Shutdown

by Heather Anastasiu

  We were trapped in the dark underneath a mountain, with murderous machine men headed straight toward us. And I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

  I tried not to think of the Regs coming down the tunnel behind us. I tried not to think about the fact that, back in the compound behind us, Adrien’s mother was probably dead. Too many things not to think about, and that wasn’t including the collapsed tunnel in front of us. My body started to tremble.

  Stop. Focus. I squeezed my eyes shut for one long second and took several deep breaths. First one thing and then another.

  I needed to clear the tunnel. With my eyes still closed, I lifted an arm to move the largest chunks of rock and steel to the sides of the tunnel. The rocks scraped against each other as I moved them and the steel beams screeched.

  I could already feel the rest of the mountain threatening to crash in from the weak spot above. Dirt sifted down, so I held up my other arm and kept the rest of the rock back. Sweat began to bead on my forehead. Splitting my focus on two objects was one thing, but holding this much mass back while also keeping my mast cells in check was far more taxing.

  I looked at the small hole I’d made and realized there was no way I’d be able to get the pod through. Even if I cleared enough of the fallen rock out of the way, the walls were too close. Wherever I moved the pieces of rock, they’d only cause another obstruction.

  Adrien finally spoke up. “We should fly out of the mountain.”

  “We can’t.” I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I couldn’t help how sharply my words came out. “The tunnel’s too tight. The pod isn’t flying anywhere. And we’re still at least fifteen miles from the Surface.”

  He just stared straight at me, his translucent gray eyes uncanny in the dim light. “We should fly out.”

  “I can’t fly!” I said. He was obviously still not able to think straight.

  “Why not?” he asked. “You just made me fly out of the pod.”

  I was about to respond back that he was being ludicrous, that of course I hadn’t made him fly. I was simply using my telek to make him occupy another space where gravity didn’t matter and—

  Oh.

  Right. Wow. I blinked in surprise.

  I’d only ever lifted other objects. I’d never really thought about lifting myself. A distant repetitive thunking noise echoed down the long tunnel behind us. It must be the Regs. They were gaining on us.

  I raised Adrien up behind me and tugged him forward on an invisible leash. He floated along until we were well past the rubble. I released my hold on the ceiling, and more rock crumbled in and sealed off the tunnel behind us. It wouldn’t keep the Regs back for long, but it might help.

  “Now,” Adrien said. “Fly.”

  The absurdity of what he was asking struck me all over again. I couldn’t fly. But I also realized I didn’t have any choice except to try. I’d never be able to outrun the Regs on foot.

  I closed my eyes and let the telek buzz in my ears until it was a steady drone, then I pulled out of myself and felt the shape of my own body in the tunnel. It was such a small thing to lift myself off the ground. Easy, even.

  What I hadn’t expected was the disorientation. I tried to steady myself with my feet, but there was nothing but air. I lost focus and plummeted back the two feet to the ground, landing unceremoniously on my backside.

  Adrien laughed, then stopped, looking as surprised at the sound as I felt. I stared a moment longer than I should have. Had I imagined the sound of his laugh? It had sounded so normal, so Adrien. Which was doubly absurd considering our position.

  I closed my eyes again and lifted my body off the ground. I tried to focus only on the projection cube in my mind. Tried to ignore the rest of my senses that were screaming Oh-shunting-hell-I’m-not-touching-the-ground!

  I took Adrien’s hand, as if holding on to another floating object would make the fact that I was floating seem less bizarre. It didn’t.

  “We should accelerate,” Adrien said, looking down at our connected hands with an expression I couldn’t read.

  “Right,” I said. Accelerate. Just like that.

  More noise sounded behind us in the distance. Watching the ground, even in such dim light, would only get me cracked. If I was going to do this, I had to rely only on my telek sense alone. I closed my eyes and propelled us forward again. I tried not to think about the air brushing against my face or the smell of the dusty rock surrounding us. Weight didn’t matter. Objects occupying space, that’s all we were.

  I visualized the long skinny tunnel and us as a tiny object zooming through it.

  I felt out the curves of the tunnel far before we came to them. After a few minutes, the terror that I might accidently fly us full speed into a wall dimmed. The tunnel around us was just like those old virtual exercises they used to train us with in nanobio-engineering. We’d put on the goggles and then zoom past minuscule cell walls as if they were huge hallways. I could do the same here. Accelerate, adjust left, slight right. The only difference was here I could feel my hair blowing backward with our speed.

  I kept my telek projected down the entire tunnel, and we were quickly approaching the end. The sudden vastness of the open air beyond the tunnel almost choked me as we got near. I could navigate the slim contours of the narrow walls with a fair amount of precision, but how could I even begin to wrap my head around that much awful open space? The Surface and the sky were still the stuff of nightmares to me.

  I slowed us down as we came to the lip of the tunnel. I dropped us to our feet again in front of the tree- and brush-covered entrance. The rock that had been hewn in a perfect circle now grew wider, with more natural jagged edges as it opened to the Surface.

  If we’d still been in the escape pod, we would have burst through the slight barrier of tree branches and scrub brush that covered the entrance with little problem. Then the propulsion thrusters would have kicked in as it turned from a launch pod into a regular air transport.

  As it was, we had to make our way through the thick brush and brambles, earning several scratches for the effort. Finally we reached a small ledge overlooking the mountains. The smell of sharp pine filled my nose. I could feel my mast cells threatening to kick into overdrive with the amount of allergens suddenly being introduced to my body. I ground my teeth together to keep them all in check.

  Adrien seemed to have gained more strength back. He’d opened his pack and pulled out a new pair of pants and tunic. Two pairs of clothes came standard in each pack, along with other basic supplies like food, blankets, lamps, and coolant harnesses to avoid Infrared Sat Cams when traveling at night. As I watched, he pulled his gel-soaked top off over his head. He reached for his pants next.

  I spun around so that my back was to him. “What are you doing? We’ve got to get going.”

  “I don’t like the feel of the gel.”

  “There are more important things to be focusing on right now!” Like the fact that his mother was probably lying dead in the Med Center all those miles behind us. Did it mean anything to him?

  “Maybe we can contact one of the other escape pods,” I said, trying to push away all my worries about those who hadn’t been able to make it out. All I could do now was problem-solve what came next. “See if one of the other groups can come pick us up?”

  “I thought about that, but we can’t talk to them.” Adrien held up the external com that was tucked in the side of the rations pack. He held it out toward me.

  On the readout, it said ERROR 8. I looked up at him. We knew what that meant: the channel wasn’t clear. It must have been compromised. If we tried to use it, the enemy could trace it back to us and we’d be cracked.

  I looked out into the landscape. “What do we do now?” There was a slightly hysterical note in my voice, but I couldn’t help it.

  Adrien didn’t answer me. He just clicked the com unit apart until the inside was exposed and flipped a switch. The device started smoking in his hand and he dropped it. It was the protocol, I knew. But
as I watched our only way of communicating with the rest of the Rez go up in smoke, my heart dropped. Only a week ago I’d believed we’d be able to take down the Community, and now here we were with no home, fleeing for our lives.

  “We head to the rendezvous site,” he said. “You know the destination, right?”

  I nodded. Each pod leader had memorized the location.

  I looked out again at the landscape. It was beautiful, but I didn’t see the beauty. I just saw terrain to be crossed. Satellite cameras were so developed these days they could make out your fingerprints if your palms happened to be faced up. Just because no one was around didn’t mean no one was watching.

  “We’ll have to stay under the tree cover,” I said.

  “Then fly us under the tree cover.”

  “I can’t just—” I sputtered.

  He interrupted me. “Why not? It’s the only way we can move without leaving tracks.” His face was calm, like all this was just another math theorem he could methodically problem-solve his way through.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sense outward with my telek. Immediately I felt the open space above us, the lack of contour. My heartbeat sped up at the very thought of all that space, so I directed my attention back toward the land. But that was almost as overwhelming.

  There were so many trees, bushes, leaves, and branches swaying in the wind. Birds even, and a hundred other things I couldn’t identify. Usually I captured the space in my mental projection cube before I tried to move objects, but there was simply too much moving around me. If this was going to work, I was going to have to change my method and abandon the level of control I was used to. I swallowed hard at the thought.

  A banging noise echoed down the tunnel behind us. Had the Regs already made it to the collapsed portion? That meant they were moving faster than I thought.

  Adrien looked back with me and frowned. “It doesn’t seem wise to stay here.”

  “I know, I know,” I muttered, pacing as I tried to figure out what to do.

  “So fly us out of here. I bet you could move us fast. Maybe as fast as a transport if you tried.”

  “And which direction would we go? I have no cracking idea where we even are!” I rubbed my forehead. “I know where the rendezvous site is, but have no idea where we’re starting from. That techer boy’s power made it so I never knew.”

  “Then how was anyone going to find their way there?”

  “The pods had programmed coordinates for satellite sites that would be recognizable. From there we would all switch vehicles and go to the memorized rendezvous point. We never anticipated one of the pods not making it out of the mountain in the first place!”

  “I can find out where we are,” Adrien said.

  I looked up at him in surprise. He’d pulled a long rectangular box out of the pack, then clicked it open. A row of tiny chips was secured inside. “Standard in every rations pack.”

  “Can we use one as another com?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, I bet all com channels are cracked,” he said. “But this one,” he pulled out the fingernail-sized chip and inserted it into the slot on his arm panel, “is a maps application. Now that the techer is gone and his power isn’t affecting me, I should be able to read it just fine and see where we are. Then I can help you navigate as you fly. Where’s the rendezvous site?”

  “It’s right outside New Presinal. It’s a big trade city.”

  He tapped through a few screens, then looked out at the horizon and pointed. “We head north. That way.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “Four hundred miles,” he said calmly.

  “Four hundred miles!” I grabbed his forearm to see the map better. Willing it to show something different.

  “We’re in Sector Five now,” he said, “and we’ll have to get back to Six.”

  I stared at him, shocked. This whole time, the Foundation had been in a different country and I’d never even known. Meanwhile Adrien was staying so calm I wanted to scream. “Don’t you see the one little problem with that?” I threw my hands up in frustration. “It’s four hundred miles away, and we don’t have a vehicle.”

  He watched me, unmoved. “But we have you, and you can fly.”

  Chapter 10

  I TOOK HIS ARM, CLOSING my eyes as I projected my telek outward again to get a better sense of the landscape. There were just so many trees, and they all felt identical. I didn’t know how to differentiate one from another, much less how to find and hold a clear path through them.

  Not to mention, I was already exhausted from everything that had happened and by the focus it took to constantly keep the allergies at bay. It hadn’t been this hard when Max and I had been with the Uppers at Central City. The city had been on the Surface and didn’t have a tight air-filtration system or anything. But we’d been inside at least, out of the sunlight. Right now, the assaulting allergens were overwhelming. I’d just have to concentrate that much harder.

  I lifted us up a few inches off the ground. We dipped in the air and I held out my hands to steady myself—which was ridiculous because there was nothing to actually brace myself against, only air. It felt just as unnatural as earlier when I’d done it in the tunnel, but worse now without the comforting confines of walls surrounding us.

  I flew us into the forest, side by side, with our feet inches above the ground. Fallen brown needles carpeted the forest floor. The trees themselves were tall and spindly—so different from the last forest I’d been in where the tree trunks were thicker than I was tall. These trees weren’t wide, but about five feet up thousands of tiny needle-laden branches sprouted from the trunks. They swayed in the wind like they were dancing. The wind itself felt unnatural against my skin, like a giant was blowing a cold breath over me.

  “Ow!” Adrien said, and I paused, looking over at him. I’d run him straight into a row of scratchy branches. Brown needles rained to the ground where he’d smacked into them.

  “Sorry!” I said, losing concentration. Both of us dropped out of the air. I landed on my feet, but Adrien fell on his backside. “Sorry again!”

  He didn’t say anything, just frowned as he stood up and brushed the pine needles off his shoulders. As bad as I felt for running him into a tree, it was nice to see anything other than his normally monotonous expression of calm.

  “There’s just so much to concentrate on,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you’re breaking branches everywhere,” he said. “Any tracking bot could find you from a mile away like this.”

  “Well, what do you suggest?” Irrational anger surged through me. I felt like shoving him in the chest. I felt like screaming at him. I felt like curling into a ball and pulling my tunic over my head to shut out the world.

  It was myself I really wanted to scream at. How many people were lying broken or dead back at the Foundation? All because of me. I was familiar enough with failure, but never on such a colossal scale. It was my worst nightmare made real.

  I closed my eyes and put my hands on my head with my elbows together in front of my face to create a small cocoon to block out the world so I could try to calm down. None of this was Adrien’s fault. And he was right, of course. They’d be tracking us. The Regs would have reported about the tunnel already. We didn’t have time for me to behave like an irate little kid.

  I dropped my arms. “Maybe we should, I don’t know, hold hands?”

  He paused a moment as if considering. “It’ll be easier if you’re only moving one object instead of two, right?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. He just stepped behind me, his chest to my back, and looped his arms around my waist. I stiffened at the touch, feeling a burst of too many emotions to count. I hadn’t been this close to him since …

  I shook off the thought. Steel, I thought to myself, I will be steel. I put my arms through my rations pack. Instead of slinging it over my back, I kept it on my front like a pouch. The truth was Adrien’s touch, even if it meant nothing to him, made me feel better. More confident,
like I wasn’t alone, and I needed every bit of strength, wherever I could draw it from.

  I closed my eyes and let the projection cube expand in my mind. Gently, I lifted us off the ground again. Adrien was right. It was easier not having to worry about the surface area of two separate individuals. But the pressure of him against my back was distracting.

  As I flew us forward, navigating around the branches, Adrien reached up several times to tug at my hair. His fingers tickled my neck and I only narrowly missed flying us into a tree trunk.

  “What are you doing?” I snapped.

  “Your hair keeps getting in my face,” he said.

  I grabbed for the tie I always kept around my wrist and tried to reach back to tie my hair up, which was awkward since I was flying with Adrien basically hanging off my back. Not to mention I continued being distracted by the awareness of every inch of his body where it made contact with mine.

  “Maybe we should fly with our bodies horizontal to the ground,” Adrien said after a few more minutes. “We would move faster.”

  I bit down on my cheek hard to keep myself from snapping at him again. I was having a difficult enough time keeping us moving forward without him distracting me every other minute.

  “It’s just that it would be far more aerodynamic and—”

  A metallic grinding noise echoed from behind us in the forest. I swiveled my head around to look. “What was that?” I whispered.

  “Maybe they got past the blockage.”

  My eyes widened, and then I closed them back tight again, pouring all of my energy into my telek sense. I tipped us forward until we were horizontal with the ground. I had to admit, we were smacking into fewer tree branches this way, and we were able to move faster.

  Flying entailed a strange balance of calculating carefully where we were aiming and ignoring the inner stream of logic screaming that flying at all should be impossible. For a few moments here and there I was able to find the equilibrium where I kept us moving forward instinctually rather than intellectually. Dip, adjust to the left, avoid the split branch hanging down. I kept my telek focused spatially forward and down. If I let myself think about the unending expanse of sky above the trees or the Regulators on our heels, I wouldn’t be able to keep it up.