Swarm (40 page)

Nate didn't answer. “Ethan said he wanted you to be happy. That's what he was trying for, anyway.”

“He did?” she said. “In his real voice?”

Nate shrugged. “They're both real. But he was texting, so it wasn't his power. It was him.”

“Please tell me he's okay,” she whispered.

“I'm pretty sure he's gone,” Nate said. “Don't tell the others.”

Kelsie felt her pain bounce around the Dish, hitting all of them. A soft cry even came from the Craig.

She couldn't lose another friend. She stepped to the door and opened it.

Outside, a buzzing, jittering wall of uniformed police stretched from one side of the Dish to the other. The cops
wore crisp dress uniform. Their eyes were unfixed, their mouths stretched wide, their holsters unbuttoned and flapping on their hips. They filled the street.

“You can't do this,” Nate said.

“I have to.”

“Hey, Zeroes!” It was Chizara's voice, calling from the balcony inside. “Come up on the roof—I've got a plan.”

Kelsie looked at Nate, and hope bloomed in both their faces.

AS SHE STOOD ON THE
roof with the others, Chizara's power built inside her, ready to ignite.

Ever since she crashed the container ship, she'd been carrying a gutload of fixing juice. She'd had to remind herself that it was a
bad
thing to have. To get it, she'd burned out a ship, covered a beach with fuel, and sent millions of dollars in cargo to the bottom of the sea. And learned that the rest of her life would be loveless.

But now that she needed that stored power, it swelled and gleamed, no longer guilty or miserable, a pressing excitement under her ribs. It was huge inside her.

She could feel all things electronic within half a mile. Painlessly. Clearly. Every way she turned, the visible world was just a scrim in front of the nodes, the networks, the teeming
chips, the multiplicity of flickering microswitches.

Energy poured underfoot and overhead, in precise, calibrated, controlled, and controllable ways. She could extinguish swaths of systems in a single swipe. She could surge power into them so they blew themselves apart. She could burrow deep and cut a single connection, scorch a single chip. She could reach into a web of dead shadows a mile off and activate it. Any broken system nearby, she could comb its frazzled wires straight, unmelt its burned-out components, knit it together, and bring it back to life.

It was wonderful to feel balanced like this. Her usual pain was transformed into cold, glittering information she could use whenever she chose. Even as she held off on her power, layer after layer of systematic beauty was spread before her, a century and more of trial-and-error design, workings stripped back and re-elaborated, functions given finer and finer form.

She was in command of galaxies.

She was Crash.

“So what's this plan?” Flicker hunkered behind the concrete peak of the facade, her face blank. “Before they start shooting!”

“He still thinks I might join him.” Kelsie wiped away tears in that way she had, like she did
not
want you to ask about them. And Chizara wanted to ask, to wipe the tears for her. “While I'm in the way, they won't open fire.”

“I hope you're right about that,” Crash said. “Because we're driving out.”

“
That's
your plan?” Nate cried. “Steal a car and just roll out of here?”

“Not
a
car, no.”

Crash waved her hand at the used-car lot across the street. It was so obvious, glistening there, packed with dozens of motley vehicles. Most were new enough to have microchipped starters, but a few had old-fashioned ignition points and coils. It didn't matter—she had power enough for them all.

With a thought, their engines roared to life. She'd surged them slightly too hard—lights flicked on, windshield wipers stuttered into motion, radios blared.

“Holy shit.” Flicker jerked her head to one side, listening. “But what about the fence?”

Crash laughed, and one of the big V-8s at the front of the lot accelerated, crashing into a post of the chain link. It bent forward, the web of metal bowing on either side.

“Fifty percent rust,” Crash said, and called forward the whole front row. They bashed, retreated, and bashed again, snapping one post, knocking others from their shallow holes in the old concrete.

On the third blow the whole fence collapsed. Revving high, metal scraping, the cars trundled out over the wire.

So much damage, Chizara. So much crumpled metal!

Whatever, Mom. Saving lives here.

She grasped the cars' steering now, which took more effort than mere starter chips, and crept them out into the street. Their thunder shook the Dish roof beneath her feet.

“Don't run anyone down,” Flicker said. “Those are still cops down there.”

“I'm not a monster.” The first cars reached the shuddering lines of blue, and gently pushed into the policemen. It was like nudging spinning tops—the cops wobbled and corrected. Nudge, wobble, correct. Nudge, wobble—

“Perfect,” Nate said, peeking over the parapet. “Swarm can take over people, but not cars!”

“Exactly,” Crash said. “And he's not used to anyone pushing his toys around, so he can't hold a line firm. The only settings he's got are shuddering standby and murderous rage.”

But she couldn't give him time to figure out a counterstrategy. She pressed the cars through the lines of blue. Soon the space in front of the Dish looked like an angry rush-hour traffic snarl.

The sound of battering came from below. A phalanx of police were bashing at the Dish door.

“They won't get through the steel,” the Craig said. “Not unless they brought C4.”

Flicker swore. “But that's one less exit we can use.”

“We can't get out of here in cars anyway,” Nate said. “If
he turns those cops murderous, they'll just haul us out the windows!”

“Everyone relax,” Crash said. “We just need something
big enough
.”

She flung her mind outward, searching the surrounding blocks.

More tech was arriving beyond the dithering edge of Swarm's crowd. Cars bringing on-duty cops in. News vans with satellite dishes flowering on top, ambulances and—was that a fire engine?

They were all too far away, and full of passengers already.

A news helicopter hovered overhead, lousy with tech, filming the strange behavior of Cambria's finest—and those kids on the roof, probably. Crash eyed it longingly.

But helicopters were sensitive beasts—one wrong twitch of the tail rotor and the torque would smack them into the crowd.

She needed something simple, solid, and muscular. An automotive version of the Craig.

And there it was, at the construction site three blocks away—a dump truck.

She started it, backed it out, crashing through the wooden safety fence. It was an old-style lump of a thing, its tires as tall as a person. As she trundled it toward the Dish, she worked her battalion of cars through the blue throng, clearing a lane for the truck.

It was like playing some old video game in her head, big bright hieroglyphs making gentle headway against many smaller, finer ones.

Carefully she slowed and steered the dump truck around the corner. Beside her the Craig nodded. “Good choice.”

“He's not going to just let us do this,” Nate said. “He must be planning something else.”

“Let's not stick around to find out,” someone said—Thibault, almost faded into the throng surrounding them.

“Not planning to stick around,” Chizara said, hauling the truck forward, her cars clearing the street of cops.

A sudden volley of gunshots rang out, and they all ducked. Then a second roar of gunfire crackled up from the street.

“Damn it,” Flicker said. “Shaky eyeballs down there. But it looks like he's shooting up your cars, Crash.”

Crash could already feel the damage, could hear the windows shattering, the tires hissing flat, the fuel tanks leaking, even as she healed silicon and metal to keep as many vehicles going as she could. She wouldn't be able to keep this up for long. But how much ammo did cops bring to a
funeral 
?

Chizara, a whole car lot, completely destroyed!

Not my fault, Mom. Talk to the bad guy.

She lumbered the dump truck closer, its reassuring weight, its bulletproof hide. She guided it in among the stalled cars, which offered no more resistance than traffic cones.

Flicker spoke up. “How about this? We can drop into that truck bed from the second-story window, and they won't get a clear shot. They're not really aiming with their eyeballs jittering like that.”

“Perfect,” Crash said. “Everyone down to the second floor.”

THE SECOND-FLOOR OFFICE FELT DARK
and boxed-in after the rooftop. Crash quelled her claustrophobia and ran straight for the window.

Someone pulled her to a stop. “Let me.”

Thibault stepped forward and peered through the window shades. “Whoa. That thing is a
tank
.”

“The dumping bed is thick enough to block signals,” Crash said. “It'll stop bullets.”

Crash reached outside and backed up the dump truck like the overgrown toy it was. Its engine ground closer until its rear thudded into the wall, shaking the building around them.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess we jump now.”

“Yikes,” Thibault said. “That's a ten-foot drop.”

“No problem,” said the Craig. “I'll catch you.”

He ripped the shade down, and winter sunlight streamed in. Then he threw open the window, and leaped onto the sill with surprising lightness.

“One by one,” he said, and dropped out of sight, landing in the truck bed with a resounding metal boom.

Thibault rushed back to the window. Looked down.

“You okay, dude?”

“Jump!” came the answering cry.

Thibault took Flicker by the arm, guided her up. For a moment they kissed, silhouetted by sunlight, her hair tossed by the cold wind.

Then Flicker leaped from the sill with a cry.

“He got her!” Thibault said. “You next, Kelsie.”

“I have to go last,” Kelsie said, pushing Crash forward.

“Busy!” Crash said. Her cars were dying out there, blinking out of the video game. And now she could see the distant edges of her fixing power, where before it had seemed limitless.

Yet with all this going on, she still managed to feel a spark of pleasure at Kelsie's body pressing against hers.

Stay focused, Crash!

“He's only holding his fire while I'm up here,” Kelsie said. “As soon as I'm safe in the truck, they'll start shooting again.
Go
, Zara!”

Crash obeyed, stepping onto the sill. For a moment the whole insane tableau spread out below her, real objects matching the filigree maps of circuitry and pulsing electrons in her mind.

So
many
cops. Could she push this monstrous truck through without crushing a single one?

Still watching the game in her head, she dropped into the Craig's waiting arms.

“Oof! Thanks, Craig.”

Craig set her gently onto the sun-warmed metal of the truck bed. She slid down to join Flicker in the corner near the cab, casting her mind along the escape route, now littered with dead cars, delicate little phones in police officers' pockets filtering in among them.

There is going to be loss of life, Mom.

You cannot, Chizara. I'm serious now. Look into my eyes.

“What's taking so long?” Craig said.

“They're just up there talking,” Flicker said. “Nate! Kelsie! Thibault! Come
on
!”

Endless moments passed. Then Kelsie was swinging her legs over the sill. Chizara imagined bullets flying.