The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “What was that?” asked a Gotham.

  “What was that?” asked a soldier.

  “What the hell was that?” Mia asked from her floating aeric platform.

  Semerjean peered down at the fresh new crater in Temperance Street, twenty feet wide and deep enough to cut into the tunnels. He closed his eyes with a maudlin sigh, then turned his back on Mia.

  “That was my wife.”

  —

  Fifteen feet below the thermics’ guild building, in a long and narrow corridor of storerooms, Zack stood alone under a naked filament bulb. His back was still aching from the stun bolt he’d taken. His whole body moved like he was neck-deep in snow. Even under optimal circumstances, he knew the .38 in his hands wouldn’t do a thing to stop the creature that was coming for him.

  The walls shook. Dust fell in clumps. Zack saw a bright, flickering glow at the end of the tunnel. Esis had turned a sharp corner, and was now headed his way.

  “Here she comes,” Rebel said into Zack’s earpiece. “Get ready.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  She came floating down the tunnel in a globe of yellow light, her high-heeled boots hovering six inches off the concrete. Gusty winds blew all around her, ruffling her hair, her slacks, her surplice blouse and longline jacket. Without the supernatural embellishments, Esis would have blended in perfectly among the glitterati of this era: a tall and stylish business executive, an aloof but lovely art dealer, the intimidating head of a lumivision network, the uptown socialite whom everyone admired but no one liked.

  But all a person had to do was look into her eyes—those pitch-black eyes with the wild, dancing spark in them—to know that Esis Pelletier was . . . different. For Zack, who’d already seen her at her worst, one glimpse was all it took to realize that Rebel was right. She hadn’t come here today to save any Silvers. Quite the opposite.

  “Hold your position,” said the voice in Zack’s earpiece. “If you run, she’ll teleport. And we need her to cross that corridor.”

  No one knew what Rebel had been up to these past few days. He’d spent most of the time in the cellar tunnels, preparing for a battle that only a handful of augurs saw coming. The Integrity invasion was just a sideshow. The real threat, he knew, was arriving right on its heels. He saw Pelletiers in his foresight, clear as ice.

  More than that, he saw a way to hurt them.

  “Esis is the heart and soul of their mission,” he’d explained to Zack, a mere two minutes before her arrival. “They can’t finish their work without her. If she dies, then Azral and Semerjean have no reason to stay on this world.”

  “Except to kill us,” Zack had said.

  Mercy had been stuck on that point as well. Rebel shrugged it off.

  “The three of us are on her kill list,” he’d insisted. “We’re all dead anyway. The best thing we can do is take that bitch down with us.”

  Esis was a hundred feet away from Zack when she passed the first motion sensor. A vault door next to her retracted on shifted wheels, springing open as quickly as an eyelid. She barely had time to turn her head before an automated turret came to life at 24x and sprayed her with .50-caliber rounds.

  Zack watched her, cursing, as the bullets bounced harmlessly off her light enclosure. He had hoped at the very least that she’d throw up a tempic shield and suffer a few hundred psychic stings. But, as always, the woman had come prepared.

  The turret ran out of ammunition. Esis looked to Zack with haughty bemusement, as if he’d just tried to kill her with a squirt gun.

  “Don’t worry,” Rebel told Zack. “There’s more coming.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Just stand your ground.”

  “How about you stand here?”

  “She’ll be seeing me soon enough.”

  While Rebel and Mercy had both armored up, Zack was stuck facing Esis in a T-shirt and sweatpants. His body was still reeling from Integrity’s stun bolt, and the temporis inside him felt as slippery as mud. He had no hope of rifting Esis, nor did he put much faith in the crusty old weapon that Rebel had given him, a .38 revolver that looked more likely to explode than fire.

  As Esis continued her gliding approach, a putty bomb went off behind a wall vent, sending flame and debris all around the edges of her lightshield. Another vent blew up, then another, then four others. For six loud seconds, that fifty-foot stretch of tunnel had become hell on Earth, yet Esis passed through all of it like she was drifting through a pleasant dream.

  Zack suddenly recognized the yellow glow of her force field, the first form of temporis he’d ever seen. It had emanated from his silver bracelet eleven months ago, just as the sky came down on his native Earth. Whatever that stuff was, it was strong. Strong enough to withstand an apocalypse.

  “This won’t work,” Zack muttered into his collar mic.

  “Yes it will,” Rebel told him. “Just keep your gun ready.”

  Esis was forty feet away now, close enough for Zack to see the wrath in her eyes. Another vault popped open next to her. Another cannon came to life. This one looked more like a giant gas nozzle than a conventional weapon. Whatever it fired was invisible to Zack.

  “Solis,” Rebel said. “Refashioned it from a government drone.”

  “It didn’t do shit.”

  Rebel studied Esis on his monitor. Her force field continued to operate at full strength. It didn’t even flicker. “Huh.”

  Mercy grabbed the microphone from him. “Zack, get out of there.”

  “No,” said Rebel.

  “That was our last trick! Go!”

  “Do not leave,” Rebel ordered. “Wait till she gets closer.”

  “And do what?” Zack asked.

  Esis stopped ten feet in front of him and lowered herself to the ground. If anything, Rebel’s buffoonery had turned her rage to amusement. She regarded Zack with idle curiosity.

  “Why?”

  The .38 dangled at Zack’s side. He had to fight to keep from firing it at her. All he’d do was embarrass himself.

  “Why what?” he asked.

  “Why put your trust in that insipid ape? He’s caused you nothing but pain.”

  Zack scoffed. “He’s still better than you.”

  “Better,” Esis mocked. “What a strange perspective you have.”

  “She takes one more step, you shoot her,” Rebel growled.

  “I’ve given Richard more than enough reason to hate me,” Esis said. “But what drives you?”

  “You’re seriously asking?”

  “I could have locked you all in prison cells, forced you to copulate with people of my choosing. You would have never seen the sky of this world, and yet I was the one who gave you freedom. I gave you life, Trillinger. And what do I get for my generosity?”

  Zack gaped at her. “Holy shit. You really are crazy.”

  “Why?” Esis stepped forward. A thick vein pulsed on her temple. “Why must you make my work so difficult?”

  “Now, Trillinger! Shoot her!”

  “Run!” Mercy yelled.

  Zack aimed the revolver, his eyes moist with tears. Both Rebel and Esis had lost their minds, and Mercy’s advice was . . . impractical. He had no hope of escape, no hope of surviving. All he could do was steal the last word of the argument.

  “Because you destroyed my world,” he said in a choked voice.

  He pulled the gun back and pressed it to his temple. “That’s why.”

  Mercy screamed. Esis lunged forward. Zack closed his eyes, cast a silent apology to Amanda, and then pulled the trigger.

  Esis tilted her head, confounded, as the weapon made an unexpected noise: a high-frequency hum that only she could hear. The soundwaves passed harmlessly through her energy bubble, then sent her nervous system into discord. Her shriek forced Zack to open his eyes again. The gun hadn’t even clicked. Yet somehow,
despite all logic and reason, it had caused Esis immeasurable pain.

  He popped open the gun chamber and saw complicated circuitry where bullets should have been.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  A gritty laugh filled his earpiece. Rebel had acquired the weapon four days ago, an apology gift from a cagey old friend. Though he would sooner kill her than trust her again, this Ioni Anata T’llari Deschane, Rebel was an angry man in a desperate situation. He’d put his last ounce of faith in her, and was duly rewarded.

  Rebel watched Esis through his monitor, still laughing as she writhed and howled inside her force field.

  “What did you do to her?” Mercy asked.

  Rebel wasn’t entirely sure. Ioni had spouted off some garble about a disease called terminus and its many effects on Esis. One of them was an aversion to a very specific sound frequency.

  The noise won’t kill her, Ioni had warned. It’ll just weaken her. The rest is up to you.

  Rebel wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The shield around Esis flickered out of existence. Rebel kicked his door open and burst into the corridor, a Remington MP in his hands. The pump-action shotgun was nowhere near as elaborate as Zack’s weapon, but it fired a hell of a lot more than soundwaves.

  Frantic, Esis covered herself in tempis just as Rebel’s first slug exploded against her chest. She screamed and flew back into a wall.

  Rebel pumped his gun and shot her again. “Rift her.”

  “What?”

  Zack could barely hear him over the thunder of the Remington. Between his near-death trauma and his screaming tinnitus, his mind was stuck in painful stasis. He couldn’t shake the feeling that killing Esis was a mistake—not morally, but strategically. They had a rare and golden chance to sway the minds of all three Pelletiers, and Rebel was squandering it on a vendetta.

  “Goddamn it, Trillinger. Rift her!”

  Mercy charged into the tunnel, her brow flecked with sweat. Though she fired enough solis to melt a hundred tempic skins, it didn’t do a thing against Esis. Her necklace, like Semerjean’s wristwatch, provided complete immunity to Mercy’s power.

  Rebel shot another slug at Esis before she could get up. “Your gun,” he yelled at Mercy. “Keep pounding away at her shell!”

  Esis thrust her hand and cast a barbed tempic whip. It tore off a slice of Rebel’s leg armor, along with a patch of his thigh.

  He pumped his rifle and moved in closer. “That’s all you got?” He shot her again. “That’s all you got?”

  “M’itta-ke né!”

  Esis shifted into high speed and disappeared in a blink. The others looked up and down the tunnel.

  “She’s still here,” Rebel said. “She’s lumiflaged. She can’t—”

  A tempic blade cut the back of his neck. Rebel bellowed and spun around. Between him and Mercy stood a barely visible entity, a shimmering patch of air with a womanly shape.

  Zack’s face went white as Rebel aimed his Remington at the blur. “Wait!”

  “Don’t!” Mercy yelled.

  Esis ducked out of range, just as Rebel fired. The slug tore through Mercy’s armor and shredded half her chest.

  “No!”

  While Zack rushed to catch her, Rebel turned around and fired again. He didn’t need to see his targets to hit them. When his foresight worked, it guided his arm through the spectrum of future possibilities. It told him exactly where to aim when he wanted to draw blood, even from an invisible swifter.

  Esis shrieked as the slug hit her square in the chest, in the flimsiest part of her tempis. Her sternum cracked. She spit up blood. Her lumiflage and armor withered away.

  Rebel pumped his gun for a kill shot, but it was out of ammo. Esis hobbled down the corridor at 15x.

  Cursing, Rebel threw down the Remington and unholstered his .44. By the time he aimed it, Esis had already disappeared around a corner.

  “Goddamn it!” He kicked Mercy’s gun over to Zack. “Come on. We can still catch her.”

  Zack peeled off his tattered T-shirt and pressed it against Mercy’s wound. She stared up at the ceiling in trembling shock, wheezing.

  “I can heal her.”

  “Forget it. There’s no point.”

  “She’s not dead!”

  “We’re all dead,” Rebel shouted. “You’re just wasting time.”

  “Oh, shut up already! Just shut up! You’re just as bad as Esis.”

  “Coward.” Rebel ran after his quarry, his gruff voice trailing behind him. “You’re fucking useless.”

  Zack threw him the briefest of glares as he disappeared into the tunnels. “Asshole.”

  Mercy’s gasps became louder, coarser. Zack could see that she was slipping. There was no time to stabilize her. If he didn’t heal her right here, right now, she was lost.

  She’s lost anyway, said a grim voice in his head. Rebel was right. None of you are getting out of here. You could have at least tried to fight.

  Zack gritted his teeth and focused. Maybe he was a coward, or maybe he was just being stubborn. If the universe had driven any point into his head, it was that human existence was a brief and fragile thing. Every life mattered. Every moment mattered. And that went double for Mercurial Lee.

  “Hang on,” Zack told her. “I got you.”

  He jumped to his feet and waved his bloody hands over Mercy, until her body glowed and the wheels of time began to turn the other way.

  “I got you.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  A portal swirled open on the black granite face of the guild directory. Peter emerged from the stone and took a nervous look around. He’d only been gone for forty-one seconds, yet sometime during his absence, an overwhelming hush had washed over the square. Everywhere he turned, his people walked dazedly through the smoke, staring or crying or searching for loved ones. Tempics gathered dead soldiers into a big, messy pile. Turners moved between the bodies of their kinsmen, checking to see if there was someone, anyone, who still had a pulse.

  Under different circumstances, Peter would have been one of the many corpses here. But his bullet wounds had healed. He could feel his blood replenishing itself—an unpleasant sensation, like ants beneath his skin. He only had to touch the golden disc on his chest to know why he and his son were still alive, why all the drones had vanished. The Pelletiers had ended the invasion, but not before dozens of innocent people were killed. As far as saviors went, Semerjean and company stood on a par with the Old Testament God—petty, selective, and utterly inscrutable. Peter didn’t take much comfort in the fact that he and Liam were on their good side, especially if Zack was right about what they wanted.

  A young voice filtered out of the portal. “Dad, please! I can help you!”

  “I’ll be all right,” Peter told Liam. “You just rest, love. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  “But—”

  Peter closed the portal behind him, then moved deeper into the square. The first thing he’d done upon regaining consciousness was teleport Liam to Montauk, Long Island, to the opulent beach house where the Varnovs spent their summers. He’d already watched his son take two bullets to the chest. He’d be damned if he exposed Liam to any more danger.

  “Goddamn it!” yelled a woman in the distance. “I said help her!”

  Peter looked to his left and saw Shauna Ryder chasing after a turner, her twin sister dangling in her arms. Sadly, there was nothing to be done for poor Angela. The girl was a nonentity on the portal network. Her traveler’s light had been permanently extinguished.

  Clearly Shauna could sense it as well, yet she persisted in haranguing the healer. “Bastard! Why won’t you save her? Why—”

  A dozen Gothams gasped when an armored soldier, one of the many rooftop marksmen that Harold Herrick had blinded, fell screaming off the top of the municipal building. Peter looked up and saw a young b
lond swifter at the edge of the roof.

  “Stop that!” he shouted. “They’re not a threat anymore!”

  The swifter gave him an obscene gesture, then disappeared in a blur.

  Another howl turned Peter’s head. Twenty yards to the south, an Integrity operative struggled in Sunder’s tempic grip. A crowd of angry Gothams quickly gathered around him.

  “Please,” said the soldier. “I’m on your side!”

  Sunder scoffed at him. “Our side?”

  “I work for a man named Cedric Cain. He wanted me to film the invasion so he could show it to the president. We’re trying to save you!”

  “You think we’re idiots?”

  “No, I swear!”

  Shauna dropped Angela’s body, then lunged at the captive soldier. Her fingernails dug into his cheek. “Monster! You killed my sister! You killed her!”

  “I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Stop it,” Peter barked. “All of you.”

  He could feel the hot stares of everyone around him, and he had a good guess why. He wore the clothes of a man who’d been riddled with bullets, yet he didn’t have a visible scratch.

  Sunder was the first to notice the shiny disc on Peter’s chest, the unmistakable magic of the Pelletier family. “They healed you. What are you to them?”

  Peter winced. “Irwin—”

  “Have you been one of them all this time?”

  Shauna Ryder attacked the soldier again. Another sniper was pushed off a roof. The crowd around Peter became restless, angry. Only Prudent Lee kept a level head.

  “Please! If everyone would just—”

  “Stop.”

  The voice seemed to come from all directions. A heavy black shadow washed over the square. Everyone looked up to see a huge floating head near the top of the dome, a lumic image of someone they all recognized. He was more than a celebrity to the clan. He was something of a messiah.

  Theo stood on the roof of the lumics’ guild building, with Heath and Harold at his side. Like Peter, the three of them had been brought back from the brink of death by Pelletier wizardry, and it showed. Their faces were jaundiced and they could barely stand straight. But the moment Theo found the boys, he put them to work. While Harold projected Theo’s image, Heath directed eight tempic men toward a group of wounded soldiers. One by one, they picked them up and carried them down Center Street.