Coda (38 page)

“Citizen, this is a restricted area. You can’t come in here.” A young guy sits at a reception desk a lot like the one downstairs, watching the door through beady eyes.

Fake it
. “I’m N4003,” I tell him, brushing my hair from my forehead with my left hand, the right buried in my pocket. “You guys have been asking for another interview with me for weeks and I finally agreed to arrange this. Of course, if you don’t want one anymore . . .”

His face morphs into awe. “Oh, wow! I’m so sorry, Citizen. Yes, of course. We’ll get you on primetime. Excuse me.”

I fall against the desk when he’s out of sight. By the time he gets back I’m just leaning on it, wearing an expression that could pass for conceited boredom. He helps me to a room obviously equipped for making sure no one goes out on Corp TV looking anything but beautiful, and his enthusiasm covers my near inability to walk. I’m put in a chair in front of the mirror and asked to wait. “It will only be a minute, Citizen.” I grab a wet cloth from the counter and clean off the back of my right hand.

“Anthem?” I raise my eyes and see Peacock behind me in the reflection.

“Hi.” How can she be so calm? Oh. No one knows about Ell yet. A smile stretches her blue-green lips.

“What
have
you been doing to yourself?” she asks. “You’re a complete mess. Good thing you’ve got me.” I watch the eerie eyes in her hair as she rummages in drawers and boxes and turns back with a handful of stuff. The eyes are still staring at me, through the mirror
now. I shift and look away. She does her thing, cleaning and drawing and smearing and brushing.

I think of the twins. I should be with them, but leaving this half-finished would be worse than never having started it at all. It’s too late to think maybe that would’ve been the best plan. Pixel and Phoenix have left them in the warehouse with Bee and Isis. Two women—one an Exaur—and two little kids. I need to get to them before anyone else does. I don’t know whether Yellow Guy told Ell or whoever he reports to about our secret practice space, but I know he will when he learns what’s going on, if given the chance.

“All done,” Peacock says cheerfully. I look almost like myself. She’s covered the dark circles under my eyes. My hair is clean, spiked, the blue streaks refreshed to match my lips and eyelids. Black lines rest against my lashes. “You want new clothes?”

I shake my head. She gave me these weeks ago. The tears and ragged seams from today make me
feel
like myself. Maybe, if I get out of this alive, I’ll mend them with uneven stitches, over and over again, until they fall apart completely.

The room fills suddenly with people; every pair of eyes is on me in a way that makes me wish Peacock and her weird hair hadn’t faded into the background. Someone clips a tiny microphone to a rent in my shirt, another examines Peacock’s handiwork.

I recognize only one: the spokeswoman usually on the news in the evenings. The last time I was on TV as Ell’s barely known puppet, it was in the afternoon. I wonder if she’ll speak to me with the same enthusiasm she musters for hydroponics and new music developments.

She does. It hurts my ears.

“Is there anything particular you want to say, Citizen N4003?” she asks. This close, her voice is a feedback whine, dissonant and
ugly. “Do you have news about new tracks? Or would you like to encourage more Citizens to follow your footsteps in creating our wonderful music?”

“Both, I guess,” I tell her. She starts to vibrate like a tablet filled with messages.

“Right this way then!”

I push myself from the chair, follow her clicking heels out of the room and down a hallway. The crowd of people around us steals all the breathable air. Spots dance across my vision.

The TV studio is blinding. Not as white as the Corp offices or the medical facility, but the lights make up for it. Cameras meld into triangles of shadow in front of the stage.

Someone begins to count down from five. I could almost be getting ready to sing.

“We have a very special guest with us today, Citizens! Our latest musical sensation has just dropped by to share some good news with all of you, so I hope you’re listening closely! Put down those headphones! Tracking can wait a few more minutes. N4003, what do you have to say to the Web?”

I take a shallow breath—the most I can manage—and look straight into the camera. “Some of you know me already. Not as N4003, but by my other name. Some of you have seen me play with my band, heard what
real
music is.” Beside me, the spokeswoman gasps quietly, that fake, plastic smile stuck on her face. “If you’ve seen me, some of you might believe the lies that were spread about me, that I chose to turn legit. They. Were. Lies.”

A ripple of noise spreads through the studio. I hear tablets buzz. I imagine the running footsteps of guards coming closer.

“The Corp threatened my family and hurt the people I love to get me to work with them. They wanted me to help make a new kind
of track. One that will control our minds and take away the few choices they’ve allowed us to have.” I stand on shaky feet and walk toward the camera. Around me, the TV crew have turned to statues, paralyzed and mesmerized. I was counting on that, but I’m sure it won’t last much longer. “If you know this”—I hold up my hand to show the clean, bright, sparkling chrome coda symbol—“it once meant something to you. It still means something to me.”

I close my eyes.
Mage, Haven, you better have meant it when you said you were ready
.

“And it’s time to fight for it. Now.”

I open my eyes to pitch darkness.

For one brief, blissful second, there is silence. Shock fills the room, a weighted, almost tangible presence gathers and intensifies.

“Get him!”

Something heavy crashes to the floor. I run as chaos erupts behind me, and the pandemonium is a musical thing. It should be discordant, disorganized noise—everyone for themselves—but it’s not. The stomping feet, the waving arms, and the voices shouting to be heard . . .

The glowing blue tubes in my hair cast just enough light for me to see a few inches in front of me. Someone tries to grab my arm and is either pulled back or swallowed by the crush, I’m not sure which. Getting out of here is the only thing that matters.

There’s no way of knowing how many guards we managed to trap in the elevators as they tried to come up here to stop me. Enough to make a dent, I hope. That was the plan. I push, pull, and punch my way through the door, and run down the hall to the stairs.
Some of those people back there are on my side. Not all. I wasn’t going to stop to count.

In the stairwell, I yank the tubes from my neck jack and drop them. The gun Crave gave me I take in my right hand—even injured, I’m probably a better shot with it than my left, which I use to hold the flashlight to get through the tunnels.

A stampede is coming closer—people from upper floors, trying to get out, but anyone whose door was shut is trapped until Mage or Haven goes into the scanner hub to override.

I barely make it down. At every step, every turn, my body begs to give up.

The lobby is empty, a ghostly glass and marble tomb. One of the windows explodes into a shower of skittering, glinting shards. It wasn’t the one I was aiming for, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Anyone not stuck somewhere can follow me out.

Or come in. The streets are flooding with people—the only source of noise and life in the Vortex. Dead neon signs hang like sound implants in a quiet room, still and black against the skin-colored sky of early sunset.

Hundreds surge around me. Rage. Excitement. The energy is beautiful and terrifying. I did this. Already it feels like it was someone else who gave them what they wanted. Nearby, more glass breaks with a crack like lightning. A guy grabs my arm; recognition is clear on his face, but I shake him off and push my way against the current, my head down. Everything hurts.

I steal a pod, hardly waiting for the door to open at the swipe of my master chip to jump in the driver’s seat. I force it south through a swarm of pods and people with whatever weapons they were able to find. All heading to the Corp. To fight. I press my foot more firmly down on the accelerator and let the auto navigation systems keep me
from hitting anything too important.

I’ll be back there soon.

I leave the engine running and the door open, the pod half on the curb. My clothes rip as I push through the fence and race into the warehouse. “Are they okay?” I ask, practically throwing myself through the trapdoor and barely touching the ladder on my way down. Isis’s face emerges from the darkness.

“Sleeping,” she says softly. “Anthem, I don’t know what—”

“I know there’s nothing you can do. Just . . . make sure they come out of it?” They’re going to be terrified and I can’t stop it. As I reach for my tablet to tell the others to go on without me, Isis touches my arm.

“They’re safe here, Anthem. I’ll look after them. Go.”

I find them first, curled up against Bee in a corner, the old scrap of cloth Johnny used to wrap his guitar laid over them. Their bodies are relaxed and their hair is tangled, faces softened by sleep except for a furrow between Omega’s brows—the sign of a forming headache. The image follows me through the old, almost-rusted door I nearly have to wrench off its screaming hinges to enter the network of tunnels. My tablet screen glows. A moment later it vibrates in my hand; a map draws itself in streaks of blue.

Even so, it takes me too long to reach the others. Every fifty feet I have to stop and catch my breath. When I finally see the hazy green light, I close my eyes and stumble forward into waiting arms. Haven and Mage catch me and drag me to the soft nest of blankets and pillows.

“What’s happening?” I ask. Haven holds a bottle to my lips, and sweet, sticky juice pours down my throat until I cough. “What’s happening?” I try again.

“Pixel, Scope, and Phoenix just left. Crave opened up the
armory in Three, letting people just help themselves. Too late for anything else now.”

“You have enough power?”

“We’re gonna have to. I’m not letting you drain out any more, even if we had the equipment here. You look half-dead as it is.”

“It wasn’t that much.”

He raises his eyebrows. “On top of being in the studio all day, coming down here, back to your place, running to headquarters, killing someone . . .”

I wave a hand to stop him. “I need to get back out there.”

Mage laughs. “Not yet. She’s trapped, Anthem. Not going anywhere, trust me. And we’re intercepting all her tabs, so she can’t call for help. Drink. And eat this.” He tosses me a huge slab of chocolate. Haven pushes me until I lie down on the pillows, my head tilted just enough to see the screens that are running on
me
now. Mage cut power to the main Grid, but we still need some for what we’re doing, and now every light, every flash, is a second of my own life gone.

“Member Seven is tracking,” Mage says, turning to the bank of blinking monitors and picking up his tablet. None of us are breathing and it makes the tunnel feel airless. I tighten my grip on Haven’s hand. I don’t know exactly where Scope is; I don’t know how many interminable minutes it will take him to get to the guy’s office and make sure the track has worked.

I picture my friends entering rooms, looking at consoles and corpses and removing chips with bloody hands. They’ve all told me they can handle it; I have to believe them. Phoenix was insulted I asked, and it’s too late to back out now. Soon it’ll be my turn, but the energy suck of providing the power has exhausted me, and I need to recover. I eat the chocolate, gulp down grape juice, and will my body to be strong.

The silence presses in. Even now, I wish I could track.

Never again.

Come on.
Come on
.

The tablet vibrates.

“Got him,” Mage says. One Board member down. A tiny draft from somewhere fills my lungs with oxygen again. Eight more, plus President Z, who’s the reason I am down here in the musty dark with Haven’s head against my shoulder, sucking down juice.

“This is it,” Haven whispers. I squeeze her hand, divided. My stomach flips between relief and horror. It’s working.

A light, where there wasn’t one a second ago, flares to life on one of the monitors. Another member is at a console. The tablet goes off again.

“Phoenix got Four.” The image of Phoenix with a gun slides easily into my tired brain. She won’t use it if she doesn’t have to, but we’re still killing. We’ll have to live with that if we survive. I hope we can.