A crowd was gathered now, and Coin swung his backpack off his shoulder and pulled out a wad of paper.
Flicker jumped into his eyes. In his hands the rectangles of white crawled with fine lines of dull green ink. The familiar shapes of presidents and seals began to appear.
“He’s about to do it,” she said.
“At least let me kill the fountain lights,” Crash begged. “They’re gnawing my skin off.”
“Sure,” Nate said. “But we need a way to push people back. Anything that keeps the Curve from kicking in.”
“I’ll try,” Crash said.
“Anon, get in there and separate those two.” Nate’s voice was full of Glorious Leader confidence. “If we can stop them from locking eyes, maybe Glitch won’t do her thing.”
“You got it.” Thibault squeezed Flicker’s hand, then slipped away. She felt his absence with a momentary pang, then shook off the feeling and threw herself into Coin’s eyes.
He was climbing now, hoisting himself up onto the lowest arm of the fountain. The money in his free hand was fully formed. No presidents after all, just a solid stack of Benjamin Franklins staring up at Flicker.
“He’s going with hundreds.” As Flicker spoke, Coin flung a plume of money high into the air.
She pulled back, putting her vision into the galaxy of eyes already watching—and moving in.
“Oh, shit.”
“Relax,” Crash said from beside her. “I got this.”
CHAPTER 28
CRASH
FOR CHIZARA, A SHOPPING MALL decked out in full Christmas bling was torture.
It was like carrying a vast, intricate, burning-hot jungle gym on her shoulders, with added angry-bee clouds of Christmas lights. It was hard to think straight, to home in and find the right pain among millions.
The excruciating beauty of the central junction box was a big distraction. Phone stings scraped across her as frazzled shoppers scrambled for the money fluttering down around the fountain.
Beside her Mob whimpered, vocalizing the crowd’s exhaustion and greed.
“Just another ten seconds.” Chizara dragged her mind off the junction box and back to the fountain’s workings. Incredibly, the thing was only half active, most of its ghostly pathways dark and barely visible through the flashing, hurting bars of signal. How spectacular, how painful, would it be in full flow?
That sparkling cluster in the fountain’s center governed the lights’ color and intensity. Chizara sifted through the hard drives, the synchronization system, the galaxy of fluttering LEDs . . . so much stuff, so much pain—
She crashed it all, just to clear her head.
With the lights’ buzzing silenced, she could see the water system, the pumps and valves and gauges, big and crude after the lacy electronics. She put a mental finger on every piece of piping, every relevant connection.
Coin was perched in the curving steel. Glitch stood below, dancing in the rain of cash. If her brain-glitching power kicked in, they would all be helpless.
It was time to throw the switch.
With a grunt of effort, Crash shut off every valve inside the fountain, at the same time pushing the impeller pumps up to maximum. To do that without crashing the rest of the mall took all her focus, like playing Twister while flipping pancakes. Sweat sprang out cool on her face.
Inside the fountain, gauges wailed at every juncture—pressure was building, going critical. But in the rain of free money, no one even noticed that the fountain had gone dark and still.
Then a hissing came from somewhere at the top—the built-up pressure had popped a valve open by sheer force, sending a sparkling mist into the air.
“Get ready,” Chizara said to Mob, and let every valve go.
Cold water exploded from dozens of spouts, spewing in all directions under pressure. People shrieked and ducked away on all sides. The fake cash lay plastered sodden to the floor, suddenly a lot less tempting.
Even at this distance, Chizara felt a spatter of drops hitting her face. A diabolical Crash laugh burst out of her chest.
The peppy Christmas shopping tunes chose that moment to switch to a somber drone of cellos and brass.
“Go, Scam!” said Mob, and pointed. “And check out poor Coin!”
Crash laughed again. Coin was curled at the top of the fountain like a wet cat up a tree, his arms wrapped protectively around the backpack. Clumps of bills dropped from the soggy mass of green paper in his hands.
But the eruption of spray lasted only a few seconds. Crash kept the impeller wheels spinning, but this thing was designed to be a fountain, not a water cannon. She shut the valves and wiped her face.
“I’ll build it up and hit them again in a minute.”
The crowd looked confused by the bait and switch of free money and cold water. People stomped about, complaining, squeezing out skirts and pant legs, but they still wanted that wet cash on the floor.
But Crash had one more trick to play.
She reached up into the air-conditioning, dragging the thermostat way down and setting the fans to full blast. Icy air gusted into the fountain plaza.
People backed away from the fountain and the puddles around it, grimacing at the sudden cold. And, as the crowd fell below some crucial density, Coin’s money turned back into worthless white rectangles of sodden paper.
“You!” Glitch was pointing straight at Crash from beneath the fountain. “You’re that chick from the nightclub!”
Crash, her legs trembling under the weight of the mall’s electronics, still had the strength to blow a kiss at Glitch and raise the middle finger of her other hand.
CHAPTER 29
ANONYMOUS
THIBAULT WATCHED AS THE FAKE money faded.
The crowd fell back. Their strands of frustrated attention stuck to the bills, stretching and shimmering . . .
Until, snap! Their collective focus disintegrated, flitting about in bewilderment. And all that cash was now sodden, sloppily scissored rectangles of plain white.
The crowd stared at each other and at the blank bills. Had it all been some kind of optical illusion? A trick?
Time to move in. If the crowd was thin enough for the money to fade, Ren wouldn’t have much power either. Thibault had to get her someplace private before Davey jumped down to help.
He pushed forward past a soggy couple, their eyes tethered tight and bright to the wet paper in their hands.
“Some kinda magic trick,” the guy said. “What a rip.”
Two mall security guards were waving the crowd back from the fountain. Perfect.
Thibault snuck up behind the skinnier guard and gently unlooped the handcuffs from his belt. Then he ran a big, fast semicircle within the cover of the crowd, past their cranky faces, their angry fists.
Davey was on the lowest arm of the dripping fountain sculpture, watching Ren’s advance on Crash. Thibault darted across the wet tiles, vaulted onto the long steel arm.
Davey turned to look—too late. Thibault had clapped a handcuff on his wrist and locked him onto a steel branch.
“What?” Eyes wide, Davey pulled on the cuff. “Are you out of your mind ?”
Thibault jumped down before the guy could think to throw a punch.
“Ren, help!” Davey cried. “Stalker dude! Six o’clock!”
Ren spun around, her focus locking on Thibault.
“I see him,” she said.
He tried to chop her attention away, but it snapped right back onto him.
The steel rang under the rattling handcuff. “Get the key off him, quick!”
Ren stepped swiftly backward into the crowd’s edge, then flung out a hand at Thibault—
And the world stopped making sense. It became random patches of color, twists of texture and tone. Thibault closed his eyes, but eyelids didn’t make sense either, and the sounds around him turned foreign and frightening.
His mind fled in all directions. Insanity was only seconds away.
Cold water hit Thibault right in
the face. His eyes flew open and he recognized the fountain, all its spouts erupting. And over there was the girl who’d glitched him. Her black hair doused flat as a winter witch’s, Ren held her ground, alone, enraged, as the rest of the crowd fell back.
Nice timing, Crash.
Before Ren could recover, Thibault slid-splashed across the floor and grabbed her arm, twisted it behind her back. He pinned her other arm and dragged her away from the remains of the crowd.
“Put me down, you piece of—” Her boots thudded into his shins, sending flashes of red pain across his vision.
Streamers of curiosity and concern from the crowd latched onto Ren as he carried her away. With no chopping hands free, he tried to will them away, but the two security guards had spotted the howling girl and were coming after him.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” a sudden voice boomed across the mall. “I hope you’ve all enjoyed our little show!”
It was Nate, halfway up the escalator, hands in the air, his Glorious Leader aura shining. The attention of the crowd, of the security guards, even of dripping, angry Ren, switched to him in an instant, ready to listen, ready to trust.
He spoke to their uplifted faces, selling them the crazy idea that this was some great entertainment, and not the Zeroes’ usual superpowered train wreck. There was even a smattering of applause—people wanted to be rescued from the crazy. They wanted things to make sense.
Thibault wrenched his mind free from Bellwether’s thrall and dragged Ren off down an empty hallway. At first she kept struggling, but then she hung still, every muscle in her drenched body wire-taut. He felt the faintest wavering at the edges of his perception.
“Sorry,” he said. “No crowd, no glitch.”
“Give me the key to those handcuffs! I’m serious!” Her boot whumped into his shin again.
“Ow! Quit kicking! I haven’t got it.”
“You can’t leave him trapped there. I’m begging you!” She strained to looked toward the fountain.
“Relax. With Glorious Leader talking, security won’t even notice him.”
“Security?” She convulsed—was she laughing or crying? “Do we look like we give a shit about mall cops?”
“We just want to talk to you two. Without a crowd around.”
“You okay, Anon?” came Flicker’s voice. She and Mob were following them down the hallway.
“Not too close,” Thibault called. “Her power could kick in.”
“Oh my God, you’ve got your whole crew here? Are you crazy?” Ren exploded again, kicking and struggling. “Didn’t I say, specifically? He can smell us in a group!”
“Who can?” Thibault suppressed a shiver—the mall was suddenly cold, and he was wet through. “You mean your killer?”
Ren let out a wail. “If you morons figured out where we’d be, Swarm will too! Find some bolt cutters, a saw! We’ve got to get Davey off that thing!”
“Um, she’s just bullshitting, right?” Flicker said. “To make you let go?”
“I don’t think so.” Mob’s face was pale and stiff. “Something’s coming. Something really, really bad.”
CHAPTER 30
MOB
KELSIE FELT IT ROAR THROUGH her body. Something had hooked into the greed and confusion of the crowd, dragging them into a deep, hungry rage.
It was a knife in her brain, pulsing with every heartbeat.
She stared past the fountain. The people clustered around Nate on the escalator had begun to fall away, like a tide dragged out before a tsunami. The wave itself was building farther back, more and more people massing together.
Flicker’s voice was faint. “You’re not doing this, are you?”
“No,” Kelsie said.
“And it doesn’t feel like Glitch,” Flicker said.
“It’s Swarm!” Glitch cried from where Thibault held her, halfway down the exit hall. “What are you waiting for? Get Davey and let’s get out of here. You have no idea what’s coming.”
Kelsie had more than an idea—she could feel it. She was becoming it, swept into the blazing anger of the crowd. They began to jitter under Swarm’s control, jerking and shaking like sand on a drum. Their teeth rattled and their breath came in furious, shuddering sips of air.
Crowds had always felt like a big, dumb animal to Kelsie. But this one was more like a hive of bees—shivering and buzzing, many-bodied, single-minded.
Glitch broke free of Thibault’s grasp and came hurtling down the hallway, knocking Flicker sideways. Kelsie spun and seized her, the swarm roiling in her gut. She wanted to shake the life out of Glitch. She wanted to shove her so hard into a wall that her skull would crack—
She stopped herself just in time, extinguishing the fury that burned in her muscles.
“She’s right,” Kelsie whispered. “We should run. Right now.”
Glitch jerked out of her grasp. “The hell we will! Not without Davey!”
“I’ll get him.” Thibault shot past and Glitch followed, both of them headed for the edge of the trembling crowd.
It was moving as one . . . swarming toward the fountain. The central mass was dense and packed, but the periphery seethed with activity—people sparking out from the core and back in, almost a blur.
Under the fountain, Davey writhed against his handcuff, like he was trying to pull off his own hand.
His terror made Kelsie’s mouth water. The greed of the mall crowd had shifted into another kind of hunger.
There was Nate, coming down the escalator with a mad confidence, his hands raised in the air as if he could stop the swarm. He bellowed out something that Kelsie couldn’t even hear through the roar in her head.
She grabbed Flicker’s hand, trying to speak—
He can’t win. They’ll kill him.
But the fury had taken her again—her jaw was locked tight. She tried to tear herself out of the feedback loop, but anger and thirst and even bone-rattling lust pulled her back in. She wanted to be part of this murderous crowd. Nothing else mattered.
As the buzzing edge of the swarm reached Coin, the fountain erupted, water spraying in all directions. Chizara was nearby, a hundred spinning lights pulsing to life around her raised arms. Kelsie expected an answering spike in the swarm’s energy—confusion, hesitation—but there was only that deep, wrathful desire roaring through her body.
“Move it, Stalker!” Coin shouted, his voice shrill as the core of the shivering crowd drew closer. “Get me out of here!”
“Hang on!” came Thibault’s voice. As he breached the seething outer edge of the swarm, Kelsie lost sight of him, her awareness faltering.
“It’s not working,” she managed to say through clenched teeth.
“I can’t see shit,” Flicker muttered. “Their eyes are twitching all over the place.”
Kelsie glimpsed Glitch staggering as a passing man slammed her with his forearm, saw her go off balance as someone else shouldered her. Dozens of people were splashing through the fountain. Glitch was falling—
No, some guy had caught her and was holding her up. Anon, coming back into focus as he dragged her from the swarm. Chizara was beside them.
“Don’t save me,” Glitch yelled. “Get Davey!”
“I can’t get through!” Thibault shouted.
Flicker’s voice carried above the din. “Nate, bail out!”
The main body of the swarm had reached the escalator. Nate had abandoned his Glorious Leader pose and was running upward and away. But the first grasping hands of the mass were just behind him. Ethan stood frozen at the top of the steps until Nate jerked him into a run.
Flicker called again, calm steel in her voice. “Crash! Escalator!”
Chizara turned and raised an arm, letting out a sharp, barked laugh just as Nate reached the upper floor. The tendril of the swarm that pursued him began to slip and tumble, falling back as the stairs reversed.
Flicker sank her fingernails into Kelsie’s arm. “Mob! Come back to me. Can you control them? Can you do anything?”
Kelsie tried to find some other emotion to send into the crowd, but she had nothing but hunger. She moved to get a better view of Coin, because she didn’t want to miss a moment of his terror. She wasn’t Kelsie anymore. She wasn’t even the Mob she knew.
“No,” she said, half to Flicker, half to herself.
“Please!” came a long wail from Glitch. Anon had dragged her back to the hallway entrance. Chizara was right behind them—
But so was the livid border of the swarm. A woman took a passing swipe at Chizara—she ducked and kicked out, sending her attacker sprawling.
Thibault pointed down the hallway. “You guys run for that exit. I’ll go back for Davey.”
“You won’t make it,” Flicker said.
“In a crowd that big I’m—”
“Dead!” Flicker yelled, grabbing at his jacket. “Swarm killed the other Anonymous, remember?”
Thibault looked back at Davey. “But we can’t just—”
“Too late,” Mob said, horrified and exultant.
The swarm had reached the fountain.
“Screw this,” she heard Crash say, and the mall plunged into darkness. The crowd was unswayed. In the eerie green light of the exit signs, they continued to shake in silent convulsions, their jittering eyes shining, the water glittering as it splashed up around them.
A pulse of energy went through the swarm, sweeping Mob up into their vast greed. The pack seethed forward, setting upon Coin, feeding on his fear. They wanted to destroy him.
Someone pulled her, staggering, down the hallway, even as she felt every moment of the murder behind her—the clothes tearing from his body, then clumps of his hair, his skin. She felt sick and elated as bones bent and snapped. Dimly, she heard him screaming, and even that felt good. The swarm’s energy slipped from gluttony to a gulping satisfaction. . . .
Then the screaming stopped, and Kelsie felt a moment of perfect, satiated bliss before she realized what the silence meant.
Coin was dead. Davey was dead.
There was a flutter of confusion from the mob. In his moment of ecstasy Swarm had lost control, long enough for the crowd to drift apart into individuals, to register what had happened. . . .