Swarm (16 page)

The voice obliged. It roared up into his throat so fast it nearly winded him. It filled his mouth and latched onto his jaw and grabbed hold of his tongue.

“So, Jess,” it said. “You're into
guys
now?”

Jess's eyes widened. “Holy freaking shit. How did you—”

“Crap!” Ethan shouted in his real voice. “You gave me that lame advice and you don't even
date
girls anymore? Since when do you like guys?”

“Just this one guy, actually. It's complicated.”

Ethan nodded. Pretty much everything was.

OUTSIDE THE DISH, DUSK FELL
over the street. Chizara, wearing dark clothes, waited in the shadows by the corner of the nightclub.

So many happy people lined up out here on Dish party nights, excited to submit themselves to Mob's crowd magic. But tonight it was just a cracked concrete wasteland, blown trash collecting in the corners.

The perfect place to meet a couple of corrupt cops.

Or a Zero killer.

Chizara shook that last thought out of her head. She didn't believe anything Glitch and Coin had to say. They just liked freaking people out.

Ethan kept stepping out from the club's front door, checking the street. Flicker and Nate were right there behind him,
out of sight, though Chizara could feel their phones fumbling for a signal. But was that a third phone, just inside?

Right. Flicker's boyfriend . . .

Anon.
Anonymous! Hold it in your head! He's right there in front of you.

He actually
lived
in the Dish, didn't he? Just like Kelsie.

Kelsie had stayed up in her room. Her crazy childhood had made her leery of cops, especially dirty ones. After the horror movie yesterday, they'd walked and talked half the night. Kelsie had been surprised at Chizara's guilt about Officer Bright getting beaten up last summer. How did that square with the Dish paying out bribes to cops? she'd wanted to know.

It doesn't,
Chizara had replied grimly.

Kelsie had shrugged.
If you ask me, you can't trust dirty cops.

Engine noise rumbled along the street, and Chizara shrank back into the dark. The patrol car's shadow slid along the concrete, blurry in the dusk, and a tire crushed a beer can in the gutter with a metallic crackle. She felt the car's constellation of electronics glide to a stop.

Man, cop cars were crammed with gadgets. It felt like a gleaming blanket of itchy thorns dragged across her body. She was careful to keep everything spinning, but how sweet it would be to crash the whole shebang.

Ethan came out from the Dish and walked toward the car. No sign of the voice's confidence in his gait, just his
own pale-faced, weasely self. He carried the money in a brown paper bag that practically shouted,
Criminal activity!

He was slouching more than usual.
If you imitate the crooked, you become crooked,
her mother always said.

Chizara closed her eyes. She had a job to do.

She sent her mind into the car, feeling her way along the glowing lines inside. From the outskirts of the roof lights, siren, and engine she moved in toward the central fortress around the driver. That glittering little city was the computer mounted by the seat, for looking up license numbers. That shiny thing, the way it split, must be the radio and handset.

And there was the video system, cameras facing forward to record traffic stops. It was running now, the data streaming into a chip. But dirty cops would be aware of their own dashboard cam and would keep it pointed away from anything incriminating. Not what she was looking for.

She could hear Ethan and the two cops murmuring to each other. Ethan sounded like he was
apologizing
. What a coward.

Whatever. She took a soundless step to the edge of the corner, where the signals were clearer, and sifted through the dashboard electronics, the GPS, the radar speed gun, the license-plate reader . . .

Maybe there was no hidden camera. Maybe Murillo and Ang weren't under suspicion.

Man, it was such a
tangle
in there. . . .

Then she found it. An electronic eyeball, no bigger than
a chickpea, was set in the shadow of the dashboard—a microphone, too. Pointed back at the driver, both were busy funneling signals into that tiny box behind them. And that was where the data stopped, it looked like—no pathways ghosted out into the air. The system was designed to be silent, undetectable if the car was swept for bugs.

So the incriminating images were waiting for someone to manually download the data.

Hopefully that hadn't happened in the last day.

Chizara pushed her mind closer to that little memory box, her jaw tight. If she broke the car, the cops would be stuck here, wondering what had happened.

It was like reaching into a fire to pick up a hot coal. Delicately, with exquisite care not to touch anything else, she reached for the paining ember.

She snuffed it out. But crashing it gave her no relief—so much other e-stuff pecked and chittered inside that car, inside Chizara's head.

Check your work,
Bob's voice reminded her gently. She probed the empty space she'd made in the brilliant labyrinth of the car. Not a glimmer. Everything that needed to die was dead, and nothing else was broken.

When the investigators found that precision damage, they'd guess that Murillo and Ang were hiding something. That was the only reason Chizara had agreed to any of this—the missing data would throw suspicion on them.

She retreated back along the side alley, breathing slowly as she recovered from the precision work.

Scam and the cops were still talking, but Chizara wanted the car and all its fancy tech
gone
. How long did it take to hand a sack of money over?

Finally she heard the voice calling smoothly, “Thank you, officers.”

The engine surged and some of the electronics brightened, shafting pain through Chizara's head. The vehicle's glittering constellation moved away.

She poked her head around the corner. Ethan was waving, like those cops were his favorite uncles or something.

A minute later all of them were outside. Even Kelsie, who must have been watching from her window upstairs.

“So, Crash, was there a recording?” Nate asked.

“There was. There isn't anymore.” She shrugged. “At least not in that car. Someone could have downloaded the data already. Who knows?”

Chizara let herself enjoy the expression the words created on Ethan's face.

“It's only been twenty-four hours,” Nate said. “If Internal Affairs inspected every police car in Cambria that often, the whole force would know something was up.”

“Those two cops weren't worried,” Flicker said. “No nervous glances over their shoulders. They don't have a clue about any investigation.”

“Perfect,” Nate said with a nod. “Good work, Crash and Scam.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said. “But now those guys want fifteen hundred every time we open.”

Nate gave them all a theatrical shrug. “The Dish isn't about money.”

Rich people said that a lot, Chizara had noticed. Nothing was ever about money when you had more than enough.

“They won't be satisfied,” Kelsie said softly from the shadows closer to the club. She was still looking down the street after the police car, like they might turn around and come back. “Blackmailers never are.”

Ethan stepped closer and put an arm around her. “It's okay, Kelsie. Whatever happens, the Zeroes can fix it. We had a plan and it worked. Right, guys?”

“Hey, we found Glitch and Coin.” That was Anon, taking Flicker's hand. “And we'll find them again.”

“Exactly,” Ethan said, pulling Kelsie a little closer. “It's all handled.”

Chizara felt a shimmer of annoyance at Ethan's glomming onto Kelsie without asking. She was about to say something to break up the self-congratulation party when a voice called out from across the street.

“Hold it right there, baby bro!”

Everyone turned.

A woman stepped out from darkness, and the streetlight lit
up her buzz cut. She looked like Ethan, but like Ethan stretched out to six feet tall, with some serious muscle pumped in.

“Oh, crap,” Ethan said.

The woman strode at him across the street. And from her own experience of being an older sister, Chizara knew that this one was
mightily
pissed off.

“WHAT THE HELL DID I
just see there?”

Without meaning to, Chizara took a step back into the shadows.

Jess towered over Ethan, big, strong, and loud.

“Nothing!” Ethan whined. “Just talking to some guys I know.”

“Some guys in uniform? Just talking and then
handing something over
? What the hell was in that bag? Drugs? You got a meth lab going here or something?” She shot a look at the Dish.

Nate, Flicker, and Kelsie had retreated just like Chizara. They stood in the doorway, looking guilty, as if this bellowing artillery trooper had guessed exactly right. The Dish did look derelict enough to be a meth lab, at least from the outside.

Scam stood straighter. Jess saw the move and slapped him on the arm.

“Don't you
dare
use your smart mouth with me. No wonder you kept talking about getting killed. That's what happens when you mess with
drugs
!”

“I only gave them
money
,” Ethan whispered. “And would you mind not shouting it for the whole street to hear?”

Jess took hold of Ethan's shoulders and gave him an outraged shake. “You know Mom's investigating the police, right? If there weren't so many witnesses, I would be inflicting such serious bodily injury on you, Ethan Thomas Cooper.”

Chizara felt the brick wall of the Dish against her shoulder blades. She'd backed off as far as she could.

Jess was like Mom's Look personified, with an army cut and a buttload of righteous rage thrown in. The Virgin Mary would have felt guilty standing here.

And Chizara was far from blameless. She'd just used her power to erase evidence of police corruption.

What had she turned into?

It was like Jess had slapped her awake, bulldozing the whole fantasy world she'd been living in, built of wishful thinking, Zeroes loyalty, and all her shiny new toys in the Dish. Her moral Faraday cage, keeping out the stings of guilt and conscience. A way to keep doing her experiments on unsuspecting crowds.

Mom would
not
be proud.

Nate stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “You must be Jess.”

Chizara felt his power mute the volume of her conscience. There were six people here—plus Anon—enough for Nate to play Glorious Leader all he wanted.

“Ethan's sister, right?” Nate pressed on.

Jess must have felt his power too. A little of the fight went out of her. But she still looked reluctant about shaking hands with him.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“I'm Nate Saldana. This is my nightclub.”

Chizara felt the little charge of awesomeness he'd injected into the word
nightclub
and fought not to feel impressed.

“Pleased to meet you,” Jess said automatically, and submitted to a handshake.

Nate gave his best class-president smile. “I can't offer you any meth, alas. But let me introduce Chizara, our head technician.”

Chizara found herself drawn out of the shadows, into the glowing sunshine of Nate's gaze.

She smiled and shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Jess.”

“And this is Riley, in charge of inventory.”

Jess took in the dark glasses and white cane, and her angry expression faltered a little more. This blind white girl with excellent posture didn't match her expectations of a meth cook somehow.

You had to admit that Nate was pretty damn
good
at this.