The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Mia covered her mouth. Amanda’s hands crusted over with tempis. “No . . .”

  “I hope you make the right choice,” Ivy said to Peter. “For once.”

  The screen went black. David cleared the lumic projection. Everyone in the room turned their nervous eyes to Peter.

  “Before you get your hopes up,” he began, “you should know that—”

  “It’s a trap,” Heath blurted.

  Theo nodded his head in tense agreement. “He’s right. Zack was trying to warn us.”

  “How?” Amanda asked.

  “Admiral Ackbar’s a character from Return of the Jedi. He barely has any lines but one of them’s a classic. It was a running joke on the Internet.”

  “What’s the line?”

  “‘It’s a trap,’” Heath said.

  “‘It’s a trap,’” Theo echoed.

  Peter blew a hot breath at the floor. “It’s most definitely a trap.”

  The room went silent. Hannah cocked her head at Peter. “So all that stuff about the truce . . .”

  “Malarkey,” he said. “I see right through her. She hasn’t changed her mind. She wants you all dead. Even if it doesn’t save the world, it’s a blow to the Pelletiers. That’s good enough for her and Rebel.”

  “So what happens now?” Mia asked. “What do we do when she sends the address?”

  “She already sent it,” Peter admitted. “I got it ten minutes ago.”

  Amanda shot to her feet. “What?”

  “Listen to me—”

  “We have to get Zack!”

  “Amanda—”

  “If we don’t go, they’ll kill him!”

  “Amanda, he might already be dead.”

  The others paused, horrified. Peter sat down on the sofa, then clutched Amanda’s arm. “The trap’s been baited. They don’t need Zack anymore. Then again, they might keep him alive just to give our augur something to look at. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t care,” Amanda snapped. “If you’re wrong—”

  “Just listen to me, okay? There’s a better way—”

  “No.” The objection came from David this time. Peter looked to him, exasperated. “You won’t even hear me out?”

  “I don’t need to. You’re about to propose some unilateral rescue effort that risks nobody’s life but yours. Ordinarily I’d be fine with that, except I was there the last time you tried to save Zack from Rebel. It didn’t go well.”

  Peter gritted his teeth. “Boy, you don’t know half as much as you think you do.”

  “He knows plenty,” Amanda said. “If Zack and I had listened to him, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m not making that mistake again. And I won’t let you throw your life away on some stupid act of chivalry.”

  “It’s not chivalry, it’s—”

  “Dumb,” Hannah said. “You need us, Peter. Everyone sees it but you.”

  He shot to his feet. “Goddamn it! You’re playing right into Ivy’s hands! This is exactly what she wants.”

  “What do you expect us to do?” Theo asked. “Let Zack die?”

  “You’re not doing anything,” Peter said. “I’ll bring the others before I bring you.”

  “He’s my friend!”

  “I don’t care. Your only job is to stay alive and find that string.”

  Theo opened his mouth to object, but he could see from the looks on his friends’ faces that they were with Peter on this one.

  Hannah clasped his hand. “He’s right. You’re too important.”

  “And you’re all fogged up anyway,” Amanda added. “You won’t be able to help us.”

  “I can still help.”

  Mia shook her head. “If Zack were here, you know what he’d say.”

  Peter snorted. “Glad you feel that way, darling, because you’re not going either.”

  “What?”

  “The others at least have a chance to protect themselves. You can’t even make a working portal.”

  “Then give me a gun!”

  David looked at her despondently. “The last time you faced Rebel, he nearly killed you.”

  “But he didn’t,” Mia said. “Zack saved me. Now you’re telling me I can’t save him back?”

  The heavy faces of her companions told her everything she needed to know. “That’s all I am to you. Just dead weight.”

  “Of course not,” said Amanda. “We love you.”

  “But you don’t believe in me.”

  “Mia . . .”

  “Fine. Go.” She wiped her eyes, then fled into the foyer. “But you better goddamn save him.”

  The others stayed silent as she disappeared up the stairwell. Her slammed door echoed through the house.

  Peter’s gaze shifted gravely between Hannah and David. “I suppose I can’t talk either of you out of going.”

  “No,” said David.

  “Hell no,” said Hannah.

  Jonathan fidgeted with his T-shirt, still damp with soapy water. “I’ll go.”

  Heath stared at him in horror. “What? No!”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Hannah said.

  “Heath and I would be dead if it wasn’t for Josh Trillinger. The least I can do is help save his brother. And as it stands, I like Zack.”

  Heath tugged his arm. “Don’t go! Please.”

  “You stay here with Theo and Mia. You’ll be all right.”

  “No we won’t!”

  Amanda looked at the wall clock. “We’re wasting time.”

  Peter nodded. “We leave in ten minutes. Do whatever you need to get ready.”

  While the others filed out of the living room, Peter asked Amanda to stay behind. She studied the many bandages on his arms, her face racked with guilt.

  “I’m sorry about that, Peter. I . . . lost my head.”

  “I know. That’s what worries me. I can’t stop you from coming, but you have to pull yourself together. If Zack’s dead, or if they kill him in front of us—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “—we can’t have any more friendly fire.”

  Amanda looked down at her fumbling hands. When her emotions ran wild, she was a danger to everyone around her. Even now in the haze of her sedatives, she could feel the tempis waking up. Soon it would be pounding against the bars of its cage, screaming to be released.

  “I won’t hurt you again,” she promised Peter. “Any of you.”

  “Good to hear.” He grabbed a dangling lock of Amanda’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. “You realize this is all but a suicide mission. They know our tricks. They’re ready for us.”

  “What choice do we have?”

  “You could still let me handle it on my own. Quietly. Diplomatically.”

  “There’s nothing quiet or diplomatic about your people.”

  “Look—”

  “No. Those bastards have hurt us time and time again. It ends today. And I’ll tell you something else. If we get there and Zack’s dead, or if they kill him in front of us, it won’t be my people who need to worry about me.”

  Amanda brushed past him, then made a hard line up the stairs.

  “I’ll kill every last Gotham I see.”

  —

  At eleven o’clock, the rescuers assembled. They looked deceptively normal in their blue jeans and sneakers, their faded gray sweatshirts and bargain-bin windbreakers. They might have passed for Sunday strollers if it wasn’t for their more conspicuous adornments. Peter and David each carried a .38 pistol in a belt holster. Hannah had strapped two billy clubs to her legs. Amanda wore a paramedic bag over her shoulder. Jonathan only had himself to bring.

  Theo watched from the far side of the garage, his foot tapping a restless beat. Though his foresight remained lost in an impenetrable fog, he couldn’t shake
his ominous feeling, as if everyone’s fate had already been decided. Surely the Pelletiers knew what would happen when they brought to Zack to Rebel. But what did they have to gain by war?

  As the sky door opened on rumbling metal wheels, Peter pushed a manila envelope into Theo’s hands. “There’s thirty thousand dollars in there, plus directions to an apartment in Jersey. If we’re not back by sunset, take Heath and Mia and stay there. You remember where the spare van’s parked?”

  Theo nodded tensely. “I do, but—”

  Peter tapped the envelope. “There’s something in there for Mia. A note. Don’t let her read it till you know I’m dead.”

  “Jesus. Peter . . .”

  “Whatever happens, you keep safe. If you die, we all do. You understand me?”

  “I get it. Just be careful.”

  Jonathan peeked into his bedroom and saw Heath perched on a pair of wooden boxes, his nervous gaze fixed out the window. He turned to Theo.

  “He’ll be a handful. Just be patient, all right? He’s a good kid at heart.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Theo assured him.

  Amanda checked David’s watch. “Fifty minutes.”

  “Let’s go,” Peter said.

  As her sister and the others climbed into the Peregrine, Hannah hurried over to Theo and gave him a hug. “We’ll be back,” she promised him. “All of us. Even the funny one.”

  Theo smiled weakly. “I’m counting on it.”

  The van doors closed. Peter started the engine. The Peregrine had barely risen a foot off the ground before Mia rushed up the stair ladder and ran to the driver’s door. She’d changed into a track top and jogging pants, a knit cap and sneakers. A bookbag dangled in her grip.

  Peter rolled down the window, scowling. “Sweetheart, I told you—”

  “Bug!”

  “What?”

  “There’ll be a swifter named Bug, a lumic named Mink, a tempic named Jinn, and a solic named Mercy. There’ll also be an air brake you have to pull. I’m not sure what that means but I got two different warnings about it. It must be important.”

  The sisters and Jonathan traded uneasy looks. Mia kept her hard eyes on Peter. “You said I couldn’t make a working portal. I just made two hundred of them.”

  She’d spent the last ten minutes opening the floodgates of her mind, filling her bedroom with the portals of Future Mias. She’d only had time to read a fraction of their notes.

  Mia opened her bookbag and showed Peter her messy collection of paper scraps. “There’s a lot more in here. You can take them all with you, but I’m your best chance at interpreting them.”

  Peter eyed her skeptically. “Those other Mias hate you. How can you trust them?”

  “Because they love Zack. They won’t do anything to hurt him.”

  “Darling . . .”

  “You’re walking into a trap and you don’t even have an augur! You need me.”

  Peter tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, thinking.

  “An air brake,” he said.

  “An air brake,” Mia echoed.

  Peter muttered a curse, then lowered the Peregrine back to the ground. Mia closed up her bag and ran around to the side door.

  “I’ll watch over her,” David assured Peter. “I won’t let anyone hurt her.”

  Peter didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A sixteen-year-old pledging the safety of a fourteen-year-old. Lambs to the slaughter, he thought.

  As the Peregrine ascended through the roof of the brownstone, Jonathan peeked down at the street. Heath’s dreaded yellow moving truck remained double-parked down the road, its rear gate closed and not a soul in the vicinity. The whole damn street seemed eerily devoid of people.

  Hannah caught his troubled expression. “What’s the matter?”

  Jonathan thought about it a moment, then anxiously shook his head. “Nothing. It’s all right.”

  A hundred feet below them, at the far end of the Transpac trailer, Gingold watched the Peregrine through a surveillance camera. He scowled into his headset.

  “I want a shadow on that junker. Don’t let it see you and don’t let it out of your sight.”

  He’d been six minutes away from staging a full-blown takedown—twenty-four operatives hiding all around the residence, each one armed with four different kinds of weapons. If that wasn’t enough to tip the scales, a solic wasp was coming that would all but guarantee a bloodless victory. These freaks were nothing without their temporis.

  But the wasp had yet to arrive, and now the fugitives were leaving. Gingold didn’t think for a moment that the timing was coincidence. Someone must have tipped them off. The augur or—

  “Sir?”

  He turned to look at his imaging analyst. She directed his attention to her thermal scan monitor, at the humanoid orange shapes on the top floor. “They left two behind.”

  “What?”

  Gingold leaned in closer and studied the silhouettes. The boyish figure was unfamiliar to him but he easily recognized the other one. Only one man in the group stood shorter than six feet.

  “Maranan.”

  This was a baffling development. The fugitives were deadly but they weren’t callous. They’d never abandon two of their own unless—

  —they don’t know, said a blithe little voice in Gingold’s head. Even Maranan doesn’t know you’re here.

  “Sir, how do you want to proceed?” asked Tomlinson, his second-in-command. “Should we—”

  “Shut up. Let me think.”

  Gingold tapped the cleft of his chin, his camera eyes locked on Theo. He didn’t like improvising, but a golden opportunity had just presented itself. He figured if Sun Tzu had known about augurs, the old general might have added a tenet to his Art of War: “Never pass up the chance to take one by surprise.”

  He hailed the agents on his network. “All right, folks. We had nine targets. Now we have two. Don’t get cocky. Stick to the plan and be ready for anything.”

  Gingold signaled to Tomlinson. The truck’s rear gate opened. Gingold prepped his automatic rifle and took a long, hard look at the brownstone.

  “Move in.”

  TWELVE

  The sky hatch closed with an echoing thud, throwing the whole garage back into shadow. Theo suddenly felt a vague sense of panic, as if his friends were flying in the wrong direction or had forgotten something crucial. Should he find his phone and call them? Or was he just being—

  “Hello, Theo.”

  —paranoid?

  He spun a half turn, puzzled. The voice had come from the edge of his consciousness, an aural premonition that vanished as quickly as it came. Theo closed his eyes and put his ear to the future, listening to the voices in the fog. Though most of the chatter was incomprehensible, he could still draw a few snippets here and there.

  “. . . we’re not raising gods or monsters here . . .”

  “. . . just saying there’s a reason he wears a mask . . .”

  “. . . never seen David in love before. He looks so . . .”

  “. . . give us a week. We’ll get your message out . . .”

  “. . . think I like doing this? You think I want Rebel to be right?”

  “. . . I’m afraid that Peter’s done you a great disservice . . .”

  “Hello, Theo.”

  His eyes popped open. There it was again: the low, husky voice of a woman. She sounded close, just minutes away. But who the hell was she?

  Theo looked down at his manila envelope, filled with cash and contingency instructions. Peter had told him to wait until sunset, but he wondered if it might be wise to grab Heath now and get out of here.

  “No!”

  Theo followed the noise to Heath’s attic bedroom, where the boy was scrambling around in a tizzy. He threw his sneakers on without tying them, grabbed his song sheets with
out sorting them, then slung Jonathan’s electric guitar over his back.

  “Heath, what—”

  He rushed out the door. Theo chased him down the stair ladder. “Wait! What are you doing?”

  “They’re coming!”

  “Who’s coming?”

  Heath turned around at the second floor and stared at Theo inscrutably. Even now, after nineteen days of living together, the two of them had yet to converse in any meaningful way. Theo wasn’t equipped to handle Heath’s complicated issues, and he was fairly sure the kid felt the same way about him.

  He’d barely made it down the steps before Heath bolted again. “Wait!”

  Rattled, Theo ran down the hallway and peeked out through the back window. Five men in tempic armor crept side by side across the patio, their rifles aimed at the kitchen door. Their sleek, tight helmets made their faces look creepy, like unfinished mannequins.

  A cold fist squeezed Theo’s heart. “Oh God.”

  Heath perched at the top of the second-floor landing, his wide eyes fixed on the front door.

  “It’s too late,” he said. “They’re here.”

  —

  Oren Gingold was a perfectionist at heart, and had taken drastic measures to ensure a flawless operation. At nine A.M., Integrity agents began a systematic evacuation of the neighboring brownstones, escorting residents to a safe zone while jamming all civilian communication channels. Plainclothes operatives stood on every street corner to disinform the public. Even the police had been tricked into thinking there was a toxic spill on Humboldt Street.

  By eleven o’clock, the half-mile radius around Peter’s house had become a complete blackout zone. There were no reporters or witnesses, no aer traffic or camera drones. There was no law here but Integrity’s. As far as Gingold was concerned, this little patch of Brooklyn was now hostile, foreign territory.

  Ten snipers trained their crosshairs on the brownstone’s main and rear exits, while sixteen gunmen advanced on the property from both sides. Gingold stopped at the front door and fired a small, cone-shaped weapon at the knob. The lock reversed itself with a click.

  His thermal analyst hailed him from the Transpac trailer. “Sir, I’m picking up movement on the ground floor. No heat. Just . . . movement.”

  Gingold stashed his juve gun back in its holster. “Are the targets still upstairs?”