Storm (Swipe Series)

computer racks, left, right, straight, left . . . toward the source of the smoke and into the thickening haze.
    “These hard drives are all off-line,” Connor said to Mr. Larkin. Their lights were off. Nothing blinked; nothing hummed. By now the air was black and heavy with the smell of cordite.
    “What . . . what happened here?” Connor asked, though some screaming, terrified part of him already knew the answer.
    At the center of the supercomputer’s maze was a crater. The floor was damaged and charred black. The computer racks surrounding it were blown out and knocked down, lying against the denatured concrete like dominos.
    “Bomb blast,” Mr. Larkin said simply. “Crude. Homemade. Hasty. That’s what you’re looking at, Connor, in literal terms.
    “And yet that doesn’t really describe it, does it, Connor?”
    Connor shook his head.
    “No. I’d have to agree. Because I’m afraid that what you’re actually seeing, Connor—what this really is—is the aftermath of a successful conspiracy against our weather mill. Against the very stability of our American State.” Mr. Larkin frowned. “A full-fledged terrorist attack. A suicide bombing. This weather mill is now permanently off-line.” He led Connor through the dense, dusty air and across the crater of the bomb blast. “I arrived too late to stop them, Connor. I tried . . . I tried to negotiate. I’m sorry. I failed.”
    And that’s when Connor made it to the other side of the smoke.
    His parents were there, his father’s thumb still pressed against the trigger of the detonator. They rested slumped against the farthest of the blown-out computer racks, together, determined, bloody, and dead.

FOUR
    FORECAST
    1
    A SILVER LINE SLICED LILY’S SKY RIGHT down the middle. She squinted, her eyes following its path all the way out, but it stretched farther—much farther—than she could see: a cable that thinned to a pencil mark against the blue, and then, beyond that, to a razor’s edge . . . until it was nothing at all, disappearing completely into the black.
    Lily Langly was on an elevator to the stars.
    “Few years ago we could’ve sent you to Europe in a jet plane from Acheron,” Cheswick had told her, back on the sonicboat that had taken her all the way to the equator. “But oil’s too precious these days, even for official IMP business, and fission planes are much too glaring a target now that these Markless are feeling rebellious. Don’t worry about any of that, though.” Cheswick laughed. “I hear space gliding’s more fun, anyway.”
    And so the two of them docked at the base of Chancellor Cylis’s personal space elevator—which was nothing more than an anchor, really, for a carbon-fiber tether that stretched out twenty-two thousand miles above Earth—and from there Cheswick shuffled Lily alone into that small, winged elevator shuttle, strapping her tightly into its harness. “Last stop on this thing’s thegeosynchronous space station,” he said. “But you won’t be going all the way there. End of the line for you is the thermosphere, only about sixty miles up.”
    “Only,” Lily said. She hadn’t even known there was a geosynchronous space station.
    “From there you’ll detach automatically, and your shuttle will glide down to Europe from space—like riding a paper airplane tossed from the world’s highest cliff! No energy required. A straight shot, all automatically navigated. It’ll be just a little under an hour of gliding. Fast!” Cheswick assured her. “You’ll be there before breakfast.”
    “Okay,” Lily said as the air lock closed down tightly around her. “Still no idea why the chancellor wants to see me?”
    Cheswick shrugged from behind the shuttle’s glass. And just like that, Lily’s shuttle began to ascend.
    Lily thought now of sleeping, tired as she was, while the elevator ride was still smooth. She didn’t imagine the glide down would be quite as relaxing. But her eyes just wouldn’t close. How could they, with a view like this?
    Out the portholes to her sides, she now could see Earth’s horizon below, already curving gently off at its ends. To her left was the American State, its Rocky Mountains just bumps in the distance, its whole continent reduced to a little brown place mat on the table of blue seas. At its western side was Sierra, dotting the coast with its sparkling lights. At its eastern side was Beacon, a blinding wash of glow even brighter than the moon above. And between them