Pulse

by Patrick Carman

  “You wish,” she said sarcastically.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “At least get your shoes out of my bed. That’s gross.”

  Hawk’s shoes hit the floor before Faith could take back what she had just given in to. For Hawk, it was the single most awesome thing that had happened to him in months. He took out his three-day-old Tablet and pulled it by its gleaming corners, stretching it until it snapped into its larger size.

  “I brought you something. It’s time sensitive.”

  “Sounds mysterious,” Faith said. “Kind of like this blanket on my bed. I’m telling you, I didn’t put it here.”

  “Setting aside the fact that your room is haunted by items of home decor, I think you’ve got a nice place here.”

  Faith couldn’t help but smile as Hawk looked around the room appreciatively. He was a huge nerd, but he was sweet. “What did you bring me? If it’s a hug, you can put your shoes back on and hit the road.”

  Hawk pressed the screen on his new Tablet, bringing it to life. The light bathed the room in an eerie glow. Shadows danced on the walls as Hawk used both hands to program in some commands, bypassing several layers of security in order to reach the service he wanted access to.

  “We can only do this for about two minutes before it fades out,” Hawk said. “You’ll need to make it quick. And listen, I don’t know if I can ever do this again. The new Tablet had a back door installed, something I’ve never seen before.”

  Faith didn’t have a clue what Hawk was talking about; but then he handed her his Tablet, and his meaning became clear in an instant.

  Liz Brinn’s face was on the screen, staring back at her.

  “Liz? Is it really you?” Faith stammered.

  A cute guy with sandy-brown hair squeezed into the camera view. “Hey, Faith! Thanks for taking care of Liz while we were apart. I owe you one!”

  “No problem,” Faith said, laughing softly as her eyes began to fill with tears.

  “Uh-oh. Your buddy’s not doing too well,” Noah said.

  “Stop that,” Liz said, playfully shoving Noah out of the way. Her cheeks were flushed with good health, and she looked happy.

  “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t cry. Everything is fine, really.”

  Faith wasn’t so sure. She’d really blown it on the night she’d been swept away by Wade Quinn. “I’m so sorry, Liz. I don’t know what I was thinking. And I miss you. It’s not the same out here all alone.”

  “You have Hawk; he’s your wingman. He’ll take care of you.”

  Hawk was basking in the glow of being called a wingman to a pretty girl.

  “Wait, are you in bed with him?” Liz asked. “Whoa.”

  “It’s a sleepover,” Hawk said, leaning into the screen. “And she let me take my shoes off.”

  “Cool,” Noah said from offscreen.

  Faith shoved Hawk back toward his side of the bed with her shoulder as Liz started talking.

  “We only have about a minute left. I just want you to know I’m okay. I found Noah, obviously.”

  “What’s it like?” Faith asked. “The State, I mean. Is it as great as they say?”

  Liz pondered the question for a few seconds. She didn’t seem to know exactly how to answer.

  “It’s good, yeah. I mean, everything is clean and nice. And I have a billion channels on my Tablet; it’s insane. We watch it all the time now. Plus there are cute guys by the millions.”

  “They all have rough hands,” Noah said.

  “He’s lying,” Liz said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I hope you get here soon. I know it’s just a matter of time, but you can trust me on this—you’re not going to hate it. It’s a little bit, I don’t know, boring, I guess. But it’s good.”

  Faith knew exactly what Liz was talking about, because they’d imagined the States many times. They’d seen plenty of beautiful and exciting pictures and videos of the Western State, but they’d always concluded that it lacked the grit of real life. Something real was missing. Faith didn’t know what else to say. She was so happy to see Liz; but she was sad, too, because she knew she’d never go to one of the States unless she was forced. The screen began to flutter with static.

  “I’m really, really sorry, Liz. And I’m happy for you.”

  Like a dream that folds into the mist and is quickly forgotten, Liz’s image started to fade on the Tablet screen.

  “I love you,” she said. It was full of static, but Faith heard her say it, and then Liz was gone.

  “I love you, too.”

  Hawk thought about reaching for Faith’s hand, to try and make her feel less lonely, but he was pretty sure any sudden movements in her direction would get him kicked out of bed. It was a risk he wasn’t willing to take, so he stayed perfectly still until Faith handed back the Tablet.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked. “I didn’t think it was possible to communicate with people on the inside.”

  “Technically it’s illegal. Also impossible. I know because I’ve been trying since she left. The new Tablet was set wrong or something, who knows. All I can say is, it was a gift from the gods and it probably won’t happen again.”

  Faith was overcome with appreciation for what Hawk had done for her. Hawk had given her an enormous gift she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to repay.

  “What would happen if they caught you?” Faith wondered out loud.

  “You know what’s funny about that? No one really knows. I’ve done a lot of hacking over the past few years, but I’m always very careful to cover my tracks. Best I can tell, people who mess around with this sort of thing and get caught just disappear. I don’t know if they go up in smoke, but their Tablet identity vanishes.”

  Faith yawned. It was after midnight, and she was starting to fade as she slid down onto the bed and stared at Hawk.

  “No funny business,” she said. “Let’s get some sleep and talk in the morning.”

  Hawk wanted to ask where her parents were and what they would think, but he let it pass. Either she was a very independent girl, which was probably true, or her parents were on a trip somewhere. Either way, he was much more interested in whether or not he had really seen the blanket move across the room or not. As he let his head rest on the pillow, he vowed not to fall asleep for at least an hour, just in case something else moved in the room. For safe measure, he set his Tablet on the nightstand, turned on the video recorder, and pointed it at the closet.

  Four minutes later he was asleep.

  Dylan Gilmore’s brain was tired. His body was fine; there was plenty of energy there. But his mind, which he’d been putting through hell for months, was at loose ends. He was standing outside Faith’s window, trying to understand why Hawk was lying in bed next to her.

  Didn’t see that coming, Dylan thought, Even though he was nearly sure the two of them couldn’t possibly have a thing for each other, he felt the same stab in his heart that he’d felt when Faith and Wade had hooked up.

  Dylan looked at his Tablet for the time and saw that it was after two in the morning. Normally he’d have work to do, but it was risky with Hawk in the room. He noticed the blinking red light on Hawk’s Tablet and understood immediately that he was recording.

  “Nice try, little man. But it’s too soon for that.”

  As Dylan looked at the Tablet, it began to move toward him in the air. The window latch unlocked, and Dylan quietly slid the window open a few inches. The Tablet drifted through the opening, and Dylan took it in his hands, stopping the recording. He was about to delete the video file, but instead he scrolled through on fast-forward, stopping and backing up when something moved in the room. He let it run at normal speed for a few seconds, watching silently as Faith Daniels rose up in the air, the covers coming along with her.

  “Interesting,” he said, deleting the video file and sliding the Tablet back through the opening in the window. “Very interesting.”

  Dylan stayed by the window for two more hours, watching Faith Daniels and thinking abo
ut the progress he’d made. Things were moving faster than he’d expected, possibly faster than was safe given the circumstances. As he walked away at ten past four in the morning, he made up his mind about something. It had been a very long time coming, and months of exhausting work, but the moment had finally arrived.

  It was time to tell Faith Daniels the truth.

  Chapter 11

  How Did You Get Me All the Way Up Here?

  Every year the Field Games were held in different States around the world. It had been five years since the United States had hosted, and the Western State had created a state-of-the-art facility like nothing anyone had ever seen. Every event would be broadcasted live onto millions of Tablets via thousands of cameras. Field Games were even fed to Tablets owned by those sorry souls still living outside the States, although there was a delay to allow for editing. In the days leading up to the start of the Field Games, news reports streamed onto the Tablets twenty-four hours a day, preempting all other programming for endless speculation about the competitions.

  “God, I’m tired of hearing them talk about the games,” Faith said as she shuffled into a classroom with everyone else. “Get it over with already.”

  In the months since Faith had arrived at Old Park Hill, more students had stopped showing up. The population of the entire school was down to the classroom she was in, which held nineteen students, and one other room with another twenty kids waiting it out. Amy, whom Faith had avoided religiously, had been moved to her room a week earlier. She had different feelings about the games than Faith did.

  “Hot guys running around in tights? Best show on my Tablet.”

  “Uh-huh,” Faith murmured, trying not to get pulled into a conversation.

  “Have you seen Wade jump? Oh. My. God. He’s insane.”

  Wade and Clara Quinn still hadn’t made an appearance at the warm-ups, also known as preflights.

  “They don’t talk about Wade or Clara,” Faith said. She sat down in her seat, hoping Amy would move off and sit somewhere else. She didn’t, taking the seat next to Faith and clicking on her Tablet.

  “That’s because the Quinns are on the outside. They don’t even keep outsiders on the radar; you know that. But Wade told me people inside are worried. Last thing they want is someone from out here showing up to take the spotlight.”

  “Wouldn’t matter,” Faith said, growing bored with the conversation. “Once they’re in, they’re in. The State will spin it as another victory either way.”

  Faith glanced up and saw that Amy understood something that had somehow eluded her to that point. She wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, but even Faith thought it was impossible that Amy wouldn’t have thought about it.

  “Once Wade and Clara go in for the Field Games,” Faith explained, “they aren’t coming back. No one comes back. You know that, right?”

  Amy looked flustered and started swiping her finger across her Tablet nervously. She had a thing for Wade even if Wade couldn’t care less. “Of course I know that. But this is different. He said he’d come back. And if he doesn’t, it’s fine anyway. My parents are moving us in pretty soon anyway.”

  Faith doubted that, but she didn’t want to totally ruin Amy’s day, even if she deserved it for being dumb enough to pursue Wade, a very Amy thing to do. Faith knew that once Wade left for the State and became some sort of superstar, he’d never settle for someone like Amy.

  “I thought your parents were on cleanup. Doesn’t that last for a while longer?” Faith asked.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amy said. “They can go whenever they want.”

  Faith and everyone else knew that wasn’t true. Parents who signed up for cleanup got paid a lot of Coin, but they were on annual contracts. Amy had at least another six months outside and probably more.

  “Ladies, how about we get to work? Would that be okay with you?” Miss Newhouse asked. Faith was more than happy for the out. She went straight to work notating an English lecture while a teacher on her Tablet explained the finer points of The Grapes of Wrath, a story Faith related to for its outsider, nomadic themes. She settled in, then glanced around the room looking for Hawk. He hadn’t shown up for class. Her eyes landed on an empty desk at the back of the room where Wade should have been sitting. His absence was less surprising, because with two weeks to go before the games, he was almost never in class anymore. The word in the halls was that he and Clara were leaving in six or seven days, which suited Faith just fine.

  Dylan was sitting in the back row in the far corner of the room under the soft light from a window overlooking the courtyard. He looked up, caught her eye, and smiled. Faith smiled back awkwardly. Inside she was nervous about how uncomfortable he made her feel. . . .

  When she looked back at her Tablet, a message came in across the top of the screen.

  Didn’t make it in today, parents are having a tough day.

  Hawk almost never talked about his parents and neither did Faith. It was a topic they both wanted to avoid, so neither of them brought it up. It crossed Faith’s mind not to answer the message. It was a door she didn’t want to open because she was sure the topic would turn in her direction in due time. Still, it was Hawk. How long could she really hold out without telling him her parents were Drifters?

  Sorry. Did you get caught in the middle of it or what?

  Faith tried to pay attention to the audio stream in her earphones as she waited for an answer, tapping out a few notes on the lightboard.

  It’s complicated.

  Faith messaged back:

  Better to talk in person later?

  She wondered if it was about leaving for the Western State. Most arguments with parents were. In some strange, unsaid way, the Field Games felt like a marker for everyone who remained outside. It was a national moment to shine, to show the rest of the world they were a unified people with the will to do what had to be done in order to survive.

  Hawk messaged back:

  My mom heard a rumor the States were going to stop letting people in. I’ve searched, haven’t seen any sign of that. That’s kind of intense if it’s true.

  It had never been a threat Faith thought too much about, but it was an idea she’d heard people talk about for years. China and Africa had closed their States years ago, and almost everyone had complied. Of the billions of people in China alone, only a scant few thousand were unaccounted for within a month of the announcement. China had already built eleven interconnected States, and they were always working on more; but the rest of the country was empty. Africa, with its fourteen state-of-the-art States, was a vast landscape of deserts, trees, and animals nearly devoid of human life.

  Faith thought of all the places in the world that were empty of people. She knew she could walk for days and days through once-thriving cities and not see a single person. It was what made her current location different. There were people, hundreds of them, all in one place on the outside, like they’d been herded there by a shepherd on their way to somewhere else.

  Faith pulled up a program on her screen with an interactive map of the United States. There was a lot of empty space, with two circles that could not be missed. One was in the place where Nevada had once been, only the circle was bigger than that. It leaked out over Oregon and Idaho and what was left of California after the floods. This was the Western State, almost two hundred square miles, so vast it was almost unthinkable. To the east, covering parts of Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee, was another enormous circle; the Eastern State. It was just as big and getting bigger by the day.

  The old high school was the tiniest of red dots, and seeing it sitting in the shadow of the Western State, Faith knew the truth of the matter.

  She sent a message to Hawk:

  We’ll be overrun by the State pretty soon anyway. Unless we move again. And I’m pretty tired of moving.

  And that was the bitter truth. The States were fine with letting people stay outside, but they couldn’t be too far off into
the unknown. They had to be reachable within a few hours of driving so the white vans from the State could return by nightfall. And the States kept growing, gobbling up more space as the population grew.

  Another message came in, and Faith read it without really thinking:

  I have something I need to show you. Meet tonight at the old mall parking lot, 9 p.m. Thanks.

  She was about to tap out a message to Hawk telling him that would be fine when she realized the message hadn’t been from Hawk. It was from Dylan Gilmore. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she hoped he wasn’t watching in case she looked nervous. She began chewing on her pinkie nail without even noticing she was doing it, unsure of how to respond.

  A message came in from Hawk:

  You’re probably right. Matter of time. What do you think your parents are going to do?

  As she’d expected, the conversation had turned to her own parents, which was something she didn’t want to talk about. So she decided to answer Dylan instead.

  What do you want to show me? And how did you message me during a lecture? Have you been talking to Hawk?

  It was risky, but she was curious. The last time she’d gone with a boy to see something he really wanted to show her, she’d ended up consuming two Wire Codes and blacking out the entire thing. There were times, in her darker moments, when she imagined a lot of bad things happening to her that night. Part of her felt it was better this way, not knowing; but it was also hard not being able to remember. She might spend the rest of her life wondering.

  By the time class let out forty minutes later, Faith still hadn’t gotten an answer from Dylan; and when Miss Newhouse let everyone go, Dylan was gone before Faith could get up the nerve to talk with him.

  “I lied, but only a little.”

  They were not the comforting words Faith had been hoping for when she showed up in the empty parking lot of the old mall. She thought about turning around, leaving before this got complicated or dangerous. She stared at him from ten feet away, where she’d come up short and stood motionless on the cracked concrete sidewalk.