Quake (24 page)

And then Hawk said something that made Faith pause and think all the way back to the roof of the abandoned Nordsrtrom with Dylan. All the way back to the beginning, when she could barely move a glass of water with her mind. Dylan had asked her a question then—
Do you trust me?
—and now Hawk was asking her to do the same.

“Trust me on this, Faith. I have it contained. We beat Hotspur Chance.”

Faith nodded without speaking.
Okay, Hawk. I trust you. I really do.

“Did I tell you I killed him? I killed Hotspur Chance. I did it with my bare hands.”

A couple of seconds went by and then Hawk responded.

“Whoa.”

“I didn't think it was right, using my pulse. It would have been like faking it, I guess. I had to really do it.”

Faith looked at the body one more time and thought about what she'd done.

“Tell me she's okay,” Hawk said, changing gears and facing a question he wasn't sure he wanted the answer to.

“Jade is fine, but you should prepare yourself. She's a second pulse.”

Hawk laughed. A genuine, heartfelt, happy laugh. “I don't care if she's a three-D pulse. I'm so psyched about this! Tell her I love her. Tell her she's awesome!”

“You can tell her yourself.”

“That's right, I can. She's alive. She's alive and Hotspur's dead. And the Quinns are locked up tight. Does it get any better?!”

“Speaking of the twins, I have a plan I'd like to run by you. Wanna hear it?”

“Do I ever.”

By the time Faith got back to the cells, Hawk had already spoken to Jade and the Quinns had stopped trying to cause trouble. They'd thrown Dylan and Jade around some, but very quickly realized how useless it was. They were dealing with two second pulses. What was the point? Nothing they did was going to be enough to seriously hurt Dylan or Jade.

“I talked to Hawk,” Jade said, beaming from ear to ear. “He told me he loved me. In front of all these people!”

“Somebody shut that kid up or I'm going to lose it!” Wade said. He put his fist into the wall a few times.

“Hawk stopped the program from running and you killed the monster,” Jade said, totally ignoring Wade as if he didn't even exist. “It's been a good day.”

Faith went to Dylan, hugged him, and felt her head slam hard into his.

“Clara, stop doing that,” Faith said. “Save your energy. You're going to need it.”

Faith wrapped her arms around his shoulders and felt Dylan pull her in close at the hips. She was trembling softly, an adrenaline rush still coursing through her veins as they kissed. When they parted she put her lips close to his ear and spoke softly. “I don't like killing people. I'm not doing that again. Ever.”

Dylan nodded patiently and Faith went on.

“Are you ready to rumble?”

Dylan kissed her once more, close to her ear, and whispered, “I'm ready. Let's clean this place out and shut it down for good.”

Faith could feel the power in Dylan's arms, the muscles rippling as he flexed. He was at 100 percent and so was she.

“Jade, I know you can't be hurt, but all the same, I'd like you to stand aside and let Dylan and me handle this next part. Okay?”

Jade didn't look at all happy, but she seemed to accept it, nodding defiantly.

Faith knelt and whispered into Jade's ear so no one else could hear, and Jade smiled again, content to have a part in what was about to happen. She ran down the corridor in the direction of the elevator that had brought them all 260 feet underground.

Faith stood and nodded at Dylan. He nodded back.

“Did you know everything Hotspur was planning to do?” Faith asked. Her question was aimed at Clara, but Wade was quicker to the answer.

“Terminate the Western State. He said it was what we were made for.”

“And you were okay with that?” Faith asked, staggered by the emotionless quality of Wade's voice.

“I never said I was okay with it. Who knows? Maybe if the timing had been different, it would have been me snapping his neck instead of you.”

Faith's stomach dropped at the sound of what she'd done. She'd killed someone with her bare hands, and that would, in some ways, become a marker for the rest of her life. Maybe that's what she'd wanted it to be: the last dark moment of a broken past, the violent release into a better future.

“Clara had plans of her own,” Wade added bitterly. “I never agreed to any of it.”

“Way to throw me under the bus when we're both gonna die anyway,” Clara said. “Very classy.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Wade asked.

No one answered, which seemed to make Wade more nervous, as if the thought hadn't, for some reason, crossed his mind.

“You'd have come along willingly and you know it,” Clara snarled at her brother. “And it could have been nice, the world at our feet. Doesn't matter now. Soon as this place falls, we're under a mountain of dirt and everything that comes with it, brother.”

Dylan looked in on Wade, right up in the small square. “She's right, you know. It wouldn't take much to bring this ceiling down on top of you.”

“So that's your plan, crushing us to death?” Wade asked. He shook his head, feigning disbelief, and stared Dylan down. “I have a better idea. Let me out of this cage and we'll see if you can beat me in a real fight?”

Dylan looked at Faith and she could see he wanted this, wanted it more than anything. But there were real risks. They could pummel the walls enough to trap them all if the ceiling collapsed.

“We're not going to leave you down here to rot, but we're not fighting down here, either,” Faith said. “Too risky.”

She moved to the side of the cell doors that was farthest from the elevator. She heard the gentle, deep thump of an explosive force far in the distance. Dust rained down from the ceiling and the ground shook slightly.

“Open them up,” Faith said.

Hawk's voice pinged into Clara's cell: “On it.”

The two cell doors clicked open and then there was a deep silence. Faith couldn't see Wade or Clara, but she imagined what they were doing. They were both looking at the open doors, thinking how stupid Faith and Dylan were for letting them out. They were, in many ways, just like their father. It wasn't that these two thought they were never wrong; it was a different reaction sprung from the same source. Wade and Clara thought they were indestructible, maybe even immortal. And it was for this reason that Faith imagined them with smiles on their faces. Things were going as they always eventually went. The only thing standing between them and winning had been time.

Both doors flew open at the same time with enough force to remove them from their hinges. The two slabs of metal careened back and forth against the walls with a chaotic violence that made Faith take two steps backward.

“Looks like we woke the monsters,” Dylan said, flashing a look at Faith she'd seen before. It was a look that told her everything she loved about him in only a few seconds:
Let's kick some ass, I love you, you're beautiful.

Clara and Wade stepped out into the corridor. They were closer to the surface than Dylan and Faith were now, and they knew it. Clara pushed her hands out in front of her chest, forcing her energy toward Faith. Wade gathered the quickly hardening coat of concrete from the floor and pulled it up into the air. It floated there, a melting wall of stone, and then Wade pushed it forward. Faith was deadlocked with Clara, the two of them pushing against each other, cancelling out their own energy. Half-hardened concrete exploded forward, crashing into Faith as Dylan unconsciously moved directly behind her. When Faith took the brunt of the blow, she stumbled back, but Dylan pushed forward and held her aloft.

“Never figured you for a guy who'd use a girl as a shield in a fight,” Wade said. “Actually, that's not true. I did figure that. You seem like
just
the type.”

While Wade was running his mouth, Dylan was tightening his grip around Faith's waist and turning her in the air, aiming them both like a rocket. Before Wade or Clara could react, Faith and Dylan launched, ramming into Clara's stomach like a double-headed battering ram. She buckled in half, carried away as Faith and Dylan pushed hard down the hall.

“Make her feel it,” Dylan said into Faith's ear, letting her go. She felt his hands leave her side, pushing her forward, and then she dug deeper than she'd ever gone for power she didn't even know she had. It was like going from normal speed to light speed in a burst of energy, then stopping just as fast, letting the cargo free.

Clara flew forward, spinning out of control, and slammed so hard into a wall of mortar it collapsed into a hole. Behind the hole lay wet earth and roots and worms, and Clara didn't stop until she was ten feet beyond the wall. She'd punched a crater hole and the earth shook, raining down debris from the fragile ceiling.

When Faith turned to see where Dylan had gone, she saw that he and Wade were caught in a death spiral, clamped onto each other like sumo wrestlers, hurtling toward her. She dodged to the side and let them pass, a human tumbleweed making its way toward the elevator shaft.

Clara crawled out of the narrow tunnel and fell to the floor. She stood, wobbling back and forth, covered in dirt.

She definitely felt that
, Faith thought, and it pleased her to think she could make Clara feel some pain. She watched as Clara took notice of her twin brother rolling past, bouncing into the open area before the elevator shaft. Dylan had let him go and the two stood face-to-face, ready to lock horns again.

Clara glanced at Faith, then back at the shaft, then back at Faith.

“You better run,” Faith said, and she started to walk toward Clara with the resolve of a rhino about to charge. For the first time in their long battle over many months, Faith saw fear in Clara's eyes. She took flight, following Clara as she moved for the exit.

“Come on, Wade!” Clara yelled as she passed by and entered the elevator shaft. Wade was gone in a flash of dust and debris, up the shaft with his sister as Dylan and Faith took chase. It was 260 feet of tunnel leading to the surface, and at the top, the light of day shone through. It had a strange green hue, an avocado sky that didn't belong.

“Looks like Jade did her job well,” Dylan said with a hundred feet to go. She had gotten outside and used whatever means necessary to blow the roof off the elevator shaft.

“Only question left is whether Clay was ready,” Faith said.

“He's a cowboy. You can always count on a cowboy.”

Faith flashed a smile at Dylan as they approached the top.

They could have taken a moment to embrace and release all the pain and pressure they'd endured. But that would all have to wait for another time, because right then Clara and Wade broke through into daylight.

Their freedom lasted only a split second as the air above the opening closed in on them. Clay's cage, which was a thing of real beauty and sophistication, was waiting beyond the blue. Clara and Wade ran right into it, and like any good trap, the door swung shut the moment they were inside.

Faith and Dylan slowed to a crawl and slid to the side of the cage, holding in the air and observing what a fine piece of work it was.

“You outdid yourself, Clay,” Dylan said, circling the cage in midair.

Jade was standing next to Clay, beaming with pride.

“This little lady knows how to blow the top off a building,” Clay said. “She done good.”

Clay was standing on the pavement with his shotgun in hand, along with a small army of cowboys behind him. The cage itself was held aloft on four ropes attached to tall trees. Faith took a good look at the cage and found it was pretty much exactly what she had ordered, with the exception of the snakes. The cage looked to be constructed of a light steel frame, but it was everything attached to the frame that mattered: a thick web of ivy and green vine, teaming with snakes and squirrels and moles.

“Nice touch with the snakes,” Faith said.

“Figured it couldn't hurt,” Clay said, tipping his hat and smiling as he looked up at his own invention. “Rattlers. Mean as hell.”

What Clay and his team had built was alive with vermin and olive-green branches. Clara and Wade were trapped inside a cage with walls that inflicted pain and sucked power. It was their version of the titanium cell Faith had been in, and it was having the same effect on the Quinns. The walls of the cage moved back and forth a few times, but after that, it was obvious its two prisoners had decided to give up.

“Did you do the other parts?” Faith asked Clay.

Clay only smiled and waved them down to the ground and across the parking lot. His whole team of urban cowboys gathered around an old-fashioned detonator: a red box with a T handle for pushing down. Wires ran the length of the parking lot and into the zoo beyond the gates.

“How much dynamite we got in there, Earl?” Clay asked, turning to a big-bellied man with a long mustache that looked like an upside-down horseshoe.

Earl chuckled, turned to his right, and spit. “Five hundred pounds, give or take.”

Dylan whistled through his teeth.

“And you got all the animals out, you're sure?”

Clay nodded and held his gun up a few extra inches from his belt buckle. “A couple of members of the cat family, a few bears, mostly monkeys. And the elephant. They're all clear, roaming around in the back forty.”

Faith had thought this through quite a bit over the past few days, and standing there on the cracked concrete she felt surer than ever about what had to be done.

Faith turned to Clay. “You're sure?”

“Only a few critters were left in there, most of them hightailed it years ago. We checked every inch,” Clay said. “It's empty.”

Two penguins waddled through the gate, looked back as if they were the last animals on earth, and headed for the woods.