Pulse (21 page)

After about twenty minutes, the van pulled off on a marked exit down a secondary tube and came to a stop. Clara and Wade gathered their things and entered a building through a set of sliding double doors. None of the usual checking in at the hotel desk took place. Instead, Wade and Clara boarded an elevator, which was glassed in on all sides.

“Here we are,” Clara said as she pushed the button marked 300.

“Yeah,” Wade said. “Here we are.”

The building they had entered was 301 stories high, one of the taller buildings in the Western State. As they began their ascent, the glass elevator emerged onto the outside of the building after the first few floors, allowing them a spectacular view. At first they only saw buildings surrounding them on all sides. Modern, sleek structures of metal and glass that rose so high they couldn’t make out the tops. But soon enough, as they passed the halfway point, gaps in the buildings started to appear. There were white skywalks everywhere, spanning from one building to another. The higher they went, the more connecting spokes there were. From the sky, it began to look like the buildings were all trapped in an enormous spiderweb that went on for hundreds of miles: thousands of sleek skyscrapers connected by layer after layer of white passageways.

“Pretty cool,” Wade blurted out as he leaned his forehead against one of the windows of the glass elevator. “Last week they surpassed four million connecting passageways. Blows the mind.”

Tops of lower buildings started to appear, bright green and teeming with life. The giant roofs were used to grow much of the food consumed in the Western State. All the rooftop farms were managed mechanically to plant, grow, and harvest without human intervention. Distribution was handled through automated delivery systems that put fresh fruit and vegetables in every residence on a regular schedule. Advances in soil and seed management produced constant, not seasonal, new harvests.

In the elevator, Clara pulled out her Tablet, snapped it large, and turned it on. She was hoping to send a message to someone as they rose up in the air, but she was surprised to find that her Tablet had reset while they traveled. The operating system had been updated, and she was tied into the G12 network.

“Hey, check your Tablet,” Clara said. “We’re on the grid. Lots of channels.”

Wade snapped his Tablet open and started scrolling through the channel guide. By the time they reached floor 250, they’d both realized how much they’d been missing. Their old network had delivered what amounted to decades-old reruns, lectures, and propaganda about everything anyone on the outside was missing. Now that they were inside, the options were endless. What they both wanted to do was curl up on a couch and watch new shows for weeks on end, but a message on Wade’s Tablet brought them back to reality before they could even begin to enjoy the idea of lazing around in their rooms.

“He says we need to be at the practice field in two hours,” Wade said as they arrived at the three hundredth floor and the elevator stopped.

“What else does he say?” asked Clara. She stepped out of the elevator into a corridor lined with doors and turned left.

Wade laughed. “He says not to overdo it until he tells us to.”

“Figures,” Clara said, stopping at a door just off the elevator. She minimized her Tablet and held the screen next to a reader on the door. There was a soft, buzzing sound, and the door unlocked. “If he has it his way, we’ll never show anyone what we can do.”

“He wants us to contact him as soon as we settle in,” Wade said, snapping his Tablet small and placing it in his pocket. Unlike Clara, who could turn moody and sullen when the pressure was on, Wade was dizzy with excitement as he went to the plateglass window and stared at the view below.

“Come on, Clara. You have to be excited when you look at this place.”

Clara stood next to her brother, trying not to feel manipulated by forces outside of her control. What she really wanted to do was start throwing things around the room with her mind, but she knew that would solve nothing. Looking down, she saw the location for the Field Games, a stunning spectacle of modern architecture. Buildings towered all around the edge of a rooftop field. The striking green color of the grass overpowered the sea of white and silver. There was seating for 100,000 around the edge of the track, and on top of all the surrounding buildings another 50,000 seats. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide would watch the games on their Tablets or on larger screens in their apartments, but 150,000 would see them compete live. Clara thought of those people, especially the lucky few who would be seated near the field, and mulled over something she’d been contemplating for days.

“Let’s contact him,” Clara said. “I want to start warming up as soon as we can.”

Wade was happy to see his sister come out of her funk, if only a little, and went straight to work setting up a connection. The G12 network wasn’t available outside the Western State, but Wade had been instructed in how to get around that little problem. With a few keystrokes, he was tied into multiple networks at once, and a few seconds later he and Clara were sitting on a couch staring at two people. One was Mr. Reichert, the other Miss Newhouse. They were no longer using those names as covers though, and they were no longer running Old Park Hill, which had closed the previous day.

“No trouble getting settled in?” asked the man. His name was Andre Quinn, and though he really did have something of an egg-shaped head and a bad haircut, he was a formidable presence when he wasn’t pretending to be a washed-up school principal.

“No trouble at all,” Wade said. “And we can see the field from our window. Amazing!”

Wade’s father smiled proudly. He loved his son’s childlike exuberance. Unlike his sister, who could be difficult, Wade wanted nothing more than to please his father.

“Remember,” Andre Quinn warned, “this has to be handled delicately. If you compete at too high a level, our plans will be harder to manage. Don’t draw undue attention.”

Clara hated this part of “the plan.” She knew she could win every single event without even trying. Having to pretend that she was lame like every other athlete on the field was going to be very tough. And the plan had been bothering her for a long time, primarily because she didn’t fully understand what it was.

“I don’t know why we have to throw these events,” Clara said. Arriving in the Western State and seeing the facility had turned up the volume on her competitive nature. “What’s the point of even doing this if you’re not going to let us compete?”

“There’s a job to do. Drawing attention to yourselves is the last thing we need,” Andre’s wife said. Her name was not Miss Newhouse and never had been. This was Gretchen Quinn, and she was always the bad cop when it came to dealing with Clara. “This is not about winning, Clara. At least not yet.”

Clara rolled her eyes. She couldn’t stand her stepmother and thought she was a power-hungry idiot. “Whatever you say, Mommy dearest.”

“That’s enough, Clara.” Andre was all too happy to let Gretchen deal with Clara’s behavior, but there was a line he would not let Clara cross. “We’re at the beginning of a long journey. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and it begins with small steps. These ridiculous Field Games are not going to mean anything by this time next year. And I promise you, by then you’ll have more power than you know what to do with. Trust me on this, Clara. I know what I’m doing.”

Clara did trust her father, even if his taste in women bordered on insane. But Clara had a plan of her own, one that had been swirling around in her head ever since Gretchen had come into the picture.
Just you wait,
Clara thought as she glared at her stepmother.
I’m going to come for you; and when I do, you’ll wish you’d never been born.

“When you warm up, keep it normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Stay near the back of the pack during the decathlon, and do as we’ve instructed when the time comes. Remember, you’re not there to win games. You’re there to do a job.”

Wade felt a small pang in his chest as he thought about all the work he’d put in training for the games. It was nowhere near the amount a true Field Games athlete would invest, but still, there had been a lot of endless afternoons jumping over a bar or throwing a metal ball. There had been many moments of extreme boredom in which he’d asked himself why in the world anyone would dedicate himself to such useless endeavors. And yet, deep down inside, he wanted to win. It would take all his self-control not to position himself on the top podium when the opportunity arose.

“Always remember, this isn’t about us,” Gretchen said, her cold gaze alternating between each twin. “We have the power to change the world, to mold it into what it should be. We are not to waste such power. Am I understood?”

Clara and Wade nodded obediently, looking at their father for any additional guidance he might provide.

“You are now firmly entrenched in enemy territory. Don’t forget that. And don’t for a second let your emotions get away from you. Get the job done and come home.”

Wade was just about to sign off, but Clara stopped him.

“There’s a girl from Old Park Hill, a friend of mine. I’d like her to have a seat. A good one, close to the field.”

Gretchen saw this as a way to appease her unpredictable stepchild and immediately latched on to it. “I have someone on the inside, won’t be a problem. Tell me her name.”

Gretchen turned her attention to a Tablet at her side, where she scrolled through a list of seats she had access to through an associate in the State.

“Liz Brinn,” Clara said. Wade shot her a look of surprise, but Clara ignored him and went on. “She was a really close friend; this would mean a lot. And she’d want to bring another person, if that’s not asking too much.”

Gretchen didn’t like the idea of Clara having a close friend at Old Park Hill, but she let it slide. If this small gesture could build some much-needed goodwill between the two of them, so be it.

“I’ll have two tickets sent to her, both right on the field. A213 and A214, in case you want to say hello. Does that make you happy?”

“That’s perfect, thank you, Gretchen. It really means a lot.”

Clara could be charming when she needed to be, and all appeared to be in order when the call ended.

Andre and Gretchen had moved to a new location ten miles to the north of Old Park Hill, where they could watch the Games unfold in peace and quiet.

“They’re nearly seventeen. We shouldn’t have to treat them like children any longer,” Gretchen said.

“Well, it was a nice gesture all the same,” Andre responded. “You know how unpredictable she can be. Better safe than sorry.”

Gretchen looked at Andre without a shred of emotion.
The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree,
she thought. And she was right. Andre had been calm for many months, but he could be as unpredictable as his daughter.

If things didn’t go as planned in the Western State, there was no telling what he would do.

“Charity case, happens every year.”

Wade heard one of the other athletes use those very words as he began warming up at the high jump pit in the training facility an hour later. There were four other jumpers, and they all seemed to agree: Wade was the one from the outside, a concession to help the needy feel better about themselves. It galled him to think about what total losers they all were, and to take his frustrations out, he made them look like amateurs on every single one of their warm-up jumps. Wade would watch them elevate, then when they were right over the bar, he would use his mind to move the jumper’s legs down and knock the bar off the stands. He did this to all the other jumpers, messing with their heads as they looked at the fallen bar and thought,
What the hell?
When the guy who’d made the lame comment stepped up for his first jump, Wade took special pleasure in making him trip on his approach and fall flat on his face. The guy didn’t even make it to the bar.

“You guys warming up at six-six? Really?” Wade asked. “Huh.”

On his first jump, Wade couldn’t help himself. He cleared it by a foot and a half, a dangerous sign of talent that hovered in the area of the world record. Then he walked past the group and over to the throwing area. “I guess once is enough.”

He continued the routine at each of the warm-up stations, relishing every jaw-dropping stare he got as he showed them all who they were dealing with. The complicated part of all this posturing was the fact that it was really messing with Wade’s head. Clara had already made her case as they walked to the practice field: they should do what they wanted to do, not what witchy Gretchen and their dad said.

“Who does she think she is?” Clara had said, adding, “There’s no reason for us to do what she says.”

Wade had tried to convince her that it was their duty to follow through with the plan.

“They’ve been training us for what, three years? It’s not our problem, Wade. It’s not our war; it’s theirs. I don’t see why we have to be pawns on someone’s chess board.”

But Wade always had to remember that Clara was incredibly persuasive. If she’d been arguing the other side of the case, that they should stick to the plan and do as they were told, she would have been every bit as convincing. And the problem with Clara, as he’d come to know over time, was that she was notorious for changing her mind.

Still, he had to admit, it felt good to trounce a bunch of talentless normals. What fun it would be to sweep the games, take every event in the decathlon, and break all the world records while he was at it.

By the time he and Clara were settled in for the night, awaiting the morning alarm that would send them onto the field, he still hadn’t decided which course of action he was going to take.

Liz Brinn couldn’t believe her luck. She’d only been in the Western State for a little while, and already she’d managed to secure two tickets to the Field Games. And not just any two tickets,
field
level tickets. She was the talk of her social circle. No one could believe she had them. A bidding war broke out to buy the second ticket that went as high as six thousand Coin, a huge amount of Tablet cash she could have used to buy a whole closet full of new clothes. But it never really crossed her mind to sell the extra ticket. She knew it was a fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the Field Games live and up close.