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Chapter 29

ADRIEN SAT ON JILIA’S MED TABLE as she finished her diagnostic. His mother sat beside him, squeezing his hand. Deep brown circles ringed his eyes, and I couldn’t look away from the barely healed scars lining his head where his skull had been cut open.

“Adrien,” Jilia said, her tone falsely bright as she lowered the imaging panel. “You’ve done very well. Please go back to your dorm room and rest now.”

He stood up and did what she said. All he ever did now was follow orders. Nothing else. He’d stand for hours if no one told him to sit down.

Rand was waiting to escort Adrien back to his dorm room.

“What is it?” Sophia asked the doctor anxiously.

Jilia swallowed, then pulled out a projection tablet that loaded a 3-D image of Adrien’s head.

“He’s had multiple operations. From the bit that he is able to remember and relate, the Chancellor had him under compulsion for over a month. Until he had a vision of what he thought was Zoe’s death.” She looked at me. “He foresaw you going into the allergy attack with no one there to save you. He knew if he told the Chancellor, he’d be telling her how to kill you. His determination not to harm you somehow enabled him to finally break her control over his mind. He began successfully fighting back and refusing to tell her his visions anymore. That was when she started in on the surgical options.”

I felt numb as she spoke. This had happened to him because of me.

“What, as some kind of torture?” Adrien’s mother asked, stricken.

“She did torture him at first to try to get the answers out of him.” Jilia looked down. “But in the end, she lobotomized him. She cut out portions of his brain, including almost the entire amygdala. He has his memories, but can no longer attach emotion to them. Or to anything he experiences. After the operations…” she swallowed again. “After the last operation it appears the Chancellor’s compulsion did indeed work on him again. But he’d stopped having visions altogether.” She looked at me. “The only reason the Chancellor even kept him alive was as collateral against you. She knew that he had to be alive for Ginni’s power to locate him, so she could draw you into the trap.”

“Is he ever going to be my Adrien again?” Sophia asked. I held my breath while I waited for Jilia’s answer.

She looked at the floor again.

“Tell me!” Sophia said.

“The developments in organ-regrowth technology have been promising over the last fifty years, but no one has ever succeeded at regrowing entire portions of the brain. Any replication processes will be long and slow. We’ll begin right away, but I can’t make either of you any promises. I’m so sorry.”

I stepped back, stunned.

“But you’re a healer,” Sophia shouted. “Can’t you do something?”

The sorrow on Jilia’s face clear. “I’m sorry, Sophia.” She reached out to put a hand on Sophia’s shoulder, but Sophia ripped her arm away from the contact. She spun and hurried from the room, I think so we wouldn’t see her cry.

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I had to get out of here too. Sophia was gone when I got to the hallway, and my steps echoed loudly in the empty space. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Regardless of everything Jilia had said, I knew Adrien and I were destined to be together. There was supposed to be a happy ending. Adrien and I, standing in the sunlight at the end of the war. But then again, Adrien had never told me that’s how it would end. In the vision he’d shared with me, I was in the sunlight, but I’d been all alone. And I’d been running toward danger, not celebrating victory.

I stopped when I came to the T in the hallway, looking up in surprise when I realized my feet had carried me to Adrien’s dorm. I stood outside the door for a moment, preparing myself for what was on the other side, then pushed the button and stepped in.

Adrien sat at the study table, staring at the wall. My heart tightened in my chest at the sight of him. He looked so broken, but the strong cut of his nose and his rugged jaw were still so familiar. This was the boy I loved. Jilia had to be wrong. Even if the Chancellor had removed part of his brain, surely Adrien was still in there somewhere. We were more than our physical parts, more than our electrical synapses or brain tissue; that was what Adrien always said. That’s what Cole had taught me. We had souls.

I sat down in the chair opposite him and reached for his hand. He let me take it. Maybe if we touched for long enough, it would spark him back to life. The memory of the diagrams Jilia had shown us popped up in my mind, but I expelled the images.

This was Adrien. My Adrien. Our love could surmount anything. He’d proven it already when he’d thrown off the yoke of the Chancellor’s compulsion. It shouldn’t have been possible, but his love for me was stronger even than her ability. He could find his way back to me again, I knew it.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

He didn’t look up at me. His hand was limp in mine. “The doctor says I am unwell.”

“You’re going to be fine.” I tried to smile, but I was fighting back tears. “We just have to give it some time.”

He didn’t say anything or nod.

“Can I ask you a question?” I leaned in.

“Yes.”

I swallowed, gripping his hand tighter. “Why did you go on that raid? Why did you leave the Foundation at all after you’d seen the visions of what would happen to you?”

“I had other visions, of you and me together at the Foundation. Several of them had not yet occurred, so I deduced that my capture would not be until later.”

I felt hope flower in my belly. “So they’ll still come true?”

He shook his head, but it looked like a mechanical movement, sharp jerks back and forth. “No. It was not me that I saw. It was Maximin wearing my face.”

The bloom inside me wilted, replaced by an involuntary shudder. It was cruel and unfair. All those moments that should have been Adrien’s and mine had been shared instead with Max. I felt another rush of choking hatred for Max. He’d been locked up in a room on the lower level and was kept under constant supervision. It was far better than he deserved. If Sophia or I had our way, he wouldn’t be treated so humanely.

“You thought you had more time,” I said, my heart breaking.

“That is not the only reason,” he said. “I could not interfere with the causality chain. If I did not rescue Saminsa on the raid, she would not have been able to save you when you fell from the roof.”

“You idiot,” I said, feeling guilt burn through my veins like fire. He’d gone because of me. Risked his safety for me. And worse, the only reason Saminsa had even needed to save me was because Adrien had gotten captured. If he’d only stayed home, none of it would have mattered. In trying to make sure one vision happened, he’d caused the circumstances leading up to it.

I swallowed down my grief. At least he was responding to me. That was what I needed to focus on.

“Do you know who the red-haired glitcher was in that hallway?”

“He creates hallucinations based on a subject’s fears and desires,” Adrien explained in a completely blank monotone. “While your mind was busy in the world he created around you, the weapons from the ceiling were supposed to take you down. But you detected them and the gun he had with him as well. The Chancellor was afraid if she sent out more soldiers to kill you, you’d sense them with your telek in spite of the hallucinations. So she sent me out to kill you instead by taking off your helmet. As I had foreseen.”

“She said you saw me die.” My voice was quiet.

“I saw flashes of you writhing on the ground, and then not moving at all. I assumed that indicated your death.” His voice was still so empty and cold. He talked about my death with the same emotion as one might when discussing the components of a propulsion engine.

“Do you feel anything?” I asked, desperate for some spark of the old Adrien I’d known.

He raised his head, and his eyes met mine for a moment.

This was it. This was the moment our souls would recognize each other and I’d see the light come back into his eyes.

I clutched his hand tighter.

See me, I wished silently. Look into my eyes and remember.

“No,” he said. “I do not feel anything.” His gaze was just as empty as my brother’s had always been under the control of the V-chip.

No. I couldn’t lose him like this. I would make him remember. I scooted my chair closer to his, ignoring the screech of the chair legs scraping across the ground. His eyes did not follow me, but instead stared at the spot I had previously been.

I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see his hollow stare. I touched my lips to his.

He didn’t respond. I kissed deeper, harder, pouring all of my desperation into it and willing him to remember.

His lips didn’t move.

I pulled back and searched his eyes. He still wasn’t looking at me.

And I knew.

We hadn’t saved him, not really. We’d brought back his body, but that was all. The Chancellor hadn’t given me a choice after all. She knew I was going to lose both Taylor and Adrien either way.

My body trembled as I stepped back. “You should get some rest,” I said. “Everything will turn out okay.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt.

And then I fled from the room. The tears I’d been holding back before now flooded my cheeks.

My arm com buzzed.

Compound-wide meeting in the training room, attendance is mandatory.

I swiped the tears from my eyes and took a deep breath. The last thing I wanted right now was to be around other people, but I knew everyone was afraid for the future of the Rez. The General had been killed and the Chancellor had escaped again. We needed solidarity more than ever right now. I changed directions and headed toward the training center.

By the time I got there, half the room was filled. All the Rez fighters from the lower level were there. Even the Professor stood in the corner. He looked just as bad as I felt, with his disheveled tunic and red-rimmed eyes. His grief was so thick it seemed to cloud the air around him.

Ginni hurried over and hugged me. “I heard about Jilia’s prognosis for Adrien, I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t say anything, just blinked back more tears and let her take my arm to lead me to where she was sitting. I noted with brief surprise that Xona and Cole were already there, talking in hushed whispers. This wasn’t the first time I’d caught them like this. The fact that he’d thrown himself in front of the laser fire for her had changed everything.

While Adrien was undergoing the battery of tests, I’d gone back to my dorm to change out of my suit. Xona was sitting on the edge of her bed, eyes wide. After asking me about Adrien, she opened up about it. “If Saminsa had gotten the orb up only a millisecond later, Cole would have died saving my life.” She shook her head. “For so long, I could only see them as killing machines, but he protected life instead of taking it. I talked to him earlier and do you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said that if I of all people could forgive him for what he was, then maybe he could too. Like in spite of everything he always said, he couldn’t believe he was fully human until he’d proved it to me, who hated them the worst.”

The Professor’s voice broke into my thoughts. He’d made his way to the front of the room. “This is a difficult time for all of us,” he said, his voice raw. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Rosalina tried to prepare me for this possibility. She always said that to accomplish anything truly great or make lasting change, sacrifices would be necessary. Honor, loyalty, courage. These qualities are her legacy, and ones that we will all need more than ever in the coming months.”

He looked out at the crowd until his eyes stopped on me. “Zoe, will you please join me?”

I looked at him, bewildered, but I got up and walked to the front of the room. I paused beside him.

“Tyryn,” the Professor nodded to the large man who’d been standing off to the side. Tyryn approached. The Professor looked out again at the gathered crowd. “General Taylor’s last act before leaving on the mission was to name Zoel Q-24 acting Colonel should she not return. Zoe will join the other four Colonels who head the Resistance.”

“What?” I couldn’t help the astonished question popping out.

The Professor looked at me. “She thought your generation of glitchers should be represented among the highest ranks of leadership, and you in particular. She’s watched you closely these past few months and believes you are ready.”

I stood still, completely stunned as Tyryn came forward and pinned a star on my tunic. A hundred thoughts raced through my head at once. I thought Taylor hated glitchers, but she’d made me a leader in the Rez. It was just as Adrien had foreseen, but not at all how it should have happened. None of this was.

The Professor turned back to the crowd. “We have suffered heavy losses recently and made sacrifices that at times seem too much to bear.” His voice cracked slightly before he took another deep breath and continued. “More will be required in the months ahead. But hope remains as long as we have breath in our chests. We fight for our lives and for the ones we love. Rosalina always believed that, though we are few, we can still change the world.”

The Professor stepped back and I dazedly walked to sit down again while Tyryn discussed heightened security measures and the need to ration supplies now that more and more people were seeking sanctuary at the Foundation.

I leaned my back and head against the cool hallway outside after everyone else headed to dinner. It stretched out empty on both sides of me. That was how I felt. Empty. I’d always taken for granted that Adrien would be by my side no matter what came. But now I faced it alone.

Terror pitched in my stomach like acid at the thought. I gritted my teeth and clenched my jaw. No. I wouldn’t let fear rule me anymore. I would not be weak.

The future was coming, and I would be ready to face it this time. As a Colonel, I could make sure the EMP plan was never put into effect. We’d find another way to end the war once and for all. And by all the stars and shadows in the universe, I would make the Chancellor pay for the lives she’d destroyed.