He was someone again.
They helped him back to the campsite.
They sat him down at the picnic table, built up the fire tall and hot. Flicker washed and bandaged his feet and put socks and Ethan’s spare sneakers on him, while the others went to make camp in the neighboring sites, each divided from the next by thirty feet of redwood stumps and undergrowth.
Ethan sat with him while Kelsie helped Flicker pitch her tent and Chizara and Nate got dinner ready. They all watched him nervously, as if worried he would slip back into the night.
Steaks. Potatoes wrapped in tin foil. Thibault’s hungry self was a lot clearer to him now. Everything was turned up way too loud – the fire smoke and cold air, the smells of food, everyone’s attention shafting to and fro. If they would only stop moving and talking, give him a rest. If only they’d go away, and leave him to the forest, to the birds and the trees and the fog.
He looked down at pages in the brown folder, which they said would help him find himself again. He looked so neatly dressed and shaved in the photos. Like a schoolkid.
The folder was fat with pictures, transcripts, notes – all those campfire confessions with Nate were here, and they were the least of it.
Thibault was slowly paging through, not knowing what to feel. Every artsy photo he’d taken, every line he read triggered rafts of other memories, inching him closer to the real world. The hungry part of himself was just fine with that, but the rest was holding back.
He should never have said Flicker’s name. Just another minute and she would’ve given up, they would have driven away. He’d be alone now, dissolving into the forest, transforming into leaf and bark and bird wing.
Kelsie thumped a six-pack of beer on the table. Her hair was dyed dark now. Like she’d changed from a good fairy into some creature of shadow.
‘So, you know we’re wanted terrorists, right?’ she said.
Everyone’s attention swung to her, then back to Thibault.
‘It’s not the most relaxing gang to be in.’ She passed out the beers. ‘Nate’s a murderer, and the rest of us are suspects in crimes they don’t even have names for.’
‘Especially Crash,’ Ethan said. His hair was bleached blond. It looked ridiculous. ‘She’s fucked up an awesome list of things since we saw you last.’
‘No human was harmed in the course of our escapes,’ Chizara pointed out.
‘Not seriously harmed.’ Ethan laughed, popping a beer. ‘But Las Vegas got pretty dicey. Who knows how many federal marshals lost their jobs?’
‘No loss of life,’ Chizara said earnestly to Thibault. ‘Not since Quinton Wallace and Craig.’
All their attention lines firmed and brightened. Not even Ethan dared to crack a joke.
‘Right.’ Thibault felt faint, like he was fading out. ‘We killed people, didn’t we? In between dance parties.’
‘Swarm killed Craig,’ Ethan said hotly. ‘So Nate had to kill Swarm, to stop him from wiping us out.’
Thibault looked up, and his silence spread through the group. He turned his stone head on his stone neck and stared at Nate.
Nate, his hair shorn close, pretended to be busy checking the steaks. But finally he looked up.
‘You let them believe that?’ Thibault asked.
‘I…’ Nate gave an awkward shrug. ‘It was simpler that way.’
Flicker’s fingers were suddenly tight on Thibault’s shoulders. ‘Let them believe what?’
‘That I killed Quinton Wallace,’ Nate said. ‘But now that we’re here, and everyone’s together at last, I should explain.’
Nobody said anything. The fire popped once, like a distant gunshot.
Nate cleared his throat. ‘Thibault shot Swarm, to save my life. To save all our lives.’
And Flicker’s warmth was gone from behind Thibault. The others stared at him openmouthed – and then they were all gone, along with the rest of the world, wiped out by a cataract of memory.
‘I COULDN’T IMAGINE ANYTHING WORSE THAN PRISON,’ KELSIE SAID. ‘But being in there for something you didn’t even do? Poor Nate.’
Chizara shrugged. ‘It’s not like he had a choice. You can’t tell a judge, “It wasn’t me, your honor. My friend did it, in front of a bunch of cops, but everyone forgot.”’
Kelsie stared at her. ‘I wasn’t saying he should snitch. Geez.’
‘Of course you weren’t,’ Chizara said with a laugh, and nudged her aside. They were alone in their tent, trying to zip two sleeping bags together into one. Kelsie had been camping for most of three weeks now, and she still couldn’t get the sleeping-bag thing to work.
It was warm and cozy here in the tent, but around them the forest was rain-drenched and empty. As lonely as one of Scam’s borrowed cabins. A few hikers had passed by a while ago, but that little taste of the Curve only made the isolation worse.
Kelsie reached out for the other Zeroes but found no threads of connection. Everyone was in their own headspace tonight.
She’d spent all day trying to keep them focused and upbeat as they searched for Thibault. It had been exhausting, partly because they knew she was doing it. And when Flicker had gone off with Thibault to put up their tent, she’d asked Kelsie to ease up.
Let everyone feel what they need to feel.
Flicker had said it nicely, but Kelsie felt ashamed for trying to control the group. Maybe she was still a baby Swarm.
They should all be happy now – for once a plan had worked from start to finish. But there was nothing binding the group. The six of them kept becoming five, like Thibault couldn’t stay linked with the others.
‘He still wants to disappear,’ Kelsie said quietly.
Chizara looked up from the sleeping bags. ‘Sure. He can’t live with what he did.’
‘It was self-defense. And he was protecting the rest of us, too!’
‘I know. But you shouldn’t be comfortable with killing. There’s nothing wrong with feeling guilt.’
‘Nothing wrong with it?’ Kelsie said. ‘Zara, it erased him!’
This new Thibault was gaunt and quiet. He had a faraway look, like he was listening to music only he could hear.
Kelsie knew what killing could do to you. She could still feel every moment of that night in the church, when she’d been part of the swarm. There was a mark on her soul from what Quinton had made her do.
‘It’s in me, too,’ she said. ‘Guilt about killing Delgado.’
Chizara gave her an almost angry look. ‘But Swarm had control of you!’
‘At first, yeah. But then it was both of us – and I liked it, Zara. Quinton was connecting with something that was already inside me. Do you want me to disappear too?’
Chizara shook her head. ‘When you ran away, you took me. Guilt made you need me more, not less. You ran away to protect the other Zeroes, not to erase yourself.’
Kelsie sighed. Maybe that was why she couldn’t understand any of this. She just wanted everyone to understand and support each other. But the Zeroes kept flailing and fighting.
She wished they could just start all over. No grudges, no shame.
The sleeping bags were finally aligned, and Chizara zipped them together in one elegant sweep of her long arm. They climbed in and lay staring up, shoulders touching. The plastic of the tent rippled above them with the wind and the movement of the moon-cast shadows.
‘He scares me now,’ Chizara said.
Kelsie turned to face her. ‘Thibault? Why?’
‘He spent his whole life trying to be Zen. To be at one with everything.’ Chizara shook her head. ‘But when it came time to choose, he turned his back on that.’
‘He was protecting his friends.’
‘At the cost of his faith. I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I’m pretty sure shooting people isn’t in the program, no matter how good the reason.’
‘You can’t judge him,’ Kelsie said. ‘He saved you.’
‘I’m not judging him. It just scares me that he could be a killer, whe
n he was trying so hard to be something completely different. What does that mean about him?’ Chizara’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘What if we all keep forgetting him because…there isn’t really anything inside him?’
Kelsie flinched. There might be a lot of anger and hurt inside Thibault, but he wasn’t nothing.
‘You don’t really think that,’ she said. ‘Why did you say that?’
‘Because I might be the same,’ Chizara whispered, her arms wrapped around herself. ‘Remember when Ethan threatened Agent Phan? When he said my power could stop hearts?’
‘He didn’t say that – his voice did. You can’t listen to it.’
‘But Verity was sitting right there,’ Chizara said. ‘What if her power makes even the voice tell the truth?’
‘Oh.’ Kelsie turned back to the ceiling of the tent, stunned. Ethan’s lying was bad enough. But an all-knowing voice telling inescapable truths was somehow scarier. ‘But you can’t crash people, Zara. They aren’t machines!’
‘In a way they are. Since the voice said that, I’ve started to see more. Hearts, lungs, brains. They’re all one giant electrochemical system, not all that different from a network. I could switch someone off like that.’
She snapped her fingers, and Kelsie jumped. Being in the tent out in the wilderness suddenly felt scary, right out of a slasher movie. And the look on Chizara’s face wasn’t helping.
‘But you won’t,’ Kelsie said. ‘You’re all about doing no harm, remember?’
Chizara stared down at her hands. ‘I’ve worried about hurting people my whole life. Even when I’m asleep in the car, we could pass a hospital or an airport and I could have a nightmare and wreck it all! I feel like I’m carrying A-grade plutonium everywhere I go.’
Kelsie turned and hugged her. ‘But that’s never happened. Because you’re strong.’
‘Strength works both ways. Like when those marshals were coming at us in the casino. I would never have let them take you, Kelsie. Push me hard enough, and I’m a killer too. Maybe we all are.’
Kelsie didn’t answer. She’d already answered that question with Swarm. In the right circumstances, she was exactly what Chizara feared.
Suddenly she felt the emptiness around her. She reached out to her friends, but the Curve was tenuous. Ethan was somewhere out of range, and she could feel Thibault slipping in and out of the loop of sadness and uncertainty. Exactly how it’d felt when her dad had died, his consciousness coming and going.
Like losing someone, over and over.
She had to say something to make it better.
‘I trust you, Zara.’
‘You shouldn’t.’ A sigh in the darkness. ‘I need to tell you something.’
Kelsie pulled away and waited. This couldn’t get any worse.
‘Nate already told me he didn’t kill Swarm,’ Chizara said.
Kelsie looked at her. ‘When?’
‘A week ago, at the cabin.’ Her words came out in a rush now. ‘Flicker was already freaked about forgetting Thibault, so Nate couldn’t just tell her that her boyfriend was a killer. He asked me not to say anything.’
‘To Flicker, sure. But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I could barely remember the guy. And I never thought we’d actually find him! And you’re so lonely out here, I didn’t want to talk about murder.’
Kelsie shook her head. Another thread of connection was breaking.
It felt as if the winter could swallow her.
Chizara was staring up at the ceiling of the tent, where the shadows of wind-blown trees danced. ‘Nate only told me because he wanted me to make a tracker. So if Thibault disappears again, we can find him.’
‘A tracker? Like a chip in a pet? That is such a Glorious Leader idea.’ Especially the old, before-prison Glorious Leader. ‘You said no, right?’
Chizara only shrugged.
‘Zara! What was the point of finding Thibault if we have to force him to stay with us?’
‘The point is, now that we’ve found him, we’re responsible for him. You saw how skinny he was. If we hadn’t gotten here in time, he would’ve starved to death. Do you think Flicker could take it if we lost him again? Forever this time?’
‘I guess you’re right.’ Kelsie shook her head. ‘But you have to trust me. Don’t get drawn into Nate’s lies. I’m not some child who has to be protected.’
She turned over and curled up with her back to Chizara.
‘I know,’ Chizara said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ Kelsie said, deciding to be strong. ‘I’m not mad.’
‘You forgive everything, don’t you?’
Kelsie shrugged. ‘I had a lot of practice with my dad.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ Chizara put her arms around Kelsie. ‘But most people with a father like yours would’ve turned out the opposite.’
‘Trust issues aren’t my thing,’ Kelsie said. The weird thing was, she’d forgiven Zara just to sound strong, but uttering the words had made them true. A burden lifted from her, and the threads between the two of them pulled tight again.
The cold wind ruffled the tent. But Kelsie felt safe, even if it was just the pair of them.
When Chizara spoke next, Kelsie felt the breath on the back of her neck. ‘I used to love camping, you know. Nothing to crash. No hospitals, no cargo ships.’
Kelsie smiled. ‘No haywire dance parties. No deadly mall crowds.’
‘No twin sisters to betray us,’ Chizara added softly.
Even with the group’s energy scattered, Kelsie could feel her grief, her homesickness for her brothers.
‘Forget all that,’ she said. ‘Let’s just be us for a while.’
Chizara smiled sadly. ‘You think you can handle that? All alone out here, just you and me?’
‘Sure.’ Kelsie felt herself smiling. ‘For a while.’
Chizara drew her fingers along Kelsie’s shoulder and down across her back. Kelsie breathed in the smell of her girlfriend’s skin, and sent her delight spiraling out across the emptiness around them.
But the few sparkling connections with the group fed it back to them.
‘Not exactly alone,’ Chizara chuckled. ‘There’s no privacy with you, is there?’
Kelsie shrugged. ‘That’s just who I am, Zara.’
She was too relaxed and glad to stop the emotions from getting loose.
Chizara kissed her deeply. ‘I love who you are.’
‘WHOA,’ FLICKER SAID. ‘DID YOU FEEL THAT?’
Thibault shifted on the plastic floor of the tent. He was huddled by the propane lamp, watching the flame dart and dance. He’d stared into the campfire all evening, too, like it was some awesome new video game.
‘Maybe,’ he said. Thibault’s voice was so different now. Dry and gravelly, like he’d forgotten to drink water all that time away.
‘Maybe?’ Flicker had to smile. ‘If you can’t feel the nightly Mob-and-Crash feedback loop, you should check your pulse.’
‘Nightly?’ There was a pause, and then a smile in his voice. ‘Oh. Right.’
‘That’s why we use propane lamps,’ Flicker said. ‘They’re smelly, but at least Chizara can’t crash them. We even wrap the burner phones in foil at night so she doesn’t brick them when they…by accident.’
‘Wow,’ he said, and then silence. Nothing but the wind stirring leaves, and the far-off rumble of ocean.
Am I talking too much? Flicker wondered. She kept explaining the Zeroes’ survival procedures to Thibault, like he was some new Zeroes recruit, anxious to learn everything. But he felt a thousand miles away.
She wished she could see through his eyes, to know if he was looking at her. But she’d fallen in love with the only person she’d ever met whose vision she couldn’t hijack.
Superpowers interacting. Like mixing the wrong kinds of medication.
At least she could smell him, here in the confines of the tent. The laundry soap of his fresh clothes, the tang of shaving cream, but also the pine-needle scen
t that hadn’t washed away. A cleaned-up mountain man.
And Thibault’s own smells – his skin, his hair. Every breath of it brought back those fugitive memories of other nights, and redoubled the guilt of having forgotten him.
He was so thin now, all angles. What would he feel like to lie next to?
This silence was getting long – but she couldn’t think of what to say.
He spoke first. ‘Kelsie must be used to broadcasting her emotions, but how does Chizara cope with no privacy?’
Flicker smiled again. It was the longest sentence Thibault had said since they’d found him.
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it coping,’ she said. ‘You can’t mention it in the morning. Like, no teasing or jokes or anything. Sometimes Ethan doesn’t even show up for breakfast, just in case he smiles wrong.’
Thibault didn’t answer.
She counted silently to ten. Still nothing.
‘This one time he smiled wrong, Chizara set him on fire,’ she said.
Only the resounding silence of a joke being ignored. Maybe he wasn’t listening at all.
Flicker shifted uncomfortably. What she needed to say wasn’t going to come up in casual conversation, so she might was well just say it.
‘I don’t care that you killed Swarm. What I care about is that you ran away. You just left me.’
The wind picked up then, thousands of leaves rattling against each other, fluttering like cards thrown in the air.
Or maybe the roaring was in her head.
Why wouldn’t he just answer?
‘It feels like you died,’ she went on. ‘But I didn’t get to mourn you. Even when people kill themselves, the ones left behind get to be angry about it. But I didn’t get to be anything.’
She couldn’t hear his breathing. What if he’d already crept away into the night, and they never found him again?
Flicker resisted the urge to reach out and confirm that he was there. A warm drop was rolling down her cheek, but it felt like someone else’s tear.
‘You were just gone out from the world. Gone from my—’
‘It happened when I saw Craig’s body,’ Thibault broke in. ‘That’s when I lost myself.’
Flicker waited. That was all she could do now.