Sneak (Swipe Series)

now, visible, deliberately lining the streets at every level, blocking traffic, making noise, camping out at the DOME headquarters, on the Capitol steps . . .
    But while the protests were peaceful, the scene in Beacon was not. Erin looked on, horrified by the violence she’d stirred. All around them, IMPS marched through the streets, revealing themselves, pushing back against the protesters with all means of force, magnecuffing everyone they could grab, dragging them away, not caring about the Marked onlookers or the disturbed faces they made.
    Slowly, Logan approached Erin. He put his hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him. “I’m told this was you,” Logan said. “You started this.”
    “I . . . I guess I did,” Erin said, sounding shell-shocked and empty. “But Logan.” She looked at him. “They did this for you.”
    9
    The new year came. The G.U. treaty was signed. And across what could now only be called the Global Union, the Markless protests continued. The IMPS remained a constant presence.
    By radio, the Dust heard nightly reports from Dane about the situation out west. Like a giant game of telephone, he relayed, without fail, everything he’d heard, passed on straight from the mouths of Mrs. Phoenix and Grandma, out from the little, unassuming town called Spokie, suburb of New Chicago.
    The story was the same everywhere. Markless rising. IMPS crashing down on them.
    A new era had begun.

    It was another week before Logan or Erin or Peck or any of them could tell up from down. They mourned Eddie. They mourned what they had done. They wondered, hopelessly, what was next.
    Slowly, Logan warmed back up to Erin, and Erin to him.
    She hadn’t gone back home after that night she left. She imagined her parents were beside themselves with worry. But she feared that if she left Logan’s side, she would never find him again.
    It wasn’t safe enough to set a meeting place and simply hope for the best. Not anymore. The IMPS had made sure of that.
    10
    It was clear, with protests continuing all around them, that it wasn’t safe for all of the Dust, the original Dust, in Beacon any longer. Not for Logan. Not for Peck. Not for Erin or Hailey.
    The rest of them were determined to stay, to be a part of the community they’d found in the city. To be a presence there. To help with the movement blossoming all around them.
    And Peck agreed that this was for the best. But for him, for Logan, for Erin and Hailey, everyone knew it was time to move on.
    They’d been planning to leave, to head for the countryside, when Erin came down with the first signs of a fever.
    “You can’t deny it any longer,” Peck said to her. “You have to come to terms with this thing. There must be something we can do.”
    “What thing?” Logan asked. “Peck, what are you talking about?”
    “I’m sick,” Erin said simply. “All the Marked are. Or will be, anyway. I think.”
    “How? What? Why?”
    Erin took a deep breath, and she asked Logan to sit down.

    Over the course of that night, Erin told Logan everything she’d found out. About Project Trumpet, about how it had led her to Acheron, to her plan with the IMPS . . . and she told, too, of the truth she had learned. About what was coming. For every last Marked in the G.U. It didn’t always kill quickly, she said. But it did kill.
    She told of the vaccination. She told of the shot at the Pledge.
    And throughout that whole story, Logan looked at his own empty wrist. He remembered his own Pledge.
    He remembered the shot he’d received.
    But he didn’t speak up.
    Because it couldn’t be, could it? Logan wasn’t Marked.
    Was he?
    11
    Another week, and Logan, Erin, Peck, and Hailey were ready to part ways.
    “Do you think you’ll find the cure?” Jo asked. “You think there’s any cure at all?”
    “We don’t know,” Logan said. “But we have to try. Or else the Global Union’s about to get a whole lot messier.”

    It took until that night, their last night all together, for them to talk about what had happened the day Logan tried to sneak Lily out of Acheron. Periodically, Erin would ask about it. The betrayal. About how he was doing. About what he was thinking. But each time, Logan would close his eyes, and he’d shake his head, as if brushing off some thought too big and painful to wear just yet.
    And then, finally, with Logan and Erin and Peck’s Dust all sitting atop the fifth-tier Beacon grid, in a moment of rare peace, looking out over the crackle