Quake by Patrick Carman Page B

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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œHow 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.
    â€œHow 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,
    â€œI’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?
    â€œThat could have gone better,” Carl said.
    Clooger didn’t reply. He’d never been one for jokes to lighten a heavy load.
    â€œHawk, 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.
    â€œHe developed the States to corral human population into small spaces,” Dylan said. “So he could annihilate half of them.”
    â€œBeyond 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