The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “You’ve all suffered greatly today,” Azral continued. “We sincerely regret your pain. The United States government has forced us all into an intolerable situation, but now the conflict is over. Though their soldiers and scientists will continue to be a part of your lives, there’ll be no more oppression. No more violence. A bright new day begins for all of us.”

  While Azral spoke, Peter saw Amanda in the distance and teleported to her side. They hugged like they’d been apart for months.

  “Where’s Liam?” Amanda whispered.

  “He’s safe. You see any of the others? Mia?”

  “No.”

  Peter frowned at Azral. “Maybe we should go looking instead of listening to this gobshite.”

  Amanda shook her head. She knew the best thing they could do for Zack and the others was stay right here where the Pelletiers wanted them. The bastards were determined to put on a show, and they wouldn’t take kindly to walkouts.

  Azral waved an image into the air, a rotating hologram of a planet that only vaguely resembled Earth. Though its seven continents were easily recognizable, the oceans were filled with thousands of tiny land masses. Black dots peppered the cloudscape over North America and Europe.

  “There are fourteen trillion people on the Earth of our era,” Azral said. “Technological advances have provided us with unlimited resources, as well as endless options for habitation. We have cities in the sky, cities on the water, cities at the highest mountaintops, cities on the ocean floor.”

  He glanced up at the dome, still flaring the Heavensend’s restart message. “We have thousands of cities buried deep below the earth, ones far more sophisticated than this.”

  His expression turned solemn. “It’s a wondrous age my family and I live in. It saddens us that this world will never see it. The damage that’s been done here is . . . irreversible. Even we don’t have the power to heal it.”

  Testy mutters coursed through the crowd. Melissa gripped Amanda’s arm. “Did he just . . . did he just say what I think he said?”

  Amanda and Peter closed their eyes. More telling than their gloomy expressions was their complete lack of surprise. Melissa looked around and saw that she was the only one here who’d been blindsided by the news.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “We’ll explain it after—”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Four years,” Azral informed her. “Approximately.”

  Melissa turned around to find him staring right at her. A shiver ran down her back. Though she’d lost all memory of their last encounter, high in the skies above Atropos, she’d watched the dash-cam footage that Cain had recorded. She saw the look on her face when Azral choked the life out of her.

  He turned back to the crowd. “We don’t know the exact day this string will fold. There are endless variables that affect the timing. All we can say with certainty is that the end is coming and there’s no way to stop it. In four years’ time, this Earth will perish.”

  He flashed a coy grin at the people down below. “But that doesn’t mean you have to.”

  While the audience mumbled in tense discord, Semerjean caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked to the north and saw a lone figure emerge from the Sunder family elevator.

  The last of the Silvers had finally returned to the underland.

  Hannah shambled down the walkway like one of the living dead. Her hair hung down in matted clumps, shrouding her eyes and making her oblivious to her surroundings. If there were still snipers terrorizing the village, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. She was in no condition to fight.

  Azral studied Hannah briefly before continuing. “We have the means to bring a thousand people back to our homeland, and more than enough space to shelter you. There’s a city buried deep below the Mantiqueira Mountains of Brazil that’s gone unused for decades. Though its infrastructure is antiquated by our standards, it would be a self-sustaining paradise for you and your people. You’ll have privacy and independence, limitless provisions, and full control of your environment. Your society could thrive there for generations to come.”

  Theo crossed his arms skeptically. Here it comes.

  “This is no small gift we offer you,” Azral said. “And we do not give it freely. There are conditions. To the natives of your clan, you must accept and embrace the people we’ve brought to your world, the ones you call ‘breachers.’ It’s of the utmost importance that you keep them in your community. Your very survival depends on it.”

  All Gothams near Amanda turned their leery eyes onto her, while another twenty stared at Theo and Heath.

  Semerjean’s voice filtered into Theo’s head like a second set of thoughts. he teased.

  Theo seethed at him from the back of the crowd, disturbed but not surprised that the Pelletiers had a neural connection with him. They’d been pirating his premonitions from the very beginning, using his power to see the future from a different angle.

  Theo sent back.

  Semerjean’s smile deflated.

 

 

 

  Semerjean hunched his shoulders in a surly shrug.

  Theo’s heart lurched.

  Fifty yards away, outside everyone’s notice, Hannah stopped at the north edge of the square. The last time she was here, Integrity had the whole place under siege. Now the goons were gone and the Pelletier family, whom she hadn’t seen together since she was five years old, floated serenely above the center of town. None of this made sense, but who knew? Maybe it was all just part of the same long nightmare. Maybe she would wake up any second now and find Jonathan sleeping next to her.

  “What we ask is very simple,” Azral declared. “We want you to conceive children with these breachers among you, the ones who are here and the ones who’ll arrive shortly.”

  Heath looked to the north and saw Hannah at the mouth of an alley. His mouth fell open as he processed her appearance: the blood on her clothes, the grief in her eyes, the empty space all around her. She was alone. She’d gone to war with a good man at her side and she came back alone.

  “No . . .”

  Hannah caught his gaze, weeping, as Heath fell to his knees. He hid his face behind his wrists and turned his head violently back and forth, back and forth, as if he could shake the news away. Just shake it, shake it, shake it until the whole story changed. Shake it until Jonathan Christie came marching back into town, a guitar on his back and a grin on his face.

  Heath gripped his hair and let out a whimpering moan, the saddest sound that Theo had ever heard in his life. He snapped out of his neural trance and followed Heath’s vacant stare to Hannah. One look at her face was enough to crack his heart to pieces. He’d never seen her so devastated, and he’d met her seventeen minutes after the world ended.

  Azral continued to explain the terms and benefits of his proposal, only marginally aware of the disruption at the back of the crowd.

  “The children you produce for us will come to no harm,” he assured everyone. “They will not be used for unscrupulous purposes. Quite the opposite. Your help will ensure—”

  “No, no, no, no . . .”

  Esis raised her aeric platform until she could see the sobbing boy in the distance, the last of the Golds.

  she told her husband and son.

  Semerjean’s eyes bulged as an old mistake suddenly caught up with him. He looked at Heath’s wrist, then raised a hand at Esis.
<
br />   “No!”

  Every heart in the crowd jumped at Heath’s bloodcurdling shriek. He’d done everything in his power to be strong and resilient—to face the world like a man, not a boy. But now his pain and his rage were too much to hold back. They had to come out.

  She had to come out.

  Heath thrust his arms and launched a mass of tempis over the crowd, a shapeless glob the size of a whale. It transformed in midair, forming limbs and paws and snarling white teeth.

  In the span of a breath, the tempis had turned into a giant wolf, the most vicious one in Heath’s pack. He’d named her Rose Tyler, and he feared her more than he loved her.

  The Pelletiers were about to find out why.

  Frowning, Esis flicked her hand, immersing the beast in an invisible cloud of solis. The energy should have been enough to pop it like a balloon, but the tempis endured without a ripple of strain.

  Semerjean sent to her.

  Heath had taken the wristwatch back from Harold earlier, and he hadn’t been nice about it. It was his trophy, his magic, his protection against future enemies. The wolves had become a crucial part of his life, and he never wanted to be separated from them again.

  Unfortunately for the Pelletiers, the same device that made Heath immune to solis also rendered his tempis impervious to manipulation. They had no control over the great white beast that was lunging at them.

  The spectators watched with wide-eyed fascination as the Pelletiers showed their first hint of worry. Semerjean and Esis cut through the air like missiles, throwing themselves in front of Azral before the wolf could reach him. Their hands exploded in jets of mortis, a dozen gooey black tendrils that wrapped around Heath’s creature and bound it in the air.

  Semerjean clenched his teeth, grunting, as he and Esis fought to contain the animal. The corrosive vines should have burned right through its hide, but tempis was a force of will, and so was Rose Tyler. She was the totality of Heath’s rage, the middle finger his mother had always taught him to suppress, the scream he wanted to hurl at God for letting bad things happen to good people. She was the voice that cried for Jonathan Christie. And she was mighty.

  Sweat dribbled down Esis’s brow as Rose snapped and thrashed in her tendrils. Amanda nearly laughed at the panicked look she threw over her shoulder.

 

  Azral hovered behind her, his hands cutting through the air in quick, erratic motions. To the people down below, he looked he like was panicking in sign language. In truth, he was scrambling to disable the protections in Heath’s wristwatch, a device he’d built out of spare silver bracelets.

  At last, Azral found the remote kill switch, reducing the watch to a useless bauble. Esis vanquished Rose Tyler with a second burst of solis, then turned to Heath with a look of smoldering fury.

  Semerjean warned.

  Azral nodded in agreement.

  The Pelletiers returned to their floating formation, then took an anxious look at the crowd. The effects of Heath’s disruption could be seen on each and every one of their faces: a nascent skepticism, a hint of derision. All the majesty and awe of Azral’s offer had been thoroughly undermined.

  Semerjean pursed his lips at the many doubtful faces below. “Look—”

  As soon as he opened his mouth, a handful of Gothams began hissing at him. Even now, after all their traumas and ordeals, they couldn’t forget the original reason they’d assembled down here: to say good-bye to their beloved Yvonne Whitten.

  “Just go!” yelled Eddie Ballad, the brother of a boy whom Semerjean had murdered last year.

  “Get out of here!” yelled Anna Bloom-Sunder, widow of Bug, mother of Gemma.

  Semerjean raised his palms. “We’ll be gone in a moment. I just—”

  “Shut up.”

  The third interruption came from the northern edge of the crowd, from one of Semerjean’s least favorite Gothams.

  Peter stepped forward and glared at him reproachfully. “I can’t speak for the others, boy, but I’ve had enough of your lip for one lifetime.”

  Hoots and applause rose up all around him. Azral glowered at the increasingly unruly mob. “We’re offering a future for you and your children.”

  “That may be,” Peter said, “but your timing’s for shit. There isn’t a single person here who hasn’t lost someone today. We’re in no state of mind to hear your devil’s bargain.”

  Elder Tam wagged a stern finger at Semerjean. “‘Devil’ is right. I’d sooner die than trust you!”

  “Nor should we,” Irwin Sunder bellowed. “Those creatures murdered half my family!”

  “They held me captive for months,” yelled Sage Lee.

  “They killed my sister!” Winnie Whitten shrieked at top volume.

  The square fell into chaos as a hundred Gothams jeered at Azral, Esis, and Semerjean. The lumics filled the air with spectral noises—hisses and crackles and animal growls—enough to render all conversation impossible.

  The Pelletiers turned to face each other, and communicated telepathically in their native tongue.

  Esis said.

  Semerjean countered.

  Esis looked at him askance.

  said Semerjean.

  Esis glanced at the fractious crowd.

  Azral said.

  He waved a twenty-foot portal into the air.

  The Gothams cried with delirious relief as Esis and Semerjean departed through the gateway. Azral drifted halfway into the portal, then turned around to take one last look around the square. In a distant corner, far beyond the rabble, Hannah caught his gaze and held it. There was something new and troubling in her expression, a look of calm hatred that went well beyond her years. For a moment, Azral caught a glimpse of something dark in the future, then just as quickly lost it.

  Scowling, he vanished into the whiteness, then closed the portal behind him.

  An addled hush fell over the survivors. Slowly, quietly, the scattered families began to come together. Peter brought Liam back from Long Island while, two blocks north, Stan Bloom found his way to Carrie. Amanda saw Hannah and hurried across the grass. They converged near the guild directory and hugged each other tight.

  Thirty feet away, a soft hand squeezed Theo’s shoulder. He turned around and saw Melissa, and fought the mad urge to embrace her.

  “I know Azral’s weakness,” he uttered instead.

  “What?”

  A half-formed notion had been cooking in his head, ever since Semerjean and Esis rushed to save Azral from Heath’s tempic wolf. It seemed a strange thing to do, as the man was more than capable of taking care of himself. Theo had watched him destroy a whole fleet of Integrity attack ships, using every temporal trick in the playbook—except one.

  “Tempis,” Theo told Melissa. “He’s weak with tempis.”

  A stair hatch opened on the far side of the square. Zack and Mia emerged from the tunnels just in time to see the sky take on a whole new color. Everyone in the village raised their heads and looked up at the dome.

  At long last, the Heavensend had completed its reboot. It remembered the gorgeous summer weather that was scheduled for the day, then brought it to life in vibrant color. By late afternoon, the four surviving elders would vote to lock the machine on its current setting, variety be damned. There would be nothing but clear blue skies and sunshine from now on, or at lea
st the illusion of them.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The local news was sedate that evening, with little to offer beyond the usual Sunday fanfare. A hit-and-run driver killed a child in Brooklyn. A Yonkers man died in an aerogliding mishap. The New York Furies scored a last-inning victory over the Cincinnati Robins, securing their place in the Women’s League Championship. Residents of Quarter Hill were briefly disrupted by the sound of gunfire in the Heaven’s Gate district. No casualties were reported.

  As the last strips of daylight disappeared behind Irwin Sunder’s mansion, Melissa waited impatiently by the front door. By now, Integrity had cleaned up and catalogued every last trace of the battle that had taken place here: the crashed dropship, the spent bullet casings, the large pool of blood on the driveway. It broke Melissa’s heart to watch the last earthly remains of Jonathan Christie get siphoned into tubes. He’d lived a short and tumultuous life on this world, but he’d be remembered. The people who knew and loved him would be cherishing his memory for the rest of their lives.

  The rest of their lives, Melissa thought with a scoff. That term used to mean something. Now all she could hear was Azral’s flat, chilling voice.

  Four years. Approximately.

  An aerojet de-shifted and descended gracefully onto the lawn. Melissa watched, stone-faced, as a dozen well-dressed men and women came marching down the exit plank, all talking over each other like excited children. Until today, they were the misfits of Integrity: the idealists, the pacifists, the malcontents and rabble-rousers. Cedric Cain had carefully courted each and every one of them over the last several years, grooming them in secret and promising them a bright new future for the agency.

  At long last, that future had arrived. And all it took was two hundred and fifty deaths.

  Cain trailed his associates down the plank, his lanky frame towering over each and every one of them. Melissa credited him for not smiling in the wake of his triumph. This was not a good day for the National Integrity Commission, and she had no patience for anyone who thought otherwise.