Glitch

out a feral yell and poured the momentum of my
    mind forward. The door ripped outward with a roar of crum-
    bling concrete and twisting metal. I sent it crashing forward
    into the Regulators who waited on the other side.
    The door was only big enough to knock half of them
    down. The others pulled their triggers, pumping bullets
    toward us. I felt the bullets whizzing through the air, and I
    dropped to my knees with my hands to my forehead.
    The hum in my mind was taking over. It felt like a giant
    wedge splitting open my skull. My shout became a scream,
    but before it overwhelmed me, I wrapped webs of air around
    the hundred and twenty- three bullets in midair. Only then
    did I see that Adrien had taken the same fraction of a second
    to throw his body in front of me. He knocked me down and
    spread his arms over my head, face clenched, ready for the
    bullets to hit him.
    Instead, the bullets fell harmlessly from the air like metal
    raindrops as they all clattered to the concrete fl oor. Molla,
    Max, and Juan huddled in the corner by the wall, looking
    stunned.
    I threw Adrien off of me. “Stay behind me,” I yelled furi-
    ously at him, then turned my attention back to the Regula-
    tors. If they were surprised, their blank faces didn’t show it.
    They probably weren’t capable of surprise. They set new clips
    in place in the silence and raised their reinforced arms to
    release another volley of bullets.
    I dropped the bullets again before they got to us, but I
    didn’t know how long I could keep this up. It was exhaust-
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    G L I TC H
    ing to focus hard enough to catch each of the speeding bul-
    lets in time. Most of the Regulators knocked down by the
    wall had managed to free themselves from the rubble. I
    couldn’t keep an eye on everything else that was happening.
    I felt the consuming energy bubbling up in my chest and
    let it seep out of my pores, my eyes, my fi ngertips. I focused it
    on the twenty- four lightweight alloy guns, pushing through
    the outer casings. I felt out the inner contours of each weapon,
    almost tasting the metallic oil on my tongue.
    And then I ripped them apart from the inside out. The
    guns exploded in the Regulators’ hands. Flying shrapnel from
    the weapons wounded a few, but most of them shook it off
    and stood up, ignoring their bleeding hands and faces.
    Without a word, they arranged themselves into a block
    formation and ran at us, mindless of the pain under the con-
    trol of thier V-chip. My vision fl ooded with rage at both the
    violence these men intended and the fact that they them-
    selves weren’t to blame. They were all so young— the same
    Regs- in- training that were everywhere in the Academy. It
    wasn’t their fault they’d been chosen for Regulator duty.
    But I still had to stop them. I had to end this.
    Adrien’s shouted warning behind me, Molla’s screams,
    and the sound of the Regulators’ feet pounding the fl oor all
    twisted together into a crazed cacophony. I closed my eyes
    and sent the energy out one last time, fl owing over the block
    of the twelve Regulators coming at us.
    I screamed as the hum became a burning pain in my
    head— this might fi nally be too much for me. I felt myself
    start to fracture, to rip into pieces in the attempt. I pushed
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    Heather Anastasiu
    onward anyway, through their skin, through the hard metal
    plating around their skulls, then deep into their brains. I
    located the sliver- thin outline of the V-chip architecture in
    one body, then the next and the next, straining with my
    hands pressing against my own head as if I could somehow
    keep myself from coming apart.
    I felt my body being hauled backward— Adrien must be
    trying to pull me to safety but I didn’t let myself even spare
    a backward glance. Almost there . . . Almost there , three more,
    two, one . . .
    “Zoe!”
    All as one, I crushed the ten- tiny fi ngernail- sized embed-
    ded V-chips and all the minuscule alloy webs attached. Adrien
    pulled me out of the way just as the Regulators, carried
    forward by their momentum even as their eyes widened
    suddenly with self- awareness, toppled over one another like
    dominoes into a pile of muscle and metal right in front of us.
    We stood, torn and bleeding, amazed at the rubble before
    us. I looked down at my own hands in shock.
    “What did you do?” Adrien whispered over my head and
    only now I realized his arms were wrapped around me, again
    trying to shield me with his body.
    I looked up weakly. “I