The Severed Tower

by J. Barton Mitchell

  “Ben, I think—”

  “But, I…” His eyes lost their focus again, they blurred and moistened, both his hands shook. “Oh, God…”

  “Ben…”

  “She died because of me. I stood there … and I thought … I thought I could fix it. I…”

  “Ben, you have to listen to me.” Zoey was unable to keep the note of urgency out of her voice. They were running out of time. “Mira doesn’t have to die. None of them do.”

  “What have I done?” he whispered painfully, ignoring her.

  “Ben!” she yelled with as much force as she could. It got through. He looked at her. “We can still save her.”

  “I saw her die!” he yelled back in a raw voice.

  She looked at the abacus in his hand, saw how white his knuckles were from gripping it. “You have to give me the artifact. The one in your hand.”

  Ben looked at the Chance Generator. “Why?”

  “If I have it, I can control the Tower. I can fix things. For a little bit, but there isn’t much time.”

  “You can fix it?” He looked at her with hope. “You can make it so the Assembly never came?”

  “No.” Zoey shook her head sadly. “The Tower doesn’t work that way, Ben, but I think I can fix it. It won’t be like you hoped, but I can save them, if you help me.”

  A dark hint of suspicion passed over Ben’s face. “You … you’re lying to me. You want it. You want the abacus for yourself.”

  Zoey tried to stay calm. “Why would I want that, Ben?”

  “You’re like everyone else,” he snarled. “You want to take it from me, but I won’t give it up. Why would I ever give it up?”

  Zoey hesitated. This wasn’t working. She had to think of something different. She looked around them, at the church, the flickering fire, the exploding stars above. “This place—it’s important, isn’t it?”

  The change of subject seemed to jar Ben out of his hostility. “It doesn’t exist anymore. It fell down not long after she and I were here.”

  “You and Mira?”

  Ben nodded. “Why is this what the Tower looks like? Why show me this place?”

  “Maybe … you see what you want to see here,” Zoey answered.

  Ben’s stare moved all around the church. “I guess, if there was one place I’d want to be for eternity, it would be here, but it would be with her. Not alone.” Ben looked back up at the stars bitterly. “I was … I was supposed to be here.”

  Zoey almost argued with him again, but then something occurred to her. Something profound. “I believe you.”

  He looked at her hopefully. “You do?”

  She nodded, thinking it all through. “Don’t you see? If you hadn’t been here, if you hadn’t come—I couldn’t fix any of it. We would already be gone, all of us, but … because of you I can.” She and Ben stared at one another as the impact of what she was saying sunk in. “I think you were supposed to be here, and in spite of everything, you found a way to do it.”

  Ben’s gaze softened at her words and he slowly deflated back into the pew, thoughts running through his mind. Zoey couldn’t read Ben in this place, for some reason his emotions were closed to her, but just by looking at his face and the barest expressions which formed there, she knew what he was feeling all the same. Relief. Contentment. Resolution.

  “If I give you the abacus,” he quietly said, “I’ll die. Won’t I?”

  Zoey stared back at him. “I don’t know what happens when someone is absorbed into the Tower, Ben, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as dying.”

  Ben was quiet a moment longer, then he looked back down to the artifact. His hand was no longer shaking, Zoey noticed. “It was so hard to give up before…”

  “You can do it. Holt gave it up. You’re just as strong as he is—only in different ways.”

  Ben looked up again. “If what you said is true, that we see what we want to see here, then…”

  As he spoke, what was left of the ceiling was wiped away and the breadth of the night sky opened itself. The stars burst apart in prismatic color, over and over again. It was beautiful. In spite of the situation, Zoey stared up in wonder.

  “The problem was always too much interference,” Ben said. “Too much data. I always wondered…”

  Above them the stars flashed out, one by one, one after the other, until nothing was left but a single, strange-looking constellation.

  “There.” A smile spread across Ben’s face. From what Zoey knew of him, that was a rare thing. “There.”

  “What is it?” Zoey asked.

  “A scorpion.” He almost laughed as he spoke the words. “I can see it.”

  Zoey stared up at the cluster of stars in the black sky, but it looked nothing like a scorpion to her. After a few moments Ben turned to her. He pulled something from a pocket and placed it in Zoey’s palm. It was a single brass cube of dice.

  “Will you … tell her I meant what I said?” Ben seemed calm now, at peace. “At the Anvil.”

  “She knows, Ben,” Zoey answered, “but yes, I will.”

  He nodded … and then his hand slowly raised and held out the Chance Generator. Zoey stared at it hesitantly, as if the old, innocent-looking abacus were a coiled viper. If she wanted to make everything alright, she would have to take it. Slowly, she forced her hand around it, and she and Ben held it at the same time. He stared down at it intensely—and then finally, slowly … he let it go.

  At first there was no indication anything had changed. Then a crimson sphere flashed around Zoey. She saw Ben’s form begin to lighten and glow. Streaks of light drifted off him, rising into the night sky, each streak reducing his luminosity by a fraction.

  Whatever was happening to him, it didn’t seem painful. He was smiling again. “It’s … like pure knowledge,” he said.

  Zoey watched as he faded, bits of light drifting up from him into the sky, until his entire body gently broke apart and blended into the air. When she looked up, the stars had been repopulated with those streaks, and their light rained down on her … and then he was gone.

  Zoey looked at the abacus. She knew what she had to do. She knew the sacrifices involved, but she’d promised Ben. She’d promised them all.

  The last thing Zoey felt before the world exploded in white, was the brass dice cube in her tightly squeezed fist.

  43. BALANCE

  TIME STREAMED BACKWARD PAST AVRIL in painful blurs of light, and it felt like her mind was being split apart.

  Then it abruptly ended.

  She barely recovered fast enough to avoid a burst of plasma bolts from an Assembly Hunter, flipping up and back and just catching the edge of a crushed Volkswagen. Instantly, she fired her remaining crystal and watched the walker fall in a burst of flame.

  What had just happened? The last she remembered, she was holding Dane on the water tower, both of them bleeding and clinging to each other.

  Dane.

  Instinctively, she searched the battle raging around her—and found him. Crouched on a rooftop, staring right back at her. Avril breathed in stunned relief. So did he. But it was clear neither knew how it was possible.

  All around her, Avril saw her Arc—Masyn, Castor. Most of the others. Flipping and darting through the air as yellow bolts sizzled past them, firing their spears, continuing (or repeating, she wasn’t sure) the same fight.

  In the distance, bright flashes of light sparked to life up and down the line of larger walkers. Seconds later, the popping sounds of ordnance being fired echoed through the air.

  Avril remembered this. She remembered. “Heads up!” she yelled to the jumping Helix around her. She saw the streaks of light rain down just like before … but they never fell.

  The sky flashed. The projectiles slowed … and then burst harmlessly apart above the White Helix.

  Two massive Dark Matter Tornadoes suddenly descended from the clouds right on top of the artillery walkers. The huge machines sparked and burst into flames as the black funnel clouds moved o
ver them, warping and ripping them to pieces. In just seconds the huge walkers disintegrated into flaming, twisted metal.

  Lightning—red, blue, and green—fired down from the sky. Explosions flared everywhere as the lightning targeted the Hunters, one by one, blowing them apart in showers of colored flame, leaving craters of glowing crystals.

  Avril watched, stunned, as the lightning ripped through the Assembly ranks, saw them turn and run, confused, unable to defend themselves as the land itself turned against them. More Tornadoes descended from the clouds, barreling down on the army.

  Toward the north, in the far distance, Avril saw something even more incredible.

  The Vortex was gone, as if it had never existed, and without it, the truth of the Severed Tower was fully revealed.

  The black shape of an Assembly Presidium base ship hung over the city ruins, broken into two giant pieces, one falling away from the other in a rupture that was, somehow, stuck in time.

  The winds ripped through Avril’s hair. All around her she could hear explosions and streaking missiles, but her eyes were on the Severed Tower … and a single speck of glowing brightness hovering in front of it, a thousand feet off the ground, wrapped in shimmering golden light.

  “Zoey…” Avril breathed in awe.

  * * *

  THE ONE THE SCION named Ambassador felt the world rip backward and resume at the most opportune moment. It was surrounded by seven Hunters and the one the Scion named the Royal.

  Each opponent hesitated, confused, dazed, unsure what had happened.

  But Ambassador hesitated the least.

  It plowed through three of the Royal’s guardians, driving them into the ground in bursts of flame.

  As before, the others twisted, trying to target the five-legged walker—but this time they had no chance. Red and green lightning streaked down and blew them to pieces, one at a time.

  The Royal trumpeted in shock, suddenly facing its adversary one-on-one, its advantage lost.

  The tripod barely lunged out of the way of Ambassador’s charge, its cannons whining and firing.

  Ambassador’s shield collapsed, like before, but it didn’t care. This was the opportunity it had waited for. It would vanquish an ancient enemy. Or that enemy would vanquish it. There was no middle ground.

  It spun around and charged. The powerful walker connected with the Royal in a horribly violent impact, sending it crashing through what was left of a drugstore. As it did, bright, glowing things formed in the air. Each the shape of a cube.

  The cubes drifted toward the tripod as it tried to stand and right itself. One of them made contact with the Hunter’s armor and a great plume of sparks shot from it. The Royal stood up, tried to move …

  And another cube sank into it. Then another, and another. More and more, piling on top of the machine. The Royal trumpeted, and if Ambassador had still been connected to the Whole, it was sure it would have felt its enemy’s fear.

  The desperate machine burst through a window, crashing outside, but it was too late. Its armor disintegrated as dozens of the glowing cubes burrowed into it, driving it to the ground. Flames shot everywhere. The green-and-orange Ephemera of the Royal drifted into the air, glittering and flashing, frantically trying to form, but it couldn’t. It broke into a billion pieces and dissolved into nothing, while Ambassador watched in satisfaction.

  * * *

  HOLT GASPED OUT LOUD as he unwound from time.

  The first thing he noticed was Max licking his face. The second was that he was lying on the ground between two jackknifed semitruck trailers that were warped and merged together. Ravan and her men were there, too, staring at each other with odd, disturbed looks.

  Holt shuddered as he remembered Max dying, Ravan’s limp form against a wall, the huge Spider walker crashing down on top of them. What the hell just happened?

  Explosions shook the trailers violently. Plasma bolts sizzled through the air. Holt could hear the trumpetings from a hundred Hunters in the air.

  “Get your asses up!” Ravan yelled, grabbing her rifle.

  Everyone got to their feet as two Hunters leaped onto the roofs of the tractor trailers on either side of them, their cannons priming to fire. The Menagerie’s rifles opened up, spraying bullets upward, and the tripods shuddered and fell away.

  More were coming, thundering toward them in a stampede, threatening to overwhelm what was left of the silver reinforcements that were firing desperately in all directions.

  Holt and Ravan braced themselves, her men tensed …

  And the air was suddenly full of flashing bright shapes that Holt recognized. Tesla Cubes, Mira had called them, the things that had destroyed the Crossroads. They appeared from nowhere, thousands of them, flashing to life right in front of the charging Hunters.

  The walkers skidded to a stop, trying to avoid the Anomalies, but there was nowhere to go.

  Sparks flew everywhere as the cubes covered and burrowed into the machines, dissolving them where they stood. Lightning flashed down from the swirling clouds, striking in pulses of color. Thunder shook the ground.

  The Menagerie watched as the Assembly was torn to pieces by the environment.

  A huge, triumphant bellow emitted from behind them, and Holt saw the silver Spider walker stomping forward, its massive cannons firing, sending plasma hurdling into the crowd of dying Hunters.

  “Oh, my God…” Ravan said, and Holt turned. They stared above them, past the trailers and the flashing lightning and the fields of glowing cubes, toward the north.

  There in the distance, the Severed Tower hung, but the swirling mass of the Vortex was gone, and he and Ravan could see it clearly now. It was … a Presidium? It didn’t seem possible, but that was exactly what he saw: a massive Presidium base ship, broken in half, hovering in the air. Standing out against its huge black shape was a small dot of glowing, golden whiteness. It was a figure, Holt could tell. A small one.

  “Is … that your girl?” Ravan asked.

  “Yeah,” Holt said, smiling. “That’s my girl.”

  * * *

  ZOEY HUNG SUSPENDED JUST in front of where the Presidium had broken apart all those years ago. She could feel the energy streaming out from it, growing and building. Soon it would be too much for her to control, but it didn’t matter. She would be done by then.

  Everything stretched out into infinity. Not just the Strange Lands below, but everything. Pasts. Futures. Presents. Every possible combination of every potential possibility relating to her converged at that exact moment—and every other moment—and they were hers to shape.

  For one brief period, she was the Tower.

  Time yielded to her, and she forced it back, rewinding it all in a blur. Below she saw Mira disintegrate and then re-form. Saw the White Helix cut down, then rise up. Watched the giant silver Spider walker crush Holt’s building and then stand back onto its giant legs.

  But she had to do more than that, and she could.

  She reached out to the Strange Lands, felt its chaotic power.

  Dark Matter Tornadoes dropped from the swirling, black clouds. Antimatter Lightning rained down. She summoned Tesla Cubes, Quark Spheres, and Daisy Chains; she made Time Sinks and Landmines and Pulsars and she flung all of it, the full force of the Strange Lands itself, at the massive Assembly army below, and it stumbled and faltered under the onslaught.

  From some of the Assembly, she sensed a new intention. They already hated this place, were terrified of it, and the sight of Zoey, the Scion, controlling all of it, holding their fate in her hands, was enough to break their resolve.

  But only for some. Those she spared, directing the energy of the Strange Lands away from them. She did the same for Ambassador and the silver reinforcements it had brought. That was all. She watched as the Tower’s energy tore into the rest and scattered them like leaves in a furious wind.

  The air below was covered in flickering, golden energy fields, hundreds of them, lighting up the darkness, but only briefly. They never took sh
ape, it was impossible here. Their energy bled away into the air. Their colors faded.

  Scion, a sudden mass of projections reached her, from hundreds of sources. She could sense their shock, their fear, bleeding off of them. Why?

  The energy of the Tower kept building. It was getting too strong, and the Chance Generator’s influence was fading. She had to redirect it, let it release before it was too late, but still she hesitated. She remembered what the Tower had told her.

  Balance must be restored. It is a mathematical necessity. And you are part of the same equation.

  Only, she wanted to see Holt again. Wanted to see Mira and the Max. She wanted it all so badly.

  The Feelings stirred, rising up eagerly, filling her with strength. Zoey listened, sensing their intentions, their idea. Could it work, she wondered? Was it cheating? She thought the process through, the chain of events she would set in motion. She knew where it led.

  But was it the right thing to do? Is it what Holt or Mira would do? Maybe not. Maybe it was selfish, but didn’t she deserve it this once? After all she had done?

  The Feelings swirled pleasantly, agreeing, encouraging.

  Zoey made her choice. She unleashed the full, impending blast from the singularity, the one that had been building all this time, and used all that chaotic power to shape one final set of events. Events that would still lead to true balance. Only later.

  She hoped it would be enough, she hoped fate accepted her bargain.

  Behind her, the Assembly Presidium, once known as the Severed Tower, shuddered and flashed blindingly, unsticking in time.

  There was a violent, gut-wrenching explosion as it disintegrated into the ground, shaking the earth in a massive fireball that bellowed outward. Zoey closed her eyes and focused. Concentrating the energy, directing it, sending it away from everyone she loved.

  Finally, moments later, for the first time in more than nine years—balance was restored.