Storm (Swipe Series)

overlooking a window that, Loganpresumed, would have displayed the main Barrier Street stretch of Beacon’s City Center, the hill—the city —that Lamson had built with his leadership after the end of the long and wretched States War.
    But Logan couldn’t see the view out that window now; the shades were drawn, and Lamson sat solemnly, in the dim and diffuse light, staring ahead at nothing at all.
    He wasn’t interested in the view beyond, Logan guessed. Not anymore. The chancellor chattered on in the background, and Lamson didn’t even seem to listen.
    “Do you want to know the funniest part?” the general asked, strangely, still out of sight behind the back of his chair. “The funniest part . . . is that in your mind, you’ve come here to accuse me. The killer, accusing his prosecutor . . .”
    “I’m not here to accuse you,” Logan said. “I’m here for answers. I’m no killer at all.”
    “Oh, aren’t you?” Lamson laughed a little.
    Logan wasn’t sure how to respond to that. This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped.
    “I want to know why you caused the drought,” Logan began. “Why you can’t just take responsibility for wiping out the Markless, and having the IMPS round us up once and for all. I want to know why you’re too cowardly to admit that right now, you’re murdering your own citizens. You knew Trumpet would target the Marked. So why would you do it? Was it your plan all along, hmm ? To activate the plague the moment I thwarted your drought?”
    General Lamson turned a little in his chair and looked sideways at Logan. “You poor boy,” he said. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you? Are you really so blind?” And before Logan could answer, he turned up the volume on the tablescreen between them.
    Logan looked down at the image of the chancellor, nodding resolutely, four thousand miles away, shedding a tear and dabbing it with the knuckle of his thumb. Through crocodile tears, he was enumerating the ways in which he had already begun contributing to the relief effort from his office in Third Rome.
    But now Cylis paused, heaving a great sigh. “Nevertheless,” he said, “the crucial questions of justice remain: What virus has caused this terrible fever? From where did it come—and who is to blame? Indeed, as many of you have already surmised but dared not whisper . . . this scourge is no ordinary work of nature. It is, it breaks my heart to say, a weapon—biological warfare unlike any our world has ever seen.
    “And before I do one thing more, I owe it to you, the American people, to reveal, today, the name, the face, the hatred of the terrorist behind this heinous affliction:
    “Logan Paul Langly—enemy of Unity and of mankind.”
    Logan was stunned. He looked up at the general’s chair and shook his head violently. “That’s not right! General, that’s not right !” And yet some part of Logan suddenly wondered . . .
    Was it?
    On the tablescreen before him, the chancellor invoked testimony from Lahoma’s model citizen, Connor Goodman, recipient of the first ever General’s Award, to support his bold claims.
    “But he’s lying!” Logan yelled as Connor’s words confirmed his guilt. “What does Connor Goodman have to do with Trumpet? That kid’s just mad that I foiled his permadrought plans!”
    The general stayed quiet.
    “They’re both lying! I’m no terrorist! I never killed anybody !”
    And now the general laughed. “On the contrary,” he said, pivoting in his chair. “You’ve killed everyone .”
    Logan saw him now, really saw him for the first time. The great general-in-chief of the American State—frail, defeated, sickly, and pale.
    The general’s sunken eyes drooped, half-closed in their sockets. Sweat beaded on his forehead and neck. His hair was greasy, matted, a mess stuck down against his clammy skin. He was shivering. “Cold in here,” he said. And he smiled weakly.
    Logan stepped back instinctively, petrified by what he saw.
    “You and I, you see . . . we’re the same,” Lamson said. “Each trying to do his best. Each trying to take this messy world and make some order of it. Make it better. Because we like people too much not to feel we owe them that.”
    “You and I are nothing alike,” Logan said, though the sight of Lamson’s fever was a shock from which Logan hadn’t nearly recovered. He spoke breathlessly, his words all but whispered.
    “No? Well, we’re both dying of Trumpet. We have that in