32: Jolt
Jonah
An otherworldly screech jolted him from sleep. Jonah swore and clamped his hand to his ear as the keening gave way. He waited, staring into the endless black of the storeroom, for the voice to hit his eardrum. “Kal peske ven a ledar. Letraon vein lev mantra.”
Jonah sat bolt upright, white lights popping like firecrackers before his blind eyes. “What?” he hissed. “What do you mean they launched the weapon? There was no explosion, there was no … ” He cut himself off, mindful of the guard outside his door. The girl, Terra, had left hours ago. Her replacement was one of the men, he was not sure which. He was silent as a tomb, but Jonah was certain he was not asleep.
Static crackled like distant thunder in his ear. For a long moment, he thought his employer had walked away from the radio and forgotten to disconnect. Just as he was about to lie back down and try to sleep through the electronic babel, the man spoke again. “Ger vein pien.”
The line went dead. Jonah frowned and lay back down on his coat, his eyes on the invisible ceiling. For five years he had been an agent of the Kev Fairla. He had fought and killed to protect their island from threats both foreign and domestic. He was accustomed to sudden shifts in plans; if anything they injected a little adrenaline into his blood.
What he could not stand was being lied to.
He rolled onto his side, his brow creased with doubt. Ger vein pien. Gain their trust. Why? His original task was to locate the rogues and relay their position to his employer once they were stationary. It was a straightforward mission with a monumental reward: enough weapons and ammunition to give them a fighting chance against Vinta. Jonah had assumed his boss was just gathering the necessary forces while he waited in his cell. It was clear that was not the case.
What is he waiting for? he thought angrily. If the rebels had already launched their weapon, whatever it was, why waste time digging into their ranks? Jonah gritted his teeth and tucked the crook of his arm under his head.
Tovaire would not last much longer. If it came down to it, he would get the weapons on his own. He slipped his hand under his makeshift pillow, touching the cool metal of the blade the blonde had abandoned. He had gotten out of worse binds with less. But he would not use it. Not yet. “What are you doing, Bullon?” Jonah muttered. “What the hell are you doing?”
PART II: SIREN SONG
33: Routine
The days fell into a steady rhythm.
Each morning Ronja woke at 4:45 A.M. to the piercing wail of the alarm clock Mouse had given her. The very concept of an alarm was foreign to her. She had never needed one under The Music. The dying moans of The Night Song were enough to rouse her. In the Belly, she was either awakened by the clatter of cookware or the intense urge to run before the compound became choked with suspicious Anthemites.
In the bone-quiet warehouse, an alarm was an absolute necessity. The pull of her bed was stronger than ever. Rather, the person in her bed. On their first night in the factory, Ronja and Roark discovered they slept well together, despite the fact that she had now kneed him in the kidney several times. Neither of them had said as much, but they knew sharing a pillow buffered their nightmares.
Roark slept like the dead at her side. There was little that could wake him, even the ungodly screaming of the alarm clock, so the task fell to Ronja. She was always reluctant to rouse him. He looked younger in sleep, unburdened.
“Get up, shiny.”
“Hmmm no.”
“Come on, time to go.”
“No, thanks.”
After a few minutes of fruitless coaxing, she would be forced to pinch his earlobe, which through some mishap she had learned he hated. This caused him to sit bolt upright, grumbling and massaging the pink welt left by her fingernails. Forgiving her at once, he would snag a kiss and vault out of bed as if she were the one lagging behind.
By the time they had showered and dressed, it was 5:15 and the gap between The Night and Day Songs was approaching. Yawning and stretching, they made their way down to the radio station. Mouse and Evie usually beat them there. The machine that hacked the Singers, which the techis had named ‘Abe,’ required almost as much persuasion to wake up as Roark.
Evie and Mouse usually rose around 4:00 with the aid of coffee brewed in Mouse’s portable kettle. The little black pot was a godsend. They were eternally grateful that he thought to bring it from his apartment. “My contribution to the revolution,” he said with a sweeping bow each time someone gulped down a mug.
Though Ronja was fond of the taste, she did not need the coffee to get her blood pumping in the morning. The promise of singing into the void of The Music was enough to shoot electricity into her veins. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff with her arms spread wide, terrifying and exhilarating. She no longer feared the darkness that blossomed from her mouth. It had expanded and morphed since her confession, freed by her words. Now, the black mass was studded with bullet holes that spilled white light.
She wished she could make the Revinians see what she saw. If they could see beyond the desolate prison they were born into, she was sure she could set them free. The best she could do for now was make them listen. From what her friends told her, they did.
Each day before the sun rose, Samson and Terra clipped on false Singers and ventured out to watch the song of the Siren roll over the city. Besides Evie, the captain was the only one who could stand to be around Terra for extended periods of time. Their personalities were oil and water, yet somehow they worked together smoothly. Iris expected some secret romance. She was alone in this theory. No one else thought Terra had the emotional capacity for a relationship.
During the evening broadcast, Roark and Iris snuck into the city. They had to be considerably more cautious than their counterparts, even skulking around the outer ring in the dead of night. Iris wore a wig. There was always the chance that the Offs had been instructed to keep an eye out for a petite redhead with two inches of hair.
Roark had a harder time with his disguise. He was a celebrity long before his mugshot was plastered to every street corner. Ronja tried to convince him to remain inside to no avail. He suffered from the same cabin fever that had plagued her in the Belly. She knew once he set his mind to something, there was no stopping him. It was a quality they shared. Instead of throwing punches at a brick wall, Ronja coughed up a compromise.
At her request, he swapped his fine leather overcoat for a shabby brown jacket Terra brought back from the slums. He donned a pair of thick rimmed glasses with the lenses punched out and tucked his chin into a woolen scarf to hide his razor jawline. Most importantly, he allowed her to chop off his long elegant hair.
“I look like an Off,” Roark complained, glowering at his clean-cut reflection in the mirror. Ronja snickered, setting her scissors on the lip of the sink and brushing locks of inky hair off his shoulders. For all her lack of experience with primping, she was quite good at cutting hair. They had never possessed the money to go to a hairdresser as children, so she gave Georgie and Cosmin trims over the kitchen sink.
“I like it,” she replied seamlessly, peeking around him to view herself in the looking glass. She frowned, tousled her brief mess of curls. “I look like I stuck my finger in an electrical socket.”
Roark laughed, his grimace giving way to a grin. He spun around and pulled her toward him by the waist. Her stomach vaulted. His eyes were clear and sharp, especially without the shadow of his hair. “It matches your personality,” he said, reaching up to pluck at one of her curls.
“Skitzed?”
The boy tilted his newly freed head to the side, considering her with a coy smile. “I was going for pitched, but if you like.”
The days became a week. The heart of winter settled over the warehouse like a yoke. Evie was able to keep the radiators running in their bedrooms, though the factory floor was too vast to heat much. Roark and Mouse had managed to smuggle in a month’s worth of rations while they were building the radio station. Their bounty consisted mostl
y of canned goods, but no one complained. They were too focused on the task at hand, sinking into their individual roles with fervor.
Ronja stopped splitting the days between morning and night, instead measuring the passage of time by broadcasts. At 5:30 A.M., she poured her soul into the microphone for a minute, signed off as the Siren, then climbed back into bed with Roark until Samson and Terra returned. Their stories were always the same.
“They float around like the dead until the gap, then as soon as Ronja starts singing, they light up,” the captain described one day over a breakfast of lukewarm soup. Despite the lack of a fire, they still took their meals sitting in a circle on the floor of the room Ronja and Roark now shared. “Some people smile, some cry. Some of them hold on to each other. The only thing they have in common is — ”
“They go silent,” Terra finished, setting aside her own tin can. She tossed her dirty blonde hair over her shoulder.
“They are listening,” Ronja said quietly.
Terra surprised her by answering her directly. “Yeah,” she said with a blunt nod. “I think they are.”
34: Brawler
“Good, again.”
Ronja groaned, clutching her sore ribs. She lay on her back on the smooth concrete, her eyes screwed shut against the dull pain in her back. Her tank top was soaked with sweat, her leggings too.
“Come on, get up, I know you can.” Ronja opened her eyes for the sole purpose of glowering up at Samson. He grinned down at her. He was barely sweating, his hair tied into a loose braid at the back of his neck. The captain stuck his hand out for her to grab. Huffing, she took it and he pulled her to her feet. “All right?” he asked with a laugh.
“Fine,” Ronja grumbled, looking anywhere but his teasing blue eyes.
They had been sparring for hours and she had yet to win a single match. She started out confident enough. While she had never had any formal training, a lifetime as a mutt and three years as a subtrain driver in the merciless outer ring had forced Ronja to learn how to defend herself. She was a brawler. She fought ugly with her teeth and elbows and nails.
Samson and the other Anthemites were more than just fighters, though. They were dancers.
“Go again?” Samson asked.
“Yeah, give me a minute.” Ronja ambled over to the crate where she had set her canteen. She unscrewed the top and leaned up against the rough wood. She took a long swig, her eyes on the arching factory ceiling.
“Where did you learn to fight?” the captain asked, stretching his muscular arms over his head. Ronja tried not to notice how beautiful they were. She set her bottle down with a dull thwack, leaving it uncapped.
“Self-taught,” she replied, copying him and raising her arms above her. “I had a lot of skitzed passengers when I worked the subtrain.”
Samson grinned. “You were a driver.”
“Yeah,” she replied, letting her hands fall to her sides.
“You know something,” he said, turning his gaze to the ceiling thoughtfully. “I have spent my entire life in a subtrain station and I have never actually been on a steamer before.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Samson laughed. “I do most of my work in and around the Belly, I can walk everywhere I need to go.”
“Huh,” Ronja said. Her lips split into a grin. “When this is all over, I’ll take you for a ride.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said eagerly. “It’ll be great. We’ll steal an engine and I’ll take you on a loop around the city.”
“Wow,” Samson ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair, beaming at her. “I would love that.”
“Great, but I have one condition.”
“Which is?”
Ronja raised her fists before her, hopping side to side on the balls of her feet. “Teach me how to flip somebody over your shoulder, like you just did to me.”
Samson let out another ringing laugh. His humor was infectious. “You got yourself a deal, Siren. Here, come stand by me.”
Ronja dropped her arms and sidled over to stand next to him. Heat radiated from his muscular form. “If you can learn to do this, you can flip just about anybody,” he told her. “In this case, size doesn’t matter.”
“Never heard that one before,” Ronja quipped.
Samson grinned. “All right, bend your knees, feet a bit more than shoulder width apart, good. Assume somebody comes up behind you, like this.” He paused before stepping behind her, arching an inquisitive brow. “Can I?”
“Oh, sure.”
The captain moved to stand behind her. Her skin tingled as he pressed himself against her, then slowly wrapped his arms around her neck. The smell of sweat and musk overwhelmed her senses, and she fought to keep her head. “There is no way in hell I am going to be able to flip you,” Ronja said.
“Iris can.”
“She cannot.”
“Okay,” Samson conceded. “Iris can flip Trip.”
“You have fifty pounds on Roark,” Ronja seethed, shifting in his snug grip.
“To be fair, you have a good thirty on Iris.”
Ronja grumbled unintelligibly. She felt rather than heard Samson laugh, his chest vibrating against her back. “All right,” he said. “Bend your knees, feet a bit further apart, then I want you to grab my right forearm and lift me onto your back … ”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Then roll me over your shoulder.”
“There is no way in hell … ”
“Ronja, you are in the process of freeing several million minds from mental slavery by singing into a transmitter. I think you can flip me over your shoulder.”
Ronja sucked in a deep breath, then bent her knees as he had instructed her and grabbed his thick forearm with both her hands. It was slick with sweat. “Okay,” she said. “One, two, three.” She heaved with all her strength, dipped forward and slammed Samson into the ground. His eyes popped with shock as he struggled for breath on the concrete. Ronja let out a noise of distress and crashed to her knees next to him. “Are you okay?” she gasped.
“Fine,” Samson said, with a winded laugh. “I just didn’t think you would actually throw me the first time.”
Ronja grinned as pride replaced her concern. She stuck out her hand for him to take, then yanked him to his feet. He looked down at her with bright eyes, kneading the muscles of his right shoulder. “Again,” she said.
35: Paradox
Roark
“H—how much longer?” Iris asked through chattering teeth.
Roark squinted at his watch in the dim light of the alleyway. “Three minutes,” he replied.
The surgeon made a distressed noise at the back of her throat and stomped, sending up a spray of slush. Roark tossed her a scathing look, then unwound his scarf and passed it to her. “Ro—Ronja would kill you,” she said as she took the garment and wrapped it around her neck. She crossed her arms to hold the heat in.
“Probably,” he agreed, peeking out onto the main road. They were staked out on the inner edge of the outer ring, several miles from the warehouse. It was nearing 9:00 P.M. and the streets were still full of Revinians. They moved mechanically, their Singers glinting like flint in the aura of the gas lamps. Across the avenue, Roark could just make out a wanted poster bearing his face nailed to a storefront. “But I doubt a scarf is going to keep people from recognizing me, anyway.”
Iris grumbled under her breath, then sank deeper into the wool. The tip of her nose was as red as her natural hair, which was currently obscured by an ashen brown wig.
“Trip.”
Roark looked down at the girl questioningly. She heaved a sigh, her breath mushrooming in the air, then leaned against the wall. She looked even tinier than usual in her padded overcoat and mousy wig. “I’m worried.”
“When are you not?”
“I’m serious,” she said sharply “This is taking longer than we thought.”
“We knew from the start it would take time to make a lasting c
hange,” he reminded her, a hard edge creeping into his tone. His defenses were up and he knew why. Iris did, too. “We have to get them to feel before we get them to rebel.”
“The problem is, the change does not hold,” Iris explained gently, as if he had not thought of this himself. She placed a gloved hand on his arm. He did not return the gesture, nor did he pull away. The wind gusted, stirring their coats and hair. “They feel something when she sings, but as soon as The Music comes back, it dissipates. I was worried about this when we came up with the plan. I hoped if they heard her enough, it would effect a permanent change in their minds … ”
“It might,” Roark cut in.
“It might,” she agreed with a somber dip of her chin. “But … we’re running out of time.”
“Give her another week,” he implored her. He stood up straighter despite the biting wind. “I believe in her voice.”
“I know you do,” Iris said, her chapped lips twitching upward. “I do too. But we have to be realistic. You were never very good at that.”
“Realism is overrated.”
“Surviving is not.”
Roark shushed her, tapping the face of his watch with a leather-clad finger. “Ten seconds.”
Iris huffed indignantly, turning her brooding eyes on the street. She had stopped shivering, though the tip of her nose was still ruddy.
“Iris,” he said tenderly. “You know this is our only shot.”
“I know. That’s what scares me.”
Roark looked down at his watch just as the minute hand clicked into place. Over the past week, he had grown accustomed to the sudden hush that enveloped the neighborhood each time Ronja’s voice flooded the Singers. It no longer unnerved him. Instead, it instilled awe in him. The paradox of silence and noise, the knowledge that fully autonomous thoughts and emotions were stirring in the minds of the Revinians, perhaps for the first time in their lives.
That was why it was particularly shocking when a blood-curdling scream lanced through the streets.
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