The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Evan clucked his tongue at the squadron. “Right on cue. Boy, did I show up in the nick of time.”

  “Get us out of here.”

  He teasingly cupped his ear. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear that.”

  “Go!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Evan’s face lit up in a devilish grin. “Hi-yo Silver.”

  They rose to the taxi level of the skyway, then shot off like a missile. By the time the Integrity shuttles landed, Evan’s cab had blended into the traffic, just another streak of light on the Via Fortuna.

  THIRTY

  The midnight hour brought a soothing hush to the underland. Most of the Gothams retired to their surface homes, leaving a scattered few to enjoy their cigarettes, their solitude, their secret affairs and eccentric club gatherings. The naturalists took their nightly “free walk” around the perimeter park. The mystics met in the village square to eat psychedelic mushrooms and commune with their ancestors. The fantasists convened in the alley behind the library to shoot the next scene of their film project: a quasi-erotic horror thriller that was tentatively called The Torment.

  By two A.M., the last of the locals went topside and the village fell into mechanical white noise. David loved being awake at this hour. He’d been living in cramped, loud spaces from the day he arrived on this world. Now he and Yvonne had a whole town to themselves.

  They kissed on the grass of the Memorial Garden, their bodies lit with spectral incandescence. Yvonne had furnished everything they needed for their tryst: a goose-down blanket, an orange-jasmine scentstick, a high-fidelity spinner loaded with sensual (but not overly erotic) pop music, and the pièce de résistance: a ten-ounce bowl of Lambert cherries, fresh from the market and one hundred percent unjuvenated. Yvonne had gone out of her way to please David without giving up her sweeter fruits, and he had no intention of pressing her on the matter. He liked what he had with Yvonne already. Why muddy it up with hormonal demands?

  Yvonne fed him another cherry, giggling as she plucked the stem from his lips. “Tell me another one.”

  David chuckled. The girl was endlessly amused by alt-Earth slang. She’d already cried with laughter over booboo, dork, and wedgie, and those were just the American terms. David feared she’d asphyxiate if he started teaching her the Australian lingo.

  “What kind of word are you looking for?” he asked. “Crude? Insulting?”

  “Complimentary.” Yvonne rolled onto her side and traced a finger across his chest. “What do you call a man who’s exceedingly sexy?”

  “Hunky.”

  She laughed. “Liar.”

  “It’s true.”

  “That’s what we call our vomit.”

  “I have no control over that.”

  “Fine.” She squinted at him. “What do you call a man who’s exceedingly brave?”

  “Ballsy.”

  Yvonne buried her face in his shoulder and shook with laughter. David particularly enjoyed her in the wee hours, when fatigue made her goofy and effortlessly sincere. In the light of day, she put too much work into the semblance of perfection, always striving to say the right thing, wear the right thing, be the right thing at all times. David blamed the Mayor for her neurosis. Like most of these Gothams, he was all about appearances. He’d turned his poor daughter’s life into a never-ending pageant.

  Her giggles subsided. She brushed the bangs from David’s brow. “Your compliments are disgusting. I’ll just call you brave and sexy.”

  “I’m not as brave as you think I am.”

  “Oh, puff.”

  “I’m really not.”

  “David, look at that.”

  She drew his gaze to the Requiem Wall, an ornately chiseled list of every deceased Gotham. Yvonne shined a lumic spotlight on thirty recent names.

  “Those were our augurs,” she said. “The mere thought of apocalypse drove them to suicide. But you lived through it. You watched your whole world fall and it didn’t break you. Don’t tell me you’re not brave.”

  David wriggled uncomfortably on the blanket. “Then why do I live in constant fear of dying?”

  “Because you’re sane.” Yvonne sat up and hugged herself. “Because you’re sixteen and you have everything to live for.”

  David felt an unpleasant tickle at the base of his throat. He coughed into his hand, then turned off the music. “Come here.”

  Yvonne fell back into his embrace. He caressed her arm distractedly. His instincts were growling for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint. Something felt . . . off.

  “Our two worlds were siblings,” he reminded Yvonne. “Until 1912, they were perfect twins. But there are countless other Earths out there: cousins, neighbors, distant strangers. I don’t believe they share our malady. No matter what happens here, I believe life will go on for trillions of people.”

  Yvonne didn’t draw much comfort from that. She looked up at the nightscape with dark, doleful eyes. “Gumbled.”

  “What?”

  “Slang word. It means ‘born in the wrong place at the wrong—’”

  “Yvonne!”

  The voice hit them from the distance: a high, girlish cry that rattled every window in the village.

  David sat up with a start. “What was that?”

  “My sister.” Yvonne hurriedly buttoned her blouse. “Get dressed.”

  Winnifred Whitten was one of the clan’s rare dualers, a twelve-year-old swifter/lumic. Though her light-bending skills were average at best, her control over sound was unparalleled. She could steer a whisper through the warrens, drown half the village in silence. When the right or wrong mood struck her, she could project her voice like a mighty goddess.

  “Yvonne, where are you?”

  Cursing, Yvonne flicked her hand and cast a giant white arrow above her. David heard the accelerated patter of footsteps in the darkness.

  Winnie rushed into the garden and de-shifted in front of her sister. Her chubby cheeks were streaked with tears.

  “Daddy’s been shot!”

  Yvonne jumped to her feet. “What?”

  “They just got back. He’s at the vivery. Come on!”

  David’s head spun with dizziness as he rose from the blanket. “Are the others okay? Zack? Mia?”

  Winnie saw his open shirt and bashfully looked away. “I don’t know. I think one of them’s hurt.”

  “Come with us,” Yvonne said.

  David shook his head. “I’ll meet you there. I have to . . .”

  He broke away for a second cough, a throaty hack that made his eyes water.

  Yvonne touched his back. “Are you okay?”

  Winnie tugged her arm. “Come on!”

  David waved her on, then ran to the other exit.

  A hundred yards away, the residents of Freak Street stumbled out of their cottages, groggy and bewildered. Only Carrie knew the voice that had woken them all up.

  “Winnie Whitten. Has to be.”

  Jonathan looked around. “Jesus. The lungs on her.”

  “I know. We’re all dreading the day she gets a boyfriend.”

  Theo turned to his left and saw a familiar figure staggering up the street. “Oh my God . . .”

  Even from a distance, David looked terrible. His skin was pale and glistening with sweat. He weaved on his feet like a drunkard.

  Hannah sped to his side. “David! What happened?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then doubled over and retched. Hannah barely had a chance to see the blood in his vomit before his eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious to the cobblestone.

  A thousand feet above the village, in the bedroom wing of a Quarter Hill mansion, Gemma Sunder watched David on her computer screen. She’d lived through this day nine times already, and knew just the right moment to sneak into Yvonne’s kitchen, just the right cherry to poison. Now the smartest of the breachers
had been knocked off the chessboard. And that was just her opening move.

  Gemma raised a microphone to her smiling lips. “You’re up, Harold.”

  —

  Unbearable images rushed through Amanda’s head as she checked David’s vitals. His pulse was weak. His breathing was labored. He needed far more help than an ex-nurse could offer him. Of all the nights to be without their healer and teleporters.

  She looked to Carrie. “What do you people do in emergencies?”

  “We, uh . . .”

  Carrie stared at David’s bloody mouth and lost her train of thought. She’d been living among the orphans for two weeks now, but she had yet to see their struggles firsthand.

  “Carrie!”

  “We call the vivery! That’s where the turners are.”

  “Good,” Amanda said. “Call them.”

  “Wait!”

  The shout came from behind them. In all the commotion, no one had noticed Liam on the lawn. They didn’t even know he was back in the underland. He’d been staying topside with the Varnovs while Peter was away.

  He raised a gloved finger at the others, then continued his phone call. “Yeah, I don’t know. He looks bad.” Liam listened and nodded. “All right. We’ll get him there.”

  He closed the handphone and pocketed it. “That was Mother Olga. She’s waiting for us.”

  “Can’t she come here?” Hannah asked.

  “She moves slowly these days. It’ll be easier to go to her. It’s not far. Come on.”

  Amanda crouched to pick up David. Jonathan swooped in from the other side. “I got him.”

  “It’s all right. I can—”

  “Amanda, I got him.”

  Carrie and Amanda watched him guardedly as he hoisted David in his arms. They’d been thinking about him a lot these past few days, ever since Carrie found that ominous message from Future Mia: Don’t trust Jonathan. He’s not who he says he is.

  Though Amanda was all but certain that the note was a lie, she didn’t want to dismiss it completely. She decided to bottle the issue until Mia returned from Seattle. If anyone could untangle that mess, it was her.

  Except now Mia could be coming home to much worse news.

  “Come on!” Liam shouted. He dashed down the street as if on springs. Only Heath noticed the soles of his sneakers. They weren’t just treadless, they were completely blank.

  “That’s not . . .” Heath rushed to Theo’s side. “Something’s not right.”

  Theo looked at him distractedly. He assumed that Heath was talking about David. “He’ll be okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I see it.”

  Gemma listened to their chatter through directional mics and laughed. Just minutes before, while Theo slept, Suki Godden had crept outside his cottage and flooded him with solis. The man wasn’t seeing anything but his own wishful thoughts.

  Liam led the others to the village square, then pointed to the top of the clock tower. “She’s up there. Come on.”

  “Up there?” Carrie eyed him suspiciously. “It’s nothing but gears and old boxes. Why would Olga—”

  “I don’t know.” Liam opened the front door of the municipal building. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Look, maybe we should just go to the vivery.”

  “It’s on the other side of town,” Liam snapped. “You want David to die? You want to be the one who tells Mia?”

  Carrie recoiled. “Of course not.”

  “Then stop wasting time.”

  Gemma watched their exchange with delight. Oh Harold. I’d kiss you if you weren’t so gross.

  The municipal building was the underland’s largest structure: a two-story palace of polished white marble. Every elder, primarch, and head-of-house had an office here, with designated chambers for each government function. For the Gothams, it was the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon combined.

  Liam escorted the others through the ornate lobby, up the marble steps, and to a spiral staircase at the end of the second floor. The wooden steps twisted all the way up the clock tower, to a cavernous chamber of drywall and brick. One look at the place was enough to confirm Carrie’s description. The room contained nothing but junk: withered old boxes in haphazard stacks, inscrutable tools, and long-abandoned gewgaws.

  The orphans had to crane their necks to see the tower’s true attraction: a massive array of cogs and pinions, all turning in harmony to keep the four clocks running. Catwalk bridges provided easy access to every part of the mechanism.

  Olga Varnov stood at the western clock face, her large frame striped in the shadows of gearworks. She wore a fire-red sweatshirt under white denim overalls, an ensemble that Hannah thought made her look vaguely surreal, like an alt-world Santa Claus. If the primarch of the turners had a reason to be up here at two-thirty in the morning, there were no clues to show it.

  Mother Olga blanched at the sight of David. “Bring him in. Bring him in. My goodness. What happened?”

  Amanda guided him forward on a platform of tempis. “I don’t know. I think he was poisoned.”

  Olga leaned forward and sniffed his lips. “Does he have a taste for the spirits?”

  “What?”

  “Alcohol,” Olga said. “Is he an excessive drinker?”

  “Him? No. He’s a health-obsessed vegan.”

  “What does it matter?” Hannah asked. “Can’t you just heal him?”

  Olga scoffed at her. “Reversal isn’t magic. It’s a complicated process. The more I know about David’s sickness, the better chance he’ll have.”

  At last, the stragglers arrived. Theo and Carrie emerged through the stair hatch while Heath shot Olga a leery look from the top steps.

  Gemma narrowed her eyes at Heath’s pixelated image. “Come on, you weirdo. Get in.”

  “Come in,” Olga told him. “It’s okay, child. I don’t bite.”

  He retreated a step, his fists clenched at his sides. “You’re not real.”

  Gemma spat a string of curses. She’d been counting on David’s illness to keep the others distracted, but the little Gold was sharp. Now the curtain was falling, the wolves were coming, and the swifter among them was about to get wise.

  Hannah looked to a distant corner of the room. While her eyes registered nothing but dim and empty space, her mind detected a highly shifted presence—one she’d felt once before.

  “Wait . . .”

  Gemma gripped the mic. “Now!”

  The orphans watched, stupefied, as Liam and Olga melted before their eyes. Their ethereal forms merged into something even more surreal: a spectral blue tiger with a neon-yellow stare. It roared triumphantly at its enemies before exploding into a cloud of mist. The fog quickly expanded to fill every inch of the chamber.

  Gemma switched her monitor to thermal view, her knees bouncing with excitement. Harold Herrick had done a man’s job. Now it was time for the other kids to play.

  Hannah shifted into velocity and took a frantic glance around the room. At 40x, Harold’s illusions took on a flickering transparency. She could see five small figures through the mist, all scattered around the periphery. Their eyes glowed in cool blue squares.

  Thermal goggles, Hannah guessed. They can see us.

  Her heart jumped when one of the children moved. The swifter girl was advancing quickly, but not on her.

  Oh no . . .

  Naomi Byers raced across the room, an eight-inch hunting knife in her grip. Her goggles brought some interesting new colors into her monochromatic world. The walls were beige. Her friends were green. Her enemies were all a ghastly shade of orange. Her best friend, Gemma, had shown her the silhouettes of a tall, skinny woman named Amenada (was that right?) and a small, frizzy boy named Heef. Gemma told her to stab those two first because they were tempics and they were dangerous and they had to die.<
br />
  But Naomi was never good at following directions, and there was an orange girl right in front of her. She had such thin and pretty arms. It’d be a shame not to cut them.

  Hannah ran through the fog and got her first look at Naomi: a feral-looking brunette in tattered, mismatched clothes. The child looped around Carrie, then slit both her wrists.

  “No!”

  If Hannah had been friendly with her fellow swifters, they would have told her that there was no catching Naomi. The child lived in the red upper limits, beyond the reach of even the guild’s fastest runners. They had as much luck chasing her as they did raising her.

  By the time Hannah reached Carrie, Naomi had moved on to her next victim. She stabbed Jonathan once through the hand, then twice in the stomach. Blood gushed out of him in slow, messy arcs.

  Hannah’s thoughts went white with rage, and she lost all sense of place. She could have been anywhere in the universe now. She could have been anyone. She was a floating, nameless entity, and she only had one mission: to stop this twisted little horror before she hurt anyone else.

  Screaming, Hannah floored her inner pedal and lunged at Naomi. The girl saw her coming and easily dodged, but now Hannah had her attention. This new orange woman was a soft and clumsy thing, yet she moved faster than the others. Was she one of the slowquicks? Was she a relative?

  No matter. The woman was no threat, and Naomi still had a job to do.

  Hannah sucked a sharp gasp when the girl raised her knife at Amanda. There was no time to reach her. There was only time to yell.

  “You bitch! You sick and ugly freak!”

  Naomi stopped in place as her temporal converter accelerated Hannah’s words. She sounded just like her relatives, the ones who shouted at her and screamed at her and tried to make her slow. Sometimes they drugged Naomi’s food and tied her up while she slept. Sometimes they kept her chained for days.

  Hannah backstepped toward the stairwell. “Come on, you weasel. Come at me!”

  Gemma couldn’t comprehend her in her accelerated state. But she’d been to the future and back, and she knew exactly what Hannah was planning. Worse, she knew that it would work.