Swipe (8 page)

She
would be the one to get herself back to Beacon.

She
would be the one to pull her family back together.

And if that meant solving the mystery of Peck and the Markless threat in Spokie herself, then that's exactly what Erin intended to do.

11

At that moment, seventeen stories below, a boy named Blake ran over the shadowed sidewalks of Spokie, furious with himself and weighing the consequences of having been seen.

Not as bad as getting caught
, he concluded, darting unpredictably through side alleys and streets.
Whatever they are, they're not as bad as getting caught would be
.

Behind him, he heard the heavy breathing of the boy he was supposed to be pursuing. But that was botched. This was backward.

What Blake had witnessed, just moments before in their showdown on Wright Street, was a new side of the boy he and the Dust had followed all these years. A latent spark in the eyes of a kid he'd always seen as broken. Perhaps it was this spark that Peck had seen all along. Perhaps that spark was the danger.

Half a block behind and running off pure, stupid adrenaline, Logan yelled between breaths, “Just tell me what you want from me! It's all over now! Just tell me what you want!”

But it wasn't over. And as houses turned to empty lots and streetlamps faded off into the far distance behind them, Logan began to lose his nerve. Slowly it dawned on him exactly where he was chasing this boy, exactly where he himself was headed, and the realization was far from welcome.

Slog Row. The most dangerous, sordid street in all of suburban New Chicago. The street crawling with Markless, with disease and crime.

He could not go there. Ever. To walk down Slog Row was to walk with death.

Whoever this boy was, he had as good as escaped. Logan's steps slowed to a stop, and he caught his breath with his hands resting on his bent knees. He could follow no farther. Before him now, beyond the several empty lots and across the crumbling, abandoned six-lane expressway of years ago, was the silent and decaying street of so many parental warnings. He could see its panorama all at once, and in the moonlight, it was seething, a corpse lined with maggots.

What was I thinking?
Logan thought.
Following even this far?

And yet something in Logan had come alive. Something in him had flirted with the danger he'd spent so long avoiding, and the danger flirted back.

But no. That's crazy
.
And your parents will be worried sick
. So all at once Logan's nerves dropped out from under him like a trapdoor, and he turned to burst full-sprint down the quiet Spokie avenue from whence he came, not looking back, not catching his breath, not stopping for anything else until he'd reached the safety of his own front door.

FOUR
THE INVITATION

1

T
HE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, LOGAN WAS JUMPY,
even for him.

“You always been this wired?” Dane asked as they filed out of computer science. “Looks like you had about four cups of nanotea this morning.”

Logan spun around as if Dane had poked him with something burning. “Sleepless night,” he said, without a trace of humor in his voice.

“Sorry to hear it.” Dane frowned. “Hey, Tom!” he yelled. “Aren't you Pledging today?”

“Just finished,” Tom said. He held his wrist up. Its nanoink was so fresh, it sparkled. “First thing this morning. I walked straight here from the Center. Couldn't wait any longer to show this bad boy off.” He pointed smugly at the Mark.

“That's
awesome
,” Dane said. “Hey, buy me a soda!”

“You bullying me for my lunch money, Harold?” Tom asked.

“Sure am!” Dane laughed, and he pounced on Tom's arm, wrestling the class president, grabbing at his wrist with fake effort to pull the guy's hand off. Tom, who had Dane by four inches and at least thirty pounds, stood and waited for the joke to be over while Logan tried not to laugh.

“Dane Harold, knock it off!” the school secretary said as she hurried past.

“Sorry, Ms. Carrol.” Dane gave up the act and brushed his hair down.

Tom turned to Logan with fresh interest. “So, Logan, you coming to auditions after school?” Logan shrugged, the Spokie Middle drama club being the furthest thing from his mind. “
Mark of a Salesman
, remember? Be a great chance to meet people if you made the show. Make some friends.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Dane asked.

“Oh, I just thought . . .” Tom backpedaled. “I mean . . . you know . . .”

“I'm zonked, anyway,” Logan said. “I think I'd better not.”

“Well, suit yourself.” Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “You coming to English, Dane?”

“Yeah,” Dane said, and soon Logan was alone in the hallway.

He walked to history through the Prairie Wing, where in the virtual window a lion crouched low and followed him the whole way to class.

School that day was slow, but Logan's mind couldn't have stopped racing if he'd begged it to. All those years spent certain he was crazy, exasperating his parents, visiting doctors and refusing prescriptions, answering questions and absorbing doubts and suspicions that were anything but fair . . .
all
of that, overturned in an instant by one stalking silhouette. He'd been right. This whole time. And he didn't know what to do about it.

He hadn't told his parents. If they'd believed the story of his walk home, it would have been a miracle; more likely it only would have led to a disappointed look and perhaps another doctor's appointment.

He would not tell Erin either. Logan was already angry with himself for going on so long about his sister and his fears the night before. Next time he and Erin talked, Logan was determined it would be about how much homework they had, or how the teachers compared to those in Beacon, or where to find the best pizza in town, or which after-school activities they might be interested in joining together.

“So!” Logan said. “Got any big plans tonight?” By the time economics rolled around, he had practiced this opening line about a hundred times.

“Huh?” Erin asked. She looked at him as if from a far-off place.

“Uh . . .” Logan cleared his throat. “I said, ‘Got any big plans tonight?'” He'd rehearsed the words so extensively in his head that when he said them a second time, they came out in exactly the same cadence.

“It's Tuesday,” Erin said, brushing him off. “Why would I have plans?”

Logan was crushed. He couldn't have guessed that her response was coming from a place of paranoia and guilt.

Truthfully, Erin
did
have plans that night. And not only were they big; they were illegal. They would begin with the deliberate theft of classified information, and she couldn't imagine they'd get any rosier from there.

“I just . . . thought . . . maybe . . . I mean . . .” Logan struggled to form a complete sentence. He hadn't prepared for this particular contingency.

But Erin laughed in a way that was friendly and genuine, and Logan caught his breath and shut up.

He's not onto me
, Erin thought.
He's just being dorky ol' Logan
.

“I'll prob'ly mostly be doing homework,” Erin lied. “Don't wanna get behind already, being the new girl and all.”

“That's smart,” Logan said. “I'll probably be doing that too. Maybe study for the Pledge some.” He felt himself calming down now. This had been the idea. This was exactly the conversation he'd had in mind.

“If I finish early, maybe I'll sneak a movie on my tablet,” Erin continued. She'd heard once that the key to dishonesty was specificity. “Sounds boring, I know.”

“That doesn't sound boring.”

“Oh, it will be.” Erin laughed. “It'd just be some romantic comedy.”

“I like romantic comedies,” Logan said.

Erin laughed again, more nervously now. “Yeah, but . . . like . . . this'll be a really awful one, though.”

“How bad could it
—
”

“Bad,” she insisted. There was much too much to be done before her father got off work tonight for Logan to get any ideas about following her home again.

But Logan wasn't inviting himself over. He was simply making the small talk he had been so determined to make. And throughout the lesson, each time he'd lean over to whisper a joke, or to pretend to need clarification on a point the teacher had made, Logan forgot a little more completely about the stress he was under and the danger he was in.

In all of it, Logan never once mentioned the stalker on his walk home from Erin's the night before.

And Erin never once mentioned her unfolding plans to moonlight as an unlicensed spy.

2

By the time Dane called that night, Logan had already finished four full sweeps of his house. He had already checked all the locks twice, he had already determined his bedroom unfit for sitting, and he was already sandwiched safely between his parents on the living room couch.

Providing the calm company Logan needed while he distracted himself with Pledge prep, Dad watched the television frame on low volume, and Mom sat upright, though she might have been asleep. Meanwhile Logan curled up nose-deep in his tablet computer, skimming Pedia articles on the Unity for the hundredth time and by now practically memorizing their words.

He'd just finished reading twice the five-part article about the history leading up to the Total War, and he could have recited by heart the precise ways that rising temperatures had led to extinctions, crop failure, famine . . . how hurricanes and earthquakes and floods had forced relocation, had strained infrastructure with refugees and changed ecosystems for good . . . how countrymen had fought over land and water. He could have explained the migration of mosquitoes and other pests to the northern regions, the specific path each disease took across continents. He could have listed by name the spokesmen and leaders in those first waves of unrest, quoted the speeches and rallies and television programs that had prompted men and women to violence. He could have spouted off without blinking an eye the specific body counts of various battles and epidemics, the total dead and missing persons adding up to a staggering amount.

For political history, he'd reviewed the ways in which the States War differed subtly from the European War, and he studied the ways in which the two fit together to become, simply, the Total War. He'd read about the meteoritic rise of Chancellor Cylis in Europe, and the successful military trajectory of General Lamson in America. He'd memorized the ways in which each leader cooperated increasingly over the years, how Lamson had come to implement Cylis's Mark program across the A.U., how both had brought about the worldwide religious Inclusion, all to ensure that nothing as cataclysmic as the Total War ever happened again.

The Inclusion was of particular interest to Logan, partly because it was so far-reaching, and partly because it was the least talked about of all the major historical events. Logan knew, from piecing together what he'd read, that there had been a time not long ago when people around the world practiced a variety of different religions, each with its own system of values and culture and beliefs. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism . . . the idea of it fascinated Logan, even though he hadn't the slightest idea what those religions taught. After Lamson and Cylis instituted the Inclusion, everything that might once have been considered spiritual was just sort of lumped into a single, bland system that mostly preached patriotism and peace. Not bad ideas by any means, and yet Logan couldn't help but wonder if somehow, in all of it, something important was being lost.

In any case, this brought Logan to present-day news, to articles about the treaty and the speculation over the Global Union, along with editorials enthusiastically describing what a milestone it would be. Logan tried to imagine it as he continued to study.