Swipe

Give them homes? Give them work? Somehow I’m not seeing it.”
    Jo threw her arms around Blake. “Please don’t go,” she whispered, begging now. “Please don’t. I can’t do this without you.” She dropped her face into her hands.
    “I’ll come back. I promise I will.”
    When Jo looked up, Blake was already running fast across the field, out of the stadium.
    3
    On Slog Row, the sun was bright and the air was warm. “I don’t like this,” Logan whispered to Erin. “This doesn’t feel . . . right . . . to me.”
    “These people made their choice, Logan. They made their lives what they are. They had plenty of time to turn themselves around.”
    Ahead of them, DOME agents were storming into house after house, dragging people out in electro-magnecuffs. Some were screaming, thrashing, cursing. Others just kept their heads down.
    “Maybe they didn’t see it that way,” Logan said. “Maybe they were happy here.”
    “Stop kidding yourself. Everyone on this block had to have seen this coming. In Beacon, it would have happened a long, long time ago. They should have gotten the Mark. It isn’t any more complicated than that. I can assure you, Logan—life, with it, is good. These people must be pretty dim not to have seen the obvious solution here.”
    “Maybe they’re standing up for something,” Logan said. “Maybe they think we shouldn’t have to Pledge in order to be contributing members of society. There was a time when we didn’t, you know.”
    “Yeah, before the States War . When everyone aligned themselves randomly , to whatever idols they wanted, killing each other over the differences between them. That sound like a better system to you, Logan?”
    “I’m just saying—”
    “Do you even hear yourself? You’re suggesting these people deserve A.U. benefits without being members of the A.U.”
    “ I’m not suggesting anything. I’m telling you what I think their point might be.”
    “Their point is not worth thinking about. It doesn’t even follow logically. They’re angry at a government that is perfectly happy to give them full benefits and rights and pursuits of happiness as soon as they pledge allegiance to it—which they could do at any time—for the sake of everyone’s safety and quality of life. I don’t see the injustice here.”
    “Except for the ones who Pledge and don’t come back. Except for the flunkees.”
    “You can’t blame Lamson and Cylis for accidents, Logan. Now will you stop? If DOME hears you right now, it’s straight back to the Center for both of us. You sound like a lunatic. You sound like one of them! Now walk with me. We have to try to find the Dust. We have to. That’s the deal.”
    Logan began to walk with her, but he couldn’t help looking back the way they came, to the firehouse. He heard screams from inside. Yelling. Shuffling. Then quiet.
    Two DOME agents emerged from the crumbling front door. They were holding a man by his arms and feet, stretched between them. The man was thin. He had yellowing skin. His mouth hung open and he was missing most of his teeth. His hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail behind him. He was clean shaven.
    Logan knew the man. Logan had fed the man. The man had smiled at him, had hugged him, had looked into Logan’s eyes with gratitude.
    Wallace.
    Wallace was dead.
    4
    “DOME,” Blake called quietly. “DOME coming! Street cleaning! Everybody out!” He ran in and out of houses, warning all the Markless he could, shepherding everyone he found through back doors and alleyways, toward safer streets and better odds.
    The Row was crawling with DOME. Agents flooded every house, rounding people up, beating them, insulting them, humiliating them. Years of pent-up frustration and anger and resentment, all flooding out in one horrible burst.
    Blake had been through a dozen homes before he found him. The boy he’d known from Fulmart. Rusty. Cowering in a closet, sucking his thumb, clutching a towel he seemed to think of as a teddy bear.
    “Oh no,” Blake said. Not the boy. Not the kid. He tried to imagine DOME’s strategy in handling the son of a Markless, and he guessed it didn’t involve adoption, or foster homes . . . or mercy. “Okay, Rusty. Come on, now. Time to go.” Blake picked the child up and carried him like a baby downstairs. But when he got to the back door, Blake realized there wasn’t a direction on the compass that would lead this kid to safety. And there wasn’t time to think of a