by Daniel Price
At dawn, a shrill electronic chirp blared throughout the suite. Zack’s eyelids fluttered in jarring disruption. He dazedly processed the teenage girl in his bed, then plucked his ringing handphone from the dresser.
Mia rolled over and opened a groggy eye. “What time is it?”
“Early.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Well, that’s the weird thing.”
He held the phone in front of her. She squinted at the screen. Mia Calling.
For a brief disturbing moment, Mia wondered if her future self had discovered a new venue. Once the ringing stopped, she stumbled onto the saner theory.
“Someone found my phone. The one I threw away.”
Zack had a strong idea who it was. When the phone rang a second time, he painfully scuttled out of bed. Mia sat up in worry.
“Wait. You’re not going to answer that, are you?”
“I’ll be all right.”
“But it could be—”
Before she could finish, Zack pressed the phone to his ear and heaved a sigh into the speaker.
“Hello and up yours, Evan.”
From the airy balcony of his newest suite, Evan laughed. This was his fifth trip through their conversation. Zack always started the same way.
“Good morning,” he said, with sunny cheer. “How are the new digs?”
“Spiffy,” he’ll say, and then inquire my purpose in calling.
“Spiffy,” Zack said. “Are you calling to gloat or is there another reason?”
“For you, my friend, I’m all rainbows and kittens. Come outside. Let’s talk privately.”
Beyond the sliding glass door, two naked corpses bled out on the bed. This suite’s balcony was the only place Evan could get a decent view of the Silvers’ new hideout. Tragically, the room had been occupied by a pair of young newlyweds who were light sleepers and loud screamers. Evan had to rewind twelve times before he was able to murder them quietly. It didn’t help that he’d invaded their room in a smiling gray goblin mask.
Evan pressed binoculars to his eyeholes, waiting for Zack to emerge onto the patio.
“By the way, I’m sorry about the mimosa prank. I only wanted the sisters to shriek and pull some hair. I didn’t expect a full tempic smackdown. Jesus.”
Zack stepped outside and slid the door shut. He scanned Tower Two, the only spire within view.
“Over here,” said Evan. “Top floor.”
Zack squinted across the distance at the tiny waving goblin. “You’re wearing a mask.”
“No. This is just how I look in the morning.”
“Why the mask? I’ve already seen your face.”
“It’s for the Deps and their damn ghost drills,” Evan explained. “They can be a real hassle when they’ve got your mug in their system, as you’ll soon discover. The woman on your tail is particularly smart. In fact, I’d say she’s your next big problem.”
“I’m still stuck on the current one.”
Evan sighed. “I know. I’m a handful. Look, you took this call because you’re hoping to reason with me, to convince me to leave you guys alone. The good news is that there’s a way. Let’s just . . . Whoops. Here comes the concern brigade.”
Mia, Amanda, and Theo stood at the glass door, all watching Zack with leery caution. Theo and Amanda backed off at the sight of Zack’s assuring palm. Mia kept her nervous vigil.
Evan chuckled. “Ah, that Farisi. Such a little sweetheart. Enjoy it now before she changes.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“I mean all teenagers are wet clay, but Mia really takes a different shape. Sometimes she becomes a thin and pretty slut-tease, the Third Little Given. Other times she hardens into a fat and angry ass-kicker. That’s when she’s really fun.”
“Evan . . .”
“Most of the time, she just dies. It’s weird. She’s like the team’s cannon fodder. She rarely makes it to Year Two.”
Zack’s empty stomach churned. “You’re obviously trying to upset me.”
“No. If I wanted to upset you, I’d tell you how David turns out.”
He’d called Zack at the crack of dawn in the hope of dulling his sharp edge. And yet in the first four run-throughs of the conversation, Zack kept finding new and clever ways to gain the upper hand. Evan was determined to keep him off balance in Round 5.
“Why do you hate us so much?” Zack asked. “What did we ever do to you?”
Evan exhaled impatiently. It was like living in a world full of senile people. They never remembered.
“It’s not worth getting into. Just know that I only really have it in for the Givens. Theo and the kids? Meh. Take them or leave them. But you, mein Freund, I can never stay mad at. Truth be told, I really miss our chats.”
He grinned at Zack’s furrowed perplexity. “Strains the brain, doesn’t it? Once upon a time warp, I was part of the gang. We started out as an eight-piece band. You guys, me, and Jury Curado.”
“You mean the guy on the driver’s license.”
Evan laughed. “You’re lucky that’s all you know him from. You should be thanking me. He was a real asshole. Always yelling. Always convinced he was right. He was decent enough to the womenfolk, especially Hannah. He wasn’t so nice to us beta males, especially me.”
“So why don’t I remember any of this?”
“Because the story changed. I changed it.”
“How?”
Evan waved a curt hand. “Ah, I’m sick of talking about it. Let’s talk about culture.”
“Why don’t you just get to the—”
“I know you weren’t crazy about your old life. I hated mine. But man, do I miss the culture. You must have noticed how bad it is here. The shit that passes for entertainment.”
Zack sighed with forced amenity. “The movies are pretty bad.”
“It’s all bad. You know why? No foreign geniuses to shake things up. No Charlie Chaplins or Alfred Hitchcocks or Sergio Leones. Foreign films are illegal here. You think George Lucas would have come up with Star Wars if he hadn’t been able to see The Seven Samurai? Of course not. But they sealed the doors and nailed the curtains shut. So now all we have are five hundred brands of American vanilla.”
“I do miss Star Wars,” Zack admitted.
“God, I’d kill to see the original trilogy again. I’d only maim for the prequels.”
Zack was amazed to find himself smiling. “If I had known what was coming, I would have packed a portable movie player and a suitcase full of discs.”
“You and me both, brother. It kills me that I only had a few minutes to prepare. I think about all the things I could have grabbed from my room. Even the cheapest piece of crap would have been a treasure to me now. But oh no. Azral, King of Time, was running late and had to rush me.”
Zack tapped the railing, debating whether or not to press Evan for intel. Could his information be trusted?
“I’m guessing you know a lot more about him than I do.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the things I know, Zacky. I’ve seen this tale from start to finish. You really want to know about the Pelletiers?”
“Tell me.”
Evan took a deep breath. He knew he was sailing into dangerous waters now.
“They’re Gothams,” he explained. “But from way the hell in the future. Distant descendants of Peter Pendergen’s people. Fiftieth generation, hundredth—I have no idea. I just know they’re insanely powerful. They’re one family you don’t want to mess with. And yet you always do.”
“How many are there?”
“There are three. Papa Bear’s on special assignment. He’ll rear his ugly head next year. That won’t be a fun day for any of you.”
Zack thought back to the scary man in the tempic mask, the one who gave him his silver bracelet.
“What do they want with us?”
Evan cracked a dark laugh. “If I told you that, they’d come down on me like the Monty Python foot. They don’t want you knowing yet. All I can say is that we share a rare quirk in our DNA. Nothing that ever made us stand out from the crowd, though we do tend to fall on the brainy side. Even Hannah’s got some wattage in the noggin, though it sure did take a thumping, didn’t it?”
Zack slitted his eyes at Evan, swallowing his wrath. “How many of us did they bring over?”
“They gave out ninety-nine bracelets in ten different cities. Not sure how many of us are still breathing. Our group lost two. The Violets are down five.”
“The Violets?”
“Pelletier lingo. They like to call us by the color of our bracelets. Isn’t that cute? The Violets are the London folk. The ones in Osaka are the Rubies. The Pearls of Guadalajara are my favorites. All-girl group. Eight Mexicans and one hot Cuban.”
Zack remembered what the masked Pelletier had whispered, shortly after sealing the bracelet around his wrist. Any other weekend, you’d be one of the Golds.
His heart lurched. “There’s a New York group . . .”
“Yep. Motley bunch. Their Sterling Quint’s a Chinese woman. Some big-name biology professor. Easy on the eyes, but not the nicest gal. I know what you’re about to ask, by the way.”
“My brother’s from New York. If the Pelletiers are picking siblings—”
“Now, Zack—”
“Is my brother alive?!”
Evan scratched the skin beneath his mask. “We have reached the end of the ‘free information’ portion of our discussion—”
“Goddamn it! Just tell me!”
“—and have now commenced the part in which you need to be careful. There are things you want. You won’t be able to shout them out of me.”
As Zack struggled to compose himself, Evan grinned behind his mask. He knew this would be the final take of their discussion. Round 5 was a keeper.
“You realize you’re getting worked up over a guy you weren’t that close with. I mean when it comes to being different, the Trillingers make the Givens look like Siamese twins.”
“Who told you that?” Zack asked.
“You did. I’m stealing your own joke.”
“He’s still my brother.”
“Is it him you really need right now? Or are you just looking for a quest?”
The cartoonist turned away in clenched fury. Evan softened up.
“Listen, Zack, I know what you’re going through. You survived an apocalypse. You learned just how nasty the universe can be and now you’re scrambling to give your life meaning. And since you’re too smart to cram Jesus into the equation, you’ve fit everything into a neat Hollywood structure. In your mind, you’re on a hero’s journey, with allies and riddles and big epic quests. You even have a love interest, an uptight hottie who’s slowly warming up to your wisecracking ways. Better than being a speck of dust in a senseless world, am I right?”
Zack gritted his teeth. “You don’t know me at all.”
“Oh, I do. And please don’t think I’m judging you. I used to be the exact same way. I thought I had all the same things you did. I went to Brooklyn and listened to Peter Pendergen. That man . . . God, what a prick. He dominated our lives with big ideas and Holy Grail quests, and we ate it up with a spoon because we needed to believe it. You want to know how it all turned out?”
“No.”
“Good,” Evan said. “That’s why I called. I want to spare you from all that. There’s no need to throw your life away on a wild-goose chase. Screw it. Ditch the Silvers. Come join me.”
Zack looked up from the railing. “Are you kidding me?”
“Not at all. You and I, we’re nerds of a feather. I’m more of a brother than your brother ever was. We could have fun together. Reminisce about pop culture. Buy the attentions of hot and shallow women.”
“Buy them with what?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about money, Zacky. I’ve got bundles. While you were all futzing around in Terra Vista, I hit the casinos. With power like mine, you can’t even call it gambling. It’s more like synchronized winning.”
“What is your power, exactly?”
“Come with me and I’ll tell you. I’ll answer any question you have. You’ll get every spoiler about Rebel, Azral, Peter, Amanda. Trust me. It’ll be better to hear it all secondhand than to live it.”
“And you’ll leave the others alone?”
“Zack, if you come with me, none of them will ever hear from me again. I swear it.”
Evan was mostly sincere in his promise, though he knew there was an opportunity coming up soon, a rare and golden chance to shatter both sisters at once. If Zack joined him, Evan would have to sneak out for an evening.
“I need some time to think about this.”
“Okay,” Evan replied, with a cautious leer.
“But there are two things you could do to help convince me—”
Evan pounded his fist on the railing. “Oh, goddamn it!”
“What?”
“You keep forgetting that I know you, Zack! If you were really considering my offer, you would have drowned me in a dozen more questions. But no, you jump right to the demands.”
“That’s not necessarily—”
“Let me guess. You want me to promise to leave you guys alone for a week. Or two weeks. Or until you get to New York. Just as a good faith token. Am I right?”
Zack hissed an inner curse. That was exactly the angle he’d planned.
“And then you were going to press me about your brother again. So you could get something out of me before turning me down. Clever, Trillinger. Always the clever one.”
Zack hunched over his railing, his face an angry mask. “Did you really think I’d come with you? You’ve harassed us. You’ve poisoned us—”
“Oh, now you drop the ruse.”
“Hannah could still die because of you!”
“She won’t die. Azral won’t let her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“No, no, no. You don’t get any more info. You blew it. I mean, shit, Zack. I really thought I could convince you this time.”
“Evan, listen to me—”
“Well, you’ll find out the hard way that the universe doesn’t care about your three-act structure. There’s no epic saga. No Holy Grail to find. You don’t even get your love interest. That’s another thing Peter takes from you. See, he’s a spiritual man, unlike you. With a better face and body. In a perfect world, the looks wouldn’t matter. But Amanda’s a woman. She’s a Given. It matters.”
Evan chuckled at Zack’s frozen expression, caught between despair and distrust.
“That’s okay. Don’t believe me. You’ll see for yourself soon enough. It’s just one of the many pains that await you, my friend. When you see tomorrow’s paper, you should clip that photo of you getting squeezed by the big tempic fist. Because that is you for the rest of your pathetic life.”
Evan leaned forward, hissing a whisper. “Oh, and by the way? Your brother’s dead. He was here. He was a Gold. But Rebel got him three days ago. Oops. So much for that quest.”
All the blood fled Zack’s face. The world outside faded away to a swirling haze. He dropped his phone over the railing, then returned inside without so much as a look at the goblin in the tower.
Screaming, Evan overturned the patio table. He raised a chair to throw through the glass, then froze at the sight of a tall couple in the bedroom. He had no trouble recognizing them.
“Shit . . .”
Azral curled a long white finger, sternly beckoning him. Esis stood at his side and shook her head in reproach. Evan knew there was nothing he could do to allay their displeasure. No matter where he rewound, the Pelletiers would be there, still aware of all ev
ents. Still angry.
He dropped his chair and removed the mask. There was no point in wearing it now. The Deps wouldn’t see a thing with their ghost drills.
His heart jackhammered as he joined the Pelletiers in the bedroom. When he’d first witnessed Azral’s wrath, centuries ago, he wet himself in terror. Never again. He’d never again show his fear to these people.
He plopped himself down in the overstuffed easy chair and forced a chirpy smirk.
“So. Is this a lecture or a spanking?”
—
Amanda stared at her tense reflection in the lumivision glass, pondering her next steps. Zack had traipsed back to his room with barely a word. She’d never seen him so distraught.
After five anxious minutes, she cautiously followed him into his room.
Zack leaned against a dresser, keeping a crossed-arm vigil at the window. She knew it was a painful position for a man with cracked ribs. He didn’t budge an inch at her approach.
“I asked you all to give me some space.”
“I know, Zack. I just—”
“Did you think you were an exception?”
“I was kind of hoping I was.”
Now he turned to face her. His eyes were gray and cold, the color of knives.
“You’re not.”
Amanda took a pained step back, then retreated from the room. The cartoonist resumed his window stance. He stood for two hours like a stone figurine, lost in the pain of his many new fractures.
TWENTY-FOUR
Hannah dreamed in high speed, a whirlwind barrage of fleeting scenes and images. She danced high in the sky on a floor of aeris, her long white gown twirling in the wind as Azral spun her under his finger. He dipped her halfway to the floor, ravishing her with a smile so flawless that she didn’t mind the freezing cold.
She ran crying through the streets of an old and foreign city on the brink of dawn, leaving footprints in the snow as she carried a bundled infant. She knew the Cataclysm was coming but she didn’t have time to warn anyone. She had to get her son to safety. He was all that mattered.
She stood onstage in a majestic old theater, a sprightly little child in a pretty white dress. As she sang her angelic rendition of “I’ll Fly Away,” her parents and sister smiled at her from the front row. Amanda’s hands were sleek and white, as if her skin wasn’t skin at all but—