Quake (9 page)

“We both got the short end of the stick,” Carl said. “I'm a zero pulse, too.”

“It could be worse,” Dylan said, slapping Hawk on the back. “You've got the brains, Carl's got the brawn. You guys are fine.”

“It's late,” Clooger said. “Let's all get a good night's sleep and hit this new plan hard in the morning. I'll talk to Jade, get her calmed down.”

“Good luck,” Carl said. “She can be bullheaded sometimes.”

“Just like her dad,” Dylan said, and finally there was a glimmer of lightness in the room, a brief moment when everyone smiled softly.

As they were leaving, Clooger pulled Faith and Dylan aside.

“Remember what I told you two,” Clooger said quietly. “No pulse activity.
None
. If Clara and Wade are within sixty miles of here, they might feel it.”

Everyone filed out until only Faith remained. She turned toward another long hallway on the other side of the room that led to a stairway and circled back overhead on the second floor. There she saw a flit of movement in the shadows, heard the soft sound of a creaking floorboard. Faith realized something then that made her worry even more about a young girl prone to rash decisions.

The young girl with jade-colored eyes had been listening all along.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Faith sat up in bed, startled by a sound she thought she'd heard before. She was prone to serious disorientation in the first minute of wakefulness. The screaming sound was back, accompanied by sunlight shining through the old pane window on the far side of the room. The morning light was, as usual, blinding her.

“They can't be watching that movie again, can they?”

And so it was that she retrieved her bat with her mind and started for the door still thinking that the scream, which had now dissolved into a melee of other sounds, was from a scene in a movie being played three doors down.

A projectile of some size and weight crashed through her window, and this event finally brought Faith Daniels completely awake.

“What the hell?” she said.

She heard the screaming voice again, but now she placed it in its actual location outside the lodge.

“Leave me alone!” was followed by a shrieking sound that could be projected only by a girl of a certain age.

“Jade?” Faith said out loud. She wanted to take flight, leaving through the window where glass had just shattered into her room along with a rock the size of a brick, but she knew better.

No pulse activity. None
, Clooger had said, and he was right. Way too risky.

She realized at that moment that even the semiconscious moving of the baseball bat, which she had done more than once, was something she should not be doing. She set the bat down, suddenly concerned about her own behavior, and fled for the door. As she ran down the hall and up a narrow flight of stairs she yelled for Dylan and Clooger and Hawk, but no one answered.

“
What
is going on around here?” she said aloud as she reached the top of the stairs, crossed the lobby, and threw open the doors to the outside world.

What she found there turned her blood ice-cold.

“I told you I had a secret of my own!” Jade yelled at the top of her lungs.

Dylan, Clooger, and Carl were all standing in a circle around her, none of them any closer than twenty feet.

“Jade, stop doing this!” Clooger yelled. “You have to stop!”

“Oh, sure thing,
Dad
, whatever you say,” Jade shot back.

Faith watched as Jade moved her arm swiftly up and a rusted-out snowplow lifted off the ground with shocking speed. It flew skyward a hundred feet in the span of two seconds, turned a sharp right, and went flying into the side of what had once been a ski run.

“Jade, no!” Faith screamed. “You can't be doing this!”

Jade screamed again. She put everything she had into that scream, bending over and letting it rip in a fit of primal anger Faith understood all too well. Faith had never really been a screamer, but she knew how this girl felt: angry, out of control, manipulated, imprisoned.

As Jade screamed, all manner of objects lifted off the ground and began flying through the air so fast that Carl and Clooger had to take shelter behind a boulder the size of a small house. An entire section of ski-lift chairs and the cables and poles that held them aloft pulled out of the earth like so many toothpicks. The tangled mess flew skyward, a rat's nest of metal that echoed down the mountain. Faith could tell Jade didn't have a clue how to control her pulse—a pulse she'd kept secret from everyone, including Carl. The tangle of wires and chairs and poles fell toward the earth in the direction of Clooger and Carl. That was when Faith and Dylan looked at each other and realized they'd have to intervene. Neither Carl nor Clooger had a second pulse, and Jade had lost all control. But Dylan and Faith were discovering, more and more, that when they worked together they were even more powerful.

Dylan picked up the house-sized boulder Clooger and Carl were hiding behind and hurled it into the air with his mind. Fifty feet overhead it smashed into one of the cables and the flying ski lift wrapped around rock like an octopus, the whole mess flying over the lodge and down the side of the mountain in a tangled, earsplitting knot of stone and cable and metal.

Faith moved in quickly, wrapping her arms around Jade and holding her in a bear hug. She lifted off the ground, carrying them both to the roof of the lodge before setting her back down. She could feel everything Dylan was doing, as if they were somehow connected. She looked skyward, saw Dylan there, and thought:
This is new. Something different is happening to us. Something bigger.

But Jade was crying softly, all the steam gone out of her rage, and now was not the time to explore hidden new talents. “Are you finished or should I expect more stuff to start flying around?” Faith asked.

Jade wouldn't answer, so Faith took a deep breath, calmed her nerves, and tried to lighten up.

“Look, I understand you're angry, okay? But this power you've got and didn't tell anyone about is
dangerous
. Do you understand that? You could have hurt yourself.”

“I know how to control it,” Jade said, wiping away tears.

Faith wanted to say,
Oh, really? And did you know other people can feel a pulse that big? Did it cross your mind we might be detected?
But she knew that was the wrong way to help Jade.

“This is going to take some practice to master, and we're going to need to be very careful. I had a lot of trouble with my pulse when I first started using it. I was all over the place.”

“I don't care,” Jade said, softer and sadder than Faith had expected.

Poor kid
, Faith thought. She put an arm around Jade and pulled her in close.

“No one is going to come up here, and we're not going down until you're ready,” Faith consoled. “Just take it easy. Breathe.”

Jade sucked in a big breath and finally looked at Faith, but by that time Faith was looking to the sky, making sure it was clear of something far worse than Jade could possibly imagine.

“I'm confused,” Jade said.

“I know,” said Faith. She pushed the loose hairs away from Jade's face and looked into her puffy, tear-stained eyes. “This power you have, how long have you known about it?”

Jade shrugged her usual shrug and looked down at her shoes. “A while, I guess.”

“Does Carl know?” Faith asked. She couldn't imagine that he did, or he would have said.

Jade shook her head. “I didn't tell him. I guess I wanted something all to myself. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.”

“Parents are complicated,” Faith said. “Especially when the world is messed up. My parents left me, too. Did you know that?”

Jade looked at Faith as if she was crazy.

“You think this is about
that
?” Jade said, exasperated. She looked out into the open space below, as if she was about to start throwing objects with her mind again.

“Whoa, hold on,” Faith said. “What's gotten into you?”

Jade shook with frustration and pounded the side of a fist into the roof. She looked at Faith, laughing sadly.

“I know Carl loves me, and Clooger's fine. Two dads, and they're brothers—it's weird, but it's fine. I'll survive. I'm practically grown-up anyway.”

Faith's heart broke at the thought of such a young girl, just thirteen, being forced to become an adult in the crazy world she'd been born into.

“It's Hawk,” Jade said. Her voice changed. She was almost happy. “We went for a walk last night under the moonlight. He held my hand and told me all about the real library you took him to. He was so nervous. He said you were a hand-holder. He likes hand-holding. And then he kissed me. He was shaking a little. It was adorable. And now this!”

Faith couldn't believe her ears. Jade had put the entire team at risk because of a crush? And yet she knew how powerful those feelings could be, how they could completely undo everything you thought you knew.

“He's a great guy,” Faith said. “And smart, too. Obviously. And he likes you, I can tell. What's the problem?”

Jade's expression changed. She was confused.

“Don't tell me you don't know. Of course you know.”

“Know what?”

Jade's face changed once more. This time her eyes widened at the thought of something Faith couldn't put together until Jade said the words.

“He's gone. Hawk took the HumGee down the mountain. He said he had to go do something no one else could do. He said he had to do it alone.”

The tears started flowing again and Jade's lip quivered. “He wouldn't take me with him, but he said he'd come back for me. That's. Not. Possible! Once you go in you never come out. He's gone and he's never coming back.”

“No way,” Faith said as she pressed her hands flat against the top of the lodge, a sudden catlike alertness flowing through every vein.

“I know, right?” Jade said. “I'm never going to see him again.”

But Faith wasn't reacting to the news about Hawk, though it was shocking and difficult to believe. She was reacting to something else.

“What is that?” Jade asked as she followed the direction of Faith's stare and tried to stand. Faith held her down by the arm and wouldn't let her go.

Two figures were coming in fast, flying toward the lodge, low against the tree line.

They had been found, again.

Faith turned to Jade and held her by the shoulders. She held her gaze, hard and fast.

“This is not your fault—don't you ever forget that. Do you understand?”

Jade saw the fear in Faith's eyes. Her nod was fast and nervous. Tears pooled in her bright green eyes as she began to process what she'd done.

“Listen to me,” Faith said. Time was short, but this was gut-wrenchingly personal. She knew exactly how Jade felt. “You didn't ask for the pulse. You didn't choose when to get born. You didn't decide to live up here. And you didn't choose who to fall in love with. None of this is your fault. Tell me you understand.”

Jade nodded.

“Tell me!” Faith said, her full attention squarely on Jade as Wade and Clara Quinn flew closer to the lodge.

“It's not my fault,” Jade said in a quiet, shaky voice.

That broke the spell and Faith was up in a flash, pulling Jade to her feet and looking to the sky.

“Get down the mountain at least a mile,” Faith said in her serious voice. It was not a voice that was easy to disobey. “Hide in the woods and don't come out no matter what.”

Jade nodded, dove into the air, and flew across the open space before the lodge, landing in a thicket of trees. Faith watched as Jade ran and ran, out of her line of sight.

There was no reason for Faith to hide her pulse anymore. She jumped off the roof and landed thirty feet below, where Dylan was still unaware of the approaching threat.

“They're coming,” Faith said. She moved into Dylan's line of sight, holding his forearms. “Both of them.”

Faith felt Dylan's muscles tighten in her hands and watched his expression change as he tried to turn his eyes to the sky. But she took his chin in her hand and pulled his attention back.

“This is going to be rougher than the last time. I can feel their rage.”

Faith pulled Dylan into a kiss and held his face in her hands. When they parted she was close to tears.

“I love you,” Dylan said. “And we're all going to get through this.”

“Hawk's gone,” Faith added, breathing in deep through her nose, forcing herself to be strong.

Dylan looked at Faith, a bewildered expression on his face. But then he recalibrated—game on, ready to roll. “One less person for them to kill. Let's make them sorry they came up here.”