Swarm

by Scott Westerfeld

There was a flutter of confusion from the mob. In his moment of ecstasy Swarm had lost control, long enough for the crowd to drift apart into individuals, to register what had happened. . . .

  Kelsie felt their hunger turn to horror. The spike of revulsion hit her like a blow. Closer in, the Zeroes were a mess of shock and panic.

  “Oh God,” Flicker groaned. Of course, she’d had a close-up view.

  Kelsie tried to reach out and refocus the energy of the crowd, but whoever was at its center grabbed hold again. He swallowed their terror and spat it back out, turning it into a fierce new appetite.

  He wanted Kelsie next. She could feel it.

  But not to kill her. Something worse.

  “Run,” she croaked.

  They crashed through the exit doors, into a diffuse predawn darkness. The air outside was cold and fresh, but sour bile rose in Kelsie’s throat. She tumbled forward, dry-retching as she ran.

  The swarm was right behind them, funneling into that narrow hallway. They were still furious.

  Every mouthwatering ache of hunger, every shameless craving for the hunt—she felt it. She wanted to take refuge in the build and swirl of the swarm’s feedback loop.

  “This way,” Flicker said, her voice hoarse and shaky. They ran along a short access road, back toward the mall’s main entrance. “Crash, can you start Nate’s car?”

  “Easy.” Chizara’s voice was flat, grim, and absolutely under control.

  Glitch was still sobbing. But she shoved Thibault away and ran on her own.

  “Nate and Scam are at the south exit.” Flicker’s phone was at her ear. “We can pick them up. Is that crowd still after us?”

  Kelsie hesitated. The farther they got from the mall, the more she could breathe. Slowly she felt herself detach from the bitter beauty of Swarm’s domination.

  Bloodlust still sang in her veins, but it wasn’t the swarm. It was something inside her. It had always been inside her, and now it was awake.

  “He’s falling behind,” she panted. Maybe the blackout had thrown him off. Maybe he wasn’t that fast. Maybe he was full. “But keep running.”

  She didn’t have to tell them twice.

  CHAPTER 31

  ANONYMOUS

  “STOP THE CAR!” FLICKER ELBOWED Thibault, hard. “Gonna throw up!”

  Nate pulled over. Thibault flung open the door, and Flicker jumped out, stumbled away, and fell to her knees among the rocks and scrubby desert plants, heaving.

  Thibault followed, kneeling beside her, holding back her hair. She heaved again onto the stone-strewn sand.

  “It’s okay.” His own voice was shaky. “Get it all out.”

  He’d felt sick just glimpsing the attack on Davey, but Flicker had seen everything in close-up, through a hundred different eyes. The thought made Thibault want to puke himself.

  Flicker looked up at him, breathing hard. The connection between them hung bright and steady on the night air.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “No,” she said hoarsely, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I wish I could puke out my memories.”

  “I know.” Thibault dropped his head, trying not to think of Davey’s face, his blank panic as he rattled the handcuffs.

  “How far are we from the mall?” Flicker said, leaning back on a rock.

  “At least five miles. Too far for that crowd to follow on foot.”

  Thibault hadn’t known. How could he have known he was helping kill a Zero? His shins burned where Ren had kicked them.

  She was in the backseat of the Mercedes, still sobbing and swearing. The others stood around the car, not a single strand of attention glowing among them. They had all disappeared inside their own heads.

  Thibault swung his gaze up at the vast desert sky. The randomness, the separateness of the dimming stars, their complete lack of emotion, was a relief. No one could gather them up and turn them into a deadly swarm.

  Flashing lights pulled Thibault’s gaze down to the valley. The mall was lit up like a stage show. An ambulance wailed along the exit road, and all sorts of emergency vehicles clustered around the main doors, their lights pulsing nausea into Thibault’s stomach.

  There was no getting around it. He’d left a Zero out to die.

  Flicker shifted on her rock, spat into the sand.

  “I’ll get you some water,” Thibault said. Glorious Leader always brought bottles on training missions. Suddenly that seemed incredibly thoughtful—and also incredibly naïve.

  “Thanks,” Flicker said.

  Back at the car, Nate’s face looked like an old man’s. Ren’s sobs were easing to gasps. Kelsie sat shivering on the ground, her head in her hands. She would have felt the crowd’s murderous rage, not just seen it.

  Beside her crouched Ethan, looking confused. He’d only glimpsed it from the top of the escalator. Lucky bastard.

  Would the killer have gone on picking them off if they hadn’t run? Or did one Zero last a long time, like a mouse in a snake’s gullet?

  Thibault brought Flicker the water. She rinsed and spat and rinsed again, while he kicked dirt and gravel on top of the vomit.

  “I knew crowds could be scary,” she said. “But I never thought I’d see someone get killed by . . . oh, shit. Anon, incoming!”

  Fists hit Thibault before he had time to turn around, nearly knocking him into the dirt-covered vomit. He ducked and caught sight of Ren’s metal rings making arcs of starlight at him. He tried to slice away her awareness, but her hatred blazed too sharp and hot.

  “You did this!” Her voice broke with tears as she thumped his chest. “You killed Davey!”

  Chizara was suddenly there, grabbing Ren by the shoulders. But the girl spun around, flailing at Chizara’s face. Flicker jumped up and joined the struggle, and scuffed-up dust swirled in the predawn light.

  “He couldn’t even run!” Ren shouted raggedly. “We could’ve gotten away—”

  “Enough!”

  They all fell back from each other, because it was Nate speaking.

  “Could have gotten away from what?” he said.

  Ren laughed bitterly. “What? You didn’t see him?”

  “I saw the crowd change,” Nate said. “But who was doing it? There was no center, no focus.”

  “That’s how the guy works. He’s in their heads.” She glared at Thibault, eyes brimming with starry tears. “We told this idiot everything you needed to know!”

  Everyone’s attention latched onto him, and Thibault took a step back.

  “You dropped a bunch of hints! Then you threw me out of your car!”

  “We told you to run, didn’t we? We told you to stay away from other people with powers! And you followed us? And dragged along all your special friends, with their half-assed talents?” Ren spat the last word, but the fight had gone out of her. She shook off Chizara and Flicker and stumbled away among the rocks, taking everyone’s attention with her.

  She stopped at the sight of the glittering mall and reached out to it. “We were meant to die together, Davey!”

  Kelsie let out a moan, and Thibault felt the group’s pain sweep into his body. He barely stayed standing.

  “Scam?” Nate said softly. “See if you can get her talking.”

  Ethan looked up. He was still next to Kelsie by the car.

  “Seriously, now?”

  “We need to know what kind of threat we’re facing.”

  Ethan sighed, but he slowly crossed to Ren. He stood hunched and uncomfortable beside her as she wept.

  A moment later he relaxed, the voice’s confidence seeping into his frame. Thibault could hardly hear its murmur.

  “I know how you feel.”

  “Bullshit you do!” Ren pushed Ethan hard in the chest.

  He staggered back but recovered, and the voice continued calmly, “My dad left us when I was seven. It sucked.”

  Ethan looked up at the Zeroes, like he hadn’t expected anything like that, anything so true, to come out of his mouth.

&
nbsp; “You guys had a bond,” the voice went on, coaxing a faint thread of connection out of Ren. “Anyone could see that.”

  Ren wept harder. Ethan was his awkward self for a few moments, squirming and throwing nervous attention threads back at Nate.

  But then Ren wiped her eyes.

  “My whole life . . . ,” she began brokenly. “My power was just a game, a trick I played on people, screwing with their heads. I used it to get out of trouble. Or to get other people into trouble.”

  “I hear you. That’s my power in a nutshell.” That was weird, hearing the voice talk about itself. “But with Davey it finally made sense, right?”

  Ren wiped her cheeks with her fingers. “Yeah, I leveled up when I met him.”

  “Leveled up.” Ethan nodded. “Like your power turning inside out.”

  “He helped me figure it out.” Ren hugged herself, gazing up at the stars. “How to put the stuff I stole from everyone else—all the shimmers between them and the world around them, everything they know and love and understand—into our connection, Davey’s and mine.”

  “That must feel awesome,” the voice said.

  “You have no idea,” Ren said softly, totally wrapped up in herself, no attention fraying off her anywhere. “No one gets to feel as close as we did. Not in all of human history.”

  “Like one person in two bodies.”

  “Best sex ever.” Her voice broke again.

  “Amazing,” said the voice, with very un-Ethan-like wonder.

  Thibault turned away. This was not cool, the voice playing the shrink, drawing Ren out in front of half a dozen strangers. But he was still listening.

  Nate was motionless, his attention fixed on the two silhouetted against the paling sky.

  “What I do, it only messes people up while I’m doing it,” Ren was saying. “Plus maybe an hour or so. But for Davey and me, it sticks, you know? Doesn’t fade like his money. But it’s not like we could do it in secret.” Her voice cracked, and she buried her face in her hands again.

  “It left a trail for that . . . predator,” Ethan said, and the word sent a chill through Thibault.

  “We tried to keep safe,” Ren sobbed. “We should’ve stayed away from people—in a place like this!” She spread her hands around at the desert hills and pleaded, “But we need crowds, to be who we are!”

  “Just like Quinton Wallace needs them to kill,” Ethan said.

  “Just like that—Wait, how did you know his name?”

  “We know a lot of things.” The voice was at its smooth best now, almost hypnotic. “We can protect you. You’ll be safe with us.”

  “Are you kidding?” Ren turned and sent a spike of hatred at Thibault. “One of you left Davey chained up like a sacrifice! And you’ve got a baby Swarm waiting to happen.”

  “Kelsie isn’t like that. She’s only—” The voice’s soothing murmur sputtered out, and Ethan yelped, “Wait. What?”

  Ren stared over her shoulder at Kelsie, and the Zeroes’ attention followed, glowing wires across the lightening air.

  “Mob is a . . . a Swarm?” Ethan’s real voice broke on the last word.

  “She will be,” Ren said. “I felt her working the crowd in your stupid nightclub. Quinton used to pretend he was like that, the life of the party. The guy who loved parades. But he was just waiting for a mean and hungry crowd to come along. . . .”

  A sparkling line of attention came from over by the car. Kelsie was listening now.

  “You won’t have long now,” Ren whispered. “She’s seen how fun it is to kill people with a crowd—especially people like us. Quinton says we taste the best.”

  Kelsie looked so small there, her arms wrapped around her legs, her face streaked with tears. Thibault couldn’t imagine her ever harming anyone.

  “Kelsie’s not dangerous,” Ethan said in his real voice. “That’s . . . nuts.”

  “When your power flips inside out, it happens all at once,” Ren said coldly. “You won’t recognize her.”

  “You don’t know her!” Ethan cried, his face turning red and angry. “You don’t know anything. She would never . . .”

  He sputtered to a halt, but his anger stayed, and Thibault saw him make the decision to use the voice. It broke past Ethan’s squeaky outrage in merciless attack mode.

  “You should’ve died with Davey. That’s what you promised him, that you’d be there together at the end. But no, he died all alone, while you waltzed away! Cry all you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that you left your man—your husband—to—oomph!”

  Nate had punched Ethan in the stomach. The bright bar that had joined him to Ren blew to powder, and he crumpled to the ground.

  “You morons made me break my promise!” Ren spat down at him. “If you’d stayed away, we could’ve kept running! But no, you had to find out shit, didn’t you?” She was yelling at Nate now. “You had to follow us and save your poor little dolls from our evil plans!”

  The world began to swim around Thibault. The stars above looked wrong—what was the point of them, how did they fit, what sense did their patterns make?

  Damn it. There were seven of them gathered out here, enough to make a crowd.

  Thibault scrabbled after the fraying meaning in Ren’s rant.

  “You had to come rolling out here in a big ball of Swarm bait! Nice work, superheroes! It’s great that you guys are such a team, you know? I hope you stick together like freakin’ glue until he tracks you down and tears you all apart, just like he did my Davey !”

  And with that name, all the stars went out, all the world went out, and Thibault didn’t know who, what, or where he was for a long, dark time.

  CHAPTER 32

  SCAM

  ETHAN’S THROAT WAS FULL OF sand.

  His mouth was full of sand too, and so was his nose. He coughed, snorted more sand, then coughed again. He was lying facedown in the desert scrub.

  He rolled over, and the inside of his eyelids turned bright red. Full daylight, and it’d been just before dawn when he’d hit the ground.

  Shoot, how long had he been lying there?

  Glitch had really done a number on him. It was like his whole body had forgotten how to stand up.

  If Swarm attacked them now—

  Crap, Swarm! Ethan jerked upright, heart pounding.

  “Kelsie?” he slurred.

  The Zeroes lay in all directions, spread out as flat as pancakes on the red dirt. But there was no sign of Swarm. Not yet, anyhow. Apart from the whistle of wind, the place was eerily quiet.

  Ethan half crawled, half dragged himself over to where Kelsie lay beside Chizara, her head on the other girl’s knee. Kelsie’s face was starting to turn rosy in the sun.

  When Ethan checked her pulse, she murmured sleepily.

  “Phew.” Ethan looked around.

  Chizara was breathing evenly, like she was asleep. Flicker lay beside a large rock, her long hair and skirt fanned out around her. Nate had crumpled into a very un-Nate-like pose, one leg caught under him and one kicked out in front. Teebo lay alone, facing the sky with one arm across his chest.

  “Anybody dead?” Ethan rasped. Then he spat sand at the ground beside him.

  Damn. This was the third time this week he’d been glitched, but at least his voice was working. His real voice, the one he’d lost that first time outside the Office-O.

  Speaking of Glitch, where was she?

  And where was the Mercedes?

  “Yo! Zeroes!”

  Flicker stirred first, gathering herself together to sit up. “Scam, show me everyone.”

  Ethan obligingly swept his gaze across the Zeroes, giving Flicker a panoramic view of their collapse.

  “Shit,” Flicker said.

  “You’re welcome,” Ethan replied. His stomach still hurt from where Nate had punched him.

  Why had Nate punched him again?

  Oh, right. He’d let the voice go to town when Glitch had called Kelsie a baby Swarm. Which was total crap, because Kelsie woul
d never let a crowd turn a guy into mincemeat.

  Ethan shuddered. He’d only caught a glimpse of the fountain before Nate had pulled him into retreat. There was nothing recognizably Davey left. Just bone and blood and mess. Lots of mess. And a lot of people covered with it.

  “Give me a look at the mall,” Flicker said.

  Ethan obediently turned until he could see the Desert Springs Mall in the distance. The parking lots were practically empty. Only a few abandoned cars, a half dozen fire engines with their lights flashing, and government-issue black SUVs, all the same. An ambulance was pulling away slowly, and a dozen news trucks with telescoping antennae stood corralled a mile away.

  There was no swarm headed this way.

  “Okay,” Flicker breathed.

  Ethan pulled at his shirt, trying to release some of the sand from his collar.

  The others were beginning to move. Slowly, like vampires at sunset.

  “Where’s Nate’s car?” Flicker asked.

  “Pretty sure Glitch took off with it.”

  Ethan had almost gotten through to Glitch—or the voice had. There’d been a total connection over the whole love thing. But then she had started in on Kelsie and he’d let loose. Bad move, now that he thought about it, but no reason to punch a guy.

  Flicker was next to Thibault, tracing a hand down his arm until he stirred. Kelsie and Chizara were awake now too, blearily leaning against each other. Which just left one more Zero.

  Ethan crossed to where Nate lay. He wanted to kick the guy. He was supposed to lead them all into glory, not leave them knocked unconscious in some desert. He grabbed Nate’s shoulder and started rocking him, watching his chin roll left and right.

  Nate reached out to push Ethan aside.

  “Scam?” he croaked.

  “I think we’re past code names,” Ethan said tiredly. “The mission is over. We lost.”

  That got him. Nate sat up and looked around. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Nobody dead,” Ethan replied, though when he got home, Jess was probably going to fix that oversight.

  “Mierda.” Nate clenched his jaw. “She left us here. Where Swarm could have taken us while we were unconscious.”

  “Um, maybe.” Ethan cast a quick, fearful glance toward the mall.