Swarm (41 page)

“Just jump!” she cried.

Kelsie pushed off and Craig stepped forward and caught her.

“Nate wouldn't come!”

“What?” Flicker said. “Bellwether, get
down
here! We all go together!

Chizara put out her arm and scooped Kelsie into the corner with them.

“He said he has to fix this,” Kelsie wept. “Said it's not enough for us to get away. Thibault's arguing with him!”

“Nate! You butthead!” Flicker yelled up at the window. “Cut this macho shit
now
!”

A roar of gunfire answered her, the windblown curtain flailing and tearing. The truck rattled around them. Sounds of shattering glass came from the cab, and the two-way radio fizzled and died.

“Thibault!” Flicker cried.

The engine felt indestructible, but Chizara could feel the fuel tank beneath her. One bullet hole and the truck's lifeblood would start to leak.

Did fuel tanks really explode if you shot them?

“I hate you, Nate.” She started to pull the massive machine away from the wall. “Hang on, everyone.”

The gunfire choked off.

“Wait! Wait!” Flicker cried out. “Something weird's happening!”

Chizara braked the truck, clenching her teeth with the effort.

“All I can see is sky,” Flicker said. “Everyone's looking up!”

“What, is he
flying
in reinforcements?” Kelsie cried.

“Shit.” Flicker held her head, concentrating. “They're all lying down. Hundreds of them.”

“What?” Chizara asked. “He can make them
lie down
?” But she could see, by the stilled phones in their pockets, that the cops around the truck had stopped moving. Two clusters of them were positioned right under the front wheels.

A massacre waiting to happen.

Kelsie stared at her, tearless, terrified. How could Chizara tell her that they weren't going to escape, that Swarm had countered all her glorious power with a bunch of soft-bodied humans
lying on their backs
?

“I'm sorry,” Chizara said. “I tried.”

Wordlessly, Kelsie put her arms around her.

“Let me take a look,” the Craig said.

“No!” all three of them screamed. They threw themselves at his back as he pulled himself up to the rim of the truck bed.

But a volley of shots rang out, and the big guy went limp.

He fell back into their arms, a bullet through his neck.

ANOTHER BURST OF GUNFIRE SOUNDED
as Nate approached the front door of the Dish, but he hardly flinched.

It didn't matter if bullets found him.

Ethan was dead, torn to pieces like Davey. The blood of another Zero was on his hands.

He let the guilt and misery of it overwhelm him. He forced the shame of it through his mind again and again, until his heart broke. Until he was certain that as a leader he was nothing.

The he listened at the door. The banging had stopped.

He opened it.

Two dozen cars filled the street before the Dish, bullet-riddled and window-shattered, leaking fuel that smelled bright and dangerous in the hot sun.

The dump truck was idling, not moving, and a moment later Nate saw why.

A carpet of blue covered the street. Hundred of cops lay on their backs, shuddering and twitching, staring at the sky.

Another jolt of despair went through him. Crash's escape plan had failed. Only he could fix this.

And he was nothing.

He stepped gingerly among the prone policemen. They stared up at him, their eyes bulging with rage, their anger over their fallen brother focused straight at Nate. They were dying to tear him to pieces.

Nate let their hatred come. He deserved it. Glorious Leader that he was, he had lost
two
Zeroes.

It only took a few moments in that concerted glare, and he was ready.

The earth dropped out beneath him, and he was falling, tumbling, lost. That part of him that was hungry for all that attention, even if those hundreds of eyes were glaring pure loathing, stuttered for a moment.

Nate flipped his power inside out.

Making a fist of his shame, he crumbled his ego, already battered and broken by his failure to save Davey and Ethan. All his expectations of obedience, attention, and worship flew apart like thrown sand.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nate had always hated that poem. But holding it in his
mind helped.
The lone and level sands stretch far away. . . .

The pure beams of hostility burning from the police faltered and frayed, then began to slide off him, to point back at the sky.

He was beneath their notice.

Nate walked through the vibrating field of blue, right up to the closest officer in his starched dress uniform. He knelt down to the man's face, staring into his jittering, wrathful eyes.

“I'm not here,” Nate said. “I'm nothing.”

The man kept staring, as if Nate
were
actually nothing, invisible before him.

It was working, but even a whiff of satisfaction would be the end. Nate kept his mind on one simple thought:
I lost two Zeroes. I'm worthless.

He stepped gently over the man. Shuffled his way through the rustling mass of blue, never letting himself feel a moment of certainty, or confidence, or rightness in his actions.

No one stopped him. No one saw him.

A slow minute later and he was in the rearmost ranks of the swarm. Back here the cops were standing, shaking and staring and angry.

Among them stood Quinton Wallace and the senior brass, with the fanciest uniforms, the most medals.

Swarm himself looked bored, staring at the giant dump truck, chewing his lip, planning something.

I'm worthless
, Nate reminded himself.
I'm nothing.

He shambled forward, gathering no attention. Not a glance.

But when he was only a few yards from Quinton Wallace, something wonderful and disastrous happened—a spark of hope shot through Nate.

He saw Ethan.

He was among the police brass, in jeans and a tight suit jacket and tie. His mouth was slack, his eyes vibrating in his skull, his body shuddering and his limbs twitching. He was Swarm's zombie, but he was alive.

Nate tried to stifle the moment of elation. But it was too late.

“Did you think I wouldn't see you?” Quinton Wallace said, his gaze shifting from the Dish.

He laughed, and Nate let the harsh sound burn him even further down.
I'm useless. A danger to the Zeroes. Nothing.

“Be serious,” Swarm said. “I've killed a Stalker before.”

Stalker.
Nate's brain reeled at the word.

It was so obvious now. His and Thibault's powers were the same, turned inside out. This abject Nate was nothing more than another version of Anonymous.

Not Anonymous—Thibault Emmanuel Durant, who never used his hated middle name. Memories flooded in now: every detail of Thibault's face, the conversations they'd shared camping in the Redwoods, all the times here in Cambria when Nate had cut him off, forgetting he was there. The awful thing Ethan's
voice had said two summers ago, about Thibault having been abandoned at the hospital by his parents, like they'd never had an oldest son.

For the first time, Nate really remembered his friend. And finally, having become like him, it was possible to understand that Zen, that rage, that pain.

Nate was learning so much, just as he was about to be torn to pieces. When all he wanted was to know
more
.

“How can you see me,” he asked, “in a crowd this big?”

Quinton Wallace shrugged, waved dismissively at the cops around him. “What crowd? This is all me. Smooth pieces of the whole. As long as I focus, I won't forget you're there.”

Of course. Like being alone with Thibault—tricky, but not impossible. So his plan . . .

Nate's eyes went to the holster of the nearest cop. It was unbuttoned, the gun right there.

The officer took a neat step backward.

“Too late for that,” Swarm said.

Defeat churning in his stomach, Nate let his gaze fall to the ground, to the cops' freshly shined shoes, all exactly the same. He didn't deserve to win, to avenge Davey. He didn't even deserve to live.

“I'm sorry,” he croaked.

“It's okay,” Swarm said coolly. “Trying to shoot me was
something
, at least. It was so disappointing, finding Davey handcuffed and waiting. No challenge at all.”

Nate swayed, tears of shame welling up. “That was my fault too. I told Anon to—”

“Not interested. I think I'll kill you now.” Swarm smiled. “I've never shot anyone before.”

He pointed at Nate's heart, and two dozen police drew their weapons, all aimed at the same spot, fury making their hands shake.

“They'll hit each other,” Nate said, hardly more than a whisper.

“Like I care,” said Quinton Wallace, but then he was frowning, staring at the trembling, extended hand of the officer beside him.

It was empty.

It took a moment, but then Nate understood. He pulled in a ragged breath. “I guess you've never faced two Stalkers before, have you?”

“What do you—”

A shot sang out, its vast and sudden crack erasing all sound from the world, till it came echoing back from the high brick walls of the Heights.

With a look of astonishment Quinton Wallace fell to one knee. He coughed, and blood flew from his mouth, spattering down his blazer and onto the asphalt.

Behind him stood Thibault Emmanuel Durant. Smoke drifted from the barrel of the gun in his hand, and his eyes were wide, fixed, staring down at the kneeling boy.

Wallace raised his hand. His eyes met Nate's, and his bloodied lips moved, trying to say something but only spilling more blood—

The gun roared again, flattening him to the ground.

AS QUINTON WALLACE DIED, THE
cops woke up.

Thibault saw them jerk to consciousness, heard them gasp. They all stared at the weapons in their hands, uncertain why they'd drawn them, why they'd marched a mile in dress uniform, full of anger. The air flicked and zotted with attention strands as they tried to read the situation.

They saw the dead body, and the gun in Thibault's hand, smoke wisping up from it. They didn't need to see Thibault himself—the gun was enough. Their weapons swung around, the muzzles in a jagged row, aimed at his chest.

Their attention blazed so bright, so thick, he didn't even think to start chopping it away. The instant he moved, bullets would fly.

He stood blinded, stiff, waiting to be blasted into oblivion—
true nothingness, the kind his mind would never reach. His hand still ached from the kick of the gun, but it felt impossible to drop it and save himself. It was like he'd shot his own will away, along with Wallace's life.

He was going to die right here, right now.

The police would finish what he'd started two days ago—erasing Thibault Durant from the world.

“Don't shoot!” came Nate's voice, ringing into the silence with its old commanding tone. After those moments of anonymity, he was flipping back to his natural state as the radiant, glorious center of attention.

Like the first spits of a sparkler, his power flew out into the darkness that Swarm's influence had created. It arced across the phalanx of police. Thibault felt himself fade as all that fierce, confused attention left him, shifting to Nate until the guy was lost in its dazzle, his raised hands marshaling every shimmer.

“I'm surrendering! Don't shoot.”

The muzzles swung away from Thibault, and air rushed into his lungs, as if the guns had been squashing them flat. Maybe he wasn't going to die today.

“I had to do it.” Nate's calm voice sounded small after the gunshots. “He was controlling you. But I give up.”