J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

A Solid was a token given out by high-ranking Menagerie leaders to non-Menagerie who did them important favors. They could be presented to any other Menagerie leader, and that leader was obligated to help them in some task as repayment. It was never that simple of course, but Solids were rarely given out, and it was assumed anyone possessing one must be in the good graces of someone important. At a minimum, a Solid would usually ensure your safety.

“Two of my friends have been taken by the Assembly,” Mira said. “They’re headed northwest, and I need help rescuing them.”

The pirates all stared at her a moment—then burst into laughter, the sounds filling the air. Even the black-haired girl chuckled.

“Well why didn’t you just say so?” she asked. “I was expecting something difficult or out of the question.”

“What’s so funny?” Mira asked in a low voice. She had to stay firm, had to be strong.

“What’s funny is that getting killed isn’t part of honoring a Solid, no matter who it’s from. Even the Menagerie don’t tangle with Assembly unless we can’t avoid it, and you’re talking about chasing down a group of them. Trust me, if the aliens have your friends, they’re good and gone. So drink to their memories, and spend this Solid on something nice for yourself.”

Mira sighed. It had been too much to hope that the Solid alone would get their participation, but there was another approach.

“You’re going into the Strange Lands,” Mira observed, studying all the gear that had been offloaded nearby. “Why?”

“What, we’re best friends all of a sudden? It’s nothing you need to stress about,” the Captain replied. “We’re here for something special. It’s another reason I can’t just go off looking for your friends. Of course… the way it’s looking now, we might be experiencing something of a delay.”

Mira smiled. It was as she’d hoped. “You need a guide. And all the Freebooters you would have hired at the Crossroads are gone now. There’s nothing left of that place.”

The girl spat. “That’s about the long and short of it, yeah.”

“You hoping to get to Polestar?”

“Among… other places.”

Any other time Mira would be incredibly curious what the Menagerie’s goals might be here, but right now she had other things to worry about.

“The Assembly took my friends inside the Strange Lands,” Mira said carefully. “It’s not totally the direction you need to go, but it’s close. You help me find them, I’ll help you get to Polestar, and you get to turn in one of Tiberius’s Solids when you get back to Faust.”

There were murmurings from the pirates around her. The Captain stared at Mira intently. “You any good?”

“I’m not the best, but I can get you where you need to be. Either way, looks like I’m the only chance you’ve got.”

The Captain’s stare hovered on Mira a few seconds more, then she smiled again. It was disturbing. “My name’s Ravan. If I agree to this it means three things. I’m in charge, you’re a hired hand; you do what I say, when I say it. Fighting Assembly’s a deadly game, and I can’t have you running around on your own.”

Mira nodded.

“Two: If we don’t find your friends—if the Assembly makes it to a Presidium or a processing center or an Osprey den—it’s over … and I keep the Solid for my trouble, and you’re still taking us to Polestar. Agreed?”

Mira nodded again. She didn’t like it, but it was what she expected.

“And three… if at the end of this you start thinking of ways to get off honoring our bargain…” The smile again. “Well. I’ve known lots of people who’ve tried very similar things, and they aren’t members of the living anymore. Need I be any clearer?”

Mira forced herself to muster as much calmness as she could. “No, I think I get the gist of it.” The two held each other’s stare a moment longer. Then Ravan nodded.

“Assume you got some way of tracking these friends?”

“I do,” Mira said.

“What is it, an artifact?”

“Yes.”

“How far away are they?” Ravan asked, starting to think and plan.

“I can’t tell distance, but they’ve had about half a day’s head start.”

“You said northwest?”

Mira nodded. Ravan’s eyes slimmed, thinking it through. She turned to one of the boys next to her.

“Get everyone ready, we head out in thirty. Tell them to pack light, we’re moving fast.”

“What about the boats?” the kid asked.

“Tell Steans and Riddick to take them downstream and wait at the Gillespie Interchange. We’ll meet you there when this is all said and done. Give it… five weeks. You haven’t seen us, we ain’t coming back.”

The kid nodded, moved briskly toward the boats, shouting orders, yelling at other kids. They all started scrambling, making ready to leave.

Ravan looked back to Mira, and when she did Mira noticed something she had overlooked in the tension of the past few moments. Ravan’s eyes were a perfectly clear, sapphire blue. The black, fingerlike veins of the Tone weren’t there. She was Heedless. Whether Ravan had noticed the same thing about Mira, or she just didn’t care, Mira wasn’t sure.

“Looks like you got exactly what you wanted, Red,” Ravan said, her blue eyes flashing, “and you know what they say about that.” She turned and moved back for the boats to collect her gear.

Yeah, Mira thought, staring after the Menagerie Captain. She knew exactly what they said about that.

Beneath her, Max whined and looked up questioningly.

“Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

ZOEY PUSHED BACK into the wall of the dark building, staring at everything around her. It was a big scary place, with shadows clinging everywhere, and she didn’t like it. Her head hurt, too. It seemed to be getting worse, the more the walkers took her in to the Strange Lands, and she didn’t know why.

Night had fallen outside, and Zoey could see the half moon through a giant crack in the building’s far wall that ran floor to ceiling. It was a large structure, with brick walls and heavy frames, and it seemed to consist of just one huge room. What remained of rows of long wooden benches stretched all the way to the other side.

There was something else. Something almost impossible to wrap her mind around.

The far wall from where she sat was bursting open inward. Bricks and mortar and debris hung in the air, spraying outward. The benches and chairs there were thrust forward, shattering into splinters and flying forward, and the beginning of some kind of huge truck exploded through the wall, its headlights still shining like glowing eyes, flooding the interior of the old building.

But it was all somehow amazingly frozen in place.

Like you were watching it on TV and someone had hit PAUSE. Zoey kept staring at it as her mind tried to make sense of it all.

While the truck was the most dramatic example, Zoey could look around and see others.

On the desk near her, a stack of papers had fallen off a desk, fanning outwards toward the floor—but they never reached it. They hung in the air, frozen in place just like the truck and the debris at the other end of the room.

Curiously, Zoey slowly reached out and touched one of the papers.

There was a sizzling sound, then a flash of light—and the paper unstuck like someone had hit PLAY. It floated downward, and as it did it hit other papers, and they too sizzled and flashed and unstuck, settling along the floor like fallen leaves.

Zoey watched in fascination. She wished Mira was there to explain it.

An annoyed electronic sound echoed behind her, and Zoey turned around.