‘Maybe,’ Nate said. They were closer than he liked to guessing that Anon had done this to himself.
Not because of his family, though. Despite all Thibault’s self-control, his Zen distance from the world, somewhere down in his heart he was capable of shooting someone. Realizing that had been too much for him.
Guilt had sent Thibault spinning down into his own power. Nate was more certain of it every moment.
Chizara frowned. ‘How come he didn’t erase your memories, Nate?’
‘Maybe I had the deepest connection. I took notes on him for years, made sure to reread them every…’ Nate trailed off.
All the attention in the room had gone to Flicker, whose fists were clenched.
Chizara shook her head. ‘Longest connection, Nate. Not the deepest.’
‘But it was probably simpler than that,’ he added hurriedly. ‘The cops dragged me away after the shooting. Maybe I was out of range.’
Ethan nodded. ‘We were all back at the Dish by then, figuring out how to save you.’
‘You did the right thing, letting them take me away,’ Nate said with a smile. ‘It all worked out.’
‘No. It didn’t,’ Kelsie said, her anguish spiking through the room. ‘We forgot Thibault and lost the Dish and…Craig got killed.’
The room went silent. The sparkling lines of their attention shot off in all directions.
Nate tried to draw them together again, but his own will faltered. He had allowed Craig to stay with them for the showdown with Swarm. What kind of Glorious Leader let an outsider join a losing fight?
He cast around for something to say, but in the end he let the silence linger. Maybe the others needed it.
Nate had spent weeks in his cell thinking about what had happened that day – the battle with Swarm’s police minions, the killing, Craig’s death – but the other Zeroes had been on the run the whole time. Today’s rescue should have helped, but the victory had been shattered by finding out that they’d left another Zero behind.
They needed a mission to focus them.
‘Thibault’s out there somewhere,’ Nate said. ‘We can find him and bring him back.’
Their eyes lifted from the floor, and Nate smiled. It was good to feel his power coursing, even through this small assemblage. He would lead them again, guide them back to wholeness – and then to New Orleans.
Ethan spoke up. ‘How? He could be anywhere by now, and he’s freaking invisible.’
‘He’ll be somewhere important to him,’ Nate said.
‘Like the Dish? Or his parents’ house?’ Chizara asked. ‘If we go searching in Cambria, we’ll get arrested. Everyone in town knows our faces!’
A wave of homesickness went through them, and Nate resisted the urge to raise his hands and squash the feeling. They needed to process everything they’d lost.
‘Actually, he’s not there,’ Ethan said. ‘Cambria’s full of surveillance cameras these days, and also weird-hunters. If those cameras were picking up some kind of ghost boy, I’d know about it.’
‘Still reading your friend Sonia’s blog?’ Chizara asked.
Ethan shrugged. ‘It keeps me up with news from home.’
‘Good work, Ethan,’ Nate said. It was strange to think how much their town had changed in the month he’d been in prison.
‘But if he’s not in Cambria, where is he?’ Flicker asked. ‘What other places were important to him? I can’t remember.’
‘Me either,’ Nate sighed. ‘Maybe if we had my notes. But the FBI found them.’
‘Yeah, I saw that,’ Flicker said coolly.
Anger rippled through Kelsie’s connection – none of them had ever liked Nate keeping files about them. And now all that painstakingly gathered data was in the hands of Agent Phan.
‘Wait a second.’ Flicker sat up straight for the first time. ‘I borrowed your Anon file last summer. That’s how I found Thibault’s hotel. It’s still in my attic!’
‘Then the feds have it,’ Ethan said. ‘I mean, they found all Nate’s stuff.’
Flicker shook her head. ‘I was just a bartender at the Dish, not a murderer. And who searches the blind girl’s house for a paper trail?’
They all looked at Nate hopefully. He nodded.
‘So how do we get it?’
‘My sister can bring it to us,’ Flicker said.
Ethan stared at her. ‘Lily? She wasn’t a fan of the Zeroes even before we were wanted terrorists.’
‘Maybe not,’ Flicker said. ‘But she’d do anything for me.’
Ethan started to argue again, but Nate silenced him with a glance. Flicker had already lost one certainty in her life – her connection to Thibault. She needed to trust her own twin.
‘Can you get a message to her?’ he asked.
‘I guess. There’s a fanfic board she posts on.’ A wan smile played on Flicker’s face. ‘I could use one of my old names, from the stories we used to make up. She’ll know it’s me.’
Nate nodded slowly. It was a long shot – trusting Lily, hoping the notes hadn’t been found by the feds. And it was possible that Thibault had just walked away into the desert, forgetting that he was a real person who needed food and water and shelter…
But the Zeroes needed certainty, not doubts.
He had to bring them together.
‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘We ask Lily to bring us the notes. And we meet her somewhere far away from Cambria. Somewhere with big crowds, where we hold all the cards.’
A FEW HOURS LATER, WHEN EVERYONE ELSE HAD GONE TO BED, NATE WENT OUT ONTO THE PORCH TO STARE UP INTO THE PINPRICKED DARKNESS. It had only been a few weeks since he’d seen the night sky, but the stars were astonishing.
All those other suns, rendered in glimmers of ancient light. Too easy to take for granted when you weren’t alone in a cell every night.
If the Zeroes hadn’t pulled together to rescue him, he might never have seen the stars again. But they’d remained strong enough to break into a supermax prison. Flicker had kept them together.
He had a solid base to build on, and something important to pursue once the whole crew was back together: whatever was happening in New Orleans.
Nate remembered Verity’s words. Piper wants to break everything.
What the hell did that mean?
‘Nate?’ whispered a voice from the shadows.
He turned. It was Chizara, walking softly on the porch’s rickety boards.
‘Everything okay inside?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘They’re all asleep. Even Flicker.’
‘How is she?’
‘Better. She got in touch with her sister already. We’re meeting her in Las Vegas, like you suggested.’
‘Perfect. This gives Flicker hope.’ Nate turned back to the sky. ‘And Las Vegas means no shortage of crowds if things go wrong.’
‘Nope,’ Chizara said. ‘No shortage of pain, either.’
‘It’ll be good practice.’
She stared at him. ‘For what?’
He only shrugged. It was too early to talk about New Orleans to the others. They stood in silence for a moment, Chizara’s attention shimmering among the stars.
Nate realized that it was up to him to start.
‘What I did back at the prison,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to say all that, but it was the only way to convince Phan to let us go.’
‘Pretty smart trick, I guess. Worthy of Ethan’s voice.’ She flinched, a small motion in the darkness. ‘Only one problem with it.’
Nate nodded. ‘That I broke your trust. I’m sorry.’
‘Not that.’ She let out a sigh. ‘The Zero in the FBI jacket, Verity, her power makes you tell the truth, right?’
‘Yes. I suspect she uses the social pressure of the crowd to keep you from lying.’
‘Yeah, whatever. But if she makes you tell the truth, that means you weren’t bluffing, Nate. You really would have messed me up enough to let all those prisoners go? Killed hundreds of people – guards, inmates, cl
eaning staff? All of us Zeroes?’
Nate frowned. ‘Well, I knew it wouldn’t come to that. Because I knew Phan would fold.’
‘But only because you would have done it. Verity’s truth power is a guarantee of that!’
Nate nodded slowly. ‘My threat had to be real to work.’
Chizara looked away, her attention dropping from the sky, splintering aimlessly into the darkness. They were silent for a while before she spoke again.
‘Maybe this is why Thibault is gone.’
He turned to her. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because he doesn’t want to come back. Not to us.’
‘He’s just lost.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t know how hard it is out here, Nate. Every car that passes by, every noise outside the window – there’s always the chance that it’s the feds, and that we’re about to go to jail forever.’
‘Can I point out that I’ve already been in jail?’
‘Yeah, we noticed. But sometimes I actually want to get caught, just so I can stop running. You’ll see what I mean, soon enough.’
Nate followed her gaze into the dark. The wind was rustling the leaves, like waves on a distant shore. ‘What does this have to do with Thibault? Or with what I did back at the prison?’
‘Because he’s running from us, Nate. Not from his family, but from the rolling disaster of the Zeroes!’ As Chizara turned to him again, her attention narrowed down into a laser. ‘We break things. We get people killed. We spill each other’s deepest secrets for some…tactical advantage! And after busting up a federal prison, we’ll always be on the run. Why would Anon want to be part of that, when he can just disappear?’
Nate stared at her, and for a moment his confidence trembled. The prison seemed to wrap around him again – all that emptiness, that shame.
Why couldn’t Chizara see that they had to find Thibault again? The Zeroes needed a mission, a way to practice for the crowds of New Orleans.
And more important than that…
‘Flicker won’t forgive herself until we find him,’ he said.
‘And what if we find him and he doesn’t want to be with us? How will she feel then?’
Nate didn’t answer. His Zeroes were going be whole again.
‘And do we even want a guy who abandoned us?’ she asked softly.
‘That’s not what happened.’ Nate sighed. ‘He saved us.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Nate hesitated only a moment. He needed Chizara on his side, and of them all, she could best handle the truth.
‘He’s the one who killed Swarm, not me. Shot him in the back, twice.’
Chizara was stunned into silence.
Memories came surging in to fill the space. Nate had left the Dish to kill Swarm himself. He’d flipped his power inside out, thinking he was invisible. Quinton Wallace had seen straight through him, had laughed at him.
But then Thibault, who’d been Anonymous his whole life, had passed unseen through the entire swarm to do the deed.
‘The Zen master shot someone? Whoa.’ Chizara shook her head. ‘No wonder he’s gone. No way could he live with himself after that.’
‘Maybe. But we’ll give him something better than Zen. Flicker loves him, and he saved countless lives by killing Swarm. What he did wasn’t wrong.’
‘What he did was murder someone, Nate.’
He held her gaze. ‘You all thought I pulled the trigger, and you still came to rescue me.’
‘Yeah, and look how you repaid me.’ At last the spotlight of Chizara’s attention eased, and she turned away. ‘The thing is, Nate, I expect that kind of logic from you – taking one life to save many. But from Thibault it means something different. Something darker.’
Nate blinked. In his prison cell, he’d gone through his own decision to shoot Quinton Wallace a thousand times, and every time he’d decided he was right. Why would it be different for someone else?
Of course, he knew Flicker wouldn’t feel that way about Thibault killing someone.
‘You can’t tell them,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Are you kidding? You think I’m going to keep this…’ Chizara’s voice dropped off, and she shook her head. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter. We’ll never find him anyway. And if we do, he’ll just disappear again.’
‘You’re right,’ Nate said. Somehow Chizara had muddied everything in his mind. But without this mission the Zeroes could only keep running, doubting themselves, and falling apart. ‘It might take a while for Thibault to understand that he needs us, and that we need him. We should have a plan to keep from losing him again.’
Chizara looked suspicious. ‘What kind of plan?’
He nodded and smiled his best, most persuasive smile. ‘You can help.’
‘With what, Nate?’
‘Still working out the details.’ He gave her another winning smile. ‘Let’s get that file back first.’
‘Ugh,’ Chizara said. ‘Something tells me I’m really going to hate Las Vegas.’
‘THIS PLACE IS THE WORST,’ CHIZARA SAID. ‘Can’t I crash anything?’
‘Not yet,’ Nate’s voice answered in her earphones.
She suppressed a sudden urge to swear.
Las Vegas was much bigger than Cambria, and way more wired – like an electrified termite mound. Tech stings crawled all over her. The temptation to run downstairs, steal a car, and speed out of town into the empty desert was overwhelming.
With one hand Chizara clung to the railing of the second-floor balcony overlooking the hotel lobby. The other gripped her phone in its leopard-skin cover.
Yep, even her phone was in disguise.
Her shiny, swooshy dress, scammed by Ethan from a market stall, pulsed like a migraine aura at the edge of her vision. The red-and-gold turban was tacky, but it felt like the only thing stopping her head from exploding.
She was trying to pass as a dolled-up, carefree tourist, but probably looked more like she was nursing a Las Vegas-grade hangover.
All thanks to Glorious Leader, only back a few days and already running missions again. He was focused more on maximizing the Zeroes’ powers than preserving Chizara’s sanity.
The Strip was one long bustling, bristling flare of electricity. The lighting and the Muzak and the slot machines and the endless televisions, the stage-show systems, the castles-in-the-air of interlocked hotel circuits.
Threaded through all this brain-rattling tech was the machinery of surveillance. Widgets built into the slot machines making sure people didn’t win too much. Thousands of cameras capturing every move. Rooms full of security people staring at monitors, keeping an eye on the staff, making sure none of the takings slipped into their pockets.
So much stuff to crash if things got tricky. So much power just waiting to be snatched up.
She was supposed to be keeping an eye out for Flicker’s sister and federal agents. But she could hardly remember what Lily looked like, and spotting hidden microphones in this mess was impossible. The FBI could be all over the place, and Chizara would never know.
This was a disaster waiting to happen.
Even if Lily would never betray Flicker, what if the feds had been watching her this last month? What if a sudden trip to Vegas looked suspicious, and they’d followed her?
All this risk, just for Nate’s precious notes. To find a guy who’d abandoned them.
And why couldn’t Lily just mail Nate’s files? Because Flicker missed her twin sister, of course.
Like Chizara didn’t miss her little brothers?
She lifted the earbud mike to her lips again, her teeth humming with signal. ‘I can’t help you guys if my brains melts. Let me clear some space, so I can see better.’
‘If anyone’s watching, a crash will tip them off,’ Flicker cut in. She was waiting for her sister in the diner downstairs, at the center of all of this. ‘Phan knew all about your power.’
‘But I need some juice,’ Chizara argued. ‘I’ve
got nothing left from Eureka.’
That was her excuse, anyway. The truth was, on top of the need for pain management, she craved fixing power these days. Without it she was prey to every little anxiety.
‘What do you think, Flick?’ Nate asked.
‘Just make it small’ came the answer.
Chizara smiled. ‘Maybe some slot machines. Far-off ones, don’t worry.’
She slid her attention along the busy street, snaked in through one of the bigger hotel lobbies, sought out the distinctive pattern of the slots in their sizzling rows.
They tumbled and whirred, each mini firework display indicating one more sucker, one more visitor emptying their pockets. Thinking they’d be the one to beat the whole rigged system.
A big ugly rip-off disguised as fun and glamour.
She sectioned off one of the busier avenues of machines and let it fail, a little shiver running up her spine. The lights tumbled over one last time and sank out of sight. A minor battalion of termite soldiers unclamped their mandibles from Chizara’s flesh.
‘That’s better,’ she murmured.
See, Mom? she thought with a grin. I’m saving people from themselves. Making the world a better place.
Hmmm, came the answer.
Nate spoke up again. ‘Anybody see the target?’
‘Is that what we’re calling my sister?’ Flicker asked, and Nate didn’t answer.
Chizara shook her head. Those two had some issues to work out. The Zeroes had always had too many cooks in the kitchen, and now they had two head chefs.
She wondered how Nate planned to keep Thibault from leaving again, if they ever found him. Some kind of electronic tracker, probably, if he needed her help.
Chipped like a dog. From what she remembered of the guy, Thibault would love that.
‘Um, is anything happening yet?’ Scam said, filling the silence on the conference call. ‘My service isn’t great out here.’
‘Nothing so far,’ Nate said.
Now that her head was clear, Chizara could make out Scam and the Zeroes’ sedan down in the hotel turnaround, a football field away at the other end of the massive lobby. A taxi was dropping off some pastel-clad Midwesterners. A family immediately claimed the cab, a mom ushering two small boys into the back.
Nexus Page 5
