Coda (26 page)

“Anthem, I don’t—”

“Look, I know what they’re asking, okay? I can’t see a way out of it. If nothing else, we can keep ourselves safe. And our families. The revolution”—I spit the word—“is over, but at least if we do this they won’t target us with death tracks. You’ll have credits again. Please.”

Scope presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “What are they going to do with our music?”

“Not
that
. I asked.” Assuming Ell told me the truth.

“I guess we’re used to each other,” he says, nodding. “And if it’s just normal drugs . . .” He looks at Pixel.

“I can get them to move you up the Web. And take care of your mother.”

“We’ll stay here,” Pixel says firmly. “But the credits would come in handy, not gonna lie.” His eyes flick to a closed door.

“You, too,” I say, making a sudden decision. “We’ll figure something out. They’re not denying me much.”

“Have you talked to the others?”

I give Scope a look. “You think I’d have asked them first?”

Something like a grin flashes across his face. “Just checking. Mage or Phoenix next?”

I’ve been tossing this back and forth all morning. “Phoenix. If anyone’s going to say no, it’s Mage. Strength in numbers and everything.” I’ve thought
that
before.

“Good point.”

The guards aren’t the only ones waiting for us when we get outside. I stop dead, my eyes widening to stare at greasy streaks that hang around a nauseatingly matching face, the faded yellow of healing bruises.

“Hey, Anthem, Pixel.” Yellow Guy says softly. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” we say together. “You?”

“I’ll live.” He looks at Scope and swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing
in his throat. “I’ve, uh, been waiting for you to come out. Thought it would be better if we weren’t, you know, inside.” His hand lifts, as if magnetized to Scope’s face, and he forces it down to ball in a fist at his side.

“C’mon,” Pixel says, nudging me toward the pod. We climb in with two of the guards, the third waiting by the door. All of us watch them on the steps, the gestures and the moving mouths. Scope’s face is falling, Yellow Guy’s is full of regret.

The finality of the hug nearly makes me give up on all of this. How many lives have I ruined?

“Scope—” Pixel begins.

“I’m fine,” Scope says, taking a seat beside me. “He was never part of the band, and he has his own family to worry about.”

“He should blame me, not you,” I say.

“Doesn’t matter.” He bites his lip and gazes out the window. “Let’s go.”

Twice more, I have to explain Haven’s betrayal, my own stupidity by extension. The prospect of credits and being heard wins Phoenix over without much effort from me. I’m still not sure why she wasn’t always legit—maybe she just liked the risk of what we were doing. Now, she’d rather play for the Corp than not at all. I’m right about Mage. Our combined forces aren’t enough to sway him. I want to be frustrated by his refusal, but I think this tight, itchy feeling I have on the pod ride back to the Corp is envy.

The Corp’s lobby is quiet in the middle of the day, only a receptionist covered in chrome sitting at the marble desk and a few milling suits glance up as we walk in. I don’t think the guards can help surrounding us, protecting and preventing in equal measures, even though the others are here more willingly than I am, and I’m not going anywhere.

Up we slide, into the sky. None of the others have gone this far before. Faking confidence, I lead the way down the hall, pulling my sleeve back in anticipation of the scanner. Somewhere in the mainframe, a byte of memory records my entrance. Can’t have anyone coming in here to mess with my stuff—before the Corp gets to, that is.

The memory of my first time in here is too clouded by pain and withdrawal to appreciate it. Now it’s just laden with guilt that I
do
appreciate it.

“Go in there,” I tell the guards who’ve followed us in, jerking my head to the control room. “We need the space to ourselves. And get some food sent up here.”

I guess if I act the part, I can get away with it.

“Anthem, this place . . .” Scope is doing what I wanted to the first time, his fingers reaching for every instrument, trailing over wood and ivory and strings and brass.

“I know.”

Phoenix is already behind a keyboard stack, hands flexing an inch above the keys. I saw that coming. Pixel examines the drums, knocking a cymbal, gripping it to stop the harsh
clang
. I shut my eyes against the instruments we’ve paid for in blood, a silent apology to Johnny on my lips.

We need to get started. Walking to the wall, I try to decide which guitar to play today. I haven’t tested them all yet and wish I had more hands.

“Hell, yeah.
This
is mine.” I look over my shoulder at Scope, who is at a computer filled with stored sound effects. I think of the breaking glass. That works, and it’s the first time he’s smiled since we left his apartment.

I pull a glittering purple electric down from its rack, missing my
battered old one. This one is too smooth and slick to feel like I’m doing anything real.

Metal, wood, and strings breaking. The crowd screaming. I’m calling Haven’s name, looking everywhere for her
. Nauseated, I loop the strap over my head.

“What now?” Phoenix asks. Her impatience makes her hair dance like real fire beneath the lights. “I’m assuming a lot of our old stuff is off-limits.”

I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t put it past the Corp to encode songs about how despised they are. It’s basically what they’ve done with me. And everything else I’ve written is about . . . But here, I have a choice.

“We need to practice,” I say. “Pixel needs to learn. Maybe do some of Johnny’s old stuff first since we know it the best.” Scope opens his mouth. “We won’t record them,” I assure him, and he closes it again, nodding.

Pixel takes a seat behind the drum kit. “You remember the one we used to close with at the shows?” I ask.

He thinks for a moment, head beginning to nod as a rhythm runs through it. “Yeah, got it.”

This is something we know. As soon as I strum my fingers across the strings, with most of my friends around me, it doesn’t matter where we are. We could be in our basement or at Pixel’s club or somewhere far, far from the Web where the Corp has no hold on us. It’s not just sound. I feel it, see it, even taste it—the lyrics a favorite food I haven’t eaten in too long. It’s nowhere near perfect. Pixel might one day be as good as Mage, but our edges haven’t smoothed out to fit his differently shaped piece into the puzzle yet. We stop and start, helping him as much as we can.

Guards come back with lunch and we fall on it like starving children. For the others, I guess that’s not so far from the truth. I eat as
much as they do, piling food I’m not hungry for on top of the breakfast Bee cooked for me. Wiping our fingers free of grease from the rich, delicious chicken, we attack the song over and over until Pixel loosens up and begins to trust his instincts.

I knew he’d have them. He recognized them in me.

“So what are we going to record?” Scope asks. Discounting Johnny’s songs and almost all of my own, we don’t have a lot to work with.

“I’ll write new ones,” I say. Pixel raises his eyebrows.

“Just like that?”

“Yeah. Phoenix, you might need to take more vocal parts. That okay?”

“Finally,” she says without malice.

The guards are still in the control booth, mostly ignoring us. It’s weird because it’s only just occurring to me that they must hear unencoded music all the time. And not just these—we might be a bigger risk than most of the Corp’s other bands, but I know for a fact that all of them get protection, too. After what Ell told me at the club, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Assholes. Control, everywhere. The valued with money, the unimportant with drugs. The difference bothers me more than it should for reasons I still can’t figure out.

Tired, we fool around a little longer in the studio, taking turns at the console on the wall. Ell shows up while Phoenix is experimenting with a harp, her eyes sharp above her too-smiling mouth and impeccable suit. I handle the introductions, she pretends to be interested. I guess that’s part of our deal, too. Pixel and Scope are still adamant about returning home, but Phoenix accepts Ell’s offer of a new apartment. The two of them leave, followed soon after by the others and the guards who emerge to escort them down to Two.

I find what I need in a cabinet along the wall. The acoustic I choose—my favorite one—fits neatly into the case, and just to be safe I pick up a few extra strings and a handful of little triangular plectrums from a drawer. The one guard that I think is in charge watches me through the glass, but I figure if he was going to stop me, he’d have done it already. It’s not like I can do anything illegal with it once I take it with me.

“Ant! You’re home!” The twins accost me as soon as I walk through the door. I shouldn’t be so gratified that they’re happier to see me come back than they used to be.

“Hey,” I say, putting down the guitar to hug them. “How was school?”

“I miss Fable,” Omega says, scowling. “I want to go to school with him again.”

I swallow. “You’ll make new friends, okay? Give it a chance.”

“What’s that?” Alpha asks, pointing at the case.

“It’s . . . uh . . . it’s a guitar,” I tell them both. “For making music.”

“Really? Can we see it? Can we hear it?” they say in unison. “Please, Ant?”

“Not today.” Their faces fall. “One day.” Yeah, they’ll hear my music one day, but if Ell finds out I’ve let them listen to unencoded stuff, I’m pretty sure our deal will be off.

What the hell am I doing?

Quiet snores fill my father’s room. J the med-tech looks up from checking his pulse and gives me a sad kind of smile. No, no change. Not that I expected there to be, or not for the better. He’s resting, which is enough.

This place is still so weird. I can’t blame the strange, unsettled feeling I get here on the fact that it’s only been a little while. For one thing, it seems much longer. For another, I
know
I’m never going to
get used to Bee in the kitchen, handing out treats to Alpha and Omega and watching them when I’m not here. I’ll never get used to the brightness or the space or the corner-to-corner slick perfection of it all. I won’t get used to med-techs coming and going, though it’s possible—definite, actually—that I won’t have to inure myself to that.

The guitar safely hidden under my bed, I shower in my private hygiene cube and change into yet another outfit of the soft, finely woven clothes that fill my closet. Black, exaggerating my paleness in the mirror. My bruises are fading, albeit slowly, to nauseating yellow, putrid green.

Dinner with the twins makes me feel normal for the first time since Scope, Pixel, Phoenix, and I stopped playing in the studio. I get the same feeling I could be anywhere. We could be at our old kitchen table when I tell Alpha not to talk with her mouth full and persuade Omega to try food he distrusts because he’s never seen it before.

Bee’s a better cook than I am, but that’s the only difference in a room awash with steam and grease.

That, and there’s someone missing at the table.

Again and again, I pluck Haven’s name from the strings, too softly to wake the twins through the thick walls of the rich or for C, the night-duty med-tech, to hear me. Bee I don’t have to worry about.

Haven was happy with me. I know she was. I know the way the corners of her eyes wrinkle up when she’s really smiling, not faking it for someone’s benefit. I know the difference between her shoulders relaxed or rigid beneath my hands. I know the curve of her lips and what will bring light or tears to those green eyes.

The guitar goes back under my bed, and I walk to the console. Padded headphones go over my ears, menus scroll past at my touch.

I think she was happy.

I find a track, strong if the price is any indication, which it usually is. Another. Another. I set up a whole playlist of them and sit on the floor.

Maybe I just wanted her to be.

Drums
here
, my guitar just
there
. Phoenix’s keyboards chime in
now
, and Scope offers some bizarre sound I can’t identify but that fits seamlessly into the melody. Besides the computer, he’s reassembled his whole collection of oddities and then some. Next to my foot sits a plastic bucket, a small rubber ball still rolling around in it from when Scope used them a minute ago.