Zeroes

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Not just Craig,” said the girl. “He’s got friends with him.”

  Okay. This girl in the sparkly dress was cute, but every time she talked, the situation got worse.

  Ethan pulled a pillowcase free of the pillow he’d been propping himself on to play Scepter. He crouched by the minibar and started sweeping little bottles and candy bars into the case.

  “Seriously?” Thibault said. “You’re taking the minibar?”

  “I like the minibar! If there’s anything you want to keep, grab it.” Ethan got to his feet. “Your place is about to be visited by a guy with a tree trunk where his neck should be!”

  “And five of his meanest friends,” the girl reminded them. She stood in the open doorway. “If they find me here, I’m probably as dead as you guys. So move already.”

  Ethan pulled Thibault through the door and into the hallway. “Seriously, Tee. The guy is scary.”

  “Okay. But how do you know we can trust her?”

  Ethan hesitated. He wasn’t sure why he trusted her. Because she was pretty? Because she’d busted in and said the one name guaranteed to make him jump out of his skin?

  For all he knew, the girl might be working with the Craig. No way was he leading Thibault, his one friend, into a trap.

  She was holding open a door marked FIRE STAIRS, her eyes on the elevators.

  “They’re almost here,” she whispered.

  “Look at her, Tee, she’s as scared as I am.”

  “We don’t even know who she is! Use your voice, Ethan.”

  “You want me to . . . ,” Ethan began. But it made sense. He desperately wanted to know who the girl really was. Surely the voice could say something that would make her tell him.

  The words came out in a rush. “Your dad made it out of the police station, right, Kelsie? So where is he now?”

  She stared at him a moment, then suddenly the messenger bag was off her shoulder and swinging through the air. It struck Ethan like a sack of books, sending him staggering. She had a great swing.

  “You think I’d tell you?” she cried. “After you ruined his life? After all that stuff you said in the bank?”

  “Ow!” Ethan had to grab hold of the wall to keep from falling. His mind spun back to those awful moments on the cold marble floor of the bank. “Wait. You’re Kelsie. The bank robber’s daughter?”

  “Oh, great,” Thibault was muttering to himself. “This is perfect.”

  Kelsie readied the bag for another swing. “You know exactly who I am, Axel! You know way too much about everything!”

  “I’m Ethan, okay?” And he didn’t know much of anything.

  Except that now his choice was between the neckless majesty of the Craig and this pissed-off daughter of a violent criminal. The voice would never tell Ethan himself what to do with a choice like that. But it might tell someone else.

  Ethan opened his mouth, wanting very much to give Tee the best advice ever.

  Right then the elevator doors chimed, and the voice only had three words:

  “Run like hell.”

  CHAPTER 45

  ANONYMOUS

  DAMN IT, NO SHOES? AGAIN?

  But “run like hell” didn’t leave room for argument. Especially when Ethan’s beast voice said it. So Thibault had run.

  At least this time he wasn’t in a bathrobe.

  He took the stairs two at a time, the concrete cold under his bare feet. The others were already halfway down the first flight. The pillowcase bounced like a Santa sack on Ethan’s shoulder, the minibar bottles clinking.

  The girl’s high-tops echoed in the stairwell. Swinging Ethan around the turns, she was making their descent into a kind of dance. She’d forgotten Thibault was following, the bright lines of her awareness focused on the stairs and Ethan.

  But Thibault wasn’t letting her out of his sight. He didn’t trust her. She’d already whacked Ethan with her messenger bag—what would she do when she really got to know him? And where was she taking them, anyway?

  Thibault caught up on the next landing and grabbed her sparkly shoulder. “Kelsie—”

  She cried out and spun from his grip. She started to swing her bag, but then her memory registered him.

  “I can get us out of the building,” Thibault said while he had her. “But where then?”

  “Ivy Street.” She pulled Ethan onward.

  Thibault stayed close, grabbing a few wisps of her focus. “Ivy Street?”

  She slingshotted Ethan around the next landing, “We can disappear in the crowds. I know places to hide there.”

  “Crowds are a bad idea. Everyone in town knows Ethan’s face—and half of them want to punch it!”

  But she’d gone from him already, her connection as fleeting as the cold shimmers the stairwell lights sent over her dress.

  Ethan looked up at him, still bonded by their time together.

  “Ivy Street, Ethan?” Thibault shouted. “Cops? More of Craig’s buddies?”

  Ethan tried to slow, but Kelsie wouldn’t let him.

  And Ethan didn’t want to resist her. Thibault had felt it the second Kelsie stepped through the door: Ethan’s sharp, crackling interest. Man, look at that attention he was throwing after her—a big fat cable of electric iridescence. An instant crush.

  Figured. Even after almost two days together, Thibault was nothing compared to a cute girl in a sparkly dress.

  He sped up, grabbed hold of the stair rail, and swung around another landing. Gaining on Kelsie, he caught her bag strap.

  “Kelsie, listen. Your dad robbed a bank! Why the hell should we trust you?”

  She flung him an exasperated look and pulled away. “I want to keep Axel alive. Or whatever his name is—”

  “Ethan.” Ethan spoke up, like this was a school dance.

  Thibault kept hold, scrabbling for the threads of her attention. “Why do you care?”

  “We’ve got things to discuss. Like why he set my dad up with a bunch of Russian mobsters.”

  Russian mobsters? What the—

  Kelsie jumped four steps to the next landing. Ethan happily followed suit.

  “Just shut up and run, okay?” she called back at them both.

  Thibault started sliding down the handrails now, from landing to landing. Only the finest filament of awareness floated back over Ethan’s shoulder. He was too busy following Little Miss Sparkly into whatever trap was waiting. So much for all their heartfelt confessions.

  On about the fifth floor it hit him—what would the Craig’s guys do when they got into the penthouse and found no Ethan, no duffel bag full of money?

  Thibault groaned as he slid down the next railing. It had been bad enough letting Ethan into his lair. But now a band of drug-dealing heavies was going to tear the place apart, getting madder as they went.

  His clothes, his books . . .

  He reached the ground level just as the others darted off into a service corridor. Thibault followed at a run along the wide concrete hallway, past the Magnifique’s kitchens and storerooms, past a couple of kitchen guys—Basir and some new hire—who shrank aside to let them pass.

  It was just stuff, Thibault told himself. It could all be replaced. He shouldn’t have gotten so attached in the first place. This was a good lesson, a reminder that he was nothing, unattached to the world.

  He should be grateful he and Ethan weren’t being punched into paste up there.

  Kelsie paused at a door, panting.

  “What’s on the other side of this?” she asked Ethan.

  “The lobby,” Thibault said, pushing past Ethan to reach for the handle.

  Kelsie stared at him with confused half recognition. “Wait. Craig might have someone down here, in case Ethan got past them.”

  “What do his guys look like? They don’t know me.”

  “Like bouncers, only bigger. Black tees, black pants. Tattoos.” Kelsie was staying focused on him. Adrenaline helped.

  “Got it.” Thibault poked his head out the door and scanned the lo
bby. A hundred lines of awareness crisscrossed the vast room, the usual web of Saturday night buzz.

  But then a sudden strand of attention smacked into his forehead.

  Near the entrance, a muscly guy in black was looking straight back at him. He’d noticed the service door opening.

  Thibault chopped the sticky strand clean off and shut the door. “The lobby’s no good. We’ll go out the employees’ entrance. This way.”

  He led them back down the service corridor. He would have run, but a bald-headed manager, one he didn’t recognize, was standing at the intersection ahead, staring at his phone.

  Thibault moved softly in bare feet, hoping the guy wouldn’t look up. The others followed—Ethan knew and trusted him, and Kelsie was locked onto Ethan.

  Thibault would get them out of here, then call Nate and set up a meeting. Then Scam wouldn’t be his problem anymore, and he could get back to check on his clothes and books, along with . . .

  The thought gut-punched him.

  His laptop.

  He almost cried out right there, but the manager ahead of them was looking up from his phone now, surprised to see guests wandering around back here. He looked down at Thibault’s bare feet.

  When Thibault clipped the guy’s attention, his gaze shifted to Ethan and Kelsie. But any misgivings were disguised with a bow and a tilt of the head like a good member of Team Magnifique.

  Thibault hurried on toward the staff door. Everything on the laptop—journal, photo library, music—was password-protected and backed up online. That stuff was okay.

  But he’d left the browser open. He’d been hunting for an alternate room for the Fourth of July, to get around those penthouse reservations.

  The first thing anyone would see was the hotel’s system. They’d see that he’d used the manager’s login, and know someone had hacked the Magnifique. The game would be up, all his work unraveled, and he’d be homeless again.

  Suddenly he hoped that Craig’s henchmen would break every damn thing in the room. Anything to get rid of the laptop.

  Thibault pushed open the metal staff door and held it wide for Kelsie and Ethan. On his way out he glanced up at the Magnifique with a stab of pain. He’d finagled his way so completely into this place; he knew it inside out, its rooms, its staff.

  It was a weird kind of home, but it was his. The only home he’d had for three years.

  Had he just lost all of it?

  CHAPTER 46

  FLICKER

  “GETTING KIND OF DIZZY,” FLICKER said.

  “Pace yourself.” Glorious Leader’s voice was in her earbud, along with the sound of car honks. He was still miles outside of town, caught in traffic. With the Fourth coming up and the college students on vacation, downtown was hopping.

  Flicker took a deep breath, letting herself linger in the remaining big guy’s eyes. He was watching the lobby, but nobody had come in or out except tourists and the usual party crowd. The other five guys in black had acquired a working card key and headed up to the penthouse a few minutes ago. Surely they were there by now.

  But where were Scam, Anonymous, and the girl in the sparkly dress?

  Careful not to make herself dizzy again, Flicker let her vision stray a little farther, out onto the streets around the Magnifique. She scanned the eyes of drivers edging their way across town, of stray revelers wandering over from Ivy, of window-shoppers and a policeman on patrol . . . “I can’t find them outside.”

  Glorious Leader swore. “Can you call them somehow? Warn them?”

  “I told the guy at the desk I had a friend in one of the penthouses, but he said they were unoccupied. He wouldn’t even try!”

  “And one of those goons is watching the lobby?” Glorious Leader asked.

  “Yep.” Flicker threw her vision back into the remaining thug’s eyes. And there he was, the beautiful boy called Nothing.

  Flicker’s heart stuttered for just one beat. His dark hair, his haunted eyes. And he was okay.

  But the boy made a chopping motion with his hand, and the guy’s gaze drifted away.

  “No.” Flicker swept her vision around the lobby, seeking another vantage, but all she caught was a glimpse of a closing door.

  “What’s happening?” Glorious Leader said.

  “One second.” She cast her eyes past that door, into the hotel spaces behind the scenes, wide corridors with gray concrete floors and painted yellow stripes on the walls.

  She found herself in a moving viewpoint, someone rolling a room service cart covered with the remains of a steak dinner, the white tablecloth spattered with red wine and french fries. Flicker realized she hadn’t eaten since lunch.

  Then her borrowed eyes looked up, and at the intersection of two dark passageways, Flicker saw a bald man in a manager’s uniform. It was the same man who had sold the big guy his hotel card key.

  Flicker jumped into the man’s eyes. He was staring down at his phone, but the screen was dark, and every few seconds his eyes swept up and down the gray corridors of the hotel.

  Watching. Waiting.

  “Got something,” she murmured to Glorious Leader.

  “My onboard says I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Saturday night traffic.”

  The bald man straightened. Down at the end of the hall, a sparkly dress had caught his eye, shimmering with the harsh fluorescents. Getting closer. There was Anon, his bare feet pale against the gray concrete.

  They must have left the penthouse in a hurry.

  The bald man barely looked up as the three went past. But his phone screen lit, his thumb swiftly typing: Got em. Headed toward back exit.

  “They’re almost out,” Flicker said. “But they were spotted.”

  “By who?” Glorious Leader demanded. “You sure these aren’t cops?”

  “The opposite,” she said.

  “Mierda!” The sounds of fists pounding a steering wheel filled her earbuds. “Twelve minutes out.”

  She was in Scam’s head now, his eyes tracking the sparkly girl’s fluid motion in front of him. Flicker could hardly blame Ethan for looking—the girl moved like a dancer. She jumped into the girl’s vision for a moment, just as the three of them burst out a big metal door and onto the street.

  The girl glanced back once to make sure Scam was still following. Her eyes hardly registered Anonymous.

  And then she was running again, in the lead, her gaze steady on their goal—the crowds a few blocks away. The perfect place to disappear.

  Then they were out of range, and Flicker was blind, her head throbbing from the workout.

  She pulled her cane out, heading toward the lobby exit.

  “Change course for Ivy Street,” she said. “Party of three, one in a short sparkly dress.”

  “Good work, Flick. Nine minutes and counting.”

  “Is Crash coming?”

  “She didn’t answer her phone. But what do you think?”

  “Could be she’s taking a tech break.” Flicker sighed. “Could be she’s saved Scam enough for one weekend.”

  “Maybe both.” Nate gave a dry laugh. “We’ll just have to do this on our own.”

  CHAPTER 47

  MOB

  THEY WERE ON IVY STREET at last. Kelsie’s home turf.

  The Saturday night crowd was cheerful and easy, enjoying the night air between clubs. Kelsie tried to hook into their feel-good vibe, but she couldn’t reach it.

  She was still holding on to the guy from the bank like a lifeline. He was going to fill in all the gaps about her dad until the world made sense again.

  He dragged her to a stop. “I can’t be out here like this.”

  She rolled her eyes. Maybe she should’ve waited for Craig. He might’ve let her ask a few questions before he pummeled the guy to death.

  “What’s the matter? Past your bedtime?”

  “Seriously, there are a lot of people looking for me.” He nodded toward Fuse. “Including the cops.”

  She followed his gaze. Half a dozen uniformed police w
ere trailing into the club’s front door. Of course. They were still looking for escaped criminals like her dad, and they probably wouldn’t mind a chat with the kid in the bank video.

  No way was she letting anyone else question him before she did.

  “I’ll get us off the street,” Kelsie said. “But you’ve got some explaining to do . . . Ethan, right?”

  “Yeah.” He looked happy she’d remembered. “Listen, I don’t know what it is you—”

  “Why were you in that bank on Friday?” she cut in. “How did you know my dad was going to rob the place?”

  Ethan blinked. “I didn’t. Why would I walk into a bank robbery on purpose?”

  “Good question.” She pulled him forward, weaving through the crowd. “You said my father’s name, even though he had a mask on. Then you said my name. You were screwing with his head. Why?”

  “Ow!” Ethan replied.

  She loosened her grasp on his wrist. A little. “And just now in your hotel room, you mentioned the Bagrovs. How do you know them?”

  “I don’t,” he said.

  Kelsie tightened her grip again.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Ethan whined. “But . . . I have this thing.”

  She waited for him to say more. Ethan’s expression was full of panic, but she could see the wheels spinning in his head. He was deciding what to tell her.

  But Kelsie needed the truth. She let everything that had happened to her in the last two days—her fear, her confusion, the loss of her home and her dad, her grief—rise up and reach for an outlet in the crowd. She felt the energy on the street shift up a gear.

  “Ethan? Please. Tell me what’s going on.”

  It was working. Ethan looked devastated. Which was exactly how she felt.

  He spoke in a rush. “Okay, I have this power—”

  He jerked suddenly away to one side. Somebody had bumped into him, a guy out of nowhere. He was dark and tall, familiar somehow.

  “Oh, right,” Kelsie murmured. There had been someone else upstairs, living with Ethan at the Magnifique. But he’d disappeared on the way here.