As evening fell on Old Tappan, a portal opened on the wall of the Aerie. Peter and Liam returned to the apartment with bottled drinks and a stack of take-out boxes from Italian Eddie’s Speedery.
Liam looked at the seven orphans in the room and saw the same cringing expression. “What’s the matter? You don’t like cheese pies?”
“We do,” Theo said.
“We did,” Hannah amended.
One of the more baffling aspects of this parallel culture was its perversion of the American pizza. Instead of mozzarella, they were baked with a colorless goo that looked like snot and tasted like old mayonnaise. The crust had the appearance, flavor, and consistency of saltines. Even more disturbing were the toppings, a mindboggling selection that included boiled beef, fried leeks, mashed potatoes, and apples. Hannah couldn’t even begin to fathom the historical deviations that led a nation to accept apples on its pizza.
Peter dropped the boxes on the coffee table. “Sorry, guys. It was the only place without a line.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Zack grumbled.
“You of all people should be grateful for real food.” He passed a bag of bell peppers to David. “Here. You can juve them if they’re not fresh enough.”
“They’re fine,” David listlessly replied. No one had to guess why he was sullen today, or why Mia remained tucked away in her closet refuge. They both got testy whenever anyone tried to talk to them about it.
Amanda opened the door to the apartment’s half bathroom, where their belligerent captive had been stashed for the evening. “I suppose I can’t convince you to eat something.”
Rebel glared at her from his wheelchair. “You should have shot yourself when you had the chance.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
She closed the door again. Jonathan shot a wrathful look at Peter. “Just give me the word.”
“No.”
“He’s gonna die anyway.”
“Just eat, all right?”
The orphans and Pendergens sat around the coffee table, dining in silence as they stared down at their plates.
Heath studied Liam’s hands with idle fascination. “Why does he wear gloves?” he asked Jonathan.
“I told you—”
“Why do you wear gloves?” he asked Liam.
The boy recoiled as if he’d been slapped. He looked at his father in hot surprise. “You didn’t tell them?”
Peter shook his head. “I was leaving the choice to you.”
Liam put down his plate and fidgeted with his gloves. He started and stopped himself three times before speaking.
“I’m a thermic,” he said. “I burn things. When I was two years old, I . . . uh, I had an accident with my power. A bad one. If you saw my scars, you’d probably never eat again.”
“That’s not true,” Peter said.
“It’s true enough.”
Rebel chuckled from behind the bathroom door. “It’s not the worst part of the story,” he teased. “Go on, kid. Tell ’em.”
“Shut up!”
“Tell him what it did to your mom.”
Peter held back Liam, while Hannah and Zack struggled to keep Jonathan in his chair. Amidst all the clamor, Mia finally joined the others in the living room. She grabbed a small device from an end table and then disappeared into Rebel’s bathroom.
One by one, her companions stopped what they were doing and listened to the sharp, buzzing sound coming from behind the wooden door.
“What’s happening?” asked Hannah.
Eight seconds after she entered, Mia re-emerged. Though her eyes were red and cracked with grief, her expression was as hard as stone. She put Peter’s stun chaser back where she found it, sat down at the coffee table, and took a drippy slice of cheese pie for herself.
“He’ll be quiet for a while,” she matter-of-factly informed the others. Her heavy eyes lingered on Liam. “Sorry about your mom.”
—
Rebel woke up two hours later, his head full of cobwebs, his whole body throbbing with pain. He scanned his surroundings with bleary eyes and saw that he was back in the living room. His captors had wheeled him into a circle of seats. Everywhere he looked, a Silver or Gold looked back at him.
Zack faced him from the other side of the coffee table, his hands folded serenely in his lap. “Hello, Rebel. I think it’s time we talked.”
With the exception of Heath, who was fiddling with a lumic puzzle sphere, the breachers made a point of maintaining eye contact with Rebel. He shot a dirty look at each and every one of them.
“No Pendergens,” he noted. He chuckled at Theo. “This is your doing.”
“It is,” Theo admitted.
“Hide the two people I have history with. Face me as a group. Stay calm. Stay focused. Let Trillinger do the talking. Is that the big plan?”
“More or less,” said Zack. “Except we’re hoping you’ll do most of the talking.”
“Me?” Rebel laughed. “That’s not gonna get me to change my mind.”
“Then change ours,” Amanda challenged. “Convince us why we have to die.”
Rebel lost his smile. There was a cold new wind blowing in from the future, an ominous hint of grief to come. He couldn’t see the shape of it. All he knew was that he’d be weeping like a child before this was over.
“I’m not playing your bullshit game.”
“What game?” David asked him. “We just want to know your reasoning.”
Hannah nodded. “You’ve shot half the people in this room. Killed six of our kind, including Zack’s brother.”
“And for what?” said Zack. “I’ve been asking you the same question for the last three days, and you won’t answer me.”
“Fuck you.”
“What makes you think that killing us will save the world?”
Rebel heard harsh whispering in the kitchen. Of course Peter and Liam would be hiding in earshot. They wouldn’t want to miss a word.
“What’s the matter, Pendergen? Too scared to face me yourself?”
“Answer the question,” Mia said.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re the one who zapped me.”
“And you’re the one who put a bullet in my chest. I almost died last year.”
“I wish you had.”
“Tell me why.”
“You goddamn know why!”
“You think we’re the death of this world.”
“I know you are.”
“How?” Theo threw his hands up. “You’re an augur, just like me. You must have seen something to make you so sure. What was it?”
“Why can’t you just tell us?” Zack asked.
Rebel wriggled in his chair. The grief was getting ever closer. Stay strong, his inner Ivy told him. Don’t you dare let them break you.
“I’ll answer your question,” he promised. He jerked his head at Jonathan. “If he answers one first.”
Jonathan sat up in his easy chair, suspicious. “If you’re just trying to piss me off—”
“Where were you when Semerjean was running around yesterday?”
A cold, hard silence overtook the living room. Heath looked up from his puzzle sphere, baffled.
Jonathan squinted at Rebel. “What the hell are you getting at?”
“You’re the only one on the ship who didn’t run into him. I find that mighty interesting.”
Hannah scoffed. “You’re an idiot.”
“You’re also wrong,” said a voice from the kitchen. Liam stood in the doorway and eyed Rebel sternly. “I didn’t see one bit of this Semerjean. Maybe I’m the man beneath the tempis.”
Rebel laughed. “You’re no man at all.”
“Neither are you,” Liam said. “The more you stall, the more I think you made up this whole tale about the breachers.”
“Watch it now.”
“Your wife, your cousins, your unborn sons. All dead because of your lie.”
“It’s no lie!”
“Then tell us,” Theo yelled. “Tell us what you saw!”
“I never said I saw anything! I said I got my information from the future.”
At long last, David and Mia made eye contact with each other. They traded a confused look before turning back to Rebel.
“Meaning what?” asked David.
“A future self?” asked Mia.
Theo suddenly caught a hint of the revelation to come, the real reason why Rebel was dodging the question.
“It was someone else,” he mused. “You got your information from another augur.”
Rebel lowered his head. “She’s never steered me wrong.”
“Who?” Liam asked. “Gemma? Prudent?”
“No. She’s not anyone in the clan. She . . .”
Peter stood in the doorway and stared at Rebel intently. “Who?”
“She’s been popping in and out of my life ever since I was a kid. A young woman, never aging, always filled with knowledge. Every single thing she’s told me about the future has come true. She’s never missed a beat. She told me the Pelletiers were coming a month before they arrived. She knew all three of them by name.”
He chuckled darkly at the orphans. “She told me the names of all you bastards.”
Only Hannah knew what to do with the information. She walked around the coffee table and crouched at Rebel’s side.
“This woman. Describe her.”
“I don’t know. She’s young, short, pretty. Her hairstyle changes every time I see her, but the rest of her stays the same.”
“And she wears two watches,” Hannah guessed.
Rebel stared at her, dumbstruck. “How the hell did you know that?”
“Because we know her too,” Theo said. He covered his face with his hands. “Shit.”
Jonathan blinked at him. “Wait, Ioni? He’s talking about Ioni?”
“Who’s Ioni?” Liam asked.
“We’re not entirely sure,” Mia admitted. “She visited me and Theo once, and met Hannah a month later. She’s always given us good information. She even saved Theo’s life.”
David tapped his leg in edgy thought. “She’s been playing us this whole time.”
“All of us,” Zack stressed. “We got conned, Rebel.”
“No . . .”
“You got conned.”
“No!” Rebel shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. She’s been nothing but a saint to me. Why would she—”
“—help your mortal enemies?” Amanda asked. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Take a wild guess.”
“She’s not a Pelletier!”
“I don’t think so either,” Theo said. “But she’s obviously playing some kind of game.”
Mia caught Hannah and Jonathan exchanging a worried look. Ioni was the one who’d brought them together, but why? What was her angle?
Peter crossed into the living room. “Look, I never met this Ioni woman. But if she’s your only source of information—”
“Bullshit,” Rebel hissed. “I still trust her more than I trust you.”
“What exactly did she say about us?” Theo asked. “Did she specifically tell you to kill us?”
“Of course she did! She . . .” Rebel closed his eyes. It felt like a hundred years since their last encounter. Ioni’s words had become lost in a fog of grief, twisted by desire and his wife’s interpretations. Of course she wants us to kill them, Richard! Why else would she say it?
“Answer us, Rebel. What were her exact words?”
“She said this world couldn’t live as long as you people were on it!”
The room went quiet again. Zack’s hands clenched into fists. “And that’s all it took, huh? No questions. No ‘show me the proof.’ Just point the way and pass the ammo.”
“The world is dying. That’s a fact!”
“My friends died faster,” Jonathan fired back. “You killed them all on a goddamned rumor. That’s a fact.”
“You made my dad a pariah,” Liam added. “He tried to warn you, but you turned everyone against him. Even me.”
“Shut up! All of you!”
Amanda gripped Rebel’s chair by the armrests, her face mere inches from his. Though her sharp green eyes were as intense as ever, her voice was calm, even sympathetic.
“I never in my life thought I’d say this, Rebel, but I understand where you’re coming from. I get it. You saw the end of the world and you were desperate to stop it. A woman you trusted gave you the answer, and you believed her. If I had to kill a few dozen people to save billions, I’d do it. I might not even wait for proof.”
She grabbed a napkin from the table and dabbed the sweat on Rebel’s brow.
“Except it’s all gone wrong,” she continued. “You’ve lost so many people that you cared about that you don’t even know how to handle it. There’s no one on Earth who understands that feeling more than we do. We lived your worst nightmare, Rebel. Our world’s already gone.”
Rebel looked away, quivering. Mia confronted him from his left side.
“Look at me.” Mia clasped his cheek and turned his gaze back onto her. “You put a bullet in my chest and I forgive you. More than that, I’ll work with you to stop what’s coming. This may not be my world but I’ll lay down my life to save it. I can’t think of a better reason to die.”
Liam studied her in admiration and then nodded at Rebel. “If she can forgive you, so can I.”
“Me too,” Heath said from the sofa.
“Me too,” said David.
“Not me,” Jonathan said. “I’ll never forgive you for what you did and I hope you die painfully. But I’m all aboard the ‘save the world’ train. If that means teaming up with you, then I’ll do it. I’m a musician. I know how to work with assholes.”
Zack wagged a finger at Jonathan. “Yeah. What he said. You fucked up bad and you’re not done paying for it. But I’ll work with you. I’ll fight by your side.”
He moved in closer. His voice dropped an octave. “And if you’re looking to hurt the Pelletiers, you most definitely have a partner.”
Amanda closed her eyes, livid. Zack had already learned the folly of enraging Azral and Esis. Now here he was, leaping at the chance to become their victim again.
It’s simply his nature, Esis had told her yesterday. There is no saving him.
Rebel shrank away from the people around him, using every last ounce of his willpower to keep his composure. But then the levees broke, and he blubbered exactly in the way he’d predicted.
The orphans watched him jadedly as he wept in his chair. Even the most charitable among them didn’t think he was wailing over the strangers he’d murdered, or the awful things he’d done to the people in this room. Amanda wasn’t even sure he was sorry about the soldiers he’d lost, at least a dozen dead Gothams by her count. It was his dear, beloved wife he was crying over. It was all about Ivy.
Peter dropped a box of tissues onto Rebel’s lap, then unwrapped the bicycle chains around his arms. There was no point restraining him anymore. Let the poor fool dab his own eyes.
The others watched in confusion as Peter pushed Rebel’s chair down the hallway.
“What are you doing?” Theo asked.
“We have some final matters to discuss,” Peter said. “Best we do it alone.”
He wheeled Rebel into his little green bedroom, and shut the door behind them.
The orphans and Liam fell back in their seats, their shoulders slumped, their faces racked with gloom. Only Heath had the will to keep himself busy. He picked up his lumic puzzle sphere and continued to twist the glowing rings.
Forty minutes later, the bedroom door reopened and Peter came out alone. He fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and drank the whole thing before addressing his companions. From the exhausted half grin on his face, no one had to ask how his final parley went.
“We did it,” Peter announced. “War’s over.”
—
Peter spent the next ten minutes explaining what came next. He and Liam would take Rebel back to their village and get him the medical help he needed. Once he was well enough to face the clan elders, Rebel would reveal the faulty intelligence behind his crusade, and then publicly admit that he’d been wrong about the breachers. Peter would then ask the elders to swear the entire village to an oath of armistice, ensuring a lasting peace between the Gothams and the orphans.
“And then?” Jonathan asked.
“Then you all come back with me to Quarter Hill,” Peter said. “Our home becomes your home. My people become your people.”
The faces all around him went slack with astonishment.
Holy shit, Hannah thought. We’re going to be Gothams.
By midnight, Peter and Liam were fully dressed and ready to go. Rebel walked between them on wobbly legs, his arms slung over their shoulders. He avoided the gazes of the Silvers and Golds until he was halfway across the living room.
“Stop,” Rebel said to the Pendergens. “Give me a second.”
He leveled his tired gaze at the orphans on the sofas. “I don’t know what to think anymore. If Ioni was lying . . .” He dipped his head. “There’s nothing I can say. I hurt innocent people and I lost everyone who ever mattered to me. Everyone.”
He could see the impatience on everyone’s faces. His audience, his handlers, they all just wanted him to leave.
“You won’t have to worry about me anymore,” he promised. “Even if it turns out Ioni was right, I don’t care. I don’t care if this world lives or dies. I only have one thing left to do.”
Rebel looked to Zack, a fresh rage in his eyes.
“I hope you meant what you said, Trillinger, because I’ll need all the help I can get with the Pelletiers. I also believe with all my heart that Semerjean’s disguised as one of you. I think he’s been pulling your strings from day one.”
Rebel scanned the different reactions on their faces—skepticism and anger, confusion and distrust. Only Zack met his gaze with calm, thoughtful eyes.
“If I’m right,” Rebel continued, “then Semerjean’s in this room right now. I’ve got a message for him.”
He waved a splinted finger at the orphans, his aim bouncing stubbornly between Jonathan and David. “I’m coming for you. You and your wife and that chalk-headed son of yours. I will not rest until I find you all and kill you. That’s a promise.”
A testy silence filled the apartment. Peter waved a portal onto the wall. “Come on.”
All eyes followed Rebel as he hobbled toward the exit—the brown ones, the blue ones, the vengeful, and the weary. Only one man’s face showed a glimmer of amusement. He stared at Rebel mockingly and cast a thought in an arcane language. Noted.