Override (Glitch)

by Heather Anastasiu

  Suddenly the silence became complete. I couldn’t even hear my own huffing breath. It was like we’d passed through some invisible wall where all sound was cut off.

  I turned to the ex-Regs. “What’s going on?” I yelled. My voice made no sound.

  The ex-Regs barely even paused. They gestured to one another with what looked like military hand signs and kept running to the end of the hallway. I remembered from the projected schematics that the hallway turned a sharp corner before the last stretch that opened to the circular room where the glitcher cells were. I hurried to move around the corner, but Cole grabbed my arm to hold me back.

  He mouthed something I couldn’t understand. Eli peered around the corner quickly and then pulled back. He made two sharp forward motions with his arms and then we were running again. Cole and Eli ran side by side in front of me, blocking my sight of what was ahead and shielding me. The hallway seemed to go on forever. All I could see were flashes of light from over their heads. Whatever was going on at the end of it looked like a firefight. I tried to push in between the ex-Regs, but they stayed locked shoulder to shoulder.

  Until they were blown backward off their feet. Eli’s heavy body landed on my leg and took me down with him. My head cracked on the ground and the building shook as a wave of blue light burst past us. The ex-Regs were quickly on their feet again, and Cole hauled me up as well. I screamed as I tried to stand and looked down. My left ankle hurt like hell when I tried to put weight on it, but at least my suit hadn’t ripped. I held on to the wall for support.

  A girl surrounded by a bright blue orb blocked the entryway to the room. She had to be a glitcher. Through the undulating blue light, I could see Rand, City, and several others standing on the other side. They were alive. A flurry of relief rushed through me.

  The girl’s back was turned to us. At first I thought she was one of the glitchers we’d been sent to free, fighting alongside my team. Then I saw a crackling spiral of electricity burst from City’s fingertips, aimed at the orb. The electricity hit it, but didn’t penetrate. That was when I realized the girl with the orb wasn’t helping us at all. She was trapping everyone inside.

  Cole and Eli unloaded laser rounds that bounced harmlessly off the glowing shield. The girl turned to look at us. A flash of recognition or relief seemed to pass over her face as she saw me. She made a slight motion with her arms. The momentum of an energy wave built in the orb surrounding her, and released outward in a concentric circle.

  I tried to cast my telek to stop it, but I couldn’t sense it at all. I couldn’t hear the buzzing in my ears either. I had no idea if I even had any energy left, I’d already used it so much tonight. The wave hit me before I could make any sense of it, and I was knocked off my feet again. It dissipated and passed into the walls with a foundation-shaking quake.

  I tried to motion to Eli to charge the girl, but he must have misinterpreted me, because he picked me up and ran with me toward her instead. Her eyes were fixated on me as we got closer. I desperately tried to find any thread of telek I could. If I could just cast a web around her, disable her like I had the Regs or stop her heart—anything to drop her so everyone else could get out of here before the next wave of reinforcements arrived. Or worse, the Chancellor herself.

  The girl released another wave and I felt the adrenaline surge inside me as I braced for the blow. While the wave hit like a sledgehammer to the chest, Eli stayed on his feet. Everyone else had been blown back again, but Eli kept advancing forward. It was my telek, it must be at least partially working. The girl’s eyes widened as we kept pushing forward, even through the next wave she released.

  I tried to expand my telek outward to get to her, but I could only barely sense the room in my head. My mental projection cube kept cutting in and out. My body felt flayed by the bursts of blue light. I didn’t know how long I could keep this up. When the next wave hit, Eli stumbled backward, dropping me.

  Then suddenly the girl in front of us sank to the ground. I scrambled to sit up, looking around.

  Stunned, I saw Tyryn standing behind her, holding a tranq gun steady. He must have shot her in the split second after she’d released the orb, before she could build another one. She’d been so distracted watching me, she hadn’t even seen him come up behind her. Three tranq rounds stuck out of her neck.

  I got to my feet, gritting my teeth against the roaring pain in my ankle, and hobbled into the huge room. We’d gotten here at the end of the fight. Rand, City, and Tyryn were the only ones left standing. The ex-Reg, Wytt, slowly got to his feet, part of his chest plate scorched black.

  Bodies were strewn all over the ground. And so much blood. Some wore the gray and green of the Rez fighters. A few others I didn’t recognize, but they looked like teenagers. Glitchers, no doubt. Smoke filled the air. Weapon racks on the ceiling were melted and still burned orange. A few molten drops dripped onto the ground below. Clearly Rand’s handiwork. Half of the left wall was cut up by laser fire, exposing the steel support beams.

  “We’ve got to go!” I shouted. Still my voice made no sound.

  I’d thought the girl with the orb had also been controlling the silence, but she was knocked out, and no more glitchers were standing. At least that we could see. I felt my heartbeat ratchet up a notch. Ginni had said there were ten glitchers here. Three were on the floor, so where were the others?

  City and Rand helped a fallen Rez fighter to his feet. I closed my eyes and concentrated, but between my exhaustion and the silence that quieted the buzz I usually used as a guide, my connection to my telek was unsteady. When it cut in again, I felt the whole room in my head. I grabbed it and tried to hold on. For a moment I managed, and expanded farther beyond the wall.

  And that’s when I felt them. There were people huddled in tiny cells beyond the wall, no bigger than the room I’d been closed in for months at the research lab. The bodies were too small to be Regs. They had to be the Chancellor’s other glitchers.

  I hesitated for a moment. The girl with the orb was clearly working for the Chancellor voluntarily. But if these glitchers were a danger, wouldn’t they have attacked already? I steeled myself. We had failed part of our mission, but we could still accomplish this objective. I had to try.

  Adrien appeared beside me. He made wild gestures with his hands and waved at us to follow him. At least that meant the transport must be fixed. He wouldn’t have come back otherwise.

  I pointed at the wall behind us, putting my palms up and trying to show he needed to stop and give me a second to try to get to the other glitchers. But of course he had no idea what I meant. Adrien shook his head, pulling at my arm to get me to follow him. I tugged away from his grasp, barely managing to stay upright by putting my weight on my unhurt foot.

  Others hurried past us. City and Rand held an unconscious Rez soldier between them. Cole carried a limp girl in his arms; I couldn’t see her face to tell who it was. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, straining to concentrate in the chaos.

  I felt Eli pick me up, the metal of his recently fired forearm weapons warm against my skin. He started to carry me out of the room in the opposite direction from the glitchers. I didn’t waste any energy trying to protest. For a moment, the flicker of the projected room rose in my mind. Before I could lose it again, I quickly latched on and tore the wall away.

  I opened my eyes right as Eli and I neared the exit. The small cells across from us were exposed and a few figures slowly rose to their feet. One short, thin boy stepped out and looked straight at me. I waved frantically over Eli’s shoulder for the glitchers to follow us, but half of them weren’t even looking my way.

  The few who did see me ran across the room toward us. A couple of the others saw them and followed. In the cell on the end, I could see a blond boy lying on the ground. He looked unconscious and his legs were bound. My vision bounced with each of Eli’s heavy steps, but I squinted to look closer.

  And then my heart stopped in my chest.

  I knew that rumpled blond hair
and the tilt of that nose well.

  Max.

  I screamed, but still no sound came out.

  Eli kept running, taking me farther away. I flailed and beat at his armored chest with my fists, and he finally paused when we reached the entry to the hallway. He looked down at me with no expression on his face.

  Then suddenly an explosion rocked the building. Half of the domed room we’d just left collapsed and the walls blew outward. Eli and I were thrown hard into the hallway wall from the blast, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet.

  Sound rushed in again, a cacophonic mix of screaming and the squeal of steel beams cracking overhead. Debris and dust filled the air.

  For a moment I blinked in a daze. I had no idea what was happening. Nothing made any sense. There was a painful ringing in my ears. One of the girls who’d escaped the cells lay on the ground right beside me, bloody and unmoving.

  “I saw Max!” I shouted. “We have to go back for him!”

  I looked over Eli’s shoulder. Clouds of dust made it impossible to see, but it was clear that many of the cell rooms had been destroyed in the blast. The glitcher responsible for the silence must have been in one of them.

  But Max, where was Max? I wiped at the grime on my face mask and caught only the barest glimpse of him, still lying inside his cell before Adrien shouted, “Get her out.”

  Eli picked me up and started running again. In the opposite direction from Max. “No!” I shouted into his ear.

  “Don’t put her down,” Adrien yelled over his shoulder. “The General’s orders are to protect her. Get her to the transport, now.” Eli kept running, his arms around my waist like a vice grip. A few of the escaped glitchers ran just behind us.

  “Stop listening to him and put me down! We have to go back!”

  I tried to gather my telek so that I could make Eli stop. But just then, the wall on one side of the hallway began to groan and buckle. Part of the building that had already collapsed was pulling down the rest. The groans became screeches.

  The ceiling cracked and a pile of concrete and rubble collapsed straight on top of us. I screamed and threw my hands in the air. A huge slab of concrete stopped a mere foot above our heads, caught in my telek web.

  Debris sifted down around us. All down the exit tunnel the walls were buckling, creaking under the strain. The rest of the ceiling would come down soon. I threw my telek at it to keep it from collapsing long enough so we could escape. I tried to hold the slab overhead while also reaching back into the circular room to help Max. But the second I tried to split my focus, the ceiling dropped closer.

  No, this couldn’t happen again. The scene was too familiar, an ex-Reg carrying me away while Max was left behind. I had to save him this time. He’d obviously seen the error of his ways. He wasn’t working with the Chancellor anymore. She’d tied him up and left him here.

  I strained to turn around.

  But right then, the ceiling finally dropped behind us. I couldn’t hold it anymore. A glitcher boy who had lagged behind was crushed in front of my eyes.

  I screamed in rage and grief, clinging to the last bits of my power to keep the hallway ahead of us clear. I poured every ounce of strength left in my body into the telek, and then when that was gone I pushed harder still. I remembered the image I’d seen in my dream of all the blue lights spilling out of me as I cracked like a smashed glass. It was going to break me, but I didn’t care. I had to hold on a moment longer. Just a moment.

  The next instant we were out in the night air and my power dropped out completely. I dropped my head in exhaustion against Eli’s shoulder as the building behind us shook with a terrifying tremble before it crumbled in on itself. The sound was deafening and dust billowed outward in a thick cloud.

  So much had gone wrong. In my exhaustion, I turned to Adrien. He looked distraught, but his eyes lacked the bewilderment and shock showing plainly on the faces of the rest of our disheveled and injured crew. And with a rush of pain and grief, I realized why.

  “Did you foresee this?” I asked. He looked away. “DID YOU SEE THIS?”

  But then even my voice was gone and the world swirled around me. All I could manage before I passed out was to whisper a name no one could hear: Max.

  Chapter 17

  I SPENT A WEEK in bed. Jilia had easily healed my fractured ankle, but pushing so hard with my telek had taken its toll on my body. I was absolutely depleted, without enough energy to lift my own head. Ginni helped me to the bathroom a few times a day and brought me food, but otherwise I remained in bed and stayed Linked.

  I was afraid of the rush of emotions I knew would come as soon as I disconnected, even though I probably didn’t have enough power left in my body to be dangerous for a while. After a few days, when I finally did disconnect myself for a few hours, I was surprised that I felt almost as numb as when Linked. I was left alone to stare at the drawings on my wall and let Max’s accusing gaze stare back at me. I had sworn that if I ever got the opportunity, I wouldn’t fail to save the people I loved. No matter what.

  But I had failed. We all had. Ginni said that after the General had been healed, she’d nearly torn up the Med Center in anger. I closed my eyes and I was back in the facility, feeling the blast buckle the ground beneath our feet, watching the ceiling caving in on us. I saw Max lying there tied up before the ceiling collapsed on top of him.

  The hours were tortuous as I replayed the scenes in my head, thinking of all the ways I could have done things differently. But I didn’t let myself re-Link, except at bedtime. I deserved to feel the pain.

  On the sixth day, Adrien pulled back the curtain and sat on the mattress beside me.

  I turned my face away to hide it in my pillow. I knew I shouldn’t blame him for what happened. I knew his visions were only flickering images of a future he had never been able to change, but I couldn’t help it. He should have warned us what was coming. We could have tried to stop it.

  He took my shoulders in his hands.

  “Jilia says you should try to get up today.”

  I closed my eyes.

  He let go of me, shaking his head. “We did everything we could. I know you want to save everybody, but this is the way it is. It’s the way it has to be.”

  Anger lit through me and I sat up. “How can you say that? Max wasn’t just anyone to me. He was my friend. I loved him, in my way.” I grabbed my head, feeling a bit dizzy from the sudden movement. “He only stayed with Bright because he couldn’t bear coming with me when we escaped the Community. I just always thought someday we’d have a chance to start over.”

  “What you’re feeling is guilt,” Adrien said flatly. “Not love.”

  I stared at him, openmouthed. “Why are you being like this?”

  He leaned in, his face dark. “Because anger is what you need to be strong right now, not sadness. Anger will help you get out of this bed.”

  His words surprised me, but then I realized I was sitting up for the first time in a week. And I wasn’t too tired. The buzzing thrum of my power was back, quieter and weaker than usual, but there.

  “You’re right,” my voice was hard, “If I need anger, I have plenty of it. I’m furious with myself. And maybe it’s not fair, but I’m furious with you too.”

  Adrien looked down. “Believe me. You couldn’t be any angrier with me than I am with myself. The whole thing was a trap. The Chancellor knew we were coming. And how else could she have known?”

  I stared at him, not following.

  “Because I told her.”

  I let out a confused gasp, but he continued, “I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting any visions of this mission. It was so strange. Usually when something big like this happens, I’ll get long-term visions well beforehand. But I didn’t see anything about this mission, and I’ve realized why.”

  He looked at me, anguish clear in his eyes. “It’s because I already had those visions, a long time ago. Before we escaped the Community, when the Chancellor used her compulsion on
me. She made me tell her my visions and then made me forget. She must have known long ago that we would be coming on this raid. What kills me is that I must have foreseen her setting the trap for us. I gave her the blueprints for exactly what to do.” The words poured out of him in a rush. “The only reason we’re still alive is because the explosives in the second half of the building malfunctioned.”

  He’d answered the question I’d screamed in rage at him during the raid. The question I could see had been giving him sleepless nights ever since.

  He hadn’t known this would happen.

  He hadn’t known, but he blamed himself all the same. And I’d pushed him away, reinforcing that blame. The look on his face bored a hole straight through my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I was such an idiot. I took his face in my hands, then leaned in and put my forehead against his. “I’m so sorry. Of course it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have accused you.”

  I kissed his lips, but they were hard and unyielding. After a second he relaxed into me, but then he pulled away again just as quickly. “I’ve gotta go to training.” He paused before leaving. “Will you be in classes today? Even if you don’t feel up for training, you could at least come to lunch. Everyone would really like to see you.”

  I swallowed hard, but nodded. He’d pulled away so quickly. I wasn’t sure he’d quite forgiven me yet. I’d assumed the worst of him and hadn’t even given him a chance to explain. I didn’t deserve his forgiveness. But he was right. I had to get out of bed. I had to keep moving forward somehow, in spite of all that had happened.

  * * *

  When I walked into the Caf, talk quieted and countless pairs of eyes watched me. Some of the Rez fighters immediately looked away again, their faces hard. Others, like the younger glitchers on the other task force watched me with wide eyes. Were they impressed with what they’d heard I’d done or disappointed that I didn’t do more? I was supposed to be able to save people, but four Rez fighters and one ex-Reg had died, not to mention the Chancellor’s glitchers. One of the Rez fighters put down his spoon as I passed by and outright glared at me. Okay, so disappointment it was.