handle in silent acceptance. I pushed the center switch again. Immediately the muscles in my hand clenched the handle tight in an involuntary grasp, frozen in place. I looked up into Finn’s wary green eyes and he bobbed his head to indicate his hand was locked as well. When I pushed the center button once more, we lifted a couple feet off the ground before a red light began blinking. We thudded back down.

“Are we too heavy?” Finn asked.

“No. It can hold up to six hundred pounds.”
Think, think, think.
In training, we’d only done a few duet ascensions. Coach Black always paired us together by weight. “I think we’re off balance. We need to get, umm, close.”

The daggers in my eyes dared Finn to make a wrong move.

He blinked. “Okay, so I’ll slip my … arm around your…”

“Shoulder,” I said.

“Waist,” he said at the same time.

At least he hadn’t said “butt.”

“Shoulder,” I repeated.

We stepped together. Finn circled my upper body in the crook of his arm. His skin was dry and warm where it met the back of my neck, still moist from my rain-soaked hair. He opened his hand and cupped the back of my head, then seemed to think better of it and balled his hand into a fist. He closed his eyes for a second, and I wondered what he was thinking. Or praying.

I pressed the center button one last time.

chapter 22

I’M GOING TO DIE.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

Any qualms about propriety or personal space whistled away with the wind whipping past my ears. The world rushed down. I rushed up. Green. Gray. Blue. Nothing was solid. I hugged Finn as tight as I could and dug my face into his chest.

“Woo-hoo!” Finn pumped his free hand in the air.

That snapped me back to my senses. I nudged him with my shoulder. “You’re going to get us caught.”