The Flight of the Silvers (60 page)

Amanda locked her arms around Hannah’s shoulders, biting her lip to keep from screaming. Every stride was murder on her jostled ankle. Worse, she knew it’d be just a matter of moments before Hannah’s legs screamed with an agony all their own. It was a seven-story climb to the roof. Hannah couldn’t possibly carry her the whole way.

Halfway past the eighth floor, the actress began to stagger. Her lead on her pursuer shrank with each step. Melissa fired a quick shot as Hannah turned the ninth-floor landing. The bullet pierced the wall, missing her thigh by inches.

Hannah’s calves burned with fury. Her lungs stabbed her with broken glass. Between all her dread and blinking red gauges, a cold inner voice assured her that death wouldn’t be so bad. There was a Heaven, it insisted, even for mediocrities like her.

No.

She gritted her teeth and floored her inner pedal, pushing herself past 50×. The air turned ten degrees colder and three shades bluer. The sisters shot ahead of Melissa.

Amanda leered in astonishment at the strange new artifacts in her senses—the rainbow streaks of color in the corner of her vision, the distant sound of wind chimes. A large white butterfly dawdled past her, trailing arcs of light in its fluttering wake. Amanda wasn’t sure if she’d lost her mind or found a strange new corner of her sister’s world. It was mad and it was beautiful.

She glanced up through the indigo haze and saw the metal door to the roof.
God, she did it. She really did it.

Hannah kicked the door open and stumbled out into the sunlight. Between all the air vents and glassy solic panels lay a sprawling gray aerolot. Every parking space was empty.

“They’re not here,” Hannah wheezed. “I don’t see them.”

Amanda caught moving shadows on the asphalt and squinted to look up. Three flashing NYPD cruisers circled above like birds of prey. They began their quick descent.

“Go to the edge,” she told Hannah.

“What?”

“Go to the edge. Trust me.”

Hannah staggered beyond the parking lot and stopped at the roof’s southern lip. The last of her temporal energies sputtered away. The world fell back to normal speed and color.

Amanda peered over the side, all the way down to the bustle on Battery Place. She wished she could grow wings and fly them away. She wished she had more than a cruel and desperate gambit.

“Turn us around.”

“M-my legs won’t hold. I can barely stand.”

Amanda squeezed her. “It’s okay, Hannah. You did such a good job. You were amazing. Just one last move and you can rest.”

As the actress spun around, Amanda cast slim white tendrils from her hands. They stretched twenty feet in each direction, forming a tight grip around air vents.

Hannah fell back into her like a sling, her muscles moaning with relief. She didn’t want to think about the cagey white ropes that kept them from plummeting to their deaths.

“You sure about this, Amanda?”

“No, but it’s our only leverage. I don’t want to hurt any more of these people.”

Neither did Hannah. She nodded darkly. “Okay. Okay.”

Melissa burst through the doorway and stopped cold at Amanda’s new threat. She holstered her gun and de-shifted, waving her palms at the policemen as they hopped out of their cruisers.

“Lower your weapons! Keep them down!”

One by one, the speedsuit agents made their way to the roof. Now fourteen law officers clutched their pistols at their sides as they nervously eyed the Givens.

“Don’t come any closer!” Amanda yelled. “I mean it!”

Melissa removed her helmet and dropped it. She raised her voice above the whistling wind.

“All right, Amanda. It’s all right. Despite all appearances, this is a very simple situation. You don’t want to die and we don’t want you to die. We’re proving that as we speak.”

“You’re the one who shot at us.”

“I shot at your sister’s leg,” Melissa replied. “Can you blame me? Last we met, she broke the spine of one of my men.”

Hannah’s stomach twisted. “How is he? Is he okay?”

Melissa eyed her somberly. “We got him to a reviver. He’s back in Los Angeles now. Resting.”

Though everything she said was technically true, Melissa omitted the fact that Ross Daley had suffered a fatal aneurysm inside the machine. Reversal was not a foolproof process, as 1.1 percent of patients learned the hard way. Ross had spun the wheel and lost. The outcome didn’t bode well for Hannah, who was now on the books for murder.

“When you see him, can you please tell him I’m sorry?”

“I’ll be sure to do that.” Melissa looked to Amanda with concern. “Those bodies in the elevator bank . . .”

“Esis.”

“That was Esis,” Hannah yelled. “Amanda would never do that.”

Melissa nodded eagerly. “I believe you. I do. I believe you’re both good people in a bad situation, never more so than now. The way I see it, you only have two directions to go from here: forward or down. I know neither option appeals to you, but if you fall, there’ll be no reviving you. At least with us, you’ll have a chance.”

Though their faces were half-obscured by windblown hair, Melissa found something new and dark in their expressions.

“Wouldn’t you rather keep living?”

“That’s all we want,” said Hannah.

“That’s all we ever wanted,” said Amanda.

“Then you have only one choice. Now it couldn’t be—”

Before Melissa could say “simpler,” a new complication arose behind the sisters. Fourteen pistols swung to aim at the shiny silver aerovan that popped above the building like toast.

Zack peered through the rear passenger window, narrowing his eyes at the large assembly of men.

“David, blind the hell out of them.”

“With pleasure.”

Melissa spotted the boy’s vengeful sneer through the window. She recalled David’s flare attack on Howard and pressed her hands to her eyes.

“Everyone cover your eyes! Cover your—”

A thirty-foot cube of piercing white light enveloped all the cops and Deps on the roof. The sisters turned their wincing faces. Soon they heard the electric whirr of a sliding door behind them. Amanda felt soft young hands on her shoulders.

“It’s okay,” said Mia. “I got you. Let go.”

With a delirious cry of relief, she released the tempis and fell back into Mia’s arms. Amanda never had a chance to see the van. For all she knew, her other little sister had flown in on angel wings.

David supported Amanda’s legs as Mia pulled her into the van. Hannah kept her eyes squinted shut, reeling with perplexity as someone seized her by the armpits.

“What’s happening? Who’s got me?”

“I do,” said Zack.

The actress cracked a dizzy laugh. “Oh my God. I want to kiss you so much. Is everyone else okay? Theo?”

“I’m here,” Theo said from the front. “We’re all here.”

“I knew it. I knew you’d find us.”

He smiled exhaustedly. “I knew you’d know.”

The cube of light vanished, leaving eight cops and six Deps fumbling helplessly on the concrete. Melissa uncovered her eyes and rushed to the railing. Even half-blind, she had no trouble recognizing the driver.

“Peter, don’t do this. You have more to lose than they do. You have a son!”

David cast a sphere of light around Melissa’s head. She fell to her knees, grimacing.

The door slid closed. Peter floored the accelerator. He bounced a baleful glare at David through the mirror.

“Goddamn it, boy. You didn’t have to do that.”

“She’ll recover.”

“I’m talking about the whole thing. What was that light you used? Was that the Cataclysm?”

“It was, in fact.”

Peter pounded the wheel. “Jesus Christ! You ghost the Cataclysm on Commemoration, right on top of a goddamn building? People probably saw it for miles! They’ll be talking about it for months!”

David leered at him in umbrage. “I did what I had to.”

“You could’ve used darkness on them. You could’ve stunned them with noise. I know you folks are new to this world, but there are consequences—”

“Hey!” Zack shot forward in his seat, his face flushed with rage. “We almost died because of
your
instructions! You don’t get to lecture him. And when your people stop trying to kill us, maybe then we’ll give a shit about protecting their secrets. Until then, fuck them and fuck you.”

Hannah sat between David and Zack, her hands clutched tensely on their thighs. She felt like she missed a year of plot development. She wasn’t even sure who was flying the van.

Theo held up a diplomatic palm. “Look, we’re all shaken up right now. Can we just—”

“Oh no!”

Everyone followed Mia’s gaze out the window. Two sleek blue police cruisers flew along the Seeker’s left side while another kept pace to the right. A pair of flashing aerocycles rode up the rear.

Theo’s mind spun with helpless flurry. This aerial chase was a whole new wrinkle. His counterparts in the God’s Eye had gotten away scot-free.

He looked to Peter. “What now?”

The Irishman aimed a tight scowl out the windshield. “It’s okay. They won’t get us.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you haven’t seen what I can do.” He heaved a loud, woeful breath. “This won’t be subtle either.”

Seven stomachs lurched as Peter pulled the Seeker into a sharp ascent. He leveled out and looped to the left, steering them back toward the buildings of Battery Place. Despite everything her senses told her, Amanda couldn’t accept the nitty-gritty,
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
details of her current existence. She was flying. Over the city. In an automobile.

Hannah nervously scanned the police vehicles. “They’re shifted. You can’t outrun them.”

Peter studied her in the mirror. “Which pretty sister are you?”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Hannah.”

“Figured. You’re already thinking like a born swifter. It’s not always about speed, hon.” He turned to Theo. “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you for a little advance on trust.”

“What do you need?”

“When I give the word, you hold the wheel and keep it steady, no matter what.”

“Why? What are you—”

He steered the van on a crash course with a fifty-story skyscraper, the only conventional box tower on Battery Place. A plane of mirrored glass panels lined the front.

Peter closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples. “Okay. Now. Hold it tight.”

Theo leaned over and grabbed the wheel. “Wait! What are you doing?”

“Just trust me, Theo. Keep us steady.”

Melissa lay on the roof, her wrist pressed over her flash-burned eyes. She listened intently to the police radio as they described the impending collision.
He wouldn’t. He’s not crazy.

Theo forced the same thought while he struggled to hold the van on course. His foresight had fled him like an ejected jet pilot. He couldn’t see a thing beyond the growing wall in front of them.

The Silvers kept their frozen eyes forward. Hannah locked arms with David. Amanda and Mia clasped hands. The widow threw a frantic gaze over her shoulder at Zack. He reached forward as far as he could. She closed the gap with tempis. Pink and white fingers entwined.

The van was ten feet from the building when Mia screamed and Peter’s glowing eyes shot open.

A thirty-foot portal sprouted on the face of the glass.

The police cars slowed to a halt as the Seeker disappeared into the splashing depths. All witnesses in the air and on the ground stared dead-faced at the large white breach of reason, this strange new hole on the chin of Manhattan.

As quickly as it opened, the portal shrank and vanished from existence.

The madness was gone, along with the Silvers.

—

Howard Hairston wheezed his way up the last flight of steps, then joined the rooftop gathering of beleaguered peace officers. Those who didn’t dawdle in blindness kept their dazed expressions on the neighboring skyscraper, where the laws of man and nature had been so brazenly violated.

Howard found Melissa crouched at the steel-gray base of a MerryBolt rent-a-charger. Her face was half-concealed behind a curtain of messy dreads.

“Hey, boss.”

She shined a feeble smile in his direction. “Hello, Howard.”

“I hear you got caught in the light show.”

“David was nice enough to give me my own. I see nothing but spots.”

“Yeah. I’ve been there. Man, I really hate that kid.”

“You got better. So will I.”

Howard sat down beside her and studied the blinking handphone in her grip. “You got a text.”

“Yes. I heard. Would you be so kind as to read it to me?”

He took the phone and scanned it in dim confusion. “It’s from someone named Nameless.”

“I know who it’s from. What does it say?”

“‘Well, hon, you did everything you could. But the foot’s come down. It’s Integrity’s show now. God help them all.’”

Melissa rubbed her ailing eyes. She wished she’d packed some cigarettes in her armor.

“I heard two beeps, Howard. Is there—”

“Yeah. There’s another one.” He scrolled down her screen. “He’s asking if you’re free for dinner tonight. Says you two still have something to talk about.”

His freckled brow rose in horror. “God. That old man isn’t loving on you, is he?”

Melissa smiled softly, confident that the meal would end with nothing more than a job offer. Cedric Cain had his own plans for the six temporic fugitives, one that apparently ran counter to Integrity’s. Whatever his purpose, the crafty old shade wanted them alive. That alone made him a man worth hearing out.

“Want me to respond for you?” Howard asked.

Melissa took a long moment to ponder. After all that had happened, all she had seen, she couldn’t imagine going back to chasing toopers and clouders and other temporal two-bits. She didn’t seem to have much of a future with the Deps anyway.

“Yes,” she replied, with a heavy breath. “Tell him I’m available.”

THIRTY-SIX

They emerged three and a half miles to the northeast, through the bare gray wall of an underground parking lot. The Seeker shot from the portal at sixty-four miles an hour and kissed the ground on folded tires. It scraped a sparking path across eighty-nine spaces before grinding to a halt near the elevators.

Peter puffed a winded breath, then surveyed the empty lot behind him. On any other Tuesday, their hundred-yard slide would have left a trail of dented cars, and probably a few dead mall-shoppers.

He checked the six wincing faces of his passengers. “Everyone okay?”

The Silvers were anything but. The portal jump was a new and wholly awful experience for them, like being rope-dragged through a waterfall of boiling-hot milk. One by one, they examined themselves for scald burns, finding nothing but pink and tender flesh. They looked like they’d been scrubbed from head to toe with pumice stones.

Peter clicked his tongue with empathy. “Sorry. The jaunts are always hell on first-timers. You’ll be raw for a day or so.” He shined a warm gaze on Mia. “You hang in there, darlin’.”

He knew the poor girl had it worst of all. The moment he’d summoned the entry portal in Manhattan, Mia felt an agonizing push in her thoughts, as if someone opened an umbrella inside her head. Now she stared at her trembling hands, half-convinced that everything that happened since Quinwood was just a crazy dream.

“What just . . . what . . . ?”

“We got away,” said Peter. “That’s the long and short of it.”

Theo studied their dark surroundings. “Where are we?”

“Hoboken, New Jersey. Watercourse Mall. First place I could think of with a big enough landing strip.” He glanced through the windshield at the Seeker’s smoking hood. “This thing’s done for. We’ll have to paw it from here.”

“How far?” Hannah asked. “Amanda has a broken ankle and I can barely move my legs.”

“No worries, hon. Home is just a few steps past that elevator.” He unbuckled his seat belt and snatched the cane at Theo’s feet. “I haven’t been walking too well myself these days.”

Moaning and grimacing, the Silvers extracted themselves from the van. Zack carried Amanda on his back while Mia kept her leg stabilized. Theo and David bolstered Hannah like crutches.

Peter Pendergen led the hobbling procession, moving at an impressive clip for a man with a lame left leg. He poked the call button with his cane.

“How’d you get crippled?” David asked.

Peter eyed him, stone-faced, as the doors slid open and the group boarded the elevator. He set a course for the sixth and highest floor.

“Had a cerebrovascular mishap a short while back. It’s no big deal.”

“You seem awfully young to be suffering strokes.”

“Well, thank you. I thought the same thing. Unfortunately, these kinds of problems start early for my people. Just comes with the territory.”

“Of being chronokinetic, you mean.”

Peter tossed him a weak shrug. “What can I say, boy? Time always hurts the ones it loves.”

The elevator fell into grim and listless silence.

“It’s just temporary,” Peter attested. “Few months of leg rehab and I’ll be good as new.” He took a bleak gander at Amanda’s ankle. “Guess I won’t be doing my exercises alone.”

Zack kept his dark stare on the floor. Amanda rested her chin on his shoulder and studied Peter through the mirrored doors. The man was tall, well built, and ridiculously good-looking, though he carried his appeal with a preening peacock vanity that unfavorably reminded her of Derek. He’d probably charmed dozens of doe-eyed ingenues out of their tight wool sweaters. For all she knew, he was already scanning Hannah for loose threads.

And why wouldn’t he?
Amanda thought.
It’s the end of the goddamn world. Isn’t it, Peter?

Teetering back from the edge of hysterics, she ran a soft finger near Zack’s neck gash. “We’ll have to disinfect that.”

“We will,” Peter promised. “I got everything back at the house—meds and beds, duds and suds, all an ailing body could ever hope for. You folks went through five kinds of hell to get to me. I’d say you earned some rest.”

He scanned the dark reflections of his new companions, stopping at Amanda. It wasn’t hard to recognize the abject despair in her lovely green eyes.

“Just wait,” he told her.

Amanda looked up at him. “What?”

“Don’t go losing hope just yet. Wait till you hear what I have to say.”

—

The view from the roof was astonishing. The Silvers only had to take a few steps onto the windy lot before they saw all the way across the Hudson, to the city they’d just escaped.

From a river’s distance, Manhattan was a feast for the eyes, a utopian array of artful slopes and novel curves, winding spires and colored spheres. One tower resembled a Space Needle with twenty rings. Another looked glassy to the point of translucence. Tempic tubes connected buildings at their highest levels and every street was peppered with aer traffic. For Theo, the skyline went miles beyond modernism and deep into the realm of high-budget, “holy shit,” has-to-be-CGI sci-fi. Mia couldn’t find the words to describe the sight. It was beautiful enough to bring her to tears.

David eyed Peter curiously as the man took a slow, wincing seat in the middle of a parking space.

“You said your home was just a few steps past the elevator.”

“It is.”

“Meaning we’re about to take another portal.”

“We are,” Peter confessed, to the angry groans of Zack and Hannah. “I know. It hurts. You’ll build up a tolerance. Trust me.”

He tapped the ground with his cane. “Might as well sit and enjoy the fresh air, folks. I need a bit of rest before I open the next door.”

While the others joined him on the concrete, Zack and Amanda stayed conjoined in their tight piggyback hug. The look of desperate solace on her sister’s face prompted Hannah to lean forward and wrap her arms around Theo, her own quasi-non-boyfriend. She traded a dismal glance with Amanda
. It’s never simple for us, is it?

Theo caressed her wrists, his vacant gaze stuck on the distant metropolis. “I can’t believe we were just there a minute ago.”

“I can’t believe we traveled like one of Mia’s notes,” David said. He furrowed his brow at Peter. “Wait. We didn’t jump through time, did we?”

“No. Just space. Time portals are brighter and have a strong vacuum pull. They’re also quite fatal.”

“Fatal?”

“A living being can’t handle a trip like that,” Peter explained. “I’ve seen folks try. It’s never pretty. Me, I’m perfectly happy to stay in the present. Still plenty of places to go.”

Zack eyed him sharply. “If you can jump anywhere—”

“I never said I could.”

“—why did we drive twenty-five hundred miles to get to you? Why didn’t you come get us?”

“There are limits to my talents, Zack. I can’t leap the nation. I can’t teleport someplace I’ve never been. If I had the power, believe me, I would’ve pulled you from Terra Vista before you ever met Rebel or Rander or that Dep with the funny hair.”

“How do you know so much about that?” Hannah asked, in a more accusatory tone than intended. Peter smirked in good nature.

“I’ve had a correspondent among you all along. A pen pal, as you folks call them.” He shook a stern finger at Mia. “I should’ve known better than to trust your self-description. I bought a whole mess of clothes for a fat girl. They’re gonna hang off you like drapes.”

She leered at him in bafflement. “What? When did I write you?”

“Technically, you haven’t. Not yet.”

Mia caught on. “You’ve been getting notes from my future selves.”

“Dozens of them. Nice girls. Very helpful. One of them explained how to rescue Amanda and Theo from DP-9. Another told me where you’d all be today. If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be sitting at home, waiting for your call.”

Theo shook his head, vexed. “I don’t understand. How can you get notes from her? How can she get notes from you?”

“There are only a few dozen people on Earth who can make portals like we do. We’re all linked to each other, for better or worse.”

“Why worse?” Amanda asked.

Peter turned somber. “I doubt any of you had the pleasure of meeting Rebel’s wife, but—”

“Ivy.”

He looked up at David in dull surprise. “Okay. Guess you did meet her.”

“We conversed. What about her?”

“She’s a traveler too. She can’t jump as far as I can, but she’s much more attuned to the portal network. When I sent Mia the note with my new contact number, Ivy must have tapped the link. Snatched a copy from the ether. From there, all Rebel had to do was surp my phone line and take your call in my place.” He aimed a soft glance at Zack. “That’s how they got the jump on you today. I underestimated their cleverness and you guys paid the price for it. I’m truly sorry.”

The cartoonist shrugged with drowsy accord. With all his friends alive and breathing, he didn’t have the strength to hate anyone at the moment, even Rebel.

Peter studied Zack’s spooning embrace with Amanda, then cast a pensive gaze at the eastern horizon.

“We’re in the halo now.”

“The what?”

He swept a slow gesture from the skyline. “The Cataclysm started in Brooklyn and blew five miles in every direction, stretching all the way out here. Over sixty thousand people were caught right outside the blast, in a ring of space we call the Halo of Gotham. Those folks were considered blessed because, aside from some blindness and emotional trauma, they survived just fine. It wasn’t until the pregnant women started having their babies that . . . well, some were born healthy and some weren’t. And some were just born different. Those were the first of my people.”

Peter jostled a loose chunk of concrete with his cane. “There are over a thousand of us in Quarter Hill, in forty-four family lines. We’ve lived in quiet for four generations. Now it’s all coming undone.”

“I am sorry for my part,” David offered. “I should have been more discreet with my lumis.”

“I appreciate it, son, but that wasn’t what I was talking about. And even if it was, Zack’s right. You don’t owe my people a damn thing. It kills me to see what Rebel’s doing. I don’t care if you’re all from another world. You’re blessed and cursed in all the same ways we are. You’re kin.”

A large shadow enveloped them. The group looked up to see a massive metal saucer floating 150 feet in the air, casually drifting north on bright white wedges of aeris. Luminescent letters on the hub informed everyone below that Albee’s Aerstraunt never closes. Ever.

While the Silvers followed the saucer’s progress, Peter clambered back to his feet.

“All right. Enough jawing. I see one lovely woman in need of an ankle brace. The rest of you could use some heavy gauze and epallays.” He put a hand on Mia’s back. “Hold on now.”

Peter closed his eyes and concentrated until a six-foot portal swirled open on the concrete wall. Mia sucked a pained breath.

“You all right?” David asked her.

“She’s fine,” Peter said. “All part of our connection. It’ll hurt less and less each time, just like the jaunts.”

Despite his assurance, nobody lined up for a second teleport. Peter exhaled glumly.

“You folks have traveled a long, hard road. I can’t say your troubles are over, but I can promise you that shelter and aid are right on the other side of that door. Just a few steps more and you can finally rest. I swear it.”

His new acquaintances studied him through busy eyes, caught between their desperation and their well-paved cynicism. The urge to flee was overwhelming, but they were out of steam, out of options, out of money, out of everything. A few steps were all they had left in them.

They rose to their feet and shambled toward the light like the weary souls of the departed. Two by two, limbs locked together, the Silvers disappeared into the shimmering white depths.

Only the orphans stopped at the portal. Mia held her nervous gaze at the glowing white surface.

“I—I can’t. I can’t.”

David wrapped his arm around her. “It’s all right. We’ll walk through it together.”

“I can’t do it. It hurts.”

Peter loomed behind them like a shepherd. “Go on ahead, boy. I got this.”

David eyed him suspiciously. The Irishman gripped his shoulder. “I got off on a bad foot with you, son, and I will make amends. But for now I’m asking you to trust me. Please.”

After a silent consultation with Mia, he squeezed her arm, then stepped through the portal. Peter watched the ripples settle.

“You weren’t kidding about him. He’s a lion, that one.”

She lowered her head. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“This whole thing could have been avoided. I should have . . . 
she
should have warned us not to go in that building.”

He shined a droll grin. “Right. If only she had, you’d all be alive and together now.”

“It’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not,” Peter admitted. “It’s tragic that a girl so lovely can be so cruel to herself. I’ve seen the way you talk about you. I swear, there’s no worse combination than adolescence and time travel.”

Mia peered up at Peter. “Do you get notes from your future selves?”

“Me? Nah. I blocked those fools out years ago. One of me’s enough for everyone.”

“How did you do it?”

“I’ll show you, Mia. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” Peter jerked a thumb at the portal. “That thing over there? That’s your future. You’re just making keyholes now. Soon you’ll be making doors.”

Mia sniffed at the great white breach. To think how easily they could have escaped all their past calamities if she’d been able to rip an exit in the nearest wall. It seemed unbelievable that anyone could do such a thing.

“I still don’t know how we got these powers,” she confessed to Peter. “None of us were born like this.”

“I can’t answer that, darlin’. But it’s on the list of things to find out.”

He scanned the distant city, then put a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “Come on. Before the boy comes back in worry.”

As they moved toward the portal, Peter stroked the back of her head, a warm and fatherly gesture that made her as conflicted as the two messages she’d received about him. All at once, she wanted to hug him and run from him. She trusted him with her life and she feared he’d be the death of her. She had no idea what lay behind any of those feelings. Apparently she wasn’t immune to paradox after all.