“Me too,” Flicker said. “So imagine that times a couple of hundred people.”
“And maybe even more light,” Chizara said. “I’ve got power left over from my little . . . accident up the coast. I can pump more watts in and burn out all the lights in a blaze of glory!”
“You think all that would knock you out for ten seconds?” Flicker asked.
Kelsie rubbed her eyes, nodding. “At least.”
“I’ll be wearing these, then.” The Craig pulled sunglasses from his breast pocket and put them on. “Swarm comes in, you guys flash the crowd, I grab him, squish him unconscious. Have I got that right?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Ethan said.
“But then what?” Thibault stepped into the one remaining circle of spotlight. The others’ attention flicked toward him. “What do we do with Swarm once we’ve got him—besides get him isolated, fast?”
The connections faded as they considered.
“He needs to be away from crowds, like, permanently.” Ethan sent a worried strand toward Flicker. “So, lock him up? Somewhere in the country?”
“In the desert. A bunker.” Craig’s attention fanned out among them. “I might know a place.”
“And then, what, spend the rest of our lives taking supplies out there?” Thibault asked, killing the hopeful glow in all their faces. “Hiding the fact that we’re kidnappers?”
“Just until we think of something better,” Chizara said. “Some way of canceling out his powers.”
“What, like putting a big magnet next to him?” Ethan snorted.
“Maybe we can cure him,” Flicker said. “What if you faced off with him, Kelsie, with the five of us on your side? Could you change his power so he’s more like you?”
Kelsie shrank back into herself. “I don’t think so. He changes me, not the other way around.”
“Can we level him down?” Ethan said.
Connections spangled at him.
“And how would we do that, Ethan?” Chizara asked.
He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Why even get him here if we don’t know what to do with him?”
A silence fell, connections probing all around the room.
“Don’t worry about Swarm,” said a voice from the door. “I know exactly how to deal with him.”
Thibault squinted. Nate stood there, framed against the sunlight. He’d snuck in, instead of taking the stage and commanding everyone’s attention like usual.
But now he stood resplendent in the sudden fizz of their surprise and hope.
“How?” Flicker asked quietly.
Glorious Leader looked around, deftly connecting with each person—even Thibault. He steadied and brightened each arc of attention, and it felt good. Thibault usually hated Nate’s blatant displays of power, but all he could feel was relief at being led with such perfect assurance. At being seen at all.
Damn. He’d really missed the guy.
“Don’t worry,” Nate said. “I’ll handle it.”
Uncertainty wormed through the relief in Thibault’s gut. He didn’t want to think what handling it might mean, and he didn’t want to ask.
He waited for someone else to speak up, to insist that Nate say what he was planning. But that round of eye contact seemed to have silenced everyone else’s doubts too.
They all wanted to believe that Glorious Leader had it under control.
“Now let’s get back to work,” Nate said.
CHAPTER 54
SCAM
ETHAN HAD NEVER BEEN SO unhappy to hit the weekend.
But here it was, Saturday, the day of Love Saves the Dish, the world’s first party named expressly to piss off an evil supervillain. That was the plan, anyway: lure him in and crush him. If you could call surround yourself with happy minions, dazzle them with a Dish-tastic dance party, then choke out the bad guy a plan.
The plan had kept Ethan awake most of the night.
He thought back fondly to the days when corrupt cops were his biggest problem. Or Jess being mad at him. But at least there was one good thing about the likelihood of imminent death—it took his mind off the fact that Kelsie had known he had a crush on her, and hadn’t bothered to set him straight.
Six months he’d spent pining for her, and the whole time she’d been rolling her eyes about it. On top of which she’d turned out to have an evil power all along.
Gah—no. Kelsie was too nice to make fun of him behind his back. She was good. He still hoped that.
Because if she wasn’t, they were all going to die today.
Ethan pulled on his best jeans and his favorite hoodie—if he was going to die, he was going to die styling.
“Stop,” Mom said as he hurried toward the front door.
Ethan stopped. Mom was usually at the office by now, every day of the week. But today she was still in the bathrobe Jess had given her for Christmas. She was sitting at the dining table with her hands wrapped around a coffee mug.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Uh,” Ethan began.
For a crazy moment he thought about explaining everything, just in case this was his last chance. Maybe it was time she knew about powers and swarms and the Zeroes’ busted-ass plan to convert a Heights warehouse into a supervillain trap.
Mom didn’t wait for the explanation, though. “Because I hope you’re going to the funeral.”
“The what, now?”
“For Officer Delgado,” Mom continued. “Died in the line of duty the night after Christmas.”
“Right. The guy who was torn apart by . . . a crowd.”
Mom’s face fell. “Yeah. Another one, right here in Cambria this time. He was a good cop and a close friend of mine. He was helping me with an investigation. It would have made his career.”
“The Internal Affairs thing?”
She gave him a look and said tightly, “I can’t share that information. Only that Marcus Delgado is being buried today with full honors. And you are going with me.”
Ethan groaned inwardly. Full-honors funerals took hours. His mom had dragged him to one in Bakersfield two years ago. His swore his butt was still numb. Plus, he did not have that kind of time, not today.
“Can’t you take Jess?”
“She’s been to enough funerals, don’t you think?”
“Oh. Right.” Ethan swallowed. “The thing is, I have these important plans with my friends.”
“More important than a man who gave his life for this city?”
Ethan was about to say, Totally, because if we screw this up, we’ll all be having funerals. But any remotely true answer would mean spilling the beans. Besides, Mom looked like she was really hurting, which was kind of weirding him out.
“Ethan, just do this thing for me, okay?” Mom came to stand in front of him, and put her hands on his shoulders. “Please?”
She gave him a look that made him feel small and sad. Just like all those times when she caught him lying about his grades. But none of this was Ethan’s fault. Not directly. Heck, he was trying to avenge the guy.
And today of all days, he couldn’t abandon his friends for hours of bagpipes and bugles.
So he reached for the voice.
I want Mom off my back. Keep it simple! If the voice got too fancy, Mom would know it was the other Ethan—bad, lying Ethan. And he did not want his last day on earth to include a smackdown from his mom. Be nice about it. And most of all, voice, be kind.
The voice leaped up instantly. “Of course I’ll go to the funeral with you, Mom.”
Ethan clamped his mouth shut. What part of that was not clear?
Mom smiled gently. She put a warm hand on his cheek. “Thanks, sweetheart. I had your suit cleaned. We’ll head to the parade ground in an hour.”
She left the room, taking with her any hope Ethan had of being part of the Zeroes’ preparations. But the voice had been clear: the only way to get past this ass-numbing funeral was to go.
* * *
Watching someone g
et buried when you and all your friends were probably going to die that night was a seriously depressing experience.
The police parade ground was wedged between the Heights and a nature preserve. It was infuriatingly close to the Dish, a ten-minute walk at most.
The ground was crammed with uniformed cops standing in formation, hundreds of them. Their faces were rigid with grieving, like this was a grim job that had to be done. Behind them were maybe a hundred civilians in their Sunday best. On the way over, his mom had said there were live feeds all over town in schools and halls and even bars. Seemed like a funeral could really bring people together. Which was too miserable for Ethan to even think about.
Mom found them seats in the grandstand, which was full of suits and cops in dress uniform She stared silently ahead, her hands clenched around a blue rose in her lap.
Mom had lost someone important to her because of a superpowered freak—a Zero, like Ethan. If she ever did find out what he was, would she look at him and think cop killer?
Ethan sat, trying not to look at his phone. Nate had been understanding about Ethan missing the party prep, but his calm had sounded more fatalistic than reassuring. Whatever he’d been through after Davey died, Glorious Leader hadn’t come back the same.
“Keep still,” Mom whispered.
The voice leaped to his defense. “Sorry. It’s just, I don’t know how to act at these things.”
Mom’s face softened. She put an arm around his shoulders, like she used to when he was little. “You’re doing great, kiddo.”
She hadn’t called him kiddo since he was eight. She was going all out with the sentimentality today. She even kissed his cheek, then rubbed at the spot with a thumb.
“Don’t want to confuse your girlfriend with lipstick.”
“The girls I know are in no way confused,” Ethan mumbled, wiping his cheek on the shoulder of his suit.
“You just haven’t found the right one yet.”
Met her, fell in love with her, was not her type.
His suit cut into his armpits. He’d bought the stupid thing a year ago for Dad’s wedding—on sale—and it was too small then. Now the sleeves showed a full inch of his wrists and he hadn’t even bothered trying to squeeze into the matching trousers. He was wearing his newest pair of jeans, a blue shirt, and a tie. Exactly the kind of outfit he’d probably be buried in.
He wished he could steal a glance at his phone without looking like a douche. What were the other Zeroes doing right now? How was Nate going to deal with Swarm once they caught him? Ethan hoped Glorious Leader had a real plan and wasn’t just hoping for last-minute inspiration.
A procession of motorcycle police rumbled out onto the parade ground, leading the hearse through an honor guard of uniformed cops. The coffin was slid into place at the front of the grandstand while Mom cried silently beside him. Ethan reached for her hand.
They sat through more than an hour of speeches before a lone bugle started playing “Taps.” How could an instrument that dumb-looking sound so sad? Even Ethan started choking up, and he’d never met Delgado.
He looked around the grandstand and found Detectives King and Fuentes in their dress blues. They were standing at rigid attention, but even Fuentes looked like he was crying.
“Taps” did it, every time. Turned hardened cops to mush.
Fuentes still managed to look seriously pissed, though. They all did. Too bad the Zeroes couldn’t hook into that rage and convince all these angry cops to take it out on Swarm. March around Cambria until they found the guy, and then, He’s your cop killer, the preppy kid with the terrible haircut. He did it with his superpower!
“Why are those officers staring at you?” Mom asked quietly.
“What?” Ethan followed his mother’s gaze to find his old buddies Murillo and Ang, all dressed up in dark blue finery with their hats pulled low. They had blue flowers pinned to their breast pockets, and their gloved hands rested on their sidearms.
Yeah, they were definitely staring at him. They looked angry, too. There were so many local cops who hated Ethan. Maybe he really should think about leaving town.
“Do you know them, Ethan?”
“Um, no?” His real voice was quivering, so he gave himself over to his superpower. Say anything that makes her stop thinking about Murillo and Ang.
“Surrender yourself to the rage, Mom.”
What the . . .
Ethan turned to his mom. Her pupils were vibrating, the rest of her shuddering so hard that the blue rose fell from her hands. Around them, the senior brass were shivering and jerking. The shaking moved to their teeth and then their whole bodies, until they were practically vibrating.
The voice had done it—she wasn’t thinking about Murillo and Ang anymore.
She’d been swarmed.
CHAPTER 55
SCAM
“MOM!” ETHAN CRIED.
She didn’t answer.
Come on, voice! Say something to bring her back.
But no sound came. All he could hear was the shuddering breaths and chattering teeth of several hundred swarmed cops.
He took a sweeping look across the parade ground. It was in the midst of a human earthquake. Here by the grandstand the cops had drawn together into one dense, shivering cluster. The civilian audience had been dragged in too, seething and bubbling around the solid blue center. Those outside the chaos were backing off fast, some of them fleeing toward the roads beyond.
Apparently Swarm had decided on an appetizer before the party tonight. Ethan was doomed to be ripped to pieces. By the looks of it, his own mother was going to deal the first blows.
He twisted in his chair, searching for a way to escape. But he was trapped in the middle of the grandstand, surrounded. These beefy cops would bring him down within seconds. There was only one way left to strike back against Swarm—
He reached for his phone and texted Nate:
Hundreds of cops swarmed!
The message took a long moment to send, and Ethan wrapped his arms around the phone protectively. At least he could sacrifice himself to warn the others.
His phone made a triumphant little whoop—the text had sent.
He crumpled with relief, closed his eyes, and readied himself to die. He hoped it was quick. He hoped there was enough of him left to bury. He hoped he didn’t have to see his mom covered in blood while she ripped his arms off.
Around him the sounds of the crowd had reached a buzzing crescendo. Swarm was going to slice and dice him. The swarm pressed against him from all sides, so tight he could hardly breathe.
He waited.
Crap. Maybe it took a while to build a crowd to killing pitch, and he had time to get out of here after all.
His phone trembled.
Get back here. Glorious Leader, still giving orders. That figured.
Ethan texted as fast as he could: Tell Kelsie—
But he couldn’t finish the thought. He was too scared of dying. He sent it anyway. Surely Glorious Leader could come up with some fitting last words on Ethan’s behalf.
He tried to meet his mother’s eye, but he saw only rage and burning hunger. Then she turned away—
Okay, this was weird. His mother and everyone else in the grandstand were moving in the same direction. Ethan was dragged with them as the shuddering core flowed onto the parade ground.
Then it hit him. They were leaving the funeral. Swarm was steering the whole funeral into the Heights. He was coming to the Screw the Swarm party with his own private army!
The crowd parted, revealing the only other person who wasn’t part of the shivering blue horde. Wearing a striped blazer and a curious expression, a guy Ethan’s age stood on the stage beside the coffin, staring at him.
This was Swarm? Ethan felt cheated. Wow, so weedy—and yes, that was a seriously bad haircut.
Swarm stared at Ethan like he was a foreign movie without subtitles.
“What are you?”
Ethan blinked, about a dozen stupid answers t
umbling through his head. A fellow superpowered freak. A son, a kid brother, a guy doomed to never have a girlfriend.
He left it to the voice, hoping with all his heart that whatever it said would make Swarm decide not to kill him.
“Mine is the reverse of every power you’ve ever encountered,” the voice said confidently. “I am unique among us all. And if you eat me, I’ll turn everyone inside you sour.”
It sounded like crazy talk to Ethan. Sure, the others always ribbed him about his power being different, just because it didn’t like crowds. But he was still a Zero, right?
Swarm nodded once, as if the voice’s words confirmed whatever his Zeroes-hunting nose was telling him. “I’ll deal with you later, then. After I tear your friends to bloody pieces.”
A stab of anger went through Ethan, and a buzzing darkness appeared along the edges of his thoughts, crowding out all sound and light.
The last thing he could hear was Swarm saying, “Well, that was easy.”
Little twerp. But the angrier he got, the farther Ethan fell into Swarm’s trap.
He fought it, breathing in deep gulps of air, trying to steady his emotions.
Don’t be angry. Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts! Dance party in my brain!
But there were no happy thoughts inside Ethan. First this douche had swarmed Ethan’s own mom, and now he was headed for the Dish to kill all his friends, way too early for their plan, their useless plan, to work.
His anger joined the righteous fury of the cops around him. All that rage carried him jittering along, leaving only one last rational thought. . . .
If only the crowd had murdered him. Because alive, Swarm would use him, just like he was using these cops.
He was going to use Ethan to kill the Zeroes.
CHAPTER 56
MOB
IT FELT LIKE GETTING READY for a tornado.
Kelsie was doing her best to keep her feedback loop with the other Zeroes from descending into dread, but it was wearing her out. She’d been playing uplifting movie themes all day—mostly Bollywood tracks—trying to keep her fear under control. But every time she relaxed, a pulse of anxiety would hit her, then tear through the rest of them.