Glitch

by Laura Martin

  Just like before, we huddled together, waiting to see if we’d get discovered, but unlike last time, I realized I was glad that it was Elliot crouching shoulder to shoulder with me. Somewhere in between the teasing and the bickering, I’d come to think of him as more than a mandatory partner. Somewhere along the line, he’d become a friend. I made a mental note to tell him that if we survived this. We both tensed as the security officers ran past our fountain. As their footsteps retreated, I sagged backward against the cool stone in relief, only to stand back up abruptly as something dug into my back. Turning, I spotted a black security camera looking right at us. My first instinct was to grab Elliot and run, but there was something about that camera that felt weirdly familiar, so I paused. That same gut-deep instinct that helped me to identify Butterflies during a Glitch was on high alert as something tugged at my memory. The same something that had been tugging at me ever since I’d seen Salzburg standing inside the mountain. Because I’d seen this camera before, or at least a prototype of it. The missing puzzle piece I’d mentioned to Elliot slammed into place with a certainty and clarity that literally took my breath away.

  “What?” Elliot asked.

  I shook my head, holding up my hand to silence him as I stared at the camera. Was this it? I turned to Elliot. “Recite the bullet point list again,” I said.

  Elliot stared at me for a second, then held up his hand as he started ticking things off. “Behind the curtain,” he said. “Belowdecks. When the window breaks, grab me. Trust the door will open when it needs to. The prototypes are a bust. Grab the—”

  “There,” I said, cutting him off. “The one about the prototypes. Say it again.”

  He did, looking confused. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What prototypes?”

  “How do you destroy an entire island with one explosion?” I asked.

  “You couldn’t,” Elliot said. “Not unless it was nuclear, which it wasn’t.”

  “Right,” I said. “So, if you can’t do it with one big explosion, you’d have to do it with a bunch of strategically placed smaller explosions. Right?”

  “What are you getting at?” Elliot asked.

  “Before we left for the mountain, there were a few security breaches, and my mom had a meeting with Officer Salzburg about a new security device that detected Butterflies. A device they’d replicated after they found it on one of Mayhem’s members.”

  “Replicating anything found on a Mayhem member seems like a bad idea,” Elliot said.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “But Salzburg was so certain of it, he had my mom convinced to let him install them all over campus. Honestly, I think all the security breaches had put her on edge and made her a bit desperate. But what if that Mayhem member got caught on purpose just to pass on a piece of technology? A piece of technology that they could then detonate remotely?”

  “I still don’t get it,” Elliot said, reaching a hand out to touch the prototype. I smacked his hand down and turned to glare at him.

  “Obviously,” I said. “Think about the fifth bullet point, the prototypes are a bust, as in they are going to explode.”

  “That thing?” he said. “You really think an explosive is hidden inside a security camera?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head. “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I do know these were getting installed right around the time we left. It fits.”

  “The prototypes are a bust,” he muttered darkly. “Future us was so dumb I could just spit.”

  “Don’t spit,” I said. “That’s gross.” Before I could second-guess myself, I’d grabbed ahold of the camera and given it a hard twist. To my utter surprise, it popped off easily, and I stumbled backward. Elliot yelped and covered his head. When nothing happened, he cautiously lowered his arms and took a step toward me again, his eyes wary.

  “Not how I would have handled a potential explosive,” he said. “But I always knew you were nuts.”

  I ignored him as I looked at the back of the device, where a small red light was blinking on and off. I didn’t know much about what the guts of a camera looked like, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t it. “How good were you at our explosives deactivation class?” I asked. It had been a one-year course we were all required to take pretty early on in our training, since oftentimes Butterflies would trespass into the past with the very unoriginal idea of blowing up something or someone, and knowing how to deactivate a bomb was crucial. It did no good to catch a Butterfly if you left a ticking time bomb behind to finish the job they’d started.

  “Top of the class,” Elliot said in his matter-of-fact way that used to annoy me but didn’t anymore. I’d always thought that he was showing off, but really, he was just stating the facts. The facts were that he was the best. Which was fantastic, considering I’d barely scraped by in that class. All those wires and buttons had intimidated me, especially since they were so often strapped to a living person I was trying to cuff. I’d never understood the mentality of the Butterflies who didn’t mind blowing themselves up as long as they took George Washington or Martin Luther King out with them. Although, I realized, if you’d told me a year ago that I would become a Butterfly myself, I never would have believed that either. It was funny, I’d always thought that the older I got, the more I’d understand and know. But as time went on, the only thing I was figuring out was how much I didn’t know.

  “Here,” I said, thrusting what I now knew to be a bomb out to Elliot, “disable it.”

  Elliot took it gingerly, and peered down at the mess of wires. “That may take a while,” he said.

  “How long is a while?” I asked.

  Elliot shrugged. “Maybe ten minutes. How many of them are there?”

  “Too many to spend ten minutes on each one,” I said. “What we need is the schematics map for the installation of these things. Then we’d know exactly where to look.”

  “This is like the worst Easter egg hunt in history,” Elliot muttered, and I almost laughed. He turned the explosive this way and that and then looked at me, eyebrow raised. “Do you think Salzburg didn’t know?” he said, voicing the very thought that kept bouncing around my own head.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “Pretty convenient that he left the Academy the morning before it was destroyed,” Elliot said.

  “Yeah,” I said, gritting my teeth. “A little too convenient.” We both stared at the camera that wasn’t really a camera for another second, and then I shook myself, forcing myself to refocus.

  “Come on,” I said, already sloshing my way out of the fountain. “We have to go break into my house.” If one person had a master plan of where all these cameras were hidden, it would be my mom.

  “What about this?” Elliot asked, holding up the camera.

  “Bring it with you,” I said.

  “Great,” Elliot muttered, shoving it in his pocket so he could use both hands to climb out of the fountain. “Just what I wanted to do. Break into the commander in chief’s house with a bomb in my pocket.”

  “It could be worse,” I said.

  “Really?” he asked. “How?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Elliot

  I’d imagined walking into the house on the hill more times than I could count. Sometimes I was the commander in chief in my daydreams, and sometimes I was just imagining what it would be like to live in a place like this. But I’d never, not once, imagined climbing through the second-story window like a thief. Yet here I was, in a tree, waiting for Regan to finish prying the window open. A second later she had it and slipped inside. I followed, not wanting to be left alone in the tree for a passing security guard to catch. The room was pitch-black, and I crouched, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Before they had a chance, Regan had me by the arm and was pulling me out into a hallway.

  I did my best not to gape in openmouthed awe, but it was hard. The house was everything I’d imagined it would be and more. The
walls were ornately paneled in dark, glossy wood, and the carpet under my feet was so thick it practically squished. I didn’t have a chance to look around, though; Regan was hurrying down the wide staircase, and I hustled to catch up. She turned left, and we were inside an office. The office, I realized, of the commander in chief of the Academy. A fireplace sat in one corner, the wood burned down to embers, and on the opposite side of the room was an elegant wood desk. A desk that Regan was ripping apart. Papers rained down around me like snow as she shifted through the piles on the desk like a hurricane.

  “Are those them?” I asked, walking over to stare at a pair of Chaos Cuffs in their glass display case.

  “What?” Regan asked, jerking her head up to see what I was looking at.

  “Are these the cuffs she used to catch the Hitler Butterfly?” I asked, thinking of the jump that had catapulted Regan’s mom to fame. We’d studied it in class on countless occasions, recapping how she’d managed to catch the Butterfly who would have reversed the outcome of World War II.

  “Are you serious right now?” Regan asked, and I ducked as she threw something, I think a book, at my head. It sailed past me to thump against the wall. “Focus, will you?” she said.

  “Right. Sorry,” I said, and hurried to help her, grabbing the closest stack of papers and digging in. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. I doubted there was a paper with the heading “Here are the locations of the security cameras that are actually explosives. Have a nice day.” But I was really hoping that I’d know it when I saw it.

  “Got it!” Regan cried a second later, and I jumped, the papers I’d been holding flying in every direction.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “But look, I got it!” She thrust a piece of paper under my nose, and I glanced down to see a detailed map of the campus. On it were tiny red Xs. On the top of the page were the words “BUTTERFLY DETECTION PROTOTYPE INSTALLMENT” in large block letters. I ran my finger from one X to the next, mentally picturing where each of these deadly explosives was sitting.

  “Regan?!” came a surprised cry, and we both jumped, looking up to see Regan’s mom standing silhouetted in the doorway of the office.

  “Mom!” Regan said, and practically flew across the room and into her mother’s surprised arms. Commander Fitz hugged Regan back, looking from her to me and back again. Her eyes widened a moment later when she noticed the mess of papers strewn across the floor.

  “Regan?” she said. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?” Regan stepped back as tears ran down her face. But of course; she’d been told her mother was dead just hours ago. Now here she was talking to her again. “You weren’t outside, were you?” her mom asked. “There was a Butterfly alert not five minutes ago, I just got the alert . . .” Her words trailed off as she looked at us, taking in our dripping-wet pajamas and dirt-smudged faces. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “You two aren’t . . . You can’t be . . .”

  “I’m really sorry about this, Mom. You know how training drills are. I’ll explain later,” Regan said, and at first I thought she was apologizing for being a Butterfly, but then Regan whirled and grabbed the glass shadow box holding her mother’s famous Chaos Cuffs and smashed it on the floor. The box shattered with a resounding crack, and I threw my hands up as needle-sharp splinters of glass sprayed in all directions. By the time I put my hands down, Regan had already snatched the cuffs out of the box and had one around her mom’s wrist and the other around the leg of the desk.

  “What are you doing?!” Commander Fitz cried, her voice high and panicked as she yanked at the cuffs. Regan raced back to the desk to grab the map she’d left behind and then ran to the office window. I, however, was still standing there frozen at the sight of Commander Fitz cuffed to her own chair.

  “Elliot!” Regan said, and I shook my head and raced for the window. Regan was already halfway out of it, but then she paused and looked back at her mom.

  “I love you,” she said, and I felt my face burn red. I shouldn’t be here for this. If only the office window was big enough to squeeze past Regan and out into night. But since it wasn’t, I just stood there as Regan’s mom stopped struggling to get loose and stared back at her daughter.

  “I love you too,” she said. Regan locked eyes with her mom for another second and then slipped the rest of the way out of the window.

  Commander Fitz turned her attention to me, and I wished I could sink through the floor. “Sorry,” I said lamely, and hurried after Regan.

  Regan waited for me to land beside her before taking off back toward the campus buildings.

  “How many are there?” I asked, jerking my head toward the paper she still clutched in her hand.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and her voice, so calm and steady mere seconds ago with her mom, now sounded strangled and choked. “Here, you look,” she said, thrusting it toward me. I took it from her, deciding not to comment on the tears that were streaming down her face. I glanced down at the map, but it was too dark to see anything, so I skidded to a stop at the next lantern we passed, grabbing Regan so she wouldn’t go charging off into the night without me. Considering we were out past curfew and every guard on campus was probably looking for us, the worst place we could possibly be was under a spotlight, but we didn’t have time for caution now, not when every second counted. I held the map up to the light and finished the job I’d started in the office before we’d been interrupted by Commander Fitz.

  “There’s twenty-five,” I said. Somehow that number seemed simultaneously small and overwhelmingly large. When Regan first told me about her security-cameras-turned-explosives revelation, I’d pictured hundreds of cameras, a number so big even a fleet of people couldn’t retrieve them in time. Twenty-five was definitely better, but it was still terrifying to think about that many explosives sprinkled around campus.

  “Twenty-five,” Regan repeated. “Salzburg wasn’t taking any chances, was he.”

  “Should we have told your mom about him?” I asked, glancing back toward the house on the hill.

  “And said what?” Regan asked. “All we have is a hunch, a hunch that would have taken entirely too long to explain. Besides, last I checked, nobody listened to criminals and their hunches.” I winced at the word criminal and Regan gave me a sympathetic smile and clapped me hard on the shoulder.

  “If it makes you feel any better, there’s no one else I’d rather have as a partner in crime,” she said.

  “In a weird way, that actually does make me feel better,” I said. Regan glanced behind her to where the Edison clock tower was illuminated.

  “We have exactly forty minutes left to find them all,” she said. “We need to get moving.”

  “It’s impossible,” I said. “Even if we split up, there isn’t any way we can make it all over campus. We don’t have enough time.” I looked at Regan, waiting for her to join me in my meltdown, but to my surprise she had a familiar smile on her face.

  “Now that, I can fix,” she said. “I present to you bullet point number six,” she said, sounding more than a little smug. Before I could respond, she pulled something out of her pocket and held it up to the light. It was the black metal key card of the commander in chief, a card that hung around the commander’s neck until it was time to hand it off to the next commander.

  “Grab the key card when you have a chance,” I said. “You stole that from your mom?” I asked, remembering how she’d hugged her mom moments before things went south.

  “I prefer the term borrowed,” she said. “Let’s go.” With that she turned and raced across campus, and I knew without asking where she was headed. What I didn’t know was what exactly she was planning on doing once we got there. But as I dashed after her, I realized that it no longer mattered who was in charge or that I had no idea what the plan was. I had to trust Regan in the same desperate way that a skydiver trusts his parachute, and that feeling was uncomfortable for someone like me.

  Luckily the Hub, the main building where all the Glitch eq
uipment was housed, wasn’t far, and we were hurling ourselves up its wide stone steps within minutes. Thanks to Regan’s card, we made it inside without a problem. At this time of night, the building was dark and deserted, and our footsteps sounded too loud in the silent hallways. Three quick swipes of the card later, and we were in the official Glitch room. Regan flicked the lights on, illuminating the gigantic space that was three times as big as the miniature version back at the mountain. Twenty platforms encircled the room, each with their own set of equipment and computers. I’d been here twice before, both times on field trips, and the room had been all hustle and bustle with agents Glitching to the past and back to the present in full costume, Butterflies being taken into custody, and the general clamor and chaos that went with protecting the history of the United States. It had been overwhelming then, but it was even more overwhelming now with its eerie silence.

  “Grab six sets of Chaos Cuffs and two belts,” Regan said, already booting up the closest computer.

  I dashed over to the far wall and collected the cuffs and belts. They clanked together in a way that set my teeth on edge as I deposited the whole lot on the floor at Regan’s feet. She typed in one last thing on the computer and then turned and quickly looped a belt around her waist.

  “The problem is that these are only designed to carry two sets of cuffs at the most,” she muttered under her breath as she attached one set to each hip. She held the remaining set in her hand, her forehead furrowed.

  “Here,” I said, tossing her the belt I hadn’t managed to get on yet. “Throw that over a shoulder and attach the extra cuff.” I raced back to grab two more belts. “You know,” I said as I attached my own cuffs, “this has only ever been done once before.”

  “What’s that?” Regan said, sounding distracted as she squinted at the computer screen.

  “Glitching within a Glitch,” I said. “I read about it once. One of our own agents went rogue, and in order to confuse his trail he started leapfrogging through time.”