The Severson Peregrine was the cheapest aerovan on the market, a squat and boxy eight-seater with all the charm of a cinder block. Like most Severson products, the Peregrine was made with budget parts for budget customers, and it showed. The seats were hard. The engine was weak. The chassis shook at the slightest hint of wind. But it brought the sky to millions of low-income Americans, making it the top-selling van for nine consecutive years.
For Peter Pendergen, fugitive ringleader of the Silvers, there was no better choice of transport. Peregrines were ridiculously easy to acquire on the black market, and had become so damn ubiquitous on the highways and skyways that people barely noticed them. He’d purchased four from a local junker and kept them parked at strategic locations around the brownstone. His companions needed an escape plan that didn’t rely on him, should the worst come to pass.
Except now the worst seemed to be happening to two of his people, and Peter wished to God he had a faster ride.
He pursed his lips at the Manhattan skyline, then turned off the Peregrine’s altitude lock. “Hang on.”
David clutched his seat with a sickly wince as the van lurched upward. It broke away from the traffic of the Staten Island Aerofare and made a diagonal climb toward the heavens. At a thousand feet, Peter coasted to a stop and turned off the lights. The vehicle hovered invisibly above Newark Bay, a lone gray speck in the nightscape.
“Why are you stopping?” David asked. “Zack’s—”
“I know.”
Peter leaned over and grabbed a wood-handled revolver from the glove box. Like the Peregrines, the .38 was registered under his cover identity: one Arthur King of Avalon, New Jersey.
“We’ll never reach him in this thing,” he told David. “Not in time.”
“You’re making a portal.”
“Yup.”
“I thought you needed a flat surface for those.”
“I have one.” Peter checked the bullet chamber, then aimed the .38 at the sun roof. “Brace yourself.”
David shielded his face as a deafening gunshot shattered the glass. He had to shout over the ringing in his ears.
“You couldn’t just open it?”
Peter cleared away the lingering shards. “Doesn’t open in flight mode.”
It didn’t take long for David to see why. The van rocked wildly as Peter climbed through the hatch. He balanced himself with a surfer’s grace, then looked down at David.
“You’ll have to come with me. Once I’m gone, I can’t jump back.”
“I don’t want to shake you off.”
“I’ll be fine. Just hurry.” Peter crouched down and held his hand out to David. “Son, you have to trust me.”
Lack of trust wasn’t the issue, as Peter had proven himself over and over again. He was also a ridiculously easy man to read. He roared his opinions with brass trumpet bluster and wore his moods like a quart of cologne. The only time he became cryptic was when he talked about his past. Mia had tried to pry the story of his life, but all she got were the bullet points. Born in Dublin. Orphaned at nine. Discovered by Gothams at thirteen and welcomed into their clandestine community in Quarter Hill, New York. There Peter went on to become many things—a husband, a father, a writer, a widower, a zealous protector of his people’s secrets, and one of the greatest teleporters the Gothams had ever known.
He was also their greatest traitor.
His decision to help the Silvers came with consequences, more than Peter was willing to admit. He’d become an exile of the clan, disowned by everyone who’d ever loved him, even his son. Yet Peter remained stubbornly convinced that the troubles would blow over.
“My people are just scared,” he’d repeatedly told the Silvers. “The apocalypse has them all turned around. But once they see the light of reason, they’ll end their stupid war. We’ll all go back to Quarter Hill and we’ll work together to stop what’s coming.”
That right there was David’s problem with Peter. He saw everything through rose-colored blinders, as if the universe would bend to his good intentions. Did he really think he could talk sense into his people? He’d spent six months trying to parley with Rebel and Ivy. Nothing had changed. The Gothams still hunted them with mindless obsession. The world was no closer to being saved.
“Please,” Peter said. “We can help Zack and Hannah, but you have to do what I say.”
Frowning, David took his hand and clambered out of the Peregrine. The chassis swayed from side to side, nearly causing both men to tumble off the roof. Once the van fell still, Peter let go of David and took a careful step forward.
“All right. Don’t move. This is the hard part.”
He squinted at Lower Manhattan, where the buildings were flecked with bright lumic trimmings of every color. Somewhere deep in that rainbow jungle was the perfect spot. Peter just had to find it.
A traveler has to know where he’s going, he’d taught Mia. If we can’t see our destination, we have to remember it. Every wall. Every brick. Every last detail.
Grunting, he forged a mental link to a ceiling in the West Village, a grocery store not far from Teke’s. Peter could only assume that it was empty at this hour. Then again, he hadn’t been there in years. For all he knew, the place had become a police station. He had little choice but to take the risk.
Peter waved his hand above the Peregrine. A five-foot-wide portal bloomed across the center of the roof. He lowered himself to his hands and knees and took a quick peek through the surface.
“It’s safe,” he told David. “I’ll go first but you have to be quick. And watch where you jump. You don’t want to touch the edges.”
Peter leapt forward. The portal swallowed him like thick wet paint.
David watched the sluggish ripples, then took a last anxious look at the city. He hoped Peter knew what the hell he was doing. He hoped Hannah and Zack had the good sense to stay alive.
He took a deep breath and jumped into the portal. The Peregrine rocked four times in his absence, then floated as calmly as the moon and the stars.
—
Zack stood rigidly in the shadow of the trasher, his tense gaze flitting between Mercy and her .22. She held it steadily enough to suggest that she knew how to use it. If he tried to rush her, he’d get a bullet in the face. If he tried to run, she’d shoot him in the back. He didn’t relish the thought of dying in this weird and twisty corridor, this Salvadored alley.
He scrutinized Mercy and saw colorful tattoos through her stockings. One of them was just a single word in artsy script letters.
“‘Mercurial,’” he read. “Is that your real name?”
She threw an anxious peek over her shoulder. “I told you to shut up.”
“Who names their kid ‘Mercurial’?”
Mercy stared at him, astonished. “You don’t have a lick of sense, do you?”
“I’m a dead man, anyway. So . . .”
He tucked his hands behind his back and leaned against the trasher. Mercy raised her gun. “Put them back up.”
“Fuck you. My arms are tired.”
“You think I won’t shoot you?”
“I think you’re holding me for Rebel,” Zack said. “He’ll want to know where my friends are. Maybe smack me around. And when he finally sees that I’m not talking, he’ll use that big ugly gun of his and finish me. That sound about right?”
“Not even a little.” Mercy took another look around. “He doesn’t care what you know. He doesn’t care who plugs you. He told me to do it.”
Zack fought to maintain a cool façade. “So why haven’t you?”
“You want me to?”
“No.”
“Then shut the fuck up.”
She swept her hand in a tight circle, filling the alley with an invisible burst of solis. In high doses, the energy hindered all forms of temporal manipulation. Zack’s talents were suppressed for another few minutes, while the space around them became impervious to ghost drills. The last thing Mercy needed was Integrity on her trail.
“Augurs,” she muttered.
“What?”
“My parents are augurs. They named me Mercurial because they knew that’s how I’d be.”
Zack crossed his arms with a bitter scowl. “They should’ve called you Killer.”
“I’ve never killed anyone.”
“No. You just take away their powers and let others do the killing.”
“Fuck you. You think I’m doing this for fun?”
“I have no idea why you’re doing it.”
“Don’t play dumb,” Mercy said. “You know what’s coming.”
Zack nodded darkly. “The end of the world.”
“What? You think I’m lying?”
“No. My best friend’s an augur. He sees it every day.”
“So do my parents,” Mercy said. “They’re both wrecks.”
“They should be. I already watched it happen to my world. Your future’s my past.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“We have our own plan to stop it, you know. One that doesn’t involve murder.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mercy yelled. “Every day you people live is another nail in the coffin.”
“Who told you that? Rebel?”
Mercy looked away uneasily. Zack snorted. “Yeah. Figured.”
“He’s the only augur we have who hasn’t lost his mind.”
“Oh, really? Think again.”
“Shut up.”
“He’s wrong, Mercy. Killing us won’t save the world.”
“I said shut up.” Mercy tightened her grip on her pistol. “Everything was fine till the day you showed up. You and your demon friends.”
“My demon what?”
“You know damn well who I’m talking about.”
Zack blinked at her three times before laughing in astonishment. “The Pelletiers? You think they’re our friends?”
“They pop up and save you whenever you’re in trouble,” said Mercy. “They kill us with tempis and tell us to leave you alone. That woman threatened me, Trillinger. She looked at me with those black shark eyes and she . . .”
Her mouth trembled. “Don’t tell me they’re not on your side.”
Zack could hear the quaver in her voice. This woman shared every bit of Amanda’s fear. When they talked about Esis, they sounded exactly the same.
“Mercy, listen to me. We’re not with them. We hate them just as much as you do.”
“Bullshit!”
“You’re killing innocent people for nothing!”
“Not innocent,” said a gravelly voice behind Zack. “And not nothing.”
A new figure came around the bend, a man in a stretched black T-shirt and army pants. Though Richard “Rebel” Rosen was every bit the hulking figure that Zack remembered, his appearance had changed. His face was thinner. His once-bald head was covered in fuzz. He wore a matching pair of scars on his cheeks, two pocked brown lines that Semerjean had rifted into his skin like war paint.
Most jarring to Zack was the sight of his right hand, a state-of-the-art prosthetic made of rubber, steel, and wire. Seven months ago, during their first violent encounter, Zack had rifted Rebel’s hand to a rotted husk. The temporal damage was irreversible. Permanent.
But if Rebel was angry about it, he hid it very well. He merely greeted Zack with tired eyes, as if they were just passing acquaintances from an old and boring day job.
“Trillinger.”
Try as he might, Zack couldn’t hide his own contempt. This was the man who’d put a bullet in Mia’s chest. He’d bragged to Zack about killing Josh Trillinger—his only brother, the one person in his life who hadn’t died in the apocalypse.
“Fuck you,” Zack said, his voice a cracked whisper. “I’d rift you again if I could.”
“No doubt.”
Another Gotham hurried to Rebel’s side, a chubby-faced man with blond, curly hair. He took a nervous look around the alley, then closed his eyes in concentration. A pair of illusory screens flanked Zack and his enemies, each one projecting a forced-perspective image of an empty corridor. Mink Rosen had been bending light since he was a child, and was widely considered to be one of the clan’s best lumics. The four of them were now completely invisible to prying eyes.
Rebel pulled a long-barreled .44 from his belt holster, then checked the bullets in the chamber. “I told you to kill him.”
Mercy leaned against the wall, sulking. “I found him. I kept him here. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to mettle up.” He gestured at Zack. “They won’t all be as easy as this one.”
Zack was too busy thinking to listen. He figured Mercy couldn’t use her powers again without disrupting the lumic’s illusions. If he could just buy time until her solis wore off, he might have a fighting chance.
He cleared his throat. “Since you’re here, Rebel—”
“Won’t work.”
“What?”
“Stalling,” Rebel said. “I see the future. I know your plans before you do.”
Ivy hailed him through his transmitter. “Careful. You have company.”
Rebel pressed his earpiece. “Who?”
“Peter. He’s nearby.”
Cursing, Rebel raised his revolver and scanned the upper reaches of the alley. His wife was a traveler like Peter. She could feel his portals from a mile away.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Ivy said. “He’s covering his tracks. He must know I’m here too.”
She was parked a block away in a floating black aerovan, her dark eyes fixed on the computer in her lap. She had camera drones all over the West Village Faith Mall, giving her a perfect view of Hannah and Jonathan as they walked the tempic corridors. Her brother and niece would take care of them soon enough. She was more worried about Rebel.
“Just kill the breacher and get out of there,” she told him. “We’ll save Peter for another day.”
Zack’s heart hammered as Rebel raised his weapon again. He struggled to speak with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Four years from now, Rebel, when the end finally comes, you’ll see that this all was for nothing. You didn’t save the world. You just murdered a whole bunch of innocents.”
Rebel looked at him with calm, steady eyes. “You think you know what’s going on. You don’t. But there’s no point arguing.”
Mink and Mercy flinched as Rebel aimed his .44 at Zack’s head.
“It’s time for you to go home.”
His head snapped back in sudden alarm. His foresight had many new things to say about the immediate future, none of them good.
Rebel swung his revolver to the left, then the right, then back again. The lumic screens that hid them also kept them blind to the outside world.
Mink eyed Rebel quizzically. A floating word appeared in front of his mouth like a subtitle. PELLETIERS?
Rebel shook his head. “Pendergen.”
Bizarrely, his senses were telling him that Peter was coming from the east and the west. By the time he realized that they were nothing more than image ghosts, the real Peter jumped through a portal. He grabbed Mercy from behind and pressed his .38 to her temple. Her pistol fell to the ground.
Rebel turned but—
“Stop.”
—froze a half second before he was told to.
“One more move and I shoot her,” Peter told him. “Look ahead. You know I’m not bluffing.”
Rebel’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Killing your own now, you piece of shit?”
“Haven’t killed her yet.” Peter took a quick peek at Zack. “You all right?”
“I’m breathing.” He looked to Mercy’s fallen gun. “Should I . . .”
“No. Just stay where you are. And let’s take it on faith that if I see one flash of lumis or feel a hint of Ivy’s portals, I’ll put a hole in our girl here.” He breathed a whisper through Mercy’s hair. “I’m truly sorry, love.”
Black mascara tears streamed down her face. “Go to hell.”
Rebel raised his hands slowly, his finger still on the trigger. With every inch, he scanned the future for a ricochet path to Peter’s skull.
“Uh, uh, uh,” said Peter. “No bank shots either. Drop the gun.”
Rebel pointed his weapon at Zack again. “I don’t think so.”
“Goddamn it, Rebel.”
“I’m going to count to three . . .”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“One . . .”
“You need Mercy more than I need Zack!”
Rebel paused, stymied. Sadly, Peter was right. There were only two solics in the clan, and one of them was a child. Without Mercy, Rebel had no hope of killing the Pelletiers.
Grudgingly, he lowered his weapon. Peter glared at him. “I said put it on the ground.”
Rebel dropped the gun but kept his foot against it. There was a new wrinkle coming in eighty-five seconds, a final chance to turn the tables. All he had to do was buy the time.
He shifted his gaze between the two illusive screens. “Nice trick you pulled. Guess the Dormer boy’s around here somewhere.”
“Nowhere close,” Peter told Rebel. “I don’t put children in harm’s way.”
“You’re putting all children in harm’s way! How can you even look at yourself?”
“How can you?” Zack yelled. “You’re murdering people for no reason!”
Peter flashed his palm at Zack. “Let me handle this. And you keep those screens steady, Mink. We don’t want the locals seeing our business.”
Mink refocused his thoughts until the ghosted blinds stopped rippling.
Rebel sneered at Peter. “Pathetic. Still talking like you’re one of us.”
“I am one of you.” Peter’s expression darkened. He lowered his head. “I heard about your sons. You have my sincere condolences. Both of you.”
Ivy choked back a cry in the aerovan. Rebel gritted his teeth. Two weeks ago, their twins had been born dead, discolored, as if someone had coated their bodies in metallic paint. Though the doctors were mystified, every Gotham in the village knew what happened. The deaths were a message from the Pelletiers, a vicious warning to leave the Silvers and Golds alone.
Rebel brushed his tears with a finger. “Fuck you.”
“Those people are monsters,” Peter said. “We have nothing to do with them.”
“You have everything to do with them! You’re guarding their pets!”
Zack clenched his fists. “We are not their pets, you goddamn—”
“Zack, shut up.” Peter huffed a loud sigh. “Look, no one’s gonna change any minds tonight. Let’s just call it a draw. It’s the only way we’re all walking out of here.”
Rebel took another peek at the future. Thirty seconds.
“You’re still talking to someone in the clan,” he mused. “They’re feeding you information. Who is it? Olga? Prudent?”
“Look—”
“Can’t possibly be Liam,” Rebel said. “He’s petitioned the elders to renounce his name. He wants to join my crew so he can bring you to justice himself. That’s what your son thinks of you.”
Mercy suddenly caught an anomaly in her vision, a slightly skewed perspective between the trasher and the wall. Zack followed her gaze and saw exactly what she was looking at. Between the two illusive screens was a third one.
David . . .
Mercy turned to Rebel and opened her mouth. Zack drowned her out with a chuckle aimed at Mink.
“Hey, Harpo. You’re new to this unit.”
Peter glared at him. “Zack . . .”
“Did Rebel tell you what happened to his other goons? Is that why you’re so nervous?”
“Zack, I told you to be quiet.”
Mercy’s voice was barely a whisper. “Dormer. He’s here.”
Rebel bent his knees in readiness. Three . . . two . . . one . . .
Suddenly a muscular man popped through one of Mink’s screens, a bouncer from Teke’s Humble Tavern. The moment he stepped through the lumis, five people abruptly turned visible in front of him. Only Rebel knew he was coming.
Everything that happened over the next two seconds was pure reflex. Peter turned his gun toward the bouncer. Rebel grabbed his revolver and aimed it at Peter. David emerged from behind his cover. Mink flinched, then raised a glowing hand at him. Mercy broke free of Peter’s grip and reached for the .22 on the ground, just as Zack made a dive for it.
And then chaos.
Between the clamorous gunshot and the multiple flashes of lumis, Zack had no idea what was happening. He opened his eyes in a twitching squint and caught a fleeting glimpse of someone—something—attacking Rebel. The creature was white from head to toe and moved so fast that he was practically a blur.
By the time Zack’s vision fully returned, the stranger was gone. Rebel, Mink, and Mercy lay crumpled on the concrete, their temples dripping with blood, their chests heaving with labored breaths.
Zack stumbled forward. “What just . . . ?”
A hand gripped his shoulder. “Zack? Is that you?”
He spun around to find David in awful condition. His face was drenched in tears. The whites of his eyes were marred with dark red splotches.
Zack held him by the arms. “You okay?”
“I’m not sure. I was hit. I can’t see a thing. What happened?”
Zack took another look at the three fallen Gothams. “I don’t know. Someone knocked them out.”
“Who, Peter?”
“No idea.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m here.”
Peter stood ten feet behind them, looking no worse than he had before the scuffle. Zack eyed him up and down. “What the hell just happened?”
“God only knows.” Peter looked to the street exit. “We have to go.”
Zack turned his head and saw the bouncer writhing on his back, clutching his chest with bloody fingers.
“He’s hurt.”
“Who’s hurt?” asked David.
“That bouncer. He . . .” Zack saw a thin wisp of smoke drifting up from Peter’s .38. “You shot him.”
“He’ll live.”
“He was innocent.”
“He’ll live,” Peter insisted. “The hospitals have revivers. They’ll reverse his wounds like they never happened.”
He holstered his gun, then opened a portal on the side of the trasher. “Come on.”
Zack led David by the arm, his mind struggling to fill the blank spaces. Someone had saved them in the nick of time. Someone fast, faster even than—
“—Hannah.” Zack spun around to face Peter. “She’s still out there. We have to—”
“We will. Come on.”
Peter ushered him and David through the portal, then took a final scan of the alley. Rebel and Ivy weren’t entirely fools. They’d likely sent swifters after Hannah, which meant it was already too late to help her. She’d have to get herself out of this mess. Her and her new friend.