Adrien nodded. “Hurry up, though. When he wakes up, his heart monitor will start going off from the pain and someone will come check it. But you should have time to be long gone. Zoe and Molla, you should get out of here, but be careful. Stay in the camera blind spots.”
I nodded, and Molla and I slipped out the door behind Service Worker Max.
* * *
A week later, we still didn’t know what had happened to the service worker. Max tried impersonating an official to look at the service logs but didn’t find anything, and Adrien hadn’t wanted to risk hacking into the mainframe again. All we were left with was questions. Did the manual wipe work? If it didn’t, had Monitors been assigned to observe us? But if so, why had they waited to bring us in? All we could do was hope that the decision to let the worker live wouldn’t cost us our lives.
My nights were restless, filled with repeating nightmares. Instead of Daavd’s face in the chase nightmare, it was Max’s. He’d been chased down by Regulators and I hadn’t saved him. I’d let him down, let him get hurt.
Just like I was doing in real life.
I had to tell Max. Before I spent any more time with Adrien, before I kissed him again.… The thought of kissing Adrien sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. Which was then followed by another wave of guilt. There were too many other lies in my life. I couldn’t stand to have one between me and Max. In spite of what I couldn’t give him, he was still my best friend. He was still family.
I peeked inside Markan’s room but he wasn’t home yet. It felt nice having the apartment all to myself. I was so rarely alone and unwatched.
I slid the door open to my room and then jolted in alarm and almost dropped my tablet case.
“Adrien!”
“Sorry.” He grinned and dropped down the last few steps from the ladder. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What are you doing here?” I glanced back through my bedroom door to make sure Markan wasn’t about to come through the front door. “My brother will be home any minute.”
“Sorry, I just had to see you,” he said, coming closer.
I stopped looking back out the door and smiled at him. Just being near him made all the tension seep out of my muscles, replaced by a tingling excitement.
His expression seemed to darken.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.” His face cleared as he smiled, his green eyes sparkling. He came closer and took my hand gently. I felt my stomach swoop at his touch.
He lifted his other hand to my face and I trembled. Then he kissed me, gently and slowly. Like it was a question he was waiting for me to answer. I had asked myself so many questions of my own about our kiss the other night, but the instant his lips touched mine, all of my doubts and fears washed away.
I sank against him, all my emotions breaking loose in our kiss. He responded, pulling me against him roughly, and it only made my heart beat faster. My heart monitor started buzzing between us but I didn’t care. It hadn’t beeped in ages. A little now was worth it. I pulled him closer, pressing against him, but just as I reached up to tangle my hands in his hair, he pushed me away.
“Wha—” I started dreamily, but suddenly it wasn’t Adrien standing in front of me anymore.
It was Max.
All the relief I’d felt a moment ago vanished instantly. A heavy pain hit the bottom of my stomach like a rock, taking my breath away.
“I knew it!” he yelled, slamming his fist into my bedroom wall. His face was red with fury.
I felt my mouth drop open and my throat choke with thick guilt. “Max, I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you.” I tried to reach out to him but he yanked his arm away.
“Tell me what?” I looked away from him, hot water burning at the back of my eyes.
“Tell me what?” he said, angrier this time. He was seething, but I could see and hear the hurt behind it. For once, he wasn’t masking himself. “That your heart monitor buzzes when he kisses you but not when I do?”
“You know you are important to me, right?” My eyes swam as I said it.
“But?” He spit out the word.
“But I also feel for Adrien … like…” I stumbled over my words, seeing the flare of Max’s nostrils. I had to get it all out now. “Like togetherness feelings for him.”
“Don’t say that.” His voice was hard, angry. “You don’t mean it.”
“I do. I’m sorry. It just happened. I didn’t ask for it to happen, but it did. I never meant to hurt you, Max. And I was going to tell you—”
He came toward me now and he gripped my upper arms, his fingers like a vise.
“Ow, Max, you’re hurting me.”
“You don’t understand. He’s a liar. He’s tricking you. The whole Rez isn’t who he says they are.” Max’s voice dropped. “He’s not one of us. He’s using you.”
“He’s not.” I tried to pull away from his grip. “He makes me feel—”
“What?” he yelled, letting me go and thrusting me away. “Tell me about what he makes you feel? I’ll kill the bastard!”
“Stop it, Max. Someone will hear.” I went over to him, trying to touch his arm, but he shrugged me off, staring at me with a look that made me shrivel up inside. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
He turned away and punched the wall so hard it made a dent. He let out a shout of pure rage and I flinched.
“I won’t let him have you!”
“Max,” I whispered, putting a hand on my aching chest. Adrien had once told me that hearts could break if something hurt enough. I hadn’t understood what he meant at the time, but I did now. My heart was breaking, but I couldn’t turn back now. He deserved to know everything.
“I think I was already his, before you and I even … I mean, I think I started to feel things during the time I was away. I don’t remember it all but I think that’s when it first happened. It was before we even became friends,” I whispered. I was trying to find anything to make it hurt less now.
“It should have been me who rescued you that day you disappeared. I was coming for you, too. Before he got in the way,” he spat.
“Stop it—”
“Zoe, listen to me!” he cut me off sharply. “You don’t know anything about him. Think about it. He knows all about you from his visions. He knows all the right things to say to you. Isn’t that a little bit suspicious? And then there’s his Resistance. I’ve looked into it, and they do all kinds of experiments in chemical warfare and coercion. They’re as bad as the Community. And Adrien’s helping them get to you. To make you think you like him so you’d work for them. They need your Gift. But I’m not like that,” he said, his voice intense as leaned in. “I want you. Just you.”
He came at me and put his mouth on mine and pushed me up against the wall, crushing me under his weight.
“Stop it.” I tried to push him away but he was stronger.
He stopped kissing my protesting mouth, but he still trapped me there, hands on both sides of my head against the wall.
“You’ll want me,” he said in a growl, keeping me captured against the wall. “One day. I’ll make you want me.”
“Let me go,” I whispered, all patience gone, and something worse, something I’d never expected to feel around Max—fear.
“Move back,” I said firmly, so furious at him for making me afraid. The anger started a buzzing in my ears. “Before I make you.”
He laughed darkly, pulling back and holding his hands up to show he wasn’t trapping me anymore. “Don’t you see? That’s why you’re perfect for me. You have the darkness underneath, too.”
His words were like a punch to my stomach. So he saw it too—the guilt that hung like a weight around my neck. He knew that, at my core, I was a betrayer. What I’d done to my brother would mark me for life.
“Maybe,” I finally managed to whisper. “But it’s still Adrien I want.”
He took another step back. He stood still for a long moment and I could see his throat bobbing up a
nd down as he swallowed repeatedly. It was a terrifying silence. Finally, he lifted his forearm to swipe at his eyes and hurried out of the room.
I felt like my stomach had been hollowed out, scraped clean of any goodness inside me.
I’d hurt Max. I’d betrayed yet another person I cared about. I wanted to call him back, to somehow make things better, to help close the deep wound I’d made, but I didn’t know what to say.
The front door slid shut behind him.
Chapter 20
IT HAD BEEN TWO WEEKS, and Max still wasn’t talking to me. I walked with him to the cafeteria like always. We were trapped in our routine, forced together to avoid suspicion. He couldn’t avoid me, but I could sense from the furious heat pulsing from his body that it was taking every ounce of effort to be near me.
What he could do was ignore me. Which he did. I picked at my food, feeling him like a silent fuming boulder beside me. I tried over and over to catch his eye but he never gave any indication he even knew I existed. I finally gave up trying.
Then, as I was about to stand up and collect my dishes, I heard a low scream from the other side of the room.
My eyes widened as I craned my neck to see what was going on.
A boy screamed and thrashed, trying to get away from the two Regulators who’d just grabbed him. It was Juan, the boy Adrien had pointed out to me earlier, the one who was a glitcher.
“Help me!” he screamed. “Someone, please help me!”
I looked in panic at all the staid faces around me in the cafeteria. Everyone watching dispassionately. I looked back at Juan.
He managed to wrench away from one of the Regulators, but the other one still had a firm grip. I scanned the room as calmly as possible. There were more Regulators everywhere. The ones not holding Juan were surveying the rest of us as if they were looking for a reaction.
With a sudden wave of dizziness, I recognized what was happening in this moment. It was exactly the same as my nightmares of Daavd. The anger burned in me, and I felt my power respond, bursting instantly to life at my fingertips.
One Regulator pulled out a syringe.
I couldn’t stand here and watch this happen. I couldn’t do nothing. Not this time.
The buzzing was at a fever pitch inside me. I started to rise, but Max’s fingers gripped my arm like a vise under the table. I looked at him, knowing the panic must be showing in my eyes. He blinked in surprise, as if he saw something in my face he’d never seen before. He quietly shifted his legs, locking them around mine and ever so slightly shaking his head in warning. I looked helplessly back at the boy.
But my power was not as easily quieted. I felt myself losing control, but I had nowhere to direct it. A fork on a nearby table fell to the ground, unnoticed in the commotion. A tray of food in front of me shifted first to the left, then the right. Max gripped me harder.
Juan sank to the ground, unconscious. The Regulators dragged him from the room. He was limp in their arms, his feet skimming the ground behind him. I felt sick. Everyone around me began gathering up their things calmly, as if nothing had just happened.
They’re monsters. We’re all monsters.
I stood up, barely remembering to take my case with me as I hurried out of the room. I was a monster. I could have stopped it all somehow, but I didn’t want to risk Max’s safety. To risk my own. The power had been right at my fingertips. I could have saved him. But I didn’t.
I hurried into the bathroom so I could let out my feelings in the privacy of a bathroom stall. I had to stuff my fist in my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. All my power raced through me, begging for release. I let out just a fraction of the energy as gently as I could, allowing it to shake my body in tremors that knocked me into the stall doors. I slid to the floor of the stall and wrapped my arms around myself as if I could physically hold it all in.
Max was waiting for me when I came out. He took my arm hard and steered me to the wall, out of the way of the students filing by on the way to their next class period. He was rougher with me than usual. Harder and colder than he had ever been before last night. But I deserved it.
“Promise me you aren’t going to do anything stupid,” he hissed in my ear.
I shook my head, feeling nauseous as I pictured Daavd, then Juan, dragged away. “We have to help him. That could have been any of us!” It should have been me, I added silently.
“Stop it,” Max said shortly. “Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice still hard.
I swallowed, feeling my throat clog up again. I didn’t know why he cared so much after how I’d hurt him, but I nodded anyway.
“Then trust me when I say I’ll look into it,” he said, pulling us back into the crowd of walking students.
I looked at him uncertainly.
“I promise. Just don’t do anything dangerous in the meantime,” he hissed.
The rest of the day went by in a haze. I clicked back into the Link, unable to trust myself. I’d been so sure that the next time something like this happened in real life, I wouldn’t stand idly by—that I’d act. I wouldn’t allow someone else to be taken like I’d let them take Daavd. But I’d just stood there, again. Letting it happen.
I closed my eyes hard, but over and over the scene replayed. Daavd’s face replaced Juan’s as it spooled out again in my mind, until I thought I wasn’t going to be able to hold back the water that had been threatening to pour out of my eyes all day.
That night, I didn’t look up when I heard the ceiling tile shift. I curled up in a ball, hiding my face in my pillow.
“Zoe,” Adrien said, his voice full of emotion. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t say anything. He touched my shoulder but I jerked it away.
“Zo, look at me. The Rez is handling it. If they can do anything for Juan, they will.”
I sat up, hope blooming for the first time all day. “Do you think they can get him out?”
Adrien didn’t say anything for a second. “You need to be ready for the fact that sometimes there’s nothing we can do. After they’ve transported a glitcher to a secondary location, it’s usually impossible to get them back before they’re reprogrammed or … or they do other things to them.”
“Like deactivate them, you mean.” A fresh pain burned in my chest. Adrien tried to hug me but I pushed him away.
“No, I don’t deserve comforting. I’m a monster. Just standing there, watching it happen.”
I dropped my head, sobbing quietly.
“I thought I was different now,” I managed to say between sobs. “At least before, I was numbed by the V-chip. What’s my excuse now?”
“Zoe, stop it,” Adrien said heatedly. “There was nothing you could do that wouldn’t have gotten us all taken away with him. Max and I just stood there, too. Do you think we’re monsters?”
“No!” I said automatically.
“Then why do you get all the blame? Why are you cracking taking this all on yourself? It’s not your fault. It’s the Chancellor’s fault and all of the Uppers who’ve done this to us.”
But I shook my head when Adrien tried to pull me close. “It could have been you, or Max, or…” My voice broke. “Or Markan.”
“You can’t think like that.”
“Would it have been any different?” I stared at the wall, feeling sick. “I have this horrible feeling that it wouldn’t be. That I betray everyone who comes near me. What I did to my own brother. And then Max, too. All he wanted was for me to want him.”
I turned and crumpled into Adrien’s chest, crying harder all of the sudden. He held me tight. “What else is wrong? Zoe, you’re scaring me.” His voice was tense.
I heard the muffled thud of Markan’s door sliding open.
“Hide, hide,” I whispered urgently to Adrien, pushing him back up the ladder. “Close the ceiling tile and hide up on the bed against the wall.”
He hurried as quietly as he could back up the ladder. I went to listen at the door. I heard footsteps, but they walked past my door and on towar
d the bathroom. I sighed out and leaned my head against the wall. Adrien stayed silent.
I climbed lightly up the ladder. Adrien was lying down, his long body taking up the entire length of the bed so he’d be out of sight. I lay down, facing him, far enough apart that only our bent knees touched. I curled my hands up under my pillow.
“Tell me about hate,” I whispered quietly.
“Zo.” He curled up one arm under his head like a pillow. We were close enough together that I could smell the cool mint of his breath.
“Tell me,” I repeated stubbornly.
He sighed out, rubbing his temple with his other hand. “Hate is a strong emotion. One of the strongest humans have.”
“But what is it?”
He frowned, thinking. “I don’t know how to describe it. How to define it. It’s like when anger against someone or something becomes so strong it consumes you. Life is so hard and people are so shunting cruel to each another, sometimes I think hate is what comes most naturally to humans.”
“And it makes people want to deactiv—to kill each other?”
He nodded.
“Have you ever hated anyone?”
“Of course. I hate the Uppers and this shunting Link system that has put us all in this position.…” He leaned in, his head slightly sideways. “I hate the people who put you in danger.”
His green eyes flashed in the dim light of the night luminescence panel. Our faces were six inches apart now. “But the thing is, the opposite of hate is love.…” He looked away from me and ran a hand through his hair. Then he looked back at me with an intensity I’d never seen in him before.
He moved closer.
Three inches.
Two.
The electricity I’d felt from him the other night was tenfold, burning out from his eyes. I lifted a hand to my chest monitor and tried to breathe to calm myself down.
“Then tell me about love again,” I whispered.