Shutdown

by Heather Anastasiu

  “Where are we on getting another rations shipment?” I asked as I sat down. Henk had been laughing with Jilia as I’d approached, but now he glowered.

  “It’s a right trick tryin’ to get anything past those sneaky bastards, but I think I got a line on a possible supplier. It’s all black market, but I think I can cut a deal with a ganger boss. Sylv was always fresh on me; I think I can charm her into working a deal.”

  “Is she a Rez agent?” I asked.

  “Nah, but she’s got no great love for Comm Corp.”

  Community Corp was the global conglomerate that had begun implanting V-chips in people hundreds of years ago. Almost everyone who’d escaped their control or lived on the fringes hated them.

  I frowned. “But can we trust her not to rat us out to the Uppers?”

  Henk shrugged. “For the right price, we could persuade her to at least think twice about it.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound safe.”

  “Money we got,” Henk said, “at least for the moment. But food, we don’t.”

  “How much longer will the supplies we do have last?” I asked.

  Jilia leaned in, her voice little higher than a whisper. “Another two weeks, maximum.” We’d all agreed to keep the situation of our diminishing supplies quiet. Refugees outnumbered Rez fighters two to one now. At night almost every spare inch of floor was taken up with sleeping bags. And that was just with the people we’d been able to accommodate. The latest group that had come in was the last we could take, at least until we figured out the supplies situation. The last thing we needed was a riot within the Foundation when people who’d come here for refuge realized we might not be able to feed them.

  I stared at Jilia, feeling my mouth dry up. “What about the other Rez outposts? Do they have any food they could spare?”

  Henk shook his head. “They’re just as strapped as us. Most are worse off.”

  “Then I guess we’d take our chances with the ganger boss,” I said. “But take Beka with you when you go to meet with the woman. At least she’ll be able to tell if Sylv is lying.” I hated making these decisions. I hated that if I was wrong, people might die. Beka, whose glitcher Gift made her a human lie detector, was a sweet girl. Sending her out into such a precarious situation …

  Henk nodded. “I’ll head out tomorrow.”

  Jilia took a small quick breath in, then reached over as if she was going to take Henk’s hand, but stopped herself and pulled her hand back.

  “Aw, doc,” Henk gave her his characteristic side grin, “you worried about me?”

  Jilia tilted her head, smiling with false sweetness. “Why would I worry? Just because a man who can’t manage to eat peas without spilling half of them on the table is heading off as our one lifeline to more supplies?”

  He grinned back at her and I had to look away. Whenever they bantered like this, all I felt was a yawning emptiness that cut as quick as a knife. Adrien and I used to look at each other like that. I shoveled down the rest of my food.

  “I’ll see you in training,” I said to Jilia. She nodded, a look of concern on her face as she watched me stand. I’d debriefed them all about the failed mission the day after I got back. She’d tried to talk to me about it several times since then, asking me how I was feeling about it all. If there was one thing I wanted to talk about even less than our dwindling supplies, it was about my feelings.

  I hurried away before she could ask me anything and headed to the Gifted Training room to get a jump start on my meditation time. Meditation was all about emptying your mind. With all the thoughts, responsibilities, and guilt swirling around my head the rest of the time, it was the one place I occasionally managed to find a few moments of peace.

  But no matter how much I tried to let go of my worries, today I couldn’t find any relief. Everyone else filed in. Juan began to play his cello. His Gift of manipulating emotion through music often helped push me over the edge into an iridescent blanket of peace. But even though the lull of the music calmed me, thoughts still managed to pierce through: what if Henk wasn’t able to make contact with Sylv, or if it turned out that she was double-crossing us from the start? Henk and Beka could be killed or captured. And Adrien—

  I was glad when Jilia rang the bell and everyone opened their eyes.

  “Today we’ll continue with sparring against each other, especially against the mind-workers,” Jilia said. “We know the Chancellor is gathering more glitchers every day, and many of those glitchers will have mind-working skills. They can make you see things that aren’t there, make you feel things you don’t actually feel. More than the external powers like City’s electricity or Saminsa’s orbs,” she glanced at the two girls, “these are the powers that are the most difficult to defend against. They are the attacks you won’t be able to see coming. But what have we learned over the past two months since we’ve been training with the help of our own mind-workers?”

  “That if you know what to look for, you can feel them in your head,” Ginni said.

  Jilia nodded. “Exactly. This is our most important defense.”

  City scoffed. “But it only gives us like a ten-second lead time. None of us have managed to actually stop the attack, even when we realize it’s coming.”

  “As I mentioned before, we’ve only been trying for two months.” Jilia’s voice was patient. “But we know it’s possible to throw off a mind-worker because it has been accomplished before, albeit under extreme circumstances.”

  I swallowed. She was talking about Adrien. He’d somehow found a way to break the Chancellor’s compulsion power over him because his love for me was so strong. When she’d compelled him to tell her a vision that gave her the blueprints to kill me, his mind had somehow managed to repel her compulsion. That was when she’d started in on the surgical options.

  “What was accomplished under duress we hope to duplicate through continued practice,” Jilia said. Adrien hadn’t been able to tell us how he’d done it, but the simple fact that he had managed it at all inspired Jilia to begin this new training regime. “So now let us pair up. Shaun, you’ll spar with City.”

  City kicked at the ground. “If I wanted to take a nap, I could have just skipped class and gone to my bunk.”

  Shaun was a recently acquired addition who’d come in with a group of refugees a few months ago. His glitcher power was to put people to sleep. With one touch of his mind, you were unconscious within seconds.

  But Shaun was approaching City with an equal wariness. She’d become adept at gauging her electricity just to stun a person. Even though Jilia had repeatedly told us not to attack back with our powers, since the point of the exercise was to learn to recognize and hopefully withstand the mind-worker’s power, several of City’s last sparing partners had ended up on the floor anyway.

  “Ginni will be paired with…” Jilia paused, looking momentarily confused.

  “Simin,” a dark-haired boy in the corner said, looking only mildly annoyed. “My name’s Simin. I’m the one who makes you forget.”

  “But I’m starting to remember you,” Ginni piped up. “I watch the video of you explaining it every morning and sometimes I even remember you until lunch!”

  It didn’t sound like much to me, but Simin beamed at her. I was struck by how lonely it must be to be him. Unlike most of us, his Gift was involuntary and constantly active, even in his sleep.

  Jilia went on to pair up the others. Everyone let out a grumble when Rand got paired with Amara, who could make you feel euphoric. Of all the mind-workers, hers was the only Gift that was actually pleasant to be attacked with.

  “And Zoe, you’ll be paired with Max.”

  I glared at him, but nodded curtly. It was a good idea to pair with Max, I knew that. After all, if he managed to override the anklet and tried to disappear and escape, I was the only one who could sense him with my telek to track him down before he got far. Though I didn’t think he’d be that stupid, not with the kill chip now installed at the base of h
is brain.

  “Remember what I’ve told you to practice. Visualize your mind like a house. First seal up the windows, then the door, then any cracks you find. Make your mind into a fortress and focus only on its walls. When you feel the tug of an intrusion, put up another wall.”

  We all nodded, but it was far easier said than done.

  “Hey,” Max said, coming up to me as all the groups paired off around the room.

  I put myself in a relaxed but alert stance. “Attack,” I said.

  “Zoe, wait, can’t we talk at least a little about—”

  “Attack!” I said through gritted teeth. “Or I’ll slam you against a wall.”

  He hung his head, and all I wanted to do was slug him. But he didn’t say anything else, he just got into a similar stance as me and closed his eyes.

  I set my jaw and tried to put up the mental walls Jilia described. I could feel the telltale intrusion of his power on my mind only seconds before he disappeared from sight. This was another reason why I paired with him—he was the best. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on how the intrusion felt. Over the past several months, I’d begun recognizing the signs. There was a very slight pressure right behind my forehead and very occasionally I’d feel a gentle tugging pulse on my own thoughts.

  I kept my telek raised the whole time. I always felt more secure when I had a concrete sense of my attacker in front of me. I concentrated on letting my mind expand as I tried to push out the intrusion and fortify my walls.

  But then, for a startling second, Max disappeared from my telek-sense as well. My eyes flew open and I reached out to grab hold of where his forearm should be. My hand gripped solid flesh and my telek latched on to him again.

  “What?” Max asked, becoming visible to my eyes.

  “What did you just do?”

  He looked at me steadily. “I didn’t do anything, Zoe.”

  I stared hard at him another long moment. You’d think after all this time I’d be able to recognize for sure when he was lying. I thought about sending a com to Beka to have her come question him, but she was off preparing for her mission with Henk. I shook my head. I was probably being paranoid. I’d been concentrating so hard on trying to push him out, I must have let go of control on my telek for a moment.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Again.”

  * * *

  I sat with my friends at dinner and tried to lose myself in their easy banter. But mostly I just sat silently watching them all, like an observer watching lab specimens through a window. It’s how I felt a lot these days, like there was a sheet of glass between me and the rest of the world. After dinner, when we were rising to empty our trays, several of the refugees asked Cole to speak.

  Cole nodded and moved to the front of the room.

  Shunt, I’d forgotten it was Monday. I looked for a way I might exit quietly before anyone noticed. I’d heard about Cole’s impromptu Monday night talks, but I’d always managed to be absent from them. Tonight Ginni tugged on my arm so I was forced back down beside her.

  Cole remained standing while the rest of the room quieted. He took several moments, as if gathering his thoughts.

  “Though so many of us were drones,” he finally began, “we’ve been freed. We’re learning how to become human again. But we can’t reclaim the lost years. We can’t have our childhoods back, and,” he looked down, his eyes heavy, “we can’t undo the acts we performed when under the control of the hardware in our brains.”

  He looked back up. “It’s not our fault. That’s what I tell myself every morning. It wasn’t my fault. But the thing is, I still have the memories of the things these hands did.” He raised his metal reinforced palms. “I remember what it felt like to squeeze the life out of a man. I can still hear the screams of a woman as I hauled her off to an interrogation cell.”

  I found myself leaning in, interested in spite of myself.

  “But what’s surprised me most, in talking with so many of you here, is that this experience isn’t something unique to just former Regulators.” His eyes swept across the gathered crowd. “Even those of you who were never drones. I’ve heard your stories about the things you’ve had to do to survive. About the acts of desperation that hunger can drive a person to. About the ones you had to leave behind in order to save yourselves. So many of us bear a heavy guilt deep down in the marrow of our bones. It’s what this world they created has made us—they would crush us until we all cease to be men.”

  I had to look away from him. My heart beat erratically in my chest. I knew the kind of guilt he spoke of. I dealt with it just fine. By ignoring it. Him speaking about the dark thing I kept buried in the corners of my soul made me squirm in my chair. I looked up again at the exit.

  “So how then are we redeemed?” Cole’s voice was passionate as he asked the question. His eyes seemed to zero in on me, as if he could somehow sense I wanted to flee. “How are we made human again, if our humanity has been stripped from us one way or another? How do we turn steel—whether fused to the body,” he raised up his gleaming metal forearm, “or to the soul—back into flesh?”

  He paced back and forth at the front of the room. “It’s the question that’s driven me to look for answers wherever I could find them. There’s this one text I like. When speaking to a people who had lost their way, much like we have in our world today, God says he will give them new hearts. He says he will put a new spirit in them, that he will take away their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh instead.

  “I wept when I read it.” He paused and his voice grew soft, his eyebrows bunched together. So much emotion was on his face, it almost hurt to look at. “When I first was freed, I wanted the doctor to cut all the metal out of my body, even if it would leave me weakened and deformed.”

  My mouth dropped open a little. I hadn’t known that.

  “But God says, ‘I will take away their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh.’ It helped me realize that the metal in my body can’t touch my heart. I could be made a man again, and the process was less about my metal exoskeleton and more about the choices I make and whether or not I will live a life full of compassion and mercy.

  “But it means that we have to believe that forgiveness is still possible even if those we committed crimes against will not forgive us. It means that what matters most is how we live now. It’s what redemption is all about.”

  I shifted uncomfortably again in my seat.

  Cole planted his feet in the center of the room and raised his arms as he spoke. “If we can learn to love one another and lift each other up, then we will not fall, no matter the assault the enemy might bring.” His voice was booming now. “We are human now, our hearts are flesh, I declare it! And by our strong will and by God’s grace, we will not allow them to harden back into stone!”

  A cry of agreement went up from the crowd. They surged to their feet, as swept up by his words as I had been. I looked at their faces, the tears running down cheeks, the looks of joy in their gleaming eyes. So many of us were longing for the forgiveness Cole promised was possible.

  “Let’s pray,” Cole said, and the crowd quieted, but didn’t sit back down. One voice spoke out in prayer, and when they finished, another rose and then another. Most people closed their eyes as they spoke. I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore. I left my tray and got to my feet, slowly inching my way through the suffocating crowd until I reached the hallway. When I got to the hall, I started running. I ran all the way back to my dorm, and when inside, I bent to lean my head over my knees and took breath after breath.

  Cole said forgiveness was possible. Redemption. Even for him, and he’d killed while under the control of the Regulators’ programming. Didn’t that mean that I too could be redeemed? Even in spite of calling out to the Regs and getting my older brother killed when I was a child, in spite of so many others who’d gotten hurt or captured because of me? In spite of all that had been done to Adrien?

  I sat on my bed with my knees
drawn up to my chin. Lately it had seemed easier to let myself be stone, but maybe Cole was right. Wasn’t letting ourselves be softened by compassion and mercy at the heart of what we were fighting for in the first place?

  I stared hard at the wall. I didn’t want to be driven by rage or hatred anymore. I wanted a heart of flesh again.

  Xona and Ginni came in a few minutes later. I saw questions in their eyes when they looked at me, probably wondering why I’d left in the middle of the prayers. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, if I even wanted to, so I turned to Ginni instead.

  “Hey, Ginns, can you check on my brother?”

  “Sure.” She smiled brightly. I leaned my head back against the wall of my bunk and closed my eyes. I’d get my weekly reassurance he was okay, and tonight, for once, I’d fall asleep easily.

  But after a few moments, Ginni still hadn’t said anything. My head snapped up. She was frowning, her brow furrowed.

  “Ginni,” I prompted, barely managing to keep my voice steady. “Where is he?”

  She didn’t speak for several more seconds, but then her eyes flew open. My chest went tight with dread.

  Her lips trembled as she said, “He’s with the Chancellor at her personal compound.”

  Chapter 7

  I WAS RUNNING THROUGH THE woods. The sunlight was bright. It made my eyes hurt. We shouldn’t be here. But someone insistently tugged me forward, and I looked down to see a young man’s hand dwarfing mine. I followed the line of his arm up to his body and face. One second it was my older brother Daavd, but the next moment the face shifted slightly to become Markan. He lifted his other hand to his mouth.

  “Shh, Zoe, don’t make a sound.”

  I knew what came next. I knew it like a script I’d spoken too many times: me calling out to the Regulators, them chasing my brother to the ground in front of me, and the betrayed look on his face as he gazed at me in the last moment of his life. All my fault.

  Even as the dream played out, I struggled against it. My child’s mouth opened to call out to the guard. I felt my desire for all the confusing and anomalous things to stop. But then I also felt the horror of it and clamped a hand over my mouth. This was my brother! I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t betray him again!