The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Most jarring to Zack was the sight of his right hand, a state-of-the-art prosthetic made of rubber, steel, and wire. Seven months ago, during their first violent encounter, Zack had rifted Rebel’s hand to a rotted husk. The temporal damage was irreversible. Permanent.

  But if Rebel was angry about it, he hid it very well. He merely greeted Zack with tired eyes, as if they were just passing acquaintances from an old and boring day job.

  “Trillinger.”

  Try as he might, Zack couldn’t hide his own contempt. This was the man who’d put a bullet in Mia’s chest. He’d bragged to Zack about killing Josh Trillinger—his only brother, the one person in his life who hadn’t died in the apocalypse.

  “Fuck you,” Zack said, his voice a cracked whisper. “I’d rift you again if I could.”

  “No doubt.”

  Another Gotham hurried to Rebel’s side, a chubby-faced man with blond, curly hair. He took a nervous look around the alley, then closed his eyes in concentration. A pair of illusory screens flanked Zack and his enemies, each one projecting a forced-perspective image of an empty corridor. Mink Rosen had been bending light since he was a child, and was widely considered to be one of the clan’s best lumics. The four of them were now completely invisible to prying eyes.

  Rebel pulled a long-barreled .44 from his belt holster, then checked the bullets in the chamber. “I told you to kill him.”

  Mercy leaned against the wall, sulking. “I found him. I kept him here. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to mettle up.” He gestured at Zack. “They won’t all be as easy as this one.”

  Zack was too busy thinking to listen. He figured Mercy couldn’t use her powers again without disrupting the lumic’s illusions. If he could just buy time until her solis wore off, he might have a fighting chance.

  He cleared his throat. “Since you’re here, Rebel—”

  “Won’t work.”

  “What?”

  “Stalling,” Rebel said. “I see the future. I know your plans before you do.”

  Ivy hailed him through his transmitter. “Careful. You have company.”

  Rebel pressed his earpiece. “Who?”

  “Peter. He’s nearby.”

  Cursing, Rebel raised his revolver and scanned the upper reaches of the alley. His wife was a traveler like Peter. She could feel his portals from a mile away.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “He’s covering his tracks. He must know I’m here too.”

  She was parked a block away in a floating black aerovan, her dark eyes fixed on the computer in her lap. She had camera drones all over the West Village Faith Mall, giving her a perfect view of Hannah and Jonathan as they walked the tempic corridors. Her brother and niece would take care of them soon enough. She was more worried about Rebel.

  “Just kill the breacher and get out of there,” she told him. “We’ll save Peter for another day.”

  Zack’s heart hammered as Rebel raised his weapon again. He struggled to speak with as much dignity as he could muster.

  “Four years from now, Rebel, when the end finally comes, you’ll see that this all was for nothing. You didn’t save the world. You just murdered a whole bunch of innocents.”

  Rebel looked at him with calm, steady eyes. “You think you know what’s going on. You don’t. But there’s no point arguing.”

  Mink and Mercy flinched as Rebel aimed his .44 at Zack’s head.

  “It’s time for you to go home.”

  His head snapped back in sudden alarm. His foresight had many new things to say about the immediate future, none of them good.

  Rebel swung his revolver to the left, then the right, then back again. The lumic screens that hid them also kept them blind to the outside world.

  Mink eyed Rebel quizzically. A floating word appeared in front of his mouth like a subtitle. PELLETIERS?

  Rebel shook his head. “Pendergen.”

  Bizarrely, his senses were telling him that Peter was coming from the east and the west. By the time he realized that they were nothing more than image ghosts, the real Peter jumped through a portal. He grabbed Mercy from behind and pressed his .38 to her temple. Her pistol fell to the ground.

  Rebel turned but—

  “Stop.”

  —froze a half second before he was told to.

  “One more move and I shoot her,” Peter told him. “Look ahead. You know I’m not bluffing.”

  Rebel’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Killing your own now, you piece of shit?”

  “Haven’t killed her yet.” Peter took a quick peek at Zack. “You all right?”

  “I’m breathing.” He looked to Mercy’s fallen gun. “Should I . . .”

  “No. Just stay where you are. And let’s take it on faith that if I see one flash of lumis or feel a hint of Ivy’s portals, I’ll put a hole in our girl here.” He breathed a whisper through Mercy’s hair. “I’m truly sorry, love.”

  Black mascara tears streamed down her face. “Go to hell.”

  Rebel raised his hands slowly, his finger still on the trigger. With every inch, he scanned the future for a ricochet path to Peter’s skull.

  “Uh, uh, uh,” said Peter. “No bank shots either. Drop the gun.”

  Rebel pointed his weapon at Zack again. “I don’t think so.”

  “Goddamn it, Rebel.”

  “I’m going to count to three . . .”

  “Don’t make me say it.”

  “One . . .”

  “You need Mercy more than I need Zack!”

  Rebel paused, stymied. Sadly, Peter was right. There were only two solics in the clan, and one of them was a child. Without Mercy, Rebel had no hope of killing the Pelletiers.

  Grudgingly, he lowered his weapon. Peter glared at him. “I said put it on the ground.”

  Rebel dropped the gun but kept his foot against it. There was a new wrinkle coming in eighty-five seconds, a final chance to turn the tables. All he had to do was buy the time.

  He shifted his gaze between the two illusive screens. “Nice trick you pulled. Guess the Dormer boy’s around here somewhere.”

  “Nowhere close,” Peter told Rebel. “I don’t put children in harm’s way.”

  “You’re putting all children in harm’s way! How can you even look at yourself?”

  “How can you?” Zack yelled. “You’re murdering people for no reason!”

  Peter flashed his palm at Zack. “Let me handle this. And you keep those screens steady, Mink. We don’t want the locals seeing our business.”

  Mink refocused his thoughts until the ghosted blinds stopped rippling.

  Rebel sneered at Peter. “Pathetic. Still talking like you’re one of us.”

  “I am one of you.” Peter’s expression darkened. He lowered his head. “I heard about your sons. You have my sincere condolences. Both of you.”

  Ivy choked back a cry in the aerovan. Rebel gritted his teeth. Two weeks ago, their twins had been born dead, discolored, as if someone had coated their bodies in metallic paint. Though the doctors were mystified, every Gotham in the village knew what happened. The deaths were a message from the Pelletiers, a vicious warning to leave the Silvers and Golds alone.

  Rebel brushed his tears with a finger. “Fuck you.”

  “Those people are monsters,” Peter said. “We have nothing to do with them.”

  “You have everything to do with them! You’re guarding their pets!”

  Zack clenched his fists. “We are not their pets, you goddamn—”

  “Zack, shut up.” Peter huffed a loud sigh. “Look, no one’s gonna change any minds tonight. Let’s just call it a draw. It’s the only way we’re all walking out of here.”

  Rebel took another peek at the future. Thirty seconds.

  “You’re still talki
ng to someone in the clan,” he mused. “They’re feeding you information. Who is it? Olga? Prudent?”

  “Look—”

  “Can’t possibly be Liam,” Rebel said. “He’s petitioned the elders to renounce his name. He wants to join my crew so he can bring you to justice himself. That’s what your son thinks of you.”

  Mercy suddenly caught an anomaly in her vision, a slightly skewed perspective between the trasher and the wall. Zack followed her gaze and saw exactly what she was looking at. Between the two illusive screens was a third one.

  David . . .

  Mercy turned to Rebel and opened her mouth. Zack drowned her out with a chuckle aimed at Mink.

  “Hey, Harpo. You’re new to this unit.”

  Peter glared at him. “Zack . . .”

  “Did Rebel tell you what happened to his other goons? Is that why you’re so nervous?”

  “Zack, I told you to be quiet.”

  Mercy’s voice was barely a whisper. “Dormer. He’s here.”

  Rebel bent his knees in readiness. Three . . . two . . . one . . .

  Suddenly a muscular man popped through one of Mink’s screens, a bouncer from Teke’s Humble Tavern. The moment he stepped through the lumis, five people abruptly turned visible in front of him. Only Rebel knew he was coming.

  Everything that happened over the next two seconds was pure reflex. Peter turned his gun toward the bouncer. Rebel grabbed his revolver and aimed it at Peter. David emerged from behind his cover. Mink flinched, then raised a glowing hand at him. Mercy broke free of Peter’s grip and reached for the .22 on the ground, just as Zack made a dive for it.

  And then chaos.

  Between the clamorous gunshot and the multiple flashes of lumis, Zack had no idea what was happening. He opened his eyes in a twitching squint and caught a fleeting glimpse of someone—something—attacking Rebel. The creature was white from head to toe and moved so fast that he was practically a blur.

  By the time Zack’s vision fully returned, the stranger was gone. Rebel, Mink, and Mercy lay crumpled on the concrete, their temples dripping with blood, their chests heaving with labored breaths.

  Zack stumbled forward. “What just . . . ?”

  A hand gripped his shoulder. “Zack? Is that you?”

  He spun around to find David in awful condition. His face was drenched in tears. The whites of his eyes were marred with dark red splotches.

  Zack held him by the arms. “You okay?”

  “I’m not sure. I was hit. I can’t see a thing. What happened?”

  Zack took another look at the three fallen Gothams. “I don’t know. Someone knocked them out.”

  “Who, Peter?”

  “No idea.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m here.”

  Peter stood ten feet behind them, looking no worse than he had before the scuffle. Zack eyed him up and down. “What the hell just happened?”

  “God only knows.” Peter looked to the street exit. “We have to go.”

  Zack turned his head and saw the bouncer writhing on his back, clutching his chest with bloody fingers.

  “He’s hurt.”

  “Who’s hurt?” asked David.

  “That bouncer. He . . .” Zack saw a thin wisp of smoke drifting up from Peter’s .38. “You shot him.”

  “He’ll live.”

  “He was innocent.”

  “He’ll live,” Peter insisted. “The hospitals have revivers. They’ll reverse his wounds like they never happened.”

  He holstered his gun, then opened a portal on the side of the trasher. “Come on.”

  Zack led David by the arm, his mind struggling to fill the blank spaces. Someone had saved them in the nick of time. Someone fast, faster even than—

  “—Hannah.” Zack spun around to face Peter. “She’s still out there. We have to—”

  “We will. Come on.”

  Peter ushered him and David through the portal, then took a final scan of the alley. Rebel and Ivy weren’t entirely fools. They’d likely sent swifters after Hannah, which meant it was already too late to help her. She’d have to get herself out of this mess. Her and her new friend.

  FOUR

  Hannah paced between two church lots, her anxiety increasing with each hurried step. It had been five minutes and counting since she followed Jonathan into the twisting corridors of the Faith Mall. She had no idea how to get back to Christopher Street. She didn’t know if Zack was okay.

  Why the hell did you leave your phone with him? said the Amanda in her head. You could have called him twenty minutes ago.

  She moved along the edge of the Sovereign Grace barrier, her fingers brushing lightly against the tempis. After thirty feet, she reached a T-shaped junction of tempic walls and stopped just short of the corner. “You okay?”

  No response. She peeked around the bend. “Jonathan, are you there?”

  “Still here,” he said. “Still pissing.”

  “Look, I don’t want to rush you, but I’m worried about my friend.”

  “Who? The guy with the chin fuzz?”

  Hannah fought back a laugh. “Zack.”

  “He’s one of us, I take it.”

  “Yeah.” Her smile went flat. “One of the few.”

  Jonathan zipped his fly, then made his way back to Hannah. Up close, she could see and smell every bit of his squalor. His slacks were patched with withered strips of duct tape. His dark brown button-down hadn’t been washed in weeks. She would have expected the Pelletiers to lend him a helping hand—a rescue here, a satchel of cash there—but they seemed perfectly happy to let him twist in the wind.

  “So what now?” Jonathan asked her.

  “I have to get Zack. He’s waiting.” Hannah eyed him guardedly. “Will you come back with me?”

  Jonathan shuffled his feet a moment before answering. “Okay.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m still not sure what to think about you. I mean, you’re obviously not looking to kill us, which is nice, but I don’t know if we’re better off with you people.”

  Hannah chewed her lip in contemplation. That was the third time he’d referred to himself in the plural. She hoped to God he wasn’t talking about his guitar.

  “When you say ‘we’ . . .”

  “That’s the other thing,” he added. “You told me I don’t have to be alone. I never said I was. I have Heath to think about. And he’s—”

  “Who’s Heath?”

  “—complex.”

  “Who is Heath?”

  A flying vehicle stopped sixty feet above them, bathing them both in a soft yellow light. Unlike the aerstraunt that had crossed their view earlier, the Dixon Hornet was a tiny rocket darter with one seat and three skinny tires. Its glowing aeric liftplates looked sinister in the darkness, like cat eyes.

  Jonathan squinted at the dawdling aero. “What’s he doing?”

  The pilot was no man. Had Jonathan been able to look through the windshield, he would have seen a pug-faced girl of Indian descent, an eighty-pound child in business wear. Though Gemma Sunder was only ten years old in body and temperament, she continually insisted that she was an adult, and the argument had some merit. Like Evan Rander, she was one of the world’s few loopers: a cerebral time traveler who lived a corkscrew life of rewinds and do-overs. She’d been through puberty three times, learned four languages, flown a jet, crashed a car, even killed a man once. She’d seen the start of apocalypse with her very own eyes before fleeing back to pre-adolescence.

  Now with four years of space between her and her nightmare, Gemma was determined to help Rebel and Ivy save the world. Her unique ability made her a crucial part of their team. The girl didn’t just see the future. She lived it one minute at a time.

  As her Hornet idled above the Mall, Gemma smiled at th
e breachers on her dashboard screen. “Hello, fuckers.”

  Jonathan turned to Hannah. “Who is that?

  She took a nervous step back, her eyes still raised. “I don’t know. Could be Gothams. Could be Deps.”

  “Deps?”

  “Government agents,” she explained. “Like the FBI.”

  “I know what they are. Why do you think it’s them?”

  Hannah looked at him sheepishly. “We’re kinda running from them, too.”

  Jonathan stared at her, blank-faced. “You’re fugitives.”

  “It’s not our fault.”

  “Federal fugitives.”

  “It’s not our fault!”

  “I don’t care whose fault it is! That’s the last thing Heath and I need!”

  “Look—”

  Hannah turned her head in alarm. She could feel a pair of smoky auras in the vicinity, two people moving fast—freakishly fast.

  Jonathan saw the color drain from her face. “What? What is it?”

  “Swifters.”

  “What?”

  “We have to go.”

  Hannah looked him over in frantic calculation. She’d never shifted a person of his size before. Even if she could fit him in her temporal field, he was way too heavy to carry on her back. It would have to go the other way.

  She circled behind him and tugged the guitar on his back. “We can’t bring this. You’ll have to leave it here.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “I need to shift us.”

  He pulled away from her. “I have no idea what that means, but my guitar—”

  “Jonathan . . .”

  “This thing pays the rent.”

  “There are dangerous people coming for us! We’ll die if we stay here!”

  Jonathan’s eyes bulged. He’d heard similar words seven months ago, in a White Plains research facility. If he hadn’t listened to Heath that night, he’d be just as dead as their other friends.

  He unslung his guitar and placed it gently against the wall. “Goddamn it. This better not be some sort of trick.”

  Hannah climbed onto his back, steeling herself for the hard task ahead. If even a small part of Jonathan slipped outside her temporal field, he’d be rifted. Living creatures couldn’t exist at two different speeds. It created chaos in the vascular system, triggering everything from gangrene to blood clots to instant, fatal heart attack.