Swarm (35 page)

Her mouth watered and her body was locked, ready. This next part would take her over the line, into glory.

The last trace of Kelsie Laszlo inside her let out a cry of panic—she had chosen Fig.

But the swarm buzzed away that scrap of hesitation. She didn't want Fig to run. She didn't want him to be saved.

She wanted to taste his fear.

He cried out at her, but she was beyond language. Words were nothing beside her connection to the whole.

Fig tried to save her. He grabbed her arm and tried to barrel through the people between them and the stairs. He was fit, and he was fast, but he didn't stand a chance, not dragging her along. The crowd brought him down, and his grasp slipped from her hand.

Fig threw them off like a bucking horse. He clawed his way forward as the crowd ripped at his clothes. Someone was kicking him. It slowed him down. But he still didn't stop.

Good. The longer this took, the better.

The swarm had time. Mob didn't need to help—she was all of them, and could feel every foot and fist and fingernail like they were the endings of her own nerves.

She felt a flood of joy wash across the room, the swarm's elation as they beat and slapped and kicked at Fig.

A last surge of desperation went through him, and he sprang up as if out of water, arms swinging, knocking the smaller attackers back.

He spun and reached for Kelsie, still ready to save her.

But when he saw her rapturous expression, the fight faded in him, replaced with a brilliant flavor of horror. She watched in joy as the swarm covered him again.

Then there was a hitch in the kill, a distraction in the room. Someone on the stairs. Mob peered through the buzzing to find a man in uniform, screaming into his radio.

“Request assistance at—”

And then Swarm's voice: “Another hero. Perfect.”

Mob felt a twinge in the mob at this change of plan, and through that gap came a shred of relief that Fig was saved.

But then a fresh, searing ecstasy spread through the room. The swarm surged forward at their new target, seeking handholds on his uniform. Something to rip and ruin. Flesh, skin, hair. They tore him open and had at his slippery heart, squeezing it in their fists.

Until he belonged to them, part of the swarm now. He had died at their hands, in their arms. Kelsie felt the bloated satisfaction as they consumed who he had been. She felt the tenderness of his annihilation, and she fed that out into the mob.

Her mob, hers and Swarm's.

“NATE ISN'T HERE, BUT LET'S
start,” Flicker finally said, her voice echoing in the empty Dish.

All their bleary gazes went to her sitting up on the bar. They were looking for guidance, for certainty. For any way out from under the pall of Kelsie's sadness and guilt.

“Not fair,” Ethan said. “We have to get our butts here at dark-and-rainy o'clock, and Glorious Leader just gets to
sleep
?”

“His phone's probably switched off.” Flicker tried to sell it with a shrug, but they all knew that Glorious Leader himself was switched off. At least for now.

But she was here, and she would lead them.

Somebody
had to step up and be glorious.

“Last night, Swarm came at Kelsie,” she began. “Luckily, she got away.”

“I didn't,” Kelsie murmured. She was curled up by the wall where the bar ended.

Flicker hesitated. Kelsie still hadn't told the whole story of last night, except to say that a cop had been killed. She'd called Flicker at midnight in shock, and it had taken all night to calm her down and then get the others here to the Dish.

“Well, you're here with us,” Flicker said. “That's better than being with Swarm. Or dead.”

Kelsie didn't answer, and Flicker quickly scanned the others' viewpoints—Ethan's fluttered with nervous blinks. Maybe that last word had been a bad idea.

God, this must be so easy for Nate, being able to see and feel the effect of everything he said.

“Why
are
we all here together?” Ethan asked. “I thought we were supposed to stay separate! And, you know,
not
in our much-publicized headquarters!”

“It's six thirty a.m., two days after Christmas, Ethan. The streets are completely empty. No crowds anywhere in town.” Flicker turned to face the rest of them, trying to keep doubt from her voice. “If he shows up now, we can take him, easy.”

Nothing but silence. She'd been hoping for some kind of joke about kicking Swarm's ass, but they were all too scared and exhausted.

And she was about to make things worse, but there was no way around it.

“Swarm killed a cop last night.”

“He had help,” Kelsie said softly.

“He
used
Kelsie.” Flicker plowed ahead. “And he found her even when she was the only Zero around. So keeping apart isn't going to be enough. We can't wait for him to choose his time and place. We have to fight him on our terms.”

“Do we even
have
terms?” Ethan asked. “Like, ‘Hey, Swarm, meet us alone in a dark alley? Far away from any random people, so we can kick your butt!' ”

“Ethan's got a point,” Chizara said. “This guy always shows up with a crowd.”

Flicker hesitated. If Chizara was agreeing with Ethan, things were bad.

“Like I told you guys last time,” Ethan said, “we all should run away. Live someplace no crowd ever goes. I call dibs on Alaska!”

“I tried leaving Cambria,” Chizara said. “It did not go well.”

Flicker hopped into her eyes, which were on Kelsie. But Kelsie wasn't meeting anyone's gaze.

“You all know what I mean,” Chizara went on. “We barely keep it together here in our hometown, a place we understand. Out there, the unknown can sneak up on you, make you lose control.”

Then she was looking at the floor.

What
had
happened on Crash's little road trip with Mob? Flicker hadn't checked the news for technical disasters yet. That was another thing Nate would have done already.

“Our powers can do plenty of damage right here,” Thibault said.

Flicker went into Scam's eyes, and before they slipped from Thibault, she saw just how pale and harrowed he was. The memory of yesterday morning with his family came flooding back—his poor mom, his confused brothers, his father's anger at it all.

It had been so awful, she kept pushing it away. But she owed it to Thibault to remember every moment. His family never would.

“It doesn't matter where I go,” Kelsie said. She was staring at a crack in the floor. “Even if Swarm never finds me, I could do it again on my own.”

“That's not true,” Flicker said. “You didn't
want
to kill that cop.”

“No, I
wanted
to kill my dad's best friend! The cop just interrupted us!”

Kelsie looked up, and Flicker saw her own horrified expression.

“Swarm let me choose who to kill,” Kelsie went on. “And I chose Fig, a friend, because I knew how scared he'd be, seeing me
helping
! I knew his was the fear that would taste
best
!”

Kelsie flooded the Zeroes with emotion again—not despair or horror this time, but an exquisite mix of hunger, desire, ecstasy.

A gasp went around the group, and as the elation faded, Flicker felt sick.

What had she done? Bringing them together while Kelsie was still such a mess was a terrible idea, especially without Nate here to guide the group.

Where the hell
was
he?

“Those poor people will always remember what happened, what they did to that cop,” Kelsie said. “A lifetime of nightmares, probably a lifetime of prison, too. I'm only free because Swarm let me go.”

“It'll be okay,” Ethan said. “The people at the mall aren't getting charged with anything.”

Kelsie turned to stare straight at him, and Ethan looked scared of her. “Those were nice middle-class people.
This
was alcoholics and addicts, and a cop died. There's not going to be some get-out-of-jail story about magic gas!”

And they'd gone full circle, Kelsie's guilt blanketing the room again with its desolate weight.

“You guys have to stay away from me. I'm a Swarm waiting to happen.”

Flicker felt the room shifting, as Kelsie's self-hatred threatened to spill out into the rest of them. She couldn't let that happen. They needed to trust Kelsie for the plan to work.

Flicker channeled her inner Glorious Leader and said, “You're a Zero, Kelsie. That means you don't have to fight this on your own. Together we're going to take this guy down.”

A tremor went around the nightclub, as if Kelsie was clamping her fear down to a nervous, lurking shiver.

“How?” came Thibault's voice.

“Not by running away,” Flicker said. “We're going to face him, right here, tomorrow night. And we're going to win.”

No one answered. She couldn't even see their faces. They were all looking at her, not at each other.

But at least they were listening, waiting to hear her plan.

“He killed Davey with that mall crowd—people who'd waited up all night. They were tired, annoyed,
greedy
. The kind of crowd that tramples people without any help from superpowers. And last night he killed with people whose refuge had been invaded. Who were fragile to begin with.”

“A lot of addicts are really strong,” Kelsie said. “But not that night. Not after he came in smashing a bottle of whiskey on the floor.”

“My point is this,” Flicker said. “Swarm doesn't use happy crowds to kill people. He feeds on anger, fear.”

“So we hit him with, what, a parade of clowns?” Chizara asked.

“Clowns?” Ethan cried out. “She just said fear is
bad
.”

Flicker shook her head. “No, not clowns, or rainbows, or unicorns. We hit him with the crowd we've been training with for the last three months. A crowd we
know
how to make happy.”

“Huh,” Chizara said. “You mean we hit him with the Dish?”

“Exactly. We face him in our own home, where we control the lights, the music, and the beer. That's how we win.”

For a moment Flicker had them all. She could feel it in the room—even Kelsie believed in this plan, or at least she wanted to.

Then Ethan cleared his throat. “But why would he show up here, where we want him, on exactly the right night? He can pick us off anywhere, anytime!”

When Flicker hesitated, it was Kelsie who spoke up.

“That part's easy,” she said. “We do what Davey and Ren did. We make him
mad
at us.”

IN CAMBRIA, WINTER WAS NEVER
cold enough for ponds to freeze over. So once a year the county built an ice-skating rink beside Main Square. The rental skates were crappy, the music was cheesy, and the hot chocolate was powdered.

But for some reason this was where Sonia wanted to meet Ethan.

She probably knew the place would annoy him. For a start, he hadn't skated since he was a kid. And second, nothing said
trying too hard
like skating backward to “Jingle Bell Rock.”

But Flicker's plan meant he had to go. For the Zeroes to stand a chance against Swarm, they had to have the biggest, happiest party ever, and Swarm had to be goaded into coming to it. And for that they needed something better than handing out flyers on a street corner.

They needed Sonia Sonic.

When Ethan got to Main Square, however, he started to feel queasy. He hadn't been in a real crowd since that morning at the mall. Right now the skaters reminded him of the frenzied zombies at the outer edge of the swarm. He thought of Davey, ripped apart like a Christmas turkey.

Ethan stood, sweating in the cold winter air. Sonia was late, of course, leaving him waiting with his stomach in knots. He had an awful sensation, like the back of his neck was trying to crawl up to his scalp. His whole body was on the alert for Swarm.