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go to bed.”
    “That’s a good idea,” his dad said. “I’ll be right up.”
    The intercom cut out, and Erin looked at Logan with a sudden, confused fear. “What does he mean, he’ll be right up?”
    For a moment Logan was too embarrassed to say it. When he finally did, he said it to the floor. “To tuck me in.”
    Erin rolled her eyes but spared him outright mockery. Sounds indicated the elevator’s approach, and without another word, she dove into Logan’s closet and shut the door.
    Improvising, Logan stripped down to his underwear and leaped into bed, wondering how his life could have spiraled this far out of control so quickly.
    “Think you can sleep through the night?” Mr. Langly asked, the elevator doors sliding open before him.
    “I’ll be fine,” Logan said.
    “You want your night-light tonight?”
    Logan glanced toward the closet and felt his face grow hot and flushed. “No, Dad. I . . . of course I don’t.”
    “Just asking. Listen, about everything that happened today—”
    Logan interrupted him. “Dad.” Mr. Langly stopped, and sat, and waited for his son to continue. But Logan didn’t. Instead there was silence as something inside him came to an unexpected, rolling boil. “Look, you can’t keep babying me all the time, okay? I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to tuck me in anymore. I don’t need a stupid night-light. I’m almost Marked now. I don’t need you to treat me—I need you to treat me like a . . .” With the top blown off, Logan’s boil cooled to a simmer, and then to nothing at all. His words fizzled out, and he shook his head, tired and ashamed.
    Mr. Langly nodded, understanding, frowning a little. He leaned over and kissed Logan on the forehead with horrible finality. Then he sat still for a couple of breaths. “You got it, bud,” he said. And Mr. Langly got up, turned out the light, and let the elevator carry him away.
    Logan sprang out of bed and dressed as quickly as he could. “Not a word,” he whispered furiously when Erin emerged from the closet. She cooperated graciously. “Now why are you here and what in the world are you planning?”
    “My dad’s still at work,” Erin said. “Thought you might wanna pay him a little visit.”
    4
    The breakout was easy once Erin had finished decoying Logan’s bed with pillows. The two of them snuck down the outside steps and made it to the street corner without another word uttered between them.
    Erin ran to the streetlamp at the sidewalk’s edge and began untying something. Logan strained to make it out under the artificial light of the diodes.
    “Is that . . .”
    “Yeah,” Erin said. “It’s mine. In Beacon, everyone has ’em.”
    A rollerstick. Logan had never ridden one before.
    “So that’s how you got here so fast,” he said.
    “Of course. It’s the only way to travel.”
    The rollerstick rested upright, perfectly balanced, above a single metal ball coated in perforated rubber, about the size of a cantaloupe. An electromagnet held the stick in place a few centimeters above the ball. At the top of the stick was a rubber grip, and at the bottom was a small platform for a person’s feet. Controlling it was supposed to be easy—just lean any way you want and you’ll roll in that direction—but with their quick acceleration and top speeds at over thirty miles an hour, the thought of them had always made Logan nervous.
    Erin swiped her Mark over the stick’s end and stepped onto its platform. It tilted and rolled, adjusting itself under her weight. “Hop on,” she said, and she rolled her eyes when he didn’t. “It’s fine, Logan. You can hold on to my waist.”
    Logan felt his palms begin to sweat, but he did as he was told. The ball rolled erratically beneath them and the stick swayed at their feet, but its top stayed steady, like a pendulum, agitated and finding its stasis. Once it did, they stood perfectly balanced, motionless.
    “They’re not really built for two,” Erin admitted, strapping padding to her elbows and knees, “but I can make it work. Just don’t shift your weight too suddenly or we’re both likely to get ourselves killed.” Erin handed him her helmet as she said this, then leaned forward, and, just like that, they were off.
    The pair rode along the nighttime sidewalks at a blinding speed, their rollerstick angled so severely that Logan had to crane his head back just to see in front of them—to look forward would have been to look straight at the