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Storm (Swipe Series #3)

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Overview

In a future United States under the power of a charismatic leader, everyone gets the Mark at age thirteen. The Mark lets citizen shop, go to school, and even get medical care—without it, you are on your own. Few refuse to get the Mark. Those who do . . . disappear.

Logan Langly went in to get his Mark, but he backed out at the last minute. Ever since, he’s been on the run from government agents and on a quest to find his sister Lily, who disappeared when she went to get her Mark five years earlier. His journey leads him to befriend the Dust, a vast network of Markless individuals who dissent against the iron-grip rule of the government. Along the way to the capital to find Lily, the Dust receive some startling information from the Markless community, opening their eyes to the message of Christianity and warning that humanity is now entering the End of Days.

In Storm, Logan and his friends are the leaders of the Markless revolution. But while some Markless are fighting Chancellor Cylis’ army, the Dust is busy trying to find a cure for a horrible epidemic sweeping through the Marked. And it's difficult for them to know who to trust, especially when they aren't sure if Logan's sister Lily, one of the commanders in Cylis' army, is on their side or not. And all across the nation—and the world—the weather has become less stable and a storm is brewing that bigger than any of them could have ever imagined.

Meets national education standards.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400321971
Publisher:	Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date:	05/06/2013
Series:	Swipe Series , #3
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	631,179
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Evan Angler is safe, for now. He lives without the Mark, evading DOME and writing in the shadows of Beacon. But if anyone asks, you know nothing about him. Don’t make eye contact if you see him. Don’t call his name out loud. He’s in enough trouble already. And so are you, if you listen to his books.

Read an Excerpt

STORM

By EVAN ANGLER

Thomas Nelson

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

The floor shook violently under Logan's feet, its rug jumping and sliding in short, stiff bursts. The window to his side rattled, and he wondered if the whole door might soon fall off.

Logan leaned forward to the driver's seat in front of him, peering over Peck's tense shoulder at the fuel gauge, which jittered so much that the after-image of its soft green glow showed only a blur.

But he could still see the needle, pointing with certainty. Empty.

"Can't this thing go any faster?" Hailey asked from the passenger seat.

"Not if we want it to stay in one piece," Peck said, but he pressed harder on the gas pedal even so.

Lifelessly, Erin bounced from her spot on the backseat and slid to the floor.

"She all right?" Peck asked, unable to take his eyes off the road.

Hailey turned to look over her shoulder. "Not stirring," she said. "Keep driving."

"Low on gas," Logan warned, hoping not to spark an explosion of new frustration from up front.

"It'll stop when it stops," Peck said. "'Til then, worry about what's behind us."

So Logan turned to peer out the back window, where behind them a drone plane appeared low on the horizon.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Logan said.

"Nope. Very serious. As predicted."

Not far off and closing in fast, the running lights of the drone glowed bright red, green, and white against the night sky. It flew silent and unwavering in the steady hands of its remote pilot. And on its side, branded proudly in big white letters, was the single, horrible, menacing word:

DOME.

Most of the way to Sierra by now, Logan had hoped that the four of them might enter the sprawling city undetected, that the protests they'd stirred up back in Beacon might distract authorities enough to provide some cover. But the team had made a critical mistake, and they knew it.

About twenty miles back, along the first patch of run-down outskirts near Sierra's eastern city limits, along the forgotten road that decrepit signs called "Highway 66," Daniel Peck, Hailey Phoenix, Logan Langly, and Erin Arbitor decided to make an emergency stop. Erin's fever had gotten worse, her shivering violent and her words increasingly delirious. Everyone knew she needed medicine— anything to lower her temperature, even if only for a day or two. Anything to buy her some time.

So the team decided to take the risk.

"They'll know she was here the second we buy this thing," Peck warned as Hailey stepped toward the corner store counter with a handful of nanomeds. "They'll trace her scan instantly. You know they've been watching for it."

Erin nodded in detached agreement. She was standing, but barely, and only because Logan held her up. He had his arm around her back, bouncing it now a few times, trying for a better hold. "We'll be miles away by the time they get here," he said. "And anyway, there's no way around it." If they wanted the goods, they needed Erin's Mark, simple as that. So Logan snapped his fingers in front of Erin's eyes. "Look alive, Erin. This part's all you."

And the four of them walked to the counter.

"Evening," said the store clerk. "Find everything all right?"

"Just fine," Hailey said, not looking at the man. She handed him the nanomeds and held her breath while he scanned them under the counter's Markscan.

"Your friend's not lookin' too good." The clerk nodded at Erin.

"She'll be all right," Logan said, propping her head up with his own. He grabbed Erin's hand and waved her Marked wrist under that same scanner. It beeped and flashed green. "Just fighting down a fever. These cold winter months and all, you know ..."

"You making her pay for those meds herself?" the clerk asked, scolding him a bit.

"She insists," Logan said, but he quickly shoved his own Unmarked wrist into a deep pants pocket. And Peck and Hailey did the same.

"Well ... bed rest," the clerk instructed. "Plenty of water." Then he pointed to the nanomeds. "And one of these pills twice a day. They won't cure anything, but they should keep the fever down."

Erin nodded distantly. Logan readjusted his hold on her. And the group hustled out without another word to anyone.

"We've sealed our fate," Peck said. "They have us now." He put the car in gear and peeled out before the store clerk could notice that these three Markless teens and their dying Marked friend had somehow gotten their hands on the last combustion vehicle in the entire Global Union.

Logan shook his head. "We're out. We're safe. That drew less attention than a robbery."

"A robbery's anonymous," Hailey said. "Markscans are not."

"No stealing," Logan said. He opened Erin's mouth and gave her two nanomed pills at once. She didn't protest. "She needed this. We had no choice. We'll deal with the next crisis when it hits us."

And Logan was right, Hailey knew. The truth was, they didn't have a choice. The truth was that they'd made their choice already, when each of them—Peck, Hailey, Logan—refused the Mark on each of their thirteenth birthdays, refused citizenship, refused to Pledge allegiance to General Lamson and Chancellor Cylis. They knew then what the consequences would be. They knew then that they'd never have rights. That they'd never in their lives be able to buy or sell anything, hold a job, vote, own a house, sign a contract, see a doctor, finish their education, start a family.... Those quaint hopes dried up the moment the world broke into its Total War; the moment it realized that Unity was necessary, that fractured cultures and incompatible views could never keep the peace. The kids knew all of this at the time.

But each of them knew something else too. That the Pledge was a trap. Much more than a ceremony of citizenship, it was a system designed to weed out those who didn't fit in. Flunkees were rare, maybe one in ten thousand—few enough that no one raised a fuss. DOME let families believe that their children were dead, victims of infrequent and unavoidable complications in the Marking procedure—an allergic reaction, an infection, or an unfortunate error, perhaps.

But this was not the truth. The truth was that once identified, flunkees were simply removed, thrown into the secret prison known only as "Acheron," where they were converted, brainwashed, crafted into soldiers ... into the International Moderators of Peace, the IMPS, hidden enforcers of the Mark system.

Under this program, the rest of the world was free to be Unified. Protected by the very peers who otherwise might one day have betrayed them.

Logan, Peck, Hailey ... they knew this because Logan's sister, Lily, had Pledged herself ... and had never returned. They knew this because Peck spent the next five years piecing together what might have happened, had even warned Logan that it might happen to him next.

Peck was right. But Logan escaped.

And with all his worst fears finally confirmed, Logan had gone on to break into Acheron, had seen it with his own eyes, and had managed to break back out.

It wasn't safe for him in Beacon City any longer. It wasn't safe for any of them.

Peck, Hailey, and their friends known only as "the Dust" had used Logan as a symbol—as a martyr, willing to die in his fight against DOME. And among Markless everywhere, that symbol took hold. The news spread countrywide, through renegade radio stations and secret airwaves, and the Dust spread right along with it. The Markless were banding together. They rose up; they fought back. They brought the IMPS out of hiding. And Logan became a hero.

Erin, until that time, was as loyal to DOME as anyone, Marked and diligent and proud of it. Her father worked for DOME, after all, was an operative for them, and until recently he and the Department had given Erin no reason to doubt their intentions. But then last month she discovered Project Trumpet ... and everything in her world changed forever.

Erin now lay on the floor of the group's cramped car, contorted and barely conscious. The drone plane behind them encroached.

Peck pushed the pedal harder, gliding dangerously across the icy, broken road, and Logan said, "It hasn't shot us yet. It could have by now. It's close enough."

"DOME's not trying to kill us," Peck said, gripping the wheel with white-knuckle force. "They're trying to track us."

"Not very subtle about it," Hailey said. The plane blinked menacingly as it lowered to car level and followed maybe a hundred feet behind.

"They don't have to be. We're cornered."

Logan looked out over the wide-open land and the Rocky Mountains in the distance. It was a funny word, cornered, spoken in the middle of so much empty space.

"How could DOME even know we're the ones in here?" Logan asked. "They can't scan Erin's Mark from that distance, can they? Even if they've already traced her to the store, as far as this car goes, they'd only be guessing ..."

Peck laughed. "Logan, they know Erin was with us in Beacon less than a week ago. And now they have her Markscan on file in a store two thousand miles away, without a single logged magnetrain ticket in between. As far as we know, this is the only private car driving on any road between here and Europe. What other conclusion could they reasonably come to? Of course we're in this car."

"So how do we hide?" Hailey asked, very nervously now. "We can't outdrive it."

Already, Logan was hunched over, grabbing at Erin's shoulders and sliding her up into the backseat. She groaned once, and her head lolled to the side. He buckled the seat belt around her. "We can try."

Hailey turned to Peck uncertainly. "Hey," she said. "Guys, seriously—"

Peck shook his head. He sighed. "Hold on," he said, and he pushed the gas pedal to the floor.

In their headlights, the broken road cast shadows on itself long into the distance. Its potholes, jutting concrete, and black, wintry ice rushed in fragments and patches toward the run-down car. Peck weaved fast between frosty cracks and scattered debris, and the drone shrunk smaller in the window behind them. For miles, it seemed they were succeeding. But Peck couldn't avoid the road's obstacles forever. Coming off a tight swerve, their back right wheel caught an old blown-out tire, and Hailey yelled, "Hold on!" as the whole car lurched forward with a panicked force.

It spun faster than it could turn. Its back wheels came up alongside its front. The driver's side plowed ahead with an ear-piercing squeal of its tires, the left wheels leading the charge against an unforgiving road, front and back together hitting a street-wide crack, catching and stopping all at once. In one continuous motion, the passenger side reared up, getting ahead of itself, flipping end over end at a staggering speed. Metal on concrete. Glass shattering. Gravity shifting. The world rolled hopelessly outside. A car full of breathless screams.

They tumbled from the road.

In Beacon, the citywide protests had reached a stalemate.

For weeks, Markless had marched, and chanted, and camped out on the streets. For weeks, they'd demanded rights, representation, respect, all spurred on by the truth the Dust had revealed about flunkees and Acheron and the kids who were swiped.

DOME's darkest secrets were in full view now, its Markless prison finally identified, its once-covert IMP troops forced to line the streets, make arrests, curb unrest by any means necessary . . .

For years, the Markless in Beacon had stayed mostly underground. They'd lived below the surface, huddled into communities inside an abandoned nuclear fission reactor that rested below the city, coming up only to scrounge for food or catch a glimpse of daylight. Some of them had spoken up, sure; some of them had held signs, had shared thoughts with the Marked that passed by, or gave food, or dared to stop and stare. But never before had a Markless rocked the boat. Never before had any of them surfaced with the intention of challenging the system. For years, the Markless in Beacon had been silent.

No one was silent anymore. For the first time, Markless were fighting. They were Dust. And they were not afraid.

But for each huddle that made its way street side, for each Unmarked who yelled or blocked the road, a squadron of IMPS was lying in wait. And the IMPS were fighting back.

From his quiet spot on the sidewalk hundreds of feet above, Blake leaned over, carefully considering the showdown below him. In Beacon, a five-tier system of streets connected most City Center skyscrapers at forty-floor intervals, and currently, Blake stood at the edge of Tier Two, peering over the railing at the ground level below.

From here it looked like the top of an open box of crayons: dots of colors all pressed up against one another, each one a person, each one a Markless protester. Each one Dust.

Surrounding them, completing the crayon-box likeness, were barricades—rigid right angles of makeshift hurdles and fences, put in place by IMP forces and guarded by the IMPS themselves.

Blake sighed deeply, appreciating the brief reprieve from the noise and violence down below ... and yet Blake was on no break. He wasn't resting. He wasn't relaxing. He was preparing. And he knew the chaos would come to him soon enough.

In fact, he was counting on it.

"This one's filled with ketchup Meg swiped from the huddle, and this one here ..." Tyler held a balloon in each hand, and he raised the right one now. "Well, I'm honestly not quite sure what's in this one. Some sludge Rusty found in the gutter between Barrier Street and the power plant, I know that much. But beyond that ... I really couldn't tell ya. It's green, I think." Tyler frowned. "Sorta chartreuse-green."

"Chartreuse?" Jo stepped forward from behind Blake. "I wager a punch to the face that you have no idea what color chartreuse is."

"Sure I do. It's the color of what's in this balloon. You know, greeny sludge color."

"Look, will ya just drop the thing already so we can get on with this?"

"I'm trying to decide which to drop first. I'd rather see the gutter sludge splash ... but, see, I also kinda wanna save it."

"Tyler—" Jo motioned to grab the balloons herself, but Tyler ducked quickly out of the way.

"Okay, okay—gutter sludge it is."

Tyler leaned over the second-tier railing, forty stories up, his whole torso hanging off the side, feet dangling in the air just above the sidewalk, balancing himself precariously over the ledge. He closed one eye for aim, his tongue sticking out just slightly to the side, like a master in full concentration.

"Third IMP from the corner," Tyler said. "The one with all those stupid extra badges. Don't think we've hit his squad before."

"Me neither," Blake said. "I say we go for it."

"Good game," Tyler said. So he grinned wide, and he let go of the balloon.

* * *

Blake, Tyler, Jo, Meg, Rusty, Shawn ... these kids were the Dust. The original Dust—Peck's Markless gang—before Peck left them all to head west. Blake, fourteen years old now, had become a bit of a ringleader in Peck's absence. Joanne, fifteen, used to be Peck's right-hand girl; now she was more the enforcer. Meg, thirteen, was autistic, rescued by the Dust last July after Peck realized she was at risk of flunking her upcoming Pledge. Rusty was an orphaned six-year-old, picked up by Blake back when DOME made its raid on the Dust's old home, Slog Row, last September. Shawn was the Dust's newest member, a Markless hacker from Beacon who fell in with the rest during their Acheron breakout a month ago. And Tyler ... well, Tyler was just a troublemaker. He grew up an orphan too, never knowing or fully comprehending life outside of Markless huddles. Then one year ago, right around the time when he could have Pledged, Tyler just sort of glommed on to the Dust for fun—and never left.

And until recently, there was Eddie, Tyler's best friend and now a painful hole in the Dust's once-inseparable group. Just a few weeks ago, Eddie was captured along with Logan and Joanne by DOME during the Dust's attempt to break Logan's sister, Lily, out of Acheron. Unlike the others, Eddie never escaped.

He was gone now.

Eddie was an IMP.

* * *

"Bull's-eye!" Tyler yelled. He jumped up and down as he did, pumping his fists in the air and soliciting high-fives from the rest of the group. "Did you see that?"

The balloon had hit with astonishing force, and the resulting scene down below was chaos, rapidly growing violent.

The IMP's first response, of course, had been to assume that the balloon had come from the crowd he was guarding. The sludge slathered his helmet and shoulders with a greasy green, his face smeared with goop and his uniform now looking something like pickle relish. Immediately, he'd spun around, eager for someone to hit or arrest or worse. But no obvious culprit had emerged.

Finally, the IMP's squad looked up. They stared in disbelief. They tapped their leader on the shoulder. "There," they seemed to say.

Forty stories above, Tyler stood in plain view, grinning, laughing, and waving happily as he tossed down the second balloon.

* * *

It took two and a half minutes for the IMPS to call in their underground backups and coordinate a response. This was longer than the Dust was expecting. So for about thirty seconds, Tyler was bored again.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from STORM by EVAN ANGLER. Copyright © 2013 by Evan Angler. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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