The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

She turned her attention to another casualty. This one lay crumpled on his back over two rows of seats, his shaggy blond hair dangling lifelessly over the cushions. Unlike Zack, David Dormer had managed to close his eyes before dying. He looked hauntingly at peace in his current pose, a serene young sleeper on a bed of red velvet.

  Gingold raised David’s right arm and studied his misshapen hand, the one flaw on an otherwise gorgeous sixteen-year-old. An ill-timed gunshot had robbed the boy of his ring and middle fingers. Melissa had been there when it happened.

  “The Australian,” Gingold scoffed. “Good riddance.”

  Melissa wasn’t a big fan of David either. The boy had threatened her with her own handgun and then blinded her with lumis. But he’d shown a clear devotion to his friends and had been downright fearless in the face of danger. He might have grown up to be someone truly extraordinary. That alone made his death a tragedy.

  Four rows beyond David, a pale arm poked into the aisle. Melissa muttered a curse under her breath. She already knew who it belonged to.

  Gingold followed her gaze, then cracked his first smile of the night. “Our little doormaker.”

  Both Melissa and Integrity believed that Mia Farisi had created the spatial warp at Battery Place, the huge round portal that had enabled her and her people to escape capture back in October. The wormhole was an unprecedented use of temporis, one with staggering implications. The biologists at Sci-Tech practically drooled at the thought of cutting the girl open. For them, Christmas had come fifty-one weeks early.

  Cain winced at the dead girl on his computer screen. “Ah, hell. Goddamn it.”

  Melissa reactivated the tempis on her gloves, then pulled Mia into the aisle. She looked achingly sweet in her beige dress and high heels, an ensemble that might have complemented her olive skin were it not for the frost burns. Trickles of blood ran from her nostrils, marring her cherubic features.

  Melissa looked closer. There was something about Mia’s arms that bothered her, an incongruity with her visual recollection. The girl had lost at least ten pounds since Melissa last saw her, but that wasn’t—

  “Found the chinny!”

  An armored operative lifted Theo off the floor, brandishing his corpse as if he were a trophy stag. Melissa lowered Mia to the ground, then joined the agent at the back of the theater.

  “He’s not Chinese,” she told him. “If you can’t be bothered to read the files, at least show some respect for the dead.”

  The agent shot her a murderous glare. “I read the files. These people were killers.”

  “Not this one.”

  Melissa crouched to examine the late Theo Maranan, the most baffling and enigmatic member of the group. Though his appearance was normally disheveled, he looked shockingly dapper now in a three-piece suit. His face and hair had been groomed to perfection. For a moment, Melissa wondered if Theo had dressed for his own burial, a possibility not entirely far-fetched, as the man had a talent for looking ahead.

  She dolefully examined his frost burns. What happened, Theo? Why didn’t you stop this?

  Gingold took a puzzled look around the theater. “Is that it?”

  “Is that all the bodies?” Cain asked Melissa. “What about the others?”

  Good question, Melissa thought. She scanned the gaps between the seats, her heart pounding with anxious hope. Maybe they got away. Maybe—

  “Found them,” an agent yelled. “Over here.”

  Melissa moved to the front of the theater, where the Great Sisters Given lay quiet and still.

  One was tall and skinny. The other was short and curvy. One had cherry-red hair and sharp green eyes. The other had jet-black tresses and the wide brown stare of a doe. They didn’t seem to share a single trait, yet Amanda had assured Melissa that she and Hannah Given were biological siblings. All they truly had in common was their insane predicament, a tale that Melissa still longed to hear.

  Melissa’s mind flashed back eleven weeks to a windy rooftop in Battery Place. As the sisters dangled over the ledge, Melissa had noticed a matching despair in their expressions, as if everything in the world had suddenly stopped mattering.

  “Wouldn’t you rather keep living?” Melissa had asked them, genuinely unsure of what they’d say.

  “That’s all we want,” said Hannah.

  “That’s all we ever wanted,” said Amanda.

  Now the sisters lay conjoined in a messy heap, their heads pressed together, their hands locked in a frozen clasp. There was a palpable grief on both their faces, a pain that seemed to go far beyond the physical. For all Melissa knew, they’d been looking right at their killer before he or she pulled the final trigger.

  The swinging doors flew open. Eight operatives charged in with their stretchers and scanners and black-fiber body bags.

  Gingold watched Melissa as she hurried toward the exit. “Where are you going?”

  “To canvass the witnesses some more.”

  “The ghost drills are coming. In twenty minutes, we’ll see the whole thing for ourselves.”

  Melissa shrugged. This place was already teeming with phantoms. If anything, she hoped Cassandra Dewalt would take her to the hidden smoke-easy underneath the lobby. It seemed both women could use a cigarette.

  As usual, Cain was one step ahead of her. She could hear the flick of his lighter in her earpiece.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “This isn’t how I wanted it to end.”

  “I know,” she said. “I believe you.”

  She stepped back outside and worked her way through the rabble, until she was just a stone’s throw from the marina. Looking up, she saw the Mark of St. George, the illuminated clock tower on the roof of the ferry terminal. Termites had eroded its support beams over the decades, turning a once-proud landmark into a safety hazard. Rather than rebuild, city officials had replaced it with a sixty-foot ghostbox. Now the Mark of St. George existed solely as a hologram, a life-size specter on a twenty-four-hour playback loop. Though it gleamed with sunlight even on the rainiest of days and vexed countless birds with its intangible perches, the clock still kept perfect time.

  As the hands reached ten seconds to midnight, the U.S. Ceremonial Guard began their light show. Millions of New Yorkers stopped what they were doing to watch the great celestial countdown in the sky.

  10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .

  Melissa lowered her head and stuffed her hands in her pockets, her mind venturing deep into next year. Though her case had suffered a tragic setback tonight, there were still blanks to fill. People to find.

  7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . .

  At the top of her list was Peter Pendergen, the getaway driver, the man the fugitives had traveled twenty-five hundred miles to meet. Either Pendergen had betrayed them or he’d simply failed horribly in his mission to protect them. Either way, the man had a lot to answer for.

  4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .

  Except there was something about the crime scene that continued to plague her, something about Mia Farisi. The girl’s arms had become thinner since Melissa last saw them. But more than that—

  1 . . .

  —they were longer.

  The sky erupted in lightworks—starbursts and roses and ethereal balloons, set against the backdrop of a spectral American flag. The Turn was a patriotic rechristening of an old familiar holiday, created by Teddy Roosevelt in 1913 as another venue to promote national exceptionalism. Let the rest of the world blow their noisemakers and call it New Year’s Eve. The Eagle, as always, went its own way.

  On the roof of the ferry terminal, at the base of the clock tower, a tall and reedy couple watched Melissa with interest. They were an elegant duo in their long English waistcoasts and virgin wool slacks, with pulse-heated filament gloves that had yet to be invented on this Earth. While the man’s fine white hair stayed perfectly still in the wind, the woman’s long brown locks flapped ch
aotically.

  The pair conversed in a foreign tongue, a complex mixture of Asian and European languages that had become the lingua franca of their era.

  “This won’t last,” Esis cautioned. “The woman already creaks with doubt.”

  Azral scowled at Melissa’s distant figure. “Let her. She’s no longer a threat.”

  A portal opened up inside the Mark of St. George. A six-foot man stepped through the surface. Neither Azral nor Esis turned to look as he passed through the illusory wall of the tower. They’d felt him coming from miles away.

  The man moved to the ledge, standing snugly between the mother and son. Esis clutched his arm and gave him a crooked smile.

  “My heart returns,” she cooed. “He teases with his fleeting presence.”

  Azral regarded him with soft deference. “You didn’t need to come, Father.”

  “There’s no risk,” the patriarch insisted. “I was careful, as ever.”

  With his family, Semerjean Pelletier didn’t need to wear his many masks. He didn’t have to force his words through crude English, or pretend to be interested in the inane prattle of others. Shame he only had a few minutes to enjoy his freedom.

  He focused his gaze on Melissa. His sharp blue eyes turned cold, severe. “We should kill that one.”

  “Not yet,” said Azral.

  “You underestimate her, sehgee. The woman is clever.”

  “That cleverness will aid us in the future, should these soldiers become a problem again.”

  Semerjean pursed his lips, frustrated. There was once a time where he could see the strings in all their splendor. Now his foresight had become withered with age, and no amount of temporis could fix it. He had to entrust the long-term planning to his wife and son.

  He flipped a hand in surrender. “Fine,” he said in unintentional English.

  Esis caressed his shoulder. “My poor darling. If you wish to return to us—”

  “No,” Semerjean insisted. “I’m still needed where I am.”

  “I just hate to see you suffer so.”

  Semerjean sighed. It was indeed a chore to live among these ancients, with their stenches and chemicals, their fallacies and histrionics. But they weren’t all unbearable. Some were pleasant. Some were amusing. Some even surprised him.

  He stood with his family, under the stars and lumic projections, while the locals continued to celebrate another pointless trip around the calendar. Even here, from his high perch, he could smell the flavored poison in their cups. He could hear their discordant warblings of “Auld Lang Syne.”

  Semerjean felt nothing but pity for the hopeless beasts below, these oblivious cattle. They had four years left until the end of their world, and all they could do was sing.

  PART ONE

  THE GUITARIST

  ONE

  Time passed.

  January threw one last blizzard at the people of New York before settling in to gentle flurries. February served up a shuffle-deck assortment of sunshine and frigid rain. March brought scattered patches of warmth to the entire country, as well as a few surprises.

  On Wednesday the twenty-third, at 6:34 in the morning, an abandoned church in Grandview, Washington, exploded in what witnesses described as a dome of blinding light. The flare ended four seconds after it began, leaving nothing behind but a round, smoking crater. The hole was so smooth and geometrically flawless that a flying reporter for Seattle-9 News briefly lost his composure on live lumivision. “Christ,” he’d uttered, from his single-seat Skyro. “There isn’t a bomb in the world that can do that.”

  The bizarre nature of the blast set millions of tongues wagging about miniature Cataclysms and threats of worse to come. Rumors grew so wild, so fast, that the president of the United States had to make an emergency address to the nation.

  “We will get to the bottom of this,” he promised, in his strong and soothing baritone. “In the meantime, I urge you all to stay calm. We’re Americans. We don’t panic. We persevere.”

  The story dominated the headlines for four more days, until George Gunther made some startling news of his own. Since 1991, the wealthy industrialist and eminent skeptic had offered twenty million dollars to anyone who could predict five natural disasters in the course of a year. The Gunther Gaia Test had become an annual sweepstakes for the self-proclaimed augurs of America, with thousands mailing their guesses each January. Their continued failure to get even one forecast right served as endless fodder for Gunther, a longtime critic of the billion-dollar prophecy trade.

  Then along came Merlin McGee. The aspiring futurist, a coffeehouse poet in Oregon City, had submitted seventeen predictions of natural catastrophes around the world, all of which occurred with pinpoint accuracy. Experts studied his vault-sealed entry for weeks before admitting that there was no earthly way the man could have cheated. Gunther had no choice but to admit that his challenge had been bested. In the course of a day, Merlin McGee became a household name, a multimillionaire, and the world’s first certified prophet.

  As the cameras snapped at the national press conference, McGee humbly thanked Gunther for his graciousness, then warned the residents of Abilene, Texas, that a Class-3 tornado would strike the town at half past noon the following Sunday. It did.

  While America kept chattering about vaporized churches and precognitive poets, the Dewalt Vintage Filmhouse quietly reopened for business.

  Cassandra Dewalt tightened her shawl, shivering in the brisk night air as she waited under her new marquee. It had been ninety-four days since a metaphysical mishap brought federal agents to her cinema, as clear a sign as any that she needed to make some changes. She severed ties with her foreign film smugglers, closed the basement smoke-easy, and replaced every sign, seat, and gadget that wasn’t up to city code. She’d also found a generous patron to help finance the renovations.

  She squinted her gaze as two tall figures in springcoats approached from the east, a rather fetching pair at that. While the younger fellow kept his shy gaze on the pavement, the older one walked with a high head and a cheery gait. Cassandra easily recognized him from his Eaglenet profile. Her financial white knight had arrived right on schedule.

  “Mr. Pendergen,” she said, extending a hand. “So nice to finally meet you.”

  He shook her hand warmly. “The pleasure’s all mine. And please call me Peter.”

  Cassandra studied him carefully. He was certainly enticing with his deep blue eyes and chestnut hair, his sturdy build and soft Irish accent. She couldn’t even guess the number of blouses his smile had popped open. But behind all his allure, there was something unsettling about Peter, an aura of deceit. The man was a skilled and accomplished liar. Of this Cassandra had no doubt.

  She turned to look at Peter’s companion, a lithe and lovely teen in an ill-fitting baseball cap. “And what do I call this one?”

  Peter clapped the boy’s back. “This is Liam, my son. We have some family business after this. Hope you don’t mind me bringing him along.”

  “Well, that depends on what you’re—”

  “Wow.” Peter looked up and marveled at the state-of-the-art marquee, computer-controlled and a hundred percent lumic. The Dewalts would never need their ladder again. “That’s wonderful. How’s business?”

  “Hard to say. We’ve only been open since Friday.”

  “No movie tonight?”

  “No.” Cassandra shifted uneasily on her feet. The theater had been closed on Mondays since 1948. She’d be damned if Peter didn’t already know that.

  He scanned her expression, his grin deflating to a smirk. “I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here. Why I sent you that money.”

  “I have a guess,” Cassandra admitted. “I’ve done my research. When you’re not writing sword-and-sorcery novels—”

  “Just swords. No sorcery.”

  “—you write magazine art
icles about supernatural occurrences.”

  “Well, yes, but mostly to debunk them. There’s usually no sorcery in those tales either.”

  “You can’t debunk mine,” she insisted. “It happened.”

  “I believe you, Cassandra. I didn’t curry your favor just to call you a liar.”

  She shivered again, her mind replaying the awful events in the screening room. “It doesn’t matter. My theater’s had enough bad press. If you’re looking to write an exposé—”

  Peter shook his head. “My journalism days are long done. I swear it.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I just want to know.”

  Cassandra puffed a heavy breath, her foot tapping in dilemma. When the universe wasn’t throwing portals and corpses at her, she was a powerfully sharp woman. She could sense that Peter was telling the truth about his intentions, yet the man still reeked of deceit.

  She sighed with resignation, as if she were about to be probed on an exam table. “Go on, then. Ask your questions.”

  “That’s fine. But—”

  “We’d rather look around,” said the boy at Peter’s side. “Inside. If that’s all right with you.”

  Cassandra studied him closely. This “Liam” wasn’t as meek or awkward as he’d first appeared. And though he spoke with a perfect American dialect, there was something unnervingly . . . foreign about him.

  “All right,” she said, suddenly eager to be done with both men. “Have your look.”

  —

  Cassandra led them into the lobby, then left them to their business. The moment she closed her office door behind her, Peter glared at his companion.

  “I told you to let me do the talking.”

  “You said ‘Don’t let her hear your accent.’ She didn’t.”

  “You knew what I meant.”

  David pulled off his baseball cap and fluffed his hair. In the six months since coming to New York, he’d opted to grow it out. Now his golden locks nearly fell to his shoulders. To one smitten housemate, he looked like a rock star. To Peter, he was a throwback to the mid-1980s, when personal grooming had briefly become anathema to the youth of America.