Glitch

by Laura Martin

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said.

  “What?” I asked. “That we are actually about to Glitch for real? Or what happened at the Academy?”

  “Both,” Regan said. “But to be honest, I’m doing my best not to think about the Academy or anyone else right now.” I saw her swallow hard, and I averted my eyes as she swiped at hers with the back of her hand.

  “Don’t,” I said, clenching my jaw. “If you start, I’ll lose it, and then where will we be?”

  “Sorry,” she said, sniffing as she pulled her shoulders back.

  “Me too,” I said, and I wondered if I should give her a hug or something. Everyone felt terrible about the Academy, but Regan especially had more to lose. I wondered if she was going to be able to keep it together for this jump.

  “Okay?” I asked. I wasn’t a hugger.

  “Okay,” she said as Callaway and the other professors and techs rushed around, turning on the different machines, their brows furrowed in concentration as they set the program for each group’s time travel. I watched their fingers fly across the keys and realized that the programming for an actual Glitch was almost identical to the simulation programming I’d learned back at the Academy. I’d assumed it would be more complicated than that.

  “Did you realize programming a Glitch was that easy?” I said quietly to Regan.

  She nodded, and I decided not to press her on how she knew that and I didn’t. Maybe that fact was kept out of our training so cadets wouldn’t get any funny ideas.

  “Here,” said Professor Tramble, walking up with two large pills and glasses of water.

  “What are these?” I asked, picking up the pill warily.

  “These will give you five minutes of air,” he said, holding up his hand as though we’d forgotten how many five was.

  “Air?” Regan asked, eyeing the pill suspiciously.

  “You are going to travel to the middle of a factory fire,” Tramble said. “These will allow you to breathe without damaging your lungs permanently.”

  “But only five minutes?” Regan asked.

  “Think of it like Cinderella and the stroke of midnight,” Tramble said. He waited until we’d both swallowed our pill and chased it with our cups of water before returning to his spot behind the control panels.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Does that mean we will only be gone five minutes here too?” I’d never thought to ask about the actual passage of time when you were on a real honest-to-goodness Glitch.

  Regan shrugged. “I know there is some complicated mathematical equation that figures that out, but no, I don’t think it’s a one-to-one ratio thing. We can ask after this is all over.” She didn’t add that we’d have to survive this to ask the question, a fact I appreciated. Still, my insides squirmed like I’d swallowed a nest of live spiders, and I could feel my hands trembling.

  “I really hate fire,” I admitted to Regan.

  “No one likes fire,” Regan said. “Let’s just get in and get out fast.”

  “We have to,” I said. “This isn’t a simulation. If we die there, we don’t just wake up back here.”

  “I didn’t really need that reminder, but thanks,” Regan said.

  “Is everyone ready?” Callaway called, and I glanced around the room as every partner pair reached out and grasped hands. That was kind of weird. I glanced over at Regan, but her hands were balled into tight fists at her sides, her eyes squeezed shut as though she was waiting for a bus to hit her.

  “Good luck,” Callaway said, and I shut my own eyes as the countdown began. Regan and I were going to need all the luck we could get.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Regan

  I’d heard Glitchers talk about what time traveling felt like for my entire life. They would sit around our big wood table after a fancy dinner and compare sensations in the same way we cadets compared the blisters on our hands after a particularly grueling training session. It was different for everyone, with no two Glitchers ever feeling the same thing. My mom said it felt similar to the tingling feeling you got in your foot after it fell asleep, while another professor would say it was like plunging into an ice-filled bathtub. The most notable one I could remember was an active Glitcher who said it felt exactly like someone had caught his stomach with a fish hook and was reeling it in at full tilt.

  So as far back as I could remember, I’d wondered what it would feel like. I’d obsessed over it, really, but I forgot to care as the countdown began, because who could care about something like that when their mom might be dead? The second the traitorous thought crossed my mind, I shoved it away. I couldn’t go there, not yet, not ever. I’d been trained my entire life to compartmentalize, to give my entire focus to the situation at hand, and I leaned hard on the habits developed from years and years of study and work. What mattered now was the mission. What mattered now was retrieving Agent Chris, and I could shut everything out and focus on just that. I was almost positive.

  The countdown hit one, and the air whooshed from my lungs as a sudden intense pressure encased my body. It was as though I was being sucked through a straw. I felt like my skin was shrinking, and if I’d had any air left I’d have screamed. A second later it was over, and I felt the heat. Heat so blistering that I thought for a second that we’d been Glitched directly into flames. I opened my eyes.

  The insides of the 1911 factory were ablaze and the screaming of the workers trapped inside was almost deafening. Adrenaline hit my system like a freight train, and I felt my heart rate double in an instant. I’d heard my mom talk about the Glitch rush, but I’d always thought she was exaggerating. She wasn’t. In the next instant, I remembered Elliot and turned, expecting to find him at my side, but he was nowhere in sight. My mouth went dry. Something had gone wrong. I was here alone.

  My hand went automatically to my belt, and I felt the tiniest fraction of relief when I found my set of Chaos Cuffs there. I might be here alone, but I wasn’t trapped. Forcing myself to refocus, I looked around. In a room where everyone was panicked and running, I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I took in the row upon row of upturned sewing machines that cluttered the already packed space, the piles of scrap fabric that lay everywhere just waiting for their turn to catch fire, and the disordered swirl of panic at the far end of the room where workers were still frantically trying to open a door that I knew would never open. And in that moment, I felt the enormity of it all in a way that I never had before in a simulation. Because these people were real. They weren’t generated by a computer. They were someone’s mother, or sister, or friend, and almost every face that I saw wasn’t going to survive the next ten minutes. Someone bumped into me, and I was jarred from my horror and back to the task at hand. I’d already wasted ten seconds. I didn’t have ten seconds to waste.

  I tried to look at every panicked face, hoping to see something that would let me know that I’d found Agent Chris. The room was unbearably hot, and I wondered that my skin wasn’t boiling. I could breathe just fine thanks to that pill, but my lungs still felt thick and dirty from the smoke. Or maybe it was panic that made my chest feel like it was getting smashed by a hundred-pound weight. It was hard to tell.

  I glanced out one of the broken windows; since the floor below me didn’t appear to be on fire, I decided that I was probably on the eighth floor. Unfortunately, that glance out the window also showed me that most of the women who’d jumped hadn’t survived the fall. Below me, the fire department stood staring in horror at their dry-rotted nets that had been torn to shreds. It was almost as bad as the men working to raise ladders that couldn’t reach past the sixth floor to the eighth, ninth, and tenth where the fire was in full force. No wonder this event changed things, I thought grimly. Looking up, I spotted what was supposed to be a fire escape partially detached from the wall and crumbling. Was Agent Chris on one of the two floors above me? If I knew this event better, I’d know what other options I had to get up to the next floor, but I didn’t. I made a mental note t
o do a study simulation on this one with Elliot in the very near future, and where in the world was Elliot? The nitty-gritty factual stuff was his specialty, not mine. A fact that was all too apparent as I stood there considering the fire escape. Compared to fumbling around inside a burning building for an unknown exit, this seemed like my best bet. I bit my lip. My next move was going to make or break the mission.

  The sound of frantic screams behind me made me turn as an elevator appeared and was immediately rushed, people cramming themselves into the only escape they could see. I caught a glimpse of the elevator operator who’d been brave enough to risk his own life to save others, and I wondered if history would ever recognize him for the hero he was. Not everyone would risk their own life to bring that elevator back. As the doors closed, I made my decision and headed out the window and onto the barely attached fire escape.

  I tested the ladder’s weight with one foot. It held, so, taking a deep breath, I stepped into thin air with nothing between me and an eight-story drop but a rusty twisted frame of metal, and I was reminded again that this was the real deal. If I fell here, I would be just one more victim of this tragedy.

  The fire escape creaked and groaned alarmingly as I made my way upward, so I moved quickly. I was just reaching for the windowsill on the ninth floor when I felt the last metal supports pull free from the wall. On instinct alone, I jumped. The brick window ledge of the windowsill cut into my hands as the fire escape fell away to careen to the ground. In that moment, I understood why I’d been forced to train so brutally and intensely for my entire life. Using muscles I’d honed through hundreds of push-ups and pull-ups, I heaved myself upward toward safety. I would have made it too, if someone hadn’t chosen that moment to break the window.

  I ducked my head a half second before glass exploded around me, accompanied by an overpowering wave of heat. It was like the building was an oven and someone had just opened the door. I lost all the ground I’d gained, slipping backward so I was hanging by the tips of my fingers. My stomach did a sickening flip as I made the mistake of looking down to the pavement nine stories below. I dug my nails into the brick. I would not die here. Not like this. I felt someone grab my wrist, and even before I looked up, I knew it was Elliot. I felt a rush of gratitude and relief so intense I could have cried as he grabbed my other wrist. With his help I pulled myself up and into the building.

  “Where were you!?” he yelled directly in my ear as I scrambled to my feet.

  “I could ask you the same thing!” I said. “How did you know I was out there?”

  “Bullet point number three,” Elliot said. “When the window breaks, grab me.” I stared at him as my stomach gave a sickening flop of recognition. The Cocoon was now three for three, but I didn’t have time to think about the bullet points that were left—we had a job to do.

  “Have you found Agent Chris yet?” I asked. He shook his head and together we turned to take in the nightmare of the ninth floor. The clamor inside this floor was just as loud as the one below us as the workers panicked, and I felt like my brain was going to explode from all the heat and noise. My chest tightened, and I wondered if our five minutes of air was almost up.

  “Agent Chris must be on the tenth floor or the roof. Follow me!” Elliot said. I nodded and stayed close behind him as he shouldered his way through the crowd, our progress slowed by the rows of sewing equipment that had been shoved to the floor. I was just clambering over a particularly cumbersome piece of equipment when something brought me up short. I reached out and grabbed Elliot’s arm, bringing him to a stop, and for a half second we stood frozen as chaos swirled around us. I wondered briefly if this was what it felt like to stand in the middle of a tornado. Elliot yanked on my arm, but I held up my hand and shook my head. I’d seen something, I just needed my conscious brain to catch up with my subconscious.

  One second. Two. I’m not sure how long I stood there, my eyes combing the features of panicked worker after panicked worker until I saw her. At first I thought it was Agent Chris—that was who we were here for, after all—but in the next second I realized that I was looking at a Butterfly. Maybe it was the fact that she stood three inches taller than the other workers, or the fact that her face was perfectly clean while those around her were filthy, sweaty, and soot-covered, but I knew it was her. I leaped off the equipment and charged. The woman turned at the last second, and I saw her surprised expression as I took her to the ground. Elliot was there a second later, and before I could stop him, he’d slapped his Chaos Cuffs on her, and they disappeared in front of my eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Elliot

  I was back inside the mountain. The icy air of the Glitch room hit me first, racing into my smoke-filled lungs, and I coughed, doubling over as my body attempted to adjust to the drastic change. It was a few seconds before my eyes stopped watering and my body stopped heaving long enough for me to stand up straight. As I took in the room through streaming eyes, I noticed two things simultaneously. The first was that we were the first ones back—the other platforms sat empty. The second was that there was no we. There was just a me. Regan was nowhere to be seen. I spun to look behind me, as though she was playing hide-and-seek, but the only other person on the platform was Agent Chris. Except, was it Agent Chris? The stranger I’d brought back through time stumbled to her feet and whirled to face me, her cuffed hands reaching for my neck as she let out a scream of rage. I stumbled backward just as two techs and Professor Callaway vaulted onto my platform. All three of them grabbed the woman, and it was then that I saw her face for the first time, and it was not Agent Chris’s face. In the craziness of the burning factory, I’d done what I’d been training to do—I’d relied on my partner and cuffed the target before I’d gotten a decent look at her.

  I watched in numb disbelief as the woman screamed and scratched, trying to escape despite the Chaos Cuffs still firmly around her wrists. It took the techs a moment, but they eventually had her in hand and led her off the platform.

  Callaway turned to me, his blue eyes wide. “Where’s Regan?”

  I swallowed hard. “March twenty-fifth, 1911.”

  Callaway’s jaw dropped in horror. But before he could launch into a lecture about how partners always Glitch in and out of events together, there was a loud popping sound to our left, and we both turned to see Tess and Eliana reappear on their platform, a bedraggled man clutched between them. A second later the same sound echoed to my right, and I turned to see Blake and Corban reappear, each holding the hand of a middle-aged woman with gray hair. Was I the only one who had screwed this up? I shut my eyes, which was a mistake because I was instantly bombarded with the images of the burning building, with the terrified faces of the workers who would never escape, with the smell of the acidic smoke and the screams of people who knew they were about to die. I stumbled off my platform, barely getting my head in a trash can before I threw up.

  When I finally ran out of things to throw up, I stood up, turning to see that Sam and Serina were back with their own agent. Unlike the other two, though, they’d managed to not only find their agent, but also to catch the Butterfly. I watched with a numb detachment as the Butterfly was wrestled off the platform and through the same door the techs had taken the women I’d captured.

  I was still staring at the doorway when there was a loud pop behind me, and I turned to see Regan appear, the arm of a white-faced and bloody Agent Chris thrown over her shoulders.

  “Help,” Regan called. “We need help over here! She’s hurt.” I rushed back onto the platform just as Agent Chris’s legs buckled, and together Regan and I lowered her onto the platform. The mountain’s medics hurried to check her pulse and shine lights into her eyes. We stood there side by side and watched as Agent Chris opened her eyes, coughing hoarsely into the oxygen mask someone had put over her face. I knew how she felt; my own lungs felt like someone had stuffed them full of cotton. I turned to Regan, waiting for her to rip into me about leaving her behind, but to my surprise, she did
n’t. She just stood there watching them work on Agent Chris.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She bit her lip, not looking at me, and shook her head.

  “Me either,” I admitted. “I just hurled.” I jerked my head toward the trash can when she looked at me in surprise. “I highly recommend it, actually,” I said.

  “I almost threw up within the first thirty seconds of being there,” she said. “It was awful. More awful than I thought possible.”

  I nodded.

  “I never got it before,” she said. “But I do now.”

  “Got what?” I asked.

  “Why someone would become a Butterfly,” she said. “Why you’d want to go back in time to change something. All those people,” she said, shutting her eyes as though she could unsee it all that way.

  I watched her, remembering the time back in my fifth year where I’d done a simulation of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. I’d almost asked to be deactivated right then and there. What good was it being a Glitcher if you couldn’t save the innocent little girls who died that day for the color of their skin? What good was being a Glitcher if I had to stand by as unspeakable horrors took place? Thankfully one of my favorite professors, Professor Abrams, had been there that day, and he’d sat down with me and talked for hours about it all. Maybe it was because his skin color matched my own, or maybe it was because of the way he explained it, but I hadn’t asked for a voluntary deactivation that day. “History isn’t supposed to be pretty,” he’d said. “It’s downright repulsive at times, and you don’t have to like it or agree with it to preserve it. But remember that the healthiest forests grow the year after a forest fire, and that without extreme pressure we wouldn’t have diamonds. You can’t hurry history, and you can’t fix an injustice until people recognize that it is one.” All this raced through my mind as I watched tears run down Regan’s soot-stained cheeks, and I wondered if she’d have realized this all earlier if she’d looked like me, or if her mom hadn’t been who she was. Probably. Finally, she opened her eyes and shook her head. “I would have given anything to be able to save them.”