A picture slammed into Chizara – her little brothers Ikem and Obinna, staring at her, baffled. Through the ocean roar of Las Vegas electronics, she clearly heard the pain in Ikem’s voice.
Why’d you run off, Chizara?
Around her the electronic pulse of the city skidded, a slip that the casino’s wary monitors might register. She snatched back control.
Hold it together.
‘Nothing down here,’ Kelsie said, sounding super cheerful. She’d loved Las Vegas from the moment they’d driven in.
Chizara blew out a breath across her teeth. Maybe she and Kelsie had some issues to work out too.
‘Anything, Crash?’ Nate asked.
‘No Lily in the lobby,’ she said. ‘And no vans full of tech outside.’
‘Anyone wearing a wire?’
‘Wires are small, Nate. But I’ll try.’
She forced her mind away from the tumult of the Strip, focusing on the people below. She tried to tune her ability to see the tiniest sparks.
Useless.
‘It’s like needles in a burning haystack, Nate.’ She tried to zoom in close. ‘I see…a pacemaker? That’s a cochlear implant, and endless phones. Nobody wearing a wire.’
She pulled back, letting the roar of the city’s electronic infrastructure drown out the small things. She didn’t want to be that close to the other faint whirring – the one inside people.
Your heart is a system too, Scam’s voice had said to Verity. Sparks and muscles, like a little engine in your chest.
Since then, Chizara hadn’t been able to ignore the ticks and whirs, those gradually more visible impulses that powered human bodies. Millivolt flashes prompted every heartbeat, powered arms to drop tokens into the slots, rippled across brains as new cards turned up at the blackjack tables.
She knew if she crashed this ruckus around her, she would have the power to zoom in on anyone.
Into their heart, their brain…
In the roar of this gambling-mad town, she could kill someone, anyone – that woman by the slots, that slob at the roulette wheel.
Really, a beer, at ten in the morning? Would anyone care if she grasped the sinus node at the top of his heart, blinking on and off, small and subtle? Just reached in and extinguished the rhythmic flashing like any machine made of metal and sparks?
Just like that.
There was a sick thrill in admitting she had so much power. That she really was a demon. She could feel her judgment skewing under the weight of the possibilities.
Don’t get distracted. You’ll crash the whole town.
‘How’s the traffic on our escape route, Crash?’ said Nate, as if he’d heard her attention slipping.
‘Pretty good,’ she chirped back, fighting through the bejeweled nodes of traffic lights and signal boxes. A bus was holding up traffic, waiting to turn in to the hotel with the crashed slots lounge. But if the Zeroes needed to make a fast getaway, there were other routes out. Chizara had memorized all the maps.
‘You got enough juice to deal with the traffic lights?’
‘Ha,’ Chizara said. ‘So easy.’
She could always get more juice. Her body shook from holding up Las Vegas, from resisting the temptation to let it fall, to gorge on the power of the whole crooked place.
But just then down below, a slimmer, gothier, crankier-looking version of Flicker appeared. The girl was headed straight for the diner.
She didn’t look up, but Chizara pulled back anyway, behind the clipped box hedge along the balcony rail.
In five minutes they’d be out of this awful place, speeding off into the desert’s magnificent emptiness.
‘Target spotted, entering the diner. Battle stations, folks.’
LILY SAT DOWN HEAVILY ACROSS THE DINER BOOTH, THE PLASTIC OF THE SEAT SQUEAKING.
‘You look like shit.’
‘I love you too,’ Flicker said, not hopping into her sister’s eyes. She didn’t particularly want to see herself. Her hair was ratty from a month of camping, and her skin was oily, thanks to a diet of roadside convenience store food à la Scam.
She didn’t want to see Lily’s look of disgust, either. So she stayed inside her own head, letting the other Zeroes keep watch.
Trust the plan. Get the folder and go.
‘Dad’s taking pills again,’ Lily said.
Flicker pulled her earbuds out and dropped them in her lap – the others didn’t need to hear this.
‘What kind?’
Flicker heard the faintest movement over the hyperactive rattle of the casino floor – a shrug, probably.
‘He only takes them at night. So sleeping pills, I guess.’
It was Flicker’s turn to shrug. ‘That’s not new. Is Mom seeing her therapist again?’
‘What do you think?’ Lily said. ‘She blames herself for letting you quit Dr. Bridges.’
Flicker almost laughed. ‘Like he could’ve talked me out of being a Zero?’
‘Yeah, no. That was my job.’
‘Don’t even,’ Flicker said. ‘Listen, I’m sorry everything blew up. But it wasn’t your fault, Lily. It wasn’t even our fault.’
‘Because it was all some random accident, right?’ Another plastic squeak as Lily leaned forward to take one of the french fries Flicker had ordered. She’d been too nervous to eat, and they smelled cold now. ‘Police stations and malls blow up on their own. Cops get torn to pieces every day. Shit happens, I guess.’
‘That wasn’t us.’ Flicker hesitated. ‘Well, except the police station. But there are a lot of people out there with powers. They’re all going crazy.’
‘Yeah, I watch the news,’ Lily said, chomping the cold fries savagely. She knew Flicker hated when people chewed while they talked. ‘We’ve got a front-row seat in Cambria. Everything is different since you left.’
A sadness had come into Lily’s voice, and Flicker cast her power out to take a look. Someone in the next booth was staring at both of them over a milkshake, probably wondering if they were twins.
Lily was wearing a new jacket, black leather. Her eye makeup had gone seriously goth, like she’d decided to play evil twin.
An ironic touch, given that her sister was the wanted terrorist in the family.
‘Different how?’ Flicker asked softly.
‘Cambria’s full of reporters. And these randos called ‘weird-hunters,’ who are obsessed with you guys. Sometimes they come by our house in little groups, taking pictures, because you’re weird famous. Mom loves it when that happens. There’s even this company that wants to reopen the Dish. People are pulling it apart for souvenirs, for fuck’s sake. We’re like that town in New Mexico with the crashed aliens. But it’s my sister in all the blurry photos.’
‘Damn,’ Flicker said.
‘Yeah, hot damn.’ Lily hefted something. ‘I should probably sell this. To pay all those lawyers Mom has lined up for you.’
Flicker shot her vision around the diner and found a set of eyes brushing across her sister. Lily was holding the familiar folder – the worn brown cover, the ragged edges of Nate’s handwritten pages sticking out. Even the butterfly-clipped sheaf of photos she’d used to track Thibault’s hotel down.
‘This is what you wanted, right?’
‘Yeah. Thanks for bringing it.’ Flicker reached across the table.
Her fingers closed on empty air.
‘Seriously, Lily? Playing keep-away with the blind girl?’
‘Tell me why this was so important.’
‘It’s to help us find someone,’ Flicker explained. ‘There’s this guy we all used to…Actually, it’s complicated.’
Lily snorted. ‘Um, I didn’t forget Mr. Invisible Hotness. After all those stories you made me tell? He lived in our house, Riley.’
Flicker’s stomach clenched, hard.
Of course. Lily would have been miles from Thibault’s meltdown, or his leveling up, whatever had wiped him from their minds. Much farther away than Nate. All this time, her sister had remembered her boyfriend, while
Flicker herself had lost him completely.
Superpowers sucked sometimes.
‘Just give it to me.’ Flicker hated the pleading in her own voice, but in those pages had to be a clue, a way to find him. The boy called Nothing, who was lost out there somewhere, torn from his family, his friends, her love.
Torn from himself.
‘You need to find him?’ Lily said. ‘What the hell? Did he bail on you?’
Flicker shook her head. ‘He did something to himself, made himself disappear.’
‘Small favors.’
‘Give me the folder, Lily. He’s out there somewhere, hurting!’
‘Gee, I wonder what that feels like for you,’ Lily said. ‘Missing someone. Not knowing if they’re okay.’
Flicker tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
‘Come home,’ Lily said.
‘I want to. You know that.’
‘Then just leave with me now! It’s not like you shot anyone.’
‘No, but my best friend did. And the moment I show up in Cambria, the government will grab me, Lily, and none of you will ever see me again.’ Flicker lowered her voice. ‘It won’t be like on Law and Order, with due process and reasonable doubt. There’s this FBI agent who knows about people with powers. He’s already signed up one of us!’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Lily said.
Flicker sat bolt upright. ‘Where’d you hear that? From some weird-hunter? Or the news?’
‘You have to listen to me. Mom and Dad need you back.’ There were sudden tears in Lily’s voice. ‘They’re not going to make it unless you come home. We love you, Riley. I love you. That’s why I did this.’
‘I know, and thank you. But you have to give me that…’ Flicker paused. The roar of the slot machines seemed to grow, pulsing with the beat of her heart in her ears. She cast around again for a view of her sister. ‘Why you did what? Drove all this way?’
Lily spoke again, slow and clear. ‘I have to ask you something, Flicker. Are the other Zeroes here?’
‘Why?’
‘I have to ask if the rest of them are here.’
‘Shit,’ Flicker said. She found the eyes again, the ones across the diner that were on her sister again, watching the brown folder like it was the most important thing in the world.
Then they darted guiltily away, down toward a stack of pancakes that didn’t have a single bite taken out of them.
‘We cut you a deal, Riley. With this Special Agent Phan, who understands about people like you. Just put your palms flat on the table and it’s done.’
Flicker picked the earbuds up from her lap and stuck them in.
‘Lily fucked us,’ she said. ‘Blow it up.’
Then she threw herself across the booth to tear the folder from her sister’s hands.
THE LIGHTS WENT OUT. Surprise rippled through the crowd, hitting Kelsie in her gut, like the boom of a giant bass speaker.
Flicker had hit the panic button, and Chizara was working the plan. The crappy mall music went silent, along with hundreds of slots and poker machines. The crowd wasn’t panicked yet, but anxious voices rose in the darkness – friends calling for each other, parents looking for kids.
Within seconds, light came from countless bobbing phones, a chaos of scared faces around Kelsie. She pushed through them toward the diner.
Chizara’s voice in her earbud. ‘Feds.’
Kelsie saw them too. A corner of the diner had lit up. Flicker and Lily, caught in the beams of a dozen powerful flashlights. Upheld badges sparkled metal in the air.
‘Damn it, Lily,’ Kelsie breathed. ‘Narcing on your own sister?’
Flicker was going to be shattered. But there wasn’t time to worry about that. The crowd’s fear built as the lights stayed off, pushing into her mind. Kelsie fell sideways against the diner door, her feet unsteady.
The supermax had scared her. She carried it with her now. Another violent, angry stain on her soul, like the place Swarm still occupied in her chest.
And here she was, running toward the feds – who would take her to the same kind of prison. She’d rather die.
‘Guys!’ Flicker shouted. ‘Do something!’
‘Pitch dark, Crash.’ Nate’s voice was smooth. ‘No phones working but ours.’
The flashlights flared brightly, then winked out, along with the jiggling light of phones – Chizara leveling the playing field for Flicker.
Kelsie took a breath and headed into the diner.
‘It’s getting gnarly out here,’ came Nate’s voice. ‘Can you pull back the panic, Mob?’
Kelsie almost laughed. She was the panic. Las Vegas had been a relief from empty countryside, at first. But gradually she’d seen the truth of it, the pulse of greed that underlay it all.
Everywhere she went, Swarm followed.
‘Federal marshals!’ came a shout. ‘Nobody move!’
That tipped the crowd in the diner over into terror. Badges, flashlights, and their phones had gone dark.
Was this a bombing? Something worse?
But wedged inside their panic, Kelsie felt a new emotion – the grim determination of the marshals. Then a green luminance filled the darkness, worms of light like glow sticks at a rave, and she could see again. The marshals had linked arms and were advancing on Flicker, not leaving her any space to sneak past.
‘Glow sticks?’ Chizara whispered in her earbud. ‘I can’t crash a chemical reaction!’
Of course. Phan knew all about Electro-whatevers, didn’t he?
Kelsie felt it, the familiar spark of satisfaction from predators who’d cornered their prey. Acid rose in her throat.
It was up to her – Mob, Kelsie, Swarm, whoever she was right now – to fix this, while riding a wave of panic.
But maybe panic was the key.
‘I can’t get past them,’ Flicker cried.
‘Sorry, everyone,’ Mob breathed, and seized the crowd’s fear.
She looped it, fed it straight at the marshals in a screech of feedback. All at once their sickly green faces went wide-eyed, astonished. The crowd’s horror pushed aside their certainty, made a home for itself in their veins.
Then Kelsie realized – the marshals’ calm purpose had been the linchpin keeping the diner from falling into chaos, and she’d just yanked it out.
Fear burned through the crowd, spilling out onto the casino floor. In a single pure instant, the customers and marshals were part of one group, one beast.
A creature powered by raw, potent dread.
People stumbled and collided in the dark, with no place to go, shouting and screaming. They flowed through the diner’s exits. Kelsie was shoved back out, bounced hard against a wall, and fell onto the floor.
‘Reel it in, Mob,’ Nate said through her earbud. ‘Can you?’
Kelsie clenched her teeth. Running feet rumbled all around her. Trying to ride this beast was crazy. Dangerous.
But it was awesome.
Emotion thundered through her like a stampede. Lives were in danger, but she couldn’t pull back. Couldn’t rein it in if she tried.
She was the wild terror, the madness of the crowd.
She was the maelstrom.
The fear was there in her ear, Nate shouting, ‘Damn it, Mob! Bring it down!’
But she didn’t want to. The crowd was hers now, her own swarm seeking its destiny at last. She was leveling up.
Then her girlfriend’s whisper in her ear: ‘This isn’t you, Kels.’
Kelsie curled up tighter, took hold of herself.
‘Help me, Zara.’
For an endless moment there was no reply, and then she heard Chizara’s voice again—
‘How about this?’
Lights sprang on, blinking and whirling, and the air filled with buzzes and beeps and electronic whoops of joy. And Kelsie felt the ecstasy of money being won.
She shut her eyes against the glare, and heard Zara laughing a supervillain laugh as she cried out, ‘And you get a car, and you get a car, and you g
et a car…’
‘Seriously?’ Nate was shouting. ‘You’re spilling all the slots? This is just a different kind of riot!’
‘Yeah, but it’s a happy riot!’ Chizara cackled. ‘You want to talk them down? I just routed the speaker system to your phone. Go for it, Bellwether!’
‘You did wha—’ Nate began, and his words boomed through the casino.
The throng had cleared around Kelsie, everyone piling up near the rows of slot machines that shrieked free money.
The panic was turning to joy – but greed, too. Another facet of Swarm frothing inside her…Then she felt someone take her arm, and looked up.
Flicker, a folder in her hand.
‘Come on. We don’t have much time.’
Kelsie stood on shaky legs, looked at the diner. ‘The marshals?’
‘Swept away by your little greed swarm,’ Flicker said, dragging her into motion.
They fought against the surging crowd, toward the exit where Ethan waited with the car. Kelsie remembered to keep her eyes on the floor, to help Flicker.
‘Is your sister okay?’ she asked.
‘Safe. Got knocked out, right before the riot started.’ Flicker shook out her right hand, anger in her voice. ‘Sucker punched in the dark.’
‘Ouch,’ Kelsie said.
‘Yeah. Hurts extra when it’s your twin.’
Kelsie wondered whether she meant her own fist or her sister’s jaw.
‘Sorry about that little glitch!’ Nate’s voice bellowed through the sound system. ‘But it’s Everyone Wins Day here at World Casino! Please proceed calmly to the nearest machine to collect your money!’
As Kelsie glanced back, spotlights swung and found Nate. He stood on a craps table, holding his phone to his face, spilling his charisma across the crowd. And Kelsie felt something new in the mix of astonishment and greed.
His smile, warm and civilized and contagious.
‘Yes, all that money is real, and it’s all yours! But be nice to each other!’
Kelsie added a little something extra to the feedback loop. A bright anticipation, like they were about to find salvation in that money, all their problems solved. All they had to do was play nice.
All they had to do was not hurt each other.
Nate jumped from the table and was swallowed by the throng. Kelsie couldn’t see the marshals anywhere. They’d been in plain clothes, and there were too many people flowing toward the slot machines.