I shook my head to get rid of my mounting fear. “No gravity,” I whispered, and suddenly the elevator’s brake gear had snapped and we were shooting up the tube. Light from the broken door sparked as we went. I only slowed us down as we came to the top floor. The elevator car shook as I tried to hold it steady long enough for everyone to get out. I could feel the edges of my control unraveling.
I exited last and then slipped and fell to my knees.
The floor was slick with blood. I barely held back a scream as I saw the Rez fighters we’d left at the top of the elevator were dead, torn apart by laser fire.
“Oh my God,” Adrien said.
Tavid was dead, too. Cole let out a strangled noise when he saw him. He handed Taylor off to one of the Rez fighters who’d come up the elevator with us.
The laser barrels clicked to life above our heads. They must be motion sensitive. I’d been barely able to hold the elevator. I didn’t know if I could split my focus enough to disable them. But before I could even rally my telek to try, Cole leapt up, his hydraulic legs hissing as he launched himself toward the weapons. He ripped them off the ceiling before they could fire.
I couldn’t stop staring at the dead soldiers. My breath stopped in my chest. This was all wrong. None of this was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission. No one was supposed to die.
A Rez fighter ran down the hall toward us from the entrance. “Someone’s trying to remote hack the transport. We need the techer right now.”
“Go.” I pushed Adrien ahead. “We’ll get the others.”
He hesitated.
“There’s no time. If they hack the transport, none of us are getting out of here.”
He nodded and ran after the Rez fighter.
I clicked my wrist com, but still there was no answer from the other group. “Why aren’t they answering?” I didn’t dare voice my real fear: What if they were already dead?
“Take Taylor back to the transport,” I said to the Rez fighters with us, before turning to the ex-Regs. “You two come with me, we’ve got to help the other group get out.”
They nodded and we ran down the hallway. I couldn’t hear anything from the other end. No laser fire, no screams. What was happening down there? My legs pumped fast even though I was exhausted from using my telek so much. I’d never done anything as energy-intensive as raising that elevator.
Suddenly the silence became complete. I couldn’t even hear my own huffing breath. It was like we’d passed through some invisible wall where all sound was cut off.
I turned to the ex-Regs. “What’s going on?” I yelled. My voice made no sound.
The ex-Regs barely even paused. They gestured to one another with what looked like military hand signs and kept running to the end of the hallway. I remembered from the projected schematics that the hallway turned a sharp corner before the last stretch that opened to the circular room where the glitcher cells were. I hurried to move around the corner, but Cole grabbed my arm to hold me back.
He mouthed something I couldn’t understand. Eli peered around the corner quickly and then pulled back. He made two sharp forward motions with his arms and then we were running again. Cole and Eli ran side by side in front of me, blocking my sight of what was ahead and shielding me. The hallway seemed to go on forever. All I could see were flashes of light from over their heads. Whatever was going on at the end of it looked like a firefight. I tried to push in between the ex-Regs, but they stayed locked shoulder to shoulder.
Until they were blown backward off their feet. Eli’s heavy body landed on my leg and took me down with him. My head cracked on the ground and the building shook as a wave of blue light burst past us. The ex-Regs were quickly on their feet again, and Cole hauled me up as well. I screamed as I tried to stand and looked down. My left ankle hurt like hell when I tried to put weight on it, but at least my suit hadn’t ripped. I held on to the wall for support.
A girl surrounded by a bright blue orb blocked the entryway to the room. She had to be a glitcher. Through the undulating blue light, I could see Rand, City, and several others standing on the other side. They were alive. A flurry of relief rushed through me.
The girl’s back was turned to us. At first I thought she was one of the glitchers we’d been sent to free, fighting alongside my team. Then I saw a crackling spiral of electricity burst from City’s fingertips, aimed at the orb. The electricity hit it, but didn’t penetrate. That was when I realized the girl with the orb wasn’t helping us at all. She was trapping everyone inside.
Cole and Eli unloaded laser rounds that bounced harmlessly off the glowing shield. The girl turned to look at us. A flash of recognition or relief seemed to pass over her face as she saw me. She made a slight motion with her arms. The momentum of an energy wave built in the orb surrounding her, and released outward in a concentric circle.
I tried to cast my telek to stop it, but I couldn’t sense it at all. I couldn’t hear the buzzing in my ears either. I had no idea if I even had any energy left, I’d already used it so much tonight. The wave hit me before I could make any sense of it, and I was knocked off my feet again. It dissipated and passed into the walls with a foundation- shaking quake.
I tried to motion to Eli to charge the girl, but he must have misinterpreted me, because he picked me up and ran with me toward her instead. Her eyes were fixated on me as we got closer. I desperately tried to find any thread of telek I could. If I could just cast a web around her, disable her like I had the Regs or stop her heart— anything to drop her so everyone else could get out of here before the next wave of reinforcements arrived. Or worse, the Chancellor herself.
The girl released another wave and I felt the adrenaline surge inside me as I braced for the blow. While the wave hit like a sledgehammer to the chest, Eli stayed on his feet. Everyone else had been blown back again, but Eli kept advancing forward. It was my telek, it must be at least partially working. The girl’s eyes widened as we kept pushing forward, even through the next wave she released.
I tried to expand my telek outward to get to her, but I could only barely sense the room in my head. My mental projection cube kept cutting in and out. My body felt flayed by the bursts of blue light. I didn’t know how long I could keep this up. When the next wave hit, Eli stumbled backward, dropping me.
Then suddenly the girl in front of us sank to the ground. I scrambled to sit up, looking around.
Stunned, I saw Tyryn standing behind her, holding a tranq gun steady. He must have shot her in the split second after she’d released the orb, before she could build another one. She’d been so distracted watching me, she hadn’t even seen him come up behind her. Three tranq rounds stuck out of her neck.
I got to my feet, gritting my teeth against the roaring pain in my ankle, and hobbled into the huge room. We’d gotten here at the end of the fight. Rand, City, and Tyryn were the only ones left standing. The ex-Reg, Wytt, slowly got to his feet, part of his chest plate scorched black.
Bodies were strewn all over the ground. And so much blood. Some wore the gray and green of the Rez fighters. A few others I didn’t recognize, but they looked like teenagers. Glitchers, no doubt. Smoke filled the air. Weapon racks on the ceiling were melted and still burned orange. A few molten drops dripped onto the ground below. Clearly Rand’s handiwork. Half of the left wall was cut up by laser fire, exposing the steel support beams.
“We’ve got to go!” I shouted. Still my voice made no sound.
I’d thought the girl with the orb had also been controlling the silence, but she was knocked out, and no more glitchers were standing. At least that we could see. I felt my heartbeat ratchet up a notch. Ginni had said there were ten glitchers here. Three were on the floor, so where were the others?
City and Rand helped a fallen Rez fighter to his feet. I closed my eyes and concentrated, but between my exhaustion and the silence that quieted the buzz I usually used as a guide, my connection to my telek was unsteady. When it cut in again, I felt the whole room in my head. I grabbed it and tried to hold on. For a moment I managed, and expanded farther beyond the wall.
And that’s when I felt them. There were people huddled in tiny cells beyond the wall, no bigger than the room I’d been closed in for months at the research lab. The bodies were too small to be Regs. They had to be the Chancellor’s other glitchers.
I hesitated for a moment. The girl with the orb was clearly working for the Chancellor voluntarily. But if these glitchers were a danger, wouldn’t they have attacked already? I steeled myself. We had failed part of our mission, but we could still accomplish this objective. I had to try.
