Shutdown (Glitch) (6 page)

After heading down several long corridors that were fairly empty, Max pulled out his mini console with the city schematics.

His head swung in both directions, as if looking to make sure we were alone, then came near and whispered in my ear. “Straight ahead. Make sure to follow me closely.”

“I know, I memorized it last night.”

Rowun’s eyes twitched at the sudden voices coming from thin air. I ignored him and started forward again. We were only one quick shuttle tube ride away from the central access facility where all new programming was uploaded.

The arena and Uppers housing was located in a small node at the apex of the city, with the tube shuttle lines running outward like veins. My heartbeat raced as we walked across the shuttle platform. The sun shone brightly through windows lining the ceiling of the shuttle station. I took several deep breaths, unnerved as always by sunlight, and tightened my grip on my mast cells.

There were only a few other people waiting with us. Two Regs stood on guard at the back of the station. I had to hand it to Henk. He was the one who suggested we make our attempt during Fight Night. The city was almost deserted since everyone was packed in back at the arena. Our two targets wouldn’t realize their pendants had been switched until they went into work the next day, and by then we’d have already crashed the Link.

But still, if I lost control for even a
second
, Rowun could call out to the Regs and we’d be done. I could take out a couple Regs easily enough, but our mission would be ruined. The city would go on lockdown. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

I felt an absurd relief when the shuttle finally arrived and we all stepped on. It wasn’t any safer in reality—maybe less so because now we were stuck in a confined space, not to mention we were still in the heart of Central City—but at least it felt better than waiting out in the open.

The shuttle was filled with drones in the crisp white tunics of the service class. They all stood at attention, holding on to the looped handholds that hung from metal bars running along the ceiling. There were a few other unchipped workers like Rowun here and there, distinguishable by the color of their tunics, a few with the surgeon reds and repair-worker browns. Rowun was the only techer on board though, and that fact made me nervous. Would it look out of place for him to enter the programming facility during the festivities of Fight Night?

The shuttle made several stops, and I gripped Rowun even tighter during every exchange of passengers. The shuttle dipped underground and a half a mile later finally came to a stop at the entrance to the programming access facility.

We stepped out and were faced with an intimidating blockade door at the edge of the station platform. I forced Rowun to hold his wrist out. The ID chip implanted in his wrist registered with a
beep
and the door opened. Max led us deeper and deeper into the complex, Rowun’s chip opening every door. Just as we’d thought, the facility was almost empty. The few techers who were working were too busy to even look up as Rowun passed.

We finally arrived at a small white room. The light-cells overhead all buzzed at their brightest setting.

Now we came to it. Excitement tickled up my spine. We were so close now. This was the only place we couldn’t follow right behind Rowun. There were three doorways that ran full-body scans before letting anyone pass. Max’s power could trick people, but not a scanning computer.

I stepped closer to Rowun and pressed a small drive into his left hand, forcing his fingers to close around it. Then I made him lift his right finger to a small pad and press. He didn’t flinch when he was poked and the small drop of blood was extracted. He did this every day.

The thick door in front of him opened, and I could see beyond him to a small square room. Rowun went in and the door closed again. A flash of light came from the small window in the door: the full-body scan in action. My telek was able to pass easily through the barriers, and I kept Rowun still through it all.

When he was inside, I did a quick sweep of the room. All of the machinery was foreign to me. I touched my arm panel to pull up the file where I’d written the Foundation techer boy’s instructions. I couldn’t remember his name at the moment. That was the problem of having the best techer on your team also be a glitcher whose power made people forget him. I’d been careful to write down everything he said, knowing I wouldn’t remember if he only told it to me.

The top of the file read:
NOTES FROM SIMIN
.

I nodded. Oh right, his name was Simin. I could always remember his name for a few minutes whenever I heard it. I read on hurriedly.

FIND THE BOX ALONG THE WALL RIGHT BESIDE THE DOOR, OPEN IT, AND INSERT THE SMALLEST DRIVE INTO THE PORT TO OVERRIDE THE BODY-SCAN SECURITY.

Okay, so there should be a box close to the entryway. I felt along the wall for it with my telek and frowned. There was a box in the middle of one wall, but it wasn’t close to the doorway at all.

A frantic bubble of fear passed through me, then I gritted my teeth and searched the other walls. Two were covered top to bottom with server consoles. The third wall had some kind of interface area, but it was flat and didn’t seem like the kind of box Simin described. It had to be the one on the first wall.

I made Rowun walk over to the box, flip it open, and lift the tiny drive. I prayed this was the right one and I wasn’t about to set off a ton of alarms or something.

He slipped the drive in.

Max and I waited anxiously. I started tapping my foot until I realized it was making an audible sound and made myself stand still again.

Then, just a moment later, the heavy doors of the full-body scan room opened, and I finally let out the breath I’d been holding. We were in. We hurried through the small passageway to where Rowun stood.

Three hovering console screens were projected over the desk in the center of the room.

I felt Max take out one pendant from his pocket. I pulled out mine and we both moved to the key stations, one on each side of the programming console. We inserted the keys and twisted them simultaneously. The blank console screens suddenly came to life, spooling out start-up data before settling on the main interface screen.

I sat down in the swiveling chair. Halfway there.

I studied the screen for a moment. It looked exactly like the model Simin had provided for me to study. I’d taken basic programming and computer interfacing, but all of this was way beyond my sphere of knowledge. So I’d studied the model for hours and made sure I knew exactly what to do so I wouldn’t make a mistake.

I raised my hand to the projected screen and clicked through several data directories until I got to the central programming vector.

I pulled out the fingernail drive Simin had given me with the rebooted Link programming. He’d worked on it for months. The Link feed in everyone’s head should automatically stop, along with the submission impulse. We’d uploaded simple instructions to broadcast what had been done to them and where they could go to acquire weapons if they wanted to join the revolution. The adults would most likely mindlessly follow the new instructions and fight with us. We’d had qualms about forcing them to fight like that, but it was better than the alternative plan of releasing an EMP. Setting off an electromagnetic pulse in the upper atmosphere had been General Taylor’s plan to destroy the Link hardware in all the drones’ heads Sectorwide. While it would have freed everyone under eighteen from the Link’s control, it also would have killed the millions upon millions of adult drones who had fully integrated V-chips. Making them mindlessly fight was definitely the lesser of two evils—it at least gave them the possibility of a future. Once we’d won, we could begin researching in earnest about ways to free them from their more extensive V-chips.

All around the country, Rez fighting cells were poised at strategic posts, ready for the takeover. With the drones on our side, even if only a third of them fought with us, we’d outnumber the Uppers thirty to one. We’d take Sector Six, freeing all the drones in the second-largest country in the world. And now, finally, we were here.

I slipped the drive into one of the console slots. Blue code started spinning in the columns in front of me. I checked my arm panel again to check Simin’s instructions: W
AIT ONE MINUTE FOR THE ERASE OF CURRENT CODE.
I tried to wait patiently, but my foot started tapping again. We’d been here too long already. I glanced behind me at the still-open security doors. If anyone came in, they’d immediately know something was wrong.

Finally the code stopped blinking, and a translucent command box popped up.

R
EWRITE?
Y
ES OR
N
O.

A rush of exhilaration flooded me. This was the day Adrien had always dreamed of. I wished it could have been him standing beside me instead of Max.

With shaking fingers, I clicked Yes, and then waited for the world to change.

I watched the screen, excitement already bubbling through me. A confirmation screen should pop up any second now, letting us know that the signal had been broadcast.

Instead, an alarm so loud it seemed to shake the room went off. Huge metal doors slammed down at every exit, locking us in.

Chapter 5

“NO!” I SAID OUT LOUD.
This couldn’t be happening! We’d planned everything so perfectly.

Rowun started laughing. I’d let go of my hold over him in my shock. “You thought you could upload code from one port and affect the entire Link? We have a hundred redundancy systems in a hundred different places.” He laughed even harder. “It’s part of the protocol, so if one station is breached with foreign code, all it does is trigger the alarm!”

“We’ve got to go, now!” Max shouted.

I grabbed the fingernail drive out of the computer, knowing even as I did that the information had probably instantly replicated. I replaced it with the kill-disk drive I’d also brought with me. I could only hope that it erased any of the code that had been logged and copied. Either way, I had to get word to the Rez quick, in case the Uppers could still see the code mentioning the Rez rendezvous sites.

I had an encrypted com, but all outgoing signals were too carefully monitored in Central City, and if the kill disk
did
work, calling my Rez contacts would give away their location to the Uppers just as quickly.

First we had to get the hell out of this facility.

Max grabbed my hand and pulled me away before I could see if the kill disk worked.

“Open the doors,” he said and I nodded. I lifted my hand, letting the telek build up inside me for a moment and then I unleashed it. The door slid back up in its track, grating with a loud screech as it broke free of the hydraulics system holding it in place.

“What the hell?” Rowun said from behind us. I didn’t have time for him. I threw him backward into the wall of consoles with my telek, then focused again on the blockades in front of us.

We ran through the open space and down the hallway. Heavy metal lockdown doors awaited us at every step along the way, but I felt ahead and opened the blockades before we even got to them. I could only hope it would be quick enough.

When we got past the last one I started heading left toward the shuttle platform. “Zoe, what are you doing? We’ve got to steal the nearest transport we can find!”

“No,” I pulled him near. “We’ll never get out if we steal a transport. There’s no reason we can’t continue with the original plan.”

He nodded, then gripped my hand. The tube shuttle was still working. They hadn’t shut it down yet. We hadn’t encountered any actual Regs yet either. We’d only hit automatic redundancy systems so far. If the alarm in the lab went off, the doors went down. No one expected someone like me, someone who could breech even the widest, heaviest of lockdown doors to escape. Anyone alerted to the situation would still think we were inside. Until they saw the twisted metal of each door we’d broken through.

The hum of the transport shuttling along its tracks would have been comforting if I weren’t so terrified of what we’d find on the other end. My fingernails dug into Max’s palms. The door opened and I breathed out a sigh of relief. We were quickly back in the arena lobby and took the elevator down to the Uppers quarters. We ducked into an alcove, and Max transformed us into Darl and Nihem again.

My hand felt strangely bereft after Max let go of it. Holding his hand had helped keep my terror at bay. But then again, now more than ever, we had to play our parts perfectly, and Nihem and Darl would never hold hands. We walked stiffly together, side by side but not touching.

We walked straight to the departure bay, and as we saw the attendant valet we started arguing.

“You can’t even let us stop to enjoy the game?” Nihem said loudly.

“I said I want to leave NOW.” I put an angry whine into my voice. “And if you have any hope of keeping our marriage alive and saving yourself from complete and desolate financial ruin, you’ll come with me. My daddy will cut you off as sure as the morning sun.”

“But Darl—”

I turned to the attendant and handed him our passkey. “It’s the pretty one with the shiny silver stripe,” I said.

The attendant stared at me a little blankly.

“Women.” Max shook his head, stepping in front of me. “She means the purple BT6.”

“Nihem!” I said, sounding exasperated. “It’s things like this. You treat me like I’m a child. You are so patronizing I could just strangle you—”

“I’ll be right back with your vehicle,” the attendant cut in, then hurried off.

Max and I continued arguing in case anyone else was watching. Our purple BT6 soon came around the bend.

Max suddenly pushed me against the wall. My eyes instantly widened. Was something wrong? Had someone found us? A quick look over his shoulder only showed the attendant getting out of the car. And then suddenly Max was mashing his lips against mine. I was so stunned by the audacity of it that I didn’t move at all for a second.