Sneak (Swipe Series)

“Oh. It doesn’t matter,” she said.
    “We can worry about that once this is over.”
    “Well, now you have to tell us!” Tyler demanded.
    Erin waved him off.
    “Come on! Settle it by bet? I have a game we can play . . .”
    Erin rolled her eyes. “Biological warfare, if you must know.
    Don’t worry about it, all right?”
    But Peck narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, biological warfare?”
    “It’s just this . . . this thing DOME’s had planned from the beginning.”
    The whole group stared, now, at Erin, very eager for her to continue.
    Finally, Erin did. And once the floodgates were open, the words came out fast. “They give us shots when we Pledge,” she said. “I always figured it was a numbing shot. But . . . turns out it isn’t. It’s a vaccine. DOME’s been inoculating its Marked citizens since the very first Pledge.”
    “Inoculating you for what , exactly?”
    “For . . . well . . . for a situation like this, actually. For a time when they might feel the need to just . . . wipe all you Markless out.”
    For a moment, no one among the Dust dared even to breathe.
    “Project Trumpet. It’s . . . a plague, basically. Deadly. They’ve been keeping it in their back pocket, just in case the Markless ever got out of hand.” Erin looked uneasily from one member of the Dust to the next. She clearly didn’t want to be thinking about this, much less talking about it.
    “So now what?” asked Blake. “You’re saying they’ve unleashed it on us?”
    Erin shook her head. “On the contrary.” She laughed a hollow little laugh. “DOME screwed up. Turns out these inoculations . . . they aren’t protecting us Marked from the plague. They’re making us sick.”
    Peck crossed his arms. “I don’t understand.”
    “You see, this plague . . . it was actually unleashed a long time ago. It’s been in the air—all around us—for a long time. Since the beginning of DOME.”
    “Okay . . .”
    “It’s a nanovirus. DOME took this crazy flu strain, and they used nanotech on it. Makes the virus totally dormant . . . until DOME turns it on. Until they sound the trumpets, so to speak.”
    “Project Trumpet.”
    “Exactly.” Erin laughed halfheartedly again. “Anyway. With the G.U. treaty about to go through, and with you Dust raising a real stink back over the summer . . . well . . . Cylis must have decided it was time. Time to turn on this virus . . . time to take care of you Markless once and for all.”
    Erin smiled now. “It was the perfect plan, really. As long as DOME kept its secret, the whole thing would just look to us Marked like those unhealthy skinflints were getting sick and dying on their own. Cylis would be blameless. No PR hassle, no needing to explain himself . . . as messy as biological warfare is . . . politically, it was his cleanest option.
    “ But . . .” Erin sighed deeply. “Instead, DOME flipped the switch and turned the nanovirus on and discovered that this nanovirus isn’t actually catching if you just breathe the stuff, or if you ingest it. Turns out the virus doesn’t spread like a cold or flu at all . Because of a mistake in the nanotech modification process, this virus now only spreads by blood. So all you Markless are safe. In fact, the only way for the virus to infect a person is if it’s actually injected into you—into your bloodstream—like with a needle.”
    A slow look of understanding washed over Peck’s face.
    “What? What? Guys, I don’t get it,” Tyler said.
    “You see, Tyler,” Erin explained, “the way vaccines work . . . it’s not like other medicine. It’s not something that treats the illness, the way antibiotics kill bacteria, for example. Vaccines work by actually giving you a weakened version of the virus. That way, your body’s immune system can learn to fight it in its weakened state, and if your body is ever infected for real, it already knows how to handle it. It knows how to kill it, right away, so that the real virus can’t hurt you.”
    “Okay . . . ,” Tyler said.
    “Well, so, here’s the joke of it,” Erin continued. “That vaccine nanovirus that DOME’s been injecting into the Marked? It’s been dormant too, this whole time, right in the bloodstream. And now that it finally isn’t dormant, DOME is learning that—‘Oops, sorry, everyone!’—even the weakened state of the nanovirus, once it’s turned on, is more than powerful enough to make a person deathly sick.
    “DOME’s vaccine didn’t