Logan Langly

Logan Paul Langly lost his sister Lily to the Pledge when he was only 8 years old. Five years later, he decided to do whatever it took to get her back. In the process, Logan became the symbol of a Markless revolution.

Biography
Logan was born during the States War, when the United States was torn apart by sectional disputes. He was too young to remember the start of the Marking program in Spokie, but he cannot forget his sister's Pledge. Lily celebrated her thirteenth birthday with their family, went to receive her Mark, and never came back. A DOME agent knocked on their door soon afterwards, using terms like "procedural risk" to explain that Lily would never return.

When Logan began to hear footsteps at night, he knew that it was not his sister's ghost. Frightened, he turned to his parents for help, but they could not hear the sounds that were the source of his distress. They sent Logan to get psychiatric care, and after that, Logan knew better than to share his fears with the adults in his life. For five years after Lily's death, he grew more and more paranoid. He knew that the sounds, the faces that sometimes appeared in his window, were not his imagination. But no one would believe him.

Logan lived a very normal life during that time period. He was best friends with Hailey Phoenix and Dane Harold until a fallout between Hailey and Dane sent Hailey to find another set of companions. The friendship with Dane continued, however, as did his close relationship with his father. When not at school, he played with his hoverdisk in the yard on his roof and (mostly) did his homework. But Logan could not shake the feeling that he was being watched. Unbeknownst to him, a group of Markless teenagers called the Dust had their own ideas about what really happened to Lily, and they had every intention of forcing Logan to face those conclusions.

Swipe
"'Forget about my suffering! I'm going to save Lily! And don't tell me you don't know how to do it!' --Logan Langly"

Logan never intended to tell the new girl at school, Erin Arbitor, about his sister's death, or about the feeling that he is being watched. But, far from laughing at him, Erin believes that she may know who is watching Logan. Erin's father is a DOME agent who was transferred to Spokie in order to hunt down a Markless fugitive named Peck. Peck is wanted for murder and assault, but his main focus seems to be tracking Pledges--twelve-year-olds like Logan who are nearing the age when they will be eligible to receive the Mark. When Logan finds a burning note telling him to come to the Spokie playground at midnight, he goes to Erin for help. Erin uses her visitor privileges to steal surveillance equipment from DOME, and then the two stake out the playground. No one appears, and Erin becomes angry with Logan, thinking that he might have made up his story about being followed.

That night, however, Logan leaves the radio gel in his ear by accident, and he hears Peck speak just before Peck throws water over the surveillance powder on the playground. Logan tells Erin the next day and convinces her to visit Slog Row, where most of Spokie's Markless live, in order to see whether the people there know anything about Peck. No one offers them any tips, but Logan finds out two things from the trip. First, the plight of some of Spokie's Markless, such as Wallace Martin, is disgusting. It is tragic. Logan gives his lunch to the sick and dying Markless that he finds inhabiting the old firehouse. Seeing Wallace eat his sandwich and seeing the appreciation these Markless feel for his visit affects him deeply. Second, the kids that Logan and Erin meet in the Fulmart at the other end of Slog Row seem to have something to hide.

Erin manages to turn on the surveillance cameras at the Fulmart so that she can observe what the kids do. When she sees them pack up their things and leave mere hours after she and Logan were there, Erin's suspicions are aroused. She and Logan follow the kids out of town, but they are ambushed by Meg Steward, who circled back behind them and hits both Logan and Erin with a rock. The kids circle around them, not expecting retaliation, but Erin throws a taser bean at Blake, knocking him unconscious. Eddie and Tyler then jump on Logan, but Erin distracts them by hitting Meg with a taser bean. Logan and Erin escape, but not before Logan manages to put a tracking device on Tyler. Unfortunately, Logan returned home to discover that his father knows he sneaked out.

Although Logan is grounded, Erin continues to run surveillance on the kids, who she learns are Peck's Markless group, the Dust. Her discovery that they intend to kidnap Dane at his Battle of the Bands concert causes Logan to first attempt to warn Dane--who ignores him--and then to call DOME for help. DOME, however, underestimates the Dust. While DOME attempts to arrest Logan and Erin for their vigilante work, the Dust is kidnapping Dane. Logan uses flash pellets that Erin gave him to briefly blind the agents, and then he and Erin follow the Dust back to the Fulmart. Blake attempts to talk to Logan, who refuses to listen, and is nearly captured by DOME. Logan and Erin, however, are taken back to DOME headquarters for questioning.

Erin's father promises that if Logan will help him capture the Dust, then Logan will be cleared of his charges. Logan agrees eagerly. But Logan finds his task to be extremely difficult when DOME clears Slog Row, arresting, beating, and even killing the Markless. When Blake appears, attempting to rescue six-year-old Rusty, Logan finds that he cannot turn him in.

Hailey, unbeknownst to Logan, was serving as a spy for the Dust. With Dane gone, Erin frustrated, and his remaining friends angry at him, Hailey is the only person who is still kind to Logan. As a result, he asks few questions when she invites him to take a walk with her. But then she leads him to a warehouse outside of town--the warehouse where Peck has been hiding. Peck talks to Logan, explaining that the Dust was not trying to hurt him. The Dust was trying to save him from flunking his Pledge. Pledging is not merely a means of uniting people--it is a selection process. Those who don't fit in--like Peck, Lily, and Logan himself--are swiped. But Peck reveals another truth. Lily is alive. Flunkees do not die during the Pledge. No one, however, knows where they are sent with the possible exception of the Markers. But the only way to see a Marker is to Pledge.

Against the warnings of Peck and the Dust, Logan decides that he will Pledge in order to find out what really happened to Lily. He goes to see Erin beforehand to describe his meeting with Peck and to ask her to get him out of the Center if things go wrong. Erin agrees reluctantly. Logan flunks his Pledge, just as Peck warned him, but before guards take him away, his Marker tells him that Lily was sent to Beacon City. On the way out of the building, the power goes out--the result of Erin's computer hacking--and Logan manages to escape. He runs to the warehouse, hoping that Peck and the Dust will accept him back. The warehouse, however, is in flames. Erin helped him escape, but she blames his problems at the Pledge on his decisions. While she wants to protect Logan, she does not agree with the choices he has made. They part, and Logan flees into the woods, away from Spokie and everything he has ever known.

Sneak
A month has passed since his Pledge, and Logan has spent most of it fleeing for his life. It took him several tries to successfully get away from Spokie, and even now he is only fifty miles away—tired, scared, and starving. The Ruins, located on the outskirts of New Chicago, are not a friendly place at the best of times, much less in winter. But Logan is determined to get to Beacon City in order to save his sister, and he has to get through the Ruins in order to reach downtown New Chicago, where his aunt and uncle live. Although Logan is a wanted fugitive, he hopes that his aunt and uncle will help him reach the East Coast. They are his final hope.

When Logan is accosted by a Markless girl named Bridget, he soon finds her to be an unexpected friend. Bridget warns Logan against going downtown, where DOME has been arresting any Markless person it sees. Andrew, one of the members of Bridget’s huddle, later tells Logan that DOME is looking for a crazy kid that escaped his Pledge. Logan does not have to wonder what “crazy kid” Andrew is talking about. Now he has to fear DOME, as well as those Markless who resent all the trouble Logan caused them. When Andrew awakens Logan one night with news of a DOME raid, Logan is convinced that Bridget must have betrayed him, and he follows Andrew to what he thinks is safety.

But Andrew was the one who tipped of DOME, and he leads Logan almost into the hands of the agents. Logan flees and finds himself saved by an unexpected person—Hailey Phoenix. Armed with a set of disguises, she pretends to the DOME agents that she and Logan are lost travellers. Then Hailey and Logan leave the area, headed for the farm where Peck and his Dust have been hiding. Logan only spends a few short hours there—being harangued by the Dust, talking with Peck, learning about the Unmarked River from Papa Hayes—before DOME descends, accompanied by Erin Arbitor. Erin begs Logan to give himself up, but Logan throws himself into a freezing stream and floats away.

Hailey and Dane pull Logan out of the stream, and Hailey, recognizing that Logan has hypothermic, begins trying to warm him up. Dane takes her efforts for signs of a lingering crush on Logan. Separated from the Dust, the three of them make their way east on the River. They find refuge in an underground Markless village while crossing the Appalachian Mountains and are surprised to find, while listening to the village’s shortwave radio system, that Logan’s grandmother Sonya  has begun a pro-Markless radio broadcast with Hailey’s mother Dianne. Dane is fascinated by the Markless radio system, and he decides to stay in the village after Logan leaves. Logan may need a radio broadcaster to keep him and Hailey in touch with their families. While the Spokie broadcast will not reach Beacon, a broadcast from the Appalachians would bridge the gap. In any case, Dane feels like a third wheel when the three of them are together.

After several days in Beacon City, Logan and Hailey find the Dust, but finding their way into Acheron is more difficult. It is Erin who provides the key. Bribing a Markless hacker to take her into the sublevel, she finds Logan and begs for the Dust to listen to her. Logan and Peck are initially angry, but Logan convinces Peck to listen to what she has to say. Erin explains that Acheron—which is located underneath them—is a military base as well as a prison. She has more to say, but neither Peck nor Logan wants to listen. Putting Erin and her fellow hacker, Shawn, under Tyler’s guard, the Dust formulates a plan to enter Acheron through the air vents that open onto the Markless sublevel.

Logan, Peck, Jo, and Eddie scoot through the air vents and reach an opening that leads into Acheron. Logan, Jo, and Eddie, drop down from the opening and masquerade as flunkees waiting to be processed, while Peck waits in the air duct in case something goes wrong. Logan manages to find Lily, but she is not a prisoner. She is an officer of Lamson’s army, the International Moderators of Peace. After pretending to go along with the plan, Lily betrays her brother, as well as Jo and Eddie. Logan is taken to Level Nine of Acheron and put into a brain-computer interface helmet. The helmets simulates torture, but if Logan pulls it off, then the helmet will Mark his forehead, turning him into an IMP like his sister. He manages to hold out until the Markless protests that Dane and Logan’s grandmother helped ignite allow the Dust to enter Acheron and rescue him. In the process, Logan and his story become symbols of the Markless revolution.

Storm
"Erin, as far as this virus is concerned—I'm as Marked as you are."

"Aw, Logan, terrific! Now I have to be worried about that'' too? Come on—why would you tell me that?"  "Solidarity?"''

"You're an idiot." —Logan and Erin

When Erin discovers that she has Project Trumpet, and that the only person who may know how to help her is in Sierra City, Logan joins Erin, Peck, and Hailey on a cross-country trek to save Erin’s life. DOME trails them until the four fall into DOME’s hands—in a roundabout way. Dr. Rhyne, creator of the Project Trumpet virus, is a DOME employee with a very independent mind. She tells DOME that she has the four in custody and then pretends that they have escaped into the Northwest, sending DOME on a wild goose chase. Meanwhile, Dr. Rhyne tries to find the activation protein that could save Erin’s life.

Sierra City plays by a much looser understanding of law than New Chicago or Beacon City. As a result, the fact that Peck, Logan, and Erin are Markless fugitives matters very little. Logan splits his days between spending time with Erin, secretly listening to his grandmother’s radio broadcast, and visiting the local Markless. Lily, however, changes everything.

From her station in Beacon City, Logan’s sister hacks into a POD. When Logan steps inside, she sends it away from Peck and Hailey so that she can speak with Logan alone. Lily tells Logan that Lamson is intentionally creating a permadrought, and that many Markless will die if the drought does not end. Worse, Lamson has convinced a teenager named Connor Goodman to destroy the Lahoma weather mill that could end the drought. Lily cannot leave Beacon City, so Logan is her only hope. With Logan’s help, Lily convinces Peck and Hailey to help derail Connor’s plans.

Logan and Hailey contact Logan’s grandmother, who sends them a pamphlet that teaches them how the mill functions. The three then prepare for the mission in Lahoma. Peck, however, decides not to go with them, instead leaving for a mission of his own. Logan and Hailey bid goodbye to Erin and take off for Lahoma, where Logan convinces Connor not to destroy the weather mill. He reprograms the rockets that Connor was going to set off, causing them to shoot upward instead, starting a storm and ending the drought.

Not long after Logan has completed the mission, he begins feeling ill and suspects that the vaccine given him at his Marking may be causing him to come down with the Project Trumpet virus. Abandoning his plans to return to Sierra City, he heads toward Beacon instead, where he confronts Lamson in person. He finds the general dying. Lamson tells Logan that he ordered the drought to prevent Cylis from using the weather mill to spread Project Trumpet. When Logan ended the drought to save the Markless, he launched the killer virus across the American continent. Lamson dies, and Logan is arrested by Lily. He receives a death sentence—a sentence that even the Markless, stunned by the turn of events, do not protest. To keep Logan alive, Lily puts him into a single cell in the lowest part of Acheron, hoping that he will soon be forgotten by Cylis and a stunned American population. Helmeted in a brain-computer interface, Logan can see, hear, and feel nothing. He soon loses track of time, becoming completely disoriented until a voice intrudes and leads him into the Ultranet, the virtual reality of which his BCI is only a minor part.

Spark
The voice that leads Logan from the nothingness of his BCI into the Ultranet turns out to be another human—a girl named Ali. Ali takes Logan to the part of the Ultranet that corresponds with his hometown of Spokie. He chooses to remain inside his father’s architectural program, where he can watch his father work on a housing simulation. Although time passes slowly in the program, he is relieved to exist in something other than nothingness.

Ali visits again one day later, revealing to a stunned Logan that he has been imprisoned for over three years. She helps Logan manage a trip through the Ultranet to check on the Dust. Logan is extremely disappointed to find that the Markless movement seems to have ended. Aside from Blake and Joanne’s attempts to warn the Marked about the real state of the world, the Dust are living fairly normal Unmarked lives. Erin, apparently forgiven by DOME, is stuck in a private school that she hates. Dane and Hailey are together, but Dane’s radio broadcast now consists solely of music. Frustrated that his sacrifices have had no lasting impact, Logan begins to talk with Ali. She is in a similar situation, afraid that her good efforts will be manipulated, and her sympathy helps him to gain a more balanced perspective.

Logan doesn’t see Ali again until after her nearly fatal wounding by Cylis. Returning to David Langly's architectural program, she tells Logan what happened to her, as well as how “Mother” put her personality into computer code before she lost consciousness. Logan empathizes with her, knowing fully what it is like to be outmaneuvered by Cylis. Their conversation encourages him, however, letting him know that the Dust is not dead. Ali then leaves Logan to complete her goals in other parts of the Ultranet. After her return to consciousness, however, she is able to exist both in his virtual world and in the real world at the same time.

Physical Appearance
Logan is small for his age. He has "dirty-blond hair" and is thin, particularly after he becomes Markless.

Personality
Logan is quiet, terrible at small talk, and awkward in some social situations. His grief over the loss of Lily, as well as his paranoia, have left him with little confidence as the series begins. He can also be very naive. Logan, however, has another side--a fearless side. When he believes in a cause, he will take every risk necessary to advance it. He also cares deeply about other people. It is perhaps the violence of DOME's raid on Slog Row that brings him to see what the Mark is really intended to do.

Family and Relationships
Logan was very close to his father growing up. His mother was more difficult to have a relationship with, at least after Lily flunked her Pledge, but he and his father talked frequently with each other, and his dad tucked him in bed every night, even after he was too old to need it. Unfortunately, when Logan did not tell his father about his attempts to track the Dust, distance grew between them. Logan's arrest by DOME left both of his parents extremely upset, and his father largely gave up on their relationship, feeling that Logan had betrayed his trust.

Logan was also extremely close to Lily before her disappearance. His first memory was of her holding him. He continues to love her deeply, although her position makes trust difficult. Even after she betrayed him at the end of Sneak, he was willing to give her a second chance.

Perhaps Logan's closest family relationship is with his grandmother, Sonya. He was not close with her growing up, since her opposition to the Mark caused the rest of the family to think her senile. After Logan became Markless, however, Sonya became his one link with home, as well as the one family member in Spokie who did not view Logan as a criminal. As a result, their relationship becomes Logan's most stable.

Skills
Logan is a quick learner and a good strategist, which helps him both infiltrate Acheron and prevent Connor from destroying the weather mill.

Source
"The Underpass, the Success, and the Failings"

Gallery
To view the Logan Langly gallery click here.