Sneak (Swipe Series)

said. “I guess I never thought of it like that.” He frowned, thinking back on it. “Everything happens fast; I can tell you that much. They give you the nanosleep first thing. There’s no choice about it.” Logan laughed. “Believe me.”
    “And then?”
    “And then they give you this shot straightaway—”
    “A shot ? A shot of what?”
    “I’m not sure,” Logan answered. “They put it right in your wrist. Erin told me beforehand it was to numb the area, but . . . the area never went numb.”
    “You let them give it to you, then.”
    “I was out of it from the nanosleep. It was all I could do to stay awake. Anyway, they’ve got you hooked up to the computer by this point, with little suction cups all over your head. A braincomputer interface, I think. But if it was, it’s the only one I’ve ever seen; I couldn’t really say for sure.”
    “So they read your mind.”
    “Pretty much,” Logan said. “Or close enough to it. And while they do, they’re asking all sorts of innocent-sounding questions— what do you want to be when you grow up, what do you like to do for fun . . . you know, that kind of thing.”
    “Probing for signs of trouble. Of individuality. Of dissatisfaction . . .”
    “I think so. It lit up pretty good anytime I told a lie.”
    “Then I was right,” Peck said. “About all of it!” He slapped his knee, showing some excitement for the first time that night.
    And Logan nodded. “It seems that way. More or less. But that’s as far as I got before the whole thing went into a frenzy.” Logan frowned. “It was awful, Peck, getting out of there. Injecting myself with some kind of waking agent, attacking my nurse . . .”
    “You had to.”
    “She was innocent. That’s not the right way to fight back.” Logan sighed. “It’s not. But it got the Marker’s attention. With the answers I’d been giving, I’m not sure I even would’ve seen him otherwise.” Logan chuckled, remembering. “I flunked it real bad, Peck.”
    “Told you so.” Peck smiled.
    And the two of them laughed a little more.
    “So what’d he say? Your Marker, when he arrived?”
    “He said he couldn’t tell me everything. Said even he didn’t have all the answers. But you were right, Peck. Lily’s a flunkee. And she is alive.”
    Peck patted Logan on the back. “You did well. None of us would’ve had the guts to do what you did.”
    “He told me flunkees are sent to a place with no hope. Said there’re a few of these places in the Union, different locations . . .” Logan shook his head. “I’d’ve let them take me if there’d only been one. Just let them take me right to her, magnecuffs and all. But there was no way to be sure where I’d end up. And I couldn’t let Lily down.” He looked at Peck sadly. “I never wanted DOME to crack down on everyone like this. I never could’ve imagined they’d—”
    “No apologies. You did the right thing, fighting back. Never take the easy road just because it isn’t hard.”
    Logan nodded, smiling at his next thought. “My sister must’ve been a special case, Peck. Sounds like Beacon’s place is for the big leagues.”
    And Peck smiled too.
    “You know, I’ve actually . . . I’ve actually been thinking a lot about Lily’s Pledge,” Logan said. “About where she could have gone wrong. And I’ve started to think . . . I think maybe it was Grandma. That morning, on Lily’s birthday . . . Grandma said a lot of things. Against the government, against the Mark Program . . .”
    “I remember that,” Peck said.
    “She’d done it all our lives,” Logan said. “Since as far back as I can remember. She never trusted Chancellor Cylis. Never trusted General Lamson either. I could never understand why Grandma always talked like that. Why she’d say those things. And especially that morning . . .
    “‘Why’s Grandma like that?’ I’d always ask, and Mom would always say some weird thing about conviction, and she’d just leave it at that. It frustrated me. How it just never fit.”
    Peck nodded knowingly.
    “And then this exchange with the Marker last month . . . for the life of me I couldn’t understand that either. Why would he help me? Why tell me anything at all? It was insane to think he would.”
    “And yet,” Peck said.
    “And yet.” Logan nodded.
    “He’s an excluder,” Peck said. “Like your grandmother. Like the Hayeses. Like me.”
    “A what?”
    Peck smiled. “Cylis has done quite a bit in the name of