The Porter Road Symphony Hall.
The building itself was embedded in the Seam, or rather, the Seam had been built up around the building. August squinted at the soldiers patrolling the barricade, and thought he spotted Soro’s lean form before remembering that Soro would be at the second checkpoint by now, half a mile east.
At his back, the usual argument was kicking off like clockwork.
“—don’t know why we bother, these people wouldn’t do the same for—”
“—not the point—”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“We do it, Jackson, because compassion must be louder than pride.”
The voice came through the comm set crisp and clear, and August instantly pictured the man it belonged to: Tall and slim with surgeon’s hands and tired eyes. Henry Flynn. The head of the FTF. August’s adopted father.
“Yes, sir,” said Jackson, sounding suitably chastised.
Ani stuck out her tongue. Jackson gave her the finger. Harris chuckled and began dislodging his knives.
A watch chirped.
“Showtime,” said Harris brightly.
There had always been two kinds of people in the FTF—those who fought because they believed in Flynn’s cause (Ani) and those for whom Flynn’s cause was a good excuse to fight (Harris).
Of course, these days there was a third kind: Conscripts. Refugees who’d crossed the Seam, not because they necessarily wanted to fight, but because the alternative of staying in North City was worse.
Jackson was one of those, a recruit who’d bartered service for safety and ended up as the squad’s medic.
He met August’s gaze. “After you, Alpha.”
The team had taken up their formal positions on either side, and August realized they were looking at him, looking to him, the way they must have looked to his older brother once. Before Leo was killed.
They didn’t know, of course, that August had been the one to kill him, that he had reached into Leo’s chest, wrapped his fingers around the dark fire of his brother’s heart, and snuffed it out, didn’t know that sometimes when he closed his eyes the cold heat still ached in his veins, Leo’s voice echoing steady and hollow in his head, and he wondered if gone was gone, if energy was ever lost, if— “August?” It was Ani speaking now, her eyebrows arched, waiting. “It’s time.”
He dragged his spiraling mind back into order, allowed himself a single, slow blink before he straightened, and said in the voice of a leader, “Fall in line.”
They crossed the street with quick, sure steps, August at the front, Jackson and Ani flanking him on either side, and Harris at the rear.
The FTF had stripped the plated copper from inside the hall and nailed it to the doors, creating solid sheets of burnished light. The presence of so much pure metal would burn a lesser monster—even August cringed, the copper turning his stomach—but he didn’t slow.
The sun was already past its peak, the shadows beginning to lengthen along the street.
An inscription had been etched into the copper plating on the northern doors.
SOUTH CITY CHECKPOINT ONE
BY THE WILL OF THE FTF,
ACCESS WILL BE GRANTED
TO ALL HUMANS FROM 8AM TO 5PM.
NO WEAPONS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT.
PROCEED TO THE SYMPHONY HALL.
NOTE: BY ENTERING THIS FACILITY, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE SCREENED.
August brought his palm to the door, and the other FTFs twisted out of the way as he pushed it open. Once, early on, he’d come face-to-face with an ambush, taken a round of heavy fire to the chest.
The bullets had done nothing to August—a well-fed Sunai was impervious to harm—but a glancing shot had taken Harris in the arm and, ever since, the team was more than willing to let him serve as a shield.
But as August stepped inside, he was greeted only by silence.
According to a plaque on the wall, the Porter Road Symphony Hall had “been a center of culture in the capital for more than seventy-five years.” There was even an image beneath the writing, an etching of the main lobby in all its wood and stone and stained-glass glory, filled with elegant couples in evening attire.
As August moved through the room, he tried to bridge the gap between what it had once been, and what it was now.
The air was stale, the stained glass gone, the windows boarded up and covered over with more stripped copper, the polished stone floor littered with debris, and the warm light traded for Ultraviolet Reinforced bulbs burning high enough for him to hear, loud and clear as a comm signal.
The lobby itself was empty, and for a single, hopeful, foolish second August thought that no one had come, that he wouldn’t have to do this, not today. But then he heard the shuffle of feet, the muffled voices of those waiting in the symphony hall, just as they’d been told.
His fingers tightened on the violin strap.
Ani and Jackson branched off to do a quick sweep, and he drifted forward, stopping before the depiction of a woman set into the floor. She was made of glass: hundreds, maybe thousands of small glass squares, something more than the sum of its parts—a mosaic, that was the word.
“Left hall, clear.”
The figure’s arms were stretched out and her head was thrown back as music spilled in gold squares from her lips.
“Right hall, clear.”
August knelt and ran his fingers over the tiles at the edge of the mosaic, tracing the purples and blues that formed the night around her, letting his hand rest on a single golden note. She was a siren.
He’d read about sirens, or, rather, Ilsa had read about them. August had always been more interested in reality than myth—reality, existence, that fickle state of being between a whimper and a bang—but his sister had a fondness for fairy tales and legends. She was the one who had told him about the women of the sea, their voices beautiful and dangerous enough to send sailors crashing onto rocks.
Sing you a song, and steal your—
“Ready when you are,” said Ani at his side.
His fingers fell away from the cool glass tiles, and he straightened, turning toward the inner doors, the ones that led into the symphony hall itself. The violin hung heavy on his shoulder, every step creating a faint hum of strings only he could hear.
August stopped before the doors and touched his comm. “Count?”
Phillip’s voice buzzed across the line. “On camera, it looks like about forty.”
August’s heart sank.
But this was why he was here.
This, he reminded himself, was what he was for.
Once, the symphony hall might have been stunning, but time—the Phenomenon, the territory wars, the creation of the Seam—had clearly taken its toll.
August’s gaze trailed across the hall—the copperless ceiling, the walls scraped bare, the rows devoid of seats—before landing inevitably on the people huddled in the center of the floor.