The Severed Tower

by J. Barton Mitchell

  I don’t understand, she thought.

  We can shift. Somewhere else.

  Zoey thought back to the first time she saw the walker, how it appeared from thin air in a flash of light. It had done something similar at the Crossroads. Maybe “shifting” meant … teleporting? Could it get them out of this place and back into the open air?

  Yes. The machine sensed her thoughts. Touch us and we will shift.

  The shield flickered again, the city’s corpse rumbling. Zoey didn’t hesitate. She held onto the Max with one hand and thrust her other up, touching the undershell of the armored walker.

  No. Touch us.

  The ruins groaned horribly. The Max barked wildly. Zoey felt her panic begin to rise again. I am!

  No. Touch us.

  Her hand was firmly pressed into the walker’s metallic plating, she was touching it. But … was the machine really who she was communicating with? Or was it the complex crystalline shape inside? If so, then how did it expect her to touch it?

  The shield flickered violently suddenly … and shrank inward! The ruins outside thundered as they shook, falling just a little bit. There wasn’t much time.

  Zoey couldn’t reach inside and touch the entity with her hands, but there was one way she knew she could. She wrapped her arms around the Max and shut her eyes. Zoey reached out with her mind, concentrating on the swirling mass of color in the darkness, pressing her consciousness towards it. When she did, the colors exploded in prismatic brilliance, and she felt energy wash through her.

  Then there was a sound. Like a powerful blast of static and noise, and a quick wave of heat washed over her. The Max howled. Zoey’s stomach clenched, her ears rang—and then it was over.

  A new silence was broken by the whine of gears as the walker slowly stepped off of Zoey and Max. The little girl opened her eyes and gasped.

  The infinite, crushing mass of debris that had buried them was gone. Instead there was daylight. Not the sickly, muted light from the Strange Land’s interior, this was full sunlight, bright and strong, and Zoey sighed at the feel of it. What was more, the pain in her head was mercifully gone. One possibility occurred to her. The walker had teleported them somewhere outside the Strange Lands.

  Just like that.

  Zoey peered up at the machine. Like all Assembly, it had the same red, green, and blue three-optic eye, and the sensor whirred and rotated as it studied her, then shifted to Max as the dog let out a single, defensive bark. Zoey quieted him, pulling him back. “It’s okay. I don’t think it saved us just to hurt us.” The Max seem unconvinced.

  Zoey stared up at the powerful machine. She was closer to it this time, and, for once, she wasn’t running for her life. It meant she could study it in detail. Its five legs were spaced equally around its body, and were the thickest and most powerful of any she’d seen. Its fuselage was blockier and somehow looked more solid, too. Zoey remembered she had never seen it fire weapons. It had always barreled into opponents. Is that what it was designed for? Just as the Hunters were designed for stealth and speed?

  Scion. A new projection entered her mind. You remain.

  Remain. It was hard, translating the Assembly’s images and feelings, but that was as close as she could get. The entity inside the machine had used that expression earlier. Then, it had meant “alive.” Maybe it meant the same now.

  Thank you, Zoey projected back at the walker. Are we out of the Strange Lands?

  A simple thought entered her mind in answer. Yes.

  How?

  We shifted.

  Can you … “shift” anywhere you want? Zoey was curious. If so, it was an amazing ability.

  Only where we have been. The machine stood motionless, its multicolored optic eye the only point of movement, whirring and rotating. The eye never seemed to keep still, shifting just bare inches, up and down, left and right, as if analyzing her inch by inch. Zoey chuckled. It was funny-looking, that eye, like some kind of big, spasming bug caught in a jar.

  Have you been following me? Zoey asked.

  We are few, but we are not one.

  Zoey’s eyes thinned. There are more of you?

  Zoey’s head filled with images. She saw more walkers, some she had seen before, like Spiders and Mantises, and others, a dozen or more, all painted various colors. She saw several like the one in front of her, big, stocky, five-legged brutes, each painted a dark shade of purple.

  Laser light streamed over them, sizzling away their colors, stripping them down to bare metal. When it was over, their silver bodies flashed in the sun.

  You … removed your colors, Zoey thought up at the walker.

  We do not believe, it projected back.

  In what?

  In you.

  Zoey blinked, staring at the machine. Something about that simple statement had a hint of menace in it. I don’t understand. Why are you helping me?

  You are the Scion. You are the first.

  The first of what?

  Many.

  At the projection, she felt a sudden, strong outpouring of emotion from the machine, and it wasn’t what she expected. She had never felt anything like this from the Royal, its emotions had all been exactly how she would have predicted. Strong, menacing, and arrogant. These were altogether different.

  Why are you sad? Zoey projected.

  New, vivid imagery filled her mind. She saw a crystalline shape, beautiful as always, but it wasn’t golden. This one was a distinct shade of indigo, and it fluctuated like purple silk made into light.

  A million sensations and feelings and presences, all in the background, all fighting to be heard and felt, throbbed in her consciousness. She sensed the severing of some connection. The loss of those millions of voices. Then … nothing but silence.

  These were its memories, Zoey somehow knew. It had made a choice. And she thought she knew what that choice was.

  You’re alone now, she thought. Without the others’ thoughts.

  Zoey understood. Whatever the Assembly were, whatever their nature, they were all connected together. Their thoughts and feelings and emotions all swirled in one giant storm that each was always touching, and this one, the silver one, had made a choice to cut itself free from that connection. As powerful as it was, as strong and bold, it was sad at the loss. Even a little frightened. For the first time in probably eons … it was alone.

  Zoey couldn’t help but think about her own abilities, the way she could read people, how their thoughts and feelings came crashing into her mind without warning. The more that ability had developed, the more she disliked it. It was never quiet when others were around, even others she loved, like Holt and Mira. Ironically, the being in front of her had lived with far more voices in its “head” for far longer—and seemed to prefer it that way.

  I have something to ask. Indeed she did. Maybe the most important question in her entire world. One that the Royal had refused to answer, and punished her for even asking. One no one seemed able or willing to explain. What do the Assembly want with me?

  The walker’s eye spun as it considered her. It is dangerous.

  What is?

  The truth.

  What did that mean? Answering the question would be dangerous?

  Your memories, the machine continued. They were removed.

  Yes. It was true. Zoey had no memories from before Holt found her, even though the Oracle had shown her evidence that she should. You took them away.

  For good reason, the entity replied. It is dangerous.

  Zoey sighed. Clearly, this one wasn’t going to tell her any more than the others. It only made her desire to reach the Tower that much stronger.

  Do you have a name? Zoey asked now.

  No, the machine projected in reply. Names are of you. Not of us.

  I have to call you something. Zoey thought about it, studying the machine curiously. What do you do?

  Our function?

  Yes.

  There was long pause before the walker answered. Ambassador.
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  Ambassador? Zoey thought back, confused.

  From those with no colors. Ambassador to the Scion.

  Zoey smiled, said the name out loud. “Ambassador.” It did have a nice ring to it. “I like it. It’s your name. Okay?”

  We have … a name? the walker projected.

  Zoey nodded.

  Ambassador. The machine’s multicolored eye whirred and spun. It is agreeable.

  Something else occurred to Zoey. The others don’t want me to reach the Tower, do they?

  No.

  But they can’t get through the Strange Lands.

  Few have the electives.

  Electives?

  Attributes chosen by color, Ambassador projected. Few have the electives to pass through this place. It was never anticipated.

  “The Mas’Erinhah,” Zoey said out loud. “They can pass through.”

  Yes. Apparently, Ambassador could understand her spoken words as well as her thoughts. They have proper electives. They are coming. We will take you.

  “Take me where?”

  The broken place, it projected. You say, the Severed Tower.

  Max barked as Ambassador took a powerful step forward. Clearly, it meant to take her there on its own.

  “Wait!” Zoey held up a hand in alarm, took a step back—and the giant machine stopped. Its eye whirred and focused on her.

  Zoey stared at the walker curiously, something occurring to her. “Take a step backward,” she commanded.

  Instantly, the walker stepped back with its powerful legs.

  Zoey smiled. “Turn right.”

  Max barked again as the walker rotated where it stood, facing to the right.

  “Turn left.”

  The machine obeyed.

  “Turn all the way around back to me.”

  The silver machine revolved in place until it stood facing her again. Max barked even louder, watching the huge machine do Zoey’s bidding.

  You have to do what I say? Zoey projected.

  You are the Scion, came the response. You have named us.

  Then you aren’t taking me to the Tower, Zoey thought firmly.

  Where, then?

  Zoey knew what she wanted, but was it the best thing? Were they any safer without her? Maybe. But the Oracle had shown her things, and it had indicated Holt and Mira were a part of them. Zoey had a feeling she needed them, and, just maybe, that they needed her, too.

  “I want to find my friends,” Zoey said. “I want you to take me to them.” Ambassador’s eye studied her in a way that somehow seemed disapproving.

  * * *

  SUNLIGHT WAS A FORGOTTEN thing. The world was dark, the sky full of obsidian clouds that let loose dangerous flashes of color. Strange thunder rolled everywhere.

  But the one the Scion named the Royal paid none of it any mind. Its concentration was on the remains of the large human encampment, now nothing but a smoking, charred pile of broken debris, flames still licking along its edges. Eventually it would only be ash, and just as forgotten as the sunlight.

  But ruined cities did not interest the Royal. Only the Scion did.

  She had been here, it knew. She and the wretched Mas’Shinra that festered inside her. Certainly it had been helping her all this time. It would need to be removed, and there were ways to accomplish that. Then the Royal would have the honor of inhabiting the Scion, of being the first of many. The Mas’Erinhah would take their rightful place as Those Blended with White.

  But first it had to find her.

  Above it, from the south, came the sudden roaring of engines.

  A mass of aircraft decloaked, two different types, all painted bright green and orange. One kind was smaller, more lithe, with two gleaming cannons, their armored shells like half circles set on their end, the curved part facing behind. The second type was bigger, with two powerful, rotating engines on either wing, and two or three walkers dangled underneath each one. Dropships. Reinforcements.

  The airships floated and bounced, trying to regain control in the chaotic turbulence. It was difficult. A flash of green lightning lanced downward in a shower of sparks into one of the smaller ships. It spun in a crazy descent and slammed into a dropship. Both ships listed badly and tumbled down, crashing into the ground in a giant blossom of flame.

  The Royal trumpeted angrily. The Mas’Erinhah were one of the few clans whose Electives allowed them to pass through this land, but, still, it would not be easy. It would lose half its forces hunting the Scion, but that was why it had summoned so many. In the end, it would all be worth it.

  From the burning wreckage of the crashed airships came a burst of light. The Ephemera were leaving their Hosts, forming into their golden, fluctuating, crystalline shapes. They had no choice, their machines were burning, but it was clear something was wrong.

  The shapes, bright as they were, flickered weakly, the energy that encompassed them losing cohesion. It couldn’t form, couldn’t solidify. The Royal, and every other Mas’Erinhah, felt the sensations that bled off the Ephemera and colored the Whole with their light.

  Pain, dread—and fear.

  The light of the Ephemera dimmed as the Royal and his Hunters watched. The energy stored within those shapes dissipated into nothing, vanishing into the air like gold liquid thrown into the sea. At their loss, even of just a few, the Whole grew less colorful, less bright.

  The Royal trumpeted in frustration. It was this place. Its kind could not survive here, not out of their Hosts, and it sensed more fear stirring the Whole. But it would not tolerate weakness.

  It projected its anger and resolution, and its forces responded. The fear vanished, the doubt, too. They would follow, even to their destruction. They had no choice.

  Behind them the dropships began to unload their cargo, depositing new walkers onto the torn, fragmented ground, amid the glowing crystals that dotted it. One after the other, hundreds of them, filling the darkened landscape with their numbers.

  34. NEW FRIENDS

  HOLT AND MIRA FOLLOWED THE WHITE HELIX north in a seemingly unending march through what was once North Dakota. Now it was a nightmarish world: oppressive, dark, absent of life. The foliage had all died long ago without sunlight, and the spidery, unsettling remains of dead trees were the only indication it had ever been anything else. Green lightning flashed, and the strange, everpresent aurora field wavered in the black sky.

  They had been following an old train track the last few miles, and now they had come to an obstacle. Holt took another precarious step across the top of the old train, trying to balance in the dark. Its roof was wide and solid, but that wasn’t the issue. The problem was the sheer drops on either side that streaked down to a shadowy river hundreds of feet below. The remainder of the train, dozens of cars, had broken loose of their tracks and tumbled over the edge, and if Holt looked behind him he would see all of them, hanging in the air, paused in time as they fell, the bridge breaking into pieces.

  They were in what Mira called a Time Loop. Where the semitruck from a few days ago came unstuck if you touched it, this train and the disintegrating bridge entered back into real time at fixed intervals. They had less than eleven minutes before that happened, according to Avril. The train would unstick in time and the entire thing would come crashing down—and then it would all go back to how it was—frozen, waiting to repeat again.

  Holt tried not to think about it. He hated this place.

  Mira was behind him, moving between two White Helix escorts. The others were already across.

  During the entire journey so far, Dane had practiced what Avril called the “Spearflow.” It was intense weapon practice coordinated with his movement. Each step he took resulted in a different form or swing of the Lancet. After watching it awhile, Holt could see a pattern. It took about seven minutes to go through one entire repetition of the Spearflow.

  Dane suffered his punishment quietly, sweating profusely, but he never faltered, never slowed, and he never took a break. There was always a moment near the middle
of the exercise where he spun and walked backward, and each time he did, he glared directly at Holt. And every time Holt held the stare. He had no animosity toward Dane, but the feeling clearly wasn’t mutual.

  That was a problem for later. Right now, Holt’s concern was crossing over the top of this train without plummeting to the river below. He carefully moved his feet one step at a time.

  “Is it possible for you to go any slower?” Mira asked from behind. “I only ask because the White Helix and I have a bet.”

  “You ever hear ‘measure twice, cut once’?” Holt retorted without taking his eyes off his feet. “I’m applying a similar principle.”

  “Slower isn’t always better. We need to get clear of this thing, and we have, like, three minutes to do it.”

  “And the Outlander plans on using all three,” the Helix behind them observed. “Never seen anyone make putting one foot in front of the other look tough.” The boy was a little shorter than Holt, but a little bigger, too, with short brown hair and the same easy gait that all White Helix possessed. His name was Castor. The Helix girl in front of them was Masyn. She was taller than Avril but just as lithe, with long, blond hair tied in a braid that hung down her back and brushed the top of her Lancet.

  “Works for me,” Masyn said. “Always wanted to ride this thing down, anyway.”

  “I’d prefer we didn’t,” Holt said testily. The entire time they’d been moving across the train, Masyn had been entertaining herself with somersaults, skipping backward, or doing handsprings. Right now she was walking on her hands, and it was unsettling to watch, with the dropoffs on either side, but it didn’t seem to bother her. That only made Holt like her even less.

  “Then move, Outlander,” Castor said from behind.

  Holt sighed and took another step, staring down warily.

  “We have names, you know,” Mira said. They’d been called Freebooter or Outlander since they’d left Polestar, and it was starting to get old. “I’m Mira. He’s Holt.”

  “And I don’t care,” Castor replied. “Walk.”

  Holt took another step. Masyn was maybe only a year younger than Mira, but, oddly, the creep of the Tone in her eyes was much less prevalent than it should be. Castor’s eyes were more solidly filled in, but he was old enough that he should have Succumbed already. Holt had seen the same thing in the eyes of the other Helix. For them, the Tone seemed to advance slower, probably because of the Strange Lands’s effect on time. If more people knew about that particular advantage to being White Helix, Holt wondered how many more would make the journey every year.