Shutdown (Glitch)

the long hall that flanked the cafeteria. I peeked in almost hesitantly when I got to the door. The Caf was packed like always. More and more refugees had been flooding into the Foundation since it was one of the last few safe Rez sanctuaries left. Loud chatter filled the room. A few children laughed and chased each other around, but most of the adults wore subdued expressions. Some of them had been on the run for months. And they knew as well as I did that the situation here at the Foundation was tenuous at best.
    With the Chancellor able to use her compulsion powers to make any Rez agents she captured tell her everything they knew, Rez numbers had dwindled to the lowest in recent memory. It also made sneaking in supplies harder than ever. Many of our supply contacts had either been captured, or were too afraid to help us anymore.
    Which meant, even with stringent rationing, soon we wouldn’t be able to feed the people who’d taken refuge here. Some of the refugees were already grumbling about the smaller portions. Last week we’d found several men breaking into the pantry, trying to steal food.
    I shook my head and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be a problem, I told myself. After the mission next week, everything would change.
    I finally located Adrien among all the other people. He sat at a small table in the corner, reading from his tablet. I paused for a moment, watching him. It was a picture I wanted to take with me.
    The way he hunched over when he read was so familiar I was stung by memories. For just a moment I could pretend that when I walked in and called his name, he’d look up and a smile would light his face. That special smile he used to save only for me.
    I stepped in, wishing I could lengthen out the space of this moment, so full of potential, when hope was still alive that today might be the day I’d see that smile.
    But then I came closer and he shifted his head, showing the angry red scars tracing across the left side of his skull. Evidence that nothing could ever go back to normal, not after what the Chancellor had done to him. At least his hair was finally growing back in, short and wavy against his head except where the scars were.
    I swallowed hard and then sat beside him like I always did. Every afternoon, no matter how busy I was or how many demands were made of me as the ranking officer at the Foundation, I made sure to stop whatever I was doing and spend an hour with him. He used to let me take his hand, but for the past few weeks, he hadn’t. I didn’t know if this was a good thing—that he was developing a will of his own again, or a bad thing, because the Adrien I knew would never give up a chance to touch and connect with me.
    “How are you feeling?” I asked.
    “Nauseous and weak.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry. Is it the treatment?”
    “It’s the injections the doctor gives me. I don’t like taking them.”
    I reached for his hand, but he put it under the table before I could make contact. I stared for a second. All month he’d deliberately moved away from me whenever I reached for him. I tried to still my quivering voice. “But the injections will help make you feel better,” I said. “They’re helping stimulate the new amygdala tissue that’s been grown.”
    He didn’t say anything, just stared at his tablet.
    I tried another approach. “What about your emotions?” I asked. “How are you feeling emotionally today?”
    Again, he didn’t say anything. He never did when I asked him that question.
    “What are you reading?” I tried instead, desperate to hear more than a cursory answer from him. Usually when I visited him I spent most of the hour talking since he rarely gave more than one-word responses. But I missed the sound of his voice. Sometimes I was afraid I was forgetting what it sounded like, just like I was afraid of forgetting what it used to feel like when his eyes brightened when I walked in the room, or the way he looked at me when he said the three most magical words in the English language: I love you.
    He looked up briefly, then back at his text. “One time you called me a philosopher,” he said. “So I’m reading philosophy.”
    I brightened. He remembered. I knew Jilia said he had all his memories—it was attaching emotion to the memories that was the problem. I kept hoping that the more he remembered, the more he’d be able to draw those emotional connections himself. I’d called him a philosopher during one of our first conversations