Shutdown (Glitch) (8 page)

I frowned. “I don’t know.” I shifted a little so that I could look up at him. “I can’t imagine a world outside this one.” I smiled and kissed him. “You’re the dreamer. What would
you
do?”

“Okay, I’ll go first,” he said, relenting. “But don’t think I’m not gonna come back to the question.”

I laughed. “Okay. But you tell me first, so I know what kinds of things you mean.”

He laid back on my bed, his hands under his head, elbows out. He looked up at the ceiling, but the way his blue-green eyes glistened with possibility, I could tell he wasn’t seeing just a ceiling.

“I’d own a house by a river. A small river, not one of those big ones that boats would go down. And there would be woods nearby. Thick woods that I’d be able to see out my window when I woke up each morning.”

“And what would you do in this house in the woods by a river?” I asked, half teasing. But he didn’t take the bait; he just kept that goofy grin on his face.

“Well, first of all, you’d be there beside me waking up each morning.” He moved so quickly I didn’t have time to register, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me down so that I was lying beside him, my back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around the front of my waist and pulled me into him. I’d never felt safer or more secure in my life. I let out a small contented sigh.

“And what would we do every day after we woke up and looked at the woods?”

“I’d spend hours reading,” he said. “I’d read the great philosophers and poets, and then I’d take a transport into a small city where I would be a professor. I’d ask the students questions and get them engaged, and we’d spend hours talking about ideas from the books we’d read.” He nuzzled his chin into my hair. “We’d discover new things about ideas we thought we already knew or understood. And then we’d leave class with our heads full of new thoughts and new ways of seeing the world. That would be my job. Talking about ideas all day. But only a few days a week.”

“And the other days?”

He flipped me over until I was lying on my back, his body suspended over mine. The grin was gone, replaced by a shy intensity. He looked down, and his cheeks reddened a moment before meeting my eyes again. “The rest of the time we’d spend all day in bed.”

It was my turn for my face to redden. We spent hours kissing whenever he came by on these rare visits, but hadn’t pushed it further to discover the mysteries of what happened when all the clothes came off.

A small alarm had beeped right then, signaling it was time for him to leave again so he’d be gone in plenty of time before the rest of the lab workers came in.

He’d spent several more minutes ignoring the alarm anyway, holding me close and kissing me. But then, like always, he’d had to leave.

I lifted my other hand to the side of the tank. Leaving. He was always leaving me. Even now when he was here, it was like he was gone.

The tears I hadn’t allowed earlier now slipped down both cheeks. Adrien’s eyes shifted slightly to look at my hands pressed against the glass.

But he didn’t even seem curious, much less engaged in anything that was happening to him. I wanted to pull him out of this stupid tank and hold him in my arms. Even if he didn’t feel anything for me,
couldn’t
feel anything, it would make me feel better to hold him. I pulled back, trying to tamp down my selfish impulses. I had to think of his health, his recovery.

“I miss you.” I swiped at the tears on both cheeks with my forearm. “The mission failed. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. Failing, letting people down. But obviously you know that better than anyone.”

I leaned my forehead against the tank. “I love you,” I whispered.

He blinked and one of his hands shot out to touch the glass in the same spot my hand had been earlier.

I lifted my hand to meet his. “Adrien?”

Our hands were together, so close to touching except for the barrier of glass between us. His eyes met mine and for a second I’d swear there was a zinging flash of recognition. His eyebrows furrowed together and he looked so profoundly
sad
as he gazed out at me.

“Adrien?” My voice echoed loudly in the empty room. My heartbeat ramped up and I put my other hand up anxiously to the glass. Anything to try to grab hold of this moment of connection. “Adrien?”

But then his hand released, relaxing limply into the gel again. His gaze drifted back to the ceiling. As if I wasn’t even there.

Chapter 6

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE
calm and absurdly normal. In the mornings, I switched off between doing physical training with my old glitcher task force and having administrative meetings with either the on-site Rez soldiers or the representative who’d been appointed to speak on behalf of refugee affairs. The afternoons were similarly split between administrative duties and joining in for Gifted Training when I could afford the time.

Today, I followed the rest of my friends to lunch after a morning training session. We’d run stairs. Most days I groaned like everyone else when Tyryn announced it was a stairs day, but today I’d enjoyed the pounding physicality of it. I’d even welcomed the pain burning through my thighs. Here, finally, was something I could control, something I could do
right
.

“God, Rand,” City scrunched up her nose. “Don’t you know showers after training shouldn’t be optional? Especially for
you
.”

Rand only grinned, jogging backwards down the hall so he could face her. “It’s all about the pheromones. I’m letting the Rand musk run free, so it can overwhelm all the female senses.”

Xona scoffed. “The only thing it’s overwhelming is the air quality.” She punched Rand hard in the arm.

Saminsa smiled as she walked behind them. She’d been opening up over the past few months. She was still far from talkative, but she seemed to enjoy observing everyone else and simply being part of the group.

“Ow!” Rand said, rubbing his arm. Then he leaned in to her. “You seem riled up, Xona. Maybe the pheromones are working on you and you don’t even know it.”

Xona rolled her eyes and hurried down the hallway to catch up with Cole. I stared for a moment as she talked with the hulking ex-Reg. He leaned down to hear what she said and then let out a hearty laugh. I watched with surprise. It still startled me anytime he laughed. He’d always fought hard for his humanity, but in the past six months, ever since he’d saved Xona’s life and she’d finally stopped hating him, he’d positively flourished.

I watched the pair of them walk down the hallway. Her laughing response echoed off the walls.

“Don’t think your pheromones are gonna work on her,” Ginni said with a giggle.

Rand didn’t look daunted. “Well, there’s still you fine ladies,” he said, putting his arms around City and Ginni.

“Gross!” City shouted, pulling away from him and making a big show of gagging. “Can’t you smell how much you
reek
?”

“Aw, you don’t mean that,” Rand said with an impish grin. “Stop trying to fight your primordial attraction to me.”

“The only attraction I feel for you,” City said with a falsely ingenuous smile, “is the electrical kind.” She reached out a fingertip and the tiniest spiral of electricity hit Rand between the eyebrows.

“Shunting hell, Citz,” Rand cried out, rubbing his forehead. “That hurt!”

City only smiled back as we came to the entrance to the Caf. I followed in beside Ginni until I looked up and saw Molla and Max at the central table with their baby son.

He was only let out of his cell for lunchtime and for Gifted Training, because as much as everyone disliked and distrusted him, we couldn’t deny that his power
was
incredibly useful. Adrien’s mother always locked herself away in her room during this part of the day to keep herself from attacking him.

Most of the time I handled seeing him with a degree of equilibrium, but today I paused as sudden intense rage flooded through me. It wasn’t fair. Max was a horrible person who had done horrible things, and yet here he was, free except for his ankle monitor, playing with his cooing son. Molla loved him too, in spite of everything. Her eyes were wide and adoring as she watched Max play with the baby’s fingers.

Max had a family. All the while Adrien was stuck in a sensory deprivation tank trying to regrow parts of his brain.
Because
of Max.

The image of Adrien’s hand meeting mine on the glass of his tank rose like a mocking ghost. Because I knew, as much as I wanted it to be otherwise, the moment had only been the illusion of connection, not the real thing.

I set my jaw and forced myself to look away from Max as I got in line for food.

The memory of Adrien in the tank last night made an icy spike of loneliness stab through me. Adrien had been my family, the only one I had after leaving my younger brother Markan behind in the Community. My parents were lost to the adult V-chip. Adrien had been the one person in the world who cared about me more than any of the other people scattered over the earth. My friends cared, sure. Even loved me. I looked over at the table where they were gathered. Rand was making some exaggerated gesture that had Ginni and City laughing. Xona just shook her head and went back to her conversation with Cole.

They cared, but I wasn’t first in their consideration—they didn’t put me above all others. Losing that connection made me feel so disconnected from the world around me. I could disappear or be killed and people would mourn me (or mourn the loss of my Gift, at least), but it was a wound they’d get over in time. It wouldn’t tear a hole in anyone’s heart like losing Adrien had done to me.

I stepped forward in line, averting my eyes from my friends.

No
, I reminded myself firmly. Adrien wasn’t lost. Not yet. And neither was my brother Markan. He was years away from the adult V-chip. I made a mental note to ask Ginni to track his location for me later. Her glitcher ability let her locate anyone, anywhere on the earth. I usually asked her every week to make sure my brother was still at the Academy or my old housing unit, but I hadn’t checked in on him since before leaving for the mission. It always reassured me to know he was safe, or as safe as he could be under the Chancellor’s constant observation. She’d be ready to pounce if he ever started displaying glitcher traits.

I tapped my foot impatiently. The line was taking forever today. I looked around and realized the line was far longer than it had been when I’d left on the mission. But then, I knew another group of refugees had come seeking shelter. With the Chancellor’s hefty increase on raids, people who’d lived free in the Rez their whole lives had suddenly found themselves with no safe place to go. Whenever she cracked a Rez safe house, she imprisoned the leaders and chipped the rest to turn them into drones.

We’d already been rationing our food stocks before the new group had even arrived. It was getting harder and harder to acquire supplies. Everyone was running scared these days.

Last month the Chancellor had captured a supplier who’d told them we were piggybacking on Comm Corp trains to move supplies, so now there were heavy inspections on all the trains. Worse, even though no one could remember the exact location of the Foundation because of the techer boy’s Gift that made people forget it, the Chancellor had still figured out that our hideout was in the south. After all, the informants she turned
could
still tell her the direction the train cars full of supplies were headed. We always had them delivered several hundred miles away and then picked them up from there, but still. There was more air traffic buzzing overhead than ever before. We even had to put a stop to groups going up to the Surface to get fresh air every day. Which had, of course, become another source of complaints. I was used to being underground, but lots of the people in the Rez who’d lived out in the open found it claustrophobic inside our mountain hideout.

I finally got to the front of the line and looked at the picked-over food in the steaming bins. I reached to spear one of the few protein patties left, then paused and glanced behind me at the still-long line. A tiny girl stood at the end of the line, her eyes huge and hungry. I pulled my hand back and shoveled a small bit of sweet potato and brown rice on my tray instead. I’d tell the cook to cut the protein patties in two tomorrow so everyone could get some.

But how long could we keep this up? I rubbed my tired eyes before picking up my tray. The cafeteria was crowded. For a moment, I looked longingly at the table where my friends were all gathered. Then I headed to the table where Tyryn, Jilia, Henk, and the top platoon leader of the Rez soldiers sat.

“Where are we on getting another rations shipment?” I asked as I sat down. Henk had been laughing with Jilia as I’d approached, but now he glowered.

“It’s a right trick tryin’ to get anything past those sneaky bastards, but I think I got a line on a possible supplier. It’s all black market, but I think I can cut a deal with a ganger boss. Sylv was always fresh on me; I think I can charm her into working a deal.”

“Is she a Rez agent?” I asked.

“Nah, but she’s got no great love for Comm Corp.”

Community Corp was the global conglomerate that had begun implanting V-chips in people hundreds of years ago. Almost everyone who’d escaped their control or lived on the fringes hated them.

I frowned. “But can we trust her not to rat us out to the Uppers?”

Henk shrugged. “For the right price, we could persuade her to at least think twice about it.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound safe.”

“Money we got,” Henk said, “at least for the moment. But food, we don’t.”

“How much longer will the supplies we
do
have last?” I asked.

Jilia leaned in, her voice little higher than a whisper. “Another two weeks, maximum.” We’d all agreed to keep the situation of our diminishing supplies quiet. Refugees outnumbered Rez fighters two to one now. At night almost every spare inch of floor was taken up with sleeping bags. And that was just with the people we’d been able to accommodate. The latest group that had come in was the last we could take, at least until we figured out the supplies situation. The last thing we needed was a riot within the Foundation when people who’d come here for refuge realized we might not be able to feed them.