The trees were dancing and laughing at me now. They swooped dangerously in one direction, then pulled back with a mocking sway.
Adrien turned around and scanned my face. He wasn’t bothering to hide his worry anymore. We kept going.
My body felt so heavy. I paused and put a hand on my forehead, then rubbed my eyes. Everything hurt. I accidentally caught a shaft of sunlight straight in the eyes and my head felt like it was going to explode. My tongue was wrong. Clogging my throat.
“Zo, I can see the house!” Adrien’s voice sounded far away and hollow, as if we were back in the tunnel.
I looked at him through swollen eyes. The light glowed around him and he looked like he was floating. He was a glowing creature from another world, opening his gossamer wings and beckoning me. I wanted to tumble into his embrace. We’d be able to fly and I wouldn’t mind the sunshine or the sky if he could just hold me forever.
But when he looked at me, his face changed from hope to terror. I tried to open my mouth, but my throat was closed up tight and I couldn’t choke out a single sound. I reached for the sunlight wings on his back that would fly us far away from here to a place where we could breathe the sweetest air.
But instead, I was flying without him and it was all wrong, because I was dropping down, down, down. I was only faintly aware of the crash of my body hitting the ground as everything went dark.
Chapter 8
MY FINGERNAILS were claws at my throat. I was sliding in and out of a dream, images flashing before my eyes. Adrien screaming. The boy from my nightmares running, being chased down. Green everywhere. So much green.
Shh, Zoe. Don’t make a sound.
The boy’s body crashed into the dirt, leaves in his hair—he turned to look back at the Regulators who’d tackled him. He looked just like my brother Markan. He was screaming my name as the men in blue—artificial musculature coiled with savage strength beneath their reinforced suits—slammed his head into the ground, over and over. Blood poured down his face. The boy with my brother’s face looked at me one more time, an indecipherable expression on his face, before his jaw went slack and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
Markan! I didn’t mean to! Run, Markan! Run!
Another face. A woman. Liquid gray spots bubbled around the edges of my vision, then went black. Muffled, urgent conversations. I was floating through the air one moment, then surrounded by warmth the next. A searing bite on my leg. Rats, I was covered with rats, biting me, eating me alive! I tried to open my mouth and scream but I couldn’t. Why weren’t the voices helping me, the rats were eating me alive! Blood rushed in my ears with a screaming buzz.
Shh, Zoe. Don’t make a sound.
The world went black again.
* * *
My eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. My throat burned, but I realized with a rush of relief that I was breathing without any problem. I started to take a long, deep breath, but then I winced. My whole body was so sore. With every breath in, I could feel the contours of both aching lungs and the tenderness between my ribs. It hurt to breathe, but at least I was able to.
Noises filtered in. Voices. I hadn’t noticed them at first but they were getting very loud.
“I can’t believe you brought her here after everything we talked about. Are you trying to get us all killed? What did I tell you over and over? No unnecessary risks!”
“Mom!” I recognized Adrien’s voice. “You didn’t see what I saw. I had to save her. What was I supposed to do? What use is having visions if I can’t do anything about them?”
“You need to stay focused on the big picture here, Adrien,” the other voice said. It must be his mother. “There are too many lives at risk to act so impulsively. If you compromise your mission, it puts all of us in danger. We can’t afford it. There’s too much at stake, and you know it.”
“How can you say that?” Adrien slammed something loudly, maybe the wall or a counter. “What the crackin’ hell have we been fighting for all these years? To stop this kind of thing from ever being able to happen again! To stop the Uppers from treating people like tools or stock animals instead of human beings.”
“You could have been caught!” his mother hissed. “Our safe-house location could have been compromised. We have a protocol for a reason. She’s just one girl! I thought you understood that, or I never would’ve let you go.”
“As if you could have stopped me. And she’s not just some girl. You know she’s not.”
“Certainly not. She almost tore this place apart in her sleep. She’s completely out of control, and bound to be more dangerous than useful. Your visions alone are not enough to justify putting all of the Rez in jeopardy.”
Adrien’s mother sighed. “Ever since the first vision when you started talking about this girl nonstop, your judgment has been off. Your teenage hormones and overactive imagination have made you obsessed. You’re inventing reasons why she should be important! She is not the princess locked away in the fortress and you are not some hero who’s going to save her.”
“Stop it!” Adrien yelled. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. The Rez believes me about her. I’m not a shuntin’ kid anymore, and I know the difference between visions and fantasy. I know what I saw was real.”
There was a harsh laugh in response. “Okay, you’re not a child? Then stop acting like one. If I hadn’t had the epi on hand, she would have died. Do you realize that? Then where would your visions have been?”
I let out a loud groan. Like I’d hoped, they quieted and after the sound of chairs scraping on a wood floor, I felt the cool touch of Adrien’s hand on top of mine.
“Zoe, you awake?”
I nodded my head infinitesimally, then cracked my eyes open. I saw the blurry outline of his head. He pushed back some hair that had fallen in my face. His cool hand was soothing. My whole face felt stiff and a little swollen, like I was wearing someone else’s skin.
“Wh-wha happen?” I asked, my voice raspy. My lips were too big and my mouth tasted funny.
“Here, drink some water if you can.” Adrien lifted a glass to my lips. I sipped slowly.
“You had a severe allergic reaction,” he said. “Probably to the pollen or something, we don’t know yet.” He swallowed hard, his jaw working as he leaned down closer. “I’m so sorry, Zoe.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I managed. My mouth felt a little better after I sipped the water. I lifted a shaky hand and took the glass from him to drink some more.
“Still.” He shook his head and looked angry at himself.
I took another sip and was finally able to open my eyes all the way and take in my surroundings. We were in a small room but it didn’t feel cramped. It was dark, with stained wooden walls, and there weren’t any windows but I was pretty sure we were underground. The air smelled different. Cooler, less moist. I was lying on a worn couch with a faded flower design. A few pillows had been put under my back and head to prop me up.
I was wearing fresh gray clothes too and my hair was clean, but everything else in the room was in complete disarray. Overturned stuffed chairs, pillows tossed about. A table was knocked over in the middle of the floor, a chipped leg pointing straight up. A mug lay next to it, broken and resting in a dark wet puddle. I had never seen anything that wasn’t orderly and perfectly organized. This was complete chaos. Then I remembered what I had overheard a moment before.
“Did … did I do this?” I asked, pointing around the room.
Adrien smiled, looking almost proud. “It was impressive. I’ve never seen anything like it. A little like being inside a tornado. Seriously, the other Gifteds are going to be amazed when they meet you.” He paused when he noticed the look on my face. “Don’t worry about it. Really. Nothing was damaged, and it’s all just junk anyway.”
Adrien gestured to the woman standing in the shadowed corner. “This is my mother, Sophia. She washed all the allergens off you, so you should be fine here, for now. You’re safe.”
/> She stepped forward and I got to see the face of the woman with the angry voice. She wasn’t what I’d expected. She was thin, with long gray-blond hair that had been twisted into a ton of tiny ropes that hung halfway down her back. Her skin was dark but not caramel like Adrien’s—hers looked worn and leathery. She was wearing green trousers and a sleeveless undershirt. Her eyes were keen but a little glazed like she was tired. I nodded to her, unsure of what to say and wondering if she knew I’d heard most of their conversation about me.
“Greetings,” I said, using the Community salutation without thinking.
She raised one slim eyebrow. “Greetings,” she said caustically, then shook her head and left the room through a side door.
“She does not approve of me.” I stared after her.
“Ignore her,” Adrien said. “She’s just…” He paused, looking after her with a frustrated look. “Just … my mom.
“Anyway.” He came closer. “I’m so glad you’re awake. You scared the cracking hell out of me. You’d stopped breathing and I was so afraid—” He shook his head like clearing away the memory. “Luckily Mom keeps an epinephrine shot in her med kit. Can you sit up? Or do you need to rest more?”
“I want to sit.” I tried to push myself up with my tired arms. I felt more exhausted than I had in my entire life. Adrien sprang up and helped me into a sitting position, arranging the pillows behind my head so I didn’t have to hold it up on my own.
“Do you think you can eat?” He handed me a plate with a few pieces of buttered bread. I took it eagerly. I was starving.
“This tastes good,” I said, my mouth full of bread. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days.
He smiled and pulled a chair close, sitting quietly while I ate. I chewed slowly. He was so kind, so concerned about me. Someone who understood. I couldn’t keep my gaze away from him. The strong line of his jaw, his sharp aquiline nose, thick eyebrows. And then those clear crystalline eyes.
“Zo? Something wrong?” he asked.
“No. I just like looking at you.”
“Oh.” A flush came into his cheeks and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. But he smiled quickly and leaned closer. “I like looking at you too.”
I smiled, and it actually felt natural on my face. I liked the idea of him looking at me that way. And it felt so nice to be able to move my face into so many different expressions without fear of being seen, caught, and deactivated.
“So, do you like our secret hideout?” He laughed. “Actually, it’s an old bomb shelter. So far Comm Corp hasn’t discovered it yet. Mom and I stumbled across it years ago and come back to it every now and then.”
He sat back, stretching his arms up to lace his fingers behind his head as he looked around the room. His shirt was tight on his chest when he did that, showing his lean, sharp muscles moving underneath. He was skinny, but far from emaciated. I could see the outline of his ribs when he took a deep breath, but then my eyes followed the line of his torso up to his wider, wiry-but-still-muscled chest. His lips curled up on the edges, smirking at some thought that had crossed his mind. My breath seemed to leave me again as I watched him.
I looked back at his face, and was startled to meet his eyes. One side of his lips quirked up further into a wide smile.
I turned away quickly, trying to relax my face into something more casual.
“I heard you and your mother talking. About visions of me. What did you mean?”
He fiddled with the edges of a blanket that had fallen off me.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that. She can be crackin’ harsh. I know she means well, but—” He hesitated, studying me, as if he were about to say something else. He shook his head, quickly changing his mind. “Yeah. I had visions of you. Sometimes my visions help us discover and track down new glitchers so we can try to get them out before the Community cracks them. You were my assignment at the Academy, and then I saw you get in trouble, so I did an emergency extraction. There’s always a risk, but I don’t regret it, not for a second.” His gaze was intense before he looked away again. “My mom is … well, she’s a mom. She worries. And she always gets more nervous than usual when we come back this way. She grew up out here.”
“In the Resistance? I mean, the Rez?”
“No.” Adrien shook his head. “She grew up like you—under V-chip control, in the Community.”
I could feel my eyes widen. “Really? How did she escape?”
“She started glitching. Hers was the first generation we know of that had some who were Gifted. Still, it was rare. My dad…” He paused. I couldn’t read the expression on his face—it looked like a mixture of pride and sadness at the same time. “They had some Rez informants in the schools. One of them noticed her. Dad got her out and then they just kinda fell in love.”
“Fell in love?” I frowned. “Love makes you fall?”
He laughed a little. He paused, looking up toward his brain, something I noticed he did when he was thinking. “It’s just a saying. It means that two people start loving each other. I guess because it can feel really sudden and because it’s powerful. Like gravity—an unstoppable force.”
I was still puzzling out the concept. “It sounds violent.”
He laughed and nodded. “But in a good way.”
I was amazed. I’d read so many confusing things about emotions in the history archives, but love was the most confusing of all. A thrill prickled as I realized I was actually talking to someone who’d really experienced all of these confusing emotions and could help me understand.
“Have you ever fallen? In love, I mean?”
He laughed again but it sounded different, higher pitched than normal. He shifted in his seat. “I’ll get back to you on that one.”
I nodded. I guessed not even someone who was born outside of the Community could know everything. We were quiet a few moments, but it was a comfortable quiet. Silence usually meant I was glitching, which meant I was separate and all alone, but this was strange—it was a together kind of quiet. I studied Adrien’s profile, his long face and the triangle shadows underneath his sharp cheekbones.
“Can you tell me more about the Rez?”
He looked at me, a small smile on his face.
“I suppose now that you’re here, you’ll probably meet some of them soon. And other Gifteds, like us. Some of us were born out here, outside of the Community, and others escaped. There’s plenty of people out here in hiding, on the run, out on deserted land or in abandoned buildings. Not everyone’s in the Rez. Me and Mom, we were on our own for a while. She didn’t want anything to do with the Rez, not that she’ll tell me why. I think she had some vision of it.” His smile ebbed as he looked in the direction she’d left.
“Anyway, I got tired of living on the run instead of fighting back. When my Gift started coming in, I dunno.” He shrugged. “For me, it’s like I knew life was supposed to be bigger—that I was supposed to be doing something more. With the things I’ve seen—the drone labor in the mines, not to mention the farms—”
He shuddered. “I just knew that a Gift like mine meant, I dunno,” he looked up, “it meant that I had a responsibility to use it well.”
I knew so little about the world he had seen, but his feelings connected with something deep inside me, a sharp pang of recognition.
“Duty,” I said, nodding slowly. “Duty is important.” It was something we were taught in the Community. A wave of guilt swept through me. Just yesterday I had thought duty meant turning myself in to the Regulators. Now I didn’t know what to think.
Adrien seemed to sense my confusion.
“Duty is important when you’re working for something worthwhile,” he amended.
“But how do you tell the difference?” I frowned. “Good and bad look the same sometimes.”
He shrugged. “You just gotta keep asking questions to find out more. And then just follow your intuition. Your conscience.”
“Conscience?”
“Oh, right.” He sounde
d surprised, giving a small laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t know. It’s, uh, knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. Your conscience is the part of you that makes you want to do good and help people.”
I looked at him quizzically. “It’s part of me? Where?”
He laughed again. It was a warm hearty sound that made my chest curl in happiness. “Sorry, you’d think I’d be better at explaining all of this by now. Usually I have more time to prepare a glitcher for the outside world. And being around you, I just get…”
His face colored as he looked away. “Anyway, a conscience isn’t like a physical part of you. It’s just there, or it should be there, in everyone. It’s part of what makes us human. Sometimes you can feel it. Right here.” He reached out, hesitating just above my heart monitor, pausing. Then he looked into my eyes and dropped his hand.
I frowned. “But what about my Gift? Where does that come from?”
Adrien scooted back in his chair. “The easy answer is evolution. That’s how I always start off explaining it anyway. They started shunting around with our brains and inserting all that cracking hardware. They thought they could get total control over people. But they forgot one of the basics of life on Earth—” His eyes sparkled as he leaned in, grinning conspiratorially. “—organisms adapt!”
“Old World scientists called it ‘plasticity.’ Basically, the brain can rewire itself even if crucial parts are damaged. Evolution might be the wrong word—it’s not like glitchers are a new species. Just highly adapted. We’ve started developing abilities that get around their programming, making neural connections to subvert the hardware. Even with all our tech, the brain is something we’ve never completely understood.” His hand movements grew wilder as he got excited. “Maybe it’s something that can’t be completely understood. There’s still so much mystery. Not to mention the parts about being human that are simply—” He lifted his hands. “—intangible. Like our souls or spirits, or whatever it is that makes us us.”
“Souls?” I arched my eyebrows, barely stopping myself from scoffing. “Like in the barbarian Old World religions?”