“Perfect,” Crash said. “Everyone down to the second floor.”
CHAPTER 58
CRASH
THE SECOND-FLOOR OFFICE FELT DARK and boxed-in after the rooftop. Crash quelled her claustrophobia and ran straight for the window.
Someone pulled her to a stop. “Let me.”
Thibault stepped forward and peered through the window shades. “Whoa. That thing is a tank.”
“The dumping bed is thick enough to block signals,” Crash said. “It’ll stop bullets.”
Crash reached outside and backed up the dump truck like the overgrown toy it was. Its engine ground closer until its rear thudded into the wall, shaking the building around them.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess we jump now.”
“Yikes,” Thibault said. “That’s a ten-foot drop.”
“No problem,” said the Craig. “I’ll catch you.”
He ripped the shade down, and winter sunlight streamed in. Then he threw open the window, and leaped onto the sill with surprising lightness.
“One by one,” he said, and dropped out of sight, landing in the truck bed with a resounding metal boom.
Thibault rushed back to the window. Looked down.
“You okay, dude?”
“Jump!” came the answering cry.
Thibault took Flicker by the arm, guided her up. For a moment they kissed, silhouetted by sunlight, her hair tossed by the cold wind.
Then Flicker leaped from the sill with a cry.
“He got her!” Thibault said. “You next, Kelsie.”
“I have to go last,” Kelsie said, pushing Crash forward.
“Busy!” Crash said. Her cars were dying out there, blinking out of the video game. And now she could see the distant edges of her fixing power, where before it had seemed limitless.
Yet with all this going on, she still managed to feel a spark of pleasure at Kelsie’s body pressing against hers.
Stay focused, Crash!
“He’s only holding his fire while I’m up here,” Kelsie said. “As soon as I’m safe in the truck, they’ll start shooting again. Go, Zara!”
Crash obeyed, stepping onto the sill. For a moment the whole insane tableau spread out below her, real objects matching the filigree maps of circuitry and pulsing electrons in her mind.
So many cops. Could she push this monstrous truck through without crushing a single one?
Still watching the game in her head, she dropped into the Craig’s waiting arms.
“Oof! Thanks, Craig.”
Craig set her gently onto the sun-warmed metal of the truck bed. She slid down to join Flicker in the corner near the cab, casting her mind along the escape route, now littered with dead cars, delicate little phones in police officers’ pockets filtering in among them.
There is going to be loss of life, Mom.
You cannot, Chizara. I’m serious now. Look into my eyes.
“What’s taking so long?” Craig said.
“They’re just up there talking,” Flicker said. “Nate! Kelsie! Thibault! Come on!”
Endless moments passed. Then Kelsie was swinging her legs over the sill. Chizara imagined bullets flying.
“Just jump!” she cried.
Kelsie pushed off and Craig stepped forward and caught her.
“Nate wouldn’t come!”
“What?” Flicker said. “Bellwether, get down here! We all go together!
Chizara put out her arm and scooped Kelsie into the corner with them.
“He said he has to fix this,” Kelsie wept. “Said it’s not enough for us to get away. Thibault’s arguing with him!”
“Nate! You butthead!” Flicker yelled up at the window. “Cut this macho shit now!”
A roar of gunfire answered her, the windblown curtain flailing and tearing. The truck rattled around them. Sounds of shattering glass came from the cab, and the two-way radio fizzled and died.
“Thibault!” Flicker cried.
The engine felt indestructible, but Chizara could feel the fuel tank beneath her. One bullet hole and the truck’s lifeblood would start to leak.
Did fuel tanks really explode if you shot them?
“I hate you, Nate.” She started to pull the massive machine away from the wall. “Hang on, everyone.”
The gunfire choked off.
“Wait! Wait!” Flicker cried out. “Something weird’s happening!”
Chizara braked the truck, clenching her teeth with the effort.
“All I can see is sky,” Flicker said. “Everyone’s looking up!”
“What, is he flying in reinforcements?” Kelsie cried.
“Shit.” Flicker held her head, concentrating. “They’re all lying down. Hundreds of them.”
“What?” Chizara asked. “He can make them lie down?” But she could see, by the stilled phones in their pockets, that the cops around the truck had stopped moving. Two clusters of them were positioned right under the front wheels.
A massacre waiting to happen.
Kelsie stared at her, tearless, terrified. How could Chizara tell her that they weren’t going to escape, that Swarm had countered all her glorious power with a bunch of soft-bodied humans lying on their backs?
“I’m sorry,” Chizara said. “I tried.”
Wordlessly, Kelsie put her arms around her.
“Let me take a look,” the Craig said.
“No!” all three of them screamed. They threw themselves at his back as he pulled himself up to the rim of the truck bed.
But a volley of shots rang out, and the big guy went limp.
He fell back into their arms, a bullet through his neck.
CHAPTER 59
GLORIOUS LEADER
ANOTHER BURST OF GUNFIRE SOUNDED as Nate approached the front door of the Dish, but he hardly flinched.
It didn’t matter if bullets found him.
Ethan was dead, torn to pieces like Davey. The blood of another Zero was on his hands.
He let the guilt and misery of it overwhelm him. He forced the shame of it through his mind again and again, until his heart broke. Until he was certain that as a leader he was nothing.
The he listened at the door. The banging had stopped.
He opened it.
Two dozen cars filled the street before the Dish, bullet-riddled and window-shattered, leaking fuel that smelled bright and dangerous in the hot sun.
The dump truck was idling, not moving, and a moment later Nate saw why.
A carpet of blue covered the street. Hundred of cops lay on their backs, shuddering and twitching, staring at the sky.
Another jolt of despair went through him. Crash’s escape plan had failed. Only he could fix this.
And he was nothing.
He stepped gingerly among the prone policemen. They stared up at him, their eyes bulging with rage, their anger over their fallen brother focused straight at Nate. They were dying to tear him to pieces.
Nate let their hatred come. He deserved it. Glorious Leader that he was, he had lost two Zeroes.
It only took a few moments in that concerted glare, and he was ready.
The earth dropped out beneath him, and he was falling, tumbling, lost. That part of him that was hungry for all that attention, even if those hundreds of eyes were glaring pure loathing, stuttered for a moment.
Nate flipped his power inside out.
Making a fist of his shame, he crumbled his ego, already battered and broken by his failure to save Davey and Ethan. All his expectations of obedience, attention, and worship flew apart like thrown sand.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nate had always hated that poem. But holding it in his mind helped. The lone and level sands stretch far away. . . .
The pure beams of hostility burning from the police faltered and frayed, then began to slide off him, to point back at the sky.
He was beneath their notice.
Nate walked through the vibrating field of blue, right up to the closest officer in his starched
dress uniform. He knelt down to the man’s face, staring into his jittering, wrathful eyes.
“I’m not here,” Nate said. “I’m nothing.”
The man kept staring, as if Nate were actually nothing, invisible before him.
It was working, but even a whiff of satisfaction would be the end. Nate kept his mind on one simple thought: I lost two Zeroes. I’m worthless.
He stepped gently over the man. Shuffled his way through the rustling mass of blue, never letting himself feel a moment of certainty, or confidence, or rightness in his actions.
No one stopped him. No one saw him.
A slow minute later and he was in the rearmost ranks of the swarm. Back here the cops were standing, shaking and staring and angry.
Among them stood Quinton Wallace and the senior brass, with the fanciest uniforms, the most medals.
Swarm himself looked bored, staring at the giant dump truck, chewing his lip, planning something.
I’m worthless, Nate reminded himself. I’m nothing.
He shambled forward, gathering no attention. Not a glance.
But when he was only a few yards from Quinton Wallace, something wonderful and disastrous happened—a spark of hope shot through Nate.
He saw Ethan.
He was among the police brass, in jeans and a tight suit jacket and tie. His mouth was slack, his eyes vibrating in his skull, his body shuddering and his limbs twitching. He was Swarm’s zombie, but he was alive.
Nate tried to stifle the moment of elation. But it was too late.
“Did you think I wouldn’t see you?” Quinton Wallace said, his gaze shifting from the Dish.
He laughed, and Nate let the harsh sound burn him even further down. I’m useless. A danger to the Zeroes. Nothing.
“Be serious,” Swarm said. “I’ve killed a Stalker before.”
Stalker. Nate’s brain reeled at the word.
It was so obvious now. His and Thibault’s powers were the same, turned inside out. This abject Nate was nothing more than another version of Anonymous.
Not Anonymous—Thibault Emmanuel Durant, who never used his hated middle name. Memories flooded in now: every detail of Thibault’s face, the conversations they’d shared camping in the Redwoods, all the times here in Cambria when Nate had cut him off, forgetting he was there. The awful thing Ethan’s voice had said two summers ago, about Thibault having been abandoned at the hospital by his parents, like they’d never had an oldest son.
For the first time, Nate really remembered his friend. And finally, having become like him, it was possible to understand that Zen, that rage, that pain.
Nate was learning so much, just as he was about to be torn to pieces. When all he wanted was to know more.
“How can you see me,” he asked, “in a crowd this big?”
Quinton Wallace shrugged, waved dismissively at the cops around him. “What crowd? This is all me. Smooth pieces of the whole. As long as I focus, I won’t forget you’re there.”
Of course. Like being alone with Thibault—tricky, but not impossible. So his plan . . .
Nate’s eyes went to the holster of the nearest cop. It was unbuttoned, the gun right there.
The officer took a neat step backward.
“Too late for that,” Swarm said.
Defeat churning in his stomach, Nate let his gaze fall to the ground, to the cops’ freshly shined shoes, all exactly the same. He didn’t deserve to win, to avenge Davey. He didn’t even deserve to live.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked.
“It’s okay,” Swarm said coolly. “Trying to shoot me was something, at least. It was so disappointing, finding Davey handcuffed and waiting. No challenge at all.”
Nate swayed, tears of shame welling up. “That was my fault too. I told Anon to—”
“Not interested. I think I’ll kill you now.” Swarm smiled. “I’ve never shot anyone before.”
He pointed at Nate’s heart, and two dozen police drew their weapons, all aimed at the same spot, fury making their hands shake.
“They’ll hit each other,” Nate said, hardly more than a whisper.
“Like I care,” said Quinton Wallace, but then he was frowning, staring at the trembling, extended hand of the officer beside him.
It was empty.
It took a moment, but then Nate understood. He pulled in a ragged breath. “I guess you’ve never faced two Stalkers before, have you?”
“What do you—”
A shot sang out, its vast and sudden crack erasing all sound from the world, till it came echoing back from the high brick walls of the Heights.
With a look of astonishment Quinton Wallace fell to one knee. He coughed, and blood flew from his mouth, spattering down his blazer and onto the asphalt.
Behind him stood Thibault Emmanuel Durant. Smoke drifted from the barrel of the gun in his hand, and his eyes were wide, fixed, staring down at the kneeling boy.
Wallace raised his hand. His eyes met Nate’s, and his bloodied lips moved, trying to say something but only spilling more blood—
The gun roared again, flattening him to the ground.
CHAPTER 60
ANONYMOUS
AS QUINTON WALLACE DIED, THE cops woke up.
Thibault saw them jerk to consciousness, heard them gasp. They all stared at the weapons in their hands, uncertain why they’d drawn them, why they’d marched a mile in dress uniform, full of anger. The air flicked and zotted with attention strands as they tried to read the situation.
They saw the dead body, and the gun in Thibault’s hand, smoke wisping up from it. They didn’t need to see Thibault himself—the gun was enough. Their weapons swung around, the muzzles in a jagged row, aimed at his chest.
Their attention blazed so bright, so thick, he didn’t even think to start chopping it away. The instant he moved, bullets would fly.
He stood blinded, stiff, waiting to be blasted into oblivion—true nothingness, the kind his mind would never reach. His hand still ached from the kick of the gun, but it felt impossible to drop it and save himself. It was like he’d shot his own will away, along with Wallace’s life.
He was going to die right here, right now.
The police would finish what he’d started two days ago—erasing Thibault Durant from the world.
“Don’t shoot!” came Nate’s voice, ringing into the silence with its old commanding tone. After those moments of anonymity, he was flipping back to his natural state as the radiant, glorious center of attention.
Like the first spits of a sparkler, his power flew out into the darkness that Swarm’s influence had created. It arced across the phalanx of police. Thibault felt himself fade as all that fierce, confused attention left him, shifting to Nate until the guy was lost in its dazzle, his raised hands marshaling every shimmer.
“I’m surrendering! Don’t shoot.”
The muzzles swung away from Thibault, and air rushed into his lungs, as if the guns had been squashing them flat. Maybe he wasn’t going to die today.
“I had to do it.” Nate’s calm voice sounded small after the gunshots. “He was controlling you. But I give up.”
He was taking the rap.
“No, wait!” Thibault shouted. “You can’t—”
“On the ground!” a dozen voices cried, at the roaring edge of panic.
Nate sank to his knees, his expression splendidly confident that none of them would dare pull a trigger.
But the cops were scared and confused, their focus fitful, like the swarmed people at the mall—and they were afraid. In a clattering storm of safety catches, more pushed forward to get guns on Nate. Bumped from behind, Thibault stumbled and fell across Wallace’s body. He tried to scramble off the bloodied blazer, away from the ghastly head wound, but the cops were in a fever now, too dense a crowd to see Thibault at all.
Their frenzy overwhelmed Nate’s power, and they piled in on him. Through the milling legs Thibault glimpsed his friend on the ground, his cheek scraping on asphalt as they held him dow
n. A kick went into his side.
There were still a dozen guns on him.
“Flip yourself back, Nate! Disappear!” Everything sounded soft and foggy through Thibault’s gunshot-deafened ears, and there was Quinton Wallace’s ruined face staring up at him.
But much worse, it was gone—that moment when Nate, his power inverted, had joined Thibault in anonymity. Had actually seen him. Had remembered him, right here in the middle of a crowd. Thibault had met the gaze of another Anonymous . . .
Who was about to be killed, if Thibault didn’t do something.
He still had the gun. If he shot it in the air, would that break their fever, or at least give them a new target? Thibault dragged himself up and charged at the unseeing cops. “Leave him alone!”
“Shut the hell up, Tee.” Ethan was holding him back by his belt, the effort popping a button on the too-tight jacket he was wearing.
“Scam,” Thibault said. “You can see me?”
“Dude, you just fired a gun—everyone saw you.” Ethan peeled Thibault’s fingers from the cooling weapon and dropped it on Wallace’s body with a thud. “And we’re buddies. Come on.”
“But Nate! They’re going to—”
“We can’t help him now. Can’t even see the guy under all those cops!”
Ethan pulled Thibault, stumbling, through a solid nightmare of blue-dressed officers, jabbed by their fists and shoulders as they strained to glimpse what was going on in the middle of the pile:
Nate, kicked and crushed, taking the blame for what Thibault had done.
“Keep moving!” Ethan called over his shoulder. “We need to get to the Dish. Get the others and rescue Nate together—”
“Ethan!” A woman grabbed Ethan by the shoulders. “You’re okay!”
She wore a narrow black skirt suit and a dark cloche hat. Deputy District Attorney Cooper, a.k.a. Ethan’s mom, breathless and worried.
“I’m getting you out of here! This was some kind of attack. Hallucinogens, or maybe—” She stared through the crowd beyond them at the blood pooling out from Wallace’s body.
“Mom, it’s under control.” Ethan’s real voice was all doubt and nerves. “I gotta help my friend here.”
“Your friend?” DDA Cooper stared at Thibault, her attention bright and sharp for a moment. He knew he looked bad, shocked and guilty. “Is that blood on you, son?”