Override (Glitch)

by Heather Anastasiu

  She shook her head, looking angry. “But that’s a stack of lies. Besides,” she looked over at me, “if you’re supposed to save the world, then that means the world was supposed to be all shunted up like this in the first place. It means this war, the V-chip, everything—” she paused, and I could tell she was thinking about her parents’ deaths. “Things don’t happen for a reason. If they did, what kind of sick world would this be?”

  She sped up again, her face hardening. I kept pace with her, but my lungs were burning.

  “Are you sure you even believe in his visions?” she asked. “Can you really handle the pressure of having to be some kind of savior?”

  “I’m hoping to have some help,” I said through huffing breaths. I wished I could wipe my forearm across my sweaty brow, but because of the mask all I could do was let it drip down my face. I didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken. “What about the other glitchers we’re going to meet at the Foundation? Do you know any of them?”

  “I usually steer clear of glitchers.”

  “Are you always this friendly?” My voice was sharper than I meant it.

  She laughed. “Look, I feel bad for you guys, okay? They put stuff in your brains, and your powers are a freak side effect. I get it, it’s not your fault. But in the end,” she shrugged, “you’re still just another bi-product of what Comm Corp created. The Rez is fighting so that the world can go back to the way it was, before the Community and brain hardware and glitchers ever existed.”

  The path narrowed, and Xona ran ahead of me. I gave up trying to continue the conversation. We were obviously never going to be friends. Instead I thought about what she had said about the future of the Rez. I wanted to be a part of it, to help people, but there was so much responsibility being put on my shoulders. Everyone had these huge expectations of me. I thought about how Xona had said people expected me to be the future of the Rez. And the way Adrien had described that fearless girl in the future …

  I just didn’t understand how I went from being me to being her. Every time someone talked about me being a leader, it sounded like they were talking about someone else. Would I wake up one day and suddenly be that girl, or was I supposed to somehow be actively trying to change myself into her?

  The memory of the little blue lights from Jilia’s brain scan flashed in my mind. I was changing all right. I just wasn’t as certain about what I’d become. I imagined the power multiplying more and more until my body split into a million pieces, little blue lights pouring out of me like water from a broken glass.

  I yelped in surprise when Xona suddenly stopped in front of me and pulled me down beside her against the tree. “Don’t move. Something’s coming,” she whispered. Her cool confidence was gone.

  We hunched down into a space between two fat roots. I heard a distant humming noise that grew louder as it came closer. The noisier it got, the more my heart hammered in my chest. My telek clamored to life under my skin. I squeezed my eyes shut as my forearm began to shake. Not now. If I accidentally let loose right now and was seen, we would all be caught and delivered to the Chancellor. Or killed on the spot.

  The mechanical humming got louder and louder until it was a dull roar.

  It passed directly overhead. Xona and I both tensed, curling ourselves up as small as possible against the tree trunk. Turning my head sideways, I could just make out a flash of metal through the tree branches. For a horrible second, I thought it was slowing down. But then it kept going.

  We stayed frozen for several more long minutes as the engine’s whine became a distant hum again. It didn’t loop back around. They hadn’t seen us.

  Xona let out a huge sigh of relief.

  “What was that?”

  “Sweeper drone, scanning the area.” She put her hand above her eyes and looked upward. “The canopy should have covered us. But still,” she dropped her hand and looked at me. “They don’t usually come this far out in the forest.”

  I swallowed hard. “They’re looking for me.”

  Chapter 6

  I WAS TIRED and about to climb into bed, wondering when Adrien would be done with his shower. We might not be able to really touch like I wanted, but having him beside me last night … for a while it had made all my eddying fears calm into a still pool.

  I smiled at the thought of him curled around me, but then I heard the crash of something falling in the kitchen area. Followed by a scream.

  I scrambled to my feet and pulled back the tent flap.

  No. It wasn’t possible.

  Ten Regulators stood in the common area, barely able to fit in the small space. One lifted Xona off the ground by her throat. Her legs kicked in the air, heels banging spastically against the side of the kitchen counter. She tried to reach the weapon holstered at her ankle, but couldn’t lift her leg high enough to get it.

  Blood already soaked the far corner of the floor where Jilia lay, unmoving. A Reg lifted his huge metal hydraulic foot from her crushed chest.

  Adrien sprinted into the room from the opposite entrance, a towel around his waist. Horror registered on his face as he looked at all the blood.

  “No, Adrien, don’t!” I shouted. But he launched himself at the Reg nearest him anyway. I screamed as the Reg’s fist connected with Adrien’s lean frame, slamming him hard into the tent’s struts. There was a crunch of bones breaking when he hit. He crumpled to the floor, and the Reg lifted his leg up, no doubt to crush him like he had Jilia.

  “No!” I screamed. A high-pitched buzzing erupted in my ears as all the Regulators turned toward me. I felt the rage gathering in my chest, building until it pounded against my lungs. I couldn’t contain it, and I didn’t want to. My small frame shook until my teeth rattled, and then, with a sudden hard pulse, my power exploded outward. My ribcage cracked and split as the power burst from my mouth, my eyes, my fingertips, my chest. Blue light filled the room and I barely had a moment to look down and see my chest cleaved in two, my insides pouring out right as the last of the blue light left my body.

  I felt myself crumble. I couldn’t even scream.

  “Zoe!”

  It was Adrien’s voice. I looked toward the sound, but he wasn’t there. The entire scene had disappeared. Only a black abyss remained.

  “Zoe, wake up, oh god, wake up!”

  I blinked and found Adrien crouched over my body, shaking my shoulders. He put his hand behind my neck and helped me sit.

  “Regulators!” I gasped.

  “No. It was a dream,” Adrien said. “But we gotta move, babe.” I put a hand to my chest, remembering the feeling of it splitting open.

  I was whole and solid. But I’d felt the pain, it had seemed so real.

  The tent was so dark I could just barely make out Adrien’s face. I felt a storm of relief at seeing him unharmed.

  But then my eyes adjusted and I saw that we weren’t in the tent anymore. Or rather, the tent wasn’t around us. The sides had been blown backward and several of the trees were uprooted and had fallen sideways, the enormous trunks still taller than Adrien. The night sky was overhead. Confusion mingled with the adrenaline of the dream, and I looked around in absolute confusion. What was going on? My breath came in quick puffs, fogging up the faceplate before the suit’s defroster hummed to action.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Adrien said. “I woke up to the tent ripping apart around us.”

  A loud crack filled the air.

  “Another tree’s dropping,” Jilia shouted, jumping over some fallen equipment to get to where we now stood. I looked up and saw a huge shadow, darker than the starlit night sky, falling straight toward us.

  “Run!” Adrien grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. I stumbled once on my blanket as I tried to direct my telek toward the falling tree. I managed to stay on my feet, but I couldn’t feel any power or detect even the hint of a buzzing noise.

  Jilia was right behind us as we ran through the barely standing tent frame. The tree slammed do
wn, the several-ton trunk flattening the remnants of the tent. The ground vibrated from the weight of the impact.

  “Where are Tyryn and Xona?” I shouted, trying to clear some of the debris off my faceplate that had been blown up when the tree landed.

  “Jilia!” Adrien knocked into me as he spun and turned back the way we’d come. I turned too and saw Jilia on the ground, pinned by a heavy branch.

  “Are you guys okay?” Xona ran up beside us, Tyryn right behind her. “Where are the attackers?” She had two laser weapons out, and she swung them around in every direction trying to find out who had hit us.

  “There’s no one,” Adrien said, running over to Jilia and straining to get the branch off her. “It was just an accident.”

  I hurried over and tried to pull with him, but the branch was still attached to the tree and didn’t budge an inch.

  “Is she—” Xona started, but Adrien cut her off.

  “She’s alive.”

  As if on cue, Jilia groaned, a small sound, but enough to make us redouble our efforts. Tyryn dropped to the ground beside Adrien, but even with all his muscles put to the task, the branch wasn’t moving.

  “Can you move the tree off with your telek?” Adrien asked.

  I gritted my teeth, trying to call my strength forward with my mind. But nothing happened. I felt a slight buzz of power, but then it was gone again.

  I looked at the flattened tent bits barely visible in the moonlight and then at the mangled trees all around us. Realization slowly dawned. Adrien had called it an accident, but only now did I realize what he meant. It was me. I had done this. When I’d used my power during my nightmare, I must have accidentally unleashed it in reality.

  “I think I used it all up.” I met Adrien’s eyes. He swallowed and nodded, taking a quick look around and then turning his attention back to Jilia.

  “Move out of the way,” Xona said, pulling a weapon from her ankle.

  “Back up, back up,” Tyryn said. Adrien and I pulled back as Xona pushed the trigger. The stream of bright laser cut a shocking red in the darkness. After a couple of minutes, the laser had sliced through the thick branch and Xona set to work on the other side. Finally she’d cut through it, too.

  Tyryn and Xona grabbed both ends of the log left behind and hefted it off Jilia. Jilia coughed and sputtered a few times, blood on her lips.

  “What do we do?” I asked frantically.

  Jilia’s face was pale, but she was blinking and looked alert. Her chest rose and fell easier now that the branch was gone. “I’m healing what I can,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight with her hands on her abdomen. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She worked until rivulets ran down her face.

  She finally exhaled again and looked back up at us.

  “Are you gonna be okay, Doc?” Xona asked.

  “A few broken ribs I can’t fix right now,” Jilia wheezed. “But the internal bleeding is stopped.”

  Xona helped her up while Tyryn looked around anxiously. “What the hell happened here?”

  “It was me,” I whispered. The weight of guilt sank in even as I said it. “I had a bad dream.”

  Xona looked back and forth between the damage and me and took a step back. Tyryn just stared.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Adrien said, unfazed. “We’re completely exposed.”

  Tyryn nodded. “The Sat Cams will have caught the disturbance, even all the way out here. They’ll come to investigate. We gotta run.”

  “Shunt,” Xona kicked hard at a fallen tree branch.

  Tyryn bent down and gently lifted Jilia. “Xona, go get the transport started.”

  She nodded once and then sprinted off.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “This is how life in the Rez goes.” Adrien hurried forward with Tyryn and waved for me to follow. “Midnight escapes, running with only what you got on you. We’re used to it.”

  “But it’s my fault—”

  “All that matters now is that we get out of here safely.” Adrien took my hand as we ran.

  Xona already had the transport up and hovering by the time we got there.

  “Won’t they be able to track us?” I asked, jumping inside and buckling the strap across my chest.

  “The outer hull on the transport is built to deflect infrared screening,” Tyryn said. “In the night, we should be almost invisible.”

  I felt my stomach rock as we lifted higher through the trees. Leaves and twigs scratched down the windows, but soon we were up past the tree line and off into the night sky.

  “Where do we go now?” Xona asked.

  “Henk knew we’d be headed his way in a couple of days for transport to the Foundation,” Tyryn said. He glanced down at the console screen. “As long as we don’t bring any heat his way, he won’t mind us showing up early.”

  I glanced out the back window at the tops of the trees. By moonlight, I could see that the circular area I’d flattened stood out like a giant target.

  I turned away again and saw Adrien watching me, but I didn’t meet his eyes. Guilt ate like a worm through my stomach. This was all my fault. I closed my eyes, wishing there were a way to rewind time.

  Chapter 7

  XONA AND TYRYN SPOKE QUIETLY in the front seats. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Xona glanced back at me several times. Well, glared back might be a better description.

  Otherwise, it was quiet, almost peaceful. Jilia and Adrien were asleep, and Adrien’s head lolled against the wall behind him. I memorized his sharp cheekbones and the way his jaw tapered down to his pointy chin. His thick lips were opened slightly as he slept, and I wished that I could kiss him. Anything to wipe away the memory of what I’d just done.

  I unbuckled my belt strap and moved closer to Tyryn and Xona. I didn’t have a very good view out the front window, but I could see the distant bright lights ahead.

  “We’re heading into a city?”

  Xona ignored me.

  “Right outside it,” Tyryn said. “There’s a factory there.” He pointed below, where I could just make out the outline of a cluster of structures. “The factory’s chief engineer is an Upper. Officially, he works for Comm Corp, but in actuality he’s a Rez spy.”

  “Really?” I’d never met an Upper who worked with the Rez. Uppers were usually the enemy, the privileged class who used people for drone labor without any qualms.

  The engines quieted as Tyryn settled the transport down in a covered transport bay. It jolted only lightly when we made contact with the ground.

  “’Allo mates!” someone called just as Tyryn opened the back door of the transport. A very tall wiry man was waiting for us. His face was covered in dark stubble as if he hadn’t shaved in a week, and he smiled widely when Adrien woke up, unclipped himself, and stepped out of the transport.

  “Shorty!” the man said, clapping Adrien hard on the back. Adrien was only an inch shorter than him, both of them well over six feet.

  “Henk.” Adrien grinned back.

  “You folks are early. Glad to see ya ain’t got any holes in you.”

  Adrien didn’t say anything, but he did embrace the man.

  Henk let go and turned to me, his arms open wide. “And the telek girl!” He stepped and hugged me hard right as I stepped out of the transport, lifting me up off my feet. “So good to meet ya. Shorty’s talked about ya enough to make a man’s ears bleed.”

  I turned to Adrien who smiled and looked down, his ears turning pink.

  “Welcome to my factory,” Henk said, gesturing behind him. “All the newest models, shiny and ready to be shipped.”

  As I looked around, I gasped a little to see hundreds of vehicles packed in the covered space, all in orderly rows. One was a row of duos, another was full of large trucks, skinny in front but with wide bulbous backsides; others looked like variations on the simple quad transport design we’d come in.

  Jilia stepped down from the vehicle next.

  “My favorite doc! Now it
’s really a party.” Henk spread his arms wide, but Jilia smacked them down, then winced and held her ribs.

  Henk’s eyebrows scrunched together. “You broke, Doc?”

  “Nothing I can’t fix. And don’t think I’ve forgotten last time,” she said, an eyebrow raised.

  “Aw, come on,” Henk said, looking almost contrite. “One little accident with blasting powder and a guy can never live it down?”

  Jilia rolled her eyes. “So is the container ready? I don’t want to stop here any longer than we have to.”

  “Did ya think I wouldn’t come through for my favorite gal?” Henk grinned.

  “I thought I was your favorite doctor,” Jilia said.

  Henk leaned in, his voice low. “Who says ya can’t be both?” He wiggled his eyebrows, then pulled back. “It’s over here.” He gestured with his arm for us to follow.

  “Top-of-the-line, next gen transports,” Henk explained as we walked down between rows of vehicles. “All hover-based tech.”

  “No more wheeled models?” Adrien asked.

  Henk laughed. “Who would drive on a road when you can fly?” He waved one hand smoothly through the air, like a vessel in flight, and let out a low whistle. “Antigravity tech’s gotten good enough for these nonpropulsion engines to go mainstream. I oughta know, since I helped design ’em.” He flashed a smile.

  Adrien leaned over as we walked past a row of blue transports. “Henk designs transports, but he’s also the Rez’s best weapons expert. Unfortunately, he has a habit of testing out his favorite new toys.”

  Henk overheard and smiled charmingly. “They just make such a lovely ka-boom!” He moved his fingers outward in a wide circle to demonstrate the sight. “And it scared a stitch into the bastards craftin’ V-chip parts.”

  “The General warned you about being too reckless. Blowing up one V-chip factory isn’t going to change anything,” Jilia snapped. “We’re trying to win a war here!”

  “Aw, it all turned out okay. And look at this,” Henk lifted his arm and rotated it at the shoulder. “One factory blasted back to hell where it belongs and you got me right put together again. Not to mention I got a nifty scar out of the deal.” He pulled back his tunic around the neck to show the slight line across his shoulder.