Coda (28 page)

“You can’t . . . You can’t do this.”

“Oh, I believe you’ll find we can. As he said, we are perfecting the capacity to target one person, and one person only, with any track we wish. There have been a few hiccups, but those are behind us. Tests in recent months have been executed extremely well.”

Johnny
. “But it only lasted for the length of the track.”

Ell shrugs. “It was a light dose. I don’t want you distracted. You are due to record soon.”

She was right, that last day in the cell. Death is inevitable, and knowing about those tracks was bad enough. This is worse. “Why does this even matter? You can just order people to do what you want. Stop them from doing anything you
don’t
want. Our deaths aren’t enough for you? You have to take our lives as well?” The small room echoes dully.

“Ah, but they
remember
being controlled by force, and resentment is such an unpleasant thing, don’t you agree? Really, do you think we aren’t aware of the feelings some citizens have about us? Surely you have wondered why we only wanted you. Our focus was not the other bands, or your audience. We will have them all soon enough. There’s no reason to alienate them in the meantime. Already they are grateful for the Corp’s generosity in not punishing
them. Soon, they will have no reason, no
ability
, to ever think the things that led them to follow you in the first place.”

I look around for a chair, but the only one is behind the frantically grinning tech. My teeth grind together, and I try to keep the strength in my legs. “You still haven’t told me why you need me.”

Ell pats me on the shoulder. “People enjoy your music, Anthem. The rawness of it is appealing to them. News of what you were doing spread far more quickly than we anticipated, thanks to your talent. We had to catch you sooner than we’d planned, though naturally it worked out for the best. People
wanted
to hear you, even without the benefit of encoding. Equivalent experiments with other Corp musicians have not shown such results. By applying our new discoveries to your songs, we can ensure a greater success rate than we might otherwise have hoped for. Brains will not reject the music you have to offer. Citizens will come willingly into the new age of the Web. Now, shall we?” She motions to the door and guides me out, into the elevator, down to a waiting driver. I let her usher me into a pod and take my seat, staring out the window, not seeing anything. The door slamming sounds far away.

Dazed, I’m surprised to find myself outside my apartment when we pull to a stop. As soon as I see Alpha and Omega, I’m sure Ell just wanted to remind me of what I have to lose by even trying to say no. I hold their small bodies in my arms and battle my thoughts.

What will they become? What will the Corp force them to do when they’re older, after they’ve been exposed?

All evening, I argue with myself over telling the others. I think I’d want to know, if I were them. I
did
want to know, though I’m reconsidering that now and wish I knew where to find a memory-erasing track.

Back and forth. Eventually I’m so dissociated from the argument I forget, for a moment, that I’m involved in this at all.

I’m not sure I trust Ell’s word that they didn’t have anything to do with it beyond the obvious. The end result would have been the same either way, I guess.

Whether it was painless, like she promised it would be, I have no idea. Hopefully more so than my mother’s, at least.

J seems genuinely sorry when he swears he left my father for only a few minutes. I tell him it’s okay.

Or it is until I have to talk to the twins. They’re at school. Maybe my father knew that when he got to the console and found what he needed—his last act of kindness, though it’s been so long I can’t remember what the one before this was. I’m half-dressed for a day in the studio. We’re supposed to record our first song today.

Too many people walk in and out of this too-large apartment while I sit on a too-comfortable couch, wondering what the fuck I’m doing. Voices ask me questions and I answer without thinking. Knowing. Caring.

The only thing I’m sure I insist on is that my father’s chip, once removed, is taken down to the Citizen Remembrance Center in Two. He should be with my mother, even though he died in Quadrant One.

A stretcher carves two perfect lines in the thick carpet. I stare at them until they wriggle like that snake at the club.

Someone’ll have to fix that.

He’s been gone for a long time. We were just fooled into thinking he wasn’t by the continued presence of his body. I’m not sure why I feel so much more alone now. Things really aren’t any different.

Yells break through the fog. Can’t everyone just be quiet? My
bare feet are numb and I walk unsteadily toward the kitchen; the voices get louder.

No. Just one voice.

Bee, her whole body radiating fear, cowers under the onslaught of the guard. I don’t know him; he’s not one of mine. She doesn’t need to be able to hear his shouts about his dislike of the sandwich she made.

This is all so pointless and fucking stupid.

“Get out,” I growl. He tries to wrench his arm from my unexpected grip, but I hold on.

“Let go, scum. You think because you’re a musician now, you get to order me around?”

“Get. Out.” I shove him away. Bee glances between the two of us, her eyes wide and confused.

“You haven’t heard the last of this,” he says, nostrils flaring. “And she never heard it at all.” He laughs at himself as he strides through the archway.

I’m not expecting it, so the sudden presence of Bee’s arms around me is a surprise that makes me stagger back a little. Hurt crumples her mouth, and I rush to right myself and hug her back. I try to put into it everything I can’t say out loud and which feels weird to type into a tablet for her. Thanks for looking after the twins, for the cups of peppermint tea to soothe my throat when I get home every day, for this moment. No one’s hugged me like this since my mother died. Since months before that, really. Then the lesions took over and she stopped recognizing me.

When I pull back, my eyes are wet. Bee’s sad smile is blurred, fragmented, smashed crystal under the kitchen lights. She points at the fridge, and I shake my head. No, I’m not hungry.

I know where to go if I want to be, though . . .

Shit. I can’t think about that right now.

A blue-uniformed woman is pulling the sheets off my father’s bed when I walk past the open door. Soon to be another empty room in this ridiculous place. Alpha and Omega are still insisting on sharing the one with the two small beds in it.

Telling them isn’t going to be any easier this time than it was five years ago. A hand squeezes my heart, rips it out of my chest, and pushes me to sag against the wall. I wish Haven were here. She was so good when they first learned about the music.

No one stops my stagger to my room. Death is an everyday thing, my part in the necessary routine already done.

New track symbols flash on the console screen after I punch the Corp logo away with faint satisfaction. I’m tempted to try them, but they’re all cheap, weaker than what I want—need—right now. Piles of credits sit in my account, more than I earned in my years as a conduit. Might as well use them for something.

It’s not like at Pixel’s club. I’m not transported into memory, but a stronger, healthier version of my father invades my thoughts. Tall, straight-backed, and dark-haired before he started to stoop and fade. I remember him in his uniform, the nights he wasn’t around because he was on patrol.

We all do what we need to do. I hold out a lingering hope that he was never cruel, though I won’t ever know for sure. If he was, the Corp will edit his chip accordingly.

Dazed and blank, I check my watch when the track is over. I still have hours before the twins get home. Ell told me to stay here, but disobeying her is tempting. I could walk in the park with the guards a short distance behind me. I’m just looking around for my boots when the door opens and I glance up, expecting Bee or one of the countless people here I don’t know.

“Anthem,” Scope says, crossing the room to me. I hold on to him for longer than I did with Bee in the kitchen. Two more pairs of arms join in, awkward because we’re all different heights. It works somehow. “We came as soon as Ell told us.”

I think she gets a weird pleasure from doing things I don’t expect, and I’m too grateful to question this one.

“You okay, man?” Pixel asks, backing away to sit on my bed. Phoenix joins him, but Scope stays with me, my fingers curled into the hem of his shirt.

I nod. “Yeah. We all knew it was coming.”

“That doesn’t actually make it much better,” Phoenix says. “It’s just something people say.”

“Really. I’m fine.”

They stay with me for hours; the four of us sit around my room and eat the food Bee brings us. Even the peppermint tea tastes like sawdust. Ell’s apparently given us all a few days off; I’m not expected back in the studio until Friday. She probably thinks that’s generous. I’m trying to figure out how I’ll get through until then. In the corner of my eye, the Corp logo bounces around the console screen.

I guess that’s how.

Tight anxiety corkscrews into my muscles. The twins will be back soon. I don’t think they’re going to be as receptive to the explanation of permanent sleep as they once were. And my father wasn’t completely gone then, so he helped when they became afraid of bedtime.

“We should go,” Pixel says, his eyes on my twitching foot. My hand won’t unclench from around Scope’s.

“Stay?” I ask in a whisper the others choose to ignore. He smiles softly and squeezes my fingers. He’s been through hell, too, but glimpses of his old self have been shining through and right now I need them.

The people are gone. There’s just Bee in the kitchen when I go out into the living room to wait, leaving Scope in my bedroom to track for a while.

“Ant!” Alpha runs through the door, her bag swinging from her arm. Omega follows, more controlled. Panicked, frozen, I watch their faces as I struggle with words I immediately know I don’t need. They both stop, looking around me to the open door behind my back.

Every day since we moved here, I’ve taken them in to see him, paused with my hand on the knob before opening it and quietly reminded them to be gentle with him.

I turn to look at the stripped bed and the empty chair beside it that will never hold J or C again. They’re smart kids. They know. I almost leave it there and let their minds absorb the truth for themselves, waiting for whatever reaction there’s going to be.

“This morning . . .” I stop and start again. “After you left for school . . .”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Omega says, with the calm of the accepting.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yes, he is. Come here.”

I take them both to the couch. Alpha sniffles quietly into my shoulder, Omega is too still.

“Are you going to die, Ant?” Alpha asks, pulling her face from my damp shirt to look me in the eyes because she’s too smart and she doesn’t want me to lie.

“One day,” I say, forcing the words out. “I don’t know when. Nobody does. I won’t live as long as other people do.”

“Why not?”

“The job I used to have . . . it made me very tired.” It’s enough of an explanation to make sense to Alpha.

“Is that why you don’t do it anymore? Is that why you make music now and we live here?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah, kind of. There will always be people who care about you, though, okay? To help look after you if you need it.”

Omega stiffens. “Like who?” There’s a trace of something in his voice. Anger? Pain? Both are more than I can really feel right now.

“Like Scope,” I tell him, tightening my arm around his shoulders. “And his brother. Fable and his mother. Even Bee.” I know she loves them already, and wonder if she has kids of her own or if she became an Exaur young enough that it made her decide not to.

“Haven doesn’t love us anymore,” Alpha says, almost accusing. I can feel my stomach in my toes. “She left us, too.”

Not just you
. “I’m sure Haven still loves both of you,” I say, averting my eyes from Alpha’s. I have no faith she ever did. Hurting me I can understand, if she had a goal to achieve, but I’ll never forgive her for
this
. “Haven is mad at me, not you.”