Shutdown (Glitch)

stop and rest, I forced myself to keep moving. My eyes stung and when I wiped at them, my hand came away covered in blood from a head wound I hadn’t even realized I had. I blinked several times as black spots darted across my vision. I grabbed the doorway of the elevator to steady myself. The anger had drained out of me. Grim determination was all I had left. I winced in pain as I dragged myself out of the elevator and into the small six-by-six-foot concrete entryway that led to a door of triple-layered reinforced steel. I could feel more Regs on the other side of the thick door, but thankfully, it didn’t feel like many, only about forty.
    Still, at this point, forty seemed like two hundred. I sagged against the concrete wall while I crushed, twisted, and snapped all of their necks until I finally felt no more movement. There were only two figures left standing, huddling at the end of the corridor beyond the door. I could tell by the shape of them that neither was a Reg. The Chancellor must be keeping a glitcher with her. I shuddered, knowing that if she kept a glitcher as a personal bodyguard, it wasn’t anyone I wanted to face.
    I tossed the smaller body against the wall and yanked the weapons out of the Chancellor’s hands before I started working on the door. If I’d been at full strength, I could have ripped it off without a thought. As it was, I had to take almost half a minute pouring my telek outward and then yanking several times before it burst free.
    I stepped through, careful to keep most of my weight on my unburned leg. The Chancellor cowered at the end of the small hallway, her eyes wide as she watched me approach. I froze her hand as she reached to push a button on the wall console behind her. She was probably trying to open the reinforced doors from the other stairwells so the Regs could come and save her. I kept her completely immobile. Being so close to my goal sent a surge of adrenaline through me.
    I pulled the huge metal door behind me shut with my telek, lodging it slightly off kilter so any Regs who managed to make their way down here would have more difficulty getting it open again. It wouldn’t stop them, of course. Nothing would stop a Reg on a mission. Even with the rush of adrenaline, my power was almost depleted; I wouldn’t be able to hold them off.
    But I’d have enough time to kill the Chancellor before they got through. After that, nothing mattered. I would die, but that had always been an inevitability, even if I’d never wanted to face it. After all, Adrien’s vision hadn’t extended beyond the moment he saw me standing over her. My mind was strangely calm now that I was here at the end of things. Without the Chancellor and her compulsion power to turn Rez operatives against their own comrades, the Rez could rebuild again in secret. Adrien would be safe. He’d find a way to survive.
    Cole was always talking about redemption. Maybe this could be mine. Even if it didn’t atone for all the people who’d been hurt or killed because of me—I thought of all the dead bodies piled up in the building above me—I could still hope that this sacrifice was one that mattered.
    I turned to finally face the Chancellor. She stood against the far wall, her body still paralyzed by my control. I locked eyes with her as I limped forward, stepping around all the fallen Regs between us. Neither of us said a word. I stopped a few feet away from her. Without anyone to control with her power, she looked so small, so ridiculously impotent. Her cheeks were pale. Her hair that was normally slicked back so perfectly in a tight bun had come loose and hung across her face in stringy chunks.
    I reached my telek fingers through her chest and lifted her up by her spine. The boy on the ground beside her was faced away from me, but he twitched as if in pain.
    I looked back at the Chancellor, suspended in the air. I thought I’d feel some great rush during this moment—finally having her under my control. But all I felt was a weary determination to finish it. Just as I was about to snap her spine and be done with her forever, she screamed, “Stop! You cannot kill me without killing your brother!”
    Her words brought me up short.
    No.
    The boy on the ground twisted again, and I could see his face as he blinked and slowly sat up, clutching his head.
    Markan.

 
    Chapter 26
    “MARKAN?”
    Could it really be him? I blinked hard, not trusting my eyes. This might be a hallucination. The person beside