Storm (Swipe Series)

flunkees were simply removed , thrown into the secret prison known only as “Acheron,” where they were converted, brain-washed, crafted into soldiers . . . into the International Moderators of Peace, the IMPS, hidden enforcers of the Mark system.
    Under this program, the rest of the world was free to be Unified. Protected by the very peers who otherwise might one day have betrayed them.
    Logan, Peck, Hailey . . . they knew this because Logan’s sister, Lily, had Pledged herself . . . and had never returned. They knew this because Peck spent the next five years piecing together what might have happened, had even warned Logan that it might happen to him next.
    Peck was right. But Logan escaped.
    And with all his worst fears finally confirmed, Logan had gone on to break into Acheron, had seen it with his own eyes, and had managed to break back out.
    It wasn’t safe for him in Beacon City any longer. It wasn’t safe for any of them.
    Peck, Hailey, and their friends known only as “the Dust” had used Logan as a symbol—as a martyr, willing to die in his fight against DOME. And among Markless everywhere, that symbol took hold. The news spread countrywide, through renegade radio stations and secret airwaves, and the Dust spread right along with it. The Markless were banding together. They rose up; they fought back. They brought the IMPS out of hiding. And Logan became a hero.
    Erin, until that time, was as loyal to DOME as anyone,Marked and diligent and proud of it. Her father worked for DOME, after all, was an operative for them, and until recently he and the Department had given Erin no reason to doubt their intentions. But then last month she discovered Project Trumpet . . . and everything in her world changed forever.
    Erin now lay on the floor of the group’s cramped car, contorted and barely conscious. The drone plane behind them encroached.
    Peck pushed the pedal harder, gliding dangerously across the icy, broken road, and Logan said, “It hasn’t shot us yet. It could have by now. It’s close enough.”
    “DOME’s not trying to kill us,” Peck said, gripping the wheel with white-knuckle force. “They’re trying to track us.”
    “Not very subtle about it,” Hailey said. The plane blinked menacingly as it lowered to car level and followed maybe a hundred feet behind.
    “They don’t have to be. We’re cornered.”
    Logan looked out over the wide-open land and the Rocky Mountains in the distance. It was a funny word, cornered , spoken in the middle of so much empty space.
    “How could DOME even know we’re the ones in here?” Logan asked. “They can’t scan Erin’s Mark from that distance, can they? Even if they’ve already traced her to the store, as far as this car goes, they’d only be guessing . . .”
    Peck laughed. “Logan, they know Erin was with us in Beacon less than a week ago. And now they have her Markscan on file in a store two thousand miles away, without a single logged magnetrain ticket in between. As far as we know, this is the only private car driving on any road between here and Europe. What other conclusion could they reasonably come to? Of course we’re in this car.”
    “So how do we hide?” Hailey asked, very nervously now. “We can’t outdrive it.”
    Already, Logan was hunched over, grabbing at Erin’s shoulders and sliding her up into the backseat. She groaned once, and her head lolled to the side. He buckled the seat belt around her. “We can try.”
    Hailey turned to Peck uncertainly. “Hey,” she said. “Guys, seriously—”
    Peck shook his head. He sighed. “Hold on,” he said, and he pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
    In their headlights, the broken road cast shadows on itself long into the distance. Its potholes, jutting concrete, and black, wintry ice rushed in fragments and patches toward the run-down car. Peck weaved fast between frosty cracks and scattered debris, and the drone shrunk smaller in the window behind them. For miles, it seemed they were succeeding. But Peck couldn’t avoid the road’s obstacles forever. Coming off a tight swerve, their back right wheel caught an old blown-out tire, and Hailey yelled, “Hold on!” as the whole car lurched forward with a panicked force.
    It spun faster than it could turn. Its back wheels came up along-side its front. The driver’s side plowed ahead with an ear-piercing squeal of its tires, the left wheels leading the charge against an unforgiving road, front and back together hitting a