“There are a lot of old books here, the kind that are printed,” Faith said. “Give him one of those, and make it one that will tell him something about you.”
“But that’s so boring,” Jade said. “He’s been out there doing all this amazing stuff. He’s seen everything. Why would he want some old book from a place the world has forgotten about?”
It was a hard thing to explain and Faith was desperate to move her mind away from where this conversation had taken her. “Trust me on this one. Hawk has a thing for real books. You’ll thank me later . . .”
Jade eyed Faith suspiciously and began backpedaling as the sound of The Shining poured out into the hallway. A moment later she was gone and Faith continued alone, trying not to think about the things she’d dredged up, things that scared her a lot more than a movie about a madman loose in a ski lodge.
Faith turned a corner and walked right into the barrel chest of a giant moving quickly down the hall. She jumped back and swung the bat, but Clooger was fast. He caught the end in his hand.
“You need to mellow out,” Clooger said. “Look first, then swing.”
“Sorry, I—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you’re awake,” Clooger said. “Get Hawk and Dylan and meet me at the fire.”
Clooger let go of the bat and started to leave.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Faith asked.
She didn’t think Clooger was going to answer as he ran his hand over the growing stubble on his head, but then he did.
“It’s time to finish what we started.”
Chapter 4
Prisoner One
In the largest room of the lodge a gathering of leather couches encircled a raging fire where six people sat together. This was all that remained of a frayed resistance in a world on the brink of catastrophe.
Faith scanned the faces and landed on Clooger’s brother. She wondered how much Carl knew, how committed he was, what his role would be. Dylan and Hawk and Clooger had proven themselves, but Carl was a wild card with a child, and Faith thought being a parent might complicate things. Would he grab Jade and run the second that trouble showed up? As for Jade, she was naïve and caught in the snare of first love. The biggest risk she represented was distracting Hawk at a time when they needed him most.
There was something else unusual about Carl: he made Clooger look like an out-of-shape middle-aged couch potato. They stood facing each other from opposite sides of the small gathering. Both had the same frame to work with, but what was built on those bones was astonishingly different. Clooger was huge and strong as an ox, but he was soft around the edges. If Carl weren’t standing beside him, it would be easy to say Clooger was the biggest, strongest person Faith had ever seen. But Carl was standing next to Clooger as the fire crackled behind them in the dim light, and that made all the difference.
Carl’s neck was as wide as his oversized head, a head that was covered in long waves of raven-black hair. His back and chest were broad and solid like a refrigerator, but it was his bare arms that demanded attention. If biceps were guns, these things were rocket launchers: bigger around than most people’s thighs and endlessly ripped with muscle.
Carl lifted weights relentlessly in the lodge gymnasium and read old gun magazines as if they were the Holy Bible. He was armed to the teeth with weaponry—Lugers and knives holstered in six different places up and down his body armor. There was a rumor going around that he had a stash of munitions fit for an army, but Faith had seen only what Carl wore around the lodge all day and night.
“Okay, listen up, everyone,” Clooger began. He had abandoned his beloved trench coat in favor of a blue and gray flannel shirt and jeans, but he still had the sawed-off shotgun strapped to his left leg.
“We’ve finally gotten some serious intel from one of the sleeper cells in the Western State. Hawk, maps.”
“Roger that.”
Clooger’s military background had rubbed off on Hawk, and they sometimes spoke in what Dylan and Faith called “command and answer.”
“What sleeper cells?” Dylan asked. “I thought we were it, the whole resistance.”
Clooger looked at his brother, nodded once, and Carl spoke.
“It appears Meredith had a small group on the inside—how high up we don’t know. Hell, we don’t even know who they are or if the intel is accurate. But it’s something, a thread.”
“It’s accurate,” Clooger said.
Carl looked at his brother, flexed his guns. “Says you.”
The two of them were friendly rivals, Carl younger by a couple of years. There was no way Cloog was backing down. A staring contest ensued until Jade intervened.
“Mellow out, you two. We’re on the same side, remember?”
Clooger got right up in Carl’s grill.
“I’ll mellow out if he does,” Clooger said.
Faith knew it was all about the facts with Clooger, so she zeroed in on what they knew. “How about you tell us what you heard and how the information got here. We can all decide if the intel is solid or not.”
Both men seemed to view this as a practical way to save face. They both faked a punch at each other and neither flinched. Clooger faced the group.
“A contact sequence for this outpost was established twelve years ago when Carl and Jade moved up here. The lodge was a last resort, a final out if we had no place else to go. I thought only Meredith and I knew the sequence, but she must have told at least one other person.”
“She was always like that,” Dylan said, a slight edge to his voice. “The center of a wheel, connected to spokes that didn’t know anything about one another. I have to hand it to her; she knew how to keep secrets better than all of us put together.”
Carl picked up the thread.
“When we established this station we went all retro, totally untraceable. We’re talking FM radio wired up to an ultra-high-frequency carrier wave. The only way to even get on that wave is to have the right equipment. We’re talking massively specific, ancient technology.”
“So you’re saying it works like radio used to work, but it’s on a frequency almost no one knows about?” Hawk asked.
“Bingo,” Carl said, pointing his massively muscle-bound arm at Hawk. Faith was starting to get that Carl was an off-the-grid geek-junkie extraordinaire. If it was hacked or stolen, do-it-yourself or cobbled together from random parts, or shot with your own gun and cooked over a fire on wood from a tree you cut down, or, better yet, blew out of the ground with a homemade explosive, Carl loved it.
“I built only three systems,” Carl went on. “Mine, Cloog’s, Meredith’s. So how is there a sleeper cell out there contacting us with intel?”
Faith jumped in before another argument could break out between the two biggest guys in the room.
“Okay, so someone else knows how to get on the frequency and has the right equipment to do it,” Faith said. She looked at Clooger. “How’s that possible? And either way, what are the odds this communication system has fallen into the wrong hands?”
She and everyone else watched as Hawk projected a three-dimensional holographic map of the United States into the air in the middle of the room.
“The signal was sent from inside the Western State, that much we know,” Clooger said. “Millions of people have gone in over the past decade, and plenty of them were drifters before that. The comm unit is small, easy to conceal.”
“So you’re saying Meredith gave hers to someone?” asked Hawk.
Clooger nodded. “And that someone is finally using it.”
Clooger took two steps toward the fireplace and picked up an oblong device. It looked like something out of a 1950s science-fiction movie: clear Plexiglas encasing a row of diodes and bulbs and wires all soldered to a motherboard. The entire thing was half the size of a brick.
“The Plexiglas is solar powered; it absorbs heat and converts it into electricity.”
“That’s a Hotspur Chance invention,” Dylan said. “Kind of co
ol we get to use it against him now.”
“Okay, so maybe the entire thing isn’t old-school, but the stuff inside is,” Carl said sheepishly.
“If a signal comes in, it gets recorded to a micro drive and the red light goes on. That way you don’t have to monitor it twenty-four/seven. You just watch for the light.”
A thumbnail-sized red light inside the device was throbbing on and off like a tiny beating heart.
“Eleven years,” Carl said. “Eleven years and not a single red-light day. Now it’s lighting up like a Christmas tree, two alerts in as many weeks. First you guys, and now this. It makes me nervous.”
“This sleeper cell had one purpose, I’m sure of it,” Clooger went on. “To feed us intel from inside the States. The message we got verifies that. If they were trying to pinpoint our location they would have asked for it, but they specifically told us not to respond. They don’t know where we are and they’re not going to know.”
“So Meredith set up a sleeper cell inside the Western State and didn’t tell anyone else about it,” Faith said.
“They aren’t sleeping anymore,” Clooger said. “They’re awake.”
Clooger set his pocket-sized Tablet on top of the Plexiglas and tapped out a few commands. The room filled with the sound of a female voice.
“Prisoner One has escaped from maximum-security Western State detention zone. Message relay ordered. M4-ZTom unlock code 45.5.122.67. Do not respond to this feed. Terminating.”
Silence fell on the room as the flames cast moving shadows across the walls and ceiling.
“Prisoner One,” Hawk said. “Hotspur Chance, most wanted man.”
“It’s not a very clear message,” Jade added.
“Is it all you have?” Faith asked Clooger. “It sounded as if we were supposed to unlock something else. Or maybe it’s not even for us.”
Clooger sighed. “It’s something. It’s a start.”
“It might be a lot more than that.”
Everyone pivoted in the direction of Hawk’s voice.
“Let me see that thing,” Hawk said, pointing to the device Clooger held in his hand. Clooger kept his Tablet and handed over the strange, clear block. Hawk peered inside, rotating the Plexiglas housing, until he found what he was looking for.
“Carl, can you open this up or is it vacuum sealed?”
“Depends,” Carl answered. He pulled a large, hammer-like tool from his belt. “Are you going to want to use it again?”
Hawk took an even closer look at the device and saw that there was no way around breaking the outer shell. The items inside—the diodes and wires and bulbs—were all soldered directly into the bottom section of the casing. The only way in was to break it open.
“We have two, right?” Faith asked. She was worried about cutting off communication with everything and everyone. At least with one of these, she felt a small connection to the world outside the mountain. Carl nodded—Yes, there’s one other.
“Hawk, what are you not telling us?” Dylan asked.
Hawk photographed the underside of the Plexiglas box with his Tablet, then set the box down and stretched his Tablet large. He enlarged and sharpened the photo, then held it out so everyone could see it, pointing to a rectangle. On the device itself, this rectangle was about as big as a baby tooth, but his Tablet had taken a high-definition picture and now it was blown up to fill the screen.
“This is the micro flash drive the voice message was recorded on,” Hawk said. He leaned forward and a mop of brown hair covered half his face like a curtain. “I’ve read about these old Tom drives. These little guys could hold a terabyte of data. They were a revolution in their time.”
“Is this what I think it is?” Faith asked.
“An M4-ZTom,” Hawk said. “And if we can access it directly, then I’m guessing the passcode we were just given will unlock something hidden there.”
“Hawk, I love that computerlike brain of yours,” Dylan said. “You’re a genius!”
Faith looked Dylan up and down, head to toe, and marveled at how this boy could carry the weight of the world and still take the time to compliment everyone around him. His dark hair was getting longer and he was letting his stubble grow out. He still wore the T-shirts and the jeans and the skater shoes, even in the mountains, but he was looking more like a grown man every day. He flashed a sideways smile at her and it felt as if they were one person, not two.
Hawk turned his attention to Jade and smiled as if to say, Not a big deal, I do this sort of thing all the time. Jade smiled back at him, her gem-green eyes glancing back and forth between the floor and Hawk’s face, but she kept her cool. It was hard not to be impressed with Hawk when he pulled off technological miracles.
Carl took the device back from Hawk and set it on the floor.
“You sure about this?” he asked no one in particular. Hearing no objections, he removed a foot-long buck knife from a leather sheath at his hip. He placed the tip on the Plexiglas box and hit the butt of the knife once with the hammer. The glass shattered with a sharp popping sound and Hawk leaned down with a pair of tweezers from a tech kit he kept in his cargo shorts.
“Nice shot, Carl,” Jade marveled. “Not too hard, not too soft. You hit it just right.”
“Nerds really do inherit the earth,” Dylan whispered to Faith, putting a hand on her knee as they waited nervously.
“We got the best one,” Faith added, loud enough for Hawk to hear her and see him crack a smile as he lifted the tiny object out of the mess Carl had made.
“Give me a minute here,” Hawk said, holding the small M4-ZTom flash drive between the tongs. “I’ll run it through my Tablet using a digital signal.”
Everyone watched anxiously as Hawk took forever figuring out how to connect old technology to new technology.
“We have to connect through a wireless signal developed after the chip was made—not easy,” Hawk continued. “It’s like driving a train on a freeway: a path that doesn’t match the mode of transportation.”
“This is what it will be like when the aliens invade,” Faith joked. “They’ll find our Tablets and break them apart after we’ve gone the way of the dinosaurs.”
Jade leaned in closer to Hawk and he quietly told her everything he was doing. Dylan moved his broad shoulder close to Faith and the skin on their arms touched. He was seeing the same thing Faith was, two kids falling fast for each other. Faith smiled in a way that said, That is adorable and dorky and perfect.
“Got it!” Hawk finally said. “Someone read me that code again.”
A terrible silence settled over the room as they realized no one had written the code down and the device had been broken into and taken apart.
Hawk shook his head. “I give you guys one simple job. Just one.”
“No, wait, I got it!” Jade said. “45.5.7.122. I think.”
“Are you sure?” Faith asked. “I thought there were more numbers than that.”
Jade hated that she might be wrong about the code, but she had to admit she wasn’t 100 percent sure.
“It’s okay, I think I can play it back,” Hawk said. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “It’ll just take me a minute. I hope.”
With Hawk, a deep breath followed by the words “It’ll just take me a minute” could mean four seconds or four hours. It was impossible to know which, and Clooger groaned. Luckily for everyone’s sanity, this turned out to be a reasonably simple coding issue for an Intel like Hawk, and it was solved quickly.
“Chalk one up for the good guys,” Carl said. “This kid is good.”
The room filled with the sound of the message for a second time. There was more static in the transmission this time as it made its way across the divide of many years and several iterations of technology.
“Prisoner One has escaped from maximum-security Western State detention zone. Message relay ordered. M4-ZTom unlock code 45.5.122.67. Do not respond to this feed. Terminating.”
“You were really close, Jade,” Hawk s
aid. “Only one number off. You’ve got an excellent memory. Definitely better than Clooger’s.”
Jade beamed with pride, brushing her dark hair back with a delicate hand as Hawk entered the full code into the drive—45.5.122.67.
There was a pause and a series of static waves that made everyone’s heart sink, and then a voice almost all of them had heard before materialized in the room: Meredith, Dylan’s mom and the former leader of the rebellion, was back from the grave.
If you’re receiving this message, then I am dead.
I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.
There was a lengthy pause in the transmission and Faith remembered what a straight shooter Meredith had always been. She was the most matter-of-fact person Faith had ever met.
Faith looked at Dylan and found that he was staring at his shoes. She put her hand on his as Meredith’s voice returned.
Hawk, I’m going to assume it was you who unlocked this message, which means you also know how to pause what I’m saying. I can still give orders, and I’m ordering you to pause this message until everyone who is still alive from the following list is present: Dylan, Faith, Clooger, Hawk, Carl, and Jade. You should all hear this information at the same time. That was what I intended.
Hawk tapped his Tablet screen and the recording stopped. He looked up at all the stunned-into-silence faces in the room as if the decision to continue was not his own.
“All present and accounted for,” Clooger replied with a distant kind of weariness in his voice. “Let it play.”
“Sorry. I was just making sure we’re good to go on this. Also double-checking I can stop it if I need to,” Hawk said. He glanced around awkwardly. “I can stop it.”