Swarm

by Scott Westerfeld

  “It wasn’t like that. He told me how he got like he is, which was sad, actually.” Kelsie looked up at him. “But the main thing is, he told me Ren was right. I’m a baby Swarm. One day I’ll level up.”

  Ethan stared. “You mean, you’re actually going to turn into . . . him?”

  His head was swimming with what Kelsie was saying, but that last bit made even less sense than the rest.

  “Kelsie Laszlo, killing machine? Forget it.”

  “But that’s why he didn’t kill me,” Kelsie said. “He has other plans. For when I’m . . . a Swarm.”

  “Like?” Not that Ethan wanted to know the answer.

  Kelsie got up and started going through her closet again. “After I level up, he wants us to be Zero-hunting buddies. He wants me to kill the rest of you.”

  A short, barked laugh squeezed out of Ethan. “No. Way.”

  “That’s what I said.” She tossed a pile of underwear into the bag. She was talking like a zombie. “But what if there’s no way out of leveling up?”

  “That’s nuts! You’re so . . . sweet. And nice and . . .” Ethan sighed. When did he become so lame? “And the first time we met, you saved me from the Craig! Would a baby Swarm do that?”

  Kelsie turned to him. “Back then, I had a dad. And then I had the Zeroes. But what do I have now? Nate’s totally ghosting us, Thibault’s left the Dish, and Zara’s giving up on me and her because she wrecked a ship. Face it, Ethan, the Zeroes are kind of busted!”

  Ethan swallowed, afraid to ask about the whole wrecked-a-ship thing. He hoped it was a figure of speech. But whatever it meant, he had to admit the team vibe wasn’t happening these days. The empty Dish was proof of that.

  “Anyway”—she turned back to her closet—“the truth is, I wasn’t really planning on saving you from Craig. I just wanted to find out what you knew about my dad. Just like I was using Chizara to make myself feel safe.”

  At that moment, a bolt of anger shot through Ethan. Why was Chizara the one to make Kelsie feel safe, and not him? He was the one who’d realized that Kelsie had a power, who’d brought her into the group. Who’d waited all this time while she grieved over her dad . . .

  Without really meaning to, Ethan opened his mouth, and the voice spoke. It took all his anger, his frustration about having been silent so long, his desire to be understanding and supportive and not a dick, and put it into words.

  “We’ve all been through a lot lately. A broken heart on top of that has got to suck,” the voice said smoothly. “And the sad thing is, it’s probably always going to be that way for you.”

  Kelsie looked at him, her eyes wide. “What?”

  He had her undivided attention at last. And everything the voice had said felt so true that it even sounded like Ethan talking. That hardly ever happened.

  He didn’t even pause to think about it. “You’re only ever going to be happy in a group, Kels. A crowd. A gang. No one person can ever make you feel loved enough.”

  “I guess,” she said faintly. “That’s how it’s always been.”

  “You guys keep telling me my power sucks because it only works on one person at a time, but at least I can connect to someone,” the voice said. “Maybe none of the rest of you will ever have that.”

  Okay, now the voice was just being cruel. It had sucked up Ethan’s stupid jealousy and spat it back into the world, like toxic verbal tar.

  Kelsie had grown still. “Ethan, was that you?”

  He tried to shake his head. To explain that it was the voice talking crap. But it was his anger that had formed the words, and it felt so right to say it after they’d all disappeared on him and Kelsie had run off with Chizara.

  “You’re all made from the same pieces, just rearranged!” the voice blurted out. “You and Swarm. Nate and Thibault. You’re just too full of yourselves to see it!”

  Ethan clamped his mouth shut. Crap. The voice was in full omniscient mode now, spilling its own brand of truth to get what it wanted.

  What he had wanted, down at the bottom of his shitty-friend soul.

  “You’re right.” Kelsie grabbed a black hoodie from the closet.

  “Wait,” he said. “That wasn’t me.”

  She didn’t look at him. She slipped the hoodie over her head and turned toward the door, still silent.

  “Kelsie? It was just the—”

  “I know,” she said without turning around. “It was the voice. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. Just leave me alone, Ethan.”

  She spun away and slipped from the room, moving like a dancer even when she was hurting. Ethan heard her race down the stairs, and then the back door slammed.

  He sat on her bare mattress, breathing hard. His fists were trembling with the effort of fighting the voice.

  Kelsie would come back, right? She’d left her bag, so it wasn’t like she was leaving the Dish forever.

  But leave me alone? That was not a Kelsie sentence.

  Crap. Was she looking for another conversation with Swarm? There was no telling what that creep would say.

  And what if Kelsie listened this time?

  Ethan ran downstairs and across to the open main entrance. Outside, the winter wind blew newspaper along the front of the used-car lot and rattled empty beer cans beside a row of dumpsters. But there was no sign of anyone.

  “I screwed up,” Ethan breathed, then shouted, “Kelsie? Kelsie!”

  He went left, up the street past a boarded-up building. Nothing. He ran back, skirting the Dish all the way to the wide, vacant streets on the other side. No one. Not even a car at this time of night. He tried dialing her number, but all he got was voice mail.

  Crap, he hated himself sometimes. Like when he screwed up so royally that only his superpowered friends could help.

  “Someone better pick up the damn phone this time!” he muttered.

  He started calling Zeroes.

  CHAPTER 49

  MOB

  KELSIE SHIVERED IN THE COLD. She kept her head down and her hood up, trying to disappear in the wide, empty streets of the Heights.

  Nothing was moving this late at night. Like someone had hit freeze-frame, and the movie was never going to start again.

  Zara had pulled away so suddenly. Because there was nothing important that Kelsie could give her. Nothing that meant as much to Zara as her precious self-control. And then Ethan’s stupid voice had truth-bombed her whole damn life.

  Nothing divides a group faster than couples.

  Love was its own feedback loop, away from everyone else. You stuck with someone and they stuck with you, until your little madness of two overwhelmed everything else and you lost yourself and your crowd. And then the person you loved gave up the first time something went wrong.

  Kelsie stuffed down the pain swelling in her chest, keeping it from spreading through the winter-quiet streets. There was no one around to turn into a mob, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  She didn’t know where to go. The Dish wasn’t home anymore. And maybe the Zeroes weren’t her family. It had all been a delusion, a way to keep herself from realizing the truth. She had no one. She was a monster and a danger to her friends.

  She had to get someplace safe, where Swarm couldn’t work his evil. No big crowds. No anger.

  If she were on Ivy Street right now, she’d cruise to the front of any line. Everybody knew her there. Everybody expected her to bring a good time. But what if all this pain in her came tumbling out?

  Besides, tonight she didn’t trust herself to ride any vibe, to be the party girl she used to be. She needed to take ownership of the swirling mess of her own thoughts before she hurt someone.

  She reached for her phone and hesitated, wondering who to call. She used to have friends before the Zeroes. Lots of them.

  Finally she texted Fig. Of all her friends, he was the guy who knew himself the best. Right now, that was the vibe Kelsie wanted to hook into—certainty and purpose.

  Where r u? I need a crowd. Something down t
o earth.

  Fig’s reply was immediate. Got just the thing. Cnr Park & Washington.

  Kelsie frowned. She’d roamed Cambria’s streets since she was a little kid, in search of a crowd or a good time, or both. She knew its streets better than she knew her own skin.

  Fig was in a church? Whatever.

  Be there in ten, she texted back.

  She was already moving, racing downhill toward the highway that cut the Heights from the rest of Cambria. Her breath was fog flying back over her shoulder as she ran downtown.

  * * *

  The Baptist church was a plain redbrick building. One of Cambria’s oldest. The lights were on.

  Fig met her on Washington Street. He hugged her tight, practically picking her up off the ground. “I gotcha.”

  “I know,” she said into his shoulder. She was glad it was too dark for her face to give her away. She jerked her head at the church. “Is this some kind of Christmas thing?”

  “Nope.” Fig led her across the parking lot, where empty cars ticked as their engines cooled in the December air.

  There was a blue light on over the narrow basement stairs.

  “Oh, right,” Kelsie said. “A meeting?”

  Fig had been sober since Kelsie’s dad had died. It had surprised her at first, especially since Fig had kept his job at Fuse. But something about Jerry Laszlo’s rapid decline had started Fig on a new path. One that had led him to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings twice a week.

  “Am I allowed in there?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Fig said. “They’ll ask if you want to share. You don’t have to.”

  “But you know I’ve never—”

  “You said you needed a down-to-earth crowd,” he said. “This is all I got. You’ll like these guys. We’re a kind of a fellowship.”

  Kelsie shrugged. She was okay with religion, as long as it made people happy. Sometimes she’d hang outside a church during service, just for the calm, steady joy it delivered. And she liked the idea of fellowship. Needed it, in fact.

  “We can go someplace else if—” Fig began.

  “No. This is perfect,” Kelsie said.

  Fig wrapped an arm around her shoulders and walked her down the stairs.

  She was relieved to see that the group inside was small, only a couple dozen people. Three of them were at an old-fashioned coffee urn, filling paper cups with bitter-scented brew. The rest were already seated in folding chairs that faced a small stage.

  There was no altar or cross. The floor was concrete and the walls were bare drywall. It looked about as plain as any high school classroom. It was cold, too—was there no heating in this place?

  But the crowd itself was warm, and had a certainty that Kelsie clung to.

  She accidentally met the gaze of a tall man with long, black hair tied back.

  “Welcome,” the man called. He headed toward her. “I’m Harold. You must be Fig’s friend Kelsie.”

  She nodded once. “Uh, I don’t want to speak. Or share. Thanks.”

  “No problem—it’s an open meeting,” Harold said. He had cool blue eyes and a warm palm when he shook her hand. “We’ll be ready when you are.”

  Kelsie felt her gratitude spill out into the room. Harold’s smile broadened.

  “There’s chocolate chip cookies by the coffee,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Kelsie said.

  She grabbed a couple of cookies, then took a seat beside Fig in the second row. The knots in her chest began to loosen as the crowd came together. She felt their patience and resilience, and a kind of cautious optimism. Exactly what she craved. She breathed it in, deeply.

  Harold got up to speak, and Kelsie felt the room’s respect settle around him.

  “Good evening,” he said. “I’m Harold and I’m an addict.”

  “Hi, Harold,” everyone said in ragged unison.

  “Let’s start this meeting of the Washington Street Group of Alcoholics Anonymous with the Serenity Prayer. Join me?”

  Kelsie knew the words, and halfway through she joined in. The shared cadence was a little like singing together, and she felt her nerve endings hum.

  “Next,” Harold said, “I’ll remind you that for the protection of the group, we ask that you have no drugs or paraphernalia on your person at this meeting. If you’re carrying, kindly dispose of your items outside this safe space and return as quickly as possible.”

  No one moved. Harold nodded approval.

  “Big group tonight. Difficult time of year, Christmas,” Harold said, and the crowd murmured in agreement. “We’d like to extend a special welcome to newcomers. Any first-timers here who’d like to share?”

  Kelsie looked down at her feet, feeling like a fraud.

  She was relieved when someone else got up. The woman had the tough, wizened look of a long-term alcoholic. She gave her name—Tasha—and this time Kelsie joined in with the welcome, feeling a tiny zing of care and encouragement on her tongue as she said the woman’s name.

  Tasha began haltingly, but the crowd stayed with her. It was like when someone shy gave a wedding speech and everyone wanted them to succeed.

  The room’s steadiness softened into sorrow. Tasha had been abandoned as a kid, raised in foster homes. Moving around too often was something Kelsie knew well. It must’ve resonated with some of the others, too, from the low, sad hum of the room.

  When Tasha talked about her alcohol abuse, the grief of the crowd peaked, but then it turned inside out into joy when she talked about getting sober. Kelsie had never seen the two emotions connect that way before.

  She let her power stretch out, pulling her thinner until she lost track of where she stopped and everyone else began. The room became a shape, all the jagged parts forming a whole.

  For a moment Kelsie was that whole, and she wasn’t scared of Swarm. She felt sorry that he could never experience anything like this. This certainty of having failed, mixed with determination to do better, be better.

  She felt safe here among strangers. Swarm could do what he wanted outside this room, but this place was hers. There was something sacred about the trust they placed in each other.

  Then, for one brief, stupid moment, she thought of Zara, and her serenity broke.

  Before they’d spent Christmas night together, Zara had been a virgin, she was certain. Kelsie felt a pang of guilt and tenderness at how much that trust had cost her. Chizara had known how dangerous her power could become the moment she lost control. Kelsie had worried about it too, but she hadn’t expected the disaster to come so soon, to be so huge and final.

  The drive home had been icy, the kiss good-bye distant. Chizara’s mind had been blown by crashing that ship, all that power in her body a constant reminder of the responsibilities she carried every day.

  But even so, she’d wanted Kelsie to stay with the Okeke family for safety tonight. Kelsie had lied and insisted she would bunk with Ling.

  Hardly more than a day since they’d first kissed, and already Kelsie was lying.

  Zara was probably lying to her parents, too, or at least not telling them everything. She pretended they were a pain in the neck, but when it came down to it, she wanted to obey her mom and dad and make them happy. Kelsie didn’t fit into that picture.

  A hot tear rolled down Kelsie’s face, and she struggled to keep the pain from spreading into the room. There was enough pain here already.

  Fig took her hand, and she regained control.

  She kept her head bowed, wiping away tears as the next person got up to share.

  “My name’s Quinton.”

  “Hi, Quinton,” said the crowd.

  CHAPTER 50

  MOB

  HER SHOCK ECHOED THROUGH THEM, cold and hard, with a burning core of hunger.

  Harold was staring at Swarm, uncertain what to make of his mocking expression. The rest were trying to welcome him, fighting the sense of danger that they couldn’t yet understand.

  But then Swarm made it clear—he reached into a plastic s
hopping bag at his side and pulled out a bottle of cheap whiskey.

  “What the hell?” Fig said beside her.

  Swarm swung the bottle high into the air and crashed it down before the gathered group. It hit the concrete and shattered, scattering glass and liquid across the floor. The sweet, oaky scent rose up, mixing with Kelsie’s fear and panic. People recoiled, knocking over chairs and swearing.

  Outrage lit the room like a grass fire. Kelsie felt it spreading through her.

  “Aw, hell no!” Fig shouted. He was furious.

  “Don’t get mad!” Kelsie shouted. “That’s what he wants!”

  But it was too late.

  A tide of horror and vertigo overwhelmed the two dozen people around her, and the shaking began.

  Around her, the faces of the swarmed became slack, their arms loose and twitching. Their teeth chattered. She could feel Swarm’s power coiling through them all, erasing them, scouring every bit of individuality from them. In a few seconds the crowd’s energy became clean and perfect, all those jagged parts tuning to a single frequency, a music of unison.

  Ren might’ve called people dolls, but to Swarm they weren’t even that. They were a single, complex instrument.

  He spoke with all their mouths at once.

  “Who should we kill, Kelsie Laszlo?”

  He knew her name. He’d found her here. He knew what she wanted.

  Kelsie tried to lock onto something safe. Hope, joy, love. But she couldn’t remember any of those emotions.

  Just this anger. Just this hunger.

  The swarm’s periphery was abuzz—the people caught at the mad edge of rapture were tipping chairs and bouncing off walls. The coffee urn went over, and scalding water spilled across skin. Nobody even slowed down.

  “Stop this!” Kelsie cried out.

  But then she felt herself being pulled through the door that had been opened that day in the mall, cast deep into the feedback loop. Her body shook with it, a staccato pulse of need.

  She didn’t have to search any longer. She didn’t have to be heartbroken and hurt and alone. It had only kept her from what was right and pure. Hunger. Want. Anger. Need. This was her real home. She fit right in. There was nothing left in her life but this bitter appetite, no time before this feeling had possessed her, shaken and rattled her. This burning need had been there every moment she’d sought out crowds. Every baseball game, school assembly, poker table, dance party, or club. All of them wanted to become this.