Authors: Heather Anastasiu
We dropped swiftly, and the elevator opened again to a narrow entryway space leading to the thick metal door I was supposed to open. Two more Regs lay prone on the ground. I looked down at them, ready to see the blinking eyes, but while one of the Reg’s eyes twitched frantically, the other one was completely still. His eyes stared lifelessly ahead. His mouth was open and a line of spittle trailed down his chin. I dropped down and put a hand to his chest, trying to feel if there was a heartbeat or any movement of breath, but there was nothing.
He was dead.
I gasped, feeling a dizzy swirl of emotion. I couldn’t stop staring. I’d killed someone. He’d been alive one moment, and gone the next. Because of me. I felt like I was going to be sick.
Taylor stepped out of the elevator behind me and hauled me to my feet. “Focus on the mission.” She pointed ahead. “This is the first of the doors you have to open.”
When I didn’t reply right away, Taylor grabbed my shoulders and pushed my back up against the wall. “You have to focus.”
“Hey, stop it,” Adrien shouted, putting a hand on Taylor’s arm, but she easily pushed him back.
“The survival of the Rez itself depends on what is behind that wall,” she said. “Conscience, fear, regret, and any other thought in your head can wait until after this mission is through. Got it?”
I nodded and she let go. I knew she was right. I had to swallow the guilt for now. She and everyone else were depending on me.
She put her arms on my shoulders again. “Open these doors, and then we’re out of here. Can you do it?”
I nodded again and closed my eyes. For a second it was hard to grasp my telek. I couldn’t feel it anywhere. My thoughts were scattered. I could hear Taylor’s impatient huffing and felt Adrien pacing tensely in the background. He was angry at Taylor. I wasn’t. I couldn’t blame her for expecting me to do my part. The others stood silently.
I breathed. In and out. In and out. No distractions. I could do this. I would do this. I opened my eyes and looked at the thick door. I remembered back to my practice and thought about all the times I’d lifted equal weight with ease. I could not let myself fear. Fear would cripple my control.
Adrien came up beside me and took my hand. It was the anchor I needed. I stopped thinking. A high-pitched whine filled my ears, finally settling into the familiar buzz. My telek was back and at the ready.
I cast it outward and poured myself entirely in.
There. I finally felt the room in my head and with it came a sense of power and control.
Mentally, I lassoed a web around the door and tugged it. With a screeching grind of steel, the door lifted upward on its tracks.
I glimpsed the next metal door as Adrien went rigid beside me. He was having a vision, but there wasn’t time to wait for him to finish. Taylor had said this first door would set off an alarm. I had to keep going so we could get out of here as fast as possible. I cast my telek toward the second door.
But then Adrien shouted, “Oh God, it’s a trap!”
Chapter 16
IT WAS ONLY
because my telek was already active that I sensed the laser barrels drop from the ceiling in front of the metal door.
I screamed in terror and felt the energy leave me without my control. Adrien threw his weight into me, knocking me behind one of the ex-Regs as my power ripped the weapons apart.
“We’ve got to get everyone out!” Adrien shouted, scrambling off me and pulling me to my feet. The ex-Reg we dove behind had some shrapnel from the laser barrels lodged in his chest, but he moved as if it didn’t bother him.
I looked back at the second barrier doors. “But we’re so close.” Taylor had said the object was vital to the Resistance’s survival. “Should we still try to get it?” I turned to General Taylor for orders, but just as I did, she crumpled to the ground.
A blooming red stain spread at her stomach. She gasped as she looked down at it.
A sharp hand-sized piece of metal was lodged in her left side, right below her rib cage. I’d been so clumsy with my telek, I hadn’t had time or thought to direct each piece of shrapnel safely away from us.
“Today?” Taylor whispered, looking back up at Adrien. Then she slumped sideways, unconscious.
“Adrien!” I screeched. I dropped down and reached to pull the chunk of metal out of her, but Adrien caught my hand.
“Don’t! She’ll bleed out for sure if you pull it out.”
I clicked my wrist com frantically. “Detachment A, are you there? Taylor’s down. We’ve got to abort. Now.”
I waited a second, but the only response was silence with an occasional clicking static.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Grab Taylor,” Adrien said to Cole. The bulky ex-Reg boy picked Taylor up as Adrien swiped the card in front of the elevator tube.
Nothing happened.
“No!” Adrien yelled, slamming the wall. “Power to the elevator must have shut down.”
Adrenaline pulsed through me. I turned back to the elevator and pushed the door open the same way I’d done with the security doors.
“Get in!” I yelled, trying not to think in case I lost any of my momentum. The two ex-Regs and the other soldiers piled in, with Adrien and me right behind. I spared one last glance at the metal hatch behind us.
“If they knew we were coming, they’d have moved whatever was there anyway,” Adrien said, seeing where I looked. “Get us out of here.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. My telek was sharp. I could feel the shape of the tube tunnel above us and our elevator car lodged at the bottom.
I shook my head to get rid of my mounting fear. “No gravity,” I whispered, and suddenly the elevator’s brake gear had snapped and we were shooting up the tube. Light from the broken door sparked as we went. I only slowed us down as we came to the top floor. The elevator car shook as I tried to hold it steady long enough for everyone to get out. I could feel the edges of my control unraveling.
I exited last and then slipped and fell to my knees.
The floor was slick with blood. I barely held back a scream as I saw the Rez fighters we’d left at the top of the elevator were dead, torn apart by laser fire.
“Oh my God,” Adrien said.
Tavid was dead, too. Cole let out a strangled noise when he saw him. He handed Taylor off to one of the Rez fighters who’d come up the elevator with us.
The laser barrels clicked to life above our heads. They must be motion sensitive. I’d been barely able to hold the elevator. I didn’t know if I could split my focus enough to disable them. But before I could even rally my telek to try, Cole leapt up, his hydraulic legs hissing as he launched himself toward the weapons. He ripped them off the ceiling before they could fire.
I couldn’t stop staring at the dead soldiers. My breath stopped in my chest. This was all wrong. None of this was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission. No one was supposed to die.
A Rez fighter ran down the hall toward us from the entrance. “Someone’s trying to remote hack the transport. We need the techer right now.”
“Go.” I pushed Adrien ahead. “We’ll get the others.”
He hesitated.
“There’s no time. If they hack the transport, none of us are getting out of here.”
He nodded and ran after the Rez fighter.
I clicked my wrist com, but still there was no answer from the other group. “Why aren’t they answering?” I didn’t dare voice my real fear: What if they were already dead?
“Take Taylor back to the transport,” I said to the Rez fighters with us, before turning to the ex-Regs. “You two come with me, we’ve got to help the other group get out.”
They nodded and we ran down the hallway. I couldn’t hear anything from the other end. No laser fire, no screams. What was happening down there? My legs pumped fast even though I was exhausted from using my telek so much. I’d never done anything as energy-intensive as raising that elevator.
Suddenly the silence became complete. I couldn’t even hear my own huffing breath. It was like we’d passed through some invisible wall where all sound was cut off.
I turned to the ex-Regs. “What’s going on?” I yelled. My voice made no sound.
The ex-Regs barely even paused. They gestured to one another with what looked like military hand signs and kept running to the end of the hallway. I remembered from the projected schematics that the hallway turned a sharp corner before the last stretch that opened to the circular room where the glitcher cells were. I hurried to move around the corner, but Cole grabbed my arm to hold me back.
He mouthed something I couldn’t understand. Eli peered around the corner quickly and then pulled back. He made two sharp forward motions with his arms and then we were running again. Cole and Eli ran side by side in front of me, blocking my sight of what was ahead and shielding me. The hallway seemed to go on forever. All I could see were flashes of light from over their heads. Whatever was going on at the end of it looked like a firefight. I tried to push in between the ex-Regs, but they stayed locked shoulder to shoulder.
Until they were blown backward off their feet. Eli’s heavy body landed on my leg and took me down with him. My head cracked on the ground and the building shook as a wave of blue light burst past us. The ex-Regs were quickly on their feet again, and Cole hauled me up as well. I screamed as I tried to stand and looked down. My left ankle hurt like hell when I tried to put weight on it, but at least my suit hadn’t ripped. I held on to the wall for support.
A girl surrounded by a bright blue orb blocked the entryway to the room. She had to be a glitcher. Through the undulating blue light, I could see Rand, City, and several others standing on the other side. They were alive. A flurry of relief rushed through me.
The girl’s back was turned to us. At first I thought she was one of the glitchers we’d been sent to free, fighting alongside my team. Then I saw a crackling spiral of electricity burst from City’s fingertips, aimed at the orb. The electricity hit it, but didn’t penetrate. That was when I realized the girl with the orb wasn’t helping us at all. She was trapping everyone inside.
Cole and Eli unloaded laser rounds that bounced harmlessly off the glowing shield. The girl turned to look at us. A flash of recognition or relief seemed to pass over her face as she saw me. She made a slight motion with her arms. The momentum of an energy wave built in the orb surrounding her, and released outward in a concentric circle.
I tried to cast my telek to stop it, but I couldn’t sense it at all. I couldn’t hear the buzzing in my ears either. I had no idea if I even had any energy left, I’d already used it so much tonight. The wave hit me before I could make any sense of it, and I was knocked off my feet again. It dissipated and passed into the walls with a foundation-shaking quake.
I tried to motion to Eli to charge the girl, but he must have misinterpreted me, because he picked me up and ran with me toward her instead. Her eyes were fixated on me as we got closer. I desperately tried to find any thread of telek I could. If I could just cast a web around her, disable her like I had the Regs or stop her heart—anything to drop her so everyone else could get out of here before the next wave of reinforcements arrived. Or worse, the Chancellor herself.
The girl released another wave and I felt the adrenaline surge inside me as I braced for the blow. While the wave hit like a sledgehammer to the chest, Eli stayed on his feet. Everyone else had been blown back again, but Eli kept advancing forward. It was my telek, it must be at least partially working. The girl’s eyes widened as we kept pushing forward, even through the next wave she released.
I tried to expand my telek outward to get to her, but I could only barely sense the room in my head. My mental projection cube kept cutting in and out. My body felt flayed by the bursts of blue light. I didn’t know how long I could keep this up. When the next wave hit, Eli stumbled backward, dropping me.
Then suddenly the girl in front of us sank to the ground. I scrambled to sit up, looking around.
Stunned, I saw Tyryn standing behind her, holding a tranq gun steady. He must have shot her in the split second after she’d released the orb, before she could build another one. She’d been so distracted watching me, she hadn’t even seen him come up behind her. Three tranq rounds stuck out of her neck.
I got to my feet, gritting my teeth against the roaring pain in my ankle, and hobbled into the huge room. We’d gotten here at the end of the fight. Rand, City, and Tyryn were the only ones left standing. The ex-Reg, Wytt, slowly got to his feet, part of his chest plate scorched black.
Bodies were strewn all over the ground. And so much blood. Some wore the gray and green of the Rez fighters. A few others I didn’t recognize, but they looked like teenagers. Glitchers, no doubt. Smoke filled the air. Weapon racks on the ceiling were melted and still burned orange. A few molten drops dripped onto the ground below. Clearly Rand’s handiwork. Half of the left wall was cut up by laser fire, exposing the steel support beams.
“We’ve got to go!” I shouted. Still my voice made no sound.
I’d thought the girl with the orb had also been controlling the silence, but she was knocked out, and no more glitchers were standing. At least that we could see. I felt my heartbeat ratchet up a notch. Ginni had said there were ten glitchers here. Three were on the floor, so where were the others?
City and Rand helped a fallen Rez fighter to his feet. I closed my eyes and concentrated, but between my exhaustion and the silence that quieted the buzz I usually used as a guide, my connection to my telek was unsteady. When it cut in again, I felt the whole room in my head. I grabbed it and tried to hold on. For a moment I managed, and expanded farther beyond the wall.
And that’s when I felt them. There were people huddled in tiny cells beyond the wall, no bigger than the room I’d been closed in for months at the research lab. The bodies were too small to be Regs. They had to be the Chancellor’s other glitchers.
I hesitated for a moment. The girl with the orb was clearly working for the Chancellor voluntarily. But if these glitchers were a danger, wouldn’t they have attacked already? I steeled myself. We had failed part of our mission, but we could still accomplish this objective. I had to try.