Swipe

doorway.
    “I’m gonna have to ask you both to come with me,” the man said. He pulled a pair of electro-magnecuffs from his pocket.
    “They’re taking him,” Logan shouted. “They’re taking him!”
    “Our men back there will handle it, Logan Langly. Now calm down or we will calm you by force!”
    There wasn’t time to negotiate. There wasn’t time to think. Whatever was happening to Dane, it was happening right now .
    “Okay,” Logan said. “I understand.” He took Erin’s arms and pulled hers up with his, so that all four of their hands were in the air and surrendering.
    “Very good,” Mr. Arbitor said. “Johnson—the cuffs.”
    But before anything else could happen, Logan closed his eyes . . . and he threw his flash pellets onto the ground.
    The light from them was staggering. Screams from the crowd. Everyone in the vicinity went blind. Even Logan, eyes squeezed as tight as they were for the burst, was having trouble seeing in the aftermath.
    But he did see the silhouettes of the men in front of him, Mr. Arbitor included, hunched over and clutching their eyes. They were yelling, Logan thought, but he couldn’t see their mouths, and it was impossible to hear over the sound of the band. Logan pulled Erin by the arm and led her quickly through the doors.
    The hallway in front of them was empty, save for two more DOME agents slumped against the wall. “We’re too late,” Logan said. “Follow me.”
    Beside him, Erin was crying. Purple tears flowed down her face, a reaction to the nanotech in the flash, but Logan could tell that the sobs were real.
    “What have you done?” Erin was saying. “Logan. What have you done? ”
    8
    Moments later, Logan was at Erin’s rollerstick and using her Mark to turn it on. She stumbled blindly beside him. “I’ll drive,” he said. “Hold on tight.”
    Logan had always imagined that maneuvering a rollerstick would be difficult for him. He didn’t like high speeds. He didn’t even like the thought of them. He especially didn’t like being in control of them.
    But tonight, the way things were, riding a rollerstick was the least of Logan’s worries. He moved it intuitively beneath him, and without thought or fear, he was soon flying down the Spokie streets.
    “The flash isn’t permanent, right? You’ll get better, right?” Logan called back to Erin as he swerved along the sidewalk.
    “I don’t know!” Erin yelled. “I have no idea what those things do!”
    “Then why’d you give them to me?”
    “I didn’t think you’d actually use them!”
    But within a few minutes, Erin admitted she could see shapes and movement.
    “That means DOME can too,” Logan said. “They’ll be after us soon.”
    “Oh, you think?” Erin said. “Because I was guessing they might just call it a night.”
    “We need a plan,” Logan said. “Where are we going? We don’t even know where they’re taking Dane, let alone what they’re doing to him.”
    “Take my tablet,” Erin said. Logan slowed, and she handed it to him. “Pull up the map. See if your tracker’s still working.”
    It was the first stroke of luck either of them had had all night.
    “Fulmart! They’re at the Fulmart!”
    “Pull up my old video feed. What does it show?”
    Logan did, and he almost fell off the rollerstick when he saw it.
    “What’s the matter?” Erin asked, her eyes still squeezed shut. “What’s happening?”
    Logan looked on in horror. There, in the black-and-white fuzz of the video, was Dane, dragged along the floor by the Dust and dumped horribly into a wheelbarrow.
    9
    By the time they arrived at the Fulmart, Erin’s sight had returned, but her face still shone purple in the moonlight from her flash pellet tears.
    Logan pulled the rollerstick to a stop, and he and Erin leaped from it, a coordinated tactical team, needing no words or gestures between them, running furiously across the parking lot and into the store.
    “We’re here, we have weapons, and we’re done messing around!” Logan yelled across the empty air of the store, holding his smoke bomb up at his side. Erin had her pepper spray out and ready in one hand. In the other, she held her tablet. No one on its security feed any longer. No one that she could see.
    “It’s over, Dust! No more hiding in the cracks. Come on out, hand him over, and we’ll all go home.” Logan didn’t mention the DOME agents, whom he guessed couldn’t have been more than a few minutes behind.
    There were no words in