Glitch

stopped,
    should have broken, should have split into pieces from the
    ripping pain.
    “I don’t know,” I said to Molla, trying to keep my voice
    316

    G L I TC H
    even. I hugged her hard. “I don’t know if Max got away—
    they got me fi rst.”
    She clutched me back just as desperately.
    “Max told me they’d caught you,” I said. “I’m so sorry
    we got you involved in all this.”
    She pulled back, face pale. “It was horrible. The Regula-
    tors grabbed me right after I got to school.”
    She blinked rapidly. She put a hand to her mouth. “Not
    again,” she moaned, grabbing her stomach. She ran over to
    the toilet and threw up.
    “What’s wrong?”
    She wiped her mouth and then crawled back to lie down
    on her cot.
    “It’s been like this for a week.” Her face was wet with
    tears. “Something must be wrong, but I didn’t want to go
    to a diagnostic doctor. I didn’t want them to fi nd out I was
    glitching.”
    She sobbed into a thin gray sheet, and I smoothed back
    the hair from her face.
    “Everything’s going to be okay,” I told her. I hoped she
    couldn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
    She turned over on her side, clutching her pillow. I sat
    down on the edge of her cot, rubbing her back gently. Even-
    tually her breathing calmed down. After a while she was so
    still, I hoped she was sleeping.
    My chest clenched with the sudden memory of Adrien
    calmly sticking the needle into my neck. Adrien telling the
    Chancellor about me on the video. I slid from the edge of
    the cot to the cold fl oor. The pain was so heavy. I curled up
    317

    Heather Anastasiu
    in a ball and put my palms against my eyes like I could scrub
    out all the memories.
    Max had been right all along about Adrien. He’d known
    from the beginning that Adrien wasn’t someone to be trusted.
    He’d even tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. I’d be-
    lieved what I wanted to believe.
    I’d just taken Adrien at his word. Taken everything at his
    word. And my trust in him had led us to this. There was
    certainly no way we were going to be able to escape deacti-
    vation this time. But even if we didn’t get deactivated, even
    if by some miracle we managed to escape, where would we
    go? Without Max’s help we wouldn’t be able to go unde-
    tected for long in the Central City, and I couldn’t survive on
    the Surface.
    I closed my eyes as a wave of dizziness and fear swept over
    me. Every step along the way Adrien manipulated me so
    perfectly. To make me follow him, to trust him, and then to
    fall in love with him. And I’d lost everything.
    I’d even believed him when he told me that one of the
    Rez workers had implanted subroutines in my head to fool
    the diagnostics. Now I was sure they had done something to
    my hardware, but what ever it was hadn’t been for my pro-
    tection. And I had just let it all happen.
    The emotion I’d been able to hold back for Molla’s sake
    fi nally broke free and tears poured down my face. Adrien
    had turned every pure and wonderful thing I’d felt into a
    dirty lie. Into a mockery. I squeezed my legs in tighter to
    my chest, wishing I could disappear.
    As the minutes passed with me crumpled on the fl oor,
    318

    G L I TC H
    another realization hit me with a shudder. Markan. There
    was no way I’d ever be able to save him. He would grow up
    in the Link system without me. They’d wipe me from his
    memory chip. And one day he would receive his adult V-chip
    and forever lose the ability to think, to feel, to be himself.
    Another devastating failure.
    It was too much pain to bear. But slowly the burning ache
    of hurt in my chest morphed into a fi ery anger. For the fi rst
    time since I’d glitched, I understood feeling angry to the
    point of violence. Adrien had done this to us. Adrien had
    brought us to the attention of the authorities. He had led us
    right into the Chancellor’s clutches.
    My teeth clenched with rage. I wanted to hurt him. I
    wanted to take from him what he had already taken away
    from me.
    I barely noticed the buzzing in my head, not until the cot
    opposite Molla fl ew into the wall with a loud crash, crum-
    pling with the force of my anger. Molla jerked up, eyes ter-
    rifi ed and heart monitor buzzing.
    “Oh, Molla. I’m so sorry.” I reached out to her, but she
    shrank away from me, clumsily stumbling off the cot and
    backing away from me against the far wall. Her eyes locked
    on me in terror. She was afraid of me.
    I turned away from her, my anger giving