Winterbay

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Reiko studied the spotless floors of the Machine, seeing Mira’s point. “You’re right. Hell, there’s not even any dust.” She circled the room back toward the door, thinking. “We’re on the eastern side of the city, I think.”

  “So?”

  “So, look up,” she said. Mira did, studying the ceiling far above them. “This thing’s sticking out on the surface, it’s too tall not to. There’s only one thing tall enough for it to be.”

  The answer occurred to Mira. “That dark tower. The Quorum’s tower.”

  Reiko nodded. “At least you pay attention.” She stopped in front of Mira’s pack, still wedging the door open.

  Mira, her eyes narrowed, studied the other girl. “When we’re done here, when we beat this thing and it’s all said and done, Armitage wants you to kill me, doesn’t he?”

  Reiko’s only reaction was to smile. “Would it matter if he did?”

  After a moment, Mira shrugged. “I guess not. Doesn’t change the fact that once that door shuts, the only way out of here is up.”

  “Exactly,” Reiko replied. “If we’re gonna survive this place, we gotta trust each other. Everything before the Machine, everything after … it doesn’t mean a thing. It can wait.” Mira could hear the sincerity in the girl’s voice. Whatever Reiko might be, she said what she meant. “In here, right now, we watch each other’s backs. Can you handle that?”

  Mira held Reiko’s gaze, then simply said, “Yes.”

  They stared at one another a moment longer …

  … then Reiko kicked Mira’s pack loose and sent it sliding toward her across the floor.

  The giant door shut with an ominous thud, and Mira noticed something new. There was no latch on this side, no way to open it. They weren’t going back out that way. They were committed now.

  She grabbed her pack as around them the Machine began to rumble …

  Machine

  Mira instinctively backed up as the room shook from all points at once—to the sides, up top, below; even the air felt like it was vibrating. The problem was, the door was sealed, the ceiling far above, and there was nothing to climb or grip.

  They were trapped. There was nowhere to go.

  The rumbling grew amid other sounds: clicks and whines of metallic things moving behind the walls; the wailing and hissing of hydraulics; a strange, deep, booming thump that she could feel in her gut and seemed to grow with every hit. The floor rocked under Mira’s feet, rattling up through her legs. She could see the walls shaking. Then Mira gasped and covered her ears as a loud, high-pitched screech filled the interior, like giant fingernails on a blackboard.

  It was the huge column in the center of the room coming to life. Mira and Reiko stared up at it in shock, as it began to turn, slow and powerful. It didn’t just look like a giant cog, they realized. That’s what it actually was. The thing was probably the central gear for the entire Machine.

  “Well,” Mira said, eyes wide. “This is happening.”

  The rectangular slots in the walls cranked open all around the room. Blocks of thick, rusted metal slid out, all different sizes, making hundreds of different ledges that spanned the height of the room. What the hell were they supposed to do with those? Climb them, or—

  The floor suddenly swayed under Mira’s feet. Back and forth.

  Her eyes thinned. Something was wrong about that, and Mira felt a chill as she figured it out.

  “Get off the floor!” she yelled, hands already moving for an artifact combination on her chest. Reiko looked at her. “It’s hollow!”

  Reiko didn’t hesitate, touching two fingers together. There was a flash of yellow—and she leaped straight up like a rocket, twisting into the air and landing gracefully on one of the ledges that had pushed out from the wall far above.

  Mira didn’t have time to admire the movement. Loud clicking sounds came from under her feet.

  She yanked loose one of the Gravity Voids and threw it hard at the floor. Its glass vial burst apart, producing a flash and a hum. Splinters of light exploded in a sphere all around Mira as something ripped her off the ground, floating her in midair, weightless …

  … just as the floor began to snap downward in sections.

  It was made up of a series of rings, moving toward the center of the room, hinged in some way that Mira couldn’t discern, and they were all falling open, one after the other, disappearing, leaving nothing but stark blackness. It was a drop. The final kind.

  Mira guessed they knew what had happened to all those bodies now.

  Mira floated in the void, safe from falling through the floor—but that was it. The Gravity Void created a sphere of zero-gravity all around her, but she had no way to make herself move within it.

  “Freebooter!” Reiko shouted from above.

  Mira looked up and saw the girl crouched on a ledge. One end of her rope flew downward, and Mira caught it as it dropped past. Reiko wrapped her end around the ledge, securing it, and Mira started climbing, pulling herself up.

  Her weight came back down hard as she passed through the edge of the Gravity Void, losing its effect, but she held on, climbed, and finally swung over to one of the ledges.

  Mira landed and let the rope go. She looked down. The floor was a giant black hole of nothing now, waiting to swallow them if they fell. Which led back to her previous question. Just what were they supposed to do in here?

  “Look!” Reiko’s voice again. She pointed toward something on the far wall, almost at her eye level.

  A bright red button, glowing with light. It was directly above one of the ledges. Below it, near the missing floor, was another identical red button, above a similar ledge.

  Armitage had been right. The Machine required two people to disarm it.

  “How much you wanna bet we gotta hit those at the same time?” Mira shouted up at Reiko over the loud whirring of the Machine.

  “Wouldn’t be fun otherwise,” Reiko yelled back. “Gonna make my way to—”

  The girl stopped abruptly as the ledge she was standing on suddenly retracted back into the wall. Reiko reacted instantly, flipping onto another nearby ledge in a flash of purple.

  All around the room, the phenomenon repeated itself. The ledges began to push in and out, over and over.

  “Oh, great,” Mira said. She had an idea what was coming. Her own ledge began to disappear back into the wall.

  She leaped off toward another one below—but she was no White Helix. Mira fell like a rock, slammed into the ledge, and struggled to grab hold of the smooth metal surface.

  She barely managed to pull herself up and onto it … and then felt the new ledge beginning to retract.

  Mira grimaced, leaped again, landed on another one, more solidly this time, pulled herself up. It was retracting too, but slower. She had a few seconds.

  She looked for the two buttons, found them, and noticed something perturbing. The ledges underneath each were retracting and pushing out opposite to one another. It meant she and Reiko wouldn’t be able to stand on those ledges at the same time to push the buttons.

  This place wasn’t making things easy on them.

  Mira’s ledge was about to disappear. The closest other one was above her. She jumped for it.

  Her hands grabbed the top and she tried to pull herself up, but this time she slid, feet dangling over the yawning blackness below. The ledge began to retract, just like the others. There wasn’t time to make it, and she didn’t have the strength anyway.

  With a gulp, Mira looked down. Then she did the only thing she could think of. She let go.

  Falling downward, the black void racing up at her, she yanked loose two artifacts from the straps, one in each hand. Dynamos. Sticking out from each combination was a retractable ballpoint pen, Mira’s favorite way to make an on/off switch.

  She clicked the pens with her thumbs. There was a flash—and the two artifacts she was holding instantly turned her fists into powerful magnets, and they stuck hard against the wall of the Machine as she fell. />
  Mira groaned as her weight hit her shoulders and wrists and the length of her slammed into the wall, held in place by her magnetized hands above her.

  “Freebooter, let’s go!” Reiko yelled in annoyance. The girl flipped between the moving ledges above, in flashes of cyan light. Mira glared up at the girl enviously, then started climbing.

  In a pattern, she clicked the button of one pen to deactivate its magnetic effect, repositioned her hand, clicked it, sealed it in place, and repeated with the other hand. Doing this, she could move along the metallic wall, using the Dynamos to completely bypass the system of retracting ledges that pushed in and out. The problem was that Dynamos were powerful, which meant they didn’t last long. She just hoped they could get her to that button. It was only about ten feet above her now.

  Mira climbed for it, pulling herself up along the sheer surface until she finally reached it. She planted her feet against the wall and clicked the pen in her right fist, freeing it. “Now!” she shouted and saw Reiko dart in a blur through the air toward the top button.

  Mira punched the red plastic bubble with her fist at the same time as the Helix girl …

  … and then jolted as a giant air horn filled the chamber of the Machine. The sound was so loud and jarring, it made her ears ring.

  Behind the walls came the sound of hydraulics shutting down and dying. The ledges all around them slowed and froze in place wherever they were.

  Just in time, too. She could feel that the Dynamos were almost spent. She clicked them off and fell to a ledge about six feet below, barely able to keep herself from rolling off. She was alive. She’d survived the Machine’s first test, but she had a feeling this wasn’t over by a long shot. The giant column in the center was still spinning, and there was something new now. The circular portholes they’d seen earlier had opened—yawning black voids that ran up the length of the spinning gear.

  As Mira watched, the question of what the portholes contained was answered. Things pushed out from them as the column spun: long, flat shafts of steel, like paddles or blades.

  Dozens of them, filling the center of the room, whipping through the air powerfully at different speeds, in seconds transforming the interior of the Machine into a spinning maze of metal. Mira flattened as one of them whipped by and almost took her head off. “Son of a—”

  “There!” Reiko pointed to a spot about halfway up the column’s side. Two more red buttons, spinning on opposite ends of the huge gear.

  They had to leap onto the blades, Mira saw. Hold on, climb, make their way to the buttons, all as the blades spun through the air and gravity tried to rip them off.

  Mira sighed. At least it wasn’t going to be boring.

  She pulled one of the smaller artifact combinations she’d made earlier out of her pocket. It was the Aleve on the silver chain. Most people used Aleves in backpacks, to let them carry more, but Mira had made this one for something else. Her own body.

  “What are you waiting for, Helix?” Mira yelled as she slipped the silver chain over her head and let the Aleve fall into her shirt. As long as it touched her skin, her body weight would be reduced to a fraction, and that was probably her only chance of climbing those blades without Dynamos or a White Helix’s antimatter rings. “Bet I beat you to the top.”

  “You’re on,” Reiko called down, then leaped in a flash of purple toward one of the blades, grabbed it, jumped to another, and began to descend, falling from one metallic shaft to another.

  Mira leaped onto a spinning blade of her own and wrapped around it. It was a flat piece of thick metal, but to Mira’s relief, its edges weren’t sharpened. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to hold on to, even with the Aleve.

  The world around her was a blur of rust and fluorescent light as the walls raced past. She could feel inertia and gravity trying to yank her off, but the Aleve negated the effect. Somewhat.

  Another blade flew toward her. Mira timed it, reached up and grabbed the spinning shaft, and let it rip her off and away. With her reduced weight, the impact barely registered, and Mira held on, grabbing another as it flashed by.

  Above her, Reiko fell through the air and spun around one of the blades like a gymnast on parallel bars. Mira frowned at how easy she made it look.

  The red button glowed right above where Mira’s blade disappeared into the geared column. She was there. All she had to do was—

  Mira rolled off as another blade flew toward her, almost slamming into her. The space between them was so small there was no room to duck, so she grabbed the top of the blade with her hands and pulled herself against its underside, holding on, feet dangling.

  She was lighter now, so the strain on her arms wasn’t bad, but the air below was full of more spinning wedges. She pulled her knees up as one whizzed by, wrapping her legs around the blade above her.

  She had to get to that button, but she couldn’t shimmy along the top; there wasn’t room. Mira grimaced. She’d have to do it from underneath, then.

  She hugged herself tight against the blade and started slowly sliding toward the column, hanging underneath it.

  Reiko blew past in a blur of yellow. “Freebooter, come on!” The girl was close, ready to hit her button.

  Mira reached the end of the blade. The button was just above. “Three … two … one…” she yelled. “Now!”

  Reiko flew forward on the other side. Mira rolled on top of the blade … and punched the red bubble just as Reiko hit hers.

  Another startling air horn blast filled the interior, and she felt elated. They’d actually managed to—

  A blade slammed into Mira and sent her flying. She fell, screaming, hit another wedge, bounced off, and fell toward the black, yawning floor below …

  … then felt herself jolt as Reiko grabbed her in a flare of cyan and landed them somehow on one of the ledges in the walls. Mira stared at the girl, breathing hard. Reiko frowned back. “That’s one you owe me,” she said.

  The blades began to retract, clicking suddenly backward through the portholes in the side of the column, disappearing and unfolding back inside. In less than a minute, the air was clear again.

  That didn’t last long.

  All around them, new portholes opened again in the walls. A series of loud pops like gunshots shook the Machine, and both girls flinched as things exploded outward.

  Cables, strong steel ones, dozens of them, shot forward from the walls and connected with parallel portholes in the giant spinning gear, latching on to it. There was a giant groan as the cables went taut, and as they did the column began to powerfully wrap them around itself.

  Mira and Reiko watched, stunned, as the walls of the Machine began to press and wind inward, pulled forward by the huge gear in the center of the room and the thick cables.

  Their ledge began to disappear as the walls moved.

  Both girls leaped toward the only option left to them: the cables that filled the interior.

  Mira grabbed one, but there was nothing to pull herself onto. It was like holding on to a steel rope, her feet dangling wildly below.

  Reiko grabbed and flipped around one, using it to send her shooting upward onto another.

  All around Mira, the walls were pushing in. Slowly, but that was what was happening. It was pretty obvious that they only had a few minutes, and then the Machine was going to crush them. Unless they deactivated it. But how?

  The answer was at the very top of the ever shrinking room. Two more red buttons, new ones, sitting next to each other in the center of the ceiling. Mira had to get there fast. Reiko was almost halfway up.

  Mira let go of the cable with one hand. If it hadn’t been for the Aleve, there was no way she could have held her weight. From the straps on her chest she grabbed a Gravitron—a big, complicated, four-tier combination—and broke its glass vial of magnet shavings with her thumb. Another flash, another hum.

  Where a Gravity Void combination nullified gravity, Gravitrons reversed its pull altogether. The air around Mira wavered in a
sudden, bright, golden sphere … then she was yanked hard up toward the ceiling by the artifact’s effect. Mira groaned as a thick wave of nausea overwhelmed her.

  A Gravitron mixed with an Aleve rattled your equilibrium in a major way, but Mira didn’t have much choice. Fortunately, dodging through the maze of cables as the artifact forced her upward was enough to make her forget.

  Above, Reiko reached the highest cable in the room and perched on it, staring down at Mira impatiently.

  Mira pushed in and out of the cables, flying upward, until she rammed unceremoniously into the metallic ceiling. She let the Gravitron go, and it floated up to the top, trying to push itself through. Mira didn’t have to touch the artifact for its effect to manipulate her gravity, just stay close to it, and it kept her pinned, upside down, on the ceiling.

  “Ready?” Reiko asked, her eyes on the red buttons.

  Mira nodded. “Do it!” Reiko leaped from her cable toward one button. Mira reached for another …

  … but something flared in a half-circle of blackish light around each one. The girls’ hands bounced harmlessly off the black fields.

  Mira tried again. So did Reiko, but the black energy was still there, and it was impenetrable. It was like trying to push through a wall.

  Mira studied it in disbelief. She’d seen protective fields like that, lots of them, in fact—but it didn’t make sense at all. Not in this place.

  Reiko dropped and perched on another cable as the walls kept closing in.

  “They’re Barriers!” Mira yelled down to her. She couldn’t believe it. “Force fields … from artifact combinations!”

  Reiko’s eyes widened. “That’s … that’s not possible.” True enough. The whole point of Winterbay was that artifacts were banned. So why did the Machine have two of them protecting its buttons?

  The walls rumbled around them, kept pushing in, creeping closer. They had seconds now.

  “What do we do?” Reiko shouted, a note of panic in her voice.

  “I can deactivate them. Maybe…” She grabbed her pack and started digging through it in midair, praying she had what she needed, but the odds weren’t good …