Override (Glitch)

swearing loudly.
    “Crackin’ hell, Citz!”
    She smiled and stood up, smoothing down her hair in the same motion. “My point exactly.”
    “Enough,” Tyron barked. “Filicity, take your seat.”
    Rand grinned.
    “You too, Rand. That kind of cockiness can get you killed in a fight. You can’t always see the threat before it’s on you.” He walked back and forth, making eye contact with each of us. “The Chancellor is building her own army of glitchers, and you can bet they’ll fight dirty. You have to be smarter. You have to be stronger. And most of all, you have to work as a team.”
    “But it’s not just glitchers we’ll be up against,” Xona said. “We have to learn how to take down Regs.” She glanced over her shoulder at the four ex-Regs who stood silently along the wall.
    “That’s why we will also be spending an extensive amount of time with weapons training,” Tyryn said. “There are a few ways to disable a Reg.” He clicked on a 3-D projection cube at his feet. The illuminated projection of a Reg filled the space, taller and bulkier than Tyryn.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the ex-Regs shuffle uncomfortably. The sandy-haired boy, Cole.
    “But how do you kill it?” Xona’s voice cut across the space.
    “There are a few weak points in a Reg’s armor, but a kill shot is next to impossible.” Tyryn waved his hand and the illuminated Reg swiveled around. “Aim at the joints, especially the knee caps. If you’re lucky enough for a Reg to turn its back to you, aim at the small of its back, right here at the waist.” Tyryn shone a laser at a small area to indicate where he meant. “The armor here is thinner, to allow full dexterity of movement. This is the one place that, with repeated fire with the highest velocity laser weapon, a Reg can be killed.”
    “Stop it!”
    We all turned at the sound. Cole stepped forward. Usually the ex-Regs’ faces were completely placid, but Cole looked visibly angry. Heat flushed his cheeks.
    “We shouldn’t be training to kill Regs,” he said. “We should be trying to save them.”
    Xona let out a disgusted noise. “The only safe Reg is a dead one. Look at its arm—it was made for killing.”
    Cole dropped his arm, hiding the double-barreled weapons embedded in it behind his back as if he was self-conscious.
    “It’s not our fault,” he said, his face flushed. I was shocked to see an ex-Reg displaying so much emotion. “You have no idea what it was like when our V-chips were destroyed. We woke up to find that our lives had been stolen from us and that hardware invaded every inch of our bodies. But underneath all this,” he pointed to the metal plate on his chest, “is still something that deserves saving. We deserve as much of a chance at a normal life as you do.”
    “You could only be rescued because you were young enough to handle the destruction of your V-chip architecture.” Tyryn’s voice was calm, gentle even. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible for full-grown adult Regs. We can’t save them. In a fight, they’ll be coming at us to kill. Deactivating them is the only option, getting a kill shot if possible.” He continued his presentation with the laser on the 3-D model. “Now, like I was saying, if you hit here at just the right angle—”
    Heavy footsteps interrupted him. Cole strode from the room, slamming the door button with his heavy fist and stomping through it when it opened.
    “Good riddance,” Xona said under her breath.
    I looked back and forth between the door and Xona, then over my shoulder at the three other ex-Regs. They didn’t looked fazed by Cole’s anger. Their blank expressions gave me a chill.
    “Now line up,” Tyryn said, ignoring the interruption. “You’ll each take turns with the laser-round and continuous-fire-stream weapons.”
    *   *   *
    Adrien wasn’t at dinner that night, but as we were finishing, he sent me a message over the com in my arm panel.
    Ginni held her hands to her chest. “That’s so romantic. I wish I had a boy to send me messages to meet in the middle of the night.” She sighed dramatically.
    “It’s seven o’clock,” Xona said. “That’s hardly the middle of the night.”
    “Well that part doesn’t matter. All that’s important is that they can have some time alone.” She lifted her eyebrows significantly at Xona and leaned in. “They haven’t had a chance to be alone since she’s been out of the suit.”
    “I am sitting right