deep breath. I had to get to the centered, calm place where I could access my power steadily.
A boy with round cheeks and unkempt dark hair ran in. He seemed somehow familiar, but I couldn’t remember his name. He inserted a drive into the wall near the door projection panel. The heavy door slowly began moving in its tracks just as I got hold of my telek again.
“Stop!” I suddenly screamed and ran forward. The boy jumped, pulling out the drive so that the door closed again.
“What is it?” the boy asked nervously.
I closed my eyes, centering myself and managing to calmly call my telek. Something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.
“There are only ten of us in this room,” I finally said, blinking hard and trying to sift through my confused overlapping senses, between what I saw and what I felt.
“And?” Tyryn asked, shifting so his hand was on his weapon.
“I feel eleven bodies.”
Chapter 26
“WHERE?” TAYLOR ASKED. Everyone swung around to look at the people around them.
I closed my eyes, trying to feel out the shape I’d sensed a moment ago. But there was too much movement in the room. I couldn’t track down which one was Max.
“Everyone stop moving!” I shouted in frustration.
They stilled, but then I was thrown by the entire lack of movement. Where did he go?
I opened my eyes and tried to match up the objects I sensed with the things I saw. I gasped. “There!” I pointed. “Hunched by the door!”
He bolted toward the hallway at the sound of my voice.
I ran after him. I sent my telek ahead and locked on to him as he sprinted down the hallway. It was easy now that there was no one else around. I expanded outward as we ran, keeping the projection of the whole corridor in my head. My fury focused my telek. I was single-minded. When Max ducked into the training center, I easily followed him.
I knew what he was doing—trying to get lost among the shapes of all the other people—but I wouldn’t let him. Jilia and City looked up in surprise as I ran past, but my focus was only on Max. He was still invisible to everyone else, but I’d locked my telek around him. I knew when he looked over his shoulder. I could feel the adrenaline pulsing off him. I could probably use my power to stop him mid-step, but I didn’t dare do anything that might split my focus.
He made it out of the training center right as I got close. The door dropped shut behind him, and I slammed into it with my full body, unable to stop in time. The pain disrupted my telek for a second. I impatiently clicked the door open, the whole time feeling beyond it. I locked on to him again as he slipped through the next door into the equipment room. He was probably counting on me continuing to chase down the hallway, not realizing he’d stopped to hide. He’d either underestimated me or was too desperate to think straight. All he’d really done was trap himself.
I opened the equipment room door, then tore it off the tracks and lodged it mangled sideways into the door frame so it wouldn’t open again. Max wasn’t going anywhere.
“What have you done?” I screamed, barely conscious of the wild rage in my voice.
Only silence greeted me, but I could feel his form huddled in the far corner. I lifted my arms and shook the shelves around him with my telek.
He flattened down on the ground.
I lifted one arm, teleking a net around him and then hefting him upward by his neck. I heard a gasp of pain and walked closer, my arm still raised.
He flickered in and out of invisibility, probably from the shock of pain, and I could once again see his face. His hands were at his throat, trying to pry the invisible grip of my power off him. I threw him against the wall hard and pinned him there. I tightened my fingers, cinching his throat closed and lifting him higher off the ground.
“No more games. No more manipulation. Just the truth.” My voice was ice. “What has she done with him?”
I dropped him to the ground so he could answer. He doubled over gasping for breath. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice raw. “I only know she always planned to keep him alive. She needed his visions. I was just supposed to switch places with him, drop him in the bomb-safe bunker, and then get on the transport with any survivors so I could infiltrate the Rez.” His eyebrows furrowed. “Look, Zoe, you gotta believe me. I’ll tell you everything now, I swear.”
I scoffed. “Believe you? You’re the Chancellor’s spy. You helped her try to kill me during the raid!”
He bobbed his head and looked down. “I asked the Chancellor to use her compulsion to make me stop loving you. And she tried. For a while it worked. I hated you. But then,” he looked back up at me, “when I saw you again at the raid and the Chancellor wasn’t around to compel me, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let you die. I cut the fuse that led to the explosives in the second half of the building. I’m trying to tell you I’ve changed.” His voice was pleading. “Coming back here with you, getting away from the Chancellor’s compulsion, I feel different. I see now that I was wrong—”
“Liar. You’re only saying that now because you’ve been caught!” I yelled. “Did you manage to get any messages to the Chancellor?”
Max paused, breathing heavily like he was trying to get his emotions in check. “I tried. I planned to use my own Link signal to contact the Chancellor until I found out that part of the security system here jams all wireless signals. I started looking for other ways to rig the system, but there’s a glitcher boy who’s always in the security hub. Any headway I’d make in my plans to get a message out, I’d forget the next day because of him. I started writing everything down.”
Max rubbed his throat and took a deep swallow. “But I was never a very good techer and Simin had insane redundancies for monitoring outgoing packet streams. I couldn’t find a way to get past them, especially while he was there and always watching.”
“What about the secret security project you were working on?” I asked, trying to reign in my anger and keep my voice as calm and reasonable as possible.
“There never was any project. I just made that up as an excuse for why I was busy all the time. I couldn’t handle being around you at first. I was still so angry.”
“And the kitchen fire,” I said, clenching my hands into fists. “That was you, wasn’t it? Not Saminsa.”
He nodded. “A diversion. I tried to get a message out while everyone was distracted. But Simin had the system locked down while we were at lunch. He trusted me enough by that point to share the security codes, but like most things he told me, I forgot them before I had a chance to write them down. Then I learned that you were able to Link yourself at night when you sleep. I knew it had to mean they’d opened up a wireless channel just for your Link frequency. I came up with the idea of piggybacking off your signal. There was a transmitter hidden in the necklace I gave you that copied the frequency.”
A rush of hatred choked me in spite of my determination to stay calm. He’d used me. Used my weaknesses and my trust. And then let it all fall on Saminsa. I ripped the necklace off and flung it to the floor.
“And then you dared to pretend to be him. All this time. You let me kiss you. That date—” I shuddered even thinking about it and rubbed my lips harshly, as if I could scrub away all traces of him. I felt like mud had been wiped over every inch of my skin he’d touched. I squeezed my eyes closed. To think that I’d mourned him when I thought he’d died. Everyone else could see what I’d let myself be blind to—there had never been any redeeming qualities in the monster in front of me.
“But I couldn’t bring myself to send the message, Zoe. I took the data from the necklace and was about to send the Chancellor a message. But then I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it, don’t you get it? I still love you.” He leaned toward me. I held up a hand, wrapping my power around him like a straight jacket to keep him away from me.
“Why did you blame it on Saminsa then?”
