The Boy Who Hated Sound

The Ghost in the Family Tree

The cold metal barrel presses hard against my ribs.

I stop breathing. The air in the clock shop feels heavy, tasting of dust and old copper. My eyes lock onto the man holding the gun. His hair is streaked with gray, and a deep scar cuts across his left cheek. It is Uncle Emeka. Everyone in our family thought he died in the great subway collapse five years ago, the exact same night our parents vanished into thin air.

"Uncle Emeka?" I manage to say, my voice trembling against the cold steel of the weapon.

"Quiet, Kelechi," Uncle Emeka says. His eyes dart toward the broken doorway where the Syndicate guards are starting to stand back up. "If those people hear your voice, they will not just take your memories. They will burn this entire junction down to ash."

"Let him go!"

Chidi steps out from behind the workbench, his face red with fury. He takes a hard step forward, his hands clenched into tight fists. "Are you out of your mind, Emeka? You left us! We spent years thinking you were dead while we struggled to survive in the upper blocks!"

"I stayed away to keep you alive," Uncle Emeka snaps back, keeping the gun steady against my side. "The Syndicate has eyes everywhere. And your little cousin here just rang the dinner bell for every acoustic hunter in Neo-Prague."

Before Chidi can argue back, Baba Tunde steps out from the shadows near the back hatch. The old clockmaker does not look scared of the gun at all. He just watches Uncle Emeka with a sharp, tired expression.

"The boy opened the seal because he wants his sister back," Baba Tunde says.

"Adaora is not real, and you know it," Uncle Emeka says, looking down at me with a mix of anger and deep sadness. "Kelechi, listen to me. Your power creates echoes from the old city timeline. Every time you force a memory to take physical form, the Syndicate tracks the frequency. They used your sister's echo to lure you down here into the Core."

My chest aches. I remember the note on the tape machine. I remember the way Adaora smiled at me before she vanished into the air.

"She felt real," I say, my voice barely above a breath. "She talked to me. She gave me food."

"Because your mind is desperate for peace," Uncle Emeka says, his tone softening just a little bit. He lowers the gun an inch, though he keeps it close. "Your parents spent their whole lives trying to build a device that could restore the city's true history without letting the Syndicate wipe our minds. When the Syndicate found out, they erased them. And now, they want your brain to finish the machine."

Zainab steps out from the dark doorway of the back hatch, holding a small paper notebook she grabbed from the desk. She adjusts her round glasses, her eyes fixed on my uncle.

"If the Syndicate wants his brain to run their memory-wiping machine, then staying here arguing is a waste of time," Zainab says, her voice flat and logical. "The guards are clearing the rubble at the front of the shop. We have less than two minutes before they break through the back."

"She is right," Chidi says, glaring at Uncle Emeka. "If you are really on our side now, stop pointing weapons at my cousin and help us get to the Core."

Uncle Emeka lets out a heavy sigh. He pulls the gun away from my ribs and slides it back into his jacket holster. He looks toward the dark maintenance tunnel behind the wooden hatch.

"We are not going to the Core to rescue a ghost, Kelechi," Uncle Emeka says, turning to face me directly. "We are going there because the machine your parents built is still down there. And it is the only thing that can destroy the Syndicate's memory grid once and for all."

"I am going because Adaora is there," I say stubbornly. I refuse to believe she is just a trick of my mind. Even if my head created her, she is the only good thing I have left.

Uncle Emeka opens his mouth to argue, but a loud metallic crash echoes from the front of the shop. The Syndicate guards have cleared the debris. The bright blue glow of their rifles spills across the broken floorboards.

"Move! Now!" Uncle Emeka shouts.

He grabs my arm, pulling me toward the dark hatch. Zainab and Chidi rush through ahead of us, disappearing into the pitch-black maintenance shaft. Baba Tunde stays behind, standing by his workbench with a calm smile, picking up a tiny brass gear.

"Go on," Baba Tunde says without looking up. "I have a few broken clocks left to fix."

We dive through the hatch just as a massive beam of blue energy blasts through the back wall of the shop, turning the shelves and thousands of clocks into a cloud of fine, glowing dust.

Uncle Emeka pulls the heavy iron hatch shut behind us and drops a thick metal locking bar across it just as heavy fists start hammering against the other side.

We are plunged into total darkness, sliding down a steep, winding metal chute that drops deeper into the earth than we have ever been before. The air grows hot and thick, smelling of ozone and burning wires.

We slide for what feels like miles before we hit a pile of soft rubber mats at the bottom. I scramble to my feet, coughing as the dust settles around us.

We are standing on a narrow metal walkway suspended over a vast, open cavern. Below us stretches a massive machine the size of a city block. Thousands of glass tubes glow with a pulsing purple light, running up into the ceiling like the veins of a giant beast. At the very center of the machine sits a raised platform, and standing on that platform, looking right toward our walkway, is a small figure in a yellow jacket.

"Adaora!" I shout, taking a step forward.

Before Chidi or Uncle Emeka can stop me, the walkway beneath our feet gives a violent shudder, and a wall of pure sound drops down from the ceiling, blocking our path completely.