Coda (36 page)

“Yup.” He holds up the tiny hard drive he stole and forces the word out through clenched teeth. “All we need to make one of their death songs is right here.” The beam of his flashlight guides our way through the tunnels. “Dude’s so busy moving he doesn’t notice when anyone else does. Asked him to show it to me on the screen, copied it over when he wasn’t looking.”

“That’s skill, man.”

Scope’s right. Mage just made things a lot easier.
Too easy
, says the voice in my head. It shouldn’t be this easy. I ignore it. They’ve taken my parents, irrevocably hurt Haven, and killed Johnny. I’ll take luck if it’s offered.

“Okay, so we have the code, but we don’t have the songs we just recorded,” Phoenix says.

“Anthem’s girl’s got us covered.” Mage flashes the light to warn her, and we round the corner into the alcove. Haven’s waiting and I don’t think she realizes what the sight of her does to me as she sits, smiling, in a leather chair. I pull her to her feet and wrap my arms around her. This is what’s real.

Phoenix gags, a speck of normalcy, and I smile.

“You got it,” Haven says, taking the little stick from Mage. “Choice.” She sits back down and plugs it into the computer. A block of code that makes no sense to me scrolls down a screen like a blizzard against a black sky. Scope and I stand behind her, watching, until Mage taps me on the shoulder.

“Ready?”

I swallow heavily. “Yeah.”

He’s set up the de-commed console in a corner; a pair of old headphones hangs from it. In one hand is another, even smaller black object. In another is a knife. I push up my right sleeve and take a few deep breaths before I sit on the floor. Haven swivels her chair, face lit green and painful. I shake my head.
Don’t watch
. She grimaces, nods, and turns back to the monitors. Pixel takes Scope’s place near Haven, and Scope comes to kneel next to me, fingers wrapping around my left ones. “You sure we have to do it this way?” he asks.

“They don’t work outside a body, man, or people would be stealing chips from corpses and charging credits to dead guys. Haven can hack in and alter the one Anthem’s already got, but do we want the Corp noticing that someone with a master ID chip is coming and going where Anthem’s supposed to be? We can get to where we’ve gotta go with ours, but Anthem’s going after the
President
, man.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Phoenix and Mage start to argue over which one of them has steadier hands. I don’t care. I just want to get it over with. Sweat turns my skin cold.

“Anything special you want?” Phoenix asks, giving me the headphones. I shake my head.

“Whatever. Something strong. Upper-Web strong.”

“You got it.” She taps at the console screen. I cover my ears and get the briefest moment of realization that I know this song; I used to throw myself into dancing to it at a club not far from where I’m sitting. Drums thump and a guitar begins, overlaid by hypnotic, rhythmic keyboards. The pull of the drug is heavier even than the way it sounded then, encoded for lower-Web scum like us. Meant for a perfect high in the privacy of lush apartments.

I’m deep in a sunlit ocean, bathed in green, swimming. I didn’t
know I could do that. I’ve just read about it, the cool waters turning darker and darker the farther you go. Now I must be on the ocean floor because everything is black, sand and silt shifting beneath me and something—some wild sea plant—is wrapping itself around my wrist. I try to pull away, but it tightens, holding me fast, trapping me. No, stop. Let me go! I don’t like that
.

Pain, so much pain, as a sharp-toothed creature bites into my skin, the water around us and the plant staining, blossoming with my blood. A tooth, square and hard-edged, digs below my torn veins, lodges itself close to my bones. Again and again I try to drag myself away. My mouth and lungs fill with water as I try to scream, and I just choke, cough, gasp. My pulse is a wild drum beat, and I need help, please, I’m drowning. I can’t see the light anymore, it’s too deep and I’m trapped
.

The plant tightens even more, winding itself in thick, flat straps around me, and then there is the snap of scissors, which don’t belong here, down in the sea, and someone is rescuing me, cutting the plant, and pulling me up, up, out of the water so I can breathe again
.

My face is wet from the sea. I tug my hand from Scope’s and wipe my eyes and cheeks with my sleeve.

“You okay, man?”

My eyes find Mage’s in the murk. “Yeah.” I don’t even want to think what the fuck that would’ve felt like without a painkilling track. The edges of my brain are fuzzy, but too much of it is thinking clearly already. I look down at my right arm, now sheathed in white gauze, hiding the newly implanted chip that will get me through any door. “You sure this’ll work?” Please, tell me I didn’t just go through that for nothing.

“It’ll work.”

I breathe deeply. Air. Not water. “Okay.” Scope is watching me carefully as Phoenix wipes blood from the knife.

“So who is he pretending to be with that thing?” Phoenix asks. “A guard?”

“That’s the beauty of it. Not that I’m claiming credit—Haven over there’s a genius. All the ID chips are the same to look at; it’s just what’s on them that’s different for all of us. Haven put on an access code for a senior guard and inserted it into employee records, but it’s not a real person. Nothing else is on there. Long as you use that chip and not your normal one, you aren’t anyone, man,” Mage says to me. “You’re a ghost. Pale enough for it, too.” He grins.

“Thanks.” I try to smile, but it feels like someone’s holding my wrist over an open flame.

“Come on,” Scope says, helping me to my feet. I sway a little. “Let’s get to the fun part.”

Haven stands when she senses us behind her and pushes me down into her chair with a fierce expression on her face. I’m about to protest, but she sits on my lap and gets back to work.

Okay, I can live with this.

Equalizers and sound waves cover most of the monitors. A few others are scanning dizzying lines of code I can only half see because of Haven’s elaborate hair.

One by one, nine numbers begin to replace the streaming code on one of the screens. I don’t know which is which, don’t even know what any of them look like, but I know who all of them are. President Z and the nine Board members who do her bidding. I angle my head, not to see the monitor more clearly, but to watch Haven’s profile. I don’t know if she’ll tell me whether one of those nine is her father if I ask. Given what we’re about to do, I’m not sure I want to know. Her expression of concentration doesn’t change. These are the brain codes that will tie each memory chip to a specifically encoded track. A minute later, the contents of their ID chips dump onto the screen.
Haven makes a noise of approval and quickly types something, and the screen changes back to more code.

“How are we going to make sure that they listen to the one we want them to?” Scope asks. “I mean, yeah, it’s guaranteed they’re gonna track, and they have to scan their chips to unlock the console, but we can’t replace all of the options. That’d take forever.”

I look at Mage. “It won’t matter what they choose. The one we alter is what’ll play. They won’t have time to realize it’s the wrong thing.” Johnny had no time.

“We’re ready,” Haven says. My arms tighten around her; the burn at my wrist intensifies. I’m glad she still uses her voice.

Mage leans over and types something on a second keyboard. “This is the first song we recorded today,” he says. Rows of sound waves switch places with something else to show up on a monitor in the center of the bank. “We’re using that for most of ’em, right, Anthem?”

I nod. He knows what I want to do with the last one. I told them all on our way through the tunnels.

He presses a few keys and a small window pops up. He points to a line of white letters and numbers.

I don’t know Mage’s citizen code. I know Scope’s, but only because we’ve been friends for years. I’ve never asked for Phoenix’s, or Pixel’s, but I will never forget Johnny’s. Everything else fades to white fog on the edges of my eyes as I focus on the J1942 in the middle. My mouth turns sour.

Haven follows his finger and nods. I wish she’d had a chance to meet him, but it was my own stupidity that prevented it. She replaces his code with one of the ones from the list she pulls up again.

It’s almost . . . simple, though there’s no chance I could do it on
my own. I watch as codes are switched around, altered, and embedded into the song we spent all morning perfecting. A red line crawls slowly across a monitor, counting off percentages, fraction by fraction. When it hits the other side, it blinks and disappears.

A song a few hours ago. A weapon now.

Something’s wrong.

Dust motes of stillness float through the air as soon as I open the door, lit by sun spilling through the huge windows.

“Alpha? Omega?” I call. Maybe they’re just not home from school yet. But they
should
be, and the alarm in my voice is a sign from every cell in my body that it knows this. “Peacock?” I’m supposed to go on TV in a few hours.

“Bee?” Fear makes me stupid. There’s no answer.

Door handles chip plaster as I race down the hall, looking in every room. This is more than the quiet of an empty apartment. It’s the terrifying silence of space that should be inhabited and isn’t. I turn back, promising myself they’re in the kitchen. Of course they are. I don’t know why I didn’t check there first. And for some reason, the twins are just too focused on something to have heard me come in. Maybe Bee has just finished baking more cookies. Maybe they’re doing homework.

I stop dead in the archway.

Oh, shit. I run to Bee, drop to the floor beside the fridge, and make my hands work enough to unbind her wrists and pull the gag from her mouth. Fucking bastards. Gagging her and leaving her here for me to find. Her screams would’ve been the last thing she had.

“Where are they?” I ask, my voice rising, as if that will make some kind of difference. Bee shakes her head, her pupils dilated by terror and her fingers going to the deep, angry welts left on her fleshy arms by the ropes.

My pulse speeds and breathing stops. Spots from the bright kitchen lights turn my vision to an electric snowfall.

I know who took them and don’t need the confirmation on Bee’s tablet screen I see when I make myself focus.

Ell is a dead woman. And she’s going to know it, very, very soon. Another thing to add to the list of stuff I’ve been wrong about. I will
kill
her if she hurts them, and revenge is all the reason I’ll need.

I take Bee’s tablet and type out instructions for her as clearly as I can. I’ve never known the exact address. If they haven’t fixed the hole in the fence, she’ll be safe there. I was going to take her and the twins myself tomorrow. From my own, I send identical messages to Haven and Mage, telling them what I need. A different one to Pixel, Scope, and Phoenix.

There’s only one place Ell would go. Her precious Corp.

I only needed another day, maybe two. My guard tries to stop me outside the door. I don’t wait to watch him buckle to the floor or see his face start to bleed.

Any luck we had is gone. Air tears from my lungs and flays my nostrils. Shards of agony stab at my chest. I double over and force myself up again to keep going down the stairs, outside, and down the sidewalk running the length of the park.

It’s there, looming and black, a threat made of glass. Buildings dodge and weave in front of it, but I don’t let it out of my sight. My pocket buzzes over and over. I don’t stop to look. I don’t need to see the messages yet. I need to find the twins.

How the fuck did she know?

My thoughts race faster than my feet. The others are answering their messages and in any case these tablets are rogue. The power suck down in the tunnels? No, if they knew where we were, they’d have the others by now. We said nothing suspicious to any of the guards or to the sound tech.

I stumble and right myself. Why isn’t it getting any closer? Blood
drips down from under my sleeve, my hammering pulse breaking the barriers of gauze.

If I can’t save them, this has all been pointless. I should let myself fall right here. The stabbing is getting more insistent, and all of this was for them.

All I can see is black. Shouts and curses bounce off me. I shove bodies out of the way. I must be getting closer. More people. The noise of the Vortex.