RQS ECHOES

(Broklin is paralyzed in the center of the destroyed studio. The dust from the torn acoustic foam dances in the beam of light entering through the door. Under his expensive boot rests the broken neck of his five-string bass, snapped right in half. His cell phone vibrates in his leather jacket pocket. He pulls the device out with a trembling hand, breath held, and answers without looking at the screen).

BROKLIN: (His voice cracking, mixing panic and disbelief)
— ...Hello?

(On the other end of the line, the heavy sound of mechanical breathing. Valves exhaling smoke. And then, a guttural laugh, dry and loaded with distortion).

JONAH:
— Welcome back to gravity, preppy. Is the Bossa Nova over in Paris?

(Broklin swallows hard, his eyes sweeping over the Yamaha reference monitors, which are now just empty shells with shattered screens).

JONAH:
— Are you looking at the floor now, Broklin? See that piece of wood you're stepping on? That was your pet bass. Did you think you could take my code, my hate, and turn it into a little nylon acoustic guitar to please your styrofoam investors? You played with my algorithm... so I came to do a physical Hard Reset on your matrix.

BROKLIN: (Clenching his fist, his voice choked with hatred)
— You're a dead man, Jonah. I'm going to destroy you. The building's security... the cameras...

JONAH: (Interrupting with a lethal growl)
— Cameras? My General melted the internal circuit of your building before I even broke down the first door, you moron. Nyx's witchcraft fried your firewall while I used this titanium arm of mine to punch through the motherboard of your twenty-thousand-dollar rack.

(The silence on Broklin's end is the sweetest melody Jonah has ever heard).

JONAH:
— Pay close attention, you fake vampire. The "Audio Civil War" isn't on Pro Tools. It's on concrete. Kelma might have chosen your weak system, but you're not going to spit out little plastic notes using my legacy anymore. Kneel down in the puddle of oil I left in the middle of the room and cry for your dead empire.

JONAH: (Lowering his tone, his voice sounding like a rusty chainsaw)
— And if you or the Pop Princess try plagiarism, or dare to mention the name "Rust & Lord" again... the next place I'm going to redecorate with my crowbar is the living room of Apartment 14. Have a good day, Tech Lead.

(Jonah hangs up. The dead dial tone echoes in Broklin's ear, while a solitary spark pops from a severed cable in the corner of the studio).

The dead dial tone echoed in Broklin’s ear. He slowly pulled the phone away from his face. The silence in the destroyed room was suffocating, cut only by the electrical buzz of a loose cable on the ceiling spitting blue sparks.

He looked at the floor. The neck of his five-string bass — the instrument he had used to compose the first chords of the RQS empire — was snapped in half under his boot. The thick, dark oil Jonah mentioned formed a grotesque puddle near the wreckage of the main server rack.

The threat to Apartment 14 echoed in his mind. Jonah had crossed the final line.

Broklin didn't scream. He didn't throw the phone at the wall. The panic from seconds ago gave way to something much worse: the absolute coldness of a machine executing a deep format.

He put the phone back in his leather jacket pocket with a methodical movement. He walked over the shattered glass of the Yamaha monitors, the crunchy sound echoing under his boots, and went to the built-in security safe on the back wall, the only place Jonah and Nicole Nyx's witchcraft hadn't been able to detect or open.

He typed in the 16-digit password, activated the biometric scanner, and turned the heavy handle. The inside of the safe revealed a flat, matte black military laptop, and a solid-state external drive isolated from any wi-fi network. The root backup. The unbreakable soul of RaQuel Synths.

Broklin grabbed the laptop and the drive, sat on a rubberized equipment crate that had survived the carnage, and turned the machine on. The screen lit up, bathing his hardened face in a lethal cyan glow.

He took his phone out of his pocket again and, instead of calling the police, dialed the number for Apartment 14.

She answered on the second ring.

— Babe. — Broklin's voice wasn't shaking anymore. It was pure ice. — You were right. He broke everything. The physical servers, the instruments, the walls. Nicole Nyx melted our internal circuit and he did a Hard Reset on the base with a crowbar.

Broklin heard Kelma's breath catch on the other end of the line, but before she could panic, he continued, his tone dropping an octave, loaded with surgical fury.

— Don't leave the apartment. Building 14's security system is closed and analog, they can't hack it remotely. Lock the titanium door. I recovered the root backup from the safe and I'm already heading home.

Broklin typed a command line into the military laptop's terminal, accessing the hidden directory they had finalized before their trip to Paris.

— He thinks the war is on concrete, Kelma. He thinks breaking twenty-thousand-dollar monitors erases who we are. — Broklin gave a grim half-smile, his eyes locked on the green screen running injection codes. — He's a dinosaur holding a stick. We don't need this scrap metal studio to humiliate his legacy.

The loading bar on the laptop's terminal reached 100%. The COLD WAR album, with the 10 cover tracks ready, was primed for the global distribution servers.

— We're releasing Cold War tonight. Prepare your backup gear there in the apartment. The Audio Civil War isn't going to be on Pro Tools, let alone on concrete, my love. It's going to be in the mind of every single fan of his. He wants rust, industrial metal, and screaming? We're going to turn his entire catalog into Soul, Shoegaze, Dream Pop, and Bossa Nova. We're going to drown his hate in our elegance. Lock the door. I'm coming.

The titanium door of Apartment 14 slid shut with a hermetic seal, instantly cutting off any chaotic sound from the city outside. Broklin tossed the Ferrari keys on the table and walked briskly into the soundproof room, the true, impenetrable bunker of RaQuel Synths. Kelma was already there, safe and untouchable, sitting in front of the high-fidelity backup monitors, the soft LED lighting reflecting in her sharp CEO eyes.

Without saying a word, he plugged the military solid-state drive into the terminal. On the main screen, the 10 tracks of the Cold War (Vol. 1) album glowed in neon green, lined up like warheads ready for launch: from Ctrl + alt + Bossa to Circuit breaker love.

Broklin placed his heavy, tattooed hand over Kelma's hand, which was already resting gracefully on the keyboard.

— His legacy of hate just became VIP waiting room music — he whispered, his voice loaded with lethal irony, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. — Our empire is secure, my General.

Kelma smiled, that sharp, subversive, and passionate smile, and together, they pressed the Enter key.

The upload bar shot up. 100%. DEPLOY SUCCESSFUL. The global server was flooded with the most elegant musical heresy ever created. The Cold War had officially begun on the net, but right there, inside the fortress of Apartment 14, the only thing that mattered was the indestructible warmth of the family they had just protected.

💾 END OF SEASON 2