Authors: Heather Anastasiu
Adrien appeared beside me. He made wild gestures with his hands and waved at us to follow him. At least that meant the transport must be fixed. He wouldn’t have come back otherwise.
I pointed at the wall behind us, putting my palms up and trying to show he needed to stop and give me a second to try to get to the other glitchers. But of course he had no idea what I meant. Adrien shook his head, pulling at my arm to get me to follow him. I tugged away from his grasp, barely managing to stay upright by putting my weight on my unhurt foot.
Others hurried past us. City and Rand held an unconscious Rez soldier between them. Cole carried a limp girl in his arms; I couldn’t see her face to tell who it was. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, straining to concentrate in the chaos.
I felt Eli pick me up, the metal of his recently fired forearm weapons warm against my skin. He started to carry me out of the room in the opposite direction from the glitchers. I didn’t waste any energy trying to protest. For a moment, the flicker of the projected room rose in my mind. Before I could lose it again, I quickly latched on and tore the wall away.
I opened my eyes right as Eli and I neared the exit. The small cells across from us were exposed and a few figures slowly rose to their feet. One short, thin boy stepped out and looked straight at me. I waved frantically over Eli’s shoulder for the glitchers to follow us, but half of them weren’t even looking my way.
The few who did see me ran across the room toward us. A couple of the others saw them and followed. In the cell on the end, I could see a blond boy lying on the ground. He looked unconscious and his legs were bound. My vision bounced with each of Eli’s heavy steps, but I squinted to look closer.
And then my heart stopped in my chest.
I knew that rumpled blond hair and the tilt of that nose well.
Max.
I screamed, but still no sound came out.
Eli kept running, taking me farther away. I flailed and beat at his armored chest with my fists, and he finally paused when we reached the entry to the hallway. He looked down at me with no expression on his face.
Then suddenly an explosion rocked the building. Half of the domed room we’d just left collapsed and the walls blew outward. Eli and I were thrown hard into the hallway wall from the blast, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet.
Sound rushed in again, a cacophonic mix of screaming and the squeal of steel beams cracking overhead. Debris and dust filled the air.
For a moment I blinked in a daze. I had no idea what was happening. Nothing made any sense. There was a painful ringing in my ears. One of the girls who’d escaped the cells lay on the ground right beside me, bloody and unmoving.
“I saw Max!” I shouted. “We have to go back for him!”
I looked over Eli’s shoulder. Clouds of dust made it impossible to see, but it was clear that many of the cell rooms had been destroyed in the blast. The glitcher responsible for the silence must have been in one of them.
But Max, where was Max? I wiped at the grime on my face mask and caught only the barest glimpse of him, still lying inside his cell before Adrien shouted, “Get her out.”
Eli picked me up and started running again. In the opposite direction from Max. “No!” I shouted into his ear.
“Don’t put her down,” Adrien yelled over his shoulder. “The General’s orders are to protect her. Get her to the transport, now.” Eli kept running, his arms around my waist like a vice grip. A few of the escaped glitchers ran just behind us.
“Stop listening to him and put me down! We have to go back!”
I tried to gather my telek so that I could make Eli stop. But just then, the wall on one side of the hallway began to groan and buckle. Part of the building that had already collapsed was pulling down the rest. The groans became screeches.
The ceiling cracked and a pile of concrete and rubble collapsed straight on top of us. I screamed and threw my hands in the air. A huge slab of concrete stopped a mere foot above our heads, caught in my telek web.
Debris sifted down around us. All down the exit tunnel the walls were buckling, creaking under the strain. The rest of the ceiling would come down soon. I threw my telek at it to keep it from collapsing long enough so we could escape. I tried to hold the slab overhead while also reaching back into the circular room to help Max. But the second I tried to split my focus, the ceiling dropped closer.
No, this couldn’t happen again. The scene was too familiar, an ex-Reg carrying me away while Max was left behind. I had to save him this time. He’d obviously seen the error of his ways. He wasn’t working with the Chancellor anymore. She’d tied him up and left him here.
I strained to turn around.
But right then, the ceiling finally dropped behind us. I couldn’t hold it anymore. A glitcher boy who had lagged behind was crushed in front of my eyes.
I screamed in rage and grief, clinging to the last bits of my power to keep the hallway ahead of us clear. I poured every ounce of strength left in my body into the telek, and then when that was gone I pushed harder still. I remembered the image I’d seen in my dream of all the blue lights spilling out of me as I cracked like a smashed glass. It was going to break me, but I didn’t care. I had to hold on a moment longer. Just a moment.
The next instant we were out in the night air and my power dropped out completely. I dropped my head in exhaustion against Eli’s shoulder as the building behind us shook with a terrifying tremble before it crumbled in on itself. The sound was deafening and dust billowed outward in a thick cloud.
So much had gone wrong. In my exhaustion, I turned to Adrien. He looked distraught, but his eyes lacked the bewilderment and shock showing plainly on the faces of the rest of our disheveled and injured crew. And with a rush of pain and grief, I realized why.
“Did you foresee this?” I asked. He looked away. “DID YOU SEE THIS?”
But then even my voice was gone and the world swirled around me. All I could manage before I passed out was to whisper a name no one could hear: Max.
Chapter 17
I SPENT A WEEK
in bed. Jilia had easily healed my fractured ankle, but pushing so hard with my telek had taken its toll on my body. I was absolutely depleted, without enough energy to lift my own head. Ginni helped me to the bathroom a few times a day and brought me food, but otherwise I remained in bed and stayed Linked.
I was afraid of the rush of emotions I knew would come as soon as I disconnected, even though I probably didn’t have enough power left in my body to be dangerous for a while. After a few days, when I finally did disconnect myself for a few hours, I was surprised that I felt almost as numb as when Linked. I was left alone to stare at the drawings on my wall and let Max’s accusing gaze stare back at me. I had sworn that if I ever got the opportunity, I wouldn’t fail to save the people I loved. No matter what.
But I
had
failed. We all had. Ginni said that after the General had been healed, she’d nearly torn up the Med Center in anger. I closed my eyes and I was back in the facility, feeling the blast buckle the ground beneath our feet, watching the ceiling caving in on us. I saw Max lying there tied up before the ceiling collapsed on top of him.
The hours were tortuous as I replayed the scenes in my head, thinking of all the ways I could have done things differently. But I didn’t let myself re-Link, except at bedtime. I deserved to feel the pain.
On the sixth day, Adrien pulled back the curtain and sat on the mattress beside me.
I turned my face away to hide it in my pillow. I knew I shouldn’t blame him for what happened. I knew his visions were only flickering images of a future he had never been able to change, but I couldn’t help it. He should have warned us what was coming. We could have tried to stop it.
He took my shoulders in his hands.
“Jilia says you should try to get up today.”
I closed my eyes.
He let go of me, shaking his head. “We did everything we could. I know you want to save everybody, but this is the way it is. It’s the way it has to be.”
Anger lit through me and I sat up. “How can you say that? Max wasn’t just anyone to me. He was my friend. I loved him, in my way.” I grabbed my head, feeling a bit dizzy from the sudden movement. “He only stayed with Bright because he couldn’t bear coming with me when we escaped the Community. I just always thought someday we’d have a chance to start over.”
“What you’re feeling is guilt,” Adrien said flatly. “Not love.”
I stared at him, openmouthed. “Why are you being like this?”
He leaned in, his face dark. “Because anger is what you need to be strong right now, not sadness. Anger will help you get out of this bed.”
His words surprised me, but then I realized I was sitting up for the first time in a week. And I wasn’t too tired. The buzzing thrum of my power was back, quieter and weaker than usual, but there.
“You’re right,” my voice was hard, “If I need anger, I have plenty of it. I’m furious with myself. And maybe it’s not fair, but I’m furious with you too.”
Adrien looked down. “Believe me. You couldn’t be any angrier with me than I am with myself. The whole thing was a trap. The Chancellor knew we were coming. And how else could she have known?”
I stared at him, not following.
“Because I told her.”
I let out a confused gasp, but he continued, “I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting any visions of this mission. It was so strange. Usually when something big like this happens, I’ll get long-term visions well beforehand. But I didn’t see anything about this mission, and I’ve realized why.”
He looked at me, anguish clear in his eyes. “It’s because I already had those visions, a long time ago. Before we escaped the Community, when the Chancellor used her compulsion on me. She made me tell her my visions and then made me forget. She must have known long ago that we would be coming on this raid. What kills me is that I must have foreseen her setting the trap for us. I gave her the blueprints for exactly what to do.” The words poured out of him in a rush. “The only reason we’re still alive is because the explosives in the second half of the building malfunctioned.”
He’d answered the question I’d screamed in rage at him during the raid. The question I could see had been giving him sleepless nights ever since.
He
hadn’t
known this would happen.
He hadn’t known, but he blamed himself all the same. And I’d pushed him away, reinforcing that blame. The look on his face bored a hole straight through my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was such an idiot. I took his face in my hands, then leaned in and put my forehead against his. “I’m so sorry. Of course it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have accused you.”
I kissed his lips, but they were hard and unyielding. After a second he relaxed into me, but then he pulled away again just as quickly. “I’ve gotta go to training.” He paused before leaving. “Will you be in classes today? Even if you don’t feel up for training, you could at least come to lunch. Everyone would really like to see you.”
I swallowed hard, but nodded. He’d pulled away so quickly. I wasn’t sure he’d quite forgiven me yet. I’d assumed the worst of him and hadn’t even given him a chance to explain. I didn’t deserve his forgiveness. But he was right. I had to get out of bed. I had to keep moving forward somehow, in spite of all that had happened.
* * *
When I walked into the Caf, talk quieted and countless pairs of eyes watched me. Some of the Rez fighters immediately looked away again, their faces hard. Others, like the younger glitchers on the other task force watched me with wide eyes. Were they impressed with what they’d heard I’d done or disappointed that I didn’t do more? I was supposed to be able to save people, but four Rez fighters and one ex-Reg had died, not to mention the Chancellor’s glitchers. One of the Rez fighters put down his spoon as I passed by and outright glared at me. Okay, so disappointment it was.
I looked down and headed toward the serving line. My legs were a little stiff, but otherwise my body felt healed. I tried to forget the eyes following my every move. I piled the colorless goop into a bowl and went to the table, sitting between Adrien and Xona. Rand was gesturing wildly when I sat down.
“—and when the weapons dropped from the ceiling, bam, I unleashed the Rand on them before they could get a single round off.”
Xona sat across from him and rubbed her temple. “It’s been a week already. Is there any way we’ll stop hearing this story by next century?”
“Wait,” I said, “I actually want to hear it. I never heard everything that happened with your group.”
Rand grinned and settled back in his chair. “So we get into the open chamber at the end of the hall, and all of a sudden none of us can hear anything. That’s when I saw the weapons dropping.”
He lifted his hands up dramatically like he was reenacting the moment. “And a millisecond later, I’m on it. I’ve been working on melting stuff without touching it, but usually it’s just things within a few feet of me. These weapons were over ten feet high, but I knew if I didn’t take them out, we’d all die.”
City turned from the other table and looked at Rand. “Oh please. If you hadn’t been there I could have easily electrified them.”
Rand made a face and waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t see you taking care of it.”
She stood and put her hands on her hips. “Probably because I was busy with the other attackers rushing in. Which I didn’t see you doing anything about.”
“How many were there?” I asked.
“Five came through the door at us.” City dropped down to sit beside Rand. “I don’t know if they were all glitchers, some of them had weapons. They got a couple of shots off before I dropped them. And they only managed that because there was this glitcher who could inflict pain.”
Rand nodded, looking almost solemn. “It was like a spike straight through my head. All of us were on the ground. I was screaming but couldn’t even hear my own voice ‘cause of the whole silence thing.”
“So what happened?”
City smiled and pointed her forefinger. “I fried him.”