Pulse

space of too little time. And yet Faith’s mind was reeling with so much violent emotion, she couldn’t get to a place where remorse waited. She watched as Hawk removed a large swath of red fabric from the bag he’d brought with him.
    “Was Clara Quinn on the field when it happened?” Faith asked.
    Meredith and Dylan didn’t answer as they watched Hawk drape the red fabric over his shoulders like a warm blanket.
    “Tell me!” Faith screamed. She stood, and the chair beneath her flew up in the air behind her, careening across the room and smashing into the wall. “Was she on the field?”
    Dylan stood and moved between Faith and Hawk. “She was.”
    That was all Faith needed to hear. Suddenly she knew the truth. Liz had no strategic value in whatever game was being played. It was Faith whom Clara was trying to hurt, no one else.
    “So Wade Quinn killed my parents. And Clara Quinn killed my best friend. Is that where we stand?”
    “Dylan?” Meredith said. Her voice betrayed fear, which Faith wanted more than anything to seize on.
    “Everyone in this room is on your side,” Dylan said. “We all want the same thing you do.”
    “And what’s that?” Faith asked. The chair Dylan had sat in lurched forward, then blasted up in the air, its legs twisting and turning toward Meredith. Meredith raised a hand, and the chair flew in the other direction, crashing into the wall.
    “Better get this under control, Dylan,” Meredith said. “Or you might be the only one that gets out of here alive.”
    Faith didn’t want to move. She tried to hold her ground, willing herself to stay; but she was drifting closer to Dylan, and she couldn’t get it to stop.
    “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!” she screamed. But before she could stop it from happening, Dylan had his arms wrapped around her. All the rage inside her tried to get out as she fought to break free, but there was nothing in the world that could have made Dylan Gilmore let her go. He held on as she kicked and screamed and tried to hurt him any way she could. When she finally went limp in his arms, all the anger turned to regret and sadness, she whispered something in his ear that only he could hear.
    “It’s my fault. They’re all dead because of me.”
    Dylan knew it wasn’t true and so he held her tighter still, whispering over and over again, “Not true. Not true. Not true.”
    Minutes passed.
    “Let her go,” Meredith said. “It’s over.”
    Meredith understood more than anyone else what the end of a pulsing rage looked like. She’d lived through plenty of them. Dylan slowly let Faith go. When Faith looked at Hawk, he was still covered in the red fabric. He removed it, stuffing it into the bag as he took something else out.
    “I brought this for you,” he said softly.
    He handed over his most precious possession, The Sneetches , which he had taken from the old grade school on the night he’d been there with Faith and Liz.
    Faith reached out her hand and thought of Liz, how she loved to sit and read in the abandoned library for hours on end. She held it to her chest and tried to imagine a world in which Liz and her parents didn’t exist.
    Meredith took a breath and decided the room was safe once more.
    “We come now to another one of those unfortunate moments,” she began. “Where there is no time.”
    Faith felt a kind of sad relief at the idea of putting off the pain of having to process all her feelings. This war she’d stepped into unwillingly had given her at least the smallest mercy.
    “There are those who want to destroy everything the States seek to create,” Meredith said. “Everything good that came from Hotspur Chance is the States. Hold other things against him, but not that. Nothing is perfect; but without the States, humankind would be in far worse condition and only getting worse. They’re a brilliant invention, and they need to be protected at all cost.”
    “It’s our job to keep them safe,” Hawk said.
    “No offense,” Faith said, “but what have you got to do with any of this?”
    Dylan looked a little sheepish, like he’d kept a secret from Faith. “He’s a third-generation Intel. Very rare.”
    “Why am I not surprised?” Faith asked. Her mind was reeling with questions about how this was possible, but she was pretty sure in time they’d tell her how Hawk had come to be the smartest boy on Earth.
    “Faith,” Meredith said, and then she reached out and took her hand. Faith was surprised to find