Override (Glitch)

shouldn’t have loaded weapons.”
    Xona let out a disgusted noise and kicked her cushion to the wall before pushing past Sophia to leave.
    Sophia turned back to me, her cool eyes meeting my glare. “Come with me. It’s time to see the General.”

Chapter 14
    GENERAL TAYLOR STOOD at the front of the Caf. She’d called a meeting with my whole task force. Well, everyone except Xona. When I’d come down the hallway earlier Xona had been arguing with Tyryn about why she should be able to go with us. But only Tyryn was in the room now, so I guess she’d lost the fight.
    The General paced the front of the room until everyone had gathered and was seated. “I’ve called you all here to discuss an important mission. One that only this particular task force can perform, now that all of your members are ready.” She glanced over at me, and I felt my face redden. Had she been waiting for me to get control of my powers before she okayed the mission?
    City’s eyes lit up and she grinned at Rand.
    “Bright travels all over the Sector as Underchancellor of Defense,” Taylor continued. “We’ve been able to map each place she goes, thanks to Ginni.”
    Ginni blushed at the acknowledgment and looked down.
    “For the most part we can correlate each location to her official activities and duties. However, there is one building that remains unaccounted for, one that doesn’t officially exist on the Uppers’ property registration database. I believe it is Bright’s version of our Foundation. We know of ten individuals staying regularly at the facility, and several of them had been on our glitcher watch lists. We were planning on sending Rez units into the Community to collect them, but Bright got to them first.”
    I shivered, imagining how different my life would have been if the Chancellor had gotten to me in the Community before Adrien had.
    “Bright has been tracking our spies and using her compulsion on them to make them double agents, cracking at least half a dozen other Rez cells the agents were in contact with. In short,” she put her hands down on the nearest table and leaned in, “Bright is winning. This is our first opportunity in a long time to deal her a huge blow.”
    Rand grinned and turned to high-five Eli, the ex-Reg sitting next to him. Eli didn’t budge or react at all. Taylor paused, narrowing her eyes at Rand until he lowered his hand and sank back into his seat.
    “But wait,” City interrupted. “If Ginni can locate Bright wherever she goes, then why don’t we just bomb her in the air or something? We’ve got the weapons tech, right?”
    Taylor shook her head. “We’ve tried that already, twice. Both times, the missiles were shot out of the air in spite of Henk’s cloaking tech. We don’t know why. The larger transport vehicles utilizing the cloaking mechanisms are never detected. We suspect that a glitcher Gift is involved somehow. That is why we must choose stealth and strike while the Chancellor is absent. Our task is twofold on this mission: infiltrate and retrieve. There will be glitchers under the Chancellor’s command, and there will be Regulators on guard.”
    Her eagle eyes locked on mine. “Zoel, you will first disable any Regulators on-site. Then Adrien will hack the system to get past their security and get us in.”
    “Excuse me, General Taylor,” I broke in. “When you say disable, do you mean—”
    Taylor stared at me a moment as if she was unused to interruptions. “You need to neutralize the threat. Deactivate them.”
    “But,” I sputtered, almost standing up. “I can’t just kill them.” I thought about the ex-Regs on our own team and how easily they could have been the ones guarding the Chancellor. They wouldn’t have had a choice.
    Taylor’s face was hard. “Believe me, I would love to send my Rez fighters to do the job. But you are the one with the invisible powers that can reach through walls and snap necks. Not to mention we don’t have solid intelligence on the nature of the glitcher powers we’re up against once we’re inside. It’s one of the reasons I put off this mission until you were ready.”
    Well that answered that question. “But I—”
    Taylor’s nostrils flared. “We are fighting a war here. We all must play our part.” She swept her arm. “Look around you. This is the Rez’s finest, most expensive facility, and even here you can see we’ve had to fight for every inch we have. In war, it’s either them or us. It’s as