Swarm

  She looked down at her hands. They hovered over a board full of switches and sliders. The labels—RB1, VNSP SET—suddenly made no sense whatever, even if they were in her own neat handwriting.

  She was supposed to be in control of all this. But—

  She sent her mind through the circuitry, but it was like a map of an alien city, meaningless, lit with random pulses. She should know her way around this stuff. Hadn’t she built it? But now it meant nothing. She knew nothing.

  She froze in panic. The alien city stretched out in front of her, surging, quaking. Nothing connected. What was it all for? What was she for? Her heart raced faster than the music’s pounding. Lights zigzagged in automatic patterns, gleaming on the mesh and the scarred-plaster walls of the Dish. She was supposed to rule those lights, not let them wander—she was supposed to take hold and move them.

  But she didn’t—

  But they weren’t—

  Then the familiar logic of the systems drifted back into place, and they were suddenly what they should be, what they’d always been—the cables streaming power, the thousands of feet of wire fanning in and out of the two glowing hubs of music and light that she and Kelsie commanded. Whatever glitch of her brain had taken them away from her had gently handed them back.

  Sweat broke out cold all over her, and a breath shuddered into her throat.

  What the hell had just happened?

  CHAPTER 5

  ANONYMOUS

  THE SPOTLIGHTS STILLED A MOMENT, and Thibault looked up.

  Chizara stood stiffly, her hands like snatched-back claws, as if she’d just gotten a shock from the lighting board. Her attention was snapped ropes of light, flailing around her head.

  Thibault dropped from his bar stool, ready to run and help her.

  But then she lowered her hands to the sliders again. Her attention reattached to Kelsie, to the crowd, to her job. The spots restarted their jagged dance across raised arms and faces.

  Thibault sat back, still watching her.

  As Kelsie smashed through to a new track, Chizara followed flawlessly, her lights a roving counterpoint to the beat. Everything back in its place.

  It was a pleasure to watch those two rocking the crowd, to see the connections divide endlessly across the dance floor, a stable cloud of diffuse light over everyone, no single strands lasering between individuals. They were one big multibodied animal, one mind, one heart, everyone lost in the music and the movement, no one resisting, or making a move on anyone, or breaking out and making trouble.

  At times like this, Thibault’s power almost felt like a gift. Maybe he could never join that web of connections, but he could see them like nobody else in the world—except Nate, of course.

  And being on the sidelines wasn’t all bad. Crowds were like clouds of smoke—it was easier to understand their shape from the outside. He could see things as they truly were here, not be swept up in Kelsie’s dance euphoria.

  Someone had to stay free of her grip, to intervene if needed. Thibault was the club’s secret bouncer. If Craig was the battleship, he was the stealth fighter.

  Flicker was behind the bar, moving confidently in the familiar space. Tonight she wore a zebra-striped dress, easy to spot through anyone’s eyes she happened to borrow.

  She was busy stacking cans under the counter. The Dish had only one ancient refrigerator, and by design the cold beer always ran out early. As Nate said, a sober crowd was better for practicing their powers on.

  This crowd was younger than usual, everyone out of school on the last Saturday before Christmas. Thibault recognized a lot of faces, though. He’d made an effort to memorize the regulars. He wanted to know this place as well as he’d known his last home, the Hotel Magnifique.

  A girl caught his eye, swaying through the crowd, her hair dramatic white and magenta. Seriously? Sonia Sonic? Why had Nate let her in, when she was practically stalking the Zeroes?

  Ethan was trailing after her. Okay, Nate must have told him to keep an eye on her.

  “You thirsty?”

  Flicker handed a bottle of water across the bar, fully aware of him even with all these people around. Amazing.

  It was icy in his hand. The last cold one, no doubt.

  “Thanks.”

  She dipped her head at him. “Let’s see if I can hold on to you when people start lining up.”

  “No big deal if you can’t.”

  “Oh, but I will.” She ran a finger down the inside of her left arm. Earlier, upstairs in his room, he’d moved his lips slowly along that same line, making her shiver. Breathing her in. And she hadn’t forgotten it.

  Damn it, why did the Dish have to be open tonight?

  Even after half a year, it astounded Thibault that he had a girlfriend, someone who remembered his name and what kind of coffee he drank. Someone he’d happily wear this ridiculous red leather jacket for, just so she could spot him more easily in a crowd. She even quoted Zen koans at him sometimes.

  Like whispering, Attachment leads to suffering, with her lips next to his ear, her hands on his skin. Right now Thibault was fine with being attached, to this girl and this place and these people. He had a home, upstairs in the old theater office. No more ripping off hotels. He even had a roommate, Kelsie, who wasn’t completely surprised when she ran into him making breakfast in the mornings.

  For the first time, he was part of something—this group experiment where the Zeroes could hone their skills without breaking police stations and hurting people.

  “This is a pretty tight set,” Flicker said.

  Thibault nodded. “Mob gets better every time.”

  Beyond the haze of crowd connections, Kelsie was a tiny figure with giant headphones clamped around her blond curls. She danced in her skintight silver dress, lining up the next track. She’d wound up the crowd pretty high—shiny faces and open mouths. Maybe she should ease up some?

  Right on cue she switched to a gentler track. Thibault grinned. The first time the Dish had opened, she’d exhausted everyone in the first hour. But she was learning.

  Released from her thrall, the crowd’s awareness flickered about like bugs’ antennae, brightening as people greeted friends or eyed alluring strangers. Some drifted toward the bar, eager for the cold beer while it lasted.

  Flicker’s awareness of him faded, but it would come back.

  Thibault slid off the bar stool, watching the dance floor empty. Sonia Sonic was standing in the center, looking around at the unused stage of the old theater, the box seats full of Chizara’s lights, the rickety stairway. Checking everything out.

  Was Nate really okay with this?

  Sonia took out her phone, held it up, then frowned.

  A flickering beam of attention arced toward her. Chizara, half smiling in the lighting box. No, not Chizara—Crash.

  Thibault joined in the smile.

  “What do you mean, only beer?” someone bellowed nearby. “My girl wants champagne!”

  Thibault turned. A tall, skinny guy leaned at Flicker across the bar. The nearer half of his head was shaved, and the girl beside him was all makeup, boots, and frilly skirt, her hands on her hips. Their attention was like two shining pickaxes sunk into Flicker’s face.

  How had Thibault not noticed these two before? They had trouble written all over them.

  “Sorry,” Flicker said cheerfully, sight lines multiplying as the guy’s voice drew everyone’s attention. “It’s five-dollar beer or a buck for water. And we’re not even legal for beer, really.”

  The girl looked super bored. The guy shrugged and reached into his jacket and pulled out cash—a wad of it, like something out of a comic book. Thibault hadn’t seen that many bills since the summer, when Scam had stumbled into Nate’s place with Craig’s duffel bag of drug takings.

  The guy dumped the cash on the bar and strolled the length of it, drawing the bills out in a line like a card dealer spreading a deck. Then he grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and pulled her back through the crowd. “Come drink you
r five-dollar beer, bitches!” he called out. “We’re gonna dance!”

  The bar crowd changed in a microsecond. Attention flashed thick on the bills; hands grabbed and people surged forward. Flicker stepped back, looking dazed.

  The crowd had been one big magical beast on the dance floor, built with all Mob’s care and skill. Now it fragmented into a hot mess of individuals, needy and clamoring. A koan tolled in Thibault’s head: Even a shower of money is no satisfaction.

  See? The money was already gone. People started calling for beers and water and snacks, the bright lines of their attention stabbing at Flicker. A guy pushed past Thibault, straightening a little stack of bills and aiming for the door.

  “Okay, that is not cool,” Thibault said, going after him. The cashed-up guy might have been an asshole, but this was an out-and-out thief.

  He reached the guy just as he was shoving the cash into his jacket pocket. Chizara was playing the UV light across the room, and the security strips flashed at Thibault like the bills were signaling for rescue.

  He rescued them, right out of the guy’s hand.

  The thief swung around. Thibault chopped away his attention before it had time to land on him. The guy’s outraged look turned to bewilderment.

  “Who the—?” He checked his empty pocket, scanned the crowd.

  Stashing the money in his own pocket, Thibault cut away through the dancers to find a jostle-free place to stand against the wall.

  The rich guy and his girlfriend were in the middle of the dance floor. They stood face-to-face, holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes.

  Thibault’s breath caught—the bright bar of attention in the air between them was so raw and intense. They were the center of each other’s universe. But it wasn’t what he had with Flicker—this was something stronger, darker. He felt a quiver of fear.

  Kelsie cross-faded into a new, stronger beat, like she was responding to the sudden passion on the dance floor. People cheered, and connections started to melt together as they fell in with the rhythm, the crowd beast reforming.

  Good. Maybe these two could repair the damage they’d done by throwing their money around. People were already spilling back onto the floor, whirling to the irresistible music. Thibault found himself bobbing his head in time.

  Chizara took the lights down, following Kelsie’s lead. Now it was almost black inside the Dish, except for teeth and white T-shirts throwing back the UV light, and a few spotlights slithering over the crowd—

  Then one more shaft of light as the couple began to slowly spin, and their ultrabright connection scythed out, slicing through the room, a fiery blade.

  This wasn’t just love.

  These two were Zeroes.

  The beam of their connection struck Thibault, and he stumbled, all meaning draining from the world.

  CHAPTER 6

  MOB

  THIS WAS THE PART KELSIE liked the best—when the crowd really started dancing.

  They were right on the edge of out of control. Familiar faces from her Ivy Street clubbing days and a bunch of new people too. She was ready for them. Tonight she’d blend her music and her power to create the most awesome dance party Cambria had ever seen.

  The boom frames on the big speakers beside her rattled, sending the bass like a heartbeat through the floor of her DJ platform. She let the energy fill up the room like a flood, carrying her away.

  She amped the bass, then flipped her bulky headphones off one ear to hear the whooping and hollering.

  She leaned against the wave of eagerness from the crowd. She needed this. It was only here, in the DJ booth, that she could forget about the stupid mess of her life. The flashbacks to last summer stopped when the vinyl was spinning.

  She bent over her turntables, matching the next track’s tempo to the remixed pop song already playing. Then she reached out into the crowd and cross-faded between decks. . . .

  In one voice, the crowd roared.

  The savage delight of their reaction was that of an animal let off the leash. The wilder they got, the wilder Kelsie felt. The farther she went out on a limb, the more they wanted to follow. Her spine was a hot white spotlight shining right out through the top of her skull.

  Dad would’ve been so proud. He’d barely recognize her, up here in the DJ booth five feet above the dance floor. Close enough to be part of the crowd, but separate, too. Working the room with her music and magic.

  A thought stabbed through her—if only she’d gotten him help years ago.

  The energy in the room darkened, Kelsie’s loss spilling across them. She eased back, counting out a long breath. The panic attacks had begun the night Dad died. She was getting better, though, with the Zeroes’ help. Her roomie—Thibault, that was his name—was teaching her the Middle Way.

  When she’d started DJing two months back, the crowd kept carrying her off, and she’d forget that she was supposed to control the music. Songs had stuttered or faded out into embarrassing pauses.

  Tonight she wouldn’t miss a beat. She’d make the Zeroes proud, and pay them back for taking her in. She was one of them, even if she hadn’t been practicing her power as long.

  Chizara’s lights swung toward the middle of the dance floor and landed on a couple. A girl and guy eye-banging each other as they danced, oblivious to everyone else. Kelsie felt a pang of envy. They were lost in their own world. She wondered if she would ever be part of something so private and intense.

  But it was weird. Around the couple the crowd was growing restless and shaky. Like they sensed something they couldn’t be part of. The intensity in the room became rough and unpredictable, and someone stumbled across the dance floor. Suddenly nobody seemed to know what to do with their bodies.

  Kelsie gasped, feeling the crowd’s shakiness reach out for her.

  She could fix this. Something light and simple would drag them back from the edge, the kind of thing that got played during time-outs at a basketball game.

  Kelsie reached for the crate of vinyl, but something weird happened—she couldn’t recognize the first album she pulled out. The artist and track names were in some kind of alien scrawl. The pictures turned to slush, spreading across the crate and infecting every cover until they were all unreadable.

  Beside her the decks seemed to turn into mouths with sharp pointed teeth. She leaped back before they could snap off her hands.

  “Oh my God!”

  Her confusion crashed against the weird tides of energy on the dance floor, forming a feedback loop of pure panic. The music from the speakers jolted—two mismatched beats colliding, like a dogfight breaking out.

  Out on the dance floor the crowd became an angry sea, and the music turned to screams. The Dish filled with a monstrous shape where the dance floor had been.

  Kelsie was alone up here, and all the darkness in the world was spread out below.

  She couldn’t recognize anything—or anyone.

  CHAPTER 7

  FLICKER

  THE MUSIC SKIDDED, TWO SONGS tangling, Kelsie making a rare mistake.

  Flicker was on her knees, feeling among the cans in the refrigerator, fingers searching for cold aluminum. None of the beers felt like they’d been inside for more than a minute or two. Best to close the door and let the fridge do its thing.

  “It’s warm, sorry,” she said, standing up and handing the guy a can. She slid her vision into his eyes, saw that he was handing her a ten, and gave him a five from the cash drawer stuffed full of money from that rich guy a minute ago.

  What an asshole. Compensating much?

  She bounced her vision around the bar—nobody was staring at her, waiting for a drink. But the eyeballs out on the dance floor were twitching, everyone a little unsteady on their feet. Pre-Christmas jitters, maybe?

  She searched for Anon’s red leather jacket, something familiar to hold on to.

  Wait—Anon wasn’t his real name.

  Weird. She’d lost it somehow. By reflex her fingers went to the bracelet around her rig
ht wrist. Braille letters were punched into the band of leather. They settled slowly into meaning.

  T-H-I-B-A-U-L-T.

  Flicker played the sound of it in her mind, liltingly French.

  When she’d picked braille back up a month ago, it had slid back into her fingers, feeling easy and right. It was a handy way to leave notes for herself, since her boyfriend’s involuntary superpower happened to be erasing memories.

  The air shook again, interrupting Flicker’s thoughts. More mismatched tempos blared from the speakers, like a collision of two marching bands in a parade.

  Shit. It wasn’t like Kelsie to keep blowing transitions like this. And the two beats were still flailing against each other.

  Flicker cast her vision out into the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of the DJ platform.

  But everything looked wrong. . . .

  Dancers usually stared down at their feet, or up at the light show, or at attractive strangers. But the eyes out there were darting around in a panic, like someone trying to find a snake in their bedroom.

  Over the juddering music, Flicker heard anxious cries of confusion building. She could almost smell the fear of the crowd.

  And the dancing had turned to flailing . . . like something out of a demented puppet show. Limbs and torsos jerking around, pulled by invisible lines of force. Like everyone’s brains had been glitched somehow and they’d forgotten how to use their own bodies.

  She caught a glimpse of Kelsie on the DJ platform, huddled in a corner by her records, arms wrapped around her knees. Chizara stared at her light-booth controls, confused and terrified. The lights were swinging through the same patterns again and again, stuck in a loop as random as the music.

  Whatever this was, it had hit everybody, which meant it must also be affecting . . .

  Flicker cast her vision around, looking for him. He was wearing something special tonight. Right—a red leather jacket.

  She found it a moment later, on the dance floor with all those hideously jerking bodies. His movements looked just as wrong, glitchy and uncoordinated.