Maybe the Zeroes trusted her, but Kelsie didn’t know if she trusted herself. Not after what’d happened at the AA meeting—what she’d felt while the swarm had done its work.
The cops had arrested ten people for the murder, including Tasha, the first-timer. Fig, at least, had been too beaten up to be blamed for Delgado’s death.
When she’d visited him in Cambria County General Hospital last night, Kelsie hadn’t even tried to explain what had happened. He thought sooner or later the police lab would identify some kind of poison gas in the whiskey bottle.
But it was so much simpler that that—Swarm was more powerful than her. She had no immunity to his dark control, at least not in a group as vulnerable as an AA meeting. But what if the Dish crowd was no different?
What if Kelsie was helping her friends build their own trap?
Around her, everyone was frantic with activity. She’d barely spoken to Chizara since the beach, but now they were working side by side, wiring the new lights with more power.
Thibault and Craig were building a “shark cage” out of security mesh, a place of last retreat for anyone caught downstairs. Nate and Flicker were arguing about the floor plans spread out across the bar. They all worked with a determination that kept their nervousness under control, barely pulsing against Kelsie’s mind. And Nate was at the center of it all, guiding them, his energy back to its full glorious presence in the group.
But then his phone blipped. Nate reached for it, and when he looked up from reading, his face was pale.
“Swarm’s headed this way.”
The Zeroes all jerked upright.
“He’s bringing his own crowd,” Chizara said. “I knew it.”
“Not just any crowd. He took over the police funeral.”
“The parade ground isn’t far.” Flicker swore. “And is that why he killed a policeman? Maybe this was his plan all along!”
Kelsie remembered what Swarm had said when the cop had arrived: Another hero. Perfect.
Thibault’s voice came from by the windows. “We’re not ready. We’ve got three windows left to reinforce.”
“That won’t help against hundreds of armed policemen,” Chizara said grimly. “And our friendly crowd won’t get here for hours.”
“Wait a second,” Kelsie said. “Isn’t Ethan at the funeral?”
“He’s the one texting me.” Nate looked straight at her. “He got clear. He’s fine.”
“Kelsie?” Flicker asked. “How close is the swarm? Can you feel them yet?”
Kelsie took a breath and let her perception expand. Ever since Quinton Wallace had arrived in Cambria, he’d been a constant presence at the edge of her consciousness. Like a chronic migraine. But she’d learned to deal with it, blocking him from her awareness.
Now she let her power rush out, seeking him.
A buzzing, angry force was out there. It made the hairs on her arms stand up.
“He’s way too close, and getting closer.” She turned to Chizara. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been watching.”
“Not your fault.” Chizara reached out and took her hand.
Kelsie took a step closer and leaned into Chizara’s warmth. All she wanted was to feel safe again, like she had that night on the beach before everything had gone wrong.
“Guys?” Craig spoke up. He stood next to Thibault by the half-covered window, sunlight streaming in around his bulk. “These are cops, yeah? It’s not like they’ll kill us. I mean, you paid them off with real money this time, right?”
Everyone looked at him. A hammer hung from one of his meaty hands, like he was ready to defend the Dish to the end.
“You should clear out,” Kelsie said. “He’s not after you.”
“Yes, you’ve helped us enough,” Nate said, keeping his tone light. “Head home; we’ll see you later.”
Craig hesitated, staring back at Nate, as if wondering where Mr. Saldana’s usual authority had gone.
Kelsie felt the group wavering between their concern for Craig and a quiet hope that he would stay. He made Kelsie feel safe. He was a link to her past, and he was the one guy outside the Zeroes who everyone trusted. He was also pretty awesome in a fight.
But nobody wanted to put him in danger.
In the end, though, the simple brute force of Craig’s loyalty won out.
“If it’s all the same to you guys, the Craig will stay. We’re a team now, right?”
Nate looked like he wanted to argue. But since Ethan’s texts, Nate’s usual energy had disappeared from Kelsie’s feedback loop.
It was Flicker who argued. “We’re talking six hundred cops here, all of them angry about what happened to their comrade. He’ll use your anger too, Craig, and he might make you hurt us.”
A deep laugh rumbled through the Dish. “You said that yesterday. That’s why we have a plan.”
“It’s fine with me if you stay,” Thibault said, and thumped the guy on his massive shoulder. “Seriously, I’m kind of glad.”
The Craig grinned. “Then it’s settled.”
Kelsie felt a weak current of hope flow through the group. She felt them all turn to Nate expectantly, but he didn’t move to take hold of this new energy. Since he’d shown up at the Dish yesterday, he’d turned back into Glorious Leader. But he was faltering again, something welling up in him.
Grief. That’s what it was. Kelsie recognized the feeling. She didn’t dare ask if there was any further word from Ethan. Her throat was clogged with fear.
Flicker took over, as if she felt it too. “Okay. The cops are in uniform, which means sidearms.”
“We saw what a swarm did to Davey with their bare hands,” Chizara said quietly. “How’re we supposed to deal with six hundred people with guns?”
“We keep working,” Flicker said. “We set the dazzle traps, just like we said. We can still break the feedback loop!”
“It won’t work,” Chizara said. “It’s the middle of the day. The sun’s brighter than anything I can throw!”
“There’s no time, anyway,” Kelsie said. She could feel the dark, buzzing presence of Swarm’s murderous army closing in, a sweet, delicious ache in her bones. “They’re already surrounding us.”
There was silence. Kelsie held Chizara hard.
“Huh,” Chizara said softly. “Turns out I hope Ethan made it out of there. I hope he ran.”
“Me too,” Kelsie said, with a catch in her throat. “At least one of us would survive, right?”
“Guys, we can’t give up now,” Flicker said. “This is our home. We’re ready for this!”
“Get real, Flick,” Chizara said. “This plan sucked when it was two hundred happy clubbers. Now it’s six hundred pissed-off cops with guns! You can’t stop bullets with rainbow lights and wire mesh.”
“Stick to the plan,” Nate said. A sudden determination filled his voice. “Just pick up the pace. Anon, Craig, finish the cage. Crash, how are the lights?”
Chizara looked like she was about to punch him. She started on a long and pessimistic answer. Kelsie slipped out of her arms and headed quietly for the entrance of the Dish.
It was time.
She could feel Swarm and the broad, dark thrum of the police he’d gathered around him. There was no way out. No last-minute salvation. Everyone she cared most about was at Swarm’s mercy, and all the Zeroes’ powers meant nothing.
She could feel the siren song of Swarm’s power calling to her. Seeking her out, her alone, of all of them.
No point delaying the inevitable. She had to execute her secret backup plan.
She offered up a silent prayer as she unbolted the front door. All day she’d told herself that if the Zeroes’ strategy failed, she’d do this—surrender herself to Swarm. Join him and try to push his hunger away from her friends. Anywhere but Cambria.
She hated the idea. Saving her friends meant sacrificing someone else. Some other town, other people’s lives. Maybe some other bunch of Zeroes just trying to figure out how to survive.
&nbs
p; She turned for one last glimpse of the Dish dance floor.
Nate was right behind her.
“It won’t work,” he said softly. “He won’t let us go, no matter what you do.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” she said.
“I know Swarm,” Nate said gently. “There are people just like him in every boardroom and country club my father has ever brought me to. And they’re never satisfied until they’ve taken everything. They think they’re the center of the universe. But you’re not like that, Kelsie.”
She raised her chin defiantly. “My power is just like his, Nate.”
“But you’re not him,” Nate insisted. “And you’re not your power. You’re bigger than that.”
Kelsie looked past him to where Chizara and the others were back at work, full of frantic determination. “Then how do we stop him? Because we can’t let him destroy all this.”
She meant the Dish and everyone in it. But she also meant every gathering, every group, every crowd in Swarm’s way, anywhere.
“He’ll never stop,” she told Nate quietly. “He doesn’t know who else to be.”
Nate nodded. He looked tired.
“Do you have a better idea than me surrendering?” Kelsie asked. “Come on, Glorious Leader!”
Nate gave her an exhausted look. “I’ve always hated that name.”
“I know.” Kelsie smiled. “But right now, that’s what we need. A Glorious Leader.”
Nate didn’t answer. “Ethan said he wanted you to be happy. That’s what he was trying for, anyway.”
“He did?” she said. “In his real voice?”
Nate shrugged. “They’re both real. But he was texting, so it wasn’t his power. It was him.”
“Please tell me he’s okay,” she whispered.
“I’m pretty sure he’s gone,” Nate said. “Don’t tell the others.”
Kelsie felt her pain bounce around the Dish, hitting all of them. A soft cry even came from the Craig.
She couldn’t lose another friend. She stepped to the door and opened it.
Outside, a buzzing, jittering wall of uniformed police stretched from one side of the Dish to the other. The cops wore crisp dress uniform. Their eyes were unfixed, their mouths stretched wide, their holsters unbuttoned and flapping on their hips. They filled the street.
“You can’t do this,” Nate said.
“I have to.”
“Hey, Zeroes!” It was Chizara’s voice, calling from the balcony inside. “Come up on the roof—I’ve got a plan.”
Kelsie looked at Nate, and hope bloomed in both their faces.
CHAPTER 57
CRASH
AS SHE STOOD ON THE roof with the others, Chizara’s power built inside her, ready to ignite.
Ever since she crashed the container ship, she’d been carrying a gutload of fixing juice. She’d had to remind herself that it was a bad thing to have. To get it, she’d burned out a ship, covered a beach with fuel, and sent millions of dollars in cargo to the bottom of the sea. And learned that the rest of her life would be loveless.
But now that she needed that stored power, it swelled and gleamed, no longer guilty or miserable, a pressing excitement under her ribs. It was huge inside her.
She could feel all things electronic within half a mile. Painlessly. Clearly. Every way she turned, the visible world was just a scrim in front of the nodes, the networks, the teeming chips, the multiplicity of flickering microswitches.
Energy poured underfoot and overhead, in precise, calibrated, controlled, and controllable ways. She could extinguish swaths of systems in a single swipe. She could surge power into them so they blew themselves apart. She could burrow deep and cut a single connection, scorch a single chip. She could reach into a web of dead shadows a mile off and activate it. Any broken system nearby, she could comb its frazzled wires straight, unmelt its burned-out components, knit it together, and bring it back to life.
It was wonderful to feel balanced like this. Her usual pain was transformed into cold, glittering information she could use whenever she chose. Even as she held off on her power, layer after layer of systematic beauty was spread before her, a century and more of trial-and-error design, workings stripped back and re-elaborated, functions given finer and finer form.
She was in command of galaxies.
She was Crash.
“So what’s this plan?” Flicker hunkered behind the concrete peak of the facade, her face blank. “Before they start shooting!”
“He still thinks I might join him.” Kelsie wiped away tears in that way she had, like she did not want you to ask about them. And Chizara wanted to ask, to wipe the tears for her. “While I’m in the way, they won’t open fire.”
“I hope you’re right about that,” Crash said. “Because we’re driving out.”
“That’s your plan?” Nate cried. “Steal a car and just roll out of here?”
“Not a car, no.”
Crash waved her hand at the used-car lot across the street. It was so obvious, glistening there, packed with dozens of motley vehicles. Most were new enough to have microchipped starters, but a few had old-fashioned ignition points and coils. It didn’t matter—she had power enough for them all.
With a thought, their engines roared to life. She’d surged them slightly too hard—lights flicked on, windshield wipers stuttered into motion, radios blared.
“Holy shit.” Flicker jerked her head to one side, listening. “But what about the fence?”
Crash laughed, and one of the big V-8s at the front of the lot accelerated, crashing into a post of the chain link. It bent forward, the web of metal bowing on either side.
“Fifty percent rust,” Crash said, and called forward the whole front row. They bashed, retreated, and bashed again, snapping one post, knocking others from their shallow holes in the old concrete.
On the third blow the whole fence collapsed. Revving high, metal scraping, the cars trundled out over the wire.
So much damage, Chizara. So much crumpled metal!
Whatever, Mom. Saving lives here.
She grasped the cars’ steering now, which took more effort than mere starter chips, and crept them out into the street. Their thunder shook the Dish roof beneath her feet.
“Don’t run anyone down,” Flicker said. “Those are still cops down there.”
“I’m not a monster.” The first cars reached the shuddering lines of blue, and gently pushed into the policemen. It was like nudging spinning tops—the cops wobbled and corrected. Nudge, wobble, correct. Nudge, wobble—
“Perfect,” Nate said, peeking over the parapet. “Swarm can take over people, but not cars!”
“Exactly,” Crash said. “And he’s not used to anyone pushing his toys around, so he can’t hold a line firm. The only settings he’s got are shuddering standby and murderous rage.”
But she couldn’t give him time to figure out a counterstrategy. She pressed the cars through the lines of blue. Soon the space in front of the Dish looked like an angry rush-hour traffic snarl.
The sound of battering came from below. A phalanx of police were bashing at the Dish door.
“They won’t get through the steel,” the Craig said. “Not unless they brought C4.”
Flicker swore. “But that’s one less exit we can use.”
“We can’t get out of here in cars anyway,” Nate said. “If he turns those cops murderous, they’ll just haul us out the windows!”
“Everyone relax,” Crash said. “We just need something big enough.”
She flung her mind outward, searching the surrounding blocks.
More tech was arriving beyond the dithering edge of Swarm’s crowd. Cars bringing on-duty cops in. News vans with satellite dishes flowering on top, ambulances and—was that a fire engine?
They were all too far away, and full of passengers already.
A news helicopter hovered overhead, lousy with tech, filming the strange behavior of Cambria’s finest—and those kids on the roof,
probably. Crash eyed it longingly.
But helicopters were sensitive beasts—one wrong twitch of the tail rotor and the torque would smack them into the crowd.
She needed something simple, solid, and muscular. An automotive version of the Craig.
And there it was, at the construction site three blocks away—a dump truck.
She started it, backed it out, crashing through the wooden safety fence. It was an old-style lump of a thing, its tires as tall as a person. As she trundled it toward the Dish, she worked her battalion of cars through the blue throng, clearing a lane for the truck.
It was like playing some old video game in her head, big bright hieroglyphs making gentle headway against many smaller, finer ones.
Carefully she slowed and steered the dump truck around the corner. Beside her the Craig nodded. “Good choice.”
“He’s not going to just let us do this,” Nate said. “He must be planning something else.”
“Let’s not stick around to find out,” someone said—Thibault, almost faded into the throng surrounding them.
“Not planning to stick around,” Chizara said, hauling the truck forward, her cars clearing the street of cops.
A sudden volley of gunshots rang out, and they all ducked. Then a second roar of gunfire crackled up from the street.
“Damn it,” Flicker said. “Shaky eyeballs down there. But it looks like he’s shooting up your cars, Crash.”
Crash could already feel the damage, could hear the windows shattering, the tires hissing flat, the fuel tanks leaking, even as she healed silicon and metal to keep as many vehicles going as she could. She wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. But how much ammo did cops bring to a funeral ?
Chizara, a whole car lot, completely destroyed!
Not my fault, Mom. Talk to the bad guy.
She lumbered the dump truck closer, its reassuring weight, its bulletproof hide. She guided it in among the stalled cars, which offered no more resistance than traffic cones.
Flicker spoke up. “How about this? We can drop into that truck bed from the second-story window, and they won’t get a clear shot. They’re not really aiming with their eyeballs jittering like that.”