J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

It was a Gray Devils camp. Which meant…

“You’re safe,” a voice assured her, and Mira spun around. Ben sat next to her, working in his green-and-blue Lexicon on the ground, a pencil behind his ear. His brass dice cube was absently moving over the knuckles of his left hand, back and forth. “We’re away from the Crossroads.”

Her shoulder hurt. She remembered where she had been before. With Holt and Zoey. And the Hunters.

“Where are…?” she started, but couldn’t finish. Her throat was sore and her mouth was dry. Ben handed her a canteen and she drank from it greedily.

“My guys found you outside Northlift,” he said. “Sent them to look for you, figured you might follow us. They watched until your friends were taken away, then they brought you here.”

Mira sat up angrily. “Why didn’t they help? ”

“Because then they’d be dead, too. Fighting Assembly is suicide, you know that.”

“Holt and Zoey aren’t dead, ” Mira said pointedly. “The Assembly took them, it’s not the same thing.”

“Might as well be. Either way, you’ll never see them again.”

She glared at him—but a part of her knew he was right. If the Assembly had them, then…

“No,” she said and stood up, fighting through a wave of dizziness. “They’re alive. We can get them back. It’s like you say, there’s always a solution.”

“There’s always exceptions, too. This isn’t a problem you can solve.”

“Damn it, Ben—”

“ Think, Mira,” he cut her off softly. “Even if you weren’t talking about going after a pack of Assembly walkers, the Strange Lands are different now. The old routes might not work anymore. Everything might be new. Everything might need to be solved—all over again.” Mira could hear the faint traces of excitement in his voice as he contemplated the possibilities. “Besides, I finally have what I need to get to the Tower. I can’t risk that, it’s too important.”

“More important than people’s lives?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “The Tower represents infinite possibilities. If I can get there I can make everything right. Isn’t that worth two lives? Or four? Or a hundred?”

Mira closed her eyes. “Ben…”

“I understand why you’re torn, Mira,” he said. “You’ve always had problems detaching yourself emotionally when you needed to, especially here. But you know I’m right. Going after them makes no sense. It doesn’t add up.”

What he said rang true in the same cold, logical way that everything he said did. The odds of her finding Holt and Zoey were beyond small. And even if she did, what would she do? Fight the Hunters by herself? But that wasn’t what really bothered her, was it? She was in the Strange Lands, and it meant she would have to navigate it by herself, without Ben. On her own she would fail. Eventually. She wouldn’t be good enough. And whoever was with her would pay a price for that. Just like they had so long ago.

Instinctively, Mira thought back to the Crossroads. How she froze when the Tesla Cubes were almost on them. How she couldn’t move, couldn’t even think. How could she hope to make it on her own?

“Your things are over there,” Ben said. “Your Lexicon, your packs.” Mira saw her stuff piled neatly on the other side of the campfire. “I saw your plutonium. Good quality. Couldn’t have been easy to get.”

The plutonium was the batch from Clinton Station. That had been a month ago, but it seemed like forever. It had been in her pack ever since, a glass cylinder wrapped with a Dampener, an artifact that absorbed the heat that naturally poured off the contained element inside, making it safe to transport. For the most part, anyway.

“I got it to trade for your life,” Mira said. “But turned out that wasn’t necessary. Didn’t it?”

It was true. She had hoped to use the plutonium to bargain her way out of Midnight City after she rescued Ben. But Ben had been long gone by the time she’d gotten there. It would have worked, too, the bargain. Plutonium was one of the most valuable substances on the planet because of what it supposedly granted you entrance to. The Severed Tower.

It was ironic, in a way. Everything she had gone through to get the plutonium—avoiding bounty hunters, scouring different cities for clues, eluding Holt, surviving Clinton Station—had seemed pointless once she’d learned that Ben had been the one who told Lenore about her artifact. And yet it turned out to be critical in a different way. If she hadn’t gotten it, how would they possibly get Zoey to the Tower, where she claimed she needed to go? It all felt like… fate.

Ben moved closer to her, took her hand. “I know it must have been difficult,” he told her. “But you’re safe now. And you’ll go with me. We’ll go to the Tower together, like we always said. We’ll make the loss of your friends worth it. I promise.”

Mira looked up at him. Ben had a singular belief, one that had driven him his entire life. It led him to become a Freebooter, it pushed him deeper and deeper into the Strange Lands, it dictated everything he did. The belief wasn’t a simple one. Ben believed that the Severed Tower, the mysterious center of the Strange Lands, was a fusing of all possibilities and realities. If you could reach it and enter it, then you could do anything. Ben’s intention was and always had been to change the world. Literally. To make a new reality, one where the Assembly had never invaded, where none of the horror had ever occurred. And he believed that he was the only one who could do it.

Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t. Mira wasn’t sure if she believed in his theory or not. It sounded too easy. But it had never been a pressing concern, really. After all, they could never reach the Tower, they didn’t have the resources. No one reached it without an expensive expedition, funded by a Midnight City faction. It was just too difficult. But now it was within Ben’s reach. He could find out the truth for himself. And she could go with him, if she wanted. It was something she always had wanted. But things had changed a lot in the last few months.

“No.” Mira spoke with a finality that made Ben move away.

She didn’t have a lot of faith in herself, it was true. And going with Ben would be a much easier decision—but she knew she couldn’t. She had responsibilities to Zoey and to Holt. She had brought them here, which meant in a way they were lost because of her. If they were dead, it would be one thing, but they weren’t. They were alive. And not going after them… was betraying them. Even if going after them was futile.

“You asked me about my eyes earlier—about the Tone,” Mira said. “Zoey was the one who did that. Zoey can stop the Tone. She can do other things, too. Amazing things. And the Assembly is chasing her. She’s… the key, I think, to whatever it is they’re doing here.”

As Mira spoke, Ben’s brow wrinkled inquisitively. This was unexpected, and for Ben unexpected things were the most interesting. “So she is the one from the rumors? The one who saved Midnight City, brought the dam back to life?”

Mira nodded. “They’re hunting her. Different groups from all over. She has to reach the Severed Tower, Ben.”

“Why?”

“I… don’t know,” Mira admitted. “The Oracle told her, it said she would learn the truth there. And the Librarian said Zoey was the Apex. He died to save her.”

For one of the only times since Mira had known him, Ben’s eyes widened in astonishment. “The Librarian is… dead? ” She didn’t blame him. It didn’t seem real to her either. The Librarian was more a force of nature than human. She would have bet on him living forever.