Gretchen stood outside the bars. She was an unexpected visitor and one with a second pulse. He wouldn’t be able to push her around even if he wanted to.
She came into view wearing a black jumpsuit that, he hated to admit, looked cool from a distance. As she came nearer, she brushed her short hair with a hand, then removed a pair of black gloves and slapped them against her palm.
“It’s a fine day for this,” she said. “Hardly any head- wind at all. We’re making good time.”
“So we’re moving, then? I had a feeling.”
Gretchen smiled unexpectedly. She was at her best when the pistons of a plan were firing on all cylinders in her mind.
“We’ve got a little ways to go. Hopefully this crate holds together.”
She allowed herself the shortest of all possible laughs, which sounded like a bark from a small dog, and began pacing slowly back and forth in front of the cell.
“Dylan, why did you come here?” she asked.
Dylan didn’t hesitate.
“Because Meredith and I didn’t see eye to eye.”
“Sticking to your story?”
“It’s not a story. It’s the truth. But I have to say, I’m starting to think it was a bad idea. I didn’t think I’d be spending so much time in a jail cell.”
“Well, it is a prison. One should expect to spend some time locked up. Especially when they’re in the habit of lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
Gretchen stopped pacing and faced the bars of the cell. She took the required number of steps forward in order to have her face practically touching the metal.
“I know you’re lying, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever small bits of information you’ve gleaned during this failed expedition aren’t going to matter in a few hours. The world is going to be a very different place before you know it. Better choose whose side you’re really on, Dylan Gilmore. Time is short.”
Dylan was a lot harder to rattle than that. He went on the offensive.
“Andre trusts me. And he’s in charge, not you.”
Gretchen turned her head sideways, like a bird examining a hole from which a worm was almost sure to emerge any second.
“Maybe you have flipped,” she said, and then, shaking her head as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, added, “I’m not going to see you again, not for a few days anyway. If you’re still here when I return, well, we’ll see about your future. But this is good-bye, for now.”
She began to walk away, then turned back.
“I almost forgot the whole reason I came down here,” she said. “Silly me.”
She turned on him, firing that icy-cold stare down the hall and through the bars.
“I’m going to kill your girlfriend,” she said. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Dylan wanted to hold character and fire back with a wad of attitude that said Girlfriend? I haven’t got any girlfriend. But the way she looked at him and the unexpected message she’d delivered left no doubt on Dylan’s face. He was rattled.
“That’s what I thought,” Gretchen said. She was on the move again, opening the slab metal door as the wind dived down the corridor and hit Dylan in the face.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay,” she said, slamming the door behind her.
Of course Clara had told Gretchen about Faith hiding out in the woods. It was another of her carefully calibrated bombs set to go off very, very soon. It had been a pleasant bonus informing Gretchen that Wade, hopeless romantic that he was, had known she was out there all along and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. Clara was a team player; she knew better. Of course she’d never keep anything that important from her own mother.
Had it been Gretchen’s idea or Clara’s, a showdown between the two of them? Clara knew it had been her own, but she was subtle to the point of sublime. As far as Gretchen knew, it had been Gretchen’s idea to lure Faith into a little one-on-one over the Western State. Was she that angry? Was she reckless enough to fall for it? Oh yes, Clara had discovered, I think she’s both of those things.
Poor Gretchen. Poor, stupid Gretchen.
She’d even thanked Clara for letting her do the deed, knowing Clara had long nurtured a seething hatred of Faith Daniels.
“Let me take care of this for you,” Clara had said, touching her mother on the shoulder softly, as if there was even a chance the two of them were close. “You stay focused on the task at hand.”
But Gretchen was going to take on some water. Her ship was going to see some damage. She’d easily kill Faith in the end, but not without cost. And then Clara would swoop in and finish the job.
The orchestration was precise and lethal, just the way Clara liked it.
Chapter 13
Buckshot and Fishtail
“Faith, be extra careful. Gretchen knows you’re out there, or I think she knows. Sounds like she’s coming for you.”
Hawk was reading Faith’s letter when he heard Dylan’s voice, low and quiet through the sound ring. The letter was very specific, also cleverly designed to deliver a mighty blow of guilt.
“I’ll be ready,” Faith replied, which was followed by Meredith telling her not to do anything “off the plan.”
“You guys are within an hour of the Western State,” Hawk relayed. “Better prepare for them to slow down.”
“And be ready for incoming fire,” Meredith said. “If the Western State gets a visual, they won’t hesitate to attack.”
“Wait, what?” Faith said. “You can’t let them do that! Dylan is in there.”
A pause on the line, then Dylan was back.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m a second pulse, remember? Consider it a prison break.”
Faith wasn’t so sure. “You’re in what amounts to a stone coffin. If it hits the ground and you’re under it, you could get really hurt. Or killed.”
“I’ll be fine. You just worry about yourself. I don’t know how this is going down, but one way or another, Gretchen is coming for you. Be ready. I’ve already talked too much, not that anyone is paying attention.”
Faith wanted to shout how much she loved him, how much she missed seeing him. But if she pressed in and told Dylan these things, Clooger and Hawk and Dylan’s mom would hear every word. That made the whole situation feel about as romantic as a family reunion.
Oh, to hell with it, she thought.
“Remember before, when you told me you loved me in the Looney Bin and I hesitated or whatever—”
“Wait, what’s a Looney Bin?” Hawk pressed in. “Translate.”
“Zip it, Hawk,” Clooger pressed in.
Faith closed her eyes and shook her head. She was losing her nerve.
“It’s okay, Faith,” Dylan said.
“No. It’s not okay. It’s not, and it wasn’t.”
She let go of the sound ring, loneliness gripping her chest like a vise. Then she was back. “I miss you. And I’m yours, just you, nobody else. I love you, Dylan. I do.”
Hawk pressed in: “This is intense.”
Clooger pressed in: “Hawk!”
A long pause transpired in which no one spoke, and then Dylan said the right words at the right time to lift not just Faith, but the whole team.
“Let’s play our part the best we can. We can make a difference here. All of us. And, Faith, nothing is going to stop me from finding my way back. Count on it.”
Dylan went quiet after that; everyone did. Hawk reread the letter. There was no pleading or deal making in Faith’s request. She knew as well as he did that there was no score to keep in a friendship like theirs. They did what the other needed, no matter what.
Hawk didn’t understand why Faith wanted what she did, but he hadn’t been able to see how he could ignore the request. And he couldn’t tell Meredith, either. And so it was that two hours before the prison reached the Western State, Hawk had tapped out some commands on his Tablet, bouncing a signal through cell towers and satellite systems in a random, untraceable order. Finding his target,
he had sent out the instructions, which were precise and to the point and timely.
Hawk had officially gone rogue.
Clooger barely fit inside his bullet tube, and a half hour later he had an itch, on his right knee. He tried to reach down and scratch it, but the distance between his fingers and his kneecap required some bending. Either the leg had to come up or the shoulders had to arc down or both. He chose both, thinking a little alteration from each end of his body was less likely to send him into a tailspin. He was wrong about this, and found himself unexpectedly spinning in a circle that looked like a poorly thrown football. When he finally got things back under control, he was disappointed to find that his knee still itched, having not been scratched, and that the prison was moving in a different direction.
“Faith, you seeing this?”
“Yeah, I see it. What’s with the drop and roll?”
Clooger didn’t bother elaborating on the itch and the scratch that hadn’t followed as he watched the prison rise in altitude. It was heading into the clouds on a steep trajectory.
“You still got it, Hawk?” Clooger asked.
“Totally, not a problem.”
“Good, because we just lost visual.”
Clooger made a second, slower attempt at the itch and felt his fingernail dig into skin. The relief was practically cosmic as he accelerated toward the Western State.
“Whoa there, Cloog,” Hawk said. “Slow it down. Whatever military firepower they’ve got inside the States, and I can tell you it’s a lot, they might not hesitate to use it if they see you coming. They can’t see the prison. But they can see you.”
“Head up into the clouds,” Meredith said. She was flying over New Mexico with the single pulses, having completely avoided the path of the Western State. They’d flown directly across Arizona on a path toward the border of Texas. “They’re not heading to the Western State anyway. At least not most of them.”
“You sure about that?” Clooger asked. “They’ve been headed right for it this whole time.”
A pregnant pause on the sound ring, then Meredith answered. “Yes, I’m sure.”
The itch returned to Clooger’s leg, and he thought: Holy hell, how much longer to go inside this crazy thing?
“Install a bathroom in the upgrade, will ya, Hawk?” Clooger asked.
“You got it,” Hawk answered as he began calculating the ways in which he might actually pull it off.
Clooger headed for the cloud cover overhead just as the Western State came into clear view on the ground below. It was surprisingly slender, given the number of people it held. Unlike Los Angeles or New York, the States used every square inch of ground space and grew up at a much faster rate than out. It was true the States were always gobbling up more landmass, but with 150 million people packed into each one, they were a marvel of compact, utilitarian design. The buildings looked like drinking straws from so far out, piled in close together like a fist full of wheat stalks. Everything surrounding the Western State was flat and lush from Clooger’s point of view, a valley of deep green and orange and yellow, the fall coming on fast. A ridge of mountains to the north was already covered in snow.
“See you when we get on the other side, Faith,” Clooger said, entering the clouds as he chased down the prison.
No, you won’t, Faith thought. She said the words to herself and no one else, because she saw what no one else saw. A tiny figure, moving out from under the clouds.
“Gretchen,” Faith said. “You better run.”
Faith and Gretchen were both traveling much slower now, around a hundred miles an hour, as they came within five miles of the Western State spires. Faith moved in within a hundred yards, came to a complete stop in the air, and used her Tablet to run some commands. The bullet suit rolled down toward her feet, her hands bunching it together at the bottom. She placed the resulting ring on a carabiner at her side, like Wonder Woman’s rope.
When she looked up, Gretchen had stopped as well.
She was staring at Faith Daniels like a lion at its prey, waiting to pounce.
“This is bad,” Hawk said as he fumbled around in the front seat of the HumGee, searching blindly for a bottle of water. He’d lost Dylan’s signal in the clouds, which meant he had no idea where the prison was. For all he knew it could have crash-landed into the Western State while he sat helplessly in the woods. He tried four or five more connection points, running tracers between outer-space satellites and old cell towers, but he was getting nothing. Faith he could see, and Meredith, who was rapidly approaching the Texas border on her way to who knew where. She wasn’t telling and no one was asking, not yet anyway.
“I need a better signal,” Hawk said, staring through the windshield into the tall trees shooting up all around him.
He opened the door and without thought or emotion walked about ten paces to a slightly more open patch of blue, holding his Tablet in its large size up over his head. The voice that had surprised him earlier returned out of the blue, only this time it was longer, more interesting:
A black hole with a mass of one ton would have the same luminosity as the sun. The level of gamma radiation emitted from such a black hole would contaminate not one but two entire States in a matter of seconds. There is untapped power in luminosity. Examine.
Hawk shook his head. The voice was clear and crisp, like someone on the sound ring. He was suddenly very curious about black holes and the power of luminosity and wanted to examine the problem immediately. He shook his head, afraid of what was happening to him. It had started this way with his parents: a voice that had slowly drawn them down into madness.
I heard that voice again today, asking me the most interesting questions, his mother used to say, often when she was turning out the light and bidding him good night. It’s the strangest thing.
What was it: a year, eighteen months? How long after that did his parents really go downhill? How long would it be before Hawk experienced the same fate?
He probably would have thought about the voice in his head and the potential doom in his near future had it not been for the growling sound behind him. He turned, very slowly, still holding the Tablet over his head and still getting no signal. The wolves were back, teeth bared and dripping saliva as they observed easy prey.
Hawk’s eyes darted in the direction of the HumGee, though he didn’t move his head even a quarter of an inch. The flat, wide vehicle was farther away than he’d hoped and not at the best angle. There were four wolves, pacing now, inching closer in a rocking pattern that could turn deadly at any moment.
I’m fast. Real fast, Hawk told himself. Even Dylan says so.
But he was glued to the forest floor, frozen with fear.
“How am I doing, Hawk?” Clooger piped in. “Can’t see a thing up here, but my Tablet says due east. That right? Hawk?”
Something about hearing Clooger’s voice startled Hawk into action, and before he knew it, he was running. Thank God he’d left the door to the HumGee ajar—opening it was one less thing to do when he got there. The wolves took chase instantaneously, coming at Hawk at a forty-five-degree angle, cutting the distance between them in huge strides.
Hawk wished he’d brought the sawed-off shotgun. What had he been thinking? Time slowed down, the whole scene taking place as if it were encased in a pool of thick syrup, holding everything in a liquid silence as the wolf at the front of the pack leaped, jaws open, for Hawk’s ankle.
Hawk dived, time speeding back up as he hit the seat of the HumGee and slid into the door on the other side, cranking his head sideways and crumpling to the floor. The lead wolf tumbled to the left, making room for the next two wolves to stare directly into the HumGee and take their first tentative steps inside. Both were ready to pounce when Hawk found the handle of the shotgun. He lifted it to his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and felt the power of the burst push him backward onto the floorboards. Buckshot bounced like tiny pinballs throughout the cabin of the rig, pelting him on the legs and arms. He’d missed, badly
, but it had been enough to push the beasts back into the woods. Hawk lurched forward, grabbed the handle of the door, and yanked it shut just as a wolf jumped forward and crashed into the window, pushing the door all the way shut with its weight.
“Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah!” Hawk yelled. He laughed, despite the incredible stress of the moment, and examined one of his arms, where a red circle was blooming. There were seven or eight such marks, but he didn’t care. He’d shot himself, sure, but he’d outrun a pack of wolves. It was a victory against a bigger, badder foe, a good sign on a day when just that kind of luck would be needed.
“Hawk?” Clooger called.
“Answer,” Meredith added. “Give us a signal.”
Hawk grabbed his sound ring and yelled louder than he’d intended to. The adrenaline was really pumping. “Here! Lost the signal, but I’m on it. Give me five!”
“No need to scream,” Clooger said. “I’m headed east, gotta be past the Western State by now. I’ll dip out of the clouds, see what I see.”
“Better wait, see if Hawk can grab a signal,” Meredith said. “No reason to risk it.”
“Faith, you there?” Clooger called. “Faith?”
And somehow he just knew, without thinking twice about it, that she’d deliberately gone off on her own. He was actually surprised when he heard her voice.
“I’m here, same direction as you.”
Hawk, on the ground in the woods where the pack of wolves had moved off, should have called it in. Faith wasn’t following Clooger; she was holding a few miles outside the Western State. But he didn’t say anything, let it slide, did what she asked and stayed quiet.
He was too small to reach the pedals of the HumGee without having his butt hang halfway off the seat and his chest pinned against the steering wheel, but that was going to have to be good enough. He needed to get the rig out in the open away from all the trees. He needed a real signal, and that was going to happen only if he hit the accelerator and drove down the side of the mountain.