Pulse (26 page)
It couldn’t be true. It was too much agony in the space of too little time. And yet Faith’s mind was reeling with so much violent emotion, she couldn’t get to a place where remorse waited. She watched as Hawk removed a large swath of red fabric from the bag he’d brought with him.
“Was Clara Quinn on the field when it happened?” Faith asked.
Meredith and Dylan didn’t answer as they watched Hawk drape the red fabric over his shoulders like a warm blanket.
“Tell me!” Faith screamed. She stood, and the chair beneath her flew up in the air behind her, careening across the room and smashing into the wall. “Was she on the field?”
Dylan stood and moved between Faith and Hawk. “She was.”
That was all Faith needed to hear. Suddenly she knew the truth. Liz had no strategic value in whatever game was being played. It was Faith whom Clara was trying to hurt, no one else.
“So Wade Quinn killed my parents. And Clara Quinn killed my best friend. Is that where we stand?”
“Dylan?” Meredith said. Her voice betrayed fear, which Faith wanted more than anything to seize on.
“Everyone in this room is on your side,” Dylan said. “We all want the same thing you do.”
“And what’s that?” Faith asked. The chair Dylan had sat in lurched forward, then blasted up in the air, its legs twisting and turning toward Meredith. Meredith raised a hand, and the chair flew in the other direction, crashing into the wall.
“Better get this under control, Dylan,” Meredith said. “Or you might be the only one that gets out of here alive.”
Faith didn’t want to move. She tried to hold her ground, willing herself to stay; but she was drifting closer to Dylan, and she couldn’t get it to stop.
“Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!” she screamed. But before she could stop it from happening, Dylan had his arms wrapped around her. All the rage inside her tried to get out as she fought to break free, but there was nothing in the world that could have made Dylan Gilmore let her go. He held on as she kicked and screamed and tried to hurt him any way she could. When she finally went limp in his arms, all the anger turned to regret and sadness, she whispered something in his ear that only he could hear.
“It’s my fault. They’re all dead because of me.”
Dylan knew it wasn’t true and so he held her tighter still, whispering over and over again, “Not true. Not true. Not true.”
Minutes passed.
“Let her go,” Meredith said. “It’s over.”
Meredith understood more than anyone else what the end of a pulsing rage looked like. She’d lived through plenty of them. Dylan slowly let Faith go. When Faith looked at Hawk, he was still covered in the red fabric. He removed it, stuffing it into the bag as he took something else out.
“I brought this for you,” he said softly.
He handed over his most precious possession,
The Sneetches
, which he had taken from the old grade school on the night he’d been there with Faith and Liz.
Faith reached out her hand and thought of Liz, how she loved to sit and read in the abandoned library for hours on end. She held it to her chest and tried to imagine a world in which Liz and her parents didn’t exist.
Meredith took a breath and decided the room was safe once more.
“We come now to another one of those unfortunate moments,” she began. “Where there is no time.”
Faith felt a kind of sad relief at the idea of putting off the pain of having to process all her feelings. This war she’d stepped into unwillingly had given her at least the smallest mercy.
“There are those who want to destroy everything the States seek to create,” Meredith said. “Everything good that came from Hotspur Chance
is
the States. Hold other things against him, but not that. Nothing is perfect; but without the States, humankind would be in far worse condition and only getting worse. They’re a brilliant invention, and they need to be protected at all cost.”
“It’s our job to keep them safe,” Hawk said.
“No offense,” Faith said, “but what have you got to do with any of this?”
Dylan looked a little sheepish, like he’d kept a secret from Faith. “He’s a third-generation Intel. Very rare.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Faith asked. Her mind was reeling with questions about how this was possible, but she was pretty sure in time they’d tell her how Hawk had come to be the smartest boy on Earth.
“Faith,” Meredith said, and then she reached out and took her hand. Faith was surprised to find that it was very soft, and suddenly she was crying, unable to stop the tears from coming. “If we can find your second pulse, we can turn the tide. It’s in you—Dylan can feel it. The question is, How deep? You, Dylan, and Hawk—you three might prevail against a great evil.”
Faith understood. She only had a single pulse. If a hammer hit her in the side of the head, it wouldn’t matter how many she’d thrown the other way. She’d be a goner. It was only the second pulse that mattered in a real confrontation, and somewhere hidden inside, she had one.
“Take the envelope; read it later,” Meredith said, lifting it off the floor with her mind and letting it hover in front of Faith. “It’s from your parents.”
“Can I please sit outside, on the roof?” Faith asked. “I can’t stand it down here. I need to think. Alone.”
Meredith looked at Dylan for some reassurance.
Could she be trusted not to do anything stupid? Had she calmed down enough?
“Promise me you won’t go anywhere else,” Dylan said. “Just to the roof, and don’t fly. I’ll come find you in an hour, and we’ll get going.”
“Going?” Faith asked.
Meredith was convinced it would be okay to give Faith an hour, but that was the limit. Clooger was already gathering the rest of the Drifters for their long trek south.
“We can’t stay here any longer, and besides, there’s no reason. We need time to train where no one can find us.”
The deadbolt on the red door turned, and Faith started to leave. She was suffocating with information, and all she really wanted was time alone.
“You might as well take this, too,” Hawk said, pulling Faith’s Tablet out of the bag he had carried in. “The tracking’s off now, so you can’t be traced. And I’ve made a few other adjustments. Like you can get more shows now. Unfortunately, there won’t be any more free pants.”
“I was really going to miss this thing,” Faith said. “Thanks.”
A few seconds later Faith was out the doorway, up the old escalator, and into the fresh air of a cool night.
When they were alone in the basement room, Meredith turned to Hawk. She trusted him the most, for he was an Intel. He was ten times smarter than Dylan and Meredith put together. “If we can’t unlock her second pulse, the war is over before it begins.”
Hawk seemed to be calculating something in his head as his eyes darted back and forth. “I thought the book would do it. My timing must have been off by a nanosecond.”
“Feelings are hard to pinpoint,” Meredith said. “Better follow her; make sure she doesn’t go looking for trouble. This one is more unpredictable than most.”
“And powerful,” Dylan added. “She’s something else.”
Meredith stared at the open red door for a long moment before saying what they all knew.
“Without her we haven’t got a chance.”
Faith set
The Sneetches
on the wooden table where she and Dylan had done so much of their work. Carrying the book around was a burden, unlike her Tablet, which fit in her back pocket and never failed to deliver entertainment when she needed it. She’d followed the instructions, using the fire escape to climb up to the roof, but she still felt too close to other people. She needed real seclusion, the kind she could only get if she went higher still.
The orange glow of the State was strong and clear as Faith flew straight up, higher and higher, on the rocket power of her own thoughts. She knew it wouldn’t take much of a mistake to end up with a broken leg or worse whenever she decided to come down, but she didn’t care. She needed somewhere to be alone—really alone—and the higher she flew the more isolated her world became. What she wouldn’t give for a second pulse—with that, Faith could fly right over the State, find Clara and Wade Quinn, and throw punches all night. She allowed herself to imagine picking up a bus and dropping it on Wade Quinn’s head. She thought glorious, useless thoughts of putting Clara through a brick wall.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you,” Faith said, the words falling like petals into an empty sky. She was saying it to her mom, her dad, her best friend. She hung in the air, thinking about the price she’d had to pay, and for what? She hadn’t asked to be like this. She hadn’t asked Dylan to stand outside her window invading her private dreams. No one had bothered to explain anything to Faith until it was too late. They would have her in their little army whether she liked it or not.
Faith screamed louder than she’d ever screamed before. The sky devoured every bit of sound before it reached the ground. She could have pitied herself for at least another hour had she been given the chance, but screaming had turned her mind into a sheet of white noise. She started falling; and not having a lot of experience with the weight of her own body falling through open space, she panicked. Arms and legs were dangling in every direction, turning her sideways and upside down, tumbling through space. The top of the building she would soon hit was dark enough that she couldn’t say for sure how close she was to impact. And for one last, dreadful moment, she thought about letting it happen. It would be less painful. One moment, a split second, and it would be over. No more regrets about how she’d failed, no more guilt about broken relationships she’d willingly chosen not to fix. No more anger about how unfair it all was.
Three thoughts kept her from dying that night.
Faith
.
The meaning of her name haunted her like a ghost from another world, flying in the air all around her. There was something, not nothing, on the other side of death. An eternity in which everyone felt sorry about her tragic ending was not the kind of afterlife she looked forward to.
Hope
.
As she plunged toward her death, she saw Dylan’s face the way he sometimes looked at her, and she couldn’t imagine leaving him behind. Something below the surface of her mind told her Dylan could heal all the terrible scars she carried. And she saw Hawk’s face, too. He could never replace Liz, but he had the intangible quality of being comfortable. She could sit in a room for ten hours and simply be with Hawk. He was easy that way, and she needed that. It could sustain her through the minefield of feelings she navigated on a daily basis.
And in the end, there was the fire that threatened to overwhelm her.
Revenge
.
For better or worse, the fuel that would keep her from death was vengeance. She would destroy the Quinns or die trying. It was the thing that cleared her mind and slowed her descent. Revenge got her to stop flailing around, center her mind, and come to an abrupt halt three inches short of plowing her face into the roof of a clothing store.
She went straight to the table and picked up
The Sneetches
, then sat on the ledge of the building, letting her legs dangle as she gazed at the orange light of the State. Turning her attention to the book, she read each page slowly, savoring every word like each one might be her last. With the turning of pages she tore them out one by one, tossing them into the open air and watching as they fluttered back and forth like broken wings plunging into the abyss. When all the pages were gone and only the spine remained, she felt the empty weight of what she’d done and kissed her childhood good-bye.
Faith, hope, and revenge.
These words would be her mantra. These would carry her into a war she hadn’t chosen and didn’t understand. Her sadness would be replaced with an all-consuming mission. She didn’t have the strength to read the letter tucked safely into her back pocket. It would have to wait for its turn at firing shotgun rounds at her heart. She’d had enough for one night.
As Faith’s emotions realigned, she felt a buzzing in her back pocket. Someone was trying to find her, and while she wasn’t ready to be found, she didn’t think it was a good idea to vanish. If Dylan or Meredith or Hawk was trying to locate her, it would be less trouble to simply answer. It might buy her a little more time alone.
She took out her Tablet, not bothering to snap it into a larger size, and read the message.
I’ve come back for you. Let’s finish what we started. Old Park Hill.
The message wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. Faith knew exactly who it was. Clara Quinn was back. How she’d gotten out of the State after going in she didn’t know, but what did it matter? Clara was at the school, and the two of them had unfinished business. Faith’s mind was so full of rage and confusion that she didn’t even think about the danger of what she was about to do.
She left her Tablet there on the ledge with the spine of the book and dived off the roof of the building.
“What do you mean she’s not there?” Dylan couldn’t believe his ears as he stood inside the mall among a group of Drifters packing up their belongings. Hawk was there, too, busily tapping out code on his Tablet. He switched tasks immediately, searching for other Tablets in the area.
“I’ve searched the perimeter and the roof. She’s not here,” Clooger said. He spied something along the ledge on the far side of the roof and moved toward it with lightning speed, something he rarely did. Clooger was like all the Drifters—he had a single pulse, not a second pulse—but he preferred traditional weapons of war. He’d take a grenade over throwing a car across a parking lot any day of the week. Explosions were his thing.
“Hawk, anything?” Dylan asked, hoping Faith had taken her Tablet with her. He’d hated letting Hawk do it, but he hadn’t told her everything about its tracking. It was true that the State couldn’t track Faith’s Tablet any longer, but that didn’t mean Hawk couldn’t keep tabs on where it was.
“Her Tablet’s on the roof,” Hawk said, looking up. “Could she have left it there?”