Swarm (23 page)

THIBAULT THREW HIMSELF INTO THE
bus seat next to Flicker and stared past her out the window. The winter sun still lay behind dark storm clouds, and the world was a featureless gray.

Flicker leaned against him, her sight lines winking out as she turned her vision off. Her other senses clouded around Thibault, registering his shape, the textures of his clothes and skin, the rise and fall of his breathing. Was she taking comfort from what she found? For him their clasped hands were the best and sanest thing in the world right now.

The bus ground on toward Flicker's house. He was going to stay the night there, but then . . . he didn't know what. He couldn't live at Flicker's forever, however much he wanted to protect her. And if Swarm was out there hunting for groups of
Zeroes, the safest thing was to keep everyone separate.

“I keep worrying about fingerprints,” she murmured.

“Tell me about it.” The six of them had spent an hour wiping down the interior of the stolen car. Then Thibault had taken and dumped it a mile away from the Dish and walked back. The cops might not know what to make of a murderous mall riot, but they'd sure be interested in a car hot-wired in the parking lot a few hours later.

“Anything to preserve Nate's spotless police record,” Flicker said.

“I'm more worried about his confidence. I've never seen Nate run out of steam like that.”

“We're all a little freaked out.”

“Freaked out?” A short, harsh laugh escaped him. More like traumatized. Heads full of a horror movie they couldn't unwatch. “When Kelsie was talking about Swarm wanting her to join him, I was waiting for Nate to step in and take it down a notch. And he just stared at her, like . . . game over. Glorious Leader, totally choking.”

Flicker pressed her lips together, and the warm cloud of her senses withdrew from him. Maybe he'd said too much.

She and Nate had a connection that went back before the Zeroes, to when they were little kids. And they'd had that near romance bubbling beneath the surface until Ethan's voice had snuffed it out two summers ago. It was the only thing Flicker didn't like to discuss with Thibault.

“
And when she was talking about dealing with him ourselves,” he said softly, “it almost sounded like she meant killing him.”

“I was wondering about that,” Flicker said. “But then I thought,
Come on, not Kelsie
.”

“Yeah, sure. But remember, she grew up around criminals.”

“I guess.” She put her head on his shoulder, her senses reaching for him again. “Let's hope we never find out what she meant.”

He nodded wearily. Bad enough to watch Swarm commit his bloody murder. But to see a
friend
do the same . . .

“I've been thinking about something,” he said. “Ren and Davey remembered their friend, the Stalker guy. So if anything happened to me, the chances of you remembering me are pretty good.”

She gripped his hand painfully tight. “Don't, Thibault. Just—”

“I mean, they couldn't remember his name. And they laughed at me when I asked about it.”

“We're good, okay?” Flicker took his other hand and made him touch his name in braille on her bracelet. “I've always got this.”

He heard Ren's voice echoing in the chapel:
Till death do us fucking part!
She'd meant those words. Anyone who knew about Swarm would have to take death seriously.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, lifting his gaze to
the passing suburban houses outside, their mowed lawns, their brick porches, the Christmas lights decking their gutters. In a weird way, being mindful of the present was a lot easier when you didn't know what horrors tomorrow could bring.

Thibault's phone beeped.

“Ten bucks that's Glorious Leader,” Flicker said. “Full of great ideas, twenty minutes too late.”

The message read:
Is this you?

“Whoa,” said Thibault. “That's my mother's number.”

“Holy crap. She's never called you before, has she?”

“Never!” Thibault's chest went tight around his heart. “I put my number in her phone, last time I was there, like you said I should. But I never thought she'd—”

The phone beeped again.

I was wondering if you were coming tonight. Saw ur present for me.

The words connected then, and pleasure washed over Thibault.

“It's Emile. My little brother!”

“Whoa.” Flicker's listening tendrils brightened. “How did he remember you?”

“I snuck in and left a present under the tree for him.” It actually hurt Thibault's face to smile, he hadn't smiled in so long. “Something for his rock collection, just like on his birthdays.”

“He remembers!” Flicker said. “That's amazing.”

“We've always had a good connection. Sometimes on his birthday he even—”

The phone beeped again.

Um, RU real?

Thibault stared at the message. Another appeared.

Mom saw the present too. She keeps asking me.

“Something wrong?” Flicker asked.

“Not sure,” Thibault said, then texted:
Asking about ME?

Ellipses pulsed for a long moment before the answer appeared.
She keeps looking @ old photos and talking about you. And crying. Dad doesn't know what to do.

He read out the text, and they both sat silent for a moment.

“You should answer,” Flicker finally said.

“How? Should I explain that Mom's not crazy? It's just my superpower?”

“Tell him you'll be there tonight,” said Flicker. “He needs you.
They
need you.”

Thibault shook his head. “It's Christmas Eve. It'll suck. They always have people over, and they can barely see me in the crowd. They'll just forget tomorrow anyway.”

“But they must remember
something
. This proves it!”

“Emile remembers the presents I leave,” he said. “The rest of them remember the pictures on the wall. But not
me
. Just a bunch of confusing clues.”

“You should try,” she said. “Would you rather be sitting alone in my attic all night? I have
my
parents' party, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. I was planning on lurking in the corner.”

“Lurking is right,” Flicker sighed. “It'll be too crowded to meet my parents again. But they'll be asking about you, as usual. My dad has this joke that you must not be real. Hearing that one's going to
suck
tonight.”

“Damn. Sorry.”

“It's not your fault.” She took his hand again. “It's just that Mom and Dad
really
want to meet you. They don't know they already have. I feel like I have to throw them a bone somehow.”

She turned to face to the window, but her senses stayed in a cloud around him. In a way this slim cut of hope was thanks to her. He never would have thought to put his number in his mother's phone if Flicker hadn't shown him it was possible. Possible that he would be seen one day—
recognized
—by the people he loved.

By the family that had lost him.

Zen Buddhism said that attachments were the source of trouble, of pain. And for most of Thibault's life that had proven heartbreakingly true. But look at this bond with Flicker—and now with Emile. Being unattached was for chumps.

He turned back to his phone.

See you tonight, kid.

ETHAN HAD NEVER BEEN SO
glad to be home.

He was sunburned, he was tired, and there was sand
everywhere
. He felt like he'd been flattened by a cement truck. Repeatedly.

Just inside the front door he listened carefully for Mom and Jess.

No sound.

Good. Nobody home. There was just the
slightest
chance Jess hadn't checked his room this morning. Maybe she thought he was sulking in there, playing video games. That was his usual response to fights with her, after all.

He started upstairs toward his room, leaning heavily on the bannister. His hopes rose a little with each step.

If Jess had any clue he'd snuck out for this many hours,
she'd be on him like stink on a skunk already, right?

Which he did
not
need. He was so exhausted he felt like he might throw up. He just needed sleep.

He reached his door and opened it just enough to slip through. Then he closed the door silently and rested his head against it. He'd made it. Thank crap. He was safe. He was ninja stealthy. He was—

“Where the hell have you been, Ethan?”

—busted.

He spun around. There was Jess, glaring at him from the end of his bed.

“Aw, crap.” Ethan slumped. “Listen, I'm beat—”

“Not my problem,” Jess replied. “We have to talk.”

Ethan almost laughed. “Seriously? You've been avoiding me for nearly two days and
now
you want to talk?”

“I've finally figured out what I need to say,” she said. “So yeah, this conversation happens now.”

The adrenaline of watching Davey get killed had worn off, and Ethan felt like his entire body was in meltdown. He was pretty sure he'd lost an entire layer of skin to the sand in his clothes. There was no way in hell he could talk to Jess now.

Come on, voice. Get Jess off my back so I can get some shut-eye.

Ethan opened his mouth, but the voice said nothing.

Defeated, he sat on his bed, as far from Jess as he could get. Since the night she'd followed him to the Dish, he'd been walking on eggshells, hoping she wouldn't tell Mom about the
crooked cops and the payoff and the illegal nightclub and, hell, maybe even his superpowered friends.

And now, on the very day when he just wanted to crawl into a hole and hibernate for the rest of winter,
now
she needed to talk?

“You snuck out,” Jess began. “Middle of the damn night, the day before
Christmas Eve.
Was it to meet your superfriends?”

“We're not that super. We got our asses kicked.” He sighed. “We all should have stayed in bed.”

“You should have stayed
home
,” Jess said, sounding hurt. “I only get a few weeks with you guys.”

“You weren't even talking to me!”

“And
then
you come back, looking hungover and covered in . . .” She ruffled his hair. “Sand? Did you go to the beach?”

“The desert.” Ethan smoothed down his hair and scratched at the sunburn on his neck. “Thought you'd be an expert in desert by now.”

“What the hell? How far did you go?”

Ethan leaned against the wall. He was dizzy from dehydration, and his whole body was still trembling from the aftereffects of panic. At any moment the exhaustion could make him tip sideways and somersault out his bedroom window. But even that probably wouldn't get Jess off his back.

“You wouldn't understand,” he said.

“Don't pull that teenage crap with me.”

“Sure, Jess. As soon as you drop the grown-up act,” Ethan snapped back. “
You
were a teenager two years ago.”

She leaned into his face, like he always hated. “Spill it, kiddo.”

“I had to meet my friends, all right? Sometimes there's important stuff we have to do. As a team. We look out for each other and have each other's backs. You know, like in your unit.”

Jess snorted. “We drop ordnance on bad guys. What were you doing? Bribing cops?”

“The bribing is not a regular thing.”

Except the voice had promised Ang and Murillo fifteen hundred a month. But with Swarm out there killing Zeroes, there was a pretty good chance the Dish was dead anyhow.

“Oh, really,” Jess said. “And yet Mom said you knew about some secret Internal Affairs investigation. You mentioned it to those detectives at a hockey game. Since when do you like hockey?”

Ethan tried to come up with something truthful to say. Some way to explain that Internal Affairs was the least of his problems. That crowds of creepy mind-controlled human slave-bots were ripping people to pieces in fountains.

Then it came to him, almost like the voice had said it.

“This is way bigger than that nightclub,” he began. “Sort of like when you get back to Afghanistan, and you have to make hard decisions. Like, someone's driving straight at you, and maybe it's a car bomb or maybe it's an innocent family.”

She nodded, still suspicious. Probably because he was quoting
one of her stories exactly, which was the kind of thing his Zero voice would do. Except that he wasn't using the voice. He was going it alone on this.

“Well, today we had to make exactly that kind of decision. We had to drop everything and drive all night to stop people getting hurt, and we probably saved a bunch of lives. People will go home to their families today because
we
were there.”