He smiled and waved a hand, the intense look disappearing from his face. “It’s nothing. Don’t be afraid. I’m always careful. Everything’s going to get better. You’ll see.”
Chapter 14
I WAS WALKING DOWN the hall when someone stopped suddenly in front of me. I ran right into them, my tablet case clunking to the ground in my surprise at the impact. I bent down, trying not to let my irritation show or betray any other anomalous response, but then I looked up and saw it was Adrien. My eyes widened just a fraction before I made my face blank again. He’d dropped his tablet case too with the impact and he stooped to the ground at the same time, too.
I’d had a twinge in my stomach all day at the thought of seeing Adrien again, but now that he was here in front of me, I didn’t know what question to ask first.
“I have a way to get into your house unnoticed,” he whispered, turning his head toward mine but keeping it facing the ground. “I’ll meet you in your bedroom at eight tomorrow.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he didn’t give me the chance.
“I’ll answer any questions tomorrow,” he whispered quickly, then stood up. I sat another moment watching after him, dumbfounded. His tall, lanky body quickly disappeared around a corner. I finally realized I might attract attention if I kept crouching on the ground like this, so I got up and turned toward the lunchroom.
I had to work hard to hide the excitement and nerves bubbling in my chest. Finally, I might get some answers. Adrien knew things. He might be dangerous, and I’d have to be on my guard, but I was desperate for answers. Whether he was a glitcher or not, I wasn’t sure, but he definitely was not Linked. And he had access to some advanced tech. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d know a way for us to live undetected or avoid the adult V-chip. It was a hope so precious and fragile I almost didn’t dare let myself think it.
* * *
“You’ve been talking about him nonstop since we got here,” Max said at our tutoring session that night.
I turned and looked at him. “So?”
“So maybe I’m tired of hearing about him! And he’s gonna meet you in your bedroom? Is that even safe? We don’t need him, and it’s not worth the risk. I told you I could protect you.”
I waved his words away with a swipe of my hand. “This isn’t about protection. It’s about figuring out what he knows. He’s got to be like us. I want to know what he knows and get him on our side.”
“The only people who need to be on our side,” Max stood up, his face flushed, “are us.”
I stopped pacing finally, seeing Max’s face and sensing he was quietly fuming.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“What’s wrong with me?” he echoed incredulously. “What’s wrong with me is that all I can think about all day and all night long is you, but you are obviously spending all your time and energy thinking about him.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Of course I’m thinking about him! I have this feeling like he knows things that could be useful to us—”
“I don’t care!” Max said suddenly, almost shouting. I was taken aback and finally stopped talking. I’d been so caught up in my own thoughts I hadn’t realized just how angry he was getting.
“Don’t you understand?” he said, pulling me to him. “I want you to be thinking about me.” His eyes were burning intensely as he put his hand behind my neck, pulling my mouth to his.
“Kissing,” he said, still embracing me tight. “It’s called kissing. I’ve been learning all kinds of things that people used to share with each other in the Old World.”
“How have you been learning things?” I said in surprise. “Where?”
“I snuck into a visiting official’s room and looked through his stuff. He had data on his text tablets that was nothing like I’d ever seen.”
“Max! How could you do that? It’s reckless.”
“It’s not reckless, not with my powers. I made myself look like the official and walked right into the room. Anyway, do you want to hear about what I found out, or not?” He grabbed both of my hands in his tightly.
I pursed my lips in disapproval but nodded reluctantly.
“This,” he leaned in immediately, lips on mine, then pulled back, “is called kissing. And I found out what marital partners in the Old World did, and it wasn’t just sitting around waiting for the Center to mix their DNA together in a test tube.”
“Wait, you mean like the passions?” I said, alarmed. “Like the history archives talk about? The animal flaw that brought down humans in the Old World?”
“Yes, but they aren’t like that. I was trying to tell you the other night.”
“But why did an official even have any of that on his tablet?” I asked, confused.
“That’s the biggest lie of all,” Max said. “You won’t believe this, but the Uppers, the officials, all the people in charge…” He paused. “None of them are even Linked, Zoe. They’re all free.”
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of my stomach.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. “They say being Linked gave us all a better life, a peaceful life. It’s in all of our history texts. It’s in our Community Creed!” I paused, thoughts swirling. “If it truly is a better life, then they’d be Linked themselves. And if they could feel, they wouldn’t do this to us. Turn us into drones. They couldn’t…”
Max eyed me intently. “They could, and they do. They’ve done it for two hundred years or more now. Keeping all the rest of us as drones while they let themselves do and feel anything they want.”
“But if they can feel, they know how much it is to lose! It’s—” I choked out, my mind stumbling on each thought as it rose up. “It’s inhuman!”
Max suddenly pulled his shirt up over his head. His chest was wide and muscled, with a light tufting of blond hairs. The metal of the circular heart monitor in the center of his chest glinted in the light.
“It’s horrible, I know. But forget all that, Zoe. The only thing we can do is try to forget it all and enjoy ourselves as much as we can.” He reached for my waist and grabbed the bottom of my shirt.
“Wait, Max, I don’t know—”
His voice was low and breathy with excitement. “We deserve this, you and me. We can make up right now for everything they stole from people.”
He started a trail of sizzling kisses down my neck. My face flushed. My mind raced even as my body reacted in ways I didn’t understand. Everything was happening too fast. He was so intense, holding and kissing me like he wanted to devour me.
Everything with Max was hot and cold. We’d just been arguing a moment ago, and then now he had suddenly changed again. He was reckless and wild, but he was also someone who cared for me so much. Who wanted to be my family. Wasn’t that what I wanted, too? I let myself kiss him back in my confusion.
He put his hands on my pants and began unhooking them.
“Stop,” I said, yanking away and moving to the far wall. The word was out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.
“Why? What’s wrong?” Max’s wide chest heaved as he stared at me in confusion. He started to move toward me but I held up a hand.
“Wait, this is too fast. I don’t even understand what’s happening!”
“Why not?” Max’s voice was suddenly hard. “You don’t want me. Is that it?”
“That’s not what I said. Of course I want you. I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said, feeling the stinging at the back of my eyes. Everything was wrong. Max usually made me feel safe and secure but right now I just wanted to be anywhere but here with him.
“I came here because I thought you were going to help me figure out a plan. Not this.”
Max raised his voice too. “The other day, you said you wanted to be together with me. Well this is what togetherness is, what humans are supposed to do. Maybe you aren’t as free from the Link as you think you are.”
His voice kept getting louder and louder. “There’
s a whole other world out there, and the Uppers, who’ve never been Linked one day of their lives, know all about it. Because it’s what’s normal. Because they’re not brain-gone freaks.”
“Fine,” I interrupted him. “I guess I’m not normal then.” The moisture in my eyes brimmed over. Broken. He was saying I was broken. I was too broken to stay Linked, and now I was too broken to even glitch properly.
“I guess I don’t want to be normal. I don’t want to be together with you, either.” I yanked his bedroom door open. I walked so fast I was almost running toward the front door.
“Wait, Zoe.” He caught up to me and grabbed my arm hard.
“Let go of me!” I wrenched my arm away. I tasted salt between my lips and realized water was streaming copiously from my eyes now.
“Zoe, stop, I feel bad.” He sounded like he meant it. “This isn’t going how I thought it would. Just wait.”
I wiped my eyes with my palms and looked up at him. He seemed sincere but I was still too upset. I couldn’t even completely say why. I just wanted to go to my family quarters, where things made sense. Where my parents would be sitting at the square table with their perfectly portioned food. Logical. Orderly.
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Maximin.” I didn’t look at him. I left through the door, managing only barely to keep my footsteps calm and even as I walked to the subway.
I avoided Max the next day, staying intentionally Linked so I could ignore him. It wasn’t so much that I was angry with him—it was just that all the emotion I’d felt when we’d become so upset with each other was the most intense thing I’d felt in my life, even more than fear. It hurt still to think about his words, which got stuck in my head like a worming virus. Brain-gone freak. I didn’t know what freak meant but I didn’t like the sound of it and the way his voice had sounded when he’d said it—so harsh and ugly.
And he was wrong. I wasn’t a drone anymore. I just didn’t feel the things he’d wanted me to feel, and now I was sure I had lost him. I didn’t know where I fit now. Not with the drones, and not with him. I was alone again. I looked around the cafeteria and saw Adrien sitting near the wall. The sight of him calmed me. At least I’d get answers tonight.
Max nudged my foot under the table. He’d been doing it throughout lunch, but this time I finally looked at him.
“Study at your unit tonight?” he asked, his voice soft.
I gave a quick nod and then rose to put my tray away.
* * *
I could tell Max was straining to say something the whole ride to my housing unit. He tried to hug me right when we got to my room, but I held him back with one extended hand.
“Zoe, I feel…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t have the words for how I feel—wrong, bad, as if I shouldn’t have said what I did to you. I want to go backward and not say it, but I can’t.”
“Shh,” I said. “My brother is right next door.”
“He’s on the treadmill, he won’t hear.” He took the hand I’d been barring him with and cupped it in his. “This is all new for me, too. I need you.” His look was sad, sincere. “I want to be with you, even without the passions. You know that, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” I said, feeling all of the sudden like crying again. “I don’t know what you mean when you say you want to be with me. You are with me. I’m with you. You are the person who is”—I looked at the wall, casting around for the right word—“more significant to me than anyone. The words aren’t right, maybe. But I feel like family with you. It hurts so much sometimes that my real family doesn’t seem connected to me at all. It’s like we’re just bodies that happen to occupy the same housing unit, with nothing else connecting us.”
I took Max’s hands. “It’s just wrong. Family should mean some kind of bond. It should signify that even though no one else in the world cares about you, you’re special to someone. And that’s what I have with you. You’re my only true family.”
“Family, like a marital unit?” His hands tightened on mine, his face tense, but hopeful.
“I don’t know, Max.” I felt helpless. “I’m not even sure what you mean by that. I think you want it to mean something different. Isn’t feeling like family enough? Like siblings used to be, back in the Old World, what I wish I could have with my own brother.”
“Brother?” Max’s voice was hot with disgust. He dropped my hands. “I don’t want to be your brother!”
My face must have showed how his words hurt me.
He groaned and his shoulders sagged. “I’m doing it again. Saying bad things. It’s just that I want to be more than your brother.” He crossed the small space between us. He cupped my face gently and leaned in, putting his lips ever so softly against mine.
For the first time, I really let go and let him kiss me, trying to understand the tingling sensation that was slowly waking up inside me. I raised my hand, about to reach out to his face, when one of the ceiling tiles shifted and a tall form dropped down into the room.
Max recovered from the surprise quicker than I did and launched himself at the figure just as I said, “No, wait!”
Max tackled Adrien, easily taking the thin boy down. He put his knee in Adrien’s sternum to keep him down and punched him hard in the face. I jumped forward and grabbed Max’s arm just as he revved up for another swing.
“Stop, Max, it’s Adrien!” I shouted in a hoarse whisper. “He told me he had a way to get in unnoticed.”
Max’s face was taut with a look I didn’t recognize. It looked like anger but at the same time, it seemed like more. It scared me.
“Get off of him,” I hissed, yanking at his arm. Max finally moved off. Adrien lay still for another moment, hand to his nose, before finally sitting up. When he moved his hand, I saw there was blood.
I gasped. “I’ll go get some tissue. Stay out of sight,” I said to Adrien, suddenly worried that all the noise we’d made had been noticed by my brother. I opened the door and looked out cautiously. The rhythm of pounding feet on the treadmill didn’t change and I let out a sigh of relief. Good, Markan hadn’t heard.
I got some bathroom tissue and came back to find Max and Adrien standing at opposite sides of the tiny space, each eyeing the other coldly. This wasn’t going well at all.
“I feel so bad,” I said, handing the tissue to Adrien. “I told him you were coming but we were still surprised.”
“It’s fine,” Adrien said, managing a smile. “I wish I’d had more time to warn you. I’m sorry for startling you.” Adrien addressed it to both of us.
“Sorry?” I said in confusion. “I’m not familiar with the word.”
“It means I feel bad,” Adrien said, taking a moment to think before finishing, “and wished I hadn’t hurt you or made you afraid.”
Sorry. I nodded, adding it to my mental list of emotive words. It seemed like an important one.
“So how’d you get in?” Max pushed off the wall and came to stand between Adrien and me. “And why are you here?”
“We have members of the Resistance planted in the unit above this one. We cut through the floor over a shared ventilation duct.”
“Resistance?” Max asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Let’s all sit down,” I said nervously. “Adrien, why don’t you start from the beginning?’
“Sure.”
Max’s face was still hard. He pulled me down to sit beside him on the ground. “You can take the chair,” he said to Adrien. Max’s behavior was confusing me. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t like it.
“I don’t know exactly where to begin,” Adrien said.
“Do you have a glitcher power?”
“Max,” I chastised sharply.
“It’s fine,” Adrien said. “Yes, I do have a power, though we refer to it as a Gift.”
“Well, what is it?” Max’s voice was rough and insistent.
“I get visions of the future.” Adrien met Max’s angry eyes calmly. He turned to me. “That’s how I knew you were in troub
le on the train that day.”
He explained quickly about our trip to the Surface. All the questions and confusion—the water dreams, my memories of the forest, all of it was explained in the space of ten minutes. It almost seemed too simple. Something tugged at the back of my mind. There was something else he was leaving out, something I’d forgotten. I sat stunned while he went on.
“What is this Resistance movement?” Max interrupted.
“It’s basically a sustained rebel faction,” Adrien said. “It’s been alive in some form since the beginning. Some people escaped being chipped and kept a record of what was really going on after D-day. But they were powerless to actually stop it. We still are, kinda. It’s not like the Rez has ever been strong enough to make a stand against Comm Corp or fight them straight out. Mainly, we just try to keep a strong non-chipped presence, an alternative for those who can manage to escape government control.”
“So you don’t actually do anything?” Max said harshly.
“I didn’t say that.” Adrien looked at Max. “We believe preparation’s essential, that a time will come when we have enough people and enough power to make a stand. We get weapons, recruit spies among the Uppers, and make tech to combat Community tech. We’re trying to find ways to disable the Link system for good, to give people back their voices—” He looked at me now. “—and when that happens, the Rez will be able to provide the infrastructure and resources to help the people rise up against the bastards who’ve enslaved them.”
“And when is this great revolution going to happen?” Max’s voice was caustic.
Adrien looked down, with what I thought looked like sadness or uncertainty. “We haven’t found a way to disable the Link permanently in any significant population. Until we do, it’s impossible to make a lasting change.”
“So what are you doing here at the Academy?” I asked.
“I’m looking for glitchers. I’m a recruiter, kinda. I mean, visions aren’t the most reliable way to make sure we’ve found all the glitchers at an Academy.” He looked down self-consciously. “But it’s something. My task is to find as many as possible, prepare them for the outside world, then escape with the Rez’s help.”