Swarm (12 page)

“Distract me?” she pleaded in a whisper.

Chizara leaned closer, her words a breath against Kelsie's ear. “Okay. What's up between you and Scam?”

Kelsie shrugged. “He's a good guy.”

“Yeah, sure. If you like pathological liars.”

Kelsie sighed. She knew most of the Zeroes disliked Ethan. Watching his voice work could be downright unnerving. But
she could tell it and the real Ethan apart. They all could. So why freak out about it?

“I wouldn't have met any of you guys if it wasn't for Ethan.”

“I guess we owe him for that, at least,” Chizara said begrudgingly.

“He's not my type, if that's what you're asking,” Kelsie said.

Chizara looked kind of relieved, even as she said, “It's okay if he is. I mean, I'm not judging. Seriously.”

Kelsie was about to insist that he
wasn't
, but a surge came from the crowd as the movie shifted gear. The stalking camera had gotten closer, moving up behind the girl.

She felt the crowd's excitement roll over her. In turn she opened up the feedback loop and gave back some of her own desire to be distracted and entertained. Maybe she and Chizara were supposed to be keeping watch for Glitch and Coin, but Kelsie couldn't help joining in with the audience. Becoming part of the excitement.

Then a jolt went through her—it hadn't come from the crowd, but from deep inside her.

“Hey,” Chizara said, “isn't that the Parker-Hamilton in the background?”

Kelsie stayed silent, hoping it wasn't.

“I guess they shot this last summer, before it was demolished.”

Kelsie couldn't answer. She remembered her dad tied up,
the countdown to the hotel's demolition ringing in their ears. She'd thought she was going to die there too.

Chizara was looking at her. “Kelsie?”

Kelsie gripped the armrests. She felt sick.

She shut her eyes against the sight of the doomed hotel. But it was too late. The flashbacks had started. Tied up in a car trunk, a bag over her head. Then strapped to a concrete pole on an abandoned floor of the hotel. Her dad nearby, beaten nearly to death. Too far away for her to reach out to him.

Her dad in the hospital. Her dad dying. Dead. Gone.

She started to sweat. This sequence played out in her dreams sometimes, but never when she was awake.

The world began to spin around her. And with it, the theater crowd spun too. Her fear flooded out into the room. The movie soundtrack grew ominous, dragging them all along with it.

Kelsie opened her eyes, taking deep breaths. Trying to put herself back in the story. The fictional story. The one on the screen, not the one playing over and over in her head.

This movie was about someone else. A nameless girl on-screen. It wasn't about Kelsie.

But then the stalking camera made its move, closing swiftly in a parking lot. A bright, shiny needle went into the girl's neck. She swooned, and was shoved into the waiting trunk of a car. . . .

“Oh my God.”

Panic flooded Kelsie. Her hand shot out and gripped Chizara's arm.

She tried to stand, but the shaky darkness of the trunk had swallowed her will. By now the whole crowd was swept up with Kelsie, her fear roaring and rebounding off the movie theater's walls.

The nightmares she'd been swallowing for six months came tumbling out.

CHIZARA FOUGHT FOR CONTROL
.

Kelsie's fear spilled over from the next seat, ricocheting around the theater. It was much stronger than the images on the screen—tightening ropes, the villain's cold-lit face—and the stings of foreboding music.

The fear made it harder to bear the hundreds of needling phones in the audience behind her, and the knot of itchy pain in the back of her head from the multichannel speaker system. With Mob's power drenching her, Chizara had to consciously fend off every spike of tech.

She held Kelsie's hand tight. On-screen the trunk lid slammed shut, and Chizara felt the thump of Kelsie's fear in her gut.

“It's all right,” she muttered.

“No.” Kelsie shook her head. “It's not.”

In brief scraps of screen light Chizara made out Kelsie's staring eyes. With each jangle and scrape of the soundtrack more fear was welling out of her.

But it's
her
fear, not mine,
Chizara thought, ferociously trying to keep the two separate.
Kelsie's fear of . . .

Of course. Last summer. Sack over the head, trunk, tied wrists—this was the worst day of Kelsie's life all over again. This crappy movie had let those bad memories loose. Chizara felt them reaching deep inside her, blotting out her rational mind.

With a massive effort she twisted from the screen to the audience. People clutched each other, blank-faced and cowering in their seats. A few called out curses, prayers, each other's names, from mouths square with terror. And the fear kept ratcheting up.

“You've got to control this, Kelsie!” Chizara called out over the noise.

“How?” Kelsie gasped.

At least she wasn't screaming,
I can't!
Nate's training had brought her that far.

“Look at me, Kelsie!”

But Kelsie's eyes were locked in horrible communion with the screen. Above them people were howling now, scrambling along the seat rows. Chizara wanted to howl and scramble too. But if she lost control, she'd crash everything, plunge
the theater into absolute blackness, brick every phone, panic everyone so much worse.

“You're
okay
.” She forced the words through gritted teeth, made her terrified self listen. “You can deal with this.”

Someone tumbled between her and Kelsie, making straight for the exit. Other people followed, jumping the rows, their phones zapping Chizara in the head as they passed.

Okay, time to deal with this herself.

She looked up at the beam of light flashing the terror-soaked images on the screen. Her mind followed it back into the projection booth. A tiny bright complex of electronics unspooled those jittery images, syncing them to a dozen rumbling speakers. . . .

It would be so easy to blot out the whole system in a single swipe.

Stay calm. Only what's necessary.

She didn't even crash the projector, just doused the bulb. She didn't blow the whole audio setup, just knocked the optical track sensors offline. Done.

But it made the theater darker, and the crowd still roared and fought to get away. Chizara found the circuit for the house lighting and sent a surge at it. The lights flickered on for a moment, then popped all at once. Wisps of smoke and tiny showers of glass shards disappeared into darkness.

Damn. Not enough control. The only light came from the exit signs and people's phone screens.

Kelsie's hand had gone limp. Closed eyes. No expression. Her fear had hunched her down so hard that she'd slid half off her seat, maybe passed out. But the feedback loop was still coursing through her and the crowd.

She must be caught in a nightmare. Chizara had to get her out of here.

She slid her arms under Kelsie's shoulders and knees. The girl was slim, like she burned up everything she ate with dancing.

Chizara had to force herself toward the front emergency exit. She still saw shadows of images on the screen, a primal aversion lingering behind her eyelids.

At the exit door she turned and pushed backward against the bar. The heavy door swung out.

Into daylight.

A grubby-looking alleyway—but anything was better than the boomeranging fear in the movie theater. Chizara carried Kelsie away, the panic fading into the soft burn of wireless transmissions, normal for downtown Cambria on a Sunday afternoon.

She looked for a place to put Kelsie down before her knees gave out. As well as wobbling with fear, they ached from the optical and power cables funneling stuff back and forth under the asphalt.

At the alley's end was a sidewalk lunch place, closed for the weekend—although an LED sign by its door spelled out
O-P-E-N,
letter by letter, over and over, with an irritating tickle in Chizara's brain. Outside the café stood curly iron seats and tables chained to the ground.

As Chizara carried her in among the chairs, Kelsie began to stir. “What the . . .”

“Shh, everything's okay.”

The seat farthest from the tickling sign could hold two people. Chizara sank onto it and settled Kelsie beside her.

Kelsie swayed, blinking at the curly chairs like she'd landed in a parallel universe.

“Where are we?”

“Outside the movie, remember? You passed out.”

As if to remind her, the distant emergency exit swung open and a few girls sprayed out, mascara streaked down their faces.

Kelsie watched them intently. “Oh, yeah. The car trunk.”

Through the whine of receding phones Chizara felt a scatter of fear-drops hit her psyche. Kelsie was shedding panic like a dog shaking off water.

Chizara put an arm around her. They were both trembling with relief and leftover fear.

“I never realized,” Chizara finally said, “what you and Scam went through back in July, the Bagrovs kidnapping you. Trying to
murder
you. I guess I was too busy reveling in my big crash . . .”

She looked away, feeling again that epic moment when she'd brought the Parker-Hamilton down. It
had
been pretty
amazing. But Kelsie hadn't even seen it. She'd been in the ambulance, taking her dying dad to the hospital.

Kelsie fixed her with her big green eyes and sealed Chizara's hand between both of hers. “You saved me.”

Chizara smiled. “I don't think you were in serious danger. You weren't in the crush.”

“No,” Kelsie said, her breath going ragged. “Last summer, I mean. In that hotel. You saved all of us, me and Ethan and Nate and—even my
dad
, for a little while . . .”

Tears sprang to her eyes and her pale face crumpled. Two tears fell hot onto Chizara's wrist.

Kelsie covered her face. Words and tears wormed out between her fingers: “And I never even said thank you!” She was crying too hard to go on.

Chizara put her arms around Kelsie and pulled her in, resting her chin on Kelsie's blond curls as the girl sobbed and shook. Sounded like these tears had been a long time coming.

Chizara held on tight, rocking her. She hadn't embraced a friend like this since grade school. And it had been a year or so since Ikem had gone from accepting her hugs to acting like they gave him an electric shock. But she was doing the right thing now, holding this girl, she knew it. She'd wait out these tears, her head getting jabbed from that damn sign and her butt aching with the city's workings.

Let Kelsie cry just as long as she needed.

THE CHOIR SANG BACKUP WHILE
they kissed.

It was always new, feeling her lips against Thibault's. Some part of her brain always forgot how good it was, though her body remembered. But Flicker was fairly certain that this whole choir-singing-while-kissing thing had never happened before.

Harmonies filled the air, their reverberations and echoes mapping the vast open space around them. The choir pushed out all other sound except for Thibault's breathing, which grew quick and shuddery as she ran her fingers up inside his shirt.

She allowed herself a little peek at the couple standing at the altar. All eyes were on them, and they really were beautiful. They looked way too happy for this marriage to be the loveless attention grab that the tabloids claimed it was.

Their lips parted, and Thibault murmured, “See anything?”

“What makes you think I'm even watching?” Flicker asked, guiltily shutting off her power. God, K-Mo's dress was amazing, though.

“Because that's why we're here,” he said. “To keep an eye on things.”

“Come for the stakeout, stay for the make-out.”