Twist (35 page)

I jumped with each beep from the console, flinched every time Wyck flung another section of code to a remote corner of the room.

“Can you hurry?” I asked.

“Uncharted territory here, Bennis.” He said my last name with no small amount of malice in his voice. He blinked and shook his head. “Don't worry, sweetie. We've got this.” He blinked again.

Wyck gritted his teeth. A flash of Evil Wyck. A flash of Finn. Each seemed physically painful to him. I wondered how much longer he'd be able to hold it together. Leto had gone on a lot more Shifts and attempted a lot more changes than Wyck had, with more reversions, which seemed to be especially detrimental to Neos' health, but Wyck was starting to show the strain already. He scratched at his nose, and when he pulled his fingers away, there was a trickle of blood on them.

“Wyck?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, whispered something to himself, and when he opened them, I could tell Real Wyck was completely back. For now.

“Thank you,” I said. “I know this isn't easy for you.”

“It's hard to tell what's real,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“And this code isn't helping.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's not … it doesn't make sense. The origin point is about a year in the future. Which is … well, not really normal, but plausible. The destination is fifty years or so in the past. Normal. But everything in between is wrong.”

“Well, all the other codes were for changes. Maybe this is a really big timeline change.”

“It's more than that. It's like—”

Whish

Someone had entered the transport tube's landing chamber. The lights in the Launch Room went out, replaced by red emergency flashers.

“Did you tip them off?” I asked.

“You've been with me the whole time.”

True. I motioned for Wyck to put away the code and hide. He swiped the air clean and stowed the note in his pocket. I ducked behind the console with him just as someone slid into the room.

Click clack click clack

Stilettos hammered the floor, and I held my breath as Lafferty walked a lap around the circular room. Her voice was like her shoes—hard, pointy, and needed to get knocked down a peg or two.

“Secure the perimeter.” Lafferty sounded almost bored as she dipped her head down and started scanning the floor. “Bree-ee!” she called in a singsong voice that made me want to retch all over her gazillion-dollar shoes. “I know you're in here.”

She tap-tap-tapped the soles of her shoes a few feet from my face. If Lafferty knew I was in here, she had to know where I was hiding. But maybe not. Raspy, I mean, Jafney, had withheld key information in the past. And if Jafney thought that Wyck was in danger, she'd surely hold her cards even closer. Lafferty and her entourage all seemed to be waiting for something. They certainly weren't trying very hard to capture us.

Lafferty bent down right next to the console we were hiding behind.

“I know what you're going to do,” she said in a low voice so that only Wyck and I could hear. “And I know that you're going to fail. Now, go.”

Go where?

And then I felt it, a Shift building in my extremities.

I looked over at Wyck. I couldn't leave him here. Especially now that he knew so much. I reached over and put my hand over his, expecting the contact to disrupt my impending Shift, but instead, the urge to Shift only intensified. Normally, touching a nonShifter would Anchor me to my present. But none of this was normal, and Wyck wasn't a typical nonShifter. He was a Neo. A Neo who now had some of Finn's quantum tendrils coursing through his brain.

A Neo who was in this as deep as I was.

“Sorry for the rough ride.” I wrapped my arms around him and Shifted us who knew where.

 

chapter 27

SHIFTING WITH WYCK
felt like I was being ripped through time. Certainly not the strange, almost gravitational pull I experienced with Finn. Not even the jostling push of Shifting with the reverter. Like someone had grabbed every one of my limbs, and they'd been yanked out of socket all at once. When I opened my eyes, I was just thankful we weren't surrounded by red—scrubs or lights.

We were, however, in a tight spot. Literally. Metal pressed against me on two sides, and I fought the panicky urge to beat against the walls. We'd landed in some sort of box or cabinet.

At first I thought Wyck was unconscious, but his eyes fluttered open when I squeezed his arm. I was about to say something, but he pressed his hand against my mouth and formed his lips into a
shhhh
. He pointed at his ears and I heard it, too. A voice right outside.

It was Wyck's voice.

“It's you,” I whispered.

“But how?”

He motioned for me to check my QuantCom. We were six months in the past at—
gulp
—the Institute.

“We're at the first change.” I strained to listen to Past Wyck's conversation with another version of himself, but I didn't recognize what he was saying. We must have arrived earlier than my past self had with the reverter.

“I still don't get it,” said … Past Wyck? I peered through a slit in the locker. Yeah. It was Past Wyck. “I can change how the future unfolds?”

“Yes, look,” said the other Wyck with shaggy hair wearing a ball cap. This was Wyck from five days ago, the Wyck who had made this change. “You have to follow my instructions very precisely.”

“And then I'll be Bree Bennis's boyfriend?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“Think of Bree as a … pit stop in the Pod race of love.”

I punched Present Wyck on the shoulder and mouthed
“pit stop?”
He shrugged.

“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Past Wyck.

“Just … your true love is out there. Waiting.”

Oh, save me the sap. He was talking about Jafney.

“So I screw up Bree's mid-term and then we date and eventually I'll meet my soul mate?” asked Past Wyck.

“Yep.”

“Who isn't Bree?”

“Nope.”

“How do you know all this?”

That was a very good question. The Wyck of five days ago was the one making this change, but the Wyck out there was knowledgeable about things past that time.

“I'm just following orders here,” he said.

“Following orders?” Past Wyck bit his fist laughing. “What are you on?”

“Look, apparently, as soon as I make this change, I'm not even going to remember the last six months of my life as they currently are. I'm just going to remember that I stopped Bree from taking her mid-term, and we're going to be dating.”

“I don't care,” said Past Wyck. “I don't take orders from anyone.”

My head was spinning, and the Present Wyck next to me had pressed his body into the corner of the locker and looked like he might pass out.

“So how do you even know that this change happened?” asked Past Wyck.

Yeah, what he said.

“Unchipped Shifters can detect the changes, and they remember how it's supposed to be.”

“I won't do it,” said Past Wyck. “Bree's one of my closest friends. I won't do anything to hurt her.”

“You're not hurting her,” said Five-Days-Ago Wyck. “You're helping her. I told you, we're following orders.”

“Orders from an unchipped Shifter?”

“Orders from Bree.”

What the great shades of blarking pegamoo crapsicles on a stick?

“Why would she have you make this change?” asked Past Wyck.

Yeah. Why? Why, why, why, why, why?

“She could be Anchored,” said Past Wyck. “That would devastate her.”

“She doesn't care about being Anchored. She's a free Shifter in the future. She can Shift whenever she wants to.”

I was trying (unsuccessfully, mind you) to keep myself from keeling over. I racked my brain to recall my future self's exact words when she had told me that Wyck was taking orders from ICE, but that was the thing. She never used the word ICE. I had just assumed, given my run-in last year with Evil Wyck.

But what else would I assume? Never in my most ridiculous of dreams would I intentionally order Wyck to destroy every moment I've ever held dear.

To save his, destroy yours
.

Oh my gosh. I cupped my hand over my mouth. What if he was telling the truth? What if my future self was orchestrating these changes? I mean, the shaggy-haired Wyck out there knew that my chip was turned off. How would he know that? I had to have told him.

“But—” said Past Wyck.

“Look,” Five-Days-Ago Wyck interrupted him. “I know what I'm asking of you doesn't make sense, and I know you don't want to do it, but—”

“I'm still trying to figure out how you're even here, man.”

Clang.

Past Wyck had leaned against the locker we were in. I remembered this part of the conversation. This was the moment.
The
moment. My Past Self was out there. She was crouched down a few feet away. Wyck had just hit the locker.

“It will all make sense later,” said Five-Days-Ago Wyck. “I promise. But you have to do this. It's important.”

“She's my friend,” said Past Wyck.

“And … this way, she'll become more than that.”

I elbowed Present Wyck in the ribs, even though there was nothing he could do about it. I hadn't even known he was here in this locker on the last trip. Which was weird because that would mean I wasn't going to Shift him back to our time. I was going to Shift Past Bree out of here. So how was Wyck going to get home?

“But it's a lie,” said Past Wyck. “Bree's one of the best students at this school. I haven't seen any signs that would make me question her fitness to Shift.”

“I know that.” Something slammed into our locker again, and I bit back a gasp before I remembered it was Five-Days-Ago Wyck's fist. He was experiencing a flash. But he had pulled himself together pretty quickly.

“Look,” he said, “just go into Quigley's office and report that you've witnessed some instability in Bree lately. She won't get in trouble. Bree won't even be angry at you.”

I twisted a chunk of hair around my index finger. I had to piece this together and pronto. The eensy space I shared with the not first, not second, but third Wyck in the vicinity seemed even tinier as I listened to the repeat argument a few inches away.

“But it's her midterm,” said Past Wyck.

I was going to stop myself from reverting the change in a few minutes. Why would I do that? It made no sense. If I'd just reverted Wyck's change in the first place, none of this would have happened. Finn wouldn't be comatose. Mom wouldn't be in prison. Mimi would still be my best friend.

Actually, that wasn't true. Leto knew about Finn's chronofugitive status before the change, so that was still inevitable. ICE could already have tracked him down. Mom had already started using drugs. Mimi and I were already growing more distant. And the changes had already started long before I'd heard of a reverter, long before I'd met Finn Masterson. They had started at Point Zero.

“Give me the clue,” I whispered to Wyck.

“The what?”
he mouthed.

“The note.”

He pulled it from his pocket and handed it over. I breathed on it to get it to warm up and lay flat. Before I had a chance to spread it out, though, my body was pressed back hard against the metal. What the what? Another person had popped up in here with us. I spit out a mouthful of bouncy brown curls.

Jafney.

She didn't even look at me. And she definitely didn't seem surprised at her current whereabouts.

“Do you have the note?” she asked Wyck in a hush.

“Huh?” He looked as shocked by Jafney's sudden appearance as I felt. At least it didn't appear he was a part of whatever she was doing.

“The code. Do you have the code?”

“I … just … gave it back to Bree,” he whispered.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“Give me the compufilm,” she said.

“No!” I whisper-hissed.

“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “What part of inevitable do you not understand? Give it to me.”

“No, I—”

But she had wrenched it out of my hand and … torn it in two.

“Here.” She handed the top part to me. “He only needs the code.”

“What?”

She didn't answer. Instead she wrapped her arms around Wyck. Over her shoulder, she said, “So help me, Bree, you'd better be right about all this. We're running out of time.”

“What's going on, Jaf?” Wyck asked.

“Shh.” She stroked his hair. “Everything's going to be okay.”

Then she turned back to me. “I know what you still think I did to Finn. And all those other Shifters. You're wrong. Focus on the clue.”

And then they disappeared.

I swished my hands around in the space where they'd just been.

Ahhhh. This was not happening. I literally pinched my arm. Wake up. Wake. Up.

Nope. I was living this nightmare. Twice now.

I spread what was left of the note out in my hand.

To save his, destroy yours
.

This had to be at the center of it. But I still didn't know what it meant or who the “him” was referring to. Was it Finn?

Had to be.

But save his what?

Think, Bree. What had he lost?

His memories.

To save his memories, destroy my … memories.

I traced my finger over where the transport codes had been torn away. Four changes that had destroyed my life. Four changes that had destroyed my memories.

I pulled the torn fragment tight to my chest.

I hadn't left this message to stop the changes. I had left it to start them. Somehow Finn was destined to get his memories back if I altered my past to lose everything that was precious to me.