The Severed Tower

by J. Barton Mitchell

  “The Well will be fine,” Deckard replied impatiently. “Always has been, always will be.”

  Mira was filled with frustration. “Deckard! The Strange Lands are changing. For the worse. You need to evacuate everyone out of the Spire!”

  Deckard spat again. “You mean like that coward at the Crossroads?”

  “Do you even know what happened there? The Crossroads were overrun by Tesla Cubes, Deckard! Outside the first ring!”

  “That don’t excuse it. One kid shirks his duties and we’re all supposed to? I don’t think so.”

  “Echo’s ‘duty’ was to the people who lived at the Crossroads. He probably saved the lives of everyone there. You need to do the same thing, and you need to do it now.” She grabbed his shoulder with her free hand—and Deckard spun around in anger.

  “You don’t get to tell me what needs doing!” he yelled venomously. “I don’t take advice from many people, and I definitely don’t take it from pretenders and hypocrites. You don’t deserve to be here, you or Ben. And you’re welcome to ‘evacuate’ whenever the hell you feel like it.” He started moving again, headed for a stairway onto the Spire, near where a mass of kids had gathered. “I won’t abandon this place. I’ll keep it breathing if it kills me!”

  Mira stood staring after him. Deckard was, and always had been, the most arrogant, stubborn fool that—

  Zoey stirred and moaned in her arms, and Mira decided to hold those thoughts for later. “Max! Come on,” Mira called after the dog. He reluctantly pulled himself away from the smells of the city and followed after her.

  They walked as fast as they could toward the same stairway as Deckard. It was the main entry onto the Spire, a grand staircase of sorts, made out of polished cherrywood from who knew where, and it sparkled as bright as the Mezzanine, wrapping upward, narrowing as it climbed, until it became a more simple walkway of metal and sanded oak. Eventually more paths branched off from the first, climbing and careening in different directions, but always upward, connecting to the hundreds of buildings and platforms that jutted out past the framework at angles that would have been impossible in normal gravity.

  Mira had never ascended the Spire without stopping to marvel at the audacity it took to construct. She understood why Deckard was hesitant to leave it. Polestar was more than just a city, it was a symbol—that the Strange Lands could be tamed. That there was nothing the survivors of the Assembly couldn’t accomplish if they worked together.

  Mira believed in all of that, but she also knew Holt was right. Nothing stayed the same forever. So much was changing, and it felt like her entire life had been in flux for the last few months. Would it ever end?

  As Mira climbed, she could see the citizens of Polestar gathered in the Mezzanine below, and they looked furious. When Deckard motioned for them to silence they only yelled louder.

  He spoke to them wearily, but not weakly. “I know you’re scared! We lost the Orb, it’s true. But it can be rebuilt. Anything can be rebuilt.”

  “What about the Antimatter Storm?” someone shouted from below.

  “The Gravity Well repelled it, just the same as it does Ion Storms,” Deckard answered.

  “That’s not the point!” a voice yelled.

  “It shouldn’t be there at all, this is the third ring!” said another.

  “How do you know the Well won’t weaken any more? How do you know it’s not weakening right now?”

  The yells and jeers rose in pitch and fervor.

  “Because I do!” Deckard shouted back, and the ferocity in his voice stifled the crowd. “Polestar has been here for years, and I’ll be damned if it ain’t gonna be here for years to come. Because it’s our obligation to keep it that way. Think of everything that would be lost if this place goes—the history, the achievement. What about all the kids who died building it? You think about them at all? Huh? What’s their deaths mean if we just cut and run?” Deckard gripped the stairway railing. The crowd grew quiet as they listened. The conviction in his voice almost made Mira buy into it. Almost. “No, sir. You wanna leave? You do it. Right now. No one’ll stop you. But I ain’t leaving. I ain’t ever leaving, not ’til the Tone takes me. This place is gonna stand forever. Because it’s our duty to see it does, no matter how hard it gets.”

  The crowd’s loud challenges dissolved into quiet rumblings, and Mira could tell some had been convinced. She shook her head and kept climbing, taking the second pathway on the right, where it twisted up to a rounded building made from the wooden walls of an old church. Ancient stained glass windows circled around its perimeter, vibrantly reflecting more of the Well’s light.

  She pushed through the building’s double doors, probably from the same church, and found the place empty. It wasn’t a surprise, everyone was likely downstairs in the crowd.

  Inside the infirmary was a circular, wooden-floored room lined with colorful windows. The ceiling was made of Plexiglas, and it let the shimmering light from the Gravity Well fill the interior. About two dozen beds lined the walls, each a different kind or shape: brass, wooden, rod iron, some with headboards, others without, canopy beds, sleigh beds.

  Mira laid Zoey down on one and pulled the covers over her. Her breathing was shallow. Her hair was matted with sweat, and Mira brushed it out of the little girl’s face. There was no question, she was getting worse.

  But what was wrong with her? None of it made sense, and it only made Mira feel more helpless.

  It was like she was already failing Zoey, the thing she feared the most. The little girl was sick and fading. She’d looked for Mira to get her to the Tower, and they were only at Polestar and she was almost gone.

  Everything that had been building in her—the pain and the frustration and the fear, going back not just to the missile silo, or to Holt almost hitting her, or to Midnight City or Clinton Station, but all the way back—to the beginning. It all flared powerfully and Mira lashed out at a glass lantern on the steel nightstand next to the bed.

  It shattered to pieces on the floor. Blood trickled down Mira’s hand.

  It hurt. And it felt good. For a moment. And then the false strength of anger faded—and Mira cried. Great, sobbing tears that shook her body. She desperately fought it at first, tried to stop the outpouring of emotion, but it was too strong this time, and she gave in, covering her eyes and mouth.

  When it was over, Mira opened her eyes and saw Zoey again. Nothing had changed. She was still there, laying silently.

  Mira wiped her face and stood up, moved to a cabinet and took out some cleaning solution and bandages. She winced as she cleaned and dressed the cuts on her hand.

  The crying had been inevitable. It had even felt good. But what had it done to help? Nothing. The truth was, she may be on the road to failing, to not being strong enough or smart enough, but she wasn’t there yet.

  And she didn’t have to be. She could figure this out, she told herself. She just had to think.

  Zoey was getting worse. Fine. There it was. But why?

  Mira thought back to what the Librarian had told her before he died. He said Zoey was the Apex. That she was the most important thing on the planet.

  But what did that really mean? What was the Apex? The only person to walk out of the Strange Lands, Mira knew, that was the Librarian’s theory; but even if that were true, how was it connected to what was going on?

  Then a thought occurred to her. An unsettling one.

  From every account they’d heard, the incidents occurring in the Strange Lands all started less than a day before Holt, Zoey, and Mira arrived.

  Echo had begun abandoning the Crossroads a day before they arrived.

  The Orb had fallen from the top of Polestar a day before they arrived.

  What if Zoey was the missing link? What if she was somehow affecting the Strange Lands as she moved through it? What if the Strange Lands were changing … because of Zoey?

  Or was “changing” even the right word? There was the fact that Anomalies appeared in different rings t
han they normally would. But—was that what was really happening? Maybe the rings were still the same as always, Mira thought. Maybe they were simply … expanding.

  The realization, the connection of everything, was so stunning that the bottle of solution fell from her hand and broke on the floor. Mira stared down at it in a daze, putting more pieces together.

  It explained everything they had seen so far, it even explained the Tesla Cubes at the Crossroads. The Anomalies hadn’t moved beyond the first ring, the first ring had grown to encompass the Crossroads. The Strange Lands weren’t changing. They were growing! And they seemed to be growing faster the closer Zoey got to the Core.

  Mira moved for the door, leaving Zoey asleep on the bed with Max curled up next to her. She stepped outside and looked up, but what she wanted to see was blocked from this vantage. Mira moved around the walkway, climbing upward around the infirmary, until she was between it and the Cavaliers faction residence, a castle-like structure made from the wood of old highway billboards, their old images and letters fading but still visible in jumbled patterns up and down its side. The faction flag, green with a sharp yellow sword, arced outward in the breeze.

  Mira saw what she was looking for. The column of light that was the Gravity Well. She could hear the strange, fragmented hissing sounds that filled the air. A horrible thought occurred to her as she studied it.

  If the Orb had fallen because the Well weakened, and the Well weakened because of Zoey, then Mira had very likely brought the city’s destruction right to it. And that meant—

  A bag slipped forcefully over her head. A knot tied around her throat, sealing it in place.

  She panicked and screamed, but it was no use. A hand covered her mouth, but there was no one to hear anyway, everyone was down in the Mezzanine. She kicked and fought, but whoever had her was too strong, and Mira felt herself dragged off and away.

  27. LUCK

  MIRA COULDN’T SEE ANYTHING, but she had a sense of where they were taking her. Upward. Along one of the branching stairways. She knew the sensations of climbing the Spire, the way the gravity gradually diminished. She could hear the crowd on the Mezzanine below still murmuring about Deckard’s speech.

  There were at least two of them, because they had her by the legs and arms, and they were strong. Big kids, she guessed by their heavy footfalls, but Mira wasn’t going to make it easy on them. She struggled the whole way.

  “Keep her from squirming,” one said.

  “I got her, don’t worry. Take her in headfirst,” said another.

  Her captors carried her through a door, and the sounds from outside vanished as it closed. The first thing she noticed was that it was cold. Really cold. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but—

  Mira hit the floor and groaned. They hadn’t bound her, so she quickly untied the rope holding the bag over head and ripped it off.

  She was in one of the city’s freezers, giant cuts of meat hanging from the ceiling. It was kept cold by Emitters, artifacts that radiated elemental forces in a similar way to the Amplifier she’d used back in the missile silo. In this case they emitted cold, and they hummed in each corner of the small, square room.

  But the chill in the air was the last thing Mira was worried about.

  Three boys stood in between her and the door. They were younger, big too, not as big as Deckard, but close, and she recognized them. Freebooters from Midnight City, and judging by the colors they wore, Glassmen, not Gray Devils, but if they weren’t Gray Devils—what did they want with her?

  “Hey, Mira Toombs,” the one in the middle said, a blond kid with rounded glasses. The fact they knew her name probably wasn’t a good thing.

  “What do you want?” Mira asked, trying to sound unintimidated, but failing miserably.

  “Pretty simple, really,” another said, the one on the left, the biggest of the three. His voice sounded like a bag of rocks. “Just have a question for you. Answer it in a way we like and you can go. Pretty much in the same shape you came in.”

  As they spoke, Mira’s eyes scanned the locker, looking for anything that could help. The only artifacts here were the Emitters, and they weren’t much use. She’d left her bags in the infirmary with Zoey.

  “Last time we saw you was a few months ago, before you got that price on your head.” It was the one with the glasses again. The third one so far hadn’t spoken. But he did have a knife in his hand, Mira saw. Her heart beat faster. “Something interesting about that, though. Back then, me and my friends were pretty sure there was something different about you.”

  “That being … you weren’t Heedless,” said the big kid, and Mira felt a cold tingling of fear. She had an idea what their “question” was going to be, and there was little hope she could answer it in a way they wanted. It was now official—she was in trouble.

  “You’re wrong,” Mira lied. “I’ve always been Heedless. If you were Gray Devils, you’d know that.”

  The boy on the right, the quiet one, shook his head and finally spoke. “No. Pretty sure you weren’t.”

  “Me, too,” the glasses said. “So here’s the question. How the hell did you do it?”

  They started to move toward her. She took a step back.

  “Tell us how you blocked the Tone,” the big one said. “Tell us how we can do it, too, and you can go.”

  Mira swallowed. “What makes you think I could do it again?” She had to keep them talking.

  “Heard rumors,” the quiet one told her. They kept inching closer. “About an artifact you were working on, an artifact to stop the Tone.”

  “No,” Mira said, shaking her head. “It didn’t work. It won’t help you, I swear.”

  The knife from the quiet kid flew through the air and stuck deep in the meat slab next to Mira. She jumped, barely resisted screaming.

  “Lies? That makes us sad,” said the glasses. He drew his own knife. So did the big one. “Really sad. We can see your damn eyes from here, Toombs. Hell, we saw ’em when you strolled through the gate. We’re not idiots.”

  Mira stepped back again … and felt the cold metal of the freezer wall behind her. There was nowhere to go. She watched the kids step closer, knives at the ready, but she didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t tell them about Zoey. She wouldn’t. No matter what they did.

  “That’s fine, though,” said the big one. “You’ll tell us everything in the end. Everything under the sun, I promise.”

  Another voice spoke over the hum of the Emitters. It wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t overbearing either. It was calm and certain, and something about it made the three big kids turn around. “I think the odds of that are rather low.”

  Mira looked past the three big kids—and felt a tremendous surge of relief. Ben stood in the doorway, his eyes on the three boys. One hand rested in a pocket, the other was balancing his brass dice cube, juggling it between his knuckles, back and forth.

  In a fight, it was clear he had no real chance. They were bigger than him and they were armed. The overconfident looks on their faces dropped all the same. Probably because they knew who he was. Everyone here did. Ben was the top-rated Freebooter in Midnight City, and you didn’t earn that spot without being formidable in some way.

  “Fun’s over,” Ben told them. If he was intimidated by the three, he didn’t look it. “It might not seem like it, but clearing out of here is the best option you have.”

  The three kids were still, their necks craned around to stare at Ben. The surprised, uncertain looks lasted a second longer—then the one with the glasses laughed out loud. The others followed.

  “Brave talk for a skinny brainiac, outnumbered three-to-one. What? You hoping to outtalk us? You’re the one that oughta leave, before you get hurt.”

  “It’s a mathematical certainty I won’t get hurt today. You three, however, are operating under a very different set of variables.” Ben studied each of the three in turn, then his gaze moved around the room, as if analyzing it. “The meat. The floor. And then … actually, I’m
not really sure.”

  Mira was just as confused as the three kids. Apparently, they’d had enough. “Kill this fool,” the one with the glasses ordered.

  They all turned and advanced on Ben. He didn’t budge. But Mira saw something, something telling. As they approached, a sphere of yellow light crackled around him, then vanished.

  The chains from one of the huge cuts of meat snapped apart, as if from the cold. A major coincidence, but a lucky one. The meat probably weighed several hundred pounds frozen, and when it fell, it slammed into the biggest kid, flattening him to the floor. He didn’t move.

  The other two boys stepped away, startled, but then the action seemed to spur them. They charged toward Ben, their knives gleaming.

  Ben just watched in curiosity.

  The kid with the glasses slipped on a patch of ice as he ran, went down, and there was a sickening crack as his head hit the floor. He went limp.

  The quiet kid skidded to a stop, stared in shock, and then looked at Ben.

  Ben stared back calmly. “Think it through.”

  The knife shook in the quiet kid’s hand. Then he made his choice. He charged one last time.

  The Emitter in the corner of the room near the door exploded in a brilliant flash of green light, spraying shrapnel in an arc. Mira ducked, then heard a scream as the debris ripped into the kid. He spun and fell, and like the others, didn’t move.

  Then everything was quiet. Mira opened her eyes and stared at Ben in shock. He studied the bodies of the three boys, one at a time.

  “Of course, the Emitter. It adds up.” Ben frowned, a little frustrated, and looked up at Mira for the first time. There was no hint of shame or guilt on his face. “I’m still trying to figure out the underlying algorithm. It’s … very complex.”

  Mira just stared at him, still stunned by everything that had happened.

  “Come on,” Ben said as he moved for the door. “Let’s get out of the cold.”

  Outside the locker, Ben leaned against a railing on the winding walkway. Mira saw that they were about a third of the way up the Spire. Above them, towers and platforms stretched and wrapped around the shimmering Gravity Well at crazy angles, but Mira just stared at Ben’s back, a terrible feeling growing inside her.