Coda (32 page)

“I don’t believe this,” Phoenix says, turning away for a second and raking her fingers through her wild hair.

“He wouldn’t make this up,” Scope tells her, his voice cracking. I look at him gratefully—not just for knowing that, but for his certainty that I wouldn’t hurt him this way unless I had to.

“No, okay, maybe not,” she admits. “But what the fuck difference does it make? They own us now. It doesn’t matter who ratted us out. We’re stuck because of him.” She jerks her chin at me.

“That’s not fair,” Pixel says, grabbing her shoulder. “You know what they did.”

She sags. “I know. But there’s still nothing we can do about it.”

I’ve been so blind. Until this moment, I hadn’t guessed just how much the Corp had broken the rest of them. “Yes, there is.”

Footsteps echo on marble. My heart stops until I see that it’s just Omega, approaching with his lip between his teeth. “It’s over, Ant,” he says. Panic turns my skin cold and then warm again, when I realize he just means the memory. Quickly, I take him back to the viewer
and find something else for him and Alpha to watch.

“What do you mean?” Scope asks, back in our dim corner. “What can we do?”

“Haven . . .” I pause. It still hurts to say her name, in a different way. “Do you remember what she said at that meeting in the club?” Just a day before my world imploded. “We’re inside now. They’ve given us everything we need to get rid of them, almost. We just need some help.”

“Mage. He’s our best shot at finding Haven. And Crave. He wasn’t there that night, they probably don’t know about him.” I just have to hope Yellow Guy and the Corp were too focused on me. “Tango, too, I think. My old tech from the Energy Farm.”

“Anthem,” Phoenix says slowly, “just what exactly are you thinking about?”

I smile. A grim, determined thing. “Giving them a taste of their own medicine. Literally.”

The club is bathed in chemical light, false rainbows to replace the ones so rarely seen outside. Music thumps and vinyl is a thousand black mirrors painted on moving bodies. I weave through the crowd, just high enough to relax, not so spaced that I can’t think.

A woman stops me, throws the garland of purple feathers in her hands around my neck to pull me in so I can hear her whisper-shout above the pulsing sound. Yeah, yeah, they’ve all seen me on TV. I smile and duck out of her hold.

Phoenix is surrounded by upper-Web guys, the ones I always imagined were waiting for Haven when she got sick of me. I push away the thought that maybe she went back to them. Maybe I’ve lost my chance. Scope is alone at a table with his eyes closed, studiously ignoring the admiring eyes of mistaken women and men who are just out of luck. It’s going to be a long time before he trusts himself again.

Pixel is dancing with Isis. We’d teased him about inviting her, just for the relief of a lighthearted moment, but it’s good. She’s one of us.

“Hey,” I say to Ell, passing her one of the water bottles I’d gone to pick up from the bar. She had offered to send for a waiter, but it was a good excuse to get away from her for a second. My hands hurt from holding in my anger, faking that everything’s okay.

“I have a surprise for you,” she says, setting her drink down on the table. “A reward, you might say.”

She has nothing I want. “Oh yeah?”

“You’ve been incredibly cooperative, for the most part.” I try not to laugh and wait for her to go on. “Of course, you know the plans we
have for your tracks, but I thought you might like to hear one . . . as you’re used to. Almost.”

A tiny spark flares in my chest, but I keep my expression unchanged. “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually,” I say, my jaw aching. “I have an idea for a new song. I think you could do amazing things with it.”

“But?”

“I need another drummer. For a fuller sound.”

She nods. “We can find you one,” she says, and I shake my head.

“I want my old one. I think I can convince him, now that he’s had a chance to, you know, cool off. After everything.” Mage any cooler would be frozen.

Ell smiles widely.
Teeth-Lady
. If this works, I can protect the twins not just for now, but forever. “You may do what you like, Anthem. Let a guard know if you would like him brought to headquarters, or you may go to Two and fetch him. Just take security for your safety, of course.”

Of course.

“Also, I want to see the sound tech again. I have some questions.”

“He is at your disposal. Are you ready for your surprise?”

I ball my fists under the table. “Sure.”

Ell pulls out her tablet, typing without looking at the screen, her eyes on the DJ-comp booth across the room.

I inhale. The spark bursts into flame.

It’s me. And Pixel and Scope and Phoenix. I know exactly where each instrument comes in, the instant my voice begins, but this isn’t like hearing an old favorite burned into memory by repetition on a console or at a club. This is
me
. The music speaks to my brain, entering my ears in a way that is less listening than homecoming.

Searching the dance floor, I find the others again. They’ve
stopped moving, are statues in a sea of motion, all staring at me, openmouthed.

Ell leans over. “You see? This is one of the things that gave us the idea in the first place. It likes you, Anthem. Your music
knows
you. It is the same for all our musicians. We simply had to learn how to expand the effect.”

I grit my teeth. She’s not stealing this moment from me with a reminder of what they’re going to do. They’re not going to get the chance.

I’m taking this. She’s right; it is a reward, just not for what she thinks.

It’s the closest I’ve come to being back in Pixel’s club in weeks. Or our old basement. The strength, the power. The whine of my guitar wraps six strings of my own soul around me, ties me up, and keeps me whole.

I haven’t been tracking much, counting on the Corp not to watch my usage as closely as they do lower-Quadrant people. The melody pulls me in and I’m
falling, sinking, spiraling into myself. Sharp beams of neon morph to formless clouds, into the faces of my parents, who died the sick, shameful, lonely deaths that were expected of them. The twins, who need me
.

The brightest color is hot pink. Somewhere, sometime, Haven will hear this and laugh
.

Phoenix is dancing again, her hair fire on an oil slick of black, whirling, grinning as her keyboards return to her. Pixel and Isis are knotted into one, their bodies moving to his own cascading drumbeat. Scope smiles for the first time since I told him the truth, a real smile that draws the gathered crowd closer to him
.

The Corp is strong, benevolent. They want the best for us. Warmth spreads through my chest, my skin tingles, and the colors
swim. I move my hands, watching the trails of light my fingers leave behind. So pretty. Everything tickles and I giggle at how amazing it all is
.

No. NO. This is what they want me to think, using my words, my music to control my mind. I wrote it; I must believe it. But these strings are lies, not logic, I know that. I know it
.

I orbit around sense and strength for the final verse. My knuckles are white as I grip what I am sure of. The coda begins, harsh and needy, begging not to go, instrumental feet planted firmly in refusal. It ends with a final, sudden crash and my brain
is my own again, the high receding to what is normal for a Sky-Club.

Focused. Direct. Music meant for me. Ell looks too fucking pleased with herself, clearly misjudging my spreading, satisfied grin.

“Clever, isn’t it?” she asks.

I nod. Clever, useful, ammunition, whatever. Because I’m sure now, more than I was before, that what I’m about to try will work. And they’re not going to know what hit them.

“Hey, man.”

Mage’s ashen pallor is emphasized by the whites of his widened eyes. “Can I come in?” I ask, looking past him to the empty living room. He steps back to let me through. The last time I was here, it was like walking into an escaped demon-child of the mainframe. Wires glowed everywhere, lights flashed, monitors flickered. The lock snaps, and his strong, drummer’s hands motion to a sagging couch that used to be covered in circuit boards and cable-ganglia. The room is nearly empty now. “I need your help.” The music at the club last night confirmed my suspicions, but I can’t do it without Mage.

He shakes his head. “Look, I know you’re in a rough situation, but—”

“Not that. I mean, yes, I need you to play with us, but not like that. Not just that.”

Limp dreadlocks weave through his fingers. “Gonna have to explain a little more.”

“They’re going to try to control our minds, Mage. Not like with the normal drugs, but brainwashing. Completely removing the ability to think for ourselves. You, me, everyone if they want to. I’ve seen their labs. I’ve had it done to me. We’ve got to stop them. This isn’t just about killing people anymore, and I know this doesn’t sound as bad as that, but—”

“I get why it’s worse. Rather be dead than that. Not like this is much of a life”—he gestures around the room—“but at least it’s mine.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

I’m impressed by how well he takes it. Then again, it’s difficult to be surprised at the lengths the Corp will go to, especially down here. My time in the upper-Web made me forget a little, but now I remember. “Didn’t go so well the last time we tried to fight against the Corp,” he says finally.

“I know how to do it this time.” I think.

I was the wrong person to lead an army. The wrong face for a revolution of the masses. I’m the right person for this, even if I wish it were someone else’s responsibility. For generations people of the Web have had chances, I’m sure of it. I can’t be the first. But I’m the only one with Alpha and Omega to protect. I’ll die trying if I have to.

I don’t want to think about how realistic that possibility actually is.

“So you need me to . . . what? Drumroll the end of the world?”

A smile cracks my lips. “I need you to get into the mainframe. To code. And I need you to find Haven for me.”

“I thought she was . . . ?”

So did I.
Haven, I’m so sorry
. “It was that bastard boyfriend of Scope’s.”

Mage nods. “That makes more sense. She was so into you, I couldn’t believe . . . but what can I do, man? They’re not watching me anymore, but I lost my job as a coder. Said I was a
security risk
. I work at the depot now. Want some apples? Fresh from Hydro-Farm Four.”

“You’re telling me you need to be legit to get in to the network?”

A dry laugh barks from his throat. “Point. But they took all my gear.”

“Can you do it if you have the equipment?”

He eyes me doubtfully—at my ability, not his. “Find her? Yeah, probably. The scanner hub is pretty open. You know her code?”

I tell him what it is. “That’s step one.”

“And step two?”

Inhale. Exhale. “They get in to our minds through our chips. We can get into theirs the same way if we find the right information. Haven knows how. She’s . . . good with memory chips. She hacked the system and accessed my mother’s.
All
of it. The Board and President Z, their info is going to be more well-protected than someone who’s dead, but it’s got to be possible. We find them, maybe the sound techs, everyone who ever thought this was a good idea and had a part in it. I’ll write songs and we’ll encode them. Control their minds for long enough to get them out of the way and take over. Then we destroy the tracks. Not just ours, every single fucking one of them.”