Override (Glitch)

by Heather Anastasiu

  Cole sighed, his shoulders limp as he turned to walk the opposite direction down the hallway. His reinforced legs made a rhythmic hydraulic hiss as he disappeared from view.

  Chapter 20

  I STARED AT ADRIEN over my steaming bowl of protein goo. Yesterday I’d finally tracked him down and asked him what was wrong.

  “Nothing,” he’d said with averted eyes. When I reached out and touched his arm, he flinched away from me. At first I thought he was still angry and hurt that I had accused him of foreseeing the sabotaged mission and not stopping it. And could I blame him? He already felt so guilty about his visions causing horrible things, and I’d just reinforced it with my accusations.

  Still, it had been over a month since we’d been back. I couldn’t help wondering if it was about more than him just being hurt at what I’d said. All kinds of doubts nagged at the edges of my mind. What if he simply didn’t want to be with me anymore? Our romance had been a whirlwind from the start, but what if now that I was actually here, living in close proximity to him, he realized I wasn’t the girl he’d built me up in his mind to be? He’d been walking around with these visions of this amazing leader in his head, but in person I didn’t match up.

  Today Adrien was sitting at the other end of the Caf with a guy I didn’t know. He clearly wasn’t a Rez fighter. I squinted.

  “Who is that?” I nudged Ginni and pointed over to him.

  “Oh,” Ginni smiled. “That’s…” She paused, eyebrows coming together. “It’s … give me a second. I swear I know his name.” She frowned. “But I can’t seem to remember it now that I try to think of it.”

  Adrien suddenly looked up and caught me staring. I quickly glanced away. In case he was trying to avoid me, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I was glad when Saminsa walked past, and I shifted my gaze to pretend I’d been watching her as she dropped the rest of her food in the trash and left the Caf.

  Adrien quickly stood up and headed towards us, the other boy with him following suit.

  “Hey everyone,” he said, his voice light and easy. “This is Simin.”

  “Hi,” Ginni said, standing up. She grabbed his hand and pumped it. “It’s so lovely to meet you, Simin!”

  The boy pulled his hand away, pointing to the book open on Ginni’s tablet by her plate. “You’re reading that again? Doesn’t it always make you cry?”

  “How did you know that?” Ginni gasped. “Is your power telepathy?”

  Simin sighed. “We’ve met like ten times already.” He looked over at Adrien. “I told you this was a dumb idea.”

  “Nah,” Adrien said, putting a hand on Simin’s back and pushing him lightly into a chair at our table. “The more days in a row they see you, the better chance they’ll have at remembering you.”

  “Remembering him?” I asked.

  “Simin is the glitcher who keeps the Foundation’s location safe. Anyone who meets him immediately forgets that they saw him. Taylor has anyone who visits talk to Simin before they leave, and they forget where they’ve been.”

  “So why can’t I remember him?” Ginni asked. “I haven’t left the Foundation.”

  “It doesn’t just work on people leaving,” the boy said, staring down at the ground uncomfortably. “Everyone forgets me.”

  “Whoa,” Rand said. He stared at the boy, frowning. “You don’t like, live in the dorms with us do ya?”

  “I stay in the security hub,” Simin mumbled. His eyes darted back to Ginni before quickly looking away.

  I remembered going to the security hub once with Adrien, but when I tried to think about anyone else there, the details became indistinct.

  “The hub’s below the Foundation,” Adrien continued. “Simin’s a techer too. He handles all the communications for the Foundation.”

  “So how do you remember him?” I asked. Adrien looked at me, our eyes holding each other’s gaze for a moment before he answered.

  “I wrote it down and put a note on the side of my bed to look at each morning. Figured he could use some company.”

  My heart swelled. Despite everything weighing on his shoulders, Adrien still thought so much about other people.

  “Can I sit here?” Adrien pointed at the empty chair beside me. He leaned over. “I’m sorry for how busy I’ve been lately,” he whispered in my ear. “I’ve been researching with Simin on a task for the General. But I miss you.”

  His breath was warm on my neck and I felt the chills race up my arms. It was the closest we’d come to touching in so long. I felt a rush of relief. I’d been making a big deal out of nothing. He did still want to be with me, he’d just been busy.

  “I missed you too,” I said, and grabbed his hand. The second my skin connected with his I felt a wave of warmth and security wash down my body. I tugged him down and he sat. A shy smile warmed his face. I interwove my fingers with his, my hand a perfect fit.

  But almost the instant he’d settled into his chair, his body went rigid. He stared at the wall beyond me, his eyes vacant. No matter how many times I witnessed one of Adrien’s visions, they were still unsettling.

  “What?” I asked as soon as he shook his head, his eyes refocusing and his face taking on a look of horror.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  A billowing flame of fire blew outward from the kitchen.

  Everyone except the ex-Regs immediately dove from the explosion, arms over faces. I raised my arms too, but my chair was jammed in too tightly to move. I looked behind me frantically. Adrien had dropped under the table and I thought I heard his voice screaming my name amid all the shouting. A blindingly orange fire had spread over half the cafeteria wall, filling the room with a haze of smoke.

  It was a surreal moment—the ex-Reg Eli just sat against the wall completely still, even though the upper half of his body was in flames. Part of the skin on his face had been burned away, leaving only the metal of his reinforced jaw behind.

  The buzzing in my head eclipsed the chaos. The sprinklers weren’t coming on, I didn’t know why. Tyryn had grabbed a fire extinguisher, but he was no match for the wall of flame. Other Rez fighters ran for the hallways to look for more. Some people from tables near the door escaped through the doorway, but then the blaze moved toward the entrance. We were trapped.

  I finally managed to push my chair back and stand up. The others had climbed out the other side of the table and were stumbling toward the wall farthest away from the blaze. It was hard to see much of anything beyond the basic outline of their bodies through the smoke. I turned back to the fire.

  I had to do something. But when I sent my telek outward, I couldn’t get a hold of the fire. It wasn’t a solid object I could just surround like I normally did. It kept morphing and changing shapes and right when I thought I’d managed to catch some of it, it danced out of my grasp.

  I grabbed all the glasses of water from the surrounding tables with my power and hurled them at the fire, but when they hit, it only seemed to make it spread.

  The buzzing screamed in my mind, but there was nothing I could do. The ex-Reg continued to burn and the flame licked over to the table beside me. I yanked off the tablecloth with my telek and tried to smother some of the fire with it. But it barely made a dent in the blaze and quickly caught aflame itself.

  I tripped backward, only barely managing to stay on my feet. The smoke and heat were disorienting. I coughed and covered my face with my tunic sleeve, my mind racing for something else to try.

  Then an image popped into my head—of Saminsa, and how she’d covered herself with an orb of light. The picture took hold and I stopped trying to get a hold on the fire and instead imagined a bubble without oxygen surrounding me. As I imagined it, I could suddenly feel the tingling of energy as the air around me shifted.

  Finally, a surface to hold on to! Even though they were infinitesimal, I could feel the oxygen molecules clustered like a cloud. I took a deep breath and then pushed the cloud away from me right as the flame leapt closer. The flame stopped like it ha
d hit an invisible wall.

  I continued leeching the oxygen from the air around the fire, pushing the bubble outward. The flame on the tablecloth fizzled and died out. Next I immediately concentrated on the ex-Reg, stamping out the fire on his skin and clothing. I pushed past him toward the fiery wall.

  I wasn’t even sure exactly how I was doing it. I wasn’t focusing anymore on the individual molecules, but it was like I’d gotten the feel of them and now I could just do it. My power was like a dampening wave. I felt light-headed from not taking a breath, but kept going anyway. Only a little bit longer. The people behind me were far enough away, they should still be able to breathe. I started at the edges and moved inward. The flame banked inch by inch, until I’d whittled it down to the counter. I finally stamped out the flame surrounding the blackened cooking unit that must have been the source.

  I realized a moment too late that I’d forgotten to let oxygen back into the space surrounding me, and I blacked out.

  * * *

  “Eli just sat there. Why didn’t he move?” I recognized Cole’s low voice. I shifted on my cot in the Med Center. It was a little awkward with the oxygen tubes plugged in my nose, but I could see Cole standing beside the bed where the other ex-Reg lay. Eli was wrapped head to foot in burn ointment and the skin regrowth serum. It looked like Jilia had healed some of the minor burns, but she couldn’t create skin where there was none.

  Jilia’s voice was kind. “His pain and reaction centers just haven’t started working as naturally as yours have.”

  “But he’s human,” Cole said. “He can feel. He just doesn’t know who he is without his Reg hardware.” His hands curled into fists.

  Jilia noticed I was awake and came over to do a quick scan before releasing me back to my dorm. My footsteps were heavy as I headed down the hallway. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I didn’t want to think about any of it—the ex-Regs, the fire, or how I’d used my power. Of course, when I got back to my dorm room, Ginni had other ideas.

  “Zoe, you were amazing today! Xona, did you see the way the fire just stopped? And all because of Zoe’s power. No one will doubt what you can do now.”

  Xona didn’t say anything, she just kept slowly scraping her knife across a whetstone. Scrape. Scraaaaaaape.

  “Xona, wasn’t it great?” Ginni pressed.

  Xona looked up at me. “Magnificent.” She pulled her feet up into the box and swung the curtain shut.

  I looked at Ginni questioningly, but she shrugged.

  “What started the fire anyway?” I asked.

  “A circuit on the thermal unit blew,” Ginni said. “A bottle of cooking oil was right beside it and sprayed everywhere at the same time the spark lit it all up.” She shook her head. “Here we are worrying about these death-defying missions and then something like this happens right in our own home.” She paused, shaking her head. “Life is weird.”

  I nodded. I’d never heard a better summation.

  The scraping stopped. “It’s not just weird.” Xona hopped down from her bunk. “It’s suspicious, that’s what it is.”

  I blinked in confusion, both by the sudden change in her manner and by what she’d said.

  “Suspicious?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “The thermal unit circuit just happened to blow while we were all at lunch, and the bottle of oil just happened to have been sitting beside it?”

  Ginni gasped. “Sabotage!”

  “Normally I’d guess it was a Reg. But they’re more the brute force types.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I said quickly.

  “You know, Saminsa did leave the room right before it all happened,” Ginni said.

  Xona leaned in, nodding. “It makes sense. Saminsa was already working for the Chancellor. She says she hates the Chancellor for being willing to blow her and her friends up, but what if that was just a lie to get in with us?”

  I thought of how I’d felt when I’d come here, like a stranger without a home. But it was even worse for Saminsa, going from one cold dangerous place to what she thought was another. That didn’t necessarily make her a threat. Then again, after everything she’d been through, maybe she wanted to strike back the only way she could.

  The door slid open and we all jumped.

  “Hi Saminsa,” I said, my voice high and too-bright.

  Saminsa’s eyes narrowed as she took in the scene of the three of us pretending we hadn’t been huddled together whispering conspiratorially. Ginni’s eyes widened in fear and she turned around abruptly. Xona arched an eyebrow at Ginni and me, looking pointedly at her ankle weapon before climbing back into her box.

  Saminsa set her jaw and sat down on her mat by the door without saying a word.

  I stared at her a moment longer than I should have. Could Xona be right? Did Saminsa secretly hate us and want to hurt us? I didn’t want to believe it, but then I remembered the flesh melting off Eli’s face. I knew we’d all be keeping a closer eye on Saminsa. Then I shook my head. No, I wouldn’t accuse someone without any clear evidence again. Xona was probably just seeing enemies where there were none again, like she always did with the ex-Regs.

  Chapter 21

  THE PROFESSOR BROUGHT OUT new art supplies in Humanities. There were little pots of shocking colored paints and brushes. I picked one up and looked at it dubiously. I ran the bristles across my hand. It tickled.

  It seemed like a very impractical instrument for making pictures—how could you be precise with tons of little flopping bristles? The sharp-tipped markers I’d always used before seemed like a far better idea.

  I sat in front of one of the large blank pieces of canvas the Professor had set up at stations throughout the room. He gave brief instructions and set out a bowl of vegetables, but he said we could paint whatever we wanted. City was laughing and joking with Rand, who was quickly making a mess on his canvas. Cole immediately began working quietly in the corner, glancing around the room occasionally. Adrien had skipped class. Again.

  I swallowed and dabbed the tip of my brush into the red, but stopped before it touched the canvas. The paint was globbed on the bristles. I’d picked up too much. I didn’t know how to do this. I tried wiping some of the red off on the edge of the pot, but it still looked like too much on the brush. If I put it to the canvas now, it’d just be a mess. I screwed the tops back on the pots, feeling an embarrassed heat flush my neck. I was supposed to be the artist.

  But then, I was supposed to be so many things.

  I dropped the paint brush into the cleaning solution and moved my chair away from the canvas. I pulled out a piece of paper from a stack in the corner and a marker. There, that was better. I started sketching the room and the people in it. City and Rand kept moving around, and I wished I could tell them to stand still. I tried to get their proportions as correctly as I could. I almost wished I was connected to the Link so I could see the technical schematics laid across my vision. I could be so much more exact that way.

  Professor Henry called me to stay after class. The heat in my neck returned.

  “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the paper I’d been drawing on. I handed it over and watched him eye it critically.

  “It’s very…” he paused, “accurate.”

  “Is that good?” I asked in a small voice.

  The Professor laughed. “Zoe, art isn’t about good or bad.” He handed the paper back to me. “It’s about letting yourself feel things, and then trying to communicate those feelings. Here, let me show you something.” He led me over to the canvas in the corner where Cole had been working. The canvas had been pointed at the wall, so it wasn’t until we walked around that I could see it.

  Tears immediately pricked my eyes. “It’s beautiful.”

  There wasn’t any clear image or figures in the picture. Instead, it was a wash of color, vibrant red spreading into shocking blue, with dabs of white and yellow throughout.

  It looked like delight. Or maybe that’s just what looking at it made me
feel.

  “But he’s an ex-Reg,” I turned to the Professor.

  “It’s harder for them than it was for the rest of you glitchers,” the Professor said, “but Cole’s living proof that no matter how much metal you put in a person, you can’t take away their humanity. Cole just has to fight harder for it.”

  I immediately thought of how I always felt a rush of relief right before I clicked into the Link each night. It felt like a free pass. For a while I didn’t have to try to sort out the emotions, I could just let them dull to gray. But here Cole was, fighting to keep them.

  “But why?” I whispered. “Why does he try so hard?”

  “Oh, Zoe,” the Professor said with a smile, “look at the canvas. Can’t you see why?”

  * * *

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the canvas as I walked out of the class and down the empty hallway. I wanted to be like Cole and paint in color. I wanted to feel things, I was just tired of feeling bad things. I’d had enough of bad things. But I’d also felt the emotions Cole had captured in the painting before—beauty, color, delight. I’d felt them with Adrien.

  My wrist com buzzed with a message:

  I’m waiting for you at your dorm.

  It was as if Adrien had read my thoughts. I felt a flush of warmth and smiled. I hurried down the hallway to my dorm. He was waiting outside the door for me, his face dark and intense.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as soon as I got close. He pulled me into a tight embrace. His words were a whisper against my neck. “I’ve been an idiot. I let this project I was working on distract me from what’s really important. So tonight,” he pulled back and brought my hands to his lips. He kissed my fingertips. “We are going on a date.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, my heart fluttering erratically at his touch.