Storm (Swipe Series)

forehead—she’s an IMP, plain and simple!”
    “She is an IMP, yes. She’s an IMP so that she can be in a position to do what it takes to stop Lamson and Cylis. She’s fighting them, Peck. She’s fighting them from the inside.”
    “If she’s an IMP, she’s been brainwashed.”
    “People backslide,” Lily said.
    “Okay, then they’ve reprogrammed you again !”
    “That’s true,” Lily confirmed. “Many times. But it didn’t continue until it worked. It continued until I figured out how to trick the IMPS into thinking it had.”
    “She’s a double agent, Peck. She told me she’s trying to overthrow the Union.”
    “Of course she said that,” Peck said. “She has to say that. It’seasy to say that. What, you think IMPS can’t lie? She’d tell you the sky was green if she thought it’d get you to do her bidding.”
    “She’s not lying,” Logan insisted. “I could tell if she were lying.”
    “Oh yeah? Because you’re just such a good judge of indoctrination? You’re just the expert around here? Know all the signs? Know all the tells?” Peck laughed. “Remind me not to play poker with this guy,” he said sarcastically to the group.
    “She’s my sister ,” Logan said. “I’d know if she were lying .”
    “She’s not your sister! She’s an IMP! A person can’t be both!”
    “Oh yeah, and what do you know about it?” Logan yelled back.
    “Guys. That’s enough.” Lily didn’t even raise her voice, but at once both boys went still.
    “I dropped everything for you,” Peck said to Lily, a deep pain showing through him. “I gave up my friends. I gave up my life. I gave up my future. All for even a guess at what they did to you.
    “I braced myself for anything. I waited to learn of your death, of your torture, of your wasted years in some dark cell. I gathered my strength . . . and I braced myself.
    “And now I see you, projected on this miserly POD screen—and I realize I wasn’t prepared at all.
    “I learned how to lose you, Lily. It took time, and it hurt. But I learned how to do it.”
    Peck laughed a sad, defeated laugh. “And now I realize. What I never learned was how to see you again. Not like this. Not like how you are.” Peck’s face went red. “I want Lily back. Not some rising star IMP Advocate. Not some Head-Marked Lamson loyalist—”
    “I’m no Lamson loyalist,” Lily said calmly, just loud enough for him still to hear. “That’s the truth, plain and simple. But I am not asking you to take me at my word.
    “I’m asking you to help me. I’m trying to stop Lamson, youfool, not honor him. And I’m close now. Turning you all in, proving my allegiance to country—it worked. I know the general’s plan now. And it’s not too late to end it.”
    “Go on,” Peck said.
    “Thank you. Because like me or not, you’re the only friends and family I have left in this world. You’re the only ones I can trust.” And Lily took a deep breath. “This spring General Lamson either solidifies his stranglehold on the American State, condemning this great continent to a generation of tyranny—or General Lamson falls. It’s going to be one or the other. And I came to you because I thought you’d want some say in that outcome.”
    “We’re listening,” Logan said.
    “Good. So do you know about the current permadrought?”
    Peck scoffed. “Everyone knows about the drought.”
    “All right,” Lily said. “Then tell me—what do you three know about the state of our weather mill?”
    3
    Logan, Hailey, and Peck were still sitting in the busted POD on Sierra’s beach, circled around Lily’s shaky projection, a tentative alliance forming. She’d told them everything—about Lahoma, about the offline weather mill, about Lamson’s involvement, about the tactical brilliance of strategically stirred political instability . . .
    “It’s retaliation,” Peck concluded. “For the uprisings. This hits the Markless hardest, and Lamson knows it.”
    Lily shrugged. “It’s more than that. But sure, that’s a part of it.”
    Logan shook his head. “The Marked—they’d never stand forthis. Even now, the Markless are gaining sympathy. And that’s just over all the new martial laws. There’s no way they’d sit back and let Lamson get away with this. They’d seed the clouds themselves if they had to!”
    “They won’t be able to,” Lily said. “Lamson isn’t just holding up the cloud seeding—he’s destroying America’s weather mill itself.