Shutdown (Glitch)

over at him, my exhausted eyes were seeing doubles again. It looked like there were two Adriens standing side by side—the old and the new. The old Adrien would have caught me when I stumbled a moment earlier, would have thrown himself underneath me to break my fall. He would have wanted to kiss me for hours until our lips were numb and our bodies flushed.
    But the new Adrien didn’t even ask if I was okay. He just moved away from me and promptly clicked through the maps on his arm panel. Tears leaked out of my eyes. The two images before me settled back into one, and I finally understood for certain that it was not my Adrien left standing.
    “Look,” he said, pointing at his arm and coming over to show me. I didn’t want to look. I wanted to curl up into a ball and sob. Even if the person standing in front of me wasn’t a ghost, my Adrien was dead. A thick wave of grief slammed into me.
    “It’s what I thought,” he continued, as if nothing was wrong, as if my entire world wasn’t crashing to pieces. “We’re very close. I’ve been watching the map on my arm panel, calculating our speed. I think we’re right here.”
    I still wouldn’t look.
    “Zoe,” he said softly, his voice pitched low. He reached out to touch my arm, but I yanked it away.
    “Look, Zoe, we’re less than a mile away from the safe house. We made it to the rendezvous site.”
    I looked at him in confusion. That couldn’t be right.
    “Just a mile?” I finally looked at the map. Indeed, the tiny beacon that indicated our position was blinking right beside the location for the rendezvous site. “But we were hundreds of miles away a few hours ago. It doesn’t make any sense—” I tried to wrap my befuddled mind around it.
    “You flew much faster in the open air. We’ll be there soon, and you can finally sleep.”
    I blinked and then blinked again. My eyes felt like sandpaper in their sockets. Sleep. Yes, that would be very good. I could shut my eyes and forget the sharp grief that was tearing its way through my stomach.
    I got to my feet and lurched awkwardly, the mix of adrenaline and exhaustion tipping me one way, then the next. I held my arms out and the breeze seemed to lift me up, like I was as light as a leaf, and I’d be carried along easily instead of having to work so hard. I’d lift right up out of this world with all its sadness and pain.
    “I don’t think you should be flying anymore,” Adrien said. “Not in your condition.”
    I dropped my arms to my sides and they felt extremely heavy again. I looked around in confusion. I tried to focus on what Adrien was saying. “It will take forever if we don’t fly,” I finally managed to say, though my words came out a little garbled. “We don’t have forever. We need to get there now.”
    He put a restraining hand on my arm right as I lifted off the ground. “If by forever you mean about fifteen minutes.”
    I tugged my arm away, but landed back on the ground. And stumbled again. Why was the earth all tilted funny? It was impossible to stand straight. Gravity was really a ridiculous thing. The world would be far better off without it. Objects shouldn’t be tethered to the ground. It wasn’t fair.
    “Yeah, you definitely shouldn’t be flying,” Adrien said, holding me upright. “I’m not even sure you should be standing. Here, take my arm.” He held out his arm.
    “Oh, what do you care?” I asked, choked again by a dark mixture of anger and sadness. “I’m just a liability .” I lurched forward again on the word.
    He held out a hand to steady me.
    “I don’t need your help.” I pushed away from him.
    And then I ran into a tree.
    “Clearly,” he said, taking my arm and putting it around his waist to help stabilize me.
    My legs felt rubbery, but with his support I was able to walk, only tripping occasionally on logs and brush. I couldn’t tell how long we walked. It took all my energy to stay upright and keep my telek loosely focused on stemming my mast cells from an allergy attack. Adrien checked the map again, squinting at his arm as we neared a rise in the forest. The fog was thick overhead. The air smelled a little funny, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on where I’d smelled it before.
    “Zoe,” he said, sounding excited, “we made it. The rendezvous site is right over that rise.”
    I grinned and felt a wave of adrenaline pour through my body. I grabbed his hand and started to run with a sudden burst of energy. Adrien easily kept