Coda (16 page)

Again, I don’t know what to say, but they’re not here to listen to me speak. Not yet, anyway. I glance back at Mage, who grins and jerks his head in the direction of the crowd. Scope and Phoenix are both poised to strike their instruments with fierce hands, just waiting for me. The song we’re starting with is all me in the beginning, just simple, repetitive chords until Mage gets to jump in with the beat that will keep us all in line.

One, two, and the guitar starts
here
.

It’s loud, so much louder than I’ve ever been in practice. Maybe Pixel has given extra juice to the speakers, maybe it’s just my ears catching every vibration of noise through the heavy air. The fingers
of one hand fly across the strings, the others find the right frets by instinct. I know this. I
feel
this. Two measures pass and then the floor starts to shake from the hammer-falls of Mage’s drumsticks.

I step to the mic and put my mouth an inch from metal that sends static to raise the fine hairs above my lips. To my right, Scope hits a piece of glass. My cue. The first word chimes with Phoenix striking a note, and suddenly we’re all playing, singing, a cohesive group of disparate parts.

Nameless, but not faceless. Not voiceless anymore. I look out at the crowd and see open mouths that maybe, one day, will sing these lyrics with me, join in with my anger at the Corp, scream with their last breaths at the complacency that suffocates us all. For now, though, it’s just me. They don’t know these words, and I’m the Web’s most unlikely teacher. But even if they’re not what everyone wants to hear, they’re what I need to sing. Revolution. That this isn’t okay—it never really was, and I can’t contain my voice in a basement anymore. We have to take this chance.

Electricity bubbles along my veins, set to the frenzied pulse of the music. I can barely even feel my hands anymore, just sound and strings and relentlessness. Explosive energy pools under my tongue, and the only way to let it out is to sing louder, free my voice until it hits the back wall, send it flying over faces I can’t see anymore.

Verse, chorus, verse. We mess up a few times, my fingers slipping and Mage banging his drums half a beat too early, but it doesn’t matter. What comes out during the coda is so fast it’s barely English, just a jumble of syllables I sing with all the power I have. The drums are more frantic now, Phoenix’s arms are a blur, glass is shattering and steel is screaming.

The end is abrupt, a crash of notes falling into the abyss of shocked silence. I wipe sweat from my eyes and see my hand stained
black. This is the first time these people have heard music that isn’t encoded, the first time they’ve ever experienced a song that didn’t leave them flying on their trip of choice. Their faces . . . it’s like when I watched Alpha and Omega learn to walk, their tentative amazement at this
thing
which had never been available to them before.

“What the fuck was that?”

I look for the guy, but Pixel’s beaten me to it. “
That
was music, asshole,” he says, carving his way through the crowd to someone in the middle. Arms crossed, angular face creased with doubt, the guy’s eyes pass back and forth between Pixel and me.

“I don’t feel nothing.”

“Well, then, you’re a—”

I step back to the mic. “Pixel,” I say, shaking my head when he glances at me. I stare the guy down. “Yeah, you don’t feel it. That’s because this is
real
music, and you’ve got to want it. You’ve got to
let
it get inside your head. Do that, and the high is better than some processed drug. This is what the Corp keeps from you so that they can make us listen to the stuff that’ll kill us. So they can keep us under control, use our bodies for energy, take our credits, and run our lives. If that high is worth it to you, go back to your console.”

He doesn’t say anything. I’ve started it, now. It’s too late to turn back, but I guess it’s been too late since the day Johnny first showed me the basement. Everything was always leading here.

“There used to be five of us,” I continue, gesturing to the band before I face the audience again. Rapt expressions nearly make me shut up. I’m not the person for this. “Our friend put on a track one day and dropped dead. They killed him, and he’s not the only one. It could happen to any of us, any time we put on a track. Have you ever pissed off the Corp? You might not know even if you have. Maybe our friend was lucky. Maybe it’s a good thing that he won’t go
through what happens when the music’s finally eaten through enough of his brain. But do the Corp care? No, it just makes room for the next person to come along: someone else for their guards to threaten, someone else to give up their life for the Corp’s glory.”

Murmurs ripple. “And you’re gonna change all that?” asks the guy, raising his voice to be heard. Yeah, I don’t really believe it either.

“I’m saying that this is what they take from us.” I slap the body of my guitar. “The right to express ourselves. They take it and use it to kill us, instead. I’m saying we take it back, but we need your help. We need people.”

“For what?”

I can’t see where the question comes from, but it’s one I’ve asked myself a thousand times. “Change,” I say. “To show President Z, the Board, and everyone else involved with encoding the music and keeping real stuff from us that we don’t want this anymore. That they have to give music back to us and know they can never get away with doing it again. To replace them, if that’s what it takes.”

“Yeah!” A girl’s fist punches the air. I manage a smile for her, breath coming in pants through my stretched lips. Others join in; shouts of
Fuck the Corp!
fill the room.

I’m glad this place is soundproof.

“Ready?” I ask the guys and Phoenix. I am alive, electric. I want to
show
the crowd what I mean.

A sheen of sweat glistens on Mage’s bare, muscular arms. “Hell yeah,” he says, tossing a drumstick up and catching it again.

We jump into one of Johnny’s old ones, a hush falling to make room for my voice when I start to sing. It’s fast and dirty and filled with rage that shreds me from the inside and makes me pour everything I have into playing. My hair falls in my eyes, salt stings my lips.
My feet, so used to being connected by sound-threads to my ears, start to move.

When it’s over, in a burst of metallic drums and clanging glass, we don’t give them a chance to stop us again. Songs blend together on the strings, as incessant as if it were a normal night at the club and the Corp’s tracks were sending us all into a spiral of memories and dreams. I have to make them see that this is its own high: playing, being here,
seeing
the music instead of just being another bite for the insatiable appetite of the drug. I know I don’t have them, not yet, but through blurred eyes I see bodies find Mage’s beat. Sweet-sour adrenaline floods over my tongue and my hands strum faster; I barely notice tearing off a thumbnail.

It’s a start. Maybe that’s all it’ll ever be. Pixel is flashing the blue light overhead; our signal to stop so people can get through the tunnels and off the streets before curfew.

“That’s it for tonight,” Scope yells while I pour water down my scorched throat. “Same time next week, and bring the friends you trust. Down with the Corp!” His final words get a cheer bigger than any of our tunes have. Blindly, I stumble from the stage and feel my way to Pixel’s office and the couch.

“That,” pants Phoenix as she flops down on my deadened legs, “was fucking amazing.”

“No lie, girl,” agrees Mage. Scope and Yellow Guy fall through the door, tangled in each other, their eyes bright.

I’m weirdly light and heavy at the same time, excitement giving life to muscles otherwise ready to collapse. “You think they’ll come back?” I ask no one in particular. It comes out as a whisper, but Pixel
hears me as he backs into the room.

“Are you kidding?” he asks, handing out an armful of water bottles. I let mine fall to my chest. “At least a dozen people out there were wondering how to start their own band. Another guy already has and wants to play here. I thought maybe, if they’re any good, they could be a kind of warm-up act for you guys. Get the crowd going before you head onstage.”

“Well, that’s what we wanted, right?” Phoenix asks. “To get others to come out of hiding?”

I just nod. In the basement, and even at practice here, I’ve held back. Tonight was the first time I’ve ever really let my voice go, tried to embed it in a hundred heads.

“So, now what?”

“Word’s gonna spread,” Mage says to Phoenix. “Some people will just come because they’re curious, but some’ll want to fight.”

“Mage, can you start trying to find out anything in the system that might help? Like, where the weak points are in the patrols other than shift change.”

“See what I can do.” He nods.

“We should get out of here. Mage, you make sure Phoenix gets home okay?” Pixel asks, handing Mage a flashlight and ignoring Phoenix’s protests that she doesn’t need a babysitter. Outside, there’s silence; I guess Pixel’s friends have cleared the club already. “C’mon, Anthem, I’ll take you.” He grabs my arm and hoists me to my feet. I think I probably do need a babysitter.

We walk through the tunnels in silence broken only by faint noise ahead, the shouts and echoing footsteps of the last of the crowd. On the street, we split up into pairs and go in different directions, Pixel poised to catch me if I collapse.

I’m fine, really, just . . . I’ve never felt so alive, so I’ve never felt so
tired when it’s over.

“This is you,” Pixel says, putting a hand on my shoulder to stop me when I almost walk past my building.

“I can make it from here,” I reply hoarsely. He grins.

“You guys really rocked it. You
owned
that stage. You know, when Scope first told me about all of this, I wanted to slap him senseless for being so stupid. But he explained everything, and I came around pretty quick. Still, I wasn’t sure that you guys had the chops to pull off what you’re aiming for.” He shrugs. “But I think you do. Don’t lose your nerve, man.”

“None of it would have happened without you.”

“Eh. I’m just the hired help. I’ll take my fee in tab-numbers. There were some
smokin
’ chicks there tonight.”

My laughter feels like razorblades. “All yours.”

He nods slowly, the smile dying on his lips. “Why haven’t you told Haven? You know she could help us.”

“I should go check on my father,” I say, climbing the first few steps before I look back. He holds his hands up.

“Sorry. Night, Anthem.”

“Night. And Pixel?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. Seriously.”

“Yeah.”

“You sound sick.”

“I’m not,” I say, but my voice proves Tango’s point, and it’s no wonder she raises her eyebrows at me. “Really, I’m not.”

“Sit.”

I do, submitting to the blood pressure and temperature checks and fighting to keep my eyes open when she shines a flashlight into them. “Hmmm,” she says, examining my fingernails and noting the missing one, the calluses on my fingertips. “Anthem, what the hell have you been doing?”

“Rough weekend.” I shake my head and meet her eyes to plead wordlessly with her.
Don’t do this
.

“Okay.” She nods, keeping the contact for a second too long. “Be right back.”

It feels wrong to track here at work when I can’t warn her about what’s going on, not here, but I’ve tested the limits of our tenuous friendship enough and can’t argue when she returns with a small portable console. After last night, it feels wrong to track, period. Nothing’s ever going to match that high.