Shutdown (Glitch)

body. It didn’t feel like I’d released anything. “I don’t think—” I started to say, right as the techer, who was scanning through console script faster than I could read it, shouted, “It wasn’t Zoe doing it. Henk’s jet just got fired on from overhead.”
    Henk pushed past several people to look at the console screen. The techer turned toward all of us.
    “It’s the external camera feed,” the techer said.
    A fire lit the screen, so bright I could only barely make out the smoldering remains of the jet. Two more transports were beside it, and we all watched in frozen attention as Regs poured out the sides.
    “No,” Henk whispered in disbelief.
    “Everyone, get your emergency packs,” Xona said. “We gotta run again.”
    “Run where?” City’s voice was frantic. “There’s only one way out—through the hatch, and that’s right where the Regs are.”
    “Are there or are there not some badass glitchers here in this room?” Xona asked. “We make a path through.”
    “With the techer’s help, I could probably fly one of the Reg transports if we could get to it,” Cole said.
    I nodded, running over to the hatch and projecting my telek up beyond it. Xona was right. If we couldn’t take care of the Regs, no one would be safe.
    Adrien and several others followed right behind me.
    I closed my eyes. “There are twelve of them.” The hulking Regs crept outwards from their transports in a search pattern, weapons at the ready. “I don’t think they know where the entrance is.”
    “They must not know it’s you either,” Xona said, coming up behind us as she hefted a supply bag over her left shoulder. “Otherwise they’d have sent an armada. It’s probably just the normal response team to anomalous activity caught on the Sat Cams.”
    “But what would they have even seen?” I hissed. “We’ve all been underground.”
    “Not all of us,” City said. She glared at Henk. “He’s been out there. Did you wear the coolant harness when you stumbled in last night?”
    Henk opened his mouth to make a response, but then his face went ashen. “I can’t remember.”
    “Why would they even be monitoring this area?” I asked.
    “It’s not a person. It’s a humanoid-motion-recognition algorithm,” the techer boy said. “The Sat Cam compiles an alert and sends the daily report to the nearest Guard stations, then they send out two transports to investigate.”
    City swore and spun away to get another supply pack.
    “Can you drop them?” Xona whispered to me.
    I nodded. Stretching up with my power like invisible fingers, I reached into the Regulators’ bodies and counted down the notched vertebrae in their spines. Snapping their necks at the C2 vertebrae should keep them from dying, at least if someone did a spinal reattachment surgery in the next twenty-four hours.
    As they dropped to the ground, I felt sick to my stomach. I’d accidentally killed Regs before by doing this. Underneath the metal, they were men. Getting to know Cole had taught me that clearly. But I couldn’t risk the lives of my friends, and at least these Regs had a chance now.
    “It’s done,” I managed to say. City pushed past me and hurried up the ladder. Rand and Henk followed.
    “Adrien, go next,” I said.
    He shook his head. “Not till you go.”
    “I’ll be right behind you. And I’ll be able to concentrate better, knowing you’re safe.”
    He reluctantly nodded and took off up the ladder.
    I ran back into the main room.
    “Come on!” Xona called out to us. “Ginni, let’s go.”
    “We’ve gotta get Zoe’s bed,” Ginni said, trying to fold the unwieldy plastic bed in half.
    Cole and the Rez fighters grabbed two heavy packs each, then lined up to climb up the ladder and out of the compound.
    I turned to Ginni as she wrestled with the med container. “It should self-collapse.” I felt along the surface of the lid until I found the right button. It began folding in on itself. Ginni and I stepped back.
    The bed finally finished and I picked up the heavy plastic square, about as big as my chest. I gave it to Ginni. “Take it and go.”
    I looked at Xona. “What else do we need?”
    “My console station,” the techer boy said. He pointed to the big pile of console components, several heavy machines and a mess of cables.
    “What do you absolutely need?” I asked.
    He stared at me as if it was obvious. “All of it.”
    I wasn’t sure if that was true, but since he was the only chance to