The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

Mia looked around at the bodies in the square—men, women, and children, more than she could count. At her accelerated speed, she could barely tell the living from the dead. For all she knew, half of them were still alive and flailing in agony, like that sad little spider that Gingold had crushed.

  Semerjean eyed her cautiously. “You want to know why I let it happen? The answer’s right there.”

  Mia’s whole body tensed as Semerjean gripped the back of her head. He turned her gaze westward, to the second floor of the recreation center.

  She wriggled out of his grip. “I have no idea what—”

  “Just look.”

  With a flick of his finger, the front wall of the building became transparent. Mia saw an armored solider on the second floor, a man who had yet to suffer the Gothams’ wrath. He aimed a long round device at the battlefield, like the mechanical offspring of a spyglass and an airhorn. Mia had been around long enough to know what she was looking at.

  “A video camera.”

  “And transmitter.” Semerjean pointed at the soldier. “He only pretends to work for Gingold. His real employer is Cedric Cain.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll meet him soon enough. Suffice it to say that he doesn’t like what Integrity’s become and, unlike us, he has the power to fix it. He’s with the president of the United States right this minute, showing him live images from that camera. As one would hope, the president’s outraged by the wholesale slaughter of American citizens. By sunset, every top-ranking official in the agency will be removed from power and an interim director will be named. That man?”

  “Cedric Cain,” Mia cynically guessed.

  Semerjean smiled. “He’s a long-term thinker. He understands the benefits of a cooperative partnership. He’ll immediately extend an olive branch to you and the Gothams. By this time tomorrow, everyone here will be a friend and asset of the United States government.”

  He swept his arm around the square. “None of that could have happened without this. It’s unfortunate—”

  “Unfortunate?”

  “—but that’s just the nature of causality. Sometimes you have to step back to move forward. Sometimes you have to make war to create a lasting peace.”

  Mia gritted her teeth. The Pelletiers had done the exact same thing at Atropos, forced a bloody battle between the orphans and Gothams for the sake of the greater good. Their good.

  Semerjean read the anger in her eyes. “You still don’t get it.”

  “No, I get it. You want to bring eternal life to your people, no matter who it kills.” She jerked her thumb at Mother Olga. “I’m sure she’d understand.”

  Semerjean closed his eyes, exasperated. “Shie’tta ju-né. This was always the hardest part of living with you.”

  “Me?”

  “All of you. I could tolerate your meats and chemicals, your rock-hard mattresses and inane conversations. But what I could not handle, what I still can’t bear, is your linear way of looking at things. You people are myopic to the point of blindness. Even your augur can’t see the big picture.”

  Mia scowled at her feet. If she didn’t fear for Carrie’s life, she might have reminded him that Gemma Sunder almost killed him. The mighty Semerjean, felled by a child and her poison fruit.

  He thrust a hand at Peter. “Nobody encapsulates that mindlessness more than that man. Look at him. He rushed into a battlefield with two bound arms and a wounded leg. What was he hoping to accomplish?”

  “He was trying to save Liam.”

  “Yes, and look how well that turned out.” He scoffed. “I should have never brought you to him. Every time I tried to advise him, he brushed me aside. ‘Don’t worry, son, I’ve got this.’ ‘Relax, boy. I know what I’m doing.’ ‘Quiet, lad. You don’t know the full story.’”

  Mia was neither impressed nor amused by his pitch-perfect impression. “He thought you were a kid. We all did.”

  “That shouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Well, it did, and it was your own damn fault. You could have come to us at any age. You could have been our leader.”

  Semerjean hung his head. His voice fell to a mutter. “It was a . . . strategic decision.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not important.”

  “Just tell me!”

  “I didn’t want to be an adult around Hannah. I was afraid that . . .”

  “What?”

  “I was afraid she’d fall in love with me.”

  Mia’s body went rigid. She kept her wide round eyes on the battlefield.

  Semerjean sighed at her. “Look—”

  “Don’t.”

  “I never meant for you to—”

  “Semerjean.”

  Mia closed her eyes in a sickly wince. She’d never called him by his real name before. The feeling was hideous, like she’d cast a dark spell in an old demonic tongue.

  She forced herself to make eye contact. “Just finish your damn work already so we can save Carrie.”

  Semerjean stared at her blankly before nodding. “As you wish.”

  The platform rose off the grass. Mia studied Semerjean through a hateful squint. She wondered what would happen if she opened up a portal inside his cold, black heart. Would it work? Would it kill him? Or would it only make him mad? Mia pondered the question over and over as they continued through the underland, toward the second name on his kill list.

  —

  They were fifty feet above the square when he claimed his next victim. Mia had no idea who Semerjean was dropping. The woman was locked in flying combat with a dragonette, her face concealed behind a shaded black face mask. The moment Semerjean touched her with his long tempic finger, the lights on her speedsuit flickered. Her aeric wings began to lose shape.

  Semerjean tapped the drone three times, then retracted his tempis. “Victoria Chisholm.”

  Mia looked at him. “Huh?”

  He pointed a thumb at his target. “That was Victoria Chisholm. In case you were wondering.”

  Mia had indeed wondered, but she didn’t want to ask. She was tired of being horrified by this creature in front of her, with his warped sense of ethics and his unbearable air of supremacy. Were the people of his world just like him? Did their four-dimensional perceptions kill the last of their humanity?

  He eyed Mia curiously. “You’re not going to ask me why?”

  “I know why. She either got in your way or she’ll get in your way in the future.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yeah. You love saying that.”

  The platform ascended past the broken face of the clock tower. Semerjean studied the cracks in the glass, a branching array of hard, angry angles that looked like frozen lightning.

  “Life will soon be very different here,” he told Mia. “There’ll be new orphans, new scientists, new government administrators. Some of the Gothams won’t be able to handle the change. Some, like Victoria Chisholm, would have upset the delicate balance we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

  Mia looked down at her feet. “You want this place to be a big breeding farm.”

  “A volunteer breeding farm. Everything we’d hoped to achieve in Terra Vista will be done here on a grander scale. We’ve been building toward this for months.”

  “So who’s your third, then?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said you had three people to kill. Who’s the third one? Rebel? Mercy? Jonathan?”

  “No.”

  “Zack?”

  Semerjean’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You have no idea what I’ve gone through to keep Zack alive.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No, I am not killing Zack. Or Jonathan. Or Rebel. Or Mercy.”

  “What about Azral and Esis?”

  “I’m
not killing them either.”

  Mia shot him a dirty look. “You know what I mean. Do they have their own kill lists? Are they coming after anyone I know?”

  Semerjean looked away. “My wife and son are their own people.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The disc came to a stop in the upper reaches of the underland, all air vents and roof panels. Mia couldn’t help but wonder if there was some nefarious reason Semerjean brought her here. What if she was the third name on his list?

  “What . . . what are we doing here?”

  Semerjean sighed with haughty disappointment, as if he had to explain why the Earth wasn’t flat.

  “See, this is a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. You look, you analyze, but you never see the whole picture.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Turn around.”

  Mia turned around and gasped at the two figures floating behind her. Amanda and Melissa dawdled helplessly above the clock tower, a mere ten yards from impact. Even at 1000x speed, Mia could see the pull of gravity on their bodies. They sank through the air as if it were made of molasses. Their limbs flailed as slowly as minute hands.

  “Oh my God!”

  Semerjean lowered the platform in measure with their fall. “Yes. They didn’t think their cunning plan all the way through.”

  Mia studied them from the edge of the platform. Their skin was scraped all over. Their clothes were a jumble of rips and bloodstains. While Melissa’s eyes screamed in alarm, Amanda’s were closed in pain and exhaustion. She must have pushed her tempis to the limit and then some.

  Semerjean scrutinized Amanda with a casual look of intrigue. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “Come see this. It’s fascinating.”

  Grudgingly, Mia joined him. Her heart jumped in fright when Semerjean flicked his hand at Amanda, but all he did was turn the back of her shirt transparent. Now Mia could see what he was talking about: two scaly white formations on her shoulder blades.

  “It’s tempis,” Mia said. “So what?”

  “Look again.”

  Mia took a closer look. On second glance, they seemed more deliberate in design, as if Amanda’s subconscious was crudely trying to fashion something. The scales weren’t actually scales at all, just a weak attempt at—

  “—feathers.” Mia gaped. “She’s trying to make wings. Does that mean—”

  “Oh, yes.” Semerjean grinned brightly. For a brief and painful moment, he looked just like David again. “Only ten percent of tempics can biologically generate aeris. Amanda just became one of them.”

  Mia reeled at the thought of Amanda soaring through the sky like a swan. It seemed so alien, and yet so fitting.

  “Can those save her?”

  Semerjean chuckled. “They’ll barely slow her fall.”

  “So help her already!”

  “I have just the thing.”

  He pulled a tarnished bronze disc from his shirt pocket and flung it at Amanda. It affixed itself to the back of her neck, then coated every inch of her in a skin-tight sheath of tempis.

  Mia shuddered at her eerie new state. She looked completely inanimate now, lifeless, like an unfinished statue. “Will that keep her from falling?”

  “No,” said Semerjean. “It’ll keep her from breaking.”

  He studied his handiwork approvingly, then clapped his hands together. “And now at last my work is done.”

  The platform descended. Mia looked up at the floating bodies. “Wait! What about Melissa?”

  “What about her?”

  “Aren’t you going to save her?”

  “Why would I? Her situation solves itself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean?” He motioned to her. “She’s the third name on my list.”

  The flying disc sank eighteen feet before Mia found her voice again. “Why?”

  Semerjean pursed his lips. “I’ve explained it twice now. There are those who have the potential to cause great harm.”

  “But she saved us. She’s a good person!”

  “You think this is about good and evil?”

  “Yes! She knew there was something wrong with you. She saw it from the moment she met you. We should have listened to her.”

  Semerjean snorted dismissively. “It’s listening to her that gets you killed in the future.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Yell all you want, but consider this: if an ‘evil’ man like me can fly around saving lives today, then is it not inconceivable that a good woman with good intentions could destroy many lives in the future? Have I not explained how the strings work?”

  Mia fought to suppress her rage. The girl she loved was still in need of rescue. If she pushed Semerjean too hard, it’d be all over for Carrie. He’d probably kill her himself and make Mia watch.

  But a voice in her head had been haranguing her for minutes, faulting her for letting Semerjean kill anyone today.

  You still have some influence over him, it insisted. He cares what you think. He practically admitted it himself.

  “No!”

  Semerjean turned to face her. “Excuse me?”

  Mia shook a finger at him. “I was there when you first met Melissa. She really got under your skin that night, made you angrier than I’d ever seen you. I don’t think that was an act.”

  Semerjean smiled patiently. “Do tell.”

  “You lost your cool and then you lost two fingers. You’ve been mad at her ever since. Nobody loses fingers where you come from.”

  “Mia . . .”

  “They probably don’t even have pain.”

  The platform stopped in front of the clock tower. Semerjean stepped forward, his mouth turned down. The lightning cracks of glass loomed behind him.

  “You’ve spent eleven months with David and only eleven minutes with me. What makes you think you know me?”

  “Because it’s been a long eleven minutes. And I’ve been paying attention.”

  Semerjean laughed. “A fourteen-year-old trying to gauge the mind of a three-hundred-and-fourteen-year-old.”

  “I thought only vain people put a number on it.”

  “I’m plenty vain.”

  “I think you are too,” Mia said. “You can lie to me but you can’t lie to yourself. There’s no strategy behind killing Melissa. You just don’t like her.”

  Time seemed to stop all over again as Semerjean stared at Mia. While a vengeful part of her took pleasure in his displeasure, the rest of her fell into panic.

  This is it, she convinced herself. This is where he kills me.

  After a seemingly endless silence, Semerjean fished into his shirt pocket and removed another bronze disc. He threw the object high into the air, his cool blue eyes never leaving Mia.

  By the time she dared look up, a smooth skin of tempis had formed around both women. Amanda and Melissa were nearly indistinguishable from each other in their hard white shells. They looked more like sisters than the Givens ever did.

  Mia turned to Semerjean, thunderstruck. “You saved her.”

  “For now.”

  “But . . .” Her inner voices screamed at her, begging her not to push her luck. “Why?”

  Semerjean mulled the question, his gaze darting around the clamshell hood of the amphitheater. “It’s not because you were right about me. You weren’t. Furthermore, should you ever be in a position to analyze my wife and son, I strongly advise you don’t. I’m the ‘people person’ in our family. They don’t share my tolerance for fools.”

  He paced the platform with a contemplative expression. “But you made a good point. There’s a word that you and the others continually used to describe David, a compliment that never sat well with me. Do you know which one I’m talking a
bout?”

  Mia tensely shook her head. She was done making guesses for the day.

  “‘Brave,’” he answered. “You thought I was courageous in the face of danger, but can it really be called bravery when I was never truly at risk? I have more strength, more power, more insight than all our enemies combined. You all saw me as David, when I was secretly Goliath.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “But you, you risked my wrath over a woman you barely know. You took me on knowing full well what I could do to you.”

  A genial laugh escaped him. “If that isn’t bravery, I don’t know what is.”

  Mia had no idea whether to be flattered or insulted. She kept an eye on Melissa, half afraid that Semerjean would suddenly change his mind again.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “You’ve inspired me to take a less drastic approach with Melissa. I will ‘sack up,’ as the men here say, and face her on a more level battlefield.”

  Semerjean tapped his chin in thought. “It’s funny. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You’re living proof of that. But where I come from, my people only have one last mortal threat. What will happen when we destroy it entirely? What will we become?”

  Mia’s shoulders drooped with exhaustion. She had finally reached the limits of her tolerance.

  “Look, I gave you my time. I listened to what you had to say.”

  “Well, that second part’s debatable but—”

  “Will you please save Carrie now?”

  Semerjean put his hands in his pockets and flashed her a boyish grin. “I already did.”

  The platform descended on a quick, slanted path, fast enough to turn Mia’s stomach. The moment it stopped, she moved to the edge and looked down. They were just thirty feet above Temperance Street, right where their journey had begun. Stan Bloom lay miserably on the floor of the alcove, his bloody chest lit with a bright, golden healing disc. Ten feet to his right, Carrie remained petrified at the mouth of the alley. There wasn’t any trace left of the dragonette or its flame.

  Mia looked at Semerjean, stammering. “When—”

  “Eleven minutes ago. Right after we started.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I’d tell you I did it because I care about you, but you wouldn’t believe me. So let’s just say there’s more to gain by keeping her alive.”