The Severed Tower (33 page)

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 unlike 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

31.
CONSTELLATIONS

BEN AND MIRA MADE CAMP
in what was left of an old country church in the second ring, three days’ journey from where the Time Shift had almost killed them at the antique shop. The building’s roof had fallen in long ago, revealing the night sky, and where the ceiling used to be the stars burst apart in prismatic color, over and over again, like tiny fireworks forever in the distance. Something about the atmosphere over the second ring filtered and changed the light from the stars, and gave them this mesmerizing effect.

Mira and Ben were wrapped together under their blankets, her head on his chest, and it felt like they had lain there for weeks instead of hours. The photograph of her father was propped up on one of the church’s old pews, and Mira stared at him, studying the lines around his eyes, the curve of his smile. They were things she never wanted to forget or lose, and she almost had.

“Is it just me,” Ben asked, “or is it a little weird that we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing with him there?”

“No.” Mira smiled. “He’d be happy, I think. Happy I was happy.”

“You miss him a lot.” Ben’s fingers moved through her hair.

Mira nodded. “This picture’s a good memory.”

“Tell me another.”

Mira thought a moment, then rolled over so she could stare up at the flashing sky through the ceiling.

“So, okay. That’s Libra,” Mira told him, pointing upward. “The big triangle, see it?”

“Yeah,” Ben answered.

“East is Andromeda, and Scorpio is in between them.”

“It’s supposed to be a scorpion?” Ben asked skeptically.

“You have to use your imagination to see it,” Mira replied softly. “It took my dad a million years to point out all the different stars to me before I saw the shape—but the whole time I never felt like he wanted to be anywhere else. And when I saw it, he was just as excited as I was. Every time I see it I think of him.”

Ben stared up at the constellation thoughtfully. “It just looks like a bunch of dots to me. But I’ve never been very good with imagination.”

Mira turned and studied him. “What do you know. Something Ben Aubertine isn’t good at.”

They lay there, watching each other in the firelight. “What would you do,” Ben asked, “if you could do anything?”

Mira’s answer came so easily, it surprised her. “Stop the Tone.”

Ben nodded. “Why?”

“Because…” Mira felt a sting of pain at what she was about to say. The truth was it was always at the back of her mind, the one thing that drove her and kept her going. The possibility that not everything was lost. She looked at the photograph again. “Because maybe I could have my dad back.”

“Me, too,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to be a Freebooter. To change things.”

“Change them how?”

“There are ways. One way, really. If you found it, you could make it so the Assembly never came here. You could reset everything. Start it all over,” he said, studying her. “You could see your dad again.”

Mira stared back silently. She knew what he must mean.

In a land full of myths, the Severed Tower was the biggest one, the most glamorous and exciting. Supposedly, if you could reach and enter it, the Tower would make one wish come true. For Mira, it had always sounded too amazing to be real.

“It might not be a good idea to think like that, Ben,” Mira said carefully.

“Why?”

“What if the Tower’s not real? What if it’s just something someone made up? What if you believe in it and you get there and it isn’t what you think?”

“It’s
real,
” Ben said with conviction, “and I think I might be the only person in the world capable of making the right decision inside. I think it’s what I’m supposed to do.” His gaze refocused on her, turning serious. Or, at least, more serious than usual. “I don’t know why I told you that. I’ve never told
anyone
that.”

Mira smiled again. She liked knowing there were parts of him that were only accessible to her. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Ben. I don’t know what the Tower is, or what happens when you’re inside it, but if someone were supposed to go there … I think it would be you.”

The barest glimpse of a smile formed in Ben’s eyes. He leaned over and dug through his pack, pulling something out. It was a necklace, a gold chain with two small pendants. Mira recognized them instantly. They were brass dice, the same kind Ben juggled between his knuckles when he was thinking.

He slowly slid it around her neck and she took it in her fingers, watching the firelight reflect on the tiny brass surfaces.

“Now we each have something of the other,” Ben said.

She looked up at him, confused. “What do you have of mine?”

“The best thing you could give me.” Ben looked back up at the stars, at the constellation Scorpius. “Something to figure out.”

Mira smiled and moved closer to him. “We’ll work on that.”

“You were wrong, you know,” Ben said, serious again. “It’s not me that’s supposed to go to the Tower. It’s
us.
In here we’re one person. We can’t survive alone, I know that now. I need you, and you need me.”

Something about that statement, as sweet as it was, seemed … off. But Mira felt warmth spread through her nonetheless, pushing away the doubt. A warmth she hadn’t felt in years. It was the feeling of belonging, of being home.

“I’ll always protect you, Mira. Always keep you safe.” Ben’s fingers gently slid along the length of her jaw. “I
promise.
”

They lay there holding each other, staring up at the sky where the stars shattered apart in bright, streaming flashes, over and over.

32.
AI-KATANA

MIRA WOKE FROM EXPLODING STARS
to the sounds of strange, fragmented thunder. The light around her was dim, and what little there was had been filtered to a sickly shade of yellow. It meant she was deeper into the Strange Lands. Soon there would be no light at all.

She blinked groggily, trying to push through the gloom. The horribly mournful sound of snapping metal and wood of Polestar as it fell was something she would hear the rest of her life. Platforms and buildings and memories, all of it cascading down in slow motion.

Mira closed her eyes, trying to seal it away, but it did no good.

“You were dreaming,” someone said.

Mira opened her eyes. Holt sat with his back against what looked like the bottom rung of a set of bleachers.

They were in what was left of an old basketball arena, a high school one, judging by the banners and posters still clinging to some of the walls.
ELECT WAYNE LEONARD CLASS VP
one read.
EMILY BRANDT FOR FIFTH GRADE TREASURER
said another. The school had apparently been in the middle of student council elections when the Strange Lands had formed. More in a long list of decisions and choices that now would never be made.

Most of the gym had been blown apart by Antimatter lightning, and its walls were full of gaping holes that gave glimpses of the dark landscape outside, and the occasional flashing of red, green, or blue. The court rested in tattered pieces, about half of it consumed by glowing upsurges of Antimatter crystals.

The White Helix were there, too. A dozen of them, broken into three groups of four. Each group stood equidistant from the others in a triangle, practicing different skills. One group sparred against itself, their Lancets whizzing and humming through the air. Another worked agility drills, tumbling and balancing in handstands. The third practiced with their Antimatter rings, leaping high into the air, floating back to the ground, dashing from one point to another in blurs of motion, all while wrapped in flashes of different colors.

Every few minutes their small, fiery leader would clap her hands loudly. When she did, the Helix stopped what they were doing, moved clockwise to the next point of the triangle, and began training again, this time in a new skill.

Watching the White Helix train was something Mira never thought she would ever do, the kind of thing that would have thrilled her not that long ago. Now the sight failed to move her at all.

“You okay?” Holt asked.

Mira’s answer came instantly. “No.”

“We don’t know she’s dead.”

“She might as well be.” Mira didn’t want to, but it was all she could think of now. Zoey alone in the Strange Lands, lost, helpless. If she wasn’t crushed under the ruins of Polestar …

“That kid comes with a lot of surprises,” Holt said. “I can’t think we came all this way just to be stopped here.”

“I can. She came with
me.
” She felt Holt look at her.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he told her.

Mira’s smile was full of irony. “Yes it was. It wouldn’t have happened if she’d been with Ben.”

“Ben left you to die, Mira,” Holt said. “Took your plutonium, trapped you and ran. You really think
he’s
who we should have trusted? I’d put her in your hands all over again.”

Mira didn’t say anything. Holt was biased, his feelings for her clouded his thoughts—and besides that, he didn’t understand. Not really. No one did. No one except her and Ben and Echo and Deckard. Now she and Ben were the only ones left—and even Ben wasn’t Ben anymore. Her eyes stung, started to glisten, and it made her angry. Just another sign of her weakness. Just more proof she didn’t belong here.