“You really do want to murder me, don’t you?” Clara said, a cold calmness in her voice. “The problem with an idea like that is that it’s stupid. You, Faith, are stupid. You have no idea what you’re doing. I could end you right now—does that frighten you?”
Faith didn’t know what it would feel like to have shards of glass slice through her body, her face, her legs; but she had a pretty good idea that she would feel the pain before she came to an end. A small piece of her felt like she deserved it; another part was horrified at the idea of dying at the hands of Clara Quinn. She pushed her mind to the outer limits of its strength, trying to force the glass away.
“You’re stronger than I expected,” Clara said. She’d wriggled free one of her arms, which she held up in the air, letting it sway back and forth. The glass swayed ominously to the rhythm of her movements. “Who showed you how to do these things?”
Faith began to realize something that hadn’t occurred to her up until that moment. If Dylan, Meredith, Clooger, and Hawk were on one side, who was on the other side?
“Tell me!” Clara bellowed. She liked to navigate between slippery sweet and raging diva. It tended to disarm her enemies. “Who told you to use the tree?” she said quietly.
Faith had chosen a living thing as a weapon, and it had pinned the most powerful girl on Earth. If she had chosen something else—a giant rock or a pile of desks—Clara would have blown it apart like matchsticks. It had been a complete accident, this choosing of the tree. Or had it? Maybe she had some insight into Clara’s mind neither of them yet understood. Maybe the tree had known it could be of use in a world of good and evil unleashed. However, she knew it was true: every second pulse had a weakness in battle. For Clara, it was living things used as weapons against her. It was the same for her twin, Wade. A bullet would do nothing against the Quinns, but a freshly fallen tree, still alive and pulsing water through its knotty veins, had the power to do some damage.
The glass shards began to shake and crack into smaller pieces in the air. Before Clara could grasp what was happening, they were turned to dust particles and blown away like a great wind had swept through and carried them off. Dylan landed on the tree next to Faith, picked her up, and carried her to the roof.
“Stay here; Clooger should arrive anytime.”
“NO! I won’t just stand by while you save me. I can do this.”
Dylan put one hand on each of her shoulders. “No, you can’t. Right now our only chance is to get rid of her before she kills you. Just stay here. I mean it.”
Dylan took a step backward, then flew off the building and landed where Faith had stood on the tree, over Clara. She smiled sadly.
“So you’re one, too,” Clara said. She assumed he was a first pulse, a mere nuisance like Faith, and this complicated things. “No wonder I liked you from the start. You put off a certain energy. I should have known.”
Dylan was surprised she hadn’t moved the tree. It wasn’t like her to stay down.
“I’ve got no reason to fight you,” Dylan said. “We’ll leave, and we won’t come back.”
“I think we both know it’s too late for that. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I really did like you, Dylan Gilmore.”
Clooger landed on the building overhead with nine other Drifters, and they all stood in a circle around Faith, awaiting instructions.
“Faith, just go!” Dylan shouted. “Let us handle this.”
But she wouldn’t stop making herself stay right where she was.
“I brought backup, too,” Clara said. “Mine’s better.”
In a flash of sound and fury, the tree broke in two, sending shards of wood flying in every direction as Dylan leaped for the ground. Wade Quinn advanced along one of the pathways, lifting the concrete slabs in front of him. Each slab was three feet wide, five feet long, six inches thick. They rose like a snake, chasing Dylan up in the air and onto the roof as he ducked and dodged for cover.
“It sure is hell finding a man under these circumstances,” Clara said, brushing herself off as she walked over to her brother. Wade was looking up on the roof where Clooger was standing with his men.
“Let’s kill some Drifters.”
Clooger unpinned three grenades and tossed them into the courtyard. The explosions created a diversion he needed, in which Dylan freed himself from the concrete slabs and slammed into Wade’s midsection with a brutal kick. Wade sailed through a sheet of plate glass and landed on the floor inside the school. Dylan needed to get Clara and Wade away from Faith, so he picked up Clara before she could wrap her mind around what was happening and threw her into the same corridor with her brother.
“Get down!” Clooger yelled, raising his hands over his head as desks started flying out of the hole where Wade and Clara had entered the school. The Drifters all used their powers to hold off the incoming assault while Faith stood in the middle, wondering what was going on down below. She took a big chance, shooting herself straight up in the air a hundred feet; and when she looked down, she saw headlights on the football field. Six white vans were parking themselves along the center of the field, and she had no idea why. From her vantage point she could see something Clooger and the rest of the Drifters could not: Wade and Clara had picked up the concrete slabs and swung them out like a boomerang. They were making a wide arc, heading straight for the roof of the school.
“Clooger!” she yelled, but there was so much noise and she was so far overhead that he couldn’t hear her. She surveyed the ground in the courtyard and decided on a section of the tree she’d already felled. Picking it up with her mind made her fall from the sky in jerks and starts, like the effort was short-circuiting her system.
“Clooger!” she yelled once more, and this time he looked up briefly. “To your left!” Faith yelled. Just as she said it, the first three sections of concrete slammed into the tree she’d moved. The tree fell from the sky and slammed into the side of the school, but three more slabs of concrete were still coming in hot.
“Move!” Clooger commanded, and the group of Drifters dispersed in different directions. The slabs of concrete exploded onto the roof, breaking into brick-sized chunks. One of the pieces careened into a Drifter, and he fell from the sky, landing hard on the grass outside the school. Faith couldn’t say whether or not the Drifter was alive or dead, but she watched as Dylan flew out into the open air, followed closely behind by Clara and Wade Quinn.
Dylan knew the risks involved. He had to get Wade and Clara as far away from everyone else as possible. No one else on his side had a second pulse, so he was the only one who could go toe to toe with the Quinns and live to tell about it.
“Clooger, get the hell out of here! Now! Go!”
“We can’t find Faith,” Clooger responded. “She’s gone!”
Dylan hoped against all hope that Faith had been smart enough to run.
“Get your men and go!” Dylan shouted into his Tablet. He wasn’t going to have a bloodbath on his hands, even if it meant putting Faith in danger. In a burst of activity, nine Drifters, including Clooger, left the scene and scattered far and wide. If they’d have seen where the one fallen Drifter had landed, they also would have found Faith. She was at his side, holding up his head with one hand.
“It’s okay; you’re fine,” she mumbled. But the man was struggling to catch every breath, blood flowing over his beard from a gash in his temple. “Don’t die on me. Don’t!” Faith yelled.
The thought of having caused one more person to die was more than Faith could handle. She cried for help, but there was no one.
“They say you’re the other one,” the man coughed, his voice turning to a papery whisper. “Two by two. That’s what they say.”
Faith didn’t understand. “Just stay alive, please. Don’t die on me.”
She reached for her Tablet, but it wasn’t there. Searching the sky for any sign of help turned up nothing. Not only had she failed to put an end to Clara Quinn, she’d gotten another Drifter in trouble and dragged Dy
lan into the mess she’d made.
“Look at me,” the man said. Faith’s eyes were pooled with tears, but she did as she was told. The man had the kindest, gentlest eyes. Surrounded by all that long hair and the beard, they were the most striking thing to look at. He moved his hand to his heart and tapped it. “Your parents loved you,” he said. “It broke their hearts, leaving you behind.”
“Don’t do this!” Faith said, but no amount of wishing was going to change the situation. The man’s breathing was getting shorter. Faith could barely hear the words he was saying. He took another gasp of breath, smiled, and said one more thing.
“I’ll tell them you were worth it.”
He closed his eyes, and he was gone.
Faith hadn’t imagined that all this would happen when she went to confront Clara. She’d imagined a heroic fight to the death, just the two of them. But she’d been deadly wrong. How could things have turned so crazy so fast? She took a breath, wiped her eyes, tried to think.
What can I do?
What the hell can I possibly do?
She touched the tattoo on her neck and wished she could feel the searing pain of the needle.
And then, all at once, she knew the answer.
Dylan stood alone against one of the outside walls of the school, watching. Clara and Wade Quinn both had second pulses, which made them more than just invincible. Together, they were an unstoppable two-person army. Dylan knew how strong their powers of perception were. If anyone inside the mall so much as moved a spoon three inches across a table with their mind, Wade and Clara might feel it. They’d rip the place apart until they found the source.
Dylan knew better than anyone how high the stakes had become. He couldn’t save the States alone, and the States had to be protected at all cost. States and locations like them existed around the world for a reason: a fragile planet couldn’t sustain humanity without them. There was no going back to people spread out all over kingdom come. The infrastructure wasn’t there to sustain that kind of future. And there was another reason the States had to be protected. Ninety percent of humanity resided inside them. A fallen State meant untold millions of casualties. Dylan would need Meredith and the Drifters. But more than that, he would need Hawk and Faith, and both of them were in serious danger. If Clara and Wade discovered the encampment inside the mall, things would take a sharp turn for the worse. He’d be left to navigate the coming wrath all by himself. Not a happy prospect, and not a battle he could win. He had to keep Clara and Wade as far away from the deserted mall as possible, and the best way to do that was to lure them away with a pulse.
He looked in the direction of the football field, then burst up in the air like he’d been shot from a gun. They sensed his presence immediately, taking chase behind him from two different corners of the Old Park Hill campus. He was pretty sure they already knew he had a second pulse, but they were about to discover just how powerful their new enemy was. Dylan lined himself up with the goalpost and stopped, hovering in the air as he turned his back on the field and faced the coming wrath of the Quinns. The field below was dark, so the vans couldn’t be seen. His secret was safe as they stopped short, hanging in the air ten feet away from Dylan.
“I’m going to enjoy kicking you through that goalpost,” Wade said. He had always felt threatened by Dylan. The fact that he was spending time with Faith Daniels, the only girl Wade had ever truly loved, made him want to tear Dylan limb from limb.
“I hear the games were a real success, only not for you,” Dylan said.
Wade laughed. “Those clowns weren’t worth my time, and you know it.”
“Why don’t you join us?” Clara asked. She imagined herself beside Dylan, taking on the world together. It was a far more enjoyable fantasy than doing the same work with her brother. “You don’t want to be on the wrong side of what’s coming. We could use someone like you.”
Dylan half smiled in the darkness. “Killing Drifters is a hobby for you guys. I think we’d have a little conflict of interest there.”
Wade could sense Clara’s passion for Dylan, and it made him furious. Dylan had taken Faith and sided with the scum of the earth; but Dylan’s ability to charm Clara’s heart made things even worse for Wade, and that was the situation that pushed Wade into action. The goalpost began to sway behind Dylan, then the pole leading to the ground lurched free and spun up in the air. The end that had once been in the ground faced Dylan’s back and fired like an arrow. Dylan somersaulted backward in the air, then steadied himself as he backed up, his long hair tangling into his face as the wind pushed against him.
“Looks like we don’t have a future together,” he said, lifting the first of six white vans in the air behind him. It was dark, but Clara sensed trouble, turning on the lights around the field with a series of sharp sounds. Dylan ducked, and the first van flew over his right shoulder, slamming dead-on into Clara and catching Wade in the legs as he tried to move. Wade spun wildly out of control, slammed into the ground, and rolled into a standing position.
He was smiling.
“This is going to be fun.”
The van crushed Clara into the ground, but she was up and moving in a matter of seconds, feeling her anger start to burn. When she turned, the second van was already airborne, clobbering her to the ground again. They were punishing blows, but Clara seemed to grow stronger with each one.
“Now you’re starting to make me mad,” she said. It didn’t cross her mind that Dylan might have a second pulse. She didn’t think it was possible. She’d known about first-pulse Drifters and variants such as Faith—they weren’t common, but they were around. A nuisance she took a lot of pleasure in dealing with. They were, at base, incredibly weak. So what if you could pick up a refrigerator and throw it? If you couldn’t take a punch, it didn’t matter. Eventually, you’d always lose.
Dylan threw two more vans, picking them up and guiding them to their targets. Wade couldn’t react fast enough, and this time the van pummeled him into the bleachers. Clara put up a hand and forced the van coming at her to change course. She made it fly straight up in the air and left it hanging there.
“Last chance, Dylan Gilmore. You can come with us; I won’t hurt you.”
“I think I’ll take my chances without you,” Dylan responded. Clara was shocked when he took control of the van hanging in the air, dropping it with fantastic speed on her brother, who was barely getting up from the blow he’d just taken.
“Behind you!” Wade screamed, right before the goalpost, which had been lying on the ground behind Clara, slammed into her lower back. It was moving with such speed that it arched her back like a noodle, the two prongs hitting the ground and sliding into the earth until she was pinned against the football field.
Clara hated the taste of earth. She lifted her face, covered in grass and dirt, and felt the stinging sensation that meant her powers had been slightly compromised. It would take a lot more than a chunk of grass to end Clara Quinn, but she’d played around long enough. If this was how Dylan wanted things to be, then he was about to get his wish.
“You had your chance,” she said, blowing the goalpost out of the ground with her mind. It sailed over the school and crashed into a building hidden in the distance. She wiped a smear of what she thought was mud from her forehead, but when she looked at it in the stadium lights, she realized it was dirt mixed with her own blood. No one had ever made Clara Quinn bleed. It scared her, but more than that, it focused her mind on the task at hand. She was smart enough to realize that Dylan was learning her weakness: a hard enough impact into a living thing, such as a field of grass, could do damage.
She pulled one of the tall stadium lights out of the ground with the force of her will, turned the rotted wooden end in Dylan’s direction, and fired. The lights sparked and popped on the tail end; and when the weapon hit Dylan in the chest, sending him tumbling end over end, she was surprised by her reaction. She felt her heart turn dry and brittle, like a dead flower on hot pavement. She looked at him
lying there on the grass, not moving, and wished he wasn’t a weak and useless first pulse.
Her wish, she was surprised to see, came true.
Dylan stood up. Unfazed, he plucked two more stadium lights out of the ground, their wires sparking against the black sky, and hurled them in her direction. She dodged them, but only barely, and realized the incredible truth.
“You’re a second pulse?”
“Not possible!” Wade yelled. The idea that someone he hated as much as Dylan could have the same level of power was a reality Wade couldn’t deal with. He focused all his energy on one of the smashed vans, picked it up, and hurled it with unprecedented speed. Dylan tried to move to one side, but Wade swerved the flying van in the same direction. The door connected solidly with the top half of Dylan’s body, sending him end over end through the air as he tumbled across the field. Dylan was up almost before he was down, shaking the grass out of his thick hair and holding his ground. He had a look of quiet determination on his face as he wiped a smear of dirt and grass off his shoulder.
“I do hate a dirty T-shirt. Makes me crazy.”
Clara shook her head slowly, looking across the field at Dylan like he were a ghost she couldn’t believe she was seeing.
“I thought we were the only ones.”
“Guess you thought wrong,” Dylan said.
Clara’s emotions, which she had never trusted as much as her intellect, were a tangled mess. She loved the thought of Dylan being like her. His power made him ten times more attractive. He was not her equal, but he was close, and this made him even harder to resist. And yet, this new information made another emotion well up in her chest. Fear. She’d never felt it before, and she didn’t like it one bit. Passion was fine, but only if she was alive to enjoy it.
Wade was coming at Dylan at the same moment Clara was, and this was a big problem for Dylan. One of them he could take head-to-head, fighting them at least to a draw. But two was another story. Eventually they would discover his weakness, possibly by accident, and his second pulse would give out. He knew it was a fight he couldn’t win, but he was going to throw as many punches as he could before it was too late. He threw the rest of the vans, trying to create a diversion so he could escape, but they picked up every object they could find. Dylan was fending off sections of the bleachers, random van parts that had blown free, entire vehicles, roofing tiles flying like ninja throwing stars—everything that wasn’t nailed down tight was heading his way. He was taking hits from all sides as he backed up against the gymnasium wall, pinned down, with an endless array of objects crashing into every part of his body. He took special care to protect himself from flying rocks and boulders, ducking and moving so they wouldn’t touch his skin. Everything else was fine; he could take a beating all day. But rock was Dylan’s kryptonite. Like living things for Clara and Wade Quinn, a boulder had an especially damaging effect on Dylan Gilmore. A really big one could move past the power of his second pulse. He watched as one of the vans missed its mark by ten feet and blasted a hole through the cinder-block wall. As it did, a slab of cement the size of a car door broke free from the wall, spinning wildly until it struck Dylan square in the chest. His ears rang and his vision blurred as he tumbled head over heels along the cinder-block wall of the gym. When he came to a stop, the door was on top of him, the wide section of cinder block touching skin through his ripped T-shirt. He felt the weight like burning coals, searing the second pulse out of his heart. The cement slab felt like it weighed a million pounds.