Ari and Zac

Chapter 32: Silence

Chapter 32: Silence

Ari stepped through the bathroom doorway, out into the hall. Two men bounded up the stairs in her direction, shouting and waving devices that looked like some kind of cross between a Taser gun and an old-fashioned bullhorn.

AudioPhasers?

Ari had seen them on the news before, but never up close. All weaponized sonic devices had been outlawed under President Kardashian's Acoustic Safety Act, after manufacturers had tried to market them as an alternative to pepper spray. The phasers were designed to stun the target, temporarily incapacitating the central nervous system with a focused beam of high-intensity sound, but they'd ended up banned after a couple unlucky victims showed signs of permanent nerve damage. Only military and law enforcement personnel were allowed to carry them in the U.S. Were these police officers, then?

Ari's eyes widened. Thank goodness she hadn't gone out the window with Zac. She didn't want to get arrested. The police would notify her parents for sure, and she and Lucy would never hear the end of it. They weren't even supposed to leave their house tonight!

Ari raised her hands above her head. They couldn't really arrest her, could they? She'd done nothing wrong. She just needed to find Lucy, and her sister would explain to the police how they'd ended up here by accident. They thought it was a party. They didn't even know what it was abo—

Ari didn't finish her thought. An indescribable force slammed against her eardrums, and her mind disintegrated. Erased. Blotted out by a noise so intense, so absolute, that the sound of it could only be compared to total silence.

She crumpled to the floor, gripping her head. Her hands clawed at her hair, and she might have ripped her own earlobes off with her bare hands, if one of the men hadn't grabbed her by the wrists. He hauled her to her feet.

Ari blinked, dazed, unsure how much time had passed. Her other senses had returned to semi-functional status now. She could see, although her vision blurred from the way her eyes were tearing up. She could taste the metallic tang of blood inside her mouth. But her hearing....

A moment ago, the house had been filled with sound: shouting voices, slamming doors, windows rattling in the wind and pouring rain. It was all background noise, filtered out and disregarded, but now the absence of sound weighed down on Ari like a leaden cloak. Total silence. It was as if someone had taken a remote control and hit the Mute button on the entire world—as if the blast from the phaser had rendered her brain completely incapable of processing any form of auditory input.

Ari wondered vaguely how long the sensation would last. Was that what those lawsuits meant by nerve damage? Permanent nerve damage?

Great, she thought. As if muteness didn't make things hard enough.

The man was trying to speak to her, but Ari had no idea what he was saying. She shook her head dully, pointing at her ears.

He held her roughly by the upper arm and marched her in front of him down the stairs. A cluster of people stood in the living room below, surrounded by other men with AudioPhasers. Not arrested, Ari realized. None of them were being led away in handcuffs. They were simply being rounded up and held... held captive.

Ari felt her heartrate quicken. These men were no police officers. She should've gone with Zac. Had Lucy gotten out? Ari stumbled on the bottom step and nearly fell as her eyes sought out her sister's face.

There. Lucy was standing on the far side of the room with her hands on her hips and a defiant look on her face, speaking to one of the men. Ari couldn't hear what her sister was saying, but she could venture a guess.

"Do you know who I am?"

Or more likely: "Do you know who my father is?"

Ari stumbled in her sister's direction, trying her best to stay calm. At least Lucy was OK. Captured but not audio-blasted. Her sister would talk her way out of this, just like Lucy always did. She'd invoke the mighty Callahan name, and these men would be falling all over themselves to let the two of them go.

To her intense relief, Ari sensed her hearing start to return as she reached her sister's side. The voices were still muted, but at least she wasn't cloaked in that eerie silence anymore. She could tell her sister had her voice raised, shouting, but the words didn't seem to have their usual effect. The men didn't look impressed. Not even a little bit intimidated. If anything, they were laughing in Lucy's face.

Ari lurched and caught her sister by the arm. Lucy turned toward her, her face red and blotchy. She said something, but she spoke too softly for Ari to understand. Ari shook her head and pointed toward her ear. Lucy mouthed the words to her again, exaggerating the shape of the sounds to let Ari lip read.

My phone, Ari. Do you have my phone?

It was only then that Ari remembered. She'd taken the cellphone from her sister during the meeting. She still had it in her pocket. Ari fished it out and held the phone toward Lucy, but her sister didn't take it from her. Something had distracted Lucy's attention. In fact, when Ari looked around the room, something had distracted everyone—captives and captors alike.

Ari squinted in confusion, looking from face to face. It was like everyone had frozen in place, caught in some magic spell. They all stood there, mouths hanging open, and the dull echo of their shouting voices ceased. The sound was replaced by something else. Ari could barely hear it, but she knew what it must be.

SirenSong?

Really? Now? In the middle of everything, someone decided it would be a good idea to put on some SirenSong and throw a trance party?

Ari almost could've laughed. The strangest sense of déjà vu had just come over her. It was the same sensation she had when she worked as a mermaid in the tank, and SirenSong turned on over the speakers in the viewing chamber. The sound couldn't reach her underwater, and it left her free to observe the transformation in the people listening on the other side of the glass—the way their eyes glazed over with that disconcerting, vacant stare.

But Ari wasn't underwater now. The effects of the AudioPhaser receded bit by bit, and the sound affecting everyone else grew clearer by the second. Ari strained to hear it, willing her ears to work. One of the men who stood by Lucy was fiddling with the smart-ring on his finger, and the music seemed to be coming from there. The people all crowded toward him, pushing and shoving their way closer to the source.

Other men around the room started looking at their own smart-rings as well. Were they all playing it? The one who had dragged Ari down the stairs pulled out an iScroll from his pocket and snapped it open. He projected a small image onto the wall.

Ari peered at it curiously, going up on her tiptoes to get a better view. SirenSong didn't usually come with video images—especially not super low-res like that. Music videos were a thing of the past. Anyway, whatever he was playing didn't sound like SirenSong at all. Her hearing had cleared enough to make out the melody, and Ari recognized it instantly. She would have known that song in her sleep.

Not SirenSong, she realized, as the truth penetrated in an icy wave.

That was Periscope. An old-school cellphone video, streaming live... A human voice singing out loud for the whole world to hear.

But it couldn't be. Not live. Ari knew that was impossible—because she knew exactly whose face she would see projected on the wall, singing that song at top of her lungs.

Her own face. Her own soggy, blood-red hair. Her own purple bath towel wrapped around her shoulders. A girl who thought she was alone, with her eyes closed and her head tipped back in the privacy of her bathroom, belting out the words to her favorite song.

They were all listening to her now. The others in the room pushed and shouldered her out of the way to get a better view.

No, Ari thought, as the waves of panic closed over her head. It couldn't be.

And yet, she couldn't unsee the evidence before her eyes. She couldn't unhear the sound that met her ears. No, not impossible after all. For, Ari knew exactly when that video had been recorded—and by whom.