by Daniel Price
Rebel aimed his revolver through two metal posts. He reeled with doubt as he watched his speculative gunshot pierce the back of Esis’s skull. That can’t be right. It can’t be that easy.
Indeed, the moment he pulled the trigger, a small white portal appeared ten feet in front of him and swallowed the bullet whole.
Esis dropped Mercy and moved toward Rebel in a windy blur. He barely had a chance to react before she tackled him down the stairs. He crashed to the floor, his gun sliding thirty feet across the marble.
The mother Pelletier straddled his stomach, pinning him to the floor in a tempic web.
“Imbecilic ape. Did you think you were the only augur here? You see nothing compared to me. You’re a blind and stubborn fool and we are out of patience with you.”
Five stories above, Amanda took a wincing perch on a cushioned bench by the railing. She’d sent Hannah to the restroom to soak her scalded hand. Now she had a lone view of the conflict below, clear enough to recognize the man beneath Esis.
Rebel bucked and thrashed in her web. “I’ll kill you, bitch.”
“Your foresight fails you again, Richard. Shall I tell you the future? That crude piece of lead you fired at me will return one day when you least desire it. It’ll travel through the skull of your pretty wife. Or perhaps the tiny eye of your child.”
He bucked madly. “NO!”
“You’ve inconvenienced us greatly, Richard. Did you think we would tolerate it? You should have listened to Pendergen. You accomplish nothing by killing these children of ours.”
“The breaches—”
“The damage to this world is already done. It cannot be undone, any more than your hand can be unrifted. Cease your foolish crusade and perhaps we’ll let you and your family live to see its natural end.”
“I swear to God I’ll—”
“Kill me. Yes.” Esis sighed. “A stubborn fool to the last. So be it. Soon you’ll know—”
She threw her head back and gasped in cold shock. Even the most powerful augur couldn’t foresee every circumstance. When Esis dropped Mercy Lee to the carpet, she never anticipated for a moment that the terrified girl would rediscover her nerve. And her solis.
With a feral scream, Mercy drowned both Esis and Rebel in an invisible field of energy, dissolving the tempic web between them and flipping the cruel advantage. Esis was a 130-pound woman with slender arms and a delicate beauty. Rebel was not.
Amanda gaped, thunderstruck, as Rebel’s first punch drew blood from Esis’s nose and sent her flying onto her back. He leapt on top of her, pummeling her with fists both flesh and synthetic.
“You threaten my wife? You threaten my child?”
Four blocks away, the screens of the command center flickered back to life. Gemma did a double take at the action on the center monitor. This was not the future she’d seen. Not at all.
“Oh my God. He’s alive.”
Ivy raised her teary face from her hands. “What?”
“He’s alive! Rebel! He . . . Holy shit, he’s beating her!”
Olga looked up from her table. She’d just finished tying a tourniquet around Bruce’s leg and was now lowering his body temperature in preparation for reversal. Her ice pack dropped to the floor when she saw the two slaughtered kinsmen in the elevator bank. Dear Lord. No.
Ivy kept her rapt attention on the middle screen. “Oh God. Richard. Get the gun. Kill her.”
“Kill her!” Gemma screamed.
Kill her, Amanda cried in her broken thoughts. Kill each other.
Rebel continued his furious assault, reducing Esis to a raw and battered wreck. The woman had been raised in a more civilized era, where only the poorest suffered the indignity of pain. Even a surgeon like her could live her whole life without seeing a drop of blood.
Now as this ancestor ape thrashed her with his brutal fists, a shrill cry escaped her bloody lips.
“SEMERJEAN!”
A nine-foot portal opened on the second floor balcony. A speeding figure burst through the surface and knocked Mercy unconscious. It continued down the stairs in a blurry streak, yanking Rebel off Esis and slamming him against a wall. Two heavy-framed paintings crashed to the ground.
Now Amanda could see this new man clearly. He stood as large and bald as Rebel, with powerful arms and a broadly muscled back. His entire body was glossy white, like a marble statue of a naked Greek god. It took two squinting glances for Amanda to see that he was covered in tempis.
Ivy stared at the screen in slack horror. “Oh Jesus, Richard. Come on. Break free.”
Rebel may as well have been crucified for all the force that pinned him. When he tried to kick his aggressor, the man grew a second pair of arms from his hips. They held Rebel’s thighs to the wall.
Gemma shook her trembling head. “God. What is that? Is it even human?”
Only Rebel was in a position to glimpse the man behind the tempis. Through the small round eyeholes, he could see pale skin and sandy brown eyebrows. His fierce blue eyes brimmed with savage fury, like a panther in mid-roar.
Rebel hocked a spiteful gob at his attacker. “Fuck you, coward. A real man shows his face when he kills someone.”
Semerjean’s eyes laughed with a shrewd and vicious mockery that Rebel found even more frightening than his rage. Clearly this creature wasn’t just a thug on the family payroll. He was a Pelletier through and through.
Ivy cried out when the tempic man grew a third pair of arms from his rib cage. They struck at Rebel with relentless fury, cracking his jaw, breaking his teeth. Once Rebel’s face matched the bloody wretchedness of Esis, Semerjean melted away his extra limbs. He leaned in toward Rebel and hissed a gritty whisper.
“You’ll know when I’m killing you, boy. You’ll see my true face then.”
Rebel moaned in pain as Semerjean traced a finger along each cheek, rifting the skin just enough to scar him. He let his victim collapse to the floor, then gently scooped his wife into his arms.
Amanda watched in bleary-eyed anguish as Semerjean carried Esis through a new portal. The gateway shrank to a close behind them.
All was once again quiet in the lobby as the living fell as still as the dead. In the remote command room, three Gotham women stared numbly at the monitors. Gemma shuddered in her seat while she received new intel from the future.
“It’s safe to get Rebel and Mercy,” she told Ivy. “But you have to do it fast.”
“Why? Are those monsters coming back?”
“No.”
Gemma adjusted the camera displays to show a view of the street. A trio of ash-gray vans came to a halt in front of the building, with several more approaching.
The Deps had arrived in full force.
—
Howard Hairston parked his rental coupe at Bowling Green Park, a block away from the action. The freckly young redhead was the only member of Melissa’s team to follow her here. Everyone else had been called back to Los Angeles by the regional director, who sought to sever his office from this quagmire of a case. Until Integrity seized the reins, as everyone assumed they would, the six otherworldly fugitives were officially New York’s problem.
The moment Howard reached the siege site, he saw that New York was ready for them.
Seventeen government vehicles flanked the building—armored trucks, reviver vans, mobile thermal scanners. A trio of NYPD aerocruisers circled the roof like buzzards.
Howard scanned the crowd for Melissa, to no avail. He moved in on Rosie Herrera, a small and sturdy woman whose masculine features were only slightly countered by her salmon-pink ensemble. She paced the barricaded entry, commanding her men like Napoleon at Austerlitz.
“I want all exits covered before that tempis comes down. Every door. Every window. Every vent.”
“Excuse me . . .”
She held up a finger to Howard, then fumed a
t the young agent working the gate controls. “Why am I still looking at this barrier, Jules?”
“None of the overrides are working. Someone jammed it good.”
“Well, fix it already. We got thirty guys standing here with their twigs out.” She turned to Howard. “Who the hell are you?”
He raised his badge. She leaned in to study it. “Huh. Another one from Sunland. You must be Melissa’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am. Has she arrived yet?”
“She’s here. She’s changing.”
“Changing?”
“You faced these perps before. How bad are they?”
“Bad.” Howard sighed. “One of them broke my teammate’s back. Another punched the gate off a Tug-a-Lug truck. They’ve got an Australian kid who’s an ice-cold gangster and a Filipino who probably already knows your middle name. If they slip out this time—”
“They won’t.”
“—it’ll be because of Maranan. That guy just knows things.”
Rosie snorted. “Unless he knows how to turn into sunbeams, he’s not getting out of there.”
The back doors of a truck swung open with a heavy thud. Eight imposing agents marched down the ramp. They wore the same padded black armor, with thick-soled boots and gray metal cables that ran between their gloves and their backpack shifters.
The lone female of the group broke away from the procession and approached Howard. He smiled at the dreadlock tips that dangled from the base of her mirrored black helmet.
Melissa raised her visor and flashed him a humble grin. “Hello, Howard.”
“Hi, boss. Damn. I guess I don’t need to ask if you’re ready.”
Melissa now had the power to move at twenty times her normal speed. Her armor carried four gas bombs, three flash grenades, two sonic screamers, and a stun chaser. She kept a snub-nosed pistol in her side pouch in case Zack rusted her primary weapon. Most crucial of all were the two reviver vans parked right outside the building. In lieu of winning over her quarry’s hearts and minds, she now had the freedom to shoot them everywhere else. This was Melissa’s final chance to capture the fugitives alive. She wouldn’t waste it on words.
She blew a hot breath, then looked to the barrier. “Let’s get this thing down, shall we?”
—
Hannah eyed her dreary reflection in the restroom mirror. Her vision was coming back in dribs and drabs, enough to let her see the magnitude of her sister’s injury. Amanda was in mortal agony and yet somehow she found the strength to fuss over Hannah’s trifling burn. You need to soak that hand, she’d told her. Put it in cool water, not cold.
After forty seconds, Hannah yanked her fingers from the sink in restless anguish. There had to be something she could do for Amanda. Maybe she could make her a splint out of something, or find some painkillers. For once it was time for the dizzy actress to take care of the nurse.
She returned to the hallway and scanned the many glass doors. Though her weirdness was still smothered under a lingering sheen of solis, she figured she could smash her way into any one of these offices if she found something heavy enough.
Her search was interrupted by the sudden presence of music, a faint and tinny riff of jazz lounge trumpets. Hannah looked around and saw that the door to a nearby office—some personal injury law firm—had been opened a crack. Stranger still, she could swear she recognized the song that blared from within.
Soon her suspicions were confirmed by the unmistakable voice of the divine Sarah Vaughan.
Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.
And little man, little Lola wants you . . .
Make up your mind to have no regrets.
Recline yourself, resign yourself, you’re through.
Hannah reeled with fresh perplexity. This wasn’t some Altamerican retread of her old favorite showtune. This was a haunting echo from her old dead Earth.
She pushed the door open in a dark and dreamy daze. The law firm’s lobby was no larger than her old living room. Drab wood paneling covered every wall, while bubbly white chairs stood out like blisters on the red shag rug. There wasn’t another soul in sight.
Through the glass wall of a conference room, she spied a clunky homemade contraption at the edge of a long table. Two large speakers were bridged at the top by a thick square battery. Clipped, split wires curled wildly in all directions.
Resting in the center of the construct, like a beating heart, was a tiny pink device that triggered another sharp flash of recognition in Hannah.
She was looking at her own iPod, the one she’d carried in her handbag on the day the world ended. Last she knew, the thing was dead and gathering dust in Terra Vista. What the hell was it doing here?
Suddenly the ground beneath her vibrated. Eight-foot poles of tempis sprang up all around her in a perfect square formation. Panicked, she shook the bars, then looked down at the metal platform below. A large engraving by her foot reminded owners to check their local laws for restrictions on using this Ellerbee-brand live animal trap.
She covered her eyes. “Oh no. No no no no . . .”
Soft footsteps approached. A high and merry whistle kept rhythm with the song. Once her captor moved close enough to pause the iPod, Hannah opened her eyes and looked at him.
Evan Rander tossed her an impish grin through the bars of her cage. He tilted his head in mock concern.
“I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?”
—
Rebel lay flat on the marble, a grim and battered husk. The skin of his face had become as numb as a mask while the bones beneath throbbed with jagged pain. Through the sliver of his unsealed eye, he saw a narrow figure kneel at his side.
Ivy pressed his shoulders. “Don’t move, hon. Don’t try to talk. Your jaw’s fractured. You have four shattered teeth and that creature rifted some skin on your cheeks. But you’ll live.”
He could tell from her level of knowledge that Gemma had been to the future to get the doctor’s prognosis. The girl had probably already spent an evening at his bedside.
“Merzee,” he mumbled.
“Olga’s getting her now. She’s out cold, but she’ll make it. So will Bruce.”
Rebel couldn’t give a crap about Bruce Byer. He sensed from Ivy’s grim omission that all the others were dead. Ben. Colin. Nick. Freddy. We lost four. They lost none.
“Firdy . . .”
“Richard, don’t talk.”
“How?”
Ivy closed her eyes. “Gemma says he was shot in the face. She thinks the boy did it.”
A guttural groan escaped his lips. Ivy held his arm. “I know. I’m angry too. But right now I’m just so glad you’re okay. I can’t believe you survived that creature. I just can’t believe it.”
Rebel knew it wasn’t luck. The Pelletiers had chosen to spare him, either out of strategy or sadism. Now that he’d been rifted again, he knew he couldn’t be healed through reversal. The temporal discord in his body would kill him instantly, gruesomely. He’d have to recover the slow and painful way, as Semerjean no doubt intended.
While Olga carried Mercy over her shoulder, Ivy helped Rebel back to his feet. She slung his thick arm around her and walked him to her portal on the eastern wall.
Amanda followed their progress from her hidden perch. Just go already. Leave.
As Olga carried Mercy through the glimmering gateway, Rebel stopped and noticed his revolver. It had spun all the way through the eastern arch, resting halfway between the lobby and the entry for Nicomedia Magazines. One more second and he would have gotten Trillinger. One more second.
Ivy tugged him along. “Come on. We have to go.”
His fresh failures bubbled inside him like boiling water. All the evidence they were leaving behind. All the dead kinsmen. All the living Silvers.
Rebel broke away from Ivy and charged through the archway.
“Richard!”
He seized the gun and fired seven shots through the open door. The first round hit the leg of the reception desk. The next two shattered the white glass wall behind it. The remaining four traveled into the sea of cubicles where Zack and Mia hid. Rebel’s foresight was still hobbled by solis. He shot blindly and was now blind to the results.
By the time Ivy caught up to him, he fired empty clicks at the office. She grabbed his arm.
“Richard, stop! Stop! It’s over!”
“No!”
“If we’re lucky, the Deps will finish them. If not, we’ll have other chances. But we have to go!”
Amanda turned white at the distant sound of gunshots. She looked to the southern archway and saw David make a stealthy reentrance. He ducked behind a support column just as Rebel and Ivy returned to the lobby. Amanda’s fingers dug into her thighs.
Oh God, David, don’t. Just let them leave.
A half mile to the north, Gemma accessed the Nicomedia office cameras and shook her head at the image.
“Christ, Rebel. You lucky son of a bitch.”
Olga looked to Gemma. “What are you talking about?”
“He did it.” She chuckled in wonder at the screen. “He got one.”
—
Zack sprawled facedown on the carpet, his fingers pressed over his head. From the moment the glass wall exploded in front of him, his body went into system crash. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t feel anything but the thundering beat of his heart.
Two minutes after Rebel’s hasty exit, Zack and Mia worked their way back toward the front of the office, darting in and out of cubicles like skittish rabbits. Once they’d reached the first row, Zack made Mia wait behind him while he scanned the reception area. He’d only made it as far as the white glass partition when the shots rang out and the world seemed to end all over again.
Now the wall lay in shards all around him. For all he knew, his body was just as broken.
“Zack?”
The sound of Mia’s voice prompted him to move. He clambered to a wobbly kneel, then checked himself with trembling hands. He still couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t get his mouth to work.
