Glitch Read Online Free

her, but failed. His shoulders and hips looked fixed, but he still scratched at his neck, even as he stood over her.
    “My arms don’t work right,” he said.
      The Rogue attack he’d suffered last week had been reversed, but the fact his head and arms had been on backward for a short time meant he’d be dealing with the aches for weeks.
    “I guess not,” the one-and-only glad-fighter Hutto Toth said.
    He stood next to Joss, smiling at Simone, the perfect representation of masculinity. He’d pulled his blond locks back into a ponytail. Next to him, two-foot-tall Wally Dorsey stared at Mrs. Douglas as if he thought she’d died.
    Beasley stood over the teacher, ignoring Simone and her mechanical friend in the back of the room. “Didn’t the teachers get a memo or something about Simone?”
    Hutto peeked at the fallen teacher from behind Beasley. “Did you frown at her and scare her shitless, Beasley?” Beasley spun. He backed up, still grinning, as if he expected a blow. “Just playing, Big Dog. Just playing.”
    She raised a ham-sized fist. “See these knuckles? They’ll be smashing your nose today in training.”
    “Keep telling yourself that.”
    Wally stood on a chair. “Did she bang her noggin on the floor?”
    Joss lifted her head. Mrs. Douglas babbled and slobbered on his hand. “Great,” he said, as if he’d dipped his hand in mud. “Teacher drooled on my fingers.”
    Half the class crowded around the downed teacher like gamblers at dice.
    Kimberlee pushed forward. “Joss, hold her head up. Let her breathe.”
    A semicircle of students had formed around Simone and the cydrone in the back of the room with enough space anyone could bolt if they had to, but close enough for a good look. She let them look at her. She stood there in a summer dress open at the neck, wearing her knee-high boots with the big buckles. Simone imagined they’d throw rocks if they’d had them.
    Russell Wooten and Chip Monroe walked in late, and gawked.
    “Take a picture,” she said. She put her hands on her hips and faked a pose.
    Chip, the quasi-Neanderthal Transhuman, walked past her as if she were normal. “Nice robot.” The big football player sat in the middle of the room, put his head on his hands, and dozed off.
    “Freak,” Russell said. He bopped a band student in the back of the head for no reason and sat.
    Principal Smalls appeared with Nurse Betty, who wrung her hands as if an Ebola outbreak had just happened. Mrs. Douglas was sitting by now but looked no more refreshed than if she’d been shot and bandaged up. She was trying to blot her eyes. But it didn’t work, and her makeup ran down her ragged face in splotchy lines.
    Simone stood in the back with her silent guardian, watching the period implode.
    Principal Smalls made everyone sit in their chairs, facing forward, with no talking. As always, his wide belly pushed at his belt, and his balding head looked moist. After a frazzled Nurse Betty escorted Mrs. Douglas out, Principal Smalls paced back and forth, wringing his hands.
    “Oh, enough of this,” he said. “All the Cybercorps Alters, including Simone and her guest, in the library.”
    “Yes!” Hutto said. “No class.”
    * * *
    Second period rang for the rest of school, while for the Alters—Beasley, Kimberlee, Hutto, Wally, Joss, and Simone—the bell meant the beginning of their training in the Consortium’s experimental Cybercorps Defense Program.
    Hutto sat on one of the empty tables in the middle of the small library, feet on a chair. The others gravitated to him as if he were the de-facto leader. Wally chatted with Beasley and Kimberlee, while Joss played with his tablet. Simone’s cydrone found a place by the wall and stood at attention, as lifeless as an unplugged dishwasher. The walls of the library were lined with stacks in rows like the spokes of a wheel. She moved down one of these aisles, hiding among the books, keeping her distance.
    Principal Small followed, shut the double