J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

“Back!” she shouted, then turned—and stopped again. When Holt spun around, Zoey saw why. The air behind them was full of the same cubes, sparking violently as they began to cover and bore into a cargo helicopter.

The air was filling with them, and Zoey moaned as the pain in her head kept rising. There was nowhere to—

Someone grabbed Mira and Holt and yanked them off the path and underneath a rusting fighter jet. Zoey climbed off Holt as they ducked under the old plane, and saw a group of five other kids. Max darted underneath with them, barking, until Holt silenced him.

More sparks, and another plane collapsed inward on itself under hundreds of the glowing cubes. There were thousands now, Zoey guessed.

“Mira!” Echo shouted, pushing toward them. His voice was shaky, and Zoey could feel the shock and fear coming off him. “Been pinned here five minutes. Lost four of my guys already. They’re Tesla Cubes! Outside the—”

“Yeah, I have eyes!” Mira yelled back, just as shocked. “How can this be happening?”

“I don’t know! I… I should have evacuated sooner. I felt it, I knew something like this—” More plumes of sparks sprayed into the air as a helicopter disintegrated loudly.

“No one could ever predict this, Echo, it’s insane!” Mira tried to console him, but Zoey felt no change in the emotion coming from him. “Listen to me, we need to get to Northlift! Before the Crossroads are completely over—”

“I said no! ” he retorted angrily. “I’m not losing anyone else! Besides, it’s at the other end of the city, where the cubes are the densest. You’ll never make it.”

“Hate to break it to you,” Holt told him, “but those cube things are behind us now, too, and with the way they’re multiplying, in another ten minutes they’re going to be pretty much everywhere. The northern side’s closer, it’s less of a run. That lift’s our best chance.”

Echo snapped to the sound of screams, watched as a giant B-1B bomber fell to pieces in a shower of rust, covered with cubes. Zoey could sense the emotions drifting off him. Frustration, disdain, and anger. He had lost a lot of friends to the Strange Lands, but he had always seen the Crossroads as safe. The realization that it wasn’t hit him hard.

“Echo,” Mira said. “It’s important. If we can get inside the Strange Lands… we can maybe change everything. ”

His eyes slimmed. “I don’t even know what that means, Mira. Change everything? How?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said, and Echo frowned. “But I think I’ve earned your trust. After everything we’ve been through.”

Echo’s gaze visibly softened. Zoey felt new emotions from him. Guilt mainly, and sadness. “Cashing that chip in, huh? It’s that important?”

“It is,” Mira said simply.

Echo and Mira stared intently at one another, then he seemed to relent. “Fine. But then you and I are even. And I can stop feeling guilty every damn time I see you.”

Mira nodded. “Deal.”

“We can’t use the main paths,” Echo stated, “they’re too open, and the air’s gonna be full of cubes, especially up high. Only shot is to stay low, move under the planes.”

The glass from a ruined Apache helicopter next to them burst into shards.

Holt nodded encouragingly. “How about we get going with that?”

Echo spun and told his men what was happening: They were moving for Northlift; they would try to get out of the city that way. No one argued.

Mira grabbed Zoey’s hand and pulled her forward, dashing out from the cover of the fighter plane and running toward another one. Zoey’s head throbbed and pulsed, and she could sense the cube things all around her, growing, filling the air and decimating the city. Thousands upon thousands of them now.

They rushed toward a cluster of helicopters.

Behind them two of Echo’s boys screamed, and Mira clamped a hand over Zoey’s eyes, stopping her from looking. The cubes must have touched them. And that had been that.

Behind them came more explosions. A blossom of flame shot out from the side of the cliff at the far end of the city. There were screams as something big and dark fell loose from the wall, plummeting downward and crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust and fire.

Southlift, Zoey realized. And right before it fell out of sight, she could see it was completely covered in the glowing cubes.

“Damn it!” Echo cursed as they slid under another plane. Zoey felt his frustration. His city was being eaten alive and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

More cubes burst to life in bright flashes around them. Tens of thousands. The number growing every second. Everywhere, the old planes and helicopters, and the city buildings they had been turned into, were covered by the cubes, and they shook and rocked as sparks sprayed from them.

They kept moving, running between and under the planes, dodging the cubes above.

Ahead of them, not more than a hundred feet away, Zoey saw the cliff face rising straight upward, and climbing up along it were the tracks of Northlift, the elevator which would get them into the Strange Lands. So far, it hadn’t attracted the cubes—but it wasn’t on the ground either, it was hanging in the open air at the top.

“Damn,” Echo said, staring at the lift. “Have to lower it.”

“Did Ben use it?” Mira asked.

“Who the hell knows. We gotta do this fast.” Echo rushed out from under the plane toward a bank of controls near the lift’s platform, and started shoving levers and pulleys in different directions.

From up top came a stuttering sound, as the engines began to turn. Zoey saw Northlift shudder and start to descend, crawling at a glacial pace down the cliffside.

Holt groaned in frustration. “You have got to be kidding me!”

The last kid with Echo screamed violently, and this time, Mira wasn’t close enough to shield Zoey’s eyes.

“Danny!” Echo shouted, but it was too late.

The kid’s right arm touched one of the cubes in the air. His body flashed once—and then dissolved into a thick cloud of black particles, amid a mass of orange sparks that burst outward and fell to the ground.

Zoey shut her eyes, her head throbbing powerfully. The cubes were everywhere, multiplying, burrowing into and decimating the nearby planes, filling the air like a glowing swarm of insects.

Mira grabbed Zoey and pulled her back. Holt held onto Max as he howled at another explosion nearby. The elevator was lowering too slowly. The cubes were pushing in.

Zoey stared up at Mira fearfully. “What do we do?”

Mira didn’t say anything, just clutched Zoey tightly, staring at the cubes that were growing and filling the air.

“Mira!” Holt shouted.

Zoey felt desperation and fear pour off of Mira in great torrents. She was frozen, unable to move. The cubes closed in.…

Then there was a sound like a powerful, punctuated blast of static and noise. In a flash of light, something big materialized out of thin air about twenty feet away. An Assembly walker, big and powerful, with five legs. The one from before, the one stripped of its colors. One second it hadn’t been there, and then the next… it had. The machine gleamed brightly in the afternoon sun. Its three-optic eye whirred as it focused on Zoey.

“Assembly!” Echo stumbled back, his eyes wide with shock, but the machine ignored him.

“Zoey!” Mira screamed, the sight of the walker breaking her spell. Holt ripped his shotgun free.

Then the cubes in the air all pulled away and drifted faster and faster toward the walker, drawn by its thick metallic fuselage.

The machine’s shield flashed to life around it, a glowing sphere of energy—and then sparked violently as the cubes made contact. The energy barrier flickered, but it held. The cubes couldn’t punch through.