Coda
Emma Trevayne
RPITEENS
PHILADELPHIA
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LONDON
Copyright © 2013 by Emma Trevayne
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945893
E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-4840-1
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Cover art by Rob Williams
Edited by Lisa Cheng
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To Brittany and Brie,
with all my string, and all my yes.
I’m drawn toward the door. I can’t hear it yet, but I can feel it. A pulse, a heartbeat. The floor shakes.
Inside, the cavernous, soundproof room is already packed, black and neon and flashing lights and stifling heat from the crush of bodies. It will dry my hair back into some semblance of the platinum-and-blue spikes I’d arranged so meticulously at home, hiding the wire for the fiber-optic cerulean tubes in my own real hair before snaking it down to plug into the socket at the back of my neck. My own energy will make them glow, just as by day it helps power the Grid. They’re an indulgence since I should conserve myself for work, but I love them too much to care.
My body shudders with relief inside wet clothing as I fully register the music that pounds around me: heavy, rhythmic percussion, the cut-glass of keyboards. Speakers line the walls and hang from the ceiling to prevent recurrences of the early disasters, when people pushed to get closer to the music coming from corners of the room, and trampled bodies fell under brutal boots. A more even distribution makes sure we only get the happiness we crave.
And hate.
In the few minutes I have before the effect takes hold, I find my friends, weaving my way through a tangle of euphoria and sweat. Scope has his arms around some guy I don’t recognize whose lips and bones are outlined in harsh yellow. Haven’s next to them, all legs and spiked heels and her favorite shade of hot pink. Why she slums it down here when she should be at a Sky-Club, being worshiped by rich men, I have no idea. I’ve asked and gotten only an arched chrome eyebrow and a shrug of a slender shoulder as an answer.
Sticky mouths kiss both my cheeks at once. Haven and Scope shout something I can’t hear above the music, but I nod as if I do. Scope goes back to his latest nameless guy, and Haven focuses on the luminous sticks in her hands, transfixed as they slice through steamy air and pulses of light. My own are in my pocket, blue to match my hair, like hers are pink. I reach for them with fingers just starting to hum.
It’s working. I just need to let it.
Sound is everywhere. I can’t see, but I don’t need to. The music moves my arms and legs around the square foot I’ve claimed. A crash of drums and I am eight years old again, held by my mother during a thunderstorm that rages in window-rattling fury. Everywhere else I’m forgetting her face, but here, here I can remember her eyes so like mine, and her smile back when she smiled. Scope is grinning at pretty things shimmering just out of reach no matter how high I stretch my hands to grab them. Maybe they’re down, not up—I’m not sure if I’m flying or falling anymore, but either way I’m throwing laughter back at the thumping bass in a conversation everyone else must be able to hear because they are laughing, too
.
With drumbeat shackles and guitar-string ropes, I’m a willing prisoner. It’s miraculous here: light and sound and color and shape coalesce around me before exploding into fireworks of bliss. Rainbow sparks tumble down to sizzle on my clothes
.
I try to catch the pink ones
.
Songs change. Sweat flows. Energy gathers and releases and gathers again. This one’s my favorite. It sweeps me away, floating, until waves of a thousand keyboards break all at once, crashing into my frantic body, tossing me higher, higher, higher
.
My mouth tastes like the carpet that’s scraping against my face. Boots nicer than mine, heels tall and sharp, sit at the end of an empty bed. Scope always goes home—almost never alone—but Haven sleeps here a lot because it’s closer to the club than her place. Through the painful, expected withdrawal that scratches at my insides and fills my mind with fog, I vaguely remember a good time, which is the problem.
Good times turn you into my father. After a while, they turn you into my mother.
I throw off my blanket and stand to scan my wrist at the console on the wall. If I could brace my eardrums, I would. They say we’re not supposed to hear the beep, that the frequency’s too high.
The Corp says a lot of things.
My eyes close. The whine ricochets around my head and the chip vibrates subtly against a vein. Text pops up on the display, but I don’t need to read it. Male. Eighteen. Six-one. Not heavy enough. Blond and blue. Conduit. Mother deceased; father and two siblings living. Citizen N4003. I pull a headset from a hook. The screen glows too-bright blue and my eyes water.
One song, one hit. I’d have to track for a long time to equal the strong high I can get at the club, but the first rush does come faster here. I scroll through the menus of uppers, downers, and meds until I find something that will take the edge off and not chew up too many credits.