Swarm (2 page)

IT WAS EVEN BUSIER BACK
on the street. The stores were open late tonight and people were frantic with last-minute Christmas shopping.

Next to the Office-O, Ethan spotted a girl peering at a retail-window display of robot Santas. She had white-bleached hair with a strip of magenta over one ear. Perfect.

“Party at the Dish tonight.” He held out a flyer with a smile. “Great for your next post!”

Ethan squirmed as the words came out. Nate didn't want anyone putting stuff about the Dish online.

The girl turned toward him, befuddlement fading into a look of recognition. “Hey, it's
you
.”

Ethan swallowed the voice down. “Um, sorry, who . . .”

But he knew who she was.

She grinned. “Been to any good bank robberies lately?”

Sonia Sonic. The girl he'd met on the cold marble floor of Cambria Central Bank last summer. The girl who'd videoed his Zero voice in action and posted it for the entire world to see.

That
girl. And the stupid voice had just gone and promised her more material!

He tried to hide the flyer, but Sonia yanked it away from him. Lightning fast, she snapped a picture of it with her phone.

Ethan was seriously screwed.

Nate had warned all the Zeroes to keep a low profile, and specifically to avoid Sonia Sonic on pain of death. Those were Nate's exact words:
pain of death
, which sounded like some pretty serious pain.

“I knew it!” Sonia said. “You're up to something, right? You and your freaky friends?”

Ethan tried to look like he didn't know what she was talking about. But all the Zeroes read Sonia's feed regularly.

She was practically a career weird-hunter now. She'd been posting about inexplicable crowd events ever since the bank thing. She might not have been present for the police station meltdown last summer, or the riot on Ivy Street the next night, but she'd interviewed a lot of people who had been.

And, like most of Cambria, she'd witnessed firsthand the mysterious glitch at the Fourth of July fireworks show a week later. After that she'd started tracking outbreaks of crowd madness from Seattle to Miami to Santa Rosa. Her theory was that
all these events were related, and that Ethan and his friends were part of some strange conspiracy.

She was mostly wrong, of course. For a start, most of the Zeroes had never even been out of Cambria. There was no conspiracy, even if it was pretty clear that there
had to be
other Zeroes out there causing trouble.

But six superpowered teens experimenting on people in an illegal nightclub? Now
that
story would blow all of last summer's crazy out of the water.

Sonia leaned forward conspiratorially. “You know, that bank video was the biggest thing to happen to me ever. People all over the country read my posts. I've had calls from journalists, even a senator from Washington State. I'm, like, a celebrity now!”

“Glad my humiliation was useful to you,” Ethan said.

For weeks after she'd posted that video, Ethan hadn't been able to go anywhere in Cambria without being recognized. Which was the opposite of useful with a power like Ethan's. When your superpower was lying, it didn't pay to be famous.

In fact, none of the Zeroes needed Sonia's attention. It'd be a lot harder to influence people if they knew that crowd magic was nudging them along.

Sonia scanned the flyer. “What kind of club name is the Petri Dish, anyway?”

“It means you're not welcome there,” he said.

“Why not, exactly?”

Because the Dish was the Zeroes' hideaway, a place where they could experiment with their powers. (Hence the stupid name.) They kept it underground for exactly three reasons—no media attention, no cops, and no Sonia frickin' Sonic.

Of course, Ethan didn't say any of that. He could only unleash the beast. He hated to, because the voice had been in such a happy place today. But the safety of the team was more important than his own good mood.

“Because you really
don't
want to be seen in public with that hair,” he heard himself say.

Sonia opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The voice was an expert at getting that reaction.

“Sure, I can see you were going for magenta with that stripe. But right now it looks more like a shade of Life Saver. Flamingo Musk, maybe? Or Cat Vomit Rosé?”

“Stop even talking!” Sonia cried. “This is GothLyfe Full Metal Magenta! You can't
get
more magenta than this.”

But the voice was cruising now. It burned with a fierceness he hadn't felt in days. As if all the happiness it had flung out into the world had been a warm-up for the real deal.

“Maybe it was this morning, sweetie. But unless you want to be known as Sonia Salmon Head—”

“Why are you doing this?” She glared at him, eyes glistening.

Ethan could feel the voice rising up, ready to go again. But with a searing effort, he managed to choke down the next insult.

This wasn't what his power was all about. It wasn't who he
was
. Not anymore.

“Sorry,” he croaked.

As he warred to keep the voice silent, Sonia's expression shifted.

“Wait a second. This is exactly what you did in the bank. You made that robber go crazy, just by talking to him.”

“I . . . um,” Ethan managed, still struggling. “Pink hair . . . bad.”

“I am totally coming to your club,” she said grimly. “There's nothing you can say to stop me.”

And with that, the voice died a silent death in Ethan's throat.

That was the thing about his power—it knew when to quit. If there was nothing to say that would get Ethan what he wanted, the voice went to sleep.

Looked like Sonia was coming to the Dish.

He swallowed, wondering how to explain it when he got back.

Hey, Nate, remember the one person you told me on pain of death not to invite? Yeah, well, check out her new hairstyle!

“Okay. But let me take you.” Maybe he could get ahead of this. “My girlfriend's the DJ. Kind of.”

“Kind of your girlfriend, or kind of the DJ?”

“Definitely the DJ,” he muttered.

“Okay.” Sonia flipped her striped hair over an ear. “I'll make sure to check out your girlfriend's mad skills.”

She made
skills
sound like it had
Z
s on the end.

Maybe Kelsie could charm Sonia out of posting about the club. She could work anyone who was willing to be part of a crowd.

“I think your hair's pretty cool, actually,” he admitted.

“You are a
freak
!” Sonia grinned and linked her arm through his. “But you're not so bad, when you're not going psycho. And hey, we're practically Cambria royalty, right?”

A familiar voice called from behind Ethan. “Hey, everyone! Free shipping for your Christmas packages!”

Ethan turned. It was the guy who'd been stealing paper in the Office-O. He was in the doorway, shouting at the people on the street. His girlfriend stood beside him, warming her hands in the folds of her frilled skirt.

“Seriously!” she added. “Mail your Christmas presents here and now. We've got packing supplies! Wrapping paper! FedEx forms! We'll spring for it all!”

A crowd began to gather, their arms full of shopping bags. They all looked tired and hopeful enough to believe in a Christmas miracle.

The guy lifted his arms above his head. He had a thick wad of cash in each hand.

“Huh,” Ethan said. So much for them having no money.

“Quit stalling and let's go,” Sonia said, dragging at his elbow.

“Does that seem weird to you?” Ethan asked, pointing at the couple.

“Ethan, I know weird, and that's nothing like it. Free stuff always pulls a crowd.” She stared at her phone. “But this
is
weird. Whose phone is this?”

“Isn't it your—” Ethan began, but a convulsion struck his throat, like his Adam's apple was expanding. “I should forget she'll never I'm not good enough how could I—”

Ethan stopped talking. His throat felt like someone else's, and his voice sounded like someone else's too. But worst of all were the words he was saying. They weren't
his
anymore, after all that time he'd spent learning to speak, even though the voice could do it better. Suddenly his words felt like someone else's, and he couldn't get them out right.

He tried again, “I just want what I can't but it's something I never—”

This wasn't the voice going haywire. No. It was his own voice—his Ethan Cooper voice, the one he'd spent his whole life trying to claim—somehow turned alien inside his own mouth.

Panic roiled his gut.

“I tried but it's never wanted to know everything—” This was
not
him talking! Even his lips and tongue felt wrong, like a dentist had shot him full of novocaine.

“Brain fart again?” Sonia asked, dragging him away from the Office-O crowd. “Come on. Because I'm still going to your nightclub, even I have to take you to the psycho ward first.”

Ethan turned to her, his mouth working to explain but no sound coming out.

Finally he managed to shout, “Mesopotamia!”

It was his code word, something he'd chosen when he was a kid—a fail-safe, in case he ever had to make sure it was him talking and not his other voice. He hadn't needed that word since he was ten.

“You are
so
random,” Sonia said calmly.

“Hello? Hello!” Yes, the pall was lifting. The words came out almost normally, and his throat felt like his own again. “Sorry, I didn't recognize myself for a minute there.”

Sonia was frowning at her phone again. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Come on, this Dish club of yours isn't going to investigate itself.”

Ethan let Sonia propel him away from Ivy Street and toward the Heights. He handed out a few more flyers as they walked, but he couldn't use the voice with Sonia watching. After what had happened, he wasn't sure if he wanted to speak at all.

Right now all he wanted was for Nate to not be on the door when he rolled up with Sonia Sonic in tow.

THERE WERE TWENTY-SEVEN PEOPLE IN
line. Not enough to open the doors.

Nate hated clubs that let customers in too soon, forcing them to jangle around in too much space, forming half crowds and feeble connections.

Not while he was working the door.

Besides, keeping the crowd waiting gave him time to take notes on who was showing up tonight. Hipsters with chunky glasses—local residents, probably. A group of women in designer jeans, alight with the wary bubbliness of slumming it in the Heights. The usual underage contingent who knew that the Dish never turned anyone away. Well, except people visibly messed up enough to alter Kelsie's vibe.

The Petri Dish was a controlled experiment. Every variable mattered.

For example, the male-to-female ratio of the line was getting a little high. Nate texted Ethan:
No more groups of guys.

For most of the summer and fall, Nate had spent his weekends with Kelsie on Ivy Street—taking notes, asking questions. Determining the best night of the week to open, the right mix of young and old, the minimum number of people required for serious dancing to break out.

Thirty-one in line now. Still not enough.

The Curve started at around six people, but everything the Zeroes had accomplished this summer showed that bigger crowds were better. More meaningful. More
powerful
. So every night he waited for at least forty people before opening the doors.

Nate had never particularly liked nightclubs. But now that he had his own, he realized that most of their problems were easily corrected.

Being in charge always made the difference.

“Hey, dude,” a girl shouted from halfway down the line. She was wearing a purple feather boa. “Don't tell me it's
full
in there already. Let us in!”

The energy of the crowd centered on her, then shifted back to Nate. He gave them a smile, focusing all those restless shimmers of attention.

“Five minutes,” he called out. It settled them a little, but it also sharpened their anticipation. People finger-combed their hair, reapplied lipstick. At the front a guy reached over to straighten his boyfriend's tie.

Two couples, white teenagers trying to look chill about being on the bad side of town, joined the end of the line. Thirty-five now. Very close. Nate pulled a little tighter on the web of attention from the crowd, drawing it to himself.

These were his favorite moments, keeping the crowd on edge like this.

But then his focus frayed a little—a police car was cruising past, the officers inside it taking a long, hard look.