Shutdown (Glitch)

site,” he said. “You know the destination, right?”
    I nodded. Each pod leader had memorized the location.
    I looked out again at the landscape. It was beautiful, but I didn’t see the beauty. I just saw terrain to be crossed. Satellite cameras were so developed these days they could make out your fingerprints if your palms happened to be faced up. Just because no one was around didn’t mean no one was watching.
    “We’ll have to stay under the tree cover,” I said.
    “Then fly us under the tree cover.”
    “I can’t just—” I sputtered.
    He interrupted me. “Why not? It’s the only way we can move without leaving tracks.” His face was calm, like all this was just another math theorem he could methodically problem-solve his way through.
    I closed my eyes and tried to sense outward with my telek. Immediately I felt the open space above us, the lack of contour. My heartbeat sped up at the very thought of all that space, so I directed my attention back toward the land. But that was almost as overwhelming.
    There were so many trees, bushes, leaves, and branches swaying in the wind. Birds even, and a hundred other things I couldn’t identify. Usually I captured the space in my mental projection cube before I tried to move objects, but there was simply too much moving around me. If this was going to work, I was going to have to change my method and abandon the level of control I was used to. I swallowed hard at the thought.
    A banging noise echoed down the tunnel behind us. Had the Regs already made it to the collapsed portion? That meant they were moving faster than I thought.
    Adrien looked back with me and frowned. “It doesn’t seem wise to stay here.”
    “I know, I know,” I muttered, pacing as I tried to figure out what to do.
    “So fly us out of here. I bet you could move us fast. Maybe as fast as a transport if you tried.”
    “And which direction would we go? I have no cracking idea where we even are !” I rubbed my forehead. “I know where the rendezvous site is, but have no idea where we’re starting from. That techer boy’s power made it so I never knew.”
    “Then how was anyone going to find their way there?”
    “The pods had programmed coordinates for satellite sites that would be recognizable. From there we would all switch vehicles and go to the memorized rendezvous point. We never anticipated one of the pods not making it out of the mountain in the first place!”
    “I can find out where we are,” Adrien said.
    I looked up at him in surprise. He’d pulled a long rectangular box out of the pack, then clicked it open. A row of tiny chips was secured inside. “Standard in every rations pack.”
    “Can we use one as another com?” I asked hopefully.
    “No, I bet all com channels are cracked,” he said. “But this one,” he pulled out the fingernail-sized chip and inserted it into the slot on his arm panel, “is a maps application. Now that the techer is gone and his power isn’t affecting me, I should be able to read it just fine and see where we are. Then I can help you navigate as you fly. Where’s the rendezvous site?”
    “It’s right outside New Presinal. It’s a big trade city.”
    He tapped through a few screens, then looked out at the horizon and pointed. “We head north. That way.”
    “How far away is it?”
    “Four hundred miles,” he said calmly.
    “Four hundred miles!” I grabbed his forearm to see the map better. Willing it to show something different.
    “We’re in Sector Five now,” he said, “and we’ll have to get back to Six.”
    I stared at him, shocked. This whole time, the Foundation had been in a different country and I’d never even known. Meanwhile Adrien was staying so calm I wanted to scream. “Don’t you see the one little problem with that?” I threw my hands up in frustration. “It’s four hundred miles away, and we don’t have a vehicle.”
    He watched me, unmoved. “But we have you, and you can fly.”

 
    Chapter 10
    I TOOK HIS ARM, CLOSING my eyes as I projected my telek outward again to get a better sense of the landscape. There were just so many trees, and they all felt identical. I didn’t know how to differentiate one from another, much less how to find and hold a clear path through them.
    Not to mention, I was already exhausted from everything that had happened and by the focus it took to constantly keep the allergies at bay. It hadn’t been this hard when Max and I had been with the Uppers at