Swarm

by Scott Westerfeld

  But she also knew about the other side of school. Where mobs were formed and victims selected. She looked at Swarm’s too-tight blazer and his white socks.

  She tried to keep her voice soft. “You were bullied.”

  “I was taught a lesson.”

  The different parts of him, the crowd inside his head, all came together for those last words, and the force of it almost sent her stumbling backward.

  “They held me against the lockers to throw basketballs at me. They made speeches before each throw, like a sacred rite. And I kept smiling the whole time, because I’d never felt the crowd’s focus before. The time they broke my nose, I laughed with them.”

  Kelsie nodded, remembering being punch-drunk at age eleven when Sally Jeffers’ pigtails had been tied to the back of her chair in homeroom. Everyone had laughed, including Sally. Trying to appease the bullies. Laughing at her own humiliation, because it was better than crying.

  The memory made Kelsie sick. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “I’m not. I was too busy learning about the truth of crowds.”

  “That isn’t how they are,” she said. “I mean, that’s not how they have to be. They do other things. They dance . . .”

  Suddenly that word, which Kelsie had uttered a dozen times a day since she was fourteen, seemed pitiful. What was dancing compared to all the horrors that groups of people could commit?

  “But if you’re worried about young Quinton, his story has a happy ending.” Swarm finally stopped talking to his phone. He looked straight at her. “I won.”

  “I bet.” Kelsie knew the temptation to become part of the darkness.

  “Andrew Forster was his name,” Swarm said. “New kid at school, tall and strong and good-looking. Showed up in the middle of eighth grade, and right away he told them to stop hurting me.”

  “A good guy,” Kelsie said.

  “A morally pretentious asshole,” Swarm corrected. “I hated the bullies, but at least they knew who I was. Andrew Forster didn’t give a shit. For him it was about being a hero.”

  “He was helping you.”

  “True. Because in that moment when they hesitated and wondered if they should stop, I found my way in.” Swarm stared straight at Kelsie, and she could feel the full-bore gaze of the crowd inside him. “And from then on, Andrew Forster was the one against the lockers.”

  “Oh my God.” Another shiver ran through Kelsie.

  The more Swarm spoke, the more her teeth rattled. The cold sank through her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to rub some warmth back into her body.

  “Do you know what it’s like,” Swarm asked, “when you finally find yourself part of something? On the right side for a change? After never feeling that before?”

  Kelsie nodded slowly. Not the same way Swarm knew. But she remembered finding the Zeroes.

  “After that,” Swarm said, “I walked into that locker room like a conductor following his orchestra onstage. I made those idiots into something beautiful.”

  “That’s not . . . ,” Kelsie said softly. “What you did to Davey—what you forced those people to do—that was brutal and ugly. Not beautiful.”

  “You’re very sweet.” Swarm smiled. “But deep down you want to be what I am. You want to level up.”

  “I don’t want that!” Kelsie’s throat was dry.

  “But it’s so beautiful, what we have. The power to make every crowd what it longs to be—a mob.”

  Kelsie wanted to argue, but she could tell just standing here that Swarm’s power was bigger than hers, more complete, more leveled up. Maybe he really was the end result of her power, what all her training with Nate and the others was leading her to. The other Zeroes had named her Mob, as if they already knew the danger.

  Swarm must have seen the fear on her face.

  “The temptation is already in you,” he said. “You’ll join me because I can teach you. And then we can take your friends together.”

  Kelsie almost laughed. “You’re crazy! You seriously think you can make me do that? You don’t know me at all!”

  “I know your destiny,” Swarm said casually.

  Swarm’s power spiked and spun in dizzying patterns. Kelsie tried to close herself against it, but she felt it again—that inner cry that had been under her skin the whole time, unnoticed and unanswered.

  “You’ll find me when you’re ready.” He made to walk away, as if the conversation were already over. “Just like Ren and Davey did.”

  “They ran from you!”

  “They courted me,” Swarm said. “They left a trail of bread crumbs. The wedding was their come-hither glance. The mall, their surrender.”

  “They tried to sacrifice me and my friends to escape you!”

  “Because they wanted everyone to join me,” Swarm continued. “Ren and Davey wanted to be on the winning team. You will too.”

  “You’re sick,” she said.

  Swarm grinned his crooked grin, angling his phone toward her. “Maybe you’re sick. And I’m what you’ll become when you choose to get better.”

  Kelsie stepped forward and pulled the phone from his hand. His palm was slack and damp.

  He looked at her in astonishment. “That’s my journal. Don’t—”

  She threw the phone as far as she could. It bounced off a distant wall and clattered down a dark alley.

  Swarm crumpled, like she’d ripped out his spine.

  “If you’re so leveled up,” she told him, “go find your stupid phone!”

  Then she turned and fled toward the Dish.

  CHAPTER 43

  FLICKER

  “WE MET LAST SUMMER,” FLICKER said.

  Thibault’s mother turned to take in her son. Her gaze lingered on him for a long, hopeful moment before drifting back to Flicker. Every time she saw him, her awareness seemed to last a little longer.

  “I mean, we got together last summer,” Flicker clarified, wanting to tell the truth. “We’d met before. We just hadn’t realized that we liked each other.”

  “So it snuck up on you.” There was a smile in Ms. Durant’s voice, a smile Flicker wanted to see. She switched her viewpoint to Thibault’s father across the breakfast table, but the man’s gaze was still buried in the newspaper. He wasn’t actually reading, though. His eyes were fixed on one phrase in a headline—POLICE SEEK ANSWERS.

  So maybe he was listening, processing.

  “Yeah, Flicker snuck up on me,” Thibault said, putting down his tea and laughing. “She was stalking me, in fact.”

  “Stalking you?” Flicker cried. Sure, she’d tracked Anon down to his secret hotel lair, but only in case he needed help with Scam. That wasn’t stalking, exactly. “You wish.”

  “He was always so handsome,” Ms. Durant said. Her voice was wistful, as if she’d forgotten Thibault was sitting right here.

  Flicker took his hand, trying to guide his mother’s awareness back to him, but her eyes were fixed on a tiny snag in the white tablecloth. Then the kettle began to hiss, and Ms. Durant was up again, busying herself with cups and saucers.

  God, this was hard work.

  “See?” Thibault said softly. “There’s always something to distract her.”

  On cue, Auguste came in from the living room, demanding tea. The youngest brother, Emile, was out there too, playing with Christmas toys. With six people, plus his grandmother napping upstairs, Thibault’s power had the full Curve to work with.

  Maybe this meeting should have waited until the boys were back in school.

  But there wasn’t time for that. Sonia had posted Ren’s revenge dump yesterday afternoon. Swarm could show up any day.

  She looked through Auguste’s eyes. He stood by the fridge, staring at the food. When he closed the door, his gaze went to Flicker, like any kid’s would to a stranger at the breakfast table. But he left the kitchen without a word, not giving his older brother a glance.

  Thibault’s father was still reading his paper, but he finally looked up whe
n Ms. Durant settled a tea tray before Flicker. He stared at the four cups.

  Flicker’s heart lifted a little. But then Ms. Durant only poured tea into three of them.

  “Has Auguste drunk all the milk, Mom?” Thibault prompted, and was rewarded with a full cup of his own, and then a splash of milk.

  But Ms. Durant never looked at her son, and her husband’s eyes were scanning the newspaper now, reading the words. Flicker felt a flash of annoyance and, not for the first time, wished that she could control where other people’s eyes looked instead of just peeking through them. If she could remember Thibault sitting right here, why couldn’t his own parents?

  Maybe it was time for some hardball.

  “Ms. Durant?” Flicker said. “Emile mentioned you’ve been feeling unwell.”

  A little gasp. “Well, I think we’re always a little tired the day after Christmas.”

  “And maybe it’s strange, having Thibault here?” Flicker nodded toward him.

  “Strange?” his mother asked. The single word hung over the table, and her eyes met Thibault’s for the first time.

  He looked so afraid, Flicker wanted to hug him. “Because you can’t remember when he went away. When he left home.”

  “He’s so young to be on his own” came the woman’s reply. “He’s only . . .”

  “Sixteen,” Flicker provided.

  “Oh.” Ms. Durant’s view blurred a little. Tears of confusion. “I should know that.”

  Whatever memories his mother had of Thibault, they were from before his power had fully formed, before the grandmother had moved in and pushed the Curve up. Back when he was, what, twelve?

  But her gaze stayed on her son, and Flicker suddenly saw the boy in his features. The little kid wondering why his parents had abandoned him in a hospital.

  A flash of anger went through her, but she bit down on the words that came with it.

  “Maman,” Thibault said gently. “It’s okay that you don’t remember. It’s not your fault I left. It’s mine.”

  “You . . . ran away?” Her voice was fragile.

  “I had to.”

  Flicker heard the rustle of newspaper and jumped into the father’s eyes. They shifted from his son to his wife uncertainly.

  “Then why come back?” challenged a voice—Auguste, from the doorway.

  Flicker heard Emile there too, and went into his eyes. They jumped around the table, wary of the unfamiliar sight of his brother and his parents talking.

  “Yes,” Mr. Durant said. “After you broke your mother’s heart, why not stay away?”

  Flicker felt Thibault’s hand flinch in hers. He’d been knocked speechless.

  “He didn’t want to leave,” she said. “He has . . . a condition. It makes you forget about him, sometimes. You have no idea how hard—”

  “He left us,” his father said, and the newspaper snapped taut.

  Shit. Flicker thought she’d been steeled for anything—disbelief, guilt, doubted sanity—but blame? Sharp and bitter words rose in her throat, but Emile spoke first.

  “When he’s here, you just ignore him! And when I ask you where he is, you pretend like you can’t hear me!” His voice broke into sobs. “Why are you all so mean to him?”

  The boy’s mother swept in on him, until Flicker could see nothing but the floral print of her dress. She jumped into Mr. Durant’s eyes.

  He was staring again: POLICE SEEK ANSWERS.

  “Listen,” Flicker said. “There are . . . techniques for making this work. You can use stories, or mnemonics, like this bracelet of mine with Thibault’s name on it. You can get past this.”

  She was babbling now. None of this would make sense if you didn’t know about superpowers. But at worst they would all forget what had happened here, and she and Thibault could try again in an hour or so.

  But the family disaster seemed to have its own momentum now. Emile was still crying, trying to form words and failing. Auguste was glaring at Thibault, and his mother was looking straight at Flicker.

  “What did I do?” her voice reached over her son’s sobs. “How did I drive him away?”

  “He’s right here!”

  Thibault’s hand wrenched in hers. “Flick, please don’t.”

  “I see pictures of him. And for a second I can’t remember! What kind of mother . . .”

  “Ms. Durant—”

  “I wonder if my mind is damaged in some way.” She knelt, clutching Emile closer. “Maybe I’m going to forget all three of my sons, one by one.”

  “Maman.” An anguished voice came from Flicker’s left.

  Flicker realized that she was losing Anon too. Six people here, all their focus on Ms. Durant, all this anxiety. The damn Curve.

  But then the woman stared at Thibault. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said.

  Her eyes moved to Auguste. “I lose track of my boys for a moment—in a store, on the street—and I think I must have forgotten them, too. For a second I worry that I lost them years ago, and I’ll never see them again!”

  “Stop this!” Mr. Durant cried. “Why do you act like a madwoman in front of our two boys?”

  “Three boys!” she cried back at her husband.

  The yelling was making it hard to focus. By reflex Flicker’s hand went to her bracelet.

  T—H—I—

  “This is hurting them.” Thibault’s voice came from beside her. “I have to leave.”

  He stood and walked away from the table, down the hall.

  She followed. “Wait! We can try again in—”

  Her phone trembled in her pocket, playing the sound of a car crash—a message from Chizara, who never texted except for emergencies.

  “Speak text,” Flicker said, and the phone obeyed in its familiar dispassionate tones.

  “Swarm. Is. Here. In. Cambria.”

  CHAPTER 44

  ANONYMOUS

  THIBAULT STRODE DOWN THE HALLWAY, grabbing framed photos off the wall. He hardly needed to look, he’d done this so many times in his mind, in moments of rage and frustration when all his Zen deserted him.

  “What are you doing?” Flicker stood at the door to the hallway, her different forms of awareness darting after him like bright ghosts.

  “I have to fix this,” he said.

  “Whatever you’re doing sounds pretty drastic, Thibault. Maybe you should stop and think for a second.”

  “Think? I’ve been thinking about this for years. About how one day I might have to erase myself, the way this family erased me four years ago. To disappear, for their sakes.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Flicker said. “If Swarm’s really in town, everyone will be freaking out!”

  “Go help them if you want. I have to finish this.” Thibault went farther down the hall, snatching the studio photo of the three brothers, the blurry snapshot of himself with the seventh-grade French prize.

  His father appeared at Flicker’s shoulder, attention spewing out of him like a firehose. He’d chosen now of all times to see Thibault?

  “What do you mean, coming here and making your mother cry!”

  Flicker’s mouth fell open with outrage. She would jump in and start defending Thibault unless—

  He chopped at the jet of his father’s attention, but it didn’t disappear completely.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” he said coldly. “I’m going.”

  The jet shrank, and one more hack was enough. The anger switched off in the man’s eyes, and he slowly turned away, took a step back into the kitchen. “What’s upset you, chérie?”

  It was like being dead, and watching life walk on without him.

  “Thibault,” Flicker said. “Don’t do this now, when you’re hurting.”

  “I have to, before I lose my nerve. Swarm can wait.”

  He strode into the home office. There were big shopping bags folded and slotted down beside the filing cabinet. He shook one out and thrust it at Flicker, who’d followed him in. “Hold this?”
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  With no eyes in the room, she reached out toward his voice. Her hands were shaking. He wanted to hold them, to reassure her. But he couldn’t risk losing momentum.

  He went through the cabinet like a machine, taking his old school file, his medical insurance papers, anything else that had his name on it, dropping it all in the bag.

  Flicker flinched with every chunk of weight into her hands.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m saving them all pain,” Thibault said.

  “Looks to me like you’re giving up on them.”

  “That too, I guess.” He flicked through the bottom drawer. That folder of memorabilia—drawings he’d done as a kid, pages from composition books when he was learning to write, some hilariously terrible grade-school poems. He dropped it into the bag with the rest.

  “But your mom is trying so hard,” Flicker protested. “She wants to remember you. Can’t we work with that?”

  “All we’re doing is messing with her brain.” He took the bag from Flicker’s hands. “She doesn’t know what’s real anymore.”

  “You’re real, Thibault. She knows that.”

  “That’s what’s driving her crazy,” he said. “She lost her son, Flick—as in misplaced him. Can you imagine what it’s like to realize that a hundred times a day?”

  “Kind of,” she said faintly. “Same thing happens with my boyfriend every now and then. But I’ve figured out some strategies. So can she.”

  “You and I spend time alone,” he said. “Too many people live here. I’d always be fighting the Curve.”

  Flicker’s phone erupted in her pocket, a tinny version of “Hail to the Chief.” Her ringtone for Nate, but she didn’t answer it.

  Thibault pushed past her, carrying the bag upstairs. Flicker followed.

  Halfway up, there was a buzz in his back pocket. He whipped the phone out as he ran.

  Scam, it said. His own family couldn’t remember him, but Ethan could?

  “Sounds like the Zeroes are panicking,” Flicker said.

  “Let them.”

  In his parents’ bedroom he dug in the bottom drawer of the dresser, where his father put stuff he didn’t want to deal with. Here was that pen set from a long-ago birthday, engraved FOR DAD, FROM THIBAULT. Ancient notes left out hopefully: Pick up T, soccer, 4pm. A few letters he’d sent from the Magnifique, when he couldn’t stop himself late at night, like drunk-dialing an ex. He grabbed it all, hating how it stank of Dad’s confused grief and guilt, and pushed it into the bag.