“Harrow, leave us,” Trip ordered.
Harrow glared at the boy, who still stood behind Ronja. She was still for a moment, weighing her options. Then she nodded, accepting the command.
Ronja found herself shaking her head frantically. She felt desperation clawing its way into her expression. If Harrow saw the fear in her eyes, she elected to ignore it. She whirled and slammed the iron door on her way out. Ronja heard her brief footfalls tapping down the corridor almost as fast as her heartbeat.
“Congratulations, you’ve found us,” Trip said after a pause.
“I’ve already seen your face, want to stop hiding?” Ronja snapped, cringing when her voice cracked.
The boy breathed a humorless laugh.
Trip stepped back around her chair. Ronja squinted into the glare of the light bulb that crowned him. He had shed his jacket and goggles, trading them for a knit sweater. He had also cleaned the grime from his face, and the shadows made his cheekbones jagged.
“Sorry about the restraints, love. Can’t have you running off on us.”
Ronja looked down, dread thick in her stomach. Between her terror and the lancing pain in her skull, she had failed to notice that her wrists and ankles were locked to the chair with leather straps. “No problem,” she said bitingly, meeting his piercing gaze again. “It’ll save you a black eye.”
Trip cocked his head, considering her.
“You’re still green, aren’t you? Believe it or not, there are ways to overcome The Music.”
Ronja swallowed her nonexistent saliva.
Trip reached into his back pocket. Ronja recoiled fearfully, but to her surprise he withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a matchbook. He sighed deeply, regarding the white cardboard pack with disdain.
“I hate smoking.”
The wound on her forehead pulsed as Ronja furrowed her brow.
Trip tapped a slim cigarette from the half empty pack. He clenched it between his teeth and struck a match. “It’s a horrible habit,” he continued through his teeth.
He cupped his fingers around the tip and pressed the shivering flame to it. Wincing as it licked his finger, he tossed the dying match at his feet and inhaled. The cigarette smoldered beneath the electric light. “But for the sake of this evening, I’ll indulge myself,” he went on. “If you don’t answer my three questions by the time I finish this cigarette, it’s going in your eye.”
Ronja tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth she found that her words had dried up along with her spit.
“One,” Trip inhaled slowly, then blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. It struck the damp stone and scattered. “How long has The Conductor known about my involvement here?”
Ronja’s stomach clenched. “I don’t . . . I don’t even know who you are.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t believe you.”
“I’d never seen you in my life before yesterday.”
“I’m supposed to believe that in a city of six million we just happened to meet twice in less than twelve hours?”
“Yes!” Ronja exclaimed. “Yes, because that’s what happened! I didn’t tell anyone about your Singer, and I won’t say anything about the package or the symbol. Please just let me go, I have a family. They need me.”
“Didn’t I tell you to cut the pitch?” The boy hissed a cloud of smoke through his teeth. They were stark white. He could not be a heavy smoker. “This will be considerably less painful if you just answer the question.”
“I can’t, because I don’t know! I swear I was just running a package. I didn’t know you’d be receiving it. Honestly, I hoped I’d never see you again. I didn’t even want to think about you, because every time I do—”
A bolt of pain ruptured her words. The Night Song roiled in her skull, so loud it muted the rumble of the subtrains burrowing through their tunnels. The oxygen was thin, the smoke dense. Ronja screwed her eyes shut, trying to snuff the agony.
“Half gone. You might want to rethink your answer.”
A glob of ash plummeted from the cigarette and landed on her thigh, smoldering on her trousers.
“I swear I don’t know anything!”
“Wrong.”
Ronja screamed as her captor drove the scorching tip of his cigarette into her exposed forearm. She was hoarse by the time he lifted it. She forced her eyes open, but refused to look at the bloody burn that marred her skin.
“I’m just a subtrain driver, I swear,” she insisted through gritted teeth. “I’ve got two younger cousins. I dropped out of school because my mother was too lazy to get off her ass and—”
Ronja bit back another scream as The Night Song knifed through her brain. Black bled into her line of sight. Her head wilted on her neck. Her curls drooped forward to form a protective curtain around her face.
“You’re not a bad actor, Off. I’ve never seen one of your kind fake emotion before. I’m almost impressed.”
“Not . . . acting,” Ronja panted.
Her mouth felt fuzzy, like her words were made of cotton. The Night Song was louder than a train engine, louder than the roar of a crowd, louder than anything she had ever heard. She wanted to tear off the metal vice like a scab.
“I don’t know how The Conductor found us,” the boy said in her free ear. “But what’s more important is how long he’s known. Speaking of time, yours is about up.”
Ronja was not listening.
The Night Song had shifted.
The rambling notes leveled, like a clump of butter smoothed over a slab of toast. The new Song was a ceaseless, winding ribbon that curled around her brain, her body, her heart. It was almost comforting, the smoothness, the consistency.
Ronja’s head lolled over the back of her chair. Her sightless pupils expanded. Something warm oozed from her nose, pooled in her mouth. It tasted like metal. Then it tasted like nothing.
The boy’s cigarette plummeted from his teeth, rapidly dying on the damp, stone floor.
“Skitz . . . HARROW!”
12: Quiet
Trip
Footsteps sang down the corridor, then the steel door flew open on his shouts. For half a moment, Caroline stood rigid in the doorframe, jaw unhinged.
“What the skitz did you do?”
“Confirmed she’s not an Off,” Trip said lamely.
Caroline smashed the door shut and stalked forward. She knocked Trip out of the way with a broad shoulder and put her fingers to the girl’s neck, hunting for her pulse beneath clammy skin. The doctor swore colorfully. “She’s in The Quiet,” she said, jerking her hand back and raking it through her mousy hair. “What triggered it?”
“I may have told her I was going to stick a smoke in her eye.”
“Trip!”
“I thought she was an Off. When was the last time you saw one of them go into The Quiet?”
“Except she’s not! This is why Wilcox doesn’t want you gallivanting around on your own!”
“The day Wilcox tells me what to do is the day I die.”
“No, it’s the day she dies.”
Trip’s retort froze on his tongue. The girl’s labored breathing swallowed the silence. “What do you mean?” he asked warily.
“It means she’s too far gone.”
“It hasn’t even been two minutes!”
“Look at her.”
Trip turned slowly. Dread dragged his stomach to the floor. The girl was twitching erratically. Her skin was gray beneath a sheen of sweat. Her swollen corneas glinted like black marbles in their sockets. Dark blood drained from her nose and ears.
“How is this possible?” Trip asked, touching the back of his wrist to her forehead. It was blistering. “It should take at least an hour.”
“If The Quiet Song needs to be this strong to take her down, she must be something special.”
“I’m going to get Iris,” Trip said, starting toward the door.
Caroline caught his arm, her grip surprisingly firm.
“Trip,” she said quietly. “There’s no time
. She’ll be dead in minutes.”
The girl retched behind them, but her stomach was empty. She vomited acid, staining her worn sweater. Her back arched and her coiled muscles fought against their restraints. Still, she was utterly silent. She did not scream or cry. She only struggled to breathe.
Trip’s legs moved without his permission. He crossed the room to a supply cabinet, unlocked the combination with several flicks of his wrist. He flung open the door to reveal a waning hoard of medical and surgical supplies. From the top shelf he grabbed a small, gleaming instrument. He spun on his heel.
“Caroline,” he said, voice painstakingly calm.
“Don’t—”
Trip shouldered past the doctor. He braced his right hand on the girl’s restrained forearm and twirled the surgical knife in his left hand. Her convulsions had slowed. Her irises were almost completely devoured.
Her execution was drawing to a close.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the unraveling girl.
He was not sure if he hoped she heard him.
Trip brought the knife to her right ear.
“Wait!” Caroline screeched.
She flew forward and snatched the blade from him. Trip straightened, preparing to challenge her.
“Let me do it,” Caroline hissed. “Get me some gauze. Now.”
Trip rushed to the indicated cabinet and grabbed the last roll of gauze from the shelf. He unspooled it, then crumpled it into a sponge. If memory served him well, it would not be enough.
“Hold her steady,” the doctor commanded.
Trip used one hand to rake the girl’s abundant curls from the right side of her head and the other to still it. Her skin had started to cool, and was morbid beneath his hands.
Not a good sign. She was nearly gone.
“Do not let her move, do you understand me?”
Trip nodded.
Time slowed as Harrow took the girl’s caged ear in her hand, pulled it taut, and sliced the blade clean through the tissue. Blood oozed from the maw, thick as oil, and dribbled to the floor in sickening plops. The knife struck metal with a soft clink. Thin wires peeked out from the flesh, flashing like coins in a murky river.
Trip wondered vaguely at the strangeness of it all. That a small bouquet of copper could control an entire city.
Gingerly, Harrow began to saw.
The girl woke when the first wire snapped. Her pupils pulled in on themselves. Her labored breathing sped. Trip felt the veins branching across her right temple bulge beneath his fingers.
“Trip,” Caroline growled.
Trip tightened his grip on the girl, forcing her shoulders back into the chair with his elbows.
Another wire split.
A stream of tangled words began to crawl from the girl’s mouth, trailing the blood. He could not discern their meaning, but caught “peace” and “Conductor” more than once.
Caroline severed another wire. Sparks snapped from the angry metal. The Singer was fighting back.
The girl gasped. She was nearly lucid. Harrow cut with increased ferocity. Trip put all his weight against the prisoner, fighting her convulsions with all his strength. Tears were leaking from her eyes. His stomach twisted. He had to do something.
Without thinking, Trip leaned toward her free ear and began to sing.
The last two wires gave way as one. The knife slipped through the remaining tissue. The ear and the Singer came off in one final motion. There was left a gaping hole, from which uncoupled wires jutted like broken branches. Trip crammed the wad of gauze into the wound, pressing down with all his strength.
The last words of the song left him, ending on a soft note that clashed with the jarring scene.
The sudden silence was louder than any Trip had ever heard. Bodies and minds froze, even the wall clock seemed still. Caroline, who still grasped the limp ear, slid her gaze toward Trip. The doctor did not speak, but she did not need to. Her words were clear on her face.
That was when the girl began to scream.
13: Warped
The following days were fractured, warped.
Ronja passed out moments after Dr. Harrow amputated her ear. Mercifully, she remained unconscious for a majority of the procedures that followed. The yawning wound was sterilized. A surgeon removed lingering Singer debris. The bleeding was dammed with a series of sutures and a wreath of bandages.
Then withdrawal hit her with the full force of a steamer.
The medicine that muted the pain of her wound did nothing to fill the cavity left in the wake of The Music. Her body rejected its absence. She had been twined with the bewitching notes since birth, and could not function without them. She may as well have been deprived of water or air.
Lurching nausea bombarded her stomach. Blurred figures with sympathetic words pressed food and water to her cracked lips, but nothing stayed in her stomach for long. Somewhere in the tangle of hours she stumbled into consciousness to find an IV pumping saline into her veins. Her nose oozed a slow stream of blood and mucus. Her body was racked with chills, though her muscles brimmed with heat. Someone kept her forehead damp with cool rags.
Ronja began to lose track of time. On one occasion, she gathered enough of her wits to ask the date, but found that words seared her throat. She let out a raspy squeak and was immediately shushed by one of her guards.
When the sickness took brief respite, she hung in a gray place between wakefulness and sleep. In those moments, she was aware enough to fear, to wonder about her family, about Henry, if they were looking for her or not.
Worse than the nausea and the weakness, was the noise. She had once thought that life would be quiet without The Music. She was wrong.
The world was deafening.
Her remaining ear was hyper-attuned to every sound. Whispered conversations shared between her guards sounded like screams. Her own breaths were small hurricanes. Her heart was a fish writhing on a dock. The whir of electricity pouring into the lamp at her bedside was the thrum of an auto engine. The roar of the subtrain manifested physically, rattling her nerves and teeth.
Her silence was all she could control, so she kept it dutifully.
Slowly, steadily, the nausea dulled.
Her nose and eyes dried. The ache in her right temple receded. Someone wiped the brown crust from her upper lip and the sweat from her brow. The rag felt as it should, like cotton rather than sand. The ache abandoned her muscles, the chills crawled from her skin.
Relief flooded her, and for a day she slept so deeply her captors feared she might have succumbed to withdrawal or infection.
It was not so. Beneath the shroud of sleep, Ronja was coming alive.
Memories took shape in her slumbering mind. The boy taking her from the station. Strapping her to a chair, interrogating her. The smoke slithering from his cigarette, the ring of pain on her forearm. He thought she was an Off because she had seen the symbol, as if it were somehow invisible. No, not invisible. Dangerous. Why? What did it mean? He was so scared. Terrified of her and the knowledge he thought she held.
Then there was nothing but The Quiet Song. It must have been The Quiet Song, she now realized.
It was so peaceful, so different than what she had envisioned. An easy death, like slipping into a warm bath and never surfacing. Then, a knife and a voice punctured her tranquility. The former brought agony. The latter . . . something else. Something she could not name.
Be still, my friend
Tomorrow is so far, far around the bend
Cast your troubles off the shore
Unlace your boots, and cry no more
For today, my friend, I promise you are on the mend
He did not speak. He did not scream or whisper. His words rose and fell like boats cradled on gentle waves. Though they came from his mouth, they took on their own meaning when they struck the air. Through the sickening sound of her own flesh peeling away, the screech of the knife against the wires, the monotonous roar of The Quiet Song . . . she heard him. Each word was
heavy with significance, light with grace.
It stole her breath in a way pain never could.
Now, Ronja lay in her bed as her endless sleep fell away. She turned the gory scene over in her mind like a coin between two fingers.
The memory of her amputation was weighty in comparison to the ones preceding it. Her life was crystalline in her memory. Meals eaten, smiles shared, steps taken. All moments were accounted for. Yet, they were inexplicably lighter, as if made of tissue paper.
The patter of approaching footsteps bucked Ronja from her contemplation.
Her chest tightened. Her stiff fingers rolled into defensive fists beneath her starched bedsheets. A blip of pain at her wrist reminded her of the IV plugged into her veins.
The footfalls tapped up to her bedside. They ceased in a whisper of skin against stone and a soft metallic clink. Ronja’s muscles coiled. Handcuffs? Did they plan to restrain her again, even while she slept? Curiosity implored her to open her eyes, but panic glued them shut.
“Breakfast,” announced a whispery voice.
Ronja’s hands relaxed slightly. She struggled for a moment against the weight of her eyelids, then blinked her surroundings into focus.
She had been removed from the dank room flanked by filing cabinets. Her chair had been exchanged for a small cot, which was draped in surprisingly fine linens. They clashed with the corroded bed frame and the dingy stone ceiling overhead. To her right stood a coat rack, its wooden arms extended politely to hold her IV bag, which was plump with clear fluid.
The room had only one true wall, which rose behind her head. The other barriers were thick, dusty curtains that drooped from the ceiling. They were the same wine red as the airships that wheeled through the skies. Through their folds, Ronja could hear the drone of human activity. Her remaining ear was beginning to adjust to the workings of the world, and the sounds were almost bearable.
Vinyl: Book One of the Vinyl Trilogy Page 7
