Override (Glitch) (12 page)

“Security hub?” Ginni asked. She looked at Xona with a frown. “I’ve never heard of it. How have I never heard of it?”

“Oh never mind,” I said, looking at my arm panel. “He sent directions.”

Ginni smiled again. “If he’s telling you to meet him in some part of the Foundation we’ve never heard of, it’s definitely because he wants to be alone with you!” She reached out and took my hand. “Promise you’ll tell me all about it? Best friends share all their secrets.”

Considering how Ginni usually handled secrets, I wasn’t too excited about sharing mine, but I still returned her smile.

As I walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help getting swept up in Ginni’s giddy enthusiasm.
He wants to be alone with you.
My face broke into a grin at the thought. I looked at the directions lighting up my forearm and hurried down the main hallway, then cut across to the east wing by the training center.

Right before the boys’ dorm rooms was a door labeled T
O
S
UBLEVEL
. I pressed my thumb against the panel at the side and it slid open, revealing a stairwell leading down. Of course. If there was a room Ginni didn’t know about, it had to be in the military level of the Foundation.

I went down the stairs and followed a short hallway until I came to the door Adrien had indicated. I stepped into a room with a wall covered in projected monitors, floor to ceiling. There was a bed in one corner, and Adrien sat in the middle of the room at a console desk that curved in a large C around several chairs. A boy I’d never seen before sat beside him.

My heart sank. We weren’t going to be alone after all.

Adrien jumped to his feet when he saw me. “Zoe, I’m so glad you’re here. This is Simin,” he gestured to the other boy. Simin was dark-haired, with big round cheeks. He didn’t look up when Adrien introduced him.

“Simin.” Adrien nudged the boy in his shoulder.

“No point,” Simin grumbled. “She’ll just forget.”

“You know what the Professor says. Repeated exposure could help you stick longer in people’s memories.”

Adrien turned back to me. “Simin’s the glitcher whose power keeps the Foundation invisible. I think maybe I told you about him before?”

I frowned. It seemed like I had heard something like that, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the specifics.

“Did I catch you in the middle of dinner?” Adrien asked.

I shook my head. “No, I was just chatting with Xona and Ginni.”

“Ginni?” Simin finally looked up at me. He seemed to be about our age. “Did she mention me?”

“No, she’d never heard of this place. Which surprised me, since Ginni seems to know everything and everyone.”

Simin looked down, and I could see the disappointment clearly on his face. “Not everyone.”

“Simin’s a top-notch techer,” Adrien said, patting his shoulder. “He’s been helping me with something. It’s about your older brother, Daavd.”

I felt my eyes widen. That was the last thing I’d expected. Unbidden images from my old nightmares flashed in my mind. My brother running in a forest. Swarms of Regulators charging through the trees after him. Him on the ground, broken, his eyes frozen on me, his little sister who’d raised the alarm. I swallowed hard.

“What about Daavd?”

“We’ve been hacking into the Community subject records for known glitchers.” Adrien gestured for me to sit on the empty seat beside him. “Mostly we’re looking for information on the glitchers we suspect the Chancellor is trying to recruit and the ones she might already have under her power. But we’ve been practicing our hack codes on older records that are less guarded and won’t raise alarms in their systems. So I thought I’d look into Daavd’s files…”

He started tapping on the console in front of him and opening several directories in the screens on the wall. He clicked through a few more screens then pointed. “The report says they were never able to discover how your brother got past Regulators, much less how he got you to go with him.”

He turned to me. “At first we thought maybe he was able to hack their security systems, but then Simin came up with a different theory. What if Daavd’s power was something similar to what the Chancellor can do?”

I shook my head. I might not remember him, but Daavd was my brother. There was no way he could be anything like the Chancellor.

But Adrien persisted. “Think about it, Zoe, why didn’t you turn your brother in much sooner than you did when he escaped with you as a child? Your first instinct under V-chip control would have been to report him to the Regulators, but you went along with him quietly. What if he could compel you to do what he wanted?”

“But then why didn’t it work?”

“Well,” Adrien’s voice had turned softer. He knew how much guilt I still felt about it all. “Maybe he had trouble with his Gift like you do, and it didn’t always work right. Just an instant of his losing control over you would have been enough time for you to call out to the Regulators and get him killed.”

“But the Chancellor has the same power.” A horrible thought struck me. “Are you saying that we’re somehow related to her?”

“No, no,” Adrien waved a hand. “Not at all. We just think that Daavd’s power is similar to hers and that the small dose of your early exposure to his power is why you can resist her now. There’s something unique about your body chemistry. It seems to work like your allergies do.”

Adrien turned to Simin. “You want to explain this part? You’re the one who made the connection.”

Adrien pushed his chair back a little so I could see across him to where Simin sat.

“So we know your extreme allergic reaction to Surface allergens is due to your earlier exposure as a child,” Simin said. He clicked through his console while he talked and didn’t look up at me. He sounded bored, or maybe he just wasn’t comfortable being around other people. “Your body created antibodies against a specific allergen the first time you were exposed, so the next time you encountered it, your mast cells went crazy, releasing histamines to protect against what they registered as a dangerous substance. This sent you into anaphylactic shock.”

I shuddered. He recounted it so scientifically, but I remembered the horror only too well. Gasping for air, my throat swelling shut.

“But what does that have to do with why the Chancellor’s power doesn’t work on me?”

“Histamine-releasing neurons are also found in the brain,” Simin continued. “Neural interaction between the hypothalamus and amygdala are at the heart of what makes glitcher powers possible. If your unique immunological response triggered a similar release of histamines in the hypothalmus due to childhood exposure to glitcher compulsion, you could have built up protection against that particular kind of power.”

I blinked rapidly, trying to follow his complex explanation.

“But instead of making you sick like your allergies do, your mind is protecting you from a real threat.” He finally looked up at me. “It’s not a perfect correlation, but you could think of it like an immunization. An early dosage built up an immunity to the disease. It was only possible through the combination of your unique body chemistry and your chance exposure as a child.”

“It explains why you’re the only person her compulsion doesn’t work on, but why every other glitcher power still affects you,” Adrien said.

I looked between the two boys uncertainly.

“Zoe,” he took my hand. “I know this doesn’t make up for what happened. Nothing can change that. But your brother’s death could be the reason we’re alive. Because of him, you’re the one person with the ability to fight the Chancellor. You save lives. You can save all of us. Because of him.”

I couldn’t breathe. I pulled my hand away from his. “If I had the choice, I’d rather have Daavd back.”

“But you weren’t given a choice,” he said, his voice gentle. “And I’m so, so sorry about that.”

Tears welled up and my whole upper body began to quiver. Xona had said her mom believed that good things can come from the bad, that things always work out for a reason. But it seemed so wrong to be glad that my brother had died as part of some twisted web of fate so that I could fight against the Chancellor. Adrien had obviously meant it as a comforting thought, but I didn’t want to believe the world worked like that. And still, any way I looked at it, Daavd died because of me. A high-pitched buzzing sounded in my ears. I knew the feeling well.

“Oh no,” I said, blinking my tears away and looking at my shaking forearm.

Adrien took my hand in his, then his eyes flashed back up at mine. “Zoe, your emotions are triggering your telek. Can you calm down and get yourself under control?”

I tried to take several deep breaths, but all I could see was my brother’s bloody face. The shaking got worse. I could feel the power building up inside me, begging to get out.

Adrien put his hands on both sides of my face and looked straight into my eyes. “Zoe. You need to Link yourself. Right now.”

I whispered the words to reconnect myself. Color leached from the room. And with it, I felt my tumultuous emotions calm and dissipate too. The sliding door of the Link came down, separating me from my fears and anxieties, and replacing them with numb calm.

Simin stiffened in his chair.

“It’s all right,” Adrien said. “Her powers are under control now.”

“No, it’s not that,” Simin said, grabbing a small device from a shelf under the console and sticking it in his ear. He pointed at one of the monitors.

“What is it?” Adrien asked.

Simin raised a hand to silence him, but, after a few minutes of giving directions over the com, he turned to us.

“It’s the General. She’s coming in. With a lot of wounded soldiers.”

Chapter 11

ADRIEN’S FACE WENT ASHEN
at Simin’s words. He headed directly to the Med Center where Jilia was already prepping beds. I followed.

He had told me I should go to my dorm room, but I stayed behind anyway. One look at Adrien’s tense face helped me fight the numbing Link enough for one clear thought of my own to shine through the fog: I didn’t want to leave him when he looked like that. At the same time, I didn’t dare un-Link myself. I couldn’t risk adding to the crisis by losing control of my power.

I pressed myself against the wall as Rez fighters came stumbling in with a loud chorus of shuffling boots, moans, and shouted instructions. Half a dozen wounded fighters were carried in and deposited onto the waiting beds. All of them bled from one place or another. The Link grayed color as much as emotion, but I could make out the dark stains on clothes and the floor, and the gashes on their skin. Adrien helped them all get situated. The cold readouts of the Link informed me of the size and breadth of each wound. One man’s leg looked like it had been blown completely off from the shin down. Another’s chest was half caved in, and Jilia laid her hands on him immediately. After a few moments though, her face fell and she cursed and moved on to another.

Adrien’s face reflected the horror I couldn’t feel.

In the chaos, a woman with sharp cheekbones and a hard mouth strode into the room. She wore the dark gray uniform of the Rez fighters. Her hands were stained with blood, but I couldn’t tell if it was hers. Professor Henry followed on her heels. “Are you sure you’re okay, Rosalina?” She must be the General.

“What happened?” Adrien asked.

The General ignored him and walked over to Jilia. “How are they?”

“I’m almost done triaging,” Jilia murmured, pressing on the abdomen of a woman Rez fighter. The woman winced but didn’t cry out. “We lost Tirpte. Jenald might need a bionic replacement.” Jilia lifted her hands and finally looked at the General. “But I think the others will make it.”

The General breathed out and closed her eyes. “We lost four more in the field. They were ready for us. There were only two cell commanders who knew we were coming.” She rubbed her forehead. “Chancellor Bright must have gotten to them.”

The Professor’s eyes widened. “Then all the cells in the northern quadrant might have been cracked.”

The General slammed her palm against a tray of instruments. “She knows our every move before we make it. And she’s being considered next in line to become Chancellor Supreme of Sector 6. If she manages it…” Her jaw tensed. “We can’t let it come to that.”

“Why were you in Central City?” Adrien asked. His voice was hard, almost accusatory.

The General’s eyes sliced over at him and something passed between them I couldn’t read. Her mouth tightened and a vein in her forehead stood out. “That’s none of your concern.” She glanced over at me. “No one should be in here except medical personnel. Leave now.”

Adrien pushed off from the wall and I followed him. He didn’t say anything once we got into the hallway, but he stopped and leaned over, putting his hands on his knees and breathing hard.

In the back of my mind, I felt a tugging thought that I should be doing something. But I didn’t know what.

“You should go to your dorm room,” he said, standing up and raking a hand hard through his hair. His facial features were contorted. The three long tones of Scheduled Subject Downtime sounded over the Link. Numbed by the soothing sounds, I moved my feet forward and shuffled obediently toward my dorm.

I paused and looked back before I turned the corner. Adrien was standing in the same place, his eyes wet as he looked down at the stains on his hands.

*   *   *

The next morning, Ginni told me to un-Link as per our usual morning routine, and immediately everything that had happened the night before rushed in again. The bloody soldiers. The General’s anger. And Adrien’s face when I left him.

“How are the soldiers who came in last night?” I asked Ginni, trusting that she’d have the latest news.

“One died, but the rest are going to be okay.”

I showered and dressed quickly, braiding my long dark hair while it was still wet. I hurried along to breakfast before Xona and Ginni were ready, hoping Adrien might be there. He’d been so obviously hurting last night, and I’d left him there. Just walked away. The Link had turned me into an unfeeling monster. I had to see him and try to make it right.