Override (Glitch)

Your job is to get rid of Chancellor Bright.”
    “You can free them?” I leaned forward. My worries about my brother were momentarily sidelined. Getting rid of the V-chip was everything I’d always hoped for. “How? I’ll do anything to help.”
    “Would you?” Taylor raised an eyebrow. “Would you really? You speak of sacrifice as if it were simple. As if choosing who can be saved and who can’t is a burden easily carried. Yet you come in here begging me to risk losing countless good fighters, people who have their own families and lives worth protecting.”
    “But it’s our families—”
    “We all have families.” Her voice caught for a moment before her eyes hardened again. “The question is not whether you are willing to give your own life, it’s whether you’re willing to give up the people you love most. Even if it was for the greater good, could you do it? Could you?” She waited a moment with her hawk eyes on me. “I thought not. But you can kill the Chancellor. You’re powerful, you’re immune to her compulsion, and she will kill you unless you take her down first. That is all you are here to do. You are dismissed.”
    I left Taylor’s office both fuming and terrified. We couldn’t get Markan back. They were watching him, all because of me. If he was a glitcher, the Chancellor would know first, and if he wasn’t, she’d still make sure I never got to him before he turned eighteen and the final adult V-chip was implanted. He’d turn into a drone forever, just like our parents.
    No. I wouldn’t let the Chancellor take the only family I had left. Anger surged up inside me like a billowing red sheet. The idea of Markan glitching and being able to feel emotion—only to be made a slave to the Chancellor’s compulsion—chilled me to the bone. If it was in my power to end the Chancellor’s life, I could save my brother and so many others. This was my destiny, and, sooner or later, I had to face it.

Chapter 19
    TRY AS I MIGHT, I could never seem to catch Adrien alone. I wanted to talk to him about everything the General had said, or just spend a couple of hours holding each other. But I never could. He’d show up late to meals and would disappear right after classes. He always seemed tired and drawn. He’d brushed me off when I asked if he was okay and said he was working on a special techer security program for the General. He looked like he never slept. What happened on the raid seemed to have ruined the peace he’d spoken of when we watched the sunset.
    Meanwhile Tyryn was pushing us harder than ever in training. We ran a long loop up and down the stairwells between the two floors, over and over again.
    “Faster,” Tyryn yelled as Ginni and I ran by on our tenth lap.
    “I take back ever thinking he was cute,” Ginni said through huffing breaths.
    Xona flew by, lapping us. Again. It seemed like she was in a race to keep up with the ex-Regs, whose pounding feet had run past us three times already.
    I looked behind me, trying to see where Adrien was in the pack. He was so far back he must still be on the stairwell. I frowned. Adrien had been running slower than normal the past few days. His late nights must be taking their toll. Saminsa jogged down the hall behind us, carefully keeping her distance from Ginni and me.
    “Rally up,” Tyryn called on our next lap. I came to a stop inside the training center and leaned over with my hands on my knees. Ginni collapsed on the ground. Adrien and City were the last to finish their laps. Right when they came in, Tyryn called out, “Everybody on your feet!”
    City let out a long complaining groan.
    Xona smirked, bouncing around from foot to foot as if the workout hadn’t even begun yet. City glared, her blond hair wet with sweat and matted on her forehead. Before she could fire off a snappy comment, Tyryn interrupted with his booming voice. “You all need to start acting more like a team. Until we get another chance at the Chancellor, you’ll be called on for more and more dangerous missions, and your life will depend on the people standing around you now. You all did as well as could be expected on your first mission together, but when we go up against the Chancellor herself, we have to be flawless.”
    City nodded toward Xona. “Then I don’t know why she’s here. She’s not even on our task force.”
    Xona’s jaw tensed like she was barely keeping herself in check, but she didn’t say anything. She looked at her