Sneak (32 page)

“Stop him—
stop
him
!” Erin pleaded to Logan. “Or he’ll botch this whole thing!”

Logan stood, bewildered, between Peck and Erin, caught

right in the middle of his two friends.

But something about the look in Erin’s eyes told him to give

her a chance. A small one, at least.

“Peck,” he said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s hold off.

Just for one minute, okay?”

So Peck cut short his announcement. He turned to Logan.

Then he looked to Erin, fuming. “You have one minute.”

5

“Listen to me.
Listen
to me now.” The Advocate towered over the young Coordinator.

“I am listening, ma’am.”

“Cheswick’s call confirms it: DOME’s security has been

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compromised. We must assume the boy knows everything. He

will make it this far. Now it is just a matter of time.”

“But . . . Advocate . . . even with this security breach . . . is that really plausible? No one has
ever
made it this far. People have tried, but . . .”

The Advocate brushed a chin-length wisp of hair from her

face, revealing briefly the Mark on her forehead. She closed her light-blue eyes. She sighed. “All the same. I believe this one will.

And when he does—”

“But—”

“
Listen
to me.
When
he does . . . you must let him in. Do you understand?”

“No. No, ma’am. I’m sorry . . . I don’t. Why? Why not simply

capture him?”

“He is crafty, this boy. DOME has learned that much. We

strike when the time is right, or we risk missing our opportunity altogether. Are you following me now?”

“But . . . Advocate . . . why not simply capture him on sight?”

“This boy’s resolve is unique, Coordinator. It will take a specific approach to break him. But make no mistake. He can be

broken. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Advocate.”

“Good.” The Advocate nodded. “Then be prepared.”

6

One minute was not enough time for Erin to explain everything.

Not by a long shot. So she had to go right for the bull’s-eye.

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“I know,” Erin began. “I know about Acheron.”

Peck rolled his eyes, unimpressed. “Congratulations,” he said.

“That makes DOME only one step behind us this time. Probably a record for you hotshots.”

“I’m not
with
DOME,” Erin said. “Can’t you understand that?

Don’t you have
any
idea what I’ve sacrificed to help you beggars?

What I’ve done to my family? My future?”

“You have strange definitions for
help
and
sacrifice
. Unless, of course, you’re referring to how you
helped
DOME hunt us down and how you
sacrificed
the life of an innocent man,” Peck growled.

“Please,” Erin said. She looked at Logan now. “You can’t. You

can’t
go in there.”

Logan laughed, feeling all the loneliness he’d experienced

without Erin fall away under the weight of his anger. “Why?” he said. “You’re gonna tell me it’s too dangerous? Two weeks ago

you’re chasing me into a freezing river in the dead of night, leading the charge for my capture by the very people who
created
Acheron, shooting my guide and separating me from my friends . . . and

now you wanna give me a speech on
safety
?”

“I’ve learned things, Logan. It’s not what you think in there, in Acheron. You can’t possibly succeed!”

Logan scoffed. “Six weeks ago you didn’t even believe me when

I swore to you Acheron was real. Now you’re trying to share your expertise with me?
Me
. The guy who escaped a DOME Center.

You think I can’t break into a prison?”

“
First
of all, you escaped that Center because of
me
.
Second
of all, Logan—this place . . . no matter how dangerous you think it is . . . I swear to you, it’s worse.”

“Oh yeah? And why is that? Because you’ve already turned us

in? Because DOME is on the way? As usual? Thanks to you?”

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“No, you dimwit! Because Acheron is a
military
base
!”

Peck stepped forward now. “What are you saying, Erin? Are

you saying Acheron
isn’t
a prison? That we’ve got this all wrong?”

“I’m not saying that,” she said, still pinned against the wall by the rest of the Dust. “I’m saying it’s both. The prison
is
a training base.”

“A training base for what?”

“For IMPS.”

“
Imps?
Little demons?” Eddie laughed.

“It’s an acronym, you idiot. The International Moderators of

Peace. Cylis is using Lamson to build an army.”

Logan sneered. “What would Cylis need an army for? He’s

about to run the
Global
Union. Also known as
the
whole
world
. Why would the G.U. need an army when there’s no one left to fight?”

“Because there
is
someone left to fight.”

“Who?”

Erin grimaced against Jo’s arm. “Us.”

Peck was quickly losing patience. Her minute had elapsed.

“Erin, how do you even know any of this?”

“’Cause of Logan,” she said. “I studied his Pledge tape.”

“You have
access
to that?” Shawn said enviously.

“Of course not. I hacked into DOME’s system. Saw the

Marker saying something that looked like ‘Acheron,’ so I followed the lead. And unlike for you beggars, when
I
follow a lead, it leads to actual information. So I kept digging, through DOME’s deepest channels. Eventually found my way to a document. And what that document explained . . .” Erin trailed off, shaking her head.

“What?” Logan asked, egging her on.

Erin sighed. “Deep down,” she said, “Cylis is a vicious, vindictive man. I can see that now. The idea of people anywhere, at any
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time, not pledging complete allegiance to him . . . it makes his blood boil. So he had Lamson build Acheron—and all the other

places like it—to punish them.

“But I think Cylis soon realized that punishment wasn’t going

to be enough.
Punish
people . . . and they only resent you further.”

She shook her head again. “But if you can
break
them . . . if you can bring them over to your side . . .” Erin shrugged. “Cylis may be vicious . . . but he’s also brilliant. So he made a brilliant decision.

Who, in any country, is more loyal than a soldier? Throughout

history, an army has been the very symbol of patriotic loyalty. To fight for your country, to die for your country . . . there is no greater commitment.

“If Cylis could take those who had committed themselves to

him
least
and turn them into those who had committed themselves to him
most
—turn them into his own soldiers—then, truly, Cylis could rule the world. It does more than kill two birds with one stone—it proves a point. That there has
never
, in
history
, been anyone more powerful.”

“Erin,” Logan said. “Look. If your goal was to convince me now more than ever that we
have
to get my sister out of this place—

you’ve succeeded. So tell me how to get into this place, already, and stop wasting my time.”

Erin laughed bitterly. “Fine,” she said. “You want to know so

badly? Here goes: You’re standing right on top of it.”

Logan closed his eyes. He put his hand over his face.
Of
course.

Of
course
we
are. We’ve searched City Center high and low; this whole
time, it’s been right under our noses
.

“Do you remember how General Lamson won the States

War, Logan? He won by rupturing the dam that protected the old capital from rising waters. And then he had this hill constructed
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right above it, with the new capital built on top as a symbol of how peace had been won. Except City Center is
not
just a symbol, Logan. It’s a decoy. It was put on this hill to hide the Markless prison underneath; to hide DOME’s secret army. To hide it right here, in plain sight.

“Acheron isn’t
on
the hill, Logan. Acheron
is
the hill. Your sister is right below us.”

7

“All right,” Peck said. “We’ve heard what we needed to hear.

Blake, Jo, tie these two up. Take anything they have on them.

Erin and Shawn both. These next few hours are crucial. No risks.

You got that?”

“Wait!” Erin yelled. “No! Logan, no! Hear me out! Lily
can’t
be saved!”

“Different song,” Peck said. “But the same old tune. Starting

to sound awfully familiar, Erin.”

“Peck, please—listen to reason!” But Jo had her gagged before

she could say anything else.

“You okay with this, Logan? I need you on board.”

Logan looked at Peck sadly. He wished he had a little more

time to figure everything out.

Was Erin really here to help?

Or was she here for DOME, up to her usual tricks?

They’d come all this way. They’d risked so much.

And now they were
right
there
.

Erin really could derail that. Just a pea-sized tracker, or a little strip of tape—or any number of the other spy gadgets Erin knew
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all too well how to use—and she could ruin this whole thing.

She’d done it before. She’d done it at every opportunity, in fact.

“You picked the wrong side of history
,” Erin had said back at the warehouse that night in November.
“You’re alone now, Logan. I can’t
help you anymore
.”

So what made him think tonight was any different?

Logan looked Erin in the eyes when he spoke, summoning

all the cold, hard resolve he could. “Take her to where she can’t bother us, Dust. We have work to do.”

8

The Dust was stationed back in the control room, with Erin tucked very far away.

“Okay. We know it’s under us,” Logan said. He had intended

to draw up a plan with chalk on an old slate that hadn’t been used in years, but he realized now that this one fact was as much as he knew. So Logan drew a horizontal line across the board, and a dot underneath it. And then, sheepishly, he sat down.

“All right, go team!” Blake said sarcastically.

Logan buried his face in his hands.

“We know they freeze their prisoners,” Tyler said, trying very hard to be helpful. “We learned that on the wagon, remember?”

“And snakes,” Eddie said. “I heard they have snakes.”

Logan shook his head. “Wait a minute.
I
heard they poke your eyes out, or they tar and feather you, or they put you in a fiery cell.

I never heard anything about freezing or snakes.”

“That’s ’cause everything we heard was an urban legend!” Blake
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blurted out angrily. “Don’t you guys get it? No one
knows
what’s in Acheron—that’s the whole point! Everything we’ve heard . . . it’s all just stories. Stories that don’t fit together at all. Because they’re nonsense. They’re made up!”

“Face it,” Jo said to the group. “We know nothing.”

“Not true.” Logan pointed defiantly at the slate. “We know it’s right under us. We
know
that.”

“Yeah? And what good does that do us, exactly? Huh? We can’t

even
walk
in, let alone sneak in—we don’t even know where the entrance is!”

“Actually,” Eddie said, very slowly. “We might.”

The Dust all leaned forward, eager but confused.

“Back at the mansion,” he continued. “On the River. With Mr.

and Mrs. Psycho and their kid, Psycho Jr.”

“What about it?” Blake asked.

“Winston. While you all were stuck in the basement, he told

me . . . he gave me details.”

“Yeah, we know,” Tyler said. “You told this story already. Like, fifteen times in the car.”

“No. All I talked about was the hundred-foot-thick walls and

the entrance—”

“—that might as well be a brick wall,” Tyler interrupted.

“We
know
.”

“I know you know! But there was something else too! At the

time, I thought it was a joke. But . . . when I pressed him on this . . . when I asked if that one entrance was
really
all there was, Winston said—and I’m quoting here—‘That and the power

source.’”

Peck narrowed his eyes. “Power source . . . like a fusion plant?”

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Eddie shrugged, and he nodded a little.

“That’s it . . . ,” Logan said. “If we can find a way into the maintenance ducts on the other side of this reactor, we should be able to follow the power cables all the way into Acheron. Of
course
.

Eddie—you’re a genius!”

“Let me get this straight,” Jo said. “We’re about to launch

our whole prison break plan on a story some random Marked told Eddie as a scare tactic while his parents were threatening to torture us?”

“You got anything better to go on?” Logan asked.

Suddenly, Jo smiled. “No,” she said. “Actually—I kinda like

this.”

9

They spent the rest of the night planning, the Dust, all together, in the control room. It was time to break Lily out of Acheron.