Black light flared out from the watch’s interior in a cone of pulsing, bright shadows that seemed to squirm and contort like it was made of millions of dark, putrid worms.
Lenore shrieked as the light hit her, and her grip loosened automatically. She tried to pull back, but the beam of darkness held her in place, leaving her to scream and shake.
And Mira screamed with her. While the full force of the artifact had hit Lenore, the bleed effect from it sprayed outward and struck her as well.
Her mind filled with the static and whispers and hisses of the Tone, but in a way she had only felt one other time. It was almost tangible, like some kind of slimy, oily, pestilent energy working through her mind. And it hurt. A lot. More than she remembered.
Above her, Lenore continued to shriek. With horror, Mira watched as Lenore’s previously clear green eyes—eyes that had looked so much like her own—filled in with spidering, black, veinlike fingers. She watched until the black solidified, until the woman’s eyes were completely black, watched until what was left of her grip on Mira’s throat released, and the person who used to be Lenore rolled off her.
Mira forced every bit of concentration she could muster on closing the watch. And slowly, painfully, she somehow did it.
When it shut, the vile, black, squirming energy vanished away, and Mira slumped on her side, barely conscious.
The Tone continued to sound in her mind, raging and whispering and filling her, and she knew, even though she had been only partially hit by the beam, in her advanced state, it was enough to finish the job.
She wasn’t scared. She felt calm, in fact, could hear the whispers more clearly now, could tell what they meant, could make out their insistent rambling for the first time.
Come, they seemed to say. Walk. Follow. Belong. Surrender. The words repeated. Over and over, gaining power and momentum. And slowly, she could feel herself starting to give in to them.…
She noticed a familiar presence above her suddenly, a presence she loved, and it almost pushed through the crushing darkness. Almost.
The presence held her; she felt his arms circle her. Her mind was slowly shutting down, but she knew he must be sad, knew he must be tortured.
But it was too late now. She had gotten what she deserved.
* * *
HOLT HELD MIRA IN his arms, staring into her nearly black eyes, watching her on the verge of fading away, just like Emily.
Lenore lay comatose and Succumbed next to them, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling of the main hall. Mira wasn’t in much better shape, but she was still herself, still conscious. Barely. He saw Mira’s artifact lying on the floor next to her hand. She must have used it to save herself from Lenore, but it had affected her as well.
“Zoey!” Holt shouted. “Grab Mira’s stuff quick!”
The little girl grabbed the awful thing with its tarnished pocket watch face and stuffed it into Mira’s pack as the mad crowd churned and frothed around them. Explosions continued to push into the city, louder, closer. Holt knew it was only a matter of time before the Assembly burst in.
“Mira!” he yelled, shaking her hard, trying to break through the fog in her mind. He was not going to lose her, not now—“Mira! Wake up. You can do it, focus on my voice!”
“Holt…,” she whispered, staring up at him. Her eyes were so black, he couldn’t tell if she was even looking at him. “I used it … I used it.…”
“I know,” Holt said, looking around, trying to find an avenue of escape. “I know. It’s okay.”
“It’s not…,” she replied weakly. “Said … I never would…” The strain in her voice, the obvious effort it took her even to speak now, ripped Holt’s heart in half. He had to get them out of here.
“Leave me…,” she managed to say, and Holt felt his blood run cold. “Out of time … what I deserve … leave me … get Zoey to—”
Holt shook her as he spoke, this time with ferocity. “Don’t you ever tell me that!” he yelled. “I will never leave you! Do you understand, Mira? And you aren’t going to leave me! You will not!”
Mira slumped in his arms, but he kept shaking her regardless. Shook her until she finally responded. “Okay … Holt…,” she said weakly. “Won’t … leave…”
“Damn right you won’t,” he said, pulling her up. He hefted her over his shoulder, fighting off the panicking, seething crowd as he stood.
He saw the Scorewall room ahead of them, but there were hundreds of panicked people in between. It was going to take a lot of energy to—
Screams filled the interior of the main hall. Holt looked behind them and saw the gates of the city burst open, and dozens of Mantis walkers erupt inside, plasma cannons firing and decimating everything. People were being cut down, falling or blown backwards.
The Assembly had penetrated the interior of the city. It was all but over now. And they would be looking for Zoey, Holt knew.
46. CHANCE GENERATOR
PLASMA BOLTS SEARED THROUGH THE AIR as more and more Mantises pushed inside the city. Holt watched as panels opened up on the sides of the walkers and small, deadly, buzzing objects sparked and hovered to life, rising up into the air, dozens and dozens of them.
They were about the size of soccer balls, with small turbine engines underneath that held them aloft. Survivors called them Seekers, small machines that could squeeze into tight spaces where the larger walkers couldn’t go. Their plasma cannons were small, but no less lethal, and they had the nasty ability to blow themselves apart at will.
Holt had seen one of them take out a dozen kids that way, inside the drainage pit of some city ruin. It wasn’t something he liked to think about much.
Max barked as the Seekers rose up and buzzed forward, raining down heated death from above. The Mantises pushed into the crowd, stomping through the people, sending them flying.
What was left of the Midnight City defenders were fighting valiantly against the aliens, but the effort wasn’t enough. Their guns and slings sparked harmlessly off the walkers, and the Seekers were too agile to be easily hit.
Still they kept at it, refusing to let their home be taken without a fight. Some had clubs and bats and swung them at the buzzing drones in the air, knocking them down. Others piled on top of the walkers in large groups, trying to drag them down, pulling at their cables and electronics, trying to rip them apart on the spot.
It was chaos. Holt had to get everyone out of here. And he had to do it now.
He looked to the Scorewall room, a hundred feet away, but the crowd in front of him was still thick and panicked, dashing wildly everywhere. Mantis walkers and Seekers were all over, shooting and buzzing and exploding.
His heart sank. He would have to carry Mira, and see to Zoey and Max as well. It would be nearly impossible for them to make it.
He heard Mira’s words in his mind once more: Leave me, she’d said. Leave me and go.
Holt shoved the thoughts away angrily. He wouldn’t leave her. He would never do that. There must be a way. There was always an answer.
Holt paused as something occurred to him. A solution. A dark and drastic one. But a solution nonetheless.
Quickly, he pulled out the aging abacus from his pack, held it in his hand. The Chance Generator did nothing, just sat in his palm, waiting, and Holt stared down at it with apprehension.
“No…,” Mira said next to him, barely brushing his hand with her fingers. “Not … worth it…”
Holt flinched as more explosions rocked the main hall. The Mantises were almost on them, the plasma fire intensifying. Mira looked up at him weakly, fading, slipping away from him, just like Emily. And when it happened, it would be his fault all over again.…
Holt scowled, looked down at Zoey and Max. “Stay close to me, okay?” he said as he studied the abacus with uncertainty, deciding how it worked. Experimentally, he did the only thing he could think of. He slid one row of beads up to the top.
There was a flash of yellow energy in the shape of a perfect sphere all arou
nd them, just big enough to cover all four of them.
“No…,” Holt heard Mira mumble. But it was too late. It was done. Even though he couldn’t say he felt any “luckier” than before.
More plasma fire, more explosions. One of the larger buildings along the street came tumbling down in a mass of debris. They had to move.
“Go!” he shouted, and they all moved forward as one. The crowd was still in front of him; so were the Assembly, their cannons flashing and spraying lethal energy everywhere, their legs pinning and stomping people as they ran.
Holt expected the crowd to push and pull against him, to stop them from moving, to force them back.
But the panicked masses cleared out as they approached, giving them a way through. Holt smiled. It was working. He could almost run full-speed through the churning crowd.
As he moved, Holt noticed others nearby who were trying to push through at the same time, watched them get blocked and sucked down, trampled underfoot. But that had to be a coincidence, didn’t it? Surely there wasn’t a connection between—
A pair of Mantis walkers stomped in front of them, blocking their path, guns rising.
Holt shoved another row of beads to the top of the abacus, and an orange sphere of energy flashed around them.
Flame exploded from the base of another building as missiles buried themselves into it.
The structure collapsed in a shower of concrete and wood and metal, falling right on top of the two Mantises, burying them before they had the chance to fire.
Nearby, another group of people were blocked by a similar pair of Mantises … and he watched plasma bolts burn into them and send them flying.
Holt shut his eyes momentarily but forced himself to keep moving. He had to save her. It was all worth it to save her.
His luck parted the sea of people in front of them, and they pushed inside the Scorewall room. He stared at the cavern, the giant wall of numbers and names and lists stretching high above them. It was eerie somehow. This place was the hub of the city, and seeing it so empty drove home just how desperate the situation was.
“Everyone’s gone,” Zoey said quietly below him, and she slipped her hand into his.
“Yeah,” he murmured, studying the layout of the cavern. Screams and explosions echoed behind them. There were three offshoot tunnels to the Scorewall, and only one of them led to the Lost Knights. “Mira,” Holt said, looking over his shoulder at her. “Mira, which way? I don’t know which cavern to take.”
Mira mumbled something he couldn’t hear. She was almost lost, slowly slipping away. Holt had to hurry. He looked at his options: the three different openings in the black walls. He picked one … and just hoped the Chance Generator’s effects extended to picking tunnels as much as it did to avoiding plasma bolts.
There were more explosions behind them. He saw a troop of Mantis walkers rushing toward them.
He ran, pulling Zoey along, and Max darted out in front of them. Plasma bolts shredded the air and the floor all around them, and Holt prayed the abacus could keep them alive long enough to reach the compound. Mira had told him it worked for only so long, and he had no way of knowing when it was about to run out of power.
“Hold on, Mira,” he said as he ran. “Hold on.” Mira made no sound, didn’t even move on his shoulders, except to bounce up and down. Please let her still be there. Please …
47. LOST KNIGHTS
THEY PASSED THROUGH THE TUNNEL, and then through an opening that spit them out into a room that wasn’t anything like what Holt had expected. It wasn’t a cavern like the others. Walls of concrete and steel stretched high up to a flat, smooth ceiling several hundred feet above. Metal pipes snaked all along the walls, and rusted, old ladders and walkways stretched among them. At the very top, skylights had long ago been built into the ceiling, allowing sunlight to filter in from the surface.
The Lost Knights had found and inhabited a part of the old dam itself.
The room was full of Lost Knights warriors, gearing up to fight the aliens that had invaded the city and were about to beat on their own gate. As Holt entered, they all aimed their weapons squarely at him. Max growled, and Zoey instinctively moved behind Holt’s legs.
Just outside, he could hear screams and yells, gunfire and explosions, and the buzzing of Seekers. Everyone in the room nervously looked at the tunnel that led outside.
“No pulling triggers!” a voice shouted from the center of the room. A small feminine voice, not unlike Zoey’s, only this one was laced with venom and guile. “At least not yet.” Holt watched as the kids, all dressed in red and orange, parted so that a little girl could push past them.
It was Amelia.
Her eyes moved between each of them intently, studying Holt, Zoey, Max, then finally settling on Mira, slumped across Holt’s shoulders. She smiled mockingly. “If you brought her here to sell, I don’t think she’s worth much anymore.”
Holt’s eyes thinned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean her bounty was payable by the Gray Devils,” Amelia said, walking slowly toward them, holding Holt’s eyes. “And from what I hear, the Gray Devils aren’t the faction they used to be. Their leader’s gone. Their numbers are dwindled. In fact … I hear pretty much the same thing about Los Lobos, too. It all sounds very tragic.”
The explosions and sounds of battle outside were suddenly forgotten as Holt put the pieces together. “You told them,” he said, glaring at the little girl in front of him. “You told them both we were in the Vault. That’s how they knew.” Holt watched as Amelia’s smile broadened, and he felt his anger building. “You gambled they’d kill each other off in their frenzy to get Mira, and then the Lost Knights would be on top of that stupid wall of numbers back there.”
Amelia’s smile vanished. “That wall of numbers is everything,” she fumed. “You just don’t see it. The Scorewall is order and structure. It’s meaning. Where you come from, there are no systems, no designs, no formulas to tell you what to do, nothing to spell out what’s right or wrong. Here … there are rules. And the rules make sense. We live or die by them. Midnight City is the world, Holt, like it used to be, only more honest. We rebuilt the world inside this cave, only we made it better. And if I could, I’d thank the Assembly for giving us the chance to create it.”
Holt stared at her, at all of them, like they were insane. “You wanna thank the Assembly?” he asked. “I think you’re about to get your chance.” He held up the Chance Generator for Amelia to see, and her gaze turned dangerous. “You want this thing or not?”
“Oh, yes, Holt. I do. And while we’re at it … why don’t you hand over Mira’s artifact, too? Lenore was Heedless, and if the rumors about her Succumbing are true, then I have a pretty good idea what it does … which makes it even more valuable than the Chance Generator.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Holt said firmly.
Amelia laughed, and so did the others. “Well, aren’t we confident?” she asked with a malicious glint. “Kill them quick. We have other visitors to deal with.”
The Lost Knights all raised their weapons. Max growled viciously.
“Holt…,” Zoey whispered behind him, fear in her voice.
Holt did the only thing he could think of. There were two more rows of beads left on the abacus in his hand. He shoved them both to the top.
The air around them briefly flashed into a crimson sphere …
… right as the Lost Knights pulled their triggers.
Holt flinched as every gun in the room simultaneously misfired and exploded, sending their owners crashing backwards, dead or badly hurt. Everyone who was left jumped back in shock, staring around wildly.
“He’s using the generator!” Amelia shouted, figuring it out. “Rush him!”
The Lost Knights stared at Holt, but none of them made a move.
“Now!” Amelia yelled.
The kids tensed, their fear of Amelia stronger than their fear of Holt’s luck. They moved forward … and plasma f
ire filled the air, punching holes in the concrete wall above them, raining debris down everywhere.
The kids in front of him panicked and scrambled.
Holt grabbed Zoey and ran forward through the chaos as the buzzing of Seekers filled the room. He knew that the Mantis walkers would be close behind now.
Two Lost Knights moved to block his path … but were quickly cut down by plasma bolts from above.
He kept moving, picking a door at random in the side of the wall across the room.
“Stop him!” he heard Amelia yell behind him. “Stop him bef—” The sound of her voice was lost in the roar of an explosion. Holt felt the heat of it on his neck as he ran.
More Lost Knights moved to block him … and were just as quickly crushed by a downpour of falling concrete and glass as one of the skylights crumpled above them. His luck was holding, awful as it was.
Gunfire erupted everywhere, but none of it was aimed at him. What was left of the Lost Knights defenders were firing at the walkers and buzzing Seekers. He heard screams and cries of pain and the sounds of bodies hitting the concrete. But Holt didn’t look back. He had to get Mira out of here. Had to save her. He had to …
Holt reached the door set into the corner of the room. A faded stenciling of letters on it read, CONTROL ROOM ACCESS—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
He yanked it open, shoved Zoey and Max inside … and risked a look behind him.
The room was chaos now. Half a dozen Mantis walkers had pushed inside, and were firing and bowling over Lost Knights defenders. And then he saw something even worse. Every one of the walkers were headed right for Zoey, chirping loudly. They had seen her, Holt guessed. And it meant every walker in the city would be headed this way soon.
Holt lunged through the door and slammed it behind him. There was a dead bolt on it, and he rammed it home. It wouldn’t keep the Assembly out long, but it would buy them time.
Just on the other side was a flight of stairs leading up into darkness. They rushed up, taking the steps as fast as they could. Mira’s weight was becoming a major burden, and his legs were starting to weaken. But he kept going, forcing himself to climb.
Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) Page 35
