Shutdown (Glitch)

don’t need the external tablet to use them.”
    His confidence and calm about everything did make me feel better. He’d done this kind of thing all his life. We’d made it out of the mountain and gotten far enough away that we were safe. The rest of the pods were probably already at the rendezvous site by now.
    But then I thought about all those who hadn’t been able to make it out of the Foundation. I remembered the screams as the lights flickered. What had happened once the Regulators had reached the main level? Did they take everyone prisoner, or had they just opened fire on the crowd? And then there was my brother. What was the Chancellor doing to him? Did she have him under her compulsion, or something worse? I rubbed my temple as if I could erase the images that had suddenly popped up in my head. There was nothing I could do about it right now. Not till we met up with the others.
    “Let’s get some sleep,” I finally said. “A few hours would do us both good.”
    But then I looked back at the contents of the pack and my heart sank. No, surely they wouldn’t have …
    My hands became more frantic as I lifted every object and tossed it aside.
    No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening.
    It wasn’t there. Every pack was supposed to include a biosuit for me and two oxygen reserves. But they were gone.
    “Is there a biosuit in your pack?” I asked, standing up and running over to Adrien’s pack. I unceremoniously dumped it all out and began sorting through items, but his was the same. No suit.
    “Why the hell would they take my biosuits?” I shouted, throwing the empty pack to the ground as hard as I could.
    Adrien looked down at the strewn contents in dismay. “Reg armadas use chemical weapons sometimes. Suits like that are valuable, either to use themselves or to sell on the black market.” He flipped over a few more objects from his pack. “Whoever took it probably didn’t think it’d do any harm because there were suits in every other pack. So if they took a few things here and there, maybe they thought it wouldn’t be missed.”
    I had another thought. “At least we still have the epi infusers,” I said, trying to reassure myself. Then at least I could revive myself if I started having an allergy attack, and it would afford me twelve hours of safe breathing time. “Each pod should have two of them in the med kit.” I searched through the supplies. “Where is the med kit?”
    “Here,” Adrien pulled out the small metal box from where he’d stowed it in a side pocket of his pack. He clicked it open and then his eyes widened. He turned the box toward me. The two epi injections that should have been stowed in little latches on the lid were gone.
    “Medicines are also big sellers on the black market,” he said quietly.
    All of a sudden, I felt like laughing hysterically. Of course they were.
    I sat back on my heels and rubbed my eyes, conscious of how tired I already was. I’d barely slept at all last night. We had prepped three redundancies with every pod in consideration of my condition—one collapsible med container, a biosuit in every pack, and epi infusions in the med kit. And yet here I was, without any of them. Everything had been so hectic in the tunnel, I hadn’t even bothered with the med container since I’d been confident that there would be a suit in my pack. Stupid. I should have known something was wrong when I first saw that the packs were unsecured.
    “Look, we’ll get to the safe house in a few more days,” he said. “They’ll have all the medicines we need…” Then his eyes narrowed. “Oh,” he finally said, my predicament apparently sinking in.
    “Yeah. Oh. The second I fall asleep and stop controlling my allergies, I’ll go into anaphylactic shock.” I looked up at him. “I’ll die within minutes.”

 
    Chapter 11
    I SWALLOWED HARD AT THE thought, trying not to wallow in the memories of how it felt for my throat to close up and to gasp for breaths that wouldn’t come. Even though we’d stopped in an area where the needle-carpeted ground was clear, the thick tree trunks surrounding us seemed to suddenly close in. I doubled my grip on my mast cells and took several long, deep breaths to calm myself down. It helped, sort of.
    Adrien frowned, still crouched by his pack. “Your allergens do make you a liability.”
    “A liability…” I repeated slowly, feeling punched in the gut. I looked to see if he was joking, but no, his face was intent