Quake (21 page)

“I work better under pressure,” Hawk said. “Hold tight.”

Faith lowered to the floor, stood in the middle of the cell, and just tried to breathe as steadily as she could. Whatever was going to happen, it would be very soon. She was too weak to stand, but lying down would only be worse.
Come on, Hawk. You can do this. Get these doors open.

As if things couldn't get any worse, the wall behind Faith moved closer, cutting the size of the room in half. It felt as if the air was being compressed around her, crushing the bones inside her body. The wall didn't stop until she was down to a few feet of space left to move around in.

She heard Dylan curse from his cell and knew he was struggling the same way she was. Was it really going to end like this? The two of them being slowly killed while the Western State went dark forever?

“Faith Daniels, you continue to disappoint me.”

Hotspur Chance's voice was back and Faith's head snapped up in anticipation of what he might say. She was suddenly alert.

“You know, he's going to perish like everyone else. Hawk is no match for me. He may be an Intel, but I'm
the
Intel. He can't build walls fast enough for me to tear them down.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Faith said, trying to sound confident in the face of total, abject ruin. The doors opened at the end of the hall again, and this time something about their entrance was very different. There was some screaming and shouting. There were three, not two, people coming down the hall, and one of them wasn't happy.

“You're hurting me! Not so tight!”

Faith knew that voice: Jade was coming toward her as Clara's voice boomed down the corridor. “Kid, if you don't shut your mouth right now, I'm throwing you down this hallway and you'll never get up.”

“You can't
make
me do whatever you want,” Jade shot back. “Where are you taking me?”

“Jade, it's okay—it's me, Faith!” Faith yelled. Her head felt as if it was full of fog, thoughts and sounds swirling around, lost in between one another.

“Faith?! Faith!”

Faith heard but did not see as Jade pulled free from Clara's iron grip and ran toward the voice. Jade was short and small, and Faith could see only her head as she peered out of the square hole in the door.

“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.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“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 armor. 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.