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immediately realized how much sense it made. Dane liked Hailey. How had Logan never realized it before?
    “Just stay away from her, okay?” Dane said. “I’m serious.”
    “All right,” Logan said. “Fine.”
    Dane nodded. “Fine.”
    But before Logan could say anything else, Dane turned, abruptly changing character. “Hey, Hailey—where’re you going? Stop being so weird!” and he ran down the snowy tundra hall.

    Logan still felt rotten when he made it up to street level, and when he approached Erin on the sports lawn, she only made matters worse. “Hey!” Logan called, but when she saw him, Erin swerved quickly to walk down the street without him.
    “Erin, wait up!” Logan yelled, and to his frustration she walked even faster. Great , Logan thought, so everyone’s mad at me . It was a full block before she made eye contact with him, and then when Erin did, she crossed the street away from Logan, to walk on the other side.
    “What’s the deal?” Logan yelled.
    “Do I know you?” Erin said, and then she turned a corner down a side street and out of sight. Logan broke into a full sprint after her.
    “Erin, what in the world is this all about?” he demanded once he’d caught up to her.
    “We can’t be seen together,” Erin said dramatically.
    “Why?” Logan asked. “Because of Dane?”
    Erin laughed. “Huh? Of course not. Why would you even—”
    “Never mind,” Logan said quickly, and Erin narrowed her eyes.
    “Listen, if you’re right about what you heard last night,” she said, “and I’m not saying you are. But if you’re right about any of it, we need to start being more careful about how we act.”
    “Oh,” Logan said. “Right.”
    “I mean, either you’re lying to me about that whole playground ambush, or you screwed things up so the deal didn’t go down, and whichever one it was, it got me no closer back to Beacon.”
    “Yeah, okay,” Logan said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Totally—your getting back to Beacon City is so much more important than me not getting kidnapped and killed. Sorry. For a minute there, I forgot why I was doing all this.”
    “Oh, give me a break,” Erin said lightly, hitting Logan’s shoulder. “You’re all right.”
    Logan looked at her, and Erin’s bright smile immediately cleared the dark clouds around him. He knew she hadn’t quite forgiven him for things going wrong last night. But she hadn’t given up on him either.
    They walked without speaking for a few blocks.
    “Hey, what’s so great about Beacon, anyway?” Logan asked after a while. He genuinely wanted to know.
    “It’s not about the city, Logan. It’s about my family.” Erin frowned. “You wouldn’t understand.”
    Logan shrugged and said, “Still, the city must be cool. My dad calls it the greatest architectural achievement in history.”
    “Of course it is,” Erin said. “That goes without saying. It’s the center of the Western world.”
    “We’re not so far from New Chicago, you know. If you want to see a city—”
    “New Chicago’s rural next to Beacon,” Erin said.
    “Oh.”
    “Beacon . . . ,” Erin began. “First thing you need to know about Beacon—it’s right on the water.”
    “Okay.”
    “Like, the waves literally come right up to it—come between some of the buildings, even, lower down on the hill.”
    Logan had seen videos online but tried to imagine it now through Erin’s eyes.
    “And City Center’s way high up, right? So first of all, anywhere you are, you get this beautiful view of the ocean, day and night.”
    Logan had heard of this too. The Rupturing of the Dam was a pivotal moment in the States War, and every student in the A.U. knew the story. At the time, the East Belt Dike protected the old capital and all its surrounding land from the Atlantic Ocean that had long since risen above it. But a few years into the fighting, one of the states, led by General Lamson, decided to blow the thing up, and most of the coastal states were destroyed in the ensuing flood. So Lamson had a huge hill constructed over the ruins of the old capital, rising half a mile high and with a ten-mile plateau on top. Lamson named it Beacon and finished leading the war effort from there as a new metropolis began to grow rapidly around him. After the Unity, Lamson chose Beacon City for the new A.U. capital, as a reminder of how the war had been won and how peace had been achieved. These days, City Center filled the entirety of the