Storm (Swipe Series)

back before Lily disappeared and she, uh . . . retired. But she’s been dabbling with it again recently, Grandma tells me. She has all sorts of computers up there, tracking various weather patterns and such. And that office is where my grandma and Mrs. Phoenix broadcast their radio show. They commandeered an antenna my mom used to use to track thunderstorms.”
    “Well then, they’re there right now,” Arianna said. “I can have that computer hacked inside of five minutes.”
    “You think that’ll really work?” Logan asked.
    “Everything I do works, Logan. Cylis , how many times do I have to tell you kids that?”
    But no sooner had Arianna made it to the staircase than her son Sam came barreling down it. Preoccupied by his news and blinded by the dark of the basement, Sam slammed into his mother’s stomach with a full-sprint force, doubling her over and knocking himself back with a hard bounce onto the concrete floor.
    “What’s up?” Arianna said, waiting for her breath to come back, but otherwise just pleasantly curious.
    “An IMP breach,” Sam said. “Dad read it in his computer alerts. Something about a hack coming from Acheron in Beacon. There’s an IMP spying on us.”
    “ What? ”
    Sam nodded.
    “I might have expected DOME, but IMPS now too?” Arianna was fuming. “This is ridiculous! I already told these moguls—the fugitives aren’t here . They left for the north! How much more clearly could I have said that?”
    “But we didn’t leave for the north,” Logan said. “We are here.”
    “Yes, I know that!” Arianna snapped. “But why in the world would anyone authorize IMP jurisdiction against my orders?”
    “They aren’t,” Sam said, still winded. “Not according to the logs, at least. No one authorized anything. One of them’s just . . . hacking.”
    “Hacking?”
    “Yeah,” Sam said. “Just spying.”
    “We need to get you kids out of here,” Arianna said to Logan and Hailey and Peck. “I can have this hack shut down within the hour, but until then—I’m not taking any chances. I’ll call a few PODs—one for each of you, so you can scatter. They’ll meet you out front.”
    Already, Logan, Peck, and Hailey were scrambling. “What about Erin?” Logan asked.
    “What about her? She can’t move.”
    “But—”
    “Go. Run!”
    The three of them did. And sure enough, within moments, the first POD did appear in the distance.
    “Logan, you first,” Peck said.
    “Why me first?”
    “Because you need to get out of here. This IMP’ll want you the most.”
    “No—they’ll want you most, Peck! You’re the leader. The Dust is yours. You’ve always been the priority.”
    “I was the leader. I was the priority. This is your show now.”
    “Peck, seriously—”
    “We don’t have time to argue. Go!”
    The POD came down with a blast of air and a thud , landing precariously on a pile of rubble in front of the SSC building. Thejunk shifted under it, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust, and the POD rolled slightly off, down from the mound and onto a more level concrete chunk of street. It sat still there and waited with its glowing blue anticipation.
    “Go. Go!” Peck said. He pushed Logan hard toward the POD, and Logan tapped at the door button furiously. He looked back and gave a final, short wave to Peck and Hailey. They nodded.
    And Logan nodded too, turning just as the POD door opened, hopping quickly into the front seat of it and pressing the wallscreen input to close the door behind him. The glass of the POD unfogged as whatever previous advertisement ended, and Logan could see out, through the fishbowl sides, to the group sending him off.
    They were horrified.
    For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why.
    “Hi again, Logan,” a voice said from the POD’s advertisement speakers.
    And Logan’s heart froze in his chest.
    Immediately, Peck rushed to the glass casing, banging hard with his fists and yelling something that was too muffled for Logan to hear. The door wouldn’t open. The POD’s next coordinates had already been set. It prepped itself for launch, and a blast of air shot out from all sides beneath it, knocking Peck down against the debris along the sidewalk. Hailey fell too, pushed to her back from the force of it. The POD launched with breakneck speed into the dark night air.
    Her projection had been waiting on the POD’s hacked advertisement wallscreen behind him, translucent against the clear glass, but just visible enough