Storm (Swipe Series)

was more or less everything that Chancellor Cylis was not. Where Cylis was young and handsome, Lamson was old and decrepit. Where Cylis was strong and charismatic, Lamson was weak and disagreeable. Where Cylis was confident and empathetic, Lamson was nervous and dismissive.
    Cylis was a politician, fresh and eager and ready to lead. Lamson was a general, war-battered, tired, and quickly losing patience for the situations that surrounded him.
    “You can speak, you know,” he said one morning to Lily when she handed him his daily news screen. Lily had nodded when he said so, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder, What would be the point?
    The one thing Lily hadn’t heard about was anything regarding Lahoma. No talk of the drought, no talk of the mill being offline, no talk of the effort to get it running again by April 1, now just five weeks away . . . as far as Lamson’s office was concerned, Lahoma would take care of itself. The country needn’t worry about them , thank-you-very-much.
    But all that changed this morning, when Lily went to deliver Lamson his messages.
    Mostly, it was just the standard stuff. Updates on the movement of a variety of bills and proposals that had reached or would soon reach the Parliament floor, communications with Cylis and with the European branch of the new Global Union, financial news from Barrier Street (almost always bad these days) . . .
    But then, too, there were the personal messages. Thank you letters from Marked students for visits the general had made to their schools, requests from hospital patients for a dying-wish visit . . .that sort of thing. And finally, there was this one. Addressed personally. From a certain recipient of this past year’s General’s Award for Marked Excellence, Promise, and the American Dream.
    Protocol stated, of course, that Lily not open any messages of the first sort—those regarding politics or national security or sensitive matters of any kind.
    But the personal messages—the standard fan-mail type stuff—well, now that was at Lily’s discretion. Once in a while, if something seemed particularly heart wrenching or funny or interesting or inspiring, she might slip it in with the rest of the important stuff and pass it along its way. But for the most part, the general couldn’t be bothered (or expected, he insisted) to read every single message that came his way. Someone had to respond to them, but it sure wasn’t going to be him, and so this was a task that most commonly fell to Lily.
    A message from a General’s Award recipient sounded very much like standard thank-you fare, so Lily opened it without giving it a second thought. She even had the standard response already planned out, regardless of what the note actually said.
    Except this message, it turned out, was no ordinary piece of fan mail. This was no “Thank you for the award.” This was no “I want to grow up to be you one day.”
    Instead, this message was exactly what Lily had been waiting all these weeks to find.
    2
    For Tyler, it was a dream come true. It had certainly taken long enough for them to coordinate everything with Arianna out west,but finally, today, the plan was in place. The Dust was making its way into Beacon City’s top secret DOME headquarters. And they had explicit orders to let loose.
    Back in the early stages of planning, of course, the team realized that Mr. Arbitor himself couldn’t be the one to look within DOME for Trumpet’s new activation protein. Having been Marked and vaccinated himself, to come in contact with the stuff even just briefly enough to get a sample would put him at a tremendous risk.
    But not so with the Markless Dust.
    It took a few days for Mr. Arbitor to get his hands on all the materials and cloth Detection Swabs they’d need to take their protein samples, and another few days on top of that for Arianna to explain properly how to use them. But the real holdup was caution. It had been an excruciating two weeks before Mr. Arbitor finally found the right opportunity for an office break-in—the window between busy work hours and the souped-up automated surveillance of off-hours was short to begin with, and on most days, some office event or meeting or crisis closed the gap altogether. But the time was finally upon them. The perfect window had opened. And the Dust was called quickly into action.
    So while Mr. Arbitor distracted Head Agent Tate in her office down the hall, Tyler, Joanne, Blake, and Shawn were