Storm (Swipe Series)

did decide to reenter the world, when she finally did tune in and hear the news of Lamson’s demise, of Cylis’s takeover across the Global Union, of Logan Langly’s death sentence, and of the truth behind Project Trumpet’s cloud-seeding activation, the shock came all at once.
    It was clear to Hailey, then, the trick she’d fallen for backin Lahoma. The trick Cylis had played. The trick that Lily made possible.
    Still think she’s on our side, Hailey? she asked herself.
    But Hailey started eating again after that.
    She saw herself in the mirror. Thin hair. Gaunt cheeks. She didn’t recognize herself.
    And it was time to turn all that back. It was time to live again. Or to try.
    She was free now, Hailey knew.
    Finally.
    She had nothing left to lose.

    The next morning, Hailey set out once more along the Unmarked River, finding that old, familiar path, retracing the route she’d taken last December, step by step. It rained the whole time. But Hailey didn’t mind.
    She biked to the Hayes’s old farm, still abandoned after DOME’s winter raid. She approached the stream where Logan had nearly died of hypothermia. She followed it out of the woods. She found the trail to the train tracks tracing east through the no-man’s land far outside of town. She waited.
    And when the train finally came, a half day later, its conductor was the very same she’d met those five months ago. He recognized her, in fact. He let her sit up front with him. He even let her blow the train’s whistle when she asked.
    So Hailey rode with that conductor across half the country, all the way to the Appalachian Mountains, to her same, familiar stop.
    From there, it was a full day’s hike to the valley. But the walkwent fast. And her heart pumped red-hot hope into her veins every step of the way.
    That evening, Hailey came upon the Village of the Valley, and she found the old path to the radio station up the hill. It was nighttime, after all. Time for Dane Harold’s Markless radio program.
    Hailey knocked on the wooden door of the small shack. Dane opened it and nearly fainted to the ground.
    Over the next few hours, Markless listeners and radio fans all across the country shared in the incredible reunion of Dane Harold and his oldest friend, Hailey Phoenix. The broadcast kept right on going as Dane bounced excitedly around the shack. And everyone everywhere heard the old friends embrace, and cry, and share stories, and mourn, and laugh, and sing, and dance.
    That spring, Hailey learned to farm. And she and Dane tended to the squash and the sweet potatoes and the corn and the apples, and they ate well each night, and around a great big campfire at the village’s center, Hailey told the whole village a new story, every night, about Markless life in Beacon, and Sierra, and everywhere in between.
    And still, each morning when she woke up, each evening when she went to sleep, Hailey mourned her mother. She mourned Logan. She thought of Peck and Erin. She thought of the rest of them—of her friends still out east. Those crazy kids in Beacon, the stars of Swipe .
    4
    Erin felt alive for the first time in months. Her migraines were gone. Her temperature was normal. Her nerves were steady and still.
    But the news of Logan made it difficult to care.
    She stared distractedly out the window of her parents’ crowdedBeacon apartment, absorbing the sights and the sounds and the smells of home, and bemused by its odd contrast to the Dust’s company behind her.
    They’d spent the last few weeks recovering, hiding away from it all with the Arbitors’ help. They’d grieved for Logan, and they’d celebrated his life and his courage and all that he’d done. But it was time, they knew, to move on. Just a little. To think of next steps.
    “So what now?” Blake asked. “Peck’s gone. Logan’s . . .” He paused. “Dead. We’ve lost our leader and our symbol, both. We’re a headless organization . . .”
    “Didn’t he say anything ?” Shawn asked Erin. “Could Peck really have given no clues as to where he was headed?”
    “He wasn’t sure,” Erin said. “He couldn’t have told us anything more because he didn’t know anything more. It was as if . . .” She stopped herself. “It sounds silly. But it was as if he was answering some call. Like some force was guiding him. He didn’t know where it would take him . . . only that he needed to follow it.
    “He said he thought . . . well, he said he thought Cylis was more powerful than