Earlier that morning, as Peter was teleporting home to Brooklyn, his phone lit up with a single-word text message. Ivy knew that her fellow traveler, the love of her youth, wouldn’t need a full address to find her. One name was all it took to light a path of torches across the face of New York, to the site of their final battle.
Atropos.
The building stood thirty miles north of the city, in a small and wealthy suburb on the Westchester side of the Hudson. The village had been known as North Tarrytown until 1996, when the name was changed to Sleepy Hollow in honor of the famous Washington Irving story that took place there. By strange coincidence, the same thing had happened on the Silvers’ native world in the exact same year. Sometimes the two Earths had moved in perfect rhythm with each other, as if their histories had never split.
Peter broke away from the Pocantico Skyway and flew the Peregrine toward the river. No one in the van had spoken for minutes, not since Mia finished sharing the words and “wisdom” of her future selves. Of a hundred and eighty-six notes, only nine offered intel about the trials ahead of them. The rest were either too vague, too irrelevant, or too noxious to read aloud.
The Peregrine stopped a hundred feet above the edge of Sleepy Hollow. Peter stared out the windshield at the structure in the distance.
“There it is,” he said.
His passengers leaned forward and studied their destination, a tortoiseshell complex of glass and steel that looked way too large to be a business office. Hannah figured it was a megamall. Mia assumed it was a stadium of some sort. Only Amanda guessed its true nature from its numerous launching pads. They graced the upper dome like a crown of roses.
“It’s an aerport.”
Peter nodded. “Atropos National.”
Jonathan scanned the empty sky. There were no flights departing or arriving, no cars in the parking lot. Not even the hints of a skeleton crew.
“Dead as hell,” he noted. “Is it closed for Easter?”
“Closed for good,” Peter said. “Died last year in the cutbacks.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Yeah. Ivy and I used to come here in our younger days, when it was still under construction. At night, we had the whole place to ourselves. It was like a playground for teleporters.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes at him. Peter was waxing nostalgic about the woman who may have already slit Zack’s throat. “We’re wasting time. What’s the plan?”
“The plan is we go in.”
David eyed him skeptically. “No portals. No tunnels. Just walk right in through the front door.”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” Mia echoed.
The others turned to look at her. She raised a paper scrap in her fingers, the first of nine pertinent notes.
It doesn’t matter which way you go in. The Gothams are prepared for every choice you make. They’re very, very ready for you.
Peter gestured at the main entrance, the only one that wasn’t boarded up with plywood. “She’s right. Rebel’s an augur. He’ll see us coming no matter what we do.”
“Then what’s to stop him from blowing us out of the sky right now?” Jonathan asked.
“Bigger fish.”
“What?”
David understood. “Rebel’s not just after us. He wants Azral and Esis too. He’s laying a trap for all of us.”
Hannah frowned at him. “The Pelletiers got us into this mess. What makes you think they’ll show up now?”
“It’s not what I think. It’s what Rebel and Ivy think.”
“I don’t care,” Amanda said. “Let them come. Let them kill each other. I just want Zack.”
“We’ll get him,” Peter assured her. “But he’s still a hostage, so we have to tread carefully. If there’s talking to be done, you let me do it. And if it comes down to fighting . . .”
Amanda caught his edgy look. She stared down miserably at her hands. She’d been stressing nonstop about Future Mia’s warning, the one that called her out by name:
Watch Amanda closely. She’s an atom bomb right now, and the Gothams know just how to set her off.
Peter sighed at the windshield, then shifted the Peregrine back into gear.
“Just stay alert,” he told everyone. “This is gonna get messy.”
—
Walking into Atropos was like stepping into the throat of a dying dragon. The glass dome turned the entire structure into a hothouse, an unfortunate design choice that had forced the administrators to run the air conditioners eleven months out of the year. Now the fan blades slept beneath a blanket of dust, and the air was thick with heat and mildew. Mia nearly gagged at the fetid taste in her mouth.
You signed up for this, she reminded herself. You don’t get to complain now.
The entry was lined with bresin sheets and wooden scaffolding, a path of human cobwebs that only grew narrower. Peter asked David to scan the recent past for traps. The boy obliged him with a courteous nod, as if he hadn’t been doing that all along.
After sixty feet, the corridor opened up to a huge and dusty mezzanine. The left and right pathways were sealed off with plywood barriers. The only way forward was to go down a dormant escalator, into the shadowy lower concourse.
David squinted suspiciously at the wooden obstructions. “These are less than a day old.”
“They’re leading us like cattle,” Amanda said. “We should make our own path.”
Peter shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re leading us to them,” he replied. “That’s just where Zack will be.”
He clutched David’s arm and jerked his head at the escalator. “Scan the area below. Just your hindsight. Don’t go too far.” He turned to the sisters. “Watch his back.”
Mia wandered toward a wall mural, a painting of three ancient Greek women toiling on a skein of yarn. Their faces were lovely in a cold, austere way. They were just how Mia imagined Esis to look.
Peter moved behind her and studied the image. “The old governor of New York was a nut for Greek mythology. When he approved the construction of three aerports in Westchester, his only demand was that they be named after the Moirae. You know who they are?”
Mia nodded. “The goddess sisters of Fate.”
“That’s right. Clotho weaves the threads. Lachesis measures the length of each person’s life. And Atropos—”
“—does the cutting,” Mia finished.
Peter smiled. “You never fail to impress, darling.”
“Then why do you keep things from me?”
“What?”
She retrieved a slip of a paper from her pocket and held it up to him. He plucked it from her fingers.
Merlin McGee’s real name is Michael Pendergen. There’s a lot Peter’s not telling you.
Scowling, he crumpled up the message. Mia kept her stony gaze on the Fates. “You said he was one of your people. You never told us he was family. What is he, your brother?”
Peter sighed over her head. “Not by blood. We’re just two Irish street rats who grew up together. When the clan took us in, we chose a new name for ourselves, a variation on Pendragon.” He snorted with dark humor. “We do love the Arthurian handles.”
Mia wasn’t even remotely amused. “So Pendergen isn’t even your real name.”
“It’s the realest name I ever had.”
“You’ve had seven months to let us get to know you.”
“You do know me,” Peter insisted. “I may keep things close to the vest, but I never lied to you and I never will.”
He dropped his hands on her shoulders, his eyes fixed on the long shears of Atropos. “We’re travelers, sweetheart. You and I are linked. One of these days, when you’re strong enough, you’ll look inside my head and see exactly what you mean to me.”
Mia’s expression softened. She supposed she was being a hypocrite. Seven months together and she never told him that her father’s name was Peter.
“We found something,” Amanda called.
Peter and Mia joined the others at the rail of the mezzanine. David flicked his hand at the shadows down below. A circle of light appeared and formed a twenty-foot ring around the base of the escalator.
“There’s some kind of machine down there,” David said. “I don’t know what it does but they went out of their way to hide it.”
Peter clenched his fists. “Son of a bitch.”
“What is it?” Jonathan asked.
“A tempic barrier.”
Amanda’s brow wrinkled. “How is that a problem? It’s flat on the floor. It’s not even on.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Peter said. “When you remove all the safety measures, the thing becomes a guillotine. They could’ve cut us all off at the ankles.”
Hannah reeled at the thought of it. “Assholes.”
“And cowards,” David added. “I expected more from Rebel.”
“So did I,” said Peter. He raised his voice at the ceiling. “We didn’t come here looking for a fight! We just want our friend back. No one has to die today. Talk to us.”
A hundred yards away, in a boarded-up restaurant on the sunny side of the concourse, Rebel and Ivy listened to Peter through wireless speakers. They could have easily replied through the public address system, but there was no point. The foot trap was just a friendly hello. Their full response was coming.
—
The command center had once been a four-star kitchen. But the juves were long gone, the refrigerators had been resold, and there was nothing but grime where the ovens used to be. Only the stainless-steel countertops remained, all of them loaded with military-grade computer equipment. Ivy had stolen the devices from a DP-8 armory, along with some weapons and tactical armor. All it took was a pushcart and a portal to rob the Deps of their nicest toys.
Gemma worked her surveillance console from a bar stool, her field armor painstakingly altered to fit her tiny frame. She zoomed in on Amanda and watched with amusement as her tempic fists made short work of Rebel’s tempic barrier.
“Smashy smashy,” Gemma joked. “The redhead sure loves to break things.”
Jinn Godden glowered at her from the neighboring workstation. “You said she’s their weak link.”
“She is. Patience, girl.”
“You know how zizzy you sound when you call me that? I’m twice your age.”
“You know how stupid you sound when you use words like ‘zizzy’?”
“Quiet,” said Deven Sunder, the swifter known as Bug. “Both of you.”
He was the only one in the room who looked natural in Dep armor. Between his feathered black hair and his neatly trimmed beard, he might have passed for one of the Bureau’s top directors. Only the fear in his eyes revealed how truly out of his element he was.
Bug looked at his twin sister. “I don’t get why you’re toying with these people. You have the firepower. You could kill them right now.”
Ivy leaned against a pantry door, her hand clasping Rebel’s. Like the rest of their crew, the two of them had come dressed for war. If everything went according to plan, they wouldn’t see a moment of combat. And if things went south . . . well, Rebel and Ivy had prepared for that, too. They’d recorded detailed instructions for their chosen successors. They’d made love an hour ago like it was their very last time.
“We only have one chance to hit the Pelletiers,” Ivy told Bug. “We’re not going to waste it.”
“You don’t even know they’ll be here.”
“They’ll be here,” Rebel said. “They always come for the Silvers.”
Gemma smiled at her father’s smoldering indignation. Bug couldn’t stand playing second fiddle to his brother-in-law, this ill-bred Jew from the lower houses. But what could he do? Rebel was the clan’s big hero, the one who’d thrashed Esis within an inch of her life and exposed the limits of the Pelletiers’ power. They weren’t all-seeing and they weren’t invulnerable. Now they had four solic cannons, three grenade launchers, and six mounted machine guns waiting for them in the concourse. Should those fail, Rebel had installed enough explosive charges to bring half of Atropos down on their heads. The demons weren’t getting away this time, and neither were their pets.
Except there was already one of them who got away in advance.
“Where the hell is Maranan?” Rebel asked. “Makes no sense for them to come without their augur.”
“Maybe he’s guiding them by radio,” Jinn offered.
Rebel shook his head. “Can’t see the future through someone else’s eyes.”
“They don’t need him,” Gemma said. “The Pelletiers are giving them all the guidance they . . .”
Her eyes rolled back. She shuddered on her seat. Though Gemma’s twitching spells never failed to unnerve her father, Rebel and Ivy welcomed them. That meant her older self was coming back from the future with fresh new intel.
Her convulsions stopped. Ivy held her by the shoulders. “You okay, sweetie? What did you see?”
Rebel smiled at the girl’s savage grin. “The glass,” he guessed.
“The glass,” Gemma confirmed. “They’re about to lose their wonder boy.”
—
David proceeded carefully down a bulb-lit corridor, a rickety enclosure of plywood, tape, and nails. The concourse was teeming with these ramshackle constructions. There was no way across except through the maze. A quick scan of the past revealed its hasty creation: dozens of Gothams working tirelessly over the last forty-eight hours. While tempics hammered and swifters sawed, a team of lumics filled the upper dome with ghostly storm clouds. They were deliberately hiding something far above, as if Rebel had looked to the future and saw David looking back.
Clever, thought David. He’s not a complete idiot.
Peter reached the corner and watched him nervously. “Don’t stray too far, son.”
David never failed to bristle whenever Peter called him “son.” It was not an affectionate endearment, like the “sweetheart”s and “darling”s he lavished on Mia. It was just a vain man’s way of reminding David who was in charge.
He tapped his fist against the roof boards. “We need Amanda to open up the ceiling.”
Peter shook his head. “There could be trap triggers.”
“Actually, I think the danger’s higher.”
“I’d rather not chance it.”
David spun to face him, his face mottled with sweat. “Would you just listen to me for once?”
Amanda turned the corner and splintered the roof with a tempic punch. If recent mistakes had taught her anything, it was to always heed David’s warnings. Always.
The Gothams followed their progress on the thermal scanner. While the sisters and Mia were easy to tell apart by silhouette, the men were all six feet tall and athletically built. Ivy could see one of them standing on the digital “X” that Gemma had marked for the glass trap. She squinted at his orange frame. “Is that Dormer?”
Gemma nodded her head, grinning. “Yeah. Just wait.”
Rebel’s eyes hardened at the image of David. The boy had killed one of his soldiers last year, and then threatened Ivy at gunpoint while she was still pregnant. The kid had earned his own special death.
“Drop it,” he ordered Jinn.
“But the others aren’t in range.”
“I don’t care. Do it. And get ready.”
Jinn shifted into high speed, pressed a button on her console, and then gripped her weapon triggers. She had six gun turrets and five rocket cannons at her command, plus a lightning-fast reaction time. If the Pelletiers were coming to save David, they were in for a rude awakening.
A hundred small putty charges exploded on the roof of the aerport, each one strong enough to take out a support bolt. The noise was just a rumble to the Silvers down below. Nobody heard it in the din of Peter’s and Amanda’s shouting.
“Goddamn it! I told you to follow my lead!”
“You’re not leading!” Amanda yelled. “They are!”
“You want to see Zack again?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then stop acting rashly and start—”
“Look out!”
Everyone turned to Jonathan, whose wide eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. Mia craned her neck and gasped.
A hexagonal pane of glass had broken off from the dome: twelve feet wide and three inches thick. The explosions that freed it had filed away its edges, leaving sharp, jagged protrusions all around it.
By the time Hannah saw it, it was already halfway down to the concourse. She jumped into blueshift, just as Amanda threw a tempic canopy over everyone around her.
Only Peter caught her mistake. The glass wasn’t coming at them. It was falling on the one person outside the shield.
“David!”
Hannah made a fevered dash for him but it was already too late. The glass fell edge-first into David’s shoulder blade and then kept on going. Mia screamed in horror, her hands pressed over her mouth. The whole thing played like a slow-motion nightmare. And yet something . . .
“What?”
Something wasn’t right. It took three seconds for everyone to realize that David was still alive and standing. The glass had cut right through him, yet he hadn’t shed a drop of blood.
Hannah de-shifted in time to watch the last of the pane disappear. It vanished through the floor as if it was nothing but painted air.
While David stood in blinking stupor, the sisters, Mia, and Peter all slowly turned around.
Jonathan crouched motionless behind him, his arm raised high, his face red and sweaty. A trickle of blood dribbled out of his nose.
“Holy shit,” he said through panting breaths. “It worked.”
—
The Gothams in the kitchen fell silent. None of them had expected the guitarist to be much of a threat. In fact, they were amazed he still existed. Droppers were rare and tragic beings, children doomed by fate to die falling through the earth. Now here was a full-grown one, walking around without a tempic catchnet, wielding his curse like a superhero.
Ivy screamed and swept a keyboard off a countertop. The Pelletiers would never show up if their minions kept saving themselves.
Gemma shook her head, baffled. “That’s not the way it happened. That’s not what I saw.”
“Just use the damn turrets already,” Bug urged his sister. “The Pelletiers obviously aren’t coming!”
Ivy grabbed Rebel by the shoulders, her eyes wide and frantic. “He’s wrong, Richard. They’re here. They’re already here and they’re toying with us. All of them!”
“Honey—”
She looked up at the ceiling, hang-jawed. “All of them.”
“Ivy, wait.”
She lunged into a portal and emerged two floors above, in a glass-domed terrace that could comfortably seat fifty. In better times, the place had been a scenic dining deck. Now every inch of window was covered by wooden panels. The main light in the room came from six floor lamps around the perimeter. A quartet of solic generators added a sickly blue glow to the center.
Mink Rosen flinched at Ivy’s sudden entrance. He rose up from his chair and waved his hand. Radiant blue letters materialized in front of his chest.
WHAT’S HAPPENING? ARE THEY DEAD?
Ivy brushed past him, her eyes fixed on their prisoner. Zack sat on a folding chair between the solic generators, his hands shackled to the floor by long metal chains.
“This was a setup!” Ivy yelled. “You’ve been working with them all along!”
Zack stared at her, speechless. He’d been a hostage of the Gothams for two and a half days, an experience that served as a polar contrast to his time with the Pelletiers. Here, the seconds moved with fast-ticking fury. He rarely had a moment alone to think. His body churned with needs and discomforts, and he didn’t have to worry about silly things like eternity. From the way the winds were blowing, he figured the rest of his life could be measured in minutes.
He forced an insolent sneer at Ivy, his lip still swollen from her last tantrum. Just as he’d learned that it was Azral, not Esis, who was the archvillain of the Pelletiers, it was Ivy, not Rebel, who was the true fanatic of the Gothams.
“‘Working with them . . .’” Zack repeated. “If you mean who I think you mean—”
“You know exactly who I mean.”
“Jesus.” He let out a jagged laugh. “You get crazier by the hour.”
Mercy Lee winced from the back of the room. She didn’t have to be an augur to know that Zack was in for another fat lip. The only mystery was why he insisted on provoking an unhinged woman.
Ivy grabbed his collar. “Don’t play games with me. Why did they send you to us? What are they planning?”
“I know therapy may seem like a big step, but with the right doctor—”
She slapped him across the face, then crouched at his side. “We only kept you alive to give the augur hope, but Theo’s not here. Peter brought the baby traveler but he didn’t bring the augur. Does that make sense to you?”
Try as he might, Zack couldn’t hide his anguish. He’d guessed from all the Gothams’ chatter that his friends had come to save him. They had no idea what they were walking into.
Ivy pulled her .22 pistol from her belt and ran the barrel down Zack’s cheek. “I won’t lie, Trillinger. There’s nothing you can say that’ll stop me from killing you. But if you tell me what Azral’s planning—”
“I don’t know what he’s planning!”
“—I can end you quickly. Painlessly. I’ll even extend the courtesy to your friends.”
Zack dipped his head, scowling. “You won’t. You’re just as bad as them.”
“As bad as your friends?”
“As bad as the Pelletiers!”
Mercy palmed her face. “For God’s sake, Trillinger.”
The elevator door opened. The eighth and final member of Rebel’s team stepped onto the terrace. All Zack could see was his scrawny frame, his messy mop of sandy brown hair. He was a teenager, a stranger to Zack. So then why did he look familiar?
Ivy lowered her pistol. Her expression became soft again. “Honey, what are you doing? I told you to stay downstairs.”
Unlike the others, the kid wasn’t fully armored. He wore a tactical vest over a T-shirt and jeans. As he moved in closer, Zack noticed his gloves—long and thin and colored to match his skin tone. The kid clearly wasn’t wearing them for protection. He was hiding something.
He jerked a nervous shrug. “I heard shouting. I just wanted to help.”
“You will, Liam. I promise.”
“Liam,” Zack echoed. “Shit. Now I know where I’ve seen you. Your dad carries a photo of you in his wallet.”
Liam Pendergen crossed in front of him, livid. Now that he was fully lit, Zack could see his resemblance to Peter. They had the same wide nose, the same sharp blue eyes. But where Peter’s face was all hard lines and angles, Liam’s features were soft and angelic. Only the rage in his eyes belied his innocence.
“He’s not my dad. He stopped being that the minute he turned traitor.”
Zack shook his head. “Liam, listen to me. You don’t know the whole—”
“Save your breath,” Ivy said. “He’s too smart for your lies.”
She looked to Mercy. “Take him downstairs. Keep him safe.”
Mercy took Liam by the arm and walked him to the elevator. “Come on, kid.”
They disappeared into the elevator together. Zack glared at Ivy. “You poisoned him against Peter.”
“Peter poisoned him against Peter. He abandoned his one and only son for a group of alien strangers. How would you feel?”
“You know damn well why he did it.”
“Oh, I know all about his delusions.”
Zack laughed. “His delusions?”
“All this time, and you still think you’re the good guys.”
“Compared to you, we’re the goddamn Justice League.”
Ivy pressed the gun against his face, grinding his teeth through his cheek. “Stop lying and tell me what Azral and Esis are up to.” She cocked her pistol. “You’re a visual man. Try to imagine what will happen if you shoot your mouth off again.”
Zack’s heart hammered. “I don’t know what they’re planning!”
“Yes you do!”
“I hate them as much as you do!”
“Really? Did they kill your children? Did they murder your babies in the womb?”
“Ivy.”
She turned around and saw Rebel at the top of the stairwell. She stumbled toward him. “We have no reason to keep him alive!”
“Yes we do.” Rebel approached her and pulled her into his arms. “He’s got one more role to play. Just stick to the plan.”
Ivy buried her face in his shoulder. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Yes, you can. You’re the strongest person I know. Don’t lose hope, angel. This is it.”
Rebel pressed his forehead to hers, his voice choked with emotion. “This is the day we save everyone.”
Zack swallowed a scream, torn between his disgust and his pity for these sad fools. He could remember a time, a thousand years ago, when he hugged Amanda in the basement of a Brooklyn brownstone and assured her in similar fashion that everything would be okay. What an idiot he’d been. What a bunch of suckers they all were—the Gothams, the breachers, all the hapless little victims of the Pelletiers. They were all going to war here in Atropos, while the real villains watched them and smiled.