Nexus

  ‘You’re unique,’ Sonia said. ‘Why is that so bad?’

  ‘Because Chizara met all these other Crashes, and she got really excited. And there’s another Nate who runs this town, God help us, and he’s practically in love with her! Even when Kelsie turned out to be like Swarm, she figured out how to stay nice. It made her stronger!’ Ethan looked away. ‘Meeting other versions of themselves, it helped them figure out who they are. But what if I’ll always be alone?’

  Sonia said carefully, ‘Being special is cool too.’

  ‘Yeah, awesome. Except once people know how my power works, they don’t trust me anymore. Even my friends call me Scam. But hey, we’re all going to prison anyway, right?’

  ‘You know, you’re a real pessimist, Ethan,’ Sonia said. ‘I bet the other Scams are just hard to find, because you can all lie your way out of anything. But I’ve got a plan to track one down!’

  ‘What kind of plan?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Sonia said. ‘We’re in New Orleans, a town full of magic and voodoo and vampires. If you wanted to scam people here, what would you be?’

  ‘A flood-insurance salesmen?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Nope.’ Sonia laughed, and pointed at the shop across the street.

  It had a neon sign that blinked the words PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE in bright red, and a giant diagram of a palm with its lines labeled LIFE, FATE, and HEART.

  Ethan looked back at Sonia, whose eyes were bright.

  ‘You’d be a fortune-teller,’ she said. ‘The oldest scam in the book.’

  FLICKER MOVED THROUGH THE JOSTLING CROWDS, HOPPING AMONG THE EYES AROUND HER.

  So much to see. Shiny sequined costumes, bare flesh and masks. Trumpets and banjos and hand drums. And the beads: thousands of them strung around necks, hung in the trees, flying through the air, scattered treacherously on the ground…

  And none of it was what she was looking for – though Flicker still couldn’t remember what that was.

  Who that was, right? She’d been talking to someone, right before her brain had slipped away.

  She looked down at the ungainly, glued-together phone that was warm against her palm. Burning battery, busily scanning the airwaves for Verity’s tracker.

  But Verity wasn’t who she’d lost. It was someone more important. Someone she’d sworn never to forget.

  Her vision darted among the eyeballs around her, searching for a clue, a glimpse, anything that would jog her memory. The awful dizziness of trying to see through too many drunken, dancing eyes threatened, but then something happened…

  The collective gaze of the crowd began to gather on a single face.

  Flicker stopped in her tracks. He was so beautiful. His dark hair rippled to his shoulders. His face was alight with purpose and intelligence. Those eyes – what would she see if she stared deeply into them?

  Was it him she was looking for? No, that was crazy. She never could have forgotten a boy as lovely as that.

  Flicker shook her head. What the hell?

  It was just the guy from yesterday, with the hotness power. Except the crowd here was about a hundred times bigger than in the cemetery. The Curve was pushing his beauty to nuclear levels.

  He marched at the head of a small parade, a brass band outnumbered by drummers and dancers. He wore a cape with an upturned collar. A werewolf mask was pushed up onto his head to reveal his irresistible face.

  The crowd was going crazy for him. Every eye in the street was turning his way, drawn by his glamour, his sheer flawlessness. And the more people stared at him, the more splendid he became. Girls were screaming, guys too, like he was a pop idol at the center of mass hysteria.

  It hurt to look at him, to have those exquisite features scalded into her brain from a hundred viewpoints. Flicker felt herself swaying on her feet, her brain starting to fry. But just as she was about to draw back inside her head, the boy reached up and pulled the mask over his face.

  She steadied, but then a new agony came – his absence cutting at her heart.

  A moan passed through the crowd. All of them felt the same anguish at losing his beauty. The throng was surging forward, trying to see the boy’s face again. He turned and ran through the musicians, dodging flashing drumsticks, ducking outstretched arms.

  Flicker followed.

  She leaped from eye to eye, keeping him in sight, blundering through the crowd. He was fast, and soon the next jam-packed street swallowed him. His pursuers pushed ahead, slower and slower, defeated by the many bodies. Until finally they came to a ragged, confused halt.

  But Flicker kept moving. Yesterday in the graveyard, he’d been the FBI’s target, and he was Verity’s old friend. He must know something about Piper’s plans.

  Someone in these thousands of eyes had to catch a glimpse of that werewolf mask.

  BACK INTO THE CITY, INTO THE MAELSTROM OF PHONES AND WIFI. Blaring TV camera trucks here to capture the revelry, all of it flying past the cab’s windows in a roaring blur, pounding in Chizara’s head.

  ‘It’s getting scary out there,’ Kelsie said as traffic slowed on the expressway. She was peering down at the city. ‘More crowded than yesterday.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Chizara winced at the mass of phones boiling below them.

  ‘And tonight, when they’ve all been drinking all day…what if we run into a bunch of assholes looking for a fight? I’m worried about my feedback loop.’

  Chizara stopped rubbing at her temples and took Kelsie’s hand. ‘You aren’t Swarm, okay? With you around, they’ll all have a great time.’

  Kelsie looked reassured. But Chizara was glad when the cab was finally past the French Quarter and out into the relative emptiness of warehouses and factories.

  Mardi Gras was the real problem – it made Zero powers too strong, too hard to control.

  And Piper had grown up here. Her personality had been forged in this ego-amplifying cauldron of humanity. She was Nate on steroids.

  No wonder she thought she could take on the world.

  A few minutes later they were across the street from the Makers’ warehouse, the cab pulling away.

  ‘This is weird,’ Chizara said. The Madbolt sat dead in its box like an empty chrysalis, all its magic flown. ‘They haven’t reset that lock.’

  Kelsie pulled off her mask, frowning. ‘I can’t feel any crowd inside.’

  ‘So no Glitches to worry about, at least.’

  The closer they drew to the warehouse, the emptier it looked. The roller door was wide open, but no signals reached from inside – not so much as a phone bleeping.

  ‘They’ve moved out,’ Chizara sighed.

  Kelsie peeked nervously into the yawning doorway. ‘It feels empty. But what if they have a crowd-hiding room in here? This could be a trap.’

  ‘They had us trapped yesterday,’ Chizara said. ‘And they let us go.’

  She stepped into the cool darkness, but the warehouse’s Faraday cage was broken by the open roller door. She was tempted to close it and cut out the city’s blare. But the door was their only escape route.

  As Chizara’s eyes adjusted, though, it soon became clear that the place really was abandoned. In the middle of the warehouse floor, where the machine had sat, bright with meticulous and inscrutable circuitry, there was only darkness.

  Disappointment swept through her. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Why would they move it?’ Kelsie looked around.

  ‘Maybe they thought we’d call the feds,’ Chizara murmured.

  Her mind was already pushing through the shadows, looking for evidence. She felt the tools strewn across the table, the dragon’s hoard of other equipment left behind. There was a dumpster full of discarded parts and packaging. From these things and her memory of the machine, she tried to piece together its history, its function.

  And then she saw it in the corner, a giant box marked with the logo of a satellite-dish company. The box looked to be eight feet across, the sort of dish you’d use for internet access o
ut in the country, off the grid.

  ‘Oh my God. That’s what was mounted on the float.’ Chizara’s voice echoed in the vacated space. ‘Some kind of transmitter.’

  ‘Transmitting what?’ Kelsie said, her green mask glinting in the light from the roller door. ‘Bellwether Radio?’

  ‘No.’ A shiver ran down Chizara’s spine. ‘Powers.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Zero powers are just a signal,’ Chizara said. ‘Something you can block. So maybe Essence and her crew figured out how to project them too. What if Piper can throw her influence out onto a million people? Worse, what if Glitch can?’

  ‘Whoa.’

  Chizara pulled her phone out of her pocket and switched it on. ‘Nate needs to know about this.’

  At the warehouse. Empty. The machine is gone.

  I think it transmits powers.

  ‘You know what he’ll say,’ Kelsie said. ‘Something like, “Get back to looking for Verity! We only have a day!”’

  Chizara shook her head. ‘He’s not wrong, if this is what she’s planning. Our search area’s half a mile from here. Come on.’

  ‘Sure.’ Kelsie’s voice was light as a ghost. ‘There’s just one thing.’

  ‘What?’ Chizara asked.

  Kelsie pulled her phone out. ‘It’s nearby. I don’t know if I actually want to go, but…’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘No, forget it.’ She shoved the phone back into her pocket. ‘We’re supposed to be saving Verity. We should just…’

  Kelsie jittered there in the middle of the floor, a solitary puppet on a dimly lit stage.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘That group my mom joined? They’re meeting five blocks away, on Bartholomew. Right about now.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Chizara said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Kelsie shrugged.

  Chizara crossed the unswept floor. Of all the Zeroes, she could detect the tracker the farthest, using her power instead of some jerry-rigged device. She should be out there right now, searching for Piper.

  But this was Kelsie’s mother – the only family she had left. This might be their last chance to connect, before Piper visited another disaster on the whole city.

  ‘Are you up to it?’ Chizara asked. ‘Meeting your mom now, in the middle of all this?’

  Kelsie’s eyes were huge, the pupils big and black in the dimness.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said in the softest voice.

  Chizara smiled. ‘Let’s go find out, huh?’

  And she took her girlfriend’s hand and led her out into the sunlight.

  FLICKER FOUND THE BEAUTIFUL BOY IN A CAFE WITH A TILED FLOOR AND ARCHED CEILING. It was long and narrow, lit by a row of chandeliers down the center.

  He sat in a corner, staring down at his coffee like he was trying to figure out how to drink through the mask.

  But then he pulled it off.

  Flicker waited for a sudden explosion of beauty – nothing. He was back to the straggly hair and indifferent chin he’d had before turning beautiful in the cemetery. Apparently this guy could control his power in a crowd.

  She walked over and sat across from him.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he began, but when Flicker lifted her mask, the frown in his voice changed to a smile. ‘Oh. You’re one of those celebs who showed up yesterday. Cambria Five?’

  ‘That’s us,’ she said, making a quick scan of the room’s eyes. Everyone was talking, reading their phones, too intent to listen in. But she pulled the mask back down and kept her voice low. ‘We thought Phan was going to grab you.’

  ‘Like Piper would let that happen. She runs this town.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Flicker said. ‘That’s why we’re looking for—’

  ‘Wait!’ the boy interrupted. ‘You’re Riley Phillips!’

  Flicker hesitated. But there was no point hiding it.

  ‘Yeah. But maybe not so loud.’

  ‘Ha!’ His chair squeaked as he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I’m Beau. Always nice to meet a fellow Sight-caster!’

  The words didn’t make sense. Flicker shook her head.

  ‘I think you’re confused.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Beau turned. ‘That guy to your right? He’s reading about Troy’s Super Bowl party.’

  Flicker frowned, but sent her vision into a nearby set of eyes flicking across a phone screen.

  …bar-code scanners crashed, and backup verification methods mysteriously failed as well, despite sophisticated anti-fraud methods including holograms and watermarks. Later, many of the fraudulent tickets turned out to be nothing more than blank pieces of…

  ‘Shit,’ Flicker said. ‘You can see that?’

  Beau let out a laugh. ‘What, you never met another one of us before? I thought you guys knew everybody. The Cambria Five are supposed to be the bomb.’

  ‘We are, but not in the sense you mean,’ she said, then shook her head. ‘Wait. If you’re like me, why were you so damn pretty a minute ago?’

  ‘I didn’t know about the beauty thing either,’ he said. ‘Not till Piper’s Stalker brought me here. Then I started learning stuff. The thing is, every power has two sides.’

  ‘Of course,’ Flicker said.

  Chizara could crash and fix. Mob could make a crowd happy or turn them deadly. Nate could flip his charisma around to become Anonymous. But Flicker had never come up with even a theory about how her own power would reverse.

  Yet here the answer was, sitting in front of her.

  ‘So I could be…’ She imagined herself at the center of a screaming, worshipful crowd, and the idea almost made her giggle.

  ‘Totally hot?’ Beau supplied. ‘You bet. Just stop throwing your vision into other people. Instead, draw their vision toward you.’

  ‘It can’t be that simple.’

  ‘You’ve already got the muscles.’ He was leaning forward again, his voice intense, his weight scooting the table an inch toward her. ‘Just turn them around.’

  Flicker focused for a moment, feeling the eyes around her. She could leap into this gaze, or that one – but to drag them all toward herself?

  It seemed kind of pathetic, forcing people to stare at her.

  At a concert once, she’d seen a natural version of Beau’s power. The group’s singer had been pretty average-looking, but the mere fact of everyone staring at him made him seem irresistible. As if the lemminglike focus of the crowd had formed its own superpower.

  But Flicker had never imagined herself as a rock star, any more than she thought of herself as a great beauty. The whole thing made her feel giddily undeserving, like when she’d found out about the fuckton of money she was down for in Gramma’s will.

  ‘You aren’t even trying,’ Beau complained.

  ‘I’m a wanted terrorist,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Unnecessary attention is not my friend.’

  ‘Trust me. No one will recognize you when you’re beautiful.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Just get over yourself and try it. Imagine flipping your power inside out, like when you’re cleaning a contact lens.’

  ‘A contact lens? Is there something wrong with your eyes?’

  She jumped into Beau’s vision and saw herself with perfect clarity – the crappy roadside-store T-shirt, her hair disheveled from a day of frantic searching, the ill-fitting mask.

  ‘Just a little short-sighted,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just thought…’ Flicker began, but she didn’t know what it was she’d thought. It had always been a lingering question.

  Then Beau got it. ‘Oh, right. You’re the blind one. You thought that was part of sight-casting?’

  ‘Um, I guess so?’

  ‘Nope.’ The frame of his vision moved as he shook his head. ‘I’ve met two other Sight-casters. Neither of them even wore glasses.’

  ‘Huh,’ she said softly.

  So being blind was part of who she was, not some side effect of her power. That was how she’d always thought abou
t it – or at least the way she’d wanted to think about it. But she’d never been completely certain. And Nate had always insisted that her blindness had to mean something.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  Flicker nodded. ‘It’s just, sometimes my blindness feels the same as being one of us. A different kind of awareness. A different way of being in the world.’

  ‘I guess,’ Beau said, his eyes on her mask. ‘I always thought it was cool that you guys can hear better.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Flicker said. ‘We just listen better.’

  ‘Okay. But that’s sort of like a power.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. It’s more about how the world isn’t designed for blind people. And we freak some people out, just by being who we are.’

  He shifted back in his chair. ‘You don’t freak me out. And having a power isn’t going to feel out of place for much longer either. Piper’s going to do something about that shit.’

  The words brought Flicker back.

  ‘What do you mean, “do something”?’

  ‘She’s going to break everything down,’ Beau said, awe in his voice. ‘We’re gonna start from scratch and build it all up again. I even get to be on the float tomorrow. To keep everyone focused on us, you know? That’s when it all goes down.’

  ‘When what goes down?’

  He hesitated, and when he spoke, disappointment colored his words. ‘Piper doesn’t tell me everything. My job is just to look pretty.’

  ‘Pretty,’ Flicker murmured. It was just too weird to think that, if she wanted, she could be earth-shatteringly, crowdaddlingly gorgeous.

  Of course, she knew what Zen Boy would say about that.

  She sat up straight – Thibault.

  He was the one who’d disappeared. Faded into the massive crowd, and she’d just forgotten him!

  Flicker stood up. ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘Trust me, it’ll be okay.’ There was a smile in Beau’s soft voice. ‘We’re all going to be okay, us people with powers. The world’s going to get remade…for us.’

  ‘I have to go.’ Flicker turned, making her way toward the door.

  Unbelievable. How could she have sat here philosophizing about beauty and blindness while the boy she loved was missing?