Tremor (23 page)

“Give it all you've got,” Clara said. “Now.”

Dylan was terrified she would let it fall again, and a million or more souls would be on his conscience. He focused his entire mind on the prison, blocking out everything else, including the voices in his head.

“Think of it mathematically,” Clara said. “That's the trick. Don't be lazy. It's not about the whole damn thing. You have to break it down, piece by piece, room by room, wall by wall. Bring it all into your mind, one piece at a time, and you'll be able to hold it. Understand?”

Dylan thought of the cell he'd been in.

“How many cells are there?” he asked, eyes closed and utterly focused.

“Now you're thinking!” Wade said.

“One hundred seventeen cells,” Clara said. “Four gun turrets, nine walls, eighteen offices, twelve corridors, a foundation.”

Clara and Wade watched Dylan as his mind worked over each part of the prison, holding it up one section at a time.

“He hasn't got it all, but it's close enough, I bet,” Clara said. She took out her Tablet and glanced at the screen. “We're late. Better go.”

Wade nodded, and together he and Clara slowly let their minds wander away from the prison, one piece at a time. Dylan felt the weight of each thought as it left them, like a scale that was loading up with piles of gold, his side getting heavier, theirs getting lighter, until every fiber of his mind stretched under the pressure of the task.

When he opened his eyes they were gone.

He was holding up a million pounds of stone and steel with his mind, the vast power of its weight pulling against him, dragging him foot by grinding foot toward the tallest spires of the Eastern State.

Chapter 16
Universal Donor

Andre, Wade, and Clara slipped away, down into the maze of buildings, as their army of single pulses spanned out across the sky. The drones were already coming, but whoever commanded them appreciated the situation: an object heavy enough to inflict unspeakable damage was hanging by a thread above the city. Who knew what might cause it to come crashing to earth? What was even holding it up to begin with? Where had it come from? Special care was required. They couldn't fire on the object or any of the people who appeared to be flying over the Eastern State. It was all, every part of it, wildly out of protocol. No one had ever seen anything like it; there was no manual or experience to prepare them. Something about the world had gone haywire in a way that was unprecedented and dangerous. And so they proceeded gently, as if tiptoeing around a floating nuclear bomb and its guardians in the sky.

The air swarmed with drones, circling and watching, dodging one another as they photographed and examined. The data transmissions only confirmed a world gone berserk: the object floating in the sky was a prison that weighed more than a million pounds.

There were what appeared to be two opposing forces at a standoff in the sky, floating as if weightless, staring each other down.

And the unimaginable fact that a young man appeared to be somehow or other holding the prison aloft.

Transmissions were also coming in from commanders in the Western State, who reported a major breach of security, the destruction of several tube bridges, a body count of more than two hundred, and an unexplainable encounter with flying people.

All this taken as a whole would have been enough to distract anyone from a smaller, far less noticeable event taking place on the 354th floor of a certain building in the finance and government district of the Eastern State. But Andre needed to be absolutely sure the decoy was so big it would capture the attention of everyone who mattered.

“We knew they would come,” Andre said into his Tablet. He was hovering outside a window, looking at the frosted white glass and imagining what lay behind it. Meredith, he knew, would never go down without a fight. He felt a strange comfort in knowing she somehow always knew when he was making a very large move. She'd made a mistake this time though. The stakes were too high. This time Meredith would have to pay the highest price.

He looked at Clara and Wade and wondered for an instant how it had all led to this. Then he held his Tablet close and gave the order. “Take them. Take them all.”

The swarm of black-camo single pulses moved as one, all of them brandishing handguns or knives or throwing stars that had previously been hidden. Four of them carried Smith and Wesson Magnums: guns that kicked like a bull when fired. Andre and Gretchen had always preferred classic weapons of war, and the Magnum was as classic as they came. Knives were of the hunting variety, with wide blades extending six inches away from pearl handles. The throwing stars were razor sharp and as broad as a grapefruit, cut in the shape of gears with teeth for ripping.

Meredith's forces had plenty of weapons of their own, which they carried inside their discarded bullet suits. She was more inclined to heavy artillery of the grenade and cannon varieties, and half her forces shouldered rocket launchers at the sight of incoming forces.

The battle was on.

Shots were fired first by Andre's men, great blasts of fury that rang through the sky and scrambled the coding inside more than one drone. Security forces watching from nearby buildings slung code as fast as they could, trying to bring the drones under control. They were hardwired to attack at the sound of gunfire, and Andre's men retreated to the prison, where they took shelter in the four gun turrets. One of them didn't make it out of the open war space before taking fire from a set of two drones. The single pulse turned, faced the oncoming assault, and emptied all six Magnum rounds, strafing fire across the bow of both drones as he spun in a circle. His body armor, in which both teams of single pulses were covered from head to toe, took the brunt. But soon he was surrounded by two more drones. He was out of ammo, and though he'd destroyed some serious machinery in the effort, a spray of bullets finished him off. The man fell toward the earth and was caught by the roof of a building a few hundred feet below.

Meredith held back, giving orders to
Fire! Fire! Fire!
She didn't seem to care that half the effort was resulting in damage to the prison itself, sending shards of metal and debris falling toward the Eastern State. Drones were everywhere, filling the sky with rocket-fueled flames.

Meredith commanded her small army to surround the prison and fire at will. What resulted was an all-out war around and within the prison itself while Dylan, pestered by Hawk's voice and a hundred drones doing flybys, fought against the immense weight of the prison he held. The prison lurched fifty feet downward, sending Andre's army swarming into the sky like hornets. Dylan regained his mental footing, and the giant concrete structure pitched to the right, turning sideways like a badly thrown Frisbee.

Meredith's single pulses were falling out of the sky one after the other. Semana was hit dead in the chest with a bazooka-fired rocket; another fighter watched his body armor slice open at the hip as a throwing star ripped through flesh and bone. Skulls were breached by Magnum fire, bodies blown apart by grenades thrown. And Glory, wise old Glory—her chest was struck with a blade, and she tumbled and tumbled and tumbled.

Meredith hadn't expected it to be so bloody, so swift and cruel. But there was no calling for a retreat now. It was way too late for that. All her small army could do now was take out as many of Andre's soldiers as possible, a fight to the bitter end.

He's going to be even angrier when he finds out Gretchen is dead,
Meredith thought.

She hated leaving her drifters, but there was no choice. She had to at least try to stop what was coming. Meredith let herself drift down and out of sight, under the line of spires, and made her way around many tall buildings to where she knew she would find Andre. When she came to the tall white spire for which she was looking and glanced up into the sky, she saw that the prison was inching its way downward directly over her head. Like a black cloud bursting with the weight of water, it shed chunks of metal and stone, ripped free by a fight that would not end. It was shockingly close now, less than a hundred feet from the top of the highest buildings.

Meredith turned toward the spire with a look that might have been described as two parts fierce and one part shell-shocked. A wide hole had been punched in the side of the building, behind which lay a red-carpeted hallway. As she stepped through the broken shards of glass, Meredith felt a wave of sadness, all the memories of struggle and sorrow crashing at once on the open wound of her soul. She'd been strong for such a long time, never flinching, never giving in. Listening to the symphony of violence and regret outside grow quieter with each step, she began to hum the old song once more.

 

Clooger and Faith arrived at an abandoned hospital outside Colorado Springs. The chill in the air on the flight had slowed Faith's breathing, and Clooger had stemmed the bleeding by wrapping his giant-sized hand around her side as they flew. All the doors were sealed tight, so Clooger picked up the nearest boulder he could find, throwing it through a metal door with his mind. The boulder, a good four feet in diameter, bounced down a darkened linoleum floor and came to rest against a hospital gurney. What lay in shadow was surprisingly pristine: a hospital that had been sealed off from the decaying world outside.

“How's it going?” Hawk asked, pressing into the sound ring. “I'm not getting anything from the East. It's gone quiet.”

Hawk had been watching the signals flaring on his Tablet screen, unable to say for sure what was going on. If he had to guess, it was Armageddon. Whatever was happening, it wasn't good, and Dylan either wouldn't or couldn't answer his calls.

“There's a lot of blood loss, but no major organs hit,” Clooger said as he examined Faith, shaking Hawk out of his thoughts. He'd laid her on the gurney, where he could get a good look at her, tearing the blood-soaked shirt from her torso. She wore a pink sports bra, stained red along the rim of elastic. “The wound is nearer the outside edge of her abdomen than I originally thought. I need to stitch her up good and get her a blood transfusion fast.”

Hawk was happy to hear Clooger's voice, happier still that Faith had a fighting chance.

“Find the OR and look for a blood bag and a syringe. We need to convert at least a couple pints.”

“Hawk, you sure about this?” Clooger asked. He used one hand to press the sound ring, the other to push the gurney down the hall, banging it into a set of swinging doors that led to a darkened wing of the hospital. He was becoming adept at using one hand to work and the other to communicate. It wasn't so different from being in the field during a war holding on to a two-way radio. A guy got used to it.

“It'll work,” Hawk said. “But I need to send you some files. Get on a network and start extracting. I'll download while you work.”

Clooger tapped out a few instructions on his Tablet, putting it into satellite search mode. It honed in on a signal as he rummaged around gathering supplies: a puncture, tubing, antibacterial liquid, surgical thread, needle, sponge. When he returned to the gurney, the files he needed were already downloaded and ready. A new icon had appeared on his screen.

“Do you have what you need to extract?” Hawk asked.

“Got it.”

“Sew her up first,” Hawk said. “That's job one.”

Clooger splashed the wound with antibacterial liquid, and Faith sucked in a fast, harsh breath of air, her eyes going wide with shock.

“Oh, hell,” Clooger said, pinching his sound ring. “She's awake!”

“That's probably not a good thing,” Hawk said. “Faith, can you hear me?”

She nodded and looked into Clooger's eyes and tried to sit up. Clooger pushed her back down as he watched blood pump out of her body.

“Stay still, Faith. Really still.”

“Faith, listen to me,” Hawk said. “We need to stitch you up and get some blood in you. You're not feeling any pain, I gather?”

She slowly raised a hand to her ear, pressed the sound ring.

“Not a thing. I am a little light-headed though. And cold.”

“Must be a second-pulse thing. Clooger, get sewing. Her body doesn't know the trouble it's in. Just stay still, Faith. Moving is only going to make it worse.”

Clooger went to work, stitching up the wound on the front first, then rolling her gently on her side and doing the same on the back.

“Dylan?” Faith asked, hoping to hear his voice on the other end. There was only dead air, and she began to sob quietly.

“Hey, hey—he's just busy, that's all,” Clooger said. “Give him a little time. And also, you're all stitched up. Now you need blood. And I have plenty of that.”

Clooger slapped his monstrous bicep four or five times, bringing a vein to the surface.

“We're ready,” Clooger said. “Run the program?”

Hawk thought he'd perfected the process of changing blood types, but he couldn't be precisely sure.

“Yeah, run it. Lay the tube on the Tablet, let the blood flow between. You'll need to get your arm up in the air.”

Clooger did as he was told, strapping the tube to his Tablet with four or five wraps of gauze. He pressed the icon and watched as the screen filled with a random assortment of flashing colors: bright green and blue and yellow, bursting like a strobe light. A wave of sound pierced his ears.

Clooger rose up in the air on the power of his mind. He stabbed the wide vacutainer needle into his vein and felt the blood start pumping out of his body. The tube turned red, filling until it reached the Tablet, then it seemed to back up for a beat before continuing on its path.

Clooger hovered down, right over Faith, and took the other end of the tube in hand. They didn't have a lot of time, and they needed to push in a lot of blood fast. He attached an equally wide vacutainer needle to the tubing and stared at Faith.

“This was where I would have woken you, but since you're already awake, I can skip the face slapping.”

“I appreciate that.”

Clooger smiled down at Faith.

“You have to let it in. Tell me when you're ready.”

Faith had let things in before, but it was a rare event in her life. She'd done it twice with a similar object, only much narrower: the tattoo needles, which provided a sweet, stinging sensation. It was part of what she liked about getting tattoos. She could really feel them. And the sound ring, she'd let that in. Now, as it had been with those procedures, she needed to let down her guard, a mental process that required a surprising amount of focus. It wasn't easy throwing aside the armor of a second pulse. She had to work at it.

Clooger waited as Faith's body relaxed and all the tension drained out of her face like an android cycling down.

Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then she spoke. “Okay, I'm ready. Stab me with that thing.”

Clooger plunged the broad needle into Faith's arm, and she sighed with pleasure. Maybe it was the loss of blood and how light-headed it had made her. Either way, she acted as if she were in a happy dream, smiling as the blood flowed into her.

“Better be O positive,” Clooger said.

“If she's going to reject, it will happen in a few seconds; otherwise let it flow.”

O positive wasn't like the A and B types of blood. Anyone could take O positive. But Clooger's blood was B and Faith's A. She'd reject his natural blood, and in her weakened state, it would more than likely push her into cardiac arrest. They needed to change Clooger's blood from B positive to O positive, and that was a serious trick of organic chemistry. Hawk had been experimenting with light and sound and their effects on blood type for months in a lab setting, but never in a high-stakes situation. Faith either had pulled her guard all the way down and let in a poison that would devastate her frail organs, or she was getting the one thing that could save her.