Shutdown (Glitch)

visions in the past, and they’d never ended up with him on the ground clutching his head.
    He shook his head, his face pale. “It wasn’t like they used to be. This was different. It was fractured.” His troubled gaze finally met mine. “I saw two separate futures.”
    I frowned. “Like two separate events that happen in the future?”
    He shook his head, slowly running his hand through his hair. It was such an Adrien thing to do. “I don’t think so. It was like … like I saw things that were happening at the same time, but I saw it two different ways. As if the future could diverge into two paths, and I saw each one.”
    “What happened in the visions?” I asked. My voice was small. It seemed nothing was simple anymore, not even his visions of the future.
    “I saw us. In the first vision, you and I are in a cave.” He frowned. “When I used to get visions, it was just images, but this…”
    “What?”
    He looked back up at me. “This time it was like I was jumping into my future body for a few moments. I could smell the damp air inside the cave, and I could tell that we’d been there at least a few days. We were alone and scared.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then nothing. It switched to the other vision.”
    “We were back in the cave again,” he started. “But this time we left it. I skipped in and out of my body as the days passed. We made a run into a city together, I don’t know which one. But we were caught. The Regs grabbed you and then…”
    He stopped.
    “And then what?” I prodded.
    “And then I watched you die.” His words came out only as a whisper. A drop of water rolled down his face. At first I thought it was a tear, but then I realized it was only the rain dripping off the tree branches overhead. It was coming down harder now. “And I wasn’t just watching it happen as a bystander like my visions used to be. I was in my own body, I could feel everything.” His voice broke. “Feel the anguish of losing you.”
    I paused for a moment as my exhausted mind tried to soak in everything he was saying. “So which one is the real vision?” My voice was quiet. He’d foreseen my death. I didn’t know what to say to that. “Or are they both possible?”
    “Maybe,” he said, frowning and chewing on his bottom lip as he thought, “they hinge on some decision someone makes. Even how we decide to respond to the foreknowledge from the vision.”
    “But in both visions we end up in some cave?”
    He nodded. “I don’t know where it is though. If we find it, then it’s clear we should stay there.” The raindrops fell faster and heavier. He stood up and held out a hand to help me up. “Come on, let’s start looking for it. Maybe it’s nearby.”
    “No,” I responded immediately, getting clumsily to my feet.
    He scrunched his eyebrows. “Why not?”
    “Because if we do, we’re just making the vision come true,” I said. “Both visions start in the cave. If we go there, that means the other vision where I die becomes possible. I’m not walking into a trap like that.” I shook my head. “We should go somewhere else, get out of the mountains. Now we know I can fly faster at night; we could go to one of the cities after I get some sleep, try to track down some Rez operatives. You said yourself it was easy getting into Driwald.”
    “Easy for an in-and-out supply run, maybe,” he said. “But just because we don’t go to the cave doesn’t mean the rest of the vision won’t come true. We can’t risk taking you into a city. Besides, we don’t know where any of the Rez operatives are. Half the safe houses have been cracked in the last six months. We’d be in enemy territory without any idea where to go. Our safest bet is out here where no one can find us.”
    “I’m not going in a cave!” I said, all but stomping my foot. “I’ve seen people do things because your visions said it would happen. Commander Taylor died because of it. You got lobotomized. No, I’m not going anywhere near—”
    The rain fell in sheets now and it was harder to hear our voices.
    “Fine, but we’ve got to at least get somewhere dry.” Adrien took my hand and led me through the woods. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but I did know that no matter how exhausted I was, I’d rather soak through to the bone than voluntarily go in a cave. But then Adrien stopped at a copse of dense trees near a small lake’s edge, where one huge tree dominated the others. The long leafy green