The Severed Tower

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Holt felt the same chill at her words.

  “It’s not really talking; it’s hard to explain. But … I understand them. And they understand me.” She looked back up at him and he could see the fear in her eyes. “They make me … remember things, Holt. The things they teach me, it’s like I’ve done them before. Like I forgot how to do them and now I’m remembering again.” Her voice had a haunted tone to it. “I remember more and more, the longer I stay near them. I don’t understand why, I don’t like what they show me. It scares me. They call me the Scion.”

  The word bothered Holt for all kinds of reasons. It wasn’t just that they had a name for Zoey, a label, or that she was something specific to them. It was also that the word itself had a sense of menace to it, somehow.

  He had to get them both out of this. Quick—before whatever dropship these “Mas’Erinhah” were waiting for showed up.

  Holt looked and followed the thin line of cable that held him to the rafter. It looked like the same strange, fibrous material the aliens used to tie Zoey inside that crashed ship so long ago. From what Holt remembered, it was thin and cut easily, but it was also incredibly strong. He wouldn’t be able to simply snap it, and he had no way to sever it.

  But the rafter the line he was tied to was a different story. Holt could make out the cracks that ran through it. It had been weakened, probably by that truck plowing into the building. If he could use his weight somehow, shake that rafter hard enough—it might break. He’d hit the floor pretty hard, but he should be okay.

  Holt could feel his Swiss Army Knife in a pocket of his cargo pants. In fact, he could feel all his stuff, minus what had been in his pack, of course. The Assembly hadn’t bothered to remove it. They probably didn’t consider any of it a threat. If Zoey could get that knife once he hit the floor, she could cut his bonds herself.

  The problem was, for the plan to work, they would pretty much have to be alone inside the courthouse, which meant … they needed a diversion.

  “Did you see the wall, Holt?” Zoey asked. She was looking at the truck with wonder.

  Holt frowned, refused to look back at the thing. “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “If you touch it, it unsticks in time.”

  Holt shivered. This place was a nightmare. “Then we probably shouldn’t do that, wouldn’t you say? How far are we into the Strange Lands, anyway?”

  Zoey shook her head. “I don’t know, but the Mas’Erinhah are very good at finding Anomalies. We’re safe with them.”

  Holt didn’t say so, but he wasn’t sure he felt the same way.

  “Do you think Mira will come after us?” Zoey asked.

  Mira.

  The mention of her brought pangs of shame. He saw himself standing over her, Chance Generator in one hand, his other poised to strike. He remembered the scared and hurt look in her eyes.

  He’d almost hit her. It still didn’t seem real, but he knew it was.

  The Chance Generator. If only he had that now, he could—

  No, he told himself sternly.

  He had to let that go. Mira was right. It had changed him, made him reliant on it instead of himself. It had made him do things he never would have imagined, and it may also have cost him whatever feelings Mira still had for him. He hoped he never saw that thing again.

  “Unfortunately, kiddo, I think she’s too smart for that,” Holt said. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll figure something out.”

  “I know, Holt,” Zoey said simply. “You always do.”

  Behind her, the green-and-orange walkers watched them. Holt sighed, looked back up to the rafter he was hanging from. All he needed now … was a miracle.

  16. KENMORE

  THE ASSEMBLY TRACKS HAD VEERED OFF the Forlorn Passage about ten miles back, and headed down a rural road lined with old barns and farmhouses before ending here. That road hadn’t been marked as safe in Mira’s Lexicon, and she’d spent a good amount of time steering the pirates through pockets of Vector Fields and Daisy Chains.

  The Menagerie were still proving themselves capable; they hadn’t slowed their pace at all, and much to Mira’s relief, no more had died. Ravan, for her part, seemed unsurprised by her men’s performance. She drove them hard and expected their best.

  As they approached an old town a rusted welcome sign proclaimed KENMORE. Ravan called a stop. City ruins were a good place for an ambush, and she wasn’t going to just walk right into the town square without a little recon.

  The ground sloped up on either side of them, and both hills were peppered with trees—cottonwoods and spruce, thick and unkempt. It would give them good cover.

  Ravan split the group in two, ordering the divided units to climb separate hills. Mira and Max followed Ravan’s group up the larger one. At the top, they crawled to the edge, trying to keep out of sight of whatever might be below. It was a small town, maybe ten square miles all in all, and from here Mira could see old houses, the steeple of a church, gas stations, businesses, and right in the center an old courthouse. Strangely, it all seemed in good shape. Like it hadn’t aged for some reason. That would be expected in the deeper rings, where time actually ticked slower, but here in the first ring it was unusual. Mira didn’t like it. Anything unusual in the Strange Lands usually meant trouble.

  Ravan handed Mira an extra pair of binoculars. They sighted through them, studying the town, looking from building to building. It was a dead zone, silent and eerie, and Mira could see the breeze stir the dirty remains of tattered curtains in some of the buildings’ broken windows.

  Then Mira saw the answer to the question of the town’s near pristine shape. Everywhere, incidents appeared to somehow be frozen in time.

  At one corner a billboard was falling over, its pieces suspended in the air. Nearby, the beginnings of an explosion flared outward at a gas station, a blooming ball of petrified flame that sat like a sculpture. In a street below, vehicles listed in a three-way collision, their pieces and parts hanging in the air. The most dramatic example was a semitruck, its cargo trailer jackknifing and tearing loose as the engine punched straight through the side of the courthouse.

  Mira moaned. “This whole place is a Time Sink.”

  “Let me guess. Bubble of frozen time?” Ravan asked mildly, still sighting through the optics.

  “Pretty much. They’re fragile and they’re dangerous. Any sort of kinetic movement against an object in a Time Sink frees it from the Anomaly’s effect.”

  “Lovely,” Ravan replied.

  Mira kept scanning the town. Other than the evidence of the Time Sink, it was unremarkable. It seemed devoid of life and movement.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here,” Mira said quietly. “If there was—”

  “Town square, northeast corner,” Ravan cut her off.

  Mira spun her binoculars, saw the remains of a bank, one of the more heavily damaged buildings in the city. On its roof something moved. A green-and-orange Assembly walker.

  Mira almost dropped the binoculars, the flood of relief was so strong. She’d found them.

  She watched as it slowly paced along the edge, scanning the ground and the horizon. A sentry, most likely, and after another few steps it disappeared behind some of the building’s ductwork.

  “Another one, coming out of the courthouse,” Ravan said. Mira spun her binoculars again, found the walker emerging from a huge crack in the building’s wall. She watched it take a few slow steps—then leap into a run. As it did, the Menagerie let out a collective gasp. A shimmering field of energy enveloped the walker—and it disappeared from view.

  “Son of a gunderson,” one of Ravan’s lieutenants said next to her. “Did that just happen?”

  “That just happened,” Ravan said tightly. “Tell the others to report in.”

  The lieutenant grabbed a small mirror, aimed it so that it caught the sun, and flashed signals to the hill on the other side of town. A few seconds later Mira saw similar flashes from the far tree line.

  “Looks like they spotted
three more,” he said, translating the flashes, “running patterns on the south side.”

  “Patrols,” Ravan said with distaste. “They’re dug in. But why? What are they waiting for?”

  “More than that,” the lieutenant said, “look at them. They’re green and orange. I ain’t ever seen any that weren’t blue and white.”

  Ravan lowered her binoculars and looked at Mira darkly. Mira stared back carefully.

  “Green-and-orange walkers.” Ravan’s tone was dangerous. “Three legs. Small, mobile—and invisible? I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s my naturally distrusting nature, but … I’m starting to have a hard time taking what you say at face value.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know,” Mira lied. “I don’t know why these Assembly are different, or what it means. All I know is, these walkers have my friends and you made a deal to help me get them back.”

  Ravan’s crystal-clear eyes stared into Mira’s, probing and searching for deception. If she found it, Mira wasn’t sure what the girl would do, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be pleasant. Ravan considered her a moment more, then just turned and looked back through her binoculars, as if the issue were settled. “Like I said. Probably just me.” Her optics moved over the city, scanning and searching again. “So, if I were a prisoner, where would I be?”

  It could be any one of dozens of buildings. Mira couldn’t pinpoint it, but she could definitely narrow it down.

  She took out the compass pendant and pointed it toward the city. The needle aimed into the heart of the square. Ravan and Mira followed its line to the big, white-bricked courthouse. It was a sturdy building, covered, a good defensible position. The giant crack in its exterior allowed a glimpse inside.

  Mira focused her binoculars, and when she saw what was there, barely visible through the hole, her stomach tightened like a fist.

  Someone hung in midair, tied to what was left of the building’s rafters. Mira couldn’t see his face with any detail, but she recognized enough to know who it was.

  Holt. Hanging lifeless and unmoving in the shadows of the ruined building.

  Mira dropped the binoculars and shut her eyes. He couldn’t be gone. Not after how they’d left things.

  Ravan turned to Mira. “Don’t worry, Red, doesn’t mean he’s dead. They’re Assembly. Everything they do has a purpose,” she said with disdain. “If he weren’t alive they wouldn’t bother stringing him up, would they? Of course, doesn’t mean they’ve kept him in mint condition, either.”

  She was right, Mira knew. On both counts. He probably was still alive, but there was no guarantee that would last. Holt wasn’t the one they really wanted, after all.

  “Don’t see your other friend,” Ravan said. “What are we looking for?”

  “A little girl,” Mira replied. “Eight or nine, blond hair.”

  “Probably just out of sight, one side of the gap or the other.” Ravan lowered the binoculars, looked at her lieutenant. “We brought a Portal, right?”

  The lieutenant nodded. Mira was surprised. A Portal was a pair of linked artifact combinations, complicated, expensive ones. When activated, they each formed a gateway that anyone could pass through no matter how far the distance. Even Mira had only made a dozen or so, and usually only by special request. Ravan was well supplied, obviously.

  “Still need a distraction.” The pirate Captain stared back into the town, thinking. Mira followed her gaze to the frozen gas station explosion at the opposite end. “Kinetic movement, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Mira replied. She saw what the girl intended. “Throw something into that—a rock, a bottle, whatever—it’ll merge back into real time. In a major way.”

  “What about a bullet? From a distance?” Ravan asked. “Would that work?”

  “As long as you hit it.”

  “We’ll hit it.” She looked at the lieutenant. “Signal the others. Tell ’em we’re gonna run a Deneen Gambit. Reinhold’s our best shot, he can do the distraction. You and Sparks are on point for the Portal. We get one go at this, don’t mess it up.”

  The lieutenant nodded grimly, turned and started flashing instructions to the pirates on the other hill. The others who were with them started gearing up to move. Two of them set down the big crate as they did, and Mira looked at it.

  “What’s in that thing anyway?” she asked.

  “Something the White Helix wants, and that’s all you need to know,” Ravan replied, loading shells into a shotgun. When she spoke next it was in a low whisper, meant for Mira’s ears alone. “But if you want something to worry about, then worry about this: If I get in that courthouse and find that you’ve misled me in any way, Solid or no Solid, I’ll kill you myself.”

  Ravan smiled pleasantly—then started gathering her things, making ready to move. Mira didn’t doubt the girl’s sincerity.

  17. YOU ARE OF US

  ZOEY WOKE FROM A DEEP DREAM where planets circled huge red suns and giant moons sank along impossible, purple horizons. Alien worlds … or just her imagination? She wasn’t sure. Her back hurt from how she’d fallen asleep against the old wall, and she grimaced when she sat up.

  Two of the Hunters stood guard over her. The Royal was across the room, powered down, its machine body dark and still. Zoey stared at it warily, regardless.

  Her feelings for the aliens were complicated now. Before, there had been only fear. There was still that, but now it was mixed with different things. She didn’t like it, but what was forming between her and the Hunters was some kind of twisted closeness.

  The Royal had kidnapped her, threatened her friends, but at the same time it seemed to know her in a way no one else did. It had hurt her, but it had also taken her pain away. It was interested in her powers, but unlike many people, including Holt and Mira, who had witnessed what she could do, its instinctual response wasn’t to recoil in fear or confusion. Instead, it had been pleased. It had encouraged her, and it had praised her when she succeeded.

  It wasn’t Holt. She didn’t care for it like she did him. But there was something oddly comforting about her interactions with it the last few days. It made no sense, those “lessons” had been laced with fear and pain, but it was there nonetheless.

  From the distance came a loud, shuddering sound.

  An explosion. A big one. From the north, just past the edge of the small town, probably. At the sound, the walkers inside the courthouse trumpeted to one another, a series of sounds that conveyed both confusion and alarm.

  The Royal shook as it powered back up, lights flashing to life all over its body. It instantly broke into a run, its cloaking field enveloping it as it leaped outside and disappeared into the sunlight.

  Two guards remained behind, moving back and forth agitatedly, staring after their leader. Zoey felt their frustration. The explosion might mean action, battle. It took a great deal of self-control for them to remain behind.

  “Zoey,” a voice whispered above her.

  She looked up and saw Holt. He was awake, staring at her with that look he had when he’d decided to do something dangerous and altogether not smart.

  Zoey could guess what it was, now that only two walkers were left in the courthouse. She shook her head at him, trying to tell him no, but, she knew, once Holt decided something, he carried through with it.

  “Be ready,” he said. She watched him take a deep breath and look up at the rafters. Whatever he was about to do, it was going to cause big problems.

  From nowhere, something landed in the center of the old courthouse, tossed in from outside, through the broken roof.

  It was too far away for Zoey to make out what it was, but she saw the two remaining Hunters turn, their triangular laser sights streaming toward the object, moving over the ground where it landed.

  Zoey gasped as the thing pulsed in a powerful burst of illumination.

  The walkers trumpeted as a hole of light—that was the only way Zoey could describe it—ripped the air apart, forming into a perfect, bright, hovering circle.
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  Zoey watched, stunned, as kids began pouring out of the hole into the courthouse, as though it were some kind of gateway. One, two, three, four, they just kept coming—and they were all carrying shotguns.

  The Hunters reacted with surprised, distorted sounds, their plasma cannons spraying yellow bolts outward in a stream. Zoey felt lustful joy erupt from the machines. This was battle, this was action, and it had found them after all.

  One of the kids took a plasma bolt in the chest, spun and fell.

  The rest of them, whoever they were, returned fire, their shotguns thundered to life, the shells exploded in sparks as they hit the Hunters. Zoey cringed in terror at the loud, jarring sounds, covering her ears.

  Above her, Holt jerked his whole body downward. The rafter above him groaned, but it didn’t break.

  Zoey watched him jerk again. Again. The rafter weakened with each impact, spraying rotted splinters until it finally came apart.

  Holt slammed onto the hard floor with a grunt.

  The two remaining walkers didn’t notice. They stood protectively between Zoey and the strange gateway, firing at the kids that continued to leap out of it, one after the other.

  “Holt!” Zoey rushed toward him, tried untying the strange, fibrous bonds that held his feet and hands together, but they were too tight. She couldn’t get them to untangle.

  “My knife,” Holt said. “On my belt.”

  Zoey reached for his belt, found the red Swiss Army Knife.

  Nearby, more kids poured through the gateway. By now they outnumbered the two green-and-orange walkers ten to one, but the Hunters were significantly more powerful. Raw numbers were no advantage here.

  The tripods waded eagerly into the kids, lashing out with their powerful legs. One kid went flying. He crashed to the ground, rolled, but didn’t move.

  A plasma blast blew another one across what was left of the courthouse. His body almost instantly exploded in flames.