Coda (29 page)

“Why?” Omega asks.

I shake my head and kiss both of them on theirs. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

Bee comes in, her instincts another sense that was heightened after the loss of one. Or maybe she’s always been like this. She hugs the twins, too, and leads them into the kitchen. For a few minutes I sit, trying to compose myself. The black curtain on the TV screen doesn’t help. President Z is talking about the opening of a new Sky-Club, but in my head, all I can hear is what she wants me to do. The way the twitchy, manic tech is going to alter the song I’m supposed to record on Friday, and every one after that. They’ve got me until the day I die.

It’s been a long time since Scope sat at a dinner table with us. Haven came into the picture, then Yellow Guy, and we stopped spending so much time together. I’m reminded why we’ve been
friends since we were younger than Alpha and Omega are now. Bee piles his plate with food, but the sight of the twins and me not eating takes his appetite, too.

I need a hit—as many as I can stand before I pass out. The club is out of the question tonight, and the console will be better, anyway. Stronger. More effective, I hope. Everything about my life is reversed up here.

There’s pretty much nothing I wouldn’t give to be back in my old place, my father alive—sort of—on the couch, me playing in the warehouse basement, the twins happy and with their friends, or asleep while I’m out clubbing with Haven and Scope. Even if some of that was a lie, it’s preferable to this truth. Pretty much nothing I wouldn’t do, but the two things I won’t surrender are curled in new pajamas on their beds, waiting for me to tell them a story. Routine. Life as normal, except I don’t know what to say. Eventually, when they’re almost asleep on their own, I fall back on the old standby of life outside the Web, a history so old it’s reformed to imagination, not anything real anymore.

“Thanks for staying,” I say to Scope, quietly in my now hushed apartment. Bee is in her own room, the twins are in theirs, and the med-techs are gone for good.

“Sure.” There’s nothing easy about the smile he gives me. I think that makes me appreciate it more.

“Track?” I hold out a pair of headphones. He nods, climbs off my bed, and comes to me. Together we set up a list that should get us high for hours.

I still haven’t told him or the others about what the Corp is going to do. Ell’s conviction that what the Corp’s planning is right has left me no confidence in my own decisions.

Scope slides to the floor, his back to the wall and his hand
reaching for mine to pull me down. Our shoulders touch and it’s the first time I’ve felt warm since the twins left me on the couch. The music starts, an eclectic mix of everything I like—soft, velvet-toned guitars and hard, glass-shattering keyboards. Drums like the intangible pulse of the earth, or the footsteps of a monster. I only care about strength.

We sit there for ages. Bright colors climb from dark shadows in my white room, shifting, separating, coalescing in front of my eyes. They wipe my mind blank until they’re all I can see: the blue halo around a mirror that sucks a little more of me into it every time I look inside, the ghostly yellow of a lamp’s remembered light. Red, streaks of it that splay across my shoulder.

His skin is warm, the muscles and tendons beneath it firm. With the hand not holding his, I pull my own headphones off, then Scope’s. He gazes at me through blinking eyes and says nothing as I stand and lead him to the bed.

The sheets are cool; a rush of lavender wafts up when we sit down on the edge. It feels as if only minutes have passed since the last time we did this. Scope’s fingers rise and stroke over my jawline. This time, the smile isn’t forced.

Pink clashes with red in my head, and I force it away.

His mouth is softer than it should be after kissing so many. Maybe mine remembers that I was one of the first. Sparks tingle in my fingers and toes. Life, finally, to erase this day of death. I hold on to his lip with my teeth, unwilling to let him go, for this moment to fall in pieces around us. But we need to breathe, more proof of life, and he uses the distance to pull my shirt over my head, then rid himself of his own.

We’re lying down, chest to chest, familiar, but so different to the last . . .

No. Not her. Not now
. I kiss him again and try to think of nothing but
these
lips,
this
tongue,
these
arms clasped around my back.

I pull away. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I can’t do this.”

Scope finds my eyes in the dimness, his own sad and sure. Carefully, he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I know,” he says. “Come on, let’s go to sleep.”

My throat burns. I scream through the fire. Help. Please. Someone, anyone, help me.

We’re in the studio. A red light blinks above my head. I close my eyes and don’t think about the fact that we’re recording. Pixel pounds his drums, never sounding better than he does today. Phoenix’s keyboards are perfect, exactly as we’ve practiced for weeks. Scope, most faithful of us all to the people we used to be, makes music from objects that have never been instruments
.

Guards in the control booth watch, less bored now that we’re actually doing something. Moving forward. Celebrating their Corp with lyrics it sickened me to write and scrapes my throat to sing. But the guitar feels incredible in my hands. I try to forget everything except that
.

We don’t get it the first time. Nerves place Phoenix’s hands on the wrong keys at the last minute, though she’ll never admit it
.

We keep going, over and over. Bathe our skin in sweat. Get it perfect, each note precise and howling. No one will have any reason to find fault. This is the best we can do. All I can offer
.

The red light blinks out and I drop my guitar. I feel the curious stares of the others as I walk to the console on the wall without looking back. I know. They don’t. I need whatever I can get that’ll stop me from thinking about what that song is about to become. Even as I prod the screen, it is zooming along the Grid, right into the computer in that lab, right into fidgeting, impatient hands
.

Please. Help. Water. Anything. My fist connects with something I’m sure is flesh. A curse, but it might be my own
.

The first minute of the track is so perfectly mind-numbing. But then the breath freezes in my chest and icicles of pain start to scrape
through my veins. The earthquake is inside me now and I slam to the floor, teeth rattling, back arching
.

“He’s OD’ing!” I hear. Someone calls for the guards. Heavy footsteps sound; strong arms carry me away
.

The bed is hard, slippery plastic, wrong. I can’t move my arms or legs anymore. Cold steel bites at my wrists and ankles. Cool, pure oxygen floods my open mouth. What happened to my old gas mask? What happened to my old life?

Headphones. No. No. My neck turns and twists away. They’re what started this. Help me
.

Static. A mechanical buzz, or the thud of a head held for too long underwater. By inches, my body relaxes in its restraints, the pain fading as the white noise begins to work. It blows through my brain, a gusting wind flaying my neural pathways clean
.

I’m so tired. Please, just let me sleep
.

This bed is soft, the room strange.

“What?” I didn’t mean that. Words jumble in my brain. Someone in a white coat slams water bottles down. It hurts, the noise and the white coat and the lights. I was in a fight, but I don’t know if I won or lost. Her hands are deep brown. Nice. I look at those instead. “Why?”

No. Damn it.

“I’m surprised you’re even alive.” She turns to face me. Pretty. Skinny fingers lift my wrist, her nails digging in. She reaches for headphones and I don’t trust my words. Bombs go off in my shaking head. She glares at me and places them over my ears. Strange, electronic music filters into my head. It must do what it’s supposed to,
because I only have to listen to one before she leaves me.

“Where am I?” I ask when she returns with a tray. Figures that even patients here would get better stuff than I ever ate down in the Energy Farm. My tongue is furred, eyeballs dry, the pain is mostly gone.

“Headquarters OD station,” she says eventually. Clipped. Cold, but her voice is rich and warm. I wonder if she can sing. “Feeling better?”

Doesn’t say much for her self-confidence. I nod. Ow. “I guess so. What day is it?”

“Monday. You were in bad shape when you were brought in. It will take a little while to reorient yourself.”

“I need to get out of here.” The twins, the band . . . I try to sit up. The room orbits around the middle of my brain.

“Not possible. You need to eat, and you should track some more. We’ll keep you overnight for observation to make sure you’re all right after that. Don’t want this happening again, do we?”

I’m not too out of it to recognize sarcasm.

“No.” I try to shake my head and regret it. “No more tracks.”

She ignores this. “I know who you are, you know.”

“I’ve been on TV. Everyone knows who I am.” Maybe hiding out here in the OD station for as long as I can isn’t a terrible idea. “Hey.” I jerk away from the unmerciful light she’s shining in my eyes.

“Not what I mean,” she says, her voice lowering so it won’t carry out the open doors. “You’re Anthem.” Finally, she looks at me, her face tight. “I saw you play. Word got around.”

Oh. Yeah, it did. Not that it mattered in the end. We were betrayed by our own. By
my
own. But it explains why she hates me.

“Traitor,” she hisses. “We thought you were going to make a
difference. Hmmm, your heart rate is a little high. Here.”

I don’t lift my hands to take the offered headphones.

This is different than other OD stations I’ve been in. Down in Two, we’re all together in one big room, machines bleeping, techs scurrying back and forth between patients. We watch each other through the eyes of shared experience.

Here, I’m alone. The room is small, just big enough for the bed, a chair, and a counter above a line of cupboards along one wall. The chair confuses me; it’s waiting for a visitor who wouldn’t be allowed back home.

None come, thankfully. Not even Ell. Phoenix, Pixel, and Scope are probably busy, or Ell forbade them from coming. It’s kind of difficult to face Scope right now, anyway. I definitely don’t want the twins to see me like this, skin ashen and leaking cold sweat. It was so fucking stupid, OD’ing when they need me now more than ever. I knew I was tracking too much between recordings in the studio while I was doing it. I knew I shouldn’t go for so many strong ones.

The console is within easy reach; the careening logo makes the backs of my eyes ache and I don’t look away. Metal bars on either side of me are cool under my white-knuckled grip. I shouldn’t . . .

Antidote has scoured my brain, cleared it like hot, minty steam rising into clogged sinuses. One won’t hurt. I was fine after the track the tech gave me. Of course, I don’t want medication this time.

I’ve failed. At everything. Revenge for Johnny, putting a stop to the Corp, protecting the twins, and keeping my promise to my mother—and
that
was all for nothing. I’m just a puppet now, an addict and a dealer against my will. The worst kind of hypocrite, because the twins are happy and I love all my new guitars, and I wish, more than anything, that Haven was still mine.

I wish they’d just killed me, like they did to Johnny.