Shutdown (Glitch)

people who’d come here for refuge realized we might not be able to feed them.
    I stared at Jilia, feeling my mouth dry up. “What about the other Rez outposts? Do they have any food they could spare?”
    Henk shook his head. “They’re just as strapped as us. Most are worse off.”
    “Then I guess we’d take our chances with the ganger boss,” I said. “But take Beka with you when you go to meet with the woman. At least she’ll be able to tell if Sylv is lying.” I hated making these decisions. I hated that if I was wrong, people might die. Beka, whose glitcher Gift made her a human lie detector, was a sweet girl. Sending her out into such a precarious situation …
    Henk nodded. “I’ll head out tomorrow.”
    Jilia took a small quick breath in, then reached over as if she was going to take Henk’s hand, but stopped herself and pulled her hand back.
    “Aw, doc,” Henk gave her his characteristic side grin, “you worried about me?”
    Jilia tilted her head, smiling with false sweetness. “Why would I worry? Just because a man who can’t manage to eat peas without spilling half of them on the table is heading off as our one lifeline to more supplies?”
    He grinned back at her and I had to look away. Whenever they bantered like this, all I felt was a yawning emptiness that cut as quick as a knife. Adrien and I used to look at each other like that. I shoveled down the rest of my food.
    “I’ll see you in training,” I said to Jilia. She nodded, a look of concern on her face as she watched me stand. I’d debriefed them all about the failed mission the day after I got back. She’d tried to talk to me about it several times since then, asking me how I was feeling about it all. If there was one thing I wanted to talk about even less than our dwindling supplies, it was about my feelings.
    I hurried away before she could ask me anything and headed to the Gifted Training room to get a jump start on my meditation time. Meditation was all about emptying your mind. With all the thoughts, responsibilities, and guilt swirling around my head the rest of the time, it was the one place I occasionally managed to find a few moments of peace.
    But no matter how much I tried to let go of my worries, today I couldn’t find any relief. Everyone else filed in. Juan began to play his cello. His Gift of manipulating emotion through music often helped push me over the edge into an iridescent blanket of peace. But even though the lull of the music calmed me, thoughts still managed to pierce through: what if Henk wasn’t able to make contact with Sylv, or if it turned out that she was double-crossing us from the start? Henk and Beka could be killed or captured. And Adrien—
    I was glad when Jilia rang the bell and everyone opened their eyes.
    “Today we’ll continue with sparring against each other, especially against the mind-workers,” Jilia said. “We know the Chancellor is gathering more glitchers every day, and many of those glitchers will have mind-working skills. They can make you see things that aren’t there, make you feel things you don’t actually feel. More than the external powers like City’s electricity or Saminsa’s orbs,” she glanced at the two girls, “these are the powers that are the most difficult to defend against. They are the attacks you won’t be able to see coming. But what have we learned over the past two months since we’ve been training with the help of our own mind-workers?”
    “That if you know what to look for, you can feel them in your head,” Ginni said.
    Jilia nodded. “Exactly. This is our most important defense.”
    City scoffed. “But it only gives us like a ten-second lead time. None of us have managed to actually stop the attack, even when we realize it’s coming.”
    “As I mentioned before, we’ve only been trying for two months.” Jilia’s voice was patient. “But we know it’s possible to throw off a mind-worker because it has been accomplished before, albeit under extreme circumstances.”
    I swallowed. She was talking about Adrien. He’d somehow found a way to break the Chancellor’s compulsion power over him because his love for me was so strong. When she’d compelled him to tell her a vision that gave her the blueprints to kill me, his mind had somehow managed to repel her compulsion. That was when she’d started in on the surgical options.
    “What was accomplished under duress we hope to duplicate through continued practice,” Jilia said.