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

by J. Barton Mitchell

  He struggled underneath it, trying to breathe and get it off him any way he—

  Someone yanked the remains of the banner away, and he stared up into angry green and black eyes. He braced himself as Mira opened her mouth to yell at him …

  … and a dog barked under them. They all looked down to the floor below, saw Max there, staring up at them impatiently, his tail wagging.

  “The Max beat you!” Zoey exclaimed.

  Mira rolled her eyes, looked back to Holt. “Real nice work,” she said.

  All around them, people were stirring. Lights were flashing on in the platforms that circled the giant cavern, and Holt realized he’d just woken the entire Gray Devils faction.

  Mira was up and moving, pulling Zoey along with her toward the edge of the bridge. “Jump after me when I get down,” she told the little girl.

  Holt pulled himself loose from the heavy banner as Mira crawled off the edge of the bridge and dropped to the floor about ten feet below. All around, he could hear shouts starting to ring out as the faction members slowly realized what was happening. Their prized captive was escaping, aided by a little girl, a dog, and a clumsy moron.

  Zoey dropped from the bridge into Mira’s arms, and Holt ducked under its railing, falling as well, landing on the ground, and moving after them.

  But Mira wasn’t running back the way they had come. Instead, she was running toward the waterfall.

  The torrent of water thundered down in front of them, and Mira reached for a length of thick chain that ran up the side of the wall next to it.

  When she yanked it, more chains above them began sliding through pulleys as counterweights fell downward. A large latticework of sheet metal that Holt hadn’t noticed before began slowly tilting down on the other side of the waterfall. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but whatever it was, it needed to happen fast.

  Above, dozens of figures were leaping from the platforms, scaling ladders, and running over bridges. Max barked up at them.

  The large wing of sheet metal continued to lower … and finally passed into and under the water that was crashing down from above. The sheet metal wing shuddered under the impact, but it held together as it deflected the waterfall outward, shifting the flow a few dozen feet to the left.

  With the falls diverted, a new tunnel that had been hidden behind the water was revealed. Mira raced into it, pulling Zoey along.

  The Gray Devils reached the floor, and Holt raced after Mira and Zoey, signaling Max to follow.

  Behind him, Holt heard a new sound that overpowered even the roaring waterfall: bells, all kinds and tones, ringing incessantly. The Gray Devils had raised the alarm; the entire faction would be waking now to hunt them down.

  37. AQUEDUCT

  HOLT SPLASHED THROUGH THE NEW TUNNEL, noting that he was ankle deep in flowing water. “Where does this thing go?” he shouted at Mira up ahead.

  “Nowhere, if we don’t outrun all the trouble you just stirred up!” she yelled back.

  “It wasn’t my idea to leap off a ledge twenty stories off the floor!”

  Behind him, Holt heard the cries of kids splashing after them. Ahead, the tunnel widened into a new room, and Holt raced after Mira into it.

  It was huge and it wasn’t what he’d expected. Several other tunnels converged in this same spot, and they all contained flowing water. Where it collected sat a big crystal-clear pool that stretched from one end to the other, and branching out from it were more of the aqueducts Holt had seen in the main hall. They traveled in different directions, disappearing into tunnels that looked like they’d been cut through the rock by human hands.

  Each aqueduct was labeled with large letters, which read things like, MAIN HALL, LOST KNIGHTS, CROSSMEN, LOS LOBOS, and MARKET HALL. Each went to a different part of Midnight City, Holt realized, and each had a large iron gate hovering above it, which could seal off the flow.

  No wonder the Gray Devils had amassed so many Points: they could shut off the water supply to any part of the city with the turn of a handle.

  Mira and Zoey didn’t stop to admire the view in the same way as Holt; they just rushed forward and jumped into the flowing water of a specific aqueduct, which flowed fast toward the other end of the room. They were quickly whipped under and out of sight.

  “Hey!” Holt yelled angrily as he leapt in after them. The water ripped him forward. It was deep, probably up to his chest, and it was flowing fast. He tumbled and rolled a few times before he finally righted himself.

  Ahead of him, he spotted Mira and Zoey again, right before they disappeared into a tunnel. Seconds later, everything went dark as he did, too. He felt himself sucked under and tossed back and forth against the rocky walls. Try as he might, he couldn’t reach the surface in the current, and he was starting to worry he—

  He felt a hand grab him by the hair and yank him to the surface.

  “Grab on!” Mira’s voice shouted above him. “Pull yourself out!”

  Holt saw Mira and Zoey standing on the edge of another aqueduct, trying to keep him from sailing past. He grabbed the edge, started to pull himself up … when Max tumbled past.

  Holt grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and the dog coughed out water and inhaled. “Zoey!” Holt yelled. “Get Max out!”

  The little girl reached for the dog, helping him scramble over the side of the structure. Holt did the same thing, and when he was out, collapsed on top of the aqueduct. His heart beat heavy in his chest as he breathed deeply.

  “Come on, you can pass out later,” Mira said, leaping quickly down from the aqueduct.

  Holt opened his eyes and took in the new cavern underneath the aqueduct. It wasn’t as big as the aqueduct hub or the residence hall, but it was still large. Half a dozen workbenches were dotted around the room, cramped with tools and supplies. The walls were lined with metal cabinets and cases, each of them filled with objects that glowed or sparked or hovered or flashed colors. On the room’s largest, flattest wall, a giant gray δ was painted, with the Gray Devils logo resting inside the round circle on its bottom.

  Holt realized he was in the faction’s artifacts lab. He was surrounded by objects from the Strange Lands.

  Next to him, Zoey and Max both climbed down from the aqueduct.

  “Holt! Get down here!” Mira yelled under him, and he rolled off the aqueduct and landed on the floor.

  Mira was near one of the cabinets, building something from the components there. As she did, Holt studied the room more closely. There was only one exit, and it seemed to head right back where they had come from. Other than that, he saw no other way out.

  “This is a dead end,” Holt said in exasperation.

  “Not according to Marcus,” Mira answered, hurriedly building her artifact combination.

  Marcus? What did the Lobos member have to do with—?

  And then it hit him. “The other secret tunnel,” Holt said, looking around.

  “Yeah, and I need you to find it,” Mira answered, concentrating on her work.

  Holt scanned the room again, trying to find any sign of another tunnel, but he couldn’t find anything. The walls were solid, there was nothing behind any of the workbenches that—

  “Is that it, Holt?” Zoey asked from beside him. The little girl was pointing with a finger straight up.

  Holt stared upward. Above them, a hundred feet or more, was a small black opening in the ceiling. It was also, of course, completely out of reach.

  “Son of a…,” he started.

  Mira looked over, following his gaze upward. When she saw it, her face dropped.

  “Real nice work,” Holt said, echoing her tone from before.

  And then, from the tunnel came the sounds of running feet and angry yells. The faction was almost on them again.

  Mira sprinted for the tunnel entrance, holding her new combination. Holt saw it was made of a pencil, a D battery, and two dimes wrapped together with red string.

  She reached the tunnel entrance, took the artifact, and dr
ew a long line with the head of the pencil, starting at the floor, then up one side, along the top, down the other side, and back to where she’d started.

  When the two lines connected, there was a bright flash of light in the air contained by the square. Everything hummed powerfully for a moment, and then the tunnel entrance was darkened by some kind of fluctuating, black energy.

  Mira stepped back and away from it … as two Gray Devils rounded the corner at full speed and slammed into the field of black energy. They were tossed back as though they had just run into a wall, crashing to the ground and staring up at the field of energy in surprise.

  Then the boys glared at Mira, realizing what she’d done.

  More and more kids were appearing in the cramped tunnel. A few others slammed into the energy field before they all figured it out. They piled up next to it, kicking and punching, trying to break through. But for the moment, the shield was holding.

  “How long will that thing last?” Holt asked.

  “I used dimes, so not long,” Mira said, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. “We have to find a way up there.”

  “Can’t you just … make another one of those gravity things?”

  “I need magnet shavings for that, and there’s none here.”

  “There has to be something, we’re surrounded by Strange Lands stuff!” he yelled.

  “It’s not that simple!” she yelled back. “The combinations do very specific things—you can’t just make them do whatever you want!”

  The kids continued pounding on the black force field, trying to weaken it. Holt shook his head in frustration, looking for anything that might help. “Well, what can you make?”

  Mira quickly canvassed the contents of the shelves that circled them, mentally taking inventory. “Um … I can do a Vortex, a Gravitron, another Grid—”

  “I don’t know what any of that is!”

  “I can make something freeze in time,” Mira started over in frustration. “I can make something that increases gravity in a certain area, I can do another of those force fields—”

  “None of that helps us, what else?” Holt asked, looking back to the black force field. The kids kept pounding on it, and some of them were using bats and crowbars and other things against it. It was starting to flicker.

  Mira’s voice was nervous. “I can … I don’t know! I can do a … an Accelerator.…”

  “What’s that?” Holt asked.

  “If you throw something, it accelerates whatever it is to a much higher speed.”

  At the description, Holt looked at her. “How fast?”

  “It depends on the coins you use, but if I can find quarters, it’ll be pretty damn fast,” she replied. “The speed of sound.”

  Holt eyes widened. “The speed of sound?” That was incredibly fast … but was it enough? They were talking about solid rock here. It was a long shot, but at the moment, he didn’t see any other option. “Make it,” he said, ripping the pack off his back.

  “Why, what are you—”

  “Just hurry!” he shouted, taking off the thick black bracelet he always wore, then pulling out a small harness from his pack. Holt looked up at Zoey as Mira bolted for one of the workbenches. “Zoey, I need your help.”

  The little girl ran to him and he handed her the harness. It was too small for a person, but it would fit a dog perfectly, and it had a metallic clip on top of it, woven into the fabric. “I need you to put this on Max for me, okay?” Zoey took it from him and nodded. “He hates wearing it, so you’ll have to convince him, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I can do it, Holt,” Zoey said with confidence.

  “I know you can, kiddo—get to it.” Holt reached for his corded black bracelet. When he started unwinding it, it became apparent what it actually was: about fifty feet of 550 mil spec paracord that had been tightly coiled into the shape of a bracelet. They were called Survival Straps, and Holt always wore one. You never knew when you might need a length of really strong rope.

  When it was unwound, Holt grabbed Marcus’s knife. He quickly slipped one end of the rope through the hole at the bottom of the handle, pulled a length of it through, then tied a knot called a buntline hitch. It was a strong knot, though it had a tendency to jam. But since Holt didn’t plan on ever untying it, it didn’t really matter.

  “Girls, how’s it coming?” he asked as he finished the knot.

  Mira was hurriedly piecing things together at the workbench, while Zoey was wrestling with Max on the ground, trying to force his head through the harness’s main loop. The dog was having none of it. Holt looked back to the lab’s entrance. There were so many Gray Devils in the tunnel beyond the shield now that they completely filled it, and most were yelling threats as they beat against the shield. Others just glared at him, eager to rush inside when the barrier finally collapsed.

  They were running out of time.

  “Got it!” Mira exclaimed, and ran back to him. In her hand was another combination, made of two quarters, a piece of copper tubing, and a round gear that looked like it used to power a bicycle. It was all wrapped with rubber bands, and Holt stared at it skeptically.

  “It’s Interfused, it’ll hold together, and it works fine,” she said impatiently. “What do you want to do with it?”

  “Can you tie it on the knife handle?” he asked back. “I need the blade to be free.”

  It was Mira’s turn to look skeptical as she figured out what he intended. “This is your idea?” she asked as she wrapped the artifact combination to the knife’s handle with her duct tape. When it was done, it looked like a gray tumor sticking off the side of the blade, and Holt examined it without much enthusiasm.

  “Okay, then,” he said, holding the knife by the rope it was attached to. “How does it work?”

  “The copper pipe is the Focuser,” Mira explained quickly. “It’s straight, which means the artifact will accelerate motion only in a straight line.”

  “So I can spin it around before I throw it?”

  “Right,” Mira answered. “But once it gets moving straight … look out.”

  Behind them, Max whined, struggling against Zoey’s attempts to get the harness around the dog’s head. “Go see if you can help her,” Holt said, looking up at the ceiling and the dark tunnel inset into it. He’d get only one shot at this.

  Mira ran to Zoey and Max, tried to shove the dog into the harness, but he growled and snapped at her. “You’re working on getting left behind, you stupid mutt!” Mira shouted, struggling with the dog.

  Holt surveyed the ceiling a moment more … then began spinning the artifact and the thick knife it was attached to in a circle next to him, like he was priming a sling. There was nothing to indicate that the artifact was even working, but he didn’t have a choice now. When he thought he had the aim right, he slung it all straight upwards …

  … and there was a flash and a loud, deep explosion of sound so thunderous, it almost knocked him to the ground.

  The Gray Devils pounding on the energy field fell back, stunned. Mira held her ears, and Max scampered backwards, frightened. As he did, Zoey pulled the dog’s head all the way through the harness and secured it to his waist. “Got you!” she yelled at the distracted canine.

  Holt’s ears were ringing, his equilibrium was all wrong, but he looked up anyway … and saw the knife impaled straight into the thick rock of the cavern wall right above. The speed at which the blade had flashed through the air was enough to puncture the rock, but it wasn’t a bull’s-eye. The rope dangled downward to the floor a foot or so away from the opening in the ceiling. It would have to do.

  “That’s a big climb,” Zoey said as she brought Max to him.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll carry you just like in the Drowning Plains, remember?”

  Zoey nodded. “But who’s gonna carry the Max?”

  “We’re gonna pull him up last,” Holt said, passing the end of the rope through the clip in Max’s harness and tying the same knot he’d made bef
ore. “Get on my back, kiddo.”

  Zoey climbed onto Holt, and he stood up, feeling the little girl’s weight. She was getting heavier every day. His gaze moved up the rope to the ceiling above. It was going to be one hell of a climb.

  “You sure you can do this?” Mira asked with her hand on his arm.

  Holt looked back at her. “Don’t have much of a choice.” He smiled and felt his tension melt away. It would work or it wouldn’t; either way, it would be over soon. “Wait till I make it inside before you start climbing, I don’t know how much weight this will hold.” Holt grabbed the rope and started hauling himself up.

  From the tunnel, where the kids were still blocked, came cries of anger as they saw their prey now had a chance to escape. With renewed effort, they went back to pounding on the field of energy. It was wavering badly.

  Holt felt his arms start to burn as they pulled both he and Zoey toward the ceiling.

  He kept climbing, pulling himself up, groaning with each effort. His hands ached, but he felt a sense of relief knowing he would at least make it to the ceiling, and also a sense of dread as he realized he still had to find the strength to crawl into the tunnel once he did.

  Holt reached the top and looked to the tunnel entrance a foot away from him. It was dark inside, but mercifully he could tell it leveled out quickly, making a ledge they could scamper onto. Barely.

  “Zoey,” Holt said. “Can you reach that ledge? If I swing you over?” It was dangerous, for both of them, but they were running out of options fast. The shield below was almost down—he didn’t need to be a Freebooter to see that—and Mira hadn’t even started to climb yet.

  “I think so,” Zoey said with nervousness in her voice. “But we’re so high, if I—”

  “Just don’t look down. We have to do this fast, and I know you can do it, okay?”

  “Holt, no!” Mira exclaimed under them. “She’ll fall, she’s not strong enough!”

  “She can do it!” he yelled back. She has to, he thought. “Can’t you?”

  Zoey nodded.

  “Okay, get ready.” Holt used his weight to swing them both toward the hole in the ceiling. “Now!” As he did, Zoey reached up, grabbed the ledge, and let go of him.