Shutdown (Glitch)

gun.
    But then suddenly a burning red light erupted from the center of the Chancellor’s chest. Laser fire. The Chancellor fell to her knees and looked down in disbelief as the red stream cut off. It had blasted a fist-sized hole through her chest.
    “No!” I shouted, not understanding what was happening. I looked back at my brother, terrified I’d find a similar hole through his chest, but he was unharmed. He did not crumple to the ground. He didn’t even look like he was in pain.
    The Chancellor had been lying after all. Their lives had never been linked.
    My eyes flew back to her. She blinked and her body twitched a couple times. Blood gurgled up out of her mouth.
    Then another burst of light came from beside me. Markan had fired his weapon, but not at me. At first I thought it had been him who’d killed the Chancellor somehow and now he was firing at her again, though I could have sworn he hadn’t even had his arm raised at the time.
    But when I looked back at the Chancellor, suddenly it all became clear.
    A body materialized behind her, covered in blood.
    “Max!” I screamed.
    My brother’s weapon had sliced Max across the lower part of his abdomen, completely severing the top half of his body from the bottom. It must have been the Chancellor’s last command to Markan before she died—to kill the person who had killed her.
    I ran over and dropped down beside Max. He’d been invisible, but she must have still figured out that her attacker was right behind her. Markan dropped the laser weapon the next second, stepping back in confusion. “Zoe?” he asked in a small voice from behind me.
    I ignored him and tried to use my telek to keep Max’s blood from pumping out of his body all over the floor. The laser had cauterized as it cut, which helped, but not enough to stop some of the largest blood vessels. Max gasped in shock, his eyes open wide.
    “Max, hold on,” I said desperately. “Just hold on, we’ll get you fixed up.” But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it was true. Blood spread in a pool where his body was sliced in half. I clamped as many arteries shut as I could, but he’d already lost so much blood in the few moments it had taken me to realize what was happening.
    I just had to get him back together again. I tugged the bottom half of his body over with my telek and tried to line it up with the top half like a gruesome puzzle. Then I threw my mind forward until I was lost in the mass of tissue and vessels, trying to knit them back together with my power.
    But I didn’t know how, and there was just so much . I was already pulling on vapors at the end of my power reserve to keep the Regs back. Maybe if I got the important vessels—
    “Zoe,” Max rasped out.
    I kept working, trying desperately to fix him. I bent over him as if proximity alone would help. My brother and I were alive, and Max was alive, and if I just fought a little harder … One of my tears splattered on his cheek. “Max, you stay with me—”
    “Zoe…” He coughed and blood spurted from his mouth.
    “Shh, Max, don’t try to talk!” I whispered. I lined up his spine and matched several large blood vessels, holding them flush together and trying to force blood through them.
    Max looked up at me, his face pale and his eyes glassy. I’d barely studied human anatomy, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I kept trying to work my way through the material of his body.
    “I told you … I could be…” he rasped out, pausing with another choking fit and then continuing, “… a better man. I came to kill her. Keep you safe. But couldn’t get inside till you came. Followed, but so many Regs…” He expelled a long breath. Talking was taking every last ounce of strength, I could see it.
    “Stop talking. You can tell me all about it later. You’re going to be fine, Max,” I said, still working as fast as I could. But my control was slipping. Several arteries I’d clamped off had pulled back open again. There was so much blood on the ground already. Too much.
    “I’m not,” he said, his eyelids fluttering weakly.
    He was right, of course. I finally stopped trying to piece him back together and just held everything in place for as long as I could. Even with all my power, there was no way. The pool of blood I sat in grew larger every second. Sobs wracked my chest as I took his face in my hands.
    “You are a good man,” I said. “I always knew you could be.”
    His eyelids fluttered again, and I could