Quake

by Patrick Carman

  “Where are you?” Jade asked, looking back and forth.

  “Here,” Faith said, in what she felt was a soft voice but wasn’t sure came out that way. “I’m right here. Are you okay?”

  Jade looked at the hole in the door and caught Faith’s eye. Anger sparked on her brow as Wade and Clara came up next to her.

  “Where’s Dylan?” Jade asked, and now she wasn’t looking at Faith, but up at her captors with a look that said, You better answer this question the way I like.

  But of course they didn’t. Of course Wade had to rub it in and Clara had to smirk.

  “Dylan is right behind you, about a foot away from drowning in a lake of wet cement. Clever, right?”

  “Jade, don’t,” Faith said in the most adult way she could muster: firm and direct but not condescending. If Jade went ballistic on either of them, used her first pulse to send one of them careening down the hall, say, the Quinns might retaliate. Faith had been smelling the bloodlust on them all day. Clara and Wade were dying to inflict some pain on the world. It was what they did best, and they hadn’t done much of it lately.

  “Little girl,” Clara said, squatting down toward the floor so she was eye to eye with Jade, “you’re on thin ice. The only thing stopping me from hammering you into the floor is your usefulness. And that’s not going to last much longer.”

  And that was when Jade lost it. Faith saw it coming before it happened. Those narrowed eyes, that furrowed brow, those clinched fists. Clara flew backward into the door to Faith’s cell. Her back hit first, then her head, hard, like a bowling ball dropped onto pavement. Faith couldn’t see Clara’s head snap back, but she could imagine the look on her face. She knew that look. It was the look of an alpha female who knew she had the power to end you with the flick of her finger.

  Jade’s body moved up into the air and then back against the wall, and she began to hyperventilate. Clara moved in close, lifting Jade’s body up to her eye level.

  “I don’t need to kill you. I can just hurt you.”

  Jade used her mind to try to push Clara away, but Clara was too strong for that.

  “We’re here to deliver a message. Shouldn’t we get on with that before the old man gets all pissed off again?” Wade asked.

  Clara glared at Jade, put a fist against her breastbone, and started pushing. Jade struggled to breathe, pinned like a bug on a wall, until Clara’s fist was so deep into Jade’s chest that poor Jade couldn’t even take in the tiniest breath. A little more and the ribs would start snapping.

  “Clara, come on,” Faith said. “She’s a kid. Even you’re not that cruel.”

  Wade moved in front of the small opening to Faith’s door and smiled knowingly. His words came in a whisper, only for Faith: “You know how she hates to be pushed around. She’s like an animal. But I can stop her. I can stop anything.”

  Wade didn’t even turn around. He just pushed his sister to the floor with his mind and held her there, angry and writhing, smiling at Faith as Jade slipped down the wall and gasped for breath.

  “Wade, let me go!” Clara yelled. Faith could feel the rage pouring off her in waves.

  “Both of you, stop it. Stop acting like children.”

  Hotspur Chance’s electrogram appeared. Faith was struck by how real it looked, so bright and detailed.

  “I didn’t bring you into this world to act like such fools. You have a purpose, both of you. Get what I need accomplished. Now.”

  The electrogram vanished in sparks of light and Hotspur Chance was gone.

  “That guy is so good at leaving a room,” Dylan joked from his floating perch near the top of his cell. “What a pro.”

  “Dylan!” Jade said, moving back so she could look up into the opening of his cell.

  “Hey, Jade,” Dylan said, moving his head down into a precarious position just above the flowing concrete. Their eyes met. “Hawk and I talk all the time. He’s my main man. And he talks about you all the time. He thinks you’re amazing.”

  It was as if time stood still, if only for a second, and Faith could tell. She could just tell, even by looking at the back of this girl’s head, that she had smiled. Two hundred and sixty feet underground in the pit of hell, Dylan had found a way to make Jade smile. Faith would never forget that, the ultimate importance of an act of grace like that. It meant everything.

  “Everyone. Shut. The hell. UP.” Clara was on her feet again and she was breathing fire. “Someone is blocking the work we need to do and we’re guessing it’s that urchin, Hawk. He’s the only one remotely smart enough to find a way in there. There’s something you need to know about this situation.”

  Clara held the Vulcan Tablet out and tapped the surface, bringing the screen to life.

  “Jade is dead if you don’t contact Hawk and tell him to stop putting up firewalls.”

  Jade didn’t react to this news. She seemed to have gone emotionless and cold, not wanting to let Clara know she’d gotten the best of her. Or maybe she was just scared. Faith couldn’t say for sure. But one thing Faith did know: Hawk had heard what Clara was offering. He knew a terrible truth that no fifteen-year-old head over heels in love should ever have to know: I can save the world, or I can save the girl I love. I can’t save both.

  “What do you want me to do here, Jade?” Faith asked. She didn’t want Jade to have to grow up so fast, but she needed Hawk to hear the answer. This was one decision she wasn’t going to make for either of them.

  “If I get out of this cell alive,” Dylan said, coughing before he finished his thought, “I’m going to be one mad son of a bitch. You better run.”

  Faith watched as Wade looked up at Dylan’s cell and met an eye staring back at him. Dylan could bring an army to its knees with that stare, and if Faith didn’t know better, she’d have said that Wade was very happy there was an iron door between him and Dylan Gilmore just then. Faith could see Dylan was thinking about using his mind to drive Wade’s head into the cell door, but it was way too risky. If he lost his cool and took it out on Jade, there would be no more Jade. She’d get caught in the cross fire.

  “Jade, it’s your call,” Faith said, pulling the scene squarely back on course. “We’re locked up. We’re probably not getting out alive. You tell me. Should I log into that device and send a message to Hawk telling him to lower the firewalls, or should I tell the Quinns to go to hell?”

  Jade looked at the floor. She looked at her shoes, one of which was untied. She looked up at Faith, and then directly at Clara Quinn.

  “Go to hell.”

  Faith had to admit, this was a girl with some serious spunk. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have said they were long-lost sisters. She shrugged, which took almost every ounce of energy she had. “You heard the girl. Not my call.”

  Wade shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He grabbed Jade by the arm and looked down at her: “Your funeral.”

  When Wade started pulling Jade down the corridor, Clara looked back at the last second and caught Faith’s weary eye.

  “Your funeral, too.”

  And that was when the miracle happened, the moment Faith didn’t see coming. It was the one thing that had the power to turn the tide.

  The door to Faith’s cell clicked open.

  Chapter 12

  Quake

  “Kick some ass,” Hawk said, and this time he didn’t use his small voice. He said it like he meant it. “Hotspur is busting down firewalls faster than I can put them up. Get Jade out of there alive—I’m back to slinging code.”

  Faith used her mind to push the titanium door open on hinges that had been rotting 260 feet underground for decades. The door groaned open like a beast waking up from a long slumber, and Faith Daniels stepped into the yellow light of the corridor. She looked down the hallway and saw Clara and Wade turn in her direction. They both registered shock and confusion and didn’t seem to know exactly what to do.

  As Faith moved forward, away from the cell, it felt like shedding heavy ar
mor. Weight lifted off her mind. She shook her arms at her sides, power coursing through veins.

  She looked at Dylan’s door, squeezed her eyes halfway shut, and put her hand up. A moment later the door flew open and a lake of wet concrete poured out onto the floor like quicksand. Dylan was out in a flash, flying in front of Faith, instinctively protecting her from the titanium bullet–loaded gun Clara was already pointing down the corridor. Clara fired three fast rounds, the sound deafening inside the small space, and each one of them hit Dylan in the chest, falling to the floor like candy corn.

  Clara looked at the gun and seemed to take note: Three more bullets in the chamber, wait for better odds.

  Faith could tell Wade was squeezing Jade’s arm almost hard enough to break it. He pushed her forward, holding tight.

  “Get back in your cells or she’s finished,” Wade said. “I’m serious, Faith. Don’t make me kill this useless single pulse. It’s not worth it.”

  Faith faltered for a brief second, glancing at the cell she’d come out of and the hell it would mean going back inside. She knew Wade Quinn well enough to know he wasn’t bluffing. He was just that heartless when he needed to be. When she turned back down the hall, Jade had ripped her arm free from Wade’s grip. Faith and Jade caught eyes for the flash of an instant, and then Jade did exactly what Faith wished she wouldn’t do. She put her single pulse to use on the Quinns.

  Clara and Wade both vaulted upward like rag dolls, slamming hard into the low ceiling, then back to the floor and up again. Over and over, Jade bashed them back and forth until the whole underground world of the lair quaked and roared. The earth moved overhead, lights fluttered on and off, and still Jade pummeled the Quinns with everything she had. “Run, Jade!” Dylan yelled. He moved like lightning toward the melee as the ceiling began to cave in and Jade’s power faded. Clara and Wade were fighting back. The surprise attack had lasted only a moment and they were about to take control again. Ribbons of rebar and steel peeled out of the ceiling and rocks tumbled into the corridor from above. The earth was moving under the zoo.

  “He’s in! Hotspur Chance is in!”

  Hawk’s voice came from the tiny speaker in Faith’s cell. He was screaming. There was so much happening all at once that Faith couldn’t focus entirely on what he was saying, something about running code faster than Hawk had ever seen, something else about an electromagnetic source under the Western State taking on power. But really, Faith was so immersed in what was happening right in front of her, she couldn’t focus on anything else. Her mind was still bouncing back, finding its footing. It could hold only so much.

  Dylan pulled up short before he reached Jade, because Wade and Clara were blocking his way. Faith had some but not all of her strength back, and she knew Dylan had to be feeling the same way. They weren’t strong enough to stop them both, not yet.

  Hotspur’s voice boomed through the corridor. “Kill the girl. She’s outworn her usefulness. The sequence has begun.”

  “Clara, don’t!” Faith yelled. “I’ll get back in my cell. Just let her go!”

  “Too late for that now,” Clara said. Faith could see her face in a full bloom of black satisfaction even from faraway, down a crumbling hallway: Oh, how I’ve wanted to hurt you, Faith Daniels. And killing this girl is going to hurt you more than anything else I can think of.

  Dylan tried to break through Wade and Clara, but he wasn’t strong enough to do it, and in that moment Jade moved gut-wrenchingly fast to one side, hitting the wall with deadly force. Her head snapped sideways and connected with stone, and then Clara was throwing her in the other direction, slamming Jade again. Back and forth, five times in the space of a few seconds, and then Jade fell to the ground like a sack of rocks.

  “Now you know how it feels,” Clara said, and Faith couldn’t be sure who she was talking to. Either way, there was no reason left to hold back. The only reason there had ever been was lying dead on the ground. Rage totally consumed Faith, but she had learned over time and through many regrets not to let her anger overshadow reason. She was seasoned now; she was a different person than she had been. The Quinns had taken her parents, her best friend, and her protectors. Now they’d taken an innocent girl.

  “That’s enough,” Faith said, barely loud enough for Clara to hear. “You’ve taken enough.”

  Clara looked past Dylan and smiled down the crumbling corridor. “I’m just getting started.”

  Faith felt herself being moved back toward her cell and pushed hard against the power of Clara’s mind. Wade dove into Dylan, knocking him down as the two of them tumbled on the floor. Neither one of them would let go of the other as they struggled, using their minds to slam each other from wall to wall, closer and closer to where Faith stood.

  “I see what he’s doing,” Hawk said, and Faith heard his voice as if from a faraway hilltop, echoing into her ears. She held herself free of the cell, pushing back against Clara.

  “I understand how this is going to happen,” Hawk’s voice continued. There was a pause then, a pregnant moment of wondering, and then a sad release of all that Faith had fought for when the voice returned. “I can slow him down, but I can’t stop him. It’s too late.”

  Faith couldn’t see Jade’s body any longer. Dust and debris were everywhere and the ceiling continued to quake as though it might cave in at any moment and put an end to them all. She watched as Dylan failed to overcome Wade’s immense strength. Wade had pushed Dylan nearly all the way back to his cell, and now he hurled him into the wet concrete pooling on the floor in front of Faith. Dylan slid, screaming as the one thing that could get through his second pulse washed over him. It must have felt like molten lava, Faith thought. It must have burned.

  She had a sudden burst of energy and thought about how she should use it before acting. Faith didn’t just act, she thought about the options before her.

  The gun. The gun had to go.

  Faith hurled herself down the hall with everything she had, releasing herself from Clara’s power. She rammed into Wade’s head like a battering ram, knocking him off his feet, and there stood Clara, reaching instinctively for the gun. Faith thought of Clara’s hand and forced it toward the wall as the gun came up. She pounded Clara’s hand into the wall over and over and the gun went off once, then twice, sending titanium bullets ricocheting down the hall.

  Clara righted herself, taking control as Faith began to feel her power waning.

  “One shot left,” Clara said, standing with all the supremacy she commanded. She pinned Faith to the wall with her mind, holding her there as the gun barrel came up between her eyes. She was, possibly, the most dangerous girl on earth, and she carried it well. Faith looked into her face and thought even the scars she’d inflicted on Clara had made her more beautiful, more in command than ever before. A warrior, that’s what she was. Confident beyond all reason.

  This is going to be your downfall, Faith said to herself. Her expression was confident, not fearful. She was every bit the warrior Clara was. This is going to be your undoing. You think you’re unkillable, but you’re not.

  Faith looked back toward Wade and Dylan and saw that Wade was holding Dylan down in the mire of liquid rock, waiting for the end. She thought but did not say I love you, Dylan Gilmore. I never left you, not for one second, and then she turned back to Clara.

  “Now would be best,” Faith said, surprising even herself with the resolve and volume in her voice.

  Clara looked at her inquisitively, a half smile on her face.

  “Yes, I agree,” she said, putting pressure on the trigger of the gun. “Now would be best.”

  Faith gazed into Clara’s eyes and almost felt sorry for what her enemy had become. “I’m not talking to you.”

  Clara’s head tilted sideways in a way that Faith had seen before. She was catching on to something that wasn’t quite right. If not me, then who are you talking to?

  But it was too late.

  In that moment the gun suddenly turned on Clara, pointed into her o
wn face, and fired. And while the titanium bullet didn’t pass through her second pulse, it did knock her onto her back, the gun flying out of her hand. As soon as the gun was free it skittered down the corridor, toward a figure who was moving out of the rubble. The figure picked up the gun with her mind, opened the chamber, and saw that all the bullets were gone.

  Faith felt the full force of her power return, but she didn’t use it, not yet.

  She let her pulse simmer and grow as Jade came into view.

  “Are you okay?” Jade asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?” Faith asked.

  But Faith already knew the answer. Meredith hadn’t been a second pulse, but she’d had a knack for giving birth to them. First Dylan, then Jade.

  Jade was no single-pulse girl. She was a second pulse and always had been. It was a secret given to her by her mother, her secret of secrets, the one thing she could tell no one until the time was right.

  Wade’s jaw dropped open as he watched Jade coming closer, and Dylan had his moment. He kicked Wade hard to the right, rolling sideways and lifting himself into the air. Faith and Jade put all their combined energy into hurling Clara across the hall and into the titanium cell. The door slammed shut and locked in place.

  “Hawk!” Faith yelled. Her voice had to make it through the small hole in the door and up to the speaker. “Override the locking mechanism and keep my cell closed. Now!”

  “Done,” Hawk said a split second later.

  Wow, Faith thought. He’s really good.

  “Someone needs to shut this thing down and fast,” Hawk said. “I’m laying virus cable as fast as I can, but the system Hotspur put in place is reactive. It’s hell-bent on electrocuting the Western State and everyone in it. I can only hold this thing back so long!”

  Faith looked at Dylan as he wiped away as much of the wet concrete as he could.

  “I’m fine; it’s him I’m worried about,” Dylan said. He was looking at the same person everyone else was: Wade Quinn. Wade was glancing back and forth between all three people in the hall with a concerned look on his face. He got up off the floor and Jade lifted her arm. Wade’s head bashed into the wall like a tetherball and he registered fury.