Twist by Karen Akins Read Free Book Online Page B

what?” He leaned over and kissed me again.
    It was only after I pulled my lips away from his that I realized those lips weren’t Finn’s.
    They were Wyck’s.

 
    chapter 6
    â€œAIGHH! ” I HURLED MYSELF to the far edge of the viewing chamber. Away from him. Away from … Wyck. How was this possible?
    â€œWhat’s the matter, sweetie?” Wyck reached over and smoothed my hair back.
    â€œUmmm … what are you … Aighh!” I yanked nodes off my head and body as fast as I could. What the blark had been changed? Where was Finn?
    I clenched the reverter in my pocket. I had to fight the urge to click it right then and there. But if something went wrong on the reversion, I couldn’t just disappear right in front of Wyck. He’d remember it, and the last thing I needed was for Wyck O’Banion to know I was an unchipped Shifter now.
    The reverter was still going strong, and I pushed it down into my pocket. If Wyck saw it, I was a dead woman. The last time I’d had it in my possession around him, he’d tried to zap me and plunge me off the Washington Monument to get it back. Well, not him exactly. A future, evil version of him.
    But this guy looked enough like that version of him to get me to push the emergency release button on the chamber and scramble down the ladder when it was still ten feet from the ground. I had to get somewhere private so I could revert this change.
    â€œBree, what are you doing?” he called after me.
    I looked up at Wyck and shuddered. I couldn’t believe I had just kissed him.
    The path to the exit lit up step by step like luminescent lily pads as I pressed my way through the bases of the raised chambers.
    â€œBree!” Wyck had jumped from the chamber and was close behind me. I’m sure I was easy to spot, what with the way my pocket blazed green like it held a mutant asparagus.
    â€œWait up!” he said. “What’s the matter?”
    He caught up with me and grasped my shoulder. I flinched away as he touched me, remembering the way he had splintered my knee into bits six months before, the way he had crushed my windpipe with his bare hands.
    Not him, I reminded myself again. Some twisted future version of him.
    â€œLook, I don’t know what’s going on.” I grasped my QuantCom in my fist and flicked the stunner out just in case I needed it. “But you’d better leave me alone.”
    â€œWhat on earth are you talking about?” He stepped into a shaft of light from the exit, and I gasped. His appearance was so different from the last time I’d seen him. He looked … great. His usual messy hair was carefully combed and parted in a neat line, like a cement sidewalk crack that had been poured with precision.
    â€œWhy is your pocket glowing?” he asked. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want to go back to the Institute?”
    â€œWith you?” I almost choked. After he’d been expelled from the Institute, last I heard he was going to some reform program. I pulled my jacket over my pocket to cover it.
    â€œWho else would you go with?” He looked around. His puzzlement was palpable.
    Yeah, well, that made two of us, buddy.
    â€œI need some air,” I said, stumbling toward the lobby.
    â€œOh-okay.” He followed close behind.
    â€œNo. You”—I backed away—“you stay here.”
    â€œAll right.” He pointed at the spot where he was standing, like he was claiming it. No argument. No fight.
    There was no telling where this new compliance came from. But it didn’t make me feel one whit better. As soon as I had cleared the exit, I turned and ran to the women’s bathroom. Clutching the sides of the sink, I stared into the mirror, gasping. A mom with two daughters in tow walked in and flashed me a sympathetic look when she saw my stricken face.
    â€œBoy problems?” she said.
    A noise that might have been a laugh in