Swarm

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Wait a second,” she said. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Um” was all Nate could manage at first; then he rallied. “What do you mean?”

  “This club. Since I walked in here, my head’s been jerked around. It’s like some kind of psy-ops shit is going down!”

  Chizara didn’t know what psy-ops meant, but she had an idea.

  Then Glorious Leader did exactly the wrong thing. He spread his hands magnificently and doubled down. Chizara felt the force of his will flooding the room.

  “Our humble party space isn’t really equipped for psychological warfare,” he said. “More for dancing.”

  But his laugh sounded hollow in the empty club.

  Mob wasn’t with him anymore. She was looking at Ethan, her power sputtering with uncertainty.

  “Shit. You’re doing this,” Jess said, staring straight at Nate. Then her eyes went to her brother. “You were telling the truth about powers, weren’t you? Which means that you . . .”

  She looked at Kelsie, then took a few quick steps backward—and bumped straight into Anonymous.

  Jess spun around. “Holy crap. Another one?”

  Anon looked stunned for a moment, then made a chopping gesture, stepping deeper into the corner. Chizara’s awareness of him fizzled.

  Jess turned back to the group.

  “Do all you little fuckers have superpowers?”

  No one answered. Ethan must have told her about the voice. And about Mob, too, it seemed.

  Again Chizara saw the Zeroes from the outside, from beyond the loyalties and friendships. They manipulated people. They experimented with crowds. They broke things.

  They were pretty evil, really.

  All Nate’s charm had gone from the room.

  “Come on, little brother.” Jess stepped warily back into the group and took his arm. “We’re getting out of here. These people have been messing with your mind.”

  “No they haven’t—” But he was being dragged across the dance floor, and against her strength he didn’t have a chance. Out they went, the door slamming behind them.

  Chizara stared at the others. Kelsie sent her a confused look, but no one else would meet anyone’s eye.

  The silence was broken by the scrape of a bar stool. The pop of a beer can.

  “Why do you guys keep telling your families about your powers?” said a voice. Anon, by the bar.

  “Because it helps,” Flicker said gently, taking the can from his hand. “In the long run.”

  Slowly the rest of them drifted to the bar and settled on stools. For a while no voices distracted Chizara from the phones in their pockets gently searching for a network that the Faraday cage wouldn’t let them find.

  “Ethan and his sister will figure things out,” Nate finally said. “Or she’ll ship back to Afghanistan and have more important things to worry about.”

  “You think she’ll tell their mom?” Kelsie asked. She looked nervously at the door of the club. “She’s a prosecutor, right?”

  Chizara put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Kels. Cops aren’t going to start streaming in.”

  Nate nodded. “Jess was right when she said that the Dish is the biggest thing Ethan’s ever done. She’s not going to take it away from him.”

  Chizara felt his confidence leaking back into the room, but she wasn’t certain. There was no telling what Jess would do next.

  And even if she didn’t spill Ethan’s secrets, they still had to worry about Internal Affairs, a crazed killer on their trail, and a whole new bunch of Zeroes bubbling up across the world.

  CHAPTER 25

  BELLWETHER

  “IS THAT HOMEWORK?”

  “Yeah, always.” Nate turned from his laptop screen to face the door of his room. Gabby stood there, wearing a pink tutu and a look of genuine outrage.

  “But it’s Christmas break!” she cried. “High school is messed up.”

  He smiled at her. “Sucks to be old.”

  Gabby waited there, not daring to come in without an invitation. She looked bored and restless, and Nate had hardly seen her since Glitch and Coin had arrived in town, so he said, “Come in.”

  He shut his laptop on an image of a riot in Seattle.

  “Feeling better?” Gabby asked.

  “A little,” Nate said. All day he’d pretended to be sick, dodging the family’s holiday preparations to search for upcoming events. Christmas Eve was tomorrow. He didn’t have much time to figure out where Glitch and Coin’s “honeymoon” would be.

  The easy part was finding the trail of mass hysteria they’d left from Portland to Cambria. They’d hijacked concerts, movies, even a high school play. And they’d never hidden themselves. It was more like they were trying to be found, which made Nate wonder if a killer was chasing them at all.

  Though maybe Chizara was right, and they were in love with their own love story. Like Bonnie and Clyde, wanting to leave a mark before they were extinguished.

  The problem was, nothing suggested where they’d be headed next. Would their honeymoon involve a college football game? A midnight mass?

  But Glitch had mentioned the desert. Crowds gathered in the desert for what? Balloon races? Burning Man?

  “I got you the best present ever,” Gabby said. “So you have to get better.”

  “I’d never be sick for Christmas, silly,” Nate said with a smile. His sisters always competed over who could get the biggest reaction from him on Christmas. So far, no one had beaten Gabby’s silver business-card case of two years ago.

  “I think you’ll like my present too,” he said. He’d gotten all the girls lucha libre costumes, handmade in Mexico.

  “Mamá wouldn’t take us anywhere decent to shop,” Gabby went on. “She says malls are too loco this year.”

  Damn. If their mother had started to notice that crowd behavior was changing, no wonder the US government was getting involved.

  “She’s right,” he said. “Christmas crowds are big, and you are small.”

  “Pfft.” Gabby made a muscle pose. “I’m big! My friend Engrácia got to go all the way to the Desert Springs Mall to shop. It has three hundred stores!”

  “Whoa. You could get me a present at each one.”

  “You wish. Engrácia had to line up all night to get in at five a.m., but she said it was worth it! It just opened last month.”

  Nate leaned back, staring at his sister. “Sounds really . . . crowded.”

  “Yeah. They have early-bird sales every day. But it’s all the way in Arizona.”

  “Like, the desert?”

  Gabby nodded, and Nate turned to his computer. “Mierda.”

  “How come you forget English when you swear?” Gabby asked.

  “It’s a bad habit I got from Flicker.” He lifted the screen again and opened up a new window. “Did you say Desert Springs Mall?”

  “Uh-huh. Are you going to get me a present there?”

  “Maybe.” Images spilled across Nate’s screen—a shiny new mall out in the desert, a giant three-story fountain in the middle, fireworks every morning at opening time. And lots of exhausted-looking customers lined up outside, with sleeping bags and camp stoves.

  A Christmas Eve riot waiting to happen. Almost a straight shot east of Cambria, about eight hours’ drive at legal speeds.

  Nate looked at the clock—almost ten p.m.

  Which meant the Desert Springs Mall was opening in six hours.

  “Thanks, Gabby,” he said, reaching for his phone. “But I gotta go. You just reminded me: I need to do some shopping with my friends.”

  CHAPTER 26

  BELLWETHER

  “WHO’S SNORING?” NATE DEMANDED, HIS hands tight on the wheel.

  He was pushing the Mercedes at ninety miles an hour, his eyes locked on the moonlit road ahead. He’d been driving all night, and the snoring sound was making his eyes heavy.

  “It’s Thibault,” Flicker’s tired voice came from the backseat. “For the third time.”
/>   “Huh.” Did Anon’s power work while he was asleep? Or was Nate’s brain just too exhausted to remember anything?

  “Wish I was snoring,” Ethan said from next to Flicker.

  Nate dared a glance at the GPS—twenty minutes away. It was four forty-five a.m., and the mall opened at five. Even Nate’s tired brain could do that math.

  “We’re not going to make it,” he said, nudging the car a little faster.

  “We’d be on time if you hadn’t forgotten Anon,” Flicker muttered.

  Nate frowned at her in the rearview. “You should’ve noticed he wasn’t in the car earlier!”

  “I’m not my invisible boyfriend’s keeper.”

  “If we’re going to be late anyway, maybe you could slow down?” Chizara was squashed into the front passenger seat with Kelsie, clutching her arm nervously. Kelsie looked like she loved cruising at a hundred miles an hour.

  “Every second counts,” Nate said.

  “You’re going to get us killed,” Chizara said. “And we don’t even know if this is the right place!”

  “I do.” Nate pushed the speedometer needle a little higher.

  “Jess is going to kill me anyway when she realizes I snuck out,” Ethan said. “Or worse, tell my mom! If you dragged me all this way for nothing, I’m going to . . . sleep all the way home. But angrily.”

  “Listen,” Nate said. “We know they were headed east, and this place has the biggest crowds within a day’s drive of Cambria. Thousands of people, twenty times the size of K-Mo’s wedding!”

  “Big sale crowds are pretty horrible,” Kelsie said. “I steer clear of malls between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.”

  “At least all our practice missions are actually going to pay off,” Flicker said tiredly.

  “What if all mall tramplings are caused by Zeroes?” Kelsie said.

  Nate didn’t answer that. The thought of a horde of Glitches and Coins out there—walking disaster zones—was too much to handle on no sleep.

  Flicker stepped in. “I’m pretty sure people getting trampled was a thing before any Zeroes were born.”

  “Right,” Nate said. “We’re here to save people, not trample them. Who the hell is snoring?”

  Flicker groaned. “It’s Anon! Should I just remind you after every snore?”

  “Wake him up already! This mission starts in . . .” He checked the GPS again. The increase in speed had shaved some time off. “Eleven minutes.”

  “Unless you roll the car,” Chizara said.

  “There’s no traffic,” Nate said, but he eased off on the speed a little. She was right—they were going to be late anyway. He hoped Glitch and Coin weren’t planning to attack while everyone was cramming into the mall’s entrances. They were assholes, but hopefully they weren’t trying to create a bloodbath.

  “Where am I?” came a tired voice from the backseat.

  “Big Christmas sale,” Flicker told Anon. “Glitch and Coin evil. Us saving people.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Nate smiled. He wished he had his folder of notes.

  December 24—Addled by sleep, Anonymous briefly forgot a thing that everyone else remembered.

  The road was climbing ahead, a soft swell in the desert. Three minutes to five a.m. and they were six minutes away. The dark sky ahead showed hints of red, but it couldn’t be the dawn yet.

  “Um, guys?” Kelsie suddenly said. “There’s a serious crowd up there.”

  Nate slowed the Mercedes as they crested the hill. The road ahead was crammed with taillights. The traffic jam led straight to the giant glowing ramparts of the brand-new mall, its floodlit parking lot solid with vehicles, its entrances choked with thousands of shoppers. Their combined focus shone like a flaming battering ram.

  “They’re so hungry,” Kelsie murmured softly.

  The nearest taillights were drawing close. Nate put the Mercedes into four-wheel drive and steered it off the asphalt onto the rough surface of the desert. Scrubby plants started to thwack the front bumper, and Chizara’s hand smothered a cry of alarm.

  A firework streaked high into the air above the mall, then flowered out red, white, and blue. Even from here, with pebbles pinging off the bottom of the car, Nate could hear the crackle of it, and crowd’s cheering. It was five a.m. exactly, and the Desert Springs Mall was open for business.

  CHAPTER 27

  FLICKER

  “YOU SEE THEM ANYWHERE, FLICK?” Nate said.

  Holding tight to Thibault’s arm, Flicker cast her vision to the front of the throng.

  Way ahead, sprinting for bargains, were the people who’d slept all night at the entrance. They carried sleeping bags and pillows, and one girl clutched a ragged teddy bear under one arm. Their wide-eyed gazes darted among the giant banners hanging from every storefront.

  XMAS EVE SALE

  80% OFF EVERYTHING

  GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!

  That last one seemed a little far-fetched, given that the Desert Springs Mall had been open for all of a month. But this crowd seemed ready to believe anything, to do anything, to give themselves a shot at a bargain. Nate’s Mercedes was one of a dozen cars parked illegally by the doors.

  So far it all looked normal enough, if a crazed Christmas Eve sale could ever be normal. No sign of Glitch and Coin.

  “Nothing yet,” Flicker said.

  “I’ve found the central junction box.” Crash’s voice came from ahead of the rest of them. She sounded less nervous here than she had in the car. “What do you need, Nate?”

  “Close the roller doors. Keep anyone else from getting in.”

  It took a moment for Crash to answer, and Flicker’s ears filled with the squeak of a thousand sneakers on freshly waxed tile, the bouncy Christmas music piping through the store, the aahs of appreciation as the mall’s atrium skylights came into view.

  “Can’t do it,” Crash said. “The roller doors have some kind of safety mechanism—you need a physical key. What about turning off the escalators?”

  “No! We want people upstairs, as spread out as possible.” More sneaker squeaks, more Muzak. When Nate spoke again, he was facing a different way. “How do they feel?”

  “Excited, exhausted,” Mob answered. “But the main thing is . . . greedy. I’m trying to calm them down, but the music’s too damn peppy.”

  Flicker agreed with that. Christmas disco was bouncing off the walls like sound waves of made of tinsel and glitter.

  “Where’s the music controlled from?” Scam asked.

  “Second floor, at the rear,” said Crash. “I could crash the sound system.”

  “Don’t. I’ll talk them into changing the tunes.” Scam’s voice faded as he peeled off.

  “Try for classical,” Mob called after him. “Something soothing!”

  “You got it!” he called back.

  As Anon guided Flicker around a group of chattering kids, she realized that the six of them were working together as a team.

  She brought her vision back to the group. Mob’s face was alight with the crowd’s shopping madness—frazzled, tense, spoiling for a fight at a bargain rack. Crash and Bellwether wore determined expressions, on the same side at last. As a passerby’s vision slid past Anon leading her, Flicker smiled.

  “Spotted the targets yet?” Nate asked her.

  “Yeah, really,” Anon said beside her. “Because if they aren’t here, I’d rather be anywhere else.”

  “Hang on.” Flicker cast her vision out again, letting the questing viewpoints of the surging crowd spill into her head.

  She saw hands rifling clothes racks, fingers tying sneaker laces, smoothies spinning in blenders, credit cards sliding through readers, a thousand price tags being checked. Darting from eye to eye, she began to understand the vast but simple layout of the mall—an entrance at each compass point, four wide passages surging with the crowd, all leading to the center, where a shining glass-and-metal fountain soared above a broad square plaza.

  The huge structure drew every eye,
filling Flicker’s vision. It looked like a gigantic metal octopus with too many tentacles, each studded with shards of mirror and flashing colored lights. A hundred spouts sprayed and misted and tumbled water down into elaborate tiers of receptacles. Yet you could walk under the whole contraption without getting wet.

  The fountain was possibly the tackiest thing Flicker had ever seen, but viewed from a thousand different vantage points, she had to admit it was impressive.

  And there at its center, underneath its spreading arms, two familiar faces smiled at the oncoming crowds.

  “I see them! Right in the middle, under the fountain!”

  “Let’s move it,” Nate said, and Anon pulled Flicker along faster.

  She kept her vision on Glitch and Coin. “He’s got a backpack. Stuffed full of paper, I bet.”

  “A rain of cash will turn this crowd bad,” Mob said. “They all feel so entitled. They waited all night, or got up crazy early. They want their bargains—they want free stuff!”

  “How many people close to Coin?” Nate panted. “Enough for his power to work?”

  Flicker sent her vision skittering around the fountain, taking in every angle.

  “Not yet, but they’re headed in from all directions. All he has to do is yell Free money! and he’ll be good.”

  “Sorry, Flick,” Nate said. “But we have to run!”

  “Fine with me!”

  She tightened her grip on Anon’s elbow and slipped into Crash’s eyes. Chizara was scanning the ground ahead of their feet, in seeing-eye-human mode, just like during their old training missions.

  After seven hours in the car, it was good to run, darting around benches and mall directories and pop-up stores selling sunglasses and cheap watches.

  A few breathless minutes later, the others slowed.

  Crash gasped as she looked up from the tiled floor to gaze at the fountain. “I could crash the heck out of that.”

  “Not yet,” Nate said. “And whatever you do, keep the lights on in here!”

  “Duh.”

  The couple beneath the fountain were dressed up as usual, but today’s finery was brighter. Glitch wore a purple satin dress, and Coin’s suit was shiny black. Perfect outfits for attracting attention in the middle of the flashing, bubbling fountain.