Zeroes

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Seriously?” he was saying to Ethan. “Was that you talking? You were just going to tell her?”

  “Sorry, man,” Ethan said, staring at the ground. “But she saved us.”

  What were they talking about? Ethan had been about to say something, but this new guy was seriously distracting. . . .

  She dragged Ethan closer, her mind focusing again. She’d let herself get distracted by the crowd around them. She had to get him someplace quiet.

  “I need a pen,” Ethan said nonsensically.

  “What?”

  “To write his name with.” Ethan was staring at the palm of his free hand. “It rubbed off. I’m going to forget his name!”

  Great. Turned out the guy was high, or a psycho of some kind. Maybe he’d just been babbling random words in the bank and gotten lucky with their names.

  But that didn’t make sense. Jerry was a common name, but Kelsie? And both of them together?

  No. Somewhere down in his wasted brain he knew something.

  “Teebo!” Ethan said, pulling on the front of his shirt. “I remember, because Teebo lent me this shirt. Do you have a pen? He was just here, but he disappears in crowds. . . .”

  Ethan wasn’t what she’d been expecting. He was a lot weirder.

  “Look, Ethan,” she said. “When Craig finds your room empty, he’ll head back to Ivy. We have to get off the street.”

  The mention of Craig made Ethan quiet and obedient again. He let her guide him down the street, mumbling the nonsense word “teebo” over and over.

  “Are you faking this?” she finally said. “You didn’t seem this crazy upstairs. And in that bank video, you were totally smooth.”

  He drew her to a halt and leaned in closer to whisper, as if anyone could hear him over the blare of nightclub music and crowd babble. “You deserve to know. But I need someplace quiet. It works better one-on-one.”

  Kelsie nodded as if that made sense. Whatever it took to get this guy someplace where she could interrogate him. She knew a bunch of hiding spots around here. She just had to pick one where none of Craig’s friends would stumble on them.

  Then she saw the Boom Room ahead, its guitar-shaped roof signboard lit up by a string of dancing lights.

  “I know just the place.” She tried to drag him forward, but Ethan anchored her to the spot. “Now what?”

  She spun. A short guy in a crumpled white jacket had his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. He was rocking gently like he was happily stoned.

  “You’re that kid,” the stranger said.

  “Nah. I’m really not,” Ethan said, trying to move around the stranger.

  “From the internet!” The stranger turned to his friends in the crowd. All of them looked just as stoned. “Hey, bro, don’t we know this kid from the internet?”

  “Totally, bro,” said one them. “He’s the kid in that bank video.”

  Kelsie felt a bubble of curiosity surrounding Ethan. She tried to grab hold of the energy and tamp it back down—the last thing they needed was attention—but gossip was slippery and small, like minnows bursting out.

  One of the guys was shouting, “Hey! We got a celebrity!”

  Kelsie felt her ears pop. The focus of the crowd was gathering like nasty weather.

  She dragged Ethan a few more steps toward the Boom Room. Usually a crowd was good cover. Safety in numbers. But a feedback loop had already formed. People were staring at Ethan, then other people noticed and turned to see what everyone was staring at. . . .

  A camera flash went off. Ethan put a hand up like he was warding off a blow.

  “Coming through!” Kelsie tried to break the growing focus of the crowd. “Excuse me.”

  Then someone was right in front of her. A tall dark figure.

  Her brain searched and spun—the guy from upstairs again.

  “Not this way,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Police.”

  There were two cops near the door of the Boom Room, their eyes drawn by the rumblings of the crowd around Ethan.

  She scanned for an opening in the throng, but the tall guy placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “Your bigger problem is back there,” he said. “There’s not much I can do against those guys.”

  Even as he said the words, Kelsie felt the heavy, unswerving approach. The mini crowd of giant men closing in, full of purpose. No point even looking.

  Craig was on Ivy Street.

  “Thanks,” she said, but to no one in particular.

  Great. Ethan’s craziness was contagious. Now she was talking to herself. Beside her, Ethan let out a strangled whimper.

  The two police officers were closing in from the direction of the Boom Room, drawn by the activity around Ethan. She felt their professional curiosity merge with the crowd’s more primitive, rampant interest. She felt Craig’s intensity ramp up as he caught sight of Ethan.

  “Get him out of here!” someone whispered in her ear.

  “I’m trying!” Kelsie turned, but there were only strangers around her.

  She pulled her messenger bag in close. The crowd was starting to crackle with her uneasiness. That was good. It gave her something to work with. She took hold of their anxiety and pushed. Enough to get them swirling, moving in a wheel around her.

  She glanced at Ethan. He was trapped in the same loop as the rest of the crowd, his panic arcing higher.

  She pinched and twisted his wrist. Hard.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “You have to stay separate from the mob,” she said. “Trust me, okay? It’s about to get crazy.”

  Ethan didn’t seem convinced. He still looked like he was going to make a bolt for it. Fair enough. Craig was still powering through the crowd behind them. The cops were closing in on her left.

  They needed cover. She had to unleash the full power of a crowd storm right now.

  She reached into her bag.

  CHAPTER 48

  BELLWETHER

  AT LAST THE LIGHTS OF Ivy appeared through the windshield, gaudy and chaotic.

  Nate parked the Audi on a side street, got out, and took a long look at the crowd.

  “A short sparkly dress?” he muttered. Seemed like half the women in the street glittered, and every dress was the same length—about as short as it could be.

  He slipped one earbud back in as he walked. “You still there, Flick?”

  “I’m on Ivy,” she said. “I think they’re in trouble. But it’s hard to track. Too many eyeballs.”

  “Try to get into Scam’s head and stay there.”

  Flicker didn’t answer. Her breath was short and sharp in Nate’s ears.

  Nate kept his voice calm. “Tell me what you see, Flick.”

  “Can’t tell whose vision is Scam’s. Shit, I’ve never been down here at night before. Drunk eyeballs are the worst.”

  Nate was at the edge of the crowd now. The flashing sign of the Boom Room threw trembling shadows on the sidewalk, and shoulders jostled him.

  No wonder Flicker was overloaded. It was a perfect summer evening, less than a week till July Fourth, and everyone was here on Ivy.

  He’d have to use his own eyes.

  A bike rack next to the curb bristled with handlebars and wheels. A NO PARKING sign stood next to it. Nate placed a foot on top of the rack, grabbed the sign pole, and pulled himself up. He wobbled for a moment but managed to steady himself. For a moment he felt like a kid watching a parade.

  Once he opened up his sight, looking across the top of the crowd was dazzling. The glittering lines of their attention were scattered and spinning, pulled in all directions by flashing signs, thumping music, bare skin.

  No focus. Nothing to work with.

  He swallowed a bitter taste. There was nothing more repellent than a shapeless, leaderless horde.

  Then he saw something—a channel of laserlike attention slicing through the crowd. It came from a cluster of men in dark clothes. They were big, and their black T-shirts sucked up the nightclub lights. />
  “Flicker,” Nate said. “Those guys who were after Scam. Were they wearing black tees?”

  “Yep. Just got in their heads. They’re looking straight at Scam.”

  Nate followed the lances of their focus down the crowded street, and finally saw her—the girl in the sparkly dress. Beside her was Scam. They looked paralyzed, staring back at the approaching group of men. The girl’s hand was locked around Scam’s wrist, like he was a little boy she didn’t want to lose in the crowd.

  Too far away for Nate to reach them in time. And he doubted he could distract those big men from their purpose. They looked too determined for charm to sway.

  But the crowd . . .

  A crowd would always listen to Bellwether.

  He just needed their attention.

  He jumped down from his wobbly vantage on the bike rack and ran for the nearest car. A Porsche sedan, late model and freshly waxed—there was no way it didn’t have an alarm.

  He jumped up onto the hood, his heels landing with a metal crunch.

  A second’s pause, and then an earsplitting shriek erupted beneath him, pulsing in his feet, his ears, his bones. The crowd’s attention whirled upon him, gathering into a web of focus.

  It was Bellwether who stepped onto the Porsche’s roof as the energy built, raising his hands into the air, feeling the flow of focus streaming through his fingers. He was best with words and smiles, but sometimes one had to make do with gestures. He made two fists, readying to set the crowd in motion . . .

  But then something odd happened.

  A fluttering plume erupted into the air above Scam and the girl with the sparkly dress. The burst of paper billowed up and outward, carried in a roiling cloud by the ocean breeze.

  It was money, dozens of bills. The web of attention Bellwether had gathered shivered—a second later it was unraveling, disintegrating in his hands.

  An explosion of money trumped a car alarm any day.

  But the organism he had forged from the crowd didn’t fall apart. The focus he’d given it scattered as people lunged for flitters of cash in the air, but something new took shape. The mass began to swirl, a hurricane forming, with Scam and the girl at its center.

  Nate stared at his own hands, empty of glittering light. Who was doing this? Who had stolen his crowd?

  “Holy shit. What’s happening?” came Flicker’s voice in his ears, barely audible above the shriek of the car alarm.

  “No lo sé,” Nate murmured.

  “Everyone just went apeshit. Is that money?”

  “Yeah. And something else.” A force was moving through the mass of people, shaping the shimmering lines of their attention. But it didn’t point to anyone; it was like a thing let loose by the crowd itself. A whirlpool sustained by its own power.

  Was this some kind of natural phenomenon, like the greed storms Nate had seen at holiday sales?

  The girl in the sparkly dress was in motion again, dragging Scam through the swirling mass of people. Scam stumbled behind her, but she moved like an athlete, slipping gracefully into the current of the crowd. She seemed to know its contours perfectly.

  The cloud of money had broken the web of attention that Nate had made, changing it into something completely different. His own crowds always had a focus—himself. But this one had no leader, no center. It was nothing but a shape, an energy, as if all of them moved to the same unheard music.

  And that girl was the DJ.

  “It’s her,” he said.

  “What’s her?” Flicker’s voice was wan in his earbuds. “Shit, I’m going to be sick.”

  “Switch your vision off, Flick. I’ve got this.”

  “Go blind, here? I’ll get knocked down!”

  “Then get clear!” Nate tore his eyes away from the sparkling girl for a moment, scanning the throng for his best friend. “This crowd could go loco.”

  “Have to help the boy . . .”

  Nate had lost sight of Flicker, but he saw the big men in black trapped, like trucks trying to thread their way through a flock of sheep. Their muscles and glares were no good to them here in this dancing, bouncing crowd.

  Where were Scam and the girl? Lost in the maelstrom.

  “Mierda.”

  He should go after them, find out who she was. But Flicker was stuck in this riot somewhere, her vision overloaded . . .

  Beneath him the car alarm chirped one last time and went silent.

  Nate looked down. A red-faced man in a blue shirt stood staring up at him, holding a key fob.

  “What the hell are you doing on my car?”

  Nate gave the man a soothing smile.

  “Is this your car? If you’ll just give me a moment to explain.”

  Judging from the guy’s face, it might take longer than that.

  CHAPTER 49

  FLICKER

  THE CROWD WENT WILD WHEN it saw the sparkly girl’s money.

  Too many eyes were in Flicker’s head. Not like switching channels, the way it usually worked. More like staring at a bank of a thousand TVs, every one showing the shakiest vomit-cam movie she’d ever seen. The sound was up way too high, the shouting of the greedy crowd pressing on her ears. The bump and crash of shoulders kept her off balance. So many feet stepping on hers.

  She shouldn’t have gone so deep into the crowd, but Flicker had seen him, the beautiful boy, lost in the middle of it all.

  Which was worse in a riot: to be blind or invisible?

  It hurt, having all these TVs colliding in her brain. But she couldn’t turn her vision off, not yet. She needed another glimpse, to make sure Nothing was okay. Those guys in black were coming for Scam, and the brave, beautiful boy might try to get in the way.

  Or the crowd itself might crush him.

  Flicker had never seen anything like it. The money flying into the air, the sudden change in intensity. All those points of vision in her mind, changing from eyeballs into a thousand floating cameras set loose in a hurricane.

  It had no pattern at first, just the random madness of everyone grasping after fluttering bills. But then suddenly, impossibly, a shape had started to form, as if the crowd had an intelligence.

  Back when they were both twelve, Nate had taken her on a bike ride one night, Flicker perched on his handlebars. To amuse himself, he’d bellwethered the other cyclists they’d met along the way, forming an armada of bikes—fixed gears and stocky off-road BMXs, carbon-fiber wonders with solid disks instead of spokes. A flotilla of spinning chrome, flowing around obstacles like a shiny blob of mercury let loose in the dark.

  Then he’d told Flicker to ride, to pedal and steer herself with her vision scattered through the peloton behind them. In the grip of Nate’s power, those dozens of eyes merged into a single viewpoint. And she’d kept upright for mile after mile, wobbly but imperious, secure in the god’s-eye view of herself from all directions at once.

  It was happening again, all these drunken eyeballs somehow coalescing. But tonight they weren’t all staring in the same direction. Instead of focusing on one glorious leader, they formed a pattern, a spinning shape, a vortex made of people.

  Whatever was doing this wasn’t leading the crowd, but forming it into some kind of . . . creature. Something with its own personality, its own logic.

  No, not logic. More like emotion.

  “It’s a new power,” Flicker said to no one. Her earbuds had been yanked out in the tumult.

  Whatever was controlling the crowd grew stronger, the shape clearer in Flicker’s mind. Her vision clicked a little farther into place, and she saw everything . . .

  . . . the men in black tees, brought to a puzzled halt.

  . . . Glorious Leader at the edge of the storm, working his charm on an angry man.

  . . . the sparkly girl pulling Scam through the crowd, like she knew every step of their wild dance. Like she was in charge.

  But Flicker didn’t care about all that, because the boy called Nothing was lost among all those eyes that couldn’t track him. What if the cro
wd storm battered him to pieces?

  She spotted her own red dress, tried to guide herself toward where she’d first glimpsed him. The crowd shape was starting to fade already, or her brain was overloaded from juggling all those eyeballs. Flicker was buffeted, and stumbled, and fell.

  And someone caught her.

  Someone whose eyes she couldn’t see through, whose hand fit into hers perfectly. They ran through the crowd together, and she caught only glancing images of his bare feet pale in the darkness as he danced across the glitter of broken beer bottles. It was him, it was that boy, Anonymous.

  Then they were out of the crowd, in an alley between a nightclub and a closed tire-changing shop. They stopped, safe at last, and Flicker gratefully cast away her vision.

  Darkness crashed down around her, full of fireworks and shooting stars from her overloaded brain. Her head was pounding, her dizziness tipping the whole earth sideways underfoot.

  “Anon,” she said, just to ground herself.

  “Whoa,” his voice came. “How’d you know it was me, Riley?”

  She smiled, half motion-sick, half giddy from her god’s-eye view.

  “I just do.”

  CHAPTER 50

  SCAM

  ETHAN COULD FEEL THE THUD of dance music through his shoes.

  He was standing behind the biggest guitar he’d ever seen. Sure, it wasn’t real. Just a sign adorning the rooftop of the club Kelsie had dragged him into. Past the bouncer and into a back room, up the stairs like she owned the place.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” he said. “The thing with the money? That was pretty badass.”

  It had been seriously cool: Kelsie standing there on Ivy Street with her chin high, her arms flung up above her. And a rain of greenbacks falling past her shiny dress. The stuff music videos were made of.

  “It wasn’t badass,” Kelsie said glumly. “It was expensive.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Ethan realized that he didn’t want to say the wrong thing here. He wanted Kelsie to think he was at least halfway as cool as her. Without really meaning to, he let the voice trickle into his throat. “You probably needed your money for something more important.”