Twist (26 page)

Quigley noticed his disappearance as well. “Everyone has been giving in to the slightest pull to Shift, thinking it might take them to her.”

“Any luck?”

“No.”

Sam appeared again a moment later in the same spot, the hope replaced by disappointment. He sat back down next to Tressie and shook his head.

“Where's Nurse Granderson?” I asked, surprised he wasn't in the thick of it. Nava was one of his favorite residents.

“He was the one who discovered her absence earlier. Even though he knew it was coming, he took it hard. He needed a breather,” said Quigley. “Nava was much loved around here.”

“Why her?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“Why Nava?” I thought of the pile of smoke-covered anachronistic possessions in that pile in ICE's Cryostorage Unit. “All the other Shifters who have been taken seem to be from the distant past, so their absence could go unnoticed or at least uninvestigated.” Definitely not the case here. She was the outlier. “So why Nava?”

It didn't make sense.

“I don't know,” said Quigley. “I assumed because she was an easy target.”

“Breaking into Resthaven, surrounded by other Shifters? Hardly the easiest option. If anything, it seems the riskiest.”

“Maybe trying to send us a message?” asked Quigley.

“Have we done anything to hork them off recently?”

“Your guess is better than mine. I stopped trying to figure out my own altered history about three unreverted changes ago.”

“I'm trying,” I said.

“I wasn't trying to criticize, Bree, but it's true. You haven't been able to keep up.” She held up a finger when I started to protest. “No one would be able to. But even if you did revert every change, there's still this.” She gestured around the room, and I knew what she meant. Some Haven members still bothered to pore over the news, trying to keep a semblance of sanity. Others had clearly given up long ago. It wasn't just the unreverted changes. It wasn't just Nava. Our entire existence felt like it was spiraling out of control. Even chipped Shifters were being impacted now with the increased Buzz.

I motioned to one of the chronoinvestigators by the entrance. “What do they think about Nava's disappearance?”

“No theories yet.” She lowered her voice. “I actually haven't decided yet whether or not to tell them about ICE's involvem—”

“Make way!” The front doors flew open. The top of Nurse Granderson's head was visible over the pack of investigators.

“Clear a path!” he yelled and the investigators obeyed. As they parted, I got a full view of Granderson, and my hand flew to my mouth. In his arms, he held Nava's body.

“Is she…?” Quigley rushed over to the couch where he'd laid her.

“She's alive.” He leaned in to kiss her forehead. With her downy hair and stem-thin body, it reminded me of someone wishing upon a puff of dandelion.

“Is she going to be all right?” asked a man behind us. At first I thought he was one of the chronoinvestigators, but he wore street clothes and looked utterly shell-shocked. He was young, maybe ten years older than me.

“Who are you?” asked Quigley, blocking him mid-step.

“It's okay,” said Granderson. “He found her outside. He was calling for help when I came up.”

“Could we have a word?” the head chronoinvestigator asked the man.

“I'm afraid you've already heard all that I know. I was standing there and she”—his face went even paler than it already was—“she landed on the sidewalk in front of me.”

Nurse Granderson ran a medical probe down Nava's arm.

Her eyelids fluttered open. “Devvy Arthur Granderson,” she murmured. “I've been frozen solid. The last thing I need is that cold probe turning me back into a popsicle.” It was like a breeze passed through the room as everyone heaved a sigh of relief. She was okay. Also feisty as ever.

“Is she synched with her real time?” I asked.

“Yes.” Granderson helped her prop herself up on some pillows, and another resident brought a glass of water. “Her tendrils are stable with low activity. Just the way we want them.”

It reminded me of that note that ICE had left.
You know what we want.
But we hadn't given ICE anything. They took her fifty years into the past and put her into cryostasis. And then they returned her a few hours later?

Something didn't add up.

“What do you remember about your attacker, ma'am?” asked the head chronoinvestigator. Officer Abernathy, his badge said. With his bristly buzzcut and stern expression, the man looked like he could be ex-military no matter what time period he was in.

“My attackers?” said Nava. “I remember red.”

“Red?”

“And blue.”

“Red … and blue?”

Of course, to the investigators, that meant nothing. But I ventured a sidelong glance at Quigley. Red scrubs. Blue … well, whatever that blue liquid was in ICE's tank. Maybe Nava's testimony could garner some police support for the Haven after all.

Officer Abernathy, however, looked out the window at the police light still flashing. Red and blue. He sighed.

“Ms. uhh…” He glanced at his notes.

“It's Mrs., young man.”

“Yes, umm. How long have you lived here at Resthaven?”

So much for police support. They saw us all as loonies.

“I don't recall the exact length of time,” said Nava. “Long enough to see my share of changes.”

She chuckled at her joke. Officer Abernathy didn't join in.

“I don't know that there's anything more we can do right now.” He put away his compufilm pad. “Gotta go deal with a known chronosmuggler who showed up dead in a ditch earlier.”

It was Quigley's turn to shoot a sidelong glance in my direction. I astutely ignored it until the investigators had left.

The second the door shut behind them, Quigley turned to me. “My office. Now.”

I followed her down the hall. I settled into a stiff wooden chair, and saved her the question balanced on the end of her tongue. “Yes, it was Leto. I was there when he died.”

“Is there any way they could pin you to it?”

“Pin me to it? What are you implying? That I killed him?”

“Of course not, but is there any way you could be linked to him? Did he even know who you were on this timeline?”

“He didn't. But … he did.”

“Glad we cleared that up.”

“No, I mean, he had no idea who I was, even after I punched him, but—”

“Punched him? I thought you said you didn't have a part in his death.”

“I didn't. It wasn't hard enough to seriously injure him, much less kill him. He was acting strange, though. He started hemorrhaging blood. I had reverted the change he was trying to make. It was nothing. A lottery ticket in the past. I've used the reverter on him plenty of times before for the same kind of dumb stuff.”

“How many times?”

Honestly, I'd lost count. I thought through all the money-grubbing changes to the past that Leto had tried to make.

“Twenty, maybe. Thirty?”

Quigley balked.

“Anyway, Leto synched, but not to ICE's headquarters. He landed in a drainage culvert, and he was bleeding everywhere. By that point, he was acting really strange.”

“When you say acting strange, what do you mean by—”

“He was in love with me.”

“In love with you?” Up shot the eyebrow of skepticism. I swear, with that dumb mysterious grin, she looked exactly like the
Mona Lisa.
Well, exactly like herself, I guess.

“Quigley, you didn't see him. And the way he was talking, he knew stuff about me. Stuff that…”

“That…?”

“Stuff that only Finn knew. And he had this goofy lovestruck expression on his face. I've only seen one other person look at me that way. It was like Leto
was
Finn.”

“Oh.”

Great. All hail Bree, queen of the crazy people.

“I realize how it sounds,” I said.

“I know you miss Finn.”

“It was more than that. Leto talked about Chincoteague, and he knew the name of my pet pegamoo.” Wait. “A pet pegamoo I don't even have on this timeline. Explain that.”

“I … can't. But that doesn't mean—”

“What it
means
? I have no blarking idea what it means. Do you?”

“Perhaps you misconstrued what he was saying.”

“You don't believe me, do you?” I dug my fingers into the arms of the chair.

“It's not that I don't believe you, it's that we have more pressing matters to attend to. Those chronoinvestigators were the same ones who handled Finn's alleged kidnapping.”

“So?”

“So this is now two trips to Resthaven they've made in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Again, so? The trips happened on different timelines. Those chronoinvestigators were chipped. They don't remember the change.”

“The one thing I've noticed about all these timeline changes is that the Haven members have been steered toward the same eventualities in spite of the changes. I'm still heading up this place. Granderson is still the medical director. Your mother keeps getting incapacitated. And you keep running afoul of the law.”

“Yes, but—”

“Bree, if they find even a splash of your DNA on Leto, do you think that will go ignored? They will swarm this place. The Haven has survived as long as it has by going unnoticed. Resthaven is all some of these Shifters have. They can't survive in the outside world anymore. And the more unchecked changes ICE makes, the greater chance we'll lose our home as well as our already tenuous hold on reality.”

“I hate them,” I said.

“Who?”

“ICE. Neos. All of them. Shifters have devoted their entire existence to studying the past. We study and study to supposedly figure out how to use our ability to help. Like John with his surgery. Like Mom with her art. And yet after all our studying, all our trying to help, Neos figured out a way to use the ability to time travel for nothing but their own gain. I hate them.”

“Then they've already won.”

“Quigley, all they do is distort and destroy.”

It reminded me of the clue.
To save his, destroy yours
.

“I want it to be back to the way it's supposed to be,” I said. “The way it was before all this started. If there were only some way we could figure out a way to change the past like them.”

“And what would you change?” asked Quigley quietly.

“I'd … I'd stop Jafney from bringing Finn here. Then he wouldn't be a chronofugitive.”

Maybe,” said Quigley. “But then you would.”

“Huh?”

“He took the blame for your break-in.”

“Oh.” That was true. “Well, then, I'd stop Wyck from turning my mom in for those drugs.”

“She had more hidden away in your house. What if the next step had been overdose?”

“Fine.” I hadn't thought of that. And Quigley was right. Mom had gotten caught on this timeline without Wyck's interference. “Y'know what? I'd go back and stop ICE from ever Shifting the first Neo. I wish I could stop them from ever discovering they could even make changes to the timeline.”

I expected Quigley to point out some fallacy in that as well, but she didn't. She sat there, staring at me, for longer than I was comfortable with, a rare look of brokenness on her face.

“I wish that, too,” she finally said, pushing away from her desk. “Some what-ifs are harder to take than others. I'll have a room prepared for you, and I'll notify the Institute that you've entered Resthaven for health reasons.”

“Thanks.” I hiked my bag on my shoulder but stopped Quigley before she left. “Wait. There was one more thing. I think”—I hated to even suggest it but it had to be said—“I think there's a mole in the Haven.”

“I know.”

“You
know
?”

“I mean, I've considered it, too.” She pointed at my reverter. “Only a few people know of that thing's existence, and we're all in the Haven. But then again, that's linear thinking. This person could be from the future.”

“Well, we know that Raspy is an unchipped Shifter. And Finn and I figured out that Raspy would have to be a Shifter with sticky tendrils, someone born of two centuries like me, in order to kidnap people in the past and bring them to our time.”

“You think the
kidnapper
is a mole in the Haven?”

“No. I mean … I don't know what I think.”

“No matter what, you make very good points. Whether they're in the Haven or not, having an unchipped Shifter running around and working for ICE explains a lot. Namely, how they've been kept in the loop so that they know that changes are even happening. Let me give it some more thought while you get settled in. I'll keep my ears open about any suspicious behavior. In the meantime, I really need to go check on Nava.”

“Thanks. Are you going to take Nava to the hospital?” I asked.

“I'll defer to Nurse Granderson's judgment, but I'd prefer she stay here.”

“We couldn't protect her before,” I said.

“True, but she'd be no safer there. She'll be more comfortable here. And they did return her.”

“Yeah.” But again … why?

Quigley left, and I was alone.

Alone.

The word burrowed under my skin, seeped into my pores. I truly felt it in that moment. No Mom. No Mimi. No Finn.

Alone.

My tendrils began to tingle. It was a welcome relief from the void.

I bent into a crouch and closed my eyes as I Shifted. My feet sank into sand. I dragged my fingers through the grit and smiled without bothering to peek. I would know the feel of Chincoteague sand anywhere. As I lifted my face, the back of my eyelids transformed from cool pink to a burning orange. I twisted my head around as I opened my eyes, disoriented.