“The suit won’t interfere with the scan?” I asked.
“Nope, no problem at all. Now let me hook this up here—” She hooked a cable into the machine, then sat at the chair in front of the console. A few more clicks and I heard the machine beside my head whir to life. “Now lay as still as you can,” she said.
I looked at the ceiling and tried not to twitch. The machine clicked and rotated around my head, making a complete circle. My eyes tracked the spinning metal arms.
After a few more moments, Jilia announced, “All done. Now, let’s look at the data.” The excitement in her voice was palpable. Adrien pulled the scanner away from the sides of my head and helped me sit up.
“If you can tell I’m a glitcher from a brain scan, why can’t the Community? Or the Chancellor? She could use it to find potential glitchers and recruit them.”
Jilia was typing and clicking on the console. “Luckily, their equipment isn’t as fine-tuned as this. I’ve spent years developing software to detect these subtle differences, and only because I knew what I was looking for. The best the Chancellor could do is detect glitcher brain activity after six months of glitching. And by then, the glitcher has usually been reported and ‘repaired’ or been rescued by us.”
She leaned in closer to the screen, looking at what was just a long string of gibberish to me. “Wow,” she breathed out.
“What is it?” Adrien moved in closer.
“I’ll show you,” Jilia said. “It’ll be easier than trying to explain it.” She tapped on the screen a few more times, then turned to the projection cube. “This is a typical brain.”
An image of a brain rotated in the orange light. “This is what a non-glitcher brain looks like. The sparks of blue represent neuron activity.” She pointed at various portions of the brain where minuscule blue dots lit up, making small bright clouds. “And this—” she said, then tapped the screen a few times, “is a glitcher brain.”
I leaned. “They look the same to me.”
“Here, I’ll show them side by side. See the frontal cortex here on the glitcher brain?”
I looked closer, glancing back and forth between the two images. “There’s more blue light,” I said, looking up at Jilia.
She smiled. “Exactly. At first we thought glitchers simply had an increased neural capacity due to the brain adapting around the Link hardware the Community installed. But now, it’s clear that the actual number of neurons has been increasing exponentially. There are genes that usually lay dormant that, in glitcher brains, are finally finding expression. The electrical impulses and connections your brain is able to make—it’s not the same leap as the difference between primates and humans, but it’s still impressive.”
Jilia tapped in the screen a few more times. “Now, hold on. This is Zoe’s brain.” The blue lights on the new model covered almost the entire frontal lobe. Adrien gasped and took a step back. I blinked, certain I was seeing it wrong.
“But what does that mean?” I asked. I was suddenly queasy. My powers, the uncontrollable seizures, Adrien’s visions of me as a powerful leader. All of it must be explained by the brain scan in front of me. Solid proof that I was different. My stomach dropped. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to have all this power capped up inside me. I just wanted to be a regular glitcher.
“To be honest, I don’t know.” Jilia’s eyes were still trained on the model, and as she leaned in to look closer, her face was bathed in reflected blue light. “I’ve never seen this before.” I couldn’t read the look on her face—it seemed like a mixture of surprise and excitement. It was clear Jilia only saw strength and possibility when she looked at the model of my brain, but I saw it for what it really was: dangerous.
“Do you have any unusual symptoms? Headaches? Surges in power? New abilities?”
I glanced at Adrien. “Sometimes I lose control, and I feel like it’s too powerful to fit inside my skin.”
Jilia nodded. “Training for you is going to be a bit difficult because we’ve never seen anything like you before. I’m not sure how best to tap into it and control it, but we can experiment with a few different methods.”
She looked away from the screen. “You might be the most powerful glitcher in the new generation, perhaps even the most powerful we’ve ever seen. I can see now that there could be truth to all of Adrien’s visions, Zoe. Perhaps you’ll be able to save us after all.” Her voice held a note of awe.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to convince her that she was wrong. I wasn’t special. Maybe even Adrien’s visions were wrong. I didn’t have a clue how to save anyone, couldn’t they see that?
Adrien leaned in, his expression dark and withdrawn as his eyes flickered over the data on the scan. He didn’t look at me, and I couldn’t tell what he must be thinking, but his silence sent a chill through me.
Chapter 5
DURING OUR LATE BREAKFAST, Jilia explained the results of my brain scan to Tyryn. “It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Tyryn was a friendly guy, just a few years older than Adrien and me. I’d never seen anyone with such a developed physique. His arm muscles strained the sleeves of his shirt. He also had a wide scar from forehead to chin. The angry line of healed skin was shiny against the dark brown skin of his face.
“General Taylor will be pleased to hear it,” Tyryn said, finishing his last bite of an omelet and then sitting back in his chair. I could feel his eyes on me, assessing me. “She’s asked me to head up a new glitcher task force. We’ll start training when we get to the Foundation.”
“What?” I nearly choked on the gritty protein mix coming through my straw. “But—” I started, then stopped. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“Don’t worry,” Tyryn said, his voice calm. “I’ve actually never trained a team of glitchers before, but I’ve been training Rez recruits for eight years. We won’t put you in the field until you’re ready.”
“It’s not just the, um, fighting I’m worrying about,” I said, looking between him and Jilia. “It’s my power. It’s getting harder and harder to control.”
Tyryn turned to Jilia. “You’ve studied glitchers. What do you think?”
“Telekinesis is a unique ability with its own set of obstacles,” Jilia said. “It’s not like other glitchers can tear a room apart if their power goes haywire.”
I looked down. “But do you have any idea why it’s gotten so out of control lately? Does that happen to other people?”
“Most glitchers experience an expansion of their powers as they grow into them. And glitcher powers are so closely connected to the emotion centers of the brain. You’ve been through a lot lately and you’re still so new to feeling emotion of any kind, it makes sense that overwhelming emotion would make your power erupt in unpredictable ways.” She leaned in, her eyes compassionate. “Most people have seventeen years to learn how to deal with emotions. You’ve only had eight months. But Zoe, I do think that with some discipline and practice, you’ll learn to control it again.”
“Jilia’s helped me before,” Adrien said, eyeing the older woman. “I wasn’t having exactly the same kind of problems, obviously, but she worked with me to help focus my visions through meditation. She can help you, Zoe.” He turned to Jilia. “You’re coming with us to the Foundation, right?”
“Oh,” Jilia hesitated, pushing her food around on the plate with her fork. It was the first time her excitement had flagged since she’d looked at my scans. “I’m not sure. I’m more helpful here in the field.”
“From what General Taylor was saying,” Tyryn cut in, “the Foundation’s almost completely finished, and it’s already her new base of operations. We’ll need a good doctor.”