The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Gemma flipped a switch on her console. A monitor flickered to life in an engine room, inches away from Hannah and Mia. A computer screen came awake on the manager’s desk near Jonathan. David saw a lumic projection on the wall outside the control room.

  Peter and Amanda got the clearest picture of all. A six-foot image of Zack materialized above a dining booth. Amanda could see fresh welts on his neck, the tears in his eyes as he struggled to catch his breath. Someone had choked him just moments ago.

  She gritted her teeth. Sharp spikes of tempis protruded through her shirt. “I swear to God, Ivy . . .”

  Her face went white as Mink crossed into the picture and pressed a .38 pistol against Zack’s temple. “No! Don’t you dare!”

  “Quiet,” said Ivy. “I can see and hear each one of you, and I promise you this: the next one who moves or opens their mouth will be the one who kills Zack Trillinger.”

  Mia clutched Hannah’s arm. Amanda quickly retracted her tempis.

  Ivy shook her head condescendingly. “You had to know we’d play this card. I mean, Jesus. You came here without any Pelletier support. You didn’t bring your augur. It’s like you people wanted to lose.”

  Rebel muttered into his headset. “Get ready, Mink.”

  “On that note,” Ivy continued, “where is Maranan? If I hear anything but a true and honest answer, Zack’s dead.”

  Five seconds passed without a peep from the breachers. Ivy nodded understandingly. “Yeah. I probably wouldn’t talk either. Maybe the sound of Zack screaming will—”

  “No!” Amanda and Mia hollered.

  “Don’t,” Hannah pleaded.

  “Kneecap,” Rebel ordered Mink. “The left one.”

  “Hey, Rebel . . .”

  “Hold it.” Rebel looked between the monitors. One of these men—the Silver, the Gold, or the traitorous ex-kinsman—had decided to call him out.

  “Who said that?” Ivy asked through the PA. “Was that you, Peter?”

  “That was me,” said Jonathan. He stared at the camera from the edge of the manager’s office, his eyes cool and defiant. “I know your husband’s standing next to you. I can hear him. Are you hiding under her skirt, Rebel, or just behind it?”

  Rebel snatched the microphone from Ivy, his slitted eyes locked on Jonathan. “Careful.”

  “You be careful. I’m not like the others. I barely know Zack.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Gemma muted the PA system and threw a fearful look at Rebel. “He’s not bluffing. He’ll drop you the minute he sees you.”

  Ivy held his arm. “Maybe Jinn—”

  “No,” said Rebel. “We stick to the plan. Turn it back on.”

  Gemma reactivated the mic. Rebel sighed at the monitors. Both his foresight and his insight kept insisting that this was pointless. None of them were going to give up Maranan.

  “All right, folks. Your mouthy new friend just earned Trillinger a bullet. Mink—”

  The overhead lights went dark, along with all the computers and surveillance screens. The only illumination came from the battery-powered laptop that controlled the ship’s systems.

  “What happened?” Ivy asked.

  “What’s happening?” Liam yelled through the pantry door.

  “No idea.” Gemma ran to the laptop and checked the status screen. “Temporics are fine. Electrics are fine. It’s just this one circuit.”

  “Our circuit.” Ivy scowled at the bank of dead monitors. “Run the pulsers, then get us back up.”

  “On it.” Gemma moved to the wall and pulled a silent alarm. Every ceiling on the Absence flashed red with lumis. Bright white arrows pointed passengers to the nearest fire safety rooms.

  Rebel looked around in the crimson light, his revolver raised in readiness. “One of them’s messing with us.”

  “Peter,” Ivy guessed.

  “It’s David,” said Gemma.

  Rebel shook his head. Neither one of them was anywhere near the fuse relay. It had to be someone on the engine level—Farisi or the younger Given. But they’d been standing in front of the camera the whole time. So how the hell did they . . .

  His mouth fell open in realization. Ivy followed his line of thought. “Them? Now?”

  Rebel shut his eyes and scanned the future, though the strings had little to say. If there was a Pelletier on the Absence, then he or she was doing a damn good job staying hidden. All Rebel knew for sure was that the breachers were gaining the upper hand. It was time to finish them once and for all.

  He reactivated his headset. “All right, showtime. Bug and Jinn, hit your targets. Mink?”

  Rebel looked at his wife with a vindictive smile. “Kill the hell out of Trillinger.”

  —

  The pulsers were barely visible on the dining level. Sunshine gleamed through every window, eclipsing all other light. But clearly something had gone awry in the Gothams’ command center. The voices on the speaker had abruptly gone silent. The image of Zack had vanished in a blink.

  “What happened?” Amanda asked Peter. “Is this another trick?”

  Peter bit his thumb, thinking, worrying. There was a purpose behind Rebel and Ivy’s hostage game, and it wasn’t just to learn Theo’s whereabouts. They were using Zack to keep his friends paralyzed, to hold them perfectly still for the—

  “—swifters.” He shot a frantic look at Amanda. “Ice up.”

  “What?”

  “Armor! Armor!”

  Amanda tried to gird herself in tempis, but her power was still sluggish. She’d barely managed to cover her torso when she heard a rising patter, an eggbeater sound of accelerated footsteps that she’d long come to associate with—

  —Hannah, she thought, before a hot wind overtook her and a deafening boom filled her ears.

  Something struck her in the back with agonizing force, like nothing she’d ever felt before. If she’d been looking in the right direction, she might have seen Bug Sunder just in time to watch him empty both barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun into her spine.

  Her tempis was all that kept the buckshot from shredding her. The explosion reverberated throughout her body, shattering four ribs and three vertebrae before sending her flying. She crashed against the edge of a bolted steel table, breaking her pelvis in two places.

  Amanda crumpled to the floor, her eyes wide open but her senses torn apart. There was a struggle happening somewhere in the periphery of her hearing—a splattering of blood, a man’s gurgling death rattle. Her head lolled to the side, but all she could make out in her blurry vision was a mangled corpse on the floor.

  “P-Peter . . . ?”

  A pair of cold, strong hands gripped her by the shoulders. They flipped her onto her stomach, then tore away at the back of her T-shirt. Her broken bones screamed from a thousand miles away.

  “Don’t,” she said in a tiny voice. “Don’t do this.”

  “Shhhhh.”

  Amanda flinched as the stranger pressed a cool metal disc to her back. “What . . . what are you . . . ?”

  “I’m fixing you,” the man replied. “Shut up and stay still.”

  His voice trickled out in a low, haunting whisper, one that was distorted with impossible sounds: crinkled paper, wind chimes, a humming white noise.

  What’s happening? Amanda asked herself. Is this real?

  A liquid warmth filled her body, and she felt a strange sensation inside of her, like ants marching all through her bloodstream. As her broken bones began knitting together, her double vision came into focus, enough to give her a clear view of the casualty on the floor. He was a tall, bearded stranger in tactical armor, an Indian man who was just as striking as Ivy. His throat had been torn wide open. He stared at Amanda through a frozen expression of horror.

  She struggled to look at the figu
re above her, but all she could see was his shadow. “Peter? Is that you?”

  The man replied with a mocking chuckle. “Do I sound like Peter?”

  The room spun. Amanda’s eyelids fluttered. As her consciousness tumbled down a deep, dark well, she took a final moment to ponder her new acquaintance. Though he remained well out of eyeshot, her mind could feel every curve and contour of his skin. That could only mean one thing.

  Tempis, she realized. He’s covered in tempis.

  —

  “Mink, stop! Don’t do this!”

  Zack sat on his chair in the middle of the terrace, his mind lost in the clouds as Mercy pleaded for his life. He was painfully aware of the pistol that was pressed to his temple, and he knew damn well that it wasn’t morality or sentiment that kept Mink from pulling the trigger, just squeamishness. Zack had seen him go dizzy at the sight of a bleeding finger. How would he deal with a man’s scattered brains?

  Sweating, Mink backed up several steps and aimed his .38 at Zack’s heart.

  “It won’t be any cleaner,” Mercy warned him. “You’re not a killer, Mink. And you don’t have to start now. Come on. Think about it. What if Rebel’s been wrong this whole time?”

  Mink gave her a dirty look, then waved his free hand in a circle. Angry red lumis appeared above his head. HE’S MY COUSIN. WHAT ARE YOU?

  “I don’t know,” Mercy said. “I just know I’m sick of this shit. All of it. I’m done.”

  FINE. Mink jerked his head at the emergency exit. DOOR’S THAT WAY.

  Zack stared at the carpet with busy eyes, torn between the crisis and the whirlwind storm that was happening inside his head. He would die any moment now—horribly, pointlessly—yet there was at least one man in the world who saw a function to his suffering.

  You were chosen, Azral had told Zack. For better or worse. And you will serve our purpose, one way or another.

  “An umbrella . . .”

  The words spilled out in a listless mutter. Mink and Mercy watched him, expressionless, while he continued to ramble.

  “The Pelletiers never move in a straight line. When they want a sandwich, they’ll buy an umbrella, because they know it’ll start a chain of events that’ll get them the best sandwich ever. I thought they sent me to Rebel because they wanted a war. But that’s just the umbrella. I think . . .”

  He stared at his captors in dark amazement. “I think they want peace.”

  Zack caught a moving figure in the corner of his eye. He looked to the stairwell and saw a large man hurrying up the steps—bald and muscular and ridiculously pale. It took Zack three blinks to realize that the guy wasn’t naked. He was sheathed from head to toe in a molded skin of tempis.

  Mercy and Mink spun around and flinched at the formidable presence coming quickly toward them. Only the eyeholes in his mask revealed the man beneath the tempis—bright blue eyes, angry-looking.

  And they were locked right on Mink.

  “No!”

  Mink raised his gun in trembling hands, but the stranger was faster. He zipped past Mink in a shifted blur, then doubled back to the stairwell. Zack could see something new in his right hand, a three-foot katana made of pure tempis. The blade was streaked with fresh, wet blood.

  Mercy covered her screaming mouth as Mink fell to the carpet in pieces. His legs dropped forward. His torso toppled backward. His round, blond head went rolling under a table. Zack looked just in time to see bright pink organs spill out of his midsection. He turned away, nauseated. Oh Jesus. Oh God.

  The stranger pivoted on his heels and cast his full attention on Mercy. She stumbled backward, weeping. “No. Please. Please. I’m sorry . . .”

  “Don’t kill her!” Zack begged. “She won’t be a problem. She’s done with Rebel. She quit.”

  His plea for Mercy clearly intrigued the man. He tilted his head at Zack before turning around again. Now Mercy could spot the smile in his eyes, a derisive grin if she ever saw one. He brandished two fingers at her before dashing down the stairs in a hazy white streak.

  Mercy fell to her knees, gasping. “Oh my God. Oh my God . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Zack told her. “You’re okay.”

  “Jesus. That was . . . he was a . . .”

  “I know.” Zack rattled his handcuffs. “Look, we have to get out of here. Can you—”

  “Why did he hold up two fingers at me?”

  “Mercy . . .”

  “What does it mean?”

  Zack closed his eyes, sighing. He barely knew anything about the third Pelletier. He was the father of Azral, the husband of Esis, the one who gave Zack his portentous silver bracelet. He was also the only one in the family with a dry sense of humor, as he’d just ably proved.

  “It was a symbol on my world,” Zack explained to Mercy. He lowered his head and fought the mad urge to laugh. “It means ‘peace.’”

  SEVENTEEN

  The Absence was fifteen thousand feet in the air when it finally decided to complain about it. Alarm bulbs flashed all throughout the engine level. Status monitors lit up with bold red text: Altitude exceeding vehicle capacity. Power consumption at 225%. Engines 1, 3, and 4 at critical risk of malfunction. Proceed toward land immediately or call U.S. Aer Guard for emergency assistance.

  Mia read the display on the south starboard engine, her forehead dripping with sweat. The ship’s external de-icers were roaring full blast beneath her, turning the entire chamber into a furnace. More unnerving than the heat was the noise of the engines—a nonstop cacophony of hisses and sighs, like a dozen old men on ventilators. Shhhhhhh. Haaa. Shhhhhh. Haaa.

  She looked at the monitor that had recently shown Zack, still dark after a full minute of downtime. God only knew what was happening with the Gothams.

  Mia pulled her handphone out of her pocket and tried to call Peter, but she couldn’t get a signal. Were they too high up, or was Rebel jamming their connection?

  “Shit.” She wiped the sweat from her brow, then peeked around the side of the engine. “Hannah.”

  She was everywhere and nowhere, a hot gust of wind on a clockwise diamond path. The Gothams knew that Hannah and Mia were here, and it was just a matter of time before they came in through one of the room’s four entrances. Hannah was determined to spot them early and strike them hard. At 40x, her billy clubs hit like freight trains.

  She saw Mia waving, then de-shifted in front of her. “What? Did you find the air brake?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then keep looking.”

  “But—”

  Hannah jumped back into high speed, then continued her circuit. Mia always found her to be disconcerting in blueshift. Her hummingbird twitches and inability to hear and speak made her an ethereal presence, like a ghost or a mirage. While Mia certainly appreciated Hannah’s vigilance, she couldn’t help but feel alone down here, just her and the hydraulics. Shhhhhhh. Haaa. Shhhhhh. Haaa.

  She checked the status screen again and saw a brand-new complaint on the ship’s list of worries:

  Air brake disabled.

  “Wait, what?”

  Forty feet away, in a small and musty cabin on the other side of the hallway, Jinn Godden crouched behind a steel desk. Killing the manual brake had been easy. The lever was right there in the engineer’s office. Killing the swifter, however, would take some finesse. Jinn had skulked through the corridors at unshifted speed to keep Hannah from sensing her aura. Now, at last, she was within striking distance.

  Be careful with Given, Rebel had warned her. She’s surprisingly clever.

  Only a man would be surprised that a pretty woman was clever. Jinn had been battling that nonsense half her life. Besides, she already knew not to underestimate Hannah. The breacher had outmaneuvered her back in the Faith Mall, despite the fact that she’d only been swifting for a few months. Hannah was a fast learner, and she had some very uni
que tricks up her sleeve.

  But then so did Jinn.

  She raised her finger and extended a thin tendril of tempis across the floor. It hooked a left at the doorway, slithered into the hall, then began a slow, creeping journey toward the engine room. All it would take was a well-placed tripwire to send Hannah tumbling. At that speed, she’d break her neck. The Farisi girl would be an even easier kill, as long as Jinn didn’t look at her sweet, adorable face.

  Just imagine she’s Gemma, she told herself. The rest will be easy.

  Jinn didn’t have to look to know what Hannah was doing. She could feel her temporal signature. The breacher was speeding right toward the tripline, oblivious. Maybe she wasn’t so clever after all.

  The tendril suddenly retracted, snapping all the way back into Jinn’s hand. She stared at her fingers confusedly. Tempis had always been the weaker of her two powers, but it had never revolted against her like this. What the hell was it doing? How—

  A brand-new string shot out of her finger. The tempis looped three times around her neck and constricted like a snare.

  Bug-eyed, choking, Jinn fell to the floor and struggled against her own creation. She rolled onto her side and saw someone watching her from behind the engineer’s desk, a muscular man sheathed entirely in—

  No . . .

  —tempis.

  Djinni Godden had never been humble about her blessings. Even among her own, she was a superior specimen, blessed with brains and beauty, good health, and an abundance of power.

  But one look at this creature was enough to reveal her true place in the food chain. The man had all of her talents and then some. He was a swifter, a tempic, a traveler, a lumic.

  He was a Pelletier. He came from a world where people like Jinn were considered crippled.

  She struggled to speak, to beg for her life, but her throat had completely closed. Her mind defensively threw her into blueshift, but all it did was hasten her demise. She thrashed on the floor at high speed for seven seconds before her body went limp and her head thumped listlessly against the floor.

  Hannah came to a stop in the engine room, puzzled. She’d briefly detected another swifter, but it was gone now. Extinguished.