Tremor by Patrick Carman Page A

enemy of all that is good, is your father.”

Chapter 5

October Road
    Dylan looked at his mom and Clooger, and then he stood up and walked out of the room without saying a word. All eyes were on Meredith when the door closed behind him.
    â€œYou’ve got some explaining to do,” Faith said, and, looking at Clooger, added, “What else aren’t the adults in the room telling us?”
    â€œThat’s all there is; and whether you like my methods or not, it’s been planned this way for a long, long time. It’s our way in.”
    â€œShe’s right,” Clooger said. It was obvious he felt terrible about having kept the secret from them all, especially Dylan; but he also wasn’t going to let Meredith take all the blame. “I’ve known since long before you and Hawk came into the picture. I could have said something, but I didn’t.”
    â€œWhy the hell not?” Faith asked. She wheeled around, facing Meredith, and seriously thought about putting both of them through a wall. “How come he gets to know and your own son doesn’t?”
    Calm down. These people are on your side, Faith thought. Get a hold of yourself. But her hands were shaking. She was barely keeping it together. “My parents pulled the same bullshit on me. I didn’t know I was part of a rebellion until it was way too late. No one asked me.”
    Hawk was staring at his Tablet, doing whatever it was that he did that almost no one understood. It was his way of coping with confrontation.
    â€œShe’s got a point,” Hawk said without looking up. “If you’re going to have us cleaning up your messes, you should at least be honest with us from the start. We probably would have said yes anyway.”
    Hawk wasn’t exactly in the same boat as Faith or Dylan, but his parents were definitely caught up in the wreckage in their own twisted way. They, like he, were Intels. Their minds had been co-opted by Hotspur Chance himself a long time ago. He’d used them to advance the cause of the States, tapping into their brains as if they were nothing more than two supercomputers with processing power he could use as he needed it. No one ever discovered how Hotspur did this, but there was no doubt that he had figured out a way to use minds other than his own to process the most complex problems he wanted to solve. The trouble was, once he was done with them, they were never the same. All the Intels—hundreds of them in total—eventually turned in on themselves, their minds wandering in some unseen desert, searching for answers they would never find. Sometimes it took a year, other times it took decades; but it always ended in the same wandering madness. Hawk’s parents had entered that phase of their journey, and they weren’t coming back.
    The difference for Hawk and Clara Quinn was that they were second generation, Intels by birth. They enjoyed the power of an evolved mind, but it was completely unknown if or when they, too, would devolve into madness.
    Meredith looked at Clooger, and he knew, for once, he had to rescue her. It might never happen again, but it was happening right then.
    â€œSometimes we have withheld information, brought you along slowly. That was our call, and we made it. If you were in the military it wouldn’t be any different. You report to someone; you know some but not all the history; you bring the best you’ve got and hope it’s enough.”
    He ran a hand over his noggin again, which was clearly becoming a habit he would have trouble breaking now that all those dreads were gone.
    â€œNot a day goes by that Meredith and I don’t wish we had second pulses or wish we were Intels. Good God, are you kidding me? If we could take care of this ourselves, we’d be the happiest people alive. But we can’t, and that’s a tough spot to be in: tough for me, tough for Meredith. We have to send you to do our job for us,