“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.