Zeroes

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Okay, Dad. Where?”

  CHAPTER 20

  CRASH

  CRASH CLUNG TO THE DESK, her bones shaking, throwing off the crushing pressure system by system, swimming up toward the surface through a glowing tangle of tentacles alive with stingers.

  Someone put a hand on her shoulder. Muzzily she looked up at Scam. He was shouting, and shoving something at her that glittered in the dimness. A pink phone covered with fake diamonds—definitely not his.

  Crash hauled herself up. Where were Scam’s detectives? There, scrambling along the hallway toward the back, their guns pointed at the ceiling.

  They must be thinking this was a terrorist attack. Messy.

  “Let’s get outta here!” Scam cried.

  “Stairs this way.” She would have run, but her legs had gone rubbery. Something big was building inside her, she could tell, something epic and out of control. “Uh-oh.”

  Crash grabbed for the desk again and missed, but Scam caught her. He was practically hitting her with the glittery phone, and he pulled out one of her earbuds, shouting over the smoke alarms, “Kill this phone, would you?”

  She tried to push him away. What was gathering inside her was too big, too dangerous. Crashing something now would be like pouring kerosene on a burning fuse. She had to get out of this place.

  Scam funneled his voice into her ear with a hand. “There’s video on it! She was videoing me! At the bank! She’s got me saying—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Crash fended him off. He’d been incriminating himself, of course. Opening his big mouth and letting the bullshit fall out. She pushed him toward the central stairway.

  “But there’s video,” he mewled.

  She snatched the phone and smacked it into the metal corner of a desk. The screen blistered. She hit it again, harder. Glass fragments skittered across the desk and flew to the floor.

  She shoved it back at him. “There, it’s crashed.”

  He stared at the dead, shattered screen. His stunned expression started a laugh burbling up from deep inside her.

  No, that wasn’t a laugh. Not at all. It was something big and scary.

  A walking massacre if ever there was one.

  “Stairs.” She pointed with a shaking hand.

  Scam hoisted a green duffel bag up onto one shoulder, put the other under Crash’s arm, and heaved her forward. Then they were at the stairway, a bigger space where the alarms didn’t hammer quite as hard. Cops were running past, guns drawn—Crash wanted to laugh, they looked so earnest and alert. As if this were an alien invasion and not just a systems meltdown.

  At the foot of the stairs, a guy was waving everyone through to the front of the building. “Get out! Move it!” They pushed on after the people crowding out into the lobby.

  She’d let something bad happen, down in the basement. What was it again? She hadn’t meant to go that far. . . .

  Now all she could see were the phones, every single one in the CCPD. The local tower was down, but the phones were still struggling to connect, a flock of burning lights and fizzing pains. And the phones out on the street, too, and some in neighboring buildings. She could feel the call of the next tower on, and still farther away bulked the switching center with its unbearable complications and power.

  The smoke alarms still shrieked; the fire control system pressed in on her. Everything was building into a wave, one she couldn’t hold back much longer. She was slipping, losing control, her will no longer separate from the shattering networks around her. She was not going to be able to stick to the rules.

  Do no harm? She didn’t have a choice anymore.

  She should never have come here.

  Crash stumbled along, head down, only Scam and his duffel bag holding her upright. Shiny cop shoes scuffed and clumped on the tiled floor around her own. With her last ounce of willpower she turned away from Scam—she did not want him to see her face.

  Because it was about to fall over.

  All of it.

  There was nothing she could do.

  The pain, the strain of keeping those masses of tech functioning, surged out of Crash’s body in a hot, sweet, glorious rush. If Scam hadn’t been holding her weight, she would’ve slumped to the floor with the blissed-out shock of letting go. The entire building sighed to a halt around her, an airy, painless refuge in the middle of the downtown madness.

  This was good. This was what she was meant to do.

  She was Crash.

  Some dim-faced cop was shouting in her face, “You okay, miss?”

  She smiled at him, tried to nod, tried to speak, failed. Scam pulled her forward. She felt light in his arms, a creature made of fire and cotton candy.

  Now they were in the reception area. The doorway to the street was bright with sunlight. They’d made it—

  But someone stepped in and blocked the light, a big cop with a square head and shoulders like football armor.

  “Hey!” he said to Scam. “Fuentes had you in for something, didn’t he?”

  Somehow, even in her rapture, Crash realized that this had all been a waste of time. They were going to haul Scam back inside, and probably arrest her, too.

  It was all over. But worth it, just to taste this.

  But then a kid—a tall, skinny boy, nicely dressed—came at the big cop from out of nowhere. He kicked the back of the cop’s left knee, then pulled him backward by his shoulders. The cop’s mouth opened, and he flailed and went down, and Scam was dragging her out the door.

  She looked back—there’d been something about that boy. But he was gone. Maybe there hadn’t been a boy at all.

  It was so bright out here on the front steps. The summer sun amped up all the color in the world, and polished the palm-tree leaves to shining.

  Crash stared at the sky. It was deep blue and empty and perfect.

  Suddenly Flicker was on the other side of her, helping Scam support her. Even in her blissed-out state, Crash’s training kicked in, her eyes going into seeing-eye-human mode, scanning the sidewalk in front of them, registering every seam and bump.

  “You guys,” she said. “That was fun.”

  “Are you okay?” Flick’s voice sounded so real out here in the street air, instead of through earbuds.

  “Totally. It’s so good to see you!” And somehow Crash meant both of them, even if Scam was twitching and gawking back over his shoulder and sweating all over her.

  Flicker shook her head. “That was insane, Chizara. I didn’t know you could do that much!”

  Crash laughed. It was not doing that much that was always so hard! And Chizara? For this wonderful moment there was nobody called Chizara, only crazy, reckless Crash, who could paint her name in darkness across the city.

  Who could bring down the whole world if she wanted.

  “They’ve still got that bank security footage of me,” Scam muttered.

  “Relax,” Flicker said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  Scam hoisted his duffel bag a little higher. “Where are we going?”

  “To see our Glorious Leader!” said Flicker in a bad Russian accent.

  Crash burst out laughing. Scam groaned.

  “Come on,” said Flicker. “This mess is going to take some debriefing.”

  They ran through the crowd of curious onlookers, Flicker fast and sure-footed thanks to Crash’s eyes, the way the training missions had taught them, back when they’d all been friends and worked together, before Scam’s voice had blown the Zeroes to pieces.

  CHAPTER 21

  BELLWETHER

  “I NEED THE ROOM,” NATE said.

  His little sisters giggled, but they streamed obediently out, dragging their stuffed animals, wrestling masks, and capes made from bath towels behind them.

  “Gabriela?” he called to the youngest before she disappeared. “Would you please mention to Mamá that my friends haven’t had lunch?”

  Gabby rolled her beautiful brown eyes at him and curtsied, then ran off behind the others, laughing. But the messa
ge would be delivered.

  Nate stood there a moment, kicking a few toys his sisters had left—a plastic wombat, a cheetah made of felt—behind the riser under the movie screen. Why his sisters always wanted to play here in the home theater was beyond him. They ignored the playroom and backyard for days at a time, preferring these eight fat leather chairs and the purple carpeted floor.

  But it was time for Nate to reclaim his sanctum.

  He pulled a four-inch Blue Demon doll from a cup holder. It was new, beautifully hand-painted, and already chipped from too many combats. His sisters’ lucha libre craze had lasted months now. Which was all very well, except for the occasional masked ambush when Nate emerged from his bedroom.

  His phone buzzed. Anon.

  Might be late. Following something up.

  Nate put the doll down and keyed an OK. At least all four of them were coming.

  It was annoying, having no agenda prepared for the first meeting of the Zeroes in almost a year. But this was like starting over, he supposed. If they left here feeling bonded into a group again, maybe Scam’s little disaster had been worth it.

  Nate needed to remind himself what Anonymous looked like. He reached into the riser’s secret compartment, beneath the hidden wires and cables, and pulled out his stack of Zero files—he never kept anything about the Zeroes on his computer.

  The Anonymous folder was mostly photos. Low angled and badly lit, most snapped in secret, the images were never clear enough to stick in his mind. The guy was a snappy dresser, though.

  Which was funny, come to think of it. Why would a guy bother with fancy clothes when he was practically invisible? Well, more like forgettable. But still.

  Nate pulled out his notepad, ready to add that to his list of questions. He reviewed the others: Can Anon also see connections? Does his power follow the Curve? Invisibility as a function of memory? Does his own family recognize him?

  And there it was, written in Nate’s own handwriting and dated a year ago:

  Why does he bother dressing so well?

  Nate sighed. It had been a while since he’d reviewed this file. Daily memorization was the only way to make the knowledge stick, and even then it only halfway did. It took all of Nate’s focus just to sit here and read his own notes, to keep his thoughts from drifting. To remember that Thibault was real.

  It was like trying to make friends with a puff of smoke.

  It seemed only a few moments had passed when Gabby was back, announcing, “Your friends are here!” and fluttering away again.

  Nate hid the files beneath his seat as the three of them came in. Crash looked wide-eyed and spacey, like she’d been pulled away from a nightclub at the peak of some expensive high. Flicker was using her cane, her power probably worn down from skipping across so many eyes. Scam’s buzz cut was new, but otherwise he was his usual twitchy self. He was dragging a duffel bag behind him, and looked like a guy who’d lost a fight. With a bear.

  “Take a seat, everyone,” Nate said. They fell into the recliners as he took the stage.

  Almost a year. That’s how long it had been since the four of them had been in this room together. All that time they could have been training, building up their powers, learning to work together. Almost a year wasted.

  And the whole blowup had been, in a way, Nate’s fault. He’d struck the match.

  But now the Zeroes were his again. He could see it in the lines of attention that lit up the air like sparklers, all gathering on him, like they always did. The others were skittish about being together again, still scarred from what had happened last summer. But they were too exhausted from the mission to fight his influence.

  They needed reassurance. They needed to be led.

  “You guys did great.” Nate let his smile settle over them, flexing his power to tighten the connections. “Without any planning or prep work, we accomplished our mission. We rescued one of our own. By the way, Scam, welcome back.”

  He turned his gaze to Ethan, giving him the floor for a moment.

  The little guy just cringed at first. He probably hadn’t been called Scam in a while, and he didn’t know what to say. But Nate gave him just the right look, guiding him toward gratitude.

  “Um, right. Thanks, guys.” It was Ethan’s real voice, as clumsy and squeaky as always. “You, uh, really saved my ass.”

  There was an uncomfortable little pause here, because no one was going to say “you’re welcome,” not to Scam. Speaking the words himself would only cost Nate respect, so he didn’t bother.

  Instead he drew the focus back to himself. “We’ll always protect each other. Especially when our powers, when what we are, gets us into trouble.”

  That worked—the connections in the room grew a little brighter. The three of them were still full of adrenaline, still bonded by success.

  That had always been the point of the training missions. Nate had gotten the idea from watching his cousins play baseball. They could spend a whole morning fighting, but then drop all their rivalries in an instant once victory was at stake.

  Now, to find out what the hell had happened in the bank.

  “So, Ethan. Your voice got you into trouble?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  Nate stepped off the stage and sat down, setting the sparkling strands of awareness wavering, looking for a new object. He swiveled his chair toward Ethan.

  The guy didn’t want to talk, but Nate’s attention drew the others’ along with it, focusing the pressure until it was too much to resist. Ethan stumbled into an explanation of what had happened in the bank, something about a girl who hadn’t wanted to hand over her ring. To keep her from getting shot, the voice had spilled the robbers’ secrets, setting them against each other, and the heist had ended in gunfire.

  But the girl had taken video of Ethan using his voice, and she’d given it to the cops. It all sounded very heroic and self-sacrificing, which meant he was leaving something out.

  Nate couldn’t quite tell what yet. Here in front of his former friends, Ethan didn’t dare use his voice. But without it helping, his wobbly storytelling was hard to piece together, even when he was trying to tell the truth.

  “They’re going to find me,” he whined. “The cops, they know my face!”

  Chizara giggled in a very un-Crash-like way. “Any video your girlfriend took is gone, Scam. Even if the cops made a copy, it’s confetti in a hurricane, like the rest of their data.”

  She laughed again, slouching in her chair, her usual regal posture turned casual.

  Nate glanced down at his notepad and wrote, What’s up with Chizara?

  “But a bunch of cops saw me,” Ethan said. “It’s not like you erased their memories, too. And there’s security footage. You gonna crash the bank’s computers?”

  Chizara raised an eyebrow, like this sounded tempting.

  “Blurry bank cameras don’t matter,” Nate said, giving them both a calming look. “You never told them your real name, right?”

  “Course not. But my mom works down there. . . .”

  Of course, his mother the deputy district attorney. The bank footage would be part of the robbery investigation, and then the trial. Sooner or later, Scam was busted.

  But what had he actually done?

  “You haven’t broken any laws, Ethan,” Nate said in his most soothing voice. “The fact that you talked to the robbers might make the cops suspicious, but it’s not a crime.”

  That was what really mattered—that Scam never had to explain himself to the law. Because once he started talking about his own power, it wouldn’t be long before his inner voice traded everyone else’s secrets as well.

  Nataniel Saldana had big plans for himself, goals that would be a lot trickier if the public had any idea what he could do.

  Ethan was nodding along, wanting to believe that everything would be okay. That was the key to getting people on your side—showing them a path to what they already desired. Once you’d done that, it hardly mattered that it was also your p
ath.

  Human nature was so easy to figure out when you could see it shimmering in the air. Most of the time Nate didn’t even have to use his power to get what he wanted.

  “When you asked the detective to call me,” he said carefully to Ethan, “did he write my phone number down on a piece of paper?”

  “Yeah, but I ripped it up.”

  “And his phone’s memory is gone. Right, Crash?”

  Chizara was still smiling. “Like I said, it’s all confetti down there. But if the cops want to find you, they can pull the phone company’s logs.”

  Ethan shrank a little in his chair, and Nate had to control himself.

  “That doesn’t matter. If they come around, I’ll deal with it.” Nate gave them all a cool, serene expression—like he was the only one in danger but wasn’t worried at all. For a moment the room settled around him, the glitter of their adrenaline finally starting to soften in the air.

  Then Flicker said, “So, Ethan, why do you keep looking at your duffel bag?”

  Ethan stared at her in terror for a moment, then tried to shrug it off. “It’s just my bag. Clothes and . . . stuff.”

  Nate wrote on his notepad, Clever girl. Then he stood and crossed the little theater, knelt, and unzipped the duffel bag.

  Money. Countless rolls of it, wrapped tight with rubber bands. He heard Flicker whistle.

  Nate looked up at Ethan. “Are you serious? You skimmed money from a bank robbery?”

  “No! I was in the bank to put it someplace safe. It’s mine.”

  Chizara flat-out laughed at this. “Okay. But whose was it before that?”

  Ethan swallowed, like his skinny little throat was gulping down a golf ball. But his next words came out too smoothly. “Me and a friend drove to Los Alamitos on Tuesday, went to the track. Put our paychecks on Amarillo Rose in the fifth race. Forty-six to one. You can look it up.”

  “No doubt we could,” Nate said mildly. Scam’s inner voice never got details wrong. Where it failed was the big picture.

  “Since when did you get friends?” Flicker said. “And why does that money smell like stale beer?”