The Severed Tower

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Holt stopped behind the line of warriors, staring past them at the rushing onslaught. So did Ravan and her men.

  “Fighting the Assembly is suicide,” Ravan told Avril. Holt was inclined to agree. It looked insane, impossible. Every experience he had ever had with the Assembly said it was.

  “Not if what Gideon said is true,” Avril answered. The others were lowering their blackened goggles over their eyes. “And he’s never lied to me before.”

  “Avril, there’s too many,” Holt said next, trying to get through to her. “Every one of you is going to die.”

  “Then we will grow stronger,” Dane said, next to Avril. The two looked at each other and smiled. Then they lowered their goggles and looked south again. The line of tripods, countless numbers rushing forward, less than a mile away. Holt felt nothing but dread and horror now. He had no love for the White Helix, but he didn’t want to see them slaughtered.

  “Fire as one!” Avril yelled.

  Holt flinched as twenty-four glowing spear points launched forward with loud pings, streaking through the air like torpedoes.

  “Again!”

  Another flash, another burst of sound as the second volley launched and arced ahead in flickering green, red, and blue.

  “Move as one!” Dane shouted next—and two Arcs of the White Helix, led by their Doyens, charged forward in flashes of purple, rushing toward their enemies almost as fast as the streaking crystals.

  The Hunters never even slowed. They were Assembly. No military in the universe had ever come close to defeating them and they raced forward without fear.

  Explosions burst upward into the sky, as the first line of crystals hit. So packed tight were the machines in their line, that nearly every one found a mark, some of them even two.

  The walkers saw their mistake too late, tried to spread out, but the second volley ripped through their ranks before they could, spraying fire and debris into the dark. In seconds they had lost almost fifty of their front line, and all the while the White Helix charged forward, leaping between buildings and old vehicles.

  The walkers finally returned fire, flinging a massive wave of plasma bolts toward something they hadn’t seen since the initial invasion years ago. Humans that weren’t running. Humans that actually dared to engage them.

  Holt just barely heard a shout from Avril in the distance. “Recall!”

  The spear points hummed to life and ripped from the ground, streaking backward toward their owners. Explosions flared again as the crystals punched back through the Assembly lines, and more walkers fell in colorful bursts of flame.

  Then something stunning happened. Something Holt never would have imagined seeing in his lifetime. The line of Assembly Hunters, hundreds of them, all ground to a halt, trumpeting uncertainly, watching the small line of jumping, darting warriors bearing down on them. The machines were confused, disoriented and, Holt guessed, stunned.

  The White Helix were none of those things.

  They caught their spear points from the air and charged into the walkers fearlessly, spinning and flipping between them, their Lancets colorful blurs of death that struck into the machines and blew them apart from the inside out. Holt and Ravan stared in shock as the tripods returned fire in a way that actually seemed desperate.

  “Tiberius was right,” Ravan said with a note of awe. “Gideon was building something here, he was building an army. An army to fight the Assembly.”

  Impossible as it seemed to Holt, it looked like that was exactly what the crazy old man had done. As he had told them, the White Helix now knew who they were, and they relished in that revelation, yelling with excitement as they fought in the distance.

  There were flashes above them suddenly as the green-and-orange gunships uncloaked, filling the sky. Plasma bolts rained down, and Holt and Max barely lunged out of the way.

  “Into the buildings! Move!” Ravan shouted, and the Menagerie dashed toward whatever edifice was closest. Not all made it, some were cut down, but the rest kept moving and firing upward.

  As he and Max reached and lunged through the door of a ruined post office, Holt risked a quick glance to the south. Past the White Helix and the Hunters, he could see the other walkers now, the bigger ones. They just sat there waiting, but waiting for what?

  40. VORTEX

  MIRA STUMBLED FORWARD IN THE RAGING WINDS, moving through the fragmented street between the cars, all of them blended and morphed into each other. Only a few hundred yards ahead of her, red lightning revealed the Vortex, a wall of spinning, glowing particles that stretched out of sight and supposedly tore anything inside it to pieces. It was what the plutonium was supposed to somehow shield her from, but looking at the massive energy storm, that idea seemed ludicrous.

  She didn’t even have any plutonium, and the Vortex was probably the most rawly powerful Stable Anomaly in the Strange Lands. How could anyone possibly expect—

  Mira stopped herself.

  She couldn’t think like that anymore. She didn’t have a choice—she had to do this. She remembered Holt’s words. Even if they weren’t true, Mira wanted to be the person he saw. She just had to think and figure out how.

  Mira lowered Zoey down onto the ruined street, catching her breath, leaning against the remains of a crashed helicopter. Zoey was still breathing, but she was cold and limp, and the sight of her stung. Mira had to get her to the Tower. If anything could save her, maybe it could. She had to think.

  She couldn’t carry the girl in her arms the whole way. The Vortex promised to be a daunting experience, and she was already exhausted. Mira needed to attach the little girl to her body somehow.

  Quickly, she unslung her pack and removed the straps. When she was done with that, she set them on the ground and opened the bag, digging through what little was left inside. A strand of rope, her roll of duct tape, and the Aleve she always carried.

  She stuck the Aleve in Zoey’s pocket. It would make the girl much lighter, but that was only half of what she needed. Mira took the straps from her pack and circled them, one apiece, around Zoey’s thighs, and then hefted the girl into her lap and arranged her legs around her waist. The wind howled around her as she ran the two straps through one another and pulled them tight, feeling Zoey’s legs circle her torso. Mira ripped loose long lengths of duct tape and wrapped them around the strap edges, securing them.

  Next she took the rope, and holding Zoey’s chest against her own, started circling it around them both. When she was done, Mira tied off the rope and stood up.

  The Aleve did its job. Zoey weighed next to nothing now, and the straps and rope kept her secured. Mira let herself smile. That was one problem solved. Now she just needed to—

  A deep, concussive roar drowned out the furious winds. Mira looked in time to see a Dark Matter Tornado descend from the swirling, black clouds and touch down on the street.

  As it moved, it changed everything, twisting objects into impossible shapes, warping buildings, and blending cars and trucks into singular chunks of metal, like blown glass.

  At first Mira stared in fascination, her natural Freebooter curiosity overriding her fear, but then she darted around the side of the helicopter, away from the advancing funnel of darkness. Everything shuddered as it approached.

  She ducked around the side of a building just as the Tornado rumbled by, twisting and morphing everything. Seconds later the Anomaly dissipated, rising back up into the dark clouds as they flashed green and blue.

  Mira closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. She was still here. She wasn’t dead yet. The Vortex was just ahead of her, less than a block away, a giant swirling wall of death. She could have been the best Freebooter in the world, but without plutonium, there was no—

  Mira noticed something in front of her.

  Leaning against the flattened wheel of a tow truck sat a backpack. One she recognized. Old and faded and gray, with black leather straps and a white δ etched into it. She had seen that pack countless times, carried it more than once he
rself. It was Ben’s pack, and Mira’s eyes widened at the realization.

  Zoey stirred in her sling as the wind cut into them. It brought Mira back to reality. “Hold on, sweetie,” she said, moving for the pack at a run. “Hold on.”

  Mira reached it, her heart thundering in her chest, not from exertion, but from apprehension. It couldn’t work out so easily. Could it?

  With shaking hands, Mira opened the pack. It was full, much fuller than her own, with artifact components and supplies, and she dug through it all frantically, desperately searching for what she—

  Mira’s hands closed around the cool, smooth, glass canister of plutonium.

  She almost cried in relief as she pulled it free. It wasn’t unlikely that Ben would have left it behind, he wouldn’t want to carry two batches of plutonium, who knew how the Vortex would react. What was unlikely, what seemed nearly impossible, was that Mira would have chosen the exact same route to the Vortex as he did.

  She heard Gideon’s words and a chill ran over her. The Tower will provide.

  Mira stared down at the plutonium. It was the same one she had gotten herself all that time ago in Clinton Station. She remembered that night—almost dying from the Fallout Swarm, rescued by Holt and promptly bound. When she analyzed all the decisions she had made, all the seemingly disconnected events that had to happen to bring her here …

  Mira looked up again, to the giant, black tower-like shape that hovered in the air over everything. Something about the sight of it made her feel powerless, and she was running right toward it.

  Zoey moaned on her chest. In the end it didn’t matter, did it? She knew what she had to do.

  Mira swallowed, tucked the plutonium under her arm and dashed toward the Vortex, where it rose straight into the air. As she approached, she could see it more clearly, see that it was made up of billions of tiny flickering particles. She heard a static-like hiss that hinted at something powerful. She closed her eyes … and rushed inside.

  The Vortex immediately encircled her, and the force of it almost ripped her from the ground. It wasn’t like the wind before, this was like stepping into a fast-flowing river. It took everything she had to keep her balance.

  Regardless—she wasn’t dead, and that was something.

  The plutonium in her hand flared brightly, a superheated pinprick of light. There was no real indication it was working, only the billions of swirling particles of the Vortex never reached her. They just dissolved, their light dying out before they hit, and as she moved through the Anomaly she was surrounded in a sphere of blank air.

  Yet she still felt the Anomaly’s force. It knocked her sideways, and it took a Herculean effort to just move forward. There was nothing to grab onto either. No buildings or vehicles, all of it had been stripped clean, but still she could see where she needed to get: the black, hulking tower, less than a mile away.

  Of course, a mile in this insanity might as well have been—

  Mira screamed as the Vortex yanked her off her feet. She tumbled in the air, then hit the ground hard on her left arm, barely avoiding crushing Zoey or losing the plutonium.

  She felt the bone snap. It was more of a shock that jarred through her than pain. That came later, when she tried to push herself up—a burning, electrical agony that shot through her arm.

  Mira gasped outloud. Her vision went dark. Thick nausea overtook her.

  Then the fear set in. Her arm was broken, badly, but she had to get up. She had to do it now, or she would succumb to the pain and exhaustion, and then it would all be over.

  “Get up!” she screamed, pushing to her feet, struggling forward through the powerful stream of particles. The Severed Tower was there, she could see it, everything she was supposed to do, what she had promised to do. It was within her grasp. She forced herself to move, ignoring everything that—

  Mira lost her footing again, was lifted up a second time and thrown down hard. The wind gushed from her lungs. Pain flared and blackness threatened to overtake her. She struggled to get to her feet—but then she was rolling over the ground, backward, away from the Tower, tossed like a leaf in a hurricane, the pain blossoming with each hit.

  When she came to a stop her mind was fading. There was nothing she could do. She was too weak. She had been an idiot to think she could accomplish this. The Severed Tower was even farther away now. She would never reach it, no matter what anyone thought.

  “I’m sorry, Holt…” she said, and then the Vortex yanked her and Zoey violently back into the air.

  41. GROW STRONGER

  HOLT AND MAX DASHED THROUGH the ruined post office as plasma bolts shredded the walls, the windows, the ceiling, all of it, the half-circle gunships trying to mow them both down from outside.

  The end of the building was coming up, a brick wall lined with windows. There was nowhere else to go. Holt yelled, and burst through the glass, spiraling down and crashing into an old Dumpster in an alley. A pile of decades-old trash in a cloud of dust and worse exploded around him.

  He coughed, started to rise—and Max dropped on him from above, driving him back down.

  “You always have to land where I do?” Holt asked testily, grabbing and dropping the dog over the edge before rolling out himself.

  In the sky, the gunships circled, firing everywhere, and Holt could see muzzle flashes at the top of the buildings from the Menagerie positions, shooting back.

  Colored lightning flashed. One of the impossibly huge Dark Matter Tornadoes materialized from the clouds and drifted downward, and behind him, at the other end of the alley, flashes of light strobed, as six green-and-orange Hunters decloaked.

  One of them was different. Its markings bolder, more commanding. Holt knew that walker—and it knew him. Its three-optic eye whirred as it focused in his direction.

  “I really hate this place,” Holt reiterated. He and Max ran the opposite direction.

  Yellow bolts shredded the alley, spraying mortar and brick everywhere, and Holt ducked. A piece of debris caught him on the side of the head and he stumbled, crashing into the street outside.

  Pain flared, making him dizzy, and there was blood on his scalp. Hands grabbed and yanked him up, and he stumbled after a figure, eventually slamming down behind a twisted city bus. About seven Menagerie pirates were there, dirty and bleeding, reloading their guns.

  “This belong to you?” one of them asked.

  Through his blurred vision, Ravan crouched down next to him. “A prized possession.”

  Holt stared up at her through the pain. “Hi.”

  “What the hell happened to you?” she asked, studying not just the blood, but the dirt and grime all over him.

  “Just … give it a second.”

  The tripods burst around the corner, trumpeting angrily, led by the Royal, and Ravan ducked out of sight. “Well, okay then.” She motioned to one of her men, and he tossed her a shotgun. Holt had the same idea, switching out the Sig for his Ithaca. They both started loading shells.

  “You know, I’ve killed these things before,” Holt informed her.

  Ravan was unimpressed. “Me, too.” Behind them the Hunters trumpeted, searching. Explosions flared in the distance.

  “I was being chased by, like, a thousand Forsaken at the time,” Holt retorted.

  Ravan shrugged. “I was dodging a time-locked semitruck exploding through a wall.”

  Holt kept loading shells. “Killed mine with shotgun blasts, close range.”

  “That’s funny. So did I.”

  Holt pumped the final shell into the chamber. “Guess we have a plan, then.” Ravan smiled back at him.

  Holt whistled four short notes, and Max bolted right and out into the open. The tripods tracked the dog, opening fire, but Max dodged and weaved in his best White Helix imitation.

  While the Hunters were distracted, Holt and Ravan rolled out from cover. Their shotguns thundered. Sparks exploded from two walkers, staggering them back, one blast after another, until flame exploded out their exhaust ports and
the machines crumpled to the ground.

  Holt and Ravan slid back into cover, just in time to see two Hunters land on top of the bus, staring down at the Menagerie.

  “Maybe that wasn’t the smartest idea,” Holt said.

  Plasma cannons opened up. Two of Ravan’s men fell, instantly dead.

  “Run!” Ravan ordered, but more Hunters appeared on either side, blocking them. One was the Royal. Holt looked around for any escape as the thing’s cannons began to prime. There wasn’t any.

  Then a stream of new plasma bolts slammed into the walker and flung it backward, clearing out the threatening tripods.

  Everyone turned and looked. Two other machines stood a hundred yards away. One had five legs, a powerful blocky frame, and an energy shield crackling around it. The other one was a Mantis. Ten feet tall, raised off the ground by four legs, and heavily armored with twin mounted plasma cannons and a missile battery. Like the five-legged walker, its colors were gone, leaving only the bright silver of bare metal.

  “Ambassador…” Holt breathed, feeling hope.

  The street filled with bright, wavering flashes, and multiple bursts of distorted sound, as more five-legged walkers, half a dozen, teleported into the battle zone—each bringing reinforcements. More Mantises, and something else, too. Something that towered over the ruined buildings, something huge.

  A Spider. The largest, most powerful walker in the Assembly arsenal. Thirty feet tall, almost as wide as the street, with eight large legs holding its huge fuselage. Spiders were the most feared sight on the planet, and this one, for the moment, was on their side.

  A frightening sound bellowed from the huge machine, like electronic whale song, and it stepped forward, its footfalls shaking the ground. The Hunters trumpeted uncertainly, and then scrambled as plasma fire sizzled toward them. Two of them crashed to the ground, their armor disintegrating in flame.

  The remainder, including the Royal, withdrew—and Holt caught a glimpse of a gray blur chasing after them, growling evilly.