My resolve began to crack. Liquid hot fire rose inside of me, a tide of hurt and pain and confusion. I didn’t know what to believe, but I knew everything was wrong. My power buzzed in my chest, but I held it still. This was a pain I had to keep inside.
Max tossed the projection pyramid in his tablet case and swung it over his shoulder. He stood up, dragging me with him. I followed mutely, letting him direct me. I felt disconnected from the situation, disconnected from my own body even. A freight train of thoughts and memories and feeling were tumbling one over another in my mind. I couldn’t sift through them quickly enough. I couldn’t make sense of anything. None of this made sense.
“We can get on the subway and go to this place I found in the Central City. I can hide us, impersonate officials as we go so we can travel and get as far away from here as we can. We’ll go to the other side of the sector, or even go to other sectors if we have to. We can reintegrate and stay under their radar, switch out our wrist chips and become other people. If Adrien has visions of us and they come for us, we’ll run away again. Whatever it takes, so long as you’re safe.”
Max transformed back into the redheaded woman and opened the door. He stuck his head out, looking carefully each way before pulling me out with him.
My mind was a storm again. It seemed there was no other explanation. What if Max was right, and Adrien was helping the officials. One thing was sure, we were all in danger now.
I wasn’t sure we could help the others, but Max was right here in front of me. For once in my life, I might be able to help someone I cared about.
But at the same time, my whole chest ached. Adrien.
Max pulled me sharply sideways so that we were moving along the wall of the busy tunnel, whispering at me to keep my head down so the cameras wouldn’t catch our faces. When the tunnel opened up to the subway platform, he maneuvered us into the flood of people. The redheaded woman’s thin hand grabbed my wrist in a pinching grasp and pulled me to a corner along the side of the tunnel.
“Regulators,” Max whispered in the woman’s soft voice, nodding to the platform.
A group of Regulators stood where the tunnel narrowed before opening onto the subway platform. There were twice as many of them as usual, scanning faces and checking wrist IDs at random. I tried to quiet the fear that had gripped my chest. Our only way out was through that narrow passage. There was no way we’d make it through without getting caught.
“What do we do?”
“They’re probably looking for us. Adrien must have had a vision. Damn. Cover me while I change.”
He dropped down, ostensibly to retie his shoe. I leaned over him, terrified and trying not to look anomalous while I blocked him from sight. When he stood up again, he looked exactly like Chancellor Bright. He grabbed my arm roughly and pulled me out onto the platform. He strode right up to the Regulators.
“I’ve got the girl,” he said in the clipped tones of the Chancellor’s voice. “But the boy eluded me. Spread out and keep looking. I’ll take her directly to the holding facility.”
The two Regulators nodded once and motioned to the others across the room. They left, fanning out and grabbing people roughly every so often, turning them around to check their faces, then shoving them back in line to continue their placid progression down the tunnel. I breathed out when I heard the low rumble of the train approaching. I didn’t know what we’d do next, or how I could work out a way to keep Max safe and still find Adrien. But I knew we had to get off this platform.
The train slowed to a stop. Max, still disguised as the Chancellor, pulled me authoritatively to the front. Everyone parted to make way until we were at the front of the line.
My chest was tight with tension but I felt better when I saw that all the Regulators were at the opposite side of the platform. In a few seconds, we’d be on the train and hurtling away from them.
But then the train doors slid open with a hiss, and the real Chancellor stepped out with Adrien, a half-dozen Regulators, and a wicked grin on her face.
“Adrien!” I heard myself cry out in disbelief before I could even think. The sight of him with the Chancellor sliced like a jagged knife into my stomach. It took everything I had not to fall to my knees with the shock and pain of it.
Max shifted again, shoving me to the side and shouting, “Run, Zoe!”
The real Chancellor snapped her fingers. Regulators surged forward off the train as Max turned to run, dragging me along behind him. I looked over my shoulder. Adrien was watching everything calmly, not even looking at me. I felt sick. Max tripped as one of the Regulators caught up and grabbed his coat.
Max.
I instinctively spun around and thrust my hand out. Time seemed to slow, then stop. The high-pitched buzzing in my head consumed all other thought. The Regulator who held Max was thrown backward into a column, his head cracking against the concrete with a sickening thump.
Max transformed again, this time into a short man. He ran to me and pulled my hand, but I didn’t move. Instead, I lifted my arm, and all the other Regulators who’d come running after us were yanked backward as if an invisible explosion had sent them flying.
The drone subjects on the platform stood silently, watching with indifference, typing their anomaly reports on their arm panels.
My power pounded in my head, taking my fear and rage and pain and channeling them down my arms in electric currents to my fingertips.
Adrien walked straight toward me.
“Zoe!” Max screamed in the man’s low voice. “Let’s go.”
“Run, Max. Go!” I said, calling to him over my shoulder. “I will hold them off for you. But I have to stay. I have to know!”
I turned away, my focus all on Adrien. I zeroed in on him, sensing the planes and curves of his body with my mind. There had to be something, some explanation.
And then I felt it with my mind.
A tiny hard drive stuck in the back of his neck port. I knew it.
This wasn’t him—he was under the control of some hardware. A joyous relief washed over me, but it was quickly replaced by determination. I tried to yank the drive out with my mind, but in all the chaos, I couldn’t focus long enough to get it out. The Regulators had been such big targets. But this felt like searching for a pebble in a pile of boulders.
Max transformed again and looked back and forth between me and the exit tunnel that led back the way we’d come. His eyes pleaded with me. But I had already made my choice. I turned back to Adrien.
“Subdue her!” The Chancellor’s voice rang out across the silent platform.
I was tense, walking on the balls of my feet. I knew what I had to do. Just a little closer and I’d be able to pull out the port drive manually.
“Adrien,” I said, “I know this isn’t you.”
He was a step away now, far enough away from the Chancellor that she wouldn’t be able to stop us when we ran. With Max’s help and my power, we’d be able to escape. I was sure of it. I reached out again with the humming energy, my blood pounding in my temples at the effort. I reached with every fiber of my being, my mind trained solely on the port on Adrien’s neck where the tiny port drive had been inserted.
Adrien reached out for me, and in one final burst of energy, I was finally able to grasp the shape of the small drive with my mind. I yanked it out, sending it shattering against the concrete wall.
Adrien blinked once. I sighed in relief, nearly collapsing to the ground in exhaustion.
“Subdue her!” the Chancellor screamed.
Adrien hesitated only a moment and then reached for me. He jammed a syringe into the side of my neck before I could even scream in disbelief. I felt the needle’s pinch and saw the ground rushing up. As the world went black, I looked up and saw a pair of aquamarine eyes gazing coldly down into my own.
Chapter 22
I WOKE WITH A START, but when I felt the pillow underneath my head, I breathed out slowly. My neck was sore and my throat felt dry, like I hadn’t had water for da
ys.
I slowly tried to sit up, but my head felt full of rocks.
“Where is Max?” a voice asked anxiously. “Is he safe?”
I blinked and saw Molla sitting across from me on a small cot in a tiny gray room. It was little bigger than my bedroom, just big enough for two cots and a small square space in the corner for a toilet. Molla jumped over to my cot and beside me.
“Where’s Max?” she repeated.
With a forceful blow, it all came back to me. It was all real. It had really happened.
Adrien was a Monitor and he’d betrayed me. I’d been so worried about hurting others, I’d never thought about being betrayed myself. The pain cut so deep that I felt it in my bones, in my toes, in my fingers, and most of all, in my heart. How was my heart still beating? It should have stopped, should have broken, should have split into pieces from the ripping pain.
“I don’t know,” I said to Molla, trying to keep my voice even. I hugged her hard. “I don’t know if Max got away—they got me first.”
She clutched me back just as desperately.
“Max told me they’d caught you,” I said. “I’m so sorry we got you involved in all this.”
She pulled back, face pale. “It was horrible. The Regulators grabbed me right after I got to school.”
She blinked rapidly. She put a hand to her mouth. “Not again,” she moaned, grabbing her stomach. She ran over to the toilet and threw up.
“What’s wrong?”
She wiped her mouth and then crawled back to lie down on her cot.
“It’s been like this for a couple days.” Her face was wet with tears. “Something must be wrong, but I didn’t want to go to a diagnostic doctor. I didn’t want them to find out I was glitching.”
She sobbed into a thin gray sheet, and I smoothed back the hair from her face.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I told her. I hoped she couldn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
She turned over on her side, clutching her pillow. I sat down on the edge of her cot, rubbing her back gently. Eventually her breathing calmed down. After a while she was so still, I hoped she was sleeping.
My chest clenched with the sudden memory of Adrien calmly sticking the needle into my neck. Adrien telling the Chancellor about me on the video. I slid from the edge of the cot to the cold floor. The pain was so heavy. I curled up in a ball and put my palms against my eyes like I could scrub out all the memories.
Max had been right all along about Adrien. He’d known from the beginning that Adrien wasn’t someone to be trusted. He’d even tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. I’d believed what I wanted to believe.
I’d just taken Adrien at his word. Taken everything at his word. And my trust in him had led us to this. There was certainly no way we were going to be able to escape deactivation this time. But even if we didn’t get deactivated, even if by some miracle we managed to escape, where would we go? Without Max’s help we wouldn’t be able to go undetected for long in the Central City, and I couldn’t survive on the Surface.
I closed my eyes as a wave of dizziness and fear swept over me. Every step along the way Adrien manipulated me so perfectly. To make me follow him, to trust him, and then to fall in love with him. And I’d lost everything.
I’d even believed him when he told me that one of the Rez workers had implanted subroutines in my head to fool the diagnostics. Now I was sure they had done something to my hardware, but whatever it was hadn’t been for my protection. And I had just let it all happen.
The emotion I’d been able to hold back for Molla’s sake finally broke free and tears poured down my face. Adrien had turned every pure and wonderful thing I’d felt into a dirty lie. Into a mockery. I squeezed my legs in tighter to my chest, wishing I could disappear.
As the minutes passed with me crumpled on the floor, another realization hit me with a shudder. Markan. There was no way I’d ever be able to save him. He would grow up in the Link system without me. They’d wipe me from his memory chip. And one day he would receive his adult V-chip and forever lose the ability to think, to feel, to be himself. Another devastating failure.
It was too much pain to bear. But slowly the burning ache of hurt in my chest morphed into a fiery anger. For the first time since I’d glitched, I understood feeling angry to the point of violence. Adrien had done this to us. Adrien had brought us to the attention of the authorities. He had led us right into the Chancellor’s clutches.
My teeth clenched with rage. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to take from him what he had already taken away from me.
I barely noticed the buzzing in my head, not until the cot opposite Molla flew into the wall with a loud crash, crumpling with the force of my anger. Molla jerked up, eyes terrified and heart monitor buzzing.
“Oh, Molla. I’m so sorry.” I reached out to her, but she shrank away from me, clumsily stumbling off the cot and backing away from me against the far wall. Her eyes locked on me in terror. She was afraid of me.
I turned away from her, my anger giving way to shame.
Maybe Molla had good reason to be afraid. I was overcome with emotion, and I couldn’t control it. Without that control, there was no predicting what my power was capable of. My head buzzed with the pressure and the power of it, begging to be released.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to control myself. I breathed deeply and repeated the Community Creed over and over in my mind, even though every word of it made my skin crawl. But I had to keep myself under control. Molla was the only one left I could protect, and at all costs, I had to keep my head clear. I would have to fight to save her from whatever lay in store for us, and I couldn’t risk harming her accidentally with my power.
Right as I wiped the tears from my face in my new resolve, the door opened and the Chancellor entered. Adrien followed behind her.
My eyes must have flashed my hatred for the woman, because she smiled as she surveyed what I’d done to the cot. The buzzing in my head grew instantly louder with my alarm. The power was prickling to get out.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said sweetly. She turned her shoulders toward Adrien, her smile still fixed on me. “Please, follow me.”
Molla had jerked up when she saw the Chancellor, her body quivering all over in fear as she huddled into a corner.
The Chancellor turned on her heel and left the room without another glance back. I looked over at Molla’s terrified face. Then my gaze shifted to Adrien, standing coolly behind her, nudging her to her feet. My hot rage toward him roared back to life. My nostrils flared as I tried to rein in my fury.
“I understand hate now,” I whispered to him in an icy voice before following the Chancellor. It took every ounce of control not to lash out at him. I wanted to hit him until I saw blood.
But I stopped myself, because no matter what, I had to keep Molla safe. Holding on to that thought kept me sane and focused. I kept calm, my hands barely trembling with the effort to keep my power at bay.
I took stock of the situation, glancing around me. With luck, I could direct my power accurately, but I still had no idea where we were being held. I had no idea what forces stood outside these walls. And I still struggled to call on my power voluntarily. I couldn’t risk it. Not yet. One mistake could get Molla killed.
My eyes flicked around the narrow rectangle hallway as the Chancellor led the way. It looked like the hallways in the Academy, but the secure metal doors we passed looked doubly reinforced. This must be a holding facility where they brought subjects who behaved anomalously. But were we at the Academy? Or had they taken us somewhere else?
I scanned everything as thoroughly as I could as we passed, trying to determine our location. We went by a window to a research facility room, and I saw several technicians interfacing with computer screens. For a flash, I saw an image of myself on one of the screens. Then I saw an image of one of my drawings—the one I had done of Markan smiling.
I gasped. They knew about the drawings. How was that possib
le?
I knew that their records on me included some anomalous reports. I knew that my recent attempted escape and the demonstration of my power meant that they had enough information to deactivate me immediately. But the drawings. It just didn’t fit. When had they discovered those? I remembered thinking the drawings had been out of place when I’d returned from the Surface. How long had they known about me? And why had they taken so long to bring me in?
My head spun, trying to put all the pieces together. This didn’t make any sense. What was going on?
The Chancellor finally stopped and swiped her wrist in front of an access panel. A door slid open and I followed her into a larger room. The room was square and gray and it looked just like an empty classroom. A few chairs were scattered against the wall. It looked so benign, so absurdly normal.
“Nothing is what it seems, child.” The Chancellor smiled and dismissed the Regulators. I took note of their number, in case they would be standing outside the door. I might be able to overpower the Chancellor and Adrien, but it would be difficult to fight so many Regulators with a panicked Molla in tow.
“Please, sit.” She gestured toward one of the few chairs lining the wall.
“I’m fine standing,” I said, grinding out each word. She had all the power. For now.
“Stubborn. Max warned me.”
I blinked, startled. I narrowed my eyes at her. “What?”
The Chancellor waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t be misled by what you think you know. I am here to help you.”
I barely held in a scoff, but the Chancellor only nodded.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time, protecting you from detection and deactivation. I was hoping that through our meetings you might eventually begin to understand and trust me, but the supervision of the Uppers made it difficult. And then with your attempted escape, I’m afraid you left me no alternative. The timing is not ideal, but I trust in time you will understand.”
“Understand what?” My voice was hard. “That you took me and my friends? That Adrien’s been spying for you?”