Glitch (29 page)

Adrien gave one more gentle knock. “I want it a little embedded in the chip but not too far. How is it now?”

“Good,” she said, and Adrien sat back on his heels, letting out a low breath.

“And now for the electricity.” He grimaced.

Max handed him the cord, and Adrien touched the metal contact from the frayed end of the fan cord to one side of the tablet. Then he lifted the tablet so that the other side was touching the metal sliver sticking out of the man’s head. “Zoe, will you go plug in the cord now?”

I nodded and swallowed. I took the cord, my hand hovering over the plug in the wall for a second. What if this didn’t work? What if when I plugged this cord into the outlet, I killed the man? My stomach twisted at the thought.

“Zoe?” Adrien said. “Do you need me to do it?”

“No,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm. “I’ve got it.” I plugged in the cord.

There was a slight pop and spark from the tablet board and the service worker’s head twitched once. Adrien pulled the tablet case away from the pin. “Okay,” he said, finally smiling. “I think we did it.”

“And he’s okay?” I hurried back over to the man, putting my hand on his chest. It kept rising and falling. He was still breathing. I grinned up at Adrien, who nodded.

“He should be fine.” Adrien breathed a huge sigh of relief, then let out a shaky laugh as he gathered up the equipment. “Okay, we need to get out of here. Max—”

“Already ahead of you,” Max said, and the next second he looked exactly like the service worker lying on the ground. “He probably had a small trolley if he was moving furniture. I’ll get it, then we can cover him up and I’ll move him somewhere far away from this part of the Academy.”

Adrien nodded. “Hurry up, though. When he wakes up, his heart monitor will start going off from the pain and someone will come check it. But you should have time to be long gone. Zoe and Molla, you should get out of here, but be careful. Stay in the camera blind spots.”

I nodded, and Molla and I slipped out the door behind Service Worker Max.

*

A week later, we still didn’t know what had happened to the service worker. Max tried impersonating an official to look at the service logs but didn’t find anything, and Adrien hadn’t wanted to risk hacking into the mainframe again. All we were left with was questions. Did the manual wipe work? If it didn’t, had Monitors been assigned to observe us? But if so, why had they waited to bring us in? All we could do was hope that the decision to let the worker live wouldn’t cost us our lives.

My nights were restless, filled with repeating nightmares. Instead of Daavd’s face in the chase nightmare, it was Max’s. He’d been chased down by Regulators and I hadn’t saved him. I’d let him down, let him get hurt.

Just like I was doing in real life.

I had to tell Max. Before I spent any more time with Adrien, before I kissed him again.… The thought of kissing Adrien sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. Which was then followed by another wave of guilt. There were too many other lies in my life. I couldn’t stand to have one between me and Max. In spite of what I couldn’t give him, he was still my best friend. He was still family.

I peeked inside Markan’s room but he wasn’t home yet. It felt nice having the apartment all to myself. I was so rarely alone and unwatched.

I slid the door open to my room and then jolted in alarm and almost dropped my tablet case.

“Adrien!”

“Sorry.” He grinned and dropped down the last few steps from the ladder. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing here?” I glanced back through my bedroom door to make sure Markan wasn’t about to come through the front door. “My brother will be home any minute.”

“Sorry, I just had to see you,” he said, coming closer.

I stopped looking back out the door and smiled at him. Just being near him made all the tension seep out of my muscles, replaced by a tingling excitement.

His expression seemed to darken.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing.” His face cleared as he smiled, his green eyes sparkling. He came closer and took my hand gently. I felt my stomach swoop at his touch.

He lifted his other hand to my face and I trembled. Then he kissed me, gently and slowly. Like it was a question he was waiting for me to answer. I had asked myself so many questions of my own about our kiss the other night, but the instant his lips touched mine, all of my doubts and fears washed away.

I sank against him, all my emotions breaking loose in our kiss. He responded, pulling me against him roughly, and it only made my heart beat faster. My heart monitor started buzzing between us but I didn’t care. It hadn’t beeped in ages. A little now was worth it. I pulled him closer, pressing against him, but just as I reached up to tangle my hands in his hair, he pushed me away.

“Wha—” I started dreamily, but suddenly it wasn’t Adrien standing in front of me anymore.

It was Max.

All the relief I’d felt a moment ago vanished instantly. A heavy pain hit the bottom of my stomach like a rock, taking my breath away.

“I knew it!” he yelled, slamming his fist into my bedroom wall. His face was red with fury.

I felt my mouth drop open and my throat choke with thick guilt. “Max, I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you.” I tried to reach out to him but he yanked his arm away.

“Tell me what?” I looked away from him, hot water burning at the back of my eyes.

“Tell me what?” he said, angrier this time. He was seething, but I could see and hear the hurt behind it. For once, he wasn’t masking himself. “That your heart monitor buzzes when
he
kisses you but not when I do?”

“You know you are important to me, right?” My eyes swam as I said it.

“But?” He spit out the word.

“But I also feel for Adrien … like…” I stumbled over my words, seeing the flare of Max’s nostrils. I had to get it all out now. “Like togetherness feelings for him.”

“Don’t say that.” His voice was hard, angry. “You don’t mean it.”

“I do. I’m sorry. It just happened. I didn’t ask for it to happen, but it did. I never meant to hurt you, Max. And I was going to tell you—”

He came toward me now and he gripped my upper arms, his fingers like a vise.

“Ow, Max, you’re hurting me.”

“You don’t understand. He’s a liar. He’s tricking you. The whole Rez isn’t who he says they are.” Max’s voice dropped. “He’s not one of
us.
He’s using you.”

“He’s not.” I tried to pull away from his grip. “He makes me feel—”

“What?” he yelled, letting me go and thrusting me away. “Tell me about what he makes you feel? I’ll kill the bastard!”

“Stop it, Max. Someone will hear.” I went over to him, trying to touch his arm, but he shrugged me off, staring at me with a look that made me shrivel up inside. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

He turned away and punched the wall so hard it made a dent. He let out a shout of pure rage and I flinched.

“I won’t let him have you!”

“Max,” I whispered, putting a hand on my aching chest. Adrien had once told me that hearts could break if something hurt enough. I hadn’t understood what he meant at the time, but I did now. My heart was breaking, but I couldn’t turn back now. He deserved to know everything.

“I think I was already his, before you and I even … I mean, I think I started to feel things during the time I was away. I don’t remember it all but I think that’s when it first happened. It was before we even became friends,” I whispered. I was trying to find anything to make it hurt less now.

“It should have been me who rescued you that day you disappeared. I was coming for you, too. Before he got in the way,” he spat.

“Stop it—”

“Zoe, listen to me!” he cut me off sharply. “You don’t know anything about him. Think about it. He knows all about you from his visions. He knows all the right things to say to you. Isn’t that a little bit suspicious? And then there’s his Resistance. I’ve looked into it, and they do all kinds of experiments in chemical warfare and coercion. They’re as bad as the Community. And Adrien’s helping them get to you. To make you
think
you like him so you’d work for them. They need your Gift. But I’m not like that,” he said, his voice intense as leaned in. “I want
you.
Just you.”

He came at me and put his mouth on mine and pushed me up against the wall, crushing me under his weight.

“Stop it.” I tried to push him away but he was stronger.

He stopped kissing my protesting mouth, but he still trapped me there, hands on both sides of my head against the wall.

“You’ll want me,” he said in a growl, keeping me captured against the wall. “One day. I’ll make you want me.”

“Let me go,” I whispered, all patience gone, and something worse, something I’d never expected to feel around Max—fear.

“Move back,” I said firmly, so furious at him for making me afraid. The anger started a buzzing in my ears. “Before I
make
you.”

He laughed darkly, pulling back and holding his hands up to show he wasn’t trapping me anymore. “Don’t you see? That’s why you’re perfect for me. You have the darkness underneath, too.”

His words were like a punch to my stomach. So he saw it too—the guilt that hung like a weight around my neck. He knew that, at my core, I was a betrayer. What I’d done to my brother would mark me for life.

“Maybe,” I finally managed to whisper. “But it’s still Adrien I want.”

He took another step back. He stood still for a long moment and I could see his throat bobbing up and down as he swallowed repeatedly. It was a terrifying silence. Finally, he lifted his forearm to swipe at his eyes and hurried out of the room.

I felt like my stomach had been hollowed out, scraped clean of any goodness inside me.

I’d hurt Max. I’d betrayed yet another person I cared about. I wanted to call him back, to somehow make things better, to help close the deep wound I’d made, but I didn’t know what to say.

The front door slid shut behind him.

IT HAD BEEN TWO WEEKS,
and Max still wasn’t talking to me. I walked with him to the cafeteria like always. We were trapped in our routine, forced together to avoid suspicion. He couldn’t avoid me, but I could sense from the furious heat pulsing from his body that it was taking every ounce of effort to be near me.

What he
could
do was ignore me. Which he did. I picked at my food, feeling him like a silent fuming boulder beside me. I tried over and over to catch his eye but he never gave any indication he even knew I existed. I finally gave up trying.

Then, as I was about to stand up and collect my dishes, I heard a low scream from the other side of the room.

My eyes widened as I craned my neck to see what was going on.

A boy screamed and thrashed, trying to get away from the two Regulators who’d just grabbed him. It was Juan, the boy Adrien had pointed out to me earlier, the one who was a glitcher.

“Help me!” he screamed. “Someone, please help me!”

I looked in panic at all the staid faces around me in the cafeteria. Everyone watching dispassionately. I looked back at Juan.

He managed to wrench away from one of the Regulators, but the other one still had a firm grip. I scanned the room as calmly as possible. There were more Regulators everywhere. The ones not holding Juan were surveying the rest of us as if they were looking for a reaction.

With a sudden wave of dizziness, I recognized what was happening in this moment. It was exactly the same as my nightmares of Daavd. The anger burned in me, and I felt my power respond, bursting instantly to life at my fingertips.

One Regulator pulled out a syringe.

I couldn’t stand here and watch this happen. I couldn’t do nothing. Not this time.

The buzzing was at a fever pitch inside me. I started to rise, but Max’s fingers gripped my arm like a vise under the table. I looked at him, knowing the panic must be showing in my eyes. He blinked in surprise, as if he saw something in my face he’d never seen before. He quietly shifted his legs, locking them around mine and ever so slightly shaking his head in warning. I looked helplessly back at the boy.

But my power was not as easily quieted. I felt myself losing control, but I had nowhere to direct it. A fork on a nearby table fell to the ground, unnoticed in the commotion. A tray of food in front of me shifted first to the left, then the right. Max gripped me harder.

Juan sank to the ground, unconscious. The Regulators dragged him from the room. He was limp in their arms, his feet skimming the ground behind him. I felt sick. Everyone around me began gathering up their things calmly, as if nothing had just happened.

They’re monsters. We’re all monsters.

I stood up, barely remembering to take my case with me as I hurried out of the room. I was a monster. I could have stopped it all somehow, but I didn’t want to risk Max’s safety. To risk my own. The power had been right at my fingertips. I could have saved him. But I didn’t.

I hurried into the bathroom so I could let out my feelings in the privacy of a bathroom stall. I had to stuff my fist in my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. All my power raced through me, begging for release. I let out just a fraction of the energy as gently as I could, allowing it to shake my body in tremors that knocked me into the stall doors. I slid to the floor of the stall and wrapped my arms around myself as if I could physically hold it all in.

Max was waiting for me when I came out. He took my arm hard and steered me to the wall, out of the way of the students filing by on the way to their next class period. He was rougher with me than usual. Harder and colder than he had ever been before last night. But I deserved it.

“Promise me you aren’t going to do anything
stupid
,” he hissed in my ear.

I shook my head, feeling nauseous as I pictured Daavd, then Juan, dragged away. “We have to help him. That could have been any of us!”
It should have been me,
I added silently.

“Stop it,” Max said shortly. “Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice still hard.