Swipe

It was the first time anyone had ever called Logan “mister.” Titles like that were reserved for the Marked. Logan looked at his wrist in a confused, hazy horror. It swam in front of him, fading in and out like everything else, but it was still Unmarked.
    “I’m no mister,” Logan said. “I have no Mark.” He couldn’t tell to what extent his words were slurred. In his head they were crystal clear.
    “But you will, Mr. Langly. You are here to Pledge your allegiance to General Lamson and Chancellor Cylis. You’re currently having an adverse reaction to the nanosleep, but if you’ll just calm down—”
    “ I am calm. This is calm. Now, what happens to flunkees? ” Logan demanded.
    “Mr. Langly, as we’ve already informed your family and documented extensively in official DOME records, Lily Langly was a casualty of the Marking procedure—”
    “Meaning what ?” Logan asked.
    “Meaning that the procedure didn’t agree with her—”
    “You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” Logan said, and he pulled more tightly on the wires around his nurse’s neck. She didn’t struggle.
    “Mr. Langly, consider the consequences of what you are doing—”
    “I want my sister back! Tell me where my sister is!” He could hear whimpering from the nurse in front of him, and he hated himself passionately for it. Why won’t you just tell me? Tell me where my sister is so this can be over!
    “Mr. Langly, what you’re asking for is highly classified information.”
    “Then she is alive! You know where she is!”
    “I didn’t say that, Mr. Langly. But if you let the nurse go, I promise—you and I can have the private chat you’re looking for.”
    “We chat first!”
    The Marker lowered his shoulders. The tension left him. “Mr. Langly . . . look at yourself.”
    Logan paused. He let the wires slack. The nurse rubbed her neck and stood up, not looking at Logan as she rushed out of the room. Logan slumped in his chair, his arm pressing uncomfortably against the stirrups. And Logan wept.
    5
    “I’m a monster,” Logan told his Marker. “I hate myself.”
    The Marker handed him a handkerchief. “You’re not a monster. You’re just desperate.”
    “You could have stopped me sooner. You could have overpowered me.”
    “Yes. But then in your eyes I’d be still be the enemy. And I am not the enemy, Logan. Your nurse was not the enemy. DOME is not the enemy.”
    “I’m the enemy.”
    A shrug.
    “And I’m a flunkee, aren’t I?”
    The Marker sighed. “Usually they aren’t so lucid when we tell them so.”
    “What will you do to me?”
    “I can’t tell you that, Logan.”
    “Do you even know?”
    “My piece of it, yes.”
    “Will it be the same thing you did to Lily?”
    “It’s always the same.”
    “If I’m a lost cause anyway, you might as well tell me, right?
    What do you have to lose?”
    The Marker laughed. Logan waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.
    “They’re coming for me, aren’t they?”
    “Yes, Logan.”
    “Right now.”
    “Yes, Logan.”
    “Will I be punished? Will I be tortured?”
    The Marker suddenly took an interest in his own hands that were resting on his lap. “Yes, Logan.”
    “Where will I go?”
    The Marker smiled thinly. There was silence.
    “Do you like your job?” Logan asked.
    The Marker frowned for some time. “I don’t,” he said, finally. “Between you and me.”
    “Then why do you do it?”
    The Marker chose his words carefully. “When I began, it was for the cause. I believed in peace, Unity, Lamson and Cylis . . . I believed in the symbol of that cause. I believed in what it meant. For us to come together, one people, one mind-set . . . content.”
    “And then?”
    “I still believe in that cause, Logan.”
    “And if you think anyone doesn’t—or might ever not—you swipe them. You nip them in the bud.”
    “A stitch in time . . . ,” the Marker said. He laughed at himself, sadly.
    “I was excited for the Mark,” Logan said. “As a kid. It was all I wanted. When my sister Pledged . . . I couldn’t have been happier for her.” His Marker listened intently now. “My sister was a wonderful girl,” Logan said. “My first memories are of her holding me and kissing me with a bright smile. I think she adored me. Though I couldn’t have seen it in those terms at the time. Of course, she adored everyone. She listened. She cared. She had great big plans . . . But DOME didn’t see any of that, did it? DOME saw