Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  This was the second time Holt had beaten it. It didn’t seem to sit well with the machine … or with whatever was controlling it.

  Plasma fire erupted from the tripods, and Holt flinched as hands yanked him onto the deck right as it seared past his head.

  “The Max!” he heard Zoey shout from somewhere, and the dog squirmed out of his grip and rushed to the little girl. Holt frowned. Max had a real problem with gratitude.

  Holt stood up … and was instantly wrapped in a crushing embrace. Lithe arms hugged him, and he felt Mira press into his chest. “Holt…,” she said, and the emotion in her voice was plain to hear. She had been worried; he could feel it in her embrace. Slowly, hesitantly, Holt put his arms around her, too, and hugged her back.

  Holt put a lot of energy into resisting caring about others. So much so that he’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone care for him. It was … not at all unpleasant.

  Mira pulled away from him, blushing, looking up into his eyes. Holt looked back, and he could feel the beginnings of a smile form on his face.

  “See?” Zoey said from his left. “Holt always comes back.”

  Holt looked down to the little girl. “That’s right, kiddo,” he said, smiling for real now. “I always—”

  A stream of plasma bolts sliced the air, and Holt felt one rip hard into his left side. The impact sent him spinning crazily in a haze of pain and fog, and he slammed onto the deck of the Landship, then lay unmoving.

  He heard Mira scream above him, felt her lunge on top of him protectively, saw the rest of the Landship crew hit the deck and take cover.

  In slow motion almost, as his vision receded and darkness pressed in, he looked behind them. In the distance, explosions flared along the river as the last of the red Spiders fell in sparks and flames into the water. On the ground below, the small green and orange tripods pursued angrily, but they were being left behind as the huge ship gathered speed. Their plasma cannon fired, sending bolts streaming after the ship, and Holt stared back at the differently marked walker again. Even over the distance between them, he could feel its gaze on him, just like before, hungry and full of malice and dark intent.

  And then everything went completely black, and the world flashed away.

  PART TWO

  MIDNIGHT CITY

  28. SOMETHING

  IN HIS SLOW, PAINFUL RETURN TO CONSCIOUSNESS, Holt glimpsed the world through strange vignettes of imagery that came and went and were punctuated with blackness. As unpleasant as they were, he preferred the waking moments to the unconsciousness, if only because in that confused, detached blend of sights and sounds, he wasn’t dreaming. The dreams had become more vivid than ever. He knew where they were leading him … and he didn’t want to go there.

  As the blackness receded, he pushed the fog and the haze away. When he opened his eyes, he blinked at the brightness of the world. He was in a small room made completely of polished wood. The ceiling was rounded and smooth, everything blending seamlessly together, and the bed he was on seemed to have been built out from the wall. There was a wooden chest at the other end, and a small stained glass window—maybe from an old church—allowed colorful streams of light to float in the air.

  And he noticed something else, too. The room rocked occasionally, shaking and jarring. It felt like the whole thing was moving.…

  “Hey, Hawkins,” said a voice he recognized. “Thanks for joining us.”

  Holt looked to his left and saw Mira sitting on the floor next to his bed, watching him. He wondered how long she’d been there. The idea of her protectively looking over him was both pleasing and discomforting.

  “Where are we?” he asked, slowly sitting up. He regretted the movement almost instantly. His head swam and there was a burning pain along his left ribs. Now that he was moving, he could feel the sticky restraint of fresh bandages around it. Someone had treated an injury, and with the realization came the memory of the plasma bolts and the world spinning as he crashed down.

  “Might want to take it slow, killer,” Mira said, noticing his pain. “You took a nasty hit. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.” Her voice was laced with a hint of concern. “You’ve been out a good twenty hours. We’re on the Wind Shear,” Mira continued. “It’s taking us to Midnight City. Zoey’s up with Max on the deck.”

  “The Landship from the trading depot?” Holt asked, remembering he had been running for it when the green and oranges had appeared. The rest of his memories were hazy at best. It explained the rocking motion of the room. “You got their … whatever it is fixed?”

  Mira smiled. “The Chinook, yeah. They traded for a bad Focuser at the depot. I had another one, helped them rebuild it.”

  Holt cradled his head, letting the pain and the dizziness pass. And then something occurred to him. Something bad. “Midnight City,” Holt sighed.

  “Yeah,” Mira replied. “I know it’s the opposite direction you were hoping to go, but I figured you’d prefer that to being left behind.”

  He looked up at her. “Guess you’ll do anything to keep me around, huh?”

  Mira smiled. “It’s possible you’re flattering yourself right now.”

  Holt looked away, thinking. It meant a longer trip for him, and more chances of running into Menagerie along the way. But there was nothing he could do to change it now; he’d just have to figure it out. He closed his eyes again. It was all coming back, and with the return of his memories, he realized just how lucky they’d been.

  So did Mira. “Those Hunters were almost on us,” she said, “and the others were blowing each other to bits. I’ve never seen that much plasma fire in one place.” She looked at him pointedly. “Something happened with Zoey. Didn’t it?”

  Holt looked at her as he thought back to the trading depot. He still wasn’t sure he believed it himself, but he told her what he’d seen. The shouts from the tent, Zoey alone with the two older kids, the reaction when the others saw their clear eyes, their insistence that Zoey had “cured” them of the Tone.

  Mira looked at Holt with all the shock he expected. “Do you … believe that? Did that happen?”

  “If it did, I didn’t see it,” Holt answered. “But judging by the reaction of those traders, I’d say it was real. They’d have torn Zoey apart to get at her, I know that much. It’s just one more reason I’m starting to wonder how safe it is keeping her around.”

  Mira stared at him, aghast.

  “I’m not saying she’d hurt us,” Holt continued, “but you saw that battle back there—it was full-scale war. And all for a little girl? She’s dangerous. The second she … did whatever the hell she did, three different groups of Assembly dropped out of the sky, Mira.”

  She studied him. “Holt, have you thought that maybe the reason the Assembly wants Zoey … is because they’re afraid of her?”

  “She’s eight years old.”

  “If what you’re saying’s true, she can stop the Tone, Holt.”

  “So what?” he said, annoyed. “What are we gonna do, line everyone up who’s left alive and have her lay hands on them? A million survivors all across the world?”

  “It’s something,” Mira said. “Everything starts from something.”

  “No, it’s nothing,” he answered. “It’s ludicrous.”

  “I think Zoey is special,” Mira said with conviction. “And I trust her.”

  “She’s incredibly special, there’s no doubt, but I don’t blindly trust anything,” Holt said. “I don’t believe in faith, I don’t believe in magic. I believe in myself and what I see with my eyes. You can’t just start believing for the sake of believing. Mira, it’s dangerous. It has to be about survival.”

  “I think that’s a load of crap,” Mira said, holding his gaze. “I don’t think this has anything to do with survival. I think it has to do with fear.”

  Holt just stared back at her, feeling a nervous energy growing inside him.

  “Who did you lose, Holt?” Mira gently asked him again.

&nb
sp; Holt sighed and looked away. It had been a long time since he’d talked about this. In fact, he had only ever talked about it with one other person … and that person was very different from Mira. It surprised him when he heard his own voice. “My sister,” he said. “She was leaving to join the Blacksheep. This was years ago, when I was still a kid. The Tone was almost finished with her then, but she thought she could have another year, maybe two, in Chicago, fighting with them.”

  No one knew why, but the Tone became weaker the closer you were to one of the base ships. In a ruin like Chicago, where the enormous Presidium towered over everything, survivors could last up to an additional year. It was no accident that the resistance groups there, like the Blacksheep Brigade, comprised primarily kids in their late teens.

  As he spoke, Holt felt all the emotions coming back, feelings he’d buried and never dealt with, and to him, they still felt almost brand-new.

  “I followed her even though she told me not to. When I caught her, she was furious. But I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want to go on without her.”

  He felt Mira’s gaze on him, but he didn’t return it.

  “We were attacked by Assembly inside an old truck stop, and the whole thing crashed down and trapped us inside. I was hurt and she had to scramble to keep me alive, and at the same time, she dug our way out of there all by herself. There was no water, no food either, and when we finally got out, we were so weak, we could barely stand. We were days away from any sort of help.”

  As he spoke, he felt his breathing become shallow.

  “It was like, once she got us out, all the strength she’d called on to save us was just spent.”

  Mira sat silent, listening. “The Tone attacked her, didn’t it?”

  Holt nodded. “She was too sick and tired to fight it anymore. Before it took her, with the little strength she had, she told me—” Holt gazed off with a haunted stare. “—she told me…”

  Mira remained quiet, watching him, not pressing.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, forcing the memories away. “The only thing that matters is that I watched her mind drain to nothing right in front of me, watched her walk away and never look back, and it was my fault it happened. If I hadn’t gone after her, we never would have been in that stupid building, and she would have had another year of still being her.” His eyes were stinging, beginning to water, and he angrily tried to rub them dry, but that only seemed to make it worse. He didn’t want Mira to see him like this.

  The only sound was the shaking of the room from outside. When Mira finally spoke, her voice was gentle and delicate. “Holt, look at me,” she said.

  Holt kept his stare on the floor. He couldn’t look at her, there was just—

  “Look at me.” He felt her fingers on his chin gently raise his eyes up to hers, and he didn’t stop her. He knew they were red and full of emotion: he could feel them burning.

  “What was her name?” Mira asked.

  There was no sense of judgment from her, no horror or pity. There was only tenderness. In spite of everything, Mira really did care. In spite of everything …

  “Emily,” he replied with a cracked voice.

  Mira leaned in slowly toward him, and at the closeness of her, Holt felt a wave of relaxing heat wash over him. “Listen to me,” she said, looking into his eyes. “You loved Emily. And she loved you. She was lost no matter what you did—it was just a matter of time. She knew that, I promise you. I know she knew, because I live with the same thought every day. When she dug a way out of that truck stop, she wasn’t saving herself … she was saving you. You were Heedless, she knew you could live a long life, and it made her happy to think that. She sacrificed the little bit of time she had left to get you out of there so you could live. That’s as big a gesture as someone can make in this world.”

  He tried to look away, but she stopped him, raised his chin back up, kept his eyes on hers.

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” Mira said firmly. “And it’s not just me telling you that … it’s her, too. I can speak for her if anyone can.”

  They were just words, but they shook Holt deeply. They were words that no one had ever said to him, and it was surprising how much relief he felt at hearing them.

  Holt took Mira’s hand, felt her fingers wind through his. The scent of her filled him. He stared into her green eyes floating behind those black tendrils. Slowly, instinctively, magnetically almost … they leaned in toward each other.…

  “Are you two finally going to kiss?” Zoey asked from the doorway to their room, and Holt and Mira stopped short inches from each other. Max was next to the little girl, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

  Holt sighed, reluctantly pulled away. Mira smiled up at him and shrugged.

  “Captain Dresden wanted me to tell you we’re here,” Zoey said.

  “Already?” Mira asked. “He made good time.”

  “Captain Dresden says there’s no Landship faster than the Wind Shear,” Zoey replied excitedly. “He said he’s outrun whole swarms of those scary metal things in the sky.”

  Holt frowned. “I get the impression Dresden says a lot of things.”

  Mira smiled and gently patted Holt’s face. “Come on, killer,” she said as she got to her feet. “All hands on deck.” Holt watched her and Zoey exit the room and disappear down the hall on the other side of the door. Max barked excitedly and dashed in the same direction.

  “Oh, sure, yeah,” he called sarcastically after them. “I’ll just limp my way up to the top, then. I’m sure I can make it on my own.”

  “You only got grazed!” he heard Mira shout from the hall. “Hurry up.”

  Holt could already hear the sounds of the crowd outside the ship, and try as he might, he couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm as the others. Midnight City was an unpredictable place in the best of times, and dangerous in most others. At least he wouldn’t be staying long.

  But that was just it, wasn’t it? Leaving, as necessary as it was … meant leaving Mira and Zoey.

  How had he let it happen? Somehow he’d gotten right back in the same spot where he started. A place he’d put up walls to prevent himself from ever going again.

  Survival was everything. It’s what he believed, it’s what he was taught, and the world had shown him it was true over and over again. How could he let this happen? It wasn’t for lack of trying: He’d kept his distance from Mira and Zoey at first, but in spite of that, something about them refused to be ignored.

  Holt shook his head. The way he saw it, he had two choices.

  Leave them here at Midnight City and let Mira and Zoey face the dangers alone. It was Mira’s agenda, after all, not his. Survival dictated he head east, toward the Low Marshes. The Menagerie was still looking for him, and the longer he stayed in any one place, the less safe it became. And, most important, if he left, he wouldn’t have to watch it all happen again. He wouldn’t have to watch someone he cared about Succumb to the Tone right in front of him.

  Or …

  He could stay. He could risk the pain and the loss, and try to find a way to make sure it didn’t happen again. He could find a way to save Mira. And with Zoey, if what had happened in the trading post was real … maybe he actually could do it. The thought filled him with strange emotions, scary ones. Ones that felt almost like … hope.

  Holt sat on the bed a long time, thinking, listening to the sounds of the churning masses outside float in through the small window.

  All he knew was, either way, he couldn’t go through all that again.…

  29. THE WINDS

  MIRA EMERGED FROM THE LOWER DECKS of the Wind Shear into the bright morning sun with Zoey and Max.

  From the ground, she could tell the ship was made of a whole host of different parts, but up close, Mira saw it all in a new light. The pieces—train, automobile, parts of buildings or boats, the airplane wings for masts—it hadn’t just been haphazardly stuck together in the shape of a giant vessel. Instead
, it was meticulously constructed and melded together, and the individual components gleamed in the sunlight, their rough edges polished smooth. There wasn’t a hint of rust anywhere, and each piece had been shaped to flow effortlessly, one to the next, all held together by crafted wood. Pieces from old floors or boat decks or giant ceiling rafters—even a section from an old basketball court—all of it buffed and lacquered to a brilliant shine that sparkled in dozens of different colors and hues.

  The Wind Shear wasn’t just this crew’s transportation; she was also their home, and you could tell by how beautifully maintained the ship was. And to think, in the Barren, there were a hundred of these ships, each one as unique as the Wind Shear in its own way.

  Something about that made the world seem less small, Mira thought.

  She watched the crew—about two dozen, Mira guessed—moving over the ship and preparing her to dock. Pulling the sails, stowing equipment, unhinging lengths of rope to tie off.

  “Mira, come on!” Zoey shouted as she and Max ran past her. Mira smiled and moved to the edge of the ship’s deck with them. Below was what once was a giant dam that marshaled the Missouri River, huge walls of concrete plunging over a steep drop several hundred feet below to where a diminished version of the river continued to wind southward through a huge floodplain.

  It had once been called Fort Bennett Dam, but now it was the exterior of North America’s largest permanent population center, a place infamously known as Midnight City.

  The real “city” lay deep underground, Mira knew, in the natural cavern system behind the structure, but she stared at it with a far-off, haunted look nonetheless. It was strange, looking at a place you used to call home, a place you used to feel safe in, and knowing that it was now hostile to you, that not only did it not want you anymore, but it would also hurt you if it got the chance. Seeing the city again was both exciting and sad.

  Mira felt another twinge of sadness as she realized what else the city represented. The possibility of another good-bye. Surely Holt wouldn’t stay now that they had reached Midnight City, not with a price on his head. He’d said his plan was to head toward the Low Marshes, to try to outdistance his problems. That possibility, inevitable though it was, left a hollow feeling in her stomach. Mira didn’t like the way it felt.