Shutdown (Glitch) (34 page)

“Come on,” I said, laughing with relief and a sudden giddiness. The Chancellor was dead. Help was here. We’d won. I led Markan forward and together we moved through the smiling Regs, closer and closer to the stairwell door.

“Zoe?” Adrien called again, his voice closer now.

“Here!” I shouted back.

We finally got to the threshold of the door. Adrien hurried down the steps, elbowing his way past Regulators. I did the same and we met at the bottom of the stairs. He threw his arms around me and lifted me up off the ground in a giant hug.

“Ow,” I said, laughing even though it hurt. I couldn’t believe he was here. That I was here. That I’d
survived
.

He immediately put me back on the ground. “I’m so sorry I stabbed you. She took over and I couldn’t stop it.” He pulled back and finally got a good look at me. His eyes widened in fear as he took in my blood-soaked clothes. “Oh my god, Zoe, what happened?”

“It’s okay,” I said, lifting my hands to his face for a brief moment as if to make sure he was real. “It’s okay, I’m safe now. Most of it is Max’s blood. He didn’t make it.” A wave of grief swept over me again, but I tried to swallow it back. There would be time for grieving later. “And there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” I gestured behind me for Markan to come forward. “This is my brother.”

Adrien nodded a greeting to Markan. “And the Chancellor?”

“Dead.” Now that it was all over, the exhaustion was getting the better of me. My legs gave out, and Adrien only barely caught me before I hit the ground.

He spoke into his arm com. “Ginni, have you found Jilia yet?”

Ginni’s voice responded. “Yes, in one of the cells on sublevel four. Rand is melting the door open as we speak.”

“Get her to the top of the stairs. Zoe’s in bad shape. Xona, Juan, see if you can find an infirmary or anything that might have some epi so she can sleep safely.”

Adrien swept me up in his arms and started to head back up the stairs. I looked over his shoulder and waved at Markan to follow us. We threaded our way slowly through all the still blissed-out Regulators and continued up the stairs.

Pain radiated through my body with each jarring step. I could feel myself on the edge of consciousness.

“Adrien.” My voice must have radiated my fear, because he started going faster. And then, right when I was sure I couldn’t handle another step, sure I was going to pass out from exhaustion and pain, we stopped and came into the larger open space of the ground floor.

When we got there, Jilia was waiting. She immediately rushed forward. Adrien laid me on the ground, gently maneuvering me to my side and pulling away the bandage so Jilia could see my back wound. Then her calm, cool hands were on me.

I winced and let out a small yelp. Her touch stung at first, but then the pain lessened and lessened, until I could barely feel it at all. Adrien eased me onto my now-healed back and rested my head in his lap. Jilia moved on to my burned thigh, then to my broken arm, knitting the bone back together, and finally to the wound on my forehead. I sagged back against Adrien once she was finished, the pain only a dull soreness.

He and Jilia stripped off my dirty, bloody clothes, and helped me into a clean tunic Jilia had brought from the prisoner’s quarters. I was too exhausted to be embarrassed. Once I was changed, Adrien cradled me against him.

I heard other footsteps come into the room, but couldn’t stop staring up at Adrien’s face. It all still felt surreal, like a dream. He looked at the others who’d come in. “Did you find any epi?”

I finally dragged my gaze over where he was looking.

“No,” Xona said, “but we found something better.” Rand, standing beside her, held up a silver box. “Tyryn was in the cell beside Jilia, and he said he thought the Regs had brought all the gear from their crashed pod back when they took them prisoner. We broke into storage and found it all. Including one med container in perfect condition.”

Adrien leapt up and within moments they’d set it up. Xona helped me stand up and get me situated in the box.

“There’s so much to tell you all,” I mumbled tiredly.

“It can wait,” Adrien said firmly.

“But—”

He took my face in both his hands and leaned down to plant the gentlest kiss on my lips. “You are worn-out and broken and battered, and I can see you’re about to pass out any second now. So do it someplace safe, here in the med container.” He planted another whisper-soft kiss before pulling back. “I love you, Zoe. Now go to sleep.”

He clicked the lid closed and, in spite of myself, I settled back onto the inflated pillow. I made sure to stay awake long enough for the vacuum process to finish clearing all the allergens out of the space and start pumping in fresh oxygen, but within a few breaths after the beep signaled the air was clear, I was fast asleep.

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.