The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  The tempic saw his hands and attacked. She was a fourteen-year-old girl of explosive temperament, a killer on two Earths. Under the loving care of Mother, she’d learned to control her violent impulses . . . to an extent.

  She’d been born Olivia Bassin. Her only name now was Stitch.

  A fist of white force extended from her arm. It struck Zack in the chest, breaking six ribs and throwing him fifty feet off the side of the pier.

  Mia watched in horror as he skidded into the ocean. “Zack!”

  Peter ran up the pier, panicked. Even worse than Zack’s predicament was the ominous change he felt inside Mother—a swirling vortex of energy, like a breath before a roar.

  “Kounya!” Mother yelled. She closed her eyes and grabbed onto See. Her children braced each other for support.

  Streaks of light burst from her skin, until she and See were encased in a glowing white dome. It ballooned in size. Five feet. Ten feet. Twenty-five. Forty.

  All over the Wallows, people looked to the west with squinting eyes. Something bizarre was happening on the horizon—an unexpected radiance, like a second moon rising up from the ocean. The bubble flared for three more seconds, then disappeared in a blink.

  Red spots danced in Peter’s vision as he struggled to survey the damage. The pier was half as long as it used to be, ending in a smooth, curved line at his feet. There was nothing beyond him now but black sky and water.

  The Coppers were gone, and so was Mia.

  —

  Seventeen miles to the east, two identical portals bloomed on the wall of a private jet hangar. The Ryder sisters emerged in synch, each one trailed by a stumbling queue of Gothams.

  Angela Ryder waved them in. “Hurry! Hurry!”

  Victoria popped out of the wall, her hands encased in a floating tempic gurney. As the group had made their frantic escape from the Wallows, the Integrity agent in the gatehouse fired a Hail Mary shot from her service pistol. The bullet struck the Mayor in the small of his back.

  He lay cheek-down on the tempis, his white lips stammering. “Please. Don’t let me die. My daughters . . .”

  “You won’t die,” Victoria told him. “You won’t even remember this. I promise you.”

  She looked to Sean Howell, the team’s handsome young turner. He’d learned the art of healing from Mother Olga herself, though he admitted that the Mayor posed a unique challenge. Between his age, his girth, and his artificial heart, Sean gave the man a fifty percent chance of surviving reversal.

  Victoria tapped her foot in anxious thought. “Can Olga heal him?”

  “Olga can heal anyone,” Sean said.

  “Then keep him stable. We’ll bring him to her.”

  Rebel was the last to emerge from the portal. He’d lingered behind at the dock to return fire on the Integrity agent. His first shot nicked her thigh. The second one cut every string of her future.

  He pulled off his raincoat and holstered his gun. “We have to go before they ground all flights.”

  Mercy looked at the shrinking portals. “Wait! What about—”

  A third portal opened on the nearby wall, gushing a torrent of seawater. Peter and Zack spilled out through the opening. The water carried them twenty feet before Peter was able to wave the gate shut.

  He scrambled to Zack’s side and listened for breath. Mercy watched him frantically as he began to resuscitate him. “Oh, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare, Trillinger . . .”

  Zack spit up water and coughed. Peter motioned for Mercy and two of Victoria’s tempics.

  “Get him on the plane. Carefully. He’s got broken bones and probably internal damage.”

  As the tempics laid Zack out on a platform, Peter stormed across the wet floor of the hangar. His disguise had come off in the ocean. He aimed his naked rage at one kinsman in particular.

  Rebel sighed at his approach. “Look—”

  Peter clocked him in the jaw. He hit the wall with an echoing thud.

  Victoria rushed to Peter’s side. “What are you doing?”

  “You happy now?” he asked Rebel. “You like how that went?”

  “Peter, stop!”

  He looked to Victoria and jerked his thumb at Rebel. “He saw what was coming. That son of a bitch knew exactly what we were in for.”

  Rebel struggled to his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth. Victoria shook her head in disbelief. “No. He wouldn’t risk our lives like that. Not for a couple of breachers.”

  “The breachers weren’t his target.”

  Peter clamped Rebel’s chin and forced him into eye contact. “He figured if Mia and Zack got in enough trouble, the Pelletiers would show up to save them. Maybe he’d get lucky and put a bullet in one of them. Was that it? Was that the big plan?”

  Rebel shoved him away. “They killed my family!”

  “And you risked mine! Mia’s in a world of trouble right now because of you. If she gets hurt, I swear to Christ I’ll kill you myself.”

  Rebel flinched at Peter’s expression. There was a savagery in his deep blue eyes that was both brand-new and shockingly familiar.

  Peter turned to Victoria. “You guys go. I’ll find Mia.”

  “Look, Peter, I’m sorry, but are you sure she’s even—”

  “She’s alive.”

  He drew a portal in the wall. Victoria ordered everyone onto the M-9, then pointed a stern finger at Rebel.

  “There’ll be hell to pay when we get home. If you have any sense left in you, you’ll shut your mouth and do what you’re told. Are we clear?”

  Her words were nothing but static in Rebel’s ears. His every thought was fixed on Peter. All this time, he’d thought Semerjean was posing as one of the breachers. But what if he’d been looking in the wrong place? What if a demon had been hiding among his people for years?

  “Are we clear?” Victoria repeated.

  Rebel watched Peter as he disappeared through the portal. He narrowed his eyes, then spit a gob of blood at the floor. “Crystal.”

  —

  For eighty-one creatures in the woods of northern Washington, the apocalypse came four years early. A rabbit stopped to sniff the strange smell of ozone. An owl shrieked at a high-pitched whine. Then everything in a fifty-foot radius was obliterated in a bubble of bright temporis.

  By the time the light dissipated, the environment had changed. The forest now had a perfectly round clearing with a floor of broken concrete, plus three aluminum shanties that leaned at odd angles. Displaced salmon flopped helplessly around the perimeter.

  In the center of the circle, seven orphans fell to their hand and knees. An eighth one slumped in his wheelchair.

  Mia ran a trembling hand down the side of her face. Mother’s three-dimensional portals were worse than anything she’d ever experienced—a sickening journey, like being passed through a giant’s loose bowels.

  She turned her head and saw Mother crouched on the concrete, caressing See’s back while the girl loudly retched. The others had managed to keep their dinners inside them, but just barely.

  “It’s a terrible power,” Mother said to Mia. “I don’t like using it. But you gave me no choice.”

  Mia fought the urge to hit her. “We came here to help you!”

  “Help?” said Sweep. “You led the feds right to us!”

  “We could have gotten you out! We have travelers too. Better ones.”

  “You shut your mouth,” said Stitch.

  “You shut yours. If you killed Zack, I swear to God—”

  “Enough,” Mother snapped. “Leve kanpe.”

  Stitch rose to her feet on wobbly legs and formed a large tempic square on the ground. Two of the Coppers carried Sweep’s wheelchair onto the surface. The rest followed them aboard.

  Soon a freckled redhead named Sky pressed her temples in concentration. The tempis glowed
on the underside before rising into the air like a flying carpet.

  Mother took a somber look at Mia. “Under better circumstances, I’d invite you to join us. You’d fit in well with our family.”

  Mia closed her eyes. Even worse than the physical discomfort of the portal jaunt was the psychic intimacy she’d shared with Mother. She could feel the sickness behind the woman’s devotion, a fear of abandonment that colored her every thought. Mother would lay down her life for her beloved children. She’d also kill the first one who tried to leave her.

  The platform continued its slow ascent. Mia looked up at Mother. “We can still help you. It’s not too late.”

  “I think we’ve had quite enough of your help.”

  “You can’t keep running. You have to trust someone!”

  “Perhaps,” said Mother. “But not today.”

  As the Coppers rose above the canopy of trees, Sweep enveloped them all in a temporal shift field. Shade shrouded them in a black lumic haze. The group fled the scene in a near-invisible blur, a fleeting smudge in the night.

  Mia sat down on the tattered remains of the pier, her palms pressed against her face. She had no money, no handphone, not a damn thing to work with except a gauzy patch of moonlight. She could be anywhere in the world right now, or even anywhere in time.

  Her inner Peter scoffed at her. Oh, come on. Only the Pelletiers can survive time travel. And only they can jump more than a hundred miles at a stretch.

  Mia frowned at the thought. Clearly Mother was an entirely different breed of teleporter. Who knew what her limits were?

  Rules are rules, hon. And what’s the first rule of traveling?

  She sighed. “Know your bearings.”

  That’s my girl.

  She cast her thoughts across the landscape, following the fetid aura of Mother’s jump trail. It arched like a rainbow back toward the Wallows, a ten-mile trip at best. She was just a quick hop away from Peter and the others, but the docks were still foreign to her. She didn’t know them well enough to make a memory leap. It probably wasn’t wise to go back there anyway. By now, the place would be crawling with—

  Harsh white spotlights drenched the clearing from above. Mia shielded her eyes and saw dozens of liftplates in rapid descent. A whole squadron of aerships had de-shifted right above her.

  Her throat closed. Oh no . . .

  She ran for the trees, cursing herself for dawdling. Integrity had known about Mother for two months now, and were just waiting for her to make another “Cataclysm.” They probably saw her dome of light from miles away.

  The Integrity squad leader watched Mia on his infrared monitor. “Got the girl. She’s alone out here. Orders?”

  Gingold paced the floor of his Bethesda apartment, tapping his headset in contemplation. Like Rebel, he’d developed a white whale vendetta against the Pelletiers. These other freaks were little fish. Farisi was barely a minnow.

  “Juice her,” he ordered. “Juice the whole area.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Six solic cannons took aim at the clearing. Mia lined up her jump with nervous precision. A shrieking voice inside her told her to screw the formalities. Just go to the hotel! Go!

  She waved a six-foot portal into the air and leapt through it, just as the cannons fired their solis. The gateway closed on the tail of her raincoat, shearing nine inches off in a molecularly even line.

  Mia moved her way through the folds of space, all the way to the floor of a dimly lit corridor. She had barely tumbled to a stop before she frantically checked her limbs. Mercifully, nothing got severed when the portal closed on her, but something still wasn’t right. She looked up and saw two dozen men staring back at her incredulously. Behind them, three fish-tailed showgirls screamed silent bubbles from their water tank.

  “Oh no . . .”

  She’d been hoping to jump back to her private suite at the Poseidon, but panic had warped her aim. Instead, she landed twelve floors down in the Mermaid Walk, the hotel’s 24-hour girlquarium. Mia had come here six times during her short stay, if only to figure out how the performers managed to stay underwater so long. At some point during the end of her fifth visit, she’d opened herself to possibility that maybe, just maybe, the mermaids turned her on a little.

  The exhibit had just begun its midnight “natural hour,” where admission was restricted, the seashell cups came off, and the showgirls earned double-wage. The men in the corridor had paid good money to see nipples, but now their eyes were fixed on a fully clothed teenager, one who’d popped into the walk through a glowing hole in the air.

  Twenty-four hundred miles away, an Integrity analyst blinked in disbelief at his monitor readings.

  “Uh, sir . . . the cameras found Farisi at the Poseidon Hotel. It’s no mistake. I’m looking right at her.”

  Gingold spat a string of curses. Integrity’s files on Mia were hopelessly incomplete. Melissa had speculated that the girl was an augur of some sort. But augurs didn’t jump twenty miles in a blink.

  “Jensen, get your squad to the Poseidon now. Rossi, patch their cameras. I want eyes on that kid every second. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir. Should I notify the—”

  “No,” said Gingold. “Let them at her. See if they slow her down.”

  Few forces on Earth operated with more ruthless efficiency than casino security. The moment Mia disrupted the Mermaid Walk, a manager brought a metal gate down on both entrances and sent three men after her. They burst into the passageway through a hidden tunnel door.

  Mia’s stomach dropped at the sight of the security guards. They were covered from head to toe in glossy black latex, these reverse-Semerjeans that moved on her like cheetahs. Clearly they were all wearing speedsuits. They would have reached her already if there wasn’t a gaggle of bystanders in their path.

  Frantic, Mia waved two portals into existence, one on each side of the aquarium glass. A thousand gallons of water splashed onto the security guards, knocking them down and shorting out their shifters. A mermaid poured screaming out of the portal and flopped helplessly on top of them.

  Mia fled down the corridor and teleported through the northern gate. She reached the edge of the main casino and gasped at the sight of five more guards speeding toward her. Everyone on the floor, from the servers to the dealers to the wild-eyed gamblers, stopped what they were doing to watch the men advance on Mia.

  Her heart thundered as she pondered her options. She didn’t have the time or strength to make a memory jump. Her only hope was to look through the glass of the lobby entrance, then prepare herself for a line-of-sight teleport.

  She had just finished willing her portals into the air when a fast-moving guard caught her from behind. Mia thrashed and kicked in his grip. “No! Get off me! Get off!”

  Just then, a stranger’s hand popped out of the portal and pressed a .44 revolver to the guard’s face mask. “Wha—”

  The gun went off with an ear-splitting boom, covering three people in gore and sending two hundred others into a state of screaming panic.

  Patrons shoved and tripped over each other on the way to the exits. A cocktail waitress got knocked to the ground. The remaining security guards drew their pistols, but the killer’s hand had already retreated.

  Mia stood in a trembling daze, her face and hair peppered with blood. The gunshot had robbed her of everything she had left—her hearing, her thoughts, her hold on reality. She existed in a mad new continuum, an alternate-alternate reality where time didn’t move and everything shrieked in a piercing whistle.

  The gunman reached back through Mia’s portal and took a firm hold of her wrist. She barely had time to notice the SS tattoo on his hand before he yanked her through the gateway and pulled her out onto the street. He steadied her before she could fall.

  “Whoa there, partner.”

  Mia couldn’t hear him through the ri
nging in her ears. She looked up and studied him with round, vacant eyes. He was a scrawny young guy in a newsboy cap and leather jacket. He looked eerily chipper for a man who’d just killed someone.

  Mia blinked at him stupidly. “Who—”

  He raised a computer tablet in front of her face. Huge, black letters filled the screen. Close your portals.

  She waved her floating discs shut. The stranger took her by the hand and led her to the open front door of an aerocab. Mia got into the passenger seat with glazed obedience, stopping only to pluck a bloody piece of face mask from her hair.

  At long last, she was able to form a coherent thought. He shot that guy. He shot that guy right in the face. Why am I going with him? Why—

  The cabbie passed her his tablet, then closed the passenger door. Mia looked down at the fresh new text on the screen.

  Integrity will be here in 41 seconds. If they catch you, you’re dead. That makes me your Lone Ranger.

  So buckle up. And smile.

  By the time she finished reading, her rescuer had run around to the driver’s seat. He closed the door and started the ignition.

  “Who are you?” Mia asked.

  Smirking, he tapped the tablet in her hands. The screen advanced to a third message.

  Think it through. It’ll come to you.

  She looked again at the SS tattoo on his hand. On closer inspection, they weren’t letters, they were numbers. Her future self had long ago warned her about the owner of such a brand.

  If you see a small and creepy guy with a 55 on his hand, run. That’s Evan Rander. He’s bad news.

  “No . . .”

  Mia reached for the exit just as the door locks clicked and the cab lifted off the ground.

  “Relax,” Evan told her. “I’m not gonna hurt you. Sorry about the Coppers, by the way. I should have warned you when I called you. They’re a little nutty.”

  “What?”

  “I said the Coppers are—” He waved her off. “I’ll tell you later.”

  As the taxi rose, Mia caught a flash of light through the windshield. A fleet of Integrity dropships had de-shifted in the sky and were descending fast on the Poseidon.