“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. He wants to be alone with you. My face broke into a grin at the thought. I looked at the directions lighting up my forearm and hurried down the main hallway, then cut across to the east wing by the training center.
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 Regulators, but you went along with him quietly. What if he could compel you to do what he wanted?”
“But then why didn’t it work?”
“Well,” Adrien’s voice had turned softer. He knew how much guilt I still felt about it all. “Maybe he had trouble with his Gift like you do, and it didn’t always work right. Just an instant of his losing control over you would have been enough time for you to call out to the Regulators and get him killed.”
“But the Chancellor has the same power.” A horrible thought struck me. “Are you saying that we’re somehow related to her?”
“No, no,” Adrien waved a hand. “Not at all. We just think that Daavd’s power is similar to hers and that the small dose of your early exposure to his power is why you can resist her now. There’s something unique about your body chemistry. It seems to work like your allergies do.”
Adrien turned to Simin. “You want to explain this part? You’re the one who made the connection.”
Adrien pushed his chair back a little so I could see across him to where Simin sat.
“So we know your extreme allergic reaction to Surface allergens is due to your earlier exposure as a child,” Simin said. He clicked through his console while he talked and didn’t look up at me. He sounded bored, or maybe he just wasn’t comfortable being around other people. “Your body created antibodies against a specific allergen the first time you were exposed, so the next time you encountered it, your mast cells went crazy, releasing histamines to protect against what they registered as a dangerous substance. This sent you into anaphylactic shock.”
I shuddered. He recounted it so scientifically, but I remembered the horror only too well. Gasping for air, my throat swelling shut.
“But what does that have to do with why the Chancellor’s power doesn’t work on me?”
“Histamine-releasing neurons are also found in the brain,” Simin continued. “Neural interaction between the hypothalamus and amygdala are at the heart of what makes glitcher powers possible. If your unique immunological response triggered a similar release of histamines in the hypothalmus due to childhood exposure to glitcher compulsion, you could have built up protection against that particular kind of power.”
I blinked rapidly, trying to follow his complex explanation.
“But instead of making you sick like your allergies do, your mind is protecting you from a real threat.” He finally looked up at me. “It’s not a perfect correlation, but you could think of it like an immunization. An early dosage built up an immunity to the disease. It was only possible through the combination of your unique body chemistry and your chance exposure as a child.”