Sneak (Swipe Series)

reactor, they had to crawl, shimmying on their stomachs, pressed against a humming coil on one side and a concrete wall on the other.
    They could not have turned around if they wanted to.
    There was not enough room for that.

    The tunnel into which Logan and the others had entered eventually branched off into an even narrower tube, with an even lower ceiling, so small that they had to keep their heads turned sideways just to fit. Logan tried hard to hold back the encroaching claustrophobia, but there were moments when he felt certain that he’d end up stuck in this tunnel forever, blocked in by the unimaginable weight of the skyscrapers above them.
    He pushed on all the same. One inch at a time. One elbow in front of the next.
    Eventually, the tube led out to an air duct that ended about six feet off the ground, in a corner of a large vestibule, which Logan could see through the duct’s grated metal cover.
    “How’s it look?” Peck whispered. “What’s in there?”
    Logan hated being in the confined space of the air duct. But the thought of venturing out into the space he saw before him now . . . that was much worse.
    “It’s the holding room, all right,” Logan said.
    Peck took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Logan and I descend. Jo and Eddie, you know what to do in the holding room.”
    But Logan shook his head. “No. Change of plans. Only I descend.”
    “Logan, we talked about this. I need to be a part of—”
    “A part of Lily’s rescue— I know ,” Logan replied. “But, Peck, I think someone needs to stay in this vent—”
    “Absolutely n—”
    “ I think someone needs to stay in this vent ,” Logan repeated, “because I’m looking at the number of guards in there. And I think there’s a good chance we’re going to need two tries at this.”
    Peck frowned, though Logan couldn’t see it. “Two tries? Logan . . .”
    “Peck. Listen to me. I’m not liking these odds.”
    11
    Eventually Peck agreed to wait behind in the air duct while Jo and Eddie prepared their part and Logan made the first attempt to sneak into Acheron.
    Logan removed the grate carefully, trying not to make any noise or draw any attention to his entrance. His goal was to slip undetected into the newest batch of arriving flunkees and make sure that no one got any bright ideas about that air duct.
    When Logan finally did jump down into the vestibule and clamp on his own sets of magnecuffs—one for his wrists, one for his ankles—he decided he liked the tunnels better, claustrophobia and all.
    The holding room was as gray and filthy and neglected as one might expect a prison holding room to be. Flies swarmed around in the air and followed flunkees wherever they went, and as everyone’s hands and feet were bound, there was nothing anyone could do to swat them away.
    Worse than the flies, though, were the guards. The “Moderators.” The IMPS. They were everywhere, dozens of them, all taking shifts herding the Markless from a set of metal sliding doors to the main sign-in desk, and beyond that, to the elevator at the room’s end. Once there, it seemed certain there was no coming back.
    That, of course, would be Jo and Eddie’s job to fix.
    Logan could see the mass of newest arrivals put into a line as they slowly approached the sign-in desk, where a different type of guard stood by, labeled not as a “Moderator,” but as a “Coordinator.”
    Logan figured this must be a higher-ranked individual. He stood counting heads as the new arrivals shuffled past the desk and into the elevator behind it.
    There was something odd about that Coordinator, though, along with the Moderators who manned the room. Something Logan had never seen before.
    The men were Marked. But not on their hands.
    Each one of them was Marked on his face.
    When Logan stepped toward the sign-in desk, one of the many Moderators stepped sharply in front of him.
    “Don’t recognize this one,” he said to the Coordinator. “Didn’t see him come in with the others.”
    Logan felt his heart speed up. He was sure he would faint.
    Stay strong , Logan told himself. This is for Lily .
    For a long, agonizing moment, the Coordinator leaned in and peered at Logan. He raised an eyebrow. He eyed the magnecuffs. Then he studied Logan’s face again. “Must be some mistake,” the Coordinator said. “This one goes to level one. Let him through.”
    It worked.
    He couldn’t believe it worked!
    As Logan passed the sign-in desk, his magnecuffs