Shutdown (Glitch)

it to be comforting, but Xona frowned deeply.
    She looked up at Henk. “That’s what Henk wants.” The way she said it made it sound like she didn’t.
    “Don’t you too?” I asked, confused.
    “Tyryn made me swear,” her eyes dropped, “that I would never try to come for him if he got captured. He made me swear it on our mom and dad. Said they would want one of us to survive if it came down to it.”
    “But still, if we could contact some of the other Rez cells—”
    “There’s no one left,” she said, her voice distant. She stared out the window, even though it was too dark to see anything. “We haven’t been able to contact any of the other Rez cells. Some of the Rez fighters at the Foundation knew where a couple of the other Rez command posts were located. The Chancellor must have compelled them to tell her. We don’t know what happened to the rest. From everything we can tell, there’s no one left but us.”
    I swallowed hard, trying to absorb the news. It was exactly what Adrien had guessed, even without a vision. I hadn’t realized just how thin a thread we’d all been hanging by. Hadn’t wanted to realize. Or maybe Xona was wrong. Maybe she didn’t have all the information.
    Xona looked back at me, her dark brown eyes intense on mine. “And I swore , Zoe. Swore I wouldn’t try to rescue him.” She sighed. “It’s been a long night, I’m gonna catch some sleep, if you don’t mind.”
    I nodded, trying to process what she’d just told me. “Get some rest.”
    In a few minutes, she was asleep. I unstrapped myself and made my way to the front of the jet. I leaned in over Henk’s and Adrien’s shoulders. “How bad is it, Henk? Xona said we’re the only ones left. But that can’t be true, can it?”
    “It’s bad,” he said. He adjusted the driving stick and we dipped gently to the left. “I’m sure some of the folks went to ground and hid. We’ve all been at it so long. We know the deal when we’re cracked. But from what Ginni reports, not many escaped the last round of raids. Not nearly enough.”
    “But the Rez has bounced back before, right? We can come back from this.”
    Henk’s eyes met mine briefly. “Zoe, there’s no Rez left to speak of.”
    My mouth dropped open. I still couldn’t believe it. “But the Rez has been operating for over two centuries. It can’t just have—”
    “We never had an enemy like Chancellor Bright before,” Henk said. “Don’t know how she cracked all the cells, but she did, first in the northern quadrant, then in the south. They’re all gone.”
    “But how?” I asked, still flabbergasted. “No one knew about the location of the cells led by Garabex and Sanyez.” I bit my lip as I thought. “Maybe that new weapon the other Colonels were talking about helped her find them all. The Amplifier. Or maybe somehow they were able to crack all our com codes?”
    “The techer boy says it shouldn’ta been possible.”
    “Yeah, but he didn’t think they had cloaking tech that could fool his equipment either. He was wrong about that.” But then I stopped talking. There was no use guessing what might have happened, at least not right now.
    I gave Adrien a quick glance. He’d been watching our exchange, but looked away out the window when I turned to him. I wished so bad he’d tell me what he was thinking. I sighed and went back to my seat.
    Adrien didn’t say anything to me for the entire ride, but he did glance back my way a couple times. Not that I could read the expression on his face. Was he upset about his mom? Or was he just glad now that he didn’t have to be saddled with my liabilities anymore? After all we’d been through together … after last night …
    “How fast are we going, anyway?” I called back up to the cabin. Anything to distract myself from thinking about last night.
    “This baby can go up to a steady fifteen hundred miles an hour,” Henk said. “I’m just keeping it slower while we maneuver around the more populated areas. We’re cloaked, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
    I sat back and tried to relax without getting too relaxed and going to sleep. I’d had enough practice over the past few days that I was able to calm every muscle of my body and let myself sink into the plush seat completely without falling asleep. I kept my eyes wide open and my mind calmly concentrated on my mast cells. I could almost do it without specifically focusing anymore. It was becoming instinctual, like