Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  “Good luck?” Holt asked.

  “Mmm-hmm. Once you’re inside the influence sphere, you become … incredibly lucky—I don’t how else to put it. Things that normally might go bad for you, go right instead. And they go right over and over again.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Zoey piped up from the end of the line.

  “Yeah, I gotta agree,” Holt replied, pushing past another tight intersection. “It not only doesn’t sound bad, it sounds valuable.”

  “It isn’t,” Mira said. “It’s horribly dangerous. In order to increase your luck, it reduces someone else’s to the same degree. Say it lets you win at dice. Someone else nearby loses. Maybe it saves you from a falling rock? Someone else has an accident.”

  “And what if someone tries to kill you?” Holt asked, but he had a pretty good idea what the answer was.

  “You live … someone else dies,” she answered. “The more you use it, the more negative effects it has to generate to keep your own luck going. And the more dependent on it you grow, the more it becomes like a paranoid addiction. You don’t feel comfortable doing anything without the artifact. The only good thing about it is that it can be used only so many times a day before it runs out of power and has to recharge. It’s been kept in the Vault for years by the Crossmen. They’re terrified of it, never use it, only hold on to it for Points. If it were me, I wouldn’t even do that much. I’d send it back to the Strange Lands to be destroyed.”

  “Seems like a lot of things that come out of that place need to be destroyed,” Holt said pointedly. Mira opened her mouth to retort … then shut it. What was there to say? Most artifacts were scary, and they did scary things. Including the one that had gotten her banished from Midnight City, the one she’d made herself.…

  The four stepped out of the cramped tunnel and into a small round room lit with two Illuminators that hummed on the ceiling just ten feet above their heads.

  The walls all around them were brimming with objects, glued or somehow else attached permanently in place, and they filled the room with all kinds of colors and shapes. Postcards, Polaroid pictures, drawings, notes, from what Holt could see. Some were worn and wrinkled and faded; others looked like they’d been placed in the room just recently.

  “Where are we?” Zoey asked, standing in the center of the room, spinning to look at all of it at once. Max watched her spin and cocked his head to the side as he studied her.

  “The Shrine,” Mira said. “These are mementos for Freebooters who’ve died or gone missing in the Strange Lands.” Mira gazed at the walls silently, and Holt could tell the chaotic conglomeration of things and images had deep meaning for her.

  “Did you know a lot of them?” Holt asked.

  “Yeah,” Mira answered. “I did.”

  Holt moved around the room, looking at everything that was revealed under the dim lights of the Illuminators. Hundreds of photographs of kids, some in Midnight City, but most were standing in a strange, almost alien landscape, where the backgrounds were blurred or flashing colors or contorted like the air had somehow been bent. There were drawings, too, of Strange Lands landmarks, some better than others, labeled things like POLESTAR, KALEIDOSCOPE, AXIS, TORNADO ALLEY, or COMPRESSOR. Next to the drawings were notes, sometimes several pages thick, that seemed to describe the adventures of the lost ones, their journeys, the obstacles they overcame, the artifacts they brought back.

  The name was well earned. It really was a shrine, Holt thought.

  Mira looked away from all the history and moved toward something set into the far wall. A heavy steel door that looked like something from an old castle. It had been permanently affixed in front of the next tunnel, blocking the path past the room, and next to a large handle near one of its edges was an ornate keyhole. The words FREEBOOTERS AND ACOLYTES ONLY were stenciled across the door in faded red paint.

  Holt eyed the wall and the writing hesitantly. “Is this—?” he started to ask.

  “An artifact,” Mira finished for him. “A really dangerous one.” From a pocket she pulled out a large key inscribed with the δ symbol, and Holt saw a length of chain attached to it that ran back to her belt. “I’d move back if I were you—it can malfunction,” she said as she stepped toward the metallic gate.

  She didn’t need to tell him twice. Max whined as Holt pulled Zoey a few steps away, watching Mira hold the key in front of the keyhole.

  She stayed like that, hesitantly studying the door. “You may want to move back more. It’s not pretty when it backfires,” Mira said.

  Holt stepped backwards again without hesitation, keeping his eyes on the door. What the hell did this thing do?

  “A little farther,” Mira said again. Holt backed up, eyeing her. “A little more,” she said again, and Holt took another step back. “Seriously, you want to be really far back for this.”

  Holt frowned and dragged Zoey and Max with him. He was starting to wonder just what—

  He flinched as he hit his head on a low-hanging part of the ceiling. “Ouch,” he said painfully, rubbing the back of his skull. Below him, Zoey looked up and stared at him in exasperation, shaking her head.

  Mira laughed out loud. “Sometimes it’s just too easy,” she said as she shoved the big key into the gate and turned it. Holt watched as the door groaned and slowly cranked open, revealing more dark tunnel beyond … and nothing else. No flash of light, no killer emission of energy, nothing remotely dangerous. “It’s just a big metal gate with a lock,” Mira said. “All Freebooters get a key. Come on, tough guy.”

  Holt glared after her, felt his ears start to redden. “Oh, that was supposed to be funny, I guess?”

  “It was funny,” Mira clarified, pushing past the gate and stuffing the key back in her pocket. “Lock it behind you.”

  Holt watched her disappear on the other side of the door, then felt Zoey take his hand and pull him forward. “Holt, try not to be so gullible, okay?” the little girl encouraged as he followed after her.

  “Well, isn’t your vocabulary growing?” he said as he shut the gate behind Max. The dog barked and ran after the little girl, just as excited. Holt rolled his eyes and followed after them, without the same enthusiasm.

  41. LIBRARIAN

  WHEN THEY ENTERED THE CAVERN that made up the Vault, they emerged into its topmost level, the stalactites that spanned its ceilings right in everyone’s eye-line, and the vastness of it was staggering. It was by far the largest cavern in the whole system, and it stretched downward out of sight into a massive pit. The walls below them were lined with row after row of shelves and cabinets, sitting on ledges that had been carved into the rock face. Even from the top of the Vault, it was apparent what they held: Thousands of artifacts flashed, glowed, pulsed, wavered, hummed, floated, disintegrated and reappeared on those shelves, filling the pit with a kaleidoscopic sea of flickering, colorful lights that spiraled down brightly into the darkness.

  In all the times that Mira had come here, the Artifact Vault had never failed to take her breath away. Long ago, when she was young, it was here she’d first learned about the Strange Lands and the artifacts that came from them, and the magnificence of the Vault had played a sizable role in putting her on the path she’d eventually taken, for better or worse.

  At first, there was no discernible way to get to the artifacts in the huge pit. There were no stairs or ladders, no poles to slide, or handholds in the rock to climb. The answer was on the ceiling.

  A large grid-work of metal had been bolted into the rock there, circling the entire cavern. Hanging from the grid by thick ropes and chains were two large boxes made of ornately polished wood, each bearing a δ symbol inlaid in brilliant gold and resting on a platform at the edge of the pit. The boxes were large enough to hold two people, and it was fairly clear what they were. Elevators.

  The ropes and chains passed through pulleys in the grid-work, and traveled to a bank of switches and cranks on the landing platform. There were other things there as well—more cabinets and she
lves, work spaces—and flickering candles and lanterns illuminated it all. But if there was anyone there, Mira saw no sign.

  She stared at all of it, enraptured once again, and didn’t even notice that the others had stepped up beside her. Even Max was still as he gazed at the Vault.

  “Wow…,” Zoey said, her voice an awed whisper. “It’s so big.”

  Mira smiled and looked at Holt, curious to see his reaction. He looked down at the expansive view with a gaze that held only amazement. In a room crammed to the gills with thousands of powerful Strange Lands artifacts, he wasn’t slowly backing toward the exit, and that spoke volumes.

  When she slipped her hand into his, he turned and looked at her. There was something about the fact that her touch was enough to tear him away from the sight of the Vault that Mira liked. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Beautiful,” he answered, and there was a tone in his voice that implied he was talking about more than just the Vault. Mira smiled.

  “Are we going down to the bottom?” Zoey asked.

  Mira pulled her gaze from Holt’s. “I don’t know yet, honey,” Mira answered. “We have to find the thing we’re looking for first.”

  “Can I ride the Max down to the bottom if we do?” Zoey asked hopefully.

  Holt sighed next to her. “What is it with you? Just because he has four legs doesn’t mean he’s a horse.”

  “The Max can carry me, he’s strong!”

  “I don’t think it’s the best idea right now, Zoey,” Mira replied. “Besides, there aren’t any stairs. We use the lifts.”

  Zoey pouted, but didn’t complain further as they all started moving for the opposite end of the cavern, where the platform sat, as well as the work and study area. There was still no sign of movement there, no indication anyone was nearby; there was only the light from a few dozen glimmering candles and lanterns. Still, someone had to have lit them.

  “Old man?” Mira yelled as they approached, her voice echoing back and forth amid the stalactites that hung over their heads. There was no response.

  “Is that the best idea?” Holt asked.

  “The Librarian knew we were here the moment we passed the Shrine,” Mira said. She looked ahead of them and yelled again, “Old man?” They all listened to her voice as it echoed between the walls, unsettlingly loud. But after it died away there was nothing, only silence.

  “Amelia said the Librarian protects the Vault,” Holt said, taking in the big, empty cavern with trepidation.

  “He’s a teacher, too—he taught me everything I know,” she answered darkly. It was true; she had learned a great deal from him, but there had been a price to pay for that knowledge.

  Mira kept moving, growing more uncertain with each step. Did he not recognize her? Or had her reputation in Midnight City tarnished even this relationship, her oldest one in the city? She wasn’t sure, but—

  Mira stopped when she heard something. A crackling in the air around her. It was distinctive, metallic and thin, like someone was crinkling giant wads of tinfoil next to them. And because of its distinctiveness, she knew what it was almost immediately. “Get back!” Mira shouted in alarm, trying to drag them back, but it was too late.

  The air flashed around them as the Restrictor took effect. Mira felt her limbs, her muscles, her extremities, even her hair, all exponentially increase in weight, and as they did so, her movement gradually slowed down. She struggled against the force building around her, but it was no use. She watched as Holt, Zoey, and even Max froze solid in place, bit by bit, unable to move—even their eyes wouldn’t blink.

  Mira had been caught in a Restrictor only one other time, and that had felt like her body was transforming into dense, unyielding stone, until she finally froze completely. It was the same now, but the reality was altogether different. A Restrictor was an artifact combination that continually reversed the force of inertia. The longer it stayed on, the more difficult it became to move, until you just couldn’t move at all. With a strong enough Restrictor, you could probably freeze a Spider walker in place.

  They were all trapped now, unable to move, their eyes glued to where they had last been looking before the artifact was activated.

  In front of Mira, the air shimmered suddenly and parted like a curtain. A silhouette stepped through and revealed itself, and in a world where youth reigned supreme by virtue of complicated circumstances, the sight of the figure before them was shocking, even for Mira, who had seen him countless times growing up.

  She’d never had the gall to ask the Librarian how old he really was, but she was positive it was more than seventy years. His appearance was beyond disheveled. His clothes were a patchwork of pieces from all manner of garments, some of them having been sewn into places that were the opposite of what they came from. Pieces of jeans for shirtsleeves, and coat arms pieced together to make leggings. A pair of eyeglasses hung from his neck by red twine, half from one pair, the other half from another, and taped together to form a complete set. Despite his chaotic appearance, the man had neatly and meticulously trimmed his beard, and it hung down half the length of his wrinkled neck. And, of course, there were his eyes: clear of the Tone. The hazel of his irises sparkled in the candlelight that filled this part of the cavern.

  Leather straps like belts crisscrossed his body, and attached to them were a dozen amazingly intricate and beautiful artifact combinations of his own creation. The lights of one of them, near his left shoulder, glowed and flashed in different colors, and Mira guessed it was probably the Restrictor that was holding all of them.

  The old man examined each of the four trespassers one at a time without emotion, and then his eyes finally settled on Mira. When they did, his brow furrowed deeply and he fixed her with an irritable gaze.

  “If anyone should not be here in this place, Mira Toombs, it is you,” he said in an annoyed voice that sounded like he had swallowed a mouthful of gravel and cut glass. “Explain why I shouldn’t hand you over to your old faction right now. It would be a fitting punishment, the way I see it.”

  The Librarian tapped the glowing artifact on his shoulder, and some of the lights on the combination—a mixture of magnets, vials of black metallic shavings, a circuit board, and a strand of interlocking paper clips, all held together by spun silver and gold chain—wavered and died away.

  With a groan, Mira collapsed to the ground in a heap, and her entire body ached. It was a normal side effect from being restrained in a Restrictor’s field, and she painfully looked up … and was shocked to see the others—Holt, Zoey, and Max—still frozen in place.

  A typical Restrictor simply emitted a single field that slowed down everything it touched. The Librarian, however, had managed to construct a combination that could selectively apply a Restrictor’s effect to multiple and separate targets. It was an amazing achievement, a testament to the Librarian’s reputation as the greatest crafter of artifacts in the world, and her head spun as she tried to figure out the complicated combination of Essences and Focuses necessary to—

  “You were asked a question, Mira Toombs,” the Librarian stated with unveiled displeasure. He was not used to being ignored, and it made her face redden the way he spoke to her as if she were still a little girl. “By coming here, you have violated the sanctity of something I long ago taught you to revere.”

  “I do revere this place, old man,” Mira said. “Just not the city that holds it.”

  The Librarian gazed down at her curiously. “Not a completely uninspired response, to be sure, and one that echoes sentiments I also hold, but it fails to answer the question, doesn’t it? Why are you here?”

  Mira swallowed, thinking through her words carefully. “I need something from the Vault,” she said. “Something that doesn’t belong to me.”

  The Librarian frowned. “You aren’t making a very good argument, little one. Why would I allow you to steal from my Vault? Why would I break the oaths I have taken?”

  Mira made herself look up at the Librarian forcefull
y. “You’ve broken them before—don’t pretend you haven’t. It’s me you’re talking to, old man, not some silly acolyte.” She spoke with as much strength as she could muster, and hoped it was enough.

  The Librarian stared back evenly … and then smiled. Or at least as much as he could. The only indication Mira had ever attributed to a smile from him was a slight wrinkling of the beard around his cheeks, and that was what he gave her now. “I didn’t say I had never broken them, only that I wanted to know the reasons why I might do so again. Is this about that wretched little creation of yours? The one I warned you against?”

  “Yes,” Mira said with shame. “I’m trying to undo that mistake.”

  “If you had listened to me in the first place, you wouldn’t have anything to undo, would you?” he said with contempt. “You’re all the same, once you leave here. Arrogant and sure of yourselves. It’s a wonder any of you survive that place.”

  “I’m trying to fix things, old man,” Mira said through clenched teeth, feeling her face burn at his scolding, just as it always had. Why did she still feel so tiny around him? Hadn’t any of her achievements impressed him? Hadn’t she earned the right to make a few mistakes?

  “You want to take it back to the Strange Lands and destroy it,” he surmised. “A wise course, but it still doesn’t explain why you’re here. You must need something else,” the old man said contemplatively, and Mira could see him putting the pieces together in his head, tugging on his beard absently as he did so. “The Gray Devils have sealed the city; I heard the horns. Looking for you, no doubt. There must be something here someone else wants in order to grant you passage out of the city. The only other way out is through the Lost Knights’ infamous secret exit … and they have always lusted after the Chance Generator.” His mood, if it were possible, darkened even more as he figured it out. “Is that why you’re here?”

  Mira just nodded. She could sense Holt and Zoey frozen in place above her, but was powerless to do anything for them. The old man had all the cards now, and he stood over her stoically a long time, still tugging on his beard, thinking things through. “The price for my aid is this, Mira Toombs,” he finally said. “You may take the artifact … but in return, you must carry it back into the Strange Lands and destroy it along with your own. It’s another hideous aberration that doesn’t deserve to exist, as far as I’m concerned, but my tenure as the Vault’s Librarian prevents me from taking matters into my own hands. You are already Unmentionable here. One further insult will have little effect.”