Coda (40 page)

Bolts creak and metal whines. Soon it is more than the five of us, the collected weight of thousands leaning, pushing. The statue rocks on its pedestal and hangs in the air for a forever-second.

It falls. The crash is the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.

We push our way through the crowd, hands grabbing at my clothes and my hair until we find a spot away from the riotous celebrations breaking out behind us.

“Where’s Scope?”

“He said there was something he had to take care of when he dropped off the chips,” Pixel says. “He’ll meet us back down there.”

I look back at the joyful mass of people. It won’t last. A broken city sprawls around us, and someone will have to fix it. Someone will have to lead it. President Z was right about that. Haven’s face is
streaked, her clothing torn, and the air around us is thick with cheers. It’s not the time to talk.

“You have them?” I ask her. She pats the bright pink bag hanging from her shoulder.

“We need to get to a CRC and the warehouse.” The twins. I pray Isis and Bee kept them safe—and themselves, too.

Pixel glances at my hand and winces. “I’ll drive. Mage, you and Phoenix go make sure we have, what, another few minutes of power?”

“I don’t need long,” Haven says, nodding.

We steal a pod. Pixel climbs into the driver’s seat, and I collapse into the one right behind him as he navigates slowly around the wreckage. Warmth covers my hand, Haven’s fingers linking with my unbroken ones. Night has fallen, but everywhere it’s as if the city is just waking up. Word’s traveled fast, and some of those who hid in their apartments during the fight emerge to stare in the direction of headquarters. Others stay indoors, opening windows seconds before consoles smash to shards on the sidewalk.

After a while I close my eyes and rest on Haven’s shoulder; her arms around me are comforting and safe. I have a million things to say to her; all of them can wait for quiet and stillness and until my hands don’t hurt so much.

“I’ll wait here,” Pixel says outside the CRC, crossing his arms and leaning against the outside of the pod. His body blocks the Corp logo. Mage answers my tab quickly, though this one is less urgent, turning the scanner on so I can open the door. More stairs. It’s easier with Haven’s help, but it’s still a struggle to climb, my legs screaming with every step.

She unravels wires and opens her computer on top of the nearest viewer. Once again the Grid blooms to life in front of us,
flickering now. The energy I banked is running out.

“Inherited memory,” Haven says, typing rapidly, the list of files rendered by the hologram scrolling up to infinity. “Passed down by every president and board member to his or her successor since the Corp formed. No knowledge is ever lost. Nothing’s ever forgotten.”

I believed her when she first told us, that day in the tunnel, but seeing it for myself—and knowing what I know now—makes it different.

You were next._

She glances at the tablet screen and nods, eyes wet. “They wanted me to be. We fought about it all the time. It changes you,” she says. “Even if you could go back and take out all the stuff that isn’t yours . . . you’d never be the same. They never were.” Her eyes shimmer in the lights from the viewer. “It wasn’t even like you were killing people, Anthem. More like unplugging machines. There was nothing left of them. Even their voices changed. Mannerisms. Like there was too much inside their heads, so the only things they could focus on were the ones that have been constant for a hundred years. Strengthen the Corp at all costs. Keep people high and paranoid. Build complacency from fear so there isn’t another war. Citizens are temporary, the Corp is eternal.
I
was temporary.”

My fingers hover over the keypad, frozen. What the hell am I supposed to say about this?

“This one’s done.” The halo of lights blinks and reforms into a person, a man I’ve never seen. She holds out her hand and I give her another chip, together we walk to a different viewer. One by one, she loads the data held on them, saving her parents for last. They’ll live on, sort of, unable to harm anyone, but the passwords encrypted on them—unknown even to their owners—will fool the mainframe into thinking its protection is intact.

“The system will still ping them twice a day,” she says, ejecting the last of them. “As long as they stay here, plugged in, the viewers on, the mainframe won’t trigger a shutdown. If we make any major changes, it will check on them all at once. Mage is going to reprogram the lock after we leave, so it only answers to my code and his. We’ll move out the other chips later and put them somewhere else so people can still visit their families.”

“Haven,” I whisper. It doesn’t matter that she can’t hear me. I wrap my arms around her, and she clings to my waist. Her shoulders tremble.

“Let’s go get the twins,” she says.

I shut my eyes for a second when we pass Pixel’s old club, the pod slowing a little, and when I open them again we’re on the South Shore, pulling to a stop outside the warehouse. Haven lets me go, and I move with the last of my energy through the gap in the fence and into the building. My usable hand yanks open the trapdoor and this time I do jump, forgoing the ladder altogether.

“Ant!”

Well, the crash of the statue had been my favorite sound. “Alpha,” I breathe. “Omega. Come here.”

They do, running into my arms and letting me almost crush them. “We slept for a long time,” Alpha says. “And I feel funny.”

“I know,” I say. “It’ll go away soon.” Not completely, but eventually the itch of addiction will, I hope, fade into the background.

“Can we have some more music?” Omega asks. “That was fun.”

“Not yet, okay?” My voice cracks. “But I have something better. Someone who wants to see you.” The footsteps overhead don’t make me nervous this time.

“Who?”

Haven descends the ladder. Two pairs of eyes widen and huge
smiles spread across safe faces. “Haven!” They let me go so suddenly I should probably be offended, but I can only laugh in hysterical relief. She wraps lace-coated arms around them, and for the first time—probably the only time—I’m glad she can’t hear me or my voice break as I tell the twins she can’t hear them. I tap Alpha on the shoulder and give her my tablet.

In the gloom, I find Isis and hug her tight, whispering,
Thank you, thank you, thank you
.

“What’s going on up there?” she asks.

“It’s over.” I let her go, sensing Pixel’s impatience behind me. Bee, watchful and silent, steps from the shadows and examines our faces. A slow, rapturous smile spreads across her face; her eyes close and her hands fold together over her chest.

“Anthem, you’re hurt,” Isis says, extricating herself from Pixel. The gash on my arm has reopened, my head’s still bleeding, and my hand is clearly wrecked. “Come here.” She rummages in a bag and takes out fresh gauze to clean and dress my wounds. “I’ll do a better job when I have more light,” she says. “If the medical facility is still there, I can give you stitches and set your hand.”

“Thanks.” We look at each other. No painkillers. I won’t take them. She nods.

“We should get back,” I say. “Alpha, Omega, you two want to go for a pod ride?” I don’t think I’m up to carrying the twins all the way through the tunnels, and we don’t have to hide now.

“Is Haven coming?”

I smile at Omega, my chest tight. “She can stay with us forever if she wants to.”

Seven of us cram into a pod designed for four and drive north again, by moonlight. The twins sit across from Haven and me, squabbling over control of the tablet. I don’t need to know what
they’re saying, or what her answers are. I only need to see their faces.

Pixel climbs down a tunnel entrance and reaches to help Alpha and then Omega. Bee moves with surprising agility, and I jump again to save my hand the pain.

The alcove is bathed in green and empty. The monitors and wires are flickering, the last of my stored energy dying out. Haven hands me my tablet.

What do you want me to do?_

Turn the Grid back on._

She pries herself from the twins and sits down, fingers flying across the keys. For a second we’re all swathed in complete darkness.

The hum begins. I can feel it, even from here. The low vibration that settles in my teeth. Monitors burst into light again, blinding, as if I’ve rubbed my eyes too hard, until I blink the spots away.

She keeps typing and lifts a hand only to beckon me over her shoulder, then point at a screen.

Millions and millions of music files. Her finger hovers over the delete key. I close my eyes, shake my head, and reach out to stop her.

Mage was right. It’s not our decision. I’ve made so many now and I’m just so fucking tired.

Remove the ones we made, and anything they made in the past year._ That should be safe enough for now.

Haven nods, rests her head against my arm for a second, and gets back to work. Somewhere down the tunnel, I hear footsteps.

“Anthem? Pixel?” Mage’s voice echoes until he’s calling a hundred of each of us.

“Stay here with Bee and Haven,” I tell the twins. “I’ll be right back.” Pixel and I duck out of the alcove, look for the flashlight beams, and go to meet Mage and Phoenix.

I don’t know which one of us stops walking or who sees it first.
Him
. The glow of Phoenix’s flashlight illuminates dark hair streaked with red, the body over Mage’s shoulder. I search their eyes, see everything I need to, and stop breathing.

No. Not him. It can’t be.

My knees hit dirt. I cough on the kicked-up dust, gag, turn my head to puke. Pixel falls too, clutching at me, and I try to hold in the deep sobs shuddering through his chest. Phoenix and Mage gently lay Scope down in the ruts of former train tracks.

“We got worried when he wasn’t answering his tabs,” Phoenix says quietly. “So we went to find him.”

I force myself to look at Scope. Every different kind of love I’ve ever felt for him fights for control in my chest. Crusted blood rings a single bullet hole at his temple, fading into a streak in his hair. It just looks like the dye ran in the rain. A scrap of something yellow peeks out from his clenched fist.

“Is he . . .? Both . . .?” Pixel asks.

“Yes, but we only found one—” Phoenix starts. Mage puts a hand on her shoulder.

“You can look at his memory chip later.”

Pixel shakes his head. I don’t want to know, either. I lean forward and kiss Scope’s dry, cool lips. When I pull back, his face gleams wet in a round pool of light.

Agony, sleep, agony again. I soak clean, soft sheets with sweat and they have to be changed several times a day. For weeks, Haven mops my forehead with cool cloths, swallows my screams with her mouth, pins down my hands when I try to claw off my skin, and calls for help when her own strength isn’t enough. Bee comes, then Pixel sometime later, and even through the pain, the nausea, the relentless pounding in my head, I know what it means that he’s not suffering through this with me.

I don’t blame him.

Finally, painfully, the withdrawal passes. I shower, dress, cross my room on atrophied legs, past a gaping hole in the wall, and emerge to see the twins, happy and cared for, gorging on cookies under Bee’s watchful eyes. I can’t hug them, or her, hard enough. Now that my brain is my own again, I’ll have to decide whether staying here is the right thing to do. Yeah, the Corp put me in this ridiculous apartment, but it’s big enough for all of us and I kind of think I deserve it. I don’t want to go back to my old life down in Two and forget all the things I’m not proud of.