The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Her expression turned bitter. “But then Integrity took over and . . . let’s just say her fears are no longer baseless. I can’t abide by what they’re doing. They’re the ones who’ve gone rogue. Not me.”

  Theo eyed her skeptically. “That’s your only reason for doing this?”

  “Of course not. I haven’t slept a full night since I met you people. I want to understand where you came from, how you got here, how you do the things you do. Can you blame me?”

  “No. I’m just wondering what your plan is. Even if you save us by some holy miracle, what then?”

  “We’ve set up a safe house in Maine,” Melissa told him. “It’s in a dense forest, away from the prying eyes of humans and satellites. It’s comfortable, secure and, might I add, quite beautiful.”

  “Back up,” said Theo.

  “To which part?”

  “The part where you said ‘we.’”

  Melissa threw a brief look at the dashboard camera. “I have an associate. A very resourceful one.”

  “Careful,” Cain muttered in her ear. “No names.”

  “And you trust this person?” Theo asked.

  “I do,” Melissa replied, though her assurance came with an asterisk. She knew Cain wanted the orphans alive as much as she did, that he despised what his agency had become. He’d promised her in his own coy way that Integrity was about to undergo a major change in management. Even so, Melissa had no guarantee that the new bosses would be any better than the old ones, or that Cain wouldn’t turn on her once he got his beloved Sci-Tech division back.

  She looked at Theo pleadingly. “Where are your friends going?”

  “I told you—”

  “I mean what’s their purpose?”

  Theo traded a quick, anxious look with Heath. “They’re trying to save Zack.”

  “From who?”

  “Gothams.”

  “Jesus,” Cain uttered.

  “So they do exist,” Melissa said. “Native-born chronokinetics. They’re not just a myth.”

  “Of course not.” Theo cocked his head. “You work for the country’s biggest intelligence agency. How could you not know?”

  “Either it’s a classified secret that I’m not privy to, or these Gothams are exceptionally good at staying hidden.”

  “It’s the latter,” Cain told her. “Believe me.”

  “Why would the Gothams take Zack?” Melissa asked Theo.

  He hemmed a moment before shaking his head. “We’ll be in Canada before I’m done explaining it.”

  “At least tell me why they left you behind.”

  He chuckled bleakly. “You definitely don’t want the answer to that one.”

  Melissa thumped the steering wheel. “Damn it. In all your premonitions, haven’t you once seen a future where you and I are friends?”

  In point of fact, he’d seen futures that went well beyond that. Theo knew the sounds Melissa made in throes of passion, the shape of the mole on her stomach. He’d also seen her shoot him in the rain, chase him down a sewer, and swear more than once that she never meant for things to end this way. The strings extended in all directions, and Theo had every reason to be pessimistic today.

  The Griffin flew in testy silence for eight more minutes, until Cain gave Melissa a new instruction. She banked a left toward Sleepy Hollow, then began a sharp descent.

  Theo gripped the door handle. “What are you doing?”

  “Your friends just landed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m clairvoyant, like all Libras.”

  Theo scowled at her. “Your friend’s feeding you information.”

  “Why on earth would your people go to Atropos?”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “It’s an abandoned aerport,” Melissa explained. “An awful place to be ambushed by armed federal—”

  “They won’t be there,” Theo blurted.

  Melissa and Heath both eyed him intently. Cain leaned in toward his computer.

  “What do you mean?” Melissa asked Theo.

  “I mean by the time we get there, they’ll be someplace else.”

  “Where?”

  His foresight had come back with a vengeance. He couldn’t stop seeing that smoldering black saucer, falling through the sky as it quickly fell to pieces. His friends were still on it. He was watching them die—just minutes from now.

  “Up,” Theo said. “We have to go up.”

  —

  The Griffin began its climb six minutes before the Absence did. Melissa steered them on a 50-degree incline, stopping only to disable the altitude lock.

  Unlike the aerstraunt, the van had no atmospheric protections. At sixteen thousand feet, Melissa sent Theo to the back for emergency supplies. He found four breathing masks but only two oxygen bottles.

  “Give one to Heath,” she told him. “You and I can share.”

  Theo sat hip-to-hip with Melissa in the front seat, their air tubes connected to the canister’s twin ports.

  He jerked his head at the dashboard’s blinking red gauges. “Will this thing hold up?”

  “I’m not sure,” Melissa said. “The heaters and stabilizers have gone into overdrive. It’s eating up the battery charge.”

  “How long do we have?”

  She checked the power meter. “We’ll have to start our descent in nine minutes. After that, there’ll be no hope for a soft landing.”

  At twenty thousand feet, the Absence burst through a cloud and continued its wayward climb. Melissa straightened the Griffin to a vertical ascent, struggling to keep pace with the saucer.

  “This is a bad idea,” Cain told Melissa. “I’ve known Noah Butterfield for thirty years. He’s as mean as they come. You get in his way, he won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Melissa’s gut twisted. She looked to Theo, still frantically punching numbers into her handphone. “You need to reach them.”

  “I’m trying!”

  He’d left his own phone in Brooklyn, along with all his friends’ contact information. Luckily, Heath had changed and tested Hannah’s ringtone enough to know her number by heart. Theo dialed it again, only to get her voice mail a seventh time.

  “Goddamn it, Hannah. Call me at this number as soon as you get this. You’re running out of time!”

  Cain sighed into his headset. “Melissa, I’m begging you. Cut your losses and get out of there. Two is better than none. And personally speaking, I like you better when you’re alive.”

  “That’s how I feel about them,” she murmured.

  Theo looked up. “What?”

  “Nothing. Just keep trying.”

  At twenty-five thousand feet, Hannah finally answered her phone. She and Theo spoke back and forth for a minute before he explained Melissa’s escape plan.

  “We’ll have to dock with the ship,” Theo said. “There’s a delivery hatch on the staff level, not far from you. It’s locked in flight but it should have an emergency override.”

  “Where?” Hannah asked.

  “Where’s the override?” Theo asked Melissa.

  “Not sure.” She took a closer look at the aerstraunt. “It’s a Douglas ship. Anything could be anywhere.”

  “They don’t have time to go looking!”

  Hannah’s voice crackled through the phone. “Jonathan says he can drop the door.”

  “Is he sure?”

  “Yeah. He’s dropped bigger things today. I just don’t know if it’s safe.”

  “It’s not safe at all,” Theo said. “Your ship’s pressurized, so when you open that thing—”

  “It’ll suck,” Hannah guessed.

  “A lot. Can he drop it from a distance?”

  “He goddamn better.”

  “What do you mean ‘drop it’?” Meli
ssa asked Theo.

  “We have a guy who does that.”

  “Does what?”

  “Drops things. Just wait.”

  Heath gripped Theo’s shoulder. “Tell him to be careful!”

  Melissa scanned the ship’s lower levels, then pointed to a large metal hatch. “There it is.”

  “Okay, we see the delivery door,” Theo told Hannah. “We’ll line up the van as best we can but this’ll be tricky. Amanda will have to use her tempis to tether us.”

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “She’s not here,” Hannah said. “She and Peter are still looking for Zack.”

  “Shit.” Theo covered the receiver and looked to Melissa. “They’re still split up.”

  Hundreds of miles away, in the suburbs of central Maryland, Cain leaned back in his office chair and watched Melissa and Theo on his monitor. A message popped up near the top of the screen, an encrypted bitmail from one of his informants.

  Butterfield’s crew almost caught up with aerstraunt. ETA 90 seconds.

  Cain deleted the message, cursing. It was already too late. Even if Melissa fled right this second, the gunships would catch her and blow her out of the sky. She had gambled everything to save these orphans, and lost. There was nowhere left for any of them to go but down.

  TWENTY

  The dining level of the Absence was all glass on the outside, a sixty-five-piece window wall that wrapped around the ship like a waist belt. The only thing that kept passengers from having a full 360-degree view was the circle of conveniences in the middle of the deck—two stairwells, three elevators, four restrooms, and a lumivision lounge.

  Somewhere in that cluster was the lift to the kitchen, but Amanda had no idea where. All she could do was lead Zack and Peter on a clockwise path along the curved inner wall. Had she gone the other way, she would have seen Melissa’s Griffin through the far window. Instead, she backtracked through the dining partitions, to the awful place where Bug Sunder had shot her. His body remained spread-eagled on the floor, next to a smiley face that had been painted in his blood.

  Peter grimaced at Semerjean’s artwork. “That’s just depraved.”

  Zack nodded in dark agreement. “You should see what he did to Mink.”

  “For a group of evolved beings, they’re pretty damn savage.”

  Amanda frowned at Peter. “I could say the same about your people.”

  “I told you—”

  “‘They’re not all like Ivy and Rebel,’” Amanda said. “I know. But your clan still supports them. They’re cheering them on from the sidelines, rooting for them to kill us.”

  Peter slung Mercy off his shoulder and carried her in his arms. “They’re just scared.”

  “And ignorant,” Zack added.

  “That can be fixed.”

  “You still think you can change their minds.”

  “We just have to change Rebel and Ivy’s,” Peter said. “The rest will follow.”

  While Zack and Amanda traded a cynical look, Peter noticed the waitstaff elevator nestled snugly between stairwells. “There it is.”

  Amanda pressed the call button, then waited restlessly by the door. She felt ridiculously spry for someone who’d just been shot in the back with a 12-gauge. God only knew what insane nanowizardry that Pelletier had put into her body. What if the disc on her spine did more than heal her? What if it gave Esis direct control over her mind, her body, her tempis?

  Zack peeked around the stairwell and saw the bobbing black aerovan in the distance. “Uh . . .”

  “What?”

  “There’s someone outside.”

  “Outside.”

  “I’m not kidding. Come look. It’s right—”

  A gunshot echoed through the dining room. Zack’s throat opened in a gush of blood. He clutched his neck with both hands, gurgling.

  Amanda screamed as he toppled to the floor. “Zack!”

  Rebel hid behind a partition, his face drenched in sweat. He’d been stalking Zack and the others since they first left the restroom, waiting for the right moment to strike. He knew he had one free shot before he was attacked.

  So who do I hit? Rebel had asked the future, and the future said, “Trillinger.” His girlfriend would drop to the ground in a hysterical effort to save him, leaving Pendergen as the only threat. But his portals were useless here, and he couldn’t reach his pistol with Mercy in his arms. Once Zack fell, Amanda and Peter would be easy kills.

  Unfortunately for Rebel, human beings were less predictable than bullets. They moved in erratic paths, making split-second turns based on chemical impulses and irrational whims. Rebel looked around the partition only to see his expectations reversed. It was Peter who’d dropped to the ground to save Zack.

  It was Amanda who went to war.

  Hard, jagged tempis covered every inch of her skin, stretching her clothes in some places and tearing it in others. Her face became a rocky mask. White lips parted to reveal clenched teeth.

  Rebel looked down at her huge spiked fists. Suddenly the future had a grim new tale to tell.

  Shit . . .

  He fired his .44 at Amanda’s left eye, only to watch her block it with her hand. He shot two more bullets at her chest. The impact alone should have brought her to her knees, but she just kept coming.

  Amanda grabbed the partition and tossed it to the side. Her voice came out in a guttural rasp.

  “That’s the last person you hurt.”

  Rebel stumbled backward and raised his revolver again. Amanda knocked it out of his hand with enough force to break two of his fingers. He howled in pain, then reached for a grenade with his mechanical arm.

  Amanda gripped him by the neck and raised him off his feet.

  “That’s the last person you hurt,” she repeated.

  She threw him against a window. His body slammed against the tempered glass before crumpling to the floor. He made a feeble attempt to crawl away, but Amanda grabbed him by the back of his vest.

  “That is—”

  She shoved Rebel into a partition. His front teeth cracked against the metal edge.

  “—the last person—”

  She drove him down onto the surface of a table, breaking his nose.

  “—you hurt!”

  At last, Amanda slammed his body down onto the floor, lacerating his liver and bruising his spleen.

  Peter kneeled at Zack’s side and pressed the wound on his neck. Hot blood coursed through his fingers. Zack writhed beneath him, gasping in shock.

  “Hold still,” Peter said. “For God’s sake.”

  He knew his efforts were only buying Zack moments at best. He was losing too much blood, too fast. Someone had to clamp the artery.

  “Amanda . . .”

  Amanda watched Rebel with idle curiosity as he writhed across the tile. He struggled to reach his gun.

  “I don’t think you heard me, Richard . . .”

  She smashed a tempic hammer down on his fingers, reducing his prosthetic to scrap metal and wires. She clutched his head with a tempic prong and raised him back up to eye level.

  “Let me say it again.”

  Rebel coughed up blood, then bared his broken teeth at her. “I heard you the first time. And I know just who you sound like.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You are Esis through and through.”

  Peter looked up, wide-eyed. “Amanda!”

  “Stop!”

  The second voice came from the top of the stairwell—a high, piercing shout that turned everyone’s heads.

  Ivy stepped into the dining room, her arm wrapped tightly around Liam’s neck. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face as she pressed her pistol against the boy’s temple.

  “No!” Peter yelled. “Don’t you dare!”

  Liam looked up,
his face streaked with tears. “Dad . . .”

  “Shut up! All of you!” Ivy gritted her teeth at Amanda. “Get your goddamn hands off Richard. Now.”

  Amanda hesitated, conflicted. She had Ivy’s husband at her mercy. A well-placed threat might get her to back down.

  But one look into Ivy’s deep brown eyes was enough to see her mental state. She was unstable. Dangerous. Amanda wasn’t about to gamble with the life of Peter’s only child.

  She retracted all her tempis, then let go of Rebel. He fell to the floor and shot a tortured look at Ivy. “I told you to leave . . .”

  “We’re in this together, love. All the way to the bitter end.”

  “Let my son go,” Peter pleaded. “He’s innocent. You know that.”

  “I said shut up.” She scanned the area suspiciously. “And you! I know you’re here. Show yourself!”

  Amanda and Peter took a puzzled glance around the dining room. Ivy was yelling at empty air.

  “What, you killed my brother and now you don’t even have the guts to face me? Come on, Semerjean! Be a man!”

  Peter shook his head at her. “He’s gone, Ivy.”

  “One more word out of you, and I swear to God . . .”

  Amanda stepped toward Zack for a clearer view. Peter was doing an awful job stemming his blood loss. He was too shaken, too distracted. “No!”

  Ivy pulled Liam back and repositioned the gun. “Stay where you are!”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I mean it!”

  “Ivy . . .” Rebel coughed more blood. “Let her help him. She’s not . . . she’s not going anywhere.”

  Ivy saw his expression and knew exactly what he was planning. He had one last trick up his sleeve. But he needed time to prepare it. She had to keep their enemies distracted.

  She flicked a dismissive hand at Amanda. “Fine. Go tend to your boyfriend.”

  Amanda kneeled at Zack’s side and took over for Peter. Tiny threads of tempis snaked out of her fingertips, gripping Zack’s severed artery and clamping it shut. But she could see that he’d lost too much blood already. He was on the slow, greasy slide to oblivion, and even her tempis couldn’t save him.