Swarm

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Smart me still gets into trouble,” Ethan muttered.

  “But the bigger problem is that good you, the guy that doesn’t try to be smart—the guy that’s kind of sweet and actually cares about people—that guy keeps being stomped on by smart you.”

  Ethan blinked. Whenever he used the voice around Jess, she looked at him like it was a moral failing or something. It was nice that she realized he was a victim too.

  “So what do I do about it?”

  “You fight back. Stand up to it. To beat this smart-mouth guy living inside you, you got to stop being so smart all the time and just be . . . you.”

  “You want me to be stupid? That is the suckiest advice I’ve ever heard.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jess shrugged. “I don’t get asked for a lot of romantic advice. All I’m trying to say is that it’s time for you to grow up, Ethan Thomas Cooper. Be a man, or whatever.”

  “Now I know you’re being sarcastic,” Ethan said. “Can you check if those detectives have left?”

  Jess sighed and stood, craning her neck to look in through the window. “Nope, still there. They probably are talking about you. I mean, that’s your real superpower—supremely pissing off Mom.”

  “Just forget I said anything.” Ethan stuffed his hands in his pockets. It really was freezing out here, but no way was he going inside for a dose of stink-eye from Detective Fuentes.

  “Aww, look,” Jess crouched and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. She pulled him in closer to her warmth. “Superpowers or not, if she’s half as awesome as you say she is, this girl will be glad you said something.”

  Ethan smiled weakly. “Thanks, Jess.”

  “Just don’t mention the cape in your closet.”

  Ethan pulled away and punched her in the arm.

  Jess laughed. “Ow! Superstrength!”

  Ethan punched her again, harder, and Jess howled in fake agony.

  “Listen, I can prove it,” he whispered. “I can say exactly the thing that’ll convince you that smart me is a superpower.”

  Jess stopped laughing. She smiled at him the way Mom used to when he was little and said crazy stuff—indulgently.

  “Okay, prove it. If you do, I will forever be the humble Robin to your Batman.”

  Ethan tried to stare down his big sister. But she was older than him and smarter and more badass and totally unconvinced.

  He let his mind fill with the urge to tell her something that no one else knew about her. Something that she’d never told anyone, not even her closest buddies in Afghanistan when IEDs were going off around them or whatever.

  Something that would blow her mind.

  The voice obliged. It roared up into his throat so fast it nearly winded him. It filled his mouth and latched onto his jaw and grabbed hold of his tongue.

  “So, Jess,” it said. “You’re into guys now?”

  Jess’s eyes widened. “Holy freaking shit. How did you—”

  “Crap!” Ethan shouted in his real voice. “You gave me that lame advice and you don’t even date girls anymore? Since when do you like guys?”

  “Just this one guy, actually. It’s complicated.”

  Ethan nodded. Pretty much everything was.

  CHAPTER 23

  CRASH

  OUTSIDE THE DISH, DUSK FELL over the street. Chizara, wearing dark clothes, waited in the shadows by the corner of the nightclub.

  So many happy people lined up out here on Dish party nights, excited to submit themselves to Mob’s crowd magic. But tonight it was just a cracked concrete wasteland, blown trash collecting in the corners.

  The perfect place to meet a couple of corrupt cops.

  Or a Zero killer.

  Chizara shook that last thought out of her head. She didn’t believe anything Glitch and Coin had to say. They just liked freaking people out.

  Ethan kept stepping out from the club’s front door, checking the street. Flicker and Nate were right there behind him, out of sight, though Chizara could feel their phones fumbling for a signal. But was that a third phone, just inside?

  Right. Flicker’s boyfriend . . .

  Anon. Anonymous! Hold it in your head! He’s right there in front of you.

  He actually lived in the Dish, didn’t he? Just like Kelsie.

  Kelsie had stayed up in her room. Her crazy childhood had made her leery of cops, especially dirty ones. After the horror movie yesterday, they’d walked and talked half the night. Kelsie had been surprised at Chizara’s guilt about Officer Bright getting beaten up last summer. How did that square with the Dish paying out bribes to cops? she’d wanted to know.

  It doesn’t, Chizara had replied grimly.

  Kelsie had shrugged. If you ask me, you can’t trust dirty cops.

  Engine noise rumbled along the street, and Chizara shrank back into the dark. The patrol car’s shadow slid along the concrete, blurry in the dusk, and a tire crushed a beer can in the gutter with a metallic crackle. She felt the car’s constellation of electronics glide to a stop.

  Man, cop cars were crammed with gadgets. It felt like a gleaming blanket of itchy thorns dragged across her body. She was careful to keep everything spinning, but how sweet it would be to crash the whole shebang.

  Ethan came out from the Dish and walked toward the car. No sign of the voice’s confidence in his gait, just his own pale-faced, weasely self. He carried the money in a brown paper bag that practically shouted, Criminal activity!

  He was slouching more than usual. If you imitate the crooked, you become crooked, her mother always said.

  Chizara closed her eyes. She had a job to do.

  She sent her mind into the car, feeling her way along the glowing lines inside. From the outskirts of the roof lights, siren, and engine she moved in toward the central fortress around the driver. That glittering little city was the computer mounted by the seat, for looking up license numbers. That shiny thing, the way it split, must be the radio and handset.

  And there was the video system, cameras facing forward to record traffic stops. It was running now, the data streaming into a chip. But dirty cops would be aware of their own dashboard cam and would keep it pointed away from anything incriminating. Not what she was looking for.

  She could hear Ethan and the two cops murmuring to each other. Ethan sounded like he was apologizing. What a coward.

  Whatever. She took a soundless step to the edge of the corner, where the signals were clearer, and sifted through the dashboard electronics, the GPS, the radar speed gun, the license-plate reader . . .

  Maybe there was no hidden camera. Maybe Murillo and Ang weren’t under suspicion.

  Man, it was such a tangle in there. . . .

  Then she found it. An electronic eyeball, no bigger than a chickpea, was set in the shadow of the dashboard—a microphone, too. Pointed back at the driver, both were busy funneling signals into that tiny box behind them. And that was where the data stopped, it looked like—no pathways ghosted out into the air. The system was designed to be silent, undetectable if the car was swept for bugs.

  So the incriminating images were waiting for someone to manually download the data.

  Hopefully that hadn’t happened in the last day.

  Chizara pushed her mind closer to that little memory box, her jaw tight. If she broke the car, the cops would be stuck here, wondering what had happened.

  It was like reaching into a fire to pick up a hot coal. Delicately, with exquisite care not to touch anything else, she reached for the paining ember.

  She snuffed it out. But crashing it gave her no relief—so much other e-stuff pecked and chittered inside that car, inside Chizara’s head.

  Check your work, Bob’s voice reminded her gently. She probed the empty space she’d made in the brilliant labyrinth of the car. Not a glimmer. Everything that needed to die was dead, and nothing else was broken.

  When the investigators found that precision damage, they’d guess that Murillo and Ang were hiding something. That was the only reason Chizara had a
greed to any of this—the missing data would throw suspicion on them.

  She retreated back along the side alley, breathing slowly as she recovered from the precision work.

  Scam and the cops were still talking, but Chizara wanted the car and all its fancy tech gone. How long did it take to hand a sack of money over?

  Finally she heard the voice calling smoothly, “Thank you, officers.”

  The engine surged and some of the electronics brightened, shafting pain through Chizara’s head. The vehicle’s glittering constellation moved away.

  She poked her head around the corner. Ethan was waving, like those cops were his favorite uncles or something.

  A minute later all of them were outside. Even Kelsie, who must have been watching from her window upstairs.

  “So, Crash, was there a recording?” Nate asked.

  “There was. There isn’t anymore.” She shrugged. “At least not in that car. Someone could have downloaded the data already. Who knows?”

  Chizara let herself enjoy the expression the words created on Ethan’s face.

  “It’s only been twenty-four hours,” Nate said. “If Internal Affairs inspected every police car in Cambria that often, the whole force would know something was up.”

  “Those two cops weren’t worried,” Flicker said. “No nervous glances over their shoulders. They don’t have a clue about any investigation.”

  “Perfect,” Nate said with a nod. “Good work, Crash and Scam.”

  “Thanks,” Ethan said. “But now those guys want fifteen hundred every time we open.”

  Nate gave them all a theatrical shrug. “The Dish isn’t about money.”

  Rich people said that a lot, Chizara had noticed. Nothing was ever about money when you had more than enough.

  “They won’t be satisfied,” Kelsie said softly from the shadows closer to the club. She was still looking down the street after the police car, like they might turn around and come back. “Blackmailers never are.”

  Ethan stepped closer and put an arm around her. “It’s okay, Kelsie. Whatever happens, the Zeroes can fix it. We had a plan and it worked. Right, guys?”

  “Hey, we found Glitch and Coin.” That was Anon, taking Flicker’s hand. “And we’ll find them again.”

  “Exactly,” Ethan said, pulling Kelsie a little closer. “It’s all handled.”

  Chizara felt a shimmer of annoyance at Ethan’s glomming onto Kelsie without asking. She was about to say something to break up the self-congratulation party when a voice called out from across the street.

  “Hold it right there, baby bro!”

  Everyone turned.

  A woman stepped out from darkness, and the streetlight lit up her buzz cut. She looked like Ethan, but like Ethan stretched out to six feet tall, with some serious muscle pumped in.

  “Oh, crap,” Ethan said.

  The woman strode at him across the street. And from her own experience of being an older sister, Chizara knew that this one was mightily pissed off.

  CHAPTER 24

  CRASH

  “WHAT THE HELL DID I just see there?”

  Without meaning to, Chizara took a step back into the shadows.

  Jess towered over Ethan, big, strong, and loud.

  “Nothing!” Ethan whined. “Just talking to some guys I know.”

  “Some guys in uniform? Just talking and then handing something over? What the hell was in that bag? Drugs? You got a meth lab going here or something?” She shot a look at the Dish.

  Nate, Flicker, and Kelsie had retreated just like Chizara. They stood in the doorway, looking guilty, as if this bellowing artillery trooper had guessed exactly right. The Dish did look derelict enough to be a meth lab, at least from the outside.

  Scam stood straighter. Jess saw the move and slapped him on the arm.

  “Don’t you dare use your smart mouth with me. No wonder you kept talking about getting killed. That’s what happens when you mess with drugs!”

  “I only gave them money,” Ethan whispered. “And would you mind not shouting it for the whole street to hear?”

  Jess took hold of Ethan’s shoulders and gave him an outraged shake. “You know Mom’s investigating the police, right? If there weren’t so many witnesses, I would be inflicting such serious bodily injury on you, Ethan Thomas Cooper.”

  Chizara felt the brick wall of the Dish against her shoulder blades. She’d backed off as far as she could.

  Jess was like Mom’s Look personified, with an army cut and a buttload of righteous rage thrown in. The Virgin Mary would have felt guilty standing here.

  And Chizara was far from blameless. She’d just used her power to erase evidence of police corruption.

  What had she turned into?

  It was like Jess had slapped her awake, bulldozing the whole fantasy world she’d been living in, built of wishful thinking, Zeroes loyalty, and all her shiny new toys in the Dish. Her moral Faraday cage, keeping out the stings of guilt and conscience. A way to keep doing her experiments on unsuspecting crowds.

  Mom would not be proud.

  Nate stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “You must be Jess.”

  Chizara felt his power mute the volume of her conscience. There were six people here—plus Anon—enough for Nate to play Glorious Leader all he wanted.

  “Ethan’s sister, right?” Nate pressed on.

  Jess must have felt his power too. A little of the fight went out of her. But she still looked reluctant about shaking hands with him.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “I’m Nate Saldana. This is my nightclub.”

  Chizara felt the little charge of awesomeness he’d injected into the word nightclub and fought not to feel impressed.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Jess said automatically, and submitted to a handshake.

  Nate gave his best class-president smile. “I can’t offer you any meth, alas. But let me introduce Chizara, our head technician.”

  Chizara found herself drawn out of the shadows, into the glowing sunshine of Nate’s gaze.

  She smiled and shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Jess.”

  “And this is Riley, in charge of inventory.”

  Jess took in the dark glasses and white cane, and her angry expression faltered a little more. This blind white girl with excellent posture didn’t match her expectations of a meth cook somehow.

  You had to admit that Nate was pretty damn good at this.

  “And Kelsie, our DJ,” Nate finished.

  Kelsie’s smile reverberated through the group. She’d spliced her power onto Nate’s to bring everyone to a happy place.

  Sometime soon Chizara had to give her some tips on resisting Glorious Leader, just so she didn’t turn into his power-boosting puppet.

  “Why don’t you come in?” Nate said to Jess. “Ethan’s been a huge help in getting this nightclub off the ground. You’re going to be proud of him.”

  “Um, okay.” Jess looked at her little brother. “Since when did you work at a nightclub?”

  “I don’t just work here,” Ethan said in his own raggedy voice. “I’m, like, a founding member. In charge of publicity.”

  “You’re sixteen!” Jess looked around at them all. “None of you are twenty-one. This club is totally illegal.”

  “Technically, it’s more of a monthly private party,” Nate said. “And that money was a donation to the policemen’s fund.”

  He turned and walked into the club, pulling the group in his wake, like they all had fishing lines attached to the base of their spines. Mob and Bellwether together were hard to resist.

  As she crossed the threshold, Chizara relaxed a little, the Faraday cage working its magic on the phone signals.

  “Check out this dance floor.” Nate strode into the middle and spun around, like he was on the mountaintop in The Sound of Music. “We built it especially for the club. Employed a lot of locals.”

  The work lights were up, revealing the Dish as a dusty, dark theater
with metal-mesh walls. But with Nate radiating enthusiasm, there was a definite magic about the place.

  Suddenly Chizara found herself eager to get in the light box and fling some watts around the room. How had she ever doubted that this space, this home, was worth protecting?

  “You should come next month and see it in action,” Nate said.

  Chizara had to keep herself from nodding in agreement.

  “I’ll be shipping out.” Jess was obviously trying to stay pissed at her brother. “And I know what a club going off looks like.”

  She turned slowly, stopping when she saw the bar.

  “You sell alcohol? Well, I can see why you were worried about dying.” Jess turned to Ethan. “Because Mom will kill you if she finds out about this.”

  “You’re not going to tell her, are you?” Ethan squeaked.

  Jess’s face was like a cartoon of the conflict in the room—the righteous big sister with the supreme self-confidence of a soldier, fighting the tide of Mob’s and Bellwether’s combined powers.

  “I should tell her about all this, especially since you’re paying off cops.” Jess slumped a little. Fighting the whole room’s enthusiasm had to be exhausting. “Still, this is the most ambitious thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

  That was probably true, though Chizara figured it was a low bar. What else ambitious had he done? Maybe stealing thirty thousand dollars last summer, but that had been an accident.

  Ethan was beaming from the praise, though. A smile slowly replaced the panicked expression he’d worn since his sister’s appearance, and his hand reached out and took Kelsie’s.

  A bunch of stuff happened then:

  Jess saw the handhold, and amusement crossed her face.

  Ethan smiled back at her and leaned pointedly into Kelsie’s shoulder.

  Kelsie looked from brother to sister and then back to brother—he was giving her a dopey grin now. She stepped away from him, putting herself shoulder to shoulder with Chizara.

  Everyone saw it. And because they were all connected, everyone felt it too: the stomach twist of Mob’s puzzlement. Even the politician’s smile on Glorious Leader’s face froze.

  Jess’s smile evaporated too, replaced by the wariness of a combat veteran sniffing out an ambush.