by Daniel Price
“Guess you don’t believe that either,” he said. “I don’t blame you. Last time we tangled, you got me good. Stuck me with this million-dollar meat hook. Can’t say I’m happy about it, but I’m not angry anymore. If anything, you’re the one who owes me pain.”
He raised his revolver in readiness. “I killed your brother.”
All the blood rushed to Zack’s face as Rebel turned a corner. The gun barrel continued to make loud friction sounds against the cloth-board walls.
“Josh Trillinger. Tall guy. Curly hair. Little scar on his not-so-little nose. He was one of Azral’s New York group, tucked away in some fancy building in White Plains. We hit them last month in the middle of the night. Two of the Golds got away from us. Six didn’t. Your brother was one of the ones who didn’t.”
Mia squeezed Zack’s trembling hand. Hot tears spilled down both their faces.
“I took no pleasure in it,” Rebel insisted. “He seemed like a good guy. When his friends started dying, he came right at me. Faced me like a man. Now here you are, hiding under a desk with the other little girl. I fig your brother would be ashamed to see you right now. He’s probably been ashamed of you your whole life.”
Rebel could hear the faint sounds of shuffling as Mia struggled to keep Zack still. Though his skin burned red with rage, he only reached for the notepad above him. He plucked a pen from the floor and scribbled hastily.
He’s coming this way. I’ll hold him off. The second I move, you RUN and don’t look back.
Mia shook her head. The girl was only half Zack’s age, but she was no stranger to losing brothers. Now she was convinced that she had four more loved ones to mourn. In her dismal thoughts, David and Amanda and Theo and Hannah were all dying or dead. All she had left was the man in front of her. Her entire world was small enough to fit under a desk.
She seized the pad and pen, then scrawled what she could only assume was her final note.
I love you and I’m not leaving you. Don’t you dare think I would.
Zack closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to Mia’s. From the moment he realized he could end people with a thought, a dark new tunnel opened up inside him. He’d barricaded the entry with warning signs and cattle skulls and enough moral rhetoric to fill a synagogue. Even now he’d rather follow his brother into the afterlife than join Rebel in the dark fraternity of self-excusing murderers.
Ultimately it was the thought of Mia that shattered his obstructions and turned every red light green. He planted a soft kiss on her forehead, then steeled himself to take a path he knew was one-way only. Whether he succeeded or failed, there was no coming back from this.
Suddenly Rebel caught a fresh new glimpse of the minute to come. In his mind’s eye, he saw Zack spring out of an office cube, launching his temporis in a thirty-foot arc that would easily rift the Gotham a second time.
Unfortunately for Zack, there was a reason Rebel kept making noise, alerting his targets to his position. Now that he’d flushed out the Zack of next minute, Rebel knew exactly where the current one was hiding.
He ducked behind the corner and aimed his revolver through three cubicle walls. The future had a better story to tell now. This little bullet cracks the heart of an enemy. This little bullet hits home.
—
Hand in hand, the sisters fled across the marble, toward the emergency exit in the north elevator bank. In Amanda’s frantic thoughts, she reckoned they (maybe maybe please) had a chance if they reached the stairwell. They might even get their defenses back if they escaped the cruel Asian woman with the heavy eyeliner and the Kryptonite stare.
Twelve yards into their dash, a flying white sphere demolished the flower pot near Amanda. Colin Chisholm had ditched the knives in favor of firing tempic cannonballs. His cracked ribs screamed with blunt force trauma. He was determined to pay Amanda back in kind.
At twenty yards, the air around the sisters abruptly doubled in temperature. Ben Herrick might have roasted his targets alive if he hadn’t been hobbled by a fresh concussion. All he could summon now was a dry sauna blast, one strong enough to send Hannah stumbling to the floor.
Amanda rained sweat as she struggled to lift her. “Come on, Hannah! Please!”
A loud crack rang out from the balcony. A bullet pierced the coffee table behind them. Amanda threw a savage yell at the distant railing.
“LEAVE US ALONE!”
Mercy pulled the bolt lever of her rifle, her face streaked with mascara tears. It was only just this morning that her parents finally told her they were proud of her. Proud of her for doing this.
The gunshot scared Hannah back to her feet. The sisters ran again.
Once they reached the elevator bank, a tempic cannonball slammed Amanda’s left ankle. Her fingers flew from Hannah’s grip and she crashed onto her back.
“Amanda! What happened? Where are you?”
The widow cried with pain as she sat up to check the damage. The skin of her ankle was red and distended. Her foot pointed in a horrible new direction. Broken. It’s broken. It’s—
“Over. It’s broken. Hannah, you have to go.”
“No . . .”
“You have to go,” she cried. The temperature around them continued to rise. They could barely draw a breath. “The stairs are right behind you. Please!”
Through the murky brown spots in her vision, Hannah could see two approaching figures. It was already too late.
You were wrong, she thought to Ioni. You got it all wrong.
The actress sat at her sister’s side, their faces wet with perspiration.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “For every awful thing I ever said and did to you. I’m so sorry.”
Amanda closed her eyes, squeezing her golden cross with one hand and her sister’s wrist with the other.
“Nothing to forgive,” she creaked. “You were never that bad.”
The two Gothams reached the elevator bank. Hannah shot them a hot wet glare.
“Assholes. You don’t even know why you’re killing us.”
“We know,” said Ben Herrick, with a shaky look that betrayed his confidence.
“You know nothing,” Amanda hissed. “Just do it already.”
The young men raised their palms for a final strike, and then arched their backs in screaming pain. With a sickening bone crunch, a curved white spike burst from the chests of both men, like elephant tusks. The tempis lifted the bodies three feet into the air and then hurled them to the ground like rag dolls.
Standing tall and fierce behind her two crumpled victims, Esis Pelletier shined a crooked grin.
“Hello, Givens.”
—
The high alarm scream of Gemma Sunder filled every earpiece, making Nick McNoel wince and Mercy Lee drop her rifle. Rebel flinched in surprise as he fired his revolver. The bullet cut through two cubicles, shattering the computer screen above Zack and Mia.
He shouted a curse, then pressed his collar mic. “Gemma, what—”
“Get out! Get out! Everyone get out!”
“What do you see?”
“Esis! She’s in the lobby! Ivy, get out of there!”
Rebel turned white at the mention of his wife. He made a furious dash for the exit.
Gemma was alone in the command center, her fearful gaze leaping between the monitors and the shimmering portal on the wall. Soon Ivy and Olga returned through the white liquid surface, lugging the ailing Bruce Byer between them.
Gemma frantically motioned them in. “Close it! Close it! Hurry!”
Ivy dropped Bruce’s legs and waved the portal shut. “Jesus, Gemma! Are you sure it’s—”
“Yes, I’m sure! She’s right there! She—”
Suddenly every screen went dark. The static hum of their headsets fell quiet. Ivy tried to hail Rebel three times, then covered her mouth.
“Oh n
o. No! I have to go back!”
Gemma’s head jerked back as if she just woke up from a nap. Like Mia, the girl shared a rapport with her future selves. But Gemma’s weren’t content to pass her notes. They possessed her body like demons.
Now four minutes older in mind and spirit, she closed her eyes and wept.
“You can’t go back,” she said. “You can’t help any of them.”
—
Freddy Ballad floated down the maintenance hall on a disc of radiant white aeris. Though the young blond Gotham stood among the elite minority of tempics who could slip the bonds of gravity, he never got the hang of wing flight. He settled for simple acts of levitation, a handy trick now that he needed stealth. In this narrow concrete passage, his feet would clop like Clydesdales.
Once the clamor in his earpiece died down, he steered his disc around a corner and whispered into his mic. “Rebel? Ivy? What’s happening? Are we aborting?”
No response. Even Gemma, that shrieking little bat, had gone quiet. His eyes darted back and forth in busy debate. He didn’t want to play the coward here. The Ballads had a history of weakness, both genetic and moral. Freddy had a rare chance to elevate his family’s status.
He pressed on with his task, continuing to test every door with long white arms before cautiously peeking inside. He didn’t know why he was so scared. His targets were a half-dead augur and a boy who could throw fake fire. What chance did they have against his tempis?
The last door on the right opened to an empty locker room. Freddy moved on, then backed up for a puzzled second glance. Something wasn’t right. The angle of the lockers changed oddly when he moved his head, as if he were looking at a forced-perspective painting.
Sharp white spikes grew from his arms. He hopped off his disc and stepped through the door.
Suddenly the illusive screen vanished and two figures turned visible. Freddy barely had a chance to register Theo in the background before his stunned gaze fixed on David and his government-issue pistol. It pointed right at Freddy’s face.
A hot stream of urine trickled down the tempic’s leg. “Wait—”
The gunshot rattled every surface in the room. Theo watched in wide alarm as the stranger fell backward in a bloody heap.
“God. Jesus. You killed him.”
“I saved us,” David replied. “Come on.”
After a quick scan of the hallway, he escorted Theo to the drab and tiny office of the building security manager. David stashed him behind the metal desk and crouched at his side. Theo saw new flecks of blood on the boy’s face. They mingled with the thin wet stripes that dribbled from his forehead gash.
“Stay here while I look for the others,” he told Theo. “Keep hidden. You’ll be all right.”
“I won’t.”
“Why do you say that? What do you see?”
Theo blinked confusedly. He was responding to something David said thirty seconds from now.
“I . . . never mind. Just be careful. I think Melissa might be coming. I think she’s bringing a whole lot of people.”
David cursed under his breath. That damn woman was the last thing they needed now.
“All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He glanced down at the gun in his hand as if he just remembered it was there. He looked to Theo with pale discomfort.
“I would, uh . . . I’d consider it a kindness if you didn’t tell the others what I did. I’d rather they hear it from me.”
Theo nodded shakily as time looped again. “I won’t.”
Once David left the room, Theo’s hold on the present slipped away like a thousand balloons. He huddled in the corner, his mind scattering across futures near and—
“No.”
—very near. He felt a wave of panic so powerful that his whole body fell to quivers. Something was coming for him. Something terrible.
You have no cause for fear, a cold voice in his thoughts assured him. In moments, you’ll experience a great and wonderful change. Nothing will be the same again.
“No . . .”
Now a thousand busy screens in his head all united to display the smiling image of a white-haired man.
You are ready, Azral told him. Come to me.
—
Hannah’s thoughts screamed with discord as she helped Amanda into the elevator. She didn’t need her eyesight to identify their brutal savior. The woman spoke with the same alien accent as Azral, and carried a mincing mischief in her voice that no sane person could muster at a time like this.
Esis propped the door from the lobby and pressed the button for the twelfth floor. She dressed like she was headed for Aspen in her sleek gray ski jacket and black thermal leggings. Her winter boots left glistening blood prints on the carpet. She hadn’t bothered to walk around her victims.
“Stay high and out of sight,” she told the sisters. “This is no longer your battle.”
Hannah hadn’t encountered Esis since she was five years old, and was grateful she could barely see her now. Ioni’s harsh warning about the Pelletiers still rang heavily in her thoughts. They destroy worlds, Hannah. They destroyed yours twice.
“Is . . . Azral here too?” she asked Esis.
“My wealth addresses another concern. He entrusts his mother to end this mayhem.”
“W-what about the others?” Hannah asked. “What are you going to do?”
“To which others do you refer, child? Your enemies or your kin?”
“I mean my friends. Will they be okay?”
Esis threw Amanda a canny smirk, as if they were in on a chummy secret joke.
“Your friends, as you call them, are alive and in much better condition than the friend you currently hold. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have matters to discuss with the unfriendly others.”
Unlike Hannah, Amanda had a full view of Esis’s first “discussion,” one that left two young Gothams disemboweled on the floor. Now as agony and heat exhaustion pushed her to the edge of collapse, the widow scrambled to process this shark-eyed horror in front of her, a woman who slaughtered her enemies and employees without distinction.
“What do you want with us?” she asked Esis, in a parched rasp.
“A little gratitude, to start. I did save your life, and not for the first time.”
“What do you want with us?”
Esis slitted her eyes in a peevish squint before releasing the door.
“I want you to grow, my stubborn flower. I want you to live. If you wish the same, you’ll heed my advice.”
Her expression turned frigid. “And my warning.”
The elevator closed on her pointed last words, which struck Amanda like arrows. She envisioned a large tempic spike bursting through Zack’s chest, throwing him to the floor in a bloody heap.
Hannah held Amanda close as she continued to keep the weight off her broken ankle.
“It’ll be okay,” she insisted. “The others are all right. You heard her.”
The words did little to comfort Amanda. She stared ahead in a morbid daze, too distracted to notice the fifth-floor button lighting up on its own.
“What did she mean by ‘kin’?” Hannah asked her.
Amanda fixed her dark green stare on the doors.
“Nothing. She’s insane.”
—
The Gothams knew of Esis Pelletier. A week after Rebel’s ill-fated mission in Terra Vista, the clan’s best ghosters had traveled to Sterling Quint’s lobby and watched her slaughter four kinsmen in retrospect. Her tempic savagery was described in harrowing detail at the next elder council, enough to give nightmares to half the tribe.
Mercy Lee had missed that meeting. She’d been off sharing opiates and oral favors with a long-haired delinquent from Nyack.
Now she was all caught up on the matter of Esis.
Mercy hid behind
a planter, struggling to hold back her screams as she listened to Nick McNoel’s gurgling last breaths. Esis had found the broken boy on the stairwell and wasted no time finishing him with a tempic sword through the neck. Three of Mercy’s teammates were dead now. Her comm-link was dead. Her solic charge was still drained from her attack on the Givens. I’m next. I’m dead. Oh God.
She parted the hydrangeas with trembling fingers, peeking down at the lobby through leaves and iron rods. No one was there. Maybe . . . maybe she . . . maybe she just . . .
A cold hand grabbed her ankle from behind. Mercy shrieked as she dangled upside down from a long white arm. The lip of her T-shirt tumbled down to her chin. Esis curiously studied her small breasts and flat olive stomach. A flowery vine tattoo spiraled around Mercy’s navel.
“Look at you. As lovely and filthy as an outdoor cat. Tell me, cat, why do you stain yourself with so many inks and oils?”
Thick black tears dribbled down Mercy’s temples. “Please! Please don’t kill me!”
“You slaughter my Golds and threaten my Silvers, and now you ask for mercy, Mercy?”
“Please! I’m sorry! I never wanted to hurt anyone! I just got scared! My brother—”
“Your brother lives,” Esis informed her. “He resides in our care, as healthy and pampered as an indoor cat. Does this news quell your bloodlust? Or must I find a stronger remedy?”
“No! No! Please!”
Esis threw a baffled gaze at the highest railing, beneath the artificial sky. Through the metal bars, she saw Hannah and Amanda hobble out of the elevator. She’d sent them to the twelfth floor, not the fifth. Her dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. No. Not him. The fool wouldn’t dare.
“Please!” Mercy shrieked. “I’ll do whatever you want!”
Esis turned back to her captive. She had no intention of killing Mercy Lee. The child came from an optimal gene line, and her future intersected heavily with Zack Trillinger’s. The two funny artists were practically born to entwine.
“You seem sincere, child. Perhaps I will spare you. But know that if you raise your claws against my little ones again, there will be no mercy, Mercy. Do you understand?”
Through her upside-down perspective, Mercy saw a large figure creep up the stairwell. She looked away for fear of alerting Esis. “Yes! I won’t! I promise!”