The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  “I mean why hang up?” Melissa said. “You’re perfectly capable of walking and talking.”

  “I don’t know. I figured you were busy.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Okay.” Theo shifted his phone to his other ear, then made his way for the cab stand. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Anything but the future.”

  Melissa leaned back, kicked off her shoes, and propped her feet up on the desk.

  “Tell me your story, Theo.” She turned off her monitor and plucked a cigarette from her desk. “Start at the beginning.”

  —

  Peter leaned against the kitchen island, his dull eyes locked on a heat crisper. He wasn’t in the habit of making toast for lunch, but he didn’t have the mind to cook much else. A tenth of his clan had died violently on Sunday, and the agency that killed them was now calling the shots. His one hope for the future had left for San Francisco on a fool’s errand. And just last night, before he even had a chance to get his bearings, his girlfriend broke up with him while also asking him to impregnate her.

  I’m sorry, Amanda told him. The Pelletiers have made this complicated. But with me and Zack, it’s very simple. He’s mine and I’m his. The rest of it . . . please forgive me.

  At the time, Peter had been too tired, too muddled, too shell-shocked to protest. Even now in the light of day, he could hardly fault her. But the thought of giving a child to Semerjean and company? No. That didn’t sit well. That didn’t sit well with him at all.

  The toast rolled off the crisper belt, tumbling onto a paper plate. Peter spent five seconds looking for a bread knife before cutting his lunch in half with a portal. It only vaguely occurred to him that he’d done the exact same thing to a soldier recently.

  “Dad . . .”

  Liam stood in the doorway, looking pale and unrested. He’d woken up twice in the middle of the night screaming Mother Olga’s name. Peter feared the horrors of Sunday would haunt him for the rest of his life. He was just one of several people to worry about.

  “It’s Mia,” Liam said. “She’s out back. I . . . think you should check on her.”

  Peter stepped out onto the patio and saw Mia in the next yard. She’d spent the last forty minutes rummaging through Carrie’s house, dropping all their sentimental keepsakes on the grass: photos and love notes, cups and plates, movie spools, music spins, anything that even vaguely reminded Mia of better times.

  “Sweetheart . . .”

  Mia shot Peter a black look before disappearing into the cottage. She came back outside with an electric whirlet, the one she and Carrie had used every day to make frozen drinks.

  “Look, I know you’re upset,” Peter said. “But Carrie’s still with us. Anything you lost, you can get back.”

  “Get back?” Mia threw the mixer onto the pile. “She doesn’t even recognize me!”

  “Then introduce yourself. Start over.”

  Mia stared at him in disbelief, as if he’d told her to build a new Carrie out of mud and straw.

  “You don’t get it, Peter. You have no idea.”

  “About you and her?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter listlessly kicked the grass. “I knew what you had. I’m not blind.”

  “Then how can you tell me to start over?”

  “Because you can,” he said. “There are people here who just buried their loved ones. You think Hannah wouldn’t jump at the chance to start over with Jonathan?”

  Mia fumed at the comparison. “That was low, Peter.”

  “I’m not trying to guilt you. I’m just saying—”

  “Leave me alone!”

  She pulled her journal from the crook of her arm and began tearing out pages. They fluttered chaotically onto the pile, like dead leaves.

  “You still don’t get it,” she told Peter. “I’m his enemy now. If I get close to Carrie again, he’ll just come back for her. He’ll probably kill her next time.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Mia narrowed her eyes at him. “I know Semerjean.”

  Peter watched her worriedly as she tore up the rest of her journal, all the thoughts she’d written on the road, all the notes and intel from her future selves. She wasn’t just throwing Carrie on the pyre, she was throwing herself.

  “You can’t torch that stuff,” Peter cautioned.

  “I’m not.”

  “You’ll burn down the whole—”

  “I’m not starting a fire!”

  “Then what . . .” Peter’s eyes bulged. “Oh, no. Don’t you dare.”

  Mia moved to the edge of the yard, closed her eyes, and then raised her arms. A high-pitched hum filled the yard. Peter felt a rippling distortion in his senses.

  “Mia, no!”

  A temporal portal opened horizontally above the lawn, six feet wide and crackling with energy. Peter never had to teach Mia how to rip a hole in time. She’d been doing it from her very first day on this world.

  But she’d never made a rift this big before. A sucking wind swirled around the pile, pulling all the loose papers into the portal. Mia increased its size until the larger items began to shake loose and tumble upward.

  Peter struggled his way around the edge of the vortex. “Mia, close it! Close it!”

  She kept widening the door until the heaviest of the keepsakes—that damn frozen drink mixer—went sailing into the past. It traveled eleven months backward, crashing hard at the feet of a thirteen-year-old Mia. Let the youngest of her past selves deal with the baggage. Let the “David” of the era try to explain it.

  A lawn chair snapped shut and flew spinning into the portal. Mia struggled to close her gate, but was struck from behind by a loose piece of fence. She stumbled forward, shrieking, as the portal’s wind took hold of her.

  “No!”

  Peter barged his way into her thoughts, clamping them down with sheer force of will. Unfortunately, he had no time to be gentle about it. Mia screamed in agony, as if her head had been crushed in an iron vise.

  The portal vanished in an instant. The gushing wind stopped. Two uprooted lawn chairs came crashing down to the grass, along with Mia.

  Peter hopped over the fence and kneeled at her side. “Goddamn it! Have you lost your mind?”

  She lay flat on her back with her arm draped over her eyes. A thin stream of blood dribbled out of each ear. “Just go away.”

  “Do you want to die?”

  “Yes!”

  Her lips trembled. She wept into her hands. It wasn’t until Peter touched her thoughts that he’d felt the full extent of her damage. All the traumas and sorrows of the last eleven months were spinning inside her head like knives, cutting her over and over and over again. She had no defense.

  Peter pulled her into his arms and held her tight, his mind spitting curses at Semerjean.

  “It’s all right,” he told Mia. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  By the time he carried her back to his bedroom, she was already half asleep. Peter closed the blinds, tucked her into his bed, then watched her from an easy chair.

  Liam peeked in through the door crack, whispering, “She okay?”

  “No.” Peter kept his glum stare on Mia. “She’s gonna stay with us awhile, if that’s all right.”

  “Yeah. Of course. She can have my room.”

  Peter squeezed his wrist and smiled. “You’re a good soul, Liam. You always have been.”

  The boy lowered his head with a guilty expression. “I see it now.”

  “See what?”

  “Why you left to help the breachers. They’re good people.”

  Peter’s expression darkened. He wouldn’t have lifted a finger for them if he didn’t think they could help him. It had always been about saving the world, about saving Liam. In many ways, it still was.

&nbs
p; Soon Liam left and Peter resumed his quiet vigil. By two o’clock, he could hear Mia’s gentle snores. He figured it was just a matter of moments before the air became bright with the light of a hundred mini-portals.

  But surprisingly, it didn’t happen. At long last, the Future Mias had nothing left to say. No notes of warning. No scathing rebukes. Not a single word until four o’clock, when a buttonhole portal opened up near the ceiling. A tight stick of paper hit the ground near Peter’s feet.

  Hesitantly, he picked it up and twirled it in his fingers. Though he had no way of knowing it, he was holding the second-to-last message that Mia would ever receive from her future selves. And it wasn’t even for her.

  He unrolled the stick and read her familiar scribble.

  Don’t worry, Peter. She has some hard months ahead of her, and she’ll never again be the girl you remember. But she’ll get through this. She’ll come out the other side and she’ll be stronger than ever.

  Don’t give in to the Pelletiers. Don’t give up on the string. And whatever happens, whatever she says, don’t ever forget what you mean to her. You’re the father of the hearts of a billion Mias. And we love you.

  Peter read the note five more times before stuffing it into his pocket. He leaned back in his chair, wiped the tears from his eyes, and smiled at Mia’s sleeping form.

  “Daughter of my heart,” he whispered. “That’s what you are.”

  He folded his hands on his chest and closed his eyes contentedly. “That’s what you are.”

  —

  A thin white tendril emerged from beneath the covers of Amanda’s bed. It forged a blind, snaking path across the floor of the cottage: through the five-inch crack in the bedroom door, down the hallway, between the chairs of the living room, and up the wooden drawers of a kitchen cabinet. The tempis fumbled around the countertop until it found a fruit bowl, then took a firm pincer grip on an apple.

  Zack watched from the other side of the bed as the fruit retracted all the way into Amanda’s hand. “That was an astonishing act of laziness.”

  Amanda laughed. “I did that once when Hannah was in the kitchen. She almost hit the ceiling.”

  “I’d be more impressed if your tempis made an omelet.”

  “How about you make an omelet?”

  “From here?”

  “Forget it.” She cut up the apple with a tempic blade, then split the wedges with Zack. “You’re just as lazy as me.”

  By the time they finished, their humor was gone. They sat against the headboard, their hands clasped, their eyes busy with thought.

  “He never liked me,” Amanda said. “All that time I loved him like a brother, and he just barely tolerated me.”

  Zack scoffed. “Look at the people he does love. You really want to be in that company?”

  “No. They make me sick.” Amanda closed her eyes. “The thought of giving them a baby makes me sick.”

  “Yeah. Mercy’s already looking for a way out.”

  “They’ll kill her.”

  “She knows.” He lay on his back and fixed his heavy eyes on the ceiling. “She just needs time.”

  Amanda nestled against him. “Do whatever you can to make it easier for her. I won’t . . .”

  “Amanda.”

  “I won’t be possessive.”

  Zack turned to face her. “That’s not how this works. It’s you and me. We’re the couple. Everything else is just—”

  “—fine print.”

  “I was going to say ‘temporary.’”

  Amanda nodded tensely. “You’re right. This is just a means to an end.”

  “A means to a beginning,” Zack corrected. “The moment we get those assholes out of our lives, we’re free.”

  “If we get them out.”

  Zack stroked her shoulder. “I watched Rebel knock them down with just his middle finger. You saw Heath put all three of them on the defensive. They can be surprised and they can be hurt. We just have to find their weaknesses.”

  Amanda looked to the satchel on her dresser, all the shiny new healing discs that Esis had given her. “Death.”

  “What?”

  “They’re afraid of death,” she said. “That’s the reason they’re doing all this. They want to live forever because they’re scared of what’s on the other side.”

  She raised her hand to eye level and grew a small sphere of tempis. Zack watched it intently as it morphed into a human skull.

  “My problem,” said Amanda, “is that I’m more afraid of losing the people I love, and the Pelletiers know it. They’ve been using it against me. That’s my weakness.”

  “Not much you can do about that.”

  “Yes there is.”

  “Like what? Caring less?”

  “Living more.” Amanda sat up and stared into the empty sockets of her sculpture. “We’re all going to die, Zack. Even if the Pelletiers don’t kill us, even if the sky never comes down, time will catch up with us one day. And if we can’t win on quantity, then maybe we should win on quality.”

  She looked to Zack. “I want to enjoy single every moment I have with you. I want to make love and make jokes and make the most out of this situation with Peter and Mercy. Every second we spend on this world will count for something. And when we finally face the Pelletiers, I will not fear death, yours or mine. I won’t be afraid because I’ll know that we lived good lives. We took the hand we were dealt and we played it beautifully.”

  The tempic skull melted back into her hand. “This is how we beat them.”

  Zack smiled at her from the mattress. “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

  “Liked me?”

  “Maybe not the strongest word I could have used.”

  “Try another.”

  “I value you?”

  “You know I can hurt you, right?”

  She threw herself on top on him, then pressed her lips against his. They barely had a moment to enjoy their kiss before a shadow darkened the window. A hand knocked gently on the glass.

  Amanda covered herself with a pillow and took a puzzled look through the blinds. Melissa stood in the side yard, a clipboard in her hands and an urgency in her expression.

  “Get dressed,” she said. “Both of you.”

  She led Amanda and Zack to the south edge of town, to one of the five community elevators that Integrity had claimed for their own. Fifteen soldiers stood guard at the doors while a small crowd of Gothams rubbernecked from the perimeter park.

  Amanda struggled to see through the mass of bobbing heads. “They were asking for Theo?”

  “By name,” Melissa said. “Do you know how many people he reached out to?”

  “Two groups. But I don’t—”

  The soldiers parted for Melissa, Zack, and Amanda, revealing twelve weary-looking strangers in weather-beaten clothes. They stood clustered in front of the elevator doors, their nervous eyes roving in all directions. Amanda’s heart jumped when she saw a Pelletier bracelet on one of their wrists: a dark iron version of her old silver bangle.

  The leader of the contingent, a muscular man with curly brown hair, stepped forward at the sight of Zack. “Are you Theo?”

  “No. He had to leave on business.” Zack extended a hand. “I’m Zack Trillinger. This is Amanda Given. If you are who we think you are—”

  “We are,” said the leader.

  “—then we’re from your world.”

  None of the orphans seemed convinced. Amanda could hardly blame them. They’d come here expecting Theo and got a whole mess of government soldiers instead.

  Before anyone could ask, Zack buried the group in a barrage of old-Earth references: Obama, Madonna, iPhones, Home Alone, Fozzie Bear, Linda Blair, diet peach Snapple, Google Earth, Mr. Burns, unobtainium, and retweets. Melissa feared for a moment that Zack was having some kind of n
eurological episode, yet the orphans looked at him like he’d just grown wings and a halo.

  The leader eagerly shook Zack’s hand. “Wow. Okay. You weren’t kidding. I’m Caleb Brooks, from the Tampa group.”

  The Platinums, Amanda thought but didn’t say. If he was anything like her, he wouldn’t like being called by his Pelletier handle.

  Caleb motioned to the quartet to his left, the ones with iron bracelets. “These fine folks are from the Austin group. We found each other along the way.”

  Zack beamed at his twelve fellow survivors, more than he’d ever seen in one place. “You have no idea how glad I am to meet you.”

  “Just wait.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re not all here yet,” Caleb told him. “There wasn’t enough room on the—”

  The elevator returned with a hollow ping. The doors slid open to reveal a tall black woman and six filthy adolescents.

  Mother stepped off the elevator and smiled coyly at Zack. “Hello again.”

  He blinked at her dazedly. Though he’d lost all memory of their scuffle in Seattle, Mia had told him everything he needed to know about the Coppers.

  “Holy shit.” He shook Mother’s hand. “You’re here. You came. What made you—”

  “Change my mind?” She wrapped her arm around a honey-skinned girl, the twelve-year-old augur known only as See. “This one has never steered us wrong. If she says this is where we need to be, then this is where we need to be.”

  See turned her large hazel eyes onto Amanda. “I know you. I’ve seen you in visions.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You’re always flying on your pretty wings.”

  “What?”

  Caleb patted See’s back. “This clever girl knew just where to find us. We’ve been traveling together for two days now.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Zack said.

  The Platinums and Irons didn’t share Zack’s enthusiasm. Amanda could see from their tense, rigid postures that they weren’t entirely fond of the Coppers.

  Caleb smiled with forced politeness. “Yeah. It all worked out nicely.”

  Melissa scanned the faces of the nearby Gothams. More than fifty of them had gathered by now, and not a single one looked pleased. It seemed the orphans were about as welcome here as the U.S. government. Another issue to monitor.