Storm (Swipe Series)

already. That meant the punishment was over, right on schedule. These helmets only ever unlatched once their Revisions were complete.
    It was the first time since his initial Pledge that Lily hadn’t needed to coax him out of it. And that meant one of two things: either these BCI stints were wearing Eddie down . . . or Eddie was getting better at fooling them.
    “Are you with us, Moderator Blackall? Have you returned?” Lily sat halfway on Eddie’s desk, looking down at him sympathetically.
    Eddie opened his eyes, still groggy from his time in the interface.
    “How much do you remember?” Lily asked. “How much can you recall of the world before your Pledge?”
    Eddie frowned. “All of it, I should think.”
    So far so good. Step one of a successful Revision was the illusion of a complete memory bank.
    “Do you remember a Markless named Peck? Do you remember his friends in the Dust?”
    “Of course I do,” Eddie said.
    Lily held her breath. It was the moment of truth.
    And Eddie continued, “That’s the miser who kidnapped me two years ago. Kept me hostage with all his skinflint friends, used me to lure even more innocent kids into his crime ring as he flouted laws, broke rules, slandered DOME and Lamson and the great Global Union, and even as they rejected Cylis, again and again, along with all of Cylis’s great ideals. Yes,” Eddie said. “I remember Peck and his Dust all too well.”
    Lily nodded. This was exactly as it should be. Time in Revision didn’t serve to wipe memories; it served to mold them. To, quite literally, revise them into a narrative that fit with the Moderator’s new allegiance to the great Global Union. For the moment, it appeared as though Moderator Eddie Blackall was fit for service.
    “Then you’re ready to resume training,” Lily said, and she put Eddie’s taser rifle back in his hands.
    Eddie looked at it, feeling its weight. Then he glanced back up at Lily. He tried to look very serious. But a smile cracked a thin line across his face.
    “Something funny, Moderator?”
    And now Eddie couldn’t help himself. The second she suggested it, he burst into hysterical laughter. “I can’t!” he revealed.“I’m sorry, I just can’t. It’s just too stupid, even for me. This whole miserly charade.”
    Defeated, Lily hung her head into her hands.
    “Do you have any idea how easy it is to trick these stupid things?” He slapped the helmet in front of him. It clanged with the thick, deep sound of expensive equipment. “I mean, it took me a few tries to get the hang of it, I’ll grant you that, but come on! Where’s the challenge?”
    Lily looked at Eddie, and somehow, seeing the smug look on his face brought years of pent-up frustration boiling to the surface. In her own quiet, restrained, undetectable-from-afar way, Lily snapped, right then and there. She leaned into Eddie, her face so close to his that their noses almost touched. And she grabbed Eddie’s uniform to keep him there, under her tight control.
    “ You ,” Lily told him, “ are an abject fool. Do you know that, Moderator Blackall?”
    Eddie stared at her, mere centimeters away. Eyes wide and out of focus.
    “Right now you are being so stupid that I don’t even know what to say to you. You are going to blow the cover off this whole. Miserable. Thing. Do you hear me?
    “What do you think happens when the Controllers realize that this Revision process is fallible, hm? What do you think happens then?
    “Has it honestly never occurred to you to think that maybe, just maybe , you weren’t the very first person to figure out how to beat the Revision process?
    “The only thing you’re the first person to be, Moderator Blackall, is stupid enough not to know how to quit while you’re ahead .”
    “You knew,” Eddie said, slowly realizing. “You knew before youput me away. That first time last month—you told me then that the fire wasn’t as bad as the frozen lake. That Level Six was easier than Nine. You knew. You’re a backslider too. You aren’t under their spell after all. And you weren’t really assigned to my training, were you? You volunteered for it. So you could watch over me. So that you could look out for me . . .”
    Lily stared at him blank-faced. “Eddie, listen to me. This game you’re playing—it’s going to end. The IMPS will not stop until you are one of them—one way or another. Now, that’s either going to happen on your terms . . . or it’s going to happen on theirs.