Shutdown (Glitch)

everyone huddled around the kitchen area. Max looked up but thankfully stayed where he was on his cot, separate from everyone else. I went to stand by Adrien, but he took one look at me and his face hardened. He walked out of the room toward the bathroom while Rand pulled a ladle up out of a pot filled with red sauce and smelled it suspiciously. I watched Adrien’s receding back with an aching heart.
    “Xona cooked this, right?” Rand asked. “Should I be afraid?”
    Xona glared at him.
    “What?” Rand dropped the ladle and put up his hands defensively. “Do we or do we not all remember the catastrophe of the protein patty casserole she tried to cook a few months ago at the Foundation?” He looked around at the rest of us for confirmation, but we wisely kept our mouths closed.
    In spite of my worry about Adrien, I couldn’t help smiling when I remembered Xona’s attempt to cook us all a meal her mother used to make growing up. It had turned out rubbery and burned.
    “Maybe Amara could bliss us all out with her power so we wouldn’t care how bad it is,” Rand went on, poking the ladle around suspiciously.
    “I helped this time,” Cole said, putting a hand to the small of Xona’s back. Rand visibly relaxed. Cooking had been another pastime Cole had taken up in his quest to understand what it meant to be human again and he was good at it.
    But the smile dimmed on my face as I watched how Xona turned into his chest and grinned. I knew that look. It made something deep in my stomach twist even though I was happy for her. She was in love. With the ex-Reg she’d always sworn she’d hate. I shook my head at the irony of it.
    “Ha!” Amara spoke up. “Last time I used my power on you in training, Rand, you kept grinning like a fool for days afterwards, even though I’d gone easy on you and only blissed you for an hour. I don’t think you could handle it full force.”
    “Oh, I could handle it,” Rand said with a grin, shoveling a pile of rice on his place and then covering it with copious amounts of the red sauce.
    “Go easy,” Cole said. “We only had a couple of slightly out-of-date jars of sauce left, so I added a lot of dried hot pepper to help the flavor.”
    Rand added another dollop of sauce and smirked. “Heat doesn’t bother me.”
    Cole only raised an eyebrow.
    There were a few folding chairs and a small table, but most of us sat on the ground with our plates in our lap. I stirred the red sauce into the rice. Whatever it was, it smelled good. My stomach growled and I dipped my fork in.
    It was delicious. Maybe it was because I’d spent the past week eating nothing but bland protein bars, but right now this tasted like the best thing I’d ever eaten in my life. It was sweeter than I expected, and the spice seemed to explode on my tongue. I was sweating within moments, and I’d only added a small bit of the sauce. There was enough rice with it that it wasn’t too overwhelming.
    I glanced over at Rand and couldn’t help laughing. His face was bright red and he suddenly dropped the plate to the ground dramatically and sprinted to the sink, where he gulped water right from the faucet.
    We all laughed. I swallowed the bit I was eating and took a long swig of water. Ginni had informed me earlier that the compound was hooked up to a deep well, so we didn’t have to limit water consumption. After the last week of worrying about finding fresh water, it was a relief.
    “So what happened to you guys while you were gone?” Ginni asked, gesturing at me and Adrien, who’d returned and gotten a plate of food. She grinned and leaned in. “Xona said the cave where she found you was cozy.”
    I choked a little on my rice, but then swallowed it down. “Um…” I looked over at Adrien, but he’d ducked his head and was staring at the floor. Apparently he was going back into barely speaking mode now that we were surrounded by other people again.
    I related what had happened to us at the Foundation and how Adrien helped me realize that I could use my power to fly. Several people’s eyes widened at that. Then I explained about the storm and the cave and Adrien’s visions. I tried to catch his eye before I mentioned the last part, to see if he minded me talking about it, but his face was impassive. I glossed over it as briefly as I could. And I didn’t mention anything about the dreamlike night in the dark.
    Before Ginni could ask anything else more probing, I turned the questions back on her.