Glitch

by Laura Martin

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Where have you been?” she chided me, tucking a stray wisp of white hair up into her bun. “You’re late, and your mother has been waiting. Now wash up and hustle into the dining room. Chop chop.” The sound of clinking glassware echoed faintly from behind the thick mahogany door, and I raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

  “Officer Salzburg is here to discuss security,” she said, turning back to the large cast-iron pot on the stove. “Be on your best behavior.”

  Being on my best behavior at all times was just one of the problems with being the commander’s kid, and today of all days I did not want to play the polite and well-behaved daughter. Mrs. Ellsworth turned away from the pot she was stirring and saw me still standing right where she’d left me, and her eyebrows disappeared into the low swoop of white curls that lay across her forehead. The message was clear—move it, girl. With a barely stifled sigh, I ducked into the small hall bathroom just off the kitchen and did a quick check of myself in the mirror. The same face I’d watched flub up Abraham Lincoln’s assassination just hours before stared back at me, although I looked a little paler now. My mom called my name from the dining room, and I grabbed both of my cheeks in my fingers and gave them a rough twist to pink them up a bit. It hurt, but at least I didn’t look like I’d seen a ghost, or, I amended with a grimace, a Cocoon written in my own handwriting. Still feeling unnerved and slightly nauseous despite the garlic bread in my stomach, I ran my hand over my hair, smoothing it down, before taking a deep breath and walking out and into the dining room.

  Our house, unlike most of the buildings at the Academy, was actually old, not just fabricated to look that way. It was built in a time when houses had things like butler’s pantries and wall-to-wall mahogany wood paneling. Our dining room in particular had an elegant old-world feel to it that you just couldn’t re-create today with all the strict regulations on natural resources. My mom was sitting at the end of our long dining room table in full dress uniform eating a salad with a man, also in full dress. He smiled broadly when I came in, and stood up.

  “Officer Salzburg,” I said, extending a hand that he shook like a limp fish. “It’s wonderful to see you.”

  He sat back down to his plate of Mrs. Ellsworth’s famous rigatoni and picked up his fork. “Sorry to interrupt your family dinner,” he said with a smile that spread just a bit too wide on his face. I glanced over at my mom and saw that her face had a stiffness to it that made it clear that Salzburg, per usual, was getting on her nerves. All the officers tended to sit up a little straighter when they had dinner with my mom, but Salzburg was one of those people who laughed too loud, talked too much, and generally tried too hard to impress her. It set her teeth on edge.

  “It’s no problem,” I said, hoping that didn’t sound like the out-and-out lie it was.

  “I had something exciting to show your mom, and I just couldn’t wait.” He held up a small black camera that was sitting on the table before plunking it back down to take another bite of his pasta.

  “More security cameras?” I asked, glancing over at my mom. “Don’t you think that’s a little obsessive?” We live on an island, in the middle of who knows where, behind a three-foot-thick wall with security officers swarming the place like ants. How could we possibly need more security?

  “Regan,” my mom said, her voice tight. “That isn’t your place. Is it?”

  I felt like a tire with the air let out, and I nodded and looked down at my own plate. She was right. Security was none of my business.

  “No, no,” Salzburg said around his mouthful of pasta. “It’s a valid question. These, my dear, are no ordinary cameras. These,” he said, patting the camera by his side like it was a dog, “these detect Butterflies.”

  I swallowed the bite of pasta in my mouth too quickly and choked. My mom thumped me on the back as I leaned forward to cough up a lung into my napkin. Sitting back, I took a sip of water, my eyes still streaming as my mom shot me a disapproving look.

  “I didn’t think we had that kind of technology,” I said.

  “These are a prototype,” Salzburg said. “Technology stolen right out from under the noses of the Mayhem themselves.”

  “Really?” I said, picking up the camera with a newfound reverence.

  “Really,” Salzburg said. “We managed to bring in one of their agents alive, and this little gem was hidden in his pocket. They were using it to detect our agents. Well, the joke’s on them, because we managed to replicate it and are planning on using these cameras to detect Mayhem members. They can threaten this Academy all they want, but the second they breach security we’ll know it.”

  Mom cleared her throat, and Salzburg snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.

  “I apologize, Commander,” he said. “Did I speak too freely?” I flicked my eyes between my mom’s disapproving face and Salzburg’s, which was looking a lot paler than it had a moment ago.

  “The Mayhem knows our location?” I said as the hairs along my neck stood up. “Is that why you’ve been so busy with security recently?”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Mom said. “Isn’t that right, Officer Salzburg?”

  “Quite right,” Salzburg said a little too quickly as he took the camera back out of my hand. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I was twelve, not two. I decided to let this one slide, for now, and made a show of shrugging and digging back into my meal. If I really wanted to find some answers, I could always poke around in my mom’s office later, and besides, the last thing I really wanted to talk about after the mess with Elliot and the letter was Butterflies.

  “Anyway, we will install the first batch in strategic locations on campus just to see how they do, and then, if all goes well, we can start using them in the field.”

  “I can’t imagine carrying something like that on a Glitch,” I said, eyeing the camera. “It doesn’t exactly blend in.”

  “But only imagine if we could use them with our Glitchers to detect a Butterfly,” Salzburg said. “The margin of error would almost disappear if we didn’t have to rely so much on a Glitcher’s intuition. Which I hear you have a particular knack for, Cadet Fitz.” Salzburg cheated his eyes over toward Mom, whose face remained as impassive as stone. If he thought he was going to worm his way back into her good graces by complimenting her kid, he had another think coming. My mom was very careful to keep her work life and her home life separate, and any officer who thought praising me was a good tactical move was off base. Salzburg got the picture and directed his eyes back to me.

  “Did you have a simulation today?” he asked, his desperation to change the subject almost pathetic.

  “I did have a sim today,” I said.

  “Well,” he prompted, “how did it go?”

  My mom flicked her eyes to me, and I saw the tiny hint of a warning there. She knew that I’d had to do a recap session, and she didn’t want me advertising my less than stellar track record in front of our guest. I felt my heart sink a little; the craziness of finding the Cocoon had kind of overshadowed the Lincoln assassination failure. Mom had helped me study for it for the entire week with her infamous flash cards, but none of that mattered.

  “Great,” I lied. “The Butterfly had an ear piercing that wasn’t on era.”

  “Very good,” said Officer Salzburg. “That’s not an easy spot. No wonder Professor Gordon raves about you. Says you’re uncanny.”

  My face flushed, but for once it wasn’t from embarrassment. Because I was the best student in Professor Gordon’s class, trumping even Elliot, which brought me huge amounts of satisfaction.

  “I don’t know about uncanny,” I said, “but I do love the class.”

  Salzburg sighed and smiled. “I remember that simulation like it was yesterday. Helped develop it myself after being part of the mission to fix Lincoln’s assassination. At one point there were ten different Butterflies in Ford’s Theatre that night. Ten! Half of them were trying to save Lincoln while the other half we
re trying to ensure that Booth didn’t break his leg when he jumped off the balcony onto the stage! Crazy.” He glanced at my mom and smiled. “You were there too, Commander, were you not?”

  My mom nodded. “I was. One of the most complex missions to date.”

  “There was even a Butterfly hiding under the stage,” Officer Salzburg said conspiratorially, leaning forward as though he was telling me a secret I didn’t already know. “Planning to capture Booth when he did his walk-through of all the hidden exits of the theater earlier that day. Tricky one, that; took us multiple jumps to figure out.” I nodded, doing my best to look appropriately impressed. Like all the officers at the Academy, Officer Salzburg had the Glitch gene and had gained a reputation for himself fixing and putting the future back together like it was Humpty Dumpty and he was all the king’s men. But like most of the officers and professors, he was no longer able to time travel.

  Some of the early technology that was used to help Glitchers time travel to specific moments in the past was unnecessarily hard on the human body. It was a similar problem to what astronauts faced when they traveled in space; the journey wreaked havoc on the fragile internal balance of bones, muscles, and nerves. As a result, he had the same longing in his eyes that so many of my professors had when we talked about our training. Some of them missed it so much they ruined their own health to do just one more jump. It was one of the reasons that the deactivation injection was now required as soon as you were done with your Glitching career. The students who didn’t make it through the Academy for one reason or another received the same thing, and I’d always wondered what that would be like. Would it feel freeing, or like you’d let everyone down? Regardless, it was common knowledge that you could find many of the Academy staff in the simulation rooms after hours, reliving their glory days over and over again. Mom was in the same boat, although she was too busy with me and being the commander of the entire Academy to mess around with recreational simulations.

  I glanced at her now, seeing a similar look in her eyes as she watched Officer Salzburg relive some of their most famous jumps together. For a while there, certain pivotal historical events had been almost overrun with Glitchers and Butterflies, to the point where it was hard to tell who was actually a part of history and who was trespassing. The very idea made my brain hurt. It was hard enough to spot one Butterfly, let alone worry about the other ten at the event that weren’t your business. Thankfully the Academy had developed some technology to help Glitchers stay focused on their target. It was something I was sure Elliot would start learning about after he broke my mom’s record and became the youngest cadet to level up. I studied my mother as Salzburg rambled on. She’d been the best Glitcher to ever grace the steps of the Academy, a fact that had quickly catapulted her up the ranks until she was named the first female commander in chief. But, just like Officer Salzburg, she’d reached her Glitching limit and been deactivated. Any more time traveling and her health would have started declining until she looked like one of the fragile Glitchers who lived in the nursing home on the edge of the Academy.

  The conversation turned away from my simulation then, and back to the intricacies of running a place like the Academy. Apparently, an entire section of the campus had lost power today, something Salzburg was quick to point out wouldn’t matter with the new prototypes since they were battery operated. I shot the piece of machinery in question a look out of the corner of my eye as I ate my third piece of garlic bread. If it really could detect a Butterfly, could it also tell that I’d held a Cocoon in my hand earlier that day? A Cocoon that Elliot Mason, of all people, now had in his possession. Why hadn’t I held on to it tighter? How had I let Elliot get the drop on me like that? Was he reading it now? If it was a Cocoon, and I was pretty positive it was, he might already be taking it straight to a security officer, and I was done for.

  Officer Salzburg set his fork down with a loud clank, and I jumped guiltily. Dinner was over, and I was excused to go to my room for the night. Usually I’d have to help Mrs. Ellsworth do the dishes, but she must have seen something in my face because she waved me away after I carried the first stack to the sink. I almost let out an audible sigh of relief as I retreated up the back staircase and into my room. I immediately sat down in front of my laptop so I could message Elliot, but before I could even touch a key it sprang to life, a message from Elliot popping up on the screen as though I’d willed it there by sheer desperation. I inhaled like I’d just been punched in the gut as my heart slammed to a startled stop in my chest. He was messaging me. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  My hands were trembling as I reached out to open the message. I hesitated, though, my finger hovering above the button. There were no cameras here, but I still felt exposed. I quickly tucked the laptop under my arm, grabbed my bathrobe, and went into the hall bathroom, locking the door firmly behind me. Turning on the shower, I sat down on the cool tile floor and opened the message as the bathroom filled with steam.

  I know what this is. We need to talk.

  I’m not sure how long I stared at that message, but I felt like I aged ten years in a matter of seconds. It was that last bit, the wanting to talk part, that threw me completely off. If he knew what that letter was, then why in the world wasn’t he marching it straight to a security officer like the good little rule follower that he was? Why talk to me about it?

  “Regan?!” came a voice from outside, and I jumped, my heart slamming into my throat. It was Mrs. Ellsworth.

  “Yes?” I said. My voice sounded wobbly even to my own ears.

  “Are you almost done?” she asked. “Officer Salzburg left and your mother wanted to speak to you before you went to bed.”

  “Yes!” I called back. “I’ll be right out.” Her footsteps retreated down the hall, and I typed in a reply to Elliot’s message.

  Okay. Meet me by the fountain before first period.

  That done, I shucked off my clothes and threw myself into the shower. We’d apparently run out of hot water while I sat on the floor staring at that message, and I inhaled hard as icy water jolted me out of my preoccupied fog. I scrubbed quickly with the soap, making sure my hair was wet all the way through before jumping back out and wrapping myself in a towel.

  A reply was already flashing on my laptop, and I dripped water all over the keyboard in my hurry to read it.

  Not tomorrow. Now.

  Now? I repeated. What did he mean now? It was late, way past the curfew that determined when students were allowed to be out and about on campus grounds. I was about to type back a snarky reply, but I stopped myself. It was not the time to make him mad, not when he was potentially holding the only piece of evidence needed to ruin my entire future. I bit my lip. I was just going to have to find a way.

  Give me thirty minutes. Meet me at the fountain.

  I was about to close my laptop so I could go get some clothes on and see what my mom wanted when a message pinged back.

  What fountain? There are a million of the dumb things on this campus.

  His annoyance seemed to drip from every word, and I had to stifle a smile. Readjusting my towel, I typed back.

  You’re right. But I only shoved you into one of them. See you there. Bring it with you.

  I stared at my reply for a second before hitting send. I didn’t dare put down in writing what I wanted him to bring with him. I glanced at the time on my laptop and grimaced. If I was going to make it to the fountain in half an hour and talk to my mom, I was going to have to hustle. Tucking my dirty clothes and laptop under my arm, I made my way back to my room to throw on my pajamas. A minute later, I flew back down the stairs, my still-dripping hair making the back of my T-shirt wet. I rounded the bottom of the stairs at full speed and almost ran headlong into my mom. She caught my shoulders before I could fall backward onto my butt and smiled.

  “Easy there,” she said. “I was just coming up to find you. I wanted to hear about your simulation.”

  I pushed my wet hair out of my face as I looked up a
t her. She knew all about my simulation. She’d watched it live, according to Professor Treebaun, but I appreciated that she was pretending she hadn’t. “One second,” I said. “I missed it by one second. One!”

  She sighed. “Come on. Let’s hear it.” She turned and led us into her office, where I plopped down on my favorite leather chair.

  “What happened?” she asked, taking a seat behind her desk and pulling off the black no-nonsense heels that she always wore when someone important came for dinner. They gave her an extra four inches, not that she really needed them at just under six feet tall, but she liked to wear them anyway. Someone had asked me once what it was like to have your mom be the commander, and I hadn’t really known how to answer them. In some ways it was pretty cool, but in others it really stunk. For one thing, I always felt like I had two moms: the public one who everyone else saw and the private one who took off her heels and replaced them with fuzzy green slippers that were almost worn through at the toe. And I really preferred the fuzzy green slippers version, even if her unrelenting expectations for me often made me feel like I had an elephant sitting on my chest.

  “The usual,” I said. “I had no problem spotting the Butterfly, but I couldn’t seal the deal in time. I forgot about the alternate theater entrance, and I was late getting the jump on the Butterfly because of it.” I pressed my lips together and waited. You didn’t interrupt my mom when her brow was furrowed like that, and to be honest, I was grateful for the quiet. Mrs. Ellsworth had lit a fire in the office’s small fireplace, and I pulled my knees up to my chest and reached down to dig one of the blankets out of the basket Mom kept there for this very purpose. Cuddled into the chair, waiting for my mom to pass down whatever verdict or opinion she was working on, the Cocoon and all that it threatened suddenly felt like a distant event that had happened to someone else. Maybe I could just stay here in this chair and life would go on as though Elliot wasn’t holding a ticking time bomb. But the problem with time bombs, I thought gloomily, was that eventually they exploded whether you ignored them or not. Reality fell heavily on my shoulders, and the warm safety of the chair and the blanket and the fire vanished as though someone had thrown me back in that icy shower. I glanced at the clock. I had to wrap this up.