Shutdown

by Heather Anastasiu

  “Emotionless?” His voice rose an octave. “Then what do you call this?” He threw his hands out wide, then brought them back and hit his chest with his palms. “I’m a human being. I feel anger. You’re just upset because I don’t feel what you consider the right emotions—I don’t feel what you want me to feel. You all walk around ignoring your most basic human instincts.”

  “And what are those?”

  “The instinct to survive!” he yelled. “That woman, sacrificing herself for us? She was a fool. All we have is this life and she just threw it away.”

  “She was your mother—”

  “She should have been trying to save herself!”

  I was shocked and taken aback at all the emotion showing so clearly on his face.

  “Instead she wasted her life for nothing—for a memory of someone who’s not even here anymore. She didn’t love me. She didn’t even know me, and she died for nothing.”

  “Don’t you dare say that,” I said, stepping toe to toe with him. “She died for you. You grew in her body and she birthed you and she’d die for you no matter what you’ve turned into.”

  “She was a fool,” he repeated, his face red. “And I used to be a fool too, back when I thought lumps of flesh had souls.” He threw his hands up in the air. “It’s so obviously the opposite. We are organisms, and like all organisms who are threatened, we adapted to survive. That’s all.”

  He moved to turn away from me again, but I grabbed his arm. “No, that’s not all,” I said, even though once I had thought the same thing. When we’d first met, we’d had this argument backward. I didn’t know now if I’d said it because I actually believed it, or if I’d wanted to believe it. “You always said there was more to it. That we matter. That relationships between even just two human beings—that love—can change the world.”

  He shook his head. “What you call love is the ultimate lie. It means putting someone else’s needs above your own. Which can get you killed. It got Sophia killed.” He paused and looked straight at me with a burning intensity. “And it got me tortured and lobotomized.”

  A lump rose in my throat. All my anger dried up in an instant. I knew what he was saying. It was my fault. Loving me had gotten him tortured within an inch of his life. All that pain and anguish, when it would have been so much easier to relent and give into the Chancellor’s compulsion. He was right. He’d already suffered enough on my account. It would serve me right to be left behind here to die.

  I let go of his arm. “I’m so sorry,” I finally managed to whisper, barely able to find my voice. I knew my apology wasn’t enough, would never be near enough. The chasm of all I owed to him, of all he’d gone through, because of me—

  “Don’t be,” he said. He closed his eyes, and his heaving chest stilled. “It was my own fault for being weak enough to fall in love in the first place. I know better now. You shouldn’t let useless guilt weigh you down either.”

  I stared at him, wanting to pull him close and rest my head on his chest, to listen to his heartbeat. Anything to try to reassure myself that the boy I had loved was still inside the person in front of me somewhere. Instead, I stayed rooted where I stood.

  “Why didn’t you say any of this before?”

  He pinched his lips together before speaking. “You never asked.”

  I took a step toward him involuntarily. “I asked you every day how you were feeling.”

  “Exactly,” he shook his head. “How I was feeling. You asked about emotions. You wanted some evidence so you could pretend I was starting to become him again. You didn’t want to know about the things I was interested in. I tried telling you about my coding projects. I showed you the exciting math theorems I was working on. But you didn’t want to hear it. All you wanted to talk about was love and souls and emotions, or worse,” he grimaced, “memories of the past.”

  “Why is talking about memories a bad thing?” My voice broke and I couldn’t help it. “I was only trying to help you remember who you are.”

  “Who I was,” he corrected. He’d calmed down some, but his eyes were still lit with intensity in the blue light of the lamp. “I’ve been trying to make you see who I am now.”

  I stepped back, stunned. He talked about the old Adrien as if he was gone for good. As if that’s the way he wanted it.

  I stared at him as he organized and restuffed the packs. It was so obvious he was different. I must have been willingly blinding myself not to see it. The way he ordered things into neat rows, everything in its place, when the old Adrien had been messy. How he read complex math texts for fun when my Adrien would have wanted to go look at the sunset or read a book of poems. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to keep trying to pretend he was someone else.

  No, I tried to tell myself. I looked down at the brown crumpled leaves under my feet. He was still sick. That was all. When he got better …

  I squeezed my hands into fists at my sides. I couldn’t think about any of this right now. Right now it was time to push all this emotion under a shadowed stone somewhere deep in my soul and face the situation in front of us. We needed to get to the safe house. That was all.

  Adrien finished closing up his pack. I took a moment to steady my voice. “We should get moving.”

  Chapter 12

  BY LATE AFTERNOON OF THE next day, we still hadn’t hit the border fence between Sectors Five and Six. We’d flown all morning and hadn’t spoken much. All the words that mattered had been slung last night.

  I set us down on the ground. The crunch of our feet on fallen leaves as we walked sounded extraordinarily loud. After a few steps on my weak legs, I barely managed to stay standing. I’d never felt such an allover achy soreness like this before. My shoulder blades felt like they were slicing through my back, and even my eyes felt bruised. It had been over thirty-six hours since I’d last slept.

  The afternoon sun was like a spike in my eyes when I opened them. I immediately backed away into the shadow of a tree and rolled my shoulders to stretch them out. I was beyond exhausted. I’d left exhaustion behind hours ago. I felt like I was about to collapse.

  I slumped to the ground with my back to a tree. We’d both agreed earlier it would be safer to cross the fence at night and figured we should take the opportunity to rest now during the day. Which meant we had a few hours of rest, or at least as much as I could rest without falling asleep.

  Soon it would be over, I reminded myself. We’d get past the border, then into Sector Six. We’d make our way slowly to the rendezvous site. Everyone would be safe and together again. Except for my brother. He was with the Chancellor, under her compulsion. Was she treating him well? If he had a useful enough glitcher Gift, she would, but there was no way to know.

  And then there was everyone who hadn’t been able to make it into the pods. I selfishly hoped my friends had all made it to safety and it was the refugees who’d been left behind. I pushed my palms against my eyes as if I could scrub the horrible thought away. I just needed to get Adrien safely there, get some sleep, and then I’d take off on my own so whoever was left could stay protected.

  Adrien refilled our bottle with water from the stream we’d been following. It had been an easy way to orient myself and make sure I was headed up the mountain so we’d hit the border fence at a deserted area. I’d flown underneath the overhanging branches of the trees along the shore to avoid detection. Without bushes and brambles snagging at us from below, we’d been able to fly faster.

  Adrien handed me the bottle of water and sat down nearby. “I drank at the river, so have as much as you want.”

  He pulled out a protein bar he’d halved earlier and began munching. I took a long swallow of the cold water and let out a sigh of pleasure at how good it tasted.

  He sat on a large rock and looked outward, his elbows on his knees. I followed his gaze.

  We’d come halfway up the nearest mountain. At times it had been so steep we’d almost been flying vertically. We were high enough up that other peaks spread out before u
s, sloping rises stacked against each other in the late-afternoon sun.

  “It’s strange not to see the peaks covered by snow,” he said, looking out. “This one time when Sophia and I spent half a year hiding out in the mountains, the peaks were all covered in white.” A small smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. “She told me the white caps were the mountains’ hats, so they could stay warm all winter.” His smile faltered. “Completely illogical, of course, but at the time it amused me.”

  I stared at him, tracing the lines of his face as if I could memorize what it had looked like when he’d smiled. But as quickly as the smile had come, it was gone again. I looked away from him and pulled my hair out of its tie to run my fingers through it and rebraid it.

  Now that we’d stopped, the noise I’d been hearing in the background for the past few hours suddenly seemed extremely piercing, a high-pitched chirping sound. It wasn’t anything mechanical, I could tell that much. “What is that?”

  “What?”

  “That constant screeching noise.”

  The smile was back. “Cicadas. There’s millions of them out there, all singing to each other. Don’t worry, you’ll get so used to it you won’t even hear it anymore.”

  “You really should get some sleep,” I said, my voice abrupt. Seeing him smile pained me in a strange way. It was more evidence that even though he could feel emotion now, he still felt none for me. “No reason for both of us to be sleep deprived.”

  I ground my back against the rough bark of the tree to keep myself awake. I was so tired, all I wanted to do was close my eyes. A day and a half might not seem like a long time to be awake, but I’d also been using my powers at maximum. That alone without the sleep deprivation would have exhausted me on a normal day.

  I blinked my eyes and forced them open wider. Going to sleep would get me killed. I’d just have to remind myself of that every 0.3 seconds when my eyes started getting heavy again.

  Adrien nodded and laid on his side beside the rock, his arms curled up for a pillow. He closed his eyes without another word.

  After a few more breaths, he was asleep. I watched his rising and falling chest, the way his mouth slackened slightly in sleep, and the long angles of his face in the soft afternoon light. I wanted so badly to curl up beside him and relax against his wiry frame.

  Instead, I took off my outer shirt so I’d feel the cool breeze of the afternoon wind more sharply to keep me from dozing off. At least I didn’t have to worry about another overload like what happened with the earthquake back at the Foundation. It only occurred when I had too much power stored up inside me. I was using it constantly now so that wouldn’t be a problem. I focused my telek senses on the continuous task of keeping my mast cells in check. When even that became a repetitive lull teasing me toward sleep, I paced a path under the tree cover. My steps slowed with each pass.

  I sat down, putting several sharp rocks underneath me so I wouldn’t get comfortable. I tried to think of my training with Jilia. She said people could meditate quietly for hours, even days. I had to think like that. That I was just training my body. I wondered if there was a way to meditate where I could go into a restful state without actually falling asleep. Now probably wasn’t the best time to be experimenting though, considering it could cost me my life.

  I looked at the ferns and shrubs all over the ground, then up at the tree trunks, then finally to the dots of sky visible through the tree tops. The leaves undulated and shook in the wind. There was so much life all around me. And noise, especially the continuous screech of the cicadas and the musiclike trill of what I assumed was a bird—I’d never seen or heard one up close before. Occasionally another bird would respond with a low guttural call that ended in a squawk. It made the hairs on my arms stand up. I wondered what other living things were out there hidden among the trees—I remembered Adrien’s comment about bears and shuddered.

  But eventually, not even my worry about hungry forest animals could keep me awake. It had been easier when we were moving, but sitting still like this, staying awake was becoming impossible. I’d find my eyes slowly closing, only blinking them rapidly before they dropped shut completely. So I tried closing one eye at a time, hoping that would help. Instead, it only made me more aware of how good it would feel to close both my eyes.

  I jumped to my feet to avoid the temptation of letting my eyes fall shut. At this point I don’t think even lying on a bed of nails would keep me awake for long. Nothing was going to really help except actual sleep. I paced again. I just had to keep moving, that was the trick.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been at it, a few hours maybe, when Adrien suddenly cried out.

  I hurried over to him in the dim light of the setting sun. He sat straight up and gasped as if he couldn’t get a breath. An animal-like noise came from his throat.

  I dropped down beside him. “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer. Had something bitten him? An insect or snake? I did a quick survey of his body, examining each limb, then his torso and head. But there was nothing. He just kept rocking back and forth, clutching his arms to his chest. Finally I realized he wasn’t hurt.

  He was crying. Adrien was crying.

  “Adrien.” I hurriedly wrapped my arms around his shaking shoulders. “Shh, it’s okay, it was only a dream.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he moved his head a tiny bit so that it rested on my shoulder as his sobs slowed.

  “It’s okay,” I kept murmuring. I gently stroked his hair, clutching him closer. “It’s okay now. You’re safe.”

  “I dreamed of Sophia dying.” His voice was barely a whisper. “The Regulators smashed her face in. I saw her head explode like a melon and there was so much blood…”

  “Shhhhh,” I said. “Shh, it’s gonna be okay. We’re going to be okay.” The mumbled words were all I could think to say. It was the first time I’d seen Adrien cry since the lobotomy. Over the past few months, I’d assumed that he wasn’t capable of emotions anymore, but maybe that was only because he hadn’t let me see. When had he started being able to feel again? It was a month ago that he’d stopped letting me take his hand when I visited in the afternoons. Had it been that long?

  “I hate it when I cry.” The way he said it made it sound like this wasn’t the first time. He pulled away from me finally and swiped angrily at his eyes. “It’s completely illogical.”

  “Not everything is about logic. You’re crying because you loved her,” I said.

  “Impossible,” he said vehemently. “I barely even knew her.”

  “You said you had your memories. You remember what it felt like when she held you as a child. You remember what it felt like when you were scared and she was there to comfort you.”

  “That’s just it.” He pursed his lips tightly together. “That’s what none of you understand. I have the memories you talk about, but thinking about them is like watching strangers in a projection vid. It doesn’t feel like they happened to me. I never loved her. He loved her. She meant nothing to me.”

  “Then why are you crying?” My voice went high-pitched as my emotions bubbled up in spite of my determination to stay patient. I was tired of his cold reasoning.”She obviously does mean something to you. You have emotions even if you don’t want them. You can feel love and hate and sadness and passion. Even if you’ve changed, your soul is still the same—”

  “Souls don’t exist!” His eerily translucent eyes flashed up at me. “The entire notion is ridiculous. The body is a machine, that is all.”

  “Then what’s the point of living?” I cried. I took a deep breath to calm myself down before continuing. “I’m explaining it badly. The soul is just a word you always used to describe that part of us that is something more than just our flesh and bones and the electrical synapses in our brains. It’s the part of us that makes us human.”

  “Well, that’s one more thing he was a fool about,” Adrien said, his voice turning bitter. He swiped at his eyes one last time. “If souls
were located somewhere other than the flesh, then mine couldn’t have been cut out of me when they hacked into my brain. But it was. I felt nothing, nothing,” he repeated vehemently, “for months. And when I did begin to feel things again, it was all sadness and pain and the realization that I wasn’t the person everyone wanted me to be. I was better off beforehand.”

  He looked away. “The sun is down. We should get going so we can make it to the fence tonight.”

  “But Adrien—”

  He grabbed his pack and stood with his back to me. “We should get moving.”

  I sighed and rubbed my tired eyes. A headache was blooming across my skull. Like a fool, I’d gotten my hopes up when I saw his tears—thought for a second maybe there was a way he could find his way back to who he had been. Back to me. Instead, like always, I was just seeing what I wanted to see. I looked back at him before quickly averting my eyes again. I was terrified that someday soon, I was going to have to stop pretending to see the light of the Adrien I’d loved in the eyes of the stranger in front of me.

  Chapter 13

  I LOOKED OVER AT ADRIEN when we next stopped, right before we got to the border fence. I was so exhausted, my vision was getting blurry. In the light of Adrien’s arm panel, it looked like he had two heads. I blinked several times until the two overlapping images settled back into one. I slumped against a nearby tree, ignoring the bark stabbing at my back as I slid down to the ground. It was the middle of the night now and the fight to stay awake was getting more and more impossible. It felt like every cell in my body was screaming at me to sleep.

  “Get your coolant harness out,” Adrien said. His voice was cold, mechanical almost. He’d been like this all day, the few times he was forced to speak to me. Almost as if, by becoming completely robotic now, he could erase the memory of his earlier emotional outburst. “We’ll be exposed to the Infrared Sat Cams while we’re crossing the fence.”