Pulse

by Patrick Carman

  “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.”

  Chapter 19

  Second Pulse

  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 lett
ing 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?”

  The idea of going anywhere without a Tablet was so alien to Hawk that he couldn’t wrap his brain around it.

  “Found the Tablet,” Clooger said. “But no Faith. She left it here.”

  Dylan had a bad feeling. He never should have let her out alone in the state she’d been in. More than anyone else—even more than Faith herself—Dylan understood the wild power of her emotions. With only one pulse to rely on, she could get herself killed in a million different ways.

  “Check the messages,” Hawk said. “She had activity about eleven minutes ago.”

  Clooger tapped the screen, but Faith had set the security to her thumbprint. There was no getting inside without Faith. “It’s locked, set to thumbprint. You want me to bring it back or keep looking for her?”

  “Keep looking, I’ll be there in less than thirty seconds,” Dylan said. He turned to Hawk. “How long?”

  Hawk was typing furiously, working his way through a string of commands that would bypass Faith’s security. “Three minutes, maybe less.”

  “Call me when you have something.”

  Dylan was gone in a flash, out the door and flying across the parking lot. He tried to imagine who would have sent her a message. Who was he not thinking of? Did she have some other friends on the outside?

  When he arrived on the roof next to Clooger, his heart sank.

  “Left this, too,” Clooger said, holding out the spine of the book with all its pages missing. Both of them looked out over the empty sky and tried not to imagine the worst.

  “She’s probably just walking around,” Clooger said. “Clearing her head. It was a lot to deal with all at once.”

  “Where would she go?” Dylan asked, though he knew Clooger would have no idea. Then he had an intuition that seemed to make some sense. “Stay here in case she comes back.”

  Dylan ran for the other side of the building, his final step hitting the ledge, and leaped up in the air on his way to the old grade school. She’d destroyed one book; maybe she’d find some comfort in being surrounded by more of them. A minute passed before Dylan found himself standing in front of the ivy-covered building. There were large boulders next to the playground where kids used to climb, and picking up one of them with his mind, he hurled it into the front door, blowing it clean off its hinges. Dylan was already through the open door and into the abandoned library before the boulder came to stop in the principal’s office.

  “Faith?” he called out. It was dark in the library, so he set his Tablet to act as a light and held it out. Faith wasn’t there, and this so frustrated Dylan that he yelled her name again, sending every book flying off every shelf with the power of his emotions. “Faith! Where are you?”

  The room was alive with the sound of pages ripping and spines crashing into one another. Dylan stood in the middle of the storm of books, arms out wide, taking out his frustrations on the useless artifacts of the past.

  “Dylan, where are you?”

  Hawk was back, a small voice coming from the Tablet in the din of violence. Every book dropped to the floor at once, a carpet of pages surrounding Dylan as he answered. “The old grade school. Anything?”

  “She’s back, Dylan. It’s my fault. I didn’t even think—”

  “Hold on, who’s back? What are you talking about?”

  There was a short pause, then a breath of frustration on the other end. “Clara Quinn. She’s back. And I think she might know about Faith.”

  Dylan’s blood turned to ice. If Clara knew, Faith didn’t have a chance.

  “Where is she?”

  “Old Park Hill, at least that’s what the message said.”

  Dylan was moving fast, but even at his fastest, it would take a few minutes to reach the school. “Don’t go anywhere; hold on.”

  Dylan switched frequencies to Clooger. “Old Park Hill, bring everyone.”

  Clooger didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. “I’ll gather the crew. We’ll get there as fast as we can.”

  “Hawk,” Dylan yelled, switching frequencies again. “What’s the inventory?”

  All the Drifters who’d been packing to leave were suddenly moving for the door, which left Hawk sitting all alone in a corner. He messaged Meredith in the basement, telling her to stay as still as a statue, and began reeling off worthwhile items near Old Park Hill.

  “Lots of desks and chairs. You can use those to distract her, but they won’t do much damage.”

  “What do we have that’s got some weight?” Dylan asked. He was watching the ground as he flew, searching for heavy objects he could bring with him. There was a limit to what he could carry while he was using so much of his mental energy to fly and talk to Hawk, but he thought he could grab at least one thing.

  “Four large trees, but it’ll take some work to uproot them,” Hawk said. “Wait . . .” He paused, not sure he should mention an idea he had.

  “Hawk, if there’s something we can use, spill it,” Dylan said. “This is no time to play it safe.”

  Hawk received an incoming message from Meredith as he continued scanning the area around the school for items that could be used as weapons:

  Protect her at all cost.

  That was all Hawk needed to hear.

  “I’ve located six State vans, all within three miles of the school. Four are idle for the night; the other two are on autopilot.”

  Dylan was getting close, maybe thirty seconds from Old Park Hill, and Hawk’s idea sounded promising but risky.

  “All hell is going to break loose if the States find out,” Dylan said. They would discover the truth about first and second pulses soon enough, but the longer that could be put off the better.

  “I bet I can disable the connection,” said Hawk. “They’ll look like software rogues that crashed out. It’ll raise some eyebrows, but I’m not seeing anything else as good as these vans. They’re the perfect weight and size. You can really throw those mothers.”

  Dylan made up his mind as he landed among the trees at the edge of Old Park Hill. “Tell Clooger to carry them over on his way in. Have him leave them on the football field. One on the fifty-yard line, space the rest ten yards apart, right down the middle of the field. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Hawk didn’t bother to message Clooger about the State vans. If he could disable their monitoring, he’d be able to control them from his Tablet. He could drive them onto the football field with less risk than Clooger and his gang of Drifters could carry them.

  As Dylan approached the front doors of Old Park Hill, there was a surprising silence in the air. The whole world had gone quiet. And then, like the crack of a starting gun in the race of his life, he heard the sound of a tree falling.

  At least Faith pulled the first punch, as it were. She had leaped to the roof of the school, which was long and flat, walking with purpose and rage. When she reached the edge of the open courtyard, she’d looked down and seen Clara Quinn sitting on a bench, facing the other way as if she didn’t have a care in the world. There were three large trees in the courtyard, their canopies higher than the roof, along with some scattered benches and concrete pathways running like an X through the space. The walls of the school rose up around the courtyard, and Faith thought it created the appearance of a giant boxing ring.

  Faith knew this would be her only chance to inflict some early damage and hopefully even the odds. She had an idea of how to accomplish this when she took a good look at the largest tree. Its base was four feet wide, plenty of weight to hold down a teenage girl long enough to scream in her face.

  Faith thought about the tree and all the unseen roots beneath the ground. She put every ounce of her being into that tree, told it to move much faster t
han it would if it were simply falling. It would need to move faster than Clara could react to it. There was something like the trigger of a gun in Faith’s mind, a method for moving things that Dylan had taught her. She could load up her mind with an idea of what she wanted to do, then hold it there until she pulled the trigger and made it happen.

  Bang.

  Clara looked up just in time to see the side of a tree hit her in the face. She tried to move out of the way, but natural objects, things that were still alive, had a surprisingly strong effect on her. Faith had chosen her weapon well without even knowing it. The tree wouldn’t harm Clara—that was very nearly impossible—but it would present a slight problem. By the time the tree was all the way on the ground, Clara was good and pinned, her top half on one side and her lower on the other. It was gruesome, like everything in between had been crushed into the earth and only the head and feet remained. When she looked up, Faith was standing on the tree, staring down at her.

  “Did you kill Liz?” Faith asked. She wanted to hear Clara say it before ripping one of the sharpest limbs from the tree and driving it through her head.

  “I never miss what I’m aiming for,” Clara said, smiling despite her compromised position. She was not happy about being talked down to, but she was patient. This would be more fun if she drew it out a little bit. “And I was definitely aiming for Liz. You should have seen the blood. Wow.”

  Faith was so angry it made her head feel dizzy. There was a plateglass window running along the far wall of the courtyard; and thinking it through, Faith cocked the gun once more.

  Bang.

  The window blew apart, not into small shards but into long, jagged sections of glass. They flew high up in the air, then down in Clara’s direction. When they were within a few inches of Clara’s face, they stopped. Ten shards of glass, four feet long and as sharp as razors, turned in sideways and pointed at Faith Daniels.