Shutdown (Glitch) (31 page)

I stayed behind the trees where they couldn’t see me and cast my telek outward. I was able to focus enough to push through the broken window and down to the small drive plugged into the dash console. I was surprised it hadn’t been knocked off in the fall. I tugged it out, then paused for a moment and reached through all the tossed contents in the back of the transport. I grabbed the healing gel and a roll of bandage wrap, then pulled all three items out through the window. I kept the objects hovering close to the ground before launching them up into the sky when they reached the tree line. No one even noticed the small bundle flying through the air. It sailed and landed in my hand.

I flew farther away again, wincing in pain as I lifted off the ground and set myself back down several miles away. I peeled up my bloody tunic and opened the tube of healing gel. I barely kept myself from crying out as I twisted around to apply the gel to the wound on my back. It wouldn’t be able to heal the internal bleeding the knife had caused, but at least it would help the outer cut seal closed and scab up.

Then I opened the spool of bandage and wrapped it as tight as I could bear in several loops around my torso. When I’d bound the wound as well as I could, I dropped the roll to the ground and took several deep breaths. I felt a little lightheaded from blood loss, but there was no time to waste. The Chancellor had somehow compelled my team from far away, even though I still didn’t know how she’d found us. She’d be sending a transport to pick them all up soon.

But Adrien had said the building where Ginni’d located the Chancellor was the same one he saw in his vision. She must still be there, or she’d be returning soon.

I steadied myself, then plugged the tiny drive into my arm port and watched the map appear in the glowing display. Now I knew where to go.

I took one moment to look over toward the trees that separated me from the jet. I was so close to Adrien. I couldn’t leave him here, knowing he was under the Chancellor’s control. Who knew what she might do to him? The last time she’d had him, she’d cut out part of his brain. But there was nowhere I could take him to be safe from her, I saw that now. The only way to truly ensure his safety was to kill the Chancellor. I swallowed hard and lingered one moment longer. I imagined Adrien’s comforting hand in mine and then launched myself up into the sky.

Chapter 25

I RACED TOWARD BATTLE WITH
no army and already wounded. The odds were not on my side.

But there was my anger. That I still had, that I could cling to. Rage, fury, the hottest and brightest-burning of emotions. I fed them until wrath pulsed through my veins. It was different than the last few months when I’d been trying to swallow all my emotions down and make myself steel. I embraced the anger now and pulled it over myself like a mantle. It made me stronger.

My speed increased as I ticked off each wrong the Chancellor had done to me and to the ones I loved. She’d lobotomized Adrien, imprisoned Markan, killed who knew how many Rez fighters, and now was planning to implant adult V-chips in children. When I couldn’t feed the anger anymore myself, I imagined the rage of centuries of people whose lives had been stolen from them by people just like the Chancellor. I carried millions of ghosts in my wake like a cape billowing out behind me.

The wind ripped at my hair, pulling it out of its braid and whipping it back in a mad rush of black curls. I pressed on, letting no more thoughts enter my head. I emptied myself out. I had never been so single-minded in my entire life.

And then I saw the ocean. It stretched out even vaster than the sky. I couldn’t fathom all the crashing water that battered the coastline. I turned my thoughts from it and focused only on the building perched on a high hill that matched the blinking dot lighting up on my arm panel map.

The Chancellor’s compound stood out like an ugly metallic sore against the beauty of the horizon. It was a long burnished steel rectangle, only two stories high but covering at least a quarter mile. I must not have been paying attention to the scale of the schematics the techer had shown us, because the building in front of me was far bigger than I’d expected. I flew toward it and let my rage expand even further.

As I neared, I sensed gun barrels click to life on the top ledges of the building. Both laser fire and projectile missiles streaked toward me. I banked and launched myself straight up into the sky, dodging the lasers and catching the other missiles midair with my telek. I forced them out to the sea and then rammed them into each other. The explosion created a huge fireball over the water. Next I ripped all the guns I could see off the building.

People began pouring out of the front doors. They were too small to be Regulators, which meant they had to be glitchers. I needed to disable them before they attacked me, but at the same time, any one of them could be my brother, Markan.

I remembered training with Tyryn. He’d always said the key to knocking someone out with one punch was the speed of the blow. I’d practiced tossing dummies against a pressure panel and had been confident at the time that it was a skill I could use whenever I needed it. But now, with adrenaline pumping through my veins and knowing that any one of the figures rushing out the door could be Markan, I was less sure.

I reached forward with my telek. As soon as I could feel the shape of their bodies, I threw them all headfirst into the metallic slabs that made up the outside of the building. Some stayed on the ground, out cold, but others got to their feet again.

More poured out the door. Even as ten bodies slumped to the ground, ten others replaced them. I felt the tingling that signaled an assault on my mind and threw the new wave of glitchers against the walls.

Still more came.

The next moment, laser fire blasted toward me from a second round of guns that had previously been hidden. I barely dodged the disorienting flashes of red, dropping low to the ground to escape the blasts.

I ripped the guns from the wall before they could get off another shot. I landed on my feet and ran a few steps so I could direct all my telek toward the building.

But before I could do a sweep to check for more weapons, a familiar figure held her arm out toward me, a blue orb in her hand.

It was Saminsa. She released the orb and I tried to jump up to fly out of the way. But the orb expanded as it went and I was blasted straight in the chest by the wave of blue energy. It knocked me sharply backward, disorienting my telek. I put out an arm to brace my fall but hit the ground so hard that I heard the crack of bones in my right forearm even before I felt the searing pain. I let out a deep howl of rage and looked back up.

Just in time to see a stream of fire burning toward me.

I tried to jump out of the way, but I wasn’t fast enough. The fire caught the outer side of my left thigh. My pants and part of my tunic went up in flames.

I dropped to the ground and rolled several times to put the fire out. But not before it burned through my tunic and pants down to my skin. I screamed in pain, both from rolling over my broken arm and from the burns. I didn’t look down to see how bad it was but the smell of charred skin filled my nose.

Somehow I had to ignore the excruciating wounds because I could see Saminsa gathering another orb. I lifted myself up into the air again to avoid another wave of fire while I focused in on her. Saminsa was a friend so I tried to be delicate; I reached into her body to look for the blood vessel to close off so she’d pass out easily. But she released the second orb before I could. It sent me spinning through the air end over end.

As soon as I’d righted myself, I saw the fire boy gearing up to send yet another stream at me. I was already half-delirious from pain. I couldn’t handle getting burned again, so I did the first thing I could think of; I grabbed hold of his body and Saminsa’s and slammed their heads together. They crumpled to the ground and I could only pray I hadn’t hit them too hard.

A loud jarring noise exploded in my ears, disorienting me so that when I tried to stand, I only stumbled a few steps before falling to my knees again. I tried to look around for the explosion, but there was none, and I realized a second before another screeching sound hit that I felt the telltale tugging at my brain. Mind-workers.

I looked back up. I’d taken out everyone I could see, and no more were rushing out. But their power wouldn’t be halted by walls any more than mine was. I reached forward with my telek, pushing past the flimsy barrier of the outer wall.

Just as I sensed a group of bodies huddled in a main corridor, I froze and toppled forward into the packed dirt. I hit the ground face-first. Blood gushed out of my nose and the burned side of my body was ground into the rocky dirt. My vision blurred from the pain. I tried to jump to my feet, but I couldn’t get up, couldn’t move at all. I was completely vulnerable, lying paralyzed in the middle of the open field in front of the building.

And then I started drowning. I gasped in panic but only swallowed more water. I coughed it out, only to have my throat fill back up again.

I tried to stay calm. This was part of their strategy. Assault me from enough angles and I’d be so distracted, I wouldn’t catch the one attack that killed me. But every rational thought I managed was punctuated by another flicker of terror. I was drowning, I couldn’t breathe! I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to ignore my panic.

I held my breath and searched the wall with my telek. My instincts had been right. More guns dropped from where they’d been hidden encased in the wall, taking aim at me. I ripped them off only seconds before they could fire at my prone body.

Still, when I tried to move again, I was as immobile as if I’d been wrapped head to toe in steel bands. I choked out the water in my mouth and managed another quick breath before my throat filled back up again. I didn’t know if the water was real or just a hallucination, but if I didn’t get more than half a breath soon, I’d pass out.

Worse, in addition to the jarring noises still blasting in my ears, I suddenly felt the prickle of a thousand crawling insects all over my body. I shuddered internally and counted to ten to calm down, in spite of my desperate need for air. I could hold my breath for a minute more, and my mind at least was still unbound.

I reached back into the building with teeth-grinding determination. I was done letting the Chancellor use these innocent people as weapons against me. Not to mention I was so battered, I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up. I let out a growl of anger as I sent the energy outward from my body. It passed easily through the wall and then into the thirty waiting bodies, knocking them backward.

It must have been enough to startle the mind-workers from their focus, because suddenly I could both move and breathe again. I took in a gulp of air and then jumped back off the ground, biting back a scream from the pain that lit up my body. I flew as fast as I could toward the main entrance. I could sense some of the bodies starting to move, so I reached in again, more surgically this time, pinching the blood vessels leading to their brains until they all passed out.

Then I moved on to the Regs lined up behind them, poised to attack in case the glitchers failed. Their standing in such orderly ranks was actually a help to me as I reached through each body, counted down their vertebrae, and all at once, snapped their spines where I knew they could survive until spinal reattachment surgery was done. They immediately toppled to the ground in a single wave. I flew through the doorway and over all the slumped bodies.

I wanted to stop so badly to see if Markan was among them. But I was exhausted and battered. Blood from my broken nose dripped into my mouth, the wound in my back had bled through the bandages, my right arm was broken, and the burns on my leg and torso screamed in pain with every move I made. Still, I had to keep going and find the Chancellor. I’d come this far and there was no going back. I cast my telek outward, hoping I could sense the shape of her body. Maybe now that I’d taken out most of the glitchers and Regs, she’d be easy to find. I dropped down to my feet and searched both the floors above and below with my telek.

And then my heart lurched in my chest.

There were hundreds upon hundreds of Regulators all around me. They filled the two elevators and all four stairwells, all heading to the ground floor with their heavy hydraulic-reinforced legs pounding out a terrifying rhythm.

In the seconds before they burst out the doors at the end of the long wide hallway, I felt the shape of the building in my mind. It went down six floors, so deep that my telek became too fuzzy along the edges to tell if the Chancellor was down there. Even if I sensed the shape of a body, what if she’d already escaped and simply left a body double behind?

I hadn’t seen or heard any transports taking off, though, and she had to know she’d be a vulnerable target if she tried to escape like that. I could easily bring a transport crashing to the ground before she ever made it out of my telek range. No, she would have stayed here and burrowed deep into the ground like the snake that she was. She’d trust in her army to protect her. It was how she operated—compelling others to do the dangerous work in her stead so she never had to get her hands dirty.

Either way, there was no way I’d know for sure until I stood over her dead body, just as Adrien’s vision foretold. I tried not to think about the other fork he’d seen, the one where she stood over me.

I snapped the cables on the elevators right before the doors opened and sent them tumbling down six stories. A loud crash echoed up the elevator tunnel right as the doors at the end of the corridor flew open. I could sense Regulators charging down the side hallways toward me from all sides of the mazelike central level. They’d make it to the main corridor where I stood in less than a minute. No more time for thinking.

I closed my eyes and reached out with my good arm as if to guide my mental aim at the Regs pouring from the stairwell in front of me. At first I tried counting down their spines like I had with the others. I took down ten that way, then twenty, then forty. The downed Regs clogged the doorway from the stairwell, but I could feel more and more in the other hallways coming for me. As soon as they rounded the corner, they’d have a clear shot.