Glitch (8 page)

“This is where we get out.” He clicked the release on my seat belt, then reached across me and popped my door open.

“Why are we getting
out
?” I whispered.

He got out and hurried around to my door. He pulled it farther open and held out a hand. “Come on, we gotta hurry.”

I heard the driver’s-side door open, and a strange man stepped in. Fear flushed me, but I managed to squelch the yelp of surprise in my throat. Adrien reached in and grabbed my hand, quickly pulling me farther into the dark.

“It’s okay. That’s Brandon. He’s going to keep driving the car so it looks like a routine maintenance vehicle continuing on to its destination. If anyone checks satellite images, it won’t seem out of place.”

“What about cameras? You said they were everywhere.” I walked as quickly as I could behind him in the dim tunnel, feeling exposed even in the darkness. The air felt thick in my throat, like I was breathing through a suffocating blanket. The hallways and tunnels back home were always dry—too dry even, people got nosebleeds sometimes—but it was necessary for the intense air-filtration systems. Or so I’d been told.

“Don’t worry so much.” He laughed. “Didn’t I tell you we do this all the time? They’ve disabled the cameras, too.”

He stopped and the metal door scraped as he opened it. A single light panel shone inside, illuminating a dirty stairwell. I went through the door willingly, glad to go anywhere that led underground and out of the reach of atmospheric particulates and the unnerving rain.

Adrien led me down the stairs and opened a circular service hatch on the floor at the bottom. A ladder led down into shadows.

“You go first. I’ll follow right behind to secure the hatch. Make sure to get a good hold. It’s a long godlam’d way down, and the ladder can be slippery.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I dropped my legs into the dark space and got a foothold on the ladder. I descended carefully in the dark, tapping my arm panel for light. I could still only see the ladder and a small area around me. I glanced down but the ladder disappeared after a few feet into the thick darkness.

I moved down rung by rung, trying not to think about the long drop into the empty space below. It was cooler down here, but it smelled horrible. The ladder was slick with what felt like slime. I tried not to think about the potential of radioactive sludge. Adrien’s footsteps sounded on the ladder above me. I glanced up just as the crescent of light disappeared when he locked the hatch behind us.

“It should be about forty more feet down or so.” He called down quietly, his voice echoing. “Once I get down, I’ll grab a flashlight from a stash we keep there.”

I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. I concentrated on getting a good grip on each slick rung. My feet splashed into something wet when I stepped off the ladder.

“What’s on the floor?” I asked nervously. I waved my arm panel around to try to see better but the ground just looked black. Adrien dropped down the last couple feet beside me. I heard a metallic click and light flooded the space.

“Oh!” I gasped.

We were in a huge cathedral-like space, complete with massive concrete supporting arches leading up to the ceiling. But it was the sludgy water I’d landed in that concerned me more. I could feel it soaking through my socks. Huge rats scurried away from the light and I shrieked and jumped back up on the first rung of the ladder.

“I was going to warn you but I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”

I glared at him in the dim light.

“You seem to be doing that a lot!” I whispered. “Next time, just warn me!”

He held up his hands. “Okay, okay, will do. It’s a little gnangy down here and I’m not denyin’ that there’s a … bit of a rodent population. But it’s not dangerous.”

He handed me some thick rubber knee-high boots. “Here, put these on. We keep ’em stored here along with flashlights.”

I shook my foot to try to get the excess water out of my shoe, slipped one leg into the boot, then the other. Adrien held out a hand and I dared to step back into the ankle-high water. It was black and oily, with a thick scum covering the surface. And it smelled horrible, like rotten eggs and rancid butter mixed together.

“Here’s a flashlight.” He handed me a heavy black flashlight. I wiped my hands on my pants and took it. The chamber we were in was huge and rectangular, with arched concrete struts that led to the ceiling, which was so high I could only barely make it out. As we made our way down the chamber, I realized that what had looked like black circles on the wall were actually other tunnels leading out.

“What is this place?” I asked softly. “Are you sure it’s safe? No cameras?”

“Nope, not down here. This is an old combined sewage and storm-drain tunnel. It used to be called the Deep Tunnel. It goes for hundreds of miles all throughout the city.”

“Then how have I not heard of it? I mean, I
live
underground.”

He nodded. “Downtown, most of these old tunnels were demolished or rebuilt as part of the infrastructure of the underground city. These ones were too prone to flooding, so they left them alone.”

He motioned me forward and I followed him, keeping my flashlight beam in front of my feet so I’d know where I was stepping.

I put one arm over my nose at the smell. “I think I might vomit.”

“Sorry,” Adrien said. “Just try not to think about it. It’ll get better once we get out of the central chamber.”

I nodded and followed him, trying to move my feet through the water smoothly rather than taking big splashing steps. As we came to the end of the chamber, I peered down the circular entrances that opened in the walls like giant gaping mouths. The light from the flashlights only cut through the first ten feet of darkness down each tunnel.

Adrien stopped. “Third tunnel on the right. Here we are.”

He pointed his flashlight toward a tunnel at least thirty feet in diameter. He stepped up, his boots splashing up the foul water as he went. I followed, trying to lift each foot slowly to keep the splash to a minimum. I swept my flashlight ahead but could see only the endless tunnel until it curved out of sight to the left.

“How far are we going?”

“Far,” Adrien said. “A mile down, we’ll branch off again to a narrower tunnel that leads to my mom’s place.”

“You really know your way around here.”

“I grew up haunting these tunnels.” He walked smoothly, sure-footed even in the sludge. “We spent a lot of time here when I was small, running ops into the city. Sometimes a cell would get cracked and my mom’d have to stow me away somewhere safe, like these tunnels. Always with a map to memorize and a backpack full of provos in case she didn’t come back.” His voice quieted at the end.

“Adrien…” I felt so sad for him suddenly—imagining him as a small child, cowering in the dark all alone—but I didn’t know the right words to express it. I thought about earlier, how he’d squeezed my hand when I was afraid and how it had made me feel better. I reached over and took his hand.

He seemed caught off-guard by my touch.

“Thanks. It’s okay.” His voice was a little rough. “Long time ago, you know. Anyway. You said you had a bunch of questions. We have some time, so ask away.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, thinking. All the little bits of information he’d haphazardly given here and there jumbled together in my mind. “You said D-day never really happened. But how is it possible that the Community could deceive everyone so completely?”

He shook his head. “History isn’t all fact—it’s just the story the victors tell to keep themselves in power. And it’s been a slow revision. The more time passes, the easier it becomes to reinvent the past.”

“So then what
is
the truth?” I asked in exasperation. “What really happened?”

He stepped around a buildup of mud and sludge that had caked up against one wall. I grimaced, but at least he’d been right: The smell didn’t seem quite so bad anymore. I didn’t know if I was getting used to or if it wasn’t as strong in this side tunnel.

“People in the Old World had been talking about a Global Community for a while,” he said. “Some globally spanning corporations were formed and they got more and more powerful. Especially Community Corp. It was an impressive technology company with military connections. Then there were the major breakthrough advancements with the creation of bionic supersoldiers. That’s when they realized the potential of the V-chip for soldiers.”

He shook his head. “Some shunting genius realized they could use the V-chip as an artificial amygdala.”

“The amygdala,” I said, my mind going back to my neurotech text. “That’s a vestigial part of the brain. It’s useless, like the appendix. That’s why they put the V-chip there, because it won’t interfere with the necessary brain processes.”

“Another lie,” he said gently.

He led me around another buildup of gunk and garbage. I saw movement in the dark. Rats. I’d never seen rats before today. Really, I’d never seen many animals in my whole life other than flies or gnats or sometimes roaches. We didn’t have any meat-processing centers in our sector. I shuddered and moved away, even though it meant I was walking through the deeper water at the center of the tunnel.

“The amygdala’s supposed to facilitate emotional response,” Adrian continued, oblivious to my reaction to the rats. Either that, or he was trying to distract me. “But the V-chip dampened feeling ’til emotion was done away with completely. Then the Link was expanded for military use so that a unit of soldiers wasn’t a group of individuals anymore—they were a single entity, all Linked together to a single commander. I mean, think about it.” He waved his hands as he explained. “With a completely obedient army under their command, an army that had no patriotic loyalties, no conscience, no fear, Comm Corp suddenly had a huge amount of power.”

He looked over at me. “And that’s when they planned D-day. They could finally wrench control away from governments and bring the V-chip to the masses. And the masses agreed to it willingly.” He laughed darkly and shook his head. “The ultimate corporate acquisition. Our own minds.”

A shiver went down my arms as I realized just how much people had given up, and all for a lie. How
could
they? I couldn’t believe that anyone would volunteer their freedom, their mind, without a fight. As a drone, I’d never known what I was missing until now, but for them—they’d experienced freedom. They knew exactly how much they had to lose.

“People will do a lot of things that don’t make sense when they’re scared,” Adrien said. His voice was gentle now; it had lost its dark sardonic edge. “Comm Corp was producing implants that they said could protect people from the aftereffects of the bombs. It’s totally cracked, I know. But people will grasp at anything if they believe their survival is at stake, no questions asked. They went to Comm Corp for help, and they all left with V-chips.”

A loud splashing from behind brought me out of my thoughts and sharply back to the present. I stopped and spun around, flashing my light. All I could see was the tunnel leading on infinitely into darkness.

“Are we being followed?” Panic spiked through me.

“Don’t worry, it’s just the rats,” he said.

Great
, just the rats. I swallowed uncomfortably and turned around. The tunnel went on seemingly forever ahead. I was used to tunnels, but the darkness and noises and foreign smells of this place were getting to me. At least I wasn’t alone. I thought of Adrien as a child huddled alone in the tunnels and shuddered again.

“This is crazy,” I said. “I’ve lived my whole life believing we were a new race of survivors, superior because we’d overcome all our destructive instincts. And you expect me to believe this horrible nightmare, just because you say so?” My voice cracked on the last word. The water was coming out of my eyes again.

“Zoe,” he said quietly, looking over at me as we walked. His green eyes seemed to glow in the dim luminescence of the flashlight. “You’ve known something was off for a while now. Ever since you started glitching. You know this is wrong. The officials and Uppers, they’re making you all slaves.”

“They tell you when and where you live, where you work, when you eat, when you sleep. They pair you with genetic partners and create your children in test tubes and when you’re no longer useful and productive for them, they deactivate you.” He waved the hand not holding the flashlight to emphasize his words. “You never have a
choice.
You never get to
think.
All you know is work. They work you ’til they wear you out and then you’re deactivated and tossed in the incinerator. You’re just
tools
to the Community, not human beings.”

His voice grew more and more impassioned as he talked. His face lit up with a warmth and fire I’d never seen before. Deep down, something new stirred inside me. The way he talked about it, it did make our lives seem horrible. It
was
unfair. I’d just never thought about it this way. The deep sadness gave way to anger. Cracks were forming, threatening to shatter everything I’d ever believed, everything I’d thought was absolute. I felt my body shaking.

Something again splashed loudly behind us. I looked backward in alarm. “That sounded closer than before.” I gripped Adrien’s arm.

Adrien flashed his light beam. “Probably just more rats. Don’t worry.” But in spite of his easy words, his voice sounded strained, and the arm I held was tense and taut.

“Don’t worry,” he said again, more relaxed this time, and he nudged my shoulder. “’Sides, they can’t bite through the thick rubber of your boots.” The flashlight glow bounced off his grin.

“That is not comforting!” I said, but I smiled back.

I realized I was still holding Adrien’s arm. I let go, surprised that I’d grabbed him so un-self-consciously. I never touched anybody in my normal world, but it had just felt natural with him. I wondered what other things would become natural the longer I was disconnected from the Link. There were entire worlds to be discovered. The thought momentarily awed me:
Maybe it will be worth all this confusion.