Shutdown (Glitch)

arranging people inside the transport with only the necessary rations?”
    “Wait,” the techer asked. “Where’s Ginni?”
    The question seemed to knock the breath out of me. I’d been barking orders only because I saw clearly what needed to be done, but he was right, where was she? Ginni had barely made it out of the hatch before the blast that caved in the bunker, and she must have been standing close by when it struck.
    Oh on no. I ran over to the person I’d seen lying on the ground.
    It was Ginni.
    Midway down the shin of her left leg … was gone. Blood gushed from the wound, but not so much that I couldn’t see the splintered bone where her leg had been severed, just inches below her knee. The techer haphazardly put his hands on the wound, trying to stop the blood.
    “What do we do?” I yelled frantically, afraid he was only making it worse.
    Henk pushed us both back. “We gotta stabilize her leg and get a tourniquet on it to stop the bleeding.”
    “Oh, Ginni!” I dropped down beside her and held her hand. All the composure I’d felt a moment ago evaporated. Henk ripped off his belt and wound it tight around her leg.
    “Simin?” she called, her voice high-pitched and hysterical. “What happened?”
    “I’m here,” the techer said. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be all right.”
    “It hurts,” she said in a shocked whimper. Her eyes were wide, shifting all over the place like she couldn’t seem to figure out what was going on. “It hurts so much.”
    “We’re gonna take care of you, don’t you even worry a bit,” I said. Though, looking around, I had no idea what on earth to do. Every minute we stayed here was another minute we made ourselves vulnerable. I tried to keep my face turned down, because I knew Sat Cams would be recording this whole exchange now. I couldn’t let Bright see that it was me when they reviewed the vid feed.
    I cast my telek up and outward, to make sure I sensed any more transports before they arrived. The sky was empty for as far as I could reach. Still, that didn’t mean they weren’t on their way. I looked back down at Ginni.
    “I’ll load her in the transport.” I tried to harden my emotions. My voice trembled anyway. “Simin,” I said, using the name Ginni had just whispered, “the best thing you can do for Ginni right now is figure out how to get us the hell out of here.”
    He nodded, his face pale.
    “Go!” I shouted.
    He finally turned and hurried into the transport.
    I lifted Ginni as gently as I could with my telek, but she screamed out in pain as soon as I pulled her off the ground anyway. I moved her through the air as quickly as I could, then set her down on the cold metallic floor of the transport. The inside was even smaller than I’d feared. There were no seats in the back, just harnesses along the wall where the Regs strapped themselves in during transport. The techer and Cole were already at work on the console in the cockpit. I cleared out all of the fallen Regs, and the rest of the group piled in around Ginni.
    “Where’s the med kit?” I frantically pushed through the packs we’d brought. “We need the healing acceleration gel and some pain meds. She doesn’t need to be awake for any of this.”
    “Here.” Xona pulled a square med kit out of one of the bags. She popped it open.
    “Wait,” Adrien said, putting a hand on her arm to stop her as she lifted the pain relief infuser. “Ginni, is the Chancellor at the same location she was yesterday?”
    “Stop it, Adrien,” I said. “She’s in pain. We’ll figure it all out later—”
    “No,” he all but shouted. “We need to know now.”
    “Yes,” Ginni wheezed out, her teeth gritted against the pain. “She’s in the same place.”
    “We’ll take care of her,” Xona said to me. “Go find out why we aren’t off the ground yet.”
    I nodded once and spun in the direction of the cockpit where Cole and the techer were arguing.
    “I’m telling you, we’ve gotta disable the tracker first,” Cole said. “Otherwise it doesn’t matter how far away we go, they’ll be able to follow us.”
    “And you aren’t hearing me!” Simin yelled, his voice half hysterical. “We can’t. It’s attached to the transport’s central processor. If we fry the tracker, we fry the transport. As in, no more flying, got it? We’ll just be sitting here like a stone, and we have to get Ginni out of here—”
    “Disable the tracker,” I said. “There’s no more