Storm (Swipe Series)

Shawn out the apartment’s main door.
    In the hallway, IMPS had already begun streaming in through the main elevator to the Dust’s right, arms drawn and shouting commands. But the stairwell on Shawn’s left looked open, its door left slightly ajar by the Sweeneys, who’d snuck out just moments before.
    “This way!” Shawn yelled, as behind them, IMPS smashed in through the apartment windows one by one.
    The boys were one hundred and thirty stories up. “There’s no way we’ll get all the way down,” Blake said. “They’ll corner us before we’ve even made it halfway.”
    “We don’t have to make it halfway,” Shawn said. “All we have to do is lose them.”
    So Blake and Tyler followed as Shawn ducked almost immediately back out of the emergency stairwell, and into the apartment building’s 127th floor hallway. Sure enough, for the moment, this floor was empty. The coast was clear.
    “From here, we might be able to make it onto an empty elevator before the IMPS figure out which floor we’re on,” Blake said, and the three of them ran full sprint toward the elevator doors at the hallway’s end.
    Tyler hit the down button and laughed at the excruciating waitthat followed. Blake tapped his foot nervously. Shawn had his head in his hands.
    Finally, the doors slid open, an elevator waiting for them. They dashed inside without looking twice.
    Except the elevator wasn’t empty. Tucked in the corner and hidden from the hallway, a man was waiting inside. He was smiling.
    “It was a good run, boys,” Mr. Arbitor said after the doors had closed behind them. “But the show’s over now.”
    5
    Shawn was confused. “Who is this guy?” he whispered, hands magnecuffed behind his back. He was still reeling from the speed and efficiency with which Mr. Arbitor had subdued and cuffed all three boys. He’d been aided by the element of surprise, no doubt, but even so, Shawn could hardly believe it—the scuffle was over practically before it’d begun.
    “Erin’s dad,” Blake told him. “From DOME. He’s been after us for months.”
    Mr. Arbitor looked down at the boys as the elevator descended smoothly, beeping with each passing floor.
    “Hey, Mr. Arbitor, I’m not so sure this magnecuff’s good for my shoulder,” Tyler said, still laughing a little at the blood seeping through his shirt. “The way it’s pulling my arms back? I don’t know if you know this, but I was shot, like, two minutes ago. With a gun.”
    “You weren’t shot,” Shawn said. “Quit being such a baby—the bullet barely grazed you.”
    “It grazed me. That counts ,” Tyler said. “Admit it. Tyler one, Blake and Shawn zero.”
    Mr. Arbitor watched the boys argue, his mouth slack, momentarily dumbfounded.
    “I’m winning,” Tyler said to him. “Mr. Arbitor, tell Shawn I’m winning.”
    But the ride was over. The elevator stopped. And Mr. Arbitor pulled the Dust out and through the building’s side, second-tier exit.
    “Where’re all the IMPS?” Tyler asked, as though he were just casually curious about it.
    “I’m not with the IMPS,” Mr. Arbitor said. “Today, I’m not even with DOME.”
    “Yeah, well, either way, we’re headed to Acheron,” Blake said, resigned. “Whether we stop at DOME’s headquarters first or not makes very little difference to me.”
    Mr. Arbitor dragged the three boys down the sidewalk tier away from the crowds and the Moderators still flooding the building. “We aren’t going to DOME,” he said quietly.
    Shawn looked at him, suddenly frightened. “Then where are we going?”
    Just then, Joanne rounded the corner, Meg and Rusty trailing close behind her.
    “You see Eddie anywhere among the troops?” Tyler asked Meg.
    But Meg shook her head, frowning.
    Tyler hadn’t been fazed by the shooting. He didn’t even care that Mr. Arbitor had caught him. But hearing Meg’s news, Tyler finally hung his head, and the laughter inside him died out.
    He’d pulled so many IMPS out of their underground stations. He’d brought so many of them right to within Meg’s field of view from across the street. For Eddie not to be among that kind of crowd, not anywhere . . . that was one defeat Tyler hadn’t been counting on. He was out of ideas now. Eddie was gone.
    But there wasn’t much time to mourn. Joanne got one good look at Mr. Arbitor holding him and Shawn and Blake like that, and she prepared the lot of them for a fight.
    “Rusty,” she said. “Flank ’em.” And she reached