The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “They are, but I’m getting faint and amorphous readings down below. I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at.”

  “Phipps, I don’t have time for your nonsense. Is there something downstairs or not?”

  “It . . . might be a sensor error, sir.”

  Gingold readied his rifle, then pushed the door open a crack. “Follow my lead,” he whispered into his headset. “And keep your heads. I don’t want to see any . . .”

  His face went slack. The foyer was packed with large tempic sculptures, twelve different versions of the same damn thing.

  “. . . dogs?”

  One of the beasts sprang to life and tackled Gingold through the doorway, knocking him to the pavement and cracking one of his lenses.

  Heath crouched at the top of the stairwell and wiped the sweat from his face. “They’re not dogs.”

  —

  Nothing could have prepared Theo for the sight of the wolves.

  They came into existence as oversize larvae—twelve bean-shaped globs writhing mindlessly in the foyer. They rose from the floor on sprouted legs, then shook themselves until their bodies gained definition—paws and nails, muzzles and tails. Dull, pupilless eyes ballooned inside their sockets. Their white skins rippled with the simulated texture of fur.

  All of this happened in the span of three seconds. By the time Theo breathed again, Heath’s creatures had gone to war.

  They spilled through the front door with coordinated haste, each one moving with a shocking degree of realism. Theo couldn’t even imagine the number of nature specials Heath must have watched to capture them so flawlessly. Though his wolves looked as fake as giant soap carvings, they were just as nimble as real wolves. But were they just as fierce?

  Awful noises drifted in through the front door: shouts and gunfire, a panicked scream. Theo turned to Heath, wide-eyed. “Are they . . . ?”

  “No,” he replied through a grunt of strain. “We only hurt. We never kill.”

  Theo didn’t care about the fate of the soldiers. He was more worried about Heath. If the government found him dangerous enough, they wouldn’t waste time capturing him. They’d shoot him dead on sight.

  Theo peeked over his shoulder at the rear hall window. “There are five more coming in from the back.”

  “Six,” said Heath.

  “What?”

  “Hang on.”

  Heath closed his eyes and shot six new dollops of tempis into the foyer. By the time Theo looked down the stairwell, the wolves had reached full size and made a synchronized dash for the kitchen.

  Theo studied Heath in gobsmacked awe. The boy had eighteen different minions moving independently of each other, all battling government soldiers he couldn’t possibly see. How the hell was he doing this? How long could he keep it up?

  “We have to get out of here,” Theo said. “There’s a van three blocks away. The keys are in the kitchen.”

  He turned to see that Heath wasn’t listening. His eyes were shut tight. He flinched and shrieked with invisible pains, as if someone was stabbing a voodoo doll of him.

  “Heath! Are you okay?”

  He shook his head, crying. “They’re shooting them!”

  Last October, during a particularly bloody battle against the Gothams, Amanda had stopped two bullets with a tempic shield. She later told Theo that each shot was excruciating, like having her brain stabbed with hot knitting needles. Now Heath was taking dozens of rounds.

  Theo rubbed his back. “All right. Just hold on. Hang in there.”

  He scanned the foyer, then pulled Heath to his feet. With his foresight still hobbled, he had no idea if he was leading them into a hail of gunfire. All he knew was that they had to get out of here, and fast.

  “Okay,” Theo said. “Now.”

  They ran down the stairs and turned toward the kitchen. Theo glanced over his shoulder at the battle on the street. Each wolf had an enemy pinned down or jaw-locked, their paws and teeth hopelessly fused with soldiers’ tempic armor.

  Theo pulled Heath along. “Come on. We’re—”

  A wolf leapt from the kitchen and slammed Theo against the wall. Its teeth gnashed dangerously close to his face.

  “No!” Heath yelled. “Not him! Not him!”

  The wolf shot a peevish look at its creator before rejoining the battle in the backyard. Heath balked at the shallow gash on Theo’s chest.

  “Sorry. That’s Rose. She doesn’t always listen to me.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Theo brushed the blood from his wound, then snatched the keys from a wall hook. He looked through the back door and saw a half-dozen agents wrestling Heath’s tempic creatures. The kid was right to make six wolves, not five. But how did he know?

  It’s their tempis, Theo realized. He can feel the soldiers through their armor.

  A whizzing bullet struck Rose in the head. Heath screamed and dropped his song sheets.

  Theo pulled him away from the door, then took a careful look outside. Someone else was shooting at the wolves. The government had snipers on the rooftops, out of sight. Out of reach.

  —

  Gingold was the first to catch on to Heath’s ethics. The wolf that kept him pinned to the concrete had passed up every opportunity to rip out his throat. The moment Gingold stopped fighting, the creature stopped baring its teeth. It sat lazily on top of him, meeting his cracked black lenses with a dead white stare.

  “Everyone stay still,” Gingold ordered. “These things aren’t lethal. Snipers, hold your fire. Save your shots.”

  A sharpshooter hailed him through his earpiece. “Sir, what about you?”

  “We’ll be all right. Just—”

  A large shadow washed over him. Gingold looked up to see a remotely piloted aercraft hovering twenty feet above him, a man-size drone that crudely resembled a wasp. It floated through the sky on humming wings of aeris, its long-barreled energy cannon pointing down at the street.

  At long last, their solic weapon had arrived.

  “Finally,” yelled Gingold. “Shoot these goddamn wolves.”

  —

  Theo rummaged through the cabinets, looking for something—anything—that could help them out of their jam. As long as the snipers were still out there, he and Heath were trapped. They wouldn’t even make it to the backyard fence before getting riddled with bullets.

  But there was nothing in the kitchen that was even remotely useful. Their only hope was tempis, which meant their only hope was Heath.

  “Listen . . .”

  Theo knelt in front of him and swallowed the urge to call him “buddy.” “We’re all out of moves. We only have one chance to get out of here. We’re going to need more wolves. Big ones. As big as elephants.”

  Heath creased his sweaty brow. “They don’t get as big as elephants.”

  “It’s your tempis. They can be whatever you want them to be.”

  He tensely shook his head. “We can’t ride them.”

  “I’m not talking about riding them. Just trust me. Please.”

  Heath opened his mouth to say something, then doubled over in pain. The solic wasp was bathing the street in invisible bursts of energy, obliterating every local trace of tempis. The agents’ white armor reverted to steel mesh and wire. The wolves in front of the house popped away like cheap balloons.

  “They’re killing them!” Heath cried.

  Theo squeezed his shoulders. “You have no idea how sorry I am. But if these people get us, it’s all over. Not just for us. For everyone.”

  He closed his eyes, then finally spoke the words that had been dominating his life for the last seven months.

  “I’m the only one who can save this world.”

  Theo felt ridiculous for saying it, and even dumber for believing it. All he had to go by was the
word of Peter Pendergen, a man who practically flaunted his fallibility. Even if Peter was right, there was no guarantee that they could stop the death that was coming. They had nothing to work with but desperate guesses and wishful thinking.

  But the hope had a power all to itself.

  Heath looked at Theo, his hazel eyes full of surprise, skepticism, and something else Theo couldn’t put his finger on. Was it gratitude? He could only imagine that Heath had spent his whole life being treated like an infirmity, a burden to his family and everyone else around him. Now here he was getting a seat at the big table, the fate of the whole world in his hands. He’d been struggling all this time without a clear sense of purpose. Well, now he had one.

  Heath looked out the patio door, his fingers drumming against his hip.

  “Okay,” he told Theo. “I know what to do.”

  —

  Gingold stormed into the foyer, his body covered in naked wire mesh. Though the solic wasp had fried his tempic armor, his assault rifle worked just fine. Good thing, too, because he was seriously itching to shoot someone.

  He waved his team through the front door, ignoring their uncomfortable stares. Moments ago, he’d peeled away the cracked glass fragments that protected his eye cameras. Now everyone could see the bionic wizardry he’d been hiding: four black-button lenses that advanced and retracted of their own accord. They made him look like something out of a nightmare, an unholy union of man and arachnid.

  Gingold was halfway through the living room when he heard a loud crunch from the back of the house. By the time he and his crew reached the kitchen, the entire rear wall had been smashed into shards. The soldiers looked beyond the wreckage. Their rifles fell limp at their sides.

  “You gotta be fourping kidding me.”

  Even in Heath’s vivid imagination, there was no such thing as giant wolves. It simply wasn’t done. If Theo wanted animals that were as big as elephants, there was only one proper way to indulge him.

  Four tempic pachyderms charged across the grass in a close diamond formation. Theo crouched in the middle of the cluster, holding Peter’s envelope in one hand and Heath’s wrist in the other. Though the beasts shielded them from the snipers, as Theo had hoped, there was nothing to protect Heath from his sympathetic bond to his creations. His mind stood exposed in four easy targets.

  A sniper shot hit an elephant in the ear. Heath screamed and stumbled. His tempis rippled in distress.

  Gingold raised his rifle at the rearmost elephant. “Keep firing!” he ordered. “And get that damn wasp—”

  A wolf leapt out from behind the shrubs and sank its teeth into Gingold’s wrist. Though Heath had vanquished his tempic hounds, the one named Rose Tyler insisted on staying. She was the bad wolf of the pack, and she was having too much fun.

  Theo pulled Heath along. “We have to keep moving.”

  He swallowed a delirious laugh as he stepped over the fragments of the backyard’s wooden fence. He was running through Brooklyn in a herd of tempic elephants, the mighty Snuffleupagi of a boy’s creative mind. In a crowded field, this might have seized the trophy as the single most surreal moment of his life.

  He heard an odd hum behind him and glanced over his shoulder. A sinister-looking drone rose above the roof of the brownstone, a six-foot hornet made of gunmetal and aeris. He recognized the long, ribbed protrusion that served as its stinger. The Deps had used something similar last year to breach a tempic barrier.

  His eyes bulged. “Oh no . . .”

  The wasp spun around and aimed its solic cannon at Rose Tyler. It blew her to oblivion with a single shot.

  Theo tugged Heath’s arm. “Run! Hurry!”

  He peeked between elephants and saw a basement hatch at the end of the brownstone block, just fifty yards away. An inner voice urged him on. It’s open. It’s unlocked. Go!

  “To the right,” he told Heath. “Steer them right.”

  Theo felt a gust of wind at the back of his ankle. A sharpshooter was aiming at the four human legs that scurried between the elephants.

  Heath clutched his brow and stumbled. “Hang on,” Theo urged. “We’re almost there.”

  Gingold seethed at the bloody state of his wrist. That last damn wolf must have opened an artery. He tore a tourniquet from his shirt and yelled into his headset. “Snipers, hold your fire! Line up your shot and wait for the wasp.”

  Theo threw his frenzied gaze between the drone and the basement hatch. They were moments away from losing their cover and they still had thirty yards to go.

  “Head shots,” Gingold told his snipers. “Don’t take any chances.”

  Twenty yards. Theo shoved the rump of the lead elephant. Come on. Go. Go!

  At seven and a half yards, the wasp made its final sting. Everything within forty feet of Theo and Heath was doused in solis. A backyard trasher spit a dying hiss of sparks. A four-foot ceramic Jesus, some neighbor’s idea of a tasteful Easter decoration, lost its lumic radiance.

  The elephants were gone.

  “Now!” Gingold shouted.

  Theo’s heart stopped. No . . .

  He leapt for the hatch just as the snipers took their shots. Two of the bullets hit the brick of the brownstone. Another two sliced the grass by Theo’s feet.

  The fifth one hit Heath square in the back.

  Had he not been wearing Jonathan’s guitar, the bullet would have torn right through him. Instead it shattered the instrument at the wooden base, severing all strings before driving sharp fragments into the small of Heath’s back. He stumbled forward with a howl. Theo threw open the hatch, cringing as he dragged Heath down the steps. The snipers were still firing. There was no time to be gentle.

  Theo pulled Heath inside the basement, locked the door, then crouched to examine him. The back of Heath’s shirt was dripping with blood. His eyes were red and drooped with fatigue.

  “Did I . . .”

  “It’s all right.” Theo rubbed his arm. “You’re all right.”

  “Did I do okay?”

  Theo squeezed Heath’s shoulder and forced a weak smile, while his inner self screamed with fury. He wanted to kill all the bastards who were responsible for Heath’s agony, all the soldiers and snipers who’d put this amazing boy through war.

  “You did more than okay,” Theo told Heath. “You’re a goddamn hero.”

  —

  The basement was as conventional as any Theo had seen, a dusty mausoleum of old boxes and knickknacks. A Vertech washer sang a musical chime. The owner had started a reversal load right before Integrity evacuated him. Now the machine waited patiently for him to return.

  Theo looked at the stairs, his instincts howling in panic. It wouldn’t be long before the Integrity goons came charging down here. “We have to keep moving. You okay to go?”

  Heath cringed at the remnants of Jonathan’s guitar, then examined himself in a panic. “My song sheets! I dropped them!”

  “It’s all right.”

  “All that music . . .”

  “It’s still in your head. You can get it all back.”

  Theo opened the washer and rooted through the clothes. He tossed Heath a baseball cap and an oversize denim jacket, then snagged a newsboy cap for himself. “Come on.”

  While Humboldt Street had become a veritable ghost town, Jewel Street teemed with life. All the displaced residents had been forcibly gathered here. They hobnobbed on the street, trading nervous gossip with one another while accosting anyone who looked like they had information. Is it safe to go home? How toxic is this spill? Can I at least go back and get my handphone?

  A policewoman noticed Theo and Heath as they emerged from a brownstone. “Hey!”

  Theo kept a tight arm around Heath. Shit. Shit.

  “Stay out of your home until we tell you it’s safe.”

  “Sorry,” Theo said. “I’m sorry.”

/>   “If I catch you again, I’m writing you up.”

  Theo apologized again, and then hurried into the crowd. He feared it’d be moments before Integrity agents burst through the front door and showed a photo of him to the policewoman.

  He squeezed Heath’s hand. “The van’s not far. Hang in there.”

  The boy let out a miserable moan. They pushed through the bystanders, bowing their heads as Integrity operatives patrolled above on aerocycles. Theo wished to God he’d grabbed his handphone on the way out. He had to warn Hannah and the others that Integrity was on their tail.

  After two more blocks, Theo broke away from the crowd and led Heath into a SmartFeast parking lot. Peter’s spare white Peregrine rested at the far edge, its windshield covered in dust and ad flyers. Theo hoped he remembered how to pilot the damn thing. It had been four months since he’d practiced.

  He unlocked the passenger door and helped Heath inside. The boy let out a sharp cry as he leaned against the seat.

  “I’ll patch you up as soon as we’re safe,” Theo promised.

  “Where are we going?”

  Theo rifled through the contents of Peter’s contingency envelope. “Old Tappan. It shouldn’t take . . .”

  His mouth fell open in sudden realization. If Integrity ran the license plate on Peter’s aerovan, they’d know the fake name it was registered under, along with the vehicle IDs of all his other Peregrines. All it would take was one smart agent to run a locational trace—

  Heath’s eyes went wide. “No!”

  Something hard pressed against Theo’s back. He raised his hands, his wide eyes locked on the aerovan. He saw a familiar face in the reflection of the window, as sharp and lovely as ever.

  Of course, he thought bleakly. Of course it’d be her.

  Melissa Masaad caught his gaze in the glass. She pressed the gun tighter, then gave him a serene smile. “Hello, Theo.”

  THIRTEEN

  Earlier that morning, as Peter was teleporting home to Brooklyn, his phone lit up with a single-word text message. Ivy knew that her fellow traveler, the love of her youth, wouldn’t need a full address to find her. One name was all it took to light a path of torches across the face of New York, to the site of their final battle.