Coda (33 page)

He’s quiet for a long time. I struggle from the sunken cushions to pace the room. Outside the window, a guard-turned-pod-driver is waiting for me on the street, more patiently than his kind used to.

“What happens to everyone else?”

“How do you mean?”

“Say we do what you just said. Overthrow the Corp, put them all in cells or whatever. Make it all stop. Even if we don’t think about the fact that we’ll be doing the wrong thing—maybe for the right reasons—the Web is full of addicts, Anthem. You gonna force withdrawal for everyone? You have any idea what that’ll do?”

The shaking. The puking. Crawling around my cell, wanting to die. “You have a better plan?”

“I’m not saying the Corp’s right, okay? Not by a long shot, and you’ve always had a point about using their weapons against them. If nothing else those are the only weapons we’ve got, so fine. But if you want to force your way on everyone, you’re almost as wrong. Taking away the choice? Not your decision to make, man.”

“Will you help me find her or not?” We can worry about all the other shit later.

“Yeah, I’ll try.”

“Thanks.”

I feel more like two totally different people than I ever have. It’s not just a matter of washing my makeup off and making breakfast for the twins anymore. Not that I do the latter much these days. Mage whistles as he climbs into the pod ahead of me, fingers running over spongy seats then reaching out to touch the console screen. The logo fades and a message appears that instructs him to swipe his ID chip. I tell him to track if he wants, and he shakes his head. That might explain the pallor. I’m not sure how concerned the Corp are these days with making sure everyone tracks enough, not
with what they have planned.

“Depot Two,” I tell the driver. He turns to look at me, eyebrows raised. “What? He works there. We’re just dropping him off.” Mage’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as he stares out the window.

The ride to the depot is short, just long enough for me to watch my old neighborhood slip past, familiar faces trudging well-worn streets. We pull to a stop, and I take a deep breath, telling the guard I’m going inside to buy something. He just shrugs. I’ve become boring.

Good.

It takes a second after I open the door for the noise of vendors to die down. Shouts advertising their wares bounce to a stop on the tiled floor. My head is suddenly heavy, harder to hold up and look these people in the eye. Word has definitely spread in the month or so that I’ve been gone.

“Sellout,” hisses a guy who came to at least one of the concerts. My father used to like his cheeses. Agreement swells like the slow, steady intro to a song that will explode when you least expect it.

“Tell me what you wouldn’t do to save your family,” I challenge him. “And that goes for everyone here,” I say, looking around the room. “You know me. Knew my parents. Know my little brother and sister. Tell me what I should have done.”

Silence. I haven’t changed their minds. These are people who have spent their lives backing down from those with power, and now I’m one of them.

“I’m not here to make trouble for any of you. I just need Imp.”

A head rises above the floury counter of a bread stall as Imp steps onto the stool he keeps there. What he lacks in height, he makes up for in width. Mage follows me and a hundred pairs of eyes follow both of us.

“Anthem,” Imp says. His voice has been high and reedy as long
as I can remember, but hearing it now brings me back to when I was shorter than he is, holding my mother’s hand as she bought loaves for the week. I lean over, close as I can get to his ear, splintered wood digging into my ribs. I think he remembers, too. His face is a little less guarded than some of the others who are still watching us.

“Mage needs some gear.”

Imp scrutinizes me, and I hold up my hands. No, this isn’t some kind of trap. “Come with me.” He doesn’t bother to open the hatch in the counter, just ducks a little and shuffles out from under it. He waddles to the back of the depot, through a door that’s supposed to be kept locked, down to a labyrinthine basement and into a room that reminds me of a cross between our old rehearsal space and the storage room in Pixel’s club.

There are no water bottles on these shelves. Imp turns to us and waits.

“A computer, to start with.” I say. “I don’t know what else. Mage?”

“A de-commed console,” Mage tells him. Every few years, the Corp upgrades them. The old ones are supposed to be recycled. Not all of them make it. “Six rogue tablets.”

I didn’t even think of that, and I hope his optimism that we need six untraceable communication devices, not five, is justified.

“This is going to cost,” Imp squeaks. I shake my head.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Mage wanders along the shelves, grabbing cables, circuit boards, and other stuff I wouldn’t know the uses for. “Can you get a clean memory chip?” he asks Imp. “And an ID chip, too. Gonna need to know how they work,” he says to me.

Imp tilts his head. I know he’s curious, but he’s not in the right business for asking questions. “ID, yes. Not cheap, but there are a
few floating around. Memory . . .”

“Not important,” I say. I think Haven has one. Either that, or she never needed one to figure them out.

“Scanner?” I look at Imp. He takes me to a corner where a reclaimed scanner is blinking on the wall, most of its tracing functions disabled. The credits it takes from my account will appear to remain there, ghost-digits I can’t spend but will look normal to the spying eyes of any overattentive Corp suit angling for a raise. Imp types in an amount that makes my stomach clench.

I tell him to double it and scan my wrist.

“I need four of those tablets now,” I say. Imp nods and goes to a shelf to pick them up. “And something to hide them in.” I check the number of the one on the top of the stack and give it to Mage so he can let me know as soon as he finds anything.

“Anthem. The rumors about the tracks they’re using to kill . . .”

Imp breaks the law every time he brings someone down to this room. “They’re true,” I say. “Give Mage everything he needs.”

A minute later I’m out of the depot, back under the indifferent charge of my guard. The loaf of bread showing out of the bag in my hand doesn’t look hollow. “My brother and sister miss it.” I explain.

In my conduit days, I read a lot of books about what people before the war thought life would be like on earth now. I envy the ones who didn’t see what was coming, and wish they were right about a lot of it. I’d like to be one of those automaton robots right now, going through the motions of home, putting the twins to bed, hitting the club, and walking into the studio in the morning without imagining every one of Mage’s illegal keystrokes, praying he’s close to finding Haven.

Thinking about what I’ll do if he can’t.

I hand the rogue tablets out to the others. The guard in
the control booth doesn’t even look up. We’ve become boring, well-behaved, good little citizens. Half the time there isn’t anyone in there at all, just the twitchy sound tech. Life’s not any fun if they don’t get to point a gun at someone at least once a day, I guess. Even Ell’s visits have dwindled. She’s probably busy overseeing the Corp’s new experiment.

On second thought, I don’t want to be a robot.

I saw Mage on Tuesday. Friday morning, a guitar string snaps, but I ignore the long welt on my hand and reach for the tablet that’s been silent for three days, until now. The rest of them know I’m waiting and haven’t tabbed me because they’re not cruel. I have to wake up the guard and feign nonchalance as I tell him we need to go pick up our other drummer. The kit is there next to Pixel’s, ready and waiting.

I barely wait for Mage to open the door. “You found her?”

A strangled sound squeezes from his throat. He coughs. “Yeah. But Anth—”

“Where is she?”

He points at his bedroom. I don’t remember crossing the floor or turning the handle. All I know is seeing her, sitting curled around a pillow in her lap.

“Haven,” I breathe. Suddenly she’s in my arms, her own wrapping tightly enough around my neck to choke. I’m home. We’re both safe, at least for this moment. I’m not even conscious of the words I’m whispering in her ear, over and over, until I realize she’s not responding to them.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “Did they hurt you? Are you okay?”

No answer. Fear bubbles, bright and hot and angry, in the pit of my stomach. I pull back a few inches and cup her face in my hands. “Can you hear me?” I ask.

Her eyes close; twin tears break the dam of her lashes to run down her cheeks.

I’m going to destroy them all.

“Who did this to you?” I demand. The dumbest thing I can do right now, probably. The only sign that I said anything is the stuttered flicker of her sound implants. She just shakes her head and grimaces.

They say the pain takes weeks to subside. I tense my arms and try to hold my anger away from my hands so I don’t hurt her.

“I found her through Exaur records,” Mage says from the doorway. “I looked other places first—scanners she might’ve hit at clubs and whatever—no joy. I didn’t want to think it, but . . .”

“Thanks,” I say hoarsely. “Did it say who?”

“Just the med-tech who did it. Nothing about orders or whatever.”

“Can I have your tablet?” Mine is sitting on top of my guitar where I dropped them both in the studio.

He brings it to me and closes the door on his way out. I spend too long figuring out what to say first.

I’m sorry._

Haven reads the screen and presses her body closer to mine, her hand lifting to take it from me. Pink nails click for a moment, loud because I’m listening for both of us. You thought it was me, didn’t you?_

I can’t bring myself to type it out and nod against her instead, waiting for her to climb from my lap or hit me or something else that would be completely justified. Sadness rises in the heat from her skin. They wanted you to. I know that’s why they filmed me._

That doesn’t make it better._

It makes it forgivable._

That’s an argument I’ll have with myself later. Who did this to you?_ I ask again.

She takes the tablet from me and holds it for a while. Direct orders from President Z._ Rage builds in me with each stumbled-over letter. It was decided that a person . . . in my position . . . should know better._

My nostrils flare, my pulse pounds heavy, and I bite back a scream. They’re so convinced they own her that they don’t even care if she hates them forever, or if they hurt her. No brainwashing tracks for her. They wanted to punish. They
wanted
to cause her pain, and her family couldn’t save her this time. They made it worse. I wonder if they even tried to stop it, if they were given the chance. Haven puts the tablet down and slides her hand across my chest to rest over my heart. I close my eyes and steal the warmth of her touch through my shirt.

“Anthem,” she rasps. My eyes snap open again. A lot of Exaurs give up speech, though the ability for it stays intact. She sounds like she’s just woken up, throat raw and dry, and she stares at me, the pure green intensified by worry. “I wanted to hate you,” she says, and I cringe. “But I missed you too much.”

I will never deserve this girl, but I’m too selfish to not try. I want to tell her I know exactly what she means. More than anything, I want to erase that fear in her eyes.

It’s like . . . I can’t even think. Her lips are so soft, wet from fresh tears. I hold her as close as I can, spelling words on her tongue with my own. Promising that what happened to her might change everything to the world outside but nothing,
nothing
between us. Gasps slide down my throat like food I’ve craved that no other flavor could satisfy. Fingers play around the edge of my neck jack, a reminder of
who I used to be—and which I’m going to need, one last time. She was there for that, and she’s here now, and I’m not letting her go again.

We come up for air only when oxygen deprivation demands it and Haven presses her face into my neck, breathing me in. I shift enough to pick up Mage’s tablet again, rest it on one knee and type, awkward and single-handed, so I don’t have to let her go. She lifts her head to read the message when I tap her shoulder, and a slow, fierce, determined smile spreads across her face.