“Just go back up to the diagnostic center. Everything will be all right. And be careful of the godlam’d cameras. Please, be careful.”
He pulled back and reached around to the back of my neck, his fingers a whisper on my skin. Then he yanked out the drive and I stumbled with the sudden use of my limbs and fell into the wall.
“Wait!” I said in a loud whisper, looking around me after I’d gotten my balance back. But he was already gone. I stood still for a moment, turning back and forth between the hallway he’d left through and the doorway leading to the subway platform.
My mind raced. If I tried to escape I knew it was doomed. I would be free and myself until the end, but it would all be over, and soon. Or I could trust Adrien, the boy who might be a Monitor.
“Beta Ten Gamma Link,” I whispered and was immediately jolted back into the Link. The familiar three rising tones of the Link sounded. I instinctively paused my step while the three tones finished. The colors immediately seeped out from the hallways around me. The Community Link is peace. In the time of the Old World— I took a deep breath and made my way back to the elevator tube.
* * *
I passed by Chancellor Bright’s office on my way to the diagnostic center.
“Subject Zoel,” she said.
I stopped and stepped into her office.
“Yes?”
“Why are you late to your diagnostic appointment? We called for you fifteen minutes ago.”
“I required use of the bathroom facilities,” I said. I was amazed. I was Linked, but it was like the sliding door remained half open. I still had access to my own thoughts. I could still keep my own secrets. She stared at me through narrowed eyes, but I didn’t blink or look away despite the scared tension gathering in my chest. I focused on my breathing to keep my heart from racing.
Embrace the Link, I thought. Let the gray spread.…
“May I continue?”
“Yes,” she said, finally glancing back down at the tablet on her desk.
I turned and tried to let the Link numb me as I kept walking down the hallway. The diagnostic center was at the end on the right.
Gray standing partitions sliced the large room into a maze of smaller cubicles. The Link laid schematics of the room over my vision. The hallway lining the left side of the room was exactly twenty paces long. Doorways led into other rooms—the surgery rooms for student hardware installation and updates.
“Subject Zoel Q-24 reporting.”
The small ash-blond woman at a desk near the door looked up. She glanced back down to her small projected tablet screen, tapping the screen a few times.
“B-11.” She sounded blank and disinterested. Just like I would sound again if Adrien had tricked me after all and made me deliver myself to my doom.
I went six paces down the hallway and turned left into the small area marked B-11. I sat down on the intimidating diagnostic table. The table had a padded oval cutout near the top for when subjects lay facedown for neck-port access. All equipment was installed in the concrete walls on huge metal arms that could be pulled over to reach either side of the diagnostic table.
Attached to each arm was a different instrument: a piercing bright light, imaging screen, chest-port plug-in, the hardwired neck-access cable, and other measuring and surgical equipment. The whole thing looked like a giant robotic spider buried in the wall, its spindly legs reaching sinisterly outward to surround the operating table.
I rubbed my neck uncomfortably, thinking about the drive Adrien had put in there only minutes before. I hated the sensation of being immobilized. The thought of the cold metal hardware that lined the walls being forcibly inserted into my body made me squeamish. I needed to go gray again and let the Link take over, but my anxiety was unfortunately keeping me sharp.
I tried logic. I should be used to this. Every test had been run thrice over after my disappearance, not to mention that I’d been subjected to the diagnostic table ever since I was a kid. It was only since glitching that I’d started feeling how unnatural it all was. In spite of my efforts to stay calm, my chest stayed tight with anxiety.
The technician entered the cubical and drew the curtain closed behind him. He was the same technician who usually worked on me.
I automatically lay down on my stomach and fit my face through the oval. The technician pulled some of the equipment arms over my prone body, and then he leaned over me.
“Zoe,” he whispered in my ear, “it’s me, Max.”
I jerked in surprise and turned my head sideways. For a quick second, the technician’s face disappeared and was replaced by Max’s impish one.
“Here to save the day,” he said with a smile before he reverted to the technician’s façade. “I’ll just pretend to use the equipment, then change it in the computer afterward.”
“Shouldn’t be necessary, I’m Linked,” I whispered in a rush of relief. “I’ll explain later.” I caught Max’s look of consternation just as I fit my face back into the oval.
He clicked the access cable into my neck and then shifted the three imaging panels on three sides surrounding my head. I could see his feet move away as he went to sit at the table with the projected 3-D diagnostic screen.
The curtain swung suddenly open and I lifted up to look, banging my head into one of the imaging panels as I went.
It was Chancellor Bright.
“And how is our subject doing, Dr. Campbell?” She tilted her head sideways in her penetrating, birdlike manner.
“Perfect,” Max said, not even missing a beat.
I buried my face in the oval facing the floor so the Chancellor wouldn’t see the worried heat flushing my cheeks.
“As you can see,” he said, gesturing to the 3-D image of my brain that was rotating in the imaging panel. “Not anomalous.”
“Hmph,” the Chancellor said. I saw her feet move close to where Max was standing. I tried to keep as still as possible, and after a minute, she stepped back.
“Yes, everything appears normal.” She sounded disappointed, confused.
A tool scraped as it was picked up off the instrument tray. “Let’s see if her pain-response system is working.”
I felt the cold metal touch my neck below my ear. Then with a sharp motion, she jammed it inward and my body lit up with pain. I screamed as my body jolted on the table.
The buzzing blasted in my head at the shocking pain. The crash of instruments hitting the floor coincided with the sound of my beeping heart monitor filling the room. The probe was released and the Chancellor whipped around to look at the tray of instruments I’d accidentally flung against the wall with my power, an unreadable expression on her face. She almost seemed to soften for a moment before turning back to Max.
“Her screaming startled me,” Max covered quickly. “I backed into the tray.”
There was silence. I imagined the Chancellor turning her penetrating stare on Max. What had I done?
I swallowed my terror down so my heart monitor would stop beeping. I kept my face firmly in the face rest, though a droplet of sweat managed to fall down my cheek. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Max calmly and methodically picking up the fallen tools.
The Chancellor was silent while he finished, her feet completely still. I had no idea what she might be thinking.
“Adequate pain monitor response,” she finally said, her voice unreadable. “Make sure to run all the tests. I don’t want anything slipping through the cracks with this one.”
“Of course, Chancellor,” the technician’s voice said, each syllable as monotone as the last. I had to remind myself it was Max beside me, he was so convincing. He hadn’t even flinched when I’d screamed. I wondered if that was part of his power—that he was completely believable as whatever person he projected—or if he was just that good a liar.
The Chancellor’s footsteps echoed as she left. Max didn’t say anything more, just went through with the rest of the tests, making marks on the technician’s tablet as he went. I was surprised
he knew what he was doing so well. I wondered where he’d learned it. In fact, I was starting to realize there was a lot about Max I didn’t know.
He finished quickly and I felt his rough hands on my neck as he removed the cable from my access port.
“Tomorrow night” was all he said but I knew what he meant. I nodded slightly as I sat up. I knew he had questions and I had plenty of my own. I didn’t want him putting himself in any more danger. And I had to tell him about Adrien, the enigmatic boy with the blue-green eyes that I still didn’t know if I could trust.
* * *
I was up all night. Questions about Adrien and the Chancellor kept me restless and awake well into the morning hours. Without Max there to help me, would Adrien’s solution have fooled the equipment all on its own? Or was he actually a Monitor after all? But if so, wouldn’t he have turned me in, not tried to help me?
It hadn’t mattered so much in the end. Max was there. Maybe Adrien had known that, and he just wanted to give the appearance of help to gain my trust. I shivered, remembering the feeling of being immobilized after Adrien put the port in my neck. That was reason enough for me to avoid him.
I tried to put it all out of my head and lose myself in the back-and-forth motion of walking, the cadence of all the morning commuters’ footsteps ringing like a dull roar around me. Too many questions and no answers was enough to drive a person crazy. I needed to start focusing on solutions. Problem solving. First one thing, then another, then another. Logical. Orderly.
I stepped onto the train and held on to a pole near the dark window. The doors closed with a hiss as the air-filtration system in the subway car kicked in. I looked around me at the dull gray subway car and the clean orderly people all standing at attention with perfect posture, most of them zoned out to the morning Link News.
A few Regulators got on at the next stop, their blue suits jumping out at me from among the clusters of gray. I breathed in and out slowly to make sure my heart monitor didn’t go off at the sight of them. I’d gotten lucky before, but that didn’t mean I would today. My eyes flickered up at the Regulators one more time before I fixed them on the ground, turning slightly away so they couldn’t see my face.
They looked too young to be full Regulators. They were probably just Regulators-in-training heading to the Academy like I was.
After I felt my heart rate normalize, I looked around at every face, trying to make only my eyes move while my face remained blank. Did any of them glitch? Were any of them hiding the same secret Max and I were?
I worked methodically through every face in the car, back to front, pausing occasionally to make sure I appeared to be just as blank as the rest of them. I used the black of the window like a mirror, so I could watch people indirectly. I continued my gaze down the train, not noticing anything unusual about anyone.
I wasn’t discouraged—look how long it had taken for Max and me to find each other. It would have to be by chance that we discovered anyone else. Though, if other people were glitching as often as I was, then maybe there was more hope.
Just when I’d given up on the possibility of finding any glitchers, I caught a glimpe of someone who felt anomalous. I could only see the back of his head and I couldn’t exactly put into words why I thought he was a glitcher. His posture looked straight but there was something about it. Something in his body language didn’t look quite as blank as the rest of them. There was an alertness to the set of his shoulders. I wondered if, when we got off the train, I could get a better look at his face. Then, as if he could feel my eyes on him, he turned around. My breath caught in my throat.
Adrien. It was as if my body itself reacted to him. My face flushed and I felt hot all over. I swallowed. I didn’t understand why I felt this way, or what it was even that I was feeling. His blue-green eyes met mine in the mirrored glass.
The instant our eyes met, he stiffened and I could see his grip tighten on the pole he was holding for balance. His eyes suddenly became vacant, staring beyond me. I glanced behind me in confusion, trying to figure out what he was looking at, but there was nothing there. I turned to look back at him.
After another few tense seconds, he blinked and looked around him like he was trying to reorient himself, his head swaying slightly. I breathed out and forced my eyes down to the floor, wondering if that was what I looked like when I glitched in and out of the Link.
I dared to look back again but his carefully composed posture was different now. His eyes flicked back and forth between me and the group of Regulators-in-training. He took a step toward me, weaving through the crowd of unmoving bodies on the train car. People barely glanced at him as he brushed past, grabbing a pole close to my left for balance just as the train curved around an especially sharp corner.
What was he doing? He was acting anomalously right in front of the Regulators! And worse, he was coming toward me, bringing attention to me, too.
My heart monitor started vibrating. I swallowed, put my head down, and squeezed my eyes shut to get myself under control. I couldn’t afford to have it start beeping here, not while I was trapped in an enclosed space with all of these witnesses, not to mention the Regulators.
Just then I heard a disruption at the other end of the train, a loud clunk noise that echoed throughout the otherwise silent train car.
I looked up, momentarily distracted by the sound. It was one of the Regulators-in-training. He was grabbing his head and stumbling around. He’d banged his armor-plated forehead into the wall again—that was the sound I’d first heard.
“Regulator Anderson,” said one of the other young Regulators, reaching out an arm to steady the unstable Regulator. The one called Anderson knocked the arm away. The loud clang of metal on metal from their steel-alloy bionic arms was so loud and piercing that I winced. Several of the people on the train began tapping their arm panels, no doubt reporting the anomalous incident. I felt a wave of relief, followed by another of shame. I was glad it wasn’t me they were reporting, but what about this poor Regulator? What would happen to him?
Anderson let out a sharp yell as the other three Regulators-in-training attempted to subdue him. They surrounded him but that only made him more wild. He thrashed outward with both bionic arms at the Regulators and sent one flying halfway across the train car into the standing crowd. The heavy Regulator knocked over a group of people, his momentum only stopping when he slammed into a metal pole. The pole snapped from the ceiling and hit a woman hard in the torso, knocking her down.
It was all happening so fast, I could barely register what was going on. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other two Regulators still tussling and trying to get Anderson under control. Then I was forced back against the far wall from them by the crowd, and I didn’t have a good view of what was going on anymore. It was only after another quick look that I realized it was Adrien’s body in front of mine, blocking me against the safety of the back subway-car wall.
He swiveled his head to the side, whispering urgently, “Stay against the wall. A glitching Regulator is shuntin’ deadly.”
Anderson let out a feral shriek at the other end of the subway car. The knock of metal on metal and the beeping of at least ten people’s heart monitors triggered by pain filled the space. I craned my neck to see over Adrien’s shoulder just as two of the Regulators pinned Anderson against the side wall. He thrashed violently under their grip, his face mottled and red. Spit dripped down over the metal that framed his jaw. His blue jumpsuit had ripped, revealing more of the metal alloy that had been grafted into his skin.
“Deactivate, Regulator Anderson,” said one of the Regulators who held him. “I repeat, deactivate.”
My heart jumped into my throat at the word. They were going to kill him? Did he have some kind of internal hardware that would kill him at the simple command of their words? Over all of the chaos in the train, a high-pitched buzzing blared in my ears.
“Don’t!” Adrien whispered just as the arm of one of the Regulators holding Anderson was yanked
away by an invisible force. My force.
“I didn’t mean to,” I gasped, my eyes wide. Adrien stared at me in panic.
Anderson had taken the momentary freedom from the Regulator’s grip to pull away. The others lunged for him but he twisted away and ran headfirst into the opposite wall. The hydraulics on his legs contracted and then released as he sprang forward with incredible force, taking a subject who’d been standing in his way with him. He was so crazed, he didn’t even aim for a window—his body smashed through the wall with a horrible crash and the squeal of twisting metal.
A panel of the wall was ripped outward and the sudden rush of wind from outside the train was deafening. The lights in the cabin flickered off and on and I saw in the brief flash of light before we were swallowed in total darkness that the person who’d been in his way was impaled on a spike of twisted metal. The metal sparked as it contacted the side of the outer tunnel, casting enough light to see that the top half of his bloody body had been severed at the torso.
Anderson hadn’t made it all the way through either. One leg was caught in the twist of metal near the floor and the whole train rocked unsteadily on its tracks every time he twisted his heavy body in an attempt to free himself.
People banged against me on all sides in the darkness, losing their footing in the rocking train. I screamed and pushed at the bodies surrounding and suffocating me. They were ripped violently away from me—but it wasn’t the chaos of the train that had sent them flying. It had been me, my power accidentally unleashed again.
I tried to look and see if I’d hurt them, but between the howl of the wind, the screech of metal against the outer tunnel, and my own screaming, I couldn’t make sense of anything. I couldn’t tell if the other Regulators were trying to fix the situation and I couldn’t tell where Adrien was either. A large man fell against me when the train rounded another corner, knocking me to the ground. I managed to quiet the buzzing in my mind fast enough to keep from throwing him away from me.
The train car scraped along against an especially tight portion of the outer tunnel and illuminated the interior long enough for me to see the chaos of tossed bodies. A brown-haired woman stumbled toward the ripped-open wall. She tripped on the Regulator’s leg and tumbled out through the open space out into darkness.
Glitch (Glitch - Trilogy) Page 14
