Glitch

touched
    nothing. We ran close to the outside walls of the buildings,
    then Adrien took us down a narrow space, similar to the
    tunnels I was used to.
    Until I looked up. I stopped cold, letting go of Adrien’s
    hand.
    Sky.
    My breath started coming in strained gasps. What had I
    done? The sky was right above me. It was beautiful and hor-
    rible all at the same time. It was just like in my nightmares,
    making me dizzy like I could fl y one second and then feeling
    like it was pressing down and compressing my lungs the next.
    Or was that just the toxic chemicals I was surely breathing in?
    I put a hand to my chest, wheezing heavily. I barely noticed
    Adrien calling my name.
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    “Zoe. Zoe! What’s wrong?”
    “Can’t breathe!” I collapsed against the cool, reassuring
    wall of a building. Underground. I needed to get back under-
    ground. I gripped my throat, clawing for air.
    Adrien knelt down beside me, putting his hands on my
    shoulders and leaning his forehead into mine. “Zoe, you’re
    hyperventilating. But we can’t stop here. Try to calm down
    and take deep breaths. Come on, I’ve seen you do this be-
    fore, whenever your heart monitor is about to go off . You’re
    a pro at this. Just breathe and calm down. We’re almost to
    the transport.”
    He breathed slowly with me, our eyes locked. Slowly, my
    lungs stopped burning. I allowed him to pull me to my feet
    and I stumbled forward. I kept trying to breathe but the air
    was so warm and moist. It felt wrong. I could just imagine
    the invisible poisonous particles I was breathing in and how
    they would worm their way through my internal organs.
    I tried to keep my eyes focused on the dirty concrete
    under my feet. I counted my footfalls, letting my stride fall
    into step with Adrien’s. I breathed in on every third step and
    out again on every sixth. Left, right, left, right, left, right,
    left, right, left.
    “You’re doing great, Zoe. Almost there. Keep it up. I see
    the transport.”
    I looked up and saw him pull open the door of a sleek
    white transport vehicle. I’d seen these on the Link News
    before, but of course never in real life. And usually they were
    entered in sealed tunnels or manned by people in biosuits.
    Adrien pushed me on to the hard gray seat and shut the door
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    Heather Anastasiu
    behind me. He ran around the front of the vehicle and got
    in the other seat beside me. I felt a little less tense about toxic
    exposure once we were inside the vehicle. It appeared well
    sealed. I hoped it had a good air- fi ltration system. Adrien
    tapped on a key panel beside the wheel; then he looked over
    at me.
    “Ready?”
    I managed a small nod, feeling anything but ready.
    “Oh, your seat belt,” he said, reaching across me for some-
    thing. I didn’t know what he was doing. His chest was close
    to me right as I breathed in and he smelled so . . . good. Not
    good- food- smell good, but good in a diff erent way. I swal-
    lowed as tingles drifted down my body. He pulled the belt
    across me and clicked it in. Then he was settled back in his
    seat and we were in motion.
    I watched in stunned fascination, trying to take in every-
    thing at once. I’d ridden the subway my whole life but it
    was nothing like this. The motion of this vehicle with its
    rapid acceleration and deceleration made me queasy— and
    that was without considering all the wild things I saw out
    the windows.
    The Surface world was full of geometric shapes, square
    and rectangular buildings, some with triangle roofs reach-
    ing up into the sky. I averted my eyes from the sky. Looking
    at it made me feel nauseated from anxiety, so instead I fo-
    cused on the straight streets and the buildings at eye level.
    Everything was concrete, gray as my underground world,
    except for the occasional shock of green— weeds coming
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    up through the concrete, trees and overgrown brush on the
    sides of the road. Overall, though, it was clean. The paved
    street we drove on was smooth. The buildings looked well
    kept. Operational, just like Adrien had said.
    Still, it was all eerily deserted. In my sublevel world, people
    were always crowded together— orderly, but crowded. The
    only place of solitude was in our tiny effi
    cient housing units,
    and even there, I could only be truly alone in the few square
    feet of my personal quarters. I simply couldn’t fathom the
    space and emptiness of the Surface. The tall buildings looked
    like monstrous uneven teeth