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“Can you get out of the house? Right now?”

“No way,” Logan said. “The whole walk home I'm sure I was followed. No way I'm going back outside.”

“So you're just gonna sit there and wait for Peck to come get you?”

“He's not coming here. He's going to the playground.”

“Yeah, and what do you think will happen when you don't show up?”

Logan knew she was right. “Look,” he said, even more nervous now. “My parents are totally freaked out. They wouldn't let me go anywhere right now if I begged.”

“Well, can you sneak out?”

“Are you kidding?” Logan asked. “Are you nuts? Of course I can't sneak out!”

“I can,” Erin said. And she ended the call.

3

She was at his window five minutes later. Logan jumped when he saw her, but he opened his stairway door.

“If my parents find you here—”

Erin put her finger to his lips. “They won't,” she whispered.

“We're leaving.”

Logan shrugged impatiently.
And how do you propose we do that?
he seemed to ask.

“Tell them you've had a long day. You're going to bed.” And before Logan could object, Erin was pressing the intercom on his wall.

“Yes?” his dad answered through the speaker.

Erin looked at Logan and nodded toward the microphone.

“It's . . . been a long day,” Logan said reluctantly. “Think I'm gonna go to bed.”

“That's a good idea,” his dad said. “I'll be right up.”

The intercom cut out, and Erin looked at Logan with a sudden, confused fear. “What does he mean, he'll be right up?”

For a moment Logan was too embarrassed to say it. When he finally did, he said it to the floor. “To tuck me in.”

Erin rolled her eyes but spared him outright mockery. Sounds indicated the elevator's approach, and without another word, she dove into Logan's closet and shut the door.

Improvising, Logan stripped down to his underwear and leaped into bed, wondering how his life could have spiraled this far out of control so quickly.

“Think you can sleep through the night?” Mr. Langly asked, the elevator doors sliding open before him.

“I'll be fine,” Logan said.

“You want your night-light tonight?”

Logan glanced toward the closet and felt his face grow hot and flushed. “No, Dad. I . . . of course I don't.”

“Just asking. Listen, about everything that happened today—”

Logan interrupted him. “Dad.” Mr. Langly stopped, and sat, and waited for his son to continue. But Logan didn't. Instead there was silence as something inside him came to an unexpected, rolling boil. “Look, you can't keep babying me all the time, okay? I can take care of myself. I don't need you to tuck me in anymore. I don't need a stupid night-light. I'm almost Marked now. I don't need you to treat me—I need you to treat me like a . . .” With the top blown off, Logan's boil cooled to a simmer, and then to nothing at all. His words fizzled out, and he shook his head, tired and ashamed.

Mr. Langly nodded, understanding, frowning a little. He leaned over and kissed Logan on the forehead with horrible finality. Then he sat still for a couple of breaths. “You got it, bud,” he said. And Mr. Langly got up, turned out the light, and let the elevator carry him away.

Logan sprang out of bed and dressed as quickly as he could. “Not a word,” he whispered furiously when Erin emerged from the closet. She cooperated graciously. “Now why are you here and what in the world are you planning?”

“My dad's still at work,” Erin said. “Thought you might wanna pay him a little visit.”

4

The breakout was easy once Erin had finished decoying Logan's bed with pillows. The two of them snuck down the outside steps and made it to the street corner without another word uttered between them.

Erin ran to the streetlamp at the sidewalk's edge and began untying something. Logan strained to make it out under the artificial light of the diodes.

“Is that . . .”

“Yeah,” Erin said. “It's mine. In Beacon, everyone has 'em.”

A rollerstick. Logan had never ridden one before.

“So that's how you got here so fast,” he said.

“Of course. It's the only way to travel.”

The rollerstick rested upright, perfectly balanced, above a single metal ball coated in perforated rubber, about the size of a cantaloupe. An electromagnet held the stick in place a few centimeters above the ball. At the top of the stick was a rubber grip, and at the bottom was a small platform for a person's feet. Controlling it was supposed to be easy—just lean any way you want and you'll roll in that direction—but with their quick acceleration and top speeds at over thirty miles an hour, the thought of them had always made Logan nervous.

Erin swiped her Mark over the stick's end and stepped onto its platform. It tilted and rolled, adjusting itself under her weight. “Hop on,” she said, and she rolled her eyes when he didn't. “It's fine, Logan. You can hold on to my waist.”

Logan felt his palms begin to sweat, but he did as he was told. The ball rolled erratically beneath them and the stick swayed at their feet, but its top stayed steady, like a pendulum, agitated and finding its stasis. Once it did, they stood perfectly balanced, motionless.

“They're not really built for two,” Erin admitted, strapping padding to her elbows and knees, “but I can make it work. Just don't shift your weight too suddenly or we're both likely to get ourselves killed.” Erin handed him her helmet as she said this, then leaned forward, and, just like that, they were off.

The pair rode along the nighttime sidewalks at a blinding speed, their rollerstick angled so severely that Logan had to crane his head back just to see in front of them—to look forward would have been to look straight at the ground. Erin grasped the stick tightly with both hands, her arms bent but rigid, and the wind blew her hair wildly into Logan's face.

“You say these things are pretty common in Beacon, huh?” Logan yelled over the rush of wind.

“Everyone has one,” Erin said. “It's the only way to get around.”

Logan tried to imagine it. “Anyone ever get hurt?”

Erin laughed. “All the time. Think I was kidding about getting ourselves killed?”

She shifted her weight slightly, and the two of them turned sharply to the right, down a side road. Logan kept very still after that.

Finally, from behind closed eyes, Logan felt the welcome sensation of slowing down. Erin pulled back into an upright position, and as she did, the stick glided gently to a stop.

Erin turned her head back toward Logan. “You can hop off now,” she said. “We're here.”

Logan looked up. In front of him was the Center for the Department of Marked Emergencies—two monstrously wide skyscrapers that filled the block from one end to the other, and a spire between them about ten feet in diameter at its base. The spire stretched high into the air, just an elevator shaft and a stairway that spiraled maybe fifty times around it on the outside. At the spire's top was a wide, Frisbee-shaped disk, with several smaller domes above it, making the whole structure look like an odd umbrella, which was in fact how the building was known. Logan had seen the Umbrella many times, but he had never dreamed of going inside.

“This is the DOME headquarters for all of New Chicago,” Logan told Erin.

“I know.”

“I thought we were visiting your dad's office.”

“We are.” She headed straight for the spire.

Logan didn't understand. “But DOME's standard offices are way downtown. These Center buildings are for the highest ranks. The Umbrella's for the top of the top—”

“You're right,” Erin said. “It is.” She raised an eyebrow playfully, and Logan began to understand the extent of what her father's “government work” really meant.

Erin swiped her hand under a Markscan at the spire's base, and the elevator door opened.

“Am I allowed up there with you?” Logan asked.

Erin stepped inside. “Almost certainly not,” she said, looking at Logan as though he were the stupidest boy in the world. “So hurry up before someone stops you!”

Logan darted into the elevator.

“You need to learn,” she said, “that it's usually easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

Logan smiled. “And I suppose this is one of those times?”

“You bet,” Erin said as the elevator closed and lurched into motion. “I have clearance 'cause I'm family. Though I'm only supposed to use it in an emergency.”

“Is that what this is?” Logan whispered.

She glanced at him uneasily, and Logan guessed the answer.

“Just do as I say and keep quiet.”

“We're going straight to your dad, right? To tell him what happened?”

Erin looked at the elevator doors. “Just do as I say.”

Logan nodded, bewildered by the speed at which he seemed to be breaking rules all of a sudden. “No buttons in this elevator,” he noticed idly.

“That how you keep quiet?”

Logan took the hint.

5

When the elevator doors opened, it was to the disk on top of the Umbrella. Logan followed Erin out and he immediately felt a horrifying sense of vertigo. The disk was as big as his school's cafeteria, and the entire enclosing structure was made of glass. Logan looked at his feet and saw nothing below him but the sidewalk, fifty stories below.

“It's tinted so you can't see from the outside,” Erin whispered.

“But the whole floor's made of glass. Don't be alarmed.”

Thanks for warning me
, Logan thought. To him, it felt like standing on a cloud, and about as safe. He tried to steady his balance as Erin led him through the space.

Even at this hour of the night, the room buzzed with the frenzied energy of a newsroom or a trading floor. DOME agents worked on long tables that wrapped around the space in concentric circles, the highest ranks at the outer rings along the Umbrella's glass edge. The tables themselves were computers, their surfaces creating one large composite touchscreen over which each agent huddled, shuffling virtual documents with flailing arms and typing or writing with a stylus directly onto the interface. Everyone was busy. When Erin and Logan walked in, not a single head looked up.

“Quickly,” Erin whispered. “Very quickly, now.” And she ducked back toward the shaft in the room's center, into a manual door resting exactly opposite from where they came in. Logan followed, wondering how they were ever going to find Erin's father.

“I thought we were looking for your dad,” he whispered, entering the more private space of the stairwell inside the spire.

“I told you on the phone. We don't have evidence yet. The only way he'd believe us now is if we admitted we'd read his documents.”

“So what!”

“So my dad doesn't play around, Logan. It'd take him all of
one second
to throw you in jail for treason. And even if he didn't—even if you wanted to take that risk—without physical evidence he'd just think we read the brief and then let our stupid imaginations run wild.” Erin turned and began walking up the metal staircase. “We go to him—first thing—when we have evidence that stands on its own. Not a minute sooner.”

“But Peck's gonna
kill
me by then!”

“Oh, give me a break. He's not trying to kill you,” Erin said dismissively. “He's probably just trying to kidnap you.”

They'd walked one floor up to a smaller enclosed dome above the main disk of the Umbrella. In here, everything was still and quiet, a narrow hallway spiraling out from the spire and lined with unlabeled doors.

“My dad showed me around on Sunday,” Erin said. “The Umbrella and the Center, both. Thought it'd cheer me up about the move if I saw how cool his new office was.”

“Did it?” Logan asked.

“It has now.” The hallway became straighter as they spiraled farther away from the center spire. “We've gotta be sneaky,” Erin said. “We're looking for room 113B. Most of these rooms are offices, but 113B is for supplies. At least . . . according to the boxes in my apartment.”

“How sneaky can we possibly be?” Logan asked. “I would think there'd be cameras everywhere in here.”

“There are,” Erin said, looking around and trying to spot one.

“But they know I've scanned in, and I'm green in their system. Just walk with purpose, and with any luck they won't second-guess us 'til we're gone.”

Logan bit at a hangnail on his thumb. “Are you at least going to tell me what it is we're doing here?”

“If I did, you'd chicken out.”

Erin slinked off to the right, opening a door and slipping into Room 113B. Logan scrambled behind her.

It wasn't much bigger than a closet, but the sight of the space stopped Logan cold.

Erin smiled with relief. “Bingo.”

“Erin, what
exactly
are you planning?”

“If we're gonna do this,” Erin said, “we need to stock up on the right equipment.” She had depleted the stash she'd had in her apartment that afternoon just by learning how to use it.

“Do what?” Logan asked, refusing to grasp the insanity of Erin's unfolding plan. “Erin. Seriously, do
what
, exactly?”

Erin grabbed indiscriminately at the shelves and drawers, filling her backpack and lining her pockets with what she now knew as bug tape, surveillance powder, flash pellets, taser beans, smoke bombs, pepper spray, chloroform . . . all the stuff she'd experimented with earlier, and more. She threw a handful of paraphernalia at him and smiled a wicked, knowing, beautiful smile. “Catch Peck tonight,” she said. “What else?”

“Erin!” Logan shot a harsh whisper her way. “Are you nuts? This is totally illegal! We're
not
vigilantes. We're
certainly
not DOME agents. Put all this stuff back, and let's get out of here before we get caught!”