Coda (23 page)
Fable’s mother will look after them. She and my mother were friends, years ago. Hopefully she’ll check on my father, too.
Please, please let my family be okay. Please tell me they won’t go after little kids and a sick old man who knew nothing
. I don’t ask through the intercom about them. I don’t want to give anyone ideas.
Meals arrive on a schedule, so I can measure time. On the second day, long scratches, where I’ve clawed my skin during restless sleep, join the bruises.
Day three. I’m shaking. My legs won’t hold me anymore, and it takes several tries to turn on the taps in the hygiene cube after I crawl there for water. My thoughts are ridiculous tangles. I see hazy images of the twins, Haven, and my mother with them, which can’t be true.
I found her body myself. I remember the blood and my mind stains red.
It’s obvious what they’re doing. I’ve read about withdrawal, its suddenness more painful than the slow decline of tolerance. I try to fight it, but I’m only fighting myself. There’s no audience to my gritted teeth and clenched fists and my limping pace around the cramped cell as I take breaths of processed, plastic air as deep as my ribs will let me.
In a pool of vomit, I wake up on what could be day four or fourteen.
“Good morning.”
I’m too weak to lift my head. I’m probably hallucinating anyway.
“You call yourself Anthem, don’t you? Not the worst handle I’ve heard, if perhaps a little misleading. Come with us.”
I love the way she says the last part, like I have a choice. I don’t ask how she knows my name. Spiteful arms haul me to my feet, their owners exuding pleasure when I flinch from the grip on my bruises. A face, blurred and smiling with wide blandness, appears in front of me. I think maybe I’ve seen her before, but I think a lot of things right now and have faith in none of them. Dark hair, a Corp-approved suit . . . it’s not as if these things make her unique.
“Who are you?” Only half the syllables make it out as sound.
“Citizen L5329.” I decide to call her Ell because the numbers are swimming in a pool of confusion and don’t add up to anything but fear.
“I’m fine right here.” The guards tighten their hold as I try to break free. I bite through my tongue.
Ell clucks. “Lying is not a good start for us, Anthem. Cooperate,
and you will have everything you want.”
“I want to die.” She asked for honesty. “You can do that. I know about your special tracks.”
“Oh, don’t be that way. We have discovered your talent now. You can be useful to us, and we can help you. Your record expunged, your family cared for . . .”
In the guards’ steely grip, I sag a little. “Are they okay? Are my friends alive?” I whisper.
Ell smiles. “For the moment. Whether that continues to be the case is entirely up to you. Bring him.”
Carpet burns my bare feet. Out of the cell, along a curved corridor. My captors seem to be trying to bump me into every available obstacle, but I don’t give them the satisfaction of complaining about it. In the elevator, Ell pulls a tablet from her pocket, types a message that will speed along the Grid in a blip of light to its recipient. I know it’s about me.
More dragging, more burning until I’m shoved into a chair with a force I’m surprised doesn’t break more bones. Maybe it does and I’m just too numb. Rising bile stings my raw throat. I can feel that and hear one of the guards curse as the scant contents of my stomach hit his shoes.
“You little—”
“Go clean up,” Ell orders him. He gives my arm a last, vicious pinch and I’m free again, if freedom can be measured in inches. Footsteps. A door closing. “Look around, Anthem,” she says.
My neck screams when I raise my head, the skin around my jack taut and sore. There are instruments everywhere—guitars, drums, keyboards, a violin too warm and brown to be in this world, let alone this building. It belongs in dusty, candlelit memories. Blinking lights flash over recording equipment, microphones wait for voices.
And there is stillness. The mainframe’s hum I can always hear at headquarters is gone. I ball my fists and grind my teeth almost to cracking point. I want to touch everything, so I don’t. The moment I show weakness, they have me.
Not that they don’t already.
“All of this can be yours,” Ell says, flicking a switch that brightens the spotlights overhead. “
Look
, Anthem. Do not tell me you don’t want to play them. Imagine what you could do in this room. Think of the music you can make, all with our blessing. We will give you everything you need. Anything you want. You can have a life you never imagined. You will be our newest celebrity.”
I don’t answer. I almost say yes. I’m so close I can feel the word stuck in my throat like a cough. A moment passes, and she calls the remaining guard forward again. “We’ll have another chat tomorrow,” Ell promises as I’m practically carried away.
Five, six, seven, eight. The days are all the same. The time I don’t spend screaming or puking, I spend thinking. The twins, Haven, and my friends. I wonder if my father’s even noticed I’m gone.
I scream some more. It hurts less than thinking.
Every day, I’m taken back down to the studio and the smooth instruments, a slick attempt at seduction.
Decisions rip me apart. Giving in means I can get back to the twins and make sure they’re okay. Giving in means I can only make sure they’re okay for now. It’s one thing to know what faces them when they’re older: the music, the addiction, the decline. . . . It’s another thing to make the tracks that will do it to them.
And if they step out of line, it could be one of my songs that . . .
No.
This punishment is no accident. Killing or turning me into an Exaur would be the easy thing for everyone, but that doesn’t teach
me a lesson, does it? And whoever betrayed us knows me, of that I’m fucking positive.
A new, creative punishment. Just for us.
On day nine, Ell is late. Maybe she’s given up on me. Maybe I’ve missed my chance and the twins are . . . My father is . . .
“Good morning.”
I exhale; the sound harmonizes with the swishing doors. She’s alone; no guards flank her. From my corner, I wonder why, but I don’t get up since she hasn’t brought anyone to make me. “We have tried to be generous, Anthem,” Ell says, “but the time has come for this to end.”
Death. I wish.
“You are too talented to go to waste. With what our techs can do to your music, we will have more success than ever before. You simply must be made to understand this.”
“You’re asking me to kill them!” I say. Impassive, undisturbed by the most energetic she’s seen me, Ell smiles. “To kill anyone who gets in your way!”
“Music enriches us, Anthem. It makes us all happier. Death is inevitable for all of us. Why not enjoy life on the way? Any problems the Corp might have with a given citizen are not your concern.”
“You really think what you do is right?” Having everything to lose feels strangely the same as the reverse. I just want all of this to go away.
“The Corp has the Web’s citizens’ best interests at heart, always. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” Reaching into her pocket, Ell hands me her tablet—a more expensive, advanced one than mine, wherever
it is now. Hers shows pictures and videos in full color. And suddenly I understand everything. Why she’s known all along that she could break me whenever she felt like it. Why there are no guards. Why she was patient, at least in the beginning. It’s because she knew before she came here in her fancy suit that the instant I saw the screen, I’d pull myself to unsteady feet.
The tablet is small, a few inches square, just enough to see what I’m supposed to. A video stream—live, if the time stamp is accurate and I’ve counted the days right. I feel myself unravel, inch by agonizing inch.
“You cannot trust anyone, Anthem,” Ell says. “This is your only chance to take control of your fate, to protect your family and the people you love.”
They’re all good reasons, really the only ones I should need, but they aren’t what drives me to surrender. I only know one thing that can—maybe—erase this kind of pain and if I go with Ell, they’ll let me track again.
“Are you going to use my songs to murder people?”
“Tsk. Such an ugly word. You can relax; we have other plans for you.”
Fine. I don’t care what they are.
“I want to see my brother and sister,” I say. “And you have to release my friends.”
She nods. “It will all be taken care of.”
Somewhere, buried in the depths of the mainframe, there’s a track strong enough to erase the sight of Haven, sitting, relaxed, in a plush leather chair, and the sound of her voice coming from tiny speakers as I stare down at the tablet.
“You’ve done very well,” says some guy in a suit who looks old enough to be her father.
He is. She smiles. “Thank you, Daddy. Boys are all the same. Too trusting.”
If there isn’t a track that strong, I’ll make one.
The headphones placed over my ears are soft, cushioned pillows that make me want to sleep, but there’s so much pain. Torn skin and snapped ribs and my heart, a heavy, aching ball of lead in my chest
.
Music, the resonance of carved wood that reminds me of the violin I never heard, the sunlight-gold sound of horns. A melody of caged birds who sing because it’s all they know, because not to would mean death, swelling louder, stronger, until they are set free. It’s been so long. The strings stitch me back together, the woodwinds blanket me in warmth. Numbness starts in my toes and climbs a ladder of muscle and bone and sinew
.
Relief. Intense, blessed relief, and I smile. I missed this. Why was I ever fighting against the people who want me to feel this way? Clouds move in on my mind-sky—not the heavy ones that threaten rain, but dull, soft gray, tinged with pink. Overhead lights diffuse. My body hovers above a bed
.
I can still think in fuzzy, abstract patterns. My lips won’t cooperate; I need something stronger. The anesthetic is only skin-deep and Haven is still everywhere and nowhere, gone after she betrayed me
.
Hands hold me down when I start to struggle against the tranquilizing effects of the drug. I have to find her. I’m fine, now. Nothing hurts anymore. I can find her and make her tell me why she did this. Make her pay
.
See her again, one last time
.
