Shutdown (Glitch)

myself up to it. I looked around me, feeling half-delirious as I watched the strange world dip and spin around me through my exhausted eyes.
    I couldn’t do it.
    I’d fight until the bitter end no matter what. Survival instincts, right? I could probably manage to keep the allergies at bay for another few hours, even if I was only prolonging the inevitable. I dug the rock in harder to my thigh.
    Hours later, I used some thin brambly vines to tie several sharp rocks to a stick that I grated over my skin like a torture device whenever my heavy eyes dropped shut for too long. The sky darkened above. I blinked, confused. Was it night already? I couldn’t see much through the treetops—just the blue slowly replaced by gray.
    Gray. It was how I’d lived most of my life as a drone, and it was how I was going to die. No one would know that a girl named Zoe had once loved a boy named Adrien. No one would know about the beauty of all the conversations we’d had and the zinging electricity his touch sent through my limbs. We’d been a brief flame that had sputtered out like the now darkening day.
    Another blink, and I’d be gone.
    *   *   *
    I walked up a staircase. It was completely dark. I swiveled my head back and forth but couldn’t see anything, not even my own hand. I kept going upwards because I couldn’t stand the thought of going back. I’d already come this far. Surely I was almost there. My thighs felt leaden with the effort and my throat burned. When was the last time I’d had a drink of water? Why was my body so heavy? It seemed like every footstep got heavier, and the slower I went, the further away I was from ever getting to the top.
    And then, in the middle of the darkest black, a crack of light appeared. It grew wider and wider like a door opening above me. I stumbled toward it, now barely able to breathe at all. I reached out my hand, trying to touch the light.
    Someone shouted my name, and it echoed out from the blinding light. I still couldn’t get close enough. I couldn’t breathe. I collapsed, my hands at my throat.
    “Zoe! Wake up!” The voice was louder than before.
    I blinked my swollen eyes and tried to sit up, but I could barely move. The realization hit all at once. I was still in the forest.
    I must have fallen asleep, and I was in the middle of an allergy attack. It had been going on for at least a few minutes already, because when I frantically wheezed in trying to get a breath, no air made it through the closed-up passage of my throat.
    The buzzing of my telek burned to life in my brain. But when I reached inward to flood the cells of my body with my power, the cells felt different. They were all wrong. The mast cells were swollen, spewing histamines like tiny geysers. I tried desperately to use my power to plug them, but I was too tired and confused. I couldn’t repair the damage already done.
    I dropped sideways to the ground from where I’d been sitting against a tree. Crunchy leaves and pine needles stabbed my face. My body spasmed. Every inch of my skin felt on fire, and my lungs squeezed in on themselves, unable to get that next lifesaving breath.
    I wasn’t so far gone though that I couldn’t feel hands gripping my arms. Someone had flipped me onto my back. My eyes were so swollen I could barely see through tiny slits, and I could only make out the vague outline of a figure standing over me. The pain was so excruciating now, I could barely tell what was going on.
    But I did feel the sharp bite of the needle being shoved into my thigh. I thrashed against the figure straddling my body, but the held me down. A jolting spike of adrenaline shuddered throughout my body. I sat up with the suddenness of it and cracked the person on top of me straight in the forehead, then fell backwards again.
    I blinked in shock and was even more stunned to be able to open my eyes wider than I had before. I gasped in another desperate breath and air finally flooded my lungs.
    When I looked up again, I could see a person who was rubbing their forehead and looking down at me anxiously.
    It was Adrien. An opened med kit sat on the ground beside him, along with a used epi infuser.
    He’d come back for me.

 
    Chapter 16
    ADRIEN WRAPPED ONE OF THE silver med blankets from the pack around me, but I shrugged it off after a few minutes. I was still sweating from all the exertion my body had just gone through, even though the air had a chill to it now. The wind blew harder, making an eerie