Free Shutdown (Glitch) by Heather Anastasiu Page B

glitcher ability let her locate anyone, anywhere on the earth. I usually asked her every week to make sure my brother was still at the Academy or my old housing unit, but I hadn’t checked in on him since before leaving for the mission. It always reassured me to know he was safe, or as safe as he could be under the Chancellor’s constant observation. She’d be ready to pounce if he ever started displaying glitcher traits.
    I tapped my foot impatiently. The line was taking forever today. I looked around and realized the line was far longer than it had been when I’d left on the mission. But then, I knew another group of refugees had come seeking shelter. With the Chancellor’s hefty increase on raids, people who’d lived free in the Rez their whole lives had suddenly found themselves with no safe place to go. Whenever she cracked a Rez safe house, she imprisoned the leaders and chipped the rest to turn them into drones.
    We’d already been rationing our food stocks before the new group had even arrived. It was getting harder and harder to acquire supplies. Everyone was running scared these days.
    Last month the Chancellor had captured a supplier who’d told them we were piggybacking on Comm Corp trains to move supplies, so now there were heavy inspections on all the trains. Worse, even though no one could remember the exact location of the Foundation because of the techer boy’s Gift that made people forget it, the Chancellor had still figured out that our hideout was in the south. After all, the informants she turned could still tell her the direction the train cars full of supplies were headed. We always had them delivered several hundred miles away and then picked them up from there, but still. There was more air traffic buzzing overhead than ever before. We even had to put a stop to groups going up to the Surface to get fresh air every day. Which had, of course, become another source of complaints. I was used to being underground, but lots of the people in the Rez who’d lived out in the open found it claustrophobic inside our mountain hideout.
    I finally got to the front of the line and looked at the picked-over food in the steaming bins. I reached to spear one of the few protein patties left, then paused and glanced behind me at the still-long line. A tiny girl stood at the end of the line, her eyes huge and hungry. I pulled my hand back and shoveled a small bit of sweet potato and brown rice on my tray instead. I’d tell the cook to cut the protein patties in two tomorrow so everyone could get some.
    But how long could we keep this up? I rubbed my tired eyes before picking up my tray. The cafeteria was crowded. For a moment, I looked longingly at the table where my friends were all gathered. Then I headed to the table where Tyryn, Jilia, Henk, and the top platoon leader of the Rez soldiers sat.
    “Where are we on getting another rations shipment?” I asked as I sat down. Henk had been laughing with Jilia as I’d approached, but now he glowered.
    “It’s a right trick tryin’ to get anything past those sneaky bastards, but I think I got a line on a possible supplier. It’s all black market, but I think I can cut a deal with a ganger boss. Sylv was always fresh on me; I think I can charm her into working a deal.”
    “Is she a Rez agent?” I asked.
    “Nah, but she’s got no great love for Comm Corp.”
    Community Corp was the global conglomerate that had begun implanting V-chips in people hundreds of years ago. Almost everyone who’d escaped their control or lived on the fringes hated them.
    I frowned. “But can we trust her not to rat us out to the Uppers?”
    Henk shrugged. “For the right price, we could persuade her to at least think twice about it.”
    I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound safe.”
    “Money we got,” Henk said, “at least for the moment. But food, we don’t.”
    “How much longer will the supplies we do have last?” I asked.
    Jilia leaned in, her voice little higher