The Flight of the Silvers

by Daniel Price

  “I swear to God, Zack, sometimes I think you’re played by twins. I never know which one of you I’m going to get.”

  “Great. Maybe the four of us can go out for burgers sometime.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Amanda cut through the crowd, her jaw held rigid with forced composure. Zack tossed another glance at the pay phone before trading a desolate look with Hannah. She wished the two of them would get over their issues, whatever they were, and just screw already. She feared she and Theo were partly to blame for their hesitation. They didn’t provide the best sales brochure for the carpe diem hookup.

  They sat side by side on an unattended shoeshine stand, their faces both covered in weeping theater masks. Theo’s head dipped and jerked erratically. Hannah couldn’t tell if he was asleep or lost in premonitions. She ran gentle fingertips up and down his forearm. The caress always seemed to soothe him, no matter how far gone he was.

  “Where’s the happy face?”

  Hannah jumped at the high voice next to her. A cute young brunette leaned against the wall. She wore a sleeveless white gown that hugged every contour of her elfin body. Her long brown tresses matched Mia’s hairstyle to the strand. If it wasn’t for the girl’s honey skin and vaguely Eurasian features, Hannah might have wondered if a Future Mia had sent herself back in time.

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “You and your fella are wearing the same theater mask,” the stranger noted. “It’s supposed to be one happy face and one sad face. You know, Thalia and Melpomene. The Muses of comedy and tragedy.”

  Hannah felt silly to be conversing through a disguise. She pulled it away. The girl studied her.

  “Nope. Still sad, but prettier now. Damn, hon, you’re a scorcher. I bet you drive all the boys wild.”

  The actress bloomed a bleak little grin. “Not enough to keep them.”

  “You seem to be doing all right with that one.”

  Hannah peered at Theo, oblivious in his torpor. “It’s not like that.”

  “I wasn’t slapping a label on it. I just see the way you’re comforting him without a second thought or a ‘what’s in it for me?’ Whatever you are to him, he’s lucky to have you.”

  It was the sweetest notion Hannah heard in days. But for all the girl’s rosiness, she wielded a sad face herself. She held a glossy mask in her hand, the plain white façade that Hannah had spotted ad nauseam five minutes ago.

  “You were in that first parade.”

  “The Ghostwalk. Yeah. I do it every year, though I never make it the whole way without losing it. I’m probably the only one who still cries about the Cataclysm. Everyone else is thinking about their aunt Jody or that dog who ran out in the road.”

  “Well, you can hardly blame them. It happened a century ago.”

  The girl shrugged tensely. “What can I say? I’m a slow griever.”

  The next float ferried four lithe young women in black rubber speedsuits, prancing around the platform in slow ballet motions. Suddenly their gear glowed with patchwork strips of color and they swayed around each other in a hazy blur. Hannah watched in gaping astonishment as their streaking hues combined to form ethereal images—an ocean sunset, a city skyline, a crude American flag. The crowd cheered wildly with each new tableau.

  Soon the quartet de-shifted and resumed their gentle mincing. The girl smiled at Hannah’s slack-faced awe.

  “Guess you’ve never seen lumis dancers before.”

  “No. That was incredible. Jesus. I don’t know how they do that without breaking a bone.”

  “Years of practice,” said the girl. “Takes months to rehearse one routine. You should see what the Chinese do with it. Their stage shows are mind-blowing.”

  “Do they have one here?”

  “Here? God, no. You’d have to go to China.”

  Hannah snorted cynically. “Yeah. That’ll happen.”

  “Hey now. You never know. Someday someone might jaunt you around the world just to put a smile on that sexy face.”

  “I don’t have until someday.”

  The girl narrowed her eyes. “Sweetie, you know you’re in trouble when a chick who just marched in a five-mile death parade is telling you to lighten up.”

  Hannah smiled despite her mood. She realized how nice it would be to have a friend outside the group, a fun and witty galpal who could bring some sanity back to her existence. If only it were possible.

  “I’m Hannah. What’s your name?”

  The girl kept a busy stare on the parade. “Ioni.”

  “Wow. That’s very pretty. It really suits you.”

  “Oh stop it. I’m already a little gay for you. You’re just poking the fire.”

  Hannah laughed. “If you can hide me from my life, Ioni, I’m all yours. You can have me any way you want.”

  “Wow. That’s quite an offer. What exactly are you running from, Hannah?”

  “Everything,” she sighed. “Everyone.”

  “Even the people who need you?”

  Hannah looked to her sister, staring down at the pavement in a somber daze. The thought that Amanda might need her was a strange new concept, as alien as anything in the parade.

  “I don’t know. Part of me wants to run away on my own. Change everything about myself until no one can find me. The other part of me’s sick of travel. Sick of change.”

  Ioni fixed a sudden nervous eye on Theo. She took a step from the wall.

  “We’ve been running for so long,” Hannah continued. “It’s taking its toll on all of us. I don’t think we can last like this another—”

  “Hannah, listen. I need you to stay calm, all right? Don’t make a scene.”

  “What?”

  Theo suddenly fell into violent seizures, shaking hard enough to knock his mask off. His eyes rolled back. His skin glowed with a faint and sickly sheen, as if he’d become his own ghost.

  Ioni rushed to his side and pressed her fingers to his temples, bowing her head in concentration. Soon Theo’s luminescence faded and the convulsions stopped. He fell into restful sleep.

  Hannah jumped out of her seat, bouncing her saucer gaze between Theo and Ioni. “What . . . what did you . . . ?”

  “He peaked a little too early. I’m buying him some time.” Ioni threw a tense glare at the busy pay phone. “You guys really need to get to Peter.”

  Hannah noticed the dual watches on Ioni’s right wrist, and suddenly scrambled to recall her secondhand knowledge of the mysterious stranger who’d approached Theo and Mia in the Marietta library. Odd that Mia had described her as a short-haired blonde. Odder still that Hannah didn’t notice her watches sooner. She must have deliberately hidden them behind the ghostmask in her hand. Ioni had been wearing her disguise all along.

  Hannah scanned the backs of her other four companions, still occupied with the parade.

  “Don’t call them,” Ioni urged. “I only came here to talk to you.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Calm down. I’m not your enemy.”

  “Why should I believe you? You lied to me. Pretended you were a stranger.”

  “I am a stranger, Hannah. If I had an ounce of sense, I’d stay that way. This isn’t my struggle.”

  “Then why are you following us?”

  “There’s no ‘us.’ Just Theo.”

  “Why him?”

  Ioni looked to Theo and sighed. “It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that I have a special empathy for augurs, this one in particular. It gives me a modicum of comfort to help him through this rough patch.”

  “Help him? You already hurt him!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the one who told Mia to bring him to the health fair. We took your advice. If you knew what would happen—”

  “I knew he’d get treated.”

&nbs
p; “He got arrested!”

  “And then he got treated,” Ioni replied. “In the augur game, it’s never a direct line from A to B. If you want things done, you have to make bank shots. Theo will learn that soon enough.”

  Hannah shot her a baleful glare. “People got hurt.”

  “People always get hurt. There’s no such thing as a perfect future. Someone always gets the pointy end.”

  “Who are you?”

  Ioni rubbed her weary face. “You can’t handle the answer. Not today. Just take comfort that I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. Once I’m done here, none of you will see me again for at least two years.”

  Hannah looked to Theo. “At least tell me what you’re doing to him. Are you healing him?”

  “There’s nothing to heal. These are just birth pains and they’re almost done. In thirty-eight minutes, he’ll be stronger than he’s ever been in his life.”

  Hannah’s brow arched. “I want to believe that.”

  “You’ll see soon enough. But listen, hon, it’s not all roses. By the end of the day, he’ll have a whole new burden. He’ll need you more than ever.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s been doing penny ante stuff up until now. Parlor tricks. Very soon he’ll know the true nature of his talent. Power like that can ruin a person, Hannah. You have to keep him anchored. You and Mia and Zack and Amanda, you’re his family now. Comfort him. Love him. Yell at him, if need be. Just don’t let him fade away into the futures. That’s where people like Theo become people like Azral. You do not want that.”

  Ioni’s pretty young face twisted with hatred. She raised a stern finger.

  “The time may come when you’ll be tempted to trust the Pelletiers. Don’t. They destroy worlds, Hannah. They destroyed yours twice.”

  The actress felt a sharp flutter in her stomach as she tried to process all the new information.

  “You’re right. I can’t handle this.”

  “I said you couldn’t handle my story. I have every faith you can handle yours. I’ve seen you in times to come, Hannah. You’re magnificent.”

  The actress flicked a hand in hopeless bother. “If you know so much about the future, then help us.”

  “I just did.”

  “Tell me something I can use to save someone I love.”

  “Sweetie, I just did.”

  Hannah clenched her jaw, exasperated. Ioni lay a gentle hand on her wrist.

  “If I could fill your life with smiles and happy faces, I would. But the future doesn’t work that way. It’s a map that’s always changing. I can’t even guide you through the minefield of today without steering you wrong. All I can tell you is to be brave, be strong, be there for the people who need you. You do that and you’ll be okay.”

  “If the future’s always changing, how can you be sure?”

  Ioni bloomed a sage little grin. “There are some events in life that are so reliable, we don’t bother predicting them. The sunrise. The full moon. The rainbow after a storm. These are all things that can’t be stopped by mere mortals. You know what the augurs call them?”

  “What?”

  She took Hannah’s hand and breathed a soft whisper through her hair.

  “Givens.”

  Ioni kissed her cheek, then backed away. Hannah looked into her palm and found a small folded square of purple paper. A crude pencil drawing of a theater mask graced the front. A happy face.

  Once Hannah glanced up again, the girl with two watches was gone.

  She took a heavy gulp of air, then reclaimed her seat on the shoeshine stand. She fumbled with the seams of her paper construct until she gave up and stuffed it in her jeans pocket. Her hard drive was already overflowing with wild new data. She couldn’t take another byte.

  Theo continued to twitch in somnolent anguish. Hannah stroked his arm with her fingertips, rolling Ioni’s words around her thoughts like boulders. You have to keep him anchored. You and Mia and Zack and Amanda, you’re his family now.

  A cold flutter gripped Hannah’s heart when she caught Ioni’s glaring omission. Why didn’t she mention David?

  The light on the pay phone turned green. The door swung open and a gaunt old woman exited the tube. Zack tapped Mia’s shoulder.

  “You’re up.”

  —

  She fed enough coins into the slot to buy twenty-six minutes. A recorded voice asked her to close the tube door and kindly spare others from her business. Mia ignored it.

  While she listened to the dulcet chirps of Peter’s ringing phone, she cleared her throat and peeled off her silly mask. As if he’d see you, she chided herself. As if he’d judge.

  Zack paced her side like an expecting father, doubling her anxiety. She forced her gaze past him, onto the bulky gray bank machine that stood against the neighboring wall. It reminded her of a video poker console with its seven large buttons and crude pastel graphics. A dark glass beacon rested on top like a novelty fez. She assumed it only flared in the event of criminal tampering.

  After two minutes and thirty rings, Amanda and David joined Zack in his fretful hovering. Mia shrugged in tense surrender, then hung up. Loose coins drizzled into the return tray.

  “You sure you got the number right?” David asked her.

  “Yeah. I double-checked.”

  “Try again in a few minutes,” Amanda said. “He could just be—”

  The pay phone rang. Mia leapt at the handset, plugging her free ear with a finger. “Hello?”

  A taut male voice filled the receiver. “What’s your name?”

  “What?”

  “Your name. Say it.”

  “Mia. Mia Farisi.”

  The voice loosened up. “All right. Just had to make sure. You guys in the city?”

  “Yeah. We’re here. Can you—”

  “And you’re together. All six of you.”

  “Yes. We’re all together. Can you just ease my mind and confirm that you’re—”

  “Peter Pendergen,” he replied. “You called my house a few weeks back and spoke to my son Liam. The two of you had a misunderstanding about the definition of ‘pen pal.’ Better?”

  Mia sighed contentedly. “Yes. Thank you. And I’m sorry about that call. If I put him in danger—”

  “No. He’s fine. My people would never hurt him. Listen, I’m being watched. I don’t have much time. You got a pen and paper?”

  “Yeah. Always.”

  He dictated an address in the Battery Park district of Manhattan and then, with a brusque impatience that bothered her, made her read it back.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said. “Come as quick as you can.”

  “Okay, but can you bring whatever painkillers you have? Theo’s—”

  He hung up before she could finish. Mia kept a dubious stare on the receiver.

  “Everything all right?” Zack asked.

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing. He just seemed nicer in his letters.”

  Amanda moved to the shoeshine stand, flanking Theo’s side while Hannah gently shook him awake. He blinked at the sisters in drowsy puzzlement, then surveyed the parade.

  “What . . . what are we doing back here?”

  “We never left,” Amanda said.

  Hannah rubbed his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “No. I’m confused. Last thing I remember, we were picking you both up from the roof.”

  “What roof?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. I feel weird.”

  Hannah fumed at Ioni. What the hell did you do to him?

  “We’re going to see Peter now,” Amanda told him. “Are you okay to walk?”

  Theo nodded unsteadily. “Yeah. I can walk.”

  As the group
regathered, Mia took a final glance at the bank machine. She knew they were called “cashers” here and that they were maintained by the state government. They could be used to pay taxes and traffic tickets, even renew a drinking license.

  Behind the dark round glass on top of the console, the civic camera continued to fix on Mia. It knew a few things about her as well.

  —

  Melissa snapped awake in her swivel chair, dazed and half-blind. She brushed the dreads from her face and glanced around the narrow van. A chubby young blond in a sweatsuit yawned at his surveillance console. He was yet another unfamiliar face from the Manhattan DP-9 office. Melissa had dozed right through a shift change.

  She arched her sore back. “Did I miss anything?”

  “No ma’am,” the agent replied.

  Quarter Hill was located fourteen miles north of the city, a wealthy little hamlet nestled snugly inside a ten-foot tempic wall. The gates were guarded by a security firm that had been cited several times by police for overzealous force.

  Melissa peeked over the agent’s shoulder at the thermal imaging display, where two orange silhouettes casually moved around the dark blue backdrop of a living room. From all indications, Peter Pendergen led a perfectly mundane life. When he wasn’t typing away at his latest novel or debating Irish history on Eaglenet forums, he lounged around the house with his thirteen-year-old son. If anything, it was the hint of anguish in Liam Pendergen’s voice that suggested something wasn’t right.

  The conversation in the living room came to a halt. The father took his son by the shoulders and drew him into an embrace. The directional microphones picked up a gentle whisper.

  “Call your team,” Melissa said. “Tell them to get ready. Pendergen’s about to move.”

  “What did he say? I couldn’t hear it.”

  “Neither could I. But that’s a good-bye hug if I ever saw one.”

  Her handphone beeped with a new text message. She pulled it from her pocket.

  Case Lead Alert. Oct-5. 11:07am. Civic Camera #NYS-55-1948C (New Union Square). Sighted: Farisi, Mia. Kidguard Facial Recog: 98%.

  Melissa opened her computer and logged into the camera alert network. It had been four weeks since she added the ghosted images of the fugitives to the facial map database. As minors couldn’t be entered into the Blackguard registry of criminals at large, she threw David and Mia into Kidguard, the archive of missing children. The effort finally paid off.