Storm (Swipe Series)

fourteen years old now, had become a bit of a ringleader in Peck’s absence. Joanne, fifteen, used to be Peck’s right-hand girl; now she was more the enforcer. Meg, thirteen, was autistic, rescued by the Dust last July after Peck realized she was at risk of flunking her upcoming Pledge. Rusty was an orphaned six-year-old, picked up by Blake back when DOME made its raid on the Dust’s old home, Slog Row, last September. Shawn was the Dust’s newest member, a Markless hacker from Beacon who fell in with the rest during their Acheron breakout a month ago. And Tyler . . . well, Tyler was just a troublemaker. He grew up an orphan too, never knowing or fully comprehending life outside of Markless huddles. Then one year ago, right around the time when he could have Pledged, Tyler just sort of glommed on to the Dust for fun—and never left.
    And until recently, there was Eddie, Tyler’s best friend and now a painful hole in the Dust’s once-inseparable group. Just a few weeks ago, Eddie was captured along with Logan and Joanne by DOME during the Dust’s attempt to break Logan’s sister, Lily, out of Acheron. Unlike the others, Eddie never escaped.
    He was gone now.
    Eddie was an IMP.

    “Bull’s-eye!” Tyler yelled. He jumped up and down as he did, pumping his fists in the air and soliciting high-fives from the rest of the group. “Did you see that?”
    The balloon had hit with astonishing force, and the resulting scene down below was chaos, rapidly growing violent.
    The IMP’s first response, of course, had been to assume that the balloon had come from the crowd he was guarding. The sludge slathered his helmet and shoulders with a greasy green, his face smeared with goop and his uniform now looking something like pickle relish. Immediately, he’d spun around, eager for someone to hit or arrest or worse. But no obvious culprit had emerged.
    Finally, the IMP’s squad looked up. They stared in disbelief. They tapped their leader on the shoulder. “There,” they seemed to say.
    Forty stories above, Tyler stood in plain view, grinning, laughing, and waving happily as he tossed down the second balloon.

    It took two and a half minutes for the IMPS to call in their underground backups and coordinate a response. This was longer than the Dust was expecting. So for about thirty seconds, Tyler was bored again.
    “It better be because they’re gathering extra reinforcements,” he grumbled.
    Jo sighed. “I’m sure it is.”
    “You ready?” Blake asked. He trained his eyes on the nearest elevator tube. It flashed red as the doors slid open. “Because here they come.”
    More than thirty Moderators flooded out, four full squads in total, each uniformed with precision nanocamo that flickered as it adjusted to the new environment, blending seamlessly into the colorful advertisements on the building behind them. Each sported utility belts and shoulder straps that held all types of guns, magnecuffs, gadgets . . .
    The leaders—the Coordinators—wore helmets with visors that came down past their eyes and shadowed their identities. But among the rest, it was easy enough to see faces, scowls, grinding teeth, and of course, the telltale branding of an IMP—the Mark, uniquely tattooed in nanoink across each forehead.
    “Freeze!” yelled the first squad’s Coordinator, his uniform still goopy with Tyler’s sludge. “In the name of General Lamson, we order you to stop!”
    But already, the kids were running. Tier Two was the densest of Beacon’s four sky levels, and the street they’d chosen as their perch was especially well connected. Blake, Tyler, Jo, Rusty, Shawn—all of them knew the plan, memorized their routes, choreographed their responses, and they moved now with the same swift certainty as the Moderators chasing them.
    “Like we planned!” Blake yelled, and at the nearest intersection, he, Rusty, and Jo zigged left while Tyler and Shawn zagged right, buying valuable seconds as the squad leaders shouted commands to their troops to split in half and form two chase groups. To the left where Blake led Jo and Rusty was a narrow pedestrian walkway leading to a rare public entrance on the fortieth floor of a commercial retail building. The group sprinted straight into a multilevel clothing department store, knocking over t-shirt racks and pants and shoes as they dashed through the mazelike floors. Behind them was a trail of fabric and cloth and accessories strewn about wildly, and for all the IMPS’ fancy