Shutdown (Glitch)

Central City. The city had been on the Surface and didn’t have a tight air-filtration system or anything. But we’d been inside at least, out of the sunlight. Right now, the assaulting allergens were overwhelming. I’d just have to concentrate that much harder.
    I lifted us up a few inches off the ground. We dipped in the air and I held out my hands to steady myself—which was ridiculous because there was nothing to actually brace myself against, only air. It felt just as unnatural as earlier when I’d done it in the tunnel, but worse now without the comforting confines of walls surrounding us.
    I flew us into the forest, side by side, with our feet inches above the ground. Fallen brown needles carpeted the forest floor. The trees themselves were tall and spindly—so different from the last forest I’d been in where the tree trunks were thicker than I was tall. These trees weren’t wide, but about five feet up thousands of tiny needle-laden branches sprouted from the trunks. They swayed in the wind like they were dancing. The wind itself felt unnatural against my skin, like a giant was blowing a cold breath over me.
    “Ow!” Adrien said, and I paused, looking over at him. I’d run him straight into a row of scratchy branches. Brown needles rained to the ground where he’d smacked into them.
    “Sorry!” I said, losing concentration. Both of us dropped out of the air. I landed on my feet, but Adrien fell on his backside. “Sorry again!”
    He didn’t say anything, just frowned as he stood up and brushed the pine needles off his shoulders. As bad as I felt for running him into a tree, it was nice to see anything other than his normally monotonous expression of calm.
    “There’s just so much to concentrate on,” I said.
    “Yeah, but you’re breaking branches everywhere,” he said. “Any tracking bot could find you from a mile away like this.”
    “Well, what do you suggest?” Irrational anger surged through me. I felt like shoving him in the chest. I felt like screaming at him. I felt like curling into a ball and pulling my tunic over my head to shut out the world.
    It was myself I really wanted to scream at. How many people were lying broken or dead back at the Foundation? All because of me. I was familiar enough with failure, but never on such a colossal scale. It was my worst nightmare made real.
    I closed my eyes and put my hands on my head with my elbows together in front of my face to create a small cocoon to block out the world so I could try to calm down. None of this was Adrien’s fault. And he was right, of course. They’d be tracking us. The Regs would have reported about the tunnel already. We didn’t have time for me to behave like an irate little kid.
    I dropped my arms. “Maybe we should, I don’t know, hold hands?”
    He paused a moment as if considering. “It’ll be easier if you’re only moving one object instead of two, right?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. He just stepped behind me, his chest to my back, and looped his arms around my waist. I stiffened at the touch, feeling a burst of too many emotions to count. I hadn’t been this close to him since …
    I shook off the thought. Steel , I thought to myself, I will be steel. I put my arms through my rations pack. Instead of slinging it over my back, I kept it on my front like a pouch. The truth was Adrien’s touch, even if it meant nothing to him, made me feel better. More confident, like I wasn’t alone, and I needed every bit of strength, wherever I could draw it from.
    I closed my eyes and let the projection cube expand in my mind. Gently, I lifted us off the ground again. Adrien was right. It was easier not having to worry about the surface area of two separate individuals. But the pressure of him against my back was distracting.
    As I flew us forward, navigating around the branches, Adrien reached up several times to tug at my hair. His fingers tickled my neck and I only narrowly missed flying us into a tree trunk.
    “What are you doing ?” I snapped.
    “Your hair keeps getting in my face,” he said.
    I grabbed for the tie I always kept around my wrist and tried to reach back to tie my hair up, which was awkward since I was flying with Adrien basically hanging off my back. Not to mention I continued being distracted by the awareness of every inch of his body where it made contact with mine.
    “Maybe we should fly with our bodies horizontal to the ground,” Adrien said after a few more minutes.