Storm (Swipe Series)

you! Just as we did the first time. Just as we’ll do every time. As many times as it takes for Revision to stick. Do you understand me, Eddie?”
    Eddie looked into Lily’s eyes with open terror.
    “I very much can do this,” the Advocate told him. “And you very much will obey.”
    Eddie pointed to his forehead with a single, shaking finger. “But I Pledged. I’m Marked. I did this already. I’ve already Pledged!”
    Lily shook her head. “A Pledge is not a promise, Moderator Blackall. It’s a way of life. And you backslid. This is what happens when you backslide.”
    Eddie was very serious now. Precisely as serious as the situation demanded.
    “Advocate. Advocate, it’s me. Eddie. Your brother’s friend. We came here to rescue you, back in December. It wasn’t a ‘break-in.’ It was a rescue mission. I . . . I risked everything to rescue you. Your name is Lily Langly. You’re a good person. You may not remember it. But I know that you are. And you don’t have to do this!”
    Lily showed no sign of hearing him. Instead, she pushed Eddie down onto an open desk, and as he spoke, she slipped the BCI helmet over his head and face. The brain-computer interface. The total immersion torture. It would last as long as it needed to last. It would last until Eddie was broken. Until he recognized the truth. That his was a great and powerful country, led by great and powerful men. And that defending this country was a very serious honor, indeed.
    His final words were muffled. “. . . have to do this!” barely even made it out of the helmet.
    “On Level Nine your punishment was the frozen lake,” Lily said, latching the helmet’s lock. “But Level Six is fire.” She hesitated. Then quickly, sadly, under her breath, she added, “Be grateful. Trust me. Level Six isn’t quite as bad.” She closed her eyes when she turned the thing on.
    She squeezed them tighter. Even the thick, metal helmet wasn’t enough to snuff out Eddie’s screams.
    4
    DOME’s Beacon headquarters was not the architectural marvel that New Chicago’s Umbrella was out west. There, it was a glass-floored disk atop a fifty-story spire, totally unique and imposing. Here, it was an office building, just the middle twenty floors of your average, pass-right-by-it skyscraper. Below it were a couple of poorly managed nonprofit organizations. Above it were the annex offices of a small European bank.
    In Beacon, the Department of Marked Emergencies preferred to keep a low profile; its agents hid in plain sight. And it was in this way that the headquarters avoided the worst of the Markless protest’s wrath, for the Markless simply didn’t know where to aim.
    Not all of the offices inside Beacon’s DOME headquarters were as dreary as the building’s outside might have suggested, of course—some had nice windows, others good light and plenty of space. But Charles Arbitor’s was practically a closet.
    Ever since he’d been reassigned to Beacon after the botched raid he led against the Dust back on a Midwestern farm in December, the perks of Mr. Arbitor’s job had rapidly dried up. No longer did Mr. Arbitor have any agents under his command. No longer did his day-to-day activities include detective work, or even fieldwork. These days, Mr. Arbitor shuffled documents on a lowres, hand-me-down tablescreen, slogging through one menial task after another and taking orders from office men who just this past fall would have begged to serve under his command.
    And then a month ago the news arrived of Erin Arbitor’s treasonous crimes.
    Mr. Arbitor wasn’t fired. But the menial tasks got much, much worse.
    For his part, Charles Arbitor never complained. He knew precisely what kind of thin ice he was on, and the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself as he secretly did everything he could to throw DOME off Erin’s trail. But last night, when the word came around about DOME’s current lead on Erin’s whereabouts out west near Sierra, Mr. Arbitor realized he couldn’t keep quiet anymore. Presently, with his tie fixed and his breath held and his hair brushed carefully back, he was walking to DOME’s Beacon headquarters main office. And he was knocking on the door.
    “Come in,” said the woman through the frosted glass.
    Charles Arbitor turned the knob slowly. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am.”
    “It’s no trouble, Charles. What can I do for you?”
    Mr. Arbitor cleared his throat and took a step toward the desk.