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“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 better plan. So he pulled the boy's towel over both their heads, held Rusty tight, and made his way out of the building.

5

“Where are they, kids? Help me out, here!”

Down the block, Mr. Arbitor was yelling at Logan and Erin.

“We haven't seen anyone yet, sir. We don't know.”

“We're looking,” Erin said. “No signs.”

“Mr. Arbitor, don't you think . . .” Logan hesitated. “Don't you think it's very unlikely that any of the Dust would be caught dead on this street today? They know how badly they're wanted. They're probably hiding as far from here as possible.”

“Spoken like a true thinking agent, Logan, but we're a step ahead of you.” Mr. Arbitor smiled. “The Dust didn't live alone, kids. They lived with these fine folks on the Row. These skimps you're looking at?” He swept his arms out and gestured to the dozens of couples, parents, grandparents, children . . . all magnecuffed and led away in cars and buses . . . or stretchers. “These skinflints? They were the Dust's community. They were the Dust's friends. This—was the Dust's neighborhood. So today”—Mr. Arbitor smiled—“today we're seeing how heartless those little pikers really are. Can they stand by and watch their fellow misers lose their homes, their families, and their miserable little lives? Or will they come back . . . to take a stand?”

“That's quite a long shot, Mr. Arbitor,” Logan said.

“Is it? Well, today it's our best option. We followed that tracker you kids placed on the Dust. Turned up loose in the woods. So it's out with the old tricks and in with the new. And this here's all win-win anyway, as I see it. Worst-case scenario, Spokie gets its block back. Of course, best case . . .”

And just then, out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw him. Blake. The boy from his window. The boy who'd left the note. The boy who'd taken hold of Erin last night. The boy who started it all, and who wouldn't let go.

Blake. The enemy. Logan was here to fish him out, and there he was, right in front of him, right in Logan's line of sight, under the warm, sunny sky, clear and certain as anything Logan had ever seen.

He carried a boy in his arms. A boy with red hair. A towel covered both their heads.

And Blake saw Logan too. Logan was sure of that, now. The two of them made eye contact, and held it for some time. Blake had stopped cold. A deer in the most ferocious headlights he'd ever seen.

Blake's eyes bore into Logan. They
saw
him. And something about them pleaded.

This was Logan's chance. To give Blake to DOME . . . Logan would be a hero. His charges, gone . . . his parents, proud of him again . . . all would be forgiven. All would be over.
This
was Logan's chance.

“So keep an eye out, Logan Langly,” Mr. Arbitor said cheerfully behind him. “Keep 'em peeled, keep 'em ready. Keep 'em out for the Dust!”

And Logan turned to him, suddenly, nervously.

“Sir—” Logan said. And he paused. “If I see anything . . . I'll be sure to let you know.”

ELEVEN
THE MEETING OF
THE MINDS

1

L
OGAN DIDN'T SEE ERIN MUCH AFTER THEIR
day together on the Row. At school, she avoided him. After school, there wasn't much to talk about. The Row was clean now, vacant, but the Dust had not been found. Logan and Erin both were on probation, walking the streets with official DOME files to their names, which would never go away until the Dust was finished and Peck was in a cell.

The halls at Spokie were quieter now that Dane was gone. Students would pass through them, crying softly. Classes were slower. Teachers pulled back on the workload. Logan stopped worrying about whoever it was that was spying on him. There was nothing left to spy.

Logan's father had stopped escorting him to school, and he stopped meeting him on the lawn when classes let out. Nothing was said to Logan about any further punishment. Nothing was said to Logan at all. After the night Logan snuck out, after the night at DOME headquarters, his parents just seemed to give up. They let him live in their house, but they never called him to dinner. They never woke him up in the morning or fixed breakfast for him. They never said good night. DOME had Logan's house guarded by two agents, twenty-four hours a day. Logan wasn't quite sure if it was to protect him from Peck or Spokie from him. Either way, his parents washed their hands of him. Logan figured they thought of their job as done.

In one month, Logan's life had collapsed around him, and he realized now how fragile all of it had been. Everything he'd ever known, he had taken for granted. But none of it had been promised. None of it was owed to him. Logan saw that now.

There was one thing left for Logan to look forward to, and he did with all his heart. One thing left to think about as he floated through classes and hallways in which no one would say hi. One thing left to think about as Logan lay in bed each night, unable to sleep.

It was his date with Hailey. The only person at Spokie Middle who still noticed when he passed. The only person in his life who hadn't just called it quits and moved right along. It had taken them until November to do it, but with Logan's punishment being somewhat more . . .
nebulous
these days, he and Hailey had finally gotten around to setting it up. She had suggested Wednesday of next week, the day before Logan's birthday, as a sort of early celebration, and Logan was all too happy to take it.

It was on that Wednesday that Erin found Logan in the Amazon Wing.

“I hear you got a date tonight,” she said. It was the first time she had stopped him for any real conversation since their day cleaning up the Row.

“Sort of,” Logan admitted. “If you wanna call it that.”

“Doesn't matter what I call it,” Erin said. “It is what it is.”

“Like you care,” Logan said.

Erin looked at him very sadly. “You never got it, did you?” she said. “Through all of it, you never actually understood.”

Logan wanted to ask just precisely what that meant. He wanted to jump inside Erin's head and know right then exactly what she was thinking. But he didn't, and he couldn't.

In the projections behind Erin, a monkey swung into the trees and looked at the two of them. It picked at a leaf, chewing and swinging a little and laughing. Bugs swarmed, and Logan could see the underbelly of a tarantula as it crawled across the virtual pane of glass. Logan had time to look at all of this because Erin had walked away.

2

After school that day, Logan walked the streets of Spokie for a long time before heading over to Hailey's house. He didn't want to go home. Without the Mark, he couldn't hang out in a mall or a store. So he walked, just like he'd do with Hailey when he picked her up, and he used the time to think.

It only barely registered to Logan that tomorrow was his birthday. It only vaguely dawned on him that tomorrow was his Pledge. He wasn't afraid of it anymore. There was nothing left to be afraid of.

When Logan made it to Hailey's door, she had it open before he could ring the bell. She smiled in a way he'd never seen from her, and in a way he hadn't seen from anyone in weeks. She was happy to see him. He loved her for it.

“Hi,” Logan said.

Hailey still couldn't quite make eye contact. She never could. But her voice was sincere. “I'm glad you came.”

They walked through all of Spokie. They walked for hours. They walked under the trees in Old District; they walked through the playground in the park; they walked past the school, past the shops, past the Umbrella and the Center surrounding it.

They chatted idly. It was just nice to talk.

“There's a place just outside of town,” Hailey said. “A really neat old building. I like to go there sometimes to think.”

Logan smiled.

“You wanna see it?”

“Of course,” Logan said. He had nowhere else to be.

The sun had long since set when they crested the hill far out of town. It was dark and calm under the stars. But there, in the distance, in a glade between the trees of the undeveloped land well beyond Spokie's borders, stood an old, white building, still beautiful despite the graffiti and dirt on its walls. A steeple rose from its side with a bell at its top.