Twist (8 page)

And, apparently, a
lot
had happened.

It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes that I'd been gone, but Wyck had likely worn a trench into the floor pacing outside. I splashed some water on my face and held my head directly under the revivamist jet. It wasn't quite as effective as a twenty-first-century triple espresso, but tasted a lot less like battery acid.

Deep breath. I opened the door.

Wyck sat about fifteen feet away in the theater lobby, on the corner of a massive fountain shooting globs of sparkly gunk that changed colors and scents depending on the number of people who were standing nearby and the moods they were in. His face was as pale as a washed-out snowman. He was staring at the bathroom door with an intensity that made me wonder if he'd blinked the whole time.

“Are you okay?” He jumped up the second he saw me.

“Yes. I just got a little … upset … from the movie.” Forgetting for a moment that Wyck and I had been watching that dumb romantic comedy rather than
Death Rumpus
. “I mean, upset stomach … from the popcorn.”

“Blinky Beans.”

“Exactly. Upset that I didn't order popcorn instead.”

His smile was equal parts relief and bewilderment as I pasted on a kajillion-watt smile.

“You could have had some of mine,” he said, then made a halfhearted gesture toward the theater. “Do you want to go catch the end?”

“Nah. I should probably head home.” A complete lie. I would head straight to Resthaven. Quigley might have some insight into what the blark was going on. But I couldn't let him know that. “I'm feeling a little—I don't know—off tonight.”

“Of course.” He shrugged off his jacket, moving toward me. I skirted away until I realized he was only trying to wrap it around my shoulders.

He doesn't remember trying to kill me. He doesn't remember trying to kill me. Over and over, I repeated it to myself like a protective mantra.

The problem was, this Wyck might not remember, but there was no way I could ever forget.

Pressing our way through the throng loitering outside the theater, Wyck, without a word, took my hand. It was the sort of thing that Finn often did, a nothing that felt natural. But as Wyck did it, all I could think was, am I squeezing hard enough? Too hard? Can he tell I'd rather be holding a rotten squid than his hand?

He joined the queue for Publi-pods, and my mantra flew out the window. He might not remember what he'd done on a different timeline, but there was no way in the glittering bowels of Hades that I was going to be trapped in a Pod with him.

“Actually,” I said, “I'm in the mood to walk.” All the better to extract information from him. I needed to find out what I'd been doing for the last six months.

“I thought you weren't feeling well.”

“The fresh air will do me good.”

“Umm sure.” He waved the next people in line ahead of us and followed me as I tore a path down the sidewalk.

I shoved my hands in my pockets so he wouldn't attempt another handhold, but we hadn't made it ten paces before his arm was around my shoulder.

Fake girlfriend.

Okay.

I could do this.

Even if I had no idea what
this
was. Were we a serious couple? Just hanging out?

“Hmm.” I leaned my chin back and gazed at the stars. “It's nights like this that make me stop and think about … us.”

That should get him talking.

But my wistful watching of the heavens seemed to have the opposite effect on Wyck. The silence between us stiffened. I didn't think I'd said something that would make him suspicious, but …

“Bree,” he said quietly, “are you breaking up with me?”

“What? No!” How had he gotten that from “Hmm”?

“It's just that you've been acting so strangely all evening,” he said, “and…”

“Oh, no. Wyck, that's not what I meant at all.”

“And then with all the ICE stuff lately.”

Oh, yes. Do keep talking.

“What ICE stuff would that be?” I asked in what I hoped would come across as nonchalance, but Wyck stopped walking and snorted.

“Very funny.”

“Uhh.” This conversation had not proceeded as planned. At all. I let out a halfhearted chuckle. “Ha. Gotcha.”

“I know I've been busy with it. And I know I'm beating a dead pegamoo”—Wow. Did not need that imagery—“But this is exactly what I was worried about. The time factor taking me away from you. Dr. Lafferty said it's nerves. She said that it's understandable. Normal, even.”

“Lafferty?” There was a Dr. Lafferty who had written my Quantum Bio textbook from last year, but he was a man.

“Lafferty. I told you about my interview with her three days ago. The medical director at ICE? Bree, are you sure you're feeling okay?”

“I … yes. Lafferty. I got her name mixed up in my mind with someone else … named … Dafferty.”

“Dafferty?”

“So she said that nerves are normal.” I tried to get us back on track.

“Yeah, and that there's nothing to be nervous about. ‘It's only Shifting,' she said. ‘People have been doing it for millennia.'”

“
Shifters
have been doing it for millennia,” I said quietly, but Wyck didn't hear me.

“Besides, I told her I'd made you a promise.” He reached out and grasped both my hands in his. “You want a Shifter boyfriend. You've got one.”

What? I fought the urge to yank my hands away as I quickly replayed the conversation we'd just had. From the way Wyck was talking, I was the one who had pressured him into Shifting. But that was the opposite of what I wanted. I mean, yeah. I wanted a Shifter boyfriend. I wanted Finn.
My
Shifter boyfriend. I wanted Wyck to have never heard of the possibility. I wanted ICE to have never invented the IcePick and even
make
it a possibility.

No,
a voice chimed in my head,
that's what Real Bree wants
. I couldn't act or think like Real Bree anymore. I had no idea what this Fake Bree wanted, what she needed, what she had been up to for the last six months. This was like waking up from a coma, only to find out that your comatose self had been not only living your life the whole time, but had been living it all wrong.

My solution: keep Wyck talking.

I maintained a steady stream of small talk all the way back to the Institute and managed to glean the following about the time I'd lost: I had still ended up Anchored, but for made-up health reasons, not for breaking the rules. Quigley wasn't a teacher at the Institute anymore. She had left to pursue humanitarian efforts, taking care of Shifters who had succumbed to the Madness, at Resthaven. Granderson had joined her there full-time as well, just as he had on my timeline.

When we reached the entrance to the Institute, where Wyck was still in the transporter program, I leaned forward to brush my hair against the scanner, but Wyck blocked it with his broad torso.

“Why the hurry?” He bent down, and at first I assumed he was picking something up but instead he whispered something into my ear that
really
made Real Bree want to slap him.

I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that somehow it was Finn standing in front of me, that somehow I wasn't betraying him or missing him or … I reached up, without opening my eyes and brushed my lips against Wyck's. They reciprocated with enthusiasm.

Okay, then.

I tried to return his kiss with an approximation of anything but revulsion. I kept my brain busy by coming up with a mental to-do list: Research this Lafferty woman, Infiltrate ICE, Strangle my future self when I caught up with her.

Wyck finally came up for air, and in the corner of my vision, I saw what looked like a photo flash from across the street. I glanced over, but I must have imagined it. There was nothing there.

“You seem distracted,” Wyck said.

“I'm just tired.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “You should go get some rest.”

“I should.”

Or.

I should plant another peck on Wyck's cheek, wait until he disappeared into his room, and run straight back out to catch a Pod to Resthaven.

Option two it was.

*   *   *

“This had better be important.” Quigley swept into her office and stared me down. Her furnishings and pictures—old-fashioned to the point of archaic—were much more suited to Resthaven than the Institute. We might be on the same side now, but I still avoided Quigley's office whenever I could. She had somehow managed to procure the most uncomfortable chairs made in the last three centuries, and every time I came to talk to her, I felt like an interrogation victim.

After she had her chip disabled, she knew it would be impossible to keep her position teaching history at the Institute. It would only be a matter of time before she couldn't hide the fact that, for her, history was changing. Still, I knew she missed it.

What I didn't know was why she, at midnight, was wearing a floor-length saffron velvet gown complete with ruched sleeves and a delicate lace veil instead of pajamas.

“Did I interrupt something?” I asked.

“A lovely lunch with Leo.” She was referring to Leonardo da Vinci. Turned out the Quig was quite his little muse. She was the model for the
Mona Lisa
.

“Color study,” she added. “He's having a bit of trouble capturing the exact shade of my irises.”

“Brown,” I said.

“Thank you for your expert analysis.” She yanked the veil off and slid behind her desk.

“You look kind of ridicul—”

“I know how I look,” she said. “Why are you here?”

Never one to mince words.

“Finn and I were on a date earlier, but then Wyck—”

“If you've come to me for boy advice—”

“Do you honestly think I'd come to you for boy advice?” Dr. Quigley and I had been on slightly friendlier terms now that she was my mentor and leader at the Haven Society rather than my teacher, but puh-lease.

“Well.” Quigley tugged at the delicate embroidery at her neck. “If you ever do find yourself in need of guidance about behavior of the male persuasion, you know that you can always—”

“Go to my mom or Mimi. Never you. Never.”

“Fair enough.”

“But if I'm ever in need of a lecture on appropriate Renaissance etiquette, I know where to go.”

“Again, why are you here?” she said.

I spent the next hour updating her on everything that had happened since I landed in London. When I stopped and considered that it was only one day—less than a full day at that—it didn't seem possible.

“You're positive Wyck was the one who made the change to the timeline?” she asked.

“Yep. I saw him do it.”

Quigley pulled up my file.

“Ahh, here it is,” she said. “Yes. ‘Transporter O'Banion states that Ms. Bennis has expressed that she is overwhelmed by her workload and shows signs of debilitating fatigue.' I cancelled your mid-term assignment, and Nurse Granderson placed you on medical Anchorment soon after. Apparently all this occurred without any protest on your part. Granderson has been handling your care, and it looks like he's forged all the chip maintenance data to look normal.”

She tucked the soligraphic file back into its data disk and tossed it to me.

“So there you go,” she said. “It seems that even if nonShifters make these changes, there are still inevitabilities that drive our actions. You're still Anchored. Granderson and I still ended up here at Resthaven. Wyck is unfortunately still tangled up with ICE.”

“Honestly,” I said, “that doesn't shock me. You didn't see him last year at the Monument, Quigley. He was like a feral animal.”

“And he was acting the same way when you saw him make the change?”

“No. That was the weird part. He was acting normal. Well, I mean, there were some flashes.”

“Flashes?”

“That's what I've been calling them. I don't know the technical medical jargon. But you know those glimpses into the different timeline that nonShifters experience after I've reverted one of their changes? Well, they seem to be physically painful. It's like this
flash
of the other timelines seeps into his brain, and he gets confused and starts acting awful. Plus, after my future self stopped me from reverting Wyck's change, she told me he was acting on ICE's orders.”

“Really? But then why did your future self stop you from using the reverter?”

“I have no idea. I guess this change ends up helping me to get a foot in the door at ICE. When I left Wyck just now, he really made it sound like I'm the one who talked him into joining their Shifting program on this timeline.”

“Again, for what purpose?”

“The only explanation that makes sense is to give me a gateway into ICE's organization. It must have something to do with the frozen woman and whoever was in that tank.”

“You said she looked familiar?”

I nodded. And for some reason, I could do so with more confidence now. Maybe it was just being here at Resthaven away from all the pressure of that situation, but I was almost certain now that I knew her.

“Did you recognize the hand?” asked Quigley.

“It was a hand.”

“Male or female?”

“I couldn't tell. It all happened too fast.” I held the reverter back up. “I don't even understand how I still have this thingamajig since Wyck stopped me from going back to Chincoteague where everything started. I just wish I could go back in time a few months and ask my past self what the blark is going on right now.”

“You're thinking linearly, Bree.”

“Shame on me.”

“When Wyck made this change to the timeline,” she said, “and convinced me that you were unfit to Shift for the mid-term, it set a different course of events into motion on this timeline. But your tendrils—and mine—are affixed to the true timeline. Or at least, our version of the Truth. And that reverter was activated in Finn's time, outside all these changes, reverted or not.”