The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

Peter dabbed his crying eyes, then seized the handset from Theo. “Hannah, put Mia on.”

  “Peter?”

  “Just put her on. Quickly!”

  Hannah passed the phone to Mia. Peter looked out the window at the smoldering saucer. “Listen, sweetheart, is there a long wall near you?”

  Mia peeked down the forty-foot shaft that was, until recently, a hallway. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You won’t like this, darling, but it’s your only way out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He took a deep breath, then aimed his heavy gaze out the window. “You’re going to have to make a portal.”

  —

  By the time Mia finished registering her objections, the Absence had dropped another thousand feet. She’d studied under Peter for months now, struggling to turn her dime-size portals into full-fledged travel doors. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t do it. And even if it was possible . . .

  “It won’t help,” Mia told Peter. “Portals can only exist in a fixed location.”

  “Look—”

  “It’ll fly right past us. There won’t be time!”

  Peter shook his head. “You’ve got a swifter right next to you. She’ll make the time.”

  Mia thought back to Semerjean’s exit, the way he threw himself at high speed through a rapidly falling portal. The maneuver seemed tricky even for a Pelletier. Now Hannah was supposed to catch a portal going twice as fast in the other direction.

  “I don’t know, Peter . . .”

  Her voice crackled and faded. The Absence was dropping out of transmission range.

  “We don’t have time to argue!” Peter shouted. “I already lost . . .”

  He covered his face with a quivering hand. Theo muted the handset. “Your son will be okay. David’s saving him right now.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You don’t know David.”

  Melissa was starting to realize that she didn’t know David. After everything he’d pulled, all his pragmatic violence, she’d written him off as a sociopath. Clearly she had him all wrong.

  Amanda clutched Peter’s shoulder. “Please. You’re their only chance.”

  He raised the handset again. “Okay, listen, Mia. No more back talk. I know you, darling. I know you can do this.”

  “But where are we supposed to go? Home?”

  Peter looked to Theo. “The brownstone. Is it—”

  “No!” Heath yelled.

  “It’s compromised,” Theo told him. “Heath and I barely got out of there.”

  Peter tapped his leg in dilemma. If Mia couldn’t draw a door to Brooklyn, then it had to be someplace else she knew by memory, somewhere fresh in her thoughts.

  “You remember that painting we saw back at Atropos?” he asked her. “The mural of the Fates?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “That’s your exit point. You have to recall every detail of it. The colors. The texture. Visualize it.”

  Mia swapped a fretful look with Hannah. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “That’s my girl,” Peter said. “Tell Hannah the plan and then hold her tight. The moment she sees that portal coming, she has to shift as fast as she can. It’s got to be a clean jump. You can’t hit the edges.”

  The saucer made an unholy sound, a metallic squeal that echoed off of every wall. The last two liftplates were breaking free of their moorings. Soon the Absence would be nothing but two hundred tons of falling glass and metal.

  Peter heard the noise over the phone. “You’re out of time, Mia. Hurry!”

  After a rushed and frantic explanation, Mia climbed onto Hannah’s back and focused all her thoughts on the mural of the Moirae. She pictured the faces of the ancient Greek sisters, the way the dust and grime made them look almost sinister. But what if the portal didn’t work? What if she couldn’t—

  No. Mia shut out all her worries and rechanneled her thoughts, until she managed to form a spatial link with the mural wall. She could feel it in her thoughts like a cool metal coin beneath her toe.

  Hannah looked down the shaft and saw a bright white circle rising up the farthest wall. She jumped into blueshift, but everything felt wrong. The portal was too far away. Too—

  “—small. It’s too small. Mia . . .”

  The disc of light sailed straight past them, then disappeared in a blink. Hannah de-shifted.

  Peter’s voice came in through crackling static. “Did you do it?”

  Mia lowered her head. “No.”

  “You have to concentrate!”

  “I’m trying!”

  Another creak tore through the Absence. The ship was coming apart fast.

  “This is your last chance,” Peter told Mia. “If you don’t—”

  His voice fizzled out. The connection was gone.

  Mia wrapped her arms around Hannah and pressed her forehead to the back of her skull. “I’m so sorry.”

  Hannah squeezed her wrists. “It’s not your fault. It’s Rebel’s and Azral’s and every other asshole who got us here.” She bowed her head miserably. “I don’t want to die in a stupid aerstraunt.”

  “Me neither,” Mia said. “Let me try something different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just get ready.”

  Though Mia couldn’t have asked for a better teacher than Peter, the man had his stubborn blind spots. He remained steadfast in his belief that no traveler could draw a door in midair, any more than Zack could draw a sketch on a pool of water. You need a hard surface, Peter insisted. It’s the backbone of our power.

  But Mia believed more and more that her talent worked differently. Her portals were only hindered by walls. They needed air to breathe. They needed to float.

  Mia drew a new link to the mural of the Fates, then cut a freestanding portal in the middle of the shaft. Already, she could feel a visceral comfort in her thoughts, as if she was all the way back in her natural element.

  Hannah re-shifted at the sight of the second portal, then squinted her eyes at the moving target.

  Slow down, you bastard. Just give me one chance.

  Her vision turned four shades bluer. The temperature dropped thirty degrees. The portal now rose with a slow, lazy drift, like a child’s balloon.

  And it was expanding.

  It’s bigger, Hannah thought. She’s doing it. Oh, Mia . . .

  One of the last two liftplates finally broke free from the hull. It dangled on its power cords like a giant gouged eye before separating itself from the ship.

  The Absence dropped faster. Hannah saw the portal speed up. “No!”

  She held Mia tight and leapt from the kitchen. The portal swallowed them whole, just as an electrical surge coursed throughout the ship and set off Rebel’s last two charges of Wild-9.

  The Absence burst apart with fiery vengeance, as if colliding against an invisible mountain. A hundred thousand fragments rained down on Sleepy Hollow—splashing in water, crashing through windshields. Four thousand pieces found their way back to Atropos, shattering what little remained of its curved glass shell.

  By the time the Griffin made its rough return to land, the aerport was littered with smoldering debris. There was nothing left in the sky but two teenage boys fluttering down to earth on a sputtering aerochute. They flopped into the grass on the shore of the Hudson, then lay perfectly still.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Zack came awake on a floor of concrete, his memories a hazy blur. Last he recalled, he’d been miles up in the sky, gurgling on blood while everyone screamed around him. Now he was back on the ground in a quiet, sunny parking lot. His skin was warm. His mouth was dry. His insides throbbed as if he’d just come out of surgery. What the hell had happened?

  “Hello, Zack.”

  Melissa sat ten feet away, her body slouched
against the grille of her Griffin. She’d touched down at Atropos with nine seconds of power left in the battery, a landing had that shattered every last window and cracked the engine in half. The van was in such wretched condition that even a full-body reversal wouldn’t get it working again. It was the day’s final casualty, or so Melissa hoped.

  Zack sat up with a wince, then chortled with black humor. Melissa looked at him askance. “That’s not the reaction I was expecting.”

  “Only sane reaction left,” Zack said. “Every time I wake up, I’m someone else’s prisoner.”

  “You’re not my prisoner. Far from it.”

  He scanned his bright surroundings. “Where are the others?”

  “Half your friends are gathering the other half,” Melissa said. “We had some troubles on the way down.”

  “Where are your others?”

  Melissa looked away with a heavy expression. “You don’t have to worry about them.”

  Zack looked over his shoulder and saw the Golds sitting on a nearby bench. Heath tended to Jonathan dutifully as he shivered under a blanket, his shoulders hunched, his head drooped miserably.

  “Is he okay?” Zack asked Melissa.

  “He’s hypothermic. He’ll be all right as long as he keeps warm.” She studied Jonathan and Heath in wonder. “The orphans are coming out of the woodwork, aren’t they?”

  “Orphans,” Zack echoed.

  “My term for your people. Hope you don’t mind it.”

  “We’ve been called worse.”

  Zack looked down and noticed the silver disc on his chest. God only knew what Amanda had to do to get Azral and Esis to heal him. They would have never done it on their own.

  He glanced up at Melissa. “You saw them, didn’t you? The Pelletiers.”

  She nodded her head, her neck still aching from Azral’s cold fingers. “I have many questions about those two.”

  “Three,” Zack corrected. “There are three of them.”

  “That’s . . . disheartening to hear.”

  A portal swirled to life on the stone wall of the terminal. Peter burst through the surface with Liam in his arms. Theo and David emerged next, the former propping up the latter.

  “Any more blankets in the van?” Peter asked Melissa.

  She shook her head, her wide eyes locked on the spatial breach behind him.

  Peter laid his son out on a bus bench, then disappeared through a new portal. He returned ten seconds later with a pair of thick comforters in his arms.

  “My God,” said Melissa. “We always thought Mia created that escape portal last year. It was you. You’re a native-born chronokinetic.”

  Her mouth went slack. “You’re a Gotham.”

  Peter shot her a tense look before wrapping up Liam. Theo pulled the other comforter around David. Though the future was looking better and better for him and his friends, he could see storm clouds gathering over Melissa’s strings.

  Careful, Theo thought. He’s very protective about his people’s secrets.

  David lifted his head and flashed a wry, shivering smile at Zack. “H-hey, I know you.”

  “God. What happened?”

  “Took the scenic route back. D-don’t recommend it.”

  Peter stared at him with awe. “That was miraculous what you did.”

  “It was foolish,” David insisted. “It was m-miraculous that we lived.”

  Amanda stumbled out the aerport’s main entrance, her arms draped around Hannah and Mia. She had to plow through seven tons of wreckage to get to their landing spot, and had nearly been crushed by a collapsing mezzanine. Now the three of them were covered in white plaster dust. They looked like ghosts of themselves, the pale and mortal reflections of the three sister Fates.

  The Silvers reunited at the Griffin, too tired and traumatized to even embrace. Only Peter had the strength to wrap his arms around Mia. He hugged her tight, his voice strained with emotion.

  “I knew you could do it,” he told her. “I never doubted you for a second.”

  Mia looked over Peter’s shoulder and saw Liam watching them confusedly. “Wait. Is that—”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “I’ll explain later.”

  Theo looked around at the dozen different smoke plumes rising into the sky. “Guys, we have about five minutes before this place is crawling with cops and firemen.”

  “It’s all right,” Peter told him. “We’ll be far away by the time they get here.”

  Hannah frowned at his implication. She was still recovering from the last portal jump.

  Amanda gestured at the Gothams in the back of the Griffin. “What about them?”

  Though Rebel remained deeply unconscious, Mercy was beginning to stir. Peter lifted her out of the van and carried her through a portal on the wall. He came back almost immediately. Alone.

  “Where’d you drop her?” Zack asked him.

  “She’ll be fine.”

  Liam eyed the portal anxiously. “Don’t send me back, Dad. I don’t want to go back.”

  “No, no, no.” Peter squeezed his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you again. You’re coming with us.”

  Melissa climbed to her feet and took a closer look at Rebel. “This man needs medical attention.”

  “We’ll take care of him,” Amanda promised.

  “That’s what worries me.”

  Peter shook his head. “It’s not like that. We want him to live.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Jonathan grumbled.

  “I put myself at great risk for you people,” Melissa said. “Because I believe you’re all decent at heart. I hope you don’t prove me wrong.”

  David chuckled at her. “That’s rich coming from you.”

  “She saved us,” Theo reminded David. “We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for her.”

  “Same could be said for the Pelletiers. That doesn’t make them our friends.”

  Peter raised his palms. “All right. All right. There’s no need to argue. You did us a good turn, Melissa, and we thank you for it. But this is where we part ways.”

  Theo shook his head. “We can’t just leave her. Integrity knows she helped us. They’ll hunt her down and lock her up.”

  Hannah stared at him incredulously. “You want her to come with us.”

  “I want us to go with her,” he countered. “She has a place in Maine. A safe house.”

  “No,” said David.

  “Absolutely not,” said Peter.

  “Would you just listen to me?”

  “It’s out of the question,” Peter said. “You know what’s at stake here. I’m not putting our fates in the hands of a government agent.”

  Theo threw his hands up. “So what’s your plan, then? We can’t go home.”

  “I’ve got another place.”

  “Oh, really? Because if it’s as safe as the last one—”

  A soft, choking cry cut him off. Everyone looked to Mia. After all her trials and tribulations, all the near-death experiences, her emotions had finally caught up with her. They’d come all this way to save Zack. Now he was just sitting there, unacknowledged.

  She crossed the space between them and wrapped her arms around him. Zack squeezed her back with a tired half grin. “Hey, you.”

  “Hi, Zack.”

  Their hug sent a shock wave of emotion through the others, all the weary combatants who’d climbed halfway to heaven today and somehow found their way back. They were alive. They were alive and reunited, and it was nothing short of a miracle.

  Melissa sighed defeatedly. There was no hope of selling Peter on her plan. She didn’t even have time to try.

  “Will you be okay?” Amanda asked her.

  “I appreciate your concern, but my situation isn’t as dire as Theo believes. I have options.”

  “I’m sorry,” s
aid Peter.

  “So am I. I just hope that one day soon—”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Peter looked away with an uncomfortable expression. “I can’t let you leave with the information you have.”

  The Silvers and Golds stared at him in disbelief. Even David was stunned. “You can’t be serious.”

  Amanda shot to her feet. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Liam eyed her strangely. “What are you people going on about?”

  “If he’s talking about killing her—”

  “He’s not.”

  “He isn’t,” Melissa said. “I’ve been sitting here wondering how his people managed to stay hidden for so long without leaving a trail of witnesses. Now I get it. He intends to erase my memory through reversal.”

  The orphans looked to Peter for confirmation. He turned his attention onto Zack. “You up to it?”

  “What, you want me to do it?”

  “You’re the only one here with the power.”

  “The only human,” Melissa clarified. “If you can’t do it, then Peter will have to wound me badly enough to warrant the use of a medical reviver. All told, my chances will be better with you.”

  Theo looked at the .38 in Peter’s holster. “Is this really necessary?”

  “I’m just trying to protect us,” Peter said. “Your people and mine.”

  “Just let me talk to her a second. Alone.”

  Peter took a nervous scan of the parking lot. “Make it quick.”

  Theo led Melissa to the other side of the Griffin. He threw a furtive peek at his friends, then leaned in for a whisper. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “About what?”

  “You’ve been transmitting to your associate this whole time.”

  While Cain listened intently from his home office in Maryland, Melissa reached into her blouse and peeled a small communication device from her chest. She pressed it into Theo’s palm.

  “You should tell Peter,” he urged her. “He’ll back off. He’ll know there’s no point reversing you.”

  “There’s still a point. The agency will interrogate me about my role in this disaster. A memory wipe will give me plausible deniability. It’s a smart move for all of us.”

  Theo studied her incredulously. “You’re really willing to give up all this knowledge you gained?”