Coda (37 page)

I don’t stop until I’m in danger of slamming into smoked glass. Smashing one window isn’t enough. I pull out my tablet and wipe blood from the screen so I can read.

Level 3. Office 317. Ready if you need it. Others on the way. Be careful, okay? I love you._

Stay where you are._ Fuck, I hope she listens.

The receptionist is still bored, painting her nails a shade of yellow. I want to knock the bottle from her hand. No one gives me more than a passing glance as I run into the elevator and press buttons that don’t respond fast enough.

I don’t know what I’m doing. My body moves without me. I’m in front of doors, gasping and biting back screams. I scan my new chip and it slides open.

“Anthem,” Ell says, sugar-laced and dangerous. “How nice of you to join us.”

It’s not a big room. The same sucking, soundproof quality of so many other Corp offices pervades it. White, everywhere. Clinical and hostile. For the smallest second I’m confused by the lack of guards. And then I’m not. I should have expected this from her. There are no guards because Ell doesn’t need them.

The console on the wall glows the blue of being in use.

Alpha and Omega are attached to it.

“You’re dead.” I race across the room, trying to get past her. Through blurred eyes, I see silver motion. A knife flicking open.

“Always pays to have insurance policies,” she says. She’s glowing—teeth gleaming, face bright. “You are too late, little Anthem.”

I look at the twins. Their eyelids are closed, and peaceful smiles are on their faces. As I watch, Omega laughs at whatever it is the track is making him see.

“The first track is the most addictive,” Ell says. “You know that, of course. They’ve had, oh, three or four now. I imagine they’re on quite a trip. Don’t they look happy?”

“Let. Them. Go.”

Ell shakes her head. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. You have never been as hungry for fame as some of our other musicians, so it was curious that you asked to go on TV. I wondered if perhaps you were going to try something, maybe tell the citizens what we have planned. It seemed prudent to protect ourselves from that, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

Alpha giggles. I try to breathe and blink away the haze behind my eyes. A steady flow of blood falls to the floor from my wrist.

“Yet. Of course. You have been
remarkably
well-behaved. Suspicious in itself, I think.”

I say nothing.

“I decided you shouldn’t be given any more time,” Ell continues. “If we had continued on our path, you might have come up with some way to prevent it in time to protect them. But you know there is no reversing this. Not even white noise will completely erase the lingering effects. You come out of an OD recovered, but not cured of
the addiction. Should you still desire to do your interview—that is, if you still have anything to say—you can now be completely certain that I have no qualms about punishment. Say anything, Anthem, and you know exactly how far I will go.”

“You crazy bitch,” I hiss. Failure strips strength from my muscles. I force myself to take another step toward her and silver flashes again.

“I learned from the very best.” Ell smiles. “You could say President Z is something of a mentor to me. Took me under her wing long ago.”

“You’re both dead,” I say. My eyes flicker between the knife and the twins. I’m no good to them dead. I’m not much good to them alive.

It would be easy, so easy to fall on that blade. The twins might not even see. I take another step.

“Good boy. Just give in. Life is so much easier that way. Let us decide what’s best for you.” Suddenly, Ell’s face splits into her widest grin yet. “Excellent. Guard, remove him until I’m finished here.”

I spin, ready to fight. The black uniform against the white hurts my eyes. A hand is pressing the button to keep the doors locked open. I don’t care that they have guns and a knife. No one is taking me out of this room.

And then Ell isn’t the only one smiling. Crave looks me straight in the eye and strides past, his gun out, to push Ell against the wall with a slam that breaks through the headphones into the twins’ ears. In unison, their eyes open wide, confused, pupils blown. I run to them, pull the headphones off, and gather them in my arms. My right arm holding Alpha nearly gives out. Both are barely conscious. A heavy dose, so soon . . . I hold them tighter.

“Citizen!” Ell gasps. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Crave smiles slowly. “Protecting the Web. Exactly as I swore to.”

Ell tries to shout, but Crave has his forearm against her throat. Her shoes clatter on the floor as she tries to kick him.

The pain in my arm is nauseating. I try to think through the warm, sticky, thick feeling. Try to decide what to do next. Crave shouldn’t be the one to kill her, and I don’t want to do it in front of the twins. Remembering even a fraction of that would be too much. As it is they’re scared—hearts hammering against my chest—and disoriented. Omega blindly reaches in the general direction of the console, trying to get the headphones back. I step away with them and will myself not to puke.

“Anthem.” A familiar voice. A soft hand is on my shoulder. I let Phoenix pry Alpha from me, and Pixel takes Omega. Pixel looks at me in question. I don’t know. I can’t think.

“Isis,” I whisper finally. “Get Isis. Take Crave and go in his pod. Down to the warehouse. Bee’s there already. Maybe they can . . .” There’s nothing they can do. The twins’ minds will always know the drug. The itch of addiction, however faint, will be there forever. They’ll never be satisfied without it. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Mage and Haven say the track’s ready for her,” he whispers to me. “Scope, stay with him.”

Crave lets go of Ell; her wheezy breaths fill the room. As soon as his hands are off her, she tries to move, her foot trips over one of her fallen shoes. A loud crack tumbles into the soundproof abyss, and the wall six inches from her head explodes from the force of the bullet. Ell freezes and Crave presses his gun into my hand. “All yours.”

Scope follows them and stands by the doors to wait. Fear paints Ell’s face. It’s a good look for her, and I let myself enjoy it for a second.

“I underestimated you,” Ell says. She doesn’t quite hide the tremor in her voice.

Fine. She can think that if she wants.

“You’ve poisoned my little brother and sister.” My legs are working fine now. With every step I take, her eyes widen further. “You let me think the girl I love betrayed me, just so you could use me. You performed experiments on my friends.”

“This has all been President Z’s brainchild, but I was instrumental in its execution.”

The bitch is
proud
of herself.

I laugh. Sharp. Not funny. But laugh nonetheless. “That’s truer than you know. You weren’t the only one paying attention.” Her arm flinches under my hand. I push her over to the console. “Do you remember what you
tested
on my friend who died?”

“It won’t work on me.” Ell smirks. “It was attuned to him. Every such test has been specifically designed for the citizen in question.”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Exactly. You screwed up. If you’d left my brother and sister alone, I would’ve let you live. I don’t need to kill you to make things right, just your precious President and her board.”

“You can’t kill them. You need the Board and President Z to run the mainframe. They’re . . . connected. Without them, everything will shut down. No food, no water, no music. Is that what you want, Anthem? To kill the Web?”

She’s good. Haven’s better. “I don’t need them. I need their chips.”

The muscles I grip turn slack. Her fight melts like wax, and I shove her harder than I need to against the wall. More plaster falls from the bullet hole. “I guess I should say thanks,” I say. “I wasn’t sure I could do it before. Didn’t know if I had it in me. You know what? I do.”

“Anthem,” Scope says, a low-pitched warning. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

He’s right. There are other places I need to be. Ell, sensing my distraction, claws and kicks at me. With Scope’s help, I force her wrist across the scanner; the logo that returned shortly after I unhooked the twins disappears again. I select the song and pin the headphones over her ears as she struggles against us.

It’s over in seconds, just like with Johnny. She’s there, and then she’s gone, the life sucked out like a conduit machine on overdrive. Scope helps me do what we need to and we slip between closing doors with an inch to spare, my bloody handprint left on the
lock
button inside.

Ell is important. It’s not going to be long before someone goes looking for her, or for Crave’s absence—and his missing pod—to be noticed. We find the nearest hygiene cube and clean up as much as we can. Scope checks his tablet, and a minute amount of tension leaves me. The twins are safe in the old warehouse basement—for now. We split up in the hall, Scope back to our station in the tunnels, me for the little used stairs down to the Energy Farm.

Tiredness is already infused into my bones, but there’s no other way for this, and Tango, with her vibrant violet hair, is easy to find.

We have nine to kill, less any who happen to track of their own volition in the next couple of hours. But most upper-Web types, especially Corp people, wait for evening. We’re figuring about five minutes for each, enough time to get into the consoles and get the tracks playing in their heads. Plus enough power to run everything we’ll need to pull this off.

One year off for one year on . . . at normal drainage levels. Who knows what this will do to me? I sit in the chair for almost an hour,
long enough to store the energy we need.

I’m exhausted when Tango de-jacks me. “Get out of here if you can,” I tell her. “Please. You don’t want to be here.”

Her eyes dart around the Energy Farm. “Okay. Good luck, Anthem.”

The man with the bionic arm looks at me in surprise when I walk—stumble—into the store. Yeah, I know. It’s been a while. He takes out a bottle of grape juice and averts his eyes from the crust of blood around my wrist when I take it from him and scan my real ID chip. It’s not much, but the sugar will help a little.

Withdrawal nibbles at my skin. I’ve barely tracked today, just a few times this morning and the one to kill the pain of the new implant—not that it helped much. The twins’ faces, blurred and hazy-eyed, float in front of me.

The withdrawal can kill me if it wants. I will never track again. I finish my juice, throw the bottle into a container outside for plastics to be recycled, and head back into headquarters. Level five. Corp TV.