Vinyl: Book One of the Vinyl Trilogy

by Sophia Elaine Hanson

  “I have to know,” Evie muttered, approaching the conveyor belt in a sort of trance. “I have to . . . ”

  She leaned toward the first body, a man in his mid forties who might have once been handsome. Evie reached down gingerly and gripped him by a bloodless shoulder. She lifted him up a few inches and peeked beneath his shell. A girl with a wide nose and glassy blue eyes rested beneath him. A bolt of relief went through Evie’s heart, followed by a twinge of self-loathing. It was not Iris, or Ronja, but the girl was still dead.

  “Help me, Terra, please,” Evie begged. “We don’t know when they’re going to start the belt. I need to know.”

  Terra glanced apprehensively at the door, then back at Evie. She sighed deeply and gripped her weapon tighter. “Be quick.”

  Evie rushed toward the next stack of bodies, rifling through them unceremoniously, choking on her own vomit. They felt like cold fish beneath her fingers.

  “Evie . . . ” Terra warned from the door.

  “I’m going as fast as I . . . ”

  Evie stilled, her fingers clamped around a girl’s boney, freckled arm. It was still warm.

  “Oh,” Evie whispered.

  “Evie?” Terra asked, moving toward her.

  “It’s Ronja.”

  47: Snuffed

  Ronja

  Death was breathing down the back of her neck. His lungs were full of hot, foul air. It burnt holes in her skin, like paper licked by fire.

  She was not dead yet, she was fairly certain. She could not move her body, but her mind still spun weakly. She had never believed in the existence of an afterlife, or a higher power other than The Conductor. If she was cognizant, she figured she had to be alive.

  Not for long, though.

  Her heart was coughing like a dying steamer. Soon its wheels would still and rust.

  She had not wanted to die, but it had been the right thing to do. In her death, Roark might find the strength to resist his father. She believed that he would find a way to save her family, and their friends if they still lived.

  Death was closing in. She felt his hot palms on her bare shoulders, tugging her gently toward a door she could not see, but knew was there all the same.

  Soon she would step through it and leave her trust behind with Roark.

  48: Violent Light

  Evie

  Terra and Evie hauled Ronja’s body off the static conveyor belt, disentangling her from the arms of another victim, an old woman whose milky eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Ronja was as heavy as a wet sandbag. They laid her on the hard floor as gently as they could. Her head lolled to the side.

  Terra rose and backed away, but Evie dropped to her knees next to the girl, her hands cupped around her mouth.

  “What did they do to you?” she breathed.

  Ronja was a patchwork of bruises and burns. Even her palms were scorched. Her beautiful curls had been shaved. Still, an inexplicable smile lingered on the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were closed, her face inexplicably peaceful.

  Evie reached out hesitantly and placed her palm over Ronja’s heart, where her tattoo might have been one day.

  Her mother’s life all but ended here, Evie realized. She’s come full circle.

  “She deserved better,” Evie said quietly.

  “A lot of people did,” Terra replied.

  Evie looked around at her comrade, her hand still resting against the Ronja’s frozen heart. Terra glanced away quickly, her mouth a taut line and her hands clenched around her gun.

  Beat.

  Evie gasped and yanked her hand back as if shocked. “Terra!”

  “What?”

  Evie did not answer, but pressed her ear to Ronja’s chest.

  Come on, come on, she begged.

  Beat.

  Evie reeled backward, charged by adrenaline, and slammed her crossed palms into the girl’s ribcage.

  1-2-3

  2-2-3

  3-2-3

  She counted the compressions, just as Iris had taught her.

  “Evie, she’s dead. We gotta go,” Terra whispered urgently.

  “I felt her pulse,” Evie insisted without stopping the cyclical motion.

  Terra advanced and grasped her by the shoulders, attempting to drag her away from the body. Evie shook her off wordlessly, ignoring the growing ache in her biceps.

  “Evie—”

  “Wait.”

  Evie leaned forward and pressed her ear to Ronja’s chest again. She closed her eyes, listening for the telltale hum of life.

  She was met only by the ravenous hiss of the fire to her right, and Terra’s anxious shiftings to her left.

  “Come on, please,” Evie muttered, as if her words might coax Ronja back into the realm of the living.

  The tongues of flame cast shadows across her bald head and battered face. Had the warmth Evie had felt rising from her skin been the heat of the fire? Had the heartbeat she thought she felt been a trick of her desperate mind?

  Evie rocked back on her toes. The metal tip of her stinger clinked against the unforgiving ground. Suddenly, she did not want to own such a weapon. It looked as if Ronja had been at the mercy of one. Concentrated, circular burns decorated her stomach and chest. A particularly nasty burn had scorched the plane above her heart.

  “This must have been what got her,” she said softly, staring at the scorched flesh with glassy eyes.

  “Electricity can give and take life,” she recalled her mentor, Haverford, telling her as she ran her fingers across a newly-constructed circuit board.

  “What do you mean?” she had asked him.

  Haverford was gnawing on the end of an unlit cigarette, a habit he developed after his wife forced him to quit.

  “Hope you never find out,” he’d replied with a dark chuckle.

  “I think I hear someone coming,” Terra said, a thread of panic creeping into her typically cool tone.

  Evie dropped like a stone back into reality. She took one last look at the body. She wished she had something of Ronja’s she could give Roark, if he was still alive. She had seen the way he looked at her. She had never seen him look at anyone that way.

  “Evie, skitz, we gotta go.”

  Evie stood, her ears ringing. She rested a callused hand on the hilt of her stinger.

  Electricity can give and take life.

  Her fingers reacted before the epiphany hit her. Evie flipped the switch on her stinger and it snapped to life. She raised the weapon above her head, and drove it into Ronja’s chest.

  The girl arched, flooded by the violent energy.

  “Evie!”

  Evie no longer heard Terra’s pleas. She spun the nob at the tip of the weapon. The current flared white. She slammed it down again.

  Ronja was thrust back into life with a retching gasp.

  49: Walk

  The air was choked with putrid fumes, but she craved it all the same. She thought her ribs might crack beneath the strain of her heaving gasps. Evie was grasping both her hands to hold her upright, enveloping her in words of encouragement.

  “It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

  Ronja tried to speak, but her numb lips had forgotten how to form words.

  “Get up.”

  Someone shoved Evie out of the way and gripped Ronja by her limp wrist. Her vision scattered to black when the hand yanked her to her feet.

  “Here.”

  The weight on her shoulders made her knees buckle, but she remained standing. Ronja sucked in another deep breath and her sight gathered. Someone had draped a heavy coat around her. It fell past her knees.

  “Thank . . . you . . . ” she rasped, buttoning the clasps with clumsy fingers.

  “Don’t. I would have left you.”

  Ronja looked up. Her eyes popped.

  Terra stood before her. Her mouth was pinched into a razor-thin line, and she was slathered with filth. Twin knives were strapped to her thighs, and she gripped an automatic with both hands. Her skin was blanched where it was
not covered in muck.

  Ronja turned around to thank Evie, who was also robed in sewage, but was distracted by the scene beyond. She stumbled backward, a scream bubbling in her throat. Terra caught her beneath her arms and smacked a hand over her mouth.

  “If we don’t leave now we will be caught, and you’ll end up back where we found you,” Terra hissed in her ear.

  Ronja nodded mutely, unable to look away from the heinous sight. She could see the gap in the tangle of bodies that had been her grave. Terra let her hand fall cautiously.

  “If they’d started the belt . . . ” Ronja croaked.

  “They didn’t,” Terra cut her off brutally. “Can you walk?”

  Ronja nodded again.

  “Then walk.”

  Evie and Terra supported her between them as they wormed through the sterile halls of Red Bay. The corridors zigzagged endlessly, but Terra seemed to know where she was going. Numbered steel doors stood like soldiers against the walls. Ronja shivered to think that she had been behind one not long ago. How long had she been out? She wanted to ask, but was too exhausted.

  Her bones and muscles ached, and her burns stung almost as badly as her ear. She had never realized how warm her hair kept her. Even in the leather coat, she was freezing.

  “How are we gonna find them?” Evie muttered to Terra over Ronja’s bald head.

  “Prison control isn’t far,” Terra whispered back.

  “Oi!”

  Ronja and Evie went rigid.

  Terra instantly retracted her support from Ronja and whipped out a knife. She spun on her toes and flung it at the man who had spoken. Ronja heard a wet crunch and could not suppress a wince. The man fell without so much as a whimper.

  “Someone will find him,” Terra said, retrieving her knife with a sickening squelch. She wiped the stained blade on her pants. “We need to run.”

  “But . . . ” Evie began, glancing down at Ronja anxiously.

  Ronja eased her arm from her waist and steadied herself. Her stomach roiled and her muscles groaned, but she did not fall.

  Terra nodded approvingly, then sprinted off ahead. Her boots barely made a sound on the tiles. Ronja still felt Evie’s worried eyes on her, but she ignored them. She started after Terra with as much speed as she could manage. Evie followed half a beat later.

  They weaved through the corridors in silence and did not meet another soul. If Ronja had been able to think straight, this would have concerned her, but her only thoughts were of each successive step.

  They passed scores of identical doors numbering into the high hundreds. The portals were as still as gravestones, but Ronja knew that many of the chambers were throbbing with The Music. New forms of it. Forms that could reach people without Singers. She could still feel The Lost Song burrowed in her head like a parasite.

  If they made it out alive, she would tell them what she had learned, but she knew she could not burden them with the knowledge now. There would be no point in warning them, anyway. If The Lost Song reached them, there was nothing they could do to defend themselves against it.

  “Here,” Terra said, halting before an unremarkable white door.

  Evie and Ronja sputtered to a stop next to her. Ronja leaned against the wall, struggling to keep from panting. The sounds of casual conversation and unhindered laughter bled through the keyhole.

  “How do we get in?” Evie whispered.

  Terra unsheathed one of her knives and offered it to Ronja, who took the weapon by its leather handle. It was heavier than she expected.

  “Stay here,” she commanded Ronja, jabbing an accusatory finger in her face. “Evie, with me.”

  Terra knocked loudly with the grip of her automatic.

  Ronja wrapped both her hands around the knife.

  The ruckus behind the door ceased. The sounds of guns cocking studded the hush.

  “Who’s there?” a gruff, male voice called.

  None of the girls replied.

  A pair of cautious footsteps approached the door. Terra raised her gun and Evie her stinger. Ronja pressed herself against the wall, gripping her knife like a life preserver.

  The door flew open.

  Terra fired once. The bullet hissed through the silencer and struck its mark with a wet splat.

  A spray of blood lashed Ronja across the cheek. Terra flew at the man before he could topple and grabbed him by the front of his collared uniform. She grunted beneath his weight and fired three more times over his broad shoulder.

  “Put down your weapon,” Terra commanded over the slumped shoulder of her victim.

  Ronja tried to peer around the doorframe to see who Terra was addressing, but Evie thrust her back protectively.

  There was a sharp clang as a gun hit the floor.

  “Kick it to me.”

  Metal screeched across the tiles.

  “Hands.”

  There was a pause.

  Terra let her human shield fall through the threshold with a nauseating thud. His dark blood dyed the tiles like dawn spreading across the plains.

  “Evie, Ronja.”

  Terra stepped over the dead man nonchalantly. Evie jumped over him, then offered her hand back to help Ronja. She took it and hopped over the corpse gingerly.

  “Get his feet inside,” Terra ordered coolly, her gun still trained on her target.

  Evie and Ronja bent down wordlessly and dragged the man the rest of the way through the portal. His blood-soaked form squeaked against the ground.

  “Close the door.”

  Ronja shut it with a quiet click and locked it. She turned to see who Terra had taken hostage.

  He was not what she had expected. The man was in his late twenties, gangly and pale. His dark brown hair was unkempt, and thick-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his long nose. He wore a white lab coat, the unmistakable sigh of a chemi. His spindly hands were raised. He looked almost relieved to have dropped his gun, a black pistol that did not suit his scholarly countenance.

  Four corpses were losing their heat on the ground, their blood snaking into the cracks between the tiles.

  “What’s the likelihood that someone is going to disturb us?” Terra asked, visibly tightening her finger around the trigger.

  The man shook his head frantically, his curls flopping.

  “Low,” he said. “Almost everyone is at the assembly.”

  “Assembly?”

  “Victor Westervelt II is visiting.”

  “We know,” Ronja snapped. “He’s here for us.”

  “No,” the man said, shaking his head again.

  “Then why is he here?” Ronja asked rawly, taking her place next to Evie, her fingers curled around the borrowed blade.

  “He’s been here for days,” the chemi said.

  “Why?” Terra asked through clenched teeth.

  “Why?” Evie repeated when the chemi failed to answer.

  “The launch of the new Songs,” he whispered, his fingers drifting up to his Singer.

  Ronja blanched.

  “No,” she spat through her teeth.

  “Ronja?” Evie asked, peering at her sidelong.

  “Tell me he’s not going to put The Lost Song in the Singers,” she demanded in a low voice, prowling toward him.

  The chemi backed into his metal desk, which screeched across the floor. A stack of papers tumbled to the ground, whispering against the tiles. Ronja grasped him by the front of his shirt and dragged him down to her level. He gulped audibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath his stubble.

  “No, no, no,” he stuttered, panic crawling into his voice and eyes. Ronja twisted the fabric of his shirt, pulling him close so that their noses nearly brushed. “No, The Lost Song isn’t for the public, it’s for the rebels.”

  Ronja released his shirt and shoved him back into the desk. The chemi caught himself, and adjusted his glasses with a trembling finger. Ronja put her head in her hands, trying to control her breathing.

  “They can’t use this . . . Lost Song on us,” Evie
said doubtfully. “None of us have Singers.”

  Ronja shook her head, her palms blacking out the room. “No,” she heard herself say. “It can be played over speakers. Anyone can hear it.”

  “It looks like you’ve felt the effects,” the chemi noted from his place on the desk.

  “Ronja?” Evie asked.

  Ronja let her hands fall and turned to Terra and Evie.

  “Westervelt tortured me to get Roark to talk.”

  Evie closed her eyes, pain working its way across her face. Terra looked at Ronja blankly.

  “He took me to a room and played The Lost Song over the speakers,” Ronja continued, rubbing the bridge of her nose and eyeing the ground. “It was . . . it was bad.”

  “Is that what nearly killed you?” Terra asked emotionlessly.

  “No,” Ronja admitted, looking up at the two girls almost embarrassedly. “I . . . uh . . . tried to kill myself.”

  “Because of the pain?” Evie asked, shock rupturing her expression.

  “No,” Ronja said. She flicked her gaze to the tiled floor, her naked feet. She curled and uncurled her toes. “No. Roark was going to give up the Anthem to save me, to save us. I couldn’t let him. So, I ended it.”

  Evie and Terra were silent, regarding her with a mixture of shock and admiration. Terra was the first to recover.

  “When do they plan to use this Song on us?” she asked, returning attention to the chemi, who again threw his hands into the air.

  “A few months, I don’t know!”

  “Does The Conductor know where we are?”

  The chemi’s lips parted silently, revealing a gold front tooth. Tears pooled in his wide eyes, and he shook his head vigorously.

  “I—I—”

  “DOES HE KNOW WHERE WE ARE?” Terra roared, stalking forward and slamming the muzzle of her gun into his temple.

  The chemi began to sob. Terra looked disgusted, but did not retract her weapon. She grabbed him by his pointed chin and forced him to meet her gaze.

  “Answer me,” Terra commanded, her voice almost velvety.

  Slowly, the chemi shook his head.

  “Ronja, do you think Roark would have told him?” Terra asked, letting her gun fall to her thigh and stepping away from the sobbing man with a look of absolute revulsion.