Glitch

I’d been twirling. “But it will work?”
    My eyes fl icked back up to him.
    “I hope so.” He paused a moment before opening the
    aluminum case and just watched me. “Do you trust me?
    You did once. I hope you can again.” He seemed to see the
    hesitation in my eyes and ran his hand through his hair.
    “Look, I don’t wanna pressure you but the sooner we get
    started, the sooner we can see if it’s having an eff ect and
    start planning the escape.”
    A thrill rushed through my body at the word escape. I
    nodded.
    “Good. Then as soon as your allergy is neutralized, or the
    Rez can fi nd a safe place for you to live with the allergy,
    we’ll take what ever other glitchers we’ve found and get the
    godlam’d hell out of here.”
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    Heather Anastasiu
    “And one day when my allergy isn’t a problem anymore,
    then I can help other people escape.”
    A smile played at the edges of his lips. “You wanna join the
    Rez?”
    “Of course! What else would I do once we escaped? I
    want to help Molla. And I want to stop the . . . the . . .” I
    threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t even have a word bad
    enough for the Uppers who’ve done this to us.”
    “Godlam’d shunting bastards is my name of choice.”
    I laughed a little. “Okay.” My gaze switched to the alumi-
    num case still by his side. “So where does this injection go?”
    His eyebrows rose. “Yeah? You sure?”
    “I’m sure,” I said, getting caught for a moment in the
    bright aquamarine of his eyes. We had so little color in our
    world, his eyes seemed doubly extraordinary against the gray
    of the walls and his uniform. Then there was how, when I
    looked at them, something inside my chest seemed to loosen,
    like a melting ice cube in a hot house.
    “Great.” He grinned. “Roll up your sleeve.” He clicked
    open the case and pulled out a small tube, about the size of
    a marker, and took a cap off the end of it. Two tiny needle
    tips pointed out the end.
    “This is a cocktail of all seven allergens. But just tiny
    trace amounts to start immunizing you against them. We
    build up your tolerance bit by bit, then next time you’re ex-
    posed to the real thing, hopefully it’ll be harmless.”
    I held out my arm and he leaned close with the needles.
    “Just a tiny prick.” He bit his bottom lip as he concen-
    trated. He took my upper arm in his cool hands to steady it,
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    G L I TC H
    then inserted the needles. I winced but he quickly pulled
    back.
    “All done. We’ll do these for a while, then we’ll test some
    skin and blood samples to see if it’s working.”
    “You have contact with the Re sis tance while you’re here?”
    “Of course. There are the people posing as my parents.
    And there are more of us hidden in all the sectors. They’ll
    help us coordinate an escape as soon as we’re ready.” He
    closed up the aluminum case and got to his knees, lifting it
    back up through the ceiling. “Okay, well, good night, Zoe.”
    His face seemed to soften as he said it.
    “Oh wait,” I said, putting a hand on his leg to stop him.
    “What do we do about Molla? How do we get to her with-
    out arousing suspicion? We can’t let them get her. We can’t
    let her be . . . deactivated.” I whispered the last word.
    He nodded, suddenly serious. “It’d be too dangerous try-
    ing to bring her here. We saw what happened last time with
    your brother coming in. Though . . .” He paused, thinking.
    “I’m surprised they’ve allowed you and Max to study to-
    gether so much— school offi
    cials are usually very wary of
    letting people congregate.”
    “Why?”
    “Well think about it. All that’s keeping them in control
    is a tiny, minuscule piece of hardware in people’s heads.” He
    reached over and tapped the side of my head with a fi nger.
    “When you imagine the sheer cracking number of people
    they’ve enslaved, and the number of glitchers that has been
    growing with every generation, there’s something going on.”
    He shook his head and dropped his hand. I realized with
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    Heather Anastasiu
    surprise that I’d been holding my breath the whole time his
    fi ngertips had been against my skin. “It’s why so many of
    you are forced to live underground. To control the environ-
    ment as much as possible, and because something as simple
    as touch could potentially trigger a malfunction. It’s even
    why they allow the space for separate bedrooms for families,
    even spouses. It would be more effi
    cient