Glitch

gonna bend if you don’t hit
    at the right angle.”
    281

    Heather Anastasiu
    A line of blood seeped down the back of the man’s neck.
    I wiped it gently away with the shirt.
    “Okay, Molla, am I close?” Adrien asked, his voice sound-
    ing strained.
    “Another half- inch,” she whispered, “and you need to
    angle more down, to the left.” She pointed on the outside of
    the man’s head and Adrien nodded. After several more gentle
    thunks of the chair leg on the hairpin, Molla held up her
    hand. “There! You got it. It’s touching now.”
    Adrien gave one more gentle knock. “I want it a little
    embedded in the chip but not too far. How is it now?”
    “Good,” she said, and Adrien sat back on his heels, letting
    out a low breath.
    “And now for the electricity.” He grimaced.
    Max handed him the cord, and Adrien touched the metal
    contact from the frayed end of the fan cord to one side of
    the tablet. Then he lifted the tablet so that the other side was
    touching the metal sliver sticking out of the man’s head.
    “Zoe, will you go plug in the cord now?”
    I nodded and swallowed. I took the cord, my hand hov-
    ering over the plug in the wall for a second. What if this
    didn’t work? What if when I plugged this cord into the out-
    let, I killed the man? My stomach twisted at the thought.
    “Zoe?” Adrien said. “Do you need me to do it?”
    “No,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm. “I’ve got it.”
    I plugged in the cord.
    There was a slight pop and spark from the tablet board
    and the ser vice worker’s head twitched once. Adrien pulled
    282

    G L I TC H
    the tablet case away from the pin. “Okay,” he said, fi nally
    smiling. “I think we did it.”
    “And he’s okay?” I hurried back over to the man, putting
    my hand on his chest. It kept rising and falling. He was still
    breathing. I grinned up at Adrien, who nodded.
    “He should be fi ne.” Adrien breathed a huge sigh of re-
    lief, then let out a shaky laugh as he gathered up the equip-
    ment. “Okay, we need to get out of here. Max—”
    “Already ahead of you,” Max said, and the next second he
    looked exactly like the security worker lying on the ground.
    “He probably had a small trolley if he was moving furni-
    ture. I’ll get it, then we can cover him up and I’ll move him
    somewhere far away from this part of the Academy.”
    Adrien nodded. “Hurry up, though. When he wakes up,
    his heart monitor will start going off from the pain and
    someone will come check it. But you should have time to
    be long gone. Zoe and Molla, you should get out of here,
    but be careful. Stay in the camera blind spots.”
    I nodded, and Molla and I slipped out the door behind
    Ser vice Worker Max.
    I spent the eve ning lying still on my bed, staring at the ceil-
    ing as I worried about what had happened to the ser vice
    worker. Was he all right? Did the manual wipe work? My
    stomach twisted at the thought that after everything, we
    could have failed. The memory of our anomalous incident
    could still be intact on the worker’s memory chip, and if it
    was, it was only a matter of time before the Regulators came
    283

    Heather Anastasiu
    for us. We had no way to be sure, we could only hope that
    the decision to let the worker live wouldn’t cost us our lives.
    I slipped into sleep for a few moments, only to fi nd myself
    repeating the same nightmares. Instead of Daavd’s face in
    the chase nightmare, it was Max’s. He’d been chased down
    by Regulators and I hadn’t saved him. I’d let him down, let
    him get hurt.
    Just like I was doing in real life.
    I had to tell Max. Before I spent any more time with
    Adrien, before I kissed him again. . . . The thought of kiss-
    ing Adrien sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. Which
    was then followed by another wave of guilt. There were too
    many other lies in my life. I couldn’t stand to have one be-
    tween me and Max. In spite of what I couldn’t give him, he
    was still my best friend. He was still family.
    I peeked inside Markan’s room but he wasn’t home yet. It
    felt nice having the apartment all to myself. I was so rarely
    alone and unwatched.
    I slid the door open to my room and then jolted in alarm
    and almost dropped my tablet case.
    “Adrien!”
    “Sorry.” He grinned and dropped down the last few steps
    from the ladder. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “What are you doing here?” I glanced back through my
    bedroom door to make sure Markan wasn’t about to