The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  On the fourth night of the search mission, Victoria gathered the team for an emergency meeting. Fifteen Gothams and two Silvers clustered together in her hotel suite, their weary eyes following her as she paced in front of a lumiquarium. By now Zack was sure that he despised Victoria, though Peter told him not to judge her too harshly. Her husband was one of the three dozen augurs who’d killed themselves last year, while her son had died violently in Rebel and Ivy’s service.

  But despite her grief, Victoria never buckled for a moment. She remained as cool and unyielding as the tempis inside of her.

  She studied the ghostfish with dark, somber eyes before turning to address her crew.

  “We gave it our best try, but these breachers have eluded us. For all we know, they’re thousands of miles away by now. I believe, and the elders agree, that we’ve run our course here.”

  Peter leaned against a dresser and popped a lemon candy. He was one of the few people on the team to retain a modicum of handsomeness with his disguise. Zack and Mia agreed that he looked like Liam Neeson after some anaphylactic swelling.

  “Give it one more day,” he urged. “We might catch a break tomorrow.”

  Victoria shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Zack rose to his feet. “If we don’t find these people, the government will.”

  “And if we stay any longer, Integrity will find us. We’re putting the whole clan at risk.”

  The Mayor looked to Zack with sympathy. “I understand your frustration, but there’s nothing more we can do.”

  “Bullshit.” Zack turned to Rebel. “You’re the big breacher hunter. How did you keep finding us?”

  Rebel stared at the floor with a dour expression. “You know how.”

  “Ioni.” Zack chuckled bleakly. “That’s just great.”

  Mercy held his arm. “I hate to say it, but Victoria’s right. If they left the city—”

  “They didn’t.” Zack moved toward the door. “If you guys want to go, then go. Mia and I will keep looking.”

  Peter sighed. “Zack . . .”

  “We’re all leaving,” Victoria insisted. “That’s an order.”

  “You seem to have me confused with one of your flying monkeys.”

  “You’re part of our clan now, Trillinger. That means you follow our rules.”

  “Or what? You’ll kill me?”

  “No. We’ll just never let you back in the underland.”

  Zack looked to Peter, whose dark expression confirmed the veracity of the threat. He opened the door and bathed the Gothams in a seething glare. “I see. When it comes to killing my people, the sky’s the limit. But when we need to be saved, it’s ‘so long and fuck you.’”

  He slammed the door behind him. Victoria sighed at her underling. “Call Aer Control. Get us the next available flight slot.”

  Mia gave Mercy a few seconds to chase after Zack, and was only mildly surprised when she didn’t. The two of them made a curiously aloof couple, all shrugs and whatevers. Mia hoped it was just a skittish early phase of their relationship. What was the point of having someone if you didn’t love them with all your heart?

  She followed Zack to his room and found him staring out at the city. His window faced the Via Fortuna, a six-level skyway that cut through the heart of the casino district. The aeromobiles all glowed in the night, trailing gorgeous streaks of color as they passed at high speed.

  Zack peeked at Mia over his shoulder, then looked back at the skyway. “They’ll never understand. Even Peter doesn’t get it.”

  Mia hugged him from behind, her cheek pressed to his shoulder blade. “I get it.”

  He gripped her wrists. “Ninety-nine people out of seven billion. God only knows how many of us are left. Evan killed one. Rebel got six. We keep dropping like this . . .”

  “Zack . . .”

  He sighed at the window. “A world only dies when there’s no one left to remember it.”

  Mia held him tight. She knew that Zack wasn’t just grieving for the late great Earth. He was grieving for his brother, for Amanda, for the pieces of himself he lost in the Pelletiers’ torture room. The Coppers were his best chance to snatch a small victory from the universe. Now they were slipping through his fingers, too.

  The room phone rang in a high, piercing tweedle. Zack and Mia ignored it until it stopped. The only people who had their number were the Gothams down the hall. They could damn well wait.

  “I’ll open up some portals,” Mia offered. “See if the other Mias know anything.”

  Zack turned around to face her. “You sure?”

  “No, but what else can we do?”

  “You don’t have to read them. I will.”

  “I’m not worried about the insults. I just—”

  The phone rang again. Mia rushed to the nightstand and yanked the handset from the cradle. “What?”

  A sharp laugh filled her ear. “Whoa. Easy there, Snappy.”

  She couldn’t recognize the voice at all. He sounded youthful and vibrant, but not in any pleasant way. He was most definitely not one of Victoria’s crew.

  “I think you have the wrong number,” Mia said.

  “Au contraire, ma chère. The number I have is seven. Seven Coppers, hiding out on a pier at the far end of the Wallows. Ask Peter. He’ll know where it is.”

  Zack eyed Mia quizzically. “Who is that?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Who’s to say?” the caller teased. “I could be a friend. I could be an enemy. It’s getting hard to tell which are which these days.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  The stranger laughed again. “It’s the City of Chance, girl. Take a gamble.”

  The line went dead. Mia hung up the phone.

  “You all right?” Zack asked her.

  “No.” She looked beyond the Via Fortuna, at the dark and distant sky. “Get Peter.”

  —

  The aeric revolution did a number on the maritime shipping industry. As old iron barges were replaced with low-flying cargolifts, a slew of cheaper, more convenient docks sprouted up across the inland. Year by year, pier by pier, the port of Seattle withered away to an antiquity. After several failed attempts to lease the harbor to commercial developers, the city surrendered it to the bums and seagulls. Soon the place became a haven for all of Seattle’s downtrodden—the addicts and erratics, the castoffs and casualties.

  To keep the homeless from wandering back into the city proper, the government converted a thousand old boats and shipping containers into habitable shelters. Food drops were made on a daily basis while volunteer health workers roamed the piers with medkits. The port had its own bathhouse, its own economy, even its own justice system. All it took was a scream to bring a dozen people down on the head of a predator.

  Still, there was a reason the place was called the Wallows. On this wet black evening, Mia couldn’t imagine a more wretched hell. Families huddled together in rusty metal boxes, scraping meat out of tins with filthy fingers. A burn-scarred man screamed the Gospel of Jesus while a frantic woman accosted everyone she saw with a photo of a teenage girl. “Have you seen her? Please. She’s my daughter. I have to find her.”

  Mia and Peter walked the perimeter of the entry plaza, a chaotic bazaar of charity stations and barter stalls. Between a tetanus shot kiosk and a purveyor of dry blankets sat a sickly old oracle who traded prophecies for cigarettes.

  Peter winced at his loud, hacking cough. “Christ, man. There are at least three doctors floating around here. Go see one of them.”

  “Fuck off, Irish.”

  “Lovely.” Peter plunked a twenty-dollar bill into the man’s cup and took Mia’s hand. “Come on.”

  Mia looked to the distance and saw the Ryder sisters grimacing at the local sights and smells. None of the Gothams were particularly happy to be
here. Even Zack seemed dubious about her anonymous caller’s information. What if it was just a Pelletier trick? What if Integrity was luring them into a trap?

  Ten yards away, Victoria did a double-take at one of the locals. She gripped the Mayor’s arm. “Over there. That girl.”

  He followed her gaze to a petite figure in a rain slicker and germ mask. She was haggling with a trader twice her size, demanding six solic batteries for the fresh-caught salmon in her hands.

  The Mayor squinted. “Can’t make spit of her. What are you seeing?”

  “Not seeing,” Victoria said. “Feeling.”

  He stared at her, surprised. “She’s a tempic?”

  “A strong one.”

  The girl left the bazaar with four batteries and a scowl. The Mayor motioned to his nephew, a lumic named Flynn. He nodded in acknowledgment, disappeared behind an illusive screen, then followed the tempic with chameleon stealth.

  Ten minutes later, the team joined Flynn at the western edge of the harbor, where three metal shanties flanked the end of a pier. It seemed Mia’s tipster hadn’t lied. The Coppers had claimed a desolate corner of the Wallows, their own little Freak Street.

  Zack peeked around the edge of a shipping can and studied the hovels. “So what now?”

  “We neutralize their powers,” Victoria said. “It’s the only way to be safe.”

  Mercy scoffed. “I can’t sap seven people at once.”

  “It’s also a bad way to earn their trust,” Peter said.

  Victoria frowned at him. “We can’t just walk up to these breachers. They’re fugitives. They’re skittish.”

  “And one of them makes Cataclysms,” the Mayor anxiously reminded everyone.

  “Let us do it,” Mia proposed. “Me and Zack. We’re from their world. We speak their language.”

  Zack nodded in agreement. “This is why you brought us.”

  Peter traded a heavy look with Victoria before shrugging at Mia. “We’ll give it a shot, but stay in view. If we see one hint of trouble—”

  “You won’t,” said Rebel. “They’ll be fine.”

  Even his fellow Gothams looked skeptical. Half of them couldn’t seem to decide if he was incompetent or lying. If his dear, beloved Ivy had seen the looks on their faces, she would have given them all an earful. Bastards! He fought and bled for you! He lost everything, and this is how you treat him?

  It’s all right, Rebel thought. They’re in for a surprise.

  The downpour stopped. Zack and Mia closed their umbrellas and cautiously emerged from cover. Without the pattering rain, the pier was eerily quiet. They couldn’t hear a hint of noise from the shanties.

  Mia glanced over her shoulder and saw all sixteen Gothams gathering at the base of the pier. She figured it was Peter’s idea to stand out in the open, as a good-faith gesture and a warning to the Coppers. Still, she wished they’d stayed hidden. They were an ornery-looking bunch. Their presence would only make these people more nervous.

  “Don’t worry,” Zack told her. “If their augur’s worth a damn, she’ll—”

  A metallic squeal filled the air. A speeding figure burst out of a hovel and screeched to a halt in front of them. He was a gangly boy of Korean descent, not a day older than thirteen. Zack and Mia had already learned from the Mayor’s divinations that the Coppers had a swifter among them, a severely injured one at that. His wheelchair didn’t seem to slow him down a bit.

  Peter blanched at the sight of the sawed-off shotgun in the boy’s hands. The barrel moved between Zack and Mia with the whizzing speed of a fan blade.

  Rebel held Peter back before he could intervene. “Wait.”

  “Wait!” Zack raised his hands at the swifter. “We’re friends!”

  “He can’t hear you,” said a voice from the shanties. “Not in that state.”

  Four more Coppers emerged from the hovels and formed an orderly wall behind the swifter. They were all dressed in rain slickers, with overstuffed duffels strapped securely to their backs. They were obviously prepared for company tonight. They all looked ready to flee or fight at a moment’s notice.

  They also had something else in common.

  “Jesus,” Mercy uttered. “They really are kids.”

  The Mayor had revealed the unique makeup of the Coppers three days ago, after his first hindsight scan. The Pelletiers had filled the group with adolescents—all Mias, Heaths, and Davids—with one glaring exception.

  At last, the leader stepped out of her hovel. She was a tall, black woman of powerful build, with close-cropped hair and a bright yellow dress that brazenly clashed with her surroundings. Zack assumed the garb was pure strategy, a way to keep enemy eyes on her. The Mayor had seen for himself the obsessive, protective love this woman had for her young ones. She was their teacher, their sergeant, their nursemaid, their nun. She’d rechristened them all with brand-new names and demanded they adapt to their circumstances.

  The Coppers listened. They adapted. And now they called her Mother.

  Zack jerked his head at the gun-wielding swifter. “Look, tell your boy—”

  “No boy.”

  “What?”

  Mother crossed her arms. “He’s seen unimaginable horrors. He suffers constant pain, yet still he fights. Sweep is many things, but he is no boy.”

  She spoke with a thick Haitian accent, and sounded much younger than she looked. At first glance, Zack had taken her for a woman in her mid-to-late thirties. Now he had to wonder if she was even older than Hannah.

  Mother beckoned to Sweep. He wheeled past her and took his place in the formation. Mia locked eyes with the small brunette next to him, the Copper’s lone tempic. She sneered at Zack and Mia menacingly, just daring them to try something.

  “Look, we’re not here to make trouble. My name’s—”

  “—Mia Farisi,” said Mother. “The man is Zack Trillinger. We know who you are. We’ve been expecting you for two days.”

  The seventh and final Copper emerged from her hut. She was a twelve-year-old girl with light brown skin, as tense and pretty as Heath. Clearly Mother had yet to hone this one into a soldier. Zack had a good guess why.

  Their augur, he realized. Oh God. That poor kid.

  The girl called See stepped into the moonlight and daintily clutched Mother’s waist. She bounced her muddled glare between the two Silvers.

  “That’s not how they look. They’re wearing disguises.”

  “We have no choice,” Zack said. “We’re fugitives, just like you. We have all the same problems you have. Same enemies. Same history.”

  “Same powers,” Mia added. From the moment she’d stepped within twenty feet of Mother, she felt a shocking twinge of intimacy, as if their naked hips were touching. The woman was most definitely a traveler. They were linked in ways that neither of them understood.

  Mother processed her with an uncomfortable expression. “Show us your true faces.”

  Zack and Mia swapped a hesitant look, then peeled off their putty adornments. Peter muttered a curse from the distance. He’d have to teleport them out of here. The docks were filled with civic cameras.

  Mother studied them intently while stroking See’s hair. “This one has been cursed with terrible visions, but her foresight keeps us alive. She told us on Sunday that you were coming—a man and girl just like us, offering safe haven from the soldiers who hunt us. But all See knows are the words you bring. She doesn’t know if they’re true.”

  Zack opened his mouth to speak, but Mother cut him off. “I wanted the chance to judge you for myself, and I do believe now that you’re everything you say you are. I believe you come to us with good intentions.”

  She motioned to the Gothams at the base of the pier. “But I do not trust these people you bring.”

  Ninety feet away, in a cracked glass booth that had once been a gatehouse, a woman in rags c
rouched against the wall and watched the meeting on a laptop screen. Gingold had sent her here a week ago to keep an eye out for temporal weirdness. All she’d gotten so far was a rash and a newfound empathy for the underclass.

  Still, there was something awfully shady about these new visitors. They stood out like diamonds here in the Wallows, and they moved about the docks with suspicious purpose.

  The agent scanned the Gothams through her remote-control camera, but none of them registered in the agency’s database. She sent the spy-eye up the pier, toward the Silvers and Coppers.

  Only Rebel noticed the plum-size drone flying ten feet above the water. He gripped the revolver beneath his raincoat. Here we go.

  Mother kept her dark eyes on the Gothams, oblivious to See’s growing discomfort.

  “We put our trust in strangers once,” she told Zack and Mia. “Long ago, when we first came to this world. I had my doubts, but I didn’t listen.”

  She dipped her head in sorrow. “There were nine of us then.”

  Zack’s heart sank at her news. Every orphan death was like a genocide to his people. Now there two more names on the casualty list.

  Mia looked at Mother. “These people you’re talking about, they were scientists, right? They had a weird name and a fancy building and they told you everything would be okay. Except it wasn’t.”

  A ripple of unease crossed Mother’s face. “What does it matter?”

  “Because it happened to us,” Zack said. “I told you, we have the same history.”

  “But you didn’t learn the same lessons.” Mother glared at the Gothams. “Can you truly tell me that you trust those people with your lives?”

  While Zack and Mia hemmed, the camera drone scanned their faces. A computer in Maryland processed the images. Within moments, a hundred different handphones lit up with a Priority-1 notice.

  See caught the new future, then shrieked at the sky. “They’re coming!”

  Mother turned to the Silvers, her eyes wide with betrayal. Zack raised his palms. “Wait—”