THE SEVERED TOWER
31. CONSTELLATIONS
BEN AND MIRA MADE CAMP in what was left of an old country church in the second ring, three days’ journey from where the Time Shift had almost killed them at the antique shop. The building’s roof had fallen in long ago, revealing the night sky, and where the ceiling used to be the stars burst apart in prismatic color, over and over again, like tiny fireworks forever in the distance. Something about the atmosphere over the second ring filtered and changed the light from the stars, and gave them this mesmerizing effect.
Mira and Ben were wrapped together under their blankets, her head on his chest, and it felt like they had lain there for weeks instead of hours. The photograph of her father was propped up on one of the church’s old pews, and Mira stared at him, studying the lines around his eyes, the curve of his smile. They were things she never wanted to forget or lose, and she almost had.
“Is it just me,” Ben asked, “or is it a little weird that we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing with him there?”
“No.” Mira smiled. “He’d be happy, I think. Happy I was happy.”
“You miss him a lot.” Ben’s fingers moved through her hair.
Mira nodded. “This picture’s a good memory.”
“Tell me another.”
Mira thought a moment, then rolled over so she could stare up at the flashing sky through the ceiling.
“So, okay. That’s Libra,” Mira told him, pointing upward. “The big triangle, see it?”
“Yeah,” Ben answered.
“East is Andromeda, and Scorpio is in between them.”
“It’s supposed to be a scorpion?” Ben asked skeptically.
“You have to use your imagination to see it,” Mira replied softly. “It took my dad a million years to point out all the different stars to me before I saw the shape—but the whole time I never felt like he wanted to be anywhere else. And when I saw it, he was just as excited as I was. Every time I see it I think of him.”
Ben stared up at the constellation thoughtfully. “It just looks like a bunch of dots to me. But I’ve never been very good with imagination.”
Mira turned and studied him. “What do you know. Something Ben Aubertine isn’t good at.”
They lay there, watching each other in the firelight. “What would you do,” Ben asked, “if you could do anything?”
Mira’s answer came so easily, it surprised her. “Stop the Tone.”
Ben nodded. “Why?”
“Because…” Mira felt a sting of pain at what she was about to say. The truth was it was always at the back of her mind, the one thing that drove her and kept her going. The possibility that not everything was lost. She looked at the photograph again. “Because maybe I could have my dad back.”
“Me, too,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to be a Freebooter. To change things.”
“Change them how?”
“There are ways. One way, really. If you found it, you could make it so the Assembly never came here. You could reset everything. Start it all over,” he said, studying her. “You could see your dad again.”
Mira stared back silently. She knew what he must mean.
In a land full of myths, the Severed Tower was the biggest one, the most glamorous and exciting. Supposedly, if you could reach and enter it, the Tower would make one wish come true. For Mira, it had always sounded too amazing to be real.
“It might not be a good idea to think like that, Ben,” Mira said carefully.
“Why?”
“What if the Tower’s not real? What if it’s just something someone made up? What if you believe in it and you get there and it isn’t what you think?”
“It’s real,” Ben said with conviction, “and I think I might be the only person in the world capable of making the right decision inside. I think it’s what I’m supposed to do.” His gaze refocused on her, turning serious. Or, at least, more serious than usual. “I don’t know why I told you that. I’ve never told anyone that.”
Mira smiled again. She liked knowing there were parts of him that were only accessible to her. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Ben. I don’t know what the Tower is, or what happens when you’re inside it, but if someone were supposed to go there … I think it would be you.”
The barest glimpse of a smile formed in Ben’s eyes. He leaned over and dug through his pack, pulling something out. It was a necklace, a gold chain with two small pendants. Mira recognized them instantly. They were brass dice, the same kind Ben juggled between his knuckles when he was thinking.
He slowly slid it around her neck and she took it in her fingers, watching the firelight reflect on the tiny brass surfaces.
“Now we each have something of the other,” Ben said.
She looked up at him, confused. “What do you have of mine?”
“The best thing you could give me.” Ben looked back up at the stars, at the constellation Scorpius. “Something to figure out.”
Mira smiled and moved closer to him. “We’ll work on that.”
“You were wrong, you know,” Ben said, serious again. “It’s not me that’s supposed to go to the Tower. It’s us. In here we’re one person. We can’t survive alone, I know that now. I need you, and you need me.”
Something about that statement, as sweet as it was, seemed … off. But Mira felt warmth spread through her nonetheless, pushing away the doubt. A warmth she hadn’t felt in years. It was the feeling of belonging, of being home.
“I’ll always protect you, Mira. Always keep you safe.” Ben’s fingers gently slid along the length of her jaw. “I promise.”
They lay there holding each other, staring up at the sky where the stars shattered apart in bright, streaming flashes, over and over.
32. AI-KATANA
MIRA WOKE FROM EXPLODING STARS to the sounds of strange, fragmented thunder. The light around her was dim, and what little there was had been filtered to a sickly shade of yellow. It meant she was deeper into the Strange Lands. Soon there would be no light at all.
She blinked groggily, trying to push through the gloom. The horribly mournful sound of snapping metal and wood of Polestar as it fell was something she would hear the rest of her life. Platforms and buildings and memories, all of it cascading down in slow motion.
Mira closed her eyes, trying to seal it away, but it did no good.
“You were dreaming,” someone said.
Mira opened her eyes. Holt sat with his back against what looked like the bottom rung of a set of bleachers.
They were in what was left of an old basketball arena, a high school one, judging by the banners and posters still clinging to some of the walls. ELECT WAYNE LEONARD CLASS VP one read. EMILY BRANDT FOR FIFTH GRADE TREASURER said another. The school had apparently been in the middle of student council elections when the Strange Lands had formed. More in a long list of decisions and choices that now would never be made.
Most of the gym had been blown apart by Antimatter lightning, and its walls were full of gaping holes that gave glimpses of the dark landscape outside, and the occasional flashing of red, green, or blue. The court rested in tattered pieces, about half of it consumed by glowing upsurges of Antimatter crystals.
The White Helix were there, too. A dozen of them, broken into three groups of four. Each group stood equidistant from the others in a triangle, practicing different skills. One group sparred against itself, their Lancets whizzing and humming through the air. Another worked agility drills, tumbling and balancing in handstands. The third practiced with their Antimatter rings, leaping high into the air, floating back to the ground, dashing from one point to another in blurs of motion, all while wrapped in flashes of different colors.
Every few minutes their small, fiery leader would clap her hands loudly. When she did, the Helix stopped what they were doing, moved clockwise to the next point of the triangle, and began training again, this time in a new skill.
Watching the White Helix train was something Mira never thoug
ht she would ever do, the kind of thing that would have thrilled her not that long ago. Now the sight failed to move her at all.
“You okay?” Holt asked.
Mira’s answer came instantly. “No.”
“We don’t know she’s dead.”
“She might as well be.” Mira didn’t want to, but it was all she could think of now. Zoey alone in the Strange Lands, lost, helpless. If she wasn’t crushed under the ruins of Polestar …
“That kid comes with a lot of surprises,” Holt said. “I can’t think we came all this way just to be stopped here.”
“I can. She came with me.” She felt Holt look at her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he told her.
Mira’s smile was full of irony. “Yes it was. It wouldn’t have happened if she’d been with Ben.”
“Ben left you to die, Mira,” Holt said. “Took your plutonium, trapped you and ran. You really think he’s who we should have trusted? I’d put her in your hands all over again.”
Mira didn’t say anything. Holt was biased, his feelings for her clouded his thoughts—and besides that, he didn’t understand. Not really. No one did. No one except her and Ben and Echo and Deckard. Now she and Ben were the only ones left—and even Ben wasn’t Ben anymore. Her eyes stung, started to glisten, and it made her angry. Just another sign of her weakness. Just more proof she didn’t belong here.
The flashing of Antimatter lightning flared outside through the broken remains of the gymnasium walls. Everything beyond them seemed barren and lifeless.
“What happened here, Mira?” Holt asked softly.
Mira exhaled a long breath. Why not tell him? He deserved to know who he was traveling with. “To be a Freebooter you have to pass a trial. Mine was to go to a place called the Mix Master, in the second ring. It’s a Gravity Well, but different than Polestar’s.”
Of course, Polestar and its Gravity Well no longer existed, did they? Mira tried to ignore the thoughts, kept talking.
“Ben was there, too,” she said. “So were Echo and Deckard, and others. I had this plan to beat the Anomaly. I was only ten then, but still really impressed with myself.” She paused, the memories and the guilt all coming back. “A group of people decided to follow my plan. And…”
“They died,” Holt finished for her.
“Most of them. Not all. Echo survived. So did Ben. But not the rest. And it was my fault. They followed me, and they’re not here anymore, same as Zoey.”
Holt studied her. “These people. You made them come with you?”
Mira sighed. “It’s not that simple.”
“It was their choice, sounds like, and whatever your plan was, it couldn’t have been all that bad. You survived it, didn’t you? Maybe they just weren’t as good as you. That’s not your fault, either.”
“I survived because of Ben,” Mira whispered. “I couldn’t have been a Freebooter without him. Hell, far as Deckard and a few others were concerned, I never should have been.”
“But you made it this far without any of them. Didn’t you?” Holt asked. “Why do you keep discounting everything you’ve done? It’s like all you can see is the negative.”
Mira turned to him, unable to find an argument, but also unable to bring herself to agree. He was right. Why was it so hard for her?
“The Arc is entering meditation.” A sharp voice made them jump. The small girl, the White Helix leader, stood almost on top of them, still sweating from the morning training. Behind her the other Helix had disbanded. Neither Holt nor Mira had noticed her approach. It was disconcerting.
“Well,” Holt replied, “thanks for the update.”
The girl’s stare didn’t waver. “After meditation we leave for Sanctum. We’ll get there tonight, if they haven’t resettled.”
“Who are you?” Mira asked.
“My name’s Avril,” the girl said, and Mira remembered the Forlorn Passage, how Ravan seemed to recognize the girl. “I am the Doyen of the twenty-seventh Arc of the White Helix. And I had been given the honor of returning the Prime to Sanctum, but that … isn’t going to happen anymore, is it?” Her voice was bitter. That “honor,” it seemed, was something she valued, but Mira felt no sympathy for her.
Avril balanced on one end of her Lancet. Where the sharpened, red spear point touched the tattered wooden floorboards, a thin trail of smoke began to rise. The crystal was burning through it, a testament to its power, and Holt studied the effect curiously.
“Can you … shoot those things?” he asked.
Mira’s eyes moved to the Lancet. The weapons were infamous, even outside the Strange Lands. In a world of high alien technology and low-rent firearms from the World Before, the Lancet was an enigma. Ornate and well crafted, no two were exactly alike, but they were all the same in design. Long, close to five feet in length, with their colorful spear points of glowing Antimatter crystals. Avril’s was made of dark cherrywood bound together with silver metal casings that contrasted each other like ice and fire. The spear point on the floor was red, while the one at the other end glowed green. A double helix was etched in white on either end of the weapon, both worn smooth from use.
Holt’s question was spurred by one of the Lancet’s most unique features, the dual hand grips and triggers on either side.
In answer, Avril spun and raised the Lancet in a blur, sighting down it like a rifle. There was a click as she pulled the trigger closest to her—and the crystal exploded from the end with a loud, strangely harmonic ping.
It ripped the air like a missile, and punched straight through the faded, black eye of a huge yellow jacket—the old school’s mascot, most likely—on the far wall in a burst of red sparks, leaving nothing but a smoking hole.
“Huh.” Holt studied the hole in the wall with a mix of fascination and skepticism. “Nice, but, seems to me, not all that practical. I mean, with only two shots, you’d better make them count, right?”
Avril pressed the glowing red Antimatter ring on her middle finger against a similar glowing crystal on the weapon’s shaft. There was a spark and a rumbling from the distance. Then the same wall from before exploded outward in a shower of debris as the spear point burst back through it.
Avril’s eyes found the projectile, raising her Lancet up and around. Another strange, harmonic ping ripped the air as the crystal slammed back into the end of the Lancet. Avril dispersed the inertia from the impact in a spin that landed her in low, agile crouch.
When it was done, she looked up at Holt and Mira.
“I … stand corrected,” Holt remarked.
But while the show was definitely impressive, it only reinforced Mira’s confusion about something. “It’s never made sense to me,” she said. “Why train for that? Why train so hard, way back in the deepest parts of the Strange Lands, where the only thing you run into is the occasional Freebooter?”
“I’ve asked the same question.” Avril slowly stood back up. “We all have. Gideon says we will know when we are ‘strong’ enough—and we grow stronger every day.”
Mira could hear the frustration in Avril’s voice, and she understood. All that training, the development of skills, without any outlet to really use them. She saw the fall of Polestar again, remembered the White Helix leaping and riding the wreckage to the ground in bursts of color, yelling in excitement. At the time it had felt insane, but now she saw it was a release. The White Helix were caged panthers, Mira realized, eager to expend their formidable energy. It made them even more dangerous than they already were.
“But you can ask Gideon himself,” Avril continued. “You’ll meet him soon enough. Though I can’t say you’re all that important anymore. The Prime will reach Sanctum some other way, I suppose.”
Mira sat up. “You know she’s alive?”
“I can feel her. Everywhere. The Pattern moves whenever she moves.”
“What does that mean?” Holt asked.
“Everything here is tied together,” Avril said. “The Anomalies, the artifacts, the earth. The S
trange Lands is all one thing now, blended together into something we call the Pattern; but we are separate from it, you and I, because we do not belong. We can sense it, we can avoid it, even dance and spin through it, but that’s all. The Prime, though … belongs. When she moves, the Pattern ripples around her like water after a stone’s throw. I’ve … never felt anything like it.” Avril’s voice was full of wonder—and something else. Fear, it sounded like. Mira wondered just what kind of mythology the White Helix had built up around Zoey, and why.
Holt jumped in surprise as someone grabbed him by the wrist. A tall White Helix, handsome, powerful but lean, with long, wavy hair. Like Avril before, no one had seen him coming. Holt struggled, but the Helix simply twisted his arm and pinned him facefirst onto the floor.
“Hey!” Mira shouted as she moved to get up, but more hands shoved her back down and kept her in place. The rest of the White Helix had surrounded them.
“Dane!” Avril yelled in anger.
Holt groaned as Dane pushed him harder against the floor, holding his right wrist, twisting it painfully so Avril could see what was there. The half-finished tattoo of a black bird, an image that marked him as something many people didn’t like very much. Mira stared at the image and felt cold. She remembered Ravan’s words. We were much more than friends …
“He’s Menagerie!” Dane told Avril. “Look!”
Dane had lowered himself to a crouch, instead of centering his balance on his knees. It was a mistake. Holt had been in enough fight-or-die situations to develop his own instincts, and he lashed out and swept Dane’s left foot completely off the floor. The Helix lost his balance and tumbled backward with wide eyes.
Holt twisted around, and when he did his fist connected hard with Dane’s jaw and sent him crashing down. The Lancet burst from Dane’s hands and skittered toward Mira. She grabbed and aimed it at the boy. She might not know how to fire it, but she could definitely thrust it forward.
The other Lancets around them all pointed at her and Holt, but it didn’t matter now, and she and Dane both knew it. They might kill them—but Dane would die first. She kept the blue glowing spear point at his throat.
The Severed Tower Page 26
