Sneak (Swipe Series)

swiped an interior scanner? You could retire after a hack like that. Erin had figured she would.
    And yet here she sat now, back in the game after only a few weeks off, shuffling through the inner save files on DOME’s security system hard drive. She was looking for video feeds. She was looking for one very specific video feed. She was looking for the recording of Logan’s Pledge.
    Erin had seen it before, of course, practically as it was happening— the video of Logan attacking his nurse, threatening his Marker . . . but she hadn’t been looking for clues. She had been looking for guilt. So what had she missed the first time around?
    The feed was buried deep. But eventually she found it.
    “Good work, Iggy,” she said as her iguana watched blankly from the dresser.
    The video was silent. Sound wasn’t recorded in the Center’s Pledge rooms, so Erin couldn’t hear what was being said. A month ago, she’d just assumed it was a litany of charges and punishments.
    But what if Logan’s Marker actually had felt something for the little flunkee? What if Logan’s Marker had decided to help? Might that behavior also look something . . . like this?
    Erin was no lip reader. But the last word spoken by the Marker was clearly of some great importance. Erin watched the clip on a loop: the Marker leaning in, annunciating so clearly, directly into Logan’s ear . . . but what was it he said? The way his mouth moved . . . it didn’t fit with any word Erin had ever heard. It looked like nonsense. Three syllables, she could tell that much. But what were they? The first looked like an ah . And the word ended with an on sound. Or was it an ot ? En ? No—definitely an on . With a kuh in the middle? A chuh?
    She just couldn’t place it. But it looked—it really looked—as if the word that the Marker was saying . . . was Acheron .
    5
    The old-fashioned freight train arrived late in the night, running off its own electric engine, chugging along with a chain of double-door boxcars behind it. Logan and Dane and Hailey stood when they saw it coming, and they waited just a few steps away from the track.
    The train slowed when it came upon them, its conductor leaning out the front window.
    “What’re you kids doin’ out here?” he yelled. “It’s dark out. Get outta here!”
    But Logan and Dane and Hailey stood their ground, and all three of them held their hands up as though they were waving, casually showing their Unmarked wrists.
    The conductor cut the engine and set the brakes, and still the train rolled on for some time. But when it stopped, he hopped out, no hesitation about it. “You lost?” he asked.
    “No, sir,” Logan said. He looked the conductor in the eyes. And he drew an arc in the ground with his foot.
    “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” the conductor said. He held out his Marked hand, and Logan shook it. “Name’s Arnold.” He pointed to the boxcar beside him, his smile wide and inviting. “Where you headed?”
    “As far as you’ll take us,” Hailey said.
    “These tracks go south to a little town by the Gulf. But they’ll veer east a while first.”
    “That’ll help,” Logan said. “Where’s the next place you’ll cross the River?”
    “Long ways. ’Bout five hundred miles, at the track’s closest point to the Potomac.”
    “The Potomac?” Hailey asked, intrigued.
    “That’s right. But folks only risk that route if they mean to take their chances in Beacon. I wouldn’t recommend it. Most Markless prefer the quieter destinations down south. It’ll make a nicer life for ya.”
    “Well,” Logan said, hedging for safety, wanting to avoid revealing too much. “How ’bout we sleep on it? What would you say to that?”
    In answer, the conductor doffed his hat and waved it toward the train, like a kid finally getting to play his favorite game. “Allllll aboard!”
    6
    It was warmer a little farther south. The old captain let Peck and Jo and the rest of the Dust off by an arrangement of rocks he’d found in the middle of a vast, empty prairie. They filed out of the wagon, and he gave each of them a bit of food as they did.
    “Head this way,” he said, pointing into the darkness. “In the morning, just follow the sunrise. You’ll hit ruins, eventually, and you just keep going, now, when you do. It’s a long haul, for sure.
    But from right here, you just head exactly due east, and you’ll hit the next anchor in about one day’s time.” He shrugged. “Can’t help you farther than