Radio

by Sophia Elaine Hanson

  “I grew up under the roof of the enemy, I know how to keep them off my trail. Besides, you may have noticed I have the most ears between the two of us.”

  Ronja barked a laugh. “And whose fault is that?”

  Roark smiled, his brown eyes glinting. She knew if she leaned in she would see those unusual gold flecks in his irises. Her stomach cinched. She hoped the sensation did not register on her face. “So,” she changed the subject, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Did you get it?”

  The boy winked.

  Excitement flared in her chest. She took an involuntary half step forward. “Can I see?”

  Roark glanced around, then reached down and took her hand, turning her palm to the ceiling. She swallowed, her mouth abruptly dry. His fingertips were smooth and cool as pebbles, so different from her own. He placed something the size of a coin in her hand. She squinted at it doubtfully. “This is the last piece?” she asked, knowing the answer. It was so simple, just like their plan. Was it wise to put so much faith in something so small?

  “Yes,” Roark answered. “Once we plug it in, it should work.”

  “If Evie is right.”

  “When is she not?”

  “Good point.” Ronja closed her fingers around the device. She looked up at Roark, scanning his features for a trace of doubt. He was so confident, but she knew it was all for show. She had seen him at his lowest point. He had held her at her worst. There was no use pretending they were not terrified, both of what had passed and what loomed on the horizon. There was no going back to the way things were. So why were they acting like there was?

  “What happens when Wilcox says no?” she asked.

  “He’ll say yes, he has to.”

  “But … ”

  “Have a little faith, love.”

  Ronja rolled her eyes, then offered him the capacitor. He took it and stashed it in his pocket. “Running again?” he inquired. Without waiting for her response, he began to walk, giving a little jerk of his head to indicate she should follow.

  “Yeah,” she replied, falling into step beside him. Despite her long legs, she practically had to jog to keep up with him. “Nothing better to do.”

  “That will change soon,” he soothed. “For both of us.”

  “It better,” she mumbled.

  Roark chuckled. They fell into an easy silence. Silence was something they were quite good at, these days. Ronja had spent the first two weeks in the hospital wing after their return from Red Bay, recovering from her wounds. As if her burns were not enough, she had also suffered a ruptured eardrum, extensive bruising on her arms and legs, and a concussion.

  And those were just her physical injuries.

  During her recovery, Roark rarely left her side. He slept in the armchair near the head of her bed, only leaving to eat and relieve himself. Ronja was often too exhausted to do much talking, so he learned to read her. He knew when she was in pain, when she was thirsty, when she needed space and when she needed company. Most importantly, he was there to wake her when her nightmares took hold.

  Sometimes, when she woke from her dreams in her tent, she found herself wishing he was there to hold her. He would brush her sweaty hair from her forehead …

  “Ro?”

  Ronja crashed back into her body, realizing she had been staring into oblivion. Roark was watching her, concerned. “Sorry,” she said. “Long night.” She scanned the landscape of quiet tents and empty pathways for any eavesdroppers, then spoke in a low tone. “Anything new on Maxwell?”

  Wilcox was adamant that the chemi should not be kept in the Belly. It was one of the few points he and Ronja agreed on. Maxwell had been moved to a safe house in the middle ring where he was kept under constant surveillance. Roark sighed, pushing out his frustration with his breath. “Same as always. He eats his meals, sleeps nine hours a night, talks to himself in … whatever the hell language that is.”

  “You asked Evie about it, right?”

  “Yeah.” He scratched the back of his head as he did when his thoughts were whirring. “Samson had her listen and she said it sounded nothing like Arexian.”

  “How the hell did he learn to speak another language with a Singer?” Ronja wondered aloud. Revinia was not a multilingual society. Everyone under The Music was programmed to speak only the common language. “To prevent confusion and to create unity,” The Conductor had explained during one of his rare speeches broadcast into their Singers. Maxwell was equipped with a standard Singer. His ability to speak a foreign language should have been impossible.

  “I have no idea,” Roark replied.

  “Maybe his works differently,” she mused.

  “None of this makes any sense,” he whispered. “Why the hell would the son of Atticus Bullon have a Singer? If I got to grow up without one … ” He trailed off, shaking his head at the stone floor. “We’re missing something.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you think?”

  Ronja peered around at the tents, shooting Roark a meaningful look. He nodded, then slipped his hand into hers, tugging her forward. Warmth blossomed between them, yet somehow it made her shiver. He led her past the final row of huts before the terminus of the main room, then veered off into the low-ceilinged hallway that housed his tent and several others. The secluded corridor was reserved for elevated members of the Anthem, people like Ito and members of the council. Roark was no longer their prized double agent, but she doubted he would be giving up his spacious quarters any time soon.

  “After you,” he said, sweeping aside the entrance flap with a flourish. Ronja ducked through. Entering his tent was always a bit of a shock. If there was one thing he had maintained from his old life, it was his taste for opulence. Scores of leather-bound books with cracked spines dominated the space. A hammock with a downy comforter and numerous pillows hung from the ceiling rod, swaying gently. A turntable and a sizable stack of vinyl records sat on the patterned rug nearby. Ronja knew if she peeled back the carpet it would reveal the hatch they once escaped through, now sealed with concrete.

  “Please,” Roark said, gesturing at the low stool near the hammock. Ronja sat heavily, her tired legs sighing with relief. She looked on as he knelt by the turntable. Grabbing a record off the top of the stack, an album labeled Symphony VI in curling white calligraphy, he slipped it from its sleeve and set it on the player.

  Ronja allowed her eyelids to flicker shut. Static filled the air as the obsidian disk began to revolve. The symphony expanded gradually, trickling in on the mellow notes of a cello. She knew parting her lids would reveal a room full of writhing colors and shapes.

  The day she sang at Red Bay and witnessed her voice battling The New Music was not an anomaly. Since then, any type of music drew vibrant colors out of thin air. Drumbeats were cloudbursts of red and white. Piano keys traced rivers of red and deep blue. The cello and the violin spun threads of evergreen and gold and sometimes violet. She had not told anyone about the visions, not even Roark. He and the others were already worried about her enough as it was.

  “So?” Ronja opened her eyes. Her breath hitched.

  Roark was enveloped in ribbons of gold. They seemed to fuse with his skin and hair, shivering with the rise and fall of the symphony. “Uh … Ronja?” Warm light spilled from his mouth.

  “Could you … turn it down a bit?” she asked distantly. She raised a hand to her temple, which had started to throb. No matter where she looked, the wavering colors followed. They rode on the waves of the symphony. They might have been beautiful if they did not terrify her.

  “It’s on three. I was hoping to cover our conversation.”

  “Please?” Sensing her desperation, Roark clicked the dial on the player. The symphony receded. The gold ribbons lost their effervescence, fading until they were nearly translucent. Ronja blinked rapidly. Fear loosened its grip on her throat.

  “Are you all right, love?”

  She looked up at Roark, her mouth pressed into a thin line. He watched her in return,
his dark eyes shifting as he searched for answers on her face. Of course not. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  She shook her head to clear it. “What was the question?”

  Roark leaned back on his hands, a tendril of black hair escaping its tie and dripping into his face. The coin he wore on a cord around his neck caught the low light, glimmering faintly as he drew breath. “Do you believe Maxwell is the son of The Conductor?”

  Ronja sighed, her shoulders sagging under the question. It was not the first time he had asked her this. He knew her answer. They circled back to the enigma once or twice a week. “He could be,” she said. The words were almost a mantra to her now. “Why would he lie about something like that?”

  “Atticus Bullon never had any children with his wife, at least that he made public,” Roark pointed out at once. It was always his first stop on their cyclical argument. “Why would he hide Maxwell? Why put a Singer on him?”

  “Well, Maxwell did say he was a bastard.”

  Roark glowered at the rotating record, his brow knit with frustration. “The Conductor would never need to hide an illegitimate child. Any judgment cast on him would be suppressed with The Music.”

  Ronja rested her elbows on her knees, cradling her chin in her hands. Her eyelids drooped. “He … ” She cut herself off with a yawn. Through her lashes, she saw Roark crack a lopsided smile. “He could be telling the truth, could be lying to save his own skin. Or … ”

  The boy raised his eyebrows. It was not often they diverged from the familiar pattern of the conversation. Perhaps it was the aftertaste of her nightmare, but this morning she felt the pull of another possibility, one they had not yet discussed. “Maybe Terra made it all up. No one actually heard her interrogate Maxwell.”

  Roark leaned forward, observing her acutely. “What would she have to gain from a story like that?”

  Ronja snorted. “Who knows, why would she tell Wilcox I was a mutt and let us walk into Red Bay without backup? Don’t ask me to get inside that twisted mind.”

  A piano had joined the cello on the record. It sounded like rain on a slow river, far too gentle for her harsh tongue. It left faint red and blue impressions on her vision. She fixated on Roark through their strange beauty.

  “I know you hate Terra for what she did,” he finally said, holding her steady with his gaze. “But if anyone is lying here, I think it’s Maxwell.”

  Ronja shifted in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She did not enjoy disagreeing with the boy, but it was bound to happen occasionally. “You don’t think it is even a possibility?”

  “I think,” he replied tactfully. “She is a scheming piece of crap, but in the end, she wants what is best for the Anthem. Making up a story about the bastard son of The Conductor would be a waste of time and resources.”

  “So was Red Bay,” Ronja said in a low voice. “We lost a bit more than time there, Roark.” The boy opened his mouth to retort, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he flopped back onto the lush rug, heaving a sigh that could drown the world.

  “Yeah,” he finally allowed. “Yeah we did.” The comfortable room grew colder in the wake of his words. Ronja found herself shivering beneath her layer of dried sweat. She was seized by the urge to reach behind her and grab the thick comforter from the hammock.

  “I should go,” she said, shooting to her feet. White lights that had nothing to do with the quiet symphony popped in her gaze. “I should … ”

  “You should go back to sleep.”

  Ronja scowled down at Roark. He was watching her with those damned brown eyes, his strong arms folded beneath his head, his long hair still damp with rain. “I need a bath,” she stated with a bit too much conviction.

  He grinned, propping himself up on his elbows. “Of course, I would love to.” She gave him a solid kick in the side as she stepped over him. He coughed, clutching at his ribs melodramatically. Scoffing, Ronja continued to the exit without breaking her stride.

  “Ronja.” Her name on his lips gave her pause. She kept her back to him, waiting for him to spit out the words he was obviously chewing on. “If you ever want to talk about … ”

  “See you at breakfast, shiny.”

  Ronja did not wait for his response, but ducked through the door and practically ran down the hallway.

  4: Fuse

  Though Ronja was not particularly sweaty anymore, she thought perhaps a bath would soothe her nerves. She retraced her steps to the edge of the platform and descended to the subtrain tracks. Ambling toward the women’s bathhouse, her mind bobbed like a balloon.

  If there was one thing she had learned about herself since being severed from her Singer, it was that she was an open book. No matter how she tried to snuff her emotions, they always crept into her expression. That did not mean, however, that she wanted to discuss them. She knew Roark and the others were just trying to help, but she was tired of being treated like a broken bird.

  Ronja brushed aside the yellow curtain and was engulfed by the aromatic, waterlogged air of the bathhouse. The low tunnel was lit by candles and strings of lanterns. A large wood and stone pool stood near the entrance. Beyond that was a line of toilet stalls and further still were the parlor and library. There were no shelves, only stacks of hoarded books that had escaped the burnings decades ago. They stood like paper cairns, just waiting to be read.

  The best part was that it was deserted before six in the morning.

  Ronja plodded up the steps to the edge of the bath, then stripped down to her underwear. A shiver scampered along her spine when she caught sight of herself. She was no longer rail thin, but lean and strong. Exercise and a steady diet had allowed her to develop muscles and a healthy layer of fat in places Iris was envious of. Those more gradual changes she was pleased with. It was the brutal alterations from her night at Red Bay that unnerved her.

  The various scars she had collected over the years were now accompanied by six discoid stinger burns scattered across her torso. Five of them had faded to white, but the one over her heart was still a blistering sun compared to the pale moons. She could not be tattooed with the symbol of the Anthem until it was fully healed. Unfortunately, the self-inflicted wound was almost as stubborn as she was.

  Ronja tested the water with her toe. It was perfect, thanks to Evie. The techi had rigged the vents from the nearest functioning subtrain station to pump steam into the water. Glancing around to check that she truly was alone, she pinched her nose and plunged into the bath. A geyser of air bubbles rushed up from below as her feet struck the smooth bottom. Her stiff muscles began to unfurl, softened by the heat. Slowly, she allowed her eyelids to part.

  It was almost pitch black below the surface, save for the somehow distant glow of the candles and lanterns. They wavered as the water roiled in the wake of her plunging body. Ronja raked her fingers through her cropped hair. Her thumb nicked the scar marking the spot where her ear and Singer once were. It was no longer painful, but the empty space still felt strange.

  Sing my friend,

  There and back

  Ronja broke the seal, wiping the sting from her eyes. Her chest rose and fell like a hummingbird in distress. She massaged her temples briskly, working the lyrics from her brain. They seemed to sneak up on her when she least expected it. The back of her neck prickled. Heart in her throat, she whirled.

  “Terra.”

  The name escaped her lips before she could bite it back. Terra stood with her back to the pool, halfway down the steps. Ronja kicked herself internally for interrupting the apparent retreat. She would have preferred The Conductor himself to the vicious, arrogant Anthemite.

  It was too late. Terra was already making her way back to the platform. Her skin was stained with sweat and filth. A pair of night vision goggles rested on her brow. Half her head was freshly shaven, the other side was heavy with stiff, blonde hair wound into a dozen braids. The whites of her eyes were laced with red.

  “Zipse,” Terra greeted her tonelessly. Every
inch of her radiated reluctance. She looked like she would rather be scrubbing toilets than talking to her. Ronja could relate. “What are you doing here?”

  “Guess,” Ronja replied tartly.

  “Why are you here so early?”

  “Avoiding the masses, like you.”

  Terra swallowed, her throat rippling in the soft light. Her fingers twitched toward the hilt of her nearest blade. Ronja took a half step back, the water parting across her spine. Then the blonde sighed and let her hands fall limp at her sides. “I need a bath; you can stay or go.”

  Ronja made a noise too harsh and brittle to be a laugh. “You expect me to get out and leave?”

  Terra shrugged, slipping out of her overcoat. It hit the steps behind her with a crunch of dried sewage. “Up to you,” she replied, bending down to unbuckle the harness that held her knives.

  Ronja bared her teeth. Her fingers rolled into fists below the waterline. Rage boiled in her stomach, bubbling up into her mouth. “You sure about that?” she asked tightly. “You might catch some awful mutt disease.”

  Terra went rigid. She looked up slowly, a snarl distorting her apathetic mask. Ronja matched her expression. She had barely spoken to the agent since her confession aboard the Westervelt Industries airship, mostly because she knew she would not be able to curb her fury.

  “Enjoying your time in the sewers?” Ronja asked with a mocking tilt of her head. “I would guess so, a rat ought to be with its kind.”

  Terra straightened up, leaving her weapons half-hitched to her body. She shook her head. “I am not here to fight you, as much as I would love to see you try.” Ronja opened her mouth to retort, but her fellow Anthemite was not finished. “We could pass around the blame forever. You, me, Evie, Trip, Iris, Ito, Wilcox, Henry.”

  Ronja flinched, the final name like a knife between her ribs.

  “Yeah,” Terra pressed, taking a reckless step forward. The tips of her boots jutted over the edge of the platform. “I skitzed up. I lied. But guess what?” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Trip is the one who broke. Iris and Evie enabled him. You are the one who risked the lives of everyone in this compound to save two and half people who were most likely fried. And Henry, he was there for you.”