Ravan lowered her gun. So did her men. “Go,” she told him, her voice a ragged whisper. “Just go.”
Holt felt relief flood through him, and at the same time guilt. He had hurt her again, the latest transgression in an unending cycle.
“Go!” she yelled at him in fury, and Holt spun and dashed outside, leaving her and the pirates behind. The relief he felt was quickly replaced by shock and fear.
Everything was chaos.
People fled and tripped and shoved each other as they raced down the stairways of Polestar, trying to escape the city. Others were bypassing the line altogether, leaping from the lower buildings onto the ground. Whoever made it ran in a mad scramble as fast as they could away from the Spire.
The once beautiful Mezzanine was buried in the remnants of several buildings that had fallen from the top of the city, and Holt was in time to see another one slam into the ground in an explosion of steel and wood, spraying debris everywhere.
Holt stared up at Polestar in stunned silence. Ravan was right, it was suicide. But it didn’t matter. They were up there somewhere, and they needed him.
Holt shoved his way through the panicking crowd, the only figure in a sea of people trying to get into the city. He saw what looked like a giant stairway on the ground, climbing upward and dividing into different walkways and bridges that went in every direction.
He kept pushing and shoving, and when he reached it he saw someone he recognized. The overseer, Deckard. He stood at the entrance to the city, staring around in a daze.
“Where’s Mira?” Holt shouted as he ran toward him. Deckard said nothing, just stared into the distance mutely. Holt grabbed him and slammed him against the stairway in spite of the kid’s size. “Where’s Mira?”
“I … don’t know…” the big kid spoke. “Don’t matter anymore, anyway.”
In desperation, Holt craned his neck to look upward at the city. Where would she go? Where would she be? A thought occurred to him. He gripped Deckard harder. “Where would she go if she wanted to destroy an artifact?”
“The … Anvil.” Deckard said. He looked like he was in shock, but Holt didn’t particularly care.
“Where the hell’s that?”
“At the … top. Very top.”
Holt sighed. “Of course it is.” He let Deckard go and started pushing his way through the crowd again, climbing up the stairs.
“It’s all coming down, you know?” Deckard’s voice was laced with horror. “All of it. It’s all through.”
Holt ignored him and pushed on. He had to get to them. He had to.
* * *
ZOEY STOOD WHERE THE giant, hissing Gravity Well erupted into the air. In the background she could hear the sounds of screams and metallic shudderings and violent crashes and even the Max’s barking, but she tried not to think about any of it.
She only had one thing to worry about now, trying to keep the Gravity Well alive. Tears streamed down her face as golden, wavering luminescence poured off her. She was pumping all her energy into the Anomaly. Even so, she was still only stalling it. The pain in her head was almost unbearable.
But she held on, and she would keep holding on until the strain was too much and she collapsed and was buried under the fallen city, but at least she might be able to buy time for Holt and Mira and everyone else to escape. Maybe she could make up for all the damage she had done. Maybe they would all forgive her, then …
Zoey held on. The pain continued to build.
* * *
MIRA HUNG HELPLESSLY IN the air, spinning in slow, lazy circles in the zero gravity, while Polestar collapsed all around her. She felt sick watching it, the death of a place that had meant so much to her, and, fittingly, she had the best seat in the house. She would sit in her perch while it all horribly fell in on itself, and then have the next few hours to think about it before the Gravity Void finally lost its power and she plummeted to the ground more than a thousand feet below.
Mira shook herself out of her funk. She wasn’t dead yet, so she should stop acting like it. If she could just find a way out of this Void she could escape.
She looked around for anything, but just like before, there was nothing to grab. However, as she looked, she saw something unexpected. It took a moment for her to figure out what it was.
Far beneath her, on the ground outside the city, a dozen figures dressed in black and gray ran toward the walls. Bright points of color followed after them—red, green, and blue. They were Antimatter Crystals, and it meant the figures were White Helix.
She watched as they leaped over the wall in flashes of yellow light, easily dodging all the falling debris, jumping and spinning through the air onto the city’s various levels, fanning out, as if searching for something—but what?
“Mira!” Holt charged onto the Anvil platform.
“Holt!” She had never been happier to see anyone.
He ground to a stop suddenly, staring at her spinning in the Void.
“What?” she asked.
“Sorry, it’s just … it’s a little ironic, is all.”
“Shut up and get me out!” The platform they were on shifted dangerously. It wasn’t going to stay up long.
Holt grabbed his pack, unhooked one of the straps, and threw it into the Gravity Void at Mira, holding onto the length of fiber.
Mira grabbed it. Holt pulled. She fell out of the Void onto the platform and looked at him. Her emotions were a jumbled mix, but she pushed them away. There wasn’t time right now.
“Zoey’s in the infirmary,” she told him.
The platform shuddered violently under their feet, almost throwing them to the ground. “Then let’s go!” Holt shouted, starting to move.
“Wait!” Mira shouted, grabbing her wretched artifact off the Anvil. She wasn’t leaving it for someone else to find. It was still her responsibility. She scooped up her packs and Lexicon and ran after Holt.
Together they dashed for the bridge, and they could feel the platform shaking and weakening under them. Halfway there, Mira screamed as it ripped completely apart, shattering into chunks of wood and plaster, falling downward behind them.
“Jump!” Holt shouted, and they both leaped off as the platform fell away into the abyss. They slammed onto one of the main stairways and rolled, barely stopping from sliding off the edge.
Holt looked at Mira, breathing hard. “Hands down, my favorite city in the whole world.”
Mira frowned and yanked him to his feet, pulled him down the stairway. The Gravity Well hissed and sparked. All around them, the supports of Polestar moaned and shuddered as more and more weight was placed on them.
Just below, two of the city’s cold storage buildings ripped free of their supports, crashing into a garden platform and carrying it with them as they fell heavily toward the ground. As it did, Mira saw figures flipping and spinning out of the way in flashes of color, moving over what was left of the various buildings, jumping into the air right as they began to fall.
The White Helix again, but what were they doing here?
Holt pulled Mira back as a fragment of their stairway broke loose and disappeared into nothing, barely keeping him from falling.
“This way!” Holt leaped onto the roof of some kind of workshop, grabbing its blackened chimney for support as he slid down.
Mira followed, right before the bridge they were just on came loose, falling and crashing away.
“There!” Mira pointed out the infirmary below. It was still there. As long as Zoey was inside, there was still a chance to save her.
“We’re going to have to jump between the platforms,” Holt told her. “The bridges are almost all out.”
He was right, Mira saw, the walkways and bridges were like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle now, the gaps in between what was left of them were too much to jump over.
Mira followed Holt as he jumped down and hit the steep, metallic roof of the badly leaning Cavaliers residence hall.
As they slid, Holt dragged his feet, slowed hims
elf, and caught Mira as she flew past. Her eyes widened as she dangled on the edge. There was nothing below her but open air, hundreds of feet to the ground.
The building shook under them, its supports creaking badly. Holt strained as he pulled her up, and they crawled to the top. They stared at the infirmary, one building across and below them. They had to jump. It was going to be close.
“Still your favorite city?” Mira asked, studying the gap warily.
“Feels like a second home to me.”
Together they ran and leaped into the air, legs kicking underneath them as they free-fell out and then down. They slammed onto the flat roof of the infirmary, barely keeping their balance.
There was a thunderous roar behind them as the Cavaliers residence hall tipped over, disintegrating in a massive cloud of wood and plastic and metal that fell in a torrent toward the ground. Screams echoed from below as the fleeing people tried to get out of the way, and a lot didn’t make it. Mira closed her eyes as it slammed into the ground in a massive crash.
Holt dashed for the center of the roof where the big skylight rested. He stomped down on it hard with his foot once, twice, three times, and it shattered apart. They both jumped through into the infirmary.
Inside, Mira looked around quickly—but there was no sign of Zoey. Screams and crashes filled the air outside.
“Where is she?” Holt asked.
“She … she was here,” Mira replied, dread beginning to fill her.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know!” Mira ran to the door, but stopped short. Beyond it was a dead drop, all the way to the ground. The stairway outside was gone. She turned and stared at Holt fearfully.
“We’ll find her,” he said. “But we have to get to the ground. If she went anywhere, it’s—”
The infirmary shook horribly—and then Mira and Holt fell, sliding down the floor into the far wall as the structure began to lean. Mira gasped and closed her eyes, her heart racing, waiting for the whole thing to fall.
But it didn’t. She could heard the supports crumple and snap, but they held. For now.
Holt got to his feet, stood with one foot on the wall and the other on the floor, and jumped diagonally up to where the skylight used to be, pulling himself up and out. Then he spun around and reached for Mira and pulled her up with him.
When she was out, Mira’s heart sank at what she saw. There was nowhere else to go. What was left of the walkways and bridges were too far away. So were any other buildings. They were trapped. All around them the city was crumbling. Buildings crashed and fell, people screamed. It was a nightmare.
Holt turned to Mira. She looked back. They both knew.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” Mira simply said, and she meant it. Now he was going to die, too, just like she’d feared all along, and it was her fault. “Why didn’t you just leave?”
Holt looked at her as if the answer should be obvious. “I couldn’t not come.”
Mira sighed and looked away. Ben had left her at the top of the Spire. He couldn’t have known the city would fall, but he hadn’t come back for her either. Holt had been the one to do that. She could still see him on that airplane, could still see the tattoo on his wrist, but she slowly reached out and took his hand anyway. It was the first time she had touched him since the Crossroads.
“I’m … sorry,” she said. “For the dam, for getting you into this.”
“Don’t ever apologize for the dam,” Holt said. “It meant something to me. All I needed was to know … was that it meant something to you, too.”
Mira looked back at him as the cataclysm continued around them. The infirmary shook again, crumbling where it stood, about to fall.
“Holt…” Mira whispered.
His arms wrapped around her and she shut her eyes. It was all about to be—
Five figures landed on the infirmary in flashes of orange and purple light, black goggles, masks over their noses and mouths.
Holt tried to rise, but the White Helix were too fast. A kick sent Holt slamming back down, a glowing red crystal stopped just inches from his throat, humming loudly. He went still, glaring up at the Helix.
Mira didn’t even bother to resist. One of them stepped forward and raised the goggles off her eyes. She was small, black, with dark hair tied behind her head. It was the same girl Mira and Ravan had encountered in the Grindhouse.
“Where is the Prime?” the girl demanded. She seemed angry and frustrated.
“The … what?” Mira asked in confusion.
More buildings fell from the air and crashed. The Gravity Well flickered. What was left of the superstructure of Polestar groaned pitifully.
“She means Zoey,” Holt said.
The girl looked at him now. “Where?”
“We don’t know!” Holt told her. “She might be at the bottom, but we’re—”
“She’s not at the bottom!” the girl yelled in exasperation. “We would have felt her, but we felt nothing!”
“If she’s near the Well, it might block her connection to—” Another Helix started, but cut off as the building shook violently, pulling free of its supports. It was about to take them all with it.
“Damn it!” the girl yelled in frustration, lowering her goggles back over her eyes.
“What do we do with them?” one of her men asked.
“Let them die,” spat another. “Let them die here with this place.”
“No,” the girl said sternly. “Bring them. They can answer to Gideon for the loss of the Prime. Go!”
With that, she turned, ran … and leaped straight off the edge of the building. Mira stared in shock as the girl fell through the air and disappeared.
Polestar shuddered its last death throe. All around them the Helix leaped off the infirmary into the air with excited yells. Mira felt hands yank her up, saw two others grabbing Holt.
Then they were both being shoved toward the drop.
“Wait!” Mira gasped, trying to pull away.
A Helix whispered in her ear, “Hold on or die, Freebooter.”
Mira screamed as the building disappeared under her feet and she was falling through the air faster and faster, the ground hurdling up at her. There was a sudden flash of orange, and their descent slowed violently, as though they had used a parachute.
The effect floated them downward, and as they did Mira saw more White Helix, flipping and spinning in flashes of color, leaping between the various buildings as they fell to pieces, shouting gleefully as they tumbled through the air a thousand feet above the ground. They were actually enjoying this.
The Helix landed gracefully on what was left of the Mezzanine, but Mira hit the ground and collapsed. So did Holt right next to her. They looked at each other, wide-eyed. One minute they were on the infirmary, hundreds of feet in the air, the next—
“Get up, Outlanders!” one of the Helix yelled as he ran by. There was excitement in his voice. “Run! Run for all you’re worth!”
Above them the massive column of energy flashed and flickered once, twice … and then it died. Fading to black. Mira gasped in shock, she couldn’t believe it. The Gravity Well was gone, after all this time …
The Spire of Polestar groaned mournfully, what was left of the main supports buckling and crumbling under its own weight. Screams echoed up and down its length, the final sounds of those still trapped there.
Holt yanked Mira up, dashing away from the city as fast as they could, dodging through the refuse of the once-beautiful buildings and bridges that had spiraled high into the air.
As they ran, Mira saw a lone figure sitting where the grand stairway once was, staring off into space.
“Deckard!” she shouted. She thought he looked up as she ran, but she couldn’t be sure. Either way, he didn’t move. He just sat there calmly, alone, waiting for it all to end.
Then Polestar, the pride of the Freebooters, the great beacon of the third ring, came crashing down in a thunderous symphony of destruction that was unl
ike anything Mira had ever imagined.
“Zoey!” she yelled in anguish—but there was nothing anyone could do.
* * *
ZOEY’S ENTIRE BODY SHOOK, her knees buckling, the throbbing in her head unbearable. But still she held on.
She felt Max grab her pants in his teeth, try to pull her away, but she fought him off, too. “The Max has to go!” she yelled over the rumblings and crashings and screams in the air. “Go!”
The dog just growled, kept trying to drag her away.
Tears streamed from her eyes. This was all her fault, it was all—
She sensed something suddenly. A suggestion, like those from the Royal and the Mas’Erinhah. But it wasn’t them. It was something else.
Scion, it said. Let go.
Zoey hesitated. She was confused, didn’t understand.
It ends, the suggestion came again. It falls. Let go.
The sensations were growing stronger, their source was coming closer, racing toward her. Zoey opened her eyes and looked up.
Max howled as a five-legged, silver Assembly walker exploded through the stone wall that surrounded the courtyard. The same walker that had appeared twice before.
Zoey stared at it wide-eyed as it landed in front of them, barely able to keep control, barely able to hold on as the walker rushed toward her and Max.
We are here. Let go.
Zoey had little choice. The pain in her head was too much, her energy was spent. The golden light vanished around her, the connection with the Well severed, and she collapsed painfully to the ground.
Everything was a haze now. She could hear Max barking wildly next to her, could feel the giant, silver walker above her, and she could see the Gravity Well in front of her.
It flickered again—and then died, snuffed out like some massive candle wick. Snuffed out by her, Zoey thought with guilt.
The city roared above as it began to collapse straight down toward them.
The energy shield of the colorless Assembly walker flashed on, sealing them away in a wavering, powerful cocoon of light, as the world thundered apart around them and everything went black.
PART TWO
The Severed Tower Page 25