Quake (7 page)

“The signal was sent from inside the Western State, that much we know,” Clooger said. “Millions of people have gone in over the past decade, and plenty of them were drifters before that. The comm unit is small, easy to conceal.”

“So you're saying Meredith gave hers to someone?” asked Hawk.

Clooger nodded. “And that someone is finally using it.”

Clooger took two steps toward the fireplace and picked up an oblong device. It looked like something out of a 1950s science-fiction movie: clear Plexiglas encasing a row of diodes and bulbs and wires all soldered to a motherboard. The entire thing was half the size of a brick.

“The Plexiglas is solar powered; it absorbs heat and converts it into electricity.”

“That's a Hotspur Chance invention,” Dylan said. “Kind of cool we get to use it against him now.”

“Okay, so maybe the entire thing isn't old-school, but the stuff inside is,” Carl said sheepishly.

“If a signal comes in, it gets recorded to a micro drive and the red light goes on. That way you don't have to monitor it twenty-four/seven. You just watch for the light.”

A thumbnail-sized red light inside the device was throbbing on and off like a tiny beating heart.

“Eleven years,” Carl said. “Eleven years and not a single red-light day. Now it's lighting up like a Christmas tree, two alerts in as many weeks. First you guys, and now this. It makes me nervous.”

“This sleeper cell had one purpose, I'm sure of it,” Clooger went on. “To feed us intel from inside the States. The message we got verifies that. If they were trying to pinpoint our location they would have asked for it, but they specifically told us not to respond. They don't know where we are and they're not going to know.”

“So Meredith set up a sleeper cell inside the Western State and didn't tell anyone else about it,” Faith said.

“They aren't sleeping anymore,” Clooger said. “They're awake.”

Clooger set his pocket-sized Tablet on top of the Plexiglas and tapped out a few commands. The room filled with the sound of a female voice.

“Prisoner One has escaped from maximum-security Western State detention zone. Message relay ordered. M4-ZTom unlock code 45.5.122.67. Do not respond to this feed. Terminating.”

Silence fell on the room as the flames cast moving shadows across the walls and ceiling.

“Prisoner One,” Hawk said. “Hotspur Chance, most wanted man.”

“It's not a very clear message,” Jade added.

“Is it all you have?” Faith asked Clooger. “It sounded as if we were supposed to unlock something else. Or maybe it's not even for us.”

Clooger sighed. “It's something. It's a start.”

“It might be a lot more than that.”

Everyone pivoted in the direction of Hawk's voice.

“Let me see that thing,” Hawk said, pointing to the device Clooger held in his hand. Clooger kept his Tablet and handed over the strange, clear block. Hawk peered inside, rotating the Plexiglas housing, until he found what he was looking for.

“Carl, can you open this up or is it vacuum sealed?”

“Depends,” Carl answered. He pulled a large, hammer-like tool from his belt. “Are you going to want to use it again?”

Hawk took an even closer look at the device and saw that there was no way around breaking the outer shell. The items inside—the diodes and wires and bulbs—were all soldered directly into the bottom section of the casing. The only way in was to break it open.

“We have two, right?” Faith asked. She was worried about cutting off communication with everything and everyone. At least with one of these, she felt a small connection to the world outside the mountain. Carl nodded—
Yes, there's one other.

“Hawk, what are you not telling us?” Dylan asked.

Hawk photographed the underside of the Plexiglas box with his Tablet, then set the box down and stretched his Tablet large. He enlarged and sharpened the photo, then held it out so everyone could see it, pointing to a rectangle. On the device itself, this rectangle was about as big as a baby tooth, but his Tablet had taken a highdefinition picture and now it was blown up to fill the screen.

“This is the micro flash drive the voice message was recorded on,” Hawk said. He leaned forward and a mop of brown hair covered half his face like a curtain. “I've read about these old Tom drives. These little guys could hold a terabyte of data. They were a revolution in their time.”

“Is this what I think it is?” Faith asked.

“An M4-ZTom,” Hawk said. “And if we can access it directly, then I'm guessing the passcode we were just given will unlock something hidden there.”

“Hawk, I love that computerlike brain of yours,” Dylan said. “You're a genius!”

Faith looked Dylan up and down, head to toe, and marveled at how this boy could carry the weight of the world and still take the time to compliment everyone around him. His dark hair was getting longer and he was letting his stubble grow out. He still wore the T-shirts and the jeans and the skater shoes, even in the mountains, but he was looking more like a grown man every day. He flashed a sideways smile at her and it felt as if they were one person, not two.

Hawk turned his attention to Jade and smiled as if to say,
Not a big deal, I do this sort of thing all the time
. Jade smiled back at him, her gem-green eyes glancing back and forth between the floor and Hawk's face, but she kept her cool. It was hard not to be impressed with Hawk when he pulled off technological miracles.

Carl took the device back from Hawk and set it on the floor.

“You sure about this?” he asked no one in particular. Hearing no objections, he removed a foot-long buck knife from a leather sheath at his hip. He placed the tip on the Plexiglas box and hit the butt of the knife once with the hammer. The glass shattered with a sharp popping sound and Hawk leaned down with a pair of tweezers from a tech kit he kept in his cargo shorts.

“Nice shot, Carl,” Jade marveled. “Not too hard, not too soft. You hit it just right.”

“Nerds really do inherit the earth,” Dylan whispered to Faith, putting a hand on her knee as they waited nervously.

“We got the best one,” Faith added, loud enough for Hawk to hear her and see him crack a smile as he lifted the tiny object out of the mess Carl had made.

“Give me a minute here,” Hawk said, holding the small M4-ZTom flash drive between the tongs. “I'll run it through my Tablet using a digital signal.”

Everyone watched anxiously as Hawk took forever figuring out how to connect old technology to new technology.

“We have to connect through a wireless signal developed after the chip was made—not easy,” Hawk continued. “It's like driving a train on a freeway: a path that doesn't match the mode of transportation.”

“This is what it will be like when the aliens invade,” Faith joked. “They'll find our Tablets and break them apart after we've gone the way of the dinosaurs.”

Jade leaned in closer to Hawk and he quietly told her everything he was doing. Dylan moved his broad shoulder close to Faith and the skin on their arms touched. He was seeing the same thing Faith was, two kids falling fast for each other. Faith smiled in a way that said,
That is adorable and dorky and perfect.

“Got it!” Hawk finally said. “Someone read me that code again.”

A terrible silence settled over the room as they realized no one had written the code down and the device had been broken into and taken apart.

Hawk shook his head. “I give you guys one simple job. Just one.”

“No, wait, I got it!” Jade said. “45.5.7.122. I think.”

“Are you sure?” Faith asked. “I thought there were more numbers than that.”

Jade hated that she might be wrong about the code, but she had to admit she wasn't 100 percent sure.

“It's okay, I think I can play it back,” Hawk said. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “It'll just take me a minute. I hope.”

With Hawk, a deep breath followed by the words “It'll just take me a minute” could mean four seconds or four hours. It was impossible to know which, and Clooger groaned. Luckily for everyone's sanity, this turned out to be a reasonably simple coding issue for an Intel like Hawk, and it was solved quickly.

“Chalk one up for the good guys,” Carl said. “This kid is good.”

The room filled with the sound of the message for a second time. There was more static in the transmission this time as it made its way across the divide of many years and several iterations of technology.

“Prisoner One has escaped from maximum-security Western State detention zone. Message relay ordered. M4-ZTom unlock code 45.5.122.67. Do not respond to this feed. Terminating.”

“You were really close, Jade,” Hawk said. “Only one number off. You've got an excellent memory. Definitely better than Clooger's.”

Jade beamed with pride, brushing her dark hair back with a delicate hand as Hawk entered the full code into the drive—45.5.122.67.

There was a pause and a series of static waves that made everyone's heart sink, and then a voice almost all of them had heard before materialized in the room: Meredith, Dylan's mom and the former leader of the rebellion, was back from the grave.

If you're receiving this message, then I am dead.

I'll give you a minute to let that sink in.

There was a lengthy pause in the transmission and Faith remembered what a straight shooter Meredith had always been. She was the most matter-of-fact person Faith had ever met.

Faith looked at Dylan and found that he was staring at his shoes. She put her hand on his as Meredith's voice returned.

Hawk, I'm going to assume it was you who unlocked this message, which means you also know how to pause what I'm saying. I can still give orders, and I'm ordering you to pause this message until everyone who is still alive from the following list is present: Dylan, Faith, Clooger, Hawk, Carl, and Jade. You should all hear this information at the same time. That was what I intended.

Hawk tapped his Tablet screen and the recording stopped. He looked up at all the stunned-into-silence faces in the room as if the decision to continue was not his own.

“All present and accounted for,” Clooger replied with a distant kind of weariness in his voice. “Let it play.”

“Sorry. I was just making sure we're good to go on this. Also double-checking I can stop it if I need to,” Hawk said. He glanced around awkwardly. “I can stop it.”

Hawk half smiled and tapped the screen again. When he did so, Jade leaned in closer to listen, their knees touching.

For the purposes of this transmission I will address everyone I named even if some of them are already dead.

Carl, if you haven't told them about the sleeper already, tell them now.

This would be the part where Hawk hits pause.

Hawk pointed to the screen and let Jade tap the pause button and the two of them leaned even closer to each other. Faith couldn't help thinking how remarkable it was that love could blossom in the most difficult of times. It was, she thought then, the most powerful thing on earth.

“What's she talking about?” Clooger asked his brother. Clooger hated the idea of being on the outside of any information that involved the team.

Carl had been standing, but now he sat on the stone edge of the fireplace. The fire had softened to embers, but there was still an orange glow around Carl's enormous head and shoulders as he spoke.

“You remember Liz's boyfriend, Noah?”

Faith's head shot up. “Of course I remember Noah. He's all she talked about. What about him?”

It was hard for Faith to think about anything having to do with Liz, her first and only best friend. Any mention of Liz led right to the hammer crashing into her head and the rage and sadness boiled over. Faith gripped Dylan's hand tighter as she was reminded of what Clara Quinn had done.

“There's more to Noah than you all knew,” Carl continued. “He's on our side, always has been, but it started with his parents. Noah's dad is deep Intel, as Meredith would say. He's got no pulse, so he can't protect himself. His only job is to be in there, digging up information and waiting in case one of us ends up inside the Western State. It's something he's good at. Think of him as an undercover information specialist. It's not likely very many people know about Meredith's death or would even know what her significance was if they did know. But Noah's dad can find his way inside State-run information systems. He fed intel to Meredith all the time, whatever he could get to. Obviously she told him to send this message if he ever found out she was dead.”

Carl did some counting in his head. “I guess it took Neal Gordon—that's Noah's dad's name—twelve days, give or take, to find out what you already knew. Meredith didn't live past the siege that let Hotspur Chance out of prison.”

“How do you know all this?” Clooger asked, genuinely crushed by the idea that Carl would know more than he did.

“Like I said, Meredith spread things around, shared what she wanted with who she wanted. And she expected us to keep our secrets well. I'm sure you know plenty of stuff I don't have a clue about. Balances out.”

“What if she knew something we didn't?” Jade asked.

Dylan was reminded once more of his mother's incredible capacity for secrecy. “Jade, I can promise you, Meredith knew
a lot
of things we don't know. That's the way she was, cagey. Even with us. Even with me, and I'm her son. Whatever message she's got for us, it's probably not information we already know, and it won't be good news.”

“Never is,” Faith agreed. “Maybe that's why she chose not to tell us everything.”

Faith could feel the weight in the room getting heavier, the energy turning downbeat. “Let's listen to the recording, see what we've got. It might be nothing more than a sad good-bye. But if it is something more, we need to know about it.”