Shutdown (Glitch)

because I didn’t understand the topography I felt with my telek.
    “You’re taking us into a city?”
    “Look closer,” Henk said. “No one’s lived there for a couple hundred years.” As the transport drew closer, I saw what he meant. What I’d thought at first were normal buildings stretching up into the sky, I could now see were ruins. The whole city looked like it had been burned out. Half the ground was covered in rubble, the other half was made of buildings on the verge of collapse.
    “What is this place?”
    “Used to be a tourist destination in the Old World. It was one of the few cities that actually got hit with a bomb on D-Day. Since it’s out in the middle of the desert, it never got rebuilt. It’s just been fallin’ to bits since. Makes for a good hiding place though. Look,” he said, and pointed to an area that was clear of debris. “Drop altitude and settle down in that flat bit o’ ground down there. You see it?”
    I nodded, then closed my eyes again. I needed to do more than see it.
    “I feel it.” I tried to decelerate the transport as gently as I could but still heard some oof s from behind me. I ignored them and set us down in the tall grasses that sprouted from the concrete.
    “No time for restin’,” Henk said. “We gotta get into the next transport fast or they’ll be on us. It’s not much roomier, but it’s got cloaking. We’ll be invisible as soon as we’re off.” He looked up into the sky as the others opened the back hatch. “Frankly I’m surprised we ain’t seen no one yet.”
    Almost as soon as he’d said it, I felt them coming. “Two more transports are headed this way.”
    “If they get one good blast at us, we’re all dead,” Henk said.
    That decided it then.
    I cast my telek out, latching onto the transports as they blasted nearer. I thought about the beating hearts inside of the Regulators who had once been men. And then I pushed that thought away and, using their own momentum, yanked them off course. Their transports flew straight into the ground at full speed and exploded with an earth-shaking boom . I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, trying to ignore the rush of emotions flooding me.
    When Xona dropped the back hatch open, the air was warm and ashy from the exploded transports. Rand and Xona lifted Ginni down. Henk dropped after them, taking huge strides with his lanky legs and motioning us to follow. Simin hurried beside them, holding Ginni’s hand while I searched the rest of the sky. It was clear. No one else was coming. Yet.
    We ran down an alleyway between two teetering bombed-out buildings. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows that covered the alley, and we had to be careful to avoid tripping over chunks of concrete and junk that had piled up on the ground.
    “Is the new transport close?” Cole asked. “Next time they won’t just send two investigative units. They’ll send an armada.”
    “We’ll be long gone by then,” Henk said. He pushed ahead of us and then banged open a rusty door with his shoulder.
    “Is this safe?” City asked.
    Henk didn’t respond, he just disappeared into the darkness beyond the door. I paused and let the others who were carrying Ginni pass.
    We all hurried after Henk. The windows on the opposite side of the building had been blown out. Henk ran across the debris-strewn floor and led us to an old stairwell, blackened by fire and covered in dust.
    “I’ve got Ginni,” I said, grabbing her body and lifting her with my telek so we could all get up the stairs faster. We ran up the four flights and Cole helped Henk kick open another door.
    And there it was. A pristine transport, perched on two slabs of concrete. The floor looked mostly solid, even though everything else in the room was demolished down to the steel girders. The walls were completely gone, open to the sky.
    As we all hurried out onto the floor, the whole building above us creaked loudly.
    “Shunting hell, Henk,” City said. “Is this building even stable for us to be in?”
    “’Course not,” he said with a grin. “That’s why it made such a good hiding place for my flier. So walk lightly. Whole bloomin’ thing’s like to fall on top of your heads.”
    “Ignore him,” I hissed. “Focus on the task at hand. Henk, get the rear door open.”
    The building overhead gave a long creeeeeeeak . Rand let out a high-pitched yelp of fear. If we weren’t in such a life or death situation, I was sure City would have teased