The Empties (The Glitches Series Book 2) Read online

  I frown at her. “I told everyone injured to seek medical assistance immediately.” I step towards her and motion to her oozing arm. “You should, too. It might get infected if you don’t—”

  “Shut up!” she practically yells at me. “Don’t pretend with me, Lib! This has always been what you do.”

  That cold feeling sweeps through me again. I think of the visions that Bird has, the ones that tell her I bring death with me like a disease. Her visions aren’t wrong, she claims, and they never have been, but I choose not to believe her. Wolf and the Council decided that there is no definitive evidence one way or the other; perhaps I’m merely at the center of death because I’m trying to stop it, but Bird remains unconvinced.

  “I’m trying my best,” I begin, but she isn’t listening.

  She shoves past me, hard enough to push me back a step. When I turn to see where she’s going, I realize why she passed me by. Wolf. He’s standing at the other end of the hall, but moving towards us. Bird has moved to intercept him. This doesn’t agree with me. I try to catch his eye, to somehow send him a silent message that she’s wrong, and that I’m not some terrible harbinger of death, but merely trying to save what’s left of us.

  But Bird has already reached him, and I can tell by the wildly angry gestures that she’s begun to tell him how this is all my fault. She’s started to tell him how badly the mission went wrong today.

  I’ve already started to come up with counterarguments. In my head, a list of numbers and statistics run.

  A seventy percent survival rate. That’s over half. Additionally, we retrieved pieces from seven different drones. Pieces that will be used in the long run to preserve more lives. Biogear allows not only for the wearer to become faster and stronger, but it also allows for smaller scavenging parties. With stronger Glitches and Rogues, we won’t have to send out so many, which means there’ll be a smaller chance for people to be hurt and—

  The argument in my head continues to roll as I approach Bird and Wolf, and Bird turns to look at me as soon as Wolf’s dark, deep eyes catch sight of me. In them, I can see something that I can describe only as connection. I don’t know what else it could be.

  “It’s her fault—why can’t you see that?” Bird hisses at him, though her glare is aimed at me.

  I don’t flinch at her words, though they sting. I’m growing used to her accusations, her dislike of me. I thought once that perhaps we might be friends, but I don’t think that anymore. She doesn’t like me and the feeling is mutual, even if I still hope for civility between us. Maybe we can eventually be partners, with an alliance of sorts, even if we can never be friends. At least, that’s what I hope for.

  Wolf’s gaze holds me steady and my whole argument leaves my mind until I’m left with nothing except the sudden, desperate need for him to understand.

  This wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have prevented it. I didn’t mean for it to happen.

  Wolf lets out a sigh, and then he tears his gaze from me with some difficulty to look down at Bird. “You’re injured and you’re upset,” he tells her in a stern voice that’s not necessarily unkind, but which comes across as firm and slightly admonishing; we both interpret it as him being on my side in this. “You’re looking for someone to blame—”

  “I’ve found someone to blame!” Bird interrupts, sounding angry and a little whiny. “It’s her!”

  I step forward at that, unable to stop myself. “It was a good plan. It would have worked if I hadn’t stumbled.” I realize what I’ve just said and freeze, stopping short of speaking more. In a way, Bird is right. It is my fault, though I don’t think she and I are in agreement as to the reasons. My shoulders slump as guilt surges through me. I didn’t want those Rogues to die today, and I never do, but sometimes things go wrong. When the two of them remain silent, I add in a smaller voice, “I’m sorry. She’s right, I messed up. If I hadn’t stumbled, they’d still be alive.”

  Bird very nearly looks triumphant, but then Wolf speaks again, his voice all authority. “Things go wrong sometimes, even with the best of plans. That doesn’t make it all your fault. You couldn’t have known that was going to happen.”

  Bird stares at him incredulously, obviously unhappy that he’s sided with me. I, however, feel warmth rush through me at the recognition.

  Sometimes, I think he feels all of the same things, too.

  “Stop looking for reasons to blame Lib,” he continues, putting a heavy hand on Bird’s shoulder. She shakes it off in annoyance, and then sends me one last angry glare before stalking away, presumably to have Croc take a look at her arm.

  I decide that I’ll wait for everyone else to finish with Croc before I go to have my side looked at. I’m fine, it won’t kill me, and I think they—Bird, especially—need time away from me. I can give them that, at least.

  My gaze goes to Wolf as soon as she’s gone, that warmth flooding my body. I feel a deep appreciation for his defense, but I feel something else, too. Something that’s not so clear-cut as appreciation. It’s the sense that I am weaker for it. That I’ve lost something when he defended me.

  “What the blazes happened?” he demands harshly all of a sudden.

  It startles me so much that, for a second, I don’t know what to say. He’s looking at me with something close to anger, but with more complexity than that. “I told you what happened,” I say in a small voice, though I admit to myself that I’ve left out the vision of the hallway, which is the reason I stumbled in the first place. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to tell him about it. “I stumbled and—”

  He shakes his head, making a frustrated noise. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I sent ten Rogues out, and one Glitch with a plan. That plan did not include having three of my Rogues die.”

  I flinch at his words, where I didn’t at Bird’s. They hurt far worse, like deep cuts in my heart. “But—” I try, but he’s not listening.

  “Maybe it wasn’t your fault; maybe the plan was okay, but it was reckless and so were you.” His expression is hard, piercing, like he can see straight through me to all of the insecurities lying beneath the surface. And he’s poked and prodded at them, making me feel utterly worthless. “Don’t do that again.”

  Before I can say anything—not that I can think of anything to say—he turns away from me and stalks off angrily. I watch him go, noting the tension in his broad shoulders and the curled fists of his large hands.

  I don’t know what to feel about this, or how to react, but I feel awful in a way I didn’t before I saw him. Bird couldn’t make me feel this way, and couldn’t make me feel responsible, but Wolf could. And he has.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I manage to avoid running into anyone else as I head towards the Tech Room. Skye likely wants to see me, though our relationship has been unsteady lately, but I don’t think I can handle her right now. She’ll want to know what happened and how it happened, and then I’ll have to tell her about my conversation with Wolf. I’m not sure I can repeat it so soon, let alone tell her how much worse things are getting between me and Bird.

  Bird doesn’t have any problems with Skye.

  Plus, on top of it all, there’s that little matter of me hallucinating during the mission. I can’t help frowning at the thought of it, considering why it might have happened. Was it a memory? A vision, like Bird’s? I doubt it. It’s incredibly unlikely that I’ve suddenly become prophetic—and I’m doubtful still that Bird is, anyway. But it doesn’t matter, really. I can’t talk about any of it with anyone. It would be pouring petrol onto the fire between Bird and me, and possibly giving her the fuel she needs to really start putting people against me. That’s something I can’t risk. Things are too dangerous right now, and time is precious. Soon, the AI will make her move. We have to be ready for that.

  So instead of dealing with any of the drama immediately, I go straight to the Tech Room to deposit what we managed to gather from the destroyed drones today. It’s quite a bit of material, and I’m ho
peful that this will be enough to form new and improved biogear. I hope to equip all members of the Tracker Clan with it once I have enough. Several of the Rogues have already tested out some of the new models, and have shown vast improvements in their skills as a result.

  Still, there’s a long way to go.

  I walk in and see that I’m nowhere near the only one here, of course. There are several Rogues who glance up when I arrive, and each waves at me easily, which is comforting. I have mixed receptions with Rogues these days. Some are friendly and have really embraced me, but there are also some who still resent my presence. There are floating rumors as to why, but I mostly ignore them. They may be about me, but I’m determined to not let them bother me. I know they aren’t all good. Aren’t even mostly good. But I tell myself that doesn’t matter. All that matters are the ones that wave at me and treat me as friend.

  In any case, I nod at them as I head to one of the cleared tables to deposit the new tech, the pieces of salvaged tech in my hands making it difficult to return any waves.

  This room wasn’t a part of the original model for the tunnels when we moved locations. Instead, the idea for it came to me when I started tinkering with my impromptu biogear. When I’d first created it, I hadn’t had much of a workspace and I’d had even less time for working out the kinks in my gear. The whole thing, creating biogear, was really hard and haphazard that, while it was successful in the end, it was also a real mess. I decided then that I needed a real workspace—and that I needed more pieces of tech to improve my gear.

  I set out the loose pieces of tech I’ve acquired across the table in front of me, giving about two inches between each piece so that I can examine and work with them easily. The metal clinks against the counter, and I think that I should have grabbed a cloth to lay beneath them.

  “Get anything good today?”

  I glance up from the table and tear myself—gratefully—away from my own thoughts. Standing next to me is Alis, one of the newer Glitches to have joined our clan. She looks a little older than me, with big green eyes and long thick hair that’s a shade of red I haven’t seen on anyone else. Freckles dot her face, attempting to blend in with the tan that tries and fails to cover her complexion. Mostly, she just turns red and burns. Seeing her after we’ve been outside always makes me grateful that I get darker; she often looks uncomfortable after too much sun.

  “I hope so,” I answer, still feeling upset after my conversation with Wolf. “We lost three Rogues today.”

  She considers me a moment, tilting her head to the side. Her hair is pulled up today in a messy bun that’s held together by two smoothed, polished sticks. It makes her look cute instead of unkempt, which is probably not how I’d look if my hair was long enough to try that. “Well, you went out with ten. That’s over a fifty percent return rate. I’d call that a success.”

  Something inside me eases, even as a separate part wants to squirm, uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Yes, that’s what I thought. It’s a seventy percent survival rate—higher if you factor in my survival.”

  She snorts a strange, nasally sound. “Yeah, well, doubt anyone would do that. God forbid someone consider our lives worth anything.”

  I frown, thinking about the prejudice. It’s one I’ve noticed and mostly learned to ignore, though it pops up... regardless of how I feel about it. I’ve encountered it on both sides, too—among Rogues and Glitches both. Raj considered us Glitches as being better; Wolf considers us to be only half human. Maybe they’re both right.

  Because Raj is still a point of soreness in my chest, I force myself to focus on the parts spread out before us. Copper wires, pieces of curved and flat metal, the outer shells of the drones. Half fried motherboards, crystals, diamonds, and other minerals. Together, all this creates the drones that try to hunt us down and destroy us, and we in turn work tirelessly on ways to reapply and change the materials’ uses to suit our own purposes.

  Raj would have loved this, I allow myself to think before focusing again on Alis. “Have you been making progress?” I ask her, reminding myself of why we’re here and what we’re trying to accomplish.

  She nods her head enthusiastically, turning to show me an eager smile. “Oh, yes, absolutely! I’ve managed to improve mine by nearly thirty percent, and the Rogue gears are up by at least six.”

  “That’s great,” I say honestly. I was really concerned when I proposed the biogear that it would be a flop. That maybe there was just something too strange about me to let it be effective for anyone else. I’m pleased to see that I’m wrong. “Have you worked out the connection problems yet?”

  “No, unfortunately,” she grimaces. “They still require alternate sources of power. If we can figure out how to get them to link up to the Rogues like they do for you, then maybe we won’t need them, but I can’t even get them to work for mine and Dat’s.” She motions towards the boy who’s sitting with his back against the wall, his legs twisted beneath him like a pretzel. He’s clearly working on a motherboard, and has a notebook opened beside him. Occasionally, he jots down notes in it, then returning to the motherboard. He’s our newest addition, the poor boy having been thrown to the wolves—literally and figuratively—a week before we found him. He was half dead, and if it hadn’t been for our scavenging party, he might not have made it. Now he’s fully recovered, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that he’s incredibly intelligent. A lot of the progress we’ve made has been because of his insights.

  And though his looks are opposite those of Raj—with this boy’s curling golden hair and his pale skin, his eyes a honey brown with almost invisible eyelashes above them—I can’t help but be reminded of Raj when I see him.

  They would have gotten along, I think idly.

  “Can I take a look at your biogear again?” Alis asks me, having missed my musings. “I keep thinking that if I can just figure out how you did it, we can work out the issues we’ve been having.”

  I honestly wish I had an answer for her, but I don’t. There isn’t any explanation for how the tech was able to integrate with my body as far as I know—at least, none that we’ve been able to find. Still, I shrug out of my gear, taking off the headset and removing the straps from around my waist. When I first remove the gear, it is like pulling out tiny needles all at once. Pinching, a little painful, and then gone. Gone as though they were never there at all. I was afraid that the whole thing would disintegrate when I first tried to take it off, that it was a one-time deal, but thank goodness I was wrong. It remained and does remain fully functional. I just haven’t been entirely able to duplicate the success.

  “Here,” I tell Alis, handing her the strands of canvas that I use to wear the gear. They’re straps that create a sort of cage across my body. Two of the lines run across my abdomen, one across my chest, and then an additional two lines move perpendicularly to those, up over my shoulders and down my back. Lining each of these bands are sets of copper wiring which have been soldered together. These wires run along key points of my body—pressure points, veins, and muscles—sending tiny electrical jolts through them in order to increase their effectiveness. There are additional cords which run along a more direct route to my nervous system. As far as I can tell, these are the hook-ups that power my gear. And we haven’t been able to make them work for anyone else.

  Alis smiles at me. “Thanks. This is still the best piece of work I’ve seen to date and you didn’t even have as many materials, or the workshop. It’s really incredible.” She’s looking at me the way she does sometimes. Like I’m amazing, and special. Like I’m so much better than everyone else. It makes me uncomfortable, though I’d be lying if I said there isn’t some part of me that appreciates the attention. I just worry, because sometimes I think her attitude toward me crosses the line into being worship, and that could be a very dangerous thing.

  My reaction to the idea of worship floods my perception momentarily, like a recording that won’t be shut down...

  People pray to their god, whic
h so ever one that might be, but he doesn’t come. He has abandoned them, perhaps for their insolence or their pride. Like Icarus, they flew too high and now they must fall. Some call this the end of times, the Armageddon promised to the world at its birth. Others call it a Ceansing.

  “Those of us left,” they claim, “will inherit the world. We will be spared and saved for what will be the Paradise we once lost!”

  But Paradise never comes. Instead, war breaks out. There is a shortage of food, and half the world is lost to disease. Those that survive are split into factions. One group believes in the end of the world, worshipping a man who claims that he can save them. The other group believes a chance for survival—to some.

  The knowledge rolls through my mind like a moving picture, a newspaper being read aloud in a matter of fact voice, informing me that, as a people, we failed in the last days of our world when we might have still been able to save it.

  “Dumb luck,” I finally tell her quietly, looking down at the table and the pieces I’ve laid out.

  We fall into silence as Alis studies my handiwork. She murmurs her approval, muttering over and over again about how impressed she is. She tells me again when she thinks something is brilliant, even though she’s seen it before. Like using the diamond to enhance the power capacities of the remaining lithium battery to power my analysis screen, or modifying a motherboard to create a back-up control panel.

  Mostly, I ignore her comments. I know what I did, but I don’t know how I did it. I had been running on pure instinct. The knowledge is locked up in my head somewhere, but I don’t even know how to access it. Just like the rest of my fragile, fragmented memories. I only hope now that we can duplicate my success.

  Not that everyone would be pleased with that, truth be told. Bird hates the technology. She says we shouldn’t be playing with things that we don’t understand, that the natural world around us is all that we can depend on. When I first returned to the clan, this was the main thing we argued about. It was the rift between us, though our disagreements have since grown, and now everything is the problem. I can’t do anything right by her.