Storm (Swipe Series)

time . The only reason DOME isn’t swarming this place already is because they think you’re in my custody.”
    Logan threw up his arms. “We are in your custody!”
    “Yes! I know! Terrific! And as long as DOME doesn’t forget that, they’ll take their sweet time getting here. Amazingly good at prioritizing, that department is. The more certain they are that I won’t let you get away, the farther you kids fall on their priority list. You do realize,” she added, a bit condescendingly, “that you four are not, at all times, their number one concern.”
    “So you will let us go, then?” Hailey asked.
    “Not a chance.”
    Logan looked around the room, confirming that his friends looked every bit as exasperated as he felt.
    “Arianna. Maybe, if you could just fill us in on your thinking here . . .”
    Arianna tugged at her shirt, its colors shifting and flowing and squishing inside the fabric. “Look. Here’s the deal. You’re in Sierra now. Just because DOME pays my bills does not mean that I agree with everything they do.” She grew more serious now, an abrupt change in tone. “In fact, right now, I’m not sure I’m on board with much of any of it.” She eyed them. “Why else would I be helping you? Why else would I have brought you out west?”
    “You didn’t bring us out west,” Erin objected wearily. “We came ourselves. I’ve been gunning for you for weeks.”
    Dr. Rhyne raised an eyebrow. “Yes, and why is that, hmm? Is it because your little hacker escapades turned up documents with my name attached? Is it because you—oh, I don’t know—caught me red-handed? My dear Erin,” she said gently, “if I’d not wanted you to find me—believe me on this—you’d not have found me.”
    “Well then, how’d you find us ?” Peck asked, still very much on edge. “Out in the Rockies. Middle of nowhere. That’s quite a lucky guess.”
    Arianna laughed again.
    Arianna was full of laughter.
    “Ah, Daniel, the Dust’s fearless leader. I welcome you humbly to the Sierra Science Center, home to the greatest scientists in the world, of every field. My husband traces SSC hacks like Erin’s before breakfast. He had her flagged the moment she poked her nose into my personal files last month, and we haven’t lost track of her since.” Arianna turned to Erin now, pleasantly. “We knew it was you in that car not because DOME’s drone alerted us—thoughthey would have had I asked, I assure you—but rather, because here in the SSC, we scientists hack drones just for the fun of it.”
    “You work for a department intent on capturing us,” Peck said. “You’re the engineer of a deadly biological superweapon. You’ve already told DOME we’re here. And now you’re asking us to just trust that it’s all part of some elaborate plan to help us?”
    Arianna eyed him. “How old are you, Daniel? Sixteen? Seventeen?”
    “I’m eighteen,” Peck said indignantly.
    “Eighteen. That’s lovely. In that case I’ve been working for Cylis since the year you were potty trained.”
    Peck blushed a little but didn’t respond.
    “Back then, the Mark, the Global Union, the very concept of the citizen’s Pledge itself was just a gleam in young Cylis’s eye. My work on Project Trumpet was purely theoretical. A challenge posed to me by the world’s greatest minds. I didn’t do it in order to kill Markless—Markless didn’t even exist yet. I did it because it was a new frontier of biomedical engineering, and because it was waiting to be done.”
    “Oh yeah?” Peck asked. “Is that how you justify it to yourself? Is that how you sleep at night?”
    “I don’t have to justify it,” Arianna said, suddenly as cold and hard as the stool she sat on. “Least of all to you.”
    A silence fell over the room.
    “But I am happy to talk with you,” Arianna said. “You came all the way here. Everyone knows it. And they were always going to, with or without my help. But not one of us—not me, not DOME, not the IMPS—not one of us has any clear idea why. So tell me. Tell me what it is you need from me. And I’ll tell you everything I know.”
    “Why would you do that?” Peck asked suspiciously.
    Arianna sneered at him. “Because I feel like it, ya piker.”
    And Peck narrowed his eyes right back. “Don’t do it,” he told the others. “She’s tricking us. Somehow it’s a trap.”
    “I’ve already told you it’s a trap! But that doesn’t mean I can’t help you with enough time left