Shutdown

by Heather Anastasiu

  Chapter 27

  I SHIFTED, SLOWLY WAKING UP and blinking my eyes blearily at the insistent knocking on the top of my sleep pod. Then I remembered where I was and all that had happened. My eyes snapped open. I poured my telek inward to control my mast cells, then popped open the top lid of the container. Adrien was there, reaching out a hand to help me stand. I was sore and stiff, but overall felt remarkably better.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Adrien reassured me as I stepped out of the container. “But we need to decide what to do next.”

  I looked around. When I’d gone to sleep, the central room had been littered with Reg bodies. Now it was clear.

  “How long was I asleep?” I turned to Adrien with a frown.

  “Twenty-four hours. Come on, everyone’s in the dining area.” I followed him as he led me across the sleek black floor and down one of the hallways.

  “What did you do with all the Regs?” I asked, my voice subdued. I didn’t know how I was going to look Cole in the face after what I’d done.

  “Cole and Xona have been clearing the dead out all day. Simin was able to hack into the Chancellor’s control console, so he’s been feeding new instructions to the rest of the Regs so they didn’t start attacking us once Amara got tired. But it only works for the Regs who were here under the Chancellor’s personal guard.”

  “And Markan?”

  “He’s fine.” Adrien squeezed my hand. “He told us what happened with the Chancellor … and with Max.”

  I took a deep breath in and out. I had to keep it together. As much as I might want to go curl up in my sleeping container and forget the world, people would be looking to me for leadership. And I could tell there was more Adrien wasn’t saying yet. He was tense.

  “Adrien, what’s really going on?”

  He nodded toward the doorway ahead. “Everyone will want to talk about it at the same time.”

  Now he really had me worried. I went into the room and saw a crowd gathered inside, locked in a tense discussion.

  I straightened my back and tried to exude a strength I didn’t feel as I strode to the center table. “Okay,” I said, working to make my voice sound confident. “What’s the situation?”

  Juan moved out of his chair and offered it to me. I sat down, and looked around the table at Tyryn, Jilia, Xona, Henk, and some of the other glitchers on my team. I was relieved to see that those who had been captured by the Chancellor didn’t look any worse for wear. Markan sat at a nearby table, his expression less fearful and suspicious than it had been yesterday. I barely managed to stop myself from going over and hugging him.

  Xona spoke up first. “We’re under attack. The Chancellor sent an alarm signal when you breached the walls. Saminsa’s keeping the armada back with a huge protective sphere surrounding the whole building. But City was just out there with her.” She turned to City. “What’s the latest report?”

  “We’ve rallied the other glitchers who are willing to work with us voluntarily,” City said. “They’ve been working with Rand and me to take out attack transports all night. But Saminsa’s getting tired. She won’t be able to hold the shield for much longer. Especially now that they’ve moved into high-payload missiles.”

  I jumped to my feet. “I need to go out there. I can take down transports with my telek—”

  Adrien put a hand on my arm. “We agree, but first we wanted to have a meeting to figure out what our next step is. We can’t just stay here under siege forever. Saminsa will be fine for a while longer until we get a game plan together.”

  I sat down. He was right. “So what’s our next move?”

  “That’s what we’ve been talking about—” Adrien started.

  Xona snorted. “You mean arguing about.”

  “What are the options you’ve come up with?” I asked.

  Henk spoke up first. “I say we oughta bug out of here. We can keep the transports busy long enough to escape. The Chancellor has three attack transports of her own in the back bay. We can escape with those. We’ll split everyone up and all head in different directions. Without the Chancellor around, we’ll finally be able to go to ground and start rebuilding the Rez from scratch.”

  “And I say we need to stand and fight,” Xona said. “Guerilla warfare has gotten us nowhere in the past two centuries. The Rez is all but wiped off the map at this point. We’ve got an army of glitchers at our command. We ought to take those transports and attack Central City. If we take out the heart of the government, we have a chance to finally start the revolution we’ve always dreamed about. We can hit a few key focalized areas where Zoe can crush drone V-chips so they can fight with us. Starting with the academies right outside Central City.”

  “All that’s accomplished in the past is to get the people she freed killed within a day,” Henk said.

  Xona was undeterred. “But that was before. Now we’ll be there to back them up militarily. What’s your range up to, Zoe? How many chips do you think you can take out at once?”

  My mouth popped open as everyone’s gaze swung to look at me. For once I didn’t feel out of my depth. I knew exactly what we needed to do.

  I glanced over at Markan. He was looking on with interest. He must have been watching everyone for the past twenty-four hours. He’d gotten a glimpse of the Rez at work. Hopefully it was enough to convince him to help us.

  “I have a plan,” I said, “but first I need to talk to my brother.”

  * * *

  An hour later, I sat in the attack transport behind Henk with my brother and Lundris, a boy Adrien had found among the glitchers as he was taking his meticulous survey of their powers. Lundris was short and blond, and couldn’t be more than fifteen. He sat quietly in the seat by the window, awaiting instructions. Adrien said he’d had a vision of our mission and that it was imperative that Lundris came with us.

  I looked over at Markan. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  His eyes were wide, but he nodded anyway.

  “And you?” I asked Lundris.

  Lundris sat straight in his chair, still used to the posture required in the Community. He met my eyes. “You freed me from the woman who took my mind away from me. I will follow you.”

  “Ready to lift off,” Henk said. He looked back at us, a grin on his face. “Alrighty. Let me know when you’ve cleared a path, Zoe.”

  I nodded, feeling nerves twist up in my stomach. I reached out a hand to my brother. He swallowed hard, but then took it.

  Immediately I was bowled over by all the information and data assaulting my mind. What had begun as a small projection cube in my head suddenly exploded outward, flooding to encompass the entire building, then the fields full of attack transports surrounding us, then out to the shore and ocean beyond. To the west, my reach extended hundreds of miles inland.

  Panic bubbled up. It was so much information. I grabbed my head with the hand that wasn’t clutching Markan’s. But after a few calming breaths, I was able to let all the data saturate my mind. In a way, it was exhilarating. I was spread out so far. I could sense so many things. Humans, machinery, trees, the ocean, tiny animals scampering across the ground. Hundreds of thousands of heartbeats all thrumming out a strange syncopated rhythm. For several moments I just lost myself in it.

  Then I tried to ground myself again. It was easier when I focused in on concrete objects. I plucked all the transports surrounding the Chancellor’s compound right out of the air as if they were no more than gnats. There were about fifty of them. I swung them through the air, crumpling the large propulsion modules along the bottom in on themselves. Then I flung them through the sky several miles into the ocean.

  Next, I tried to filter through all the information and focus only on the humans. I used their heartbeats to help me key in on them. In a way, it wasn’t that different from what I did with my mast cells every day. I’d learned to differentiate mast cells from amongst all the other billions of cells. I could
do the same to identify people. Once I’d grabbed hold of all the human shapes in range, I let myself drift up from their pumping hearts to their brains. I grimaced, biting hard on the inside of my cheek. I could not let all the sensory data overwhelm me. I had to make this work.

  There. I zoomed in through the soft putty of brain matter and finally could feel the contours of the hardware inside the hundreds of thousands of heads. I’d long ago studied and gotten familiar with the differences between the bigger adult V-chip with its snaking metal filaments connecting to places all over the brain, and the pre-eighteen chips, which were much smaller and had less invasive wirework to allow for normal brain development. Most of those with the smaller V-chips were all clustered together. It made sense. They’d be together in their various Academies at this hour in the day. That was good. They’d have strength in numbers once I freed them.

  I sifted through those in my search radius and let go of everyone with the larger V-chip. Then, anchoring myself in all the smaller V-chips left, I squeezed Markan’s hand tighter and pushed the radius out even farther. There were millions now. Millions of thumping hearts and millions of V-chips. I sorted through and again latched on to those with the smaller hardware.

  Finally, when I felt like my head was going to split wide open from being pulled in so many directions, I took one last deep, calming breath, then crushed the smaller V-chips all at once. Almost immediately, chaos erupted as the previously staid groups of people began to respond to their crushed hardware. They were all seeing color for the first time, all beginning to feel emotions at once. I couldn’t let myself imagine what they would be going through over the next few days.

  These people were only the beginning. I slowly pulled my energy back into myself and then let go of Markan’s hand. I thought I’d feel an extreme exhaustion as soon as I lost connection with him, but to my surprise, I felt fine. It was as if the power I used while connected to him sapped only as much strength as it did when I was on my own in my normal smaller sphere of control.

  I blinked my eyes open. Henk and Markan were both watching me.

  “It’s begun,” I said. I grabbed Markan’s hand again. Henk turned back to his controls and we lifted off the ground and flew out of the wide bay. Saminsa’s bright blue shield vibrated in front of us as we approached the perimeter.

  Henk spoke into his arm com. “Release it, Saminsa.”

  The blue orb suddenly exploded outward, dissipating as it went. There were no more transports in range, so everyone still in the building would be safe for the several moments it took us to fly up and out of the compound.

  * * *

  For the next three hours we covered the entire country, all of Sector Six. By the end, I’d crushed at least a hundred million pre-adult V-chips, maybe more.

  “More incoming,” Henk shouted from the driver’s seat. A loud beeping filled the transport as another missile that had been fired at us came into our air space. We’d been fielding them almost incessantly since we took off.

  Henk swore loudly. “This one’s a nuke. Mother of god.”

  In spite of the fact that I’d been fielding missiles for the last few hours, my heart still jumped into my throat. With the previous missiles, I’d just detonated them by ramming them against each other, into the ocean, or into the ground in secluded areas. When Adrien had told me his vision, I’d balked, saying surely no one would be foolish enough to release a nuke, no matter what. But here we were, flying over a huge metropolis no less, with nukes headed toward us. I was infinitely glad Adrien had made us bring Lundris along.

  “It’s coming on fast, Zoe,” Henk shouted. “Tell me you’ve got it.”

  I abandoned my control over the subjects in the city below and gripped Markan’s hand tight as I surrounded the nuke instead and gently slowed its momentum, bringing it to a stop right outside the back hull.

  “Two more are in range now,” Henk said.

  I reached and plucked them out of the air as well. “Got them.” I held them completely still in the air, feeling along the contours of their long, cold shells with repulsion. “Open the back hatch,” I called to Henk, then stood, dragging Markan along behind me and signaling to Lundris.

  “You know what you have to do?” I asked the towheaded boy. He nodded. Henk had brought the transport to a hovering standstill as the back hatch opened. It was surreal to see the deadly warheads bobbing mere feet away from us.

  I took Lundris’s hand as well, and lifted all three of us up off the floor of the plane, flying through the air so we could get close enough to the nuke to touch it. The wind was calm today, and since we were hovering still, there was only a cold breeze tugging at our tunics. Markan’s eyes went wide as he took a quick look down at the empty air below us. Then he squeezed his eyes shut hard.

  Lundris was calmer. His gaze was focused only on the nuke in front of us. I held my breath as he reached out his thin fingers toward the metal casing. I winced when he made contact, but nothing happened. I’d known in my head a simple touch wouldn’t be enough to detonate them, but still …

  Then, before my eyes, the gleaming metal turned to solid gray stone. Lundris could manipulate the molecular structure of any object he touched. And he’d just turned a deadly warhead into a warhead-shaped lump of rock. He repeated the procedure with the other two, then I sent them to rest gently on the ground a thousand feet below.

  When we got back in the transport, I marched up to the front where Henk was sitting. “Who launched the nuke?” I asked, my voice cold. An icy fury swept through me that anyone would risk the kind of destruction a nuclear weapon promised.

  “Sector Five, looks like.”

  I sat back down. “Then we’ll be heading to Sector Five next. We’ll shut down the V-chips in every country that has nuclear capability first.”

  Henk looked back at me, a frown on his face. “That’s six out of the eight worldwide Sectors.”

  I met his eyes with a steely gaze. “We end this today. For everyone.”

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  A knock on the top of my sleep pod woke me. I took one last deep breath of safe air, then surrounded my mast cells with my telek and pushed the release button. Jilia said we’d try immunotherapy again to help my allergies once everything settled down, though she didn’t know if it would work or not. Like so many things these days, it was an unknown. In the meantime, I slept in the med container. The top pulled up and slowly retracted. I smiled when I saw it was Adrien, and then smiled even wider when I saw the tray full of food behind him.

  “You got in late last night. Are you sure you don’t want to sleep a little longer?”

  I stepped out over the side of the med container. “Too much to do today.”

  He laughed. “Every day, you mean. But still, you need to eat.” He held out a chair for me. We’d stayed at the Chancellor’s compound. It made for a good base of operations and had lush personal quarters on the top floor. One wall of the room was made entirely of windows that overlooked the ocean, but I couldn’t see anything much since it was still dark out.

  “Have you gotten the daily reports yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” He smiled. “Most people don’t get up as early as you.”

  “You do.”

  He reached, almost shyly, and took my hand. “I like your face to be one of the first things I see every day.”

  I blushed and looked down. It had been three months since I’d freed all the drones young enough to handle their V-chips being destroyed. It had been chaos at first. The freed people didn’t know what to do without the V-chip directing their actions and emotions. The intensity of suddenly being able to feel had resulted in a lot of violence initially. We’d quickly released all the imprisoned Rez cell leaders and positioned them around the Sector to gather as many recruits as they could from among the newly released subjects. In large part, they’d been able to gather the former drones and pretty easily convinced them to direct their anger at the Uppers instead of u
selessly against each other.

  I ran my finger around the tip of my coffee cup and looked out at the slowly lightening earth. It had been far from a bloodless revolution. There was still heavy fighting going on in some of the other Sectors around the world. After I’d freed all of the drones with the pre-18 V-chip, Resistance factions in each global Sector had led revolutions with varying success. The Community Corporation that had ruled the world for two hundred and fifty years was decimated and each of the eight Chancellor Supremes had been deposed. But in some poorer countries like Sector Four, there was still heavy fighting going on among the survivors about who would rule next.

  Here in Sector Six we’d had a wide, unified Rez presence after we emptied the Community prisons, so the fighting had mostly died down. Xona and Cole led the army that took control of the Southern front a few weeks ago, where the Uppers had made their last stand. While pockets of violence still occasionally erupted, we’d subdued and imprisoned most Uppers and taken charge of the government. Many of the Uppers had surrendered in the end, especially after Simin finally accessed the Regulators’ separate Link programming channel and ordered them to stop fighting.

  The challenge now was to rebuild.

  “I didn’t get to talk to Jilia yesterday. Any developments in her research with the adult V-chips?”

  Adrien took a bite of his omelet. “Not yet. But she has better research facilities than ever before, not to mention the best minds in the country are on her team working on it.”

  I nodded. I knew it might take a long time before we could figure out a solution to free the adults from the V-chip as well. Maybe someday even my own parents. At least the next generation would grow up free, and the generation after that would be born and never have any hardware put in their heads at all. Adrien often reminded me of that. That even if we never found a way to free the adults, we’d given their children a future, and their children’s children.

  In the meantime, as much as I hated to think it, it was helpful to have all the adults continue working so the infrastructure of the country didn’t collapse. We lessened their work hours and the techer boy had taken over the Link programming.