The Boy Who Hated Sound

The Frequency Trap

The sound from the heavy metal horn feels like a physical blow to my chest.

I drop to my knees, slamming my hands hard over my ears, but the noise still cuts straight through to my brain. It is a sharp, screeching frequency that fills the archive room with a wave of agonizing pressure. The tall wooden shelves shake, and old books tumble down in showers of paper and dust, hitting the stone floor all around us.

"Get up, Kelechi!" Chidi shouts over the deafening noise.

I look up through squinted eyes. Chidi is struggling against the shockwave, his face twisted in pain as he tries to reach the desk. He grabs a heavy glass inkwell and hurls it across the room at the massive Syndicate guard standing in the shattered doorway.

The inkwell shatters against the guard's heavy gray coat, leaving a dark stain, but the man does not even flinch. He keeps the metal horn pointed straight at us, the device pulsing with a bright, angry white light.

Zainab moves faster than I expect. Instead of cowering behind the desk, she slides across the slick floor, reaching a small control panel built into the side of the stone wall. She flips a thick plastic switch down with all her weight.

With a loud mechanical click, the screeching sound cuts off instantly.

The sudden silence is so heavy my ears ring in protest. I gasp for air, falling forward onto my hands and knees, my whole body shaking.

"The emergency circuit breakers!" Zainab calls out, breathing hard as she stands up from the panel. "These old bunkers were built with manual overrides. Their frequency generator needs a live grid to keep that blast going, but I just cut the power to this sector."

The massive Syndicate guard lowers the horn slightly, staring down the dark, unlit corridor behind him. Without the bright glow of his device, his face looks shadowed and angry behind his filtered mask.

"You think a simple circuit breaker can stop us?" the guard says, his voice deep and rough. "The entire city grid belongs to the Syndicate. You are trapped four floors underground with no way out."

"We are not staying here to chat," Chidi says, grabbing the back of my jacket and pulling me up to my feet. "Move, Kelechi!"

We scramble past the desk, following Zainab through a narrow service door hidden behind the tallest bookshelf. The door leads to a steep flight of rusted iron stairs heading further down into the dark, away from the archives and away from the guards.

As we race down the steps, the metal rings loudly under our boots, echoing in the enclosed stairwell.

"Where are we going?" I ask, clutching my left arm where the bruise from the fall is beginning to throb. "If the Syndicate controls the whole city grid, running deeper underground will just back us into a corner."

"We are not running away," Zainab says over her shoulder, her voice calm and completely focused as she leads the way down the steps. "We are going to find someone who knows how to break their control. Baba Tunde’s shop is three levels down, hidden inside the old subway junction."

"Baba Tunde?" I remember the old clockmaker my cousin and the other kids in the neighborhood spoke about in hushed tones. They said he was a myth, an old man who lived among broken clocks and could tune out the city's noise entirely. "Do you actually think an old clockmaker can stop the Syndicate?"

"Baba Tunde is not just a clockmaker," Zainab says, pushing open a heavy fire door at the bottom of the stairs. "He is the only person in Neo-Prague who used to build the frequency dampeners before the Syndicate took over. If anyone can help us figure out how to trace Adaora's echo without setting off their alarms, it is him."

We step through the doorway into a massive, open cavern.

The air down here is different. It is cooler, smelling of old oil, ticking gears, and melting solder. Towering walls of rusted subway cars form a makeshift maze around us, their windows dark and broken. Thousands of mechanical clocks hang from the metal beams overhead, creating a strange, overlapping chorus of steady ticking that somehow drowns out the distant roar of the city above.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

For the first time all night, my head stops throbbing. The steady rhythm of the clocks pushes the harsh noise of the world away, letting me breathe normally again.

"Over here," Zainab says, pointing toward a small brick building squeezed tightly between two abandoned train carriages.

A warm yellow light shines through the small pane of glass in the wooden door of the shop. A hand-painted sign hanging above the lintel reads: TUNDE REPAIRS – TIME IS FRAGILE.

We cross the concrete floor quickly, our footsteps muffled by a thick layer of dust. Chidi keeps looking back over his shoulder, his hands clenched into fists, expecting the Syndicate guards to pour out of the stairwell at any second.

"If the guard we saw upstairs reports our location, we only have a few minutes before they lock down this entire junction," Chidi says, his voice tight with worry.

"Then we better hope Baba Tunde is home," Zainab replies.

She walks up to the wooden door and knocks three times in a steady, rhythmic pattern.

For a moment, nothing happens. The clocks around us keep ticking, filling the empty space with their steady beat. I reach out and touch the doorknob, feeling the cool metal beneath my fingers.

Before Zainab can knock again, the door swings inward with a slow, heavy creak.

An old man stands in the doorway. He has white hair that sticks out in wild tufts around his head, and thick glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He wears a heavy leather apron covered in tiny pockets filled with gears, wires, and small screwdrivers.

Baba Tunde looks at the three of us, his dark eyes sharp and taking in every detail in a single glance. He does not look surprised. He looks like he has been waiting for us.

"You brought a lot of noise with you tonight, Kelechi Nnamdi," Baba Tunde says, his voice deep and raspy. "Step inside before the walls start talking back."

We rush through the doorway, and Baba Tunde closes the heavy wooden door behind us, locking it with a loud, satisfying click.

The inside of the shop is packed tight with hundreds of clocks of every shape and size. Grandfather clocks tick against the back wall, pocket watches hang from strings along the ceiling, and every table is covered in tiny metal parts. It is quiet, safe, and entirely removed from the chaos outside.

"How do you know my name?" I ask, stepping up to the old clockmaker.

Baba Tunde turns around, walking slowly over to his central workbench where a vintage tape machine, identical to the one that vanished from my room, sits with its reels spinning silently.

"I know your name because I taught your father how to build these machines before the Syndicate stole the blueprints," Baba Tunde says, picking up a small brass gear. He turns to look right into my eyes. "And I know you are here because the echo of your sister is tearing the city apart piece by piece."

"You know where she is?" I ask, my heart leaping into my throat.

"She is in the Core," Baba Tunde says, setting the gear down with a sharp clink. "And the Syndicate is already using her to set a trap for you."

Before I can ask another question, the grandfather clock against the back wall stops ticking.

The hands on all hundreds of clocks in the shop snap backward, spinning in reverse with a furious whirring sound. Then, the front door of the shop explodes inward in a shower of splintered wood and flying glass.