Twist (11 page)

I wasn't remotely tired after sleeping all day.

“Nah. I'm going to head to the—” I was about to say greenhouse, but that was Finn's and my spot. I couldn't go there. “I'm going to go for a walk.”

“M'kay,” murmured Mimi, but she was already neck-deep in descriptions of guillotines.

Real Bree would have headed down to the greenhouse. I meandered up, up, up to the least likely spot that I'd ever go, the roof. The tiniest twinkling of stars broke through the dull-glowing halo of the D.C. skyline. No one ever went up to the roof. I'd find privacy if not peace here. But as I found a nice precipice to lean against, I saw someone sitting against the opposite wall. Wyck.

He was nibbling at the edge of a high-density nutribar, perfectly balanced to optimize and conserve Shifter energy. I once accidentally took a bite of a piece of cardboard at a hamburger joint Finn and I ate at in the 1950s. The effect was quite similar.

Wyck patted the ground next to him.

“How ya feeling?” he asked.

“Better. Thanks.” I sat down.

“Lafferty contacted me this morning,” he said, without any other explanation.

“Good.” That was good, right? Oh, for the love of Zeus's holey underpants, please tell me that was good.

“I'm officially approved.” His face broke into that boyish grin that I knew, that I missed, that he used to reserve for harassing First Years and talking me into skipping class.

“That's wonderful.”

“Pre-Shift diagnostics are tomorrow. ICE has to make sure I'm fit to time travel.”

Okay, so that's what Mimi was talking about when she thought I was nervous about tomorrow.

Wyck looked away, like he was forming a question in his mind, of which he was afraid of the answer.

“You'll still come, won't you?” he said.

“Of course I will.”

He brushed his arm against mine in a tentative attempt at affection, and my first instinct was repulsion. But then it was like my future self popped up in my brain, waving that sandy bottle. Keep him happy. Keep him interested. Keep him close. And only then would she give me the next torn piece of the map.

I leaned forward and found myself pondering each body movement. How would I act if he were Finn instead of himself? Okay. Put hand on his waist … here. And wrap my finger around his like … that. All right. That was as good as it was going to get.

“I knew they'd choose you,” I said. “You'll be a…”

“Natural. Yeah. You've said that. A lot.”

“That's because it's true,” I said brightly.

“I guess.” He picked off a corner of his nutribar and tossed it into a flock of pigeons at the roof's edge. One of them took a bite and gagged. The others scattered. Wyck folded up the rest of the bar and tucked it into his coat. “Bree, there's something I've never told you.”

“What?”

“I … I've known for a long time that I'm going to be a Neo.”

“Me, too. Like I said. You're a natural.”

“No, I've
known
.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had a visit from my future self. He told me I'd do this.”

“Is that all he told you?” It was hard to hide my disdain, but I managed.

Wyck turned red and muttered, “Yeah.”

Liar.

“You should get to bed,” I said. “I'm sure you have a big day tomorrow.”

“I'll ping you after lunch when it's time to leave.” He stood up and held out his hand. “You headed in?”

“Not yet. I'm going to hang out up here for a while.”

“See you tomorrow.” As he stepped past me, his heel landed on my toe. Hard.

“Oww.” I massaged the throbbing appendage.

“So sorry.” There was a hardness to his voice that was eerily familiar. My gaze lifted slowly to his face, afraid of what I'd find there. For a flicker, I saw it. Evil Wyck. Pure malice. But it quickly melted to the opposite, and he stooped to touch my foot gently.

“Did I hurt you?” he said.

“It's nothing.”

“No, I hurt you, I—”

“It's fine, Wyck. I'm fine.” I wasn't fine. In fact, I had my finger poised over the stunner button of my Com in my pocket. But I wanted this conversation to end so he would leave. Now.

He nodded. I could tell he was bewildered at his own behavior. Wyck had no idea what had just happened to him, but I did. He didn't realize that his timeline had changed. From his perspective, he'd had a visit from his future self six months ago (which was enough of a shock on its own, I'm sure). But then the course of his personal history, and everyone it impacted, was altered. A new branch to the timeline had been born.

But a fragment of memory from a timeline that he had changed had flashed into this one. Wyck might have morphed into my adoring boyfriend on this particular timeline, but there were other branches where he'd been the opposite, where he had done ICE's bidding, no matter the cost to his sanity or his soul. Those branches could pop up at any time.

Wyck left, and I let loose a puff of breath I didn't even realize I'd been holding. I pulled my hand out of my pocket.

Something stuck to my fingers.

Something …

To save his, destroy yours
.

The crumpled piece of compufilm from the London Fire. I stared at my future self's haphazard handwriting. I couldn't make bits or bytes of it. And then all those random numbers and letters. They looked vaguely familiar. They weren't dates, but what were they?

And then, to save his what? And who was
he
?

Thanks a lot, Future Bree. One change. That was all it had taken to crumble everything I'd fought so hard for.

Take me to Finn,
I ordered my useless, mutated genes.
Now
.

Nothing.

I tamped down the anger that had started to build, the clench of my jaw sending shocks of pain down my neck.

I stayed there, seething, until the wind picked up and forced me inside. Mimi had fallen asleep at her desk, her hand clutched around my Buzztab bottle. I tucked a pillow under her head and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. There were still things left to fight for, I reminded myself.

 

chapter 10

“THIS IS IT
?
”
I didn't mean for it to come off as disappointed as it sounded, but I couldn't help it. I'd expected ICE Headquarters to look like some kind of fortress. Not a boring, dome-shaped building, indistinguishable from the other boring, dome-shaped buildings surrounding it. Seriously, architects had become a little obsessed with domes in the last century.

“It's bigger than it looks,” said Wyck. “Most of it's underground.”

Like moles.

Or snakes.

It creeped me out, though, to think that I had probably been underground in their Cryostorage Room.

There was no formal greeting desk as we walked in, but a scanner free-floated toward us and nudged Wyck in the arm. He brushed his hair against it, and it spit out two compufilm badges that stated “Wyck O'Banion” and “Guest.” A swarm of ICE workers bustled past, all wearing their signature red surgical scrubs. Like Satan's medics, if you asked me. The last run-in I'd had with them, not counting the Cryo Room, had been in Bergin's office when two of them had tried to kill me. I bristled, but they didn't give us a second glance. I reminded myself that on this timeline, I wasn't an instigator, wasn't a rebel (that they knew of). To ICE, I was nothing but a Neo's doting girlfriend. I was nothing.

I wouldn't be nothing for long, though.

The aboveground portion of the building consisted of an enormous open space. Wyck hadn't been kidding when he said their headquarters were mostly subterranean. The only thing in this entry room was a massive sculpture. Floor to ceiling, about twenty hollow, translucent, colored tubes wended and weaved their way through the air. Each tube was approximately three feet in diameter. It looked like a jumble of giant rainbow spaghetti.

I startled as something shot through the tube above me. The humming aftereffect was almost musical.
Whoosh
.
Whish
. A man wearing a suit that cost more than my house landed at the base of the turquoise tube closest to us. He stepped out of it and straightened his sliver of a tie before marching across the lobby.

Ahh. The sculpture was their transportation system. I'd give ICE this: they had style.

Through the twisty maze of cylinders, a woman in five-inch crimson stilettos and a crisp skirt and lab coat, white as the driven snow, seemed to materialize out of nowhere. But then I realized—no, not out of nowhere, out of a black tube. It was off to the side and the only opaque one in the place.

“Wyck! Our newest Neo.” Her teeth gleamed brighter than her outfit and were that kind of perfect-straight that could only be achieved by genetic meddling. Anything white always washed me out, but with her jet black hair that had one single silvery streak, her pale skin glowed. It was a fierce brand of attractiveness—impeccable. She struck me as the opposite of that Jafney girl, whose beauty was effortless and unaffected.

“Dr. Lafferty.” Wyck ushered me forward. “This is my girlfriend, Bree.”

“I didn't know you were bringing a visitor.”

“I hope that's okay,” I said.

“Of course.” If this Lafferty woman recognized me, she kept it expertly to herself. And if she was upset that I was here, she kept that to herself as well. There was no reason why she would know me, though. They'd cut Bergin out of their organization. He had been my only link to ICE. Until Wyck.

“Today's procedures will be a bit boring,” said Lafferty, “but as I told you before, the entire process is open to the public.”

She gestured to the tubes around her as if their translucency held a pinky promise that ICE was a model of truth and light. Not all the tubes were transparent, though. Not, for example, the black one from which Lafferty had just emerged. It made me want to dive headfirst into that black tube the first chance I got.

I had more than a sneaking suspicion that I knew exactly where it led.

Lafferty led us to a hole at the base of the yellow tube. She stepped in it and was whisked away.

“It's really easy.” Wyck gestured for me to go next. “Just get in and relax.”

Relax. Yeah.

I stuck my toe in and nothing unsavory happened.

Oh, this was ridiculous. ICE wasn't going to kill me in a bustling lobby. I put my whole body in the tube.
Whoosh.
The sensation wasn't unpleasant. Kind of like what I always imagined flying must be like, only a lot less controlled. I was tempted to hold my breath even though I seemed to be encapsulated in some sort of air bubble that protected me from the wind rushing behind me. From inside the tube, takeoff felt and sounded like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle. The scariest moment was when the tube dipped and descended into a hole in the floor.

Down, down, around, around, there was no telling how far or how deep we'd gone. With vague unease, it occurred to me that ICE didn't need a security system as long as this was their sole form of transportation. It also occurred to me that I had no idea how I was going to stop. Then with an audible pop, my air bubble burst into an open space. It reminded me of a zero-grav chamber, only instead of a lack of air, the air felt soft somehow, as if I'd landed in a bowl of marshmallow fluff. I sucked in a deep breath to make sure I could. Lafferty had tucked the hems of her skirt primly against her body as she floated to one of seven portholes in the side of the chamber. A yellow light blinked above me, and she motioned me over toward her. Wyck plummeted through the opening I'd just come through. Lafferty poked her arms through the porthole, superhero-style, and some invisible force sucked her the rest of the way through.

I felt like anything but a superhero as I made my way after her. Felt more like I was being sucked through a straw. With a
shlup
, Wyck followed suit.

The room we entered was tiny. Circular. Seemed to be a theme here. There wasn't much in it—a polymorphic chair that contoured to Wyck's form as he walked toward it, a thin helmet that looked like it had cracked down the middle, some soligraphic controls that Lafferty had already pulled up. The lights in the room were dimmed, but the glow from the controls cast shadows across the ceiling.

“Did you enjoy the transportation system we've developed?” Lafferty asked, and I realized she was talking to me.

“Sure. I guess.”

“It was designed to mimic the sensation of Shifting,” she said.

I had to stifle a full-on laugh. She thought
that
was the sensation of Shifting? Maybe if magical unicorns flew you to your destination. Forget about arriving into a weightless chamber. Half the time, I was lucky if I didn't fall from five feet high and get shin splints.

If they were this deluded about their training, what else were they turning a blind eye to?

“Whaddya think?” asked Wyck, and again I realized, he was talking to me. “Was it close to the real thing?”

Blark. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I nodded vaguely, hoping Lafferty wasn't really listening, but she vaulted herself into the conversation.

“Oh! You're a Shifter?” she asked.

That did away with any doubt. I've seen many people feign many emotions, but genuine surprise is a tough one. That shock? It was real.

“Go ahead and take a seat,” she said to Wyck. “Today's final tests are perfunctory, yet important. But don't worry. There's no way you can fail, and really, there's no work on your part.”

As she connected a series of sensors to his scalp, I decided to dig for a little more info about her.

“So you're not by any chance related to
the
Laffertys, are you? Charles and Xenthia?” I asked. The author of one of my Quantum Bio textbooks was Dr. Xander Lafferty, but when I'd entered the name Lafferty to read up on him, his parents were the first to pop up. Charles and Xenthia Lafferty, a husband-wife research team who were among the first to study tendril mutation—two of the most revered Shifters in their field before they died about ten years ago.