Storm (Swipe Series)

street-wide crack, catching and stopping all at once. In one continuous motion, the passenger side reared up, getting ahead of itself, flipping end over end at a staggering speed. Metal on concrete. Glass shattering. Gravity shifting. The world rolled hopelessly outside. A car full of breathless screams.
    They tumbled from the road.
    2
    In Beacon, the citywide protests had reached a stalemate.
    For weeks, Markless had marched, and chanted, and camped out on the streets. For weeks, they’d demanded rights, representation, respect, all spurred on by the truth the Dust had revealed about flunkees and Acheron and the kids who were swiped.
    DOME’s darkest secrets were in full view now, its Markless prison finally identified, its once-covert IMP troops forced to line the streets, make arrests, curb unrest by any means necessary . . .
    For years, the Markless in Beacon had stayed mostly underground. They’d lived below the surface, huddled into communities inside an abandoned nuclear fission reactor that rested below the city, coming up only to scrounge for food or catch a glimpse of daylight. Some of them had spoken up, sure; some of them had held signs, had shared thoughts with the Marked that passed by, or gave food, or dared to stop and stare. But never before had a Markless rocked the boat. Never before had any of them surfaced with the intention of challenging the system. For years, the Markless in Beacon had been silent.
    No one was silent anymore. For the first time, Markless were fighting. They were Dust. And they were not afraid.
    But for each huddle that made its way street side, for each Unmarked who yelled or blocked the road, a squadron of IMPS was lying in wait. And the IMPS were fighting back.
    From his quiet spot on the sidewalk hundreds of feet above, Blake leaned over, carefully considering the showdown below him. In Beacon, a five-tier system of streets connected most City Center skyscrapers at forty-floor intervals, and currently, Blakestood at the edge of Tier Two, peering over the railing at the ground level below.
    From here it looked like the top of an open box of crayons: dots of colors all pressed up against one another, each one a person, each one a Markless protester. Each one Dust.
    Surrounding them, completing the crayon-box likeness, were barricades—rigid right angles of makeshift hurdles and fences, put in place by IMP forces and guarded by the IMPS themselves.
    Blake sighed deeply, appreciating the brief reprieve from the noise and violence down below . . . and yet Blake was on no break. He wasn’t resting. He wasn’t relaxing. He was preparing. And he knew the chaos would come to him soon enough.
    In fact, he was counting on it.
    “This one’s filled with ketchup Meg swiped from the huddle, and this one here . . .” Tyler held a balloon in each hand, and he raised the right one now. “Well, I’m honestly not quite sure what’s in this one. Some sludge Rusty found in the gutter between Barrier Street and the power plant, I know that much. But beyond that . . . I really couldn’t tell ya. It’s green, I think.” Tyler frowned. “Sorta chartreuse-green.”
    “Chartreuse?” Jo stepped forward from behind Blake. “I wager a punch to the face that you have no idea what color chartreuse is.”
    “Sure I do. It’s the color of what’s in this balloon. You know, greeny sludge color.”
    “Look, will ya just drop the thing already so we can get on with this?”
    “I’m trying to decide which to drop first. I’d rather see the gutter sludge splash . . . but, see, I also kinda wanna save it.”
    “Tyler—” Jo motioned to grab the balloons herself, but Tyler ducked quickly out of the way.
    “Okay, okay—gutter sludge it is.”
    Tyler leaned over the second-tier railing, forty stories up, his whole torso hanging off the side, feet dangling in the air just above the sidewalk, balancing himself precariously over the ledge. He closed one eye for aim, his tongue sticking out just slightly to the side, like a master in full concentration.
    “Third IMP from the corner,” Tyler said. “The one with all those stupid extra badges. Don’t think we’ve hit his squad before.”
    “Me neither,” Blake said. “I say we go for it.”
    “Good game,” Tyler said. So he grinned wide, and he let go of the balloon.

    Blake, Tyler, Jo, Meg, Rusty, Shawn . . . these kids were the Dust. The original Dust—Peck’s Markless gang—before Peck left them all to head west. Blake,