The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “Then do your own thing,” Zack said. “Win some cash. Buy an island. Just leave us alone.”

  “Oh, I’ve tried that. I have.”

  “And?”

  Evan sighed at the floor. “What can I say? You people drive me nuts but you’re still the closest thing I have to home.”

  “That’s pathetic.”

  “You think I’m the worst person you know? I’m not even your worst friend.”

  “Yes. Right. That evil psycho Hannah.”

  “I’m not talking about Hannah.”

  Zack turned around. More disturbing than Evan’s cryptic comment was his sudden look of horror, as if he’d accidentally opened the gates to Hell. His mirror images became distorted by ripples. He flailed about the cell, his voice fading by the moment.

  “Wait! Wait! I wasn’t going to . . . look, I wasn’t thinking, okay? I’m sorry! Please! Bring him back!”

  Zack retreated a step. “Evan, what—”

  “Bring him back!”

  His howling cries quickly shrank away. As the shimmering walls settled, Zack once again saw his own reflection. He was back to his original status quo, just him and his six doppelgängers.

  Zack slid down the wall and sat motionless in the corner. He stared at his knees, pondering everything he’d just heard and witnessed. He didn’t move for a very long time.

  —

  Eternity.

  The word splashed like acid through Zack’s troubled consciousness. In the absence of all stimuli, the suppression of all bodily functions, the gears of time came screeching to a halt.

  Daunted, but not defeated, he labored to maintain an artificial cycle. He bounced around the cell in busy activity for what felt like sixteen hours, then lay on the floor with his arm draped over his eyes for another estimated eight. At the start of each new “day,” he etched a notch on his mental calendar, bid a merry “good morning” to his invisible jailers, then began his first of many exercise routines.

  “You’re not going to break me,” he said between jumping jacks. “I’ve got a Swiss inner clock and a head full of stories. I’ve got worlds in here, fuckers. I have—”

  Eternity.

  “—ideas.”

  Zack wandered the cell in zigzag patterns, forcing himself down the twisting corridors of his imagination. He envisioned an alternate timeline in which he and his friends made peace with the U.S. government. Under the sage command of Melissa Masaad, they fought crime as an elite team of super-agents (DP-X). Zack plotted two full seasons of their television adventures before the series jumped the shark. It then devolved into a hokey silver-age comic book, filled with costumes and code names and cackling supervillains. Zack took vicious glee in casting Azral as the group’s haughty archnemesis. He dressed him in a snow-white unitard, then searched for an appropriately ludicrous moniker. Time Tyrant, or Count Tempora, or Doctor—

  —Eternity.

  No, no. Come on. It has to be something silly. Doctor Dour, or—

  “Doctor Douche,” he uttered, with hysterical giggles.

  On his eleventh day, it occurred to Zack that his cell was probably shifted at an accelerated speed—20x, 40x, 500,000x, who the hell knew? He could languish here in captivity for a thousand years before Amanda’s next lunch. The Pelletiers could toss him back in the house by suppertime, a frail and gibbering husk who’d been broken under the weight of—

  “No.”

  —eternity.

  “Stay strong. Stay strong. Stay strong.”

  Despite his resolve, he quickly began to see the strain on his ubiquitous reflections. They met his sideways glances, their brows curled in increasing despair. Goddamn it. Stop. You’re giving them exactly what they want!

  By his twenty-second day, he couldn’t bear to look at himself anymore. The existence of his mirror twins plagued him, these sick and twisted freaks. They didn’t eat. They didn’t sleep. They never grew stubble. Their hairs were unpluckable and their fingernails were too short to chew. They were pathetic, unnatural. And they had to die.

  On Day Thirty-Three, Zack punched a reflection, shattering three knuckles against the wall. Just as he delighted in the fresh data of agony, a hazy light filled the cell and he was instantly healed.

  “No. No!”

  Zack screamed and thrashed about the cell. The Pelletiers were trapping him in an endless state of constancy, stretching him out on a rack of time until he begged for forgiveness.

  “No no no.” He shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. “You owe me an apology. You owe me an apology.”

  On the forty-fourth day, he finally stopped counting. His day and night cycles had become a pitiful charade, as messy and erratic as his thoughts. He lay on the floor in a fetal ball and apologized to the Pelletiers over and over. He was sorry for Amanda, sorry for the insults, sorry for not appreciating them and their fine contributions. He promised to be a better team player. He swore to do whatever they wanted him to do.

  By the time he gave up apologizing, he could only imagine that years had passed. The second apocalypse had come and gone and the Pelletiers had taken him back to their native era. He wondered if Evan was still alive in a neighboring cell. The last two mice in the farm. Squeak fucking squeak.

  “Please,” Zack begged his captors. “I just want to talk to him again. Bring him back. Bring him back.”

  The room went dark. Zack sat up in confusion, then frantically touched his eyeballs. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced complete blackness. Was he suffering hysterical blindness, or did something else happen?

  He fumbled to his feet. “What’s going on? What—”

  “Shhhh,” said a voice in the darkness. “Calm yourself.”

  The sound came from all directions, a soft and breathy whisper that swirled around Zack like a breeze. He couldn’t tell if his visitor was young or old, male or female, real or imaginary.

  “Who . . . who are . . . ?”

  “Be quiet. If you wish to leave this awful place, you’ll shut your mouth and listen.”

  Now Zack could tell that the speaker was a man. He detected a hint of a peculiar accent, a highborn cadence that fell far off Zack’s registry. Odder still, the man’s whispers were garnished with faint aural embellishments—wind chimes and whistles and crackling white noise.

  “A final portal will come for you shortly,” the stranger informed him. “You’ll have one last chance to earn our clemency. I’ve argued in favor of sparing you but Esis very much wants you dead. If you have a shred of sense left in you, boy, you won’t say a thing to provoke her.”

  Zack shook his head vehemently. “No. I won’t. I won’t. I just want to go home.”

  “As ever, the final decision rests with Azral. He’ll be watching—”

  “Wait. I thought you were—”

  “Just listen! As you face him, he’ll be watching the strings closely. The only way you’ll earn his mercy—the only way—is to let Amanda go once and for all. Do you hear me?”

  Zack heard plenty. Between the hissing whispers and spectral embellishments, there was something familiar about the man’s voice, as if Zack had heard it before in a dream.

  “Do you understand?” the stranger asked.

  “I hear you,” Zack said. “I understand.”

  A heavy sigh filled his ears. “It baffles me, Trillinger. You’re usually one of the more sensible Silvers. Yet when it comes to Amanda—that grating, sanctimonious woman—you lose all sense of reason. Did you think you could evade our wrath on a technicality, a wishful parsing of the word ‘entwine’? It was never about sex, you idiot. Amanda has to receive her next lover willingly. She’ll never do that as long as you’re distracting her.”

  A dozen questions collided in Zack’s head. He sifted through the wreckage, struggling to piece them together. Is this why . . . What about . . . Bre
eding mice . . . Peter?

  Don’t even bother trying to figure it out, his inner Evan told him. They’re buying another umbrella.

  “So what do I say to Azral?” Zack asked.

  “It’s not what you say. It’s what your future says. Let her go. Stop hindering our work. You do that and you may just find your way back to your friends. They miss you, you know.”

  Tears streamed down Zack’s face. He fought to speak clearly. “How . . . how long have I—”

  “You’ve barely been gone a day.”

  Zack choked back a cry and palmed his face with both hands. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t mistake the nature of my aid, boy. We are not friends. I owe you no answers. You, however, owe me your life. Esis would have slaughtered you months ago if it wasn’t for me.”

  The voice seemed to travel now. It trailed around Zack in a slow, menacing loop.

  “I think the more pressing question is who are you?”

  Zack looked around blindly. “What?”

  “My son considers you a nuisance. My wife sees you as a dangerous rebel. I disagree with both of them. I believe you’re a potential asset, one who could help us achieve great things. Only you can determine which of us is right. Think on it carefully. By now you know full well how we deal with nuisances.”

  The stranger’s voice dropped an octave. “Pray you never learn what we do to rebels.”

  The lights flickered back on. Zack shielded his eyes and took a twirling scan of the room. He was alone again. Just him and his mirror selves.

  His thoughts flashed back to his last day on Earth, his mad encounter with the stranger who gave him his silver bracelet. He was a tall and well-built man whose face was hidden behind a tempic mask. All Zack could see of him were his fierce blue eyes. They’d danced with amusement, even as people burned all around them, even as the whole world crumbled.

  Zack had prayed to the gods and fates that he would never meet that man again. Now apparently he had. More disturbing still, it seemed that harsh and faceless stranger was the nicest of the Pelletiers.

  —

  The final portal came as promised. Zack stared at the liquid surface, waiting for Esis’s tendril. A full minute passed before he realized his mistake. His captors weren’t grabbing him this time. They were inviting him.

  Zack closed his eyes, sucked a breath, then took his first willful journey through the Pelletiers’ portal.

  Azral and Esis watched him vacantly as he walked the long corridor. Though he looked every bit the man they’d captured last night, it was clear from his expression and his shambling gait that much had changed with Zack Trillinger. On the inside, he was a gaunt and filthy derelict in ragged hair and tattered cloth. He was broken.

  He kept his eyes downward until he reached the Pelletiers. Azral motioned politely to a folding chair in the middle of the platform. Please.

  Zack took his seat, desperately trying to avoid the hateful gaze of Esis. Don’t provoke, he told himself. Don’t even look at her.

  Once again, the Pelletiers made no attempt to start a conversation. Zack bit his thumb, racking his brain for the perfect thing to say.

  It’s not what you say, boy. It’s what your future says.

  Yes. He knew exactly what he had to do. It was so simple, so basic. Yet he could hear his last shred of pride snarling at him. Pathetic, it said. Giving up the woman you love, just because some assholes locked you in a room. No wonder you can’t look at yourself. You’re not a man. You’re not even a mouse.

  The image of Amanda drifted into his thoughts, her green eyes filled with tears.

  He’s wrong, Zack. You know me. You know exactly what I want. If you have to cut me out like a tumor in order to live, then do it, Zack. Live!

  He lowered his head, his jaw clenched with forced composure. A smattering of tears trickled down his cheeks.

  Azral and Esis exchanged a meaningful look. Only one of their faces had softened.

  “Nyad,” Esis hissed. “L’ua tolla shii hoh-no kiesse!”

  Azral motioned gently at Zack. “Regaha la-ma.”

  “Nyad! T’uu makkiné niia hoh-no kiesse!”

  Zack glanced up and saw Azral towering over him. Thankfully, the man still looked serene, though Zack wouldn’t go so far as to call his expression friendly.

  “You were counseled,” Azral surmised.

  His accent was different than the whispering stranger’s—thicker, more exotic. For a heart-stopping moment, Zack thought he’d said “cancelled.”

  “My father has some fondness for you,” Azral told Zack. “He finds you amusing, unlike us, and he believes you can be redeemed. Admittedly, I do see a shift in the strings. It appears you’ve had a change of heart.”

  Esis crossed her arms, skeptical. “Hearts change back.”

  Azral nodded, his eyes locked on Zack. “That’s the trouble with futures. They never settle. Even we’re surprised from time to time. You were originally supposed to join your brother in our New York facility. Then circumstances changed. You made a last-minute journey to San Diego, just as we encountered an unexpected vacancy in our group there. So we joined you with the Silvers. In hindsight, it was a mistake.”

  “It was a mistake to put him anywhere!” Esis insisted.

  “Perhaps,” Azral said to her. “Yet Father believes he still has potential.”

  Zack kept his head down as Azral slowly circled him. The man radiated amusement, like a cat toying with its prey.

  “You asked why we go out of our way to save some of you but not others. It should be obvious by now that we don’t need all of you. We chose ninety-nine people as a safety measure, a pool of redundancies to minimize risk. In the end, all we require is one.”

  Zack looked up. He couldn’t find the nerve to speak the name on his tongue. Amanda?

  Azral shrugged as if he heard Zack’s thoughts. “We can’t say for certain who that person will be. As ever, the strings give many answers. But we see patterns in the future. Probabilities. There are those among you who are far more likely to give us what we seek. And so we protect them more zealously.”

  He looped behind Zack, staying just out of his line of sight. “As you may have guessed by now, you rank very low in our estimations. You have less value to us than any living Silver, including Rander.”

  “And the little fat girl,” Esis said with a roll of her eyes.

  Azral frowned. “Yes. Farisi. Another disappointment.”

  “Another hopeless romantic,” Esis teased.

  Zack felt his face burn a hot shade of red. His fingers hooked around the edge of his chair. Just end this already, he thought. Let me go or kill me.

  “The sisters stand at the top of our list,” Azral said. “The strings favor them both by a significant margin.

  “But you ruin Amanda!” Esis shouted. “You sully our best hope!”

  Azral sighed. “I believe the other one is our best hope, but that’s not the issue now. Whatever shall we do with you, Trillinger? I don’t believe your mind will withstand much more isolation.”

  Zack tensely shook his head. No. No.

  “And yet I fear that if we release you, you’ll simply stand in our way again.”

  “He’ll return to her!” Esis yelled. “Look and see!”

  “I see it, sehmeer, and I’m not optimistic. But for the love of my father, I’ll give this sad little creature one last chance to prove his worth.”

  Azral kneeled at Zack’s side, his lips hovering an inch from his ear. Zack could hear the dripping condescension in his voice.

  “Speak, child. Convince me.”

  Zack sat forward and pressed his hands to his eyes. It was obvious now that Azral Pelletier was the leader of the pack, the driving force behind all of Zack’s sorrows. He was the brutal assassin of one Earth and the cold white death that lingered a
bove another.

  He was the archvillain.

  And as sure as Zack knew anything, he knew this bastard had no intention of sparing him.

  Zack drew a deep breath through his nose. His thoughts died down to a gentle breeze. At the moment he was neither hero nor coward, neither a rebel nor a mouse. He simply reverted back to his default factory settings. He was the smart-mouthed bane of arrogant assholes. He was, once more, a nuisance.

  “She’s not fat.”

  The Pelletiers stared at Zack in matching confusion. He raised his head and fixed his steely gaze on Esis.

  “Mia,” he said. “She’s not fat. You’d have to be out of your goddamn mind to think so.”

  He narrowed his eyes at Azral. “And I liked you better when you were quiet.”

  Once again, the clock of the universe seemed to grind to a halt. Zack had minutes, hours to study the stone-hard expressions of his jailers.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Esis crack first. She bared her teeth in a silent snarl. Her arms grew thick with tempic spikes.

  “Zhii-tah no-ma!”

  Azral held her back. “Mother, stop.”

  “You hear him!”

  “I do.”

  “He disrespects us again!”

  “Ecouna ma-né,” he told his mother. “Ecouna.”

  As the two of them conversed in their complex language, Zack kept a nervous eye on Esis. Though the rage never left her lovely face, she stopped thrashing long enough to listen to Azral. She furrowed her brow. She sputtered in protest. Then, at long last, she turned her back and gave her son a dismissive wave. Whatever.

  Azral straightened his blazer and approached the prisoner again. Zack flinched in fear when he reached out toward him.

  “Calm yourself,” Azral said.

  He tapped four fingers against the back of Zack’s hand, liquefying the discs that had been melded onto his skin. The metal rolled off Zack like quicksilver, then dribbled to the floor.

  Zack only had a moment to scan the fresh new divots in his hand before a wave of agonizing hunger overtook him. His body screamed for everything now: food and water, salt and sleep. He was so tired all of a sudden, he could barely see straight.