The afternoon sun poured through the tall conservatory windows, gilding every music stand in amber. Bows glided across strings in slow, sighing arcs as the orchestra warmed up; a hundred separate voices searching for a single breath.

Among the basses, one seat gaped open.

Emma plucked a soft harmonic, eyes flicking to the vacancy. “Where’s Louis?” she whispered, worry edging her tone. She thumbed her phone as if expecting a message that never came.

Jonas, loosening the spike on his double bass, shrugged. “He’s missed a couple rehearsals, but never without texting. Maybe he’s sick?”

Emma shook her head. “He would’ve warned us. Something’s off.”

The stage door creaked. Both glanced up—only to see Roxanne in the hallway, caught mid-step. She hadn’t meant to be noticed; a sheet-music binder sat against her hip. Her gaze moved straight to the empty spot, then dropped to the small cat-face charm she’d unconsciously been fidgeting with.

A flicker—hurt, regret—crossed her face before she wiped it blank. She backed away, forcing calm composure, and the door sighed shut behind her.

Emma exhaled. “Whatever’s going on…I hope he’s okay.”

Jonas tightened his bow hair, but his joke-ready grin never came.

The gap stayed empty as the conductor raised his baton.

Sunlit order bled into underground shadow.

Louis stood in a dim warehouse spattered with colored bulbs and graffiti slogans. A bass guitar hung on his shoulder like a brand-new limb. Amp towers hummed, cables coiled like serpents across cracked concrete.

Pops — built like a refrigerator in a battered roadie vest — rolled an amp past them, gave Sona a silent thumbs-up, and disappeared into the dark with the efficiency of habit.

Arven tapped a kick-drum pedal. “Not just notes, Louis. Let the groove crawl up your spine.”

Isa flicked a pedal switch, guitar growling. “And ditch the concerto posture—bend your knees, breathe fire.”

Louis adjusted the strap. The body of the bass pressed into his rib cage—foreign, thrilling. He struck a note. Too clean—sterile. He growled the next, letting it buzz. Better.

“Again,” Isa ordered.

They launched into Passus. The first bar, Louis fumbled; a clang rang out. Isa winced but shot him a quick nod—Fix it. He slid up a fret, locked onto Arven’s pulse, and the pocket snapped shut. Sweat popped along his hairline; his right shoulder burned from the unfamiliar angle, but the sound—raw, pulsing—was worth the sting.

Sona, arms folded, studied him like she studied storms: measuring voltage.

Song bled into song. No polished scores—just riffs with teeth. Every chord felt like slamming a door in the system’s face. Louis’s fingers numbed, then burned back awake; each blister blooming felt like proof he was alive.

They finally crashed to a halt. Isa flopped onto a sagging couch, grabbed the remote, and surfed past static until a news anchor’s strained voice echoed off cinder block.

ILLEGAL ROCK GIG RAIDED — DOZENS DETAINED

On screen: riot police storming a basement venue. A teen clutched her guitar like a shield until a baton smashed it from her hands. Another kid was dragged out screaming, feedback wailing as amps toppled. Fire from a trash can licked the ceiling.

Louis’s stomach lurched.

“Again,” Arven muttered, handing him a chilled beer. “Every week.”

Isa’s jaw tensed. “They want silence. We give them noise.”

Louis watched a microphone sail across the screen like a thrown spear. Sirens drowned it out.

“Doesn’t it scare you?” he asked, voice low.

“Course it does,” Isa said, meeting his eyes. “But a world where my voice needs an approval stamp? That terrifies me more.”

Arven clinked his bottle to Louis’s. “Besides, life’s dull without a little shrapnel.”

Louis tasted the beer—cold, bitter, real. The warehouse smelled of dust and ozone, and something in him clicked into place. “I’m in,” he said. “All the way.”

Sona finally spoke. “Good. We’ve a gig in three weeks. Be ready—or be gone.”

He nodded, pulse roaring in his ears.

“Ready.”

Isa killed the TV. “Gear down. Same time tomorrow.”

Night settled. The last case latched shut. Outside, the city’s neon heartbeat pulsed through puddles on the asphalt.

Louis reached his car. On the dash lay his conservatory pin—crest gleaming faintly in street-lamp gold. Mark had pinned it on his jacket the day he was accepted. Pride, back then.

He rolled the cool metal between blistered fingers and, for a flicker of a heartbeat, pictured the bass section without him: Emma holding down his lines with that steady calm, Jonas cracking a joke to hide the worry in his eyes. Maybe they’d wonder where he’d gone. Maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, the music he needed now was somewhere else.

This has to be worth it.

He thumbed down the window. The pin clicked onto the road, twirled once, came to rest—ordinary metal under an extraordinary sky.

Louis didn’t look back.

Headlights carved into the dark as he drove toward a future scored in distortion and freedom—toward the next rehearsal, the next raid, the next impossible song.

The empty chair behind him faded into the rearview, but the music ahead was roaring.

And he pressed down on the gas.