Coda (13 page)

“We need the right crowd,” Mage says. “People who aren’t gonna rat us out. Sympathizers.”

“Yeah.”

He nods slowly. “Your hacker friend, she ever tell you much about what we do?”

Phoenix, Scope, and Yellow Guy stop talking amongst themselves to listen. “A little. I don’t really get it,” I say. “She says the security’s pretty strong.”

“It’s a playground. Yeah, there are safeguards, I don’t even understand half of them, man, but just being in there is giving the Corp the finger. Doing something we’re not supposed to, something they don’t know about.” He laughs. “Kinda weird; everyone who hacks hates the Corp and we spend all our free time inside its brain.”

“Okay? And?”

Mage smiles. “Dude, the only thing hackers like better than getting deep into a system is bragging about it. We leave messages for each other all the time, buried in the code, and the Corp has no damn idea.”

We do nothing in the basement but talk, and still when I leave I feel like we played all day. Mage’s idea about the messages makes me nervous, though I know Haven’s been too busy with her project recently to dig around the system much. The others promise to start telling people they trust. In Phoenix’s case I don’t even know who that would be, but I assume she has people she loves—and if she wanted us to be aware of them, she’d have said something by now.

We’re all bonded by this one thing. Nothing else matters when we’re in the basement, pouring our souls into notes.

The crackle along my veins dulls a little when I get home and see the twins. They’ll be in danger if I get caught. Haven, too, if I decide to tell her—maybe even if I don’t. I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet, because what I want and what is smart are two very different things here. My father, Tango, Fable and his mother, others. I’m putting everyone who knows me at risk.

I just hope that if it does get me turned into an Exaur or sends me on a one-way trip to the CRC, the reason is enough to make them forgive me.

I shudder. Of the two, I’d prefer death. If the Corp thinks that strapping a person down, covering their ears with headphones, and playing the track that will deafen them forever is a brutal punishment for the average person—and it is—it would be even worse for me. Never to hear music again . . . I’ll kill myself if that happens.

At least I’m right about Pixel. I’m not surprised to find him waiting for me outside my apartment when I get home from work on Monday. He’d probably wanted to talk to me Saturday night at the club, but Omega has a cold and I didn’t want to leave him.

At least it isn’t anything more serious. The restrictions on music for kids are lifted when one needs medical treatment. I see them, sometimes. . . . Tiny kids, holding their mothers’ hands as they navigate the world through drugged, glazed eyes.

I shake it off, focusing on Pixel, the green streaks in his hair catching the light. He’s my height, so our eyes are level. I see the acceptance I think is bordering on approval. Inside, I check that my father’s sleeping and put on a track for him anyway, more to make sure he can’t hear us talking in the kitchen than anything else.

Maybe a track guaranteed to bring instant death isn’t always a bad thing. . . . I shake myself and look at Pixel, who seems weirdly out of place here and yet totally comfortable. He’s never been here,
but the apartment he shares with Scope and their mother on the other side of Two is nearly a clone of this one in appearance.

“You okay?” he asks.

I shrug. “You?”

“I didn’t see it happen to my friend.”

My mouth opens, the words
I’ll live
on my tongue. I swallow them.

“Been thinking since Scope told me everything. Using tracks to kill . . .” He whistles and I cringe. No one’s here. No guard heard that. It’s okay. “Have some ideas about where to do this thing,” he says, wrapping long-fingered hands around the hot mug of tea I made him.

“That’s the biggest problem.” All night, between checking on Omega’s low fever and forcing water down his throat, I’d thought about that.

Pixel’s lips—odd without the green he wears at the club—twist. “Or not.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“You need somewhere soundproof, right? Scope told me about your basement, and that’s all cool when it’s just you guys and you’re careful, but you can’t get a crowd in there.”

“You might be overestimating our talents, but anyway,” I say.

Grinning, he cocks his head. “I doubt you suck. You think I don’t see you when you’re into the music, even when you’re in really deep? You
get it
, man. Like almost no one else does. Scope, too, and this Johnny guy doesn’t sound like he was just messing around.”

A twinge pulls at my gut when he says Johnny’s name casually like that, but how else is he supposed to talk about someone he never met? I remind myself that the same thing probably happened to his friend. “You were saying . . . about where?”

“Right.” He nods. “The club.”

“You’re insane,” I manage in the middle of choking on my tea. “The Corp owns it!”

“Anthem,” he says, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “The Corp owns every square inch of the Web. And it’s the last fucking place they’d think to look.”

Okay, he has a point, but still.

“So the club,” he continues. “Sunday nights, when the Corp so generously gives me a night off. I can get whatever you need from Imp; he owes me a favor. The best part? The thing about this city is that there’s a whole maze underneath it where the trains used to run.”

“Right,” I say, not sure what tunnels have to do with anything. The materials from the trains were recycled a long time ago, probably to make consoles or something.

“So there’s a way in,” he says, looking at me until I get it. We don’t have to use the front door. We can bypass the scanners, and any pods on the lookout won’t see people going into a club that’s supposed to be closed. A club that has everything we need—or at least, a lot more than we have now. Sound gear, lights, enough space.

It’s perfect. Crazy, but it’s not as if the rest of this isn’t.

Pixel finishes his tea and stands, the
clump
of his boots as they make the trip from tabletop to floor provoking a loud snore from my father. I get a sympathetic look and return it.

And still, the first thing I do when he’s gone is head for my room and walk straight to the console. I’d love to just set the track to play and not listen, and so many times I try. I’ll make it a second, or two, maybe five if I’m having a good day and my head is filled with my own music. Always, though, I’m broken just by knowing that the track is there, a drug in front of a hopeless addict, with the credits for
it already gone from my account.

Still, it takes three tries to make myself cover my ears and press the screen to find what I want.

My heart stops—a preemptive strike.

Warmth floods my fingers and toes, tingling and golden and sweet, and I exhale. Not my turn, not this time. If I concentrate really hard before the track has time to take its full effect, I imagine I can sense the melody entering my brain and hear the subliminal messages communicating with the part that’s designed for this. Or that the music is designed for. An endless loop that circles me until my mind starts spinning, too, around and around until I lift off and begin to float.

I wish I could keep going, on and on until I fly away from here completely. But I don’t think there are enough tracks in the world for that.

For the rest of the week, I throw myself into plans for the band. Saturday I watch Alpha and Omega play in the park, but my mind is elsewhere. I don’t even know what I’m hoping for. All I want is to get by, live out my life, and look after the twins for as long as I can, but that word of Mage’s—
revolution
—is a spark in my brain that finds too many fuses. Circuits glow with thoughts of ways to end the Corp for good.

They’re definitely going to delete those before my chip goes in a locker at the CRC. I guess they’ll wipe out a lot of the past few years, including these footsteps as I follow Pixel through the tunnels below the Web, over ground scarred and uneven where the tracks have been ripped out. Water leaks down the walls; rats and cockroaches
run from the beam of his flashlight.

“Keep up, you two,” Pixel calls over his shoulder to Scope and Yellow Guy, who have stopped to take advantage of the darkness.

“How are people going to find their way through all this? Shit,” I say, catching myself before I fall flat on my face. I’m already disoriented, with not a damn clue which way I’d go to find the entrance we took near the South Shore. It was another basement, kind of like our practice room, with a door that eventually opened, on squeaky hinges, to the tunnels.

“We’ll put up arrows or something; I’ve got some fluorescent paint up at the club. No one ever comes down here.”

“And you know this how?” Scope asks, his tongue apparently available for speech again.

Pixel laughs, the light jerking erratically. The sound echoes down the path ahead. “You’re not the only lawbreaker in the family, little brother. And that’s all you’re getting.”

Scope can whine more than the twins when there’s something he wants, and I’m convinced the only reason Pixel doesn’t tell Scope what he does down here is to annoy him. Suits me fine.

I crash into Pixel’s back, stumble, and right myself. This stretch of wall doesn’t look any different from the miles we’ve already passed, except for the stack of old crates piled against it. He tosses me the flashlight, its beam arcing over the wall and ceiling before I catch it, and tells me to point it above his head. The crates don’t look sturdy enough to hold him, but he climbs them anyway, reaching up to unscrew four evenly placed bolts that are more well-oiled than they should be.

A scrape, a thump, and then a shaft of light pours down, turning Pixel’s face too bright against his black clothes. He pulls himself up and through the square with ease that proves he’s done this before.

Guess he wasn’t kidding. The three of us look at each other for a moment, until Pixel’s green-streaked hair appears again and he tells us to hurry up.

I climb into a strange room, squeezing my way out from behind a set of metal shelves, obviously moved to allow for this. They’re filled with loops of cable, bars of soap, and bottles of water. Yellow Guy and Scope join me, Scope clearly knowing where he is. His usual smile widens into a grin he aims at Pixel.

“This way,” Pixel says, leading us to the door. The hallway we step into
is
familiar, at least once we pass the doors to the hygiene cubes at the end, just before it opens up into the room where I spend so many hours of my life. Daytime-bright, even without windows, I recognize it only by extrapolation. My imagination offers whirling, colored replacements for the static, boring lights overhead, bodies to fill the empty floor as they dance to music blasting from the now quiet walls.

I stand in the middle, staring as if I’ve never seen it before—and I haven’t, not like this, but it’s the vision my mind gives me that’s more enticing than what my eyes are looking at. A stage will go against that wall, right where Pixel is pointing, and the people who’ll fill the club will be listening to
my
music coming from the speakers.

The others are talking about what gear we’ll need, how to find it, and where to set everything up. I’m not paying much attention. In my head I’m singing to Haven, who is looking down from the seats on the balcony, eyes focused on me. In my fantasy, she knows the song is about her.