Override (Glitch)

by Heather Anastasiu

  “Enough,” she said. She turned to the Rez fighter. “Normally I would agree with you. But he’s not just any boy. His visions make him an incredibly dangerous asset that is now in the Chancellor’s hands. Leaving him with her could endanger us all. The Chancellor will know every step before we make it. She’s already crippled us. If Adrien stays with her, she’ll be able to finish us off.”

  “But you just said it. She knows every move we’ll make. She’ll see us coming if we try to rescue him,” City said.

  Taylor looked at her calmly. “Yes, she will most likely see it coming. But we still have to try.”

  “Even if we get past all the security measures she’s sure to have, there’s still her compulsion power to consider,” Tyryn said quietly. “She could use her power to make us surrender, or even turn against each other.”

  “Tyryn’s right,” I said. “I’ve seen her make people throw themselves into concrete walls, stab themselves. As soon as you get within a hundred yards of her, she could make you all attack one another.”

  “What about the gas? That could take out her power,” Xona said.

  Taylor shook her head. “No one could get close enough to administer it without falling under her compulsion first.”

  A terrifying realization settled in my bones. I felt cold. Really, I’d known it all along. There could be no other way. “It has to be me, and me alone.” My voice was loud in the suddenly still room.

  Taylor nodded. I could see she’d long ago come to the same conclusions. “Yes. Every day he stays with the Chancellor is another day the Resistance’s secrets are compromised. More and more Rez cells are getting cracked. We thought it was because her network of spies was increasing, but it’s clear now it’s because she has access to Adrien and his visions. The only way we have a fighting chance is if we remove him and kill the Chancellor. Then all knowledge of the future Adrien’s already told her dies with her. She wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with those secrets.”

  I nodded. “So I go in alone, kill her, and get Adrien.” The words sounded absurd to me even as I said them. I had the urge to laugh hysterically. It was beyond impossible. I balled my hands into fists instead.

  “And if the girl fails?” asked one of the Rez fighters. “What then?”

  “That’s why Zoel is not going alone,” Taylor said.

  “But I have to—” I started, but she interrupted me.

  “You can’t even operate a duo. How do you expect to get there?”

  I thought about how much trouble Adrien had when he’d driven the thing during our escape from the alcove, and he’d grown up driving and flying. The panic I’d been trying to contain threatened to bubble out. “So what do we do?”

  “I’ll fly you in as close as I can get and still be out of the Chancellor’s range of compulsion. We’ll land here.” She pointed to the rooftop of a building near where Ginni said Adrien and the Chancellor were. “There’s a skywalk connecting the two buildings.” She zoomed in and I saw a glass-enclosed walkway threaded between the top floors.

  Sophia looked at the General. “But if the Chancellor does somehow manage to catch you in her compulsion web, you’ll tell her all the Rez’s secrets. I should be the one driving Zoel in. I’m no one, I don’t matter.”

  “I will be taking her,” Taylor said, her voice hard. “I’m the best pilot here, and I’ve pulled myself out of the inner circle of intelligence for quite some time now, since I come and go so often. Not that it will matter. I won’t get close enough for the Chancellor to use her compulsion on me anyway.”

  Taylor directed her attention back to me. “You stay on coms with Ginni and she can direct you to where Adrien and the Chancellor are in the building. The rest of the team will follow at a distance behind us in an attack transport in case we encounter any difficulties trying to leave. Once the Chancellor is dead, they can move in without risking falling under her compulsion.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work?” pressed the Rez fighter who’d spoken up earlier. “What if the girl is unable to kill the Chancellor? Then we’ll have lost valuable resources and the Chancellor will still have the seer.”

  “That’s the other reason I will be leading this mission,” the General said. “Adrien’s knowledge is too powerful a weapon. Many more will die if he’s allowed to remain the Chancellor’s pawn, so I take the burden on myself. Should Zoel fail, I will bomb the building with Adrien in it.”

  Her words were like a punch to my chest.

  “No!” Sophia screamed. “You can’t!”

  “Restrain her,” Taylor said, her voice steady. Two Rez fighters grabbed Sophia’s arms to hold her back. She kicked and fought against them. “I’m sorry, Sophia, but there is no other choice. We will try to save him if we can. You will remain in lockdown until the mission is finished, one way or the other. Take her away.” The Rez fighters dragged her from the room. My heart was in my throat as her screams echoed from the hallway.

  Taylor turned her flinty gaze toward me, waiting to see if I too would object. But what could I say? If Adrien stayed with the Chancellor, I couldn’t deny that others would certainly die because of the foreknowledge he would be forced to share. I tried to quiet the sudden wave of panic rushing to my head. I was Adrien’s only hope. I must succeed.

  “How do I get in?” I asked with only a slight tremor in my voice.

  Taylor looked back at me. “Any way you can.”

  I nodded and swallowed hard.

  She looked around at the rest of the group. “The second transport team will remain outside the city until the extraction is performed. We leave in two hours.”

  They nodded. Before anyone could ask any more questions, Taylor strode from the room.

  * * *

  I stepped into my dorm room to put on my biosuit. I put my legs in and pulled it up to my waist, consumed with worry about Adrien, when I stopped, startled. Saminsa was sitting on her pallet, back against the wall, watching me.

  “Ginni said you are going to kill the Chancellor,” Saminsa said, her voice quiet. She looked up, her dark eyes piercing. “Is that true?”

  I paused, surprised. I’d barely heard her speak two words strung together since we rescued her during the raid.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m so sorry for everything that was done to you. We should have—”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Oh.” Of all the things that might have come out of her mouth at the moment, that was the last thing I would have expected.

  “Jilia flushed the meds from my system. I could be an asset. I’m coming with you.”

  I paused, confused. “But why would you help us?”

  “I don’t care about helping you. I want my revenge.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, but then continued. “Do you remember how it went silent when you attacked?”

  I nodded.

  “His name was Din.” She closed her eyes as if remembering. “In the part of the Sector where I lived, we stopped school at twelve and went to work in the factories. The machines were so loud. But then the Chancellor found me out and I met Din. For the first time in my life, I had quiet.” She smiled a little, even though it looked like the memory brought her pain. “Being around him was so peaceful.

  “Bright promised that if we helped her kill you we could be free.” She shook her head. “It was my fault. I’m the one who spotted you and sent the com that triggered the explosives. I should have realized she considered us expendable. I thought his death was my fault for a long time. But then I realized that I may have pushed the button, but she’s the one who killed him.” Her voice broke, but she gritted her teeth.

  She looked up at me, her eyes hard. “I want the Chancellor dead. If you’re the person who can make that happen, I want to go with you.”

  I hesitated. She could be lying. But then I looked at the fierceness in her face. I believed her. And Adrien had had a vision about her—that was why we’d brought her back with us from the raid in the first place. She ma
y have some part yet to play in all this. I looked at the clock on the wall. “We leave in a little over an hour. Go find Tyryn, he’ll tell you what to do.”

  Chapter 27

  I PULLED ON THE TOP half of my suit, alone for the first time since the insanity of the past few hours had begun. I checked to make sure a fresh epi infuser was safely tucked in the pocket at my thigh, then tugged the thin blue sleeves over my arms. But before I could put my helmet on and fasten the suit closed, it all hit me. Adrien was gone. He had been captured all this time, and I hadn’t even realized. The thought tore me apart inside. Now I had to face the most dangerous and powerful woman in the Sector, and if I didn’t succeed, the love of my life would be killed.

  I suddenly felt very small. Fear and self-doubt bubbled up. It was ludicrous. We didn’t even have a plan. The Chancellor would know we were coming. I wasn’t strong enough for this. How could I possibly—

  Stop.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and put my hands to my temples, as if I could physically force all the stray thoughts out of my head. I needed to empty my mind. I needed to focus. But the fear kept crowding back in.

  I am that, I repeated desperately to myself, trying to find my center. I am that. But they were just words without meaning.

  Then Max’s face popped into my head, and with it a swelling tide of rage. I am that. I visualized the billowing red rage and clung to it. Fear had no place here. The buzzing rose to a squealing pitch in my ears. I opened my eyes, awash with the power humming underneath my skin.

  I pulled the helmet and face mask over my head, fastened everything in place, and headed toward the transport bay. It was time.

  * * *

  There was no moon, only the soft sifting of stars as we flew through the night sky. I looked up at Taylor’s face in the rearview mirror. “I understand why it couldn’t be Adrien’s mom, but why not let someone else take me?”

  “It had to be me.”

  I paused a moment. “Adrien told you. He had a vision about this.” It wasn’t a question. Another thought struck. “Did he know he was going to get captured?”

  Taylor was silent a moment before answering. “Yes, he knew he would be captured, but he didn’t know when.”

  I almost jumped out of my seat. “Then how could you have let him go on the raid?”

  “He didn’t tell me.” Her voice was calm and even. “He’d been keeping a vision journal full of everything he saw and his theories about how things might connect. It was an elaborate, spiderwebbed map. I found it when we returned from the raid. I forbade him from leaving the Foundation after that.” In the mirror, I saw her frown. “Of course, it was already too late by then. I was talking to Maximin without knowing it.”

  I sat back, feeling baffled and angry at Adrien. I thought about when he’d taken me to watch the sunset before the raid. He’d talked about how precious time was, but I hadn’t realized it was because he knew his was running out. “Why did he go? Why would he do that if he knew he’d be captured?”

  She pursed her lips. “He didn’t know when it would happen, and he insisted on going on the raid. He said it had to do with protecting the causality chain. Along with the vision journal, he had endless scribbled notes about research into temporal paradoxes and causality links.”

  “Causality? What does that even mean?”

  She looked away. “He said he needed to make sure certain visions were fulfilled in order for others to come true.”

  I sat back in my seat. “If he needed to protect a vision and make it come true, it meant he believed they could still be altered,” I said, stunned. After all Adrien’s concern and doubt and despair about his visions, he’d still held on to hope. He’d still believed he could make a difference.

  “Do you think they can be changed?” I asked.

  “I sure as hell want to.” Her grip on the control stick tightened. “But still, here I am, driving straight toward my fate anyway.”

  I let out a small gasp as another realization smacked me like a club to the face. All this time, I’d thought the vision Adrien had told the General—the one that had made her desperate—was about some mission or the future of the Rez. But it was suddenly clear that it was much more personal than that.

  “Did he tell you—” I stopped, clutching the seat rest and bracing myself for the question I had to ask. “Does something happen to you on this mission?”

  Her silence was answer enough.

  “We have to go back. Find another way.” My words tumbled over one another. “We can stop his vision from coming true. Maybe if someone else takes me it won’t turn out the same—”

  “I’m no coward,” Taylor cut me off sharply. “Besides, I might not know how the causality chain works, but it’s clear it’s too important to disrupt.” Her tone shifted, urgent. “I need you to do something for me. Should we fail to take down the Chancellor, there is an operation in motion that must continue. It’s called Operation Kill Switch, and—”

  “You mean the nuclear bomb you were going to use to create an EMP.”

  “You’ve seen the plans, then.” She nodded, her voice only carrying a small note of surprise. “Good. That makes this simpler.”

  “But I’m not going to help you.”

  She let out a quick angry breath. “We have the means of ending this war forever, and you’re saying no? Millions of lives could be saved. Civilization could be restored. This is the difference I am meant to make with my life.

  “You’re young. You still believe that if you just try hard enough, you can do good in the world without ever having to get your hands dirty. You have to promise me that when you’re a leader you’ll do what needs to be done.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror with a burning intensity.

  I swallowed. “I promise to do what I think is right.”

  Her mouth turned down at the edges, but she finally nodded. “I suppose in the end that’s all any of us can ever do.”

  “We can still turn back, General.” I leaned forward. “Adrien didn’t try to change his fate, he just walked right into it. You can’t do the same thing.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t know if I believe in destiny, but I do believe that we must win this war if there is to be any hope for humanity. And I won’t hide from a fight or let someone else die the death that was meant for me. Battles are fought every day with the knowledge that it might be our last. And as confident as the Chancellor might be, I guarantee she will be underestimating me. Because there is nothing more dangerous than a soldier who knows they have nothing left to lose.”

  Chapter 28

  I WATCHED THE OUTLINE of the city come into view. Tall skinny buildings were stacked beside one another like a cluster of claws reaching into the sky. Taylor didn’t say anything more.

  “How are we going to get close without detection?” I asked.

  “We’re cloaked from their digital image scans. We just have to hope we’re not spotted by the patrols.”

  She flew straight into the heart of the city and landed on the roof of a midsized building. I closed my eyes, letting my telek sense spread out. There was no movement below, and no army of Regs coming at us.

  Yet.

  I clicked my wrist coms. “Ginni, what is the Chancellor’s position?”

  “She hasn’t moved at all. Adrien either. It looks like they’re in adjoining rooms.”

  I met Taylor’s frowning eyes in the mirror.

  “Maybe you were right,” I said to her. “Maybe she is underestimating us,… or we haven’t sprung the trap yet.”

  I jumped over the side of the duo and hurried across the rooftop. The wind rushed against my suit. I spared a glance outward at the cityscape and felt dizzy. It was so high up, higher off the ground than I’d ever been in my life outside of being in a transport. I tried to watch only the concrete ground in front of me. I came to the door in the corner and, without wasting any time, cast out my telek and made the door open sideways in its tracks.

  I hurried down a stairca
se, and after a few more doors, I was out on the skywalk. The entire thing was made of glass, even the floor. The hundred-story drop spread out beneath my feet, but I barely glanced at it. I focused entirely on the building in front of me.

  I was close enough now that I could feel past the walls of the building. Ginni said Adrien and the Chancellor were on the twenty-third floor. If I could disable the Chancellor before I even got into the building …

  I tried to scan the floors, but quickly lost count. It appeared to be a housing unit of some kind. All the floors were laid out the same, and I could only push down about ten floors before my control started getting fuzzy around the edges. I could feel the prone shapes of people sleeping in each unit. None of them had the bulk of a Reg. I had no idea if they were soldiers or civilians or other glitchers, but there was no way I’d be able to locate the Chancellor among them. I could accidentally kill an innocent person. As much as I wanted Adrien back, I wasn’t willing to go that far. I’d just have to get closer.

  I pushed aside the door at the other end of the skywalk. No Regs. I wasn’t sure if I should feel lucky. My uneasiness grew as I crept forward. All I could do was keep my telek on call and try to detect any traps before the snare clapped shut.

  The door opened to a long white hallway. The lights were dim, probably still on nighttime settings. I jogged toward the elevator, all senses alert. Still no one was coming.

  I frowned, but waved the card the dark-haired techer boy had given me in front of the elevator sensor. A few moments later, the door pinged open.

  The cylindrical elevator pod felt extra small as I pushed the button for the twenty-third floor and waited as I dropped. I had the strangest sensation I was a mouse in a trap. I shook my head. Not hitting any resistance was just making me paranoid. Maybe by some miracle Adrien hadn’t had a vision of me coming.

  The elevator slowed and came to a halt. Before the door opened, I’d already closed my eyes, feeling out into the hallway beyond.

  The hallway itself was clear, but I could sense something strange about the ceiling, like the edges didn’t quite match. I pushed farther in and felt several gun barrels embedded behind the ceiling tiles. My heartbeat ratcheted up a notch, and I crumpled the guns in on themselves until they were mangled bundles of useless steel.