Swipe

hill’s plateau, and expansion had continued quite a ways down the sides, right to the water’s edge. This was fine for the first few years, but nobody expected the water to keep rising. When it did, Beacon’s outer boroughs flooded. It happened slowly, though, so rather than relocate, the outer-borough skyscrapers were simply reinforced, and east of City Center, people just got used to getting around on boats and bridges.
    “But that’s not all,” Erin said. “Six layers of roads and sidewalks connect City Center—one on the ground, and five suspended in grids above it.”
    “Why do you need that?” Logan asked.
    “Are you kidding? You’d never fit all the people and roller-sticks and trams and electrobus traffic on one layer. Besides, it’d be way too annoying to have to enter every building from ground floor all the time.”
    “How high do the buildings go?”
    “From bottom?” she said. “You can’t see the top.”
    Logan tried to imagine it, and could, but barely. The whole city sounded like a fantasy.
    “And there’re lights and screens and speakers the whole way up, on every one. People are alive there, Logan—24-7. Spokie is dead by comparison. It’s rotting in the ground.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You’ll see, someday,” Erin said.
    “I doubt I’ll ever make it out there.”
    “Well, that’d be a shame.” Erin frowned.
    “I guess,” Logan said. “I’m still hoping I make it through the week.”
    5
    Slog Row was a couple miles from Spokie Middle, and the walk there seemed endless. The last stretch was barren, a no-man’s-land, where the buildings went from run-down, to abandoned, to condemned, to crumbling, to nothing at all—just empty lots filled with trash and hazardous waste. And then, on the horizon across the silent, old expressway, it stood: the haven for the Markless. Logan could not believe what he was about to do.
    “We’ll start with the firehouse,” he said. “A lot of people probably stay there.”
    “Outlaws, Logan—psychopaths. Stop calling them people.”
    Logan looked at her. “Maybe it’d be best if you waited outside.”
    “Fine with me,” Erin said, and she slipped her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “But if you’re in there longer than ten minutes, I’m calling DOME.”
    Logan shrugged. “I wanted you to call them last night.”
    He looked up. Outside, the firehouse looked like it might fall down any day now. The roof sagged, the walls were torn apart with large pieces missing altogether, the windows were broken or missing entirely. The stoop leading to the front door (which rested, unattached to any hinges, against the wall) was covered with trash, stains, and graffiti.
    Inside, the firehouse was much worse. The stench was awful. People sat, slumped in the corners and along the edges of the room, and mice scurried between them, often right up to their legs. Logan had never felt so out of place. But he didn’t feel scared. For as long as he could remember, he’d always been warned to stay far away from the Row, far away from these dirty, sordid people with their unpredictable behavior and their desperate acts. But standing here now didn’t match up with those stories of danger and risk. The scene in this firehouse wasn’t frightening. It was tragic.
    Logan held his hand up so that anyone who cared could see his empty wrist. Only one man, reclining on the crumbling steps that led to the second floor, seemed lucid enough to notice. Logan walked over to him tentatively, his heart pounding out of his chest.
    “Hi,” Logan said. “I have food.”
    At this, several others looked up and eyed Logan with cautious hope. He put his backpack on the floor and unzipped it, suddenly very glad that he hadn’t had the appetite to finish his lunch. “It’s not enough,” he apologized. “I’m sorry.” Somehow it never occurred to him how much his leftovers might matter to people living so close to his own front door. They were just a couple miles away . . . and yet they lived in a different world entirely.
    But the man on the steps didn’t seem to mind. He smiled a great, big, toothless smile.
    “Aw, eh, yer gottem food, ah?”
    Logan struggled a little to understand him, but at the words, he extended his half sandwich to the man, who took it. Logan saw that where the man’s hands touched the white bread, they left dark, filthy smudges.
    “What’s your name?” Logan asked.
    “Oh, eh, Wallace, um?” It was almost another