Sneak (Swipe Series)

for miles in all directions. An ocean on one side, colliding gracefully with the bridges and skyscrapers of the Water District; a vast urban sprawl on the other, sloping down past City Center, to the outer districts that lay with their shorter buildings all the way to the horizon. Little dots of light twinkled in the distance, and Hailey imagined each one as a window into a cozy home with a happy family.
    “Maybe it isn’t in City Center after all,” Hailey said. “Maybe it’s out in the lower districts, off the hill.”
    But Logan shook his head. “With all the stories we’ve heard? Of all those different types of punishments? Enormous tar pits? Huge rooms to walk around in, blind? No way this place is small enough not to be a skyscraper. And the skyscrapers are all on the hill.”
    “But we’ve checked these buildings . . .”
    “We haven’t checked all of them.”
    “Logan, you can’t hide a skyscraper. They’re tall . Face it: if a place as big as Acheron were on this hill, people would know about it. We could see it. It would have bars on it, fences around it, guards . . . I mean, you’re telling me Beacon houses the highestsecurity prison in the world, and we can’t find even one building with barred entrances or more than a couple sleepy guards? How would that even work? They just ask all their prisoners really nicely that it sure would be great if they didn’t sneak out?”
    “I don’t know,” Logan said. “If I knew, we’d have found it by now.”
    “Look, whatever,” Hailey said. She slumped down against the railing of the dizzyingly high sidewalk and pulled her foxhole radio out from her jacket pocket. “Wanna listen with me?”
    “Sure,” Logan said. He sat down too, taking one of the earphones from her. They sat close, shoulder to shoulder, listening in.
    “Good evening to all you Markless out there in the greater Beacon area. This is Dane-o-rino, comin’ to you live at thirty-nine hundred kilohertz. The only station bringing you chart-topper after chart-topper of the Boxing Gloves’ greatest hits—performed by yours truly, raw and unplugged.”
    “He is such a dork,” Hailey said.
    “Actually . . .” Dane cleared his throat. “We’re the only station bringing you anything at all. So don’t go away—because you can’t!” He laughed. “Anyway, this next song’s called ‘Comet,’ and it goes out to a special girl whose mom just wanted me to say she’s thinking of you . . . and she hopes you’re doing all right. Wherever you are.”
    And then, between bouts of static over those weak, shortwave airwaves, Dane strummed a few chords on Tabitha’s guitar. And he began to sing.
    Logan chuckled, listening to it. And he felt Hailey’s shoulder moving up and down, too, so he looked over at her to laugh about it. Except Hailey wasn’t laughing.
    She was crying.
    “Hey,” Logan said. “Hey—it’s okay. It’s all right. Really.”
    “It isn’t all right,” Hailey said. “We’re lost in a city with no one to help us. We have no idea how to find what we’re looking for. I’ve given up my family, my school, my friends. . . . Logan. What were we thinking?”
    Dane’s strumming played on in the earphones. He paused to perform a griptone solo.
    “Let me read you something,” Logan said. He pulled out of his pocket the Bible Bridget had given him back at the underpass, which seemed like a lifetime ago now. “I’ve been reading this,” he said. “A friend told me it was one of the more dangerous ones to keep on me, so . . . I figured there must be some good stuff in it.” He smiled.
    “What’s it about?” Hailey asked.
    “I’m not sure yet. Everything, it seems. But listen to this, from a chapter called Ecclesiastes.” Logan read from it now. “Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it. . . . Wisdom makes one wise person more powerful than ten rulers in a city.” Logan laid the book on his lap. “You and I? We’re broke. We certainly don’t have shelter. But Peck’s told us all along—what we’re really after out here is knowledge. It’s not supposed to be a quick fix. It’s supposed to be something we have to work for.
    “You wanna know why I think this book was banned? Because it’s filled with stories of people who took the hard path. People who risked everything to fight for what they knew was right. People who died for what they believed in. Just like Peck is