Glitch: Chapters 22–36

Worse than that, if left in that time period for too long, they would inevitably become Butterflies themselves, meddling with the ebb and flow of time by their very presence.

“The other missions require quite a bit more tact, finesse, and time...”

“The other missions require quite a bit more tact, finesse, and time...”

I’d been trained my entire life to compartmentalize, to give my entire focus to the situation at hand, and I leaned hard on the habits developed from years and years of study and work.

The brick window ledge of the windowsill cut into my hands as the fire escape fell away to careen to the ground.

Using muscles I’d honed through hundreds of push-ups and pull-ups, I heaved myself upward toward safety.

I stood there mulling this over outside the girls’ dormitory while I waited for Regan. I thought back to the Cocoon, wishing for the first time that it hadn’t dissolved in the fountain. I was almost positive I remembered everything it had said, but what if I’d forgotten something? I mentally went down the list of bullet points at the bottom of the list. The last one we’d checked off was about the window.

“If we’d told ourselves that the mountain was going to get attacked, do you think we would have stayed inside of it?” she asked, and the tirade I was about to go on about how irresponsible our future selves were dried up in my throat.

The box shattered with a resounding crack, and I threw my hands up as needle-sharp splinters of glass sprayed in all directions.

“There’s twenty-five,” I said. Somehow that number seemed simultaneously small and overwhelmingly large.

When Regan first told me about her security-cameras-turned-explosives revelation, I’d pictured hundreds of cameras, a number so big even a fleet of people couldn’t retrieve them in time.

It was nuclear, which always involved a lot of equipment and prep work, and besides that, we really couldn’t mess with Ukraine’s history without a sanction from their Glitch department.

I’d watched hundreds of recaps of myself, and it had never really fazed me.

Even through the smudged window, I could see the look of pure revulsion Regan had on her face as I followed her down the hall, harassing her for all I was worth.

“I have to commend you two on all your extra practice. It will come in handy one day, I’m sure.”