area to indicate where he meant. “The armor here is thinner, to allow full dexterity of movement. This is the one place that, with repeated fire with the highest velocity laser weapon, a Reg can be killed.”
“Stop it!”
We all turned at the sound. Cole stepped forward. Usually the ex-Regs’ faces were completely placid, but Cole looked visibly angry. Heat flushed his cheeks.
“We shouldn’t be training to kill Regs,” he said. “We should be trying to save them.”
Xona let out a disgusted noise. “The only safe Reg is a dead one. Look at its arm—it was made for killing.”
Cole dropped his arm, hiding the double-barreled weapons embedded in it behind his back as if he was self-conscious.
“It’s not our fault,” he said, his face flushed. I was shocked to see an ex-Reg displaying so much emotion. “You have no idea what it was like when our V-chips were destroyed. We woke up to find that our lives had been stolen from us and that hardware invaded every inch of our bodies. But underneath all this,” he pointed to the metal plate on his chest, “is still something that deserves saving. We deserve as much of a chance at a normal life as you do.”
“You could only be rescued because you were young enough to handle the destruction of your V-chip architecture.” Tyryn’s voice was calm, gentle even. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible for full-grown adult Regs. We can’t save them. In a fight, they’ll be coming at us to kill. Deactivating them is the only option, getting a kill shot if possible.” He continued his presentation with the laser on the 3-D model. “Now, like I was saying, if you hit here at just the right angle—”
Heavy footsteps interrupted him. Cole strode from the room, slamming the door button with his heavy fist and stomping through it when it opened.
“Good riddance,” Xona said under her breath.
I looked back and forth between the door and Xona, then over my shoulder at the three other ex-Regs. They didn’t looked fazed by Cole’s anger. Their blank expressions gave me a chill.
“Now line up,” Tyryn said, ignoring the interruption. “You’ll each take turns with the laser-round and continuous-fire-stream weapons.”
Adrien wasn’t at dinner that night, but as we were finishing, he sent me a message over the com in my arm panel.
Ginni held her hands to her chest. “That’s so romantic. I wish I had a boy to send me messages to meet in the middle of the night.” She sighed dramatically.
“It’s seven o’clock,” Xona said. “That’s hardly the middle of the night.”
“Well that part doesn’t matter. All that’s important is that they can have some time alone.” She lifted her eyebrows significantly at Xona and leaned in. “They haven’t had a chance to be alone since she’s been out of the suit.”
“I am sitting right here, you know.”
“Oops, I’m getting carried away again.” She looked down and put her hands in her lap. “Professor Henry warned me not to do that.”
I looked over at Xona, wondering if she had any idea what Ginni was talking about now, but she shrugged. I looked at the message again.
“Do you guys know where the security hub is?”
“Security hub?” Ginni asked. She looked at Xona with a frown. “I’ve never heard of it. How have I never heard of it?”
“Oh never mind,” I said, looking at my arm panel. “He sent directions.”
Ginni smiled again. “If he’s telling you to meet him in some part of the Foundation we’ve never heard of, it’s definitely because he wants to be alone with you!” She reached out and took my hand. “Promise you’ll tell me all about it? Best friends share all their secrets.”
Considering how Ginni usually handled secrets, I wasn’t too excited about sharing mine, but I still returned her smile.
As I walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help getting swept up in Ginni’s giddy enthusiasm.
Right before the boys’ dorm rooms was a door labeled TO SUBLEVEL. I pressed my thumb against the panel at the side and it slid open, revealing a stairwell leading down. Of course. If there was a room Ginni didn’t know about, it had to be in the military level of the Foundation.
I went down the stairs and followed a short hallway until I came to the door Adrien had indicated. I stepped into a room with a wall covered in projected monitors, floor to ceiling. There was a bed in one corner, and Adrien sat in the middle of the room at a console desk that curved in a large C around several chairs. A boy I’d never seen before sat beside him.
My heart sank. We weren’t going to be alone after all.
Adrien jumped to his feet when he saw me. “Zoe, I’m so glad you’re here. This is Simin,” he gestured to the other boy. Simin was dark-haired, with big round cheeks. He didn’t look up when Adrien introduced him.
“Simin.” Adrien nudged the boy in his shoulder.
“No point,” Simin grumbled. “She’ll just forget.”
“You know what the Professor says. Repeated exposure could help you stick longer in people’s memories.”
Adrien turned back to me. “Simin’s the glitcher whose power keeps the Foundation invisible. I think maybe I told you about him before?”
I frowned. It seemed like I had heard something like that, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the specifics.
“Did I catch you in the middle of dinner?” Adrien asked.
I shook my head. “No, I was just chatting with Xona and Ginni.”
“Ginni?” Simin finally looked up at me. He seemed to be about our age. “Did she mention me?”
“No, she’d never heard of this place. Which surprised me, since Ginni seems to know everything and everyone.”
Simin looked down, and I could see the disappointment clearly on his face. “Not everyone.”
“Simin’s a top-notch techer,” Adrien said, patting his shoulder. “He’s been helping me with something. It’s about your older brother, Daavd.”
I felt my eyes widen. That was the last thing I’d expected. Unbidden images from my old nightmares flashed in my mind. My brother running in a forest. Swarms of Regulators charging through the trees after him. Him on the ground, broken, his eyes frozen on me, his little sister who’d raised the alarm. I swallowed hard.
“What about Daavd?”
“We’ve been hacking into the Community subject records for known glitchers.” Adrien gestured for me to sit on the empty seat beside him. “Mostly we’re looking for information on the glitchers we suspect the Chancellor is trying to recruit and the ones she might already have under her power. But we’ve been practicing our hack codes on older records that are less guarded and won’t raise alarms in their systems. So I thought I’d look into Daavd’s files…”
He started tapping on the console in front of him and opening several directories in the screens on the wall. He clicked through a few more screens then pointed. “The report says they were never able to discover how your brother got past Regulators, much less how he got you to go with him.”
He turned to me. “At first we thought maybe he was able to hack their security systems, but then Simin came up with a different theory. What if Daavd’s power was something similar to what the Chancellor can do?”
I shook my head. I might not remember him, but Daavd was my brother. There was no way he could be anything like the Chancellor.
But Adrien persisted. “Think about it, Zoe, why didn’t you turn your brother in much sooner than you did when he escaped with you as a child? Your first instinct under V-chip control would have been to report him to the
