Override (Glitch)

and out of invisibility, probably from the shock of pain, and I could once again see his face. His hands were at his throat, trying to pry the invisible grip of my power off him. I threw him against the wall hard and pinned him there. I tightened my fingers, cinching his throat closed and lifting him higher off the ground.
    “No more games. No more manipulation. Just the truth.” My voice was ice. “What has she done with him?”
    I dropped him to the ground so he could answer. He doubled over gasping for breath. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice raw. “I only know she always planned to keep him alive. She needed his visions. I was just supposed to switch places with him, drop him in the bomb-safe bunker, and then get on the transport with any survivors so I could infiltrate the Rez.” His eyebrows furrowed. “Look, Zoe, you gotta believe me. I’ll tell you everything now, I swear.”
    I scoffed. “Believe you? You’re the Chancellor’s spy. You helped her try to kill me during the raid!”
    He bobbed his head and looked down. “I asked the Chancellor to use her compulsion to make me stop loving you. And she tried. For a while it worked. I hated you. But then,” he looked back up at me, “when I saw you again at the raid and the Chancellor wasn’t around to compel me, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let you die. I cut the fuse that led to the explosives in the second half of the building. I’m trying to tell you I’ve changed.” His voice was pleading. “Coming back here with you, getting away from the Chancellor’s compulsion, I feel different. I see now that I was wrong—”
    “Liar. You’re only saying that now because you’ve been caught!” I yelled. “Did you manage to get any messages to the Chancellor?”
    Max paused, breathing heavily like he was trying to get his emotions in check. “I tried. I planned to use my own Link signal to contact the Chancellor until I found out that part of the security system here jams all wireless signals. I started looking for other ways to rig the system, but there’s a glitcher boy who’s always in the security hub. Any headway I’d make in my plans to get a message out, I’d forget the next day because of him. I started writing everything down.”
    Max rubbed his throat and took a deep swallow. “But I was never a very good techer and Simin had insane redundancies for monitoring outgoing packet streams. I couldn’t find a way to get past them, especially while he was there and always watching.”
    “What about the secret security project you were working on?” I asked, trying to reign in my anger and keep my voice as calm and reasonable as possible.
    “There never was any project. I just made that up as an excuse for why I was busy all the time. I couldn’t handle being around you at first. I was still so angry.”
    “And the kitchen fire,” I said, clenching my hands into fists. “That was you, wasn’t it? Not Saminsa.”
    He nodded. “A diversion. I tried to get a message out while everyone was distracted. But Simin had the system locked down while we were at lunch. He trusted me enough by that point to share the security codes, but like most things he told me, I forgot them before I had a chance to write them down. Then I learned that you were able to Link yourself at night when you sleep. I knew it had to mean they’d opened up a wireless channel just for your Link frequency. I came up with the idea of piggybacking off your signal. There was a transmitter hidden in the necklace I gave you that copied the frequency.”
    A rush of hatred choked me in spite of my determination to stay calm. He’d used me. Used my weaknesses and my trust. And then let it all fall on Saminsa. I ripped the necklace off and flung it to the floor.
    “And then you dared to pretend to be him. All this time. You let me kiss you. That date—” I shuddered even thinking about it and rubbed my lips harshly, as if I could scrub away all traces of him. I felt like mud had been wiped over every inch of my skin he’d touched. I squeezed my eyes closed. To think that I’d mourned him when I thought he’d died. Everyone else could see what I’d let myself be blind to—there had never been any redeeming qualities in the monster in front of me.
    “But I couldn’t bring myself to send the message, Zoe. I took the data from the necklace and was about to send the Chancellor a message. But then I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it, don’t you get it? I