Ari and Zac

Chapter 20: The Counter-Disruption

Chapter 20: The Counter-Disruption

Zac stood in the narrow galley kitchen of the beach rental house, with his phone resting on the countertop before him. Not that this phone was doing him any good lately. He scowled and looked away from the text message thread with Ari, letting the screen go to sleep.

Things were not going according to plan. He had hoped that he might be able to win her over to the Disruption cause without resorting to anything underhanded. If only he could make her appreciate all the music that would soon be lost forever—completely wiped out from the world's collective memory—maybe then she would make a voice recording of her own free will.

But it didn't seem to be working. His favorite songs all sounded like a bunch of shouting to her. She said so herself. How could he win her over to the cause, when she didn't understand what was at stake? She couldn't even remember the hit songs from a few short years ago. When she heard them now, they sounded ugly to her ears.

No, he thought, thrusting his hand through the mop of dark hair that had fallen over his forehead. The time for musical education had passed. He needed a plan. A real plan.

Zac could still hear Cyrus and Grandfather, scheming together in the next room. Their voices were too low for him to make out what they were saying, but he had a feeling they were talking about him.

He'd lied to them earlier. He'd boasted that he had a plan for Ari, but it wasn't true. He'd only said that to buy himself a bit more time. The truth was, Zac had no idea how to break through the wall of silence that Ari had erected around herself. He'd spent a week with her now, and he felt like he was slowly winning her trust, but he was nowhere closer to hearing her sing.

Maybe Cyrus was right. Zac grimaced slightly at the thought. Maybe this whole business with Ari was a dead end, and he was wasting precious time. They all knew that the Counter-Disruption agents were closing in. So far, Zac had managed to elude them when he left the house at night to go meet Ari, but it was only a matter of time before one of those agents spotted him again. Maybe they already had. For all he knew, they might be out there watching, every single time he went to meet her.

Zac balled his hand into a fist. What would those thugs do if he led them to Ari? The very thought of it made him sick to his stomach. She was just some innocent girl—but she was quite possibly the only human being alive who posed a threat to SirenSong. How far would Dominick Torrent go in his quest for total domination? Zac didn't doubt for a second that the SirenSong CEO would want Ari out of the picture, permanently, the moment he found out about her voice.

Maybe Zac should distance himself from her. Stop seeing her. Leave town, and head to Atlantic City on some wild goose chase. Maybe that would be the noble thing to do.

But Zac couldn't face the prospect of letting down his grandfather. Not now, with so little time left and so much still at stake. Zac reached for his phone, already composing his next text message in his head:

"Never mind. Forget the music. Let's just hang tonight, OK?"

Zac flicked the phone awake, expecting to see some new reply from Ari, but their lengthy thread of text messages was nowhere in sight. His eyes narrowed in confusion. The screen had gone completely white.

Frozen.

Zac swore under his breath. God-damn obsolete piece of shit! His smart phone was growing more and more unreliable by the second. He'd had the same phone for three years now, and the damn thing was always freezing. He desperately needed an upgrade.

There was only one way to unfreeze it. He had to force shutdown, and then wait for it to reboot itself. Which took eons, of course. Honestly, how had anyone ever tolerated technology this slow? How was it possible that the 2016 world hadn't risen up in revolt over the sheer annoyance of waiting for a so-called "smart" phone to reboot?