1
NIGHTTIME FELL ACROSS LAHOMA LIKE A blanket. The moon was low in the sky, hanging red like some great lantern, and it lit the weather mill with an eerie, ominous, dying-ember glow.
The electrotrucks idled on the dirt path to the loading dock. Men and women rolled crates bigger than they were through the cargo door. Others swept the field of missile launchers, inspecting the electronics and the mechanics of each, jotting notes on tablets, ensuring that everything was up to code and ready to go.
March 15, Connor thought. Two more weeks.
It had been days since he’d sent his message to General Lamson, pleading for help, for backup, for even so much as an explanation—something for Connor to go on.
The general had not responded.
But it is the right thing, Connor reassured himself. It had to be, confirmation or not. His parents weren’t fools. And they certainly weren’t traitors.
Connor really was on his own. But that was no reason to give up. Since when did Connor Goodman ever back down from a challenge? When the general-in-chief makes a request, you do what it takes to follow through. And if anyone could figure out how to destroy this mill for good, he could.
He lay prone on the ground outside the mill now, observing, strategizing, and planning.
No way to sneak in, Connor noticed, looking at the place now. There were too many workers at the entrances, too much security on site. By the looks of it, he was facing video feed, laser trips—the works. The best cat burglar in the world couldn’t get in there.
Well then, that’s step one, Connor thought. You can’t hide in the shadows on this. You’re going to have to walk in with your head held high.
So that was step one, he supposed. But what about the rest of it? What about the destruction itself? Connor was no arms dealer. He didn’t have demolition equipment, he didn’t have bombs . . . You don’t even own a slingshot, Connor thought, laughing a little at himself. So what options were there?
He could set fire to the place. Except that his parents already did that. It shut the mill down for a couple of months, sure—but it hardly destroyed it. What Connor needed now was to level the place. So that it couldn’t be rebuilt. So that his job—so that Lamson’s wish—could be complete, permanently.
And that’s when the missile inspectors caught his eye. The way they handled the launchers, the way they double- and triple-checked so carefully the calibration of each . . .
“The launcher angles,” Connor whispered aloud. Of course! How could he not have seen it sooner? Connor didn’t need bombs or ballistics of his own—he was staring at a whole field of them! And the day of the mill’s reopening, that field would be fully loaded with thirty supersonic ground-to-air missiles just waiting to be fired.
If he could get out there onto that field between load-up and launch . . . if he could manually throw off those launch angles, could just manage to set their sights for the weather mill itself . . . then Connor Goodman could turn America’s seeding canisters into the missiles of their own mill’s destruction.
2
It took Logan and Hailey the day to find the carved waves that announced the Unmarked River, several hours longer than either of them would have liked. But the Unmarked River didn’t exactly get its name by advertising itself with all too many signs.
They’d been walking in circles all night by the time the little scrawled boat revealed itself on the stump of a fallen maple tree.
“Should be a captain this way,” Hailey said. She pointed in the direction of the trunk, as if the tree itself were their compass.
“Straight as we can walk?” Logan asked.
“Straight as we can walk.”
Logan nodded. Hailey took the lead. And yet somehow, Logan’s feet didn’t follow.
“You all right?” Hailey asked, stopping short.
Logan paused. “No,” he said, bemused. And all at once, he crumpled to the dirt.
“Hey,” Hailey said, rushing over to him. “What’s the matter? Are you sick? Are you exhausted?”
“I can’t,” Logan told her. His eyes glinted in the starlight. “I just can’t. It’s too much.”
Hailey frowned. She sat down beside him.
“How can we possibly make it?” Logan asked. “It’s too far to walk. Peck was right to abandon us—”
“Peck didn’t abandon us!” Hailey said. “Peck just . . . I don’t know . . . Peck just sorta lost it, if you ask me. But he’ll be all right. We’ll see him again.”
“Yeah?” Logan asked. “And what about Erin?”
“Erin too!”
Logan closed his eyes. “She’s dying, Hailey. No one’s saying it. But everyone knows it. They aren’t close to a cure for this thing. And she’s already dragged her own fever out longer than any of us thought it could go.”
“Well, Erin’s tough!” Hailey said. “She’s not your average anything—fever victim included.”
Logan laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “And what about us?”
“Not average,” Hailey said again. And for a while, she watched the stars sing.
“It was easier last time,” Logan said. “On the River.”
“We had Dane with us last time,” Hailey told him.
“And a purpose. A mission we were sure about. Friends to support us . . .”
Hailey laughed. “I don’t think I’m sure about anything anymore. But we still do have friends, though.” And now she glanced at Logan, hunched over in the starlight. What was he holding? She smiled. It was his old Bible.
Hailey smiled. “You’re really still carrying that thing around with you,” she said.
“I lent it to Erin these past few weeks,” Logan said. “But yeah. Ever since the underpass.” He flipped through the book’s whisper-thin pages. “Peck always told me there was strength in this book. That you could pray with it and that it makes you strong.”
Hailey frowned. “That’d be nice,” she said.
In the distance, crickets chirped.
“Pray with me,” Logan said, out of nowhere.
Hailey looked at him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Come on, pray with me. Please.”
It was dim under the night sky. There was no moon. There was only a soft blue glow. And yet somehow, the reading was easy.
“‘For truly, I say to you,’” Logan began, “‘if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “‘Move from here to there,’” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.’” Logan stared at Hailey as the breeze washed over them. “That’s what we need, Hailey,” he said. “Faith.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Hailey laughed. “A miracle wouldn’t hurt, either.”
And Logan took Hailey’s hand. And he closed his eyes. And the two of them prayed under the singing stars and the gentle breeze.
“This is nice,” Hailey said.
The crickets chirped louder.
Logan lowered his head.
He wept.
The sun came up not too much later. Logan wasn’t sure whether he’d slept or not. But there was light on the fields now.
And in the distance, two horses appeared on the horizon, quickly galloping into view.
Logan didn’t believe it.
“Is that . . . ?” Hailey asked.
And he rubbed his eyes as if to make the vision go away. Except it didn’t.
Charging, charging. White. Speckled gray.
“Horses,” Hailey said.
The path before them was bright.
3
It was morning in Beacon, too early still to call Erin out west, given the time difference.
The Arbitors should have been at work. But they weren’t. It had become the unspoken rule between them since reconnecting with Erin: no one leaves the house for the day until contact with their daughter was made.
“Bet you never thought you’d be spending the busiest days of the G.U. merger babysitting a bunch of Markless, huh?” Charles joked.
“No,” Dr. Arbitor said. “And I can’t imagine you ever pictured yourself harboring fugitive traitors in your off-hours from DOME.”
“Disgraced,” Charles agreed. “While the Markless overrun this whole miserly country.”
Olivia laughed. “Well, at least you finally caught the Dust,” she said.
Behind her, the kids were all taking turns leaping around with Tyler’s prototype DOME hover boots.
“Hey, Meg can hit the ceiling!” Shawn yelled encouragingly, as with each bounding step Meg launched up and cracked her head, sending little flakes of white plaster floating down to the floor.
Charles buried his face in his hands. “And somehow our daughter’s behind all of it.”
Olivia laughed.
“I mean, did we do right by Erin?” Charles asked, bemused and unsure. “Or wrong? Are we proud of her? Ashamed? I’m honestly asking you.”
“Right now I’m not anything but worried,” Olivia said.
“Look. I know . . . I know you and I have had our differences these last few years. It’s not exactly been an easy, uh . . .”
“Yeah,” Olivia said.
“And I’m sorry for . . . you know, I really am sorry . . .”
“I know,” Olivia said.
Charles closed his eyes. “All this time, you and I have worked to make the world a safer place for our daughter. Because the world she was born into was . . .”
“Unfair,” Olivia said. “It was unfair, growing up in a place like that.”
“I mean, the sounds, you know? Just the sounds alone were horrible. The explosions. The gunfire. Pop, pop, pop, all through the night. Remember . . . you remember how we’d have our groceries delivered to us?”
“Because we were too afraid to go outside. I remember,” Olivia said.
“Until our delivery boy was shot right on our doorstep. I was holding Erin when it happened. She must have been ten months old. I was reaching for my wallet.”
Outside the apartment, it was sunny. The sky was blue.
“We swore that night that we’d do anything if it meant Erin could grow up without all that.”
“We were happily Marked.”
“The guy was a hero,” Charles said. “I’d have Pledged again and again to the man who ended that war.”
Olivia was silent for a moment. “And now it’s all happening again. No matter what we did. Another war is already upon us. And somehow, our daughter snuck her way onto the front lines.”
Charles and Olivia both shook their heads, disbelieving. But just moments later, the tablet between them rang. Dr. Arbitor practically jumped on it. “How are you feeling, honey? Are you feeling any better?”
“Much,” Erin said.
“Really?” Dr. Arbitor asked. “Erin, that’s great! Has your fever gone down?”
For a moment, Erin was confused. “Oh,” she said quickly. “No. No, I’m still sick as ever. Worse, even, I think.” And yet Erin looked more energetic than she had in weeks.
“So then what’s the news?” Mr. Arbitor asked.
Erin smiled. “The news,” she said, “is that those Detection Swabs you sent us?”
“Yeah?” Dr. Arbitor asked, sitting on the edge of her seat.
“One of them came up positive. Dr. Rhyne thinks we might have a match. Now it’s just a matter of running that protein through a series of tests and—”
“Erin, that’s amazing!” Mr. Arbitor said. “So you’re going to find a cure?”
Immediately, Erin’s shoulders slumped. She sank down a bit in her bed. “I, uh, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, right, Dad?”
Mr. Arbitor nodded.
“The question right now is just—where did this new protein come from, what was its purpose . . . you know, that sort of thing.”
“Sure,” Dr. Arbitor said. “Sure.”
Over the video feed, the Arbitors could see Dr. Rhyne step into the frame. She felt Erin’s forehead and shook her head somberly. “No more talking today,” she said to Erin. “Rest. Doctor’s orders.”
The Arbitors could just barely hear her over the connection.
When they hung up, moments later, Charles and Olivia hugged for the first time in years. Behind them, the Dust bounded around the apartment, breaking things.
And the two of them just sat, holding each other.
4
Nearly a week had passed. It was late on a Thursday. The stars were out once again and bright enough to read under. Logan and Hailey had spent the day on horseback, as they had each day since Saturday, and they lay now sprawled in the dusty grass, aching and tired and hopeful.
But Logan couldn’t sleep. His mind raced groggily from one worry to the next. He flipped the pages of his Bible and skimmed its contents distractedly. “You awake?” he whispered finally. He turned to face Hailey, and his cheek brushed a few scratchy, brown blades of grass.
“Reading, like you,” Hailey said, and she waved her copy of Swipe. “Or rereading, I suppose. Hey, when you went through this thing, did you happen to notice how much of a weirdo Evan Angler makes me out to be?”
Logan thought about it. “You are a weirdo,” he said finally.
And Hailey threw the book at him.
For a few minutes, they both lay in the field quietly, just counting the stars.
“You know, it doesn’t . . .” Hailey stopped, considering her words. “It doesn’t make sense to me,” she said. “Why Lamson would destroy the country he fought so hard to save. Why he’d ruin the land that’s already his . . .”
Logan shrugged. “We’re on the brink of Markless civil war. Last time around, he blew up the dam and flooded the whole east coast. This time around, he’ll dry us all out. It’s not so unbelievable, when you look at his past.”
“I guess,” Hailey said. “But why’d Lamson go to Lily about it? Why her, of all people?”
“She’s his personal assistant,” Logan said. “Makes sense that he’d confide in her.”
“Okay, but how’d she get to be in that position? Who put her there? And why?”
“Like I said back in Beacon, months ago—of all of us, Lily was the one best positioned for the fight. She’s spent the last five years getting close to Lamson. She even betrayed me as proof.” Logan shrugged. “Now we’re finally seeing the payoff.”
“I guess so,” Hailey said. “I’m just . . . worrying, I suppose.”
“I know,” Logan said. “Me too.”
There was a pause.
“You see that?” Hailey asked, pointing up at the sky.
“What?”
“A shooting star. Supposed to be good luck, I think.”
Logan smiled, though he hadn’t seen it.
It was late, and Connor was sitting in Steve’s room with the lights off, just thinking, when Steve opened the door and got such a shock that he nearly fell backward with surprise.
“Cylis, you just about scared the life out of me!” Steve said, clutching at his chest. “Man, what are you doing in here?”
“Homework,” Connor said flatly.
“In the dark?”
Connor shrugged. “The sun just sort of went down.”
“Yeah, but we have lights . . . ,” Steve said, flipping the switch next to the door.
“Okay,” Connor said. He was squinting now, but other than that he hadn’t moved.
“Also, your homework’s not out,” Steve said. “All the tablets in here are off.”
Connor looked around slowly and acknowledged this was true. “I was getting to that,” he said.
And for a minute, Steve just stood there, taking in the gloomy scene. It’d been a week since Connor started staying with the Larkins, sleeping on a blow-up mattress on the floor of Steve’s room. In the beginning, Steve was glad to have him. He enjoyed helping out as Connor transitioned into his new life, whatever that ended up being, and anyway, he liked spending time with the guy. Those first few nights, the two of them stayed up late reminiscing, joking around, and talking about girls. The one thing Connor never mentioned was his parents, or the scandal they’d been swept up underneath. And Steve was fine with that, of course. He imagined that in Connor’s shoes, he might not want to talk about any of that either.
It was later in the week that things had started to deteriorate. First, it got harder and harder to drag Connor out of bed each morning. By Wednesday, Steve wasn’t even able to get him up in time for school.
Second, what started off as nice Larkin family meals with Connor as the gracious and well-mannered guest had quickly turned into morbid affairs with little eating and even less talking. Eventually, Connor just stopped showing up for meals at all, even when called. Today, he’d spent the whole day in Steve’s room, just sitting in Steve’s desk chair. Not really doing much of anything.
“I’m worried about you,” Steve said finally. “I think you’re depressed. I think you need help.”
Connor nodded. “That’s probably true.”
“I, uh . . . I invited Sally over for Mark-opoly tonight. Do you . . . would you mind if she joined us?”
Connor shrugged. “Nah.”
Sally poked her head out from around the door frame. She waved a little. “Hey, Connor,” she said.
“Hi, Sally.”
The tablescreen was on and the game was ready to go, but it’d been nearly an hour and nobody had made a move. Instead, they just chatted, about nothing in particular.
“You know,” Sally said. “Steve and I . . . Connor, we’re worried about you.”
“Thanks.” Connor smiled.
“No, man,” Steve said. “You can’t just shrug it off anymore. We’re here to help you, one way or another.”
Sally leaned in and laid her hand on Connor’s wrist. “We couldn’t help but notice that your grades are slipping,” she said. “Steve saw the tests you’ve been bringing home this week.”
“They were just lying around the room,” Steve apologized. “I didn’t mean to pry . . .”
Connor shrugged.
“We thought,” Sally said gently. “We thought tonight we could, you know . . . help you with your homework, maybe? I’ve already taken a look at it . . . and Steve too . . . and we thought, you know, maybe we could walk you through it. Make sure you don’t fall too far behind . . .”
Connor chuckled softly. “Sally,” he said. “There’s no point.”
“No—there is!” Sally said encouragingly. “There is, there is! That’s the whole thing here, Connor. That’s what we’re trying to tell you—it does still matter! Your life still matters—very, very much!”
Inside, Connor was screaming. This was a nightmare, being treated this way. Pitifully. Like he was a child.
It had been like this ever since his parents’ funeral. And not just Sally and Steve either. Everyone in Lahoma was walking on eggshells around him. They all hated his parents, he knew. But they were also all hyperaware of Connor’s great-big-awful tragedy, and the sympathy and attention they were giving him as a result was suffocating. Insulting. Like he was some stray dog just barely cute enough to be worth Lahoma’s table scraps.
Exploiting it now was necessary, Connor knew. It was part of the plan. And as difficult as it was not to lash out about it, the fact was, right now, he had these two right where he needed them. Suck up your pride, Connor. It was time to make his move.
“I just feel . . . ,” he said, trying to cry a little. “Ever since they died . . . ever since the truth came out . . . about what they were doing . . . about how awful it was . . . I just feel . . .” He paused for effect. Sally squeezed his wrist comfortingly. Steve leaned in and turned his head, as if to display more prominently the ear that was so dutifully listening.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You can tell us.”
“I just feel like I have nothing to look forward to,” Connor blurted out. “I have no family. I have no future. I have no place in this town . . .”
“Of course you do!” Sally said. “Don’t be silly! The weather mill is reopening in just a week—that’s a huge thing to look forward to! Everyone will forget all about this stuff with your parents after that.”
“But no one’s talking about it,” Connor said. “Around me, everyone just pretends like it’s not even happening.” Connor sniffled and took a moment to catch his breath. “Hey, you know, what if . . . ,” he began. Sally and Steve hung off his every word. “What if we found some way to honor the mill’s reopening?”
“Like a celebration?” Sally asked. “Like a big party?”
“Yeah . . . ,” Connor said. “Like, if only there were some way to get the town all together. So we can appreciate the mill’s reopening. So we could move on . . .” He sniffled.
“We could have a big picnic!” Sally said. “We could have food, and games, and raffles, and . . . and we could get the whole town to come!”
“A last-day-of-sunshine picnic!” Steve added. “One last hurrah before the rains come. Something to celebrate the first cloud seeding of the season—in style.”
“In style,” Sally said.
“That might be good,” Connor said. “That might be just the thing to make me finally feel forgiven, you know? Proof that we’ve moved on from this episode, as a town.”
“As a community,” Steve said. “A community with you in it.”
“At the center of it!”
“The winner of the General’s Award!”
“Prize of Lahoma!”
“Connor Goodman!”
Connor was smiling now, big and toothy and wet from all the crying. “You’d do that?” he asked. “You’d really set that up . . . for me?”
“Of course we would!” Sally said. “We’d love to!”
“We’ll have it on April 1,” Steve said. “The day of the seeding. Sally and I will invite the whole town!”
“Everyone will want to be there,” Sally said. “I’m just sure of it.”
Connor smiled.
He’d like that very much.
6
Another week, and the Sierra Science Center was buzzing. No longer the stuffy place it had been upon Erin’s arrival, it seemed every level of the SSC was now in fully motivated, lockstep crunch mode. Erin herself had migrated up to the main levels, where she could be watched 24-7 by Dr. Rhyne and her associates, and where Erin could maintain an open video call with the Arbitors and the Dust out east at all times. Right now, everyone’s priority within the SSC was to get Erin well again. She was their focus.
And the key to that lay in the Dust’s DOME samples.
They scoured that data, day and night.
Erin had not been feeling better. In fact, over these last few days, her fever had only gotten worse.
101 degrees, 102 degrees, 103 degrees . . .
But for the moment, she was medicated heavily enough to keep the worst of her symptoms at bay, and with her parents’ video feed streaming by her side, Erin even caught herself feeling, once or twice—dare she think it?—optimistic.
Was that possible? Certainly, it was an outlook she’d not expected to have again.
And yet, it was a pleasant thing, this optimism. She decided to hold on to it for as long as she could.
The Arbitor reunion, it turned out, continued to be the unexpected bright spot on Erin’s otherwise rotten winter. If she ever did see them again, she’d always figured, it would be in magnecuffs, through glass, on the wrong end of a lineup.
That’s the one, they’d say, pointing shamefully at their daughter. That’s the traitor you were looking for, no doubt about it. Her father might even have been in on the hunt.
But instead, to Erin’s utter surprise, her parents were smiling—every time that video feed went live. Sometimes they’d cry—happy tears! Not from shame!—when they saw her. They didn’t yell at her for running off, they didn’t suggest that her fever served her right—even if it did, as far as Erin was concerned—and they hadn’t even guilted her for what she’d clearly done to their careers.
For the first time in as long as Erin could remember, the Arbitors were simply happy to be connected again, regardless of the circumstances.
It was in the midst of this optimism that Dr. Rhyne spoke up from her lab bench across the floor. Erin couldn’t see her. But she could hear her voice fill the room.
“The data’s complete,” Arianna said. “Everything’s done compiling.”
All around her, doctors rushed back and forth across the floor, reviewing their latest results in the context of Dr. Rhyne’s.
Erin nodded. “And?”
“It’s not a mistake,” the doctor said, practically disbelieving her own words. “The second activating protein, targeting the vaccine. It wasn’t an error. It wasn’t a fluke. It was deliberate.”
Arianna walked over to Erin now, showing her the graphics and the characteristics of the protein that had made her so sick.
“The trial run last summer,” she said. “It was no failure—it was a success. Erin . . .” Dr. Rhyne gulped—actually gulped—at the thought of it. “This whole thing’s just getting started.”
7
From where he sat atop his horse, Logan could see Lahoma all at once.
The land was flat around it, stretching out in all directions, uninhabited and vast. To his left, the sun rose red and vibrant over the plains, and streaks of morning rays shot triumphantly through the air, glowing at the edges.
Ahead of him, tall shadows stretched out from Lahoma’s houses and shacks, casting their limits far to his right, nearly again the width of the town itself.
Indeed, from out here, Lahoma was nothing but a dirt road—“Main Street,” it was called, not that it had any competition—which stretched straight out to a stone fountain, dry and quiet, in the center of a sleepy town square. At that square’s far edge was the town hall, with a steeple for good measure and a bell that never rang.
And all along that dirt road, that “Main Street” that couldn’t possibly be anything but, were the shops and eateries and storefronts of Lahoma, sometimes with residences above them, each one calmer than the next. And between those quaint buildings, side streets branched off and gave way to a house or two or three or four, but all told there couldn’t have been more than fifty or sixty buildings in the whole place—post-Unity, every one of them, but each with a simple, wooden, pre-Unity style.
By the looks of it, many of them were empty. But from where Logan sat, all seemed inviting.
Past the town’s edge and to the right was a field, where landscaping would clearly have been maintained were it not for the drought. Browning shrubs and trees lined what must have been considered a park, complete with a baseball diamond and a handful of benches that surrounded a small, wooden stage in its center, clearly set aside for outdoor gatherings and celebrations.
Juxtaposed oddly with these simplicities, of course, were all the modern conveniences of any Marked settlement: rollersticks; roadside Markscans for candy or toys; the glow, in many windows, of television frames left on overnight; wallscreens displaying family pictures or virtual landscapes; the occasional blip of a tablet at some early bird’s morning table . . .
And, most striking of all, the weather mill, just east of town, its huge, industrial structure silhouetted against the rising sun. The empty plain between it and Main Street was dotted with long tubes that angled up into the sky—rocket launchers, twenty-five of them, all told—though their presence was hardly menacing. These launchers didn’t fire bombs—they fired the projectiles that seeded the clouds. Or they were supposed to, anyway. Logan was here to ensure that they would.
“We can’t ride in on these horses,” Hailey said, pulling Logan from his thoughts of the place. “They’re going to need to stay out here.”
“I hate to leave them,” Logan said.
And Hailey shrugged sadly, hopping off her own saddle and onto the ground. “With any luck, we’ll be back before they know it.”
“And without luck?” Logan asked, stepping down.
Hailey frowned. “Why don’t we just assume we have some left—and leave it at that.”
The horses shuffled their feet and sniffed loudly as Logan and Hailey hugged them both around the neck.
“See you soon,” Logan said.
And he and Hailey turned to leave, crouching down low.
Together they snuck into Lahoma under the gaze of the rising sun.