Override (Glitch)

simply believing in me was helping them stay strong.
    “Do you want to go get some more sleep?” he asked. “I can show you to your dorm room. Or we can go grab some food if you’re hungry.”
    I cringed at the thought of the protein mix. “No,” I took Adrien’s hand. “Is there somewhere we can go to be alone and get away from everything?”
    “Hmm,” he drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Jilia will be back after she takes care of Xona’s hand. But everyone else is at lunch, then they’ll have class after. We could go to your dorm room.”
    I nodded. He led me out of the Med Center and down the hallway, but, instead of continuing down the way we’d come, he took a hallway that forked off to the right. At the end of the hallway were several doors. He stopped at one and pressed on the panel to open it. The lights turned on as we walked in.
    The room was about twice the size of my old room back in the Community, but there were four beds built into the wall like shelves, two high. A curtain ran along the length of each, for privacy I assumed. A long metal table with four chairs took up the far wall of the room.
    “Looks like you’ve got your choice of beds,” Adrien said. “Ginni’s been living here alone. I’m sure she’ll be beyond thrilled at having you and Xona for roommates.”
    I nodded. Ginni seemed nice, but I wasn’t so sure how I felt about rooming with Xona. She was so hostile. “As long as Jilia takes away Xona’s weapons.”
    Adrien laughed.
    I pushed back the curtain and sat down on the other bottom bed beside Ginni’s. Adrien sat beside me. But suddenly, I didn’t know what to say. A couple nights ago everything had seemed so simple. Adrien and I were finally together again, and that was all that had mattered.
    “What now?” I asked, turning to Adrien and searching his eyes.
    I’d meant it in the larger sense, but he seemed to take me literally. “Well, we could read for a few hours.” He pointed at one of the tablets on the table. “Your tablet should be loaded with the texts for our Humanities class.”
    I was quiet a moment.
    “I could help you catch up. I mean, I know you could read it on your own, I thought it just might be nice—” He looked down.
    “No, that’s really sweet.” I put my hand on his, and wished once again that we weren’t separated by my suit. What I really wanted was to curl up into his chest so he could stroke my hair and kiss me. But settling in beside him and listening to him read was a close second. “I’d like that.”
    He grabbed a tablet from the table. Then we arranged some pillows behind our backs against the wall and he started to read. I felt all my muscles relax at the sound of his voice.
    The text was strange, about a man in ancient times, even before the Old World. A king received a vision from an oracle that his son would kill him and marry his wife, the boy’s own mother. The king decided to abandon the boy out on the rocks to die as a baby, so he wouldn’t grow up and do what the vision had said. But someone rescued the boy, and it all happened exactly as predicted anyway.
    As odd as the story was, I was fascinated. I’d only ever read history texts before. We didn’t have stories in the Community. It was so interesting to hear the tale unfold through the different characters.
    Better than the drama of the story, though, was hearing Adrien as he read. It seemed I could never get enough of looking at his face or listening to him. After everything that had happened over the past few days, it was calming to lose myself in the lilting cadence of his voice. I settled my head against his shoulder as he read.
    After a couple of hours, Adrien finally put the tablet down.
    “So, the stranger Oedipus killed for insulting him on the road was actually his father?” I asked. “And the queen he married after ridding the city of the Sphinx turned out to be his mother ?”
    Adrien didn’t look up at me. He just stared down at the tablet, his eyebrows drawn.
    “It’s a disturbing story,” I said, thinking that’s why he looked sad. “I wonder if people were all like that in the Old World before the V-chip. Killing strangers on the road and gouging their own eyes out.” I shuddered. “There was so much violence before the V-chips.” Then I thought about the Chancellor, the Uppers, and the Rez fighters here at the Foundation. It seemed no one without the V-chip could stay peaceful for long. Maybe that was the price of having