Swipe

ground. Erin grasped the stick tightly with both hands, her arms bent but rigid, and the wind blew her hair wildly into Logan’s face.
    “You say these things are pretty common in Beacon, huh?” Logan yelled over the rush of wind.
    “Everyone has one,” Erin said. “It’s the only way to get around.”
    Logan tried to imagine it. “Anyone ever get hurt?”
    Erin laughed. “All the time. Think I was kidding about getting ourselves killed?”
    She shifted her weight slightly, and the two of them turned sharply to the right, down a side road. Logan kept very still after that.
    Finally, from behind closed eyes, Logan felt the welcome sensation of slowing down. Erin pulled back into an upright position, and as she did, the stick glided gently to a stop.
    Erin turned her head back toward Logan. “You can hop off now,” she said. “We’re here.”
    Logan looked up. In front of him was the Center for the Department of Marked Emergencies—two monstrously wide skyscrapers that filled the block from one end to the other, and a spire between them about ten feet in diameter at its base. The spire stretched high into the air, just an elevator shaft and a stairway that spiraled maybe fifty times around it on the outside. At the spire’s top was a wide, Frisbee-shaped disk, with several smaller domes above it, making the whole structure look like an odd umbrella, which was in fact how the building was known. Logan had seen the Umbrella many times, but he had never dreamed of going inside.
    “This is the DOME headquarters for all of New Chicago,” Logan told Erin.
    “I know.”
    “I thought we were visiting your dad’s office.”
    “We are.” She headed straight for the spire.
    Logan didn’t understand. “But DOME’s standard offices are way downtown. These Center buildings are for the highest ranks. The Umbrella’s for the top of the top—”
    “You’re right,” Erin said. “It is.” She raised an eyebrow playfully, and Logan began to understand the extent of what her father’s “government work” really meant.
    Erin swiped her hand under a Markscan at the spire’s base, and the elevator door opened.
    “Am I allowed up there with you?” Logan asked.
    Erin stepped inside. “Almost certainly not,” she said, looking at Logan as though he were the stupidest boy in the world. “So hurry up before someone stops you!”
    Logan darted into the elevator.
    “You need to learn,” she said, “that it’s usually easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
    Logan smiled. “And I suppose this is one of those times?”
    “You bet,” Erin said as the elevator closed and lurched into motion. “I have clearance ’cause I’m family. Though I’m only supposed to use it in an emergency.”
    “Is that what this is?” Logan whispered.
    She glanced at him uneasily, and Logan guessed the answer.
    “Just do as I say and keep quiet.”
    “We’re going straight to your dad, right? To tell him what happened?”
    Erin looked at the elevator doors. “Just do as I say.”
    Logan nodded, bewildered by the speed at which he seemed to be breaking rules all of a sudden. “No buttons in this elevator,” he noticed idly.
    “That how you keep quiet?”
    Logan took the hint.
    5
    When the elevator doors opened, it was to the disk on top of the Umbrella. Logan followed Erin out and he immediately felt a horrifying sense of vertigo. The disk was as big as his school’s cafeteria, and the entire enclosing structure was made of glass. Logan looked at his feet and saw nothing below him but the sidewalk, fifty stories below.
    “It’s tinted so you can’t see from the outside,” Erin whispered.
    “But the whole floor’s made of glass. Don’t be alarmed.”
    Thanks for warning me , Logan thought. To him, it felt like standing on a cloud, and about as safe. He tried to steady his balance as Erin led him through the space.
    Even at this hour of the night, the room buzzed with the frenzied energy of a newsroom or a trading floor. DOME agents worked on long tables that wrapped around the space in concentric circles, the highest ranks at the outer rings along the Umbrella’s glass edge. The tables themselves were computers, their surfaces creating one large composite touchscreen over which each agent huddled, shuffling virtual documents with flailing arms and typing or writing with a stylus directly onto the interface. Everyone was busy. When Erin and Logan walked in, not a single head looked