Nexus

by Scott Westerfeld

  ‘Hey, Dwayne,’ the voice said. ‘Brittney says hi.’

  Ethan felt better already. Having only Zeroes for company meant these pit stops were the sole chance he had to exercise his power.

  Dwayne looked at him. ‘Do I know you, man?’

  ‘We met once, at Randal’s,’ the voice said. ‘She’s been talking about you.’

  Dwayne looked pathetically hopeful. ‘Really? I thought she was ghosting on me. She hasn’t answered my texts in, like, five weeks.’

  Ethan nodded wisely while the voice kept going. ‘Because of that fifty you owe her. She’s kind of pissed.’

  ‘Yeah, but how’m I supposed to pay her back? She won’t even talk to me!’

  ‘That’s a tough one.’ Ethan felt the voice shift gears in his mouth, twisting into a menacing growl. ‘That’s why she asked us to come round and collect.’

  Dwayne stared at him. ‘Us?’

  ‘Me and my friends.’ Ethan jerked his head toward the van, which seemed appropriate. Dwayne looked, and his eyes widened.

  The van was pretty scary, Ethan supposed, with its shitty paint job and dark windows. Nate hunkered down in the passenger seat, wearing a cap. A girl outside in dark glasses, and a guy pumping gas who you couldn’t quite get your eyes to stick to.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble here,’ Dwayne said.

  ‘So you’re good for the fifty?’

  ‘Uh, I don’t have it on me.’ The poor guy gulped. ‘But I can give it to her if she’d just—’

  ‘How about this?’ the voice interrupted. ‘Front me for the gas, and this stuff, and the slate’s clean.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Dwayne looked at the register. It read $57.14. ‘Um, that’s more than I owe her.’

  ‘Finder’s fee.’ Ethan didn’t feel great about this, especially since this guy was still going to owe Brittney fifty bucks. But the voice didn’t really do victimless crimes.

  Ethan felt himself wanting the guy not to hate him.

  The voice apparently felt that desire, because it said, ‘Look. You know that other girl you like? Clara?’

  ‘Uh, how did you know about that?’

  ‘Brittney told me. Girls notice this stuff.’ Ethan smiled.

  ‘Aw, damn it.’ Dwayne was really having a bad day now.

  Come on, voice. Throw the guy a bone!

  ‘She’s cool with it,’ the voice said. ‘And now that you’re finally paying up, she says to relay that Clara really likes you. And she’ll be at Jason’s party Saturday.’

  ‘Huh,’ Dwayne said. ‘Really?’

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ the voice said, sounding sympathetic. ‘Show up there.’

  Dwayne bagged the salsa and soda, looking hopeful. ‘Yeah. Maybe I will.’

  Ethan pulled his cap lower. Chizara had probably already crashed the closed-circuit camera above the till, but Dwayne had been staring at him way too much. That was the problem with the voice’s confidence games. They required a personal connection that penetrated dark glasses.

  ‘So are we straight here?’ Ethan said. ‘No need for me to call my friends inside?’

  ‘Yeah, man. I got this.’ Dwayne pushed buttons on the register. ‘Tell Brittney I’m sorry it took so long. And I didn’t mean to ruin her dress like that. I hope she found a new one.’

  Ethan kept himself from wanting to know what the hell that meant. He did not need the voice inquiring.

  ‘Thanks, buddy.’ As Ethan reached for the bag, he accidentally bumped Dwayne’s supersized soda. The giant cup spilled bright orange catastrophe all over the newspapers in the rack.

  ‘Crap!’ Ethan muttered.

  ‘Aw, hey, man, I ain’t paying for those!’ Dwayne shouted, headed around to survey the damage.

  Ethan was about to unleash the voice, but then he stopped.

  On the front page of the local rag were five high school yearbook photos. Nataniel Saldana, Riley Phillips, Chizara Okeke, Kelsie Laszlo. And of course Ethan Thomas Cooper, his not-dyed-blond crew cut sharp the way it used to be, grinning at the camera like a total goof.

  ‘Holy freaking crap on a stick,’ Ethan said under his breath.

  He dropped the bag and took hold of the papers. Dwayne grabbed the other end of the pile like they were playing tug-of-war.

  ‘Let go, man! You’re spreading it everywhere,’ Dwayne said.

  But then Dwayne went quiet. Too quiet.

  He was staring down at the pictures.

  ‘Damn.’ He looked up at Ethan. ‘Brittney sent you guys to collect?’

  Whatever will delay him the longest, voice.

  ‘Brittney knows some powerful people, Dwayne. And she’s going to keep an eye on you. Just keep this little story to yourself.’

  Dwayne just stared at him.

  Ethan grabbed the snack bag and ran for the door.

  The other Zeroes were already in the van. He could feel the rush of panic from Kelsie’s feedback loop as he leaped for the driver’s seat.

  ‘I saw the papers,’ Flicker said. ‘Did he recognize you?’

  ‘Yep,’ Ethan admitted. ‘Everybody in? Crap, where’s—’

  ‘I’m here,’ Thibault said from somewhere in back.

  Ethan dumped the bag of snacks on Nate and started the van.

  ‘Head east,’ Flicker said. ‘Fewer eyes.’

  ‘Which way’s east?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Left,’ Nate supplied, putting the bag in the footwell. ‘Take the access road, not the highway.’

  Ethan gunned the engine, breathing hard. His knuckles on the steering wheel were white. Panic tinged the air like tear gas.

  ‘Trying to drive, Kelsie!’ he pleaded. ‘Dial it back a notch?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kelsie mumbled from the back of the van.

  The knot in Ethan’s stomach began to ease. Not completely, though. There was only so much Kelsie could do.

  ‘He’s staring at his phone,’ Flicker said. ‘But he hasn’t done it yet.’

  Ethan headed for the forest. He hated forests. Bad things happened in forests. Drug dealers, for one. Serial killers, probably. Also, romantic feedback loops that he did not need to know about.

  But a few minutes later they were among the dark trees, the highway lost behind them. The road they were on gave way to dirt. Leaves whipped at the windshield, and low branches scraped the roof. The forest was so thick it turned the daylight green.

  ‘He’s out of range,’ Flicker said. ‘But last I could see, he hadn’t made the call.’

  ‘The voice was being pretty scary,’ Ethan said. Though if Dwayne ever did call the feds, Brittney was due for a disturbing visit from the FBI. Hopefully, Verity would clear her name.

  ‘There’s no signal out here,’ Chizara said in awe and wonder.

  ‘That’s because nobody’s stupid enough to live here,’ Ethan said. ‘Are we lost?’

  ‘No.’ Nate was looking at the paper maps that Anon had stolen at an old gas station. ‘Keep going.’

  Ethan drove on over the bouncing road. Would Dwayne back at the convenience store really go to that party this weekend and hook up with Clara? He kind of hoped so. Maybe the lies the voice had told would create a ripple in that little town, changing lives in a positive way for once.

  He’d been wondering more than usual lately about all the stuff the voice said. Where it came from. How it chose one thing to say rather than another. Sometimes the voice lied wildly and sometimes it homed right in on the truth. Whether he liked it or not.

  It was like the voice was trying to mess things up. Or was that all Ethan’s fault, somehow?

  And what if his voice really did have an inside-out version, like Chizara fixing things or Nate going Anonymous? What the hell would it even be? The opposite of the voice wasn’t a truth serum like Verity. The voice didn’t care whether it told the truth or not.

  What would happen when he met other people like him, with a voice inside them too?

  What would two voices say to each other?

  In those precio
us moments when he snuck off with a burner to text her, Sonia always asked him questions like that. He hated not knowing the answers. He needed to know more about his power, and the only way that would happen was if he met someone else who shared it.

  And the best place to do that would be the current center of Zeroes action in the country.

  New Orleans.

  The fact that Sonia Sonic herself was headed there too didn’t hurt either.

  So Ethan Cooper kept driving along the scary country road, even as night descended and the others all fell back asleep.

  ‘THAT PLACE ON THE RIGHT LOOKS EMPTY,’ FLICKER SAID. ‘PULL OVER.’

  Thibault stared up at the shuttered house as Ethan brought the van to a halt. Everyone sat quiet, tired from the long drive, nerves jangled from cruising New Orleans, hunting for a hideout, trying not to flinch when police cars drove past.

  At least they’d finally stopped. Thibault’s body wanted to move, to stretch. To be free of this van.

  ‘Yeah, no eyes in there,’ Flicker said.

  ‘Nobody’s sleeping?’ Ethan asked. ‘No insides of eyelids?’

  ‘I wouldn’t see that in deep sleep. Anon should check it out to make sure.’

  Thibault was already looking along the street for the sparkling attention lines of nosy neighbors. No one was watching the house.

  Through the honeysuckle on the front fence he saw a side gate.

  ‘Feels like they’re on vacation,’ Chizara added. ‘No wifi groping around. Not much power coming off the grid. Pretty sweet security system.’

  She snapped her fingers.

  ‘It was, anyway.’

  ‘Can you turn the boiler on, Zara?’ Kelsie pleaded quietly. ‘I’m dying for a hot shower.’

  Chizara smiled. ‘Me too. Done.’

  ‘Take a phone, Anon,’ Nate said. He was sitting in the center backseat, his usual trucker cap pulled low over his eyes. Redneck Glorious Leader.

  Chizara solemnly passed Thibault a burner from the foil bag.

  ‘I’ll text you if it’s clear.’ He gave Flicker’s hand a squeeze, and she clasped him back, keeping him in the van for another moment. A gentle reminder to return.

  He stepped out into the damp cool of New Orleans winter.

  There wasn’t a padlock on the side gate. The sound of a faintly babbling TV came from the house next door, but no attention glittered from the windows. Televisions were useful that way, magnets for wayward eyes.

  In the sunny back courtyard, all the signs were good. The pet bowl was dry, as was the soil around the drooping potted plants. The owners had been away for a while, with no one coming to water while they were gone.

  But did that mean they were coming back soon?

  A brick sat by the steps, looking significant, and sure enough a key was under it. Thibault blew the dirt from it, shaking his head. This must be a safe neighborhood. Or were the neighbors supposed to be watching the house?

  A few spiderwebs clung between the screen door and the jamb. Thibault parted them and unlocked the door inside.

  The kitchen was clean, the counters bare. Nothing in the fridge but mustard.

  He was definitely alone here.

  After the bright sunshine outside, the shuttered interior was a shadowy dream world. A dark hallway skirted a staircase, the walls lined with framed photos. They glimmered with needles of light from the door glass at the end.

  A hallway lined with photos…A memory rushed at him of snatching down picture frames, throwing them into a trash bag. A roar built in his head, threatening to pull him into that storm of self-obliteration again.

  He took a slow breath.

  This was not his parents’ house. He had to stay in this moment, in this body. His friends needed to find a safe spot to rest, and he could help them. Flicker needed him to come back to her.

  His footsteps creaked the floorboards under the hallway rug – he had weight. He wasn’t a ghost, a lost spirit. He was part of the Zeroes.

  He felt the leather strap on his wrist. Chizara’s wafer of circuitry hung from it. He imagined her power reaching in, feeling for him through the walls. Lighting up the tracker on his wrist.

  Claiming him. Or maybe watching out for him.

  Off to his left the dining room opened, full of dark, polished furniture. More photos hung on the walls. A skier throwing up a great arc of powdered snow. Family arranged by a big fireplace, ski tans the shape of goggles around their eyes. Hopefully, that was where they were now, another week’s vacation in front of them.

  The sight of a happy family sent a pang of envy through him, of yearning and subdued rage. And of fear. What if he’d missed something, that day when he swept through his parents’ house with Flicker, grabbing photos and gifts and birthday cards? If he’d just left one thing, and Mom found it, she’d latch on and drive herself crazy again.

  He turned to the next room, forcibly leaving the thought behind.

  Shelves full of books, padded chairs and ottomans, carved side tables. Envy hit him again, of people who felt at home in the world. Who could make a home, claim a space, fill it with their own stuff, trust it to stay how they’d left it.

  But envy was useless. He checked for exits, escape routes in case the feds came knocking. The hall was narrow, the walls cluttered with Mardi Gras masks and photos. Tight enough to bottleneck a stampede of FBI agents barreling through the door.

  A folded copy of the Times-Picayune lay in the kindling box, two weeks old. The occupants had left well ahead of the first parades of Mardi Gras.

  They were rich enough to just shut up their house and go. No renting it out to visitors. Just switch on the security system and leave.

  He should text the others. They were waiting out there, nervous, in need of showers and beds. But being alone in this lived-in, cared-for space felt so good after that long drive.

  They’d camped in out-of-the-way places, shared cheap motel rooms. Always in each other’s face. Flicker right there, her senses all over him, worrying he was about to slip away again. The tracker always on his wrist, a reminder that no one trusted him.

  Thibault had spent years making his home in different places, bedding down in unseen corners. But the rest of them weren’t so used to roughing it, and Ethan complained nonstop.

  He was sick of breathing the terror that hung around them now, trapped in the feedback loop of Kelsie’s power, like a herd of prey animals attuned to each other’s fight-or-flight signals.

  Even something as simple as lunch took so much planning. Where to park the car. Whether Scam should swindle or Anon steal. Who wanted what kind of sandwich.

  Yesterday, lifting all those subs from the deli, it had all suddenly seemed so stupid and petty and wrong. Hadn’t he had enough of ripping people off at the Hotel Magnifique?

  His memory coughed up the friendly face of Charlie Penka, the hotel manager whose career he’d ruined. And that was back in the good days, before any of this. Before…

  His hand twitched.

  Thibault stood staring at it, smelling gunpowder.

  It was dangerous for him to be away from the others, to be this far away from Flicker. Here at the top of the stairs, surrounded by doorways, he felt the Nowhere tug at him again. He didn’t need a forest to dissolve into. He could just pull off the bracelet, step away, fade, go.

  He could do it now – leave the constant ringing in his ears, the keening of his guilt. Lose the ache from the gun’s kickback. Rid himself of the vision of Quinton Wallace lying there with his head blown apart. Of Craig, who’d been so strong, so loyal, dead on the truck bed—

  He pulled at the tracker on his wrist. He could throw it out the window, grind it under his heel. He had any number of ways to escape. He was constantly noticing them, resisting them.

  The Zeroes couldn’t go on forever like this. The others were too visible. They’d done too many illegal things. Eventually they’d be rounded up by the cops or the feds, and he’d have to watch.

  He’d have to watch
them take Flicker…

  Thibault shook himself, pulled himself back into the present. You’re checking the hideout. Making them all safer.

  He went into each bedroom. Furniture and life clutter. Bathrobes hung from the backs of doors, odd things were strewn on a couple of the beds, leftovers from packing. This was what real lives looked like, nothing like what he and his friends had.

  He texted Nate:

  Come on in. Looks like we can stay all winter.

  Or forever. He pocketed his phone, unable to shake the thought that this family was gone for good. Like they’d known that something evil was coming to New Orleans, and had fled for their lives, never to return.

  ‘WE’RE GOOD,’ NATE SAID AS HE READ THE TEXT, SOUNDING RELIEVED.

  Flicker felt her own relief. Not just for a shower and a real bed, but that Thibault was still with them, not faded away into the city. He’d taken an oddly long time to check the house. It had taken an effort of will not to have someone text him with a You okay in there?

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘If anyone challenges us, let Ethan handle it.’

  Kelsie opened the car door. ‘Okay, but I call first shower.’

  ‘Noted,’ Ethan said. ‘Just like the first five times you called it.’

  Flicker gave him a nudge. ‘Move. Thibault’s alone in there.’

  ‘He’s upstairs,’ Chizara reassured her. ‘His tracker’s reading fine.’

  Ethan opened his door and stepped out onto the curb, and soon the five of them had unloaded the car. The bright sun was welcome on Flicker’s skin. Her dark glasses wouldn’t look out of place, in case the neighbors had read about the hapless blind girl who’d fallen in with the evil Cambria terrorists.

  Flicker moved into Nate’s eyes, searching for threats.

  He was scanning the plant-hung porch of the house across the street. It had three chairs, and a couple of glasses glittered on a metal table.

  ‘We should keep the front windows of the house shuttered,’ she said. ‘The neighbors opposite like to hang out on their porch.’

  The balcony next to that one was leaf-strewn, and a small lock box for spare keys was attached to the iron fence. Somebody who rented their house? Short-term stayers wouldn’t be very nosy. On the other side, a watering system was spraying the flower beds. Another good sign – owners who’d rather stay inside than come out and water their lawn.