Shutdown (Glitch)

whistling sound through the tree branches.
    With the shot of epi, I was breathing fine now. Other than the leftover rash on some of my skin, I felt better too. But none of that mattered.
    Adrien had come back. I couldn’t stop staring at him.
    He was still leaning over me, one hand on my cheek as he pushed back the matted hair from my face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    I nodded, befuddled. I reached up my hand to cover his, but he suddenly sat back and started rifling through his rations pack. “You should eat something.”
    “You came back,” I whispered, still not believing it.
    “Of course I came back.” His eyebrows furrowed as he held my gaze a moment, then he looked away again. “It was easy. We’re close to Driward. A couple hours down the mountain I was able to hack and steal a transport to get me closer to the city. It’s a big factory town, and I know it pretty well. There’s a quick way in and out through one of the off-site packaging facilities. I thought one of the other factories might have what we needed.”
    “Needed for what?” My mind was still swimming from exhaustion, and nothing he said made sense.
    He frowned down at me as if I was the one not making any sense. “For your allergy. So you can sleep. Then when I got the epi, I snuck back out of the city and put the transport back where I found it. They probably won’t even know it was missing. Well, except for my muddy footprints all over it.”
    I continued staring at him. He’d gone to get help for me?
    “The inside of the factories are almost all automated,” he went on, “so there weren’t many people on the floor to see me. But I knew that all of them have fully stocked med kits near the offices. So I snuck in between drone shift changes and grabbed the kit. There was only one epi infuser, but look what else I found.” A smile lit his face. It looked simultaneously foreign and so achingly familiar. “I had to almost empty out my pack to make it fit.”
    He pulled out a bunch of crinkling, bulky material. I’d seen something like this before.
    “You found a biosuit!” It was one of the bulky kind, not the slim tribound polysutrate that had been designed for me, but it would still work fine.
    Adrien grinned. “Complete with a four-hour oxy tank. The factory works with dangerous chemicals. I knew they always keep these around in case of spills. But right now you’ll be fine with just the long-release epi shot. You’ve got twelve free hours without going into an attack.”
    I shook my head, dizzy and delirious and not able to think much beyond the happy thought of: he came back for me . I tried to focus on what he was saying.
    “Wait, so you mean, I can sleep? Right now?”
    “Right now.” He smiled back. He seemed to be smiling a lot all of a sudden. I shook my head. I really was still delirious.
    “Okay, then.” I laughed. “Let’s find some place for me to curl up and sleep.”
    A loud booming rumble suddenly sounded overhead. I let out a surprised scream and looked up. “What was that?”
    Maybe they’d found us, and it was one of the propulsion-fueled transports roaring closer. My heartbeat ratcheted up several notches.
    “It’s only thunder.” Adrien said as a fat raindrop plopped on my nose. “The storm’s been rolling in all aftern—” Suddenly Adrien clutched his head and fell to his knees.
    “Adrien!” I stumbled over to him.
    He curled up in a ball on the ground. His eyes bulged wildly, like he was in excruciating pain.
    “Adrien, what’s wrong?” I grabbed his shoulders, trying to get him to look at me. “Talk to me!” But he stayed in the same position, shaking violently. I held on to him tighter, wishing I’d had more classes on med assistance. Maybe he was having a seizure because of what the Chancellor had done to his brain?
    But then, as suddenly as it had hit, his shaking stilled. He blinked his eyes and they seemed to come back into focus. Another couple of raindrops splattered on his face.
    “Are you okay?” I helped him sit up. His eyes wide, he lifted a hand to his forehead.
    “I had a vision.” His voice was low, terrified.
    “But.” I frowned. “You don’t have visions anymore.” That part of him was broken, never to return. Jilia had said so.
    But then, Jilia had never dealt with anyone with as extensive brain damage, much less a glitcher receiving experimental tissue regrowth treatments.
    “Like, a vision vision?” I’d watched him have plenty of