Free Override (Glitch) by Heather Anastasiu

pull with him, but the branch was still attached to the tree and didn’t budge an inch.
    “Is she—” Xona started, but Adrien cut her off.
    “She’s alive.”
    As if on cue, Jilia groaned, a small sound, but enough to make us redouble our efforts. Tyryn dropped to the ground beside Adrien, but even with all his muscles put to the task, the branch wasn’t moving.
    “Can you move the tree off with your telek?” Adrien asked.
    I gritted my teeth, trying to call my strength forward with my mind. But nothing happened. I felt a slight buzz of power, but then it was gone again.
    I looked at the flattened tent bits barely visible in the moonlight and then at the mangled trees all around us. Realization slowly dawned. Adrien had called it an accident, but only now did I realize what he meant. It was me. I had done this. When I’d used my power during my nightmare, I must have accidentally unleashed it in reality.
    “I think I used it all up.” I met Adrien’s eyes. He swallowed and nodded, taking a quick look around and then turning his attention back to Jilia.
    “Move out of the way,” Xona said, pulling a weapon from her ankle.
    “Back up, back up,” Tyryn said. Adrien and I pulled back as Xona pushed the trigger. The stream of bright laser cut a shocking red in the darkness. After a couple of minutes, the laser had sliced through the thick branch and Xona set to work on the other side. Finally she’d cut through it, too.
    Tyryn and Xona grabbed both ends of the log left behind and hefted it off Jilia. Jilia coughed and sputtered a few times, blood on her lips.
    “What do we do?” I asked frantically.
    Jilia’s face was pale, but she was blinking and looked alert. Her chest rose and fell easier now that the branch was gone. “I’m healing what I can,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight with her hands on her abdomen. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She worked until rivulets ran down her face.
    She finally exhaled again and looked back up at us.
    “Are you gonna be okay, Doc?” Xona asked.
    “A few broken ribs I can’t fix right now,” Jilia wheezed. “But the internal bleeding is stopped.”
    Xona helped her up while Tyryn looked around anxiously. “What the hell happened here?”
    “It was me,” I whispered. The weight of guilt sank in even as I said it. “I had a bad dream.”
    Xona looked back and forth between the damage and me and took a step back. Tyryn just stared.
    “We’ve got to get out of here,” Adrien said, unfazed. “We’re completely exposed.”
    Tyryn nodded. “The Sat Cams will have caught the disturbance, even all the way out here. They’ll come to investigate. We gotta run.”
    “Shunt,” Xona kicked hard at a fallen tree branch.
    Tyryn bent down and gently lifted Jilia. “Xona, go get the transport started.”
    She nodded once and then sprinted off.
    “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
    “This is how life in the Rez goes.” Adrien hurried forward with Tyryn and waved for me to follow. “Midnight escapes, running with only what you got on you. We’re used to it.”
    “But it’s my fault—”
    “All that matters now is that we get out of here safely.” Adrien took my hand as we ran.
    Xona already had the transport up and hovering by the time we got there.
    “Won’t they be able to track us?” I asked, jumping inside and buckling the strap across my chest.
    “The outer hull on the transport is built to deflect infrared screening,” Tyryn said. “In the night, we should be almost invisible.”
    I felt my stomach rock as we lifted higher through the trees. Leaves and twigs scratched down the windows, but soon we were up past the tree line and off into the night sky.
    “Where do we go now?” Xona asked.
    “Henk knew we’d be headed his way in a couple of days for transport to the Foundation,” Tyryn said. He glanced down at the console screen. “As long as we don’t bring any heat his way, he won’t mind us showing up early.”
    I glanced out the