Ethan looked down at Thibault’s grip on his arm and twitched again.
‘Sorry, dude,’ he said. ‘Too much coffee. And it’s kind of weird in here.’
‘Yeah. Welcome to my world.’
It wasn’t just weird here in the Nowhere; it was dangerous. With his power amped up enough to keep Ethan and himself invisible, Thibault hovered at the border between reality and gone.
After yesterday’s successes with Flicker, he’d felt so tuned in to reality. But every day he had to start the fight again.
‘You guys okay?’ Nate’s voice came in his earbuds.
‘We’re great,’ Thibault said, and reached up to mute his phone mike. He gestured for Ethan to do the same.
The problem with Bellwether’s plan was there was no crowd at the cemetery’s front gate. Keeping two people invisible needed at least some Curve. So Thibault had pulled Ethan across the street, closer to the crowded waiting room of a walk-in medical center.
It wasn’t much to work with, but when the sparkling attention of the FBI agent at the gate swept the street, it passed right through him and Ethan.
‘Is it like this for you all the time?’ Ethan asked.
‘Only when I make someone else anonymous.’
‘Good, because this would suck,’ Ethan said.
Thibault didn’t explain that it had been this way for weeks after he’d erased himself. But it hadn’t sucked, because he hadn’t cared.
Caring was what hurt.
‘But hey, I remember more now!’ A muzzy delight lit Ethan’s face. ‘Like hanging out at the Dish, you and me and Kelsie. Playing tunes on that sound system, super loud. I can’t believe I forgot all that.’
Thibault shrugged. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. I made you guys forget me.’
‘I know, but still.’ Ethan frowned up at him. ‘Friends should remember each other.’
Thibault got a firmer grip on Ethan’s arm, trying to navigate his way between guilt and the call of the void.
‘Neither of us had a choice. I had to disappear.’
‘Because you shot Swarm?’ Ethan murmured, like he was having trouble remembering that, too.
‘Quinton Wallace.’ The name was a mouthful of ashes. Thibault’s hand buzzed with the gun’s recoil. The world slipped away a little, and he held on harder to Ethan’s arm.
Ethan was staring up into the sky, which always seemed stuck in twilight here in the depths of Nowhere. Like even the sun could forget who Thibault was.
He searched for something to focus on, to drag himself back to the real world. An FBI agent dressed as a homeless man and a crumbling graveyard wall weren’t doing it.
‘So, Ethan. How’re you going to work this, exactly?’
Ethan stared at him, his expression fuzzy. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, what if people come to smoke weed here? While we’re warning off some random kid, we could miss the real target.’
Ethan smiled. ‘Not to worry, Tee. The voice is great at stuff like this. I’m going to wish real hard that whoever shows up doesn’t go in that cemetery. And what the voice says will give us a clue.’
Thibault shook his head. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘If it was some kid playing hooky, the voice’ll say, “Don’t go in there. It’s crawling with teachers!” But if it’s Phan’s target, it’ll say, “It’s crawling with feds” or “They know about your powers!” See what I mean?’
‘Right.’ Thibault had to admit, being on the run had focused Ethan. ‘So you’re pushing the voice to leak information.’
‘Yeah, does that all the time.’ Ethan got a funny look on his face. ‘Just yesterday, it said something kinda scary. About me being omniscient.’
Thibault stared at him. ‘How is that scary?’
‘I was using the voice to freak out Verity, so she didn’t sic her bodyguards on me. And it said that if I ever worked for the feds, the government would know everything about everyone. Like, game over for the First Amendment.’
‘I think you mean the Fourth Amendment.’ Thibault frowned. ‘But yeah, that’s probably good-bye to all of them.’
What could his own powers do, if he worked for the FBI? Or, hell, why not the CIA? He’d erased himself from his friends’ minds. Could he make people forget any inconvenient truth?
The sky was dimming, and Thibault shook himself.
‘Can we get off the topic of governments with superpowers? No Swarm talk either. All that stuff makes me want to let go of the real world – and if I fade out, I don’t know what happens to you.’
‘Whoa. What?’ Ethan took a step away.
Thibault held firm on his arm. ‘Just remind me of something happy and fun.’
As he said it, happiness and fun had never seemed like more pointless, abstract concepts.
‘Well, I guess…’ Ethan looked blank-faced, as if the Nowhere was calling him too. Then he brightened. ‘Remember that time you let me stay in your hotel suite, when the Craig was looking to beat me down? All that room service! And we played Red Scepter for, like, six hours straight!’
Thibault tried to nod along, like this was a happy memory, but the name Craig stabbed him in the gut.
He remembered the man’s lifeless face staring down from the truck bed, the bullet wound red and gaping in his throat. The exact moment when Thibault had torn himself out of reality.
Ethan scowled up at the darkening sky. ‘Flicker! She makes you happy, right?’
The name seized Thibault, and he felt reality within his grasp again.
‘Yeah. She does.’
More important, she had stuck by him, even when he’d abandoned her. She was more amazing than she knew.
‘Equally exciting and fun is…’ Ethan cast around, then pointed. ‘That bus! The target could be on it!’
‘About time.’ Thibault took a firmer hold of Ethan and walked him across the street. The waiting-room crowd faded behind them, but the approaching city bus was half full, more than enough to keep the Curve going.
It squealed to a slow, gliding stop. Thibault peered through the darkened windows and made out a shadow moving forward between the seats.
‘Teenage girl,’ he said. ‘Could be the target.’
He glanced at the FBI agent, maybe twenty feet away. The guy was pretending to be homeless and detached, but his attention was focused on the bus. When Thibault reached out to slice it away, it drifted back. The bus was too big and loud to hide.
‘Get ready to say something calming when we grab her,’ he told Ethan. ‘Explain that we’re friends, or whatever.’
‘The voice is always ready, Tee.’
The bus door sighed open. A girl stepped down – jeans, puffy jacket, black hair in a ponytail. Casual and confident.
Thibault took a step forward, his free hand outstretched.
‘That’s Verity!’ Ethan hissed, digging in his heels. ‘From the prison! She’s a Fed!’
The girl was only a few feet away, and at the sound of Ethan’s voice, her eyes lifted from the pavement and stared at him. Recognition glimmered across the space between them.
‘What the hell are…’
Thibault sliced through the line of her attention.
The girl’s expression softened, and her gaze shifted to the agent dressed in rags. A glimmer passed between them.
The bus door closed, and it eased away from the curb – taking its crowd with it.
Thibault hustled Ethan back across the street, back to the Curve coming from the medical center. ‘Damn. That was close.’ ‘Yep,’ Ethan said. ‘And there’s the target!’
Thibault followed Ethan’s stare. A guy was coming down the street on foot. He was the right age, wearing ratty jeans and a shapeless pullover. He had an indistinct face and needed a haircut.
As Thibault watched, a glitter of connection sprang out and joined him to Verity, who still waited by the gate.
Thibault unmuted his phone mike. ‘I’m not sure this is going to work, Bellwether.’
‘What’s up
?’ Nate’s voice answered.
‘The target’s on his way in, but Verity got here first. She’s already spotted him, and I don’t have a crowd to work with!’
Silence.
Damn it, where was the old decisive Nate when you needed him?
‘She knows about Stalkers, right?’ Thibault hissed. ‘Do we risk tipping her off? Or just let him walk in?’
Still no answer. The guy’s slumped posture straightened for a moment as he met Verity. They hugged like old friends.
‘Bellwether? Flicker? Any guidance at all would be appreciated.’
Ethan was thumbing his phone screen.
‘Dude, it’s dead,’ he murmured. ‘As in crashed.’
Thibault stared at his own blank phone screen, then at Ethan. He pulled them both against the medical center wall, deeper into the Nowhere, as a wordless thought passed between them.
Twenty Crashes, Chizara had said.
‘OUR PHONES JUST WENT DOWN,’ KELSIE HEARD CHIZARA WHISPER. ‘All of them.’
‘The feds have jammers?’ Nate hissed.
Kelsie looked back at Chizara, who was staring at her blank screen.
‘The chip’s fried. No machine could do that.’
Nate’s eyes lit up. ‘Maybe this guy’s a Crash. The town’s full of them.’
‘What the hell?’ Flicker said. ‘Scam and Anon are just letting him walk in!’
Kelsie felt jitters wash through the group. The four of them were at the edge of the graveyard, crouched on top of a crypt the size of a container truck. Coffins were interred three-high beneath them. A row of gravestones thrust up like broken teeth along the outer wall.
The thought of all those bodies only made Kelsie more aware of the emptiness around her. The keening of her friends’ anxiety was almost a relief in the silence of the dead.
‘Melted,’ Chizara said again, and dropped her phone. ‘No way to fix them.’
Nate shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. That would just blow our cover.’
‘Our cover?’ Flicker whispered. ‘We’re not staying hidden, are we? We’re here to save this guy!’
‘We’re here to figure out what’s going on.’
Kelsie looked from Flicker to Nate and back, feeling the group cleave. Since he’d rejoined the Zeroes, no one knew who was in charge anymore.
Sometimes he was the old Nate, but then he would fade away into the background again.
‘Bellwether,’ Kelsie said. ‘I thought you wanted to pick a side.’
‘Not until we know who crashed our phones. Besides, maybe this guy can take care of himself. Let’s see what he’s got up his sleeve.’
Kelsie had to look away from his eager expression. Like this was some kind of science experiment and not a fellow Zero about to lose his freedom.
‘Okay,’ Flicker said. ‘We’ll figure out who needs saving once we know what the hell is going on.’
That settled it. Kelsie gritted her teeth against her own emotions and reached her power across the graveyard.
The feds were spread out, their connection tenuous. But they were joined by shared goals – ambush, dominate, capture.
Kelsie raised herself a little and made out two figures on the cemetery’s central path. The guy was pretty unremarkable, and she didn’t recognize him from the Crashes’ warehouse the other night.
A moment later they were lost from view behind the crumbling family vaults. Kelsie sank back to the sun-warmed stone.
‘They’re smiling and talking,’ Flicker said. ‘A little awkward. Like old friends who haven’t seen each other for a while.’
‘Friends?’ Chizara whispered. ‘She’s leading him into a trap.’
‘The feds are moving in now,’ Flicker said. ‘Slow. Staying hidden.’
Kelsie wondered what the new guy’s power was. Was he another Crash, or something more dangerous? With an operation this size, it seemed like the feds wanted him bad.
Maybe they were happy to get any Zero in custody.
She scooted up to the edge of the crypt, peering past a statue of a winged angel. The closest FBI agent was a stone’s throw from her, making his way among the crumbling mausoleums. As the agents converged, their group bond became more solid.
‘This is weird,’ Flicker said. ‘He looks…different.’
Nate looked at her. ‘Who? The target?’
‘Yeah, he was super average-looking a second ago. But he’s changing.’
Kelsie and Chizara exchanged a glance.
‘I mean, he looks exactly the same,’ Flicker continued. ‘But he’s kind of…getting hotter.’
Everyone looked at Nate.
After a long moment he let out a whistle. ‘Maybe that’s his power.’
‘Hotness?’ Chizara snorted.
But Kelsie felt it now. The FBI agents were close enough to form a crowd around Verity and the boy, nine of them altogether. But their professional focus had been dented.
‘It’s hitting the agents,’ she murmured. ‘They’re surprised. Kind of awestruck.’
‘He’s so damn gorgeous,’ Flicker said. ‘I can’t even figure it out. His face is the same. He’s still got that awful haircut…’
Nate dropped into his nature-documentary voice. ‘Beauty is a social construct, after all. Coin made money from crowds – maybe this guy creates attraction.’
‘I repeat my question,’ Chizara said. ‘His power is hotness?’
‘It’s not going to save him,’ Kelsie said. The agents were confused, but they were professionals, still intent on their target.
‘If he’s not a Crash, who wrecked our phones?’ Nate asked. ‘Flicker, any extra eyes looking on?’
‘Nope. Mob?’
‘No big groups anywhere.’ Except for the converging feds at its center, the cemetery felt empty—
Then suddenly it wasn’t. Like a door in reality opened, and a crowd pushed through.
‘Oh my God,’ Kelsie said.
Flicker gasped. ‘Shit. A ton of eyeballs just came out of nowhere!’
‘Heartbeats,’ Chizara murmured. ‘A whole mass of them.’
‘What are you all talking about?’ Nate asked, standing for a better view.
Kelsie pressed her fingertips to her temples. The new group was as determined as the FBI agents, but wilder, looser. Full of frantic energy, like a bunch of kids let out of school onto a playground.
She rose unsteadily, shielding her eyes from the sun.
At the center of the cemetery, Verity and the boy stood arguing, ignoring the agents closing in from all directions. And from an open mausoleum out of their view, a gaggle of people poured into the sunlight. Kelsie felt the group swelling as they emerged.
‘They’ve been here the whole time!’ she cried.
‘That crypt, it’s like a Faraday cage,’ Chizara murmured beside her. ‘But for Zero powers. The walls blocked us from sensing them!’
‘A double cross,’ Flicker said, then flinched. ‘One of Phan’s agents just went down. No idea why, but his vision just fritzed.’
‘Come on,’ Nate said, sliding his feet over the edge of the crypt. He turned around and skidded down the side to arm’s length, then dropped.
Chizara followed. ‘Are we saving him now? Or Verity?’
‘Still figuring that out!’
Kelsie slid down, her sneakers skidding on the protruding lips of tombs as she clambered down. Sorry, dead people.
As her feet hit the dirt, she felt a moment’s dizziness. A familiar slant in the slippery new energy that filled the cemetery. She racked her brain, trying to place it as she ran.
The four of them skidded onto the main path.
The new Zero boy beside Verity was slumped and disheveled, his face kind of lumpy. And yet he was radiant, filling Kelsie’s heart with happiness just to look at him.
The feds were staggering, confused. Their faces went slack, and they fell, dropping from the feedback loop one by one. There was Phan, running toward Verity, his pistol drawn. But whatever had knoc
ked out the others hit him too, and he dropped like a rag doll to the ground.
Then Verity dropped too.
Chizara came to a halt, placed a heavy hand on Kelsie’s shoulder. She swayed like she was about to pass out.
‘Whoa,’ she said. ‘I’ve felt this before.’
Kelsie nodded. From the moment she’d locked onto the other group’s energy, it had all been familiar. That terrible sense of the world slipping and shifting, of meaning leaking away.
For a moment she hardly knew Chizara’s face.
The new crowd stared at the Zeroes across the fallen agents, wary and ready to fight. Kelsie dimly recognized a few of the Crashes that she and Chizara had met the day before.
But at the head of the group was a face she knew all too well.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘It’s Glitch.’
SPARKLING LINES OF ATTENTION CRISSCROSSED AMONG THE OLD STONES.
Two dozen Zeroes stood there on the path, blinking in the sunlight, as if they’d teleported in. The boy the feds had tried to kidnap was glowing now, his beauty amplified by the sudden crowd.
Though maybe it wasn’t really beauty. It was something more primal, some group need to worship an idol, a king. Every angle of his face was a hook sunk deep in Nate’s visual cortex. A demand to keep looking, to drink in that face. To gaze along with every other eye in the cemetery…
But Nate didn’t have time to analyze this new power. With every ounce of his will, he tore his eyes away and stared at Glitch.
Also known as Ren, the girl who’d attacked the Petri Dish just before Christmas. She stood at the head of the new group, her eyes lit with pleasure from knocking out Verity and the federal agents.
Her power’s focus had improved since Christmas. Nate felt dazed, though this was nothing like the awful disorientation of her full-on assault.
But he needed to assert himself before she struck again.
‘You owe me a car,’ he said.
Ren stared at him, stony-faced. ‘You owe me a husband.’
Right, yes. There was that.
‘But you’re still alive,’ he said. ‘ And we took care of Swarm.’
‘Too little, too late. Still, this crowd’s big enough to lobotomize you. That might make up for it.’
It look Nate a moment to answer. Every night in prison, he’d seen Davey handcuffed to the fountain in the middle of the Desert Springs Mall, the deadly mass of Quinton Wallace’s minions descending on him.