Yet.
I clicked my wrist coms. “Ginni, what is the Chancellor’s position?”
“She hasn’t moved at all. Adrien either. It looks like they’re in adjoining rooms.”
I met Taylor’s frowning eyes in the mirror.
“Maybe you were right,” I said to her. “Maybe she is underestimating us,… or we haven’t sprung the trap yet.”
I jumped over the side of the duo and hurried across the rooftop. The wind rushed against my suit. I spared a glance outward at the cityscape and felt dizzy. It was so high up, higher off the ground than I’d ever been in my life outside of being in a transport. I tried to watch only the concrete ground in front of me. I came to the door in the corner and, without wasting any time, cast out my telek and made the door open sideways in its tracks.
I hurried down a staircase, and after a few more doors, I was out on the skywalk. The entire thing was made of glass, even the floor. The hundred-story drop spread out beneath my feet, but I barely glanced at it. I focused entirely on the building in front of me.
I was close enough now that I could feel past the walls of the building. Ginni said Adrien and the Chancellor were on the twenty-third floor. If I could disable the Chancellor before I even got into the building …
I tried to scan the floors, but quickly lost count. It appeared to be a housing unit of some kind. All the floors were laid out the same, and I could only push down about ten floors before my control started getting fuzzy around the edges. I could feel the prone shapes of people sleeping in each unit. None of them had the bulk of a Reg. I had no idea if they were soldiers or civilians or other glitchers, but there was no way I’d be able to locate the Chancellor among them. I could accidentally kill an innocent person. As much as I wanted Adrien back, I wasn’t willing to go that far. I’d just have to get closer.
I pushed aside the door at the other end of the skywalk. No Regs. I wasn’t sure if I should feel lucky. My uneasiness grew as I crept forward. All I could do was keep my telek on call and try to detect any traps before the snare clapped shut.
The door opened to a long white hallway. The lights were dim, probably still on nighttime settings. I jogged toward the elevator, all senses alert. Still no one was coming.
I frowned, but waved the card the dark-haired techer boy had given me in front of the elevator sensor. A few moments later, the door pinged open.
The cylindrical elevator pod felt extra small as I pushed the button for the twenty-third floor and waited as I dropped. I had the strangest sensation I was a mouse in a trap. I shook my head. Not hitting any resistance was just making me paranoid. Maybe by some miracle Adrien hadn’t had a vision of me coming.
The elevator slowed and came to a halt. Before the door opened, I’d already closed my eyes, feeling out into the hallway beyond.
The hallway itself was clear, but I could sense something strange about the ceiling, like the edges didn’t quite match. I pushed farther in and felt several gun barrels embedded behind the ceiling tiles. My heartbeat ratcheted up a notch, and I crumpled the guns in on themselves until they were mangled bundles of useless steel.
The elevator door pinged again and then opened. But what I saw didn’t match what I’d sensed with my telek at all, and my mind reeled in confusion. Instead of a hallway, I stepped out into a large room that was blindingly white.
Children dressed in white tunics sat at desks, their small heads all turning in unison as I walked into the room. The room was unlike any I’d ever seen, but it was clearly a school. They were so young. Five or six years old.
“You have to get out,” I said, my voice a frantic whisper. “It’s not safe!”
The buzzing exploded in my ears. I closed my eyes and the room fell away. I felt the contours of what seemed like an empty hallway again. Where were the children? None of this made any sense. And then I noticed a lone figure standing just a few paces away from me. He raised a gun. I screeched and crumpled it like I had the weapons in the ceiling.
But when I blinked my eyes open again, I was back in the white room. I twirled around in confusion. My telek faded to a low buzz in my ears and then was gone completely. The children needed me. Suddenly nothing else mattered. I had to get them out of here.
One little girl came toward me, her blond hair in ringlets that framed her face.
Her tiny lip trembled. “Are you here to hurt us?”
“No,” I crouched down so I was her height. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m here to help.”
But all of a sudden, I couldn’t remember why I was here at all. How was I going to help? Something was wrong, there was something I was supposed to be doing—
The girl pulled away from me.
“He’s waiting for you,” she said. She pointed to a boy sitting up front with his back to me. He was bigger than the other children, and the only one who hadn’t turned around when I walked in.
I hurried to the front of the room. I didn’t have much time. Then I frowned, not knowing why the thought had arisen. Other thoughts seemed to be wriggling at the back of my mind too, but when I tried to focus on them, they evaporated.
Of course I had all the time in the world. I carefully rounded the desk and saw the boy’s face.
I knew him.
“Markan!” I leaned over and hugged him hard. My little brother. I looked around at all the other children. They watched me silently. The more I looked at them, the more something seemed wrong with their eyes.
What had felt like a peaceful sanctuary only moments before now felt sinister. There was something wrong with these children. With this whole situation.
“Come on, Markan,” I said, a chill running up my spine. “We should go.”
He didn’t say anything, but he let me pull him to his feet. I grabbed his hand and was about to tug him forward when he cried out and sank to his knees. Blood bloomed on the front of his tunic.
“Markan!” I screamed. I looked around. I didn’t see any Regs. How had he gotten hurt?
I reached to pull his tunic off over his head so I could see the wound and try to stop the bleeding, but he grabbed me with a surprisingly strong grip.
“Why didn’t you save me?” Blood bubbled out of his mouth as his face paled. “Why didn’t you save me?”
The children around us picked up the chant, a choir of accusing voices. “Why didn’t you save me?”
I reached out to pull Markan into my arms, but as I touched him, he disintegrated into thin air.
“Markan!” I screamed, pawing the empty air in a panic. No! I’d had him, he’d been in my arms!
The children continued chanting, but all of them were bleeding now, from their noses, heads, chests. I screamed.
Another figure appeared in the spot where Markan had disappeared. Milton. Half his head was crushed in and blood poured down his face and neck. He reached out his arms to me. “Why didn’t you save me?”
“No!” I screamed, backing away. “You’re not real.” I spun around, clutching my head. “None of you are real!”
I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see them. I had to use my telek, I had to—
“Why didn’t you save me?” Another voice added to the chorus behind me. A voice I knew well.
“Adrien!” I turned around to him, and I remembered why I was here. The thought burned clear like a light piercing the fog. I was supposed to save Adrien. He didn’t look like the others in the room. He wasn’t as clean and he seemed more solid somehow.
He’d always been thin, but now he was positively skeletal. Dark, bruiselike shadows ringed his eyes. His hair was shaved and jagged, barely healed-over scars crisscrossed the left side of his head.
“Why didn’t you save me?” He didn’t reach out for me like Milton. He simply stood still looking like a broken toy. His eyes were vacant, constantly shifting this way and that as if he were seeing but not seeing.