He had processed all that. But he’d never had Ren right in front of him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Sorry doesn’t cut it!’ Glitch cried, and the world tipped sideways. The lines of attention wavered as confusion rippled through the crowd. The words on gravestones and crypts turned into an alien script.
Nate raised his hands high, trying to gather the disordered glimmers. Maybe if he could focus the group on himself, he could dampen Ren’s power long enough for one of the others to do something.
But instantly those shimmering strands pulled away, slipping through his fingers. The disorientation hit him full force again.
‘Stop this nonsense,’ someone ordered.
In the head-spinning confusion, Nate wouldn’t have recognized his own parents, but he recognized that voice. And Glitch obeyed, the world falling raggedly back into place.
But she yelled out in protest, ‘He killed my Davey!’
‘Swarm did that, and he’s dead now. Are you okay, Nataniel?’
It took Nate a moment to form words.
‘I’m fine. Everyone, this is Piper.’
She stood next to the beautiful boy, basking in reflected glory.
‘Someone’s been snooping,’ Piper said. ‘Are you stalking me?’
Nate shook his head. ‘We knew the FBI was planning to grab someone. Just trying to help a fellow Zero.’
‘The Cambria Five to the rescue!’ Piper looked around at Chizara, Kelsie, and Flicker. ‘Four of them, anyway.’
Her smile fell on him like pure, undiluted honor. And he felt it again, the need to please Piper, to join her.
He knew it was just her power, the same ability that he put to work every time he met a stranger, every time the Zeroes argued with him. But the gift was so much more magnificent in her.
Late last night, unable to sleep after meeting her, he’d realized why – Piper had grown up here, in New Orleans. A city that swelled with huge crowds once a year. These massive parties, these glorious parades, these weeklong celebrations were her birthright.
She could teach him all of it.
‘Looks like you had it under control,’ he said.
A ripple of laughter went through Piper’s gang. Like the word ‘control’ was an understatement.
Chizara stepped forward. ‘Are these normals going to be okay?’
Nate looked down – damn. Seven federal agents out cold on the ground, an open gate forty feet away, and he’d been too distracted by Piper to worry about any backup they might have.
‘Relax,’ Piper said. ‘Special Agent Phan has been tracking my crew for years, which makes him the only normal who really understands us. We’re going to need him soon.’
‘So this was all about getting Verity,’ came a voice from behind Piper – the voice. Ethan stood there, looking nervous and ready to run. But when he spoke, it was with perfect ease. ‘You’ve got plans for her, huh?’
Piper looked at him, then back at Nate. ‘Ah, the mysterious fifth Cambrian. What’s his power again?’
‘Asking good questions,’ Nate said.
Piper smiled again. ‘Verity is an old friend. I’d never hurt her.’
‘Then why knock her out?’ Ethan said. ‘And what does she have to do with that weird machine you’re building?’
For a moment Piper’s composure slipped. The voice was hitting a nerve.
Then she reached out and tapped Ren on the shoulder. Ren raised a hand, glitch light gleaming in her eyes, and Ethan went wobbly on his feet. He sat heavily on the dirt, head in hands.
‘Knock it off!’ Kelsie cried, and ran to him.
Piper turned back to Nate.
‘I like you, Nataniel – your crew is charmingly chaotic. But my sources say Agent Phan is in trouble for letting you out of prison. A suspicious person might think you two made a deal.’
‘We did,’ Nate said. ‘Phan let us go, and I didn’t blow up his supermax.’
Piper narrowed her eyes, and Nate felt the full swell of her power. Even with Verity out cold, she wanted to pull the truth from him.
‘Why did you show up here, Nataniel?’
He basked in her gaze, felt his power shift inside him.
He let himself submit.
‘To save a fellow Zero,’ he said. ‘We don’t work for the FBI.’
She held his eyes for a moment, then glanced down at Verity and sighed.
‘Too bad we had to knock you out, babe. Could’ve used you about now.’ Piper looked up again. ‘My plans are too important to share with strangers. But come see me on Ash Wednesday, Cambria Five. That’s when the real work starts.’
‘How do we find you?’ Nate asked, almost pleading.
Another ripple of laughter.
‘That won’t be hard,’ Piper said. She raised a finger, and two of her gang swept in and lifted Verity up. The group headed toward the cemetery gate.
‘Do we follow them?’ Kelsie asked.
‘And give Glitch another excuse to fry our brains?’ Ethan coughed. ‘No thanks.’
Nate wanted to follow, to stay close to Piper, to ask how he could help. But he shook himself.
‘That’ll only make Piper angry. But we have to get out of here.’
‘Not till I get a look at that hiding place,’ Chizara said, turning away. ‘Its walls blocked our powers!’
‘We leave now,’ Nate commanded. ‘Remember Phan’s dead-man switch at the prison? His backup could be on the way.’
That got them. Everyone headed toward the gate.
‘We can come back later, Zara,’ Kelsie said.
‘Not too much later,’ Chizara said. ‘You heard what she said – this’ll all be over by Ash Wednesday.’
‘Which is when?’ Ethan asked groggily.
‘The day after Mardi Gras,’ Kelsie said. ‘Like we thought, Piper’s plan goes down on Fat Tuesday.’
‘The day after tomorrow.’ Nate swore. ‘And we don’t even know how to find her.’
‘Not a problem.’
They all looked up. It was Thibault, joining the group as they passed through the graveyard gate. Spellbound by Piper, Nate had forgotten all about him.
‘What do you mean, Anon?’
‘Ethan was just stalling, giving me time to get the tracker out of Phan’s badge case.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I put it in Verity’s back pocket.’
‘You’re a genius!’ Flicker cried, and ran to hug him.
‘Perfect,’ Nate said.
They had a way to track down Piper. He and his Zeroes could be a part of this.
He still didn’t know what she was up to, and maybe the weird-hunter rumors were true and they’d have to stop her. But Nate knew for certain that he didn’t want to be on the sidelines.
And that his heart still rang with what Piper had said just minutes ago…
I like you, Nataniel.
Mierda. He liked her right back.
‘WHAT IF THIS THING DOESN’T WORK? WOULD WE EVEN KNOW?’
Flicker waved the phone in the air. The carnival-choked streets roared around them, full of music and the smell of cheap beer.
But from the phone, no beep, no buzz. Nothing.
The burner was heavy. Chizara had rebuilt it last night practically from scratch, along with two others. It was crammed with new parts, including a few glued to the outside. With its ungainly new antenna, it felt like a cell phone from the Stone Age.
‘We tried it on a test tracker while you were asleep,’ Thibault said. ‘It works. For a couple of blocks, anyway.’
‘Nothing like searching an entire city on foot,’ Flicker muttered.
Chizara had said not to take any cars. They’d zoom past the tracker too fast to pick it up.
Why on earth had Nate sent her and Thibault to search the downtown area? The thick of Mardi Gras seemed like the wrong place to test Anon’s tenuous connection to reality.
A passerby jostled Flicker, and she pulled Thibault closer.
‘Maybe you should’ve worn th
e test tracker,’ she said. ‘You know, just in case.’
He shook his head. ‘Not while we’re looking for Verity. We can’t have two trackers out there.’
‘Right. But after we find her…’
Thibault didn’t answer, and in the silence Flicker felt her face flush.
Or maybe it was just the leather mask she’d borrowed from the Barrows’ wall. Here on the day before Mardi Gras, pretty much everyone on the streets of New Orleans was incognito. Which was handy if you were on a most-wanted list, or hiding a blushing face.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you’re past that. Right?’
She felt him shrug. ‘I thought it was getting easier. And I want to be here for you, for all of you. But sometimes the world seems like too much.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that.’ The throng here was thick enough that Flicker had to keep one arm locked with his, her senses wrapped around him. She stayed in her own head, not daring to split her attention. ‘I just don’t want to lose you again.’
He pulled her closer. ‘I’ll be fine, as long as I don’t have to shoot anyone.’
Flicker smothered a startled noise. Was that a joke?
The phone pinged three times, and she tensed.
‘False alarm,’ Thibault said. ‘Just a bunch of texts from Nate. “Everyone in position? Keep to your search areas! We don’t have time to overlap!” ’
‘Send him a thumbs-up,’ Flicker said. ‘He hates emojis.’
‘Ha,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised this thing still works as a phone.’
‘No escape from Nate and his plan,’ Flicker said, though she wasn’t sure Glorious Leader ever had plans anymore. He switched between commanding certainty and this weird passiveness left over from prison. And his face when he was gazing at Piper…like she was the answer to everything.
His plan, such as it was, went like this:
One: Find Verity and grab her.
Two: Truth-zap one of Piper’s minions to find out what she was up to.
Three: ???
‘This whole trip to New Orleans was about one thing,’ Flicker said. ‘Nate wanting to be in the middle of all superpowered things.’
‘So you agree with Scam?’ Thibault asked, guiding her one step up onto a boardwalk. The crowd’s hubbub changed as the wall to her right became more sound reflective – stone or brick instead of wood. ‘We should be in Mexico, waiting this whole thing out?’
Flicker snorted. ‘There has to be a middle ground between charging in cluelessly and running away.’
‘Well, I want to be out here looking,’ Thibault said, guiding her past the smell of bubbling fish stew. ‘If I’m going to stay connected to this world, I should be ready to protect it, right?’
Flicker pulled him to a stop, scanning the passersby for a glimpse of his face.
There it was – his old expression, without that distant look he’d had since returning from the void. He gazed intently down at her.
And for a moment the mass of people around them didn’t matter. She was connected to him.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘As long as we’re together.’
She leaned forward into a kiss.
With her lips against his, Flicker felt herself drawn into another world. Not some shapeless void, but a private space that shut out the churning crowds. Their own reality, in no danger from Piper’s mad plans.
‘Me too,’ he said when they pulled apart, then, ‘Huh.’
‘Huh, what?’ she asked.
‘There’s a girl over there. She’s acting kind of strange. But no one’s paying any attention.’
Flicker laughed. ‘Dude. It’s Mardi Gras. You’re saying there’s only one weirdo in the French Quarter?’
But his whole body had gone tense. And he spoke softly, as if he were telling her a secret.
‘The play of people’s attention. The way they’re looking at her. Or not looking – their attention just slides past her. Just slips off, like…’
‘Holy shit, Thibault, is she another—’
Then her hands were empty. There was no one beside her, no one to talk to. Some vital meaning had been yanked out of reality, leaving her grasping at air.
Who had she been talking to?
Her fingertips fumbled on her lips, at a spark of heat, of taste.
Who the hell had she been kissing?
‘DAMN,’ CHIZARA SAID. ‘IT’S CRAWLING WITH FEDS.’
‘Told you this was pointless.’
Chizara looked at Kelsie. The whole way here she’d been nervous, full of arguments for staying away. ‘Are you afraid of dead people, Kelsie?’
‘Not really. But the city’s so alive right now.’ Kelsie was staring at the cemetery entrance across the street, where yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze. ‘And nobody in there wants to party.’
Chizara frowned. She felt a dozen heartbeats among the graves, and a painful spangling of tech. Not as crowded as Bourbon Street, but hardly an empty wasteland. The FBI was as interested in the cemetery as she was.
She had to find out how Piper had hidden her gang. What had shielded them from the Zeroes’ crowd powers?
A man came around the far corner of the stone outer wall, his dark suit screaming FBI, and Chizara took a step back into the shadows. She and Kelsie were wearing Mardi Gras masks, but the purple feathers framing her face only made her feel more conspicuous.
‘Maybe Piper wasn’t using technology at all,’ Kelsie said softly. ‘What if she has Anons in her gang? Or maybe she can flip her power inside out, like Nate.’
Chizara shook her head. ‘Her gang came out of one of those crypts. If they were using Anonymous powers, they could’ve stood in the open. If they have some kind of Faraday cage for Zero powers, I need to see it.’
‘If you say so,’ Kelsie said, adjusting the green foil mask over the top half of her face.
Chizara was sweating under her own mask. She was exhausted being in this mad city, which grew madder every day as Mardi Gras approached. She was tired of juggling its ratty infrastructure 24/7. Even Kelsie’s pleasure in the pumped-up party vibe was starting to wear on her. She longed for the Zeroes’ safe houses in the tech-free wilderness.
Her lack of sleep wasn’t helping. It had taken all night to rebuild three burner phones so they could detect the tracker chip. Now the Zeroes were spread across the city, hunting for Verity.
At least, that was what Chizara and Kelsie were supposed to be doing.
But this was more important.
‘We could go around the back.’
‘Forget it,’ Kelsie said. ‘The vibe in there is hard-core. As in shoot Zeroes on sight.’
Chizara sighed. ‘I guess that’s what happens when someone kidnaps the FBI’s pet Zero.’
‘Why do you need to see this shielding so bad?’
‘Because nothing has ever blocked you from feeling a crowd before, right?’
Kelsie shuddered a little. ‘No. It was weird. Like they were spilling out of a portal from…another world.’
‘Flicker said the same thing – all their eyes just appeared. So maybe our powers are some kind of signal, like a radio wave. Something that technology can influence!’
Chizara thought again about the weird device in the Makers’ warehouse. If it had some kind of crowd power, it would soon have more than a million people to work on…or to fuel it.
Kelsie was nodding slowly. ‘Makes sense, I guess. A lot of what we do is like a remote control. The way me and Nate influence crowds, or Glitch jams up brains. So there must be some kind of signal going through the—’ She stopped, and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Hey, is that Phan?’
Chizara’s heart beat faster – Kelsie’s fear in the air, trying to find a crowd to loop with.
Agent Phan was on the central cemetery path, striding toward the exit. He turned onto the sidewalk, heading for a couple of white vans parked there.
A moment later, a stab of pain went through Chizara’s head. Some flavor of signal she ha
dn’t encountered before. Maybe Phan was testing the shielding inside the crypt, trying to pierce it with his own transmission.
Whatever it was, it hurt.
She spoke through her teeth. ‘We’re not getting inside there anytime soon. We should go back to that warehouse. Figure out what Essence and her people were building. Come on.’
She turned away from the cemetery, walking back toward downtown. Kelsie followed.
‘Nate said not to go back there.’ She pushed her mask up so that Chizara could see her frowning. ‘They won’t hide Verity in a place we know about.’
‘Screw Nate. And screw Verity. I need to see that machine again.’
‘Pretty sure Piper doesn’t want us poking around.’
‘Screw Piper, too.’
‘Zara!’ Kelsie was laughing now, scandalized.
But this was serious. ‘Essence’s machine was decorated like a parade float. And Mardi Gras is tomorrow!’
‘But Piper told us to stay away. If we get up in her business, we could get our brains glitched!’
Chizara turned and started walking. ‘She tries to stop us, I’ll stop her heart.’
Kelsie caught up and pulled her to a halt. ‘You wouldn’t.’
Chizara met her girlfriend’s eyes. Wouldn’t she?
She just didn’t know. It would depend on the threat, and how full of rage and fear she was – and curiosity. Her deepest demon self wanted so much to know what it felt like to seize someone’s heart. To flex that ultimate power.
That self looked back at Kelsie now.
‘Zara? Tell me you wouldn’t—’
‘Of course I wouldn’t.’ Chizara let her gaze soften, felt her better self win over. Of course she wouldn’t stop anyone’s heart. Do no harm.
Kelsie kept eyeing her.
‘Just come with me, okay?’ Chizara asked.
Kelsie pulled down her mask.
‘Okay, Zara. At least if I’m there, I can keep you on the straight and narrow.’
DAZED, THIBAULT STEPPED CLOSER TO THE GIRL. It meant stepping out of the world, tempting the boundary between here and gone.