Glitches (Book 1)

Chapter 13: Claire

I ran as fast as I could, struggling to keep up with the suspicious girl, Megan, as she darted through the winding hallways of WGO. She had taken off the second I finished a short phone call with Justin and was out of Amanda's field of vision. Quite cleverly, she pretended to grudgingly follow Amanda's orders until she was sure the President could no longer see or hear her. Then, taking advantage of my unpreparedness and the fact that she was much more familiar with the layout of the building than I was, she began to walk briskly through the halls, swiftly gaining a head start.

"Hey! Wait up!" I called after her, trying not to sound rude.

Of course, she didn't respond to my cries, and just kept on jogging. She made sharp turns whenever possible in an effort to lose me, forcing me to watch her like a hawk just to keep track of her. For a while, as I ran, I heard nothing but the sound of my heels pounding on the linoleum floor and my own heavy breathing.

After what felt like an eternity, Megan and I jogged up a steep ramp and onto a landing where we approached a set of abnormally clean glass doors. Exiting through the doors, the tight hallways we rushed through opened up to a balcony that was well over three stories above WGO. I found myself looking out over a large fountain where several well-dressed, prissy-looking Glitches sat going through long, complex sequences of Code.

Those must be the Codies Jade was talking about.

From the height of the balcony, I saw that WGO headquarters was divided into five distinct sections. The first of the five sections contained a tall, black spire in the middle, which sat next to a similar structure located on the right. These were Government Buildings A and B, which I had learned were the main buildings from which Amanda governed WGO. There was nothing remarkable about them, other than what took place within them.

"You made it," Megan said grudgingly, looking over her shoulder. She walked forward until she was pressed up against the railing that circumscribed the balcony, putting as much distance between herself and me as possible.

"Well, I suppose we should get this over with."

She did nothing to disguise the spite that filled her voice. I found myself hiding my displeasure at her entirely unfounded feelings of hate in order to stay out of trouble with her and Amanda.

"That's the Codie Complex," Megan began to speak monotonously, pointing at the section that was directly in front of us. This was the upscale section filled with decorative fountains, lush gardens, and modern offices. The Codies must have been big on green energy, because more than half of their chunk of WGO was made of glass. Overall, the place screamed power and intelligence, almost even more than Amanda's towers did.

"There's Cookie Park," she gestured to the building to our left. It was so colorful that it looked like the little kids' section of a theme park. The swimming pools and coffee shops surrounding it only made it more attractive. "I know, it doesn't look like much work gets done there. It doesn't," Megan said, bitterly chastising the friendly Division.

Her blunt rudeness was beginning to put me off. The joyful Cookies had never done anything to harm her; yet, for some reason, she felt the need to take out her anger at me on them.

"Those are the Sloppie and Speedie places. They don't really matter."

She darted her eyes at a squat, rectangular building to my right that honestly looked quite drab. There was a hotel-esque thing behind me with several gyms and a soccer field attached. I approached the railing to get a better view of this complex. This move, however, also brought me closer to Megan.

"Can't you tell that I want you to leave me alone?" I heard the WGO official's harsh voice coming from beside me, which snapped me out of my thoughts.

"I thought Amanda told you to give me an orientation?" I asked bitterly, crossing my arms. I, the one and only Claire King, most certainly wasn't a pushover. When I'd had enough, I'd had enough, and my fear of some mysterious organization wasn't going to hold me back. "Why do you hate me so much anyways? You don't even know me!" I spat.

"You don't know anything about Amanda! Her motives are never as simple as what she says out loud. She doesn't care a bit whether you feel welcome and relaxed here or not. She just wanted me to give you an orientation so she can laugh at how uncomfortable being around you makes me." She paused for a moment, before letting out a long sigh. "You know what? I can't handle this right now. I'm going to get a Cookie to show you to your room."

"Why do I make you uncomfortable?" I asked, ignoring her threat of sending me away. I was beginning to feel a tad frustrated with the enigmatic nature of the people at WGO, and realized that if I wanted answers, I was going to have to be more direct. "I have so many questions, and I thought you would give me answers, but you're just giving me... well, you're just giving me even more questions!"

"There are things going on here that you know nothing about and will never understand, so stop questioning me! You have no idea what I've been through!" she snapped. However, her harsh facade wasn't as convincing as it had been before. Now, she seemed unsure of herself, as if she doubted and maybe even regretted her decision to dislike me.

Megan inched closer to me menacingly and narrowed her watering eyes, but what I saw in her wasn't anger or irritation. It was sorrow; the same soulful sorrow Dad had shown when Jade and Calvin first stood at our doorstep. I was even more confused now, which scared me. I didn't want to be here anymore. I wanted to run away and go home, to make things the way they were before I found out about Glitches and WGO. I wanted to be safe and make sense of who I was, but that wasn't going to happen. The moment I had stepped off my jet, I had felt a shift. It was the turning of the page: the bend of the river. WGO had started something in my life: something I wasn't sure I had the power to truly end.

Even if Amanda let me leave that instant, home would never be the same again. I would live the rest of my life with a big what if?" What if I had stayed? What if I had done more? What could I have discovered? I decided then and there that anything Amanda, Megan, and WGO could throw at me was better than a life full of questions. I wasn't going to break. I was going to stay as long as I needed to in order to find out exactly what was going on.