Loop (26 page)

The jerking motion threw our balance off. A red warning light blinked on. Finn clutched me closer. The flight couldn’t have taken more than five seconds. It felt like five minutes. When we reached the target my eyes were closed again, but I knew it was bad. The street sounds below were nothing but a muffled murmur.

“Wow.” Finn gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “You can see everything from up here.”

“Can you see a way to get us onto the roof?” My voice was a whimper, eyes still shut.

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He began swinging his torso in an attempt to get a leg up over the edge. Every time he did so, my body swung right along with him, a limp rag doll. His fear of heights certainly didn’t seem very feary to me.

“Man, that broken car antenna has a death grip on my hand,” he said.

“That is a
good
thing.” I hadn’t intended my voice to screech so much, but at least it got him to stop swinging.

“If I were a few inches closer…” The whole apparatus shuddered as he strained upward and heaved his leg over the edge of the building. Using the rod for support, he pushed himself all the way onto the roof. The red light blinked back on as the handle jerked and swayed. I reached my free hand up and grabbed a pipe that ran along the edge of the building.

“Okay,” said Finn, swiveling his body so it lay flat against the roof. “I think I have a pretty good grip here.”

“Think?” I adjusted my hand so I had a firm grasp on the pipe.
“Pretty good?”
I chin-upped over the rod to see how secure Finn really was. Wrong move. The red light on the center of the rod came back on, this time unblinking. A shrill beep accompanied it, louder and faster as I leaned forward to inspect it. My fingers wriggled. They were no longer glued to the handle.

“Uh-oh.” I flung my newly released hand up to the pipe next to the other one. The grappling rod gave one final
bleep
and plummeted to the ground.

“Bree!” Finn plunged his torso over the edge and reached for me, but I was too far under the overhang of the roof. “Hold on. I’ll figure out a way to get to you.”

“Stay on the roof.” It wouldn’t help matters if both of us were stuck.

The color drained from my knuckles as I struggled to keep my grip. My legs flailed wildly beneath me. I kicked one of my feet up and managed to hitch it over the pipe. Then the other foot, which at least took some of the pressure off my arms. From the ground I probably looked like one of those extinct tree sloths that scientists were constantly cloning into existence, only to have them die off again.

Eep. Dying.
Not the best line of thought.

“My leg’s hooked around a vent up here now.” Finn stretched down and thrust his hand as far toward me as he could. “I can reach you if you hold out one of your hands.”

“Or. I could
not
let go of the pipe.”

But as I looked around, I realized there were no other options. The effort scorched my muscles as it was. By the time Finn found help, it would be too late.

“Okay.”
Crapcakes. Had I just agreed to this plan? Yes. No other way.
“Tell me when.”

He wiped his hand on his shirt and stuck it back down. “Now.”

I closed my eyes and threw my hand out into nothingness. The pain that had branded my arm disappeared; a firm pressure took its place. The next thing I knew, my wrist was locked with Finn’s. I sailed through the air, cracking my eyes to see if I needed to grab on to the overhang. But all I could see was the gray of stone. Wall? Sky?
Thud.
My body slammed against something solid. I puckered my lips and kissed it. Solid. I loved solid. Finn had flung me all the way to the roof in one swoop of an arc.

He flopped down next to me and grinned. “That’s going to be the best sprained shoulder ever.”

“New goal in life,” I said once I had crawled a safe distance from the edge. “Never be that far off the ground again. Ever.”

“Solution,” said Finn. “Move to Chincoteague Island. Nothing’s over two stories high.”

I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. I leaned against one of the solar bubbles that dotted the white roof like igloos scattered across a frozen tundra. “Yeah, but after two hundred years I wonder if those ponies have taken over the place.”

“Oh.” He smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in his voice. “I was thinking of my time. Probably all skyscrapers and laser hotels now.”

“What’s a laser hotel?” My laugh was in earnest this time.

“I don’t know. It sounded futuristic and cool. Of course, you can pretty much put the word ‘laser’ in front of anything and it sounds cool.”

“Laser pencils,” I said in a robotic voice.

“Laser chairs.” His robot was better.

I snorted as I thought of another one. I slid down the panel until my heinie hit roof. Finn joined me.

“Laser … bracelet.” My face fell.

“How could you have a—?”

“No.”
No … no … no
. Where was it? I grabbed my wrist and searched the ground where we sat. “My bracelet. It’s gone.”

How could I have lost it? I jumped up and ran over to the spot where I’d landed. It had to be there. It had to.

“Help me look for it. It’s sterling silver with a heart-shaped locket on it.” My hand stayed clasped over my wrist, as if I could magically make the bracelet reappear if I left it there long enough. On the white roof, the silver should have been easily visible. The bracelet must have fallen off when Finn had grabbed my wrist.

It was gone.

I had failed. I could never get it back.

I could never get her back.

I traced our steps back to the solar bubble and sank down. My hands fell limp. Imprints remained where the links had pressed against my wrist. I traced them with my finger.

“I always rub the heart when I need to feel close to my mom. Stupid, I know.”

He followed the path of my finger with his own. “Nothing you do could ever be called stupid.”

“Even sneaking back to your time and dragging you into all this?”

“Especially that.” He had that look in his eyes I was learning to recognize, but I didn’t know how I felt about it. It was like when he stared at me he saw past me, through me, in me.

“Finn, I need to—”

There was a
bang
in the distance. I peered around the corner of the solar bubble. Coach Black had lumbered onto the roof through one of the emergency hatch doors. He wasn’t more than fifty yards away.

“So much for sneaking back in undetected,” whispered Finn.

“I’m in trouble no matter what. But we could still get you out unnoticed. Wait here at least an hour before you go back in.”

He peeked around the edge of the bubble and punched the air in frustration, but then his shoulders fell. “Yeah, I don’t see any other way.”

“Go ahead and give me the data disk. I’ll try to figure out a way to crack into that file.” I held out my hand. “And if I asked you to wait until next week’s Family Night to come back to the Institute, you would…?”

“Show up at your bedroom tonight anyway.”

It was worth a shot. “You still have my hair?”

He nodded.

Coach Black had begun to lumber in our direction in his search.

I started to stand up, then paused. “Be, umm, careful.”

“
You
be careful.”

“I’m not the one who has to keep hiding.”

“Shouldn’t be too bad. Though if you told me this morning I’d be doing this I’d have sworn you were nuts.”

“Which part? Stealing government property, running from smugglers, or hiding out at the Pentagon amusement park?”

“None of the above.” Finn took my wrist and unapologetically kissed the tips of my fingers. “Leaving you behind.”

And with that I had to walk away. Each step harder than I expected. But I wanted … no,
needed
to put some space between me and Finn’s hiding spot before Black found me. I jogged off in the other direction, toward the hatch, careful not to glance back at Finn.

“Bennis!” The arteries on Coach Black’s sweaty neck flared in and out like angry gills when he saw me. “Whaddya think you’re doing up here?”

Subterfuge, identity theft, and some light espionage work.

“Nothing. I needed some air.”

“Some air?”

“Yes, sir.” With the lie off my lips, it didn’t sound so absurd after all.

He pointed toward the center of the Pentagon. “Was the five acres of green space not good enough for you for some reason?”

Hrmm.
I started to stammer an answer, but he cut me off.

“Aren’t you even going to ask why I’m looking for you? Why
everyone
is looking for you.”

“Of course.” I’d play this as naïve as possible.

“It’s your roommate Mimi.”

“Oh, yes. Before I came up here, someone mentioned she’d fainted on one of the rides. Nurse Granderson was fixing her up.”

“Fainted? I don’t know anything about that. But she fell down a flight of stairs a few hours ago.”

His words dangled in the air. Sharp as knives, dull as a hammer.

“What?” I gasped. My entire body went numb.

“The other students are back at the Institute. A handful of teachers are still here to look for
you
.” It came out like an accusation, like I had shoved Mimi down the stairs or something.

“Where is she? Is she all right? Can I see her?” Without waiting for an answer, I turned to run for the hatch Coach Black had emerged from.

He caught me by the shoulder. “She’s at the hospital. We’re waiting for news.”

“Can you take me to her?”

“No.” He pressed his hand on the top of my head as I descended the ladder like he alone was the gravity that held me to the earth. “Someone else is keen on having a word with you.”

Coach Black offered no further information about Mimi’s condition the whole way back to the Institute. It was torture.
Chase me. Dangle me. Slam me. But
talk
to me.

An hour later—still no word on Mimi. The only slight positive was that I was waiting outside Headmaster Bergin’s office rather than Quigley’s. He was the lesser evil by a long shot.

My relief was short-lived.

chapter 23

BERGIN WASN’T IN HIS OFFICE
yet when Dolores ushered me in. The entire top of his desk was aglow with compufilm. At first I assumed it was paperwork, until I leaned forward and saw that it was news clippings about his wife’s accident, mostly editorials debating how such a tragedy could and should have been prevented. At first I wondered why he was obsessing over it now, but then I noticed the date in one of the articles and realized tomorrow was the anniversary of the accident.

I snapped back against my chair and turned around as two shadows widened across the desk until they merged into one. Quigley loomed behind Bergin with a look on her face that conveyed new heights of annoyance. At first I felt panicked to be caught in her eager clutches, but then a resolute anger took its place.

Headmaster Bergin slipped his colleague a wary sidelong glance before walking around the desk and sinking into his overstuffed armchair. He pulled out a data disk and tapped the edge, sucking the news clippings into it. His eyelids had a new set of bags under them since the last time I had visited his office. Guilt prickled my gut. What with this anniversary and Mimi’s accident, my recklessness was the last thing Bergin needed to deal with right now.

“Miss Bennis,” he began. His mustache ruffled as he blew a mouthful of air through it and backed up. “Bree. Let me start by saying you’re not in trouble.”

“I’m not?”

“No. I’m not angry. I’m…” He looked up at Quigley, who was staring out the window, lips pursed tight. “
We’re
concerned. All of your teachers and the whole staff. You haven’t been acting like yourself lately. Perhaps you haven’t had adequate support following recent events.”

“I’m fine.”

“I owe you an apology.” He kept on speaking like I hadn’t. “I believed, or perhaps convinced myself, that you were coping without difficulty. But even aside from your recent accident—”

“My accident?”

“Falling off the bus on your last mission,” Quigley said without lifting her gaze from the window one inch. The glass reflected the dean of discipline’s smug expression. Her breath clouded the glass, but from the chill I felt it could have been frost.

Bergin’s brow furrowed. “Hmm. Nurse Granderson seemed positive you didn’t experience serious head trauma, but—”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s been a long day. I’ve been worried about Mimi.”

“Didn’t Coach Black tell you how she was? I’m so sorry. This must have been so vexing for you. Your roommate had a few broken ribs and bruises, a minor concussion, but she should mend quickly. However, I do want to speak with you about what happened.”

Relief rushed through me. Mimi was going to be okay.

“I don’t know much,” I said. “I was up on the roof when she had her accident.”

“Yes. Accident.” The headmaster opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a stack of compufilm. “We have reason to believe it may not have been one.”

I leaned forward to the edge of my chair. “You think she was
pushed
?”

Bergin’s chair wobbled and he looked up in a startle. “I didn’t say ‘pushed.’ Why would you think she was pushed?”

Quigley remained motionless on the other side of the room. I ventured a peek out of the periphery of my vision. Only
one
person had eavesdropped on Mimi and me at the Pentagon that morning. And only
one
person had told us straight out she’d be watching us all day. Only
one
person had last accessed Poppy Bennis’s Shift record, which had been erased. And now that
one person
was standing across from me while my mom and roommate were lying in hospital beds.

I held the back of Quigley’s head in a captive glare before returning my full gaze to Bergin. I might not know
why
my mom was attacked, but I was certain of the
who
.

“No reason,” I said smoothly. I needed to wait until I was alone with Bergin to tell him what I’d heard in the locker room.