The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

TWENTY-TWO

  The monitors in the kitchen flickered back to life. A hard restart was all it took for David to wake up the surveillance console and get most of the screens working again. He scanned the view of the upstairs dining room and found six survivors: Zack and Amanda, Peter and Rebel, a young Asian Gotham who lay unconscious by the elevator, and a teenage boy who he could only assume was Peter’s son. Only Amanda and Liam looked healthy enough to move quickly. The other four were bloody wrecks.

  “Damn it.” David grabbed Hannah’s handphone, his scowling eyes locked on the monitor. “They’ll never make it down here. You’ll have to pick them up from the main level.”

  Theo eyed the dining room from the front seat of the Griffin. He could barely see inside with all the sunlight gleaming off the windows. “Okay. We’ll try. Can you guys meet us there?”

  “Not yet. Jonathan’s stuck by the delivery hatch.”

  “Well, get him unstuck and then get upstairs. We’re running out of time.”

  A liftplate flickered. The Absence tilted ten degrees before awkwardly righting itself.

  “That’s not good.” David looked to Mia. “Any luck with the—”

  The public address system finally finished rebooting. The ship’s speakers came to life with a loud, crackling hiss.

  “I think that did it,” she said.

  “Good.” David passed her the microphone. “Get Amanda up to speed. They’ll need her to secure the van.”

  Mia watched him anxiously as he grabbed the aerochute and rope coil that had been found in the manager’s office. “What are you doing?”

  He turned around at the kitchen door, his handsome face racked with doubt. “Getting Jonathan.”

  Ninety seconds later, Amanda’s tempic fist shattered a picture window in the dining room. A cold, sucking wind blew all around her, lashing her skin with a thousand whips. Grimacing, she wrapped a tempic cord around a table and held on for dear life.

  “Hang in there,” Mia told her through the speakers. “They’re coming.”

  Melissa tried to line up the Griffin with the broken window, but the sky was determined to knock her around. Worse, the Absence’s liftplate troubles sent it lurching at random intervals. This would be an insanely tricky maneuver, like threading a needle on horseback.

  Amanda watched the struggle from inside the ship. It’s not going to work, she thought. We’re never getting off this thing.

  Yes you are, an inner voice insisted. The Pelletiers need you. They won’t let you die here.

  Amanda wasn’t so sure about that. After that stunt she pulled on Azral and Esis, they were probably watching her now with smiles and popcorn.

  A dark shape filled the window. The Griffin thumped against the hull. Theo slid the side hatch open, his fingers gripped tightly around the doorholds. “Now!”

  Amanda cast a tendril from each hand. Eight giant white fingers hooked inside the van and held it firmly against the Absence. She expanded the tempis to cover the remaining gaps in the window, until the vacuum wind finally stopped.

  Theo boarded the aerstraunt and took a baffled look around. “What is this place?”

  “Just get the others,” Amanda said. “I can’t hold this forever.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Other side.”

  “Other side,” Mia said. “Right around that middle section.”

  As Theo disappeared around the curved wall of restrooms, Heath climbed out of the van and examined Amanda’s tempis. The back of his shirt was just as tattered as hers. Bloodstains marred the royal blue fabric.

  “You’re hurt,” Amanda said. “What happened?”

  Heath kept his sullen gaze on her tempis. “They shot the guitar.”

  “What?”

  “We have to get Jonathan.”

  “We will,” Melissa promised. “We’re not leaving anyone behind.”

  Amanda moved to the left and got a clear look inside the Griffin. She hadn’t seen Melissa since October of last year, when she chased Amanda and Hannah to the roof of an office building. Their day would have ended on a much darker note if their friends hadn’t arrived in the nick of time.

  “Why are you helping us?”

  Melissa turned in her seat, huddling herself for warmth. The air was forty degrees below zero outside, and she had a broken window. “I’m just trying to do what’s right.”

  “What’s right? Your people just threatened to shoot us down!”

  “They’re not my people,” Melissa said. “It’s safe to say I’m no longer employed with them.”

  Amanda readjusted her tempic clamps, her face twitching with strain. “So what now?”

  “I take you and your people off this wretched aership.”

  “And then?”

  Melissa had no idea. Her mind was still reeling from the massacre she’d witnessed. All she knew was that the Griffin had to start descending within the next three minutes. After that, it wouldn’t matter which ship they were on. They’d all come raining down on Westchester—the orphans, the Gothams, and the ex–federal agent who’d failed to save any of them.

  —

  For Theo, the scene on the other side of the dining room was like something out of a horror movie. Blood was splattered everywhere—on the floors, on the windows, on the tables and partitions. There were two people here who had clearly died terribly. The rest were either dazed, unconscious, or catatonic with grief.

  Theo kneeled at the side of the most familiar casualty, a sharp-witted cartoonist who’d become his best friend and roommate. “Oh God . . .”

  Zack had never looked worse. His neck and shirt were drenched in blood. He twitched on the floor like he was lost in a nightmare. Theo might have thought he was dying if he hadn’t looked to the strings and seen the healthy state of his future. Zack would survive this day and a whole lot more, as long as he got off this saucer.

  Theo scooped him into his arms and noticed a shiny silver disc on his chest. “What is this?”

  “A gift,” said a croaking voice behind him.

  Peter sat by the window, looking just as awful as Zack. His shirt had been torn wide open, revealing a mess of caked blood and the same silver disc that Zack sported. The Pelletiers must have brought them both back from the edge of oblivion. Apparently they healed as well as they hurt.

  Peter’s head doddered weakly as he struggled to process Theo. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Long story. You think you can make a portal?”

  “None that I’d trust.”

  “Well, then you’ll have to get up.”

  Peter clambered to his feet on wobbly legs. Liam rushed to brace him. “Dad, slow down. You’re hurt.”

  “No time,” said Theo. “We need to go. Can you carry someone?”

  “Mister, I don’t even know who you are.”

  “He’s all right,” Peter told Liam. “Go get Mercy.”

  Theo looked to the unconscious Gotham and was thrown by his prescient glimpses. This Mercy woman was all over Zack’s future. Their strings were entwined as far as the eye could see.

  Liam crouched at her side, then gestured at the last survivor. “What about him?”

  Rebel ignored all the chatter around him. He merely cradled Ivy’s corpse, his face wet with tears as he gently stroked her hair.

  Peter sighed at him. “Rebel . . .”

  “Shut up,” he creaked. “Just take your damn breachers and go.”

  “I can’t let you die here.”

  “Why not?” Liam asked. “He’s a sham and a liar, just like Ivy.”

  Rebel shot him a seething glare. “Boy . . .”

  “Don’t ‘boy’ me. You lied to me! You lied about everything!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “He’s coming with us.”

  Rebel scoffed. “The hel
l I am.”

  Peter drew his stun chaser from his pocket. Rebel laughed at his weak, faltering aim. “Pathetic. You can’t even—”

  Liam yanked the chaser from Peter’s hand and fired it at Rebel. His body thrashed for seven seconds before collapsing on top of Ivy.

  “Shut up,” Liam growled. “Just shut up.”

  Peter gripped his shoulder. “Son . . .”

  “Don’t touch me.” He shoved the chaser back at Peter, his voice choked with grief. “Let’s just go.”

  As Liam scooped up Mercy, Theo turned around and eyed Rebel worriedly. No one here had the arms or strength to carry him, and there wasn’t time for a second trip. Theo certainly wasn’t going to risk the lives of Hannah and the others just to save this vicious thug.

  “Peter, I hate to say it but—”

  A large glob of tempis suddenly smacked against the tile. Long, hairy limbs sprouted out of the surface. The Pendergens and Theo watched in dull-eyed stupor as the tempis took on an unexpected shape: a silverback gorilla, six feet tall and rippling with musculature.

  The creature sprang to life and moved across the dining room, shuffling its limbs with unnerving realism. It snatched up Rebel in its massive arms, threw him over its shoulder, then carted him off in the direction of the Griffin.

  Theo turned around to see Heath by the restrooms, his skinny arms crossed in a knot. Did he even recognize the man he was saving, the bastard who’d murdered six of his friends? Yes, of course he knew. The boy had a mind like a steel trap. That, and a heart of pure gold.

  Heath lowered his head and dawdled anxiously on his feet. “Come on. Jonathan’s waiting.”

  —

  Hannah stood at the edge of the kitchen, a rope in her hands, her body planted against the doorframe. She wasn’t a fan of David’s latest brainstorm, not even a little. But they had to get Jonathan before gravity got him, and there weren’t any better ideas.

  “More slack,” David yelled from the middle of the corridor.

  The other end of the rope had been tied around his waist in a bowline, a knot that Hannah had learned while playing Calamity Jane in a college musical. She hoped to God she did it right, because the closer David got to the ship’s open hatch, the more the hungry sky pulled at him. She wasn’t even sure there was enough rope to get him all the way to Jonathan.

  Mia peeked over Hannah’s shoulder, her tense eyes lingering around David’s new adornments—a pair of skydiver’s goggles and a dusty black aerochute. They didn’t even know if the damn thing worked.

  “God. I wish I’d never told him about that.”

  “It’s just a backup,” Hannah said. “If we’re lucky, he won’t need it.”

  She leaned into the doorway and shouted into the wind. “Do you see him?”

  “I see him,” David yelled back. “Just ten more feet.”

  “How is he?”

  Jonathan remained tucked away at the end of the hallway, his body squeezed into a tight and shallow nook. The cold, thin air hadn’t been kind to him. His face was red and chapped all over. His breath came out in shallow puffs of steam.

  “He’s barely conscious,” David told Hannah. “He needs oxygen.”

  Mia ran to the kitchen’s emergency cabinet, only to find dust and a dead cockroach inside.

  “Goddamn it,” she said. “You’d think Rebel would at least—”

  A hydraulic pipe exploded on the underside of the Absence, sending the entire engine system into chaos. The three remaining liftplates went dark for four-fifths of a second, a brief but total propulsion failure that caused the saucer to drop thirty feet.

  For a moment, everything became weightless. Then the liftplates returned to maximum power and the ship came to a violent halt. Windows cracked. Water pipes burst. A power cable dropped from the roof of the engine level, its live end swinging heedlessly around a closet. Directly beneath it was a large gray cube of putty explosive, one of Rebel’s three deposits of Wild-9.

  For the four beleaguered orphans on the kitchen level, the drop felt like doomsday all over again. Mia thumped her head against the edge of a counter. Hannah fell hard enough to lose hold of the rope. Jonathan and David both crashed to the floor of the corridor. Their bodies tumbled helplessly toward the open sky.

  Hannah looked up from the doorway. “No!”

  She jumped into blueshift and caught the end of David’s rope. He fumbled for Jonathan, but he was inches out of reach. While David stopped, Jonathan kept rolling. He tumbled out of the delivery hatch, then dropped out of view.

  Hannah screamed into the wind. “Jonathan!”

  The Griffin suddenly rose up in front of the opening, its nine seats filled with passengers. Peter joined Theo and Melissa in the front. Zack, Rebel, and Mercy had been buckled into the back. Liam and Heath sat in the center row, shivering as Amanda held the side door open. She’d clamped herself to the Griffin with one hand’s tempis and formed a giant white tendril with the other.

  Hannah watched from the kitchen door, breathless, as the rest of Amanda’s creation came into view. At the end of her tendril was a massive hand, and in the middle of the hand was—

  “Jonathan!” Hannah covered her mouth, her teary eyes locked on her sister. “You did it! You d—”

  One floor down and sixty feet to the north, the electrical cable swung into Rebel’s Wild-9. The putty exploded, obliterating a liftplate and pitching the ship at a 60-degree angle. Hannah toppled backwards into the kitchen.

  The concussive force of the blast sent the Griffin into a barrel roll. Amanda reinforced her hold on the van while she fought to keep Jonathan in her grip. Her tempis held, but there was something going on behind her. An unbuckled passenger was pressing against her back, and then her hip, and then—

  “Help!”

  It wasn’t until the Griffin leveled out that Amanda realized what had happened. She’d kept her hold on Jonathan, but she’d let someone else fall out of the van.

  Peter was the first to register the missing face in the center row. “Liam?”

  He looked out his window. “Liam!”

  Amanda pulled Jonathan into the Griffin, then took a frantic peek out the door. There was nothing she could do. The boy had fallen out of reach.

  “Oh God, Peter . . .”

  “No!”

  Peter struggled to open the passenger door. Theo held him back. “Peter, stop. Stop!”

  “Close that door!” Melissa yelled at Amanda.

  Amanda shut the side hatch, then took a worried look at the Absence. “God. They’re still on there. Hannah and Mia. David . . .”

  “Not David,” said a high voice next to her.

  Everyone turned to look at Heath. He cradled Jonathan’s head in his lap, his hazel eyes locked on the aerstraunt. He’d been the only one on the van who caught what happened, the only one to see David jump.

  —

  Four and a half miles above the ruins of Atropos, two teenage boys tumbled past the smoking remains of the Absence. David’s rope flapped behind him as he fell through the troposphere, his numb fingers wrapped around the straps of his aerochute. He had no idea how to operate the device, but he had at least ninety more seconds to figure it out.

  His bigger concern at the moment was the kid he was trying to save, a shadowy wisp in the distance. Liam had a sixty-foot lead on the race to the ground. Catching up to him would take some effort.

  David straightened out to a jackknife plummet, his skin bristling in the frigid sky. He was fifty percent sure he could reach Liam and still have time to make a soft landing, but it would be close. He’d be lucky to survive all this without getting frostbite. The last thing he needed was to lose more fingers.

  He dove after Liam, the cold wind whistling in his ears. Somewhere in the back of his addled thoughts, he remembered that two people he cared about were still on the aerstraunt. H
e could have used his aerochute to help him. Yet here he was, saving some damn fool Gotham.

  Stupid boy, David chided himself. Stupid, stupid boy.

  —

  There was no system in place to keep the Absence flying on half engine power, nor was there a loophole in physics that allowed a saucer to remain level on two liftplates.

  The ship swung like a hinge on its functional lifters, then dropped vertically through the air. Floors became walls. Hallways became pits. Every loose object tumbled to the port side of the vessel. Hannah slid down the delivery corridor, scrambling to grab hold of something. Anything.

  “Hannah!”

  Mia extended her arm out the kitchen door. Hannah de-shifted and grabbed it with all her strength.

  Wincing, Mia struggled to help Hannah climb back into the room. They perched together on the doorframe, hugging each other as they both gasped for air.

  Hannah pulled back and saw a thick stream of blood on the side of Mia’s face. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Where are the others?”

  “They caught Jonathan,” Hannah said. “I don’t know where David is.”

  “Oh God.”

  “He has the chute. He’ll be okay. Do you still have my phone?”

  “Yeah.” Mia fished it out of her pocket and handed it to her. Hannah redialed Melissa’s number.

  The phone vibrated in Theo’s hand. He pressed it to his ear. “Hannah? Are you okay?”

  “I’m here with Mia. We’re okay, but we’re stuck in the kitchen. Can you still get us?”

  Theo looked at Melissa and was disheartened by her expression. From the moment the Griffin straightened out, she’d pushed it into full descent. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  She covered the receiver. “We can’t reach them in time. The van has a drop speed limit of forty miles an hour. It’s a safety measure. I can’t undo it.”

  The Absence was falling at least twice that velocity. The two surviving liftplates provided just enough drag force to make it a casual plummet.

  Amanda reached for the side door. “Let me jump! If I can reach them—”

  “You won’t reach them,” Melissa told her. “You’ll only die.”