Quake (8 page)

“I wish Neal Gordon would have contacted us faster,” Clooger said. “Hotspur Chance has had twelve days to get organized. That's time I'd like to have back.”

Carl sighed heavily. “The war will still be here no matter how many days pass, brother. It always is.”

“This is different,” Clooger corrected, his gaze settling heavy on his brother. “You know it's different.”

Faith let that sink in for a few seconds and realized it was true. She locked eyes with Dylan and felt his resolve to finish what they'd started. More than ever, she knew they would have to face whatever was coming together. She couldn't do it alone and neither could he. “Let's listen to what she has to say already,” Jade pressed. “I've never even met Meredith and now I'm as curious as you guys are.”

Clooger looked at Carl in a knowing sort of way, as if they both had to agree to this before they'd give the okay. Faith got the feeling that they were nervous about what might be said, which made her wonder if these two had secrets of their own they weren't telling.

“Let 'er rip,” Carl said, nodding to Hawk. “And let the chips fall where they may.”

Jade reached over and brushed her finger across the Tablet, and Meredith's voice returned.

I'm terrible at good-byes, especially recorded ones, but I have to say them.

Good-bye, Dylan. I loved you; you made me proud. More than anyone else, you made me believe the world was worth saving.

Good-bye, Clooger, my comfort and my shield. In a broken world, you gave me the strength to go on. Sorry if I'm revealing this secret unexpectedly, but this is my only chance and I'm taking it.

Faith looked up at Clooger and saw that he was staring at Jade with a worried expression on his face. A second later she knew why.

Jade, I am your mother. I'm sure Clooger has been too nervous to tell you yet, and given his proclivity to finding himself in very dangerous situations, he might never have told you. Clooger is your father, young lady. If you didn't know that already, my apologies.

Remember these things as you go through life:

We loved you enough to get you out of harm's way before it was too late. You should be thankful for that. War is no place for a baby.

You have a half brother, Dylan, who is probably also listening to this message. He was five when you were born and we whisked you away before he could see you. Dylan will keep you safe, because he's a man now and a very good one. Him you can trust.

Be good to Carl. He deserves it. No man ever sacrificed so much for one child.

Secrets and lies are part of every life. While I don't advise lying, sometimes it is necessary to protect an innocent person.

If we'd kept you close by you'd almost certainly be dead already. Be thankful that's not true.

I thought of you. Always.

Hawk, pause. Let's take a break.

Hawk touched the screen and stopped the recording, stealing glances at everyone in the room but Jade. “Okay, so that was awkward,” he said.

“Sorry,” Carl and Clooger said at once, having the same thought at the same time.

Jade's expression softened. She didn't speak, but Carl and Clooger could see by the way she looked at them what she was thinking:
I'm okay
. It was Dylan who broke the silence, leaning forward where he sat and saying what no one else could.

“Let's not turn this into something it's not. We're in the middle of something bigger than any one of us can handle alone. We're going to need each other. We all have Meredith in common for one reason or another, and we all know she was a complicated person. But she loved every one of us in her own way. And she did what she had to do in a difficult time. We've all had to do the same, me included.”

Dylan looked at Faith with some regret, thinking of how he'd brought her into this mess without asking her, but she took his hand without the slightest hesitation. This gave him the courage to go on. “And I'm very happy to discover I have a little sister.”

Jade turned to Dylan and brightened. She had already been looking up to him as if he was her big brother. The fact that it had turned out to be true was beyond anything she could have imagined when Dylan had appeared on the mountain.

“You understand we don't have the same dad, right?” Dylan asked. “Mine's dead. Yours is right there.”

Jade had always thought of Carl as her dad; that had not changed. But she didn't take her eyes off Dylan, not yet. The reality of having a big brother, especially one who loomed as large in the world as Dylan, was something to ponder. She seemed to be quietly thinking about a lot as her expression began to darken.

“How about we listen to the rest of the recording,” Faith said as she saw Jade questioning everything she'd ever known. “This is going to sort itself out, right? We're a family. We're in this together. Let's try to focus on the positive.”

Jade stood up and glanced at the faces around the room. She finally looked at Clooger and seemed to fully calculate the information she'd just been given.

This is my dad.

My mom is dead.

Carl is my uncle.

Dylan is my brother.

Her expression had turned utterly blank, but the wheels were turning inside her head. It was too much, too fast.

“How can I trust any of you when you've misled me this whole time?”

And then Jade walked out of the room. She turned back at the last second and yelled,

“I've got secrets of my own!”

Faith could hardly blame Jade. She knew what a break in trust felt like, but this was bigger than that. Jade didn't know who she was any longer. How could she?

“That could have gone better,” Carl said.

Clooger didn't reply. He'd never been one for jokes to lighten a heavy load.

“Hawk, please,” Faith said pleadingly. “Just play the rest of the message.”

She hoped what remained wasn't full of more surprises that didn't serve any purpose but to drive a wedge through an already fragile team.

Hawk was looking in the direction of where Jade had gone, his heart pulling him to places Faith couldn't afford to have him go. She needed his game-on best. Faith got up and tapped the screen herself, bringing Meredith back to life one last time.

I give you two more secrets now, ones that may help you finish what we have started.

The first is a fact known only to a few: Hotspur Chance has a plan. It's the plan that put him in the highest-security prison when it was discovered by officials in the State system. Hotspur never intended the States to grow so large so fast; he saw them instead as a method by which to radically alter the population of the world. Had he succeeded, he would have forever been known as the most successful mass murderer in the history of the world: a hundred million people, gone in a flash. The population of the United States cut in half in the blink of an eye.

Dylan motioned for Hawk to pause. He almost couldn't bring himself to say the words everyone was thinking, and he was glad Jade wasn't there to hear them.

“He developed the States to corral human population into small spaces,” Dylan said. “So he could annihilate half of them.”

“Beyond twisted,” Hawk said. “Why would anyone want to do something like that, even if they could figure it out?”

Clooger answered, “Every generation has someone like Hotspur Chance. Hitler's methods weren't so different: he isolated a certain kind of person—”

“The Jews,” Faith said. She had liked history more than any other subject in school.

“Yes, the Jews.” Clooger nodded. “Hitler isolated them into central locations, then removed them from the population. He killed six million.”

“And Stalin killed at least twenty million people,” Faith remembered.

“But
why
?” Hawk asked again. No amount of logic, even at the level of an Intel, could properly answer the question for a thirteen-year-old kid. “Why would anyone do that?”

No one tried to answer Hawk, so the question hung in the air like a noose from a tree.

“It's efficient. It's contained. It's precise,” Carl said out of nowhere.

Clooger nodded his agreement. “We know Hotspur was convinced that the only answer to saving the planet was to dramatically reduce the population.”

“Wait, I never heard that,” Dylan broke in. He was leaning forward, concern on his face, as if once again facts had been kept from him.

“We have always known this,” Clooger said. “It's why he was Prisoner One, the deadliest man alive. Hotspur Chance envisioned the State system for two reasons: the reason everyone talks about, and the reason
no
one talks about. Yes, he designed the States to empty out vast amounts of space, that's true. But he also felt, very strongly, that the only way to save the planet was to remove large numbers of people quickly. Hundreds of millions.”

“He was smart enough to create the blueprints for the States,” Dylan said, catching on. “So he would have been smart enough to blow one of them up at any point.”

“And to think I actually admired the guy when I was a kid,” Hawk said, disoriented by the scope of evil being explained. “What an a-hole.”

“Play the rest,” Faith said. “Maybe Meredith knows how to stop him.”

Hawk tapped the screen and Meredith's voice returned.

Did you know it was Hotspur Chance himself who chose the locations for each of the two States? And that he was the architect of the power grids? These things drift into memory and seem not to matter, but they do matter. They matter very much. What if Hotspur had hidden, within the skeletal bones of the States themselves, a way in which to control them? What if he could turn the whole of a State into the equivalent of nearly half a billion electric chairs?

This was one of many ideas I heard in my years at the compound, but it was always addressed as a theory, a thing to be reviewed and explored as the size of the States increased. And more importantly, something so complex that only Hotspur himself would ever have been able to seriously turn it into a threat of any consequence.

Hawk, you might be able to access the State mainframes and get into the original power-grid schematics. Depends on whether you're as smart as I think you are.

If Hotspur Chance is free once more, then you may have an unforeseen advantage. Wars are lost by thinking the impossible won't happen.

He assumes no one could know where he has gone. But I know. I've known all along. I know because I heard him tell it to Gretchen so many years ago.

Hawk paused the recording and took a quick look around the room.

“Why are we stopping?” Carl asked.

“I just wanted you all to know before we keep going,” Hawk answered. “There's only one way to access a Western State mainframe.”

“How?” Dylan asked.

Hawk sighed.

“From the inside.”

No one spoke as the meaning of what Hawk had said sunk in. If they were going to have a chance of understanding what Hotspur might be planning to do, they'd need to do it from the inside of the Western State.

“Let's cross that bridge when we come to it,” Faith said. “Play the rest.”

Hawk engaged the recording one last time.

If Hotspur Chance is serious about putting this plan into action, he will do it from a location with coordinates that match the passcode used to unlock this message. It's the location he spoke of years ago, when we were only a few souls in the desert. I've sent search parties over the years and found nothing of interest here, but if he's escaped, then I believe this is where he went.

I intentionally positioned the last safe house as close to this set of coordinates as I could while providing for Jade's safety. This may prove useful now.

I have no idea what the world looks like because I'm no longer in it. Only you will know whether this information is useful.

I did my best. I expect no less from you.

With love and affection from far, far away.

I am Meredith, checking out for the final time.

Hawk was already translating the passcode into a set of coordinates when the audio recording stopped.

“45.5.122.67 translates into 45.5 degrees north by 122.67 degrees west.”

Hawk brought up the holographic 3-D map in the middle of the room and zoomed in on an abandoned city.

“Portland, Oregon,” Hawk said. “The coordinates give us about a five-mile radius around a shipyard on the Willamette River.”

“How far?” Faith asked.

Hawk did some fast computations, and the holographic map zoomed in farther still. An abandoned shipyard sat at the bottom of the very mountain they were all standing on.

“Fifty-seven miles from here, give or take,” Hawk said.

“We can get the jump on them,” Clooger said. “We know they're down in that general area. They don't know we're up here.”

“But five miles of space,” Carl said. “Hotspur is like a needle in a haystack. He could be hiding in any number of abandoned buildings or vacant ships.”

The room went silent as everyone let the information sink in. Hotspur Chance, the most dangerous criminal mind in the world, might be so close they could reach out and grab him. And he wasn't even a second pulse. He was vulnerable if only they could discover his location.

“If Wade and Clara are this close to us, some of us are in real danger,” Carl said, shooting a quick glance at Clooger. “Jade can't move things with her mind or fly away like you all can. She's just a kid. A
normal
kid.”

“I can't do any of that, either,” Hawk said. “No matter how many times Dylan tries to teach me. It's not in my DNA.”

Dylan had been trying to bring a first pulse out in Hawk ever since they'd met, but it was no use. If people could move things with their minds, Dylan could coax the skill out of them. But if the latent skill wasn't there, it wasn't there. And in Hawk's case, like so many millions of other people, there was no thread to grab onto, no hidden talent to pick up cars and move them with the power of his mind.