The Glitch (The Glitches Series Book 1) Read online

  I don’t know what this means, but the warmth of Wolf’s hand spreads through me.

  But my purpose is to find the Glitches. That thought pushes at me, and I push back.

  This is helping me fulfill my purpose. The need to do what the AI wants me to do fades. For now I have it under control. How long will that last?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wolf shakes his head and says, “Move faster.”

  I’m panting and sweat trails down my back beneath the thin shirt I borrowed from Bird. She tossed it at me when she heard Wolf was training me. That was now almost one full moon ago.

  Skye stands on a rock nearby and yells, “You can do it, Lib!”

  It is early morning—so very early the sun is not even visible. We stand on top of a hill. A few rocks surround a smooth, sandy area. That is where Wolf and I stand. I am supposed to learn to fight.

  Raj sits beside Skye, not far from us. He is repaired, but he and Wolf seem to avoid each other. However, Raj watches now as Wolf tries to teach me to defend myself.

  I massage my left shoulder. Wolf punched me there. I can be strong when I am threatened or when I must do something seemingly impossible. But this gift does not come alive when I am training.

  Because it isn’t real.

  Well, a connect isn’t real, either. But it is far more dangerous. A connect is live currents that can kill. Wolf could, too, but the blow to my shoulder only stings. It has half the force of what it could have. Maybe less.

  Ignoring the way Bird’s shirt sticks close, I lift my hands again. Bird is much smaller. Her shirt stops just above my waist, showing my navel and the bones of my hips where my pants hang loosely. It is comfortable to have air on my belly, but I am used to my tunic.

  Wolf comes at me again, moving fast. Power is speed, he keeps telling me, and I am beginning to understand. But the reverse is not true. But I am fast.

  Speed is my greatest ally. I wait until Wolf is practically on top of me, and then I duck and slide my foot at the same time. I throw a kick that catches his hip. It isn’t enough to do much of anything.

  Wolf steps back and shakes his head. But his mouth curves up. “Better. But we have to do strength building. I barely even felt that.”

  “Love tap!” Skye shouts out.

  I have no idea where she learned that term. I wave her off and lean over to catch my breath. When I look over at Skye, I see Raj frowning. He folds his arms across his chest.

  In the next instant, Wolf’s leg hits my knee. With one wide sweep, he knocks me on my butt. I hit and let out a gust of air.

  Standing over me, he says, “Don’t get distracted.” He holds out a hand. I take it, and he pulls me back to my feet.

  “I don’t really know why this is important. Am I supposed to fight animals or something?” I wet my lips and think of the Techs crowding Raj. Would this have helped me then? But there were so many. I couldn’t have fought them all.

  Wolf leans down and picks up a skin of water. He unstops the top and hands me the skin. I sip at it. Waste nothing—use only what you need. Wolf is also teaching me law. “Do you expect me to fight?” I let the words trail off. Do I have to fight Rogues? Glitches? Uneasy now, I shift on my feet.

  He gives me a sharp look and then takes a breath. Does he still think I know so little? I am learning, and while I still dream, they do not leave me shaking. I also control my urge now to find the Glitches.

  This will help my purpose.

  That thought is one I cling to. But will it work forever?

  Wolf frowns and says, “Rogues don’t fight within the clan.”

  “Meaning clans sometimes fight other clans?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Life is hard enough. But…not all Glitches come out like you or Skye.” He glances at Raj. “Or even like Raj.”

  Raj gives a loud snort, and Skye cries out, “Hey!”

  Wolf ignores her. “Glitches have tried to hurt people. Some have even been spies sent by the AI. It was obvious because they asked too many questions. It’s why Rogues don’t trust them.”

  My throat tightens. I swallow but it doesn’t go down, so I bite my lower lip. Am I a spy? But my purpose is to find Glitches, not Rogues. And then I glance at Wolf. “Them.” I mutter the word. Wolf said them, not you.

  But if I am not a Glitch, what am I?

  I open my mouth to ask more questions—just what Wolf said a spy Glitch would do. I snap my mouth shut and turn away.

  Bobcat appears behind Skye and Raj. She gives me a sideways look and turns her full attention to Wolf. “You’re needed.”

  Wolf nods. He starts to follow Bobcat and then turns to me. “Strength.” He grabs my arm and squeezes the muscle. I flinch. “More strength.”

  He follows Bobcat, heading for the tunnels. I walk over to Skye and Raj. She bounds up to her feet. “You’re doing great.”

  “I wish. But I’m glad you think so.”

  We head back to the tunnels. Raj seems too quiet.

  Once inside the cool darkness, I let out a breath. It is almost chilly since I am still sweating. I need a cloth so I can wipe down.

  Skye skips ahead of Raj and me saying, “I’m going to see if I can scrounge up something to eat.” She wrinkles her nose. “And sage to rub into your skin. You smell.”

  Before I can swat at her, she runs off. I glance at Raj to ask if he is going to eat, too. The look in his eyes—it seems like pain—stops me.

  “What are you trying to do—give up being a Glitch and become a Rogue?”

  I blink and step back as if his words were punches. “I am trying to learn. And what’s so wrong with fitting in?”

  He gives a frustrated growl and steps closer. He leans down. I see spots of gold in his otherwise dark eyes. “You’re not like them… and you’re not like us, are you?”

  My face goes cold.

  Not like us

  Not a Glitch.

  It hurts to hear him say this. Fear shivers through me. What if others think this? What if others find out I spoke to the AI—that Conie has a purpose for me. That I am a tool of the AI.

  Wolf just said Rogues don’t trust Glitches because of that. Will Wolf turn away from me? Will all the Glitches? Or will it be worse? Will the Rogues turn away from all Glitches?

  I know Raj, Skye, Chandra and Marq can’t survive without the Rogues. Even I am still learning how to get by in the Outside. Without the Rogues, how long would any of us last in the Outside?

  Is this why the AI wants me to find the Glitches—to bring them back to the Norm? But if that was true, why wasn’t Raj welcomed back?

  I shake my head. I want to argue, but I can’t force the words out. My chest hurts and my stomach cramps.

  “I don’t know why, Lib.” Raj puts his hands on my shoulders. “You’re special. You’re better.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “What? Better? Since waking up in the desert, I’ve thought of myself as many things, but not…Raj, you’re wrong.”

  Raj’s hands tighten and his fingers dig into my skin. “You are. You got us into the Norm and got us out. You’re going to do amazing things.” He glances down the tunnels and then looks back at me. “Don’t let all of this make you lose sight of your real skills.”

  “The connect,” I mutter. I pull away. I don’t want to connect to the AI—not even to a subroutine. I’m having enough trouble without any more contact with Conie.

  But Raj smiles at me. “Tomorrow, you’re with me. I’m taking you out and we’ll practice some hacking.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next day I go out with Raj, but we don’t go out alone. Bobcat and several other Rogues go with us. I don’t know their names and no one bothered to tell them to me. Wolf isn’t with us. When I ask Bobcat why, she says, “He can’t be expected to hold your hand every day.”

  My face heats. “Did I ask for that?”

  I turn away and head over to Raj’s AT. His bruises yellow his skin and his moves are stiff, but he smiles at me. “I’ll hold your
hand.”

  My face warms again. I shake my head and swing a leg over the AT. We ride the small ones, and I wrap my arms around Raj. He flinches and gives a groan. I loosen my grip. “Still hurts?”

  “Only when I laugh,” he mutters.

  Bobcat gets on her AT with another Rogue. She leads the way. We follow her for several miles, winding through dusty canyons until the cliffs open up into an almost grassy area. The grass is thin and grows in clumps, but it looks like the grass Wolf showed me how to eat.

  Bobcat slows and comes to a stop. I glance around, remembering what Wolf said. I close my eyes and listen and smell. I can smell faint traces of oil, and I hear wind whistling through metal. Opening my eyes, I see a platform buried by sand.

  I get off the AT and head over to the platform. It’s in worse shape than any I have seen. But it must be connected still. My hands are clammy, my nerves eating at me. I don’t want to explain why I don’t want to connect.

  Raj goes down on his knees and brushes away the sand. He exposes a railing. The platform fell on its side—half is buried, but the railing is near the top. He grins. “The more obscure, the less likely the AI will be monitoring this platform. We still have to be careful. The sentinels still patrol every connect.”

  I nod but don’t step any closer to the platform. I don’t want to go in. I never want to go in again. If I go in, will Conie let me out? Will Conie tell me things I don’t want to hear? Will I be reminded of my purpose?

  I rub the sweat from my palms on my pants. The back of my neck is tingling and I want to rub it, too, but that would make it obvious how nervous I am.

  Raj waves me forward, but I hesitate.

  My hands are shaking. My heart pounds and my breath is fast and uneven. I am scared of going in there. I can still remember the AI and… and I don’t know why she helped me or why she had my mother’s face. For all I know, she has my mother somewhere in the Norm. Maybe she holds my mother hostage to use to force me to do what Conie wants. These are things I’m not ready to deal with yet, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t tell Raj about any of this—certainly not with Bobcat and the other Rogues watching us and watching the skies.

  “Hurry,” Raj says. A flicker of irritation grates his voice. “You want to wait here until a drone flies by?”

  I have no way out. I force myself to walk three steps forward, my heart pounding so loudly I am certain everyone can hear it. I stand beside Raj. The wind hums through the rustled metal. Maybe it will be fine. Maybe there is no power to this platform anymore. Maybe it is nonfunctional and nothing will happen when I try a connect.

  Maybe I am dreaming.

  Raj gives a tight nod. “Connect. I’ll let you know what we’re looking for once we’re inside.”

  Before I can agree or disagree, he places his hand on the railing. His eyes glaze over, unfocused and distant, until it seems as if his body is an empty shell. I hadn’t thought about how a connect must look to others, but now I glance at the Rogues. They look away and shift uneasily. It must seem to them that Raj isn’t really out here anymore. Which is true. His mind is tucked inside a vast computer right now, floating in an endless flow of data.

  I can’t leave him there on his own. He might encounter sentinels. Or Conie.

  With a steadying breath, I force myself to reach out for the railing. The familiar prick of thousands of tiny pins stings my palm, and I blink.

  Connection: Secure.

  I’m standing in a room, cool and blue and vast. Beside me on my left, rows and rows of what look like tall, metal filing cabinets fade into the distance. They could just as easily be something else, but the words filing cabinets stick in my head. Raj is standing in front of me, and I am glad I connected next to him.

  Relief prickles my skin at not seeing Conie. In the Norm, it almost seemed as if she knew where I was at all times and could sense every connect. But that must be only the Norm. It wasn’t like that on other connects. The tightness in my chest eases.

  Raj waves a hand. “We don’t want to waste time. The longer we stay, the more likely it is the AI will notice us.”

  “We’re looking for water, right?”

  He nods. “We’re always looking for water, but let’s hold off on that today. Water is scarce enough that if we start a search, it’ll activate sentinels.”

  Raj begins to walk between two rows of tall cabinets. They reach higher than I can see. I follow him, though I’m not sure I see the point. The world around us doesn’t really change. It just shifts as we pass identical rows of filing cabinets. And why not just pull what we want? “What else would we be looking for?”

  He glances back and grins. The quick flash of white teeth softens his features and brightens his dark eyes. It makes him look boyish and fun instead of bitter. I like him more when he’s like this. “All kinds of things. Nutrients to add to the soil so maybe we could grow food again—like in the Norm. Access to seed storage. Even antidotes and medicines to help with poison or sickness.”

  “Don’t we need to get that from the Norm?”

  His grin fades. He hunches a shoulder and looks away. He is afraid of going back to the Norm—I know that now. “This is information storage—a place where everything is catalogued for easy reference. The physical goods will come from a storage facility in the Norm. When we find it, we’re actually sending a request to transfer the materials to our location in the Outside.”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange to think of this world as not real?” I trail a hand over a cabinet. It is cool and hums a little “In some ways, it’s more real to me than anything. It’s… familiar when the rest of the world is strange.”

  Raj isn’t listening to any of this. His long stride carries him far ahead of me. I am not sure he would understand even if he heard me. Raising my voice, I ask, “Why don’t we just search for the physical location of the storage so we can go get what we want when we want it?”

  Raj glances at me, his eyebrows tugging down slightly, before he says, “Funny. Wolf asked the same thing.”

  “How is that funny? You’re not smiling.”

  “It’s an expression. And storage is within or under the Norm.”

  I nod. That says it all. Going inside the Norm is almost as hard as getting out again. Watching Raj, I frown now. Why is it that any mention I make of Wolf has Raj acting defensive?

  “It’s a good question,” I tell him.

  Raj continues walking. “I guess. It doesn’t matter.”

  I shrug. “How do the materials get to the Outside? Drones? Something else? Doesn’t the AI monitor that?” Isn’t Conie watching everything?

  “That’s why we need to hack into a place where the AI isn’t watching at that instant and get out again.”

  Now that he’s said it, I feel stupid for even asking. This is the point of the hack. We use the connect for access and then use the hack to manipulate access. We are creating our own path to what we want.

  As we walk, Raj talks about searches, how to concentrate on what you’re looking for, and how to use multiple searches to make all of them seem ordinary. He glances back at me, his stares dark and calculating and adds, “Though, maybe you won’t have to look.”

  I know he is thinking of how I brought the water to me, but I don’t say anything. Raj turns and finds a ladder. We climb the massive towers of files, and Raj pulls out one drawer and then another. I feel as if I should look, too, so I just think of soil nutrients and seeds. A drawer opens for me. I glance at Raj. He is not looking. Like always I have lines of light spreading out in front of me. I pluck one. Half-invisible cubes, small enough to pocket, appear in the drawer. Raj still isn’t looking. I pull out one and ask, “Is this what we want?”

  Raj glances at me. His eyebrows flatten, but he nods. I don’t need Raj’s caution not to take too much—my skin itches between my shoulder blades. We are being watched. I take three cubes and close the drawer.

  As we climb back down and reach the floor, I notice a glittering ball. I move towar
d it, but Raj touches my arm. “That’s just data. Mostly old data. The AI never deletes anything.”

  The ball pulls me. Data means information. Maybe it’s data about me.

  I almost don’t want to touch it, but the colors are so bright—like one of the tiny flowers in the Outside. When I touch it, the access is instant. I absorb several terabytes before Raj pulls me away. “Are you okay? You went—I don’t think you’re supposed to go blank inside a connect.”

  Staring at him, I try to sort the data. I’m…stunned. “Raj, it was data. Did you know the Norm wasn’t the only dome? There were dozens of them—cities all over the world. But the AI—Conie—shut them down and consolidated everyone here.”

  He frowns and tugs on my arm. “We have to go.”

  “No, the data. I want to know more. I don’t know why she shut them down. There wasn’t a Norm. It was domed cities, but now there’s just the Norm. Conie’s consolidating resources for some reason. She wanted everyone here. In one place. But those who wouldn’t come into the domes got left out. And I didn’t have time to find out the date on that.”

  Raj starts walking, pulling me with him. “If you keep accessing data, the sentinels are going to notice. And then the AI will. We have to go.”

  I turn back to catch a glimpse of the data orb, but it has already moved on. And now I have more questions. Why is there only one dome now? Why does the AI want all the resources of this world that Conie once called Earth?

  Before I am ready, Raj breaks the connect. I am relieved, disappointed and angry with him. And I have much to think on. I am also itching for more data, and that could prove to be a dangerous thing for me and the Rogues.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Perfect, neat rows lay at my feet, too many to count, but I know it is a perfectly square box.

  A box of bodies.

  It is worse because I am not horrified. Just detached. These are only bodies. And bodies are meant to be recycled. Whatever made the flesh and bones into something that could be called life is gone. There is nothing to do but accept such a fact. Nonfunctionality can only be reversed if the fault is one that can be corrected, such as a repair to the circuitry.