J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

As they approached an old town a rusted welcome sign proclaimed KENMORE. Ravan called a stop. City ruins were a good place for an ambush, and she wasn’t going to just walk right into the town square without a little recon.

The ground sloped up on either side of them, and both hills were peppered with trees—cottonwoods and spruce, thick and unkempt. It would give them good cover.

Ravan split the group in two, ordering the divided units to climb separate hills. Mira and Max followed Ravan’s group up the larger one. At the top, they crawled to the edge, trying to keep out of sight of whatever might be below. It was a small town, maybe ten square miles all in all, and from here Mira could see old houses, the steeple of a church, gas stations, businesses, and right in the center an old courthouse. Strangely, it all seemed in good shape. Like it hadn’t aged for some reason. That would be expected in the deeper rings, where time actually ticked slower, but here in the first ring it was unusual. Mira didn’t like it. Anything unusual in the Strange Lands usually meant trouble.

Ravan handed Mira an extra pair of binoculars. They sighted through them, studying the town, looking from building to building. It was a dead zone, silent and eerie, and Mira could see the breeze stir the dirty remains of tattered curtains in some of the buildings’ broken windows.

Then Mira saw the answer to the question of the town’s near pristine shape. Everywhere, incidents appeared to somehow be frozen in time.

At one corner a billboard was falling over, its pieces suspended in the air. Nearby, the beginnings of an explosion flared outward at a gas station, a blooming ball of petrified flame that sat like a sculpture. In a street below, vehicles listed in a three-way collision, their pieces and parts hanging in the air. The most dramatic example was a semitruck, its cargo trailer jackknifing and tearing loose as the engine punched straight through the side of the courthouse.

Mira moaned. “This whole place is a Time Sink.”

“Let me guess. Bubble of frozen time?” Ravan asked mildly, still sighting through the optics.

“Pretty much. They’re fragile and they’re dangerous. Any sort of kinetic movement against an object in a Time Sink frees it from the Anomaly’s effect.”

“Lovely,” Ravan replied.

Mira kept scanning the town. Other than the evidence of the Time Sink, it was unremarkable. It seemed devoid of life and movement.

“I don’t think there’s anything here,” Mira said quietly. “If there was—”

“Town square, northeast corner,” Ravan cut her off.

Mira spun her binoculars, saw the remains of a bank, one of the more heavily damaged buildings in the city. On its roof something moved. A green-and-orange Assembly walker.

Mira almost dropped the binoculars, the flood of relief was so strong. She’d found them.

She watched as it slowly paced along the edge, scanning the ground and the horizon. A sentry, most likely, and after another few steps it disappeared behind some of the building’s ductwork.

“Another one, coming out of the courthouse,” Ravan said. Mira spun her binoculars again, found the walker emerging from a huge crack in the building’s wall. She watched it take a few slow steps—then leap into a run. As it did, the Menagerie let out a collective gasp. A shimmering field of energy enveloped the walker—and it disappeared from view.

“Son of a gunderson,” one of Ravan’s lieutenants said next to her. “Did that just happen?”

“That just happened,” Ravan said tightly. “Tell the others to report in.”

The lieutenant grabbed a small mirror, aimed it so that it caught the sun, and flashed signals to the hill on the other side of town. A few seconds later Mira saw similar flashes from the far tree line.

“Looks like they spotted three more,” he said, translating the flashes, “running patterns on the south side.”

“Patrols,” Ravan said with distaste. “They’re dug in. But why? What are they waiting for?”

“More than that,” the lieutenant said, “ look at them. They’re green and orange. I ain’t ever seen any that weren’t blue and white.”

Ravan lowered her binoculars and looked at Mira darkly. Mira stared back carefully.

“Green-and-orange walkers.” Ravan’s tone was dangerous. “Three legs. Small, mobile—and invisible? I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s my naturally distrusting nature, but… I’m starting to have a hard time taking what you say at face value.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Mira lied. “I don’t know why these Assembly are different, or what it means. All I know is, these walkers have my friends and you made a deal to help me get them back.”

Ravan’s crystal-clear eyes stared into Mira’s, probing and searching for deception. If she found it, Mira wasn’t sure what the girl would do, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be pleasant. Ravan considered her a moment more, then just turned and looked back through her binoculars, as if the issue were settled. “Like I said. Probably just me.” Her optics moved over the city, scanning and searching again. “So, if I were a prisoner, where would I be?”

It could be any one of dozens of buildings. Mira couldn’t pinpoint it, but she could definitely narrow it down.

She took out the compass pendant and pointed it toward the city. The needle aimed into the heart of the square. Ravan and Mira followed its line to the big, white-bricked courthouse. It was a sturdy building, covered, a good defensible position. The giant crack in its exterior allowed a glimpse inside.

Mira focused her binoculars, and when she saw what was there, barely visible through the hole, her stomach tightened like a fist.

Someone hung in midair, tied to what was left of the building’s rafters. Mira couldn’t see his face with any detail, but she recognized enough to know who it was.

Holt. Hanging lifeless and unmoving in the shadows of the ruined building.

Mira dropped the binoculars and shut her eyes. He couldn’t be gone. Not after how they’d left things.

Ravan turned to Mira. “Don’t worry, Red, doesn’t mean he’s dead. They’re Assembly. Everything they do has a purpose,” she said with disdain. “If he weren’t alive they wouldn’t bother stringing him up, would they? Of course, doesn’t mean they’ve kept him in mint condition, either.”

She was right, Mira knew. On both counts. He probably was still alive, but there was no guarantee that would last. Holt wasn’t the one they really wanted, after all.

“Don’t see your other friend,” Ravan said. “What are we looking for?”

“A little girl,” Mira replied. “Eight or nine, blond hair.”

“Probably just out of sight, one side of the gap or the other.” Ravan lowered the binoculars, looked at her lieutenant. “We brought a Portal, right?”

The lieutenant nodded. Mira was surprised. A Portal was a pair of linked artifact combinations, complicated, expensive ones. When activated, they each formed a gateway that anyone could pass through no matter how far the distance. Even Mira had only made a dozen or so, and usually only by special request. Ravan was well supplied, obviously.

“Still need a distraction.” The pirate Captain stared back into the town, thinking. Mira followed her gaze to the frozen gas station explosion at the opposite end. “Kinetic movement, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mira replied. She saw what the girl intended. “Throw something into that—a rock, a bottle, whatever—it’ll merge back into real time. In a major way.”

“What about a bullet? From a distance?” Ravan asked. “Would that work?”

“As long as you hit it.”