Storm (Swipe Series)

team had made a critical mistake, and they knew it.
    About twenty miles back, along the first patch of run-down outskirts near Sierra’s eastern city limits, along the forgotten road that decrepit signs called “Highway 66,” Daniel Peck, Hailey Phoenix, Logan Langly, and Erin Arbitor decided to make an emergency stop. Erin’s fever had gotten worse, her shivering violent and her words increasingly delirious. Everyone knew she needed medicine—anything to lower her temperature, even if only for a day or two. Anything to buy her some time.
    So the team decided to take the risk.
    “They’ll know she was here the second we buy this thing,” Peck warned as Hailey stepped toward the corner store counterwith a handful of nanomeds. “They’ll trace her scan instantly. You know they’ve been watching for it.”
    Erin nodded in detached agreement. She was standing, but barely, and only because Logan held her up. He had his arm around her back, bouncing it now a few times, trying for a better hold. “We’ll be miles away by the time they get here,” he said. “And anyway, there’s no way around it.” If they wanted the goods, they needed Erin’s Mark, simple as that. So Logan snapped his fingers in front of Erin’s eyes. “Look alive, Erin. This part’s all you.”
    And the four of them walked to the counter.
    “Evening,” said the store clerk. “Find everything all right?”
    “Just fine,” Hailey said, not looking at the man. She handed him the nanomeds and held her breath while he scanned them under the counter’s Markscan.
    “Your friend’s not lookin’ too good.” The clerk nodded at Erin.
    “She’ll be all right,” Logan said, propping her head up with his own. He grabbed Erin’s hand and waved her Marked wrist under that same scanner. It beeped and flashed green. “Just fighting down a fever. These cold winter months and all, you know . . .”
    “You making her pay for those meds herself?” the clerk asked, scolding him a bit.
    “She insists,” Logan said, but he quickly shoved his own Unmarked wrist into a deep pants pocket. And Peck and Hailey did the same.
    “Well . . . bed rest,” the clerk instructed. “Plenty of water.” Then he pointed to the nanomeds. “And one of these pills twice a day. They won’t cure anything, but they should keep the fever down.”
    Erin nodded distantly. Logan readjusted his hold on her. And the group hustled out without another word to anyone.
    “We’ve sealed our fate,” Peck said. “They have us now.” He put the car in gear and peeled out before the store clerk could notice that these three Markless teens and their dying Marked friend had somehow gotten their hands on the last combustion vehicle in the entire Global Union.
    Logan shook his head. “We’re out. We’re safe. That drew less attention than a robbery.”
    “A robbery’s anonymous,” Hailey said. “Markscans are not.”
    “No stealing,” Logan said. He opened Erin’s mouth and gave her two nanomed pills at once. She didn’t protest. “She needed this. We had no choice. We’ll deal with the next crisis when it hits us.”
    And Logan was right, Hailey knew. The truth was, they didn’t have a choice. The truth was that they’d made their choice already, when each of them—Peck, Hailey, Logan—refused the Mark on each of their thirteenth birthdays, refused citizenship, refused to Pledge allegiance to General Lamson and Chancellor Cylis. They knew then what the consequences would be. They knew then that they’d never have rights. That they’d never in their lives be able to buy or sell anything, hold a job, vote, own a house, sign a contract, see a doctor, finish their education, start a family. . . . Those quaint hopes dried up the moment the world broke into its Total War; the moment it realized that Unity was necessary, that fractured cultures and incompatible views could never keep the peace. The kids knew all of this at the time.
    But each of them knew something else too. That the Pledge was a trap. Much more than a ceremony of citizenship, it was a system designed to weed out those who didn’t fit in. Flunkees were rare, maybe one in ten thousand—few enough that no one raised a fuss. DOME let families believe that their children were dead, victims of infrequent and unavoidable complications in the Markingprocedure—an allergic reaction, an infection, or an unfortunate error, perhaps.
    But this was not the truth. The truth was that once identified,