The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Mia felt like crying all over again—tears of relief, tears of rage, tears of exhaustion and lament. A hundred new questions piled up on her tongue. They all cleared a path for the king of the lot.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I want you to make a child with Liam.”

  “I know that. I’m talking right here, right now. What do you want?”

  Semerjean took a lingering look at the tower. “By external clocks, we’ve now officially spent one second together.”

  “So?”

  He turned his gaze back to Mia. “I want one more.”

  —

  While the war beneath them continued to rage in microscopic increments, Semerjean and Mia sat quietly on the edge of the disc, their feet dangling high above Temperance Street. By now, Mia had become so numb that she almost found this relaxing. She could have been kicking her legs off an old country bridge, spending a mindless Sunday morning with her old friend David.

  “Who’s Ioni?” she asked without thinking.

  Semerjean leaned back on his elbows, an evincible contempt in his eyes. “Even we don’t know for sure. Her powers and technology are alien to us. She’s been on this world for more than a hundred years. She arrived with the Cataclysm.”

  He stared out at the perimeter park. “My son believes she was the Cataclysm.”

  Mia didn’t even know how to begin processing that. Her mind fumbled for the next question. “Why Liam?”

  Semerjean took a deep breath before answering. “He’s a good kid. Smarter than his father. I thought he’d be a good match for you.”

  He eyed her carefully. “You could always pick someone else.”

  “I did pick someone else.”

  “Someone who could get you pregnant.”

  “I don’t want to be pregnant.”

  “That’s your choice,” Semerjean said. The chill in his voice nearly made her heart drop.

  Her fingers tapped a rapid beat on the aeris. “Did you even like us, Semerjean?”

  “I like you and Zack very much.”

  “But not the others.”

  He flipped his hand in a lazy shrug. “The only one of you I actively dislike is Peter.”

  “He’s done more for me than you ever have.”

  “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in his string theory.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “There’s no saving this world, Mia, but you can save yourselves.”

  “Just leave me alone already!”

  Semerjean climbed back to his feet. He flanked Mia’s side and watched the slow, silent action in the village square.

  “As I said, things will be different after today. You’ll have peace with the Gothams, peace with the government. And just a few minutes from now, my family and I will make our own peace offering. If you do the smart thing—”

  “The smart thing,” Mia mocked.

  “—you’ll have a long and happy future.”

  Hot blood coursed through Mia’s face. She felt another wave of nausea coming on.

  “We’re not asking for anything untoward,” Semerjean said. “Just the opposite. We want to create life to preserve it. That’s all this is about.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you said, and I understand why. But you’re the smartest one of the Silvers, Mia. When all the dust settles and all your wounds heal, you’ll think about everything I told you today and you’ll come to see things my way.”

  “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Because you’ve met the real me now. You’ve seen me at work. There are people I need and people I don’t, and you’ve seen firsthand how I handle both.”

  Semerjean leaned in closer and gripped her by the shoulders. “Think about the future. Be someone I need.”

  He walked to the other end of the platform, then brushed the silver disc on the back of his hand. The clock of the world suddenly came unstuck. The underland reverted to normal speed.

  Smiling, Semerjean turned to Mia and made a sweeping gesture at the dragonettes, right as they all lost power. They spun toward the ground in whistling synch and then passed harmlessly through the floor of the village.

  While the townspeople gasped and whooped in surprise, Semerjean kept his blithe blue eyes on Mia.

  “Invasion’s over,” he told her. “We won.”

  FIFTY

  The Heaven’s Gate district of Quarter Hill was the wealthiest development in Rockland County—forty-four mansions on thirty-nine estates, each one owned by a billionaire investor. The place was so lush and ridiculously pretty that Hannah almost felt like she was violating it with her haggard presence. She and Jonathan clearly didn’t belong here, but there was no one around to notice. Every resident of Heaven’s Gate was a secret member of the Gotham clan, and they were all currently trapped in hell.

  Hand in hand, she fled with Jonathan down Ashwin Street, past an endless variety of rose plants and property gates. They had barely made it out of Manganiel’s before Integrity reinforcements arrived in dropships. Did the soldiers see them leave? Were they tracking them from a distance? Hannah had no idea. She just knew she had to get back to the underland before the people she loved were murdered.

  She stopped at the edge of the Whitten estate and took a deep breath through her nose. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  “For what?”

  “More shifting. Come on.”

  Jonathan looked into her bloodshot eyes. “You’re not ready.”

  “I’m fine, all right? The headache’s gone.”

  “Bullshit. You look like you just had a baby through your ear.”

  He checked the map on Melissa’s handheld console, then eyed the palatial mansion across the street. “Moot point anyway. That’s our stop.”

  Hannah was hardly surprised to learn that the estate in question was Irwin Sunder’s. It was the most expansive lot on the block, with the biggest house, the tallest hedges, and the wroughtiest of wrought-iron fences. Each segment formed a twisting array of metal vines, all ending with flowers and looping around a calligraphic “S.”

  “God,” Hannah muttered.

  “Yeah. He’s a tool.” Jonathan frowned at her. “And to think you gave up your singing for him.”

  “I didn’t do it for him.”

  “No, you did it to spite him. Except he doesn’t give a shit, and Heath and I miss your voice.”

  “Are we really getting into this now?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  He hurried across the street. Hannah scrambled to keep up with him. It was probably a good thing she hadn’t shifted again. Her brain was still a ball of fire, and the pain that had begun in her dislocated shoulder had spread like a current across the right side of her body. The only relief she got was from the warm breeze that flowed through Heaven’s Gate. She’d been underground so long that she had almost forgotten how good the sun and wind felt.

  Hannah studied Jonathan anxiously as he stopped at Sunder’s fence. “I’m still freaking out about what Rebel said. If Azral’s coming for you—”

  Jonathan scoffed. “When has Rebel ever been right about anything?”

  “He was right about Semerjean.”

  “He thought Peter was Semerjean.”

  Jonathan dropped a three-foot section of iron gate, then passed through the opening. Hannah took a last look around before following him onto Sunder’s lot.

  “Look, if the Pelletiers want us to breed with Gothams—”

  “If,” Jonathan stressed.

  “—then you and I are a problem.” She toyed with the folds of her makeshift sling. “Maybe we should . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Don’t.”

  Jonathan led her through a copse of trees, onto Sunder’s vast green lawn. “I’m having a bad enough weekend. I
don’t need to get dumped.”

  “You think I want that?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Hannah said. “Because I’m in love with you. You’re the first guy in my life who has me thinking long term.”

  “Then why cut us short?”

  “Because I don’t want you to die!”

  She noticed a tall wooden box in the middle of the yard—a wireless speaker, from the looks of it. Maybe the Sunders had a lot of lawn parties. Maybe Irwin liked to gather up his servants and make them dance for his amusement.

  Jonathan threw the speaker a cursory glance before stuffing his hands in his pockets. “So, what’s the plan, then? You keep me alive in a big glass jar? What will that get us?”

  “Time,” Hannah said. “You think I’m the only one who loves and needs you?”

  Jonathan closed his eyes. “No.”

  “Then why risk it?”

  “Because I’m tired,” he told her. “I’m tired of running, tired of worrying, tired of all the ticking clocks. I’m tired of assholes trying to kill us and I’m tired of making sacrifices.”

  They crossed the lawn to Sunder’s driveway, a winding lane of tumbled white brick. Jonathan fished through his pocket and retrieved the elevator card and access code that Melissa had given him.

  “I can’t be like them,” he said to Hannah.

  “Like who?”

  “Amanda and Zack. I see the way they look at each other and I know it won’t get better. No matter what they do, no matter who they’re with, they’ll spend the rest of their lives making sad eyes at each other. At some point, you have to wonder what the point is. I mean, are we fighting for long lives here or are we fighting for good ones?”

  Jonathan stared up at the sky. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being selfish. All I know is that I can’t give you up, Hannah. Not when I know how you feel. You’re the only one who gets to say ‘stop.’ Not them.”

  He shook his head bitterly. “Not them.”

  Hannah bit her lip to keep from crying. All her pains and frustrations were spinning around her mind in a vortex. She could barely form a coherent thought.

  “Jonathan—”

  “There’s another one.”

  “What?”

  He pointed to the music speaker on the far side of the driveway. “Those things must be weatherproof.”

  Hannah opened her mouth to say something, then felt a sharp twinge in her senses. There was a smoky aura crossing fast into her airspace. It was coming in high and it was big.

  “Jonathan!”

  An Integrity dropship de-shifted above them, one of the four flying carriers that Hannah had seen outside Manganiel’s. The vehicle looked like a stripped-down helicopter—no rotors, no skids, no passenger doors or windows. Just a large open hatch on each side of the chassis.

  Hannah barely had a chance to grab Jonathan’s arm before six armored soldiers popped out on tethers. She didn’t have to look to know that they were shifted, and there was no way to fight them while they were out of reach. She couldn’t even run. There was no time to jump on Jonathan’s back and accelerate him before the gunmen—

  “Now!” yelled the pilot.

  Hannah and Jonathan dropped to the lawn and covered their heads while the deafening sounds of gunfire filled the yard.

  After eight long seconds, the barrage finally stopped. Jonathan opened his eyes and saw Hannah lying face down on the grass.

  “Hannah!”

  She raised her head and looked him up and down. He didn’t seem to have a scratch on him. “Are you . . . did they . . . ?”

  “I don’t think so. You?”

  “I . . .” Hannah checked herself for bullet holes but couldn’t find any. Everything around her looked just as healthy as it ever did—the lawn, the driveway, the music speaker.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  The soldiers urgently checked their rifle clips, as if some practical joker had replaced their ammunition with stage blanks. If Peter or Mia had been there, they could have told them that their bullets had worked just fine. They simply got swallowed into dozens of portals.

  A horizontal disc opened directly above the dropship, fifty feet wide and bright as a moon. Hannah had seen countless portals before, but this one was . . . different. The surface swirled like hurricane clouds, its bright folds turning counterclockwise. It sucked in air with enough force to pull the dropship upward.

  The soldiers clutched their tethers while the pilot fought against the vacuum. Even at full throttle, she could only hold the ship in jittery equilibrium: a thrashing tug-of-war between the engines and the portal.

  Hannah and Jonathan scuttled backward from the rift as an upward breeze nipped at them. Loose clumps of dirt and grass went flying into the air, as if the gravity of tiny objects had suddenly reversed itself.

  “What is that?” Jonathan yelled.

  “I don’t know! I never—”

  Hannah suddenly remembered something she’d overheard Peter telling Mia, a warning about time portals. They may be good for passing notes, but you never want to make one at full size. They’ll draw you in and kill you. You and everyone around you.

  “Oh my God . . .”

  Hannah frantically looked around. She was hoping that Peter had swung by for a timely rescue, but he’d never be so brutal. There was, however, another man who would.

  No . . .

  The dropship’s engine died a sputtering death. Its liftplates all went dark. Hannah could hear the soldiers’ screams as the portal swallowed their ship whole. Its landing wheels had barely vanished before the disc closed shut and the whistling wind came to a stop.

  Jonathan clambered back to his feet and brushed the hair from his eyes. A smattering of grass blades fluttered back down to earth like snow.

  “Holy crap.”

  Hannah lost her breath when she saw someone watching them. She fought to speak through trembling lips. “Jonathan, get out of here.”

  “What?”

  He turned his head and saw the source of her terror: a white-haired man at the far end of the driveway.

  “Oh.” Jonathan’s face went slack. “Shit.”

  He was the only one in the group who had yet to see Azral Pelletier, though he’d certainly heard enough about him. Even Heath, who’d watched Azral choke Melissa in the skies above Atropos, had expounded at length about the man’s calm ferocity. If anything, the kid had undersold it.

  Hannah rose to her feet and took a defensive stance in front of Jonathan. “Go.”

  “Hannah . . .”

  “Run!”

  He shook his head slowly. “That won’t do a thing.”

  Azral floated six inches above the driveway on a thin golden disc, his hands casually tucked into his pockets. As ever, he’d come dressed in a stylish gray business suit, neatly buttoned over a tieless white oxford. And as ever, he wore a cold and haughty look on his face, as if the universe existed solely to annoy him.

  Hannah’s throat tightened. She took a shaky step forward. “No. Don’t you dare.”

  Azral continued to glide his way toward them, his sapphire eyes locked on Jonathan.

  “You never warned me,” Hannah said. “You never told me not to entwine with him!”

  If Azral heard her, he didn’t show it. He had yet to acknowledge her existence at all.

  Jonathan pushed the elevator card and passcode into her hand. “Sweetheart, listen to me—”

  “No.”

  “He’s giving you the chance to leave.”

  “No!”

  “I don’t want you seeing this!”

  She ran toward Azral, blocking his path until he was forced to stop. At last, he met her gaze. Hannah had to crane her neck just to make eye contact with him.

  “Okay, look. Look. Listen to me . . .”
/>
  Hannah stumbled on her words, momentarily thrown. She hadn’t stood this close to him since the day her world ended. Once again, he walked the razor-thin space between beautiful and monstrous, like a hungry white tiger, like a holy angel come to deliver God’s vengeance.

  But there was something else in his expression that she hadn’t noticed until now: a howling emptiness behind his eyes. If Azral was human, then he must have been a fanatic of the highest order. For all Hannah knew, he’d been born and raised for just one purpose—the very cause that she and Jonathan threatened. There was no use pleading with a man that obsessed. The only way to sway him was to work within his narrow scope.

  “I’ll give you what you want,” Hannah offered. “You don’t have to kill him. I’ll give you a baby.”

  Azral raised a thin white eyebrow. Either he didn’t believe her or, worse, she was offering him something he already considered to be his.

  Hannah sniffed and wiped her eyes. Her breath came out in frantic wheezes.

  “I’ve been a train wreck all my life,” she told him. “But I’ve never once broken a promise. If you let Jonathan live, I swear to you from the bottom of my heart that I won’t touch him again. We won’t be a problem for you. I’ll make a kid with whoever you want.”

  Jonathan shook his head frantically. “Hannah, no!”

  She kept her unblinking gaze on Azral. “Read my eyes.”

  His head tilted five degrees. She finally piqued his curiosity.

  “Read my future,” she stressed.

  Her whole inner world seemed to come to a stop as she waited for Azral to respond. No breath, no thought, not even a blink of the eyes. She might as well have turned to plastic in front of him. All she could feel was the prick of goosebumps on her skin, an anticipation of his cold honey monotone.

  But Azral didn’t speak. He merely turned his head toward the tennis courts for a moment, then retreated down the driveway on his flying disc.

  Hannah chased after him. “Wait. Does that mean—”

  He disappeared in a globe of light, one bright enough to make her wince. Hannah scanned the front yard through the spots in her vision. All that remained of Azral’s portal was a smooth round crater in the surface of the driveway.