The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Mercy crossed her arms. “Your point?”

  “You have eyes. You see things. How did Heath look tonight?”

  “Miserable. Almost as bad as you.”

  “Good. So you did notice.” Zack turned around to face her. “Now why do you think he was moping? Because he can’t have Amanda?”

  “Look—”

  “Negative space,” Zack repeated. “While everyone was celebrating the people who are coming, Heath and I were talking about the ones who aren’t. A pair of sisters named Carina and Deanna. A bunch of guys named Sebastian, Drew, and Gavin.”

  He thumped his head sarcastically. “Shit. There was one more. I forget his name. No, no. Don’t tell me. It’ll come to me.”

  “Zack . . .”

  “Trillinger!” He snapped his fingers. “Josh Trillinger. That’s it.”

  Mercy sat down on the bed and stared at her fumbling fingers. “You goddamn turners. Always reversing yourselves.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You said you forgave me.”

  “And I do. That isn’t about blame. It’s about me missing my brother.”

  Mercy shook her head. “It’s more than that.”

  “You’re telling me how I feel?”

  “You’ve been cold to me for days. I’m not the only one who sees it.”

  Zack moved to the window and peered up at the moon: the real one, not that flat white lie that hung above the underland. Seventeen countries had already staked their flags there, using aeris-powered spacecraft and tempis-coated pressure suits.

  “It’s not you,” Zack assured Mercy. “I’ve been like this with everyone. Hannah called me a piss blizzard tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she sucks at metaphor.”

  “Why are you pulling away from your friends?”

  Because one of them’s Semerjean. “I don’t know,” Zack said. “I don’t know what’s going on with me. I just . . .”

  “What?”

  Zack opened his mouth to say something, then immediately thought better of it. He hadn’t mentioned a word about the Pelletiers in two weeks, if only to spare the others from his stupid, half-baked theories. Except now the pieces were coming together. A sharp new picture was forming in the negative space. Zack wasn’t sure if he was getting wise or going crazy. With the Pelletiers, one was as good as the other.

  “Just give me a few days,” he said. “Let me work it out on my own.”

  Mercy studied him through slitted eyes, then told him to take all the time he needed. Zack had no trouble reading the subtext from her tone. Start now. Go.

  Soon he was back in that infernal elevator, avoiding his reflections as the car squeaked and tottered. Halfway down, he forced his eyes open and took a good hard look at himself. He was an even more wretched sight than he remembered—bleary-eyed, pale-skinned, a ghoul from any angle. Jesus. No wonder everyone was worried about him.

  Evan snickered from the back of Zack’s consciousness. Look at you. The Zack-in-the-Box. The sad little jester. Shit, man. You couldn’t even give your girlfriend a proper good-bye.

  Zack lowered his gaze and muttered under his breath. “It wasn’t a good-bye.”

  Yeah, you just go on thinking that, Blue Boy. You know you’re never going back to her. And it’s not because of your brother and it’s not because of Amanda.

  “Shut up.”

  It’s because the Pelletiers want you with Mercy.

  Zack pressed his hands to his eyes, for all the good it did him. Evan continued to circle his thoughts, taunting him from every mirror.

  They went out of their way to break up you and Amanda. They bent over backward not to kill Mercy. How many times have they spared her now? Three? Four? Gosh, it’s almost as if they have a reason to keep her alive.

  “Fuck you.”

  Come on, man. Think! You and Mercy, Amanda and Peter, David and Yvonne. It’s all a big square dance, a breacher/Gotham mating game. That’s the only reason they brought you here.

  “Bullshit.”

  You’re just their breeding mouse, Zacky.

  “Go away!”

  Squeak fucking squeak.

  Zack’s body screamed with temporis, a bright white flash that burst from every pore of his skin. His clothes became musty and threadbare with age. The mirrors all around him turned cloudy, brittle. He looked up just in time to see the glass succumb to the elevator’s vibrations. Hairline cracks spread in furious branches.

  “Shit . . .”

  He crouched on the floor and covered himself as the mirrors came down in a thousand pieces. By the time the car settled, his jeans looked like they’d been dragged through a briar patch. Thin streams of blood dribbled from the holes.

  He stepped out into the underland and focused his thoughts on the elevator. As always, the universe resisted and Zack insisted. Just there, he bargained. Just look where I’m looking and break the rules there.

  The air inside the car rippled. The glass shards wobbled until, all at once, they began to move. They clacked together into larger fragments, then leapt back to their original places on the wall. Zack almost felt competent again as he watched the seams melt away, but something wasn’t right. The mirrors were marred with hundreds of wrinkles, like used tinfoil. Any professional restorer could have told Zack that silver glass didn’t reverse well. It was the silver, not the glass, that proved stubborn to manipulation.

  Flustered, Zack cut a hurried path toward Freak Street. The underland was desolate this time of night. He didn’t see another living soul until he crossed the village square and noticed a lanky figure hunched forward on a park bench. Even in the distance and the faint glow of the lampposts, Zack had no trouble recognizing him.

  “David?”

  The boy didn’t look up at Zack’s approach. He didn’t move at all.

  “David, are you okay?”

  Clearly he wasn’t. His skin was flushed. His brow was creased. He reminded Zack of the mirrors in the elevator—a smooth veneer, forever rumpled.

  Zack sat down next to him. “Talk to me. What happened?”

  A few seconds passed before David made eye contact. His voice came out in a croaking stammer. “I thought he was crazy.”

  “Who?”

  “Rebel. I . . .”

  David took a long look at the illusive moon before rising from the bench.

  “There’s something I have to show you.”

  —

  He led Zack through the shadows, to the corner of town that one could charitably call a business district. Between a volunteer library and a self-serve coffeehouse lay a narrow path of concrete, one of the underland’s few alleys.

  David conjured a floating orb of lumis and guided Zack down the passage. “I had an argument with Yvonne tonight,” he explained. “Stupid stuff. Mostly my fault. She left on a bad note and I was feeling restless, so I went for a walk. That’s when I saw something.”

  “Something,” Zack echoed.

  “Something in the recent past.”

  The alley ended in an L-shaped alcove, a sizable niche filled with bike wheels, broken chairs, and other dusty refuse. The Gothams seemed unwilling or unable to discard their old junk. It piled up in the hidden spaces. Out of sight, out of mind.

  David set up a folding chair. “You’re going to want to sit for this.”

  Warily, Zack obliged him. David closed his eyes and concentrated until a temporal ghost appeared in front of him, a waifish blonde in a boy’s undershirt and jeans. She twirled among the clutter in wild delight, as if she’d just been freed of a soul-crushing burden. Zack couldn’t recall ever seeing her before. She was peppy and pretty and she didn’t take herself too seriously. That last part alone made her rare among the Gothams.

  He turned to David. “Okay, I’m lost. Who is this
?”

  “You don’t see them?”

  “See what?”

  “Look at her wrist.”

  Zack scanned her arm and caught a sharp glint of silver. Her wristwatch was a fancy antiquity, even more exquisite than David’s. Next to it was a plain digital timepiece that looked cheap enough to come from a cereal box.

  More telling than the quality was the quantity of her watches. Zack sat forward, dumbstruck. “Wait. Is that . . .”

  “Yes.” David’s voice dropped an octave as he glared at the ghost. “I believe it is.”

  If Theo, Hannah, or Mia had been there, they could have confirmed it. They were the only ones in the group who’d met Ioni. The others merely knew her through anecdote.

  “When was this?” Zack asked David.

  “Last Tuesday. Around midnight.”

  “But what the hell was she doing here?”

  A shimmering glow forced Zack to shield his eyes. He squinted and saw a ten-foot portal fill the air behind Ioni.

  His throat closed. Oh no . . .

  Two willowy figures emerged from the whiteness, their ghosts flecked with temporal static. They could have stepped right out of one of Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings—Les Poseuses or A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Even with the image grain, Zack could easily recognize the man and woman from their features—his chalk-white hair, her coal-black eyes, their elegant clothes and menacing airs.

  Zack shot to his feet and stumbled backward, as if Azral and Esis could turn real at any moment.

  David held his arm. “It’s okay. It’s all right.”

  “You could have warned me!”

  “That’s why I told you to sit!”

  Zack turned back to the three spectral figures. If Ioni was frightened by the sudden arrival of the Pelletiers, she did a good job hiding it. She hugged Azral with giddy exuberance and gave Esis a kiss on both cheeks.

  “Mou s’alla amn mienka!” she said. “Me’tse haas en n’affa?”

  Azral closed the portal behind it, then took a distasteful look at his surroundings. “Kusu n’affa.”

  Zack felt as if someone had punched all the breath out of him. He had to press his temples just to hold his thoughts together.

  “She’s with them. She’s been working with the Pelletiers.”

  David nodded bleakly. “I think she is a Pelletier.”

  Zack fell back in his seat. The one comfort he’d had about Ioni was her hatred for Azral and Esis, but now it seemed the whole thing was a sham. The bastards were playing everyone from both sides. And that wasn’t even the worst part.

  “The string,” Zack said. “All that stuff she told Theo . . .”

  His heart jumped in panic when Esis looked his way. She was scanning the alley for something. Or someone.

  “Hou sa macore e’ley?” she asked Ioni.

  “Illy aun,” the girl replied with breezy assurance.

  A daft thought suddenly occurred to Zack, a theory both awful and reassuring.

  “Semerjean,” he uttered. “Holy shit. What if all this time—”

  “No,” said David.

  “But if she wore enough tempis—”

  “Zack, she isn’t Semerjean.”

  “How do you know?”

  Grim-faced, David pulled a second chair from the wall and hunkered down next to Zack. “He’s coming.”

  A new portal opened in the mouth of the alley. A fourth ghost joined the others. He was six feet tall and broad in the shoulders, a formidable presence even without his tempic armor. Unlike Azral and Esis, Semerjean’s image wasn’t marred by static. Zack could see every speck of stubble on his face. He could count the wayward hairs on his ponytail.

  “No. No, no, no . . .”

  Jonathan closed the portal with a flick of his hand, then smiled at his brethren. While he was content to give Azral an affectionate squeeze of the shoulder, he greeted Esis far more intimately.

  Zack felt a hot wave of nausea at the sight of their kiss. “Goddamn it. God fucking damn it.”

  “I know,” David said. “He played us all for idiots. I never suspected. Not even for a moment.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it does. We would have never found Jonathan if it wasn’t for Ioni. She practically hand-delivered him to us.”

  Zack couldn’t take his eyes off Semerjean. Aside from the fact that he was standing with enemies, he looked just like the Jonathan everyone knew and loved. Actually, no. He carried a hint of shrewd confidence that Zack had never seen before, even when he was playing guitar. It was all in the smile. The smile and the—

  “—eyes. Why do his eyes look different?”

  David crossed his arms and fumed at the ground. “Because they’re blue now.”

  “Jesus . . .”

  While the Pelletiers conversed in their native tongue, Zack noticed a folded square of cloth under Semerjean’s arm, a royal blue fabric with a glossy sheen.

  “What’s that thing under his—”

  “Shhh! Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  David rewound the scene ten seconds, then resumed playback. Now Zack could hear what he was talking about, a repeated word that was both strange and familiar. Heh-NAH.

  “Hannah . . .”

  David nodded uneasily. “I missed it the first time. They’re talking about her.”

  Zack suddenly became very aware of the cuts on his legs, a dozen tiny eyes all weeping in trickles. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to reverse the whole world until all of this was undone.

  “Turn it off,” he told David. “Put it away.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you haven’t seen the worst part.”

  The conference wrapped up. Azral and Esis gave their affectionate good-byes before summoning a new portal and disappearing to parts unknown. Alone in the alcove, Ioni and Semerjean traded a muted look of displeasure. Zack couldn’t tell if they were angry at each other or just tired.

  Semerjean pulled the fabric from under his arm and held it out to Ioni. She pursed her lips in a juvenile pout.

  “Come on. Please? Ten more minutes.”

  “El’una chine na Hannah ho’kiesse,” he told her. “You don’t want her wondering.”

  She snatched the cloth. “Can’t wait for this to be over.”

  “Soon,” Semerjean promised.

  Zack swallowed a scream as the fabric unfurled and revealed itself. It was a homemade New York Giants jersey with a crudely stitched “44” on the front and back, a shirt he’d seen a thousand times on someone else.

  His face blanched. His arms went limp at his sides. “No . . .”

  Ioni threw on the shirt, then pressed the face of her digital watch. Her timepieces merged into a single golden bracelet. Everything about her appearance began to change—her hair, her nose, the color of her skin. She was metamorphosing right in front of Zack’s eyes like a sorceress. A werewolf.

  Once the transformation finished, there was no Ioni to be found, just a small black boy who’d become quite precious to some.

  “Heath,” David growled. “He’s been Ioni this whole time. They’ve been lying to us from the very start.”

  Zack sat in stunned silence while Semerjean and Ioni fell back into character. Soon “Jonathan” wore an innocuous expression while “Heath” reclaimed his nervous tics. The pair swapped a quick, knowing glance before walking side by side up the alley. Back to Freak Street. Back to Hannah.

  David leaned against the brick and puffed a heavy breath. “I’m sorry, Zack. There was no good way to prepare you for this. It’s been thirty minutes and I still can’t wrap my mind around it. I mean . . .”

  He paused a moment, deliberating his words.

  “If there w
as ever a real Jonathan and Heath, then I don’t think they got very far. I think all the Golds are dead. But then what do I know? I’ve been a complete fool.”

  He looked to his fellow Silver, still staring into space in a catatonic trance. “Zack, I don’t need to tell you the trouble we’re in. We have to handle this with extreme—”

  A strange noise trickled out of Zack’s throat. David couldn’t tell if it was a cry or a laugh. “Zack?”

  He chuckled again, louder this time. He followed it with another, then another, and then a staccato barrage. His laughter kept intensifying, higher and faster, until his eyes filled with tears and he could barely draw a breath.

  David soundproofed the area and peeked down the alley. “For God’s sake, get ahold of yourself.”

  Zack wanted to but he couldn’t stop. From the minute Semerjean gave him his silver bracelet, he’d been racking his brain over the Pelletiers. He’d pondered them from every plane of reason, every angle of reality. He even expanded his mind to accommodate some truly wild notions. But the one thing he never considered, not until this very moment, was that the assholes had a sense of humor. They were funny. Oh God, they were funny, funny people.

  He wiped his eyes and let out a winded moan. “Holy shit. That was brilliant. That was a work of art. They had me going right till the end.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Zack swept his hand around the alcove. “This whole thing, it was bullshit! A CGI prank. They planted it for you to find, just like that van and money.”

  David tapped his lip in contemplation. “I’m not sure you’re right.”

  “Come on. You think the Pelletiers would let you ghost them? You think if they could meet anywhere by portal, they’d meet here?”

  “They’re not gods, Zack. And they’re not infallible.”

  “I’ll say.” He laughed again. “Jesus, they must think we’re dumb. Maybe we deserve it. I don’t know.”

  Zack stood up and folded his chair. “In any case, they can take their games and shove them. I’m done playing along.”

  David jumped to his feet. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “You’re just going to ignore this?”

  “Of course not. I’m going to warn Jonathan and Heath that the Pelletiers are trying to frame them.”