Coda (24 page)

“There, that’s much better, isn’t it?”

Finding Ell, in her black suit, is easy in this blindingly white medical facility. I’m sure she can see both my answer and my reluctance to give it because it proves her point.

She smiles too much.

Thanks to the track, I’m not in any physical pain while a bunch of white-coated med-techs tend to my wounds, and my brain is the softly fogged park on a winter morning. Salve, thick and stinking, covers my cuts and scrapes. X-rays show my two fractured ribs are healing okay on their own. I float, letting the conversation between the techs wash over me. The instant I flinch from one of them, I’m given another track.

It’s like water, and I’ve been so, so thirsty for days.

Someone dresses me in the nicest clothes I’ve ever owned, gentle against my battered, bandaged skin. They’re even black. My feet are laced into soft leather shoes.

“Can you walk on your own?” Ell asks.

I don’t know if I can, but I will.

I make it out into the parking lot, filled with rows and rows of white pods emblazoned with the Corp logo, before I stumble. A guard reaches for me and I shrug him off.

“Just lost my balance,” I say. “I’m fine.”

The guard in the entrance booth has pink hair in short, gelled spikes.

They were discussing ways to get inside the groups. Like, catch them in the act
.

Onstage, where I was strongest, was where we were weakest.
Our vigilance was only for getting the next note perfect, remembering the next lyric. Pixel was too busy playing with light and volume, the crowd was too immersed in sound.

I’m led to a private trans-pod in one corner. No one handcuffs me after I’m helped carefully inside. I lean against the window, conscious enough to watch buildings I don’t recognize slide past on one side, the upper end of the park on the other. I’ve never had a reason to come this far north before.

Beside me, Ell chatters about my new apartment. Apparently my family is already there, and a small part of me has to admire her, or whoever is giving her orders. They knew it was just a matter of time.

I’m weak, but I don’t care. I just want not to think, and Ell seems happy to make my decisions for me.

The building I’m taken to is tall, smoked glass and steel, reeking of the intangible, static smell of credits. Guards surround but don’t touch me, their attitudes transformed from menace to protection.

What was it Ell said? Their newest celebrity. Right. That’s me. She taps out a hundred messages on her tablet, not stopping when we exit the pod and file into an elevator. “I’ve got someone coming to fix you up and make you look more like the star you are,” she says brightly. “A few hours with her and you won’t recognize yourself.”

“I already don’t,” I say. She’s not listening.

We step out on the twenty-seventh floor, a world away from my old place at the bottom of the Web. I follow Ell only because I don’t know where I’m going. As soon as we stop at a thick wooden door and she’s scanned her wrist, I push inside.

An impression of huge, white space hits me, but all I’m looking at are the two running figures.

“Alpha, Omega,” I whisper, holding them so tightly my ribs scream. “You’re okay.”

“We missed you,” Omega says, burying his face in my new sweater. “Where did you go? We thought you left us like Mama did, and Daddy didn’t like moving here. I think it hurt him.”

I can’t say I’ll
never
leave them. “I’m here. Are you sure you’re all right? Both of you?”

“The food here is choice,” says Alpha. My heart seizes. “Bee keeps making us cookies, but she never talks and we have to write things down for her on a tablet like you have.”

“Really?” I force a smile, my lips crack. “Why don’t you go get one for me?” I don’t want to let them go, but they’re unharmed. They even seem happy here, and I’ve wasted nine days of it.

I turn to Ell when we’re alone again. “Bee?”

“Citizen B8773. Her crime was not serious. They have been well cared for. That will continue for as long as you cooperate.”

This isn’t exactly comforting. If her crime wasn’t serious, it means they turned the woman into an Exaur for some minor infraction. “Okay.” What else can I say? “My father?”

“Through there.” She points to a door on the far side of the living room—a long way away. “A med-tech is with him. He’ll have constant attention. When his time comes, we will ensure that it is painless.”

The difference between the rich and the rest of us. Except that it’s not
the rest of us
anymore, because here I am. The twins come back with treats held out in sticky hands, and their smiles are worth my hypocrisy.

“. . . tomorrow at the studio,” Ell is saying while I chew, and I use my old clubbing standby of nodding even though I haven’t been paying attention. It’s not as if the Corp is going to forget about me or let me forget about them, so it doesn’t matter if I listen or not. I’ll be taken wherever I need to go, told whatever I need to do, and this
place is
huge
. I count four more doors down a hallway and see an arch that leads to a kitchen bigger than my old apartment. Everyone I know could fit around that dining table, and plush couches sit at angles to tall windows that overlook the park. With the twins holding on to me, I walk over to them.

At least the cherry blossoms are gone.

“Oh, excellent.” Ell joins us. Her heels make no sound on the thick white carpet. “You will be making a television appearance this week. I wasn’t sure we would be able to get you in at such short notice.”

“I . . . what?”

“You won’t be playing live, of course,” she says, as if I’d expected to. My head is hurting again and I can’t see any consoles. I don’t want to leave the twins, anyway. Ell just keeps talking. “You’ll be asked a few questions so the citizens can get to know you. How you came to be playing music, that kind of thing. We will have to think of something to call you, but that can wait for now.”

Alpha’s eyes go wide. “You play music, Ant?”

Fuck
. “I will be,” I tell her. “That’s why we get to live here.”

“Choice!”

I’m really going to have to get her to stop saying that.

“Of course, you approached the Corporation with your desire to be one of our musicians,” Ell continues. “We were skeptical, naturally, as we always are. Everyone wants this”—she gestures around the blinding room—“but not everyone deserves it. You applied and were given access to instruments while we assessed your talent. You have given up your conduit job to pursue the thing you love. This also gives you more time with your brother and sister. You do not mention anyone else.”

Yeah. That makes sense. “What about all the people who know . . .?”

“You’re a lesson, Anthem. Why do you think we only wanted you? Do you think anyone will argue publicly with the story? I have business
to take care of, but I’ll see you later. Guards will be posted outside the door; let them know if you need anything.” Her eyes flick to the twins, and she lowers her voice. “There is a console in your bedroom. The last door down the hall.”

I don’t track as soon as she’s gone. The air in my father’s bedroom is already sick-stale, saturated with the aura of death. A lump of blankets on the bed rises and falls with wheezing breaths. I stretch out one shaking hand and pull it back.

“You must be Citizen N4—”

“Anthem,” I interrupt the guy emerging from the room’s private hygiene cube. Back home, we all shared one. Keeping my name is the smallest of victories. “How is he?” I ask the guy. Sallow-skinned, in his white uniform, he blends into the room.

“The move disturbed him, but he’s stable again now. I’m J. Citizen J52229. The tech on the night shift is C1774.”

“Okay, well, I . . .” Don’t want to be in here. J reads it on my face.

“These things don’t have to be your concern anymore. He will be fine with us,” J says. There’s something I’d like to think is sympathy in his tone, and in the faint smile he sends on the way to settling himself into a chair at my father’s bedside and picking up a book.

Slowly, I lean in. “I know about the violin,” I whisper. My father’s breath hitches, just slightly, and settles back into its rattling rhythm. J watches both of us with curious eyes.

I’m out of there before he’s found his page.

The sky is a light shade of nothing on the other side of my bedroom window, blue masked by late-afternoon clouds. On either side of me
the twins are still sleeping, cradled in feather-softness. The tightly controlled stretch I try is a mistake. Alpha shifts when I gasp in pain.

I need another hit, badly. Everything hurts and there was way too much pink in my dreams. Carefully, I untangle myself and cross the room to my new console, fully stocked with the latest and greatest tracks. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore how much I spend on each one.

I can’t believe she did this. To me, to us, to our friends, to Alpha and Omega.

I can’t believe I fucking trusted her. I
know
she has Corp connections—she never hid that—and still I let myself fall for her kindness to me and to my family. And her killer legs.

So stupid.

This track isn’t working.

A small hand grabs my shoulder. Quickly, I pull off the headphones and look down at Alpha’s face, creased from the sheets. “Why are you crying?” she asks. “Are you sad?”

“No, Al, I’m fine. Come on, let’s wake Omega or he’ll be up all night.” It’s been years since either of them napped, but I guess some kind of Pavlovian response kicked in after the week’s worth of stories they demanded after Ell left. Alpha runs back to the bed to jump on him, and I wipe my eyes.

Bee is a short, round woman, maybe in her thirties, who smiles broadly at the twins and nervously at me while she cooks. Omega reaches for a cookie when her back is turned, but before I can say anything, she’s shaken a finger at him.

I wonder how long she’s had to get used to being an Exaur.

Dinner is served on heavy dishes; the fork is thick and solid in my hand. I’ve never eaten red meat before and have to concentrate on not swallowing it all in a single bite.

We didn’t have a doorbell at our old place; water spills into my plate and my lap, the glass shatters on the tiled kitchen floor. Bee shoos me away, pointing at the mess, then at herself.

This is just . . . weird.

The woman at the door introduces herself as Peacock as she breezes past me into the apartment, her hands full of bags and boxes. It’s the most appropriate handle I’ve heard in a while. The upper-Web must have tricks we don’t down in Two because swirling green and gold eyes are dyed into her blue hair, impressively detailed and disturbing. I feel as if I’m being watched even when she’s looking out the windows.

I glance at the ceiling’s corners. Maybe I am. I can’t see any cameras, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Peacock pulls a chair from the dining table and drags it across the living room. “Here, this has the best light,” she says firmly. “Sit.” The twins pile onto the couch to watch me for what feels like hours. When she’s done, an artist’s representation of me stares back from an ornate, gold-framed mirror on the wall. My hair, limp and greasy from my days in the cell, is restored to clean, bright spikes, a little shorter than before, with some kind of dry shampoo and gel that stings my nostrils. My eyes are encircled with black painted in a steadier hand than mine ever was. The blue lips make me feel a little like
Anthem
again.

I’m allowed to dress myself this time, putting on new clothes for the second time in hours. They’re black, just like the ones I took off and almost everything I owned in my former life, but the resemblance stops at color. The pants are covered with pockets, the tight shirt is silky and fine. There was a mesh one, too, but Peacock didn’t question me when I refused it.

“You should get some more chrome done. You totally have the
coloring for it,” she says, covering my face with powder. Like my body hasn’t taken enough damage already.

I hope Scope is okay. Maybe they’ll let me see him if I keep cooperating. “No, thanks,” I tell her. The symbol on the back of my hand catches the light and I shove my fist in one of my pockets.

“Excellent, you’re ready,” Ell says, walking in a few minutes after Peacock’s left. So the doorbell is optional. Good to know. She’s wearing a leather dress that on anyone else would be sexy, but on her looks as much like a uniform as the suit from earlier. I look at my feet and see a pair of boots on the floor. It takes me five minutes to do the heavy metal buckles up to my shins.