The Flight of the Silvers

by Daniel Price

  “I . . . I . . . God . . .”

  After four more seconds of self-scrutiny, he rose to his feet and blurted a nervous laugh.

  “I think . . . I think I’m all right. I’m okay. Jesus, Mia. I . . .”

  He turned around and saw her now. Her skin had turned chalk-white. She pressed a weak and trembling hand to her chest. For a hopeful moment, Zack figured she was simply struggling to collect herself. Then he saw the thick blood seeping through her fingers. His delirious grin faded.

  “Oh God. No. No . . .”

  Mia removed her hand and stared down at the oozing hole in the center of her chest. She thought about the policeman’s bullet that had narrowly missed her face a month ago, the ridiculous luck that kept her in perfect health while her friends suffered wound after wound.

  She finally understood how the universe worked now. Suddenly it all made sense.

  “Zack . . .”

  Her legs gave out from under her. She crumpled to the floor.

  —

  Four hundred and thirty feet away, in the tiny windowless office of the building security manager, Theo screamed in synch with Zack. His scattered thoughts came together in a unified roar, a thousand voices all wailing in grief, insisting that there were no futures left with Mia Farisi in them.

  He clutched his hair, throwing his elbows left and right.

  “No! No! No! No!”

  It was at that cruelest of moments that a final gear snapped into place inside him. His eyes rolled back, his skin glowed white, and his consciousness took him to a strange new place.

  At long last, Theo Maranan was formally introduced to his weirdness.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Everything stopped.

  The ambient hum of the building generators fell silent. The light on the desk phone froze in mid-blink. A fat bead of water halted its drop from a sweaty ceiling pipe. It hung in the air like a miniature planet.

  All over the office, all across creation, time held its breath and waited for Theo.

  The bewildered augur kept as still as his surroundings as he fought to absorb this latest insanity. What little color the room had was gone. A thin gray mist blanketed the floor and walls. He saw twinkling specks of light through the fog, like distant cities.

  Vague time passed—a second, a minute, an hour—before he dared to move. He writhed in his thoughts and suddenly found himself sling-shot to the other side of the office. Dumbstruck, he turned around and reeled at the haggard young Asian in his former place. The man sat huddled behind the desk in a frozen cry of grief, wearing Theo’s face and clothes, his karma tattoo. It took five rounds of furious debate for him to accept that he was somehow looking at himself. What? How is this . . . ?

  The mist on the eastern wall suddenly darkened and swirled like thunderclouds. A tall, reedy figure emerged from the depths, trailing smoky black wisps as he moved.

  Azral Pelletier shined a cordial grin at the empty space where Theo’s consciousness lingered.

  “Welcome, child.”

  He looked majestically dapper in his stone-colored business suit and tieless white oxford. His flawless skin was now as colorless as his surroundings but his eyes remained a vibrant blue. The good cheer on his face did little to quell Theo’s panic.

  “Ease yourself,” said Azral. “Your mind is still adjusting to the transition. Soon your senses will compensate and give you form.”

  Though his lips moved when he talked, Azral’s cold honey voice hit Theo like a second set of thoughts. He struggled to reply, unsure if his words were spoken or merely imagined.

  What happened to me? Am I dead?

  Azral smirked. “On the contrary. You’re more alive and awake than ever before.”

  Awake was one of the last words Theo would use to describe himself at the moment.

  You’re in my head.

  “Yes.”

  His mind flashed back to the results of the cerebral scan that Melissa had shared with him.

  You put something in my brain. Some tiny metal ring.

  “A harmless device,” Azral assured him. “It merely allows us to communicate in this state, little more.”

  His “little more” struck Theo like a salesman’s asterisk. He felt a nervous lurch where his stomach used to be. “And where exactly . . .”

  Theo balked at the new echo in his voice. Now he looked down to see a hazy facsimile of his body.

  Azral nodded approvingly. “Already you adapt.”

  Theo was surprised to find himself in his faded Stanford hoodie, his old khaki shorts and sandals. It was his favorite outfit, one that had comforted him through many drunken travels.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re an augur, Theo. Did you think you’d spend the rest of your life suffering random glimpses? No. You’re generations ahead of your peers, the so-called prophets of this age. Their talent is a crude cudgel. Yours is a violin. This is where the futures sing at your bow, my friend. This is your true gift.”

  A thunderous shudder filled Theo. By the time it passed, he appeared as whole as Azral. He could feel the ground beneath his feet again, a simulation of life and breath inside him. The sensation was even more pleasurable than waking life. He felt wonderful now. Except . . .

  “Mia. I saw her. She was shot in the chest. Did that really happen? Has it happened already?”

  “It has occurred,” Azral calmly replied. “She fades from life at this moment.”

  “No . . .”

  “We can address the matter later. For now—”

  “I have to find her!”

  “Boy, look around you. What do you see?”

  Theo took another wide-eyed glance around the office. The fat water droplet still dangled in the air. The clock on the wall remained rooted at 11:56 and 48 seconds, with no signs of letting go.

  “So it’s not just here,” Theo said. “Time stopped everywhere.”

  Azral emitted a soft chuckle, snugly perched between fondness and ridicule.

  “You can’t stop time any more than you can stop a desert or a forest. Time is a landscape that stretches across all things. We’re the ones who move across it.”

  Theo shook his head in hopeless perplexity. “I don’t—”

  “If it helps, think of all the people of the world as passengers on a train. You travel through time at the same speed and direction, perceiving events through your own narrow windows. The concepts of past and future are entirely human constructs. We formulated them as navigational markers, like east and west. Only now—”

  “I got off the train.”

  Azral smiled again. “You’re not the first of your kind to achieve this state, though my ancestors only seem to come here by accident. They romantically refer to this realm as the God’s Eye. You’d do just as well to call it the Gray.”

  Theo didn’t care what it was called. If he was forever stuck here at the cusp of noon, it was Hell.

  “Is there . . . a way back on the train?”

  “Of course. You can resume your journey at any time. I’ll show you how, but not yet. Come with me. If you wish to aid your companions, there are things you should see.”

  Theo felt a gentle hand on his back. He’d only taken three steps out of the room when a cold force pushed him forward like a leaf in a gale. By the time his dizzy senses returned to him, he found himself outside the building.

  “What . . . what just . . . ?”

  “A quicker mode of transit,” Azral explained. “Foot travel is a needless formality here.”

  Theo’s next question fizzled in the urgency of his surroundings. More than twenty federal agents now flanked the building—all paused in tense and busy actions. A ghost team fixed their imaging towers around the Silvers’ dusty red car while a second group wheeled a large metal device that reminded Theo of a supervill
ain’s death ray. He shuddered to think what it would do once the clock started ticking again.

  “Shit. It’s worse than I thought.”

  “Indeed,” said Azral. “In one hundred thirty-two seconds, their crude solic toy will breach the barrier.”

  Theo looked to the eight gun-toting Deps in armored black speedsuits. He could only assume they were all assigned to take down Hannah. “We’ll never make it out of here.”

  “You’ll escape. It’s the continuing presence of these government agents that troubles me. There may yet be a remedy.”

  “What remedy?”

  “It’s my task,” Azral curtly replied. “Not yours.”

  Theo churned with stress as he recalled Azral’s remote-button slaughter of twenty-one physicists, another so-called remedy. They worked for you and you killed them. Bill Pollock got me sober and you killed him.

  “I never wished to slay those scientists,” Azral replied, to Theo’s unease. “I saw the consequences of their continued existence, an elaborate chain of events that would have destroyed you and a great many others. It’s the burden of foresight. Our choices often seem questionable to those around us, even cruel. You’ll know this soon enough.”

  Theo saw the dreadlocks dangling from an armored agent’s helmet and struggled to avoid all thoughts of Melissa. If the Pelletiers identified her as the face of their federal problem, she was dead.

  Azral put his hand on Theo’s back. “Come.”

  In a windy swirl, the scenery changed once more. Now they stood in the vast marble lobby, a place that had seen much violence since Theo left it. Furniture all around the room had been smashed and singed and spattered with blood. Two wet and gory strangers lay facedown in the elevator bank while a third corpse languished on the stairwell.

  Theo looked to the inanimate couple at the eastern wall, poised inches from a glowing white portal. Though the alluring Indian woman was a stranger to him, he had no trouble recognizing the bald and brawny thug who’d shot him in Terra Vista. A stagnant curl of smoke extended like coral from the barrel of Rebel’s revolver.

  “Goddamn it. It was him, wasn’t it? He shot Mia.”

  Azral glared at Rebel. He’d only just now caught up on the battle in the lobby—the savage beating of his mother, the timely intervention from his father. His voice dropped a cold octave.

  “You won’t have to worry about him much longer.”

  “Why is he trying to kill us? What did we do to him?”

  Azral shook his head in scorn. “Beneath all that bulk, Richard Rosen is nothing more than a frightened child. He sees a dark event coming and he can’t bear the thought of it. So his weak mind conjures a theory, an enemy, a brutal solution. He’s hardly the first man in history to blame his troubles on immigrants.”

  Theo scanned the room and caught David hiding behind a support pillar, his pistol raised high in frozen readiness.

  “Oh no . . .”

  Azral bloomed a small grin. “He’ll be fine. The boy’s remarkably capable for his age.”

  Theo was all too aware of that. Azral gleaned his flip-side worry.

  “You believe he’ll kill this pair.”

  “I don’t know.” Theo eyed the pregnant bulge in Ivy’s bodysuit. “I hope not.”

  “Why would you show concern for those who would slaughter you without hesitation?”

  “I’m mostly concerned for David. I don’t want to see him go down a dark path.”

  “Have you?”

  Theo had to think about it. He’d suffered countless premonitions over the last several days, but only just now realized how very few of them involved David. His future seemed to fall in a blind spot.

  “No.”

  “Have faith in him then,” Azral said. “Let us continue.”

  The next jaunt took them up to the fifth-floor walkway that overlooked the lobby. The mist was ten times thicker here. Theo had to stand next to Amanda to see her on the cushioned bench.

  “God, her leg . . .”

  Azral studied her broken ankle. “Yes. Strange that my mother didn’t heal her. She favors this one. The child must have angered her.”

  “You’re talking about Esis.”

  “Yes.”

  “She doesn’t look old enough to be your mother.”

  “She would adore you for saying that.”

  “I’ve only seen her in visions.” Theo scowled in hot contempt. “She keeps killing Zack.”

  Azral frowned. “Trillinger is a buffoon and a nuisance. I see now why Quint found him so vexing.”

  “He’s my friend!”

  “If you seek to keep him, his fate is easily prevented.”

  “How?”

  Azral raised a long finger at Amanda. “She knows.”

  The white-haired man floated deeper into the fog. Theo scrambled to keep up with him, even as his screaming thoughts urged him to flee.

  “Why is it so hazy here?”

  “Even in this realm, none of us are omniscient. As we move farther from our own sphere of influence, our view grows weaker. Should we venture but one floor higher, I wager we’d glimpse nothing but mist.”

  That’s why you’re teaching me, Theo surmised. You need me to see the things you can’t.

  If Azral heard his thoughts, he didn’t acknowledge them. He led Theo into a small office that looked like a low-grade law firm. Through the swirling mist, he spotted Hannah inside a small tempic cage. She gripped the bars, her face contorted in a silent scream.

  He had to move closer to spot the source of her anguish.

  “Jesus Christ! You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Evan Rander was dressed in the stately beige uniform of a security guard, an ensemble that looked silly on his scrawny frame. Theo could only guess the outfit was part of his personal escape plan. He’d probably put on his best Barney Fife impression for the Deps, give a few shaky statements, and then slip away while no one was looking.

  The rogue Silver wore a nasty grin as he fired a bullhorn-shaped device at Hannah.

  “What’s he doing to her?”

  “He inflicts her with a low electric charge,” Azral replied. “He seeks to torment, not kill.”

  “Son of a bitch. Why does he hate her so much?”

  “He hates both sisters. The reasons hardly matter. Rander is nothing. A pathetic fool. I only show him to you as a cautionary example.”

  “What, you’re afraid I’ll become like him?”

  “In mind-set, not temperament. The boy has lived hundreds of years and yet he still fails to grasp the structure of time. He sees the past as his chalkboard, a single line to be erased and redrawn at whim. In truth, he undoes nothing. He merely jumps from train to train, forever dodging the consequences of his actions. I’m hoping you won’t be so linear in your thinking.”

  Theo covered his face in hot distress. His friends were all suffering and Azral was giving him a primer in fiftieth-century metaphysics.

  “What will it take?”

  “For what?”

  “For this guy to see consequences!”

  Azral jerked a testy shrug. “His talents give him a unique perspective on events, which in turn provides us with helpful information. But perhaps I should reevaluate his usefulness.”

  “I don’t want him dead. I just want him to leave us alone.”

  “Yes. I thought I’d dissuaded him when last we spoke. Perhaps I need to make myself clearer.”

  Azral studied Theo carefully as he reached for Hannah with an intangible hand. “You feel strongly for this one.”

  “Yeah, but not the way you think.”

  “You don’t know what I think,” Azral snapped. “If I deemed your love to be physical, we’d be having a different conversation.”

  Theo looked to him in wide-eyed bother. “What . . . what do you mean
?”

  “Just take comfort that you won’t lose her. Not anytime soon.”

  “I know.” He turned to Hannah again. “I see her all over my future. She’s everywhere I look.”

  “You say it like it troubles you.”

  “It troubles me that I don’t see the others as clearly. Can you please take me to Mia now?”

  Azral nodded obligingly, though his handsome face turned grim.

  “Come, then.”

  —

  He’d prepared himself for the worst, but what Theo saw in the magazine office sent his proxy form to chaos. He screamed and cried with two blurry heads, punched at the air with four hazy hands. He paced the floor in all directions while five ghostly duplicates fell to their knees. He was everywhere at once—an army of Theos, all thrashing and grieving over the youngest of the Silvers.

  Mia lay cradled in Zack’s arms, her eyes wide with vacant horror as he pressed a bloody T-shirt to her chest wound. The cartoonist served a silent contrast to Theo’s raging sorrow, a snapshot image of a man in blanket shock. His tears had paused in mid-journey, lining his cheeks like scars.

  Azral stood expressionless among the broken glass, calmly waiting for his protégé to collect himself.

  “Theo . . .”

  One by one, the doppelgängers vanished. A lone Theo crouched by Mia’s side. “How long does she have?”

  “Moments,” Azral informed him. “She dies before the agents breach the barrier.”

  “Oh God. There has to be something we can do.”

  “I don’t know, Theo. Is there?”

  “Don’t play games with me! I’m not in the mood!”

  “It’s your mood that clouds you. Your emotions prevent you from seeing.”

  “Seeing what?”

  “The futures,” Azral said, with a sweeping hand gesture. “They reveal themselves in this place. They sing to us from every corner. Have you not wondered about the lights in the mist?”

  Theo looked to the northern wall, at the tiny beads that twinkled within the fog. He’d glimpsed them everywhere he turned in this dreary gray world. He didn’t know why they scared him.