J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

She grimaced and held her temples, curling into a ball on the cot the Echo person told her she could sleep on. The Max whined next to her, and his cold nose pushed under her hand. He had a worried look, Zoey could tell. She had come to know the dog’s feelings strictly from his expressions, and it was a source of endearment and relief. He was the only one in her life she couldn’t read with her powers, whose emotions and thoughts didn’t come involuntarily streaming into her mind. With him everything was quiet; she felt only her own feelings. It was one of the reasons she loved him so much.

“The Max,” Zoey said softly, scratching his nose. “I’m okay, I promise. I can be tough, too.”

Something pushed through the pain. More sensations, but not like those from the dream. These were real, and different. It was like the air was vibrating outside, at specific points. As the points moved, whatever they were, the pain in Zoey’s head shifted to match. She could feel them, could tell where they were. She could tell something else, too. They were multiplying. Seconds ago there had been two of them. Now there were four.

Zoey had never felt anything like it. It was another sign things were changing—and it frightened her.

Something stirred in the back of her mind—a pleasing sensation, as if its source was trying to comfort her. The Feelings, the ones she’d been carrying as long as she could remember, like some sort of strange, disconnected hitchhiker. Her powers all stemmed from them, Zoey knew. Whatever they were, they were real and something apart from herself, something no one else had.

The Oracle at Midnight City had shown her many things, but it hadn’t explained what the Feelings were. How did she come to have them? What connection did they have with the Assembly?

The Oracle didn’t tell her, but it had shown her where to get the answers. The place Mira called the Severed Tower. Whatever it was, however it worked, Zoey knew it would reveal the truth to her. The Feelings knew it, too. They swirled warmly whenever she thought of it.

Yet, she had to get there first.

Zoey heard screams outside, strange popping sounds, and she sat up. Max growled low, staring out past the exit of the old airplane as Holt and Mira swung down from a hole in the ceiling and into the cabin.

“Zoey, we have to leave,” Mira said.

“What is it?” Zoey asked, but no one one answered her.

As Holt and Mira quickly geared up, Zoey sensed strange emotions from them. Distrust and anger, shame and a little fear. Nothing unusual in themselves—but it was the first time she’d ever felt those emotions directed from Mira and Holt at each other.

Something had happened while she was asleep. Did it have to do with that Ben person from before? Zoey wasn’t sure how she felt about Ben. His emotions were too faint. But, as he’d said, they had things in common.

An explosion echoed in from outside, the concussion wave rocking their plane.

“What’s happening?” Zoey asked again. This time Mira responded.

“Tesla Cubes. Unstable Anomalies.” The shock was still evident in her voice, and Zoey could sense the fear drifting off her. Whatever Tesla Cubes were, they were bad.

“I thought we weren’t in the Strange Lands yet?” Holt asked, just as confused.

“We’re not! They shouldn’t be here, it’s impossible,” she answered back.

A violent rumbling sound outside. More screams.

“Maybe someone should tell them that,” Holt said as he shouldered his pack. “What’s our plan?”

“Ben will try to get to Northlift now. We need to be there when he does. Assuming you’re still coming.” Mira had yet to look at Holt, Zoey noticed.

“I’m coming,” he said tightly. “Made a promise, didn’t I?”

“More than one.”

Holt stiffened. Something had definitely happened up top. Zoey wished they could see each other the way she saw them. If they did, they would understand everything, but people, she’d found, rarely saw the truth about each other or themselves. They always saw something else instead, and it made her sad.

An explosion suddenly, more crashes, more screams.

“That’s it, let’s go.” Holt strapped his guns to their usual spots. “Whatever you didn’t pack, leave it.” He whistled at Max and moved for the exit. Zoey followed them, peering into the Crossroads.

When she had last seen the city, it had a strange beauty. Built on ruins, on top of things that had been lost and forgotten, and yet it had been remade with imagination into something new. It had been cared for and loved.

Now it was burning.

Flames spread quickly between some of the old planes at the northern end, blackening and consuming them where they stood. What was left of the populace ran in a panicked surge toward Southlift and the old roads that wound up the sides of the cliffs.

In the distance, sparks shot into the air. Zoey couldn’t tell how, but the pain in her head throbbed in ways that told her the things she’d sensed before had grown again. There were almost a hundred now—and she had a feeling there would be more soon. But what were they?

Holt turned and lifted Zoey onto his shoulders. “Which way?” he shouted at Mira.

Mira pointed north, down a path of hulking, rusted planes, and Holt ran down it, shoving his way through the frothing crowd of kids.

The good news was, the more they went in this direction, the thinner the crowd got. The bad news, of course, was that they were headed straight for whatever everyone was running from.

Mira dashed past, taking the lead, and Holt whistled for Max. The dog bounded gleefully after them.

“What do these things look like?” Holt yelled after Mira.

“You’ll know them when you see them!”

Zoey held on to Holt’s neck as they kept running, heading north toward the cliff wall and Northlift, at the far end of the city. Then she screamed as a massive, old plane fell to pieces in front of them, collapsing to the ground.

“Holy crap!” Holt shouted, barely keeping his footing as debris sprayed everywhere.

The top of the collapsed plane was covered in a mass of strange, glowing objects. Small, each about the size of a softball, except they were perfect cubes. Cubes of pure energy that glowed in different colors, and they seemed almost magnetically drawn to the old planes and helicopters. Whenever they touched one, plumes of colored sparks shot everywhere, and Zoey could see they were burrowing through the rusted metal, dissolving it.

As the glowing cubes pushed down and in, their colors changed, starting at a cool blue, rising to purple, red, orange, becoming brighter and brighter, until they were nothing but white-hot light. Then there was a flash, and another, identical cube formed out of the first one.

Every time they did, the pain in Zoey’s head grew slightly worse. She moaned and struggled to keep her arms around Holt.

“They’re attracted to metal,” Mira shouted as they ran. “They break it down and absorb it, until they have enough energy to create a clone of themselves. They replicate exponentially, and with all the junk in this place, there’s going to be millions of them.” Sparks shot into the air everywhere, and Zoey could see hundreds of cubes, floating toward and absorbing into the planes and helicopters, one after the other, spreading and growing like a virus.

“What’s the big deal, if they’re just attracted to metal?” Holt yelled.

“See what those things are doing to the planes? Touch one and they’ll do the same thing to you. In a few minutes, this whole place is going to be flooded with them.”

Zoey felt Holt groan under her. “Forget I asked.”

Mira skidded to a harsh stop, almost falling over. Ahead of her the air was full of the lethal glowing cubes—a thick mass of hundreds of them drifting between the various wrecks, igniting into sparks when they made contact.