easily feel out the entire shape of the room, but I pushed beyond it, farther and farther until the entire Foundation was a vibrating projection inside my head. It was a strange sensation; I could sense movement tugging at my scalp and from behind my eyes, like ants crawling in my skull. I tried to ignore it and focus on my objectives.
Moving bodies dotted my mind’s projection. One right outside the Med Center had the bulk of an ex-Reg. I paused, then continued exploring down the hallways. There, another one was in the corner of the Caf. The third stood by the wash-down station at the exit, and the fourth … where was the fourth?
I passed body after body—too slim, too short—but still couldn’t find the fourth ex-Reg. I breathed deep and pushed out a little farther, up the elevator shaft and all the way to the transport bay. I hadn’t gone this far before, and the projection shimmered and faltered in my head, as if it would collapse at any moment. I gritted my teeth and took several moments just to breathe, holding the image still. Two people stood in the transport bay, but one was larger than the other. Definitely an ex-Reg. He was standing beside the largest transport vehicle.
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, only holding on to the four ex-Regs and letting some of the other details of the rooms go. These were my targets. I pushed past their skin, through the metal and muscle and all the way to their spines. I counted down the notched vertebrae from the top to the C2. Jilia had assured me spinal reattachment was an easy surgery. I was glad to have found an alternative to killing the Regs. Even Taylor had reluctantly approved.
I stayed there a moment, holding the four spines with my mind before pulling back out of their bodies to the hardened plaster poles they held in their hands. I snapped all four poles at the same time, feeling them clatter to the floor beside the ex-Regs. I finally breathed out and pulled back.
I’d learned to sever my telek connection gradually, since doing it too quickly left me dizzy and nauseated. I slowly worked my way back, letting each room dissolve in my mind’s projection cube until I was back in my own body, looking out of my own eyes.
I felt Taylor’s narrowed gaze on me. “It’s done.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s keep going, to make sure your stamina can hold up. Can you continue?”
I swallowed. The truth was I felt light-headed and tired, but I didn’t want to admit it. “Be honest, Zoe,” said Jilia gently. “It won’t help anyone if you get on-site and aren’t able to perform.”
“I can keep going.”
“Good,” Taylor said. “Get into your suit; I’ll meet you in the transport bay.” She spun on her heel and left without another word.
I changed and took the elevator up. The bay was a low, wide space, with steel struts crisscrossed over our heads and down the walls. It was open to the Surface on one side, an uneven rectangle of light so bright I had to look away. I tugged nervously on my glove and took one more glance back at the green beyond the opening. I shivered despite the warmth of the suit.
General Taylor stood off to the side with Rand and one of the ex-Regs. A mountainous jumble of metal was beside Rand, melted beyond recognition. Parts burned orange around the edges. The ex-Reg, Eli, reached forward with a coolant tank. He released the top valve and liquid sprayed over the melted slag. Steam billowed off in clouds, but it didn’t injure the ex-Reg’s metal reinforced hands.
I came forward, familiar with the routine. Since we didn’t have spare giant metal doors lying around, Taylor had us train with a pile of steel left over from construction on the Foundation. Rand melted down more metal into the heap each day, making it heavier and heavier. By the time I reached them, the steam was gone, and only a swath of glistening icy coolant was left behind on the surface.
“Lift it,” Taylor said, a bit unnecessarily. I’d been doing this all week; I knew the drill. I closed my eyes and let the telek expand again. Almost immediately the transport bay filled the projection cube in my mind. I surrounded the slab of metal with my telek.
It was melted solid into the rock underneath, but as I poured more of my energy out, like a web surrounding it, I felt the satisfaction of knowing it didn’t matter. Weight didn’t matter, gravity didn’t matter. It was an object filling a space, and I could move any object as I chose. I knew later I’d feel the exhaustion of having used so much energy. But right now all I felt was the powerful sense of being in control. I’d been afraid my power was too much for a human body, but now that I’d managed control, all I could do was revel in it. My focus was sharp as I imagined molding myself and the rock together into one entity.
I lifted the half-ton weight with ease, dropped it down, then lifted it again three times.
When I put it down the last time and opened my eyes, I felt Rand’s and Taylor’s stares.
“Whoa,” Rand said.
Relief and anxiety both reared up in my chest. I’d passed the test and I felt ready, but at the same time, I’d never been truly tested in a mission before. Taylor led us back toward the elevator. I hurried after her, but when we got to the elevator, Adrien stepped out.
“Adrien,” I said in surprise. “What are you doing here?” We’d both been so busy with our separate training schedules that I’d barely seen him the past couple weeks.
He smiled. “I hoped I’d catch you. I thought since you were in your suit already maybe I could show you something.”
He looked at the General standing beside me and the edges of his smile drooped a little. “General,” he said with a slight nod.
She stiffened, but nodded back before stepping into the elevator.
I stared a moment, watching the General frown as the doors closed behind her. “Sometimes I don’t think the General likes glitchers.”
“She might not like us,” Adrien said, “but she knows she needs us.”
He looked down at the clock on his arm panel. “Come on, we’ve gotta go or we’re going to miss it.”
The grin was back on his face as he tugged on my arm and led me toward the bright Surface opening. As we got closer, the sunlight almost hurt my eyes, it was so intense. A small wave of anxiety swept over me. I knew I could trust my suit to protect me, but the Surface still filled me with an instinctual fear.
The light cut a sharp line at the end of the tunnel, like a dividing edge between underground and the Surface. I paused at the shadow’s edge.
Adrien had walked straight into the light. He held out a hand to me, and finally I reached for it. We stood there, arms stretched out between us for a long moment, one in sunlight, the other shadow, until he tugged me forward.
“Good,” he murmured, looking out. “We got here right at sunset.”
My eyes widened when I realized we were at the edge of a cliffside. Brush and tree branches extended overhead and around us to the side, but there was still a clear view of the valley and mountains in the distance.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Adrien whispered. “I thought you might like to remember what beauty looks like. That, out there, that’s freedom. Beauty. Life. Everything we’re fighting for.”
Mountain ranges spilled over each other, cascading down as if they’d been planted there just for the purpose of looking pretty. Peaks one after another, each giving dramatic backdrop to the last. And then there was the sky, full of colors like I’d never seen before. Purples, blues, pinks, and other hues everywhere in between.
I’d never thought of the Surface as beautiful. It was always a scary place, but the scene in front of me made my breath catch in my chest.
“It’s incredible,” I admitted with surprise. I turned to look at Adrien. The setting sun lit up his blue-green eyes, making them brilliantly translucent against the black of his pupils. He seemed so much lighter than he had been the last time we’d been alone together. Less weighed down. Even the shadows under his eyes didn’t seem as deep.
“There was a place like this where Mom and I lived for six months, in a cave up in the mountains. Every morning I’d walk down to this little stream that was half a mile from the cave. Everything was so green. Mom was always tense and on the lookout for flyovers. But I just looked.”
His eyes were bright as he talked. “I’d sit for hours underneath one of the thick trees near the cave. All kinds of animals would come up to me after awhile, if I sat still long enough. Squirrels would run right over my legs like I was just part of the tree roots, and I’d get this amazing sense of connection to everything around me. Life calling to life.”
He looked down, his smile dimming slightly. “I forgot about it for a while when I was training so hard to
