Read Online Shutdown (Glitch) by Heather Anastasiu - Free Book Online Page A

with!”
    “The Underchancellor is the problem,” Talon said. “It’s her we need to take out.”
    I nodded. He was right. Every attempt we’d made so far had failed. She was surrounded at all times by fifty Regs and an impressive band of glitchers she’d collected.
    But there was still one thing we hadn’t tried—sending me in alone to try to assassinate her.
    It would be risky. Maybe even a suicide mission. I’d wanted to exhaust every other possibility before I suggested it, but if it was that or letting them go ahead with the EMP option …
    Sanyez held up her hand. “We can talk about that next week when we reconvene. Right now we need to recoup, count our losses, and rest. Ali will send you the encryption pattern an hour before the next meeting as always. We must be more vigilant than ever about security protocols. Next year in freedom,” she finished, the standard council salutation.
    “Freedom for all,” we all responded back. Everyone in the Rez had grown up with the saying. It was always next year, never now.
    After I switched off the camera I sighed out a long breath and ran my hands through my still-wet hair. When I got up to walk to the Med Center, my steps were heavy. My whole body felt like lead. I didn’t want to think about any of it, any of the responsibilities of knowing the Rez was getting smaller every day or worrying about the refugees who would no doubt come clamoring to me tomorrow with more problems I didn’t have a solution to. I wished I had an off switch so I could stop caring about all of it.
    In spite of how I’d just avowed how important life and morality was, sometimes I worried that I was turning into General Taylor. I remembered when I first met her, I’d been shocked by her coldness. She seemed callous, uncaring about other people’s feelings, and, in the end, unconcerned with sacrificing millions of people. But she hadn’t been afraid of death either. She took on her duty as a mantle to the last moment when she’d decided to come with me against the Chancellor. Her last thought had been for the future of the Rez.
    I headed into the hallway and heard other footsteps echoing down the parallel corridor. I knew even without seeing him that it was the Professor. He paced the hallways now at night, like a ghost. He must hear me too on the nights I couldn’t sleep, but we kept to our separate hallways and never spoke of it. We insomniacs kept each other’s secrets.
    I listened to him now, aimlessly walking back and forth. I’d always thought of the General as a project of his, another person to save. But now I wondered if it wasn’t the other way around. He barely functioned without her. Did that mean he loved her more than she did him? If it had been the reverse, and he’d died, I knew she’d have gone on as if nothing had happened. Seeing Henry so broken made me wonder if her way wasn’t better. Maybe it was better not to love anything too much.
    But that didn’t stop me from walking to the darkened Med Center where Adrien lay submerged in the chamber in the corner. The sides were made of glass, and it was lit from underneath, which made the blue regrowth gel look luminescent. Otherworldly.
    Adrien’s slim form, wearing a tight bodysuit, seemed just as alien.
    An oxygen mask covered the lower half of his face, and wired patches were placed at strategic points around his body and all over his head. His eyes were closed.
    I put a hand to the side of the tank.
    His head moved so quickly to look at me, I almost fell over backwards. He stared at me, but nothing registered on his face. It was as if he was staring past me at the wall. His eyes seemed focused, but nothing else from his expression would suggest he knew me. I swallowed hard and leaned forward again. It was just the heavy sedatives Jilia had given him, I tried to reassure myself. The sessions in the chamber always lasted five days, and it was better if he could sleep through most of it. I placed my hand where