Shutdown (Glitch)

it.
    Max would pay too. He thought eventually I’d forgive him for what he’d let happen to Adrien. While Max was impersonating Adrien, Adrien was off being tortured by the Chancellor because his love for me had somehow enabled him to fight back against her compulsion. When even the torture couldn’t make him tell her his visions, she’d cut out portions of his brain to make him compliant. The lobotomy had succeeded in making him obedient, but it also made him stop having visions altogether. And it had left him a shell of a person who, in spite of some groundbreaking tissue regrowth treatments, still didn’t seem to be able to feel emotion.
    I’d forgiven Max for every other horrible thing he’d done in the past. But he was wrong this time. He’d live his whole life and then die, and I’d still never forgive him.
    I didn’t know which was healthier—sadness or anger—but anger was certainly more productive. Sadness made me numb, like I wanted to sleep for a hundred years. Anger, on the other hand, made me active, gave me energy and purpose, and kept me busy planning my revenge against the Chancellor. Most of the time, if I kept busy enough, it even staved off the guilt. Or, at least, I had so many things to do, I could push it to the back of my mind and let it feed the anger instead of consuming me.
    I pulled my arm away from his touch, biting back what I really wanted to say: that I looked forward to the day he went into a coffin box and was burned to ash in an incinerator. The thought surprised me as soon as it flitted through my head.
    I never used to have thoughts like that. A year and a half ago, I hadn’t even understood what the word hate meant. But Max was an excellent teacher.
    “Zoe, I’m sorry for what I did. You know I am.”
    “You think that absolves you?” I shook my head. “Because you say you’re sorry?”
    “But Zoe, don’t you see? It means that I’m trying, that I’m changing. That night, on our date when things got so,” he leaned in, “so heavy , I stopped it from going too far. Doesn’t that mean something? I realized in that moment that I didn’t want to be the guy who just took what he wanted no matter the consequences. Even though I wanted it so, so badly. And I’ll keep changing, every day. I could still be the kind of man you could love.”
    I scoffed harshly, and I didn’t care about the look of hurt on his face. I tried to calm down the rage simmering inside me. It didn’t matter what I felt. I needed Max for the mission. I knew the only reason he’d been so eager to help the Rez, in addition to hoping they’d lessen his imprisonment sentence, was to try to insinuate himself into my life again. He’d even let Henk implant a kill chip at the base of his skull since we’d have to take off the ankle tracker for the mission. Every vehicle that entered Central City was scanned, and the tracker would show up as anomalous. Once we left, both the team back here at the Foundation and I would each have a trigger switch. If he betrayed us again or tried to escape, he’d be dead within minutes.
    He’d been trying to pretend he was a changed man for a few months now. Molla even talked Tyryn and the Professor into letting him have supervised visits with his baby son. After everything he’d done to her, Molla still loved him. I saw it in her eyes sometimes while he was holding their little boy—whom she’d named Max Jr.—how she believed that Max had suddenly become the man she’d always wanted him to be. Apparently incredible powers of self-delusion weren’t limited to Max alone.
    I brushed past him, and this time he let me.
    I went to the Med Center. Jilia looked up at me. “Hey,” she said.
    “Is everything ready for the mission?”
    She nodded. “Henk sent a message an hour ago. His team captured the two Uppers without a problem. You and Max should be able to replace and impersonate them without no one being the wiser.”
    I swallowed my nerves. There was no turning back now. “When do we leave?”
    “An hour. You’ll be in Central City by late tonight.”
    I fidgeted with the edge of my sleeve. “Do you know where Adrien is? I want to say good-bye before I go.”
    Jilia looked down as she arranged her instruments on a tray. “He came by here half an hour ago for his daily injection. I think he said he was heading to the Caf.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Zoe.” She put a hand on my arm. “Be safe on the mission.”
    I nodded, then turned and headed down