Shutdown (Glitch)

things just as they’d been. But it was a luxury we couldn’t afford in this underground bunker; space was too precious, especially now that we were flooded with refugees. Every closet doubled as an office, every dorm was at triple occupancy.
    And now what would we do with them all? How long would we be able to feed them? I wondered if Henk had been able to get more supplies while I was gone. Another thing I’d have to check on before I slept.
    I sat down at the desk with a bay of four projection screens around me, each screen displaying the face of a different Colonel in the Rez. They were camped out at the few other Rez hideouts that were still left scattered in and around Sector Six. None of us knew exactly where the others were stationed. It was safer that way.
    I rubbed my face in my hands for a few long moments, trying to gather myself. But they were waiting for me, so I shook my hands out and took a deep breath before clicking on the camera so they could see me too.
    “Did everyone get the message to abort in time?” I asked immediately.
    “Two cells didn’t, and Reg armadas discovered them before they could flee,” said the redheaded woman, Sanyez. “A high-security alert must have gone out after the central mission failed. Reg armadas have been scouring the skies for hours.”
    “Just two cells?” asked Garabex. He was an older man with a thick gray beard. “That’s less catastrophic than I expected, considering what a mess was made of the mission.”
    “At least if the cell leaders are interrogated,” Sanyez said, “they were told nothing of Project Reboot or the Foundation. All they knew was that they were to be ready for a planned attack, details to be messaged at the last moment if it was a go.”
    “If they only cracked two cells, that means the kill disk probably worked,” I said. “The programmer will tell his superiors what we were trying to do, but they shouldn’t be able to recover any of the code itself.”
    Garabex leaned forward. “You fool, why didn’t you eliminate the programmer?”
    “That was never part of the plan,” I snapped back.
    “Well, nothing about the plan actually worked, did it? Any elementary corporal knows to cut losses and minimize damage.” He directed his attention to the others. “Why are we even listening to this little girl?”
    Talon, the next youngest lieutenant, spoke up. “Taylor explicitly left Zoe in charge of the glitcher unit. The plan was solid—we’d all agreed it was the best option.”
    “We’ve just never been close enough to gather intel on how the Link programming is disseminated,” I said. “The code isn’t uploaded at a single port in the Central City mainframe system like we thought. Our techers were basing their assumptions on what was probably false intel circulated by the Community, as an added security measure.”
    “The girl is right,” said Lonyi, a short-haired woman. “Now is no time to assign blame. We all agreed on the plan. It failed. Now we reassess and move on.”
    “Fine,” said Garabex. “But we don’t know how much time we have. One of our Rez spies reported about what we think is a new weapon the Chancellor has acquired. He only saw the name of a file. Something called an ‘Amplifier.’ He wasn’t able to find any more details. We need to go back to the EMP option so we can strike first—”
    “No!” I said, then pulled back and tried to mask my emotions again. “We cannot go forward with a plan that kills so many innocent people.”
    Garabex scoffed loudly and threw up his hands. “Will someone please remove this child from the council?”
    I balled my hands into fists to keep myself from reacting to his words. The only way I’d earn my place at this table was by not letting myself be baited.
    “We are all that’s left of the Resistance,” Garabex continued. “Just five command posts and a paltry amount of small scattered cells whose members are often on the run. Any one of us could be cracked at any moment. The Rez is hanging on by the thinnest of threads. We must act before it is too late and that thread snaps. I refuse to let a two-hundred-year-old movement crumble to dust on my watch!”
    “The EMP option is unacceptable,” I said firmly. “There’s collateral damage and then there’s mass murder. If we plan to rebuild a world better than this one, we better know the difference.”
    Talon and Sanyez nodded. Garabex and Lonyi looked unconvinced.
    Sanyez addressed the rest of