J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

It was breathtaking to watch.

The Condensers continued to flash, lighting up the figures, and Mira made out the details she expected. They were dressed in black and gray—boots, pants, tucked-in shirts, vests with pockets, utility belts on their chests.

Black masks were pulled up over their mouths and noses, and their eyes were covered by black goggles, so dark their wearers surely couldn’t see. It made the way they flipped through the Anomaly even more impressive. They were doing it blind.

On their left hands, Mira could see the glowing colors of the rings they wore on their three middle fingers. Each wielded a long, spearlike weapon, with glowing crystals of different colors on either end shaped into points. The colorful marks of light streaked through the air as they quickly leaped closer.

They were White Helix.

Mira ducked instinctively as the first one used her weapon as a pole-vaulter would, to flip over Mira’s head. A sphere roared to life next to her. Max howled and Mira tightened her grip, trying to stop him from leaping forward.

Two Menagerie weren’t so lucky. They stumbled backward. A sphere flashed to life; their screams were ripped away as they were yanked inside. They vanished, but not so fast that you couldn’t make out their bodies being crushed into unrecognizable things the size of thimbles.

That was all it took. Mira saw it coming. “No!” she shouted.

But it was too late. The Menagerie opened fire, their guns flashing and lighting up the night.

The Helix adjusted instantly, spun in different directions, some in midair, in flashes of orange and purple light.

The rings they wore were made from Antimatter Crystals, the remnants of the colorful lightning that flashed deeper inside the Strange Lands, and they had very unique properties. Touching them in different combinations could manipulate gravity, inertia, or momentum. It let their owners do death-defying things.

The black-clad figures dodged the gunfire easily, as if everything but them was moving in slow motion, weaving through the flaring Condensers as they did.

Another Menagerie lost his balance and stumbled forward. He screamed as a Condenser Sphere flashed to life—and Mira shut her eyes tight as it sucked him inside.

Ravan yelled for her men to cease fire. The guns flashed off.

As they did, the strange figures landed on the ruined cars and trucks and buses all around them. Their weapons, the strange double-pronged spears, lowered and leveled at the Menagerie. Mira could hear a slight humming fill the air from the weapons’ glowing crystals.

“No one do anything! ” Ravan yelled. She still had her gun raised, though—as did the rest of her men, sighting at the figures that knelt above them on the ruined cars.

It was a standoff. As dangerous as that was by itself, they were still standing inside the Grindhouse. Even though they couldn’t see them, the Condenser Spheres were drifting, and they were running out of time.

THE WHITE HELIX CROUCHED on top of the cars, their strange double-pronged spear weapons pointing downward at the Menagerie.

Mira prayed no one moved. The strange, goggled figures might be outnumbered three to one, but they were White Helix, which meant they could kill every single one of them if things went bad.

Mira saw the pendants on their necks now—white ones, two strands of cord twisting around each other, with thin bars in between them. It made what was called a double helix, a symbol typically associated with DNA, and Mira had never understood why they chose it as their symbol.

The White Helix were a cult, for lack of a better description. They kept to themselves, deep back in the inner rings of the Strange Lands, and they had an almost supernatural sense and understanding of it. They could do amazing things: leap incredibly high; flip through the air; accelerate their movements—all by using the glowing rings on their left hands. Their spears were called Lancets, Mira knew, and their points were made of the same crystals. Supposedly, they could pierce solid steel, but she had never seen it for herself.

No one knew exactly how many Helix there were, but some guessed it could be in the thousands. Hundreds of survivors tried to reach the cult every year, but Mira had a feeling very few made it. To join the White Helix, you had to prove your dedication. And you did it by looking for them. If you could survive the Strange Lands on your own and make it to a certain ruined city in the second ring, the stories said the Helix would find you. What happened after that, Mira could only guess.

They were highly skilled fighters, which implied a great deal of training, and that had never made much sense. Why train to fight in the Strange Lands, where there wasn’t much use for it? And how did they get so skilled so quickly? From all accounts, the White Helix fought and did things as though they had been studying and training for a lifetime. But they were a reclusive group, and their secrets were their own.

One of them, between Mira and Ravan, slowly stood up on top of a rusted pickup. A small, black girl, with an easy grip on her Lancet. From this distance, Mira saw what looked like triggers on either end of the shaft, as if for a gun. Could the Helix fire those crystals like projectiles? The thought was unpleasant, especially with them all pointed in her direction.

Ravan’s gun tracked to the girl.

“Don’t,” Mira warned. “They’ll kill us all.”

The black girl lifted off her goggles and looked at Mira. Like Ravan and herself, the girl’s eyes were clear of the Tone. And they sparkled in a way that suggested a smile under her mask.

“You should listen to her,” the girl said. “Freebooters don’t belong in this place—but at least they understand it.” Her eyes focused on Mira in an uncomfortable way. “And yours seems to know enough to fear it, too.”

Mira instinctively hid her shaking hands behind her back. Was it that obvious?

“But you,” the girl said with disdain, looking at Ravan. “Menagerie scum. You understand nothing. ”

Ravan’s glare intensified. “I understand you killed three of my men.” Her voice was harsh. Whatever the girl might be—pirate, thief, or murderer—she valued the lives of her crew. “And you’ll pay for that, one way or another.”

The Helix shook her head. “Is it my fault if Menagerie lose their balance?”

The pirates’ grip on their rifles tightened. The Helix crouched perfectly still, their eyes unreadable behind the black goggles.

“I won’t threaten you back,” the girl said, “there’s no need. This land will kill you all on its own.”

For the first time in the exchange, Ravan smiled. “Surviving’s kind of my strong suit. I plan on being around a long, long time.”

The girl nodded as if she expected the answer. “That’s why everyone like you is destroyed here. The only way to survive this place, the only true way… is to accept that it will eventually kill you.”

Mira watched the Helix girl shut her eyes in concentration and calmly reach outward. A Condenser Sphere flared to life in bright, crackling energy right next to her, lighting up the night. Max whined, and Mira held on tight, keeping him in place.

“In this place, you’re already dead,” the girl said, eyes closed. She ran her hands around the perimeter of the pulsating sphere, almost touching it, keeping it flared and visible, courting death. An inch or two more and that would be it. “Once you accept that, the fear no longer holds any power over you.”

If only, Mira thought bitterly. The girl withdrew her hand and the Sphere vanished, blending back into the night.