Storm (Swipe Series)

me how a permadrought, on balance, is the best thing for the American State. Tell me that, and I’ll let this whole thing go. But until then, what you’re doing is keeping me up at night! I can’t live with it! I just can’t!”
    “Sometimes we do things that are hard to live with, Connor. Sometimes that’s life.”
    “Because Lamson wants it to be?”
    “Because we’re at war, ” Father said. “All right? Because the American State is at war.”
    Silence fell over the dinner table.
    Connor leaned forward. “We’re a Global Union , Father. There’s only one country left. How are we at war?”
    “Civil war,” Mother said, speaking up.
    But Connor still didn’t understand. “ Civil war? Civil war is exactly the thing that this Mark was designed to prevent!”
    “Yes,” Father said. “And yet here we are. Fighting for our side.”
    “Then how come no one’s talking about it?”
    Father shrugged. “Some are.”
    “Well . . . ,” Connor said, the wheels turning quickly in his brain. “If that’s the case, then why not just tell everybody about what you’re doing? Why not lay it all out for people, so they can at least understand what’s happening, in the context of what you just told me?”
    “Because, first of all,” Mother said, “what we’re doing is still technically treason. Lahoma’s weather mill is America’s only, and DOME’s environmental division, as a matter of national security, runs it. Any attack or conspiracy against it is an act of terrorism.”
    Connor’s head spun just thinking about it.
    “What Lamson has asked of us . . . it wasn’t an order,” Father said. “It was a request—far outside the bounds of DOME. And as far as anyone is supposed to know, it is a request that was never made.
    “Lamson was here last September to honor you, Connor. That is the only story that anyone besides us can ever know. Even you weren’t supposed to know the truth. The general has given us no official authority to do what we’re doing, and he’s made no promise that he will pardon us should we ever be caught.”
    “Well then, watch out,” Connor said. “Because whatever computer virus it is that you’re feeding that place, whatever wire itis that you’ve been pulling out here and there over these last six months . . . the jig is very nearly up.”
    “Okay,” Father said. “Duly noted. Thanks.” He seemed to mean it.
    And Mother cleared the table.
    No one was hungry enough to finish the meal.
    4
    Back at the Sierra Science Center, Logan, Erin, Hailey, and Peck all sat around a sterile aluminum table, with its sterile aluminum floor and the sterile blue tarp wall panels surrounding it. In strange contrast to this was Dr. Arianna Rhyne herself, head scientist of the SSC, balanced on a high stool off to the side, her tie-dye shirt aswirl and her long, thick dreadlocks falling heavy against her fidgeting hands.
    “So what’s the plan?” Hailey asked aggressively. “You gonna turn us in? Tell DOME you have us?” She looked ready for a fight.
    Dr. Rhyne only smiled. “Hailey, dear, you underestimate me! I told DOME I had you hours ago, the moment Sam left to pick you kids up.”
    A wave of shock washed through the room. Everyone but Erin looked ready to run, and even she tried to look ready, fever shakes aside.
    But now the doctor laughed, a chuckle at first, and more heartily as everyone else grew increasingly nervous. “Oh, calm down already. You eastern types—always so on edge! It’s not healthy at such a young age.”
    “So you haven’t alerted DOME?” Logan asked.
    “No, I most certainly have!”
    Logan and Peck stood defensively at the table, readying themselves for a showdown.
    “How else could I have saved you from that corner you backed yourselves into? Do you think DOME’s stupid? Do you think they’re disorganized? Because they are neither of those things. I assure you, the moment they traced that Markscan of yours, someone over there would have figured you were coming to see me.” She shrugged. “The public may not know that you’ve found out about Project Trumpet—but DOME’s head agents sure do.”
    “Just let us go,” Hailey pleaded, adapting rapidly to this new development. “Just let us go. Say we put up a fight. Say . . . say we outnumbered you. We’ll just leave and never come back. We can forget this whole thing!”
    But Dr. Rhyne just laughed again. Harder this time. “Listen. Children. How else can I put this? I’m buying us