She’d been feeling their excitement the whole way down the stairs. The whoosh and rush of energy. Even frightened, even knowing how hurt her dad was, even having discovered the awful secret he’d kept from her about her mother. Even with all that, she’d still wanted to lose herself to the impatient chant.
Blow it up!
But now they had a different focus, and it was her. Their energy coiled and spun, enveloping her like the curl of a wave around a surfer.
She skimmed over the crowd, their hands rising to support her like the steady breath of a thermal. With all the lights of Cambria crashed, she could see stars above. Millions of them, stretched out like brilliant bands of twinkling color. And thousands of phones glowing beneath her, a reflection of that galaxy above.
The crowd drove her forward, toward the medical station. She thought they might drop her, or spin and toss her, leave her airsick, throwing up like that guy in the Boom Room the night she’d lost control.
For a moment she was scared of them.
But then she realized that there was no them. In that moment there was only us.
She glanced back at the chain-link fence to see how far she’d come. Nate was halfway up, taking pictures of her.
Kelsie sank back into her crowd. People reached for her, holding her up, sending her forward. She felt a rich, deep gratitude. As she fed that into the feedback loop that supported her, it doubled and tripled. People called and cried and shouted, but they weren’t shouting for explosions anymore. They wanted to be part of what Kelsie was part of—they wanted to be more than the crowd. They wanted to float and skim the way she was floating.
They wanted to fly.
She’d never felt so much a part of anything, so supported and carried. She’d always been afraid to let herself go like this, afraid that if she surrendered so completely to the crowd she might never find herself again.
But now it was obvious—this was where she was meant to be. Her power was strong, and it could fix things. It could right wrongs. It was so much bigger than she’d dreamed.
The District Ambulance tent was rushing toward her. She was off course. Not by much, but at this rate she’d end up miles away.
She felt a surge of panic—her father needed help so badly—and her fear leaked into the crowd. The hands beneath her began to falter, and Kelsie felt herself sag and slow.
She bit back on her worry about her dad, channeled fear into purpose, and the crowd responded, hurtling her toward the first-aid tent. They all wanted to correct her course. To be part of her journey.
And in their hands she forgot any fear she’d ever felt.
An endless moment later Kelsie was slowing, drifting down softly to the street before the first-aid tent. They placed her there gently, like she was precious.
People still held her, wanting to stay connected. She was hugged; her hands were enveloped by other hands; her hair was brushed away from her face. She had to push them all away carefully. Her crowd. Her people.
It was hard to step out in the open and be alone again. But she had to save her dad.
She wrenched back on the crowd connection until, with a snap, her breathing was her own again. Her body was only this five feet of skin and flesh, and not a vast gyre around her. For a split second she felt like the entire world had left her behind.
She made her way to the EMT guys on shaky legs. They were staring at her, eyes wide. They’d seen her coming, flying across the crowd.
“I need help.” It was hard to speak. A waterfall was lodged in her throat.
The EMT guys looked her up and down.
“Not me, my dad.” She pointed.
She could still feel the laughter and joy of the crowd around her, but it was their happiness now. Not hers. She was in the middle of the bright, hard isolation that came with being herself again.
“Northwest corner of the fence. I’ll show you.”
She turned and, with a single gesture that focused all her pain and fear, she cleaved the crowd to make a clear path. Her crowd. They moved aside for her; they always would.
As she led the EMT guys through to where her father lay crumpled in Ethan’s arms, Kelsie felt the tears slide down her face like they might never stop.
CHAPTER 81
CRASH
THE AMBULANCE PUSHED UP THE crowded slope toward Chizara, clearing a path for itself with little siren whoops.
She stood back, trying to think straight through the afterbuzz of all she’d done, through the euphoria rattling through her veins.
Had she harmed someone? Crashed a pacemaker, an insulin pump?
Was there a Zero in that ambulance?
Nate had texted her to come to this corner of the fence to meet up with them. Had one of them gotten hurt on their way out of the tower?
The ambulance passed, and she darted down the path it had left through the crowd.
“Crash, over here!”
That was Riley’s voice. There she was, her bright skirt rippling in the sea breeze, catching the last red of the ambulance taillights. She and Ethan and a tall, dark guy—yeah, that guy, the other Zero—were three shadows leaning against the chain links.
Chizara dodged through the crowd and squeezed Riley tight. Then she hugged Ethan. “So. Freaking. Pleased to see you.”
“Oof!” Ethan patted her back warily. He was dusty and scratched, and smelled like damp cement.
Chizara let him go. “Where are the others?”
Riley pointed back up the slope, and there was Nate, looking dazedly after the ambulance.
Chizara strode up and placed herself in front of him. He startled for a moment in the darkness, until she stepped in and put her arms around him.
He hugged her right back, his cheek gritty and sweaty against hers—and alive.
“You did it.” His voice was ragged in her ear. “I knew you would.”
“Did you?” She was about to melt into tears, or laugh like a supervillain again. She grinned madly to hold in all the emotion. “Because I wasn’t all that sure.”
Here came the others, Riley holding that guy’s hand. Yes, Chizara should hug him, too. Anonymous, that was his name.
But first she asked, “Where’s Kelsie?”
“In the ambulance,” Nate said.
“Oh.” Chizara’s elation tumbled into fear. “How serious?”
“She’s fine,” Riley said. “It’s her dad. Those gangsters beat him up really bad.”
“But he’s better off than if that building had collapsed on us,” Ethan said.
Chizara shuddered. “It came so freaking close!”
“We know,” Nate said. “We heard the countdown. Next time, feel free to ruin the suspense.”
Even in the darkness she could see that his hair was gray with cement dust, and his eyes looked old enough to match.
“But thank you,” he said.
Chizara looked out at the dark city around them and swallowed some of her giddiness. “I may have overdone it.”
“But you kept the phones up,” Riley said, staring out into the crowd. “You should see it. They’re all tweeting how bad Cambria is at demolitions.”
Chizara smiled in the darkness, looking out across the thousands of glittering screens. Her bones twinged from their signals, but the afterpower of her crash shielded her from any pain.
Let ’em tweet, let ’em text, let ’em call each other as much as they wanted. She was still Queen of the Night, crammed full of almost dangerous exhilaration.
The crowd was restless too, as the wind kicked up stronger.
“I came all the way from San Diego for this!” someone shouted.
“Blow it up already!”
Nate put a hand on Chizara’s shoulder. “Maybe you should go ahead. Get the lights back on. Let them blow the building.”
Chizara frowned. “I don’t know, Nate. Aren’t there better ways to spend my fixing power?”
“It’ll be safer with the streetlights on.” Riley gazed into the middle distance. “Ther
e are bottlenecks all around this square. Could get testy when people start to leave.”
Nate held up his hands. “It’s up to you, Crash.”
Was he trying his charisma on her? Leveraging the crowd’s frustration? She didn’t think so—although it was hard to register anything through the buzz of aftercrash.
“Here’s the thing,” Nate went on. “If that building disappears tonight, the Bagrovs will think Mob and Scam and Jerry are dead. Which is a good thing.”
“Also,” Riley said, “it would be totally badass to watch you blow it up.”
“It sure would,” Ethan said. “Come on, Crash. You can pretend I’m still in there if you want.”
She sighed theatrically. “Well, I guess, for safety’s sake we could use some light.”
With a snap of her fingers and a little mental nudge, the floodlights flashed the world back into being, the Parker-Hamilton whitely cold at its center.
The crowd gasped, and readied themselves again.
“That didn’t look too hard,” Nate said.
Chizara shrugged. The floodlights had taken nothing. Maybe if she was careful, she could bring the hotel down with plenty of power to spare.
She squeezed her eyes shut and snaked her mind out past the tech buzz of the crowd, searching again for that sensor network, those wires, the trigger switch, the backup generator.
Compared to the city around her, they were tiny! This wouldn’t take more than a—
“Oh, crap,” Ethan said.
“Hold on a second,” Chizara said. “I’ve almost . . .”
She felt Nate’s hand on her shoulder, and opened her eyes.
A big, bald tank of a man stood glaring at the four of them, his hands closed into fists. Two solid, stubble-headed guys, in black tees and sleeved with tattoos, stood on either side of him.
“Oh right,” Chizara said. “The Russians.”
“No,” Ethan squeaked. “The Craig.”
Chizara knew she was supposed to be scared, but the supervillain part of her refused to take them seriously. Such standard-issue thugs. Did they have no imagination?
The big guy, the Craig—and what kind of hopeless thug name was the Craig?—grabbed a fistful of Ethan’s dusty T-shirt.
“Thought so!” His spittle flew. “Saw Kelsie up on the fence, and I knew you’d be around here somewhere.”
Ethan made goldfish mouths, but no useful words came to his aid.
“Where’s my money?” the Craig said.
“Right here.” Someone stepped between them and calmly brushed Ethan out of the Craig’s hands. A young guy who looked vaguely . . .
Anonymous. He’d been here all along, right next to Flicker, only the crowd kept swallowing him.
He swung a duffel bag into the Craig’s chest, pushing him backward with it.
The Craig stared at it, looking suspicious. He unzipped the bag, peered in, zipped it up again.
“And who the hell are you?” he growled.
Anonymous raised a hand as if to shoo off a fly, then stepped away. Not in any particular direction, just . . . away. And suddenly there were only four of them facing the Craig.
The Craig twitched his head, like he was shaking an insect out of his ear.
“So we’re square, right?” That was Ethan’s true voice, shaky and nervous. “You’ve got your money.”
“Yeah, I’ve got my money.” The Craig thrust the duffel at one of his men and took a fresh handful of Ethan’s tee. “But I got you, too.”
“Come on, now,” Ethan said. “This was all a mistake. I just wanted a ride home!”
The Craig’s lip curled and he laughed, low and nasty. “Well, too bad the ambulance already left. Because that’s how you’re getting home tonight. After you get a lesson in what happens when you make a joke out of the Craig.”
Chizara opened her mouth—and out came a voice that was a hundred percent her mom’s. “Put him down this instant.”
Surprise loosened the guy’s grip for a moment. But when he turned and saw Chizara, he only laughed.
“What if I don’t?”
She drew herself up, the supervillain inside her affronted by his laughter. “Then something bad will happen.”
“Something bad ?”
She reached into the Parker-Hamilton, slipped the networked sensors on like a glove, readied mental fingertips on the fused mess inside the borked generator, on the fritzed chips under the control board.
A lick of power, and they were fixed and ready.
“Drop him right now, or I’ll bring you down.”
The Craig leered at her. “All by yourself, princess?”
She was supposed to cringe, and she didn’t. The Craig took a step closer.
“You bet.” She smiled. “Just like this.”
She flung out an arm at the floodlit derelict hotel a few blocks away.
A scattering of explosions traveled through the building, sharp and sudden, and puffs of dust flung themselves from the windows, along with spumes of glittery broken glass. The Craig turned back toward her, astonished, and Chizara held his gaze, claiming the detonation as her own and daring him to deny it.
The Parker-Hamilton Hotel began to implode.
CHAPTER 82
FLICKER
IT WAS THE FUCKING COOLEST thing Flicker had ever seen.
As the first crackling explosions rang out, a hundred thousand eyeballs turned toward the sound. The string of little booms sent tremors through the air, like wingbeats against her face.
Larger whoomps pulsed inside the building, and with endless eyes she saw the concrete structure ripple with their force, a billowing curtain in the wind. For a moment the brick facade turned liquid—a waterfall, a melting photograph. It sagged among its own smoke puffs, and then the floors began their collapse from the top down, each one pancaking into the one below. All that concrete lowered itself to the earth and shattered there, sending out a roiling bank of dust.
So much dust. Plaster and brick and mortar, stone and marble and concrete, all of it crushed into grit and powder. Towering swells of it surged in all directions, as if drawn by the roar of the crowd. The sharp scent of explosives reached Flicker, followed by the chalky smell of the building’s guts.
She scanned the eyeballs around her, watched the Craig and his crew disappear, still astonished as the white floodlit cloud rolled over them. The Zeroes vanished as well.
Farther out, people in the crowd punched the air, waved like maniacs, tried to capture the unfurling demolition on their tiny screens. Riley watched from endless, riveted viewpoints.
She reached out, felt Anon’s hand in hers—that always-surprising perfect fit. Following the sound of maniacal laughter, she took Chizara’s as well.
“It’s me,” Flicker said.
Chizara laughed harder. “You see what I did ?”
“I see. Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’ve got Ethan,” Anon said. “And he’s got Nate. Let’s go!”
They started to move, the chain of them winding through the coughing, cheering crowd. Flicker let herself be drawn along, moving her view farther out, past the dust, where tens of thousands more eyeballs stared.
The collapsed hotel was gone, consumed by the cloud, but a few fireworks had been held back for the finale. They arced up and spread their generous glittering arms, weeping willows of gold against the black sky, and the cheering swelled again.
“Man, people love explosions,” Ethan cried out bitterly.
From next to Flicker came Anon’s laughter. At Ethan’s expense, or maybe he was just being carried along by Chizara, who was still borderline hysterical about having freaked out the Craig and his minions so completely.
Flicker felt it bubbling up in her, too. It was a kind of madness, seeing the world from all those eyeballs, all of them focused on that magnificent ruination.
But then the five of them were staggering from the thinning cloud, and she found eyeballs nearby not blinded by dust. Their hands parted,
except for her and Anon. Here in the crowd, he had to stay close to her to keep from disappearing.
Flicker was okay with that.
The other three turned to stare back at Chizara’s work, but Anon led her a little farther, finding a private corner of the crowd.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, “for leaving you alone back at the warehouse.”
Flicker shook her head. “I can take care of myself. I was more worried about you. A scooter seems like the wrong place to be invisible.”
“It wasn’t great. Right here is better.” He held her close, until she could feel his heart beating in his chest.
Her own pulse still raced from the awesome sight of the old hotel turning into a heap of wreckage and rubble. It was amazing what humans could do. Just ordinary humans, with only science, no superpowers.
It was amazing just standing here with him.
“That was beautiful,” she said. “How it just fell out of the skyline.”
“Yeah, and the best part was, none of our friends were in it.”
Those words made Flicker hold him a little tighter, struck again by how close it had all been. She switched her vision off, but the blackness in her head pulsed with leftover sparks and shimmers.
“What if you’d gone in instead of Nate?” she said.
“I wasn’t back in time. That scooter was a glorified lawn mower.”
“No, I mean, if you had gotten back and gone in, and then Chizara hadn’t stopped it in time.”
“Then I would’ve been . . .” A pause. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
Flicker held him tighter. Would anyone have remembered Anon? Or would he have simply vanished in the dust, fading from her thoughts when he never returned?
No body. No memories. Nothing.
He gave a dry laugh. “If I make any heroic sacrifices, it won’t be for the posthumous glory, I guess.”
“Maybe just skip the posthumous part altogether!”
He shrugged in her arms. “I’m not in this to win medals.”
Flicker shook her head, trying to force the thoughts of his death—his erasure—out of her head.
“You and your stupid Zen,” she said. “I think you’re amazing, Anon. I think you should get medals, because you’re this crazy-beautiful person. But you keep telling me that wisdom says you’re nothing.”
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