The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “I don’t know,” she lied. She had little doubt that there was a Pelletier on the other side of that question, but she didn’t care. To save Theo, she’d kiss the devil himself.

  Hannah stepped off the final stair, carefully leaping over Naomi’s body. The girl’s blood-flecked knife had slid across the floor, all the way to the alcove where Theo’s fate would be decided. Even at this speed, Hannah guessed that they had less than forty seconds. There was nothing else she could do. This was as far as time would bend.

  “Heath . . .”

  “I’m trying,” he insisted. “I’ve been trying.”

  “Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  Heath looked over Hannah’s shoulder and studied the savage, ugly girl on the floor. “Rose Tyler.”

  Hannah turned her head. “What? Is that her name?”

  “It’s the name of my wolf, the bad one who doesn’t listen to me.”

  He kept his somber eyes on Naomi. “If Rose was a girl, she’d look just like that.”

  Hannah stayed quiet. She didn’t have the strength to hate Naomi anymore. She only hated the people who made her, the ones who didn’t love her enough.

  “What happened?” Heath asked.

  Hannah puffed a loud sigh before answering. “I pushed her.”

  If Heath had any reaction, he hid it deep inside of him. Eight seconds passed before he spoke again.

  “I made the lightning girl kill a friend of hers. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  Tears welled up in Hannah’s eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I just didn’t want to die.”

  Hannah squeezed him tight, her face buried in his shoulder. She could have hugged him like this for hours, with the whole world hushed and her thoughts crystal clear. For once in her life, the voices in her head had fallen into perfect harmony. They sang like a choir—a song of hope, a song of pain, a song of rage and determination. She knew she was powerless to stop the universe from taking the people she loved, but there was one thing she refused to accept. Good people like Theo don’t die like this. They don’t die like this. They don’t—

  “—go to hell.”

  Heath looked up. “What?”

  She studied the shrinking gap between Theo and the floor. They weren’t going to make it. They didn’t have enough time.

  “Good people don’t go to hell,” Hannah said. “That’s not the way it works. If Amanda was here . . .”

  Her teeth clenched. She pushed against the wall of her power. It resisted with savage ferocity, as if every force of nature had banded together against her.

  “If Amanda was here, she would not . . .”

  Hannah’s mind screamed with pain. Blood trickled from her ears.

  “. . . let it . . .”

  Heath could feel Hannah’s heartbeat against his chest. It was speeding up.

  “. . . happen!”

  The lobby rippled all around them as time once again slowed down. Hannah watched Theo through bloodshot eyes. He had all but stopped in midair, a frozen scream on his face. From Theo’s perspective, he’d only been falling for two and a half seconds, more than enough time for him to realize what was happening, enough for a thousand frightened thoughts.

  “He sees us,” Hannah said. “He knows we’re here.”

  Heath studied him anxiously. “You think he sees what’ll happen?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. All I can tell you is that I lived seventeen minutes on this world without knowing him, and they weren’t good ones. I don’t even care that the whole planet needs him.”

  She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “I need him.”

  Heath looked up and saw a small, glassy orb affixed to the wall. A camera. The mastermind behind the attack was still watching them from a distance. Heath glared at her through the lens.

  “Turn me around,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Gemma tore up her bedroom in a shrieking tantrum. Lamps crashed. Chairs toppled. Knickknacks went flying in every direction. Her Lakshmi idol crashed straight through the wall of her aquarium, drenching her feet and sending seventeen fish to an early death. For all of Gemma’s hard-earned experience, the dozens of years she’d lived and relived, a child’s heart still beat inside of her. She still cried like a ten-year-old, sulked like a ten-year-old, railed and wailed and flailed like a ten-year-old.

  Now she was starting to fear that she waged her wars like a ten-year-old. Moments before her screaming fit, her camera system had come back online and revealed the sorry state of affairs in the clock tower. All of her soldiers were either dead or dying, yet the breachers still clung to life. Even the one who got dropped managed to beat the reaper, with some last-second help from his friends.

  Gemma had watched Theo remotely as he crashed onto the backs of six decumbent wolves. The impact alone should have been enough to kill him, yet Gemma could see him writhing on the tempis—broken, but very much alive.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  By the time the last doomed fish stopped flopping on the carpet, Gemma had become calm enough to ponder her next steps. She couldn’t stand this timeline one second longer, but she couldn’t bear the thought of another defeat. No, it was time to change things up, jump back two weeks and build a whole new army. No scatterbrains like Naomi. No cowards like Dunk. Next time, she’d have a stronger team and a smarter plan. And she’d be sure as hell to kill Heath first.

  She steadied herself with a deep, cleansing breath, then prepared her mind for travel. All it took was an ounce of thought to turn the wheels of time the other way and send her consciousness to the past—a tingly sensation, like swimming upstream in a river of soda.

  Except Gemma didn’t feel any bubbles this time. Baffled, she opened her eyes to find herself right where she was before—same room, same mess, same fish on the rug. Something had kept her rooted in the present.

  “What—”

  She turned her head and jumped at the intruder in the room: a tall, willowy brunette in a black-pattern shift dress. She sat on the edge of Gemma’s bed, her red lips curled in a scowl.

  “You.”

  Gemma screamed and ran for the door. She’d never had the displeasure of meeting Esis before, but she’d seen enough of her on camera. The woman was a maniac, a butcher. And now she was here.

  A tempic hand blocked the door before Gemma could reach it. She barely had a chance to turn around before a cool white tendril looped around her, again and again, until every inch of her was wrapped like spider’s prey.

  Esis pulled Gemma into her arms and caressed her squealing, wriggling form. “Shhhhh. Hush, girl.”

  She pressed a silver coin to the tempis, sending Gemma’s body into a shockingly pleasant stasis. Her muscles relaxed. Her breathing and heartbeat stabilized. Her eyes fell half closed, even while her thoughts kept screaming in terror.

  Esis dissolved the tempis and cradled Gemma on her lap. “There. Much nicer. And much safer for you, I’d wager. I’m very, very angry with you, child. A wrong word, a wrong gesture . . . I cringe to think what I might do.”

  The blood drained from Gemma’s face. Esis raked her hair with slow, gentle fingers.

  “You’ve caused extraordinary damage tonight. More than you realize. I can’t tell if it was skill, luck, or something more sinister. Tell me, were you counseled? Perhaps visited in the night by the Lady Deschane?”

  Gemma’s brow creased. She had no idea who Esis was talking about.

  “You acted alone,” Esis mused. “Remarkable. Such a clever girl, yet so blind. Even if your plan had merit, and I assure you it doesn’t, you fail to account for our many other subjects. We have dozens of these so-called ‘breachers’ around the planet. How do you expect to kill them if you can’t find them? There are even Silvers you don’t know about.”

  Esis studie
d a framed photo on the desk, a smiling portrait of Gemma and Ivy. “But then I suppose this isn’t about saving the world anymore, is it?”

  Tears spilled from Gemma’s eyes. Esis wiped them clean. Her voice became soft and tender, as if she was reading a bedtime story.

  “I’m well aware of the harm my family has caused. If we could tread this world lightly, without a ripple of consequence, we would. But we have no choice but to go where the strings take us. Our work is too important to fail.”

  Her black eyes dawdled around the fish on the floor, all the helpless victims of Gemma’s rage.

  “Death is a scourge, even in my era. We’ve conquered illness, mastered time, yet the beast always finds a way to take us. It tortures us with slow and painful degradations.”

  She narrowed her eyes at her quivering fingers. “But I’ve seen the future. I know the victory that awaits. This world will be death’s final feast, I assure you of that.”

  Gemma struggled to force a plea up her throat. Esis saw her concern and waved it off.

  “Calm yourself, little one. I’ve lost all desire to kill you. You see what silence buys you? If only Trillinger would learn.”

  Esis chewed her lip in contemplation. “Still, we can’t have you causing more trouble now, can we?”

  She pressed a finger to Gemma’s brow. “Zhu’anté.”

  Gemma convulsed in Esis’s lap. Her skin tingled with the kiss of a billion bubbles. She could feel her consciousness moving with dizzying speed, backward and backward, until everything went white.

  By the time Gemma opened her eyes again, she felt like she’d been asleep for years. Her thoughts were hazy, her limbs were numb. She could barely remember her own name.

  Where . . . who . . . ?

  She looked around but couldn’t see much beyond a low curtain barrier. The fabric curved all around her, as if she were laid out flat in an open casket. She spied patches of light on an off-white ceiling. It was all so blurry. Everything looked so far away.

  “Wuh?”

  Esis suddenly eclipsed her view from above, looking exactly the same as she did before. No, not the same. She was bigger now. She looked big enough to wear Gemma as a hat.

  “Don’t speak,” said Esis. “Your neural pathways are unformed. But you’ll learn in time, as you’ve done before. Soon, you’ll find all of this quite familiar.”

  Gemma turned her head. A naked brown arm was flopping clumsily on a cotton blanket. She was looking at her own hand, except it was so short, so stubby, so . . .

  Her eyes bulged. No. Oh God, no.

  “You’ve been given a fresh start,” Esis told her. “Use it wisely. Reflect on your mistakes and choose better paths. Perhaps you’ll find some happiness this time.”

  She gripped the edge of Gemma’s bassinet and flashed her a crooked smile. “Perhaps not.”

  Esis waved a temporal portal into the air, creating a sucking wind that ruffled the drapes and sent the loose papers in the room flying. She summoned a coat of yellow light around her body, then stepped into the rift.

  Soon the portal closed and the wind quickly dissipated, leaving no one the wiser to Esis’s visit. There in the nursery—ten years, nine months, and seventeen days ago—three newborn Gothams dawdled in their cribs. One of them slept. One of them gurgled. And one of them screamed.

  —

  Theo paced the floor of the lobby, his sandals smacking against the tile with loud, echoing clops. Though he had at least a dozen bigger concerns at the moment, he couldn’t help but wonder why his shoes were making noise. Here in the God’s Eye, in the space between moments, his body was just a psychic visualization. He could appear as anything he wanted—a lobster, a Shriner, Amanda in a sombrero. But as always, he came as Just Plain Theo, in his Just Plain Theo clothes. Apparently his subconscious had added some realism for effect. His sandals clopped. His feet kicked up dust. His body even cast a shadow.

  He turned around and checked the clock on the wall, still stuck at 2:34 and 28 seconds. Everything around him was suspended in still-frame, including his real body. The other Theo lay face-up beneath a stairwell, his broken frame sprawled on a bed of tempic wolves. His arms were bent at unnatural angles. His left ankle was snapped so badly that Theo could see the bone. God only knew the internal damage he was suffering. From the way things looked, he probably wouldn’t live to see 2:35.

  “Shit. Shit!”

  Hannah and Heath crouched near his body, their expressions frozen in fear. Clearly they had a dim view of Theo’s prospects as well. And why wouldn’t they? That freckle-faced kid had gotten him good. He would have dropped Theo all the way to Hades if Hannah and Heath hadn’t acted quickly.

  But was he truly saved?

  “Okay . . .” He took a deep breath through nonexistent lungs, then resumed his fitful pacing. “This isn’t over. I’m not dead. Think. Think . . .”

  He looked around the lobby. Every wall and surface was covered in a sheath of mist, the usual God’s Eye dressings. Normally there would be twinkling lights in the fringes, each one the start of a different future. But Theo couldn’t see a single one now. That wasn’t a good sign.

  The fog on the northern wall darkened. Tendrils of mist swirled in a stormy vortex. Theo had seen that effect once before, when a certain Pelletier came to visit him in the God’s Eye. He couldn’t think of anyone he wanted to see less right now.

  Theo took a nervous step forward. “Azral?”

  To his surprise, a woman emerged from the mist, a petite young blonde in a lily-white sundress. If she was a Gotham, then Theo had never seen her before. And if she was a Pelletier . . . no, she was far too cute to be part of that brood. But who knew? Maybe Azral had a bubbly niece with an equally weird name. Jezral. Or Sepsis.

  It wasn’t until she smiled at Theo that he finally recognized her. Of course. He should have known her right away, even with the new hairstyle. He should have checked her wrist and counted the watches.

  “You.”

  Ioni stopped in her tracks, stone-faced. “That’s one way to greet me.”

  “You think I’d be happy to see you?”

  “Hang on.”

  “You’re the one who—”

  “I said hang on.”

  Ioni crouched in the alcove, her lower half disappearing inside Heath’s tempic wolves. She leaned in close to Hannah and stared intently into her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Theo asked.

  “Diagnosing.” She rose to her feet again. “Shit on ice.”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean ‘what’? Did you even look at her?”

  Theo approached Hannah and studied her more closely. Her eyes were red with burst vessels. A trickle of blood escaped her left ear.

  “Jesus. What happened to her?”

  “Power strain,” Ioni said. “I pushed her too hard.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When you got dropped, she didn’t have an ounce of temporis left in her. She shot her wad fighting that little monster.”

  Ioni pointed to the corpse at the base of the stairwell, a ferocious-looking girl who’d taken a nasty spill. Theo had been so wrapped up in his own crisis that he hadn’t even noticed Naomi.

  “Hannah couldn’t save you,” Ioni explained to him. “Not on her own. So I gave her a boost and she used it beautifully.”

  “But?”

  “But she’s still a first-generation swifter. Her body can’t . . .” Ioni closed her eyes and sighed. “There’ll be damage.”

  “What kind of damage?”

  “Headaches. Bad ones. Whenever she goes into blueshift.”

  “How long before it gets better?”

  “It won’t.”

  Theo retreated from the stairwell. “Goddamn you.”

  “It’s a small price to save you. Hannah would
agree.”

  “Save me? This is your fault. You’re the one who told Rebel to kill us.” He gestured at Naomi. “You’re the reason any of these people want us dead!”

  Ioni followed him across the lobby, her high heels clacking against the marble floor. Theo didn’t know if it was her subconscious or his that was adding the noise. They were both specters here.

  She waved her arm and summoned a red felt pool table. The balls were already racked in a triangle.

  Theo eyed her strangely. “What are you doing now?”

  “Making trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Right here in River City.”

  Ioni saw his bemusement and pouted. “Hannah would have gotten that.”

  “I got the reference.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re from my world.”

  “If you mean Earth—”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m from your timeline,” Ioni admitted. “But not your time.”

  She crossed to the other side of the pool table. “And I never told Rebel to kill you. Not in those words.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  Ioni materialized a cue stick in each hand. She held one out to Theo. “Come on. Eight ball. Old-world rules. We’re going to be here a while. Might as well have some fun.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Fine. I’ll play myself.”

  She threw a cue stick across the table. A second Ioni appeared out of nowhere and caught it. The clone had copper-red hair and wore a crimson sundress. While the blonde lined up her breaking shot, the redhead blew a childish raspberry at Theo.

  He kept his surly gaze on the original Ioni. “What exactly did you say to Rebel?”

  She hit the cue ball at the 1 and sent all the others scattering. Only the 4 ball rolled into a pocket.

  Ioni smiled at her doppelgänger. “Guess I’m solids.”

  The redhead jerked her thumb at Theo. “He asked you a question.”

  “You’re taking his side?”

  “I’m a ginger. We’re complex.”

  Ioni lined up her shot at the 3 ball. Her expression turned grim. “I told Rebel this world couldn’t live as long as you breachers were on it.”