Pulse

sat a tattered eagle, staring off into the distance like it would fight on and on no matter the cost. It would never relent.
    Faith’s parents were gone. They’d been gone awhile. And they weren’t dead or somehow taken to one of the States without her. They weren’t off running a long and important errand only to return at some time in the future they’d agreed on.
    No, Faith’s parents weren’t coming back.
    Her parents were Drifters.

Chapter 9
Adrift in Skinny Jeans
    Field reports traveled to Meredith through a complicated series of hacked Tablets, verbal communications, and carriers. More often than not, the news was not good. She had come to recognize the steady flow of depressing information as a normal part of her day, but the latest report was different. It possessed a weight with the power to change everything.
    Ten Drifters were dead. Eleven had gone in; only one had come out.
    Every war she’d ever known about had started this way. Up until a certain point, there was always a way out if both sides were willing to negotiate. But certain special events were designed with war in mind. They were orchestrated to send a clear message. There was always one side that pushed the other into an understanding about how things had changed. There would be no more posturing. The enemy had gotten the party started, whether she liked it or not. Meredith was one of the few people who knew a war had just begun. She knew the plans being made in secret and the extent to which the world was about to change. It was information she had kept safe at all cost.
    “All but one?” Meredith asked. She was sitting in a vast, empty space, an undisclosed location known only to her most trusted carriers. The location was closer to Old Park Hill than she was comfortable with, but circumstances being what they were, there wasn’t much she could do about it. She had to be close to the front line, if not standing right on top of it. How else could she keep her finger on the most important developments taking place?
    “It would seem they walked into a trap,” Clooger said. He was a huge man, bearded and dreadlocked. What little could be seen of his pale skin was scarred in multiple places, like he’d boxed a thousand rounds and been cut open too many times to count. His skin was the color of milk, in part because he never went outside unless it was dark. Very few Drifters did. He held a sawed-off shotgun at his side, half hidden under a long trench coat.
    “Tell me everything you know,” Meredith said.
    Clooger cleared his throat as if he were about to give a field report to a commanding officer, but when he began to speak, it was more natural than that. He’d long since grown weary of military formality.
    “I sent a team to the abandoned building at Old Park Hill just as you asked. Eight men, three woman.”
    “And they holed up in one of the rooms, as I ordered?”
    Clooger nodded. “They stayed quiet, well hidden. We received one message on the first night— everything was fine —and then nothing.”
    Meredith had sent the group to watch, not to fight. “I told them to quietly observe from an empty building. How did most of them end up dead?”
    She knew this wasn’t entirely true. She’d heard, from someone Clooger knew nothing about, that there had been activity in the building of potentially high importance.
    “I debriefed the survivor about two hours ago. James, a low-level, just recruited last month. I’d say he was rethinking his decision. He escaped out a window before the trouble started.”
    There had been some important people in the group, but James had not been one of them. He was of little use to her and certainly was not allowed to know where she was stationed.
    “That’s unfortunate,” she said, her mind already on other things. She had always been a calculating thinker, and she was smart enough to realize that the massacre was inevitable. She’d known it would come to this and, more importantly, that there would be many more casualties before it was over.
    She looked into Clooger’s battered face, thinking of the various Tablet networks she had control over. “Use G10; keep everyone calm. Let’s not end up with a revolt on our hands.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “And be careful about your business. Our situation is fragile.”
    As Clooger turned and stepped away, Meredith stared at the tattered eagle on the back of his trench coat. She wondered how many weapons he was carrying and of