Pulse (11 page)

“Thank you, Glory,” Faith whispered, because she liked it. It made her feel better.

Faith took a deep breath and let her waves of hair fall against her shoulder. She looked at her Tablet and remembered that she was supposed to go and get the cheese and the flour, because that’s what her parents had told her to do.

Or had they?

As Faith pulled her long hair into a knot behind her head and turned slightly in the mirror, she let herself hold the truth completely. She’d set those messages to come in herself, the reminders from her parents, which had originally been sent months and months before. Faith had copied them and put them on a rotation. And for a stinging moment every day or two, the alerts would appear like her mom and her dad had both reminded her to get the cheese and get the flour, to get home after dark. A split second later she would understand it wasn’t really them. But the brief moment before that was like the electric hum of a tattoo needle marking her soul.

She took a good long look at the image on the side of her neck. It was small and well hidden, tucked secretly against the line of her hair, opposite the new tattoo she’d just gotten. There was a branch of a tree in winter, leafless and cracked. On the branch sat a tattered eagle, staring off into the distance like it would fight on and on no matter the cost. It would never relent.

Faith’s parents were gone. They’d been gone awhile. And they weren’t dead or somehow taken to one of the States without her. They weren’t off running a long and important errand only to return at some time in the future they’d agreed on.

No, Faith’s parents weren’t coming back.

Her parents were Drifters.

PART TWO
Field Games

Chapter 9
Adrift in Skinny Jeans

Field reports traveled to Meredith through a complicated series of hacked Tablets, verbal communications, and carriers. More often than not, the news was not good. She had come to recognize the steady flow of depressing information as a normal part of her day, but the latest report was different. It possessed a weight with the power to change everything.

Ten Drifters were dead. Eleven had gone in; only one had come out.

Every war she’d ever known about had started this way. Up until a certain point, there was always a way out if both sides were willing to negotiate. But certain special events were designed with war in mind. They were orchestrated to send a clear message. There was always one side that pushed the other into an understanding about how things had changed. There would be no more posturing. The enemy had gotten the party started, whether she liked it or not. Meredith was one of the few people who knew a war had just begun. She knew the plans being made in secret and the extent to which the world was about to change. It was information she had kept safe at all cost.

“All but one?” Meredith asked. She was sitting in a vast, empty space, an undisclosed location known only to her most trusted carriers. The location was closer to Old Park Hill than she was comfortable with, but circumstances being what they were, there wasn’t much she could do about it. She had to be close to the front line, if not standing right on top of it. How else could she keep her finger on the most important developments taking place?

“It would seem they walked into a trap,” Clooger said. He was a huge man, bearded and dreadlocked. What little could be seen of his pale skin was scarred in multiple places, like he’d boxed a thousand rounds and been cut open too many times to count. His skin was the color of milk, in part because he never went outside unless it was dark. Very few Drifters did. He held a sawed-off shotgun at his side, half hidden under a long trench coat.

“Tell me everything you know,” Meredith said.

Clooger cleared his throat as if he were about to give a field report to a commanding officer, but when he began to speak, it was more natural than that. He’d long since grown weary of military formality.

“I sent a team to the abandoned building at Old Park Hill just as you asked. Eight men, three woman.”

“And they holed up in one of the rooms, as I ordered?”

Clooger nodded. “They stayed quiet, well hidden. We received one message on the first night—
everything was fine
—and then nothing.”

Meredith had sent the group to watch, not to fight. “I told them to quietly observe from an empty building. How did most of them end up dead?”

She knew this wasn’t entirely true. She’d heard, from someone Clooger knew nothing about, that there had been activity in the building of potentially high importance.

“I debriefed the survivor about two hours ago. James, a low-level, just recruited last month. I’d say he was rethinking his decision. He escaped out a window before the trouble started.”

There had been some important people in the group, but James had not been one of them. He was of little use to her and certainly was not allowed to know where she was stationed.

“That’s unfortunate,” she said, her mind already on other things. She had always been a calculating thinker, and she was smart enough to realize that the massacre was inevitable. She’d known it would come to this and, more importantly, that there would be many more casualties before it was over.

She looked into Clooger’s battered face, thinking of the various Tablet networks she had control over. “Use G10; keep everyone calm. Let’s not end up with a revolt on our hands.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“And be careful about your business. Our situation is fragile.”

As Clooger turned and stepped away, Meredith stared at the tattered eagle on the back of his trench coat. She wondered how many weapons he was carrying and of what kind. There was no way of knowing how many pockets lay hidden inside his coat, but she knew from experience that Clooger was a master of many war crafts. He knew a hundred different ways to kill a man and had the tools to accomplish them all.

“It wasn’t my fault. It just . . .
happened
. It got crazy is all.”

Wade Quinn was in an empty classroom staring into his Tablet. The only other person within earshot was Clara, who stood by the door watching for anyone who might walk down the long, empty corridor. She loved nothing more than seeing her brother in hot water, and this situation was boiling over a gas flame. She was all too happy to throw some grease on the fire.

“He was with a girl,” Clara said, loving every second of where this was going. “I told him not to, but you know Wade. He can’t keep his hands off the ladies.”

Wade took his eyes off his Tablet long enough to shoot his sister a cold stare, but it didn’t last long. A hand slammed down onto an unseen desk in the video feed. When Wade looked back, the face in the Tablet was not pleased.

“I told you both to control yourselves, and you didn’t.”

“Hey, whoa,” Clara said, moving over in front of the Tablet feed. “I had nothing to do with this. It was all Sasquatch here. This is on him.”

“Shut up, Clara.”

The command came from a female voice neither Wade nor Clara could see. She was on the other end of the Tablet feed, standing off camera. It was a voice they knew not to mess around with. “Go back to the door. Keep quiet.”

Clara slunk away, staring bullets at her brother as she went.

“Just a bunch of Drifters anyway,” Wade said under his breath, trying to make himself feel better. “Nobody’s gonna miss ’em.”

“They’re more important than you think; I’ve told you that a thousand times. Did you kill them all?”

Wade thought this was an odd question to ask until it crossed his mind that if there had been more than ten and one had ran away, this whole thing could come back to haunt him in a hurry. He decided it would be better to lie, then clean up the mess later if he had to.

“It happened really fast. They jumped me, and I lost control; that’s it. Took maybe two minutes. But yeah, they were all dead when it was over.”

The person on the video screen wasn’t so sure, but he let it go. “And you disposed of the bodies?”

“God, this is so gross,” Clara said. She opened the door and walked out, leaving Wade to deal with the situation on his own. Wade started to yell at Clara, but the person on the Tablet stopped him.

“Let her go. She’ll be fine if you give her some space.”

Wade returned his gaze to the Tablet, trying his best to stay focused.

“Yeah, I know where the bodies are buried. It was some work.”

“You’re lucky to be alive. Drifters are dangerous and unpredictable.”

“A plague on the earth,” the unseen female voice added. “I can’t say I mind fewer of them taking up space.”

There was a pause as the man looked at Wade for a long moment. “Did you know what you were doing, or did it feel like something else was in control?”

Wade didn’t want to answer the question. The Wire Code had made him more violent and alert. He’d never felt that powerful; and it really had happened very quickly, like a bolt of lightning, and it was over: dead bodies everywhere, Faith sitting in the cart shaking uncontrollably. He’d given her a second Wire Code so she’d block out everything. It was risky, especially for a first-timer, and he’d felt badly doing it. But he couldn’t let her remember what he’d done. Not an option.

“They attacked; I went for it,” Wade said. “To be honest, it’s all kind of a blur. I don’t remember exactly.”

The whole thing had been crazy, and while he thought Drifters were subhuman losers who were too stupid to live in the States, he couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that he’d actually put ten of them out of their misery.

“Stay away from the girl,” the man in the video feed said. “It’s a distraction you don’t need right now. Get stronger, do the training, and be ready. I’m going to need you at your best.”

The feed went dead, and Wade was pleased that the Wire Code hadn’t come up. He breathed deeply, like he’d been holding his breath during the conversation and finally he was allowed to get it all out and feel what he was really feeling.

“Holy shit, Wade,” he said to himself. “You killed ten Drifters.”

His emotions were all over the map. Part of him was amped at how incredibly powerful he was. Drifters were bad people: killers, thieves, con men. He’d had that drilled into his brain for years. He was thinking about taking on fifty, a hundred Drifters. Bring on the ninjas, send in the mixed martial arts champ; he’d take them all at once without breaking a sweat. Another part of him was struggling to make sense of what he’d let himself become. He didn’t feel like a guy who’d take out ten people in a matter of minutes without thinking twice, but that’s exactly what he’d done. He thought of Faith, and what she’d think of him if she knew. He liked her, and that was becoming a problem. It wasn’t in the plan, and Wade Quinn was all about the plan.

All those thoughts were swirling around a more central one occupying a huge piece of real estate in his brain.

Something was up with that Wire Code.

Wade snapped his Tablet to small, put it in his back pocket, and went in search of an answer he could only get from one person.

Hawk, you better shoot straight with me,
he thought as he opened the door and started down the empty hallway.
Otherwise you might be number eleven.

“You realize what he’s done,” Andre said. Gretchen stood at his side, unmoving but clearly pleased. Talking to the twins always got her blood boiling.

“He’s started a war,” she said. “I would have expected nothing less.”

“It’s not the timing I would have chosen.”

“The games are only a month away. We stick to the plan. This changes nothing. And you should encourage him more. He needs to get used to this. Ten Drifters was just the beginning for Wade.”

“I don’t know. Meredith can be unpredictable. This may set her off.”

“You worry too much. She’s only one person, and she’s surrounded by castoffs and fools. I think it’s good Wade did this; it shows how stupid she is. If she thinks Drifters will be of any help to her, Wade has made it clear they’re going to be useless in any kind of real confrontation. She’s running scared. Trust me.”

Andre couldn’t look at his wife. She was striking in the meanest way he could imagine, a characteristic that had been enticing and powerfully attractive when they’d met. In situations such as this one though, he felt nervous about her energy. She wanted power, lots of it, and as fast as it could be gotten. And there was something else, a thing that Andre understood all too well that Gretchen did not.

Meredith was a lot more powerful than he was. If things got complicated, their hope rested with the twins. It was a risky bet he wished he didn’t have to rely on.

“Where have you been?” Hawk hadn’t seen Faith for a week. She’d gone off grid, locked the door to her house, vanished.

“I was sick. It happens.” Faith hadn’t felt right for days and decided to take her classes from home, give herself some time to regroup. It was allowed, and in some ways even encouraged, this idea of schooling on one’s own. Mr. Reichert and Miss Newhouse only asked that she check in every day with her Tablet, let them know she was getting her work done, staying out of trouble. It had taken six days to shake the headaches and the bouts of fever. She’d felt adrift, lost to the world, unable to reconnect.

“You were already skinny enough,” Hawk said. He looked up at her face, which was bordering on gaunt. “You wanna hit the cafeteria? We have time, like fifteen minutes before the first bell.”

They sat together eating pancakes and cold cereal, the only two things besides milk that were always available for breakfast at Old Park Hill. Ten or so other kids were there, too, scattered in little groups around the cafeteria, eyeing Faith like she’d come back from the dead.

“Can I ask you something, Hawk?” Faith asked, slurping on a spoonful of wet cornflakes.

“As long as you keep eating, you can ask anything you want.”

Hawk was careful to look up every few seconds in case Wade or Clara appeared. He’d been dodging them like a secret agent for days, steering clear of any trouble.

“What do you know about Wire Codes? I mean, are they dangerous or just fun?”