Glitch (11 page)

“Have you ever fallen? In love, I mean?”

He laughed again but it sounded different, higher pitched than normal. He shifted in his seat. “I’ll get back to you on that one.”

I nodded. I guessed not even someone who was born outside of the Community could know everything. We were quiet a few moments, but it was a comfortable quiet. Silence usually meant I was glitching, which meant I was separate and all alone, but this was strange—it was a together kind of quiet. I studied Adrien’s profile, his long face and the triangle shadows underneath his sharp cheekbones.

“Can you tell me more about the Rez?”

He looked at me, a small smile on his face.

“I suppose now that you’re here, you’ll probably meet some of them soon. And other Gifteds, like us. Some of us were born out here, outside of the Community, and others escaped. There’s plenty of people out here in hiding, on the run, out on deserted land or in abandoned buildings. Not everyone’s in the Rez. Me and Mom, we were on our own for a while. She didn’t want anything to do with the Rez, not that she’ll tell me why. I think she had some vision of it.” His smile ebbed as he looked in the direction she’d left.

“Anyway, I got tired of living on the run instead of fighting back. When my Gift started coming in, I dunno.” He shrugged. “For me, it’s like I knew life was supposed to be bigger—that I was supposed to be doing something more. With the things I’ve seen—the drone labor in the mines, not to mention the farms—”

He shuddered. “I just knew that a Gift like mine meant, I dunno,” he looked up, “it meant that I had a
responsibility
to use it well.”

I knew so little about the world he had seen, but his feelings connected with something deep inside me, a sharp pang of recognition.

“Duty,” I said, nodding slowly. “Duty is important.” It was something we were taught in the Community. A wave of guilt swept through me. Just yesterday I had thought duty meant turning myself in to the Regulators. Now I didn’t know what to think.

Adrien seemed to sense my confusion.

“Duty is important when you’re working for something worthwhile,” he amended.

“But how do you tell the difference?” I frowned. “Good and bad look the same sometimes.”

He shrugged. “You just gotta keep asking questions to find out more. And then just follow your intuition. Your conscience.”

“Conscience?”

“Oh, right.” He sounded surprised, giving a small laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t know. It’s, uh, knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. Your conscience is the part of you that makes you want to do good and help people.”

I looked at him quizzically. “It’s part of me? Where?”

He laughed again. It was a warm hearty sound that made my chest curl in happiness. “Sorry, you’d think I’d be better at explaining all of this by now. Usually I have more time to prepare a glitcher for the outside world. And being around you, I just get…”

His face colored as he looked away. “Anyway, a conscience isn’t like a physical part of you. It’s just there, or it
should
be there, in everyone. It’s part of what makes us human. Sometimes you can feel it. Right here.” He reached out, hesitating just above my heart monitor, pausing. Then he looked into my eyes and dropped his hand.

I frowned. “But what about my Gift? Where does that come from?”

Adrien scooted back in his chair. “The easy answer is evolution. That’s how I always start off explaining it anyway. They started shunting around with our brains and inserting all that cracking hardware. They thought they could get total control over people. But they forgot one of the basics of life on Earth—” His eyes sparkled as he leaned in, grinning conspiratorially. “—organisms adapt!”

“Old World scientists called it ‘plasticity.’ Basically, the brain can rewire itself even if crucial parts are damaged.
Evolution
might be the wrong word—it’s not like glitchers are a new species. Just highly adapted. We’ve started developing abilities that get around their programming, making neural connections to subvert the hardware. Even with all our tech, the brain is something we’ve never completely understood.” His hand movements grew wilder as he got excited. “Maybe it’s something that
can’t
be completely understood. There’s still so much mystery. Not to mention the parts about being human that are simply—” He lifted his hands. “—intangible. Like our souls or spirits, or whatever it is that makes us
us.
”

“Souls?” I arched my eyebrows, barely stopping myself from scoffing. “Like in the barbarian Old World religions?”

He smiled and shrugged, some of his energy seeming to wind back down. “I don’t know. But you’ve felt it, haven’t you? Those feelings that seem to get so big in your chest, like something is so beautiful it aches?”

My mouth dropped open in surprise. He was right. I had felt exactly that. When I’d seen color for the first time, or when I watched my brother sleeping.

“What
is
that?” he continued. His face had a quieter intensity as he leaned over. His green eyes caught every bit of light in the room and seemed to refract it in a thousand sparkles. “Beauty, happiness, they’re things so big they can’t capture them with their scientific words. It’s like what they used to call magic.”

I sat for a moment focusing on what he’d said, never looking away from his eyes. I wasn’t able to follow everything—but watching him get so excited, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I’d never seen so much emotion on a person’s face. It lit me up inside, made my chest feel bright and warm. It was like there was a connection between us, like somehow he
knew
me. Like he could reach right into me, pluck out the things I felt and thought, and put them into words in ways I hadn’t learned to express yet.

But I couldn’t agree with him completely. I looked at him regretfully.

“But even emotions can be broken down to electrical synapses and chemical reaction. Isn’t that what the V-chip proved? Emotion
is
all physical response. No invisible soul to it.”

“Yeah, but even under their complete control of synapses and chemicals, your mind managed to break free.” Adrien looked at me warmly. “That you exist this way, Zoe, you’re the ultimate proof that we can be so much more than just the sum of our parts and knee-jerk impulses. Something about you just could not be controlled, just had to be free.”

I couldn’t help smiling again at his enthusiasm. “I don’t think I can quite agree with your theory, but I like the way you talk about it. It makes life seem—I don’t know—more special? More important?”

He grinned, his eyes catching mine again until I felt like there was some kind of electric current passing between us.

“Sorry if I’ve been rambling. I just never get to talk to anyone about all this. Mom never wants to hear it—she says it doesn’t matter
why
things are happening, just that they are. But talking with you just feels so … natural.”

“Even though I might agree with your mother?”

“No, you’re different,” he said firmly. “I’ve watched you discover emotion, discover the world around you. I mean, before having the visions of you, I’d never felt…” He stopped himself abruptly. “Okay, getting ahead of myself. I realize the fact that I’ve had visions about you might seem kind of gnangy. It’s a violation of your privacy. I’m so sorry.” He looked down. “It’s just that the more time I spend around someone, the more I see in my visions. I’m sorry—I keep trying to control it.”

Adrien looked away, biting his lip.

“And you saw me?” I asked. “You came to the Academy for me.” Even as I said the words, pleasure bloomed at the thought. I smiled. He’d come because of me. Or he’d come because of my
ability.
I frowned at the thought. That was the logical reason.

“I’m sorry.” He cringed, seeming to mistake my frown for something else. “I know, creepy. I first had a vision of you over a year ago. You were here. We were talking, like we are now. Cracking hell!”

He smacked his forehead.

“It was probably this very moment I saw. Isn’t that amazing?”

“But that’s not why you came to the Academy, not just because you saw us talking.” I tried to contain the nervous excitement tingling in my stomach. This was what I had been waiting to talk about ever since I opened my eyes. Without the Link and its constant instruction, I was completely lost. This boy had offered me escape, but I had no idea what came next. He did.

“No.” He paused, and my stomach sank. “I had other visions of the future—the farther-off future—at least I think so because you looked different than you do now. I saw that you’re going to be an integral part of the Rez. Not just that.” He bit his lip again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to tell you this without cracking you out. I’m not even sure how much of my visions I should tell you—if it will shunt up the future somehow if you know ahead of time. I don’t really know how this all works yet.”

“Just tell me,” I said, the desperation clear in my voice. “Ever since I started glitching I’ve felt so lost and confused. You’ve seen what I’m supposed to do, what I’m supposed to be. Please. You
have
to tell me.”

He was quiet another moment, looking down so I couldn’t read his face as he searched for what to say. I reached over and touched his hand lightly.

He looked up and I realized how close we were, both of us leaning in together. I blinked a few times, suddenly light-headed, but not like before when I’d passed out. Being so close to the smooth dark skin of his face, getting lost in the shifting shades of his green eyes, it felt like my insides were fluttering and melting. Not like when I was nervous or afraid, but in a nice way. In a really wonderful way.

This was what it felt like to be connected to another person without the Link. I couldn’t describe the feeling, but I felt the pricking behind my eyes again. This was what it felt like not to be alone. And Adrien was right—I didn’t have words to describe this feeling. It was what I’d always wanted before, but didn’t even know existed. It was mystery and it was beautiful.

My hand was resting on his wrist, and I trailed my hand up his forearm without thinking about what I was doing. The texture of his shirt was so rough compared to the smoothness of his skin. My fingers traced up his shoulder and then over the soft skin of his neck. I felt his skin warm and his pulse quicken at the touch of my fingertips, responding in a way that was totally different from logic and programmed electrical impulses.

I kept going, awed by the growing sense of connection, the feel of the curly hair at the base of his neck, the way his breath ruffled my eyelashes. The pools of water gathered at the edges of my eyes, brimming over. He suddenly trembled and leaned in closer, eyes open wide in surprise.

We sat there like that for a moment, faces so close and my heartbeat pounding in my chest in a frantic flurry. He stared at me intensely, his jaw clenching and unclenching until, with a sigh of release, he closed his eyes and leaned in. His lips ever so gently touched mine, and suddenly I felt everything stirring inside me grow wings, let loose, and fly.

“Oh Adrien,” came his mother’s voice loudly from the doorway. Her face was stony, but behind her tight eyes there was resignation, and some sadness. Adrien pulled away from me quickly.

“Just tell her already,” she said. “You think she’s going to lead the Resistance. You think she’s our only hope to deliver the whole human race from slavery.”

I LOOKED BACK AND FORTH
between them in confusion. There had to be some kind of mistake. All of the blooming feelings froze in my chest.

“Mom,” Adrien said, sounding angry, jumping back from me. His face reddened as his mother strode into the room.

Sophia rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what you tell her right now anyway. Or what you
do
with her.”

“Mom!” It was a warning.

I touched his hand to try to calm him down.

“It’s true,” his mother continued. “You forgot she’s still got the memory disrupter inserted. She won’t remember a thing from the entire time since it was inserted till it’s taken out. And frankly, that’s a good thing, because she can’t stay. She has to go back.”

My hand went to the back of my neck. Oh no, she was right. Adrien had said everything was recording separately on the drive, but I’d forgotten all about it. And soon I would forget all of
this.
My hands trembled at the thought.

“Why?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“She can’t go back,” Adrien said. “Neither of us can. They’d cracking lobotomize us if we did.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. Besides, you are not going back. But she has to. She’ll die if she stays here on the Surface.”

“What?” Adrien and I both asked at the same time.

“I had her blood tested. Her allergy is extreme. Her mast cells will keep producing histamines and sending her into anaphylactic shock.”

“Then we’ll keep her away from mold,” Adrien said.

“Adrien.” Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose, looking tired. “Sanjan ran the medical tests twice. She is allergic to the most common outdoor molds. Almost all of them. I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did up here. An epi shot is just an emergency fix—it will wear off in twelve hours and then she could go into anaphylaxis again. She’ll die if we don’t take her back.”

“We’ll keep her inside, then.”

She walked toward Adrien and her tone softened. “Look, honey, I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted this. How much you want to believe your visions and the hope they bring you. But your dreams and the facts just don’t add up.”

He brushed her hand off when she touched his shoulder. “I know what I saw. I’ve seen visions of her out in the open, under the sun. Your results were wrong.”

She tilted her head sideways. “I understand this is hard, but there’s nothing we can do for her. No Resistance safe houses have the kind of air-filtration systems she needs to survive. We’re already running out of time on the epi, and she’ll die if she breathes any air except from where she’s from.” She paused a moment. “I’m sorry, but the Community is her best chance at survival right now.”