Zeroes

by Scott Westerfeld

  “That’s because we’re alone. If there were a few more people in this room, there’d be too many competing signals, too many other people to focus on.” The sneer was dying out on Ethan’s face. “Remember down in the lobby? I could barely get you to listen to me.”

  Ethan was listening now. All the scratchiness had gone out of their connection. “So you’re like Nate and Chizara—stronger in a crowd?”

  “Flicker, too. With more eyes around, she sees more. Yours is the only power that works best one-on-one.” Thibault bit back the words “you freak.” Compassion was the Way. “Even up here, when you wander into another room, you forget me.”

  “So you can’t control it at all?”

  “If I need to disappear, I can snip whatever connection there is.” He made the chopping gesture across his face, holding eye contact so Ethan would feel the break but not lose him altogether. “But I can’t turn my power off. People always forget me in the end. Do you have any idea what that means?”

  Ethan looked blank. He really didn’t remember what he’d said last summer.

  Fine. Let him sit there and think about what anonymity meant. It had taken Thibault thirteen years to figure out. Thirteen years to realize that he had to leave home, because trying to get his family to remember him only made it all hurt worse.

  Of course, even if Ethan did understand, half an hour from now he’d lose it again. Thibault could explain ten times over how completely alone he was, but it wouldn’t stick.

  The only other creature in the world that would ever know Thibault was the voice, that beast inside Ethan. And it didn’t really know anything, except as a means to further Ethan’s desires.

  Thibault flashed back to last summer at Nate’s, to the same room they’d met in this afternoon. Nate had said something to piss Ethan off, and then Ethan had started venting on the others. There in the back row, Thibault had foolishly thought he was safe. There were five people in the room, usually enough to make him Anonymous.

  But then Ethan’s angry gaze crawled up and caught on him, like two hooks through Thibault’s face into the person behind, the one that nobody ever truly saw. Without missing a beat, the voice tore straight into that kid inside him, like a hyena wrenching out chunks of flesh.

  It hurt, but at the same time something inside Thibault—his younger self, always hungry for a solid connection—took a weird delight in the attack. Another person was looking into his eyes, knowing him, speaking his most private memories. It was everything Thibault had ever wanted: to be seen, to have his insides seen, to be understood.

  But then the hyena’s teeth had gone too deep, opening a vein of secrets Thibault didn’t want to think about: those days in the hospital when he was thirteen years old—feverish, alone, thirsty, forgotten by the nurses. By his own mother.

  That terrified, trapped kid had hated humanity for shutting him out. That kid was still inside this other, older Thibault who had found his own anonymous way within the Way.

  And it could happen again, if Ethan lost his temper and lashed out. Sharing this penthouse with him was like living with an unexploded bomb.

  A knock came on the door, and Thibault flinched, imagining police on the other side. Or angry drug dealers. Or Nate with a finally found you smile on his face.

  Ethan had jumped as well, but now he laughed. “Dude. It’s just the burgers.”

  “I know.” Thibault pointed at the extra bedroom. “But you should hide.”

  “Why? Nobody in this hotel knows the cops are looking for me.”

  “Yeah, but if anyone sees you, they’ll remember someone was in the penthouse. Me, they’ll forget once I close the door. You got any cash?”

  Ethan frowned. “Doesn’t it go on the room?”

  “Not really. Once I get back on the hotel network, this meal never happened. We have to tip cash or the staff gets nothing.”

  “Oh, right. Mr. Morality.” Ethan laughed, handing over a twenty. “Whatever. Lucky I kept a big wad of the Craig’s money. ‘Bellwether’ isn’t as smart as he thinks.” He disappeared into the bedroom, a swagger in his walk.

  It was Chuck at the door, a big guy with a smile as broad as his shoulders.

  “Just leave it here inside the door,” Thibault said, handing over the twenty. Today he didn’t have time to hear for the fifteenth time how Chuck had played college football, blowing out his knee senior year.

  Thibault pocketed the check, got Chuck outside, and snipped the connection just in time. As the door swung shut, Ethan came wandering out of the bedroom, looking dazed and uncertain.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said.

  Thibault took a slow breath. No one and everyone, buddy. Just like you.

  “My name’s written on your hand,” he said. “Hope you’re still hungry.”

  CHAPTER 29

  MOB

  “YOU LOOK FUNNY,” LING YELLED over the music. “Never seen you jumpy in a club before.”

  Kelsie tried to smile. She didn’t know how to explain that her dad had robbed a bank and she was hiding from mobsters. And Ling didn’t watch the news.

  “Just tired. Didn’t make it home today, so I had to sleep at Remmy’s.”

  Ling laughed. “If you can call that sleeping.”

  “Hey,” Remmy yelled from across the table. “My dorm room is five-star!”

  Kelsie had to smile at that. When she’d showed up at Remmy’s that afternoon, saying she needed to crash, he hadn’t asked any questions. He’d just said, “Stay as long as you want. There’s no food and the TV’s busted.” Then he’d headed out to a math study group.

  His bed was comfortable enough, but sleep wasn’t easy. Her dad was facing life in prison, and she’d been made homeless by the threat of mobsters. At least final exams were over, and the dorm’s mellow summer-term buzz had watered down Kelsie’s anxiety.

  That was why she’d dragged Remmy and Ling to the Boom Room tonight. Even with her life turned upside down, Kelsie always found safety in numbers.

  The Boom was an old-fashioned place with live music and a young crowd. It played roots, blues, soul and funk, and maybe some Tejano rock or bluegrass. It had a canopied doorway and a wide, guitar-shaped sign on the roof. No self-respecting gangster would be caught dead here in a million years.

  Kelsie didn’t always like the music at the Boom, but she trusted the crowd. Maybe it was the live music, full of feedback loops between band and audience. Or maybe the folks here just knew how to have a good time. It was where Kelsie went when she needed to feel safe.

  It was also a good place to find Fig, who owed her dad three thousand dollars. The Boom was the first place Fig had taken Kelsie when he found out she loved dancing in a crowd. Fig was about halfway between Dad’s age and hers, and had somehow managed the trick of being friends with both of them.

  Fig was always good at steering Dad away from anything too dangerous or stupid. Kelsie was pretty sure her father hadn’t asked for Fig’s thoughts on the whole bank-robbery idea.

  Fig wasn’t at the Boom, but at eleven he’d be bartending at Fuse next door.

  Until then, there was nothing to do but dance.

  * * *

  “Come on, fess up,” Ling said a few songs later. “You got a stalker or something?”

  Kelsie shook her head. But she kept scanning the crowd, looking for that guy from the diner. The guy with the duffel bag who’d gotten inside her dad’s head and made the robbery go wrong. How had he known her name?

  It had to be from the clubs.

  “A stalker?” Remmy yelled over the music, and turned to Kelsie. “There somebody you need beaten up?”

  He flexed a bicep, and Kelsie just laughed and shoved him toward the mosh pit at the front of the throwback hard-core band onstage. Three chords and three minutes per song, about a billion beats a second.

  She couldn’t drag anyone else into this business of her dad’s. They were all her friends, Remmy and Mikey and Ling and a dozen others. But she’d never opened up to any of
them, not one-on-one. She wasn’t wired that way.

  Her dad had always warned her against too much trust. Trust was tricky when your life was one con after another. And she’d started helping him when she was ten years old.

  He’d never realized what his little girl was doing—she wasn’t sure herself, at first. But she knew it was real. She could nudge a poker table into a cheerful carelessness that made them bet high. She could defuse a group’s anger when they realized they’d been scammed. Dad called her his lucky charm.

  But that same power also tanked her school grades, because every exam was like drowning in a room full of other people’s fear, no matter how hard she studied. And her power was the reason she’d never had a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Not even a best friend.

  Because crowds were always better.

  This close to the stage Kelsie was bumped and jostled, knocked and pushed. But it felt good. Every time she spun around, people were smiling, mouthing the words sorry or my bad. She was only sorry there weren’t more people banging into her.

  That guy in the diner had known her name. And he’d mentioned her mom.

  That wasn’t just stalking. That was reading her mind. Getting inside her head, where no one was allowed.

  What if he was in this room, watching her?

  Kelsie took the energy of the crowd and ramped it up. She unleashed all her anger and fear and channeled it out of herself. She bounced it off the people in the room, turned it into pure heat and power.

  The energy on the dance floor ballooned, pulling her away from everything Dad had told her, everything he’d done to ruin their lives.

  The music pulsed faster than any heartbeat, as fast as nervous twitches or neurons firing. Kelsie slipped into the center, becoming one with it and all the bodies around her.

  She shut her eyes and danced it out, teased and bumped and shook to the beat and the power of the mob. She hadn’t felt safe all day, ever since she’d seen Dad in that blue car by the bank. But she was safe here, in the heart of this storm.

  A roar went up and she opened her eyes. A reedy guy in jeans and no shirt teetered at the edge of the stage. A hundred hands reached up and he jumped, then drifted across the room on a surface of sweaty palms. There was a sudden focus in the crowd, all their energies surging up through that one body held aloft like a sacrifice.

  Kelsie sent her anxiety into that buoyant hub of sweat and muscle and pushed . . .

  The guy soared now, carried by the crowd and Kelsie’s will. She shut her eyes, sensing his passage through the fingertips of the crowd. She pulled him in a circle, a rock in a sling, faster and faster as the music built toward the climax of another three-minute song.

  “Jesus,” she heard Ling say, and opened her eyes.

  The guy slid frictionlessly, as if those sweaty palms beneath him were ice. His face was pale, his mouth open in a scream lost in the music.

  “Oh, God,” Kelsie said, and her grip on the crowd sputtered. The guy slipped among the outstretched arms, crashing to the floor at speed.

  The song came to a sudden end, one of those hard-core stops like someone had stabbed the mute button. The guy stumbled out of the crowd, bleeding and astonished.

  Kelsie ran after him. Detached from the surrounding buzz, she felt all her anxiety tumbling back down on her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she kept saying.

  By the time they reached him, he was throwing up in the corner. The people around him were in retreat, laughing or horrified, no longer united by the strange power of Kelsie’s magic.

  Ling was right beside him, her hand on his gleaming back. “Dude. You okay?”

  The guy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. As he turned to look up at Ling, Kelsie spotted the exact moment when he saw how beautiful she was.

  “I’m good,” he managed. “How’s it going?”

  That was boys for you, whenever they saw Ling.

  It looked like all he had was a nosebleed. Kelsie felt her relief echo in the crowd around her. A barback had already started mopping up the vomit.

  Ling said, “I’ll get him some water. Want a drink?”

  Kelsie shook her head. Drinking only made her sleepy, and she didn’t need to sleep; she needed to be up. Just maybe not as up as she’d been a minute ago.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to the guy. “Glad you’re okay.”

  He looked at her blankly. That was the thing about not trusting anyone—nobody knew this was all her fault.

  And that moment of focus while he’d surfed the crowd . . . that had been amazing. She’d forgotten everything that scared her.

  Kelsie needed strength tonight, and this was definitely the place to get it. She just had to be more careful.

  The guy was climbing back to his feet, already twitching to get on the dance floor again. So as the first note of the next song struck, Kelsie took a deep breath and threw herself back into the crowd. She took its energy and pushed higher, keeping the dancers banging. Her anger and fear was slowly turning into something clear and hard, like ashes crushed into a diamond.

  Sometimes the effort gave Kelsie head spins and she stumbled and fell. But somebody caught her; somebody always caught her.

  Maybe she could get through this. She just needed to find her crowd.

  CHAPTER 30

  SCAM

  “PREPARE TO DIE!” ETHAN CRIED, leaning forward on the couch, his thumbs flying across the controller. He was back in the Gold Palace at last, one boss fight away from the Transmog Apple.

  The Grand Vizier began his endless entrance speech. Ethan skipped past it, then launched a fusillade of missiles and spells.

  The battle was fast and furious, the Vizier’s lightning versus Ethan’s fire, blue magic versus red. But Ethan was supreme at this game.

  Not the greatest boss fight ever, pure thumb twitch, but satisfying. Ethan still couldn’t believe his luck that this hotel room had Red Scepter III.

  But then something weird happened.

  That little elf—the annoying one from a few scenes back—showed up in the throne room and started pinging away with his bow. Before Ethan could react, two vampire arrows were sunk in his back, each of them leaching a life point every second.

  “What? Wait!” He tried to spin and return fire, but the Vizier was still spitting out lightning. . . .

  And suddenly Ethan was dead.

  The next arrow whistled through his fading form and struck the weakened Grand Vizier, who crapped it on the spot. And the little elf went dancing past their corpses to grab the Transmog Apple.

  “No way!” What was wrong with this hotel game system? Nonplayer characters weren’t supposed to win. Had it reset itself to expert mode again?

  Ethan went to the startup menu. But it wasn’t set to expert.

  It was in two-player mode.

  “What the . . .”

  “Owned again!” came a voice from beside him. “Exact same spot!”

  Ethan jumped halfway off the couch, astonished to find someone sitting right next to him. Adrenaline shot through his system, all his game-world anxiety exploding into reality.

  It was . . . that guy. Again. There was something Ethan was supposed to do now—a joystick fighting move baked into his reflexes.

  He glanced at his hand. A name was written there.

  “Thibault.” It came rushing back. “You cheated, man!”

  “Not hardly!” Thibault laughed. He was pale, with dark hair and intense blue eyes. He looked more familiar every second.

  “But I thought you were some random elf !” As he said the words, Ethan realized that this had all happened before. Every time he sank too far into the game, his awareness of the world around him faded, along with his awareness of his opponent.

  “Them’s the rules.” Thibault held out a piece of hotel stationery. Written on it was an agreement in Ethan’s own handwriting. Thibault scored a point every time his wussy elf got the Transmogrification Apple, even if Ethan forgot what was going on.


  At the bottom was the score: seven to zero.

  “This game sucks,” Ethan said.

  Then he remembered the rest of it—he was being pursued by the cops, the Craig, and a deranged bank robber. On top of which he was staying in this luxury hotel room illegally.

  He looked nervously at the door. “Crap. Was I too loud?”

  “No one’s staying on this floor but us.” Thibault shrugged, put down his controller. “But yeah, maybe we should hit the sack. It’s almost eleven.”

  “Eleven?” Ethan looked up at the clock on the kitchenette wall. “At night?”

  The last thing he remembered was eating a burger that afternoon.

  What if living with Thibault was giving him brain damage? All those slices of time being snipped out . . .

  And then it hit him.

  “Damn. It’s been over twenty-four hours since I talked to my mom! She’s going to kill me if I don’t call her. Lend me your phone? Chizara nuked mine.”

  “Mine too,” Thibault said tiredly, like they’d already had this conversation. “I was there, remember?”

  “Right. Then I’ll use the . . .” Ethan turned to the table next to the couch. The big plastic handset of the hotel phone was there, covered with buttons for room service and laundry, and also with a note:

  Don’t use the phone. —Bellwether

  “What?” Ethan asked. “Why the hell not?”

  Thibault sighed again. “Have you forgotten that bad people are looking for you?”

  “No, but my mom must be too! It’s been a whole day. She’s going to panic and call the cops!”

  “She is the cops, Ethan. She can get a call traced, and you’re wanted as a material witness. So no calls from here!”

  “Okay, okay.” Ethan stood up and headed for the door. “I’ll go down to the street and borrow someone’s—”

  On the door was another note:

  Stay in this room until further notice! —Bellwether

  Ethan rubbed at his scalp. “Why are there notes from Nate everywhere?”

  “Because you keep forgetting that I exist!” Thibault came around in front of him, staying in his view, keeping between him and the door. “You have to stay out of sight. The cops want you, and so does that dealer you stole the money from. We’re only a block from Ivy Street, where this all started!”