Sneak (Swipe Series)

she’d find the path back to Logan.
    Erin had her earphones on and her music at full volume as she typed furiously across the surface of her tablet, sitting crosslegged on her bed, delving deep into the files of DOME’s servers with the help of a new worm she’d programmed just that night.
    On a plastiscreen by her side, Erin kept her picture displayed— the one she’d taken of Mr. Cheswick’s top-secret page. Every few minutes, she’d look back at it, scrutinizing each line, down to the finest details.
    Project Trumpet. IMPS. Acheron. It was all a part of the same vast secret. She had scratched the surface. But it was time to dig a little deeper.
    Find the connections, find Lily. Find Lily . . . find Logan .
    There, buried deep in cyberspace, was a short routing index of a single troop of IMPS, corresponding precisely with the dates on Cheswick’s page.
    Nothing too useful about a routing index . . .
    Except .
    There. The first and last stops. The coordinates of the IMPS . . .
    They were right here in Beacon.
    First and last stops .
    Home base .
    Could this really mean . . . ?
    Yes. It must .
    Acheron is at those coordinates .
    Logan’s destination . . . all along . . . has been just a few blocks from my house .
    She had to get outside. Now . To be on the front lines. To make her way to Acheron. She couldn’t do it from a computer. She couldn’t do it from her bedroom. So Erin folded the tablet and stuck it in her pocket. She opened her door and braced herself. She stepped into the hallway.
    The argument was louder than ever.
    “ Look . I don’t want this any more than you do. You think I like coming back here like this? In this way? You think I don’t know that this wasn’t part of our deal? Things change , all right? Stuff goes wrong. So can’t we at least try to make this work? For Erin’s sake? Please? I’m not asking for much here . . .”
    “ You’re not asking for much? I’m not asking for anything! I shouldn’t have to ask for the same basic respect I give to you! You’re the one who told me to give up everything I’ve been working toward my whole life, right at the time I was needed the most! This G.U. merge is happening now , Charles! I should be in Europe tonight! Not here , arguing with you —”
    Erin shivered, hearing her parents talk like that. She shook her head violently, as if to shake the words right out of her skull.
    Forget about them , she thought. You’re on a mission now. You’re finding Acheron. You’re finding Logan. So just forget about all this for now .
    “I’m going out,” Erin called. Her parents went silent for a second.
    “Okay, honey,” her mom said weakly.
    And Erin was gone.
    5
    Logan and Hailey had made it up the hill, all the way into City Center. They held hands so as not to get separated, but the crowd wasn’t the only thing contributing to Logan’s and Hailey’s sensory overload; the lights and sounds were overwhelming after so many years spent in the quiet town of Spokie.
    On the sides of each building, from the ground floor to as high as Logan could see, were advertisements—bright, flashing, skyscraper-sized screens, demanding that A.U. citizens buy the newest tablet or rollerstick or soyshake . . . compelling them to vote for so-and-so or such-and-such in the upcoming spring elections . . .
    And in the midst of it, hundred-foot-tall projections of Cylis walked from one skyscraper to another, superimposed on top of all of the other ads, each building coming together to make a citywide video screen just for him, so the chancellor could address everyone all at once, and speak “one-on-one” about the myriad advantages of the Global Union merger.
    Still other buildings displayed bar graphs showing which stocks on Barrier Street were rising and which were falling. And those buildings even seemed to have Markscans where they met the roads, so that anyone who wanted to could walk right up and buy or sell or trade stock as they watched the graphs shift in tenfoot increments overhead.
    Standing in the midst of it, Logan found himself longing to share this with Erin. It should have been their moment, really, but nothing had worked out as planned. And Logan was past believing it ever would.
    No substitute would replace her. Not ever, he knew.
    “It’s amazing,” Hailey said, pulling him back down to earth.
    “Almost too amazing,” Logan replied.
    Above them, a grid of streets and walkways five layers thick stretched up into the sky,