“Bring it to me,” he said.
“Did you know he’s planning to blow up one of the States?” Dylan said unexpectedly. Hotspur’s electrogram turned sharply toward the cell and Dylan moaned, his face dropping from Faith’s view.
“Dylan!” She was sure that wherever Hotspur was standing, he had just pumped more wet cement into the cell. She was horrified as she saw thick concrete lap against the small opening as it rose. It was a lot higher than she realized. Dylan was down to a couple of feet of space at the top of the cell.
Wade looked at Hotspur’s electrogram as it evaporated into thin air, then back at Faith. Wade seemed almost contrite in that moment, as if for once in his life he felt truly sorry for the things he had done and the man he was becoming.
“He’s right. He’s always right.”
“If you think annihilating hundreds of millions of people is right, you’re just as crazy as he is. He’s wrong this time. More wrong than anyone has ever been.”
Wade seemed to think about what Faith was saying, to really let it sink in. But he had been brainwashed by Hotspur. “The Western State had its time and that time is coming to a close. People will thank us in the long run. We’ll be heroes. We’re saving the world, remember?”
He turned and walked away and Faith listened to the footfalls getting softer, the heavy door opening and shutting. She felt helpless, trapped. She wondered how it was that things could go so wrong so fast. She wished she could hold Dylan in her arms and make the world disappear.
And then she heard a voice, small and barely audible, whispering into her mind.
Faith, are you there?
She knew that voice, knew it like a little brother. Faith hoped against all hope that she hadn’t gone mad in a room designed to destroy her.
“I’m here,” Faith whispered.
It was Hawk.
Chapter 11
Firewall
Okay, take a deep breath. You’re in a room made of titanium and you haven’t been thinking clearly for a while. It’s possible you’re hearing voices in your head. Also, Hotspur Chance has been known to bore into people’s brains and drive them crazy, so that might be happening. Get ahold of yourself, Faith. This is only going to get worse, but don’t worry. You are not going to go insane.
“Faith, listen to me,” the voice came again. “It’s Hawk. Drift up closer to the ceiling, to the right of the door. Speaker.”
Faith looked up into the corner, where she saw a circle the size of a pencil eraser. Could it really be Hawk, whispering into the cell? Faith looked across at Dylan.
“Hey, good-looking guy in the cell across from mine. How are you doing?”
She figured a little romantic banter couldn’t hurt.
“Not that great. How about you?” Dylan asked. His voice sounded as if he was in the middle of a bench press, trying to hold up too much weight.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. How much space do you have?”
Faith couldn’t see Dylan’s face, but his hand came down next to the small opening and he made the thumbs-up sign. His wrist touched the wet concrete and he pulled it away. Dylan was lying flat, floating near the ceiling. “I have about a foot and a half, but I think the pump stopped. Faith, listen to me: if I fall into this stuff, I don’t think I’m going to last very long. I wish I had better news. You know I love you—forever and always. I’m sorry I got you into all this. It was a mistake.”
“Don’t go all sappy on me,” Faith said. She was on the verge of tears again, but she pushed them back, swallowing the knot in her throat. “A really smart guy said something to me once.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Dylan asked. He wasn’t struggling as much in the small space and seemed to have calmed down.
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Faith said with all the courage she could muster. “And I love you, too. Forever and always. Stay put.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Dylan said, and Faith appreciated the fact that he always held on to a small sliver of humor, even in the worst of situations. He’d man up a sly grin on his deathbed just to make everyone feel better.
Faith moved up to the right corner of the cell, feeling the force of titanium as she got closer. Her head radiated pain that ran down her back and into her legs.
“Is this really you?” she asked, barely the sound of a whisper passing over her lips. It was the softest voice she’d ever used.
“It’s really me,” Hawk whispered back. “As far as I can tell, as long as we keep it down, no one should be able to hear us. They’re not tapped into this line but they are listening out in the corridor, so whatever you say to Dylan and he says to you, they hear that stuff. I tried the cameras and monitors in the cells, but they were dead.”
“That’s probably because Clara Quinn covered the walls with titanium and made some other not-so-welcome modifications. Dylan’s cell is filled with wet concrete; he’s barely got room to breathe.”
“That’s cruel, even for Clara.”
“How are you doing this?” Faith asked. “Wait—don’t answer that, not yet. In case Wade suddenly bursts in here and rips out this connection, you need to know—”
Faith had thought a lot about this moment, how she wouldn’t let another chance slip by without telling the truth. But now she stalled, taking a deep breath and gathering her nerve.
“—we love you, Hawk, you’re part of our family. You need to hear this from me or Dylan. Clooger’s gone, and so is Carl. It was an ambush. They took Jade—that’s what led us here. Your GPS tag got us this far. She’s here and she’s alive and we’re not leaving without her. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before. Sorry we couldn’t protect everyone the way we should have.”
Hawk didn’t reply and Faith thought maybe she hadn’t whispered loudly enough or that Hotspur Chance had detected the connection and cut Hawk off. It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to say, and the last thing she wanted to do was say it again.
“Hawk?”
“Yeah. I’m here. Just give me a second.”
More silence as Faith’s head pounded. She felt herself slipping down a few inches, struggling to stay in one spot as the titanium continued poisoning her system.
“Damn, that’s a lot of bad news,” Hawk finally said. He sounded lonely, tired. “Clooger is really gone? You’re sure?”
Faith took another deep breath. “I buried him, Hawk. He’s gone.”
“Where’s Jade?” Hawk asked. His small voice infused the whole situation with a quiet loneliness.
“She’s here somewhere, not sure where. One of the cells, maybe? But I haven’t heard her voice.”
Hawk didn’t answer for a few seconds and Faith could almost see his face, the way his eyes moved when he was calculating a problem.
“Thanks for going after Jade. I wouldn’t have expected any less from you two.”
“She’s family. We’re not leaving her behind, Hawk. I promise.”
Faith felt a growing ache in her shoulders and neck. She rocked her head from side to side, trying to ease the pain.
“Can you focus?” Faith asked. “Because if you can’t I need to know.”
Another pause, but this time shorter.
“I learned how to shut down emotionally from the best. I can do this.”
It stung a little bit, knowing one of her closest friends could see how cold Faith could be. But given their situation, it was the best she could hope for. Hawk was going to set aside his loneliness and grief and give her everything he had.
“Okay, listen. I’m going to go through this really fast.” Hawk’s on-the-job voice was back, albeit in a whisper. “I got down into the foundational code, stuff that hasn’t been looked at for decades. It’s an incredible tangle of spaghetti in there, millions of lines left for dead. Think of them like ancient hieroglyphics. The coding is stuff they haven’t actively used for a long time, but it was left there. Hotspur Chance never expected to have an Intel like me digging around in the formative DNA of the States.”
>
“I like the confidence, but can you do anything with the information?” Faith said.
“I found a connection to the location you’re in right now. At some point he must have been in the Western State, coding from this side of the line, if you get my meaning. I can see the whole underground compound on my screen, and I can do a few things from my end, like talk to you. There must have been people working in both places at one time. I knew someone was in the cell you’re in because it’s activated on the schematic. The room across from yours is also activated. The other cells are showing inactive, so they must be empty.”
“So if Hotspur was in the Western State while experiments were going on down here, he could stay in contact.”
“Yeah,” Hawk said. “And, Faith, you’re at ground zero for all things pulse and Intel. He might have started with rats and monkeys, but eventually those cells were used for human testing. Hotspur Chance discovered the pulse in that underground lair. He tapped into other people’s brains right there, under the zoo. You’re at the source, where it all began.”
Faith let the information sink in. Hotspur had tampered with human DNA. He’d gone deeper and further than anyone else had ever dared to go, unlocking powers in the human mind no one had ever imagined. He’d figured out a way to unlock hidden abilities trapped inside certain people, animals, and at least one mouse.
“And, Faith?”
“Yeah?”
“He did a lot of testing. I don’t want to gross you out or anything, but there’s a huge room down there just like the one you’re in. It’s like a football field.”
“And? What’s in there?”
Pause.
“The bodies.”
How many people had Hotspur experimented on? How many did it take to lead him to Faith Daniels? She didn’t want to know.
“What else can you see? What other rooms are there?” Faith asked, trying to shake the image of thousands of bodies lying in an underground room.
“Not that big. Corridor goes past four other cells, then the hall T’s. Right is a control room, pretty big. Left are some sleeping quarters, a kitchen, stuff like that. Beyond the control room there’s another room, looks like it might be another holding cell or a private study. Other than the aforementioned football field, that’s it. Everything beyond the area you’re in is activated on the schematic, so I can’t say for sure where they might be holding Jade.”
Faith was trying to picture the whole thing in her mind when Hawk said something much more important.
“If you give me a little more time, I think I can open the cell doors.”
For the first time in hours Faith felt a glimmer of hope and possibility.
“Hawk, that’s incredible! How fast? When?”
“Keep your voice down, Faith. You’ll blow the whole cover. I’ve got access to the screen to unlock, but I have to hack into the code in order to find the combinations. They’ll be listed together, I can see that much. The bad news is it’s very likely that if I trigger the opening, it will send out an alert.”
“Wade and Clara and Hotspur will know,” Faith surmised without being told.
“You guessed it. Listen, there’s something else. Hotspur is planning something big. There aren’t any details about what it does, but there’s definitely a starting point and a complicated series of triggers after that. Whatever Hotspur set up, it affects the entire grid, all the way out to the edges of the Western State.”
“The starting point is an electromagnetic something or other, the rest is . . . I don’t know, more electricity, I guess. He’s planning to electrocute the Western State, Hawk. The whole thing.”
Pause.
“I think you might be right,” Hawk said, a sudden awareness in his voice, as if he could see now how that made sense.
“I know I’m right. Hotspur Chance told me himself.”
Faith drifted over to the opening in her door and looked out. “Dylan, you hanging in there?”
She thought she heard Hawk say something about a firewall, but she’d moved far enough away that she couldn’t say for sure.
“Hanging is the right term, I’d say,” Dylan said. “I’m okay, just feel useless. You?”
Faith was dying to tell Dylan what was going on, but she was afraid someone would hear. She could only say “I’m surviving” and hope Hawk got the codes for the cells fast. She heard a metal door swing violently open and footsteps coming down the hall. Before Faith could tell Hawk to go dark, Clara and Wade were standing in front of Dylan’s cell.
“What is this thing?” Wade asked, holding the Vulcan Tablet Faith and Dylan had used to contact Hawk. Dylan didn’t answer and Clara banged the butt of her gun against the cell door. “Wake up, Dylan. Hello?”
“Can’t get low enough in this cell to see whatever it is you’re trying to show me with this vat of liquid death under my face.”
Wade looked at the angle of the space remaining inside Dylan’s cell and had to agree. “It’s some kind of old-school Tablet, solar. It’s booted up. What were you using it for?”
Faith listened for Dylan’s answer, hoping he wouldn’t say something that might make them raise the level of wet concrete higher than they already had.
“Let me out of here and I’d be happy to take a look at it for you.”
Clara got into one of her huffy moods and took the Vulcan Tablet from her brother.
“Give me that thing,” she said, taking it directly over to Faith’s side of the hall. She pointed the barrel of the gun into the small opening of Faith’s cell. “Tell me what it is.”
Faith wondered what a bullet would do if it was shot into the cell, and then her ears rang out as Clara fired the weapon. The gun blast was earsplitting as the bullet entered the space. It ricocheted off the back wall, then pinged back and forth against titanium walls and hit Faith in the arm, spinning her sideways. Her head hit the wall and she felt her strength plummet as she fell to the floor. She looked at her arm where it had been struck, half delirious, and saw that she was fine. The bullet hadn’t pierced her skin. Then she heard Clara out in the corridor, metal-on-metal sounds of a gun being loaded.
“That was a warning shot. The next one is going to hurt, Faith. I mean really hurt. Now tell us what this thing is and why you’re carrying it around.”
Dylan’s voice kicked in from across the hall.
“Hawk’s in the Western State. We were using it to contact him but it stopped working. It uses radio waves or something like that, you’d have to ask him.”
“What’s the little brainiac doing in the Western State?” Wade asked.
Faith rose into the air on what little strength she had, back to the small window, and watched as Clara and Wade looked at each other with some concern.
“He’s an Intel,” Clara said. “He might be able to cause problems.”
Hotspur’s voice entered the corridor, calling both Wade and Clara back to wherever he was stationed.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Wade said, anger rising in his voice. “I’m coming back and you’re going to tell me what you’re up to.”
“Or you could let me out and we could go a couple of rounds of mixed martial arts,” Dylan said.
Wade backed up toward the exit and smiled. “Wouldn’t take me two rounds to finish you off. One would be plenty.”
When they were gone Faith went straight back to the speaker.
“Hawk, you there?” she whispered.
“Yeah, here. They’re heading back because I just put up a firewall for incoming requests from your location. It’s not going to last long—Hotspur’s too smart for that—so I need to get busy on a second and third security level. He needs a connection to the Western State system to pull this off. I can keep him out, but not for long.”
“Hawk, listen to me,” Faith said. “When Wade and Clara come back, and that won’t be long, they’re going to kill one of us. I can feel it. You need to get these cages open. Fast.”
“I work better under pressure,” Hawk
said. “Hold tight.”
Faith lowered to the floor, stood in the middle of the cell, and just tried to breathe as steadily as she could. Whatever was going to happen, it would be very soon. She was too weak to stand, but lying down would only be worse. Come on, Hawk. You can do this. Get these doors open.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, the wall behind Faith moved closer, cutting the size of the room in half. It felt as if the air was being compressed around her, crushing the bones inside her body. The wall didn’t stop until she was down to a few feet of space left to move around in.
She heard Dylan curse from his cell and knew he was struggling the same way she was. Was it really going to end like this? The two of them being slowly killed while the Western State went dark forever?
“Faith Daniels, you continue to disappoint me.”
Hotspur Chance’s voice was back and Faith’s head snapped up in anticipation of what he might say. She was suddenly alert.
“You know, he’s going to perish like everyone else. Hawk is no match for me. He may be an Intel, but I’m the Intel. He can’t build walls fast enough for me to tear them down.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Faith said, trying to sound confident in the face of total, abject ruin. The doors opened at the end of the hall again, and this time something about their entrance was very different. There was some screaming and shouting. There were three, not two, people coming down the hall, and one of them wasn’t happy.
“You’re hurting me! Not so tight!”
Faith knew that voice: Jade was coming toward her as Clara’s voice boomed down the corridor. “Kid, if you don’t shut your mouth right now, I’m throwing you down this hallway and you’ll never get up.”
“You can’t make me do whatever you want,” Jade shot back. “Where are you taking me?”
“Jade, it’s okay—it’s me, Faith!” Faith yelled. Her head felt as if it was full of fog, thoughts and sounds swirling around, lost in between one another.
“Faith?! Faith!”
Faith heard but did not see as Jade pulled free from Clara’s iron grip and ran toward the voice. Jade was short and small, and Faith could see only her head as she peered out of the square hole in the door.