Storm

One

Fight or Flight

1

T

he floor shook violently under Logan’s

feet, its rug jumping and sliding in short, stiff bursts. The window to his side rattled, and he wondered if the whole door might soon fall off.

Logan leaned forward to the driver’s seat in front of him, peering over Peck’s tense shoulder at the fuel gauge, which jittered so much that the after-image of its soft green glow showed only a blur.

But he could still see the needle, pointing with certainty.

Empty.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Hailey asked from the passenger seat.

“Not if we want it to stay in one piece,” Peck said, but he pressed harder on the gas pedal even so.

Lifelessly, Erin bounced from her spot on the backseat and slid to the floor.

“She all right?” Peck asked, unable to take his eyes off the road.

Hailey turned to look over her shoulder. “Not stirring,” she said. “Keep driving.”

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“Low on gas,” Logan warned, hoping not to spark an explosion of new frustration from up front.

“It’ll stop when it stops,” Peck said. “’Til then, worry about what’s behind us.”

So Logan turned to peer out the back window, where behind them a drone plane appeared low on the horizon.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Logan said.

“Nope. Very serious. As predicted.”

Not far off and closing in fast, the running lights of the drone glowed bright red, green, and white against the night sky. It flew silent and unwavering in the steady hands of its remote pilot. And on its side, branded proudly in big white letters, was the single, horrible, menacing word: DOME. Most of the way to Sierra by now, Logan had hoped that the four of them might enter the sprawling city undetected, that the protests they’d stirred up back in Beacon might distract authorities enough to provide some cover. But the team had made a critical mistake, and they knew it.

About twenty miles back, along the first patch of run-down outskirts near Sierra’s eastern city limits, along the forgotten road that decrepit signs called “Highway 66,” Daniel Peck, Hailey Phoenix, Logan Langly, and Erin Arbitor decided to make an emergency stop. Erin’s fever had gotten worse, her shivering violent and her words increasingly delirious. Everyone knew she needed medicine—anything to lower her temperature, even if only for a day or two. Anything to buy her some time.

So the team decided to take the risk.

“They’ll know she was here the second we buy this thing,” Peck warned as Hailey stepped toward the corner store counter 5

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with a handful of nanomeds. “They’ll trace her scan instantly. You know they’ve been watching for it.”

Erin nodded in detached agreement. She was standing, but barely, and only because Logan held her up. He had his arm around her back, bouncing it now a few times, trying for a better hold.

“We’ll be miles away by the time they get here,” he said. “And anyway, there’s no way around it.” If they wanted the goods, they needed Erin’s Mark, simple as that. So Logan snapped his fingers in front of Erin’s eyes. “Look alive, Erin. This part’s all you.”

And the four of them walked to the counter.

“Evening,” said the store clerk. “Find everything all right?”

“Just fine,” Hailey said, not looking at the man. She handed him the nanomeds and held her breath while he scanned them under the counter’s Markscan.

“Your friend’s not lookin’ too good.” The clerk nodded at Erin.

“She’ll be all right,” Logan said, propping her head up with his own. He grabbed Erin’s hand and waved her Marked wrist under that same scanner. It beeped and flashed green. “Just fighting down a fever. These cold winter months and all, you know . . .”

“You making her pay for those meds herself?” the clerk asked, scolding him a bit.

“She insists,” Logan said, but he quickly shoved his own Unmarked wrist into a deep pants pocket. And Peck and Hailey did the same.

“Well . . . bed rest,” the clerk instructed. “Plenty of water.”

Then he pointed to the nanomeds. “And one of these pills twice a day. They won’t cure anything, but they should keep the fever down.”

Erin nodded distantly. Logan readjusted his hold on her. And the group hustled out without another word to anyone.

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“We’ve sealed our fate,” Peck said. “They have us now.” He put the car in gear and peeled out before the store clerk could notice that these three Markless teens and their dying Marked friend had somehow gotten their hands on the last combustion vehicle in the entire Global Union.

Logan shook his head. “We’re out. We’re safe. That drew less attention than a robbery.”

“A robbery’s anonymous,” Hailey said. “Markscans are not.”

“No stealing,” Logan said. He opened Erin’s mouth and gave her two nanomed pills at once. She didn’t protest. “She needed this.

We had no choice. We’ll deal with the next crisis when it hits us.”

And Logan was right, Hailey knew. The truth was, they didn’t have a choice. The truth was that they’d made their choice already, when each of them—Peck, Hailey, Logan—refused the Mark on each of their thirteenth birthdays, refused citizenship, refused to Pledge allegiance to General Lamson and Chancellor Cylis. They knew then what the consequences would be. They knew then that they’d never have rights. That they’d never in their lives be able to buy or sell anything, hold a job, vote, own a house, sign a contract, see a doctor, finish their education, start a family. . . . Those quaint hopes dried up the moment the world broke into its Total War; the moment it realized that Unity was necessary, that fractured cultures and incompatible views could never keep the peace.

The kids knew all of this at the time.

But each of them knew something else too. That the Pledge was a trap. Much more than a ceremony of citizenship, it was a system designed to weed out those who didn’t fit in. Flunkees were rare, maybe one in ten thousand—few enough that no one raised a fuss. DOME let families believe that their children were dead, victims of infrequent and unavoidable complications in the Marking 7

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procedure—an allergic reaction, an infection, or an unfortunate error, perhaps.

But this was not the truth. The truth was that once identified, flunkees were simply removed, thrown into the secret prison known only as “Acheron,” where they were converted, brainwashed, crafted into soldiers . . . into the International Moderators of Peace, the IMPS, hidden enforcers of the Mark system.

Under this program, the rest of the world was free to be Unified. Protected by the very peers who otherwise might one day have betrayed them.

Logan, Peck, Hailey . . . they knew this because Logan’s sister, Lily, had Pledged herself . . . and had never returned. They knew this because Peck spent the next five years piecing together what might have happened, had even warned Logan that it might happen to him next.

Peck was right. But Logan escaped.

And with all his worst fears finally confirmed, Logan had gone on to break into Acheron, had seen it with his own eyes, and had managed to break back out.

It wasn’t safe for him in Beacon City any longer. It wasn’t safe for any of them.

Peck, Hailey, and their friends known only as “the Dust” had used Logan as a symbol—as a martyr, willing to die in his fight against DOME. And among Markless everywhere, that symbol took hold. The news spread countrywide, through renegade radio stations and secret airwaves, and the Dust spread right along with it. The Markless were banding together. They rose up; they fought back. They brought the IMPS out of hiding. And Logan became a hero.

Erin, until that time, was as loyal to DOME as anyone, 8

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Marked and diligent and proud of it. Her father worked for DOME, after all, was an operative for them, and until recently he and the Department had given Erin no reason to doubt their intentions. But then last month she discovered Project Trumpet . . . and everything in her world changed forever.

Erin now lay on the floor of the group’s cramped car, contorted and barely conscious. The drone plane behind them encroached.

Peck pushed the pedal harder, gliding dangerously across the icy, broken road, and Logan said, “It hasn’t shot us yet. It could have by now. It’s close enough.”

“DOME’s not trying to kill us,” Peck said, gripping the wheel with white-knuckle force. “They’re trying to track us.”

“Not very subtle about it,” Hailey said. The plane blinked menacingly as it lowered to car level and followed maybe a hundred feet behind.

“They don’t have to be. We’re cornered.”

Logan looked out over the wide-open land and the Rocky Mountains in the distance. It was a funny word, cornered, spoken in the middle of so much empty space.

“How could DOME even know we’re the ones in here?” Logan asked. “They can’t scan Erin’s Mark from that distance, can they?

Even if they’ve already traced her to the store, as far as this car goes, they’d only be guessing . . .”

Peck laughed. “Logan, they know Erin was with us in Beacon less than a week ago. And now they have her Markscan on file in a store two thousand miles away, without a single logged magnetrain ticket in between. As far as we know, this is the only private car driving on any road between here and Europe. What other conclusion could they reasonably come to? Of course we’re in this car.”

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“So how do we hide?” Hailey asked, very nervously now. “We can’t outdrive it.”

Already, Logan was hunched over, grabbing at Erin’s shoulders and sliding her up into the backseat. She groaned once, and her head lolled to the side. He buckled the seat belt around her.

“We can try.”

Hailey turned to Peck uncertainly. “Hey,” she said. “Guys, seriously—” Peck shook his head. He sighed. “Hold on,” he said, and he pushed the gas pedal to the floor.

In their headlights, the broken road cast shadows on itself long into the distance. Its potholes, jutting concrete, and black, wintry ice rushed in fragments and patches toward the run-down car. Peck weaved fast between frosty cracks and scattered debris, and the drone shrunk smaller in the window behind them. For miles, it seemed they were succeeding. But Peck couldn’t avoid the road’s obstacles forever. Coming off a tight swerve, their back right wheel caught an old blown-out tire, and Hailey yelled, “Hold on!” as the whole car lurched forward with a panicked force.

It spun faster than it could turn. Its back wheels came up alongside its front. The driver’s side plowed ahead with an ear-piercing squeal of its tires, the left wheels leading the charge against an unforgiving road, front and back together hitting a street-wide crack, catching and stopping all at once. In one continuous motion, the passenger side reared up, getting ahead of itself, flipping end over end at a staggering speed. Metal on concrete. Glass shattering. Gravity shifting. The world rolled hopelessly outside. A car full of breathless screams.

They tumbled from the road.

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