Hawk half smiled and tapped the screen again. When he did so, Jade leaned in closer to listen, their knees touching.
For the purposes of this transmission I will address everyone I named even if some of them are already dead.
Carl, if you haven’t told them about the sleeper already, tell them now.
This would be the part where Hawk hits pause.
Hawk pointed to the screen and let Jade tap the pause button and the two of them leaned even closer to each other. Faith couldn’t help thinking how remarkable it was that love could blossom in the most difficult of times. It was, she thought then, the most powerful thing on earth.
“What’s she talking about?” Clooger asked his brother. Clooger hated the idea of being on the outside of any information that involved the team.
Carl had been standing, but now he sat on the stone edge of the fireplace. The fire had softened to embers, but there was still an orange glow around Carl’s enormous head and shoulders as he spoke.
“You remember Liz’s boyfriend, Noah?”
Faith’s head shot up. “Of course I remember Noah. He’s all she talked about. What about him?”
It was hard for Faith to think about anything having to do with Liz, her first and only best friend. Any mention of Liz led right to the hammer crashing into her head and the rage and sadness boiled over. Faith gripped Dylan’s hand tighter as she was reminded of what Clara Quinn had done.
“There’s more to Noah than you all knew,” Carl continued. “He’s on our side, always has been, but it started with his parents. Noah’s dad is deep Intel, as Meredith would say. He’s got no pulse, so he can’t protect himself. His only job is to be in there, digging up information and waiting in case one of us ends up inside the Western State. It’s something he’s good at. Think of him as an undercover information specialist. It’s not likely very many people know about Meredith’s death or would even know what her significance was if they did know. But Noah’s dad can find his way inside State-run information systems. He fed intel to Meredith all the time, whatever he could get to. Obviously she told him to send this message if he ever found out she was dead.”
Carl did some counting in his head. “I guess it took Neal Gordon—that’s Noah’s dad’s name—twelve days, give or take, to find out what you already knew. Meredith didn’t live past the siege that let Hotspur Chance out of prison.”
“How do you know all this?” Clooger asked, genuinely crushed by the idea that Carl would know more than he did.
“Like I said, Meredith spread things around, shared what she wanted with who she wanted. And she expected us to keep our secrets well. I’m sure you know plenty of stuff I don’t have a clue about. Balances out.”
“What if she knew something we didn’t?” Jade asked.
Dylan was reminded once more of his mother’s incredible capacity for secrecy. “Jade, I can promise you, Meredith knew a lot of things we don’t know. That’s the way she was, cagey. Even with us. Even with me, and I’m her son. Whatever message she’s got for us, it’s probably not information we already know, and it won’t be good news.”
“Never is,” Faith agreed. “Maybe that’s why she chose not to tell us everything.”
Faith could feel the weight in the room getting heavier, the energy turning downbeat. “Let’s listen to the recording, see what we’ve got. It might be nothing more than a sad good-bye. But if it is something more, we need to know about it.”
“I wish Neal Gordon would have contacted us faster,” Clooger said. “Hotspur Chance has had twelve days to get organized. That’s time I’d like to have back.”
Carl sighed heavily. “The war will still be here no matter how many days pass, brother. It always is.”
“This is different,” Clooger corrected, his gaze settling heavily on his brother. “You know it’s different.”
Faith let that sink in for a few seconds and realized it was true. She locked eyes with Dylan and felt his resolve to finish what they’d started. More than ever, she knew they would have to face whatever was coming together. She couldn’t do it alone and neither could he. “Let’s listen to what she has to say already,” Jade pressed. “I’ve never even met Meredith and now I’m as curious as you guys are.”
Clooger looked at Carl in a knowing sort of way, as if they both had to agree to this before they’d give the okay. Faith got the feeling that they were nervous about what might be said, which made her wonder if these two had secrets of their own they weren’t telling.
“Let ’er rip,” Carl said, nodding to Hawk. “And let the chips fall where they may.”
Jade reached over and brushed her finger across the Tablet, and Meredith’s voice returned.
I’m terrible at good-byes, especially recorded ones, but I have to say them.
Good-bye, Dylan. I loved you; you made me proud. More than anyone else, you made me believe the world was worth saving.
Good-bye, Clooger, my comfort and my shield. In a broken world, you gave me the strength to go on. Sorry if I’m revealing this secret unexpectedly, but this is my only chance and I’m taking it.
Faith looked up at Clooger and saw that he was staring at Jade with a worried expression on his face. A second later she knew why.
Jade, I am your mother. I’m sure Clooger has been too nervous to tell you yet, and given his proclivity to finding himself in very dangerous situations, he might never have told you. Clooger is your father, young lady. If you didn’t know that already, my apologies.
Remember these things as you go through life:
We loved you enough to get you out of harm’s way before it was too late. You should be thankful for that. War is no place for a baby.
You have a half brother, Dylan, who is probably also listening to this message. He was five when you were born and we whisked you away before he could see you. Dylan will keep you safe, because he’s a man now and a very good one. Him you can trust.
Be good to Carl. He deserves it. No man ever sacrificed so much for one child.
Secrets and lies are part of every life. While I don’t advise lying, sometimes it is necessary to protect an innocent person.
If we’d kept you close by you’d almost certainly be dead already. Be thankful that’s not true.
I thought of you. Always.
Hawk, pause. Let’s take a break.
Hawk touched the screen and stopped the recording, stealing glances at everyone in the room but Jade. “Okay, so that was awkward,” he said.
“Sorry,” Carl and Clooger said at once, having the same thought at the same time.
Jade’s expression softened. She didn’t speak, but Carl and Clooger could see by the way she looked at them what she was thinking: I’m okay. It was Dylan who broke the silence, leaning forward where he sat and saying what no one else could.
“Let’s not turn this into something it’s not. We’re in the middle of something bigger than any one of us can handle alone. We’re going to need each other. We all have Meredith in common for one reason or another, and we all know she was a complicated person. But she loved every one of us in her own way. And she did what she had to do in a difficult time. We’ve all had to do the same, me included.”
Dylan looked at Faith with some regret, thinking of how he’d brought her into this mess without asking her, but she took his hand without the slightest hesitation. This gave him the courage to go on. “And I’m very happy to discover I have a little sister.”
Jade turned to Dylan and brightened. She had already been looking up to him as if he was her big brother. The fact that it had turned out to be true was beyond anything she could have imagined when Dylan had appeared on the mountain.
“You understand we don’t have the same dad, right?” Dylan asked. “Mine’s dead. Yours is right there.”
Jade had always thought of Carl as her dad; that had not changed. But she didn’t take her eyes off Dylan, not yet. The reality of having a big brother, especially one who loomed as large in the world
as Dylan, was something to ponder. She seemed to be quietly thinking about a lot as her expression began to darken.
“How about we listen to the rest of the recording,” Faith said as she saw Jade questioning everything she’d ever known. “This is going to sort itself out, right? We’re a family. We’re in this together. Let’s try to focus on the positive.”
Jade stood up and glanced at the faces around the room. She finally looked at Clooger and seemed to fully calculate the information she’d just been given.
This is my dad.
My mom is dead.
Carl is my uncle.
Dylan is my brother.
Her expression had turned utterly blank, but the wheels were turning inside her head. It was too much, too fast.
“How can I trust any of you when you’ve misled me this whole time?”
And then Jade walked out of the room. She turned back at the last second and yelled, “I’ve got secrets of my own!”
Faith could hardly blame Jade. She knew what a break in trust felt like, but this was bigger than that. Jade didn’t know who she was any longer. How could she?
“That could have gone better,” Carl said.
Clooger didn’t reply. He’d never been one for jokes to lighten a heavy load.
“Hawk, please,” Faith said pleadingly. “Just play the rest of the message.”
She hoped what remained wasn’t full of more surprises that didn’t serve any purpose but to drive a wedge through an already fragile team.
Hawk was looking in the direction of where Jade had gone, his heart pulling him to places Faith couldn’t afford to have him go. She needed his game-on best. Faith got up and tapped the screen herself, bringing Meredith back to life one last time.
I give you two more secrets now, ones that may help you finish what we have started.
The first is a fact known only to a few: Hotspur Chance has a plan. It’s the plan that put him in the highest-security prison when it was discovered by officials in the State system. Hotspur never intended the States to grow so large so fast; he saw them instead as a method by which to radically alter the population of the world. Had he succeeded, he would have forever been known as the most successful mass murderer in the history of the world: a hundred million people, gone in a flash. The population of the United States cut in half in the blink of an eye.
Dylan motioned for Hawk to pause. He almost couldn’t bring himself to say the words everyone was thinking, and he was glad Jade wasn’t there to hear them.
“He developed the States to corral human population into small spaces,” Dylan said. “So he could annihilate half of them.”
“Beyond twisted,” Hawk said. “Why would anyone want to do something like that, even if they could figure it out?”
Clooger answered, “Every generation has someone like Hotspur Chance. Hitler’s methods weren’t so different: he isolated a certain kind of person—”
“The Jews,” Faith said. She had liked history more than any other subject in school.
“Yes, the Jews.” Clooger nodded. “Hitler isolated them into central locations, then removed them from the population. He killed six million.”
“And Stalin killed at least twenty million people,” Faith remembered.
“But why?” Hawk asked again. No amount of logic, even at the level of an Intel, could properly answer the question for a fifteen-year-old kid. “Why would anyone do that?”
No one tried to answer Hawk, so the question hung in the air like a noose from a tree.
“It’s efficient. It’s contained. It’s precise,” Carl said out of nowhere.
Clooger nodded his agreement. “We know Hotspur was convinced that the only answer to saving the planet was to dramatically reduce the population.”
“Wait, I never heard that,” Dylan broke in. He was leaning forward, concern on his face, as if once again facts had been kept from him.
“We have always known this,” Clooger said. “It’s why he was Prisoner One, the deadliest man alive. Hotspur Chance envisioned the State system for two reasons: the reason everyone talks about, and the reason no one talks about. Yes, he designed the States to empty out vast amounts of space, that’s true. But he also felt, very strongly, that the only way to save the planet was to remove large numbers of people quickly. Hundreds of millions.”
“He was smart enough to create the blueprints for the States,” Dylan said, catching on. “So he would have been smart enough to blow one of them up at any point.”
“And to think I actually admired the guy when I was a kid,” Hawk said, disoriented by the scope of evil being explained. “What an a-hole.”
“Play the rest,” Faith said. “Maybe Meredith knows how to stop him.”
Hawk tapped the screen and Meredith’s voice returned.
Did you know it was Hotspur Chance himself who chose the locations for each of the two States? And that he was the architect of the power grids? These things drift into memory and seem not to matter, but they do matter. They matter very much. What if Hotspur had hidden, within the skeletal bones of the States themselves, a way in which to control them? What if he could turn the whole of a State into the equivalent of nearly half a billion electric chairs?
This was one of many ideas I heard in my years at the compound, but it was always addressed as a theory, a thing to be reviewed and explored as the size of the States increased. And more importantly, something so complex that only Hotspur himself would ever have been able to seriously turn it into a threat of any consequence.
Hawk, you might be able to access the State mainframes and get into the original power-grid schematics. Depends on whether you’re as smart as I think you are.
If Hotspur Chance is free once more, then you may have an unforeseen advantage. Wars are lost by thinking the impossible won’t happen.
He assumes no one could know where he has gone. But I know. I’ve known all along. I know because I heard him tell it to Gretchen so many years ago.
Hawk paused the recording and took a quick look around the room.
“Why are we stopping?” Carl asked.
“I just wanted you all to know before we keep going,” Hawk answered. “There’s only one way to access a Western State mainframe.”
“How?” Dylan asked.
Hawk sighed.
“From the inside.”
No one spoke as the meaning of what Hawk had said sunk in. If they were going to have a chance of understanding what Hotspur might be planning to do, they’d need to do it from the inside of the Western State.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Faith said. “Play the rest.”
Hawk engaged the recording one last time.
If Hotspur Chance is serious about putting this plan into action, he will do it from a location with coordinates that match the passcode used to unlock this message. It’s the location he spoke of years ago, when we were only a few souls in the desert. I’ve sent search parties over the years and found nothing of interest here, but if he’s escaped, then I believe this is where he went.
I intentionally positioned the last safe house as close to this set of coordinates as I could while providing for Jade’s safety. This may prove useful now.
I have no idea what the world looks like because I’m no longer in it. Only you will know whether this information is useful.
I did my best. I expect no less from you.
With love and affection from far, far away.
I am Meredith, checking out for the final time.
Hawk was already translating the passcode into a set of coordinates when the audio recording stopped.
“45.5.122.67 translates into 45.5 degrees north by 122.67 degrees west.”
Hawk brought up the holographic 3-D map in the middle of the room and zoomed in on an abandoned city.
“Portland, Oregon,” Hawk said. “The coordinates give us about a five-mile radius around a shipyard on the Willamette River.”
“How far?” Faith aske
d.
Hawk did some fast computations, and the holographic map zoomed in farther still. An abandoned shipyard sat at the bottom of the very mountain they were all standing on.
“Fifty-seven miles from here, give or take,” Hawk said.
“We can get the jump on them,” Clooger said. “We know they’re down in that general area. They don’t know we’re up here.”
“But five miles of space,” Carl said. “Hotspur is like a needle in a haystack. He could be hiding in any number of abandoned buildings or vacant ships.”
The room went silent as everyone let the information sink in. Hotspur Chance, the most dangerous criminal mind in the world, might be so close they could reach out and grab him. And he wasn’t even a second pulse. He was vulnerable if only they could discover his location.
“If Wade and Clara are this close to us, some of us are in real danger,” Carl said, shooting a quick glance at Clooger. “Jade can’t move things with her mind or fly away like you all can. She’s just a kid. A normal kid.”
“I can’t do any of that, either,” Hawk said. “No matter how many times Dylan tries to teach me. It’s not in my DNA.”
Dylan had been trying to bring a first pulse out in Hawk ever since they’d met, but it was no use. If people could move things with their minds, Dylan could coax the skill out of them. But if the latent skill wasn’t there, it wasn’t there. And in Hawk’s case, like so many millions of other people, there was no thread to grab onto, no hidden talent to pick up cars and move them with the power of his mind.
“We both got the short end of the stick,” Carl said. “I’m a zero pulse, too.”
“It could be worse,” Dylan said, slapping Hawk on the back. “You’ve got the brains, Carl’s got the brawn. You guys are fine.”
“It’s late,” Clooger said. “Let’s all get a good night’s sleep and hit this new plan hard in the morning. I’ll talk to Jade, get her calmed down.”
“Good luck,” Carl said. “She can be bullheaded sometimes.”
“Just like her dad,” Dylan said, and finally there was a glimmer of lightness in the room, a brief moment when everyone smiled softly.