Glitch (6 page)

“How much farther?” I finally asked. I wasn’t strained for breath—everyone in the Community did a long cardio workout every night; healthy bodies meant a healthy Community, after all—but my thigh muscles were cramping up. I was used to running on a treadmill, not stair climbing.

“Not much,” he said. He didn’t sound out of breath at all.

Again I was struck by the mystery of this boy. Who was he? How did he know so much? Why was he helping me?

Before I could continue through the long list of questions racing through my mind, we reached a small four-by-four-foot plateau at the top of the staircase. Adrien found the switch easily this time and spoke the authorization code. And then, as the last door swung open and my eyes were stung by blinding light, I learned the answer to at least one of my questions.

Adrien wasn’t trying to help me at all.

He was trying to kill me.

I FLINCHED AND COVERED
my face even though I knew it wouldn’t help. Exposure to the outside air was deadly. And if it didn’t kill you right away, the radiation would lead to tumors soon enough.

I turned to race back down the stairs but Adrien grabbed my upper arm.

“Let go of me!” I shrieked and wrenched away. “Do you have a death wish?”

Images from our textbooks flashed in my mind as I struggled to hurry down the stairs. Boiling skin. Slow, painful deaths. It was probably already too late.

“Zoe!” Adrien grabbed both my arms now, holding me back from the stairs. “Zoe, be quiet or someone will notice!”

I kept pulling away, viciously scratching him with my other hand, anything to get away from that rectangular doorway of toxic Surface air. He growled in pain as I dug my nails in deep. He suddenly twisted me around, holding both of my arms across my chest, encasing me like a straitjacket with his body behind mine. He had me trapped, but I continued to struggle, holding my breath for as long as I could. Icy cold fear raced up and down my spine. He faced me toward the door and the toxic air beyond.

“Calm down!” he said. “Crackin’ hell, I should have just told you before, but I knew you’d never come if I told you we were going to the Surface. Listen to me, it’s not toxic out there!”

My body stopped struggling for a moment in shock at what he said. His voice was an intense whisper, blowing the hair by my ear.

“Walking around without gear won’t kill you. It’s harmless, in fact. The bastards lied, Zoe. They lied about the whole history of the Old World.”

“But the nuclear bombs—”

“Only a few bombs were released on D-day. Just enough to make it convincing. And Community Corp did it themselves. They did it intentionally. Don’t you see? The Community didn’t save you—they caged and enslaved you.”

“You’re lying,” I snapped. “The Community protects us. Everyone knows that.”

I tried to break away from him. I closed my eyes, begging to hear the hum in my head, to summon the ability to close the door with my mind. Nothing.

“Just hear me out,” he hissed in my ear, tightening his arm around me. “Community Corp
created
D-day. And then they made everyone believe they were the only ones who could save us from total nuclear destruction. The only ones who could save us from
ourselves
. After a few generations, no one remembered the truth anymore—only what they’d been told. It’s almost all lies. Zoe, most Community government buildings are above the godlam’d ground.”

I twisted around as much as I could to look back at him.

“You’re … you’re broken. Anomalous. You don’t know what you’re saying.” I glanced at the rectangle of light. It didn’t hurt my eyes so much to look at it anymore. How long had we been standing here exposed?

“I’m not cracked, Zoe,” he said. “The Surface is completely harmless.”

He loosened his tight grip on me a little and I pulled away a step. He held me by the hands, turning me around to face him. “You guys from underground sectors always have the hardest time dealing with this part. People like your parents are mindless midtier quality-control reps, but in other parts of the sector, there are subjects working aboveground as drone planters and harvesters.”

He took a breath, watching my face closely. “Think, Zoe. You know they’ve lied about what the Link does. You know the hardware does more than connect people together. It doesn’t protect them, it controls them. But they can’t control you anymore now that you’re glitching. You
are
dangerous, but not to the other subjects. You’re dangerous to the officials and Uppers who run the Community. You are their worst fear.”

My pulse started to race. He’d been watching me, he knew a lot about me. But why was he taking me to the Surface? To die? He could have just left me in that horrible Room A117.

I shook my head and took one step back down the stairs. Even though he was still holding my hands, he didn’t try to stop me.

“Going with you was completely illogical. We need to go back and see a diagnostic specialist.”

He shook his head. “How can you say that? How could you go back and let them rewire you until you’re no longer
you
?”

I looked down. How many times had I asked myself that same question? All the strange thoughts that drifted through my mind made entirely from the soft matter of my imagination instead of cold hard fact. The colors. The light. All the wild emotions. There was a reason I hadn’t turned myself in, and Adrien understood. It was impossible, but this stranger understood me.

“And that’s not even to mention your ability,” he said. “Moving things with your mind. Telekinesis. We haven’t met one quite like you before.”

I felt my eyes widen. He couldn’t know. It was impossible. What I’d thought just a second before was some deep connection between us now seemed calculated. He must be a Monitor. I looked around frantically. This was a trap.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stalled.

Panic bubbled up inside me. My head filled again with a growing hum, and I tried to latch on to it, to use whatever ability I might have to reach out behind Adrien and close that door. But I was too shaken.

I looked up and saw him studying my face. Then something he’d said earlier struck me.

“Who is
we
?”

He smiled. “You’re not the only one with gifts, Zoe. There are others.”

I started.
Others.
Others like me. That meant … I wasn’t alone?

Adrien sighed, raising his hands in surrender.

“Please. I’d like to take you to meet them, but I can’t drag you kicking and screaming. Number one, we’d get caught, and number two, I’d never do that to you. You’re away from the control of the Link now. You have your own mind, and you can make your own decisions. I’m giving you what the Community never will—a choice.” And with that, he stepped back.

I immediately fled down a few more stairs to get away from the open door, but then, in spite of my terror, the warring thoughts in my head made me pause. I looked back up at Adrien, trying to work through the jumble of chaotic new ideas.

Others like me. It sounded too good to be true. My thoughts raced too quickly to finish one before another swallowed it up. Could I trust him?

He took a deep breath.

“Come with me. There are other Gifted people here, living on the Surface, free and real and
alive.
I’m one of them. That’s how I know about the pictures you draw. You draw the world as you wish it was. I know about the one you drew yesterday, a boy’s face—it was your brother, right?”

“How did you know—?”

His words poured out in a rush. “I know that you drew him in the picture like you wish you could see him in real life. The way he looked at you from the picture, it was love, wasn’t it? That’s what you drew in his face?”

I felt my mouth drop open. “How could you know that?”

“It’s my Gift. I can see glimpses of the future.”

I blinked rapidly, letting the ramifications of that statement sink in. Everything he was saying was impossible. Everything that had happened today was impossible. This person standing before me, anomalous just like me? The Surface, safe? And a boy who could see the future? It was crazy. But then again, I could move objects with my mind—that was just as impossible. And he was right about the picture I’d drawn. How could he have known so much about my deepest secrets if he wasn’t telling the truth?

“If you can see the future, then what will happen if I don’t go with you?” My voice trembled, and I held onto the concrete wall behind me to steady myself.

“I don’t cracking know.” He breathed out and rubbed his eyes, looking unsure for the first time. “I’m still learning the limits of my Gift. I haven’t seen what happens next but I hope you’ll choose to come with me anyway. The Resistance will keep you safe.”

I looked up at his face, the thick brown hair that was cropped regulation length but still stuck up anyway, unruly and rebellious. I looked back and forth between the intensity of his green eyes and the open door. Everything I’d ever learned told me that the Surface was dangerous and that the things he said were impossible. But I could feel he was right about one thing—the Community was lying to us about the Link and V-chip.

What other lies did they tell us? And what would they do if they found out I knew?

“Zoe, you know what they’ll do if you go back,” he said quietly, as if he’d read my mind. “They’ll run the diagnostic on you and find out you’ve been glitching. They’ll find out about your telekinesis. I’ve seen a few people after they get done experimenting on them. It’s shuntin’ horrid.”

His voice cracked; then he shook his head and looked at his arm readout.

“
Shunt
, we’re running out of time.” His face turned pleading again. A faint rumble sounded in the distance, somewhere on the Surface.

“Please, Zoe, let’s get out of here. Come with me.”

He stood back and held a hand out to me, for the second time that day. An invitation. One I could refuse if I wanted. I stared at it, the hand of this broken boy who said crazy things. I was trapped. I knew what awaited me if I went back. A diagnostic, my secrets all laid bare, deactivation, or, worse, repairs.

I thought again of the boy who’d tried to run, the boy who haunted my dreams—I remembered the crunching noise of the bones in his nose breaking as they slammed him down. I took one glance back down at the dark stairway that was dimly lit now by the doorway.

These were my options. I could go back to the Community, face deactivation and the certainty of never glitching again. Or I could venture out onto the Surface, either dying quickly in the toxic air or, just maybe, having a chance at escape.

Behind Adrien’s frame, I caught a glimpse of the Surface. It was so bright, all I could see at first was the light, but then in the distance my eye caught on the edge of something man-made—a building that looked tall and strong and not at all destroyed.

Before I could change my mind, I grabbed Adrien’s hand and said, “Let’s go.”

ADRIEN SWUNG HIS GRAY PACK
around and rummaged through the bag.

“What are you doing? I thought we were going.” I was going to lose my nerve if we didn’t get out of here now.

“One last thing. I’ll do it to myself first so you can see what I’m doing.” He was all business again, looking sure of himself and the situation. He took out a small metal device, about the size of a stylus, but different from the one with the needles.

Something thudded from the darkness of the stairs below. We stood there, eyes locked, breathing evenly for several moments. The door to the surface was still open a crack. If someone was coming, they’d see the light and know there was something anomalous. I was glad my heart monitor was disabled, and from the look on Adrien’s face, it was clear his monitor must have been deactivated somehow, too.

I let out a gasp of surprise. Adrien slammed a hand over my mouth, his eyes wide with fear as he looked around us.

“Shhh.” He waited another moment before dropping his hand. He stayed close to me, and I could feel his chest as he slowed his breath.

A few moments passed, and he seemed to accept that the sound was not a person approaching. He took the device in his hand and jammed the tip into his forearm right above the subcutaneous panel.

“What are you doing?” A small trickle of blood seeped from where the device had bitten into his skin. He clicked a release switch and a tiny metal chip
tinked
as it hit the ground.

“Disabling the godlam’d tracker,” he whispered back. “Now we need to do yours. Give me your arm.”

I glanced at the doorway. Well, if I was going to trust him enough to chance going out into the open air, I might as well trust him with this, too. I held out my arm and squeezed my eyes shut. I bit down hard on my lips to keep from crying out, but after a short second of pain, it was gone.

“All done. You okay?” He kept a hand on my arm.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to keep the panic in my voice down to a minimum. Before I could say anything else, much less reconsider, he pulled my arm and we went out the door into the open air.

The light was shockingly, painfully bright. For the first few steps, I closed my eyes entirely and stumbled along after Adrien.

“Here, put these on.” He handed me a pair of glasses, like the ones we wore in chem lab, except these were tinted dark. I took them gratefully and put them on. When I opened my eyes again, I could see without pain. Adrien was already pulling me forward. It was only after a few more moments of trying to orient myself to the light that I was finally able to look around.

It was so open. There was so much
space.

Huge, horrible open space, interrupted only by giant steel buildings jutting upward.

Concrete buildings and open air were all I could see. The air was warm and moist. It felt thick when I breathed it in. It smelled wrong, though I didn’t have the right words to describe it. It was too much to take in at once. We passed a huge plaza in the middle of a complex of buildings and I couldn’t stop staring. It was empty of people, but it was not the destroyed and deadly ruins I’d seen in my history texts.