The Severed Tower

by J. Barton Mitchell

  “Fear,” Ravan answered. “Nothing keeps you more focused than fear. It’s the most useful emotion. More than pain, even.”

  “You must be a blast at parties.” Mira turned back to the artifacts on the shelf—but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember which one she needed to—

  The battery! Right.

  She started working on one inside its box with the Paste, loosening it, watching the sparks as she did, using them to guide her. “So tell me what you’re afraid of then.”

  “Dying alone,” Ravan simply said.

  Mira laughed at the answer. “Well, you beat that one. If we’re going to die, it’ll be together.” Mira burned loose one of the D batteries and grabbed it, set it on the floor with the screw. Then she turned to the case of tonic water, started working on it next. “Is that it? Just dying alone?”

  “No. Dying and not … earning it.”

  Mira’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

  “Means…” Ravan didn’t finish; just sat blinking, trying to think.

  “Ravan,” Mira said louder. “What does that mean?”

  “It means … I’ve seen the Tone take kids worth ten of me. But, I’m still here, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why me and not them. All I know is, whatever the reason, I don’t want to waste the extra time I got. And I’m scared I might.” Mira felt the girl’s attention shift to her for just a moment. “I mean, doesn’t that bother you?”

  The truth was, Mira hadn’t always been Heedless. Her answer would be a lot different. But before she could reply, her head filled with dizziness and the components spilled from her hands. She tried to reach for …

  What was she reaching for again? Something. Something important …

  “Hey!” Ravan yelled at her.

  Mira focused, remembering what she was doing. She grabbed the components, arranged them on the ground. God, it would feel so much better to just shut her eyes—but she couldn’t. She had to keep going.

  “Make the stupid artifact,” Ravan told her. “Talk. Tell me yours. Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  Even in spite of the dizziness, the answer came to Mira’s mind easily, but was it really something she wanted to share with Ravan? She hadn’t talked about it with anyone, not even Holt; she’d kept it bottled up inside, and it was starting to ache there. But maybe Ravan was the perfect person to confide in. She didn’t care about Mira one way or another. Plus, they were probably going to die, anyway.

  “I’m scared of failing,” Mira said. It was strange to hear the words. A simple sentence that broke down a host of complicated emotions into its most basic idea. It hurt to hear them.

  Ravan, however, scoffed. “That’s a softball answer. Everybody’s scared of that.”

  “No. I mean failing people I care about. That scares me more than anything.”

  Mira finished the first tier, wrapped it in duct tape from her pack, then broke the bottle of water against the concrete floor.

  When she did, there was a bright spark and a hum, like something electrical powering up.

  A rippling sphere of some kind of blue substance formed over and wrapped around the artifact. It was like a shell of water, only petrified and hard. Mira picked it up. It was cold in her hand.

  “Failing who?” Ravan asked her.

  Mira tried to focus, to think … “Holt and Zoey. I promised them I’d get them to the Severed Tower. They’re relying on me, but I know I’m not good enough. I’m going to fail, and when I do, they’re going to die. They’re going to die and it will be my fault.” There it was: the truth. Spoken out loud.

  Ravan was silent a moment. “The quickest way to screw something up is to believe that’s what you’re going to do,” she said. “You don’t believe in yourself, you might as well quit.”

  “It’s not that simple. I know my limits.”

  “Limits are bullshit,” Ravan said. “They don’t exist except in your head. Something bad happened to you. Whatever it was, someone should have kicked your ass and got you back out there, but they didn’t. They did the opposite. They told you this stuff and filled your head with it, made you doubt yourself. Whoever that is, they ain’t your friend. I’ve had people like that around me my whole life: bastard father; pathetic mother; brothers in juvenile for stupid, senseless crap. I would have got out of there as soon as I could pass for eighteen, but the Assembly took care of that for me. I meet those kinds of people now—I shoot them.”

  Mira laughed. “I’m not really sure that’s an option for me.”

  The door to the room creaked open.

  Ravan tried to kick it shut, but she was too weak now. She lost her balance and fell over, weakly raising her light back up. Shadows, horrible ones, massing and pulsing around the door, disappeared.

  But her light was dimming, it was running out …

  “Hurry,” Ravan whispered.

  Mira put together the second tier, using the blue-shelled one as the Essence. Her hands shook as she did. It wasn’t just becoming impossible to think, it was getting hard to move.

  She wrapped the combination in duct tape. Another flash, another hum. It was ready.

  Mira tried to stand—but failed. She fell to the ground, her head full of fog. She was losing herself.

  “Mira…” Ravan’s voice was weak. Her light was dying. The door rattled.

  Mira forced herself to move, crawling toward the sink. Above them the air vent into the closet shook as something tried to rip it off. Mira aimed her flashlight up at the vent. The shaking stopped.

  There was a soft exhale from Ravan at the other end of the room, and Mira saw her slump to the floor, the flashlight fading away.

  “Move.” Mira tried to yell, but the words came out feeble. “Move. Move! Move!” Each separate word was louder, carried more force, filled her with partial strength. “Move!”

  The door creaked open. Things squirmed in the dark outside.

  She grabbed the edge of the sink and pulled herself up until she was looking down into the grimy basin. She dropped the artifact inside and reached for the handle. If there was no water, then they were—

  The faucet shook and groaned—and then dumped out a stream of blackish liquid.

  The Amplifier flashed and water erupted from the basin like a volcano, surging powerfully into the air.

  The pipes under the sink burst apart as the liquid was amplified by a factor of around a thousand. Mira was ripped off her feet and blown backward as the closet flooded in seconds.

  The chill of it made her gasp, refocusing her dimming mind, and she heard Ravan do the same, as they were flung violently into the hallway, carried in a tidal wave of amplified murk that thrust them forward.

  They burst into the control room. Ravan slammed into the reinforced windows, pinned there by the current. Mira was almost shot through the door into the launch tube, but she managed to grab on to the frame and hold on.

  Ravan tried to push off the windows, but the wall of water was too strong.

  “Grab my hand!” Mira shouted, reaching for Ravan. The pirate reached back, but the distance was too much. “Push toward me!”

  Ravan groaned as she slowly slid across the windows, the water pressing into her. She reached Mira’s hand. Mira pulled Ravan loose. Together they flew into the huge launch tube, rolling end over end.

  Mira broke the surface of the frothing water, gulped air. Ravan appeared next to her, doing the same.

  Because the tube had so much more area to fill, the water level was rising slower. Underneath them, the rest of the facility was already submerged. They watched as the door to the control room disappeared. Slowly the two girls began to rise up, following the curving body of the giant missile toward the door in the ceiling.

  They could see the still-sparking junction box in the corner, and Ravan started paddling to put herself directly under it. From her belt she removed a pair of long-nose pliers.

  “We only get one shot at this before we’re underwater,” Ravan yelled. �
�What about those things? They gone, or are they in here with us?”

  Mira shook her head. “I have no idea.” It was true, she didn’t. She’d never heard what water did to Void Walkers, probably because no one had ever flooded a missile silo to find out. Above them the light peeking through the crack of the giant door was growing brighter. They had light. That was something.

  “If I were you, I’d stay on the far side of the tube,” Ravan announced. “Water and high-voltage electricity don’t mix very well.”

  If the water kept rising they’d be pushed up to the box in moments—which also meant they would quickly be pushed into the ceiling. When that happened there would be nowhere else to go. Their air would be gone.

  Mira swam to the opposite end from Ravan. It was difficult to stay in one spot, with the water churning. She watched the nose of the giant missile sink and disappear. There was only about ten feet of air left between them and the thick door now.

  The water carried Ravan high enough to reach the junction box, and she yanked it open, staring inside. More sparks exploded into the air, and Ravan grimaced. “It’s stripped wires!” Ravan shouted.

  “Is that good or bad?” Mira yelled back.

  Ravan ignored her, just rammed her hands inside the box as more sparks blew out, then yelled in pain and yanked back. “Dammit!”

  “Can you fix it?” Mira yelled desperately. The current was becoming impossible to swim against, not just because it was growing stronger, but because Mira was growing weaker. The chill of the water had given her some of her senses back, but she could feel her mind going numb again.

  Ravan kept twisting and turning things inside the box.

  Then, above, came the groaning of the massive door as its hydraulics reactivated. A speck of daylight shot in from a crack near the center of the room. Mira yelled for joy—and then cringed as the sound died and the door stopped. More sparks shot from the box, and Ravan stared at her.

  “I can get it working, but I have to hold the connection,” Ravan shouted. “The cables are falling apart.”

  Mira stared back. “I don’t understand! What does that mean?”

  Ravan looked at Mira, as if thinking things through. Then, with a scowl, she reached back into the box with one hand. The door started opening again, groaning horribly as its massive hinges jerked to life for the first time in decades.

  But this time, Mira just stared at Ravan, the girl’s hand holding the cables together. The first silky strands of the top of the flood seeped into the junction box as the door continued to open, allowing light to burst in.

  “Ravan—” Mira said.

  The junction box exploded in a massive, violent torrent of sparks that blew in every direction. Ravan screamed, then disappeared behind a wall of smoke.

  The huge door stopped again, but it stayed open this time. Daylight flooded in through a crack in the center large enough for her to slip through. But Mira didn’t notice. Her eyes were glued to where Ravan used to be. Now there was just the churning water.

  “Ravan!” Mira yelled, but she was gone, and there was nothing Mira could do.

  Mira felt her head smack into the ceiling. Her air was running out fast. She should get out, start crawling through the hole made by the rusted door, but she didn’t.

  Ravan had held the wires, even though she knew she would be electrocuted, and she had done it to help Mira escape.

  In the back of her mind Mira heard Ben’s words. To survive here, you have to think only of yourself. It was logical, Mira knew, it made sense—but there was something about owing her life to Ravan that bugged her. Something about living with the idea of the pirate’s sacrifice that steeled Mira’s conviction to a place far beyond the safety of the burning daylight above.

  “Damn it.” Mira took a deep breath—and dived downward.

  The current was strong below. She had to swim against it, and it wasn’t easy. Her flashlight shined ahead of her as she did. The hulking shape of the giant missile appeared from the murk, and Mira slipped around it. Her best chance of finding Ravan was on the other side.

  The water was becoming darker, and her flashlight provided less and less help, but she kept diving down, looking for any sign of—

  Shapes wavered in the current, blacker than the shadows around them. Humanoid and deformed and reaching for her with impossibly long fingers.

  They vanished when she looked at them.

  More appeared in the corners of her vision, disappearing when she turned, only to reappear in her periphery, coming closer.

  Mira kicked away frantically, backed through the water, watching the hideous things disappear and reform just out of sight, closer, closer …

  Something hit her from behind. She let loose a distorted, underwater scream.

  Mira spun—and saw an unconscious Ravan floating near the wall.

  Mira dropped the flashlight and grabbed the girl, didn’t waste time, kicked for the surface as hard as she could. The darkness grew brighter, the daylight coming closer. Mira’s lungs were burning, spots of darkness appeared in her vision. She should have reached the top by—

  Mira slammed into something hard and almost dropped Ravan. She’d reached the ceiling, there was no more air.

  Her lungs were on fire and her vision grew black. Mira frantically swam under the huge door, feeling for an escape, pulling Ravan with her. It had to be here, it was here before. If she could just …

  Mira found a gap, and through the gap, she felt the chill of air on her wet hand.

  She shoved herself upward, holding on to Ravan. She felt hands grab her shoulders, lift her. Her head burst through the water and the harsh afternoon sun stung her eyes.

  Mira gulped in huge lungfuls of air—and then instantly coughed it back out raggedly. The hands pulled her up and through the door, and she felt her back lay flat against the warm, dusty surface.

  Figures hovered over Ravan. The girl wasn’t moving, she just lay lifeless in the bright sun.

  In blurry slow motion, Mira watched the pirates work on her. They worked on her so long, Mira was sure she wasn’t coming back. But suddenly she started coughing, expelling lungs full of water onto the ground.

  She was awake. She was alive.

  Mira sighed and lay back, letting the sun burn the chill away, feeling her mind returning, her memories, her sense of self. Mira had never felt such a strong need to simply not move in her whole life.

  “Mira!” A small figure landed on top of her. “You’re okay!”

  It was Zoey. Mira smiled and held her. Her vision was sharpening, and she saw Max amid all the Menagerie surrounding them, running excitedly forward.

  Right before he reached them he stopped short, staring at Mira, unsure. Some things never change, she figured.

  “Don’t worry,” Zoey told her. “The Max is happy, too.”

  Next to them, Ravan weakly rose and sat up. Neither looked at the other, they just stared at the landscape through the chain-link fence.

  “You’re an idiot,” Ravan said.

  Mira nodded. “You could make the argument.”

  The storm was gone, but its effects were going to last awhile. The wheat fields that had surrounded them before had been wiped away, leaving only barren ground and rocky hills devoid of grass or trees. The wind blew around them slowly. With no trees or wheat stalks to stir anymore, it sounded almost mournful.

  “Can you get us to Polestar?” Ravan asked pointedly.

  “I think so.”

  “Once you do, all debts are paid,” Ravan said. “You take the kid and the dog and you go. No one will stop you.” She turned and stared at Mira, and the look was weighted. Something had passed between them in the silo. It had only been a few hours, but they had emerged very differently. Certainly not friends, but they weren’t entirely enemies anymore.

  “And Holt?” Mira asked.

  Ravan shook her head. “Holt’s off the table. He’s going back to Faust, and that, my dear, is that.”

  Mira looked to where
several of Ravan’s men stood guard over a still-unconscious Holt. She studied his unmoving figure on the ground, watched his chest rise and fall. Max lay protectively at Holt’s side again, glaring at the pirates. “You should keep the dog,” Mira said. “He’s a pain in the ass, but Holt loves him.”

  Ravan studied her strangely. “Okay.”

  After a moment, Mira stood up and made herself start walking, taking Zoey with her. It wasn’t easy. She was more exhausted than she even knew.

  “Mira.” It was the first time Ravan had ever used her name, and the sound of it was jarring.

  Mira turned and looked back. Ravan sat staring, torn, as if she wanted to say something that she simply couldn’t find the words for.

  Mira just nodded. “Don’t mention it.” Then she and Zoey moved off to gather their things. As they did, Mira glanced northeast to where they were headed. The sky there was darkening quickly.

  24. HALF-FORMED IMAGES

  RAVAN DROVE HER MEN hard after the silo, not just because she wanted to make up for lost time, but also, Mira guessed, because she wanted to show, in spite of her ordeal, she was still capable. As much as her men might respect her, they did so because of her strength. Mira had a feeling it wasn’t a good thing to be seen as weak in the Menagerie.

  They’d exited the Western Vacuum a few hours ago and pushed on down an empty highway, near what used to be the border between North and South Dakota, while the sky blackened and more dark Antimatter clouds flashed their strange, foreboding colors. Finally Mira saw what she’d been hoping for.

  An old rural park, where a traveling carnival had set up before the invasion. Like most ruins in the Strange Lands’s inner rings, it was aging slower than it should. Grass and weeds had grown up around its roller coasters and ferris wheels, but for the most part it looked as if it had only been abandoned a year or two.

  The park was a place where Freebooters made camp on the way to Polestar, a safe zone free of Unstable Anomalies, a navigation landmark Mira had seen time and time again. Seeing it now brought a tremendous feeling of relief. It meant tomorrow they would be back on course, almost to Polestar.

  Of course, what happened after that Mira wasn’t sure.