The suggestions came once more, only they were muted and focused, as if filtered somehow, but now Zoey found she could read them as easily as before.
You are honored, they implied. You are the Scion.
Zoey stared back in confusion—and then the walkers moved for her as one.
12. RAVAN
IT ONLY TOOK TEN MILES into the Strange Lands for Mira to see that everything was wrong.
Impossibly huge storm clouds massed on the horizon, flashing lightning of different colors. Antimatter Storms in the third ring, judging by the distance, and that should have been impossible. They were fourth ring Anomalies, but that wasn’t all. The landscape was darkening. The sky, the light around them, everything was fading and becoming dimmer.
In itself that was nothing new. The farther you went into the Strange Lands, the darker it got. Midafternoon in the fourth ring felt like midnight. The problem was, it was getting dark much too soon. They were still in the first ring, and Mira wouldn’t have expected to see the light begin to fade until halfway through the second.
None of it added up, and it only served to increase her nervousness.
What if the Strange Lands were completely changed? What if everything in her Lexicon, everything she’d ever learned, no longer mattered? She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. If that was the case, then she was in big trouble.
But what choice did she have except to try?
Max walked next to her at the front of the line, traversing a wide, ever-stretching remnant of the world before—a huge highway that stretched forward over the rolling hills of what used to be the South Dakota plains.
When whatever created the Strange Lands occurred, it wiped away every single person inside, ripping them completely out of existence. Evidence of the abrupt snuffing out of hundreds of thousands of lives was everywhere you looked, this road especially. Rusting and crumpled signs identified it as Interstate 12, but no one called it that anymore.
Now it was known as the Forlorn Passage, a key safe-route into the the northwestern Strange Lands. Once a major road artery between Bismarck and Sioux Falls, it had been packed with cars when the Strange Lands formed. The vehicles sat where they careened and crashed, driverless and out of control, years ago, their remains stretching all the way to the horizon.
It was always eerie looking at the cars, knowing that people had been driving inside them one moment … then simply erased, like chalk on the Scorewall, the next.
Mira glanced behind her at the line of people there. Ravan had brought the majority of her men, almost thirty Menagerie, and they followed after her and Max in a tight single file line, as Mira had instructed. There was still no indication of what the pirates were doing here, but in the course of the trek Mira had noticed one odd thing.
Two kids near the middle of the line were carrying a large wooden crate between them. It looked heavy, whatever it was. It would have been a major hindrance, carrying it on foot. Which meant it must be important, but Mira knew better than to ask.
The group moved between the ruined vehicles, following the Passage northwest, which just happened to coincide with the needle of Mira’s compass. It meant the Assembly had gone this way, too. They were heading in the right direction, at least.
Mira’s opinion of the Menagerie had always been low—degenerate disorganized thugs who preyed on the weak. While this trip hadn’t done anything to change the “degenerate” part of that opinion, she came to see they had as much discipline and work ethic as any survivor group out there. They were all in good shape, used to quickly obeying Ravan’s orders, and the pirates had made good time since leaving the boats. But … they were still Menagerie.
“You sure we have to stay single file like this?” Ravan’s voice asked behind her. “I’d feel better if I could group my men, at least in threes. Makes us more defensible.”
“You expecting to be attacked?” Mira asked.
“Expecting the worst’s the best way to be prepared for it.”
“Guess it’s hard to become a Menagerie Captain without being a little paranoid.”
She thought she heard a smile in Ravan’s voice. “You have no idea.”
“Well, sorry, but bunching up here is a bad idea.”
“Why? Just hills and old cars, I don’t see anything to be scared of.”
As they walked past a pickup truck, Mira reached inside its bed and grabbed an old grimy bottle. She turned and threw it into the grasslands just outside the freeway.
It flew about ten feet—and began to spin, accelerate, and rise upward, as though something was pulling it into the air. Then it exploded in a bright shower of splintered light.
As it did, things became visible.
Walls of rippling energy that moved at various angles in the air, shimmering with color like curtains of light, stacked one after the other. Even in the daylight they stood out. There were hundreds of them out there. A few seconds later they disappeared again, leaving no trace behind.
Ravan’s eyes widened in surprise. Behind her, her men stared nervously at the air outside the highway. Even Max whined a little bit. But Mira took no satisfaction from it. She was stunned by what she’d seen.
“Holy God,” she said under her breath.
Ravan turned to her. “What? You weren’t expecting them?”
“Not that many,” Mira said. “There should be a dozen at any given spot; but that was…”
“A lot more than a dozen. What are they?”
“Vector Fields. Two-dimensional walls of charged particles. The first ring in this direction is full of them.”
“What happens if you touch one?”
“Every atom in your body explodes,” Mira answered simply. Ravan unconsciously took a step toward the middle of the highway. “They’re repelled by metal. Which makes this old road the only safe passable route to the northwest. The cars repel the Fields. There’s a Stable Anomaly coming up. Once we’re past it, we shouldn’t have to worry about Vector Fields anymore.”
At least Mira hoped so. For all she knew, the Grindhouse was gone and the Vector Fields were replaced with something much worse.
“Why’s it different now?” Ravan asked.
“I don’t know,” Mira admitted. “Something’s wrong with the Strange Lands. They’re changing. It’s why the Crossroads was evacuated.”
There was a commotion behind them, back near the middle of the line. One of the pirates had collapsed next to an old station wagon and was on the ground.
“It’s Keller,” one of Ravan’s men said. The name was enough to grow a scowl on the girl’s face. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t unexpected. Ravan moved down the line toward the boy.
“Come on, stinky,” Mira said to Max, following after the girl.
The boy lay shuddering on the ground, spasming and breathing heavy. Two of the pirates were holding him down, while the others stood in an ever-tightening circle, trying to get a glimpse.
“Get back, give him room,” Ravan yelled, pushing through them.
The boy was tall and big, older than Mira, probably about twenty, easily the most muscular of the group, and he was missing a finger on his left hand. One look and Mira knew what was wrong. His eyes were full of black. He was fighting the Tone—and he was losing. He had a tremendous will to stay himself, she could tell, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
“Keller. You hear me?” Ravan knelt down and put her hand on the boy’s chest. He didn’t respond, he was lost in his struggle. “I know it’s tough, you’re a fighter. I get that. But there’s always something stronger than us. Nothing to be ashamed of, just the way of the world. You listening, Keller?”
Keller just kept shaking on the ground, groaning.
“You remember that Landship we took in the Barren, the fast one, the one with the train engine grill on its front?” Ravan asked with a soft voice, smiling slightly. There was a surprising touch of tenderness in her tone. “It was your idea to jump off a Gyro onto the masts, rip the sails with knives, an
d ride them down onto the deck, strand the ship. Said you saw it in some stupid pirate movie. Most insane idea I’d ever heard for robbing a Landship—but hell if it didn’t work.”
The pirates around her laughed softly, remembering the moment themselves. Keller’s body slowly calmed as Ravan spoke, until he was lying peacefully on the ground, staring up at the sky with his black eyes.
“No one else would have been crazy enough to try that,” Ravan said. “It’s what I’ll remember about you.”
A barely audible, cracked voice answered her, and it took a moment for Mira to realize it was Keller. “Just … give me a moment, boss,” he said hoarsely. “Be back on my feet. Keep going. You … know I can.”
Ravan nodded. “Yeah. I know. You’re one tough bastard, Keller.”
Keller’s chest rose as he inhaled a long, last breath—and then the air hissed slowly out of his mouth. His body went limp as he Succumbed, sinking peacefully into the asphalt of the old highway.
Mira closed her eyes as he faded. She felt guilty. Guilty at the relief that came, knowing this was a fate Zoey had spared her from. Even though he was Menagerie, she still felt sorry for him. He became a pirate because of the very thing that had just taken him. Who knew what Keller would have been if the Assembly hadn’t come? Peace activist? Philosopher? Poet? In this world he became a brigand. And that was how it was.
The pirates were all silent now. Ravan stared down at Keller another moment and then stood back up. She nodded to one of her men, and the boy unstrapped a rifle from his back and threw it to her. Ravan cocked it and aimed down at the boy who had been Keller. The group of pirates backed up.
“Wait!” Mira shouted, horrified. “What are you doing?”
Ravan slowly turned to Mira with a look that suggested she wasn’t used to being questioned.
“You can’t just … shoot him,” Mira continued, aghast. Surely even they could see that.
“He’s worse than dead, little darling,” Ravan replied with an icy tone. “Killing him’s a charity.”
Mira’s fists clenched. She’d had enough. “My name is Mira. It’s not ‘little one’ or Red or Freebooter. It’s Mira.”
“You haven’t earned me using your name, Red.” Ravan took a step toward Mira, and the others backed up farther. “Until you do, I’ll stick with ‘little girl’ or ‘dear heart’, or any other name I feel like calling you. And you sure as hell haven’t earned the right to tell me what to do with my men. What is it you’d like to see happen here? Let him become some mindless drone for the Assembly? That what you do with your friends when they Succumb?”
Mira glared back. “It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it? How about we take a poll?” Ravan looked around at her crew. “Anyone here who’d rather be put down when your time comes than become some vegetable for the Assembly, raise your hand.”
The arm of every single Menagerie pirate raised without hesitation. They stared at Mira with fire in their eyes.
“Any other objections?” Ravan asked.
Mira sighed and looked away. What was there to say? Everyone made their own choices. Just because they were ones she wouldn’t make herself, that didn’t invalidate them. “At least do it with some compassion.”
Beneath them, what used to be Keller stirred and slowly pushed himself to his feet. When he was up, he stared sightlessly behind them, unaware of anything anymore. He began to walk, trudging step after step, back the way they’d come.
Ravan kept her back to him, still staring at Mira. “What, everyone should gather around and sing hymns before we do it? What’s the point of that? I already gave him my compassion. That story I told a second ago wasn’t just to calm him. It’s what I’ll carry forward for him, just like I carry forward something from every one of my boys who Succumbs. Because just like you, I’m Heedless. It’s the only thing I can offer them. The fact that they won’t be forgotten.”
Ravan spun on her heel and raised the rifle in a blur. She pulled the trigger and Mira flinched as the gun flashed. What used to be Keller, about twenty feet away, fell to the ground and went still.
Ravan tossed the rifle back to the same boy, and looked again at Mira.
“Compassion comes in all kinds of flavors,” Ravan said tightly. There was pain in her voice. “But they don’t all taste like pumpkin pie.”
The two girls held each other’s gaze. Mira forced herself not to look away.
“Get moving, Freebooter,” Ravan told her. “You got a lot of ground to cover.”
Mira stared back a second more, then spun and headed back to the northwest, down the ruined highway, pulling Max along with her. She could hear the others gathering their things behind her, readying to move again.
As she walked, thunder rolled around them, a strange anamorphic kind that was unique to the Strange Lands, and it always seemed to echo longer than it should. Mira looked to the black Antimatter clouds in the darkening sky to the north and saw flashes of green and red lightning.
The storm was growing. It looked ominous. Just like everything else.
13. GRINDHOUSE
MIRA’S FLASHLIGHT FINALLY FOUND what she was looking for. A school bus, an old one, crashed into what was left of a pair of military Jeeps. A giant message was spray-painted across its length, next to a large painted version of the δ symbol.
STABLE ANOMALY BEGINS 100 FEET
ANOMALY R1-3, THE GRINDHOUSE
The sun had set an hour ago and everything was dark except for the flashes of purple lightning in the distance and the beams from two huge, razor-straight pillars of light that shot up into the sky fifty or so miles away. They were Gravity Wells, Mira knew, and one of them was a place she didn’t have very fond memories of.
The Mix Master. The place where she had failed. The source of all her fear and self-doubt. But that was the last thing she wanted to think about now.
Mira’s light shone across the bus, and she felt a chill looking at it. There was no way to know if it had been full of kids when the Strange Lands formed, but still, the black windows that stared lifelessly outward were haunting.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ravan studied the crude writing on the bus. The line of Menagerie stretched back behind her into the dark, and Max watched them warily from the hood of an old Mercedes. One thing about having the pirates with them, they drew the dog’s suspicions more than Mira. She was kind of getting used to having the mutt around. And he didn’t smell all that bad, she guessed.
“It’s an Anomaly warning.” Mira pulled her Lexicon off her shoulder and set it down on the hood of the Mercedes next to Max. “Catalogued so Freebooters can look it up.” The large book was sealed shut by two metal locks on either end, and she used a tiny key hanging from one of her necklaces to unlock it. Inside the front cover, three different names were scrawled along with Mira’s. The book’s previous owners. Other Lexicons had more names, only because Mira had managed to survive the Strange Lands much longer than most.
The book had three bindings that unfolded into separate parts, each with its own collection of papers, notes, drawings, and diagrams. The first section held artifact combination schematics, instructions for building them. It was the largest section in Mira’s Lexicon, but that wasn’t a surprise. Artifact creation was her specialty.
The second section contained maps of the Strange Lands. Illustrations for each ring and for the Core, as well as detailed maps for important areas of each one. But it was the third section Mira turned to now, a catalog of Strange Lands Anomalies. Mira’s was complete, for the most part, with the exception of a few inside the Core.
The Anomalies were organized by type (stable or unstable) and the ring they existed in. Mira shuffled through the pages for ring one until she found R1-3, Grindhouse. She folded out the section and studied it. She knew how the Anomaly worked, but Ben had always led her through it. If she was going to have to take point, she wanted to cover her bases.
There were drawings and notes, information on what she
should expect, and Mira tried to ignore the queasiness she felt as she studied the pages. Her fingers moved over a specific diagram that showed a crude representation of a sphere, with writing underneath it:
Sub-Anomaly: Condenser Spheres.
Effect: Violent compaction of mass.
Catalyst: Touch only, no draw effect.
Movement: Very slow drift, random direction, direction is constant.
Natural Visibility: Invisible.
Incidental Visibility: Visible after direct contact, three to five seconds.
Suggestions: Reveal location from distance, map locations, determine route through Anomaly, move fast.
That last part was what bothered her. “Move fast.” That was going to be a real problem, with all the people behind her. It was ironic, actually. This would have been worth a lot of Points back at Midnight City.
“What does it do?” Ravan asked, looking ahead of them into the dark.
Mira looked up from the Lexicon. “Shoot off a few rounds.”
Ravan unslung her rifle, raised it, and fired in an arc. Bullets fanned forward from the muzzle, but they didn’t make it very far.
The Menagerie winced as perfect spheres of bright white energy crackled to life and absorbed the slugs. Each was the size of a beach ball, filling the air with intense light. About a half dozen of them, at various distances and heights.
Seconds later the spheres vanished, fading out and plunging everything back to black, leaving no indication they were there at all. Max whined uneasily.
“Condenser Spheres,” Mira said, closing and locking her Lexicon. “Touch one and they suck you inside. What’s left gets compressed into something about the size of a marble.”
Ravan laughed. “That doesn’t sound pleasant.” Her men didn’t laugh, however. They looked at each other nervously. “How do we get through?”
“Tediously.” Mira zipped open the black bag with the red δ on her hip. “The Condensers are moving, just really slowly. Means the path through them’s always different. I’ll have to find them and mark a trail for your men to follow.”
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