“Truly,” Roark agreed with an appreciative downward glance. “Get going, they’re probably wondering where we are.”
Ronja dressed as quickly as she could. Roark sat on the bunk, his head thrown back against the wall. She could feel his eyes on her, but was not bothered. His gaze was thoughtful, not lewd.
“What are you thinking?” she asked as she yanked her sweater over her head.
“I was thinking how much I wish we could stay in this room.”
Ronja snorted, bending down to retrieve her left boot. “Yeah, I bet.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” he corrected. “I mean,” he clarified when she shot him a withering look. “It is, but … ” He faltered, weighing his words. “As soon as we leave this room, we have to go downstairs and broadcast.”
Ronja tugged on the laces of her boot. The leather tightened around her calf. “Yeah, unless you have other plans.”
“What if I did?”
The girl let out a laugh, glancing around in search of her other shoe, which she had chucked several hours back. She spotted it under the desk and crossed to it. “You got a date or something?”
“Ronja.”
She froze half a step from her desk. She kept her eyes locked to her boot, which was waiting patiently under the chair. “No, Roark,” she said in a low voice.
“Well … ”
“No,” Ronja snapped, whipping around toward him, her eyes aflame. “We have a responsibility.”
“Do we?” Roark got to his feet swiftly and crossed to her in a heartbeat. He tilted his head down slightly to meet her eyes. The panicked spark in his gaze glared down at her like a cold star. “Why does it fall to us to save everyone?”
Ronja floundered, her mouth hanging open on a busted jaw. Shock was etched into her features; there was no need for her to vocalize it.
“I know, I know!” Roark shouted. He backpedaled away from her on unsteady legs and braced himself against the side of the bunk bed. “Sing for the mute. Listen for the deaf. Fight for the powerless. All that pitch.” He laughed, an empty sound that sucked the heat from the room. “I never even got a choice. It was fight for the Anthem or die. Wilcox would have killed me if I tried to leave.”
“I didn’t have a choice either,” Ronja reminded him softly.
“Yeah, because I took it from you.” He collapsed back onto the mattress with a groan of rusted springs, his head in his hands. Even from across the room, she could see the tremors in his hands. “I should have let you be. I should have left you in the station that day.”
“And I am so glad you didn’t,” she exclaimed, hurrying over to kneel before him. She took his shaking hands in hers. He flinched at her touch, but did not pull away. “If I could have chosen to go with you, I would have. I would rather die with you today than live the rest of my life under The Music.”
“Then come with me,” he breathed. Ronja felt her heartbeat stumble. The desperation in his voice was palpable. “Come with me. We can leave right now, all of us. We’ve gotten out of the city before, we can do it again.”
“And the Anthem? Georgie, Cosmin, and Charlotte?” she asked quietly. “Who will protect them?”
Roark shook his head, limp strands of hair slipping from their tie. “Wilcox is right, they’ve hidden down there for half a century. What makes us so sure The Conductor is going to find them?”
“You know it’s only a matter of time.”
“Do I?”
“I think you do.” She gave his fingers a squeeze. “I think you’re tired of losing people.”
“So what if I am?” he barked, wrenching his hands back as if she had stung him.
Ronja swallowed dryly. She refused to be afraid of him.
He scowled at her, his jaw bulging in his cheek. “What if I can’t stand to lose one more person?”
“Who says anyone else is going to die?”
Roark inhaled sharply. The whites of his eyes were tinted red. He looked terrified, almost as scared as he had been in the presence of his father.
As much as she wanted to, Ronja did not look away. “You know before this is over someone else is gonna die,” he said, his voice cracking. “You. Me. Iris. Sam. Evie. Mouse. Terra.”
Ronja winced internally at the last name. It was easy to forget that despite her recent betrayal, Terra and the others had grown up together. Fought together. Mourned together. There was too much history there to be ignored. She would just have to be okay with that.
“I know how you feel, I do,” she told him softly. Roark did not react. He kept his shivering gaze fixed on the rough floorboards. “But the way I see it, we only have two options. We live, or we die. Running or hiding in that pitching tomb … that is not living. The only way we get to live is if we fight. The only way we win is if we strike first.”
Her words washed over Roark in a gentle wave. As she watched, the fear leaked from him. His shoulders drooped. He wilted forward. She laid his head on her shoulder, pressed a hand to his back. “Everyone in this city,” she continued in a soft voice, running her fingers up and down his curved spine. “They deserve the chance to live, too. We can give them that.”
Roark nodded against her. “I know.”
“Where is this coming from?” she asked, stilling her palm at the small of his back.
The boy raised his head to look her in the face. A smile pricked the corner of his mouth. His dark irises shivered like oil in sunlight. Her stomach twisted itself into knots. He looked like himself again. “I guess I have just never had so much to lose.”
A loud knock at the door shattered the moment. They both jumped half a foot. Roark was lucky he did not bash his head on the top bunk.
“Oi!” Mouse shouted through the wood. “Put your skitzing clothes on and get out here! We’re live in ten!”
Roark and Ronja grinned in unison. Relief welled in the girl as she watched humor climb back into his eyes. “Coming, Mouse,” he called. A bit of unintelligible muttering from beyond the door, then the trader traipsed back down the corridor.
“Why are we on such a tight schedule?” Ronja asked as they got to their feet.
“Asks the girl who was going stir-crazy in the Belly.”
“First of all,” she shot back, raising her finger before his face. He smiled, batting it away jokingly. “You would have gone nuts without your little escapades. Second, what I meant was, why is it so important that we broadcast in exactly ten minutes?”
Roark stretched his arms above his head and yawned before answering. “Evie says the easiest spot to hack The Music will be during the gap between The Day and Night Songs,” he explained, letting his arms fall limp at his sides. “Apparently, it lasts about … ”
“Sixty-three seconds,” Ronja finished.
The boy eyed her curiously, his question written on his face.
She smiled ruefully. “When you spend your entire life with noise in your head, you learn to appreciate the quiet bits.”
Roark nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose so.”
“Come on.” She stretched out her hand for him to take, wriggling her scabbed fingers. “Together.”
He laced his fingers with hers, all traces of fear and doubt wiped clean from his face. “Together.”
29: Little Wars
Stepping into the hallway was like jumping into a cold river. Ronja actually gave a tiny gasp when she crossed the threshold. The corridor was empty, the rooms silent. The station must be downstairs, the girl thought vaguely.
“You all right, love?” Roark asked, laying a coaxing hand on the small of her back. Her skin tingled beneath his touch.
“Yeah,” she answered quickly, realizing she had been staring into oblivion. “Fine.”
“I hope so. One of us has to keep a level head.”
“That would be me.”
Roark chuckled. It was good to hear him laugh. Ronja started toward the stairwell. Her hand drifted back and caught his, pulling him forward. A shock sang down her spine. It felt so natu
ral, all of it. Kissing him, touching him, even arguing with him. It would be so sweet to run away, to leave their responsibilities behind and explore the world they were owed. But she wanted so much more than running, and was willing to fight for it. She hoped Roark was, too.
They descended the rickety stairway together, their footsteps clattering like hail on a rooftop. They were forced to release each other before they hit the doorway. Not that it’ll make a difference, Ronja thought, flushing as they stepped onto the vast factory floor. Trying to hide a secret from their friends was about as pointless as trying to move a subtrain by getting out and pushing.
“Where is everyone?” she asked, glancing about suspiciously. She saw nothing but the arching ceiling and Singer crates.
Rather than answering, Roark gestured at the chaotic maze of boxes. She tilted her remaining ear toward it, focusing. A tangle of faint voices kissed her eardrum. It sounded as if they were arguing. “Come on, Siren,” he teased. “Your throne awaits.”
Ronja swatted at his arm. He dodged the blow easily and jogged toward the labyrinth. She followed, apprehension creeping up on her like a bad cold. She held her breath as she passed into the tight wooden aisle. It did not take long before she lost track of the entrance behind them. Without Roark to guide her, she would have been utterly lost. Every bend and curve looked the same. The sense of foreboding that leaked from the boxes was overwhelming.
“Almost there,” Roark promised, as if sensing her discomfort.
“Almost where?”
Roark winked and turned the corner. Ronja stopped in her tracks. The voices of their friends curved around the bend, meshed with the hum of machinery. Her stomach knotted. She sucked in a deep breath and followed.
“There they are.”
“Finally.”
“Enjoy your nap?”
“Skitz, let them be.”
Ronja scarcely registered the teasing as she drank in the bizarre scene laid out before her. Her jaw dropped as she scuffed to a halt next to Roark.
“Not what you expected?” he asked, nudging her in the ribs with an elbow.
She shook her head sluggishly. In truth, she had no idea what she had expected. The only images she could conjure when the Anthemites spoke of the radio station were a handheld communicator and a subtrain station.
She could not have been further off the mark.
They stood at the edge of a ring of crates stacked ten feet high. At their peaks were spindly antennae with stiff metal branches. Red wires dripped from the towers to the ground. Ronja traced them to a massive dashboard on the far side of the circle. It was full of switches and dials and gauges she could not begin to make sense of. The machine rumbled like a distant subtrain. She could feel the whisper of heat radiating from it, even across the ring.
Evie sat cross-legged on an upturned crate before the dash, her back to them. She was either ignoring Ronja or focusing acutely on her task. Probably both. Iris and Mouse were conversing near the nucleus of the ring. The trader looked bored. The surgeon was fizzing with anxiety.
“Ro!” Iris yelped, bounding over to her and snatching up her hands. Roark choked on a laugh as Ronja balked like a skittish horse. He abandoned her to talk to Mouse. She glared daggers at his back, wondering if she could singe him with her gaze alone.
“I am so sorry about before,” Iris said, peering up at her with watery doe eyes. “I had a talk with Evie, she knows she was a pitcher.”
“Forget it,” Ronja said hastily, wriggling free of her surprisingly firm grip. “There are more important things.”
“Not really.”
Ronja looked up. Evie swung her muscular legs over the edge of the crate. She paused long enough to take a breath, then stood and crossed to her. Iris scooted out of the way, moving to stand with Roark and Mouse.
“I … uh … owe you an apology,” the techi mumbled. “I was being reckless. I could have really hurt you.” Ronja opened her mouth to speak, but Evie held up a tattooed hand to silence her. “Iris said I was being insensitive to your past. I see that now. I hope you can forgive me. You mean a lot to me, mate.”
Ronja shifted from foot to foot, focusing on a random spot on the concrete to avoid eye contact. She was still not accustomed to such sincerity. She wondered if she ever would be. “Thanks,” she answered, kicking a chunk of stone and sending it skittering across the plain. “We’re good.”
“Good,” Evie exhaled. She clapped Ronja on the shoulder. Her knees knocked under the strain. “Glad we straightened that out.”
Ronja nodded and offered a closed-lipped smile. The knots in her back loosened. She had not realized her fight with Evie had affected her so deeply. “Yeah.”
“Tick tock,” Mouse called loudly. Ronja leaned around Evie to look at him. He now stood beside the whirring machine, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet like a nervous buoy. “We have three minutes, three minutes.”
“Right,” Evie said, clapping once to emphasize the word. She punched Ronja in the bicep, then hurried back to her station. Wincing, the girl crossed to Roark and Iris, who were still talking at the center of the ring.
“Where are Samson and Terra?” she asked.
“Sam is guarding Jonah,” Iris answered. Her nerves were apparently pacified after Evie’s apology; now she was all business. “We sent Terra out about an hour ago to gauge the response to your voice. She should be somewhere in the slums.”
“You mean you sent her to see if it works at all,” Ronja said blandly.
The surgeon gave a considerate tilt of her head, tapping her index finger to her lips. “Or if it has any complications.”
Ronja blanched, a strangled noise escaping her throat.
“It’ll be fine,” Iris assured her. “This is just a test. The signal will only travel a quarter mile. Right, darling?”
“Yeah,” Evie responded from her seat on the crate. She was hunched over the dashboard, flicking an oscillating gauge with her forefinger. The quivering hand stilled and she grunted in satisfaction. “We’re gonna make the field as narrow as possible. It should only affect a couple hundred Singers.”
“Great,” Ronja groaned. “I might set off The Quiet Song in a couple hundred Singers.”
Roark hooked his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to his side and passing Iris a withering look. “It’ll be fine,” he soothed her.
She grimaced. He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself rather than her.
“All right everyone, back up and shut up,” Mouse shouted, clapping a few times to dispel the chatter. “Zipse, stay right where you are.”
Iris and Roark peeled away from Ronja. She was left alone in the center of the circle, which felt oddly claustrophobic. Mouse was approaching rapidly, carrying a steel microphone stand across his body like a musket. He parked it in front of her with a ringing clang. Ronja stared at it, curiosity bubbling inside her. She had never seen a microphone up close before. It was beautiful for the same reason a cello or a trumpet was, because of the potential it held. It was terrifying for the same reason.
Before she could reach out and touch it, Mouse slapped a pair of bulky leather headphones over her head. Fear spasmed in her chest. The headset squeezing her skull as she tore through the halls of Red Bay, a razor-thin barrier between her and The Air Song. She quieted her mind with a series of deep breaths. Now was not the time.
“When we go live, you’ll only be able to hear your voice,” Mouse told her. He steadied her head with his hand and plugged a thin cord into the jack in her headphones. “We’ll count you in,” he went on, walking the long wire back to the dash and handing it to Evie. The techi took it without looking up and plugged it into an outlet in the belly of the beast. Ronja shivered as faint static blossomed in her ear. “Can you hear me?” Mouse called.
Ronja nodded. His voice was muffled, but not inaudible. The trader put his hands on his hips, examining her like an artifact in a museum. His pale eyes seemed to drill straight through her. “Please tell me yo
u have a song in mind,” he said.
“Uhhh.” Ronja rifled through the reservoir of songs she had learned from dozens of nights spent lingering at the edge of jams. There was only one that felt right. She nodded in affirmation. “Yeah.”
Mouse exhaled a relieved breath. “Good,” he said. “We’ll count you in at the ten second mark.”
“You need to start singing right away,” Evie jumped in, twisting around to look at her. Her face glistened with sweat from the heat pouring off the machine. “We’ll signal you when the gap is about to end.”
Ronja nodded again. Her jaw was locked. Her thoughts were whirring louder than the machine she was connected to. Connected. She sucked in an unsteady breath. She was connected to a machine. Just like before. When they switched it on, she would be a breath from The Music. She would not hear it, but it would be there. A shadow she could never catch. Her throat constricted.
“Ronja.” She followed the muffled voice to Roark, who watched her from the edge of the ring. He smiled, just a quick twitch of his lips. The panic that had distorted his face only minutes ago was gone. There was only trust, as clear and startling as those gold specks in his dark irises. “You can do this.”
“Thirty seconds,” Evie announced from her seat. Her fingers flew across the dashboard, coaxing the machine to life. Mouse stood at her shoulder, occasionally pressing a button or muttering something in her ear.
Ronja allowed her eyelids to drift shut. This is it, she thought distantly. The moment that would change everything. As soon as she opened her mouth she would be more than just a girl on the run. She would be the weapon she was meant to be.
Unless it was all a mistake. Unless Roark waking up from The Air Song was just a fluke. Unless her voice was not a weapon at all, but a beautiful empty thing that had only affected Roark because he was falling for her.
“Ten.”
No. She could not think that way.
“Nine.”
She had to believe she was something more.
“Eight.”
She had not come so far, lost so much just to fail.
“Seven.”
For Henry. For Layla. For Georgie and Cosmin.
Radio Page 17