Loop (2 page)

They stepped on one of the other buses with a group of high schoolers. Sweet relief. Their insipid banter was going to give me a headache.

Except no.

I reached for the base of my skull.

My head wasn’t hurting. At all.

Most Shifters called it the Buzz—those painful twinges that scrambled your thoughts and blotched your vision. Like mosquito bites in your brain. Some Shifts were worse than others. But it was always present. Until now.

I pulled out my vial of Buzztabs. God bless the Initiative. Without their Assistance Fund I couldn’t afford the pills, and they were the only thing that quashed the sensation. Of course, if today’s side mission went well I’d never need their help again. I shook the tube. I wasn’t sure if I should take one even though I felt fine. But
why
did I feel fine?

A soft hand brushed my shoulder before I had a chance to pop a tablet in my mouth.

“You need to give those back to the nurse, dear. We’re about to leave.” The chaperone, who thankfully appeared to be a frazzled mother rather than a teacher, nudged me along without making eye contact. I put the pills back in my pocket.

Chincoteague Island, here I come.

While I hadn’t taken any formal classes like some of my friends, I considered myself a master of social camouflage. A pulled-down wisp of bang here, a curled-up slouch there, and I was all but invisible. As the bus filled, I fixed my eyes out the window and splayed my arms out so that I took up exactly two-thirds of the seat. Not so much that the chaperone would come and make a fuss. But enough to make it clear I liked riding solo. No one in their right mind would choose to sit by me.

Unless it was the last seat left.

A scrawny redheaded kid who was being devoured by a backpack twice his size shuffled up the aisle. His thick, concave glasses squished the sides of his head in like an insect. Everyone else on the bus appeared the typical sixteen or seventeen years old, but I doubted the increasingly flushed kid had seen the better side of fifteen yet. He gripped the back of the padded seat two rows up in desperate search of another vacant spot. When the chaperone began calling out names, he gave up and slumped down next to me.

“Here,” he responded to the name “Finn Masterson,” saving me even the most basic of pleasantries. He watched me out of the corner of his eye with a look of part anticipation and part curiosity as we neared the end of the list. When the bus pulled out onto the highway, he broke down and said, “They didn’t call your name.”

“Nope,” I said.

“Why didn’t they call your name?”

“Probably because it wasn’t on the list.” I rubbed my thumb against some graffiti on the vinyl seat in front of us.

“What is it?”

“My name? Bree.”

“Bree what?”

“Bree Bennis.”

“Oh.” He stared past me out the window, either deep in thought or avoiding eye contact, I couldn’t tell. Or care. I wasn’t even sure why I’d given him my real name, especially right now. Most of the time on Shifts, I doled out fake ones. But this kid had a sweet earnestness about him that kept the lie off my tongue.

Plus, he might prove useful when we got to our destination. A little civility never hurt anyone. On occasion, it made the difference between getting home to the twenty-third century to sleep in my own bed and standing in line at a nineteenth-century soup kitchen while I figured out an assignment.

Today it might be the difference in life and death.

Finn dove into a comic book. I pulled out my mission package. There was no point in thinking about the extra job if I didn’t finish the assigned one. Nothing special with the wrapping. I shook it, and whatever was inside rattled around—probably a long-forgotten wedding ring or some other sentimental crap. It never ceased to amaze me the stuff people sent back to their ancestors. Lost love notes, baby teeth, underwear.

Oh, the undies.

And for what? Shifters saw it for what it was—pointless. It was always nonShifters who wanted to forge some imaginary connection to their past. So they could know that
they
were the ones who returned Great-Aunt Gertrude’s precious applesauce muffin recipe when it mysteriously showed up tucked in her front door after she’d misplaced it all those years before.

Something bothered me now as I stared down at the box. Something amiss. Muffy van Sloot. The name oozed money. Rich people never used the Institute for deliveries, any more so than they’d walk into a barber school for their next haircut. They used professional chronocouriers.
Ehh.
Maybe this was a feeble attempt to make amends for losing the family fortune.

Or maybe it was all for a dead cat.

Finn tucked away his comic and pulled out a dinky action figure. At first I thought he was engrossed in putting it together, but without looking at me he said, “You a new student?”

“Kind of.” Vagueness was usually the best policy on missions. I hated lying, and technically, I wasn’t. I was a student. Just not of this school. Or century.

“You weren’t on the same bus before.”

I shrugged.

“Do you live on the island or inland?”

“You’re just a bundle of questions, aren’t you?”

Finn’s cheeks flamed, and he snapped the last piece onto his toy. “I’m collecting the whole set.” He held up his little treasure and examined it before unzipping the leg pocket of his cargo pants. “I’ve seen the movie three times already. Seen it yet?”

I looked at the action figure before he put it away. “Yeah.” And all three horrible sequels as well. Plus the franchise reboot that came out forty years after the original.

I pressed my forehead against the window and watched trees whir past in a blur of green and brown. There was something comforting about forests, sticking around from one lifetime to the next. The cool glass rattled and thrummed against my temple, sending Buzz-like vibrations all the way to my teeth. But it wasn’t real. I still felt fine—better than fine. Did it mean something was wrong? A startling thought addled my mind:
Maybe Mom stopped getting the Buzz before …

No.

She would have mentioned something like that. Mom wasn’t reckless, no matter what people whispered.

Six months of what-ifs had seared me with a perpetual paranoia. But I needed to stay focused, especially today. Everything about this midterm had to appear absolutely normal. The sky started to peek through the foliage in a blipping Morse code, and the next thing I knew the bus began
kathunk-kathunk-kathunking
across a bridge. A long bridge.

I gripped the seat in front of me and leaned as far from the window as possible.

Finn scooted away and finally tapped my shoulder. “Welcome to my lap,” he said.

“Sorry. I don’t like the water.” I inched back toward the window.

“And you moved to an island? Sucks to be you.”

Dirt, asphalt, concrete … heck, I could land in a vat of Jell-O for all I cared. Just not water. Anything but water. Asphalt carried the risk of being seen. Water carried the risk of never being seen again.

After the bridge’s last bump, my muscles unclenched. A sea-and-sun-cracked sign welcomed us to Chincoteague Island. The shuttered motels and deserted crab houses screamed “off-season.” It reminded me of Spring Break two years before, when Mom and I had thrown a suitcase each in the back of the old beat-up Pod Grandpa left her after he died. Right before
it
died. We took off up the coast and stopped in every brine-caked tourist trap we could find, ate so much chowder we thought we’d explode. I liked this town already, not that I intended to stay long. The faster I finished the midterm, the faster I moved on to the
other
delivery, the faster I could put this whole business behind me.

At the school parking lot, a stream of parents circled the block to pick up their children. Older students chattered a play-by-play of the trip on the way to their cars. Finn hung back and eyed me as I twisted my finger around a lock of hair. A cab ride was out. Public buses were unlikely. We really were in the middle of nowhere.
Ugh.
I was down to an hour and a half, and I had no idea how far away the cemetery was or how big it might be. I’d already made up my mind that I would finish the assignment before I dealt with the contraband item hidden in my shoe. Any red flags and school officials would swarm this place and investigate. I couldn’t afford any chance of getting caught.

“Would you like a ride?” Finn dug his hands into his pockets and scraped a rock across the ground with his foot.

“That’s okay.” The last thing I needed was to be trapped in the back of some crusty station wagon while his mom pried me for information. I’d rather hitchhike. “I wouldn’t want to put your parents out.”

“I drove myself. My car’s right over there.”

I followed his finger to a black Porsche SUV. “
You
drive?”

He nodded.

“In
that
?”

Another nod.

“You can’t be more than fourteen years old.”

“I’m fifteen.” He straightened up to his full height, still barely reaching the top of my head. “And I have my hardship license.”

“Hardship?” I looked at the Porsche emblem again and scoffed.

“Both my parents work, and the bus leaves before I get out of soccer. I can drive myself to school and back.” He pulled the keys out. “Look, do you want a ride or not?”

Given the long walk back to the highway, I didn’t have any other options.

“Do you mind if I sit in the back? I need to stretch out. Umm, leg cramp.”

He gave me a look that let me know my excuse was as pathetic as it sounded, but what did I care? It wasn’t like I would see him after I got to my mission site. I settled in and twiddled with my QuantCom until the geolocator came up.

“Is that a pocket watch?” he asked.

“Family heirloom.” Again, not a total lie. It did connect me with the past. It just had more in common with his car’s GPS than his wristwatch.

“Let me know where to turn,” he said.

“No problem. Take a right at the main road.”

Finn tapped his foot timidly on the gas, and we snailed forward through the parking lot.

My mission timer beeped. “Umm, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

Finn shot me a
really?
look in the rearview mirror but sped up. We turned onto the main road. Right. Left. Right. Right. No, I meant left.

A few times, Finn double-checked my directions. “
This
street? How much farther?”

After fourteen excruciating minutes, we pulled into a long, brick driveway. I had expected a graveyard or a church. It was a mansion. Or at least the biggest house I’d ever seen. After all the quaint shake-shingled cottages, it seemed especially daunting. But whatever. As long as there was a dead Muffy under the sand or dirt somewhere, I didn’t care. I was within spitting distance of finishing this midterm; then I could get to the real business at hand. I snapped the Com shut and opened the door.

“Thanks for the ride.”

Finn flipped around to face me. “Do you realize where we are?”

“Yeah, Thirty-four Seventy-one Woodman Estates.”

“I know. We’re at my house.”

chapter 2

CRAP. CRAP. CRIPPITY CRAPPITY.
CRAP.

“What’s going on?” asked Finn. His eyes darted back and forth between the rearview and side mirrors even though we were just sitting there in his driveway.

Dang if I knew. And I wasn’t sticking around to find out. I fidgeted with a tube of lip gloss in my jacket pocket. The mission address must have been wrong. Yes. Yes, a logical explanation. If this Finn guy could point me to the town cemetery, I’d drop the package off at Muffy’s grave and go on my merry way. I could squeeze in the drop-off afterward if I hurried. As I leaned forward to ask him where the nearest graveyard was, my gloss accidentally pressed into his rib cage.

“What do you want from me?” he said, his voice rising with each word. “Wait, is that a … Do you have a
gun
?”

“A gu—?” The laugh was on my lips, but then he fumbled forward, reaching for his phone. I panicked and jabbed the gloss hard into his side. “I mean, yeah. It’s a gun. Don’t make me use it. My gun, I mean. The one in my hand.”

“Where did you get a—?”

“I’ll ask the questions.” I tried to make my voice as menacing as possible. “Don’t move.”

The color drained down Finn’s neck in streaks. He looked like a chameleon that couldn’t decide on a shade. “Look, you can have my wallet, the car, whatever you want,” he said. “Just let me go, okay?”

Breathe, Bree.
Breathe.

Before last spring, the lowest grade I’d ever gotten was a B-, in my third year. And that was after a little snafu when I accidentally asked someone to switch on the lights in a pre-Edison home. Not taking a kid
hostage
. While making a black market delivery.

Breathe.

Leto Malone had timed his proposal perfectly when he showed up in Mom’s room last Tuesday. The doctor had finished his weekly
don’t-lose-hope
speech. The accountant had delivered his monthly
abandon-all-hope
report.

Leto had slithered in wearing a slick suit and an oily smile. He held out a piece of junk so technologically obsolete it took a minute for me to figure out what it was—an old, paper-thin flexiphone. Then he asked if I wanted to earn an astronomical amount of money.

Umm, yes.

He placed it in my hand. Just a simple delivery to the past.

When I realized who he was—
what
he was—I practically threw the gadget back at him.

“Hear me out, kid,” he said. “You know as well as I do this widget always popped up back then. Why shouldn’t I give some garage hack with a few hundred quiddie the glory of becoming its inventor?”

“You want me to break the law for a few hundred dollars?” I fought back a snort.

“Are you tiffing me, kid?” He looked around like he was suddenly worried we’d been watched. “You leave this in a secure spot, call the buyer, he deposits the funds in a Swiss bank and gives you the account number. The guy thinks he’s dealing with a disgruntled corporate snitch. You disappear. I collect the payment in our time. Plus interest.”