The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “I never had a feel for the lyrics,” Hannah said. “Except for ‘two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.’ I love that line. Whenever we sang those words together, I always felt so close to her. My mother and I were the screwballs in our family. It fit us to a T.”

  Jonathan turned around and saw the tears glistening in her eyes.

  “She died with everyone else,” Hannah told him. “When the sky came down on our whole goddamn planet. There are so many people that I miss. And there are so few of us left. Whether you like it or not, whether you trust me or not, we have a whole world in common.”

  Hannah looked down at her shuffling feet. “And I know a lot of songs too.”

  A fluorescent light washed over the corridor. Jonathan and Hannah looked up to see a flying saucer soar across the sky on glowing struts of aeris. A lumic sign on the undercarriage advertised RICK’S RIVERVIEW BISTRO: YOUR HEAVEN ON THE HUDSON.

  The aerstraunt drifted out of view. Hannah snorted bleakly. “Freaks me out every time.”

  Jonathan’s expression softened. “Me too.”

  “Listen—”

  “Did you see it?”

  “What?”

  “The end of the world,” he said. “Did you see the sky come down?”

  Hannah bit her lip and nodded. Jonathan pulled off his sweatband and took a long, hard look at his Pelletier bracelet.

  “They knocked me out before it happened,” he said. “I missed the whole thing.”

  In the light of the moon, Hannah could see how ragged he was—his clothes, his hair, even his skin.

  “I’m Hannah,” she said. “Hannah Given. Is your name really Trevor?”

  He looked at the ground and grimly shook his head.

  “What’s your real name?” Hannah asked.

  Jonathan took a deep breath and stared up at the night. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. And then he told her.

  —

  The Cataclysm had razed Greenwich Village to the ground, giving the architects and city planners the chance to rebuild it with manic flair. Some of the buildings were so oddly shaped that the spaces between them had become works of art. The alley behind Teke’s was a particular marvel: a narrow lane that curved north and south in measured arcs. From bird’s-eye view, the corridor looked like a sixty-yard sine wave.

  Zack waited impatiently at the Christopher Street junction, with Hannah’s purse clutched in one hand and her mobile phone in the other. He held the receiver twelve inches away from his ear, the only way to tolerate the howling voice on the other end of the line.

  “Goddamn it! What did I tell you two?”

  Zack put the phone back to his face. “Peter, calm down.”

  “The government thinks you’re dead! What do you think’ll happen when they see a dark-haired woman whizzing around without a speedsuit?”

  “She was careful, all right? She didn’t shift until she got to the alley.”

  “That doesn’t mean a fly’s fart if someone saw her. Christ!”

  Zack peeked around the curved wall and saw bouncers guarding the utility door at Teke’s. Clearly he and Hannah were no longer welcome there.

  He retreated from view. “Peter, if you’d just unclench a moment and focus, you’d see that a taxi isn’t our best option.”

  “I already changed course. We’ll be there in ten.”

  “Okay. Good. The only problem—”

  “Call Hannah and tell her to get back to you. Now.”

  “—is that I can’t call Hannah,” Zack said. “I have her phone.”

  The line fell silent. Zack could practically hear David face-palming in the background.

  “For God’s sake,” Peter said. “How the hell have you people lived this long?”

  “Look, she knows where I am. She’ll come back. Just get here as f—”

  Something cool and hard pressed the back of Zack’s neck. His heartbeat doubled. His hands rose in reflex.

  Peter’s tinny voice crackled through the receiver. “Zack? You there?”

  A hand plucked the phone from his grip and closed it. “Toss the bag.”

  The voice was a woman’s, a very stressed one at that. A mugger? Zack wondered. A junkie?

  He lobbed Hannah’s purse across the alley. It fell with a thud atop the lid of a trasher. The square blue bins were scattered all over the city, a way to erase trash through temporal reversal. Zack didn’t enjoy sharing the timebending power of a garbage can, but maybe if he concentrated . . .

  The woman pressed her gun into him. “Uh, uh, uh. No temporis. Take five steps forward and turn around.”

  He did as he was told and saw his assailant in full light. Though she was a complete stranger to Zack, she bore a striking resemblance to the woman Hannah had described earlier, the gothy young woman who’d bolted from the tavern.

  His eyes dawdled anxiously around the barrel of her .22. “Who are you?”

  “Shut up. I didn’t say you could talk.”

  “You don’t look like a Dep.”

  “Did you not hear me?”

  Zack suddenly remembered the three floating tables—all crashing to the ground, as if someone had accidentally sapped the aeris out of them.

  He winced in realization. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a Gotham,” Zack said. “You’re one of Rebel’s goons.”

  The woman shifted her gun to her other hand. “Don’t even think about rifting me, Trillinger.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You can’t. I jammed you.”

  He remembered Amanda telling him about a Gotham she’d fought in Battery Park, a woman who’d blocked her access to tempis. Peter had recognized her description and told them her name. Zack struggled to recall it now. It was something odd. Venus. Mercury.

  “Mercy,” he blurted. “Your name is Mercy.”

  Her eyes widened a bit before hardening again. “Enjoy the irony.”

  Zack didn’t. He was too busy calculating. It had been at least six minutes since Mercy fled the tavern, more than enough time for her to call for backup. There was probably a team of Gothams racing toward Hannah right now.

  As for him . . .

  “Rebel’s coming, isn’t he? That’s why you haven’t shot me. He wants to kill me himself.”

  Mercy avoided his gaze. Her voice fell to a mutter. “I said stop talking.”

  Zack craned his neck and studied the sliver of night between buildings, a curved belt of stars that looked just like a sneer. He wanted to smack that grin right off the universe, but he couldn’t even rust the gun that was holding him here. He was out of options. Out of time.

  As his future shrank to flimsy minutes, Zack catalogued a list of regrets. He should have spent every waking moment of the last six months with Amanda. He should have listened to Hannah when she suggested they leave the bar. He should have never let his guard down tonight. He should have never worn the goddamn red shirt.

  THREE

  The Severson Peregrine was the cheapest aerovan on the market, a squat and boxy eight-seater with all the charm of a cinder block. Like most Severson products, the Peregrine was made with budget parts for budget customers, and it showed. The seats were hard. The engine was weak. The chassis shook at the slightest hint of wind. But it brought the sky to millions of low-income Americans, making it the top-selling van for nine consecutive years.

  For Peter Pendergen, fugitive ringleader of the Silvers, there was no better choice of transport. Peregrines were ridiculously easy to acquire on the black market, and had become so damn ubiquitous on the highways and skyways that people barely noticed them. He’d purchased four from a local junker and kept them parked at strategic locations around the brownstone. His companions needed an escape plan that didn’t rely on him, should the worst come to pass.

  Except now
the worst seemed to be happening to two of his people, and Peter wished to God he had a faster ride.

  He pursed his lips at the Manhattan skyline, then turned off the Peregrine’s altitude lock. “Hang on.”

  David clutched his seat with a sickly wince as the van lurched upward. It broke away from the traffic of the Staten Island Aerofare and made a diagonal climb toward the heavens. At a thousand feet, Peter coasted to a stop and turned off the lights. The vehicle hovered invisibly above Newark Bay, a lone gray speck in the nightscape.

  “Why are you stopping?” David asked. “Zack’s—”

  “I know.”

  Peter leaned over and grabbed a wood-handled revolver from the glove box. Like the Peregrines, the .38 was registered under his cover identity: one Arthur King of Avalon, New Jersey.

  “We’ll never reach him in this thing,” he told David. “Not in time.”

  “You’re making a portal.”

  “Yup.”

  “I thought you needed a flat surface for those.”

  “I have one.” Peter checked the bullet chamber, then aimed the .38 at the sun roof. “Brace yourself.”

  David shielded his face as a deafening gunshot shattered the glass. He had to shout over the ringing in his ears.

  “You couldn’t just open it?”

  Peter cleared away the lingering shards. “Doesn’t open in flight mode.”

  It didn’t take long for David to see why. The van rocked wildly as Peter climbed through the hatch. He balanced himself with a surfer’s grace, then looked down at David.

  “You’ll have to come with me. Once I’m gone, I can’t jump back.”

  “I don’t want to shake you off.”

  “I’ll be fine. Just hurry.” Peter crouched down and held his hand out to David. “Son, you have to trust me.”

  Lack of trust wasn’t the issue, as Peter had proven himself over and over again. He was also a ridiculously easy man to read. He roared his opinions with brass trumpet bluster and wore his moods like a quart of cologne. The only time he became cryptic was when he talked about his past. Mia had tried to pry the story of his life, but all she got were the bullet points. Born in Dublin. Orphaned at nine. Discovered by Gothams at thirteen and welcomed into their clandestine community in Quarter Hill, New York. There Peter went on to become many things—a husband, a father, a writer, a widower, a zealous protector of his people’s secrets, and one of the greatest teleporters the Gothams had ever known.

  He was also their greatest traitor.

  His decision to help the Silvers came with consequences, more than Peter was willing to admit. He’d become an exile of the clan, disowned by everyone who’d ever loved him, even his son. Yet Peter remained stubbornly convinced that the troubles would blow over.

  “My people are just scared,” he’d repeatedly told the Silvers. “The apocalypse has them all turned around. But once they see the light of reason, they’ll end their stupid war. We’ll all go back to Quarter Hill and we’ll work together to stop what’s coming.”

  That right there was David’s problem with Peter. He saw everything through rose-colored blinders, as if the universe would bend to his good intentions. Did he really think he could talk sense into his people? He’d spent six months trying to parley with Rebel and Ivy. Nothing had changed. The Gothams still hunted them with mindless obsession. The world was no closer to being saved.

  “Please,” Peter said. “We can help Zack and Hannah, but you have to do what I say.”

  Frowning, David took his hand and clambered out of the Peregrine. The chassis swayed from side to side, nearly causing both men to tumble off the roof. Once the van fell still, Peter let go of David and took a careful step forward.

  “All right. Don’t move. This is the hard part.”

  He squinted at Lower Manhattan, where the buildings were flecked with bright lumic trimmings of every color. Somewhere deep in that rainbow jungle was the perfect spot. Peter just had to find it.

  A traveler has to know where he’s going, he’d taught Mia. If we can’t see our destination, we have to remember it. Every wall. Every brick. Every last detail.

  Grunting, he forged a mental link to a ceiling in the West Village, a grocery store not far from Teke’s. Peter could only assume that it was empty at this hour. Then again, he hadn’t been there in years. For all he knew, the place had become a police station. He had little choice but to take the risk.

  Peter waved his hand above the Peregrine. A five-foot-wide portal bloomed across the center of the roof. He lowered himself to his hands and knees and took a quick peek through the surface.

  “It’s safe,” he told David. “I’ll go first but you have to be quick. And watch where you jump. You don’t want to touch the edges.”

  Peter leapt forward. The portal swallowed him like thick wet paint.

  David watched the sluggish ripples, then took a last anxious look at the city. He hoped Peter knew what the hell he was doing. He hoped Hannah and Zack had the good sense to stay alive.

  He took a deep breath and jumped into the portal. The Peregrine rocked four times in his absence, then floated as calmly as the moon and the stars.

  —

  Zack stood rigidly in the shadow of the trasher, his tense gaze flitting between Mercy and her .22. She held it steadily enough to suggest that she knew how to use it. If he tried to rush her, he’d get a bullet in the face. If he tried to run, she’d shoot him in the back. He didn’t relish the thought of dying in this weird and twisty corridor, this Salvadored alley.

  He scrutinized Mercy and saw colorful tattoos through her stockings. One of them was just a single word in artsy script letters.

  “‘Mercurial,’” he read. “Is that your real name?”

  She threw an anxious peek over her shoulder. “I told you to shut up.”

  “Who names their kid ‘Mercurial’?”

  Mercy stared at him, astonished. “You don’t have a lick of sense, do you?”

  “I’m a dead man, anyway. So . . .”

  He tucked his hands behind his back and leaned against the trasher. Mercy raised her gun. “Put them back up.”

  “Fuck you. My arms are tired.”

  “You think I won’t shoot you?”

  “I think you’re holding me for Rebel,” Zack said. “He’ll want to know where my friends are. Maybe smack me around. And when he finally sees that I’m not talking, he’ll use that big ugly gun of his and finish me. That sound about right?”

  “Not even a little.” Mercy took another look around. “He doesn’t care what you know. He doesn’t care who plugs you. He told me to do it.”

  Zack fought to maintain a cool façade. “So why haven’t you?”

  “You want me to?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut the fuck up.”

  She swept her hand in a tight circle, filling the alley with an invisible burst of solis. In high doses, the energy hindered all forms of temporal manipulation. Zack’s talents were suppressed for another few minutes, while the space around them became impervious to ghost drills. The last thing Mercy needed was Integrity on her trail.

  “Augurs,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  “My parents are augurs. They named me Mercurial because they knew that’s how I’d be.”

  Zack crossed his arms with a bitter scowl. “They should’ve called you Killer.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “No. You just take away their powers and let others do the killing.”

  “Fuck you. You think I’m doing this for fun?”

  “I have no idea why you’re doing it.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” Mercy said. “You know what’s coming.”

  Zack nodded darkly. “The end of the world.”

  “What? You think I’m lying?”

 
“No. My best friend’s an augur. He sees it every day.”

  “So do my parents,” Mercy said. “They’re both wrecks.”

  “They should be. I already watched it happen to my world. Your future’s my past.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “We have our own plan to stop it, you know. One that doesn’t involve murder.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Mercy yelled. “Every day you people live is another nail in the coffin.”

  “Who told you that? Rebel?”

  Mercy looked away uneasily. Zack snorted. “Yeah. Figured.”

  “He’s the only augur we have who hasn’t lost his mind.”

  “Oh, really? Think again.”

  “Shut up.”

  “He’s wrong, Mercy. Killing us won’t save the world.”

  “I said shut up.” Mercy tightened her grip on her pistol. “Everything was fine till the day you showed up. You and your demon friends.”

  “My demon what?”

  “You know damn well who I’m talking about.”

  Zack blinked at her three times before laughing in astonishment. “The Pelletiers? You think they’re our friends?”

  “They pop up and save you whenever you’re in trouble,” said Mercy. “They kill us with tempis and tell us to leave you alone. That woman threatened me, Trillinger. She looked at me with those black shark eyes and she . . .”

  Her mouth trembled. “Don’t tell me they’re not on your side.”

  Zack could hear the quaver in her voice. This woman shared every bit of Amanda’s fear. When they talked about Esis, they sounded exactly the same.

  “Mercy, listen to me. We’re not with them. We hate them just as much as you do.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “You’re killing innocent people for nothing!”

  “Not innocent,” said a gravelly voice behind Zack. “And not nothing.”

  A new figure came around the bend, a man in a stretched black T-shirt and army pants. Though Richard “Rebel” Rosen was every bit the hulking figure that Zack remembered, his appearance had changed. His face was thinner. His once-bald head was covered in fuzz. He wore a matching pair of scars on his cheeks, two pocked brown lines that Semerjean had rifted into his skin like war paint.