Storm (Swipe Series)

Sally said. “We’d love to!”
    “We’ll have it on April 1,” Steve said. “The day of the seeding. Sally and I will invite the whole town!”
    “Everyone will want to be there,” Sally said. “I’m just sure of it.”
    Connor smiled.
    He’d like that very much.
    6
    Another week, and the Sierra Science Center was buzzing. No longer the stuffy place it had been upon Erin’s arrival, it seemed every level of the SSC was now in fully motivated, lockstep crunch mode. Erin herself had migrated up to the main levels, where she could be watched 24-7 by Dr. Rhyne and her associates, and where Erin could maintain an open video call with the Arbitors and the Dust out east at all times. Right now, everyone’s priority within the SSC was to get Erin well again. She was their focus.
    And the key to that lay in the Dust’s DOME samples.
    They scoured that data, day and night.
    Erin had not been feeling better. In fact, over these last few days, her fever had only gotten worse.
    101 degrees, 102 degrees, 103 degrees . . .
    But for the moment, she was medicated heavily enough to keep the worst of her symptoms at bay, and with her parents’ video feed streaming by her side, Erin even caught herself feeling, once or twice—dare she think it?— optimistic.
    Was that possible? Certainly, it was an outlook she’d not expected to have again.
    And yet, it was a pleasant thing, this optimism. She decided to hold on to it for as long as she could.
    The Arbitor reunion, it turned out, continued to be the unexpected bright spot on Erin’s otherwise rotten winter. If she ever did see them again, she’d always figured, it would be in magnecuffs, through glass, on the wrong end of a lineup.
    That’s the one , they’d say, pointing shamefully at their daughter. That’s the traitor you were looking for, no doubt about it . Her father might even have been in on the hunt.
    But instead, to Erin’s utter surprise, her parents were smiling —every time that video feed went live. Sometimes they’d cry—happy tears! Not from shame!—when they saw her. They didn’t yell at her for running off, they didn’t suggest that her fever served her right—even if it did, as far as Erin was concerned—and they hadn’t even guilted her for what she’d clearly done to their careers.
    For the first time in as long as Erin could remember, the Arbitors were simply happy to be connected again, regardless of the circumstances.
    It was in the midst of this optimism that Dr. Rhyne spoke upfrom her lab bench across the floor. Erin couldn’t see her. But she could hear her voice fill the room.
    “The data’s complete,” Arianna said. “Everything’s done compiling.”
    All around her, doctors rushed back and forth across the floor, reviewing their latest results in the context of Dr. Rhyne’s.
    Erin nodded. “And?”
    “It’s not a mistake,” the doctor said, practically disbelieving her own words. “The second activating protein, targeting the vaccine. It wasn’t an error. It wasn’t a fluke. It was deliberate.”
    Arianna walked over to Erin now, showing her the graphics and the characteristics of the protein that had made her so sick.
    “The trial run last summer,” she said. “It was no failure—it was a success. Erin . . .” Dr. Rhyne gulped—actually gulped—at the thought of it. “This whole thing’s just getting started.”
    7
    From where he sat atop his horse, Logan could see Lahoma all at once.
    The land was flat around it, stretching out in all directions, uninhabited and vast. To his left, the sun rose red and vibrant over the plains, and streaks of morning rays shot triumphantly through the air, glowing at the edges.
    Ahead of him, tall shadows stretched out from Lahoma’s houses and shacks, casting their limits far to his right, nearly again the width of the town itself.
    Indeed, from out here, Lahoma was nothing but a dirt road—“Main Street,” it was called, not that it had any competition—whichstretched straight out to a stone fountain, dry and quiet, in the center of a sleepy town square. At that square’s far edge was the town hall, with a steeple for good measure and a bell that never rang.
    And all along that dirt road, that “Main Street” that couldn’t possibly be anything but, were the shops and eateries and storefronts of Lahoma, sometimes with residences above them, each one calmer than the next. And between those quaint buildings, side streets branched off and gave way to a house