by Ramona Finn
“What’s luck?”
He lifts one shoulder and then one hand, as if he wants to touch me but won’t. “Bad luck, good luck—they’re ways to make the world seem like it makes sense.”
With a nod, I frown because luck doesn’t make sense. “You mean ascribe random chance with rationality.”
He huffs out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh. “You’re new. No one knows you. No one trusts you. Not yet.” He runs a hand through his thick hair.
What it would feel like for my hand to follow his. I resist the odd urge and ask, “Do you trust me? Am I…bad luck?”
There is a flicker of something in his eyes. I think again of Bear and his choice. Wolf obviously trusted Bear to make his own choices, but was that right?
I take a breath and hold it, waiting for Wolf’s answer. He just turns away and glances back. “Stay low for a time. Be useful.”
That feels like a slap. My breath comes out in a sharp gasp that leaves an ache under my ribs. I don’t know why he upsets me, but he does. A burn of anger sours my empty stomach. My eyes burn again, but not from the fire’s smoke. Pushing past Wolf, I head for the sleeping room.
It seems impossible to turn off my mind and go nonfunctional. I stare at the ceiling and the hole that shows the sky, watching the tiny lights move—stars. The word pops into my head along with maps of stars—suns, plants, systems and galaxies. I wish I would remember more useful things.
Skye’s deep breathing rumbles on one side, and Bird mutters something in her sleep. Glitches don’t sleep—or do we? Is nonfunctional the same as sleep?
Nearby, Chandra lies totally still. She is nonfunctional right now, as all good Glitches should be. But I’m not very good at much it seems.
Wolf doesn’t trust me. Because I was this bad luck on the scavenge? I helped Raj. We got water. And meat. But the cost was far too high. How can the Rogues function as a group if they will not work harder to save every Rogue? Or are they right? Does the group matter most?
If they have it right, Glitches should matter as a group. Maybe that is our problem. Every Glitch seems to function as an individual. We do not work together. Chandra and Marq are their own group. Skye is sometimes at my side and sometimes with Raj. I…where do I fit? Am I supposed to find the other Glitches to make us a group? But how?
This thought bothers me more than anything else. The AI seems to reject both Rogues and Glitches. Should we all be one group?
The questions spin, making my head ache and my chest hurt. I want patterns and order, but I cannot find them.
If I had my memories right now, would that help?
Movement stirs at the entrance—a shadow in the darkness. But my eyes are used to the dark. It’s Raj, standing there, looking uncertain. His head tips to one side, and it seems like the look he sent me earlier, after we ended the connect. What is he doing here?
Standing, I make my way to him, stepping over and around the others who sleep. One Rogue girl shifts and I hold still, but she only mutters and keeps her eyes closed.
Beside Raj and outside the sleeping room, I whisper, “What are—?”
He hisses at me and clamps his warm hand over my lips. He glances over my shoulder, but no one wakes. Pulling his hand off my mouth, he takes my wrist and pulls me with him deeper into the tunnel. Now I cannot see him, but I hear his breaths, short and uneven. I can feel the heat of his body and something like excitement that almost seems to fill the tunnel.
“What are you doing here?” I get the question out, making sure my voice is so quiet that he won’t hiss at me again.
His voice is even lower as he says, “I need you to come with me. You can help—like you did with the connect.”
“Come with you? Where?”
He takes my hand. His skin is rough on the tips of his fingers, and I hear a small tremble in his voice. “We’re going back to the Norm.”
Chapter Eleven
I stare at him even though I see only a darker shape in the dark tunnel. “The Norm? The place we were kicked out of? The AI kicked us out once, which means we won’t be welcome back.”
Or will we? I have no memories of the Norm so I have no idea, but everything inside me says this is a bad idea.
Bad luck. Wolf’s words echo in my head. I shake them away.
“You don’t need me to remind you of all this.”
His words tumble out, quick and low. “You can help me. I know you can. I knew it as soon as I saw you in the connect. I’ve never seen anyone that good before. You can get us back in the Norm!”
Confused, I think back to his reaction in the connect I made. “Wait…you didn’t think I’d done something wrong? You’re not…unsure of me?”
“What? No, of course not.” He sounds like he means this. Gone is the cool bitterness from his voice. Energy pours off him as if this is something he’s been holding inside for too long. But why wait until now—when everyone else is asleep or nonfunctional.
I glance back to make sure no one is awake. All seems still in the sleeping room. Looking back at the dark shadow that is Raj, I ask, “Why are you asking me this now? In the middle of sleep cycle and when we should be nonfunctional?”
“You think Wolf or any of the Rogues would like us leaving? They want to keep us and use us. They wouldn’t want us going back.”
“And Skye? The other Glitches.”
He shifts on his feet. I feel the movement more than see it and hear the soft squish of dirt.
Now I’m not just confused, but sure this is not a good thing to do. Wolf already established he thinks little of me. If I am gone in the morning, what happens then? And why isn’t Raj thinking of the other Glitches as well.
After huffing out a breath, Raj says, “This is good for all Glitches. Or it will be.”
He tugs on my arm as if to pull me with him. I jerk away and cross my arms over my chest. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why.”
“I’ve been thinking for a long time about a hack—the perfect hack. We have to fix the Norm—the AI. If I can get in, I can set it right. When I was in the Norm, that was what I did—I handled hack corrections.”
I bite the inside of my mouth and shake my head. “Isn’t a connect from here a hack? That’s what we do here to survive.” Even as I say that, I realize it can’t be true. I knew how to connect—I just knew. “What do you mean, what you did? And fix what?”
Leaning closer, he whispers, his voice so fast I can barely follow his words, “In the Norm, every Tech has a designation. We’re genetically coded for aptitude, intelligence and function, and then trained to fulfill that function. It’s all very… practical. Mostly, it works.”
“Except when we glitch out,” I mutter.
“That’s not important. What matters is that I know the internal information highways. My family had four generations of data manipulation skills.”
“Family? That word isn’t familiar to me.” As I say that, I know it is true. I have Mother—that word is in memory and echoes inside me, like a word said in the large, central room. “What is family?”
“It’s…we can’t talk here. At least come with me outside?”
I don’t want to, but what use is lying down and staring at rock? I take his hand. Raj pulls me with him, half-running.
Raj leads the way, moving quietly, but making more noise than a Rogue would. We avoid the holes that let light into some of the tunnels. I wonder if it would really matter to Wolf or the other Rogues if Raj and I left. They would still have Skye and Marq and Chandra.
I follow Raj as he darts down yet another winding tunnel. The tunnel ends in a small room I haven’t seen before, but it is familiar, with the hole at the top and the rope. Light seeps in and I can see it is almost time for the sun to come up. Now I can see Raj’s face. It seems pale and a little gray in the dim light.
Panting slightly, I press a hand to my side. Raj glances at me, opens his mouth, and looks as if he is about to share something important, but he closes his lips tight
and shakes his head. Is this something he can’t speak about for some reason?
“Family?” I tell him to remind him what I wanted to know.
His dark eyes seem to darken even more, as if there is some sorrow in him. This is how Wolf looked when Bear said he could not return with Wolf. Voice soft, Raj says, “Family are those who give you core genetic material. They are the ones who look after you when you are small. Family is your closest ties.”
“Like clan?” I ask.
Raj shakes his head. “Closer. My…I had a father and mother in the Norm. I had two siblings. We were all Techs.”
Squinting now, I ask, “Why did you get thrown out?”
He winces and says, “I glitched a hack—got my paths crossed. The AI doesn’t tolerate error. One mistake and you’re labeled a Glitch and thrown out. The AI doesn’t care about you after that, but I’m going to make the AI care. I’m going to fix that.”
“Do you…do you think I have a father? I…I remember Mother. Sort of.” I can see a soft face, but the features are blurred. Did my mother let me go willingly? Did Raj’s mother and father let him go? I ask him, “Do you think your family misses you?”
He swallows hard. I see his throat work. “The AI might have erased me from memory. But that’s going to work for us. You’ve got skills to get us both past security and inside the Norm. From there I can hack the AI. I can fix all this. Think about it. You could get us close enough to the AI so we could finally do something! We could fix it for all Glitches to get back in the Norm.”
“But—” I let the question trail away as a memory stirs.
I stand in a room tinted in shades of silver and blue. The pale walls glow softly, making everything look shimmery, as if we are underwater. And how do I know that?
But Mother whispers to me, her voice soothing and calm. “A place for everyone. The perfect place, the place where each belongs.”
One wall flickers and images form. It is as if I can see to another place.
The ground is green here—grass. The word comes to me without effort. Grass—and trees, too. Everything that needs water is here. People walking along winding strips of white—paths that are smooth and not made from dirt or rock. The Techs smile. Some even laugh. Their skin is odd, though, with flaws—brown spots and marks on them. Why are they so flawed? So different, in all shapes and sizes. Something like an ache in my chest builds as I stare at the littlest ones—babies.
Mother’s voice echoes in memory. “You are made exact for your mission. You are exactly as you should be. You are perfect.”
With a blink, I shake off the images. Were they memories? Or something else?
Raj takes hold of my shoulders. “Once you get us past security, we can physically head into the Norm. It won’t be just a connect—we’ll be inside. We can head to Control at the center of the Norm, we’ll hack in and get to the AI’s core function. We’ll fix things. We’ll make it so all Glitches are marked Techs again. We’ll all be back in the Norm where we should be. With our families.”
I blink to erase the lingering images and tense. I have a mother, but I am not certain I have a family. I am not certain I will be welcome back to the Norm, even if Raj says we can make it so.
How can I go back when I don’t remember what back is like?
Raj is staring at me, his eyebrows low over his eyes and his gaze searching my face. He says, his voice intense, “Do you really want to stay here after seeing what happened to Bear?”
I wet my lips and think about what Wolf said. The other Rogues will think I am bad luck. They want to find a reason why Bear did not come back, and I will become that reason. They will not be unhappy to learn I am gone. So why not go back to the Norm—or at least try to.
“Are you sure the AI needs to be fixed? And we can do that?”
“The AI is a complex set of programs with layers of security. We can connect to subroutines from here—from the platforms—but to get to core functionality, we have to link in to the core. We can do that. You can get me there. And then…yeah, we’ll rewrite the Tech and Glitch code. We’ll be Techs again. All Glitches can go back in the Norm.”
My skin itches and the back of my neck tingles. I stare back at Raj. He seems so certain. But something feels wrong. “We’ll be…Techs?” I repeat the phrase, trying out the taste of the words. They leave a dry aftertaste. But maybe I’m just thirsty.
Raj nods, and the brightness in his eyes leaves him looking desperate for this to be the truth. “Yes. We’ll be reintroduced into the Norm and we’ll repair the AI functionality. There won’t be any more Glitches”
I glance away from Raj.
Is this my function? To bring Glitches back to the Norm? Is this the same as finding all Glitches?
But a Glitch by definition is imperfect and different enough that the Glitch has no place in the Norm. There is no function for a Glitch. Except there is.
Rogues need the Glitches. They need us to help them get water.
Worrying at my lip, I look at Raj. I let out a whoosh of air. “What about Wolf? What about the Rogues?”
Raj tenses and his mouth tugs down at the mention of Wolf. “What about them?”
“We owe them some thought. They gave us shelter—food and water.”
With a shrug, Raj turns away and grabs the rope. He glances back at me. “Rogues will have it better, too. Once it’s fixed, the AI won’t keep sending out drones. We can set it to share resources instead of taking all of them for the Norm.”
A dozen more question come to mind. Why is the AI broken? What broke it? Will the Norm be able to function with shared resources—or is there only enough water for the Norm? And what is the security Raj keeps talking about? I remember the sentinels Skye faced. Is security like that? Or is it worse.
Glancing back down the black tunnel and then up at the hole where light is starting to stream down, I nod. There seems to be little choice, even with so many questions unanswered. Bear not returning changed everything for me. If I can make it so no one must face such a choice as that ever again, I must do that.
That—I know—is not a function. It is a choice. And I make it now.
Turning to Raj, I tell him, “We are going to need water.”
Raj smiles. “I have everything ready.”
Chapter Twelve
Raj does have everything tucked into a hole not far from where we leave the tunnels. I count three skins of water and one pouch with dried food. Raj pulls them from three rocks that slope together. He checks them and hands me one skin of water. I hope it is enough. He says we cannot take an AT. We must walk.
“Rogues would come after us to get the AT back.”
It is odd that the cage on wheels is more valued than either me or Raj.
Outside the tunnels, the land is washed by grayish light that casts long, purple shadows across every rise. The colors seemed washed out, and a chill sweeps through me so.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be cold,” I murmur, rubbing my bare arms. I wish now I had not given Skye back her jacket. The sun is just starting to peek over the far edge of hills. Raj sets off, heading toward where the sun rises, and I follow.
Walking fast warms me.
I focus on taking deep breaths and not slipping on loose rocks. The land rises and falls. The wind is soft this morning, caressing my face and not blasting sand at me. Every now and then, Raj stops to listen. I don’t hear howls, but I do hear other things stirring—animals? Rogues? Something else?
Raj comes to a sliding halt on the side of a rock where the shadow lingers. I stop next to him. Raj crouches and waves for me to do the same. We are both breathing hard and my legs ache.
“Are we hiding from something?” I ask.
Raj nods absently. “Just being careful. Drones might be out.”
I listen for the hum I heard the other night. Was that a drone?
A memory surfaces.
Another cool, blue room, but the walls have a silver tone. They are metal. I stare down at the factory l
ine, and I know this is where drones are made. It’s drones making more drones. Balls of a dark, gray metal lie open to reveal wires and circuits awash in gooey, red gel that looks almost organic. It looks like blood.
Thousands of drones sit on the factory line. The finished drones hover, perfect spheres. Tools jut out as they are needed.
I sense Mother is here, and her words seem very soft. “Growth is a sign of life. Always grow.”
The memory cuts off, leaving me shaking. I glance at Raj. It is light enough to see the worry lines around his mouth and eyes. He fears the drones, but Mother’s voice had… pride.
Are the drones good in the Norm and bad here? Or have they gone wrong like the AI?
Raj flashes a quick smile, as if it’s more to reassure himself, not me. “The AI uses drones to search for resources.”
“They scavenge, too,” I say and it is not a question. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Raj shoots me a hard look. “The AI runs the drones. And drones don’t just scavenge like the Rogues. Drones remove anything that comes between them and a resource. I’ve seen drones kill Rogues.”
My skin chills, even though the sun is coming up. Fear washes through me and my stomach tightens. I remember Bobcat’s story of Bear—that he was good at taking down drones with well-aimed rocks. I also see the drones again—tools out, and weapons, too. The drones are meant to defend themselves. And the AI. The drones will not welcome us back into the Norm.
“C’mon, Lib. We need to get moving.”
Raj stands and skirts the large rock we were crouched behind. I glance back, wanting the safety of the tunnels again. But I will never find my way back on my own. I am with Raj on this, no matter what. That pushes me to my feet. I run after him.
There is no going back.
The Drone finds us outside the wall of the Norm. Raj says the wall stretches up and over the Norm in a dome—like an upside-down bowl. He says the wall goes for farther than any Rogue can walk. I believe him. But right now, we hide in the rocks, holding very still—hardly even breathing.