The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “Stupid bastard. This is all your fault. You should’ve made a better Olga. You should’ve thrown them all in darkness, not fog.”

  Harold buried his face in his hands. “I did my best.”

  “‘I did my best,’” Bo mocked. “Your best is shit. When Dad finds out what you did—”

  “No!”

  The walls grew loud with howling white faces. Storm clouds filled the upper chamber and rained tigers down on everyone. They enveloped the room, tormenting friend and foe alike with their mighty roars.

  Theo lowered David to the floor. He’d had more than enough of this lunacy. The man behind the tigers was in here somewhere. No, not a man. A boy. A very sick and imaginative child. Every Hobbes had a Calvin. Theo just had to find him.

  He fumbled for the nearest loose object, a twelve-ounce jar of clock oil, then raised it in his hand. When he’d first met Rebel, the man had shot him without even looking. He’d used his foresight to guide his aim, a trick that Theo had yet to learn.

  It’s easy, Rebel had explained in more than one prophecy. Theo had glimpsed a surprising number of futures in which the two augurs became allies. In his visions, Rebel took him deep into the warrens and set him up with a pistol, a blindfold, and a wall target.

  Clear your head, he’d tell Theo. Don’t let the future ramble. You gotta grab it by the throat and force it down to two answers: hit or miss.

  Theo turned in a slow circle, prodding his foresight every three or four degrees. Rebel’s trick was almost brilliant in its simplicity. With each new increment, he felt a prescient twinge of disappointment.

  Miss. He turned a tick. Miss. He turned again. Miss.

  The Bos continued their relentless assault. Amanda struggled to hold her tempis while a dozen tiny tigers tore at her concentration. They circled her head on wasp wings, roaring in her face and ears.

  Theo turned faster. Miss. Miss. Miss. Wait!

  He stopped and reversed himself. Here?

  Just a . . . little . . . bit . . .

  He raised his arm an inch, then felt a wave of preemptive satisfaction. Hit.

  Theo hurled the jar. It arced through fifteen tigers before cracking against Harold’s head. His glasses flew off his face. His illusions flickered but persisted.

  Furious, Theo yanked a lug wrench from the floor and made a beeline for Harold. The boy cried from the corner, his scalp dripping blood and oil.

  “No! Get away!”

  He flicked his hand, throwing Theo’s senses into chaos. Everything around him swirled in a vortex. His ears were filled with the Doppler sounds of whooshing objects. Theo wobbled on his feet, nauseated and disoriented. He covered his eyes with one hand and raised the wrench with the other.

  “Stop it!” he urged Harold. “Don’t make me do this!”

  The whirlwind continued. Theo clenched his jaw, then let the future guide him one last time.

  Hit.

  He brought the wrench down on Harold’s head. The boy toppled against a stack of old boxes, bringing the whole pile down on him. His illusions vanished in a blink.

  Theo, Amanda, and Heath all struggled to get their bearings. Their vision danced with spots. Their ears rang with tinnitus. Only Heath was close enough to the stairwell to see someone approaching.

  Hannah returned to the clock chamber and took an anxious look around. She barely had a chance to process the carnage before she noticed the last enemy standing. The red-haired boy was in the peak of health, and he was right behind—

  “Theo!”

  Theo turned around. If he hadn’t been so rattled, he might have seen the fear on Duncan Rall’s face. He might have realized that the kid’s only plan was surrender. But after six long minutes of bedlam and anguish, Theo’s nerves were worn to the barest of threads.

  He raised his wrench in reflex. Dunk waved his hand in panic.

  Theo dropped through the floorboards, then began his long fall.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Hannah screamed herself into a new velocity. The clock gears slowed to a sixtieth of their usual speed, turning minute hands to hour hands and hour hands to statues. Dust mites stalled in mid-trajectory. The survivors in the room came to the same doddering standstill.

  Only one man moved through the languor, though “moved” wasn’t the word on Hannah’s mind.

  Dropped. He’s dropping. Oh my God.

  From the moment she first learned about Jonathan’s power, she’d lived in constant fear of his death. It could happen at any moment. He could be taking a shower, playing guitar, or simply walking across a room when the wrong wires touched and he fell through the earth for miles. To Hannah, his fatal plunge was more than a nightmare, it was an inevitability, a Chekhov’s gun just waiting to be fired.

  Except now that death was happening to someone else she loved. Someone the whole world needed.

  “Theo!”

  She hadn’t realized until now that she’d jumped into blueshift. She thought her power had burned out after the fight with Naomi, yet here she was at the cusp of 60x. She was fast enough to catch the surprise in Theo’s eyes as they sank through the floor. The wood was swallowing him inch by inch, like quicksand.

  Hannah wrung her hands, her mind lost in frantic calculation. She had time, time, time, and speed. She had the time and speed to race him down the tower. But how she could catch him if he was intangible? How could she break his fall without—

  Tempis.

  Yes. Of course. Tempis was the only force in the universe that could stop a dropped object. Peter had told her about the one Gotham with Jonathan’s power, a twelve-year-old boy who’d spent every minute of his life on safety barriers. He walked in tempic boots and slept on tempic beds and . . .

  Hannah did a double-take at Dunk. Holy shit. That’s him.

  She sped across the room and shoved him. His body hit the wall with a loud, sickening crack. Hannah had no idea what she broke in him. She didn’t care. She didn’t care if he lived or died as long as no one else got dropped.

  Oh God. Theo.

  His last tufts of hair disappeared through the floorboards. Hannah bounced her gaze between Amanda and Heath. One of them would have to come downstairs with her, but neither of them looked like they were in any condition to help. Amanda’s eyes were squinted and full of tears, as if someone had poked them both with sticks. Worse, her tempis was keeping pressure on Jonathan’s and Carrie’s wounds. There was no way to move her without risking their lives.

  It had to be Heath.

  Hannah rushed toward him, her arms curled into hooks. She had to pick him up in a way that didn’t break his bones or rift him, and she had to do it fast.

  She de-shifted three feet in front of Heath, scooped him up, then triggered her power again. The maneuver went far less smoothly than she’d hoped. In her haste, she’d kneed his thigh and scraped his neck. Worse, she’d taken too long to get a stable grip on him. Theo must have dropped halfway to hell by now.

  No. It’s not too late.

  Heath bucked in Hannah’s arms as she carried him down the stairwell. She hoisted him by the buttocks, his head forced over her shoulder.

  “What are you doing? Put me down!”

  “Just hold on,” Hannah said. “Keep your arms and legs close to me.”

  Her heart pounded as she carried Heath down the steps. If she tripped and fell at this speed, they were both goners. She didn’t have to wonder what their corpses would look like. The ghastly image of Naomi had been seared onto her psyche like a cattle brand.

  From the desperate way he clung to Hannah, Heath clearly understood the risks as well. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You didn’t see it?”

  “See what?”

  “Theo. He got dropped.”

  Heath’s muscles turned to stone. He pulled back to look at Hannah. “He can’t die. He’s the
savior.”

  “I know. That’s why I need you. You have to make something to catch him. A wolf, an ape, anything.”

  “I . . . can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t! That girl, she hit me with her lightning. Her lightning kills tempis.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Heath bowed his head. “She killed the tempis in me.”

  Hannah’s stomach twisted. Oily thoughts spilled over her landscape, gumming her works, painting her whole world black.

  It’s over. I failed.

  She racked her mind, searching for some trick, cheat, or miracle that would help her save Theo. Maybe there was a way to jumpstart Heath’s tempis. Or maybe—

  Hannah . . .

  Tears rolled her down her cheeks. She clutched Heath’s shirt in bunches. No. No.

  He’s gone.

  —

  A boyfriend once told her that a shark could keep swimming even after it died. Their reflexes could carry them through the water, sometimes for miles. Skeptical, Hannah had bet him a steak dinner that he couldn’t find scientific evidence to back up his claim. He couldn’t.

  Now, a lifetime later, she’d become a living embodiment of the myth. She was a dead thing in motion, an empty husk running purely on impulse. She could barely feel the stairs under her feet. She couldn’t hear Heath, even with his mouth at her ear.

  “Hannah?”

  A cold, empty bleakness overtook her, ballooning from her thoughts until it swallowed all of creation. She didn’t know why she was surprised to find life so cruel. People died. Worlds died. Children fell down stairwells.

  “Hannah, what do we do?”

  And good men plunged screaming into darkness, along with all hope for the future.

  At long last, Hannah understood the sickness inside Evan Rander, the black and festering nihilism that kept him swimming long after he lost the will to live.

  She had no idea that at that very moment, on the other side of the country, Evan was discussing the sickness inside her.

  —

  “I can sum up her problem in two words: willful ignorance.”

  Mia crossed her arms, her thorny gaze aimed out the passenger window. Though Evan insisted that she wasn’t his prisoner, he’d already flown the cab five times around the Via Fortuna skyway, past the same five-mile loop of casinos. He was keeping her in motion so she couldn’t escape by portal, but what did he want with her? All he’d done so far was make small talk and complain about their fellow Silvers.

  “It’s not entirely Hannah’s fault,” Evan said. “Her mom taught her to believe that she’s the center of the universe, and she had guy after guy eating out of her hand. Life’s nothing but a breeze for the fair of face and large of rack. They don’t want us to know that, but it’s true.”

  Mia glowered at him. Her brother Bobby had spouted the same caveman bullshit until a very smart girlfriend made him read a few books. Clearly Evan had yet to find such a partner.

  “But now Hannah has real problems,” he continued. “The universe has made it damn clear that she’s just a bit player in this show, barely an extra. And she’s in for the same bad ending as the rest of us.”

  He raised a dramatic finger. “But she believes, oh yes! She still believes that everything will work out for her. And she’ll grasp at any straw, no matter how flimsy, to give herself hope. Willful ignorance. She’s got it in spades. Not that you and the others are much better.”

  A truck swooped down from the upper lane, forcing Evan to brake. He honked his horn. The driver replied with an obscene gesture.

  Mia watched Evan anxiously as he memorized the license plate number. She feared the trucker would be dead by the end of the week, or maybe even the end of last week. Evan wasn’t limited by the normal constraints of time. He bounced up and down the strings like a yo-yo, and he carried his grudges with him.

  “You know how frustrating it is to watch you people do the same things over and over again?” he asked Mia. “Go there, fight that, save him, fetch that. You jump from one pointless drama to another. You don’t even stop to question the script.”

  Mia might have challenged Evan if she wasn’t so afraid of him. Her ears still rang from his point-blank gunshot. The blood of his victim was still drying in her hair.

  “There’s a Silver you don’t know,” he told her. “Natalie Tipton-Elder. She was with us in San Diego when everything went cuckoo. Came crashing into this world, just like us. The reason I know her and you don’t—”

  —is because you killed her, Mia guessed.

  “—is because she panicked and ran up the stairs of her building. Why the Pelletiers didn’t warn her, I don’t know. She must have been ten floors up when the big switcheroo happened. Poor girl dropped like a stone.”

  Mia became lost in bad memories. She’d suffered the opposite problem that day. She went to the basement of her house and got buried alive.

  “Whenever I start over, I make a point of seeing her,” Evan said. “First person I visit. She’s always laying flat on the same patch of park, this cute little blonde with a broken back and a freaked-out look. ‘Oh God. Where am I? What happened? Call an ambulance! Please!’”

  Mia looked at Evan suspiciously. “She’s alive?”

  “She is when I find her. She hangs on for a good five minutes. Well, not a good five minutes.”

  “But you never call for help.”

  “Oh, I’ve tried. Lots of times. Believe me, I’d love to save her, just to mix things up.” He shrugged. “But she’s a small woman in a big park. The ambulance never finds her in time.”

  A shiver ran up Mia’s back. Talking to Evan was like seeing the ugly side of existence. There was no light, no hope. Worst of all, he seemed to thrive in the darkness.

  “But at least she never dies alone,” he said. “I chat her up just to pass the time. Got her whole life story in pieces. Of course she always has the same questions for me. ‘Where am I? What happened? Why is this happening to me?’”

  He clucked his tongue. “Ah, Natalie, Natalie. She never even has time for the short answer.”

  Mia closed her eyes in a sickened wince. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because that’s all you guys are, just a drawn-out version of her. You flail, you cry, you ask the same questions. You spend your whole life waiting for an ambulance that never comes.”

  The cab fell silent. Evan shook a finger at Mia. “It’s all right. You’ll catch on. The others won’t, but you will. That’s what I like about you.”

  He gave her a teasing smile. “Well, Future You.”

  Mia flinched when Evan reached over her thigh and pulled a small bag of candies from the glove box.

  “But Hannah? She never stops believing. Never stops to think it through. And why would she? She has everything she needs here. Romance and action and drama galore. You’ve heard that kick in her voice whenever something exciting happens. ‘Oh no! The Deps took Amanda! We have to save her!’ ‘Oh no! Ioni wants me to meet a tall, handsome stranger! I mustn’t fall in love!’”

  Evan unwrapped a hard caramel. “Don’t let her fool you. She’s living the life she always wanted.”

  He stuffed the candy into his mouth, then crunched it to shards. “This world was made for Hannah Given.”

  —

  A spark of life returned to her thoughts, a strange new notion that flickered in the darkness. As she continued down the stairs with Heath in her arms, Hannah replayed the last words she heard from him.

  That girl, she hit me with her lightning. Her lightning kills tempis.

  Except that wasn’t true.

  She killed the tempis in me.

  No. Lightning didn’t kill tempis. Solis did. If Heath was hit by solis—

  “There he is!” he yelled.

  Hannah sn
apped out of her daze and looked around. “What?”

  “Down there!”

  She peered over the railing and gasped at the sight of Theo. He was falling back-first through the lowest flight of stairs, toward a sloped and shady alcove. That nook would be the last place to catch him. After that . . .

  A queasy dread washed over Hannah. She couldn’t bear the thought of Theo drowning in stone, dying alone and afraid in the bowels of the earth.

  But something had changed. When Hannah first jumped into blueshift, Theo had been falling at the pace of a creaky old elevator. Now he was a mere trifle in gravity’s hand—a feather, a spore, a half-filled balloon. Hannah must have been shifted at 100x, but that was impossible. She should have been in agony. How the hell was she doing this?

  Maybe she wasn’t. The more Hannah thought about it, the more she felt an external sense of momentum, as if a giant invisible hand was pushing from behind. Someone powerful was giving her speed.

  Giving her time.

  Hannah slowed down to a trot. “What are you doing?” Heath asked.

  Her chalkboard filled with new equations. Her foot speed didn’t matter anymore. She could walk to the bottom and still beat Theo.

  No, the real race was happening elsewhere now. It was happening inside Heath.

  “You’ll get it back,” Hannah told him. “I’ve never been hit with lightning but I’ve been hit with solis. It only lasts a couple of minutes. You’ll get the tempis back.”

  Heath nervously checked on Theo. “We don’t have time.”

  “I’ll make the time,” Hannah said. “You just make the tempis.”

  She drew a deep breath, then pushed her power to a dangerous extreme. Hot needles of pain pricked every corner of her mind as the environment around her shed its final flecks of color. She peeked one eye open and saw Theo sinking through the air with all the speed of a sunset.

  Heath marveled at his changed surroundings. The world around him swirled with visual artifacts—dots and lines and hazy lights, all the peculiar things one sees on the inside of their eyelids.

  “How are you doing this?”

  His voice echoed off invisible walls. Hannah reeled to think that it was the sound barrier.