Storm (Swipe Series)

was New Chicago, far up into the distance, curving out and over the edge of the tabletop horizon.
    To her right, the European State just barely crept into view from beyond the edge of the earth, its North African Dark Landsthe first to appear, brown and cracked and all dried up. Far to the north, the shimmers of New London promised life across the ocean, while beyond even that, the atmosphere itself was ablaze with the light of Third Rome.
    Well, Cylis, Lily thought. Here I come . And just as she did, she felt the jerk of her shuttle against its latch on the cable. Two jets of compressed air shot out from below her, condensing and floating off into the black. The elevator cable receded, angling away as the moon and the stars and Earth all somersaulted outside her ship, disappearing below her feet. Lily’s stomach lurched into her throat as her shuttle drifted into orbit and began gliding back down toward the world below. A fire engulfed the ship as it reentered the atmosphere. And just like that, Lily was hurtling toward Earth, sailing like a meteor all the way across the sky to the world’s new global capital. To ground zero, the heart of Cylis’s great empire, Third Rome.
    2
    The day had already passed into night, and Erin lay on a makeshift medical bed, alone in an alcove beyond the storage shelves of the Sierra Science Center’s basement. Wires stuck out in every direction from her arms and legs and chest and head, pinning her down and making her feel more than a little bit like a cyborg in some lost, pre-Unity science fiction novel.
    She expected many days like this in the weeks to come. She hoped they wouldn’t be her last. The basement of the SSC was far too dark and lonely a place for that.
    Beyond the green glow of her medical equipment, the shelvesdown here were home to a variety of specimens and experimental waste—preserved giant squids, jars of bacteria, barrels of deadly chemicals, defunct prototype nanotech, skeletons of all kinds, insects on pins . . . Under normal circumstances, Erin would have found it fascinating. But in the spooky quiet of the night, trapped as she was against the rough sheets of her lumpy bed, it was hard to think of any of it as more than just some creepy, discarded side-show . . . with Erin Arbitor as the main event.
    And yet, from across the dark, dry, cool basement, Erin did find one small source of company and comfort—the echoes of her friends’ muffled argument bouncing down the stairwell from several floors above.
    “We need to get out of here ,” Hailey was telling Dr. Rhyne. “You can’t tell us in the same breath that DOME’s already called looking for us once and that we’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s too dangerous here. We have to leave now !”
    “And what, join your friend Peck downtown at the Sierra Library, wide out in the open? I don’t understand—where is it you want to go?” Arianna asked.
    “I want us to find the safest-looking ruin in Sierra, and I want us to hide out until DOME comes and does a thorough search of the place. Until that happens, we’re sitting ducks!”
    “You’re better off here,” Arianna insisted. “Sweeping the ruins is easy for DOME. But a couple of special ops shoving their way into my storage basement, when I don’t approve? After I’ve already told one of their agents that you’ve gone? Now that would be hard.” Even down here in the dark, it was easy for Erin to picture the smug expression on Dr. Rhyne’s face as she said it.
    But Hailey clearly wasn’t convinced. “You’re asking us to put an awful lot of faith in you and your mogul DOME colleagues.”
    “Well then, it’s a necessary risk. You can take your chances with me, or you can run away now and watch Erin slowly boil alive. The only option certain to fail is the latter.”
    “Do you even actually think you can help her?” Hailey asked. “I mean, really ?”
    The echoing voices stopped for a moment. Erin tried to imagine Arianna’s frown filling the silence. “I don’t know,” the doctor said finally. “But I would like to try.”
    “ Try .” Hailey laughed. “We didn’t come three thousand miles to watch you try . You were supposed to have a cure ready for us. What kind of person designs a bioweapon without making some sort of contingency to begin with?”
    “The contingency was the vaccine , you dimwit! I can’t help it that someone went and turned that vaccine against us!”
    And so the argument continued, though by