Tremor (22 page)

“Roger that,” Clooger said, flying at breakneck speed between bridge spans, any one of which could have killed him on impact. He was giving it all he had, taking every risk he possibly could that wasn't completely out of control.

He was one, maybe two minutes from his destination when Faith and Dylan started talking on the sound ring.

“One down,” Faith said, and then she got confused. Was it one down, one to go? Or one down, two to go? Two sounded weird, but she thought there were two: Clara and Wade. Or was it one?

“Are you okay?” Dylan asked. He was done worrying about who might hear him. The world outside was coming apart at the seams. “Tell me the truth.”

“She throws a damn good uppercut,” Faith said, the world of reality swirling like an eddy of water around her. “But I knocked her out. I took care of it.”

Dylan could tell she was fading. Faith was in real trouble. He wanted to break out of his cell, fly to her side, take her out of the mess he'd gotten her into. How had he allowed himself to end up in such a helpless situation? Trapped in a prison, no way out, flying away from the one he loved when she needed him most.

“Don't leave me, Faith. I mean it. I'm not going to make it without you.”

“Such a romantic,” Faith said. “I always liked that about you.”

“I'm sorry,” Dylan said, trying to hold it together. “I'm really sorry.”

She thought of the secret places that were theirs alone: the top of the old Nordstrom building, the Looney Bin. She started to cry, tears clouding her vision as the sky turned into milky sapphire liquid.

“I love you, Dylan,” she said. “I only ever loved you. Come home.”

Dylan got up and went to the bars of his cell. He took one in each hand and pulled, harder than he'd ever pulled before. He screamed with effort and frustration, and the bars gave way, inching apart. But it wasn't enough. He was in a maximum-security prison. The place was designed to hold the Hulk, and he wasn't getting out until someone let him out.

“I love you, too,” he said, and felt his heart ripping in two at the thought of losing her. “I'm coming for you. Wait for me!”

Faith saw the frozen look of desperation on Gretchen's lifeless face and summoned the will for one more thought before passing out.

“I might have been wrong about this revenge business. It's not as great as I thought it would be.”

Meredith had remained quiet throughout, listening as she crossed into Arkansas territory with the rest of the single pulses, but now she spoke.

“It never is.”

Clooger couldn't believe his eyes when he arrived at the coliseum. Gretchen, one of only five second pulses, pinned like a bug with a javelin to the ground. It was at once horrifying and beautiful, the kind of vision he knew all too well from one too many days as a soldier. The joy of a good victory was always overshadowed by the overwhelming bleakness of death.

He saw the stain of blood surrounding Faith.

Clooger had played doc plenty of times in the field and knew he needed to get her medical attention, and fast.

“Hawk, find me a hospital,” he said. He looked skyward and saw the crisscrossing trails of drones and the first of many explosions.

“Copy that,” Hawk said, thinking for an instant how he, too, was beginning to sound like a stowaway on the
Starship
Enterprise
. “Just get airborne. I've set the drones to attack each other, but that's not going to last much longer. They're going to override my hack. Matter of time.”

Another explosion in the sky above as one drone blew up another and Clooger had Faith in his arms. She stirred momentarily, looked into his eyes.

“I'm scared.”

“Don't be,” Clooger said, the tone of his voice full of strength. “I have you.”

Anyone who had come up against Clooger when he was in this kind of mood knew what it meant: proceed at your own risk. It didn't matter if you were a warrior or an army or a second pulse; you knew there would be hell to pay. You might kill him in the end, but there would be consequences for messing with this guy, and those consequences would be harsh.

A few seconds later Clooger was airborne, where he dodged and parried his way through a maelstrom of explosions and drone fire, flying away into the blue, carrying the most important cargo the free world had in its arsenal.

Chapter 15
Doctor Doom!

Dylan and Hawk kept up a heavy chatter on the sound ring as Clooger and Faith escaped the Western State by the skin of their teeth. The number of drones in the sky over the city had swelled to more than a hundred, exploding into one another all around them as Clooger raced for the outer edge of the city.

“How's she doing?” Dylan asked, but no sooner had he asked the question than the door of cell block D was thrown open and a blistering wind ripped down the corridor.

“She's out but breathing,” Clooger said. “Hawk, get me to a hospital, now!”

“Stay the same course and keep pressure on the wound,” Hawk said. “I've got a beeline on a hospital due west.”

“Copy that. Let me know if anything follows me.”

“You got it.”

Dylan listened to the chatter without responding and stood holding on to the bars he'd bent a few inches apart as two men dressed in black-and-gray camo appeared.

“Don't give us any trouble,” the larger of the two said. He had a set of pork chop sideburns and a thinning head of dirt-colored hair that was flying over his head like strands of cotton candy. “Boss wants you upstairs. Can I count on you not to kill both of us?”

Dylan could have already hurled them into the walls of the corridor, ending their lives in the process. They were nervous, aware of Dylan's power, acting as if they'd been given the worst assignment in the world.

“Take me to your leader,” Dylan said, as if he were some sort of alien creature they'd been holding hostage.

Pork Chops looked at the other man and nodded, then took his Tablet out of a small side pocket on his pants.

“Cut him loose,” he said into his Tablet. “We'll bring him up.”

The wall of bars slid slowly open, and Dylan stepped out into the hallway, taking the full brunt of the wind for the first time. It was like a blast of water out of a fire hose, steady and powerful, pushing all three of them away from the exit.

“Hit a hard headwind in the last hour,” Pork Chops said. “Should be out of it shortly. We've started our descent.”

Descent?
Dylan thought.
We must have arrived . . . somewhere.

Climbing the stairs outside cell block D was comically difficult, forcing them all to use their pulses to navigate. The door to Andre's office was closed when they moved past, and Dylan stopped.

The guard who wasn't Pork Chop said, “Not in there, come on,” then shoved Dylan hard in the back.

“Really?” Dylan said, turning on him with a glare. The man should have wilted under Dylan's gaze, understanding in an instant what a foolish thing he'd done. But this guy was having none of it.

“That way,” he said, shoving Dylan forward again. “And stop turning around or I'll Taser your ass.”

Dylan couldn't believe his ears. What was with this guy?

“Better tell your partner to take it down a notch,” Dylan said to Pork Chops. He began walking again, hitting another set of stairs that would lead him up to the main level. “Guy's got a serious attitude problem.”

“Don't mind Stan,” Pork Chops answered, standing at a door with his hand on the handle. “He's a little tired of being pushed around by second pulses. Just one of those days.”

Pork Chop turned the handle on the door and pushed, letting a stream of sunlight into the gray landing. The wind had died down considerably, and Dylan had a feeling in his stomach that they were moving down at a rapid clip.

“Name's Paul,” Pork Chop said. “Paul Sanders. Go on now, they're waiting for you.”

The light source appeared to be somewhere above the door, out of Dylan's line of vision. Dylan leaned forward cautiously, and Stan Tasered him in the small part of his back. It didn't hurt, but it did send an electric shock through his system, making him jump forward far enough for Paul to slam the door and lock it from the outside.

“Good luck, amigo!” Paul laughed. “See you on the outside!”

Dylan was usually cool headed in times of stress, but the situation was unnerving. He'd just been Tasered by a disgruntled single pulse and locked in a space yet again. He was starting to feel like a rat in an experiment as he scaled the steps warily, searching for a way out. He was staring at a ladder, and he knew where it led: to one of the gun turrets jutting out in the air like a tiny lighthouse.

“Looks like I'm headed to the eye of the beast,” Dylan said, pinching his sound ring. “Not sure I'll be able to say much once I get up there.”

“We're closing in on your location now,” Meredith said. “I can see you.”

Dylan was shocked as he held on to the ladder with one hand. “Then you know where we are?”

“I know, too,” Hawk said. He'd been tracking the prison all along, but with everything else going on in the Western State, he hadn't said.

“You're approaching the Eastern State,” Meredith said.

“If my calculations are correct, you'll get there a few minutes before Meredith,” Hawk added. “You've slowed way down. You're starting a decline in altitude.”

Dylan didn't know what to say. The Eastern State? It was all the way on the other side of the country! He shook his head, angry and confused.

“Thanks for keeping me in the loop, you guys. Really appreciate that. Anyway, I've been summoned. Signing off.”

Dylan was feeling more and more like a pawn in someone else's game.

No order came from Meredith, no other information from Hawk. The line was dead. He knew Faith and Clooger were out there, too, but they felt farther away than they ever had. The Eastern State? Jeez. It might as well have been another planet, as Dylan started climbing the old-fashioned way, on rungs. Each time his hand touched metal he thought of how he and Faith had climbed or, more often, flown to the top of the Nord-strom building and spent time training. Those were good times, the Western State clouding the sky with soft light in the distance, the two of them alone in the quiet of the night.

At the top of the ladder lay a round hatch crossed with a metal bar. Dylan used his mind to move the bar and throw open the door. He felt as if he were climbing up and out of a submarine as his head cleared the opening. His shoulders were next, then he was all the way out, feeling the piercing sting of cold air on his face.

“Right on time,” Andre said. He was standing alone, staring through a windowless opening. The entire space wasn't more than ten feet across, and the hole Dylan had just stepped through took up two feet in diameter. He slammed the iron door shut, leaving a perfectly flat surface where the hole had been. Dylan leaned out through a wide opening adjacent to the one Andre was looking through and took note of where he was.

Below, closer than he'd expected, lay the grandeur of the Eastern State. From his unique vantage point, it was vast and beautiful. He was one of the only people in the world to have ever seen the Eastern State from where he stood, a thousand feet overhead. It was like looking down on a dense forest, the trees shorn clean and painted white. Buildings like tall, narrow trunks soared up in the air, connected by a million limbs of white. Or was it more like a vast bed of nails infested with a legion of spiders connecting millions of webs from nail to nail? Either way, looking down from high above, Dylan understood what a miracle the States really were.

“What's that old saying?” Andre asked. He took two strides across the gun turret and stood next to Dylan, staring out over the infinite mass of spires. “What man has wrought, let no god put asunder?”

“It's the other way around,” Dylan said, not really thinking at all but merely trying to orient himself to the miraculous situation he was in. “What
God
has wrought, let no
man
put asunder.”

Andre flinched at the idea.

“You can keep your god, I'll take the Marvel comics version. Doctor Doom.”

“Are you being serious right now?” Dylan asked. He was genuinely unsure.

Andre laughed.

“Only trying to lighten your load. You're going to need that. And for the record, Doctor Doom said it my way, and he did battle with the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men,
and
the Avengers. Pretty good company.”

Dylan looked over his head for the first time and saw two figures.

“That would be Wade and Clara,” Andre said. “But let's not worry about them just yet.”

It struck Dylan all of a sudden that Andre's wife, Gretchen, was dead. He'd discerned that much from all the chatter on the sound ring. Gretchen Quinn, the ice queen, dead. A sense of moral obligation flooded his system. He was Andre's son; he should tell him the bad news. But as Andre kept talking, the urge passed as quickly as it had arrived, like a wave heading back to sea.

“I know this hasn't been the easiest introduction to each other, but it's a start. And we'll have a lot more time after today.”

“Will we really?” Dylan asked. He glanced over his shoulder and thought he saw a flock of birds approaching from the distance. Or was it something else?

Andre cleared his throat and observed his son with ambivalence, then smiled with a forced sincerity.

“I have to say though, as complicated as this is, I'm glad you're here. Something important is about to happen.
Very
important. Seeing it with all my children here is more than I could have hoped for.”

Andre pulled his Tablet out of a pocket with a shaking hand. The man was clearly freezing in the high altitude even with the protective gear. Dylan felt a vigorous chill, nothing terrible, and looked once again at the approaching flock of birds.

“I'm going to send him up in just a moment more,” Andre said. At the same time, Dylan received a message from Meredith on the sound ring.

“We're not coming any closer until they move out,” she said. “Do whatever they ask, Dylan. Just follow orders.”

Dylan watched the flock of birds, which weren't birds at all, stop in midflight and hold its position.

“We've got visitors,” Wade said. “Three o'clock.”

Andre reeled to his left and saw the mass of single pulses forming on the edge of his sight. He turned back to Dylan.

“I had a feeling she would show up. She always does.”

He observed Dylan with an evil eye, sizing him up.

“You've been in contact this entire time, haven't you?”

Dylan didn't answer.

“I don't know how you did it, but you're going to wish you hadn't done that. It's not going to be good for them.”

“I didn't tell them to come,” Dylan said, and then, exasperated by all the secrets hovering around him, went on: “What's happening? What are you doing here? Why won't anyone tell me what's going on?!”

Andre smiled ruefully, as if he felt a little sorry for the young man standing before him.

“My dear boy, it's the beginning of the rest of the story. It's the start.”

Dylan wanted to scream with frustration.

“Just remember one thing,” Andre said, his enigmatic personality coming to flourish in the gun tower. “Home is not the place you go to. It's the place you leave. Not many people understand that, but in the end, it's the truth.”

He took one last look at his son, then turned his eyes to the sky.

“I'm sending him up. Let's get the show on the road.”

A few seconds passed in silence and then Dylan saw all Andre's single-pulse army exit the prison from every side like bees leaving a nest. Another second or two and then Dylan felt the air come out of his lungs as the full weight of the prison started to free-fall toward the Eastern State.

“Better get up there,” Andre said, holding on for dear life. “You've got work to do!”

Dylan leaped from the turret, up in the air above the falling prison, and put the full force of his mind to work in an attempt to slow its descent. At its angle it was capable of taking out seven, maybe eight spires in the Eastern State. What would that be, two million people? Four million? More? He had no idea, only that it would be a catastrophe of untold proportions. At least it was coming in from the top and not the side, which could have toppled ten times that many buildings. The prison slowed, but not by much, as Clara and Wade drifted down, one on each side of Dylan.

“Don't force it,” Wade said, smiling roguishly. His eyes began to flutter, and he raised an arm. Clara did the same, and the prison grinded quickly to a stop. It happened so fast Dylan wasn't prepared for it, and he couldn't correct his speed before slamming into the prison itself. He hit the east-side wall and bounced, the impact on stone crushing his ribs with pain. The Eastern State was harrowingly close now, the tops of the tallest buildings only a few hundred feet below as he buckled under the pain of the blow.

“Come on; we're in a rush here,” Clara said. “Get back up. Try again.”

There was a chatter of messages from Hawk and Clooger in his head, but he blocked out the voices and flew back up between Wade and Clara.

“That's a good boy,” Clara said. “Now listen carefully. This is what we call a diversion. Understand? Like Gretchen in the Western State. Di-ver-sion. Say it.”

Dylan wasn't about to cow to Clara's condescending demands, until she lowered her arm, and the prison moved down another hundred feet and stopped.

“Say it. Di-ver-sion.”

“Diversion! I get it,” Dylan said, the pain in his ribs subsiding into a dull roar.

“Good,” Wade jumped in. “We wouldn't want you feeling confused about your role here. What we need you to do is hold up this prison for as long as you can while we go do something more important.”

“I can't hold it up alone!” Dylan yelled. “That's impossible.”

“Oh, I think you can,” Wade said. “It's a lot harder moving it. All you have to do is keep it here. We already did the hard work.”