Glitch

asked the Chancellor
    to make her want me and she got angry. Because she can’t.
    She
    can’t control Zoe,” he said quickly, words stumbling
    over themselves. “She doesn’t know why. She tried over and
    over again to control Zoe after she returned from the Sur-
    face, but it never worked.” He fi nally looked at me. “I had to
    run. She was never going to give me what I wanted, so I was
    going to have to take it for myself.”
    “That’s enough about that,” the Chancellor cut in, her
    voice sharp and angry. She looked at me and smiled.
    “No,” I whispered to myself. I was stung by doubt, ques-
    tioning everything I thought I’d known. I’d been so wrong
    about everything else, obviously I couldn’t trust my feel-
    ings. After everything we’d been through together, Max
    and Adrien had both been spies? They had both betrayed me,
    giving information to the Chancellor and helping her cap-
    ture and control other glitchers.
    This had to be a trick. The Chancellor had admitted
    she could control people. She could be making him say these
    things.
    Molla whimpered again and I looked over at her. She
    looked ill and weak, and her knees buckled under her,
    the knife pricking the side of her neck. She bolted back up-
    right, screaming in panic and yanking harder to get away
    from Adrien. Another bright spot of blood appeared.
    “Molla, stop struggling,” I yelled at her. “Please stay still.
    Stay calm.”
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    G L I TC H
    “Enough,” the Chancellor said irritably, and Molla became
    perfectly still. It wasn’t natural. She was under the Chancel-
    lor’s control.
    Max had dropped back to the ground. His face was drip-
    ping blood.
    “Oh Max,” I said, tears brimming.
    I still didn’t know whether I could believe he’d been
    lying to me all this time. But memories fl ashed through my
    head— all the times I’d gotten the sense that Max wasn’t
    telling me everything, even outright lying to me some-
    times. The look on his face when I’d gotten back from the
    hospital and he told me he was “taking care of things.” His
    certainty that he’d never get caught in spite of all the risks
    he took. I’d attributed it to his overconfi dence, but what if
    there was another reason? What if he knew he’d never be in
    any real danger because the entire time he’d been working
    for the Chancellor?
    “Listen. I am on Max’s side. I am on your side.” The
    Chancellor’s voice softened and turned smooth. “I know you
    want to save your friends, and not just them. You want to
    make a diff erence, to save lives, don’t you? Adrien has had so
    many visions of you, of all your pain and how desperately
    you want to be useful. If he could remember, he would tell
    you all about it.”
    I felt like the air had been knocked out of my chest. I
    looked over at Adrien, a tumble of confusion in my mind.
    Of course. For the fi rst time since the incident at the train
    platform, I looked, really looked , at Adrien. My anger and
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    Heather Anastasiu
    hatred must have blinded me. His body was rigid, his face
    carry ing the same blank expression that I had just seen on
    Molla’s. The Chancellor was controlling Adrien, too.
    The realization tore through me. It was possible, just pos-
    sible, that the Chancellor could have made Adrien share his
    visions with her and then forget. Could it mean— My heart
    seemed to expand outward as a rush of emotion washed over
    me. Had he not betrayed me after all? Could Adrien really
    love me?
    So many emotions struck me at once, I could barely sort
    them out. Joy that he could still be the boy I had fallen in
    love with, that the past few months hadn’t been a lie. Pain
    and guilt at ever having doubted him. And terror. I was ter-
    rifi ed for him, now that I knew he was a prisoner in his own
    body, unable to control himself as the Chancellor made him
    hurt Molla.
    “This is your last chance,” the Chancellor said. “Will you
    join me voluntarily?”
    I turned to her, letting the anger I felt inside of me begin
    to rise up and grow. She was lying about everything. She
    never really wanted to help glitchers be free, she just wanted
    to use them. She was building an army of glitchers, con-
    trolled and manipulated completely by herself. But she
    couldn’t control me. For what ever reason, her compulsion
    power didn’t work on me.
    “This is the diff erence you want to make in the world?
    This is how you want to save glitchers?” I gestured at my
    friends in the room.