Another pellet thumped into my side.
“Just let me get—”
Another pellet.
“Stop it!” I yelled, all my frustration bubbling up and over.
Sophia flew backward six feet into the wall and then crumpled to the ground. I rushed over to her. “Are you okay?”
There was a thin layer of padding covering the training room wall, but I knew it was solid rock beyond. I felt sick at the thought of having hurt someone else, even her. Her hair was tossed in her face. I pushed the thick strands aside. “Are you okay?” I asked again anxiously.
She let out a pained groan but sat up, rubbing her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and reached to help her up. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Exactly.” Her voice was cutting. “You didn’t use it on purpose. You can’t control it.” She jerked her hand back from me and slowly got to her feet. She picked up the pellet gun from where she’d dropped it and shoved it at my chest.
“Your telekinesis is extremely powerful, but if you don’t get it under control, and soon, all it makes you is dangerous. I don’t have visions often like my son, but I’ve seen enough. Without control, you are a ticking time bomb. I don’t want Adrien around the next time you go off.” Her eyes were hard as steel, and she paused to enunciate every word. “Stay away from my son.”
* * *
“Did you and Adrien get in a fight?” Ginni asked.
Ginni and I were sitting at the long table in the corner of our dorm room. Her half of the desk was covered in different colored fabrics and a small machine that seamed the pieces together with thread. My side of the table was empty except for my tablet. Even though I’d been sitting and staring at the screen for an hour, I couldn’t remember a thing I’d read. I’d been like this all week. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything.
“What?” I asked, looking up.
“Well you two haven’t been sitting together as much lately, and you always leave class early without waiting to walk with him. Are you mad at him or something?”
I hadn’t meant to be so obvious in avoiding him. “Do you think he thinks I’m mad at him?” He hadn’t said anything. But then, we hadn’t really talked since the mirror incident, and that was almost two weeks ago. We’d say hi and joke around in the Caf. But we hadn’t had a real conversation, the kind that went below the surface, in a long time.
“Are you?” Ginni pressed.
“No, I just…”
I just felt helpless when it came to my powers and I was afraid of hurting him again. Part of me wanted to com him and ask if we could meet somewhere alone, but then his mother’s words would echo in my mind. Stay away from my son.
I didn’t want it to be true, but Sophia was right. Strong emotions made my power unpredictable, and being alone with Adrien was always inherently emotional. As much as I wanted his arms around me, how could I willingly put him in harm’s way?
Before I could think of what to say to Ginni, Xona burst in.
“Looks like I’ll be joining you for meditation during lunch tomorrow,” Xona said, tossing her tablet case roughly on the ground and then flopping onto Ginni’s bottom bunk. “I got sentenced to extra sessions all week.”
“What happened?” Ginni dropped the two squares of fabric she was holding.
“I caught that ex-Reg Cole following me on my way to a private training session. It’s not the first time either.”
Ginni looked at me, a secret smile playing on her face. She got that look whenever one of us started talking about a boy at the Foundation. She’d always nudge me with an elbow or nod and wink. It probably had something to do with the books she was always reading. She’d pause periodically to look up from the words, clutching her reading tablet to her chest and sighing loudly.
“And…?” Ginni prompted.
Xona smirked, leaning back to lazily entwine her fingers behind her head. “And I gave him a quick elbow to the throat. Now he knows better.”
Ginni gasped.
“City saw me do it and reported straight to Jilia. So, anger management meditation it is.”
“But what if he was following you because he likes you?” Ginni asked. “Maybe he just wanted to talk.”
Xona glared at her, all traces of humor gone from her face. “Don’t try to turn ex-Regs into romantic heroes like in your books. They’re killers. That’s all they know how to do.”
“Well it’s not like we have a lot of options.” Ginni’s face soured. “Adrien’s with Zoe. All the other students are too young. Which only leaves Rand.”
Xona scrunched up her nose. “Oh honey, you can do better than Rand.”
Ginni looked down at her sewing again. “He seems to like City anyway. They’re always flirting.”
“Rand flirts with everybody,” Xona said.
“You should give Cole a chance,” I said to Xona. “He’s not like the other Regs. He even smiled at me when I knocked him over during training.” Sophia had brought him in to train with me after I’d thrown her against the wall a second time. She figured an ex-Reg could take the hits better.
“Are you finally getting control of your power?” Ginni asked excitedly.
“Sort of.” I sighed. “I can call it up sometimes, but usually only when Sophia gets me mad. And then I never direct it the way I’m supposed to. I just knock things over. I might as well not have the power at all.”
“Well as long as you’re banging up a Reg, it sounds great to me,” Xona said.
“And it does sound like you’re getting somewhere,” Ginni said, with a comforting smile.
“Maybe.” It wasn’t exactly progress, but maybe it was something after all. I hadn’t had any more seizures because I was releasing my power regularly. I still had to be Linked when I slept, but that wasn’t so bad.
“So do you think they’ll let you go on a mission soon?” Ginni asked. She averted her eyes and flattened the fabric on the table.
Xona looked over at Ginni curiously. “Why? What do you know?”
Ginni bit her lip. “Well, I might have heard something about it is all. Word is that General Taylor is prepping for another big mission.”
“I heard a rumor about it too.” Xona sat up straighter. “Tyryn let me borrow some practice weapons, and I’ve been training every minute the center is free.” She popped two shiny weapons out of her holster.
“Not that he’ll let you take any ammunition outside the training room,” Ginni reminded her.
“Well, some live rounds might have accidentally fallen into my bag in the equipment room.”
“Xona!” Ginni sounded appalled.
“What? I’m the only non-glitcher on the team. When we get into battle I can’t hocus-pocus my way out of it. I need these beauties,” she patted her weapons affectionately. “But about the mission. Tyryn wouldn’t tell me any details. What have you heard?” She looked back at Ginni.
“Well, I might have overheard that the General is planning to pit us against the Chancellor’s group of glitchers.”
Xona let out a low whistle.
“I wonder what kinds of powers they’ll have,” Ginni said. “What do you think, Zoe?”
She turned to me and I felt like shrinking down in my chair. I was sure the General was well aware of my lack of progress. Sophia would have made sure of it. If the General was planning a mission, she wasn’t going to take me.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. But then I really considered the question. If we were going up against the Chancellor’s glitchers, would that include Max?
“Ginni—” I sat up suddenly. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? “You can locate anyone in the world, right?”
She looked up in surprise. “Yeah.”
I grabbed her hand. “Can you find my friend Max?”
“I’m sorry, Zoe. Molla’s already asked.” Ginni’s eyebrows drew together. “Whatever it is about being a shape-shifter, it makes him invisible to me. He can fool anyone into seeing him as someone else, and it fools my po
wer, too.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment. I tried to picture him escaping the Chancellor and running off on his own, impersonating an Upper somewhere and living the luxurious life he’d always wanted. But I knew it was unlikely. He’d gone back to the Chancellor. She wouldn’t have trusted him again and would be sure to keep him under constant control with her compulsion power.
“I don’t see why you or Molla even care,” Xona said. “He chose to join the Chancellor. He helped her.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “He made some really bad choices. The Chancellor got to him right when he was new to glitching. He thought working for her would keep us safe. He didn’t realize what she was planning—”
“Yeah, maybe,” Xona scoffed, “but then he stayed behind when he had the chance to escape. After he knew how evil she was.”
I opened my mouth, but then closed it again. I couldn’t deny she was right. Max had done some horrible things. But I truly believed he’d started out with good intentions, and I wasn’t blameless either. If I deserved a chance at redemption, after what I’d done to my older brother, didn’t Max? After all, no one had died because of him.
And he’d only stayed behind with the Chancellor because he couldn’t bear to come with me. I didn’t know how to explain that, if circumstances had been different, I was sure Max could have been a much better person. Or how, in spite of everything, I still considered him family. “I’ve got to believe there’s still some good in him.”
Xona smirked. “I knew it. You really do think you can save everyone.” She turned to me, her face dark. “Look, you’ve been protected in one bubble or another your whole life. You haven’t seen what’s really going on out there. But I have. Trust me, sooner or later you’re going to find out that not everyone makes the right choice when it matters most. Not everyone is worth saving.”
I felt my face heat up. “Who are you to decide who’s worth saving and who’s not?”
“I don’t really care who we save and who we don’t.” She leaned in. “I just want to kill as many Regs as I can and, maybe if I’m lucky, take out some Uppers too. I want to make them all pay.” She spun one of the guns around her finger and then resheathed it.
Ginni had been ignoring our conversation and kept pushing material through her machine, but she stood up and dramatically twirled the fabric in a circle. “All done. It’s called a skirt!” she exclaimed. The skirt was patchwork, made from odd-shaped squares of old Community uniforms, some ex-Reg coverall blue, browns from the service worker uniforms, even the surgeon’s reds. “Isn’t it pretty?”
Xona touched the cloth skeptically. “Looks like it’d be hard to run in.”
This time it was Ginni who rolled her eyes. “It’s not for running. It’s for looking pretty.” She grabbed the skirt back from Xona.
“Who you trying to look pretty for anyway?” Xona asked.
Ginni turned to us, mouth open like she planned on mentioning something or someone. But then she paused and frowned. “I can’t remember.”
Chapter 13
“GOOD AFTERNOON LADIES,” Jilia said, settling herself down in front of us.
I sat down on the cushion while she put a box on the ground beside her. Xona leaned over and opened it. A cluster of little clear balls lay inside.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Marbles,” Xona said. “I used to play with them when I was a kid.”
“I wanted to try something a little more tactile for Zoe to focus on while we meditate. But the same practices apply to non-glitchers, so it will be useful for you as well, Xona.”
“Okay,” I said, but I wasn’t convinced. Nothing had worked so far.
“First, Zoe, I want you to think about some memory that brings up strong emotions.”
I looked over at Xona, then down at the ground again. “Um, that might not be … safe.”
“It will be fine,” Jilia said, her voice calm and soothing. “You won’t hurt us. You can always Link yourself if you feel like you’re going to lose control. That’s been part of the problem, I think. You’re so afraid of losing control that you never allow yourself enough leeway to access and explore your power. Being locked up in the research lab for all those months only exacerbated the problem right when your power was expanding and you needed to be experimenting most. We’ve got to break those habits. So try to abandon your fears. This is a safe place. Just remember you can Link yourself the moment you feel your power getting out of control. Think of that like a safety switch.”
I nodded, uncertain. What she said made sense, but I’d been afraid of my power for so long …
“Close your eyes and think of a powerful emotional memory. As soon as you feel the power start to build, let me know.”
I closed my eyes and sifted through my memories. Well, getting mad at Adrien’s mom usually worked to get me upset. I thought about our latest session yesterday and how she’d said that I would always fail the people I loved most. A slight buzzing did begin to build in my ears at the thought. But then I shook the memory off. No. I didn’t want to draw on negative emotions if I could avoid it.
Instead, I switched to another memory. Of Adrien and me alone in my room back in the Community, when he’d tried to explain what love was. He’d called it a miracle that, in a world so broken and painful, love could still exist.
I still remembered the tenor of his voice and the intensity of his gaze as he’d spoken. Love shouldn’t exist but it does. It’s the biggest anomaly, some might say the biggest defect, of the whole human race. But it’s the most beautiful anomaly. I understand that now. And I would give up anything for you … Because I love you.
And then I’d said it back to him and we’d kissed until I felt like I was soaring right up and out of my body. So much had happened since then, but my love for him was the one thing that had remained constant. I felt warm just thinking about it, and a soft buzz rose in my ears.
But then, without meaning to, the scene switched to our kiss in the bathroom, right before I’d lost control and shattered the mirror. There had been passion in that kiss too. More than that—desperation. Tied up in the memory was fear about how upset Adrien had been and worry about what he saw in the future that had him so scared. I thought of the haunted look in his eyes. The buzzing in my ears suddenly became a loud drone and my hand started to tremble.
I gritted my teeth as the tremors worsened. My first instinct was to choke off the emotions or Link myself. Instead I let myself linger in the memory of our kiss. It wasn’t the purely happy memory I’d wanted, but maybe the strongest emotions were always a complex mix of good and bad. I replayed the feel of Adrien’s hands on my body, pulling me into him and kissing me like he was a starving man and I was a full course meal. I let the mixture of desire and desperation resonate throughout my body. The buzzing came to a fever pitch in my ears. “Okay,” I finally whispered, my voice trembling. “I can feel it.”
“Good,” Jilia murmured. “Now I want you to try to channel that energy into the box of marbles in front of you. Visualize yourself and all that emotion you feel as being contained in the marble. Make it a single thought to focus your energy. Think: I am that. Repeat the phrase with your breaths in and out. Like this. I,” she breathed in, “am that,” she said after her breath out.
“I’ll try,” I said. I closed my eyes. The shaking in my hands was getting worse. I should Link myself so I didn’t hurt anybody. I tightened my jaw against the thought. No, I wouldn’t give up before I’d even tried. I knew from training with Sophia that I had a little bit longer before I lost control. I’d wait until the last moment to Link myself if I had to.
I am that, I repeated internally. I am that.
“Do not think of any moment beyond the present.” Jilia’s voice was sonorous. “There is only now. Anything can happen next, but what happens next is not important. What is important is now, inhabiting this space. There is no separate you. You are connected to all
things. You are the marble.”
The power bubbled up inside of me, but for once, maybe the first time ever, I felt completely present with it and was not afraid. The mental projection cube rose up in my mind and I felt the shapes of the marbles in the box. There was one sitting on top of all the others, and I zeroed in my focus. I am that.
The marble started to vibrate, shaking and knocking against the other marbles with a slight tinkling sound. Even though I wasn’t touching it physically, I could feel its surface texture. It was so smooth, but as I zoomed in closer and closer, I could feel the tiny imperfections, the slight indentations and pockets of air in the glass.
“Good,” Jilia murmured. “Now lift the marble up.”
I felt the power inside me boiling over, tingling in my fingertips. For a second I worried. What if I lost control? Then I gritted my teeth and pushed the fear away.
I focused only on my power extending outward past my skin and covering the marble.
I am that.
The marble lifted up into the air. Then I lifted another and another until all of the small spheres hovered in the air. I raised them up a foot, then two.
I opened my eyes to look at them. Xona was watching in stunned fascination, but I ignored her.
The marbles formed a circle in the air. I spun them like a giant wheel. The glass glinted in the light with each rotation and I kept it spinning faster and faster until all I could see were brief flashes of light. And for the first time for as long as I could remember, I felt completely at peace.
Then several things happened at once.
Cole charged into the room with a loud roar. There was a sharp knife raised in his hand.
Xona’s head jerked up and she immediately pulled out two weapons, one from her ankle and another from her hip.
Jilia screamed at them both to stop.
I watched, detached almost, as the components of a disaster fell into place in front of me. I raised my arms and gulped in the room with my power. Everyone in the room was within my mind’s projection cube now and I could manipulate them as easily as I could the marbles. I wasn’t afraid.