Coda by Emma Trevayne

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