Dorian catches me tapping my finger.
If looks could kill.
We’re going, he mouths across the table. Then he and Lydia are gone.
The first song wraps up shortly after and Dore’s voice rings through the hall. “We are Makro!”
The crowd erupts into applause, cheering Makro on with raised hands and hoarse voices.
Without another word, Makro starts their second song. It’s more down-tempo this time. There’s just a heavy kick drum counting off one, two, three, four… one, two, three, four. A single bass-note blends in and the lights fade back down, leaving only a glow of white light on the stage. It continues on like this for several more measures. It’s almost eerie; I can feel the tension building in the room, the anticipation of the crowd rising.
The colored spotlights flick back on, one for each member of Makro. In unison, the band-members reach inside their suit jackets and withdraw two ends of what looks to be guitar straps, modified with polished chrome hooks at the end of each strap. Each of the women grasp the hooks and, as one, slam them down on the lips of their turntables, locking them in place.
Stepping forward, each of the women wrenches her turntable free from its pedestal, which relents with a hiss and a stream of vapor. Each member is now carrying her turntable in front of her as the pedestals recede down into the stage. With a flash of motion, slim necks extend from the bodies of the turntable. There’s a set of piano keys on the neck now, black keys unaltered but with white keys flashing colors corresponding to each band-member’s pastel hair color.
Dex is looking over the top of his computer, and he starts clapping as the crowd booms once more with excitement. Tori shoots him a dirty look, but he just laughs. “Oh, come on. That was cool.”
Makro transitions into another song as they dance around the stage, trading melodies between themselves as they blast out synthesized horns, woodwinds, and bass. The crowd is loving them, but I try to keep my mind focused on the mission. I scan the audience busily, looking for any sign of Alpha.
Dex slaps me on the shoulder a few more songs into the set, leaning over close to my ear. “I’m picking up a bit of a data spike,” he says. “Not really sure if it’s cause for alarm.”
I give him the thumbs up in return. “Let’s wait and see.”
Tori nudges me violently and points down to ground level. Dex and I arch our necks to peer down beside the stage, where a hulking security guard is inviting a familiar woman through a backstage entry. I recognize her by her height, the blonde hair, and the rainbow fringe that seems to shimmer even from this distance: Alpha.
“She’s early! And she’s going backstage!” Tori yells at me.
Dex doesn’t hesitate. He hits the panic button.
I signal Dex, who folds his wallet computer. Tori’s one step ahead of me, because she’s already sliding out of the booth, standing and walking quickly toward the exit into the atrium. Dex follows me. We step into the relative quiet while Makro’s set continues on inside the hall.
“What should we do?” Dex asks.
“We have to get back there,” Tori concludes.
“Have you seen the guys guarding the doors? Do you want to scrap with them without your Resonator handy?”
“Well, we’ve got to do something!”
“Can you kill the power?” I ask Dex. “With your computer?”
“What good will that do?”
“We can slip backstage. We’d only need, like, ten seconds. Can’t you just hack in?”
“Can’t you just hack in?” Dex mimics me in an annoyingly high-pitched voice.
“Is that a yes or a no, you child?” Tori flicks Dex’s ear.
“Well, yes,” Dex answers, pulling out the computer again and tapping furiously with one hand. “But it’s a fairly complicated process. Assuming their facilities manager has a digital UI, I still need to get past the firewall and… Look, I mean, Caleb made it sound like it was easier than making toast, like I could just click a few buttons and… Hey, I’m in!”
Dex beams proudly down at his computer. “I think I’m in love with this thing.”
“Don’t tell Lydia,” I mumble.
“What now?” Dex asks, oblivious.
“Tori and I will go downstairs onto the main floor. Give us a minute head start, then kill the power.”
“All right,” Dex nods.
Tori and I hurry down the staircase as I count off seconds in my head. We push through the main-level doors back into the concert hall, where Makro is still busy putting on their show. We nudge our way along the back wall, skirting the perimeter of the packed crowd until we’re as near to the gargantuan security guard as I dare.
I count the seconds down in my head. Three. Two. One. Zero.
Negative one.
Negative two.
Negative three.
…
Negative twenty-eight.
At last, the power cuts out. Lights and stacks, all at once, as the entire venue is plunged into darkness. A mixture of surprised gasps and angry shouts rise up. But Makro doesn’t miss a beat and continues on in their song, unaffected by the power outage. Even without the amp stacks, their instruments continue pumping sound, quickly matching their previous volume.
Just one of many benefits of Rez-based instruments.
The crowd cheers as people start pulling out their cell phones, shining flashlights at the stage. I see the hulking form of the security guard stepping forward as the crowd surges toward the stage.
“Now!” I hiss at Tori, and together we slide behind him, crouching low. We slide through the door, clicking it shut behind us. We’re sitting in pitch-black darkness now. After several more agonizing seconds, the power flips back on.
Overhead fluorescents flick to life and there’s a roar of approval from the crowd on the other side of the door. Tori and I are left looking down a long, windowless hallway. There are a variety of speakers and cords stacked against the wall, but only a few doors beyond this point.
“Come on,” I whisper. I click the disguise pendant at my neck and feel the mask peeling away from my face, restoring me back to my usual look. Tori does the same, and we creep slowly down the hall.
The first door we try is locked. Same with the second. The third doorway is actually a set of swinging double-doors. The sign overhead reads: GARAGE.
“My French is rusty, but I think that’s the garage,” I whisper, pointing at the sign.
Tori punches me in the small of my back as we continue moving forward.
Nearing the set of double doors, I can see there are two plastic windows looking out into the garage area. I hear muffled voices coming from the other side, and so I slip up just far enough to look out through one of the small windows.
I see Alpha, Dorian, and Lydia standing in the middle of a relatively empty garage. Dorian and Lydia have resumed their respective light red and translucent blue. Alpha has her Resonator slung over her shoulder. But she’s also holding something in her hand for Dorian and Lydia to see. It’s a small glass cylinder, filled with some gold-colored liquid.
“What’s that?” Tori asks, peeking through the second window.
“Think it’s the Key? We’ve got to hurry, regardless. They don’t have their Resonators, and it looks like Alpha’s just toying with them.”
“We don’t have our Resonators either! You want to just run in there and ask her to behave?”
“I don’t know,” I hiss back at her.
“Look,” she says, pointing to a loading platform near us. There’s a small flatbed truck parked near one of the concrete ramps nearest us. “Keys on the wall,” she points to the corner, where a small intake station is set up. Sure enough, there’s a single set of keys hanging on a hook near the desk.
“Go distract her, and I’ll hit her with the truck.”
“What?”
“Do you have a better plan?”
“Uh, open up the garage and we try to escape.”
“Why not both?” T
ori says.
“Whatever,” I mutter. “Are you ready?”
Tori nods and I take a deep breath. Then I stand up as tall as I can, puff out my chest, and push through the double doors.
“There you guys are!” I proclaim loudly, striding down the ramp before continuing. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
Dorian groans loudly as Lydia turns to me, wide-eyed. Alpha turns to look at me too, face betraying no sign of surprise.
“Caleb Young,” she welcomes me. “I figured you would be somewhere close by. I was just telling your friends how ill-advised it was to come here unarmed.”
I walk the ramp and onto the garage floor, making sure to keep eye contact with Alpha as I stride a wide circle away from the door I came in from. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“I am here to retrieve the Key,” Alpha answers me, looking pointedly at the small vial she’s holding. “We detected an off-world communication using a Composer encryption, and inferred you might have known as much. This is a particularly valuable asset.”
“I mean all of this,” I point to the ground. “Here. On Earth. Can’t you just take your stupid vault and leave Earth out of this?”
“Leave Earth out of this,” she mimics. “You have injected yourself into this war. You have destroyed Synthesizers and allied yourself with the Composers.”
“Well the Synthesizers tried to kill me first. You blew up my dad’s shop. And you threatened to kill my mom!”
“I did so without malice.” Alpha’s face remains maddeningly calm. I come to a stop beside Dorian and Lydia. “As I have said before: We do not wish needless killing. But those who persist in interfering will be destroyed. Take solace in knowing you will at least have the pleasure of dying with your friends.”
“Can I ask you one question, first?”
Alpha nods.
“Pinocchio’s nose grows when he lies, so what happens if Pinocchio says, ‘My nose will grow now?’”
Alpha blinks once. “Synthesizers devised paradox shielding over seventy iterations ago.”
“Worth a shot,” I shrug.
“I know what you’re doing.” Alpha’s eyes flare with a red glow.
“Let the kid go,” Dorian interjects. “He’s not much without us.”
“What am I doing?” I ask, ignoring Dorian’s barb.
“Attempting to buy time for Ms. Patel.”
Tori turns the ignition over in the truck, slips it into gear, then slams on the gas. Tires squeal on the concrete floor and the truck jumps forward. Tori didn’t even bother trying to open the garage doors. Dorian, Lydia, and I all dart sideways out of the path of the truck, but Alpha just turns slowly.
She braces one foot against the concrete and lowers her shoulder.
The truck hits her dead center.
With a screech of metal the truck stops, its front end caved in around Alpha’s slender figure. The airbag goes off and I see Tori in the cab jostling forward. She spills out onto the ground a moment later from the open door, cursing loudly as she scrambles over toward Dorian, Lydia, and me.
“I am the result of centuries of technological advancement, the perfection of synthetic creation married to the purest of biological specimens.” Alpha disentangles herself from the metal wreck as she speaks, turning toward us, pointing a glowing red palm at us. “And you thought to kill me with a Toyota?”
Something explodes through the garage door. It flashes across the length of the garage in a blur of motion, directly at Alpha. She sees it at the last moment, turns to face it, but too late: one of the Carnegie’s ordinance missiles catches her right in the abdomen, slamming her back into the twisted heap of truck. She and the truck are flung backward, crumpling into the concrete platform at the back of the garage.
“Strap up!” Dorian yells at us, running toward the ordinance pod. “Caleb, grab the Key!”
The pod ejects our Resonators while we follow Dorian. I can’t see much of Alpha, just an arm and a leg sticking out from the twisted metal. Her hand is grasping the vial of golden liquid. I try to wrench it from her hands, but it won’t come free. So I grab hold of my Gibson, feeling a surge of energy and inhuman strength. I grab the vial again, and this time I pull it free.
“She dead?” Dex’s voice comes from behind me. He’s standing at the wide hole left by the ordinance pod, his disguise discarded.
“Let’s hope so,” Dorian says, moving toward the makeshift exit.
We spill out into the busy Paris street beside Dex just in time to catch a glimpse of the Carnegie, fully visible overhead, jetting away with three Autotuner ships in hot pursuit behind it. Cars are stopped in the middle of the road now, pedestrians and drivers alike pointing and gasping as the giant yellow submarine rockets away, bolts of shimmering red energy tracing after the ship.
“What now?” Tori yells.
There’s an explosion several yards to my right. I wheel about to find a gaping hole in Viva le Pouls’s wall. Concrete and metal girders spill out into the street, and the sounds of terrified screams from within float outside. A moment later, I understand why.
Bass drum.
Snare drum.
Swinging high hat.
A heavy bass line.
“Get out of here!” I yell at Dex, pressing the Key into his palm. He nods in understanding, turning and running quickly away.
I turn back in time to see Makro emerging into the open air. All four women assemble in a straight line, floating several feet off of the ground as their turntable Resonators throw off waves of energy. Camera-phones start flashing from within the club, and even as several dozen of the Parisians in the street recoil from Makro and begin to flee, there are others who flip their phones to video, capturing the phenomenon on live streams.
“Too many people!” Dorian says. “We gotta take this up where they won’t be hurt!”
Dorian hits a bass note and launches upward. I strum a chord on my guitar and follow up several feet. Tori and Lydia draft alongside us. Now there are cameras swiveling to face us, lights flashing in my eyes as stunned people gaze in amazement at the flying musicians.
The Makro members are tracking us with heads that turn in unison. They remove their sunglasses and I see their eyes glimmer faint red.
“Biologicals!” Dore shouts up at us as we continue to ascend. “Return the Key!”
With an explosion of color, Makro launches up toward us. I turn to launch a beam of lightning down to meet them, but they’re too fast. The green-haired one—Sola—moves so fast she appears before me in a blur of color. She grips her instrument by its slim neck, then smashes her turntable into my face.
Chapter Fourteen
Here are some questions I never thought to ask: (1) Which is harder: my skull, or a concrete wall? (2) Which hurts more: getting thrown through the concrete wall of a parking garage, or getting a Volkswagen Polo smashed over my head? (3) What does the inside of a Volkswagen Polo look like?
Sola helps me answer each of those questions. She hits me hard enough to send me flying two city blocks, pin-wheeling my arms and legs as I spin through the air. I see the concrete wall a second before I hit it, but I’ve got the Gibson. It’s painful, but a whole lot less fatal than it would have been otherwise. I go through face first in an explosion of concrete and dust, sliding along gritty concrete for several yards before I come to a stop. There’s my first answer.
“Do you have the Key?” Sola’s voice floats from somewhere out of sight, strangely calm.
I’m still trying to blink away stars when she’s right there, wrenching a car from the ground and holding it over my head just long enough for me to see the Volkswagen logo held a few feet over my face. I try to bolt but only manage to sit halfway up with my arm over my head. The car crashes down on me like a hammer, metal shrieking in protest. So which one: concrete wall or Volkswagen? Surprisingly, it’s the Volkswagen. There’s my second answer.
The car’s frame is wrapped over my left shoulder, but my head is sticking just
far enough through the floorboard for me to get a peek inside. The Polo is sleek, with some nice upholstery, but it’s too small. Most European cars seem too small, now that I think about it. There’s my third answer.
Sola doesn’t leave me time to think about the finer points of Europe’s preference for smaller cars. She’s ripping through the front of the Volkswagen now, the metal giving way like aluminum foil. She smiles as the windshield caves and looks down at me, tangled in metal and shattered plastic as I am. But I’m ready now, and I can see that Sola has a good handful of metal in each of her hands.
I hit a chord on the Gibson, hidden partly beneath the pile of wreckage. Most of the strings are muted by the tangle of metal, but I get a few notes out, and that’s enough. The cage around me crawls with blue electricity that runs up to and snakes over Sola’s vice-like fingers.
I can actually see the red in Sola’s eyes brighten with the surge of electricity. She shrieks in pain and stumbles backwards. The sound is a garble of modulating electronic noise, but there’s a layer of something animalistic under it.
Ripping myself free of the slag heap, I struggle to my feet, still feeling Sola’s turntable on the left side of my face. I’m short on breath, but my blood is pounding in my ears. Sola’s turntable is still hanging on its strap at her side, and I’ve got the drop on her. I point the neck of my Gibson right at her.
Her hands are dripping with blood.
I can see it dripping from her fingers as she sneers at me, fingers closest to her turntable twitching slightly.
“Don’t try it,” I warn her.
“How do you think this will end?” she asks me, her voice tinged with a soft French accent.
“I don’t know. But seriously, don’t try it. I’ll roast you.”
Her hands are shaking. She makes her move.
But then I’m no longer thinking about hitting Sola with another bolt, because there’s a wave of blue Rez moving like a wall toward the parking garage. Lydia and Mifa go flying by outside as Lydia’s Rez comes crashing into the remaining wall of the parking garage. Cracking, exploding concrete catches Sola by surprise, but I’m already running the other way. Lydia’s Rez wave dissipates slightly, but not enough. I feel it slam into my back, hear the thunder of it breaking over my head as I go somersaulting across the garage and through one wall of a down-ramp. I catch a glimpse of Sola, propelled by the same Rez with vicious force into one of the garage’s far support columns.
Six Strings to Save the World Page 17
