SWARM

It's Christmas time. The Zeroes have pooled their resources and taken over a derelict building in the warehouse district of Cambria. Only Mob and Anon live there full time, but all of them call it home. Once a month it becomes an underground nightclub, protected from the authorities by Scam's voice, Nate's connections, and Mob's exquisite crowd control. It also has a great sound and light system, courtesy of Crash. Called Petri Dish, it's the ideal space for all of them to practice using their powers.

But this experimental idyll is interrupted by the arrival of two new powers in town, Glitch and her boyfriend Coin, who mess with mind and money—and not in a nice way. When the Zeroes pursue them to the new mega-mall south of Cambria, hoping to foil their plan to make mischief at the holiday sales, things suddenly get a whole lot darker and deadlier. Coin is killed by a ravening crowd of shoppers, whipped up by a third new power, Horde, who has been pursuing Coin and Glitch down the West Coast. Horde's power is that he can kill with a crowd—and the death of a fellow Zero gives him the best buzz of all.

"Now that he knows about you, he won't stop coming!" the grief-stricken Coin warns them, out under the desert stars in the aftermath of the killing. "And Mob here is has the exact same power—it's only a matter of time before she turns murderous, too!" The Zeroes return to Cambria subdued and frightened—they split up to present a less attractive target for Horde. Horde comes to town, visits Mob and invites her to join him in a life of glorious marauding—she refuses, but she already can sense the dark pull of the mob. The mob murder of Detective Fuentes a day later is clearly Horde's work. The Zeroes must take action soon. Glorious Leader is traumatized by seeing a Zero die in front of him, so it falls to Flicker to come up with a plan by which they can lure Horde to the Dish to fight him on their own territory, on their own terms.

But Horde beats them to the punch, mobilizing a phalanx of armed police at the funeral of Joe Fuentes, and marching them towards the Dish. Who will finally face down Horde and his horde? And how will they amplify or invert their powers to defeat him? This volume of the trilogy takes the Zeroes to darker, deeper places. It brings them new terrors to deal with, but also new love and a stronger sense of belonging. It reveals the flipside of Mob's, Glorious Leaders's and Anonymous's powers. Above all it shows them that they are part of a larger group of teens with millennial powers—not all of whom mean well.

Scott Westerfeld is the author of The New York Times bestselling LEVIATHAN series, AFTERWORLDS, the UGLIES series, THE LAST DAYS, PEEPS, SO YESTERDAY, and the MIDNIGHTERS trilogy.
Margo Lanagan has been publishing stories for children, young adults and adult readers for 25 years. Her work has won numerous awards, including four World Fantasy Awards. Two of her books, BLACK JUICE and TENDER MORSELS, have been Michael L. Printz Honor books and she has been shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards and for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the young adult division.
Deborah Biancotti has written two short story collections, BAD POWER and A BOOK OF ENDINGS. She's been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award and the William L. Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Book.