J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

“Parker!” Ravan yelled at him. “You wanna die out here?”

“No, skipper,” the boy said through gritted teeth, trying harder. The padlock snapped apart. Ravan kicked the fence in and everyone charged forward. The rumbling sound of the Ion Storm filled the air.

“Mira!” Zoey shouted as the pirates ran past and knocked her down.

Then one of them scooped her up as he ran. “Got her!”

Mira didn’t argue, she found her footing and ran into the fenced yard. The storm was almost on them now, blooming and rolling forward, blocking out everything as it towered over them, coming fast, darkening the sky.

She could hear it now, too. The strange, voltaic rumble that came from whatever charged particles the storm was made of bouncing off one another. It was growing. Louder and louder as it roared toward them.

Max barked frantically, and Mira turned as she ran, saw him growling and biting at the pirates carrying Holt, disappearing with them inside one of the buildings.

They were little more than shacks, cubes of concrete, maybe twenty square feet each, with heavy metallic doors on the outside. The closest one was ahead of her and to the left. Ravan was running for it, too, and Mira double-timed it.

As she ran, she saw something else in the middle of the field. A giant circle of steel, hundreds of feet across, stretching from one end to the other. Some kind of huge, metallic door set into the earth. What the hell was this place?

Mira would be happy never finding out. She kept running for the shack, saw Ravan ram into its door with all her weight and blow it open.

The rumbling static grew and everything went dark as the Ion Storm closed the distance.

Mira lunged inside, hit the ground, and rolled to a stop. She just had time to see two Menagerie behind her scream and shudder as a cloud of blackness washed over them, ripping them off their feet. Their bodies disintegrated into a black, powdery substance that mixed with the rest of the darkness.

Ravan slammed the door shut, holding it sealed with her body.

The two girls looked at each other as the charged rumble built to a fever pitch outside. The building, concrete or not, vibrated as the brunt of the storm washed over it.

“You sure this place will hold?” Ravan asked.

“Ion Storms don’t do as much damage against rock or metal. Give it a few days and it’ll disintegrate the building, but it won’t last that long.” At least, so the old logic went. The Strange Lands were changing, for all she knew this storm could last a month. Mira tried not to think about that, though.

“Wouldn’t roll over if I were you,” Ravan said.

Mira slowly craned her head around slowly. The floor beneath her wasn’t concrete, it was wood, and most of it was rotting away. She could hear it groan under her.

Less than a foot away the wood ended, and a gaping hole of blackness began, a sheer drop into darkness. She had almost rolled off it into… who knew what. The bottom was nowhere to be seen.

“Told you.” Ravan stepped away from the door. The air still rumbled outside.

The floorboards, where they still remained, came to a smooth, orderly stop before the chasm. It meant the hole was intentional, and this shack was built to contain it.

But what was it?

The floorboards creaked dangerously as Mira moved to a crouch, peering downward. The hole had concrete walls that dropped into the dark. Along the edge of the wall to her right she could see rusted metal supports bolted into the hard surface.

Mira had seen a lot of desiccated urban environments, and she could put the pieces together. “A stairwell,” she said. “Or it used to be.”

The floorboards groaned as Ravan stood next to her. Mira could see lines of rotted dust tumbling into the dark as the wood began to loosen and split.

“I don’t think we should both be on here,” Mira said, starting to rise—but Ravan’s boot stepped on her shoulder, pushed her back down.

Mira froze. She was right at the edge of the hole.

“Why not?” Ravan asked in a casual tone. “Nice place, this. Out of the storm. Dangerous, though. Who’s to say what might happen in here? Would be easy to just… take a wrong step, wouldn’t it?”

The floorboards creaked again. Mira swallowed. “Still got a ways to go until Polestar,” she said. “Killing me wouldn’t be the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

Ravan had always exhibited powerful self-control, but the look in her eyes right now held more ardor than Mira had ever seen. “Who is Holt to you?” she asked with slow, deliberate words.

It wasn’t the question Mira was expecting. “Holt?”

“You followed him into the Strange Lands, all the way from the Crossroads. Chased after some of the most dangerous Assembly I’ve ever seen, and burned a Solid from Tiberius himself to get me to help you. Who is he to you?”

Mira felt the anger that had been building inside her peak. She’d had enough of Ravan’s constant threats and power games. “Who’s he to you? ” She shoved Ravan’s foot off her shoulder and sent the girl back a step. “Just another Menagerie deathmark with a price on his head? Another Star Point on your hand?” Mira advanced on Ravan and the floor swayed and cracked under them. Neither noticed.

“He’s much more than a dollar sign.” Ravan didn’t flinch as Mira stepped closer. “Especially to me.”

“I’m supposed to believe you two are buddies, is that it? Holt wouldn’t have anything to do with the Menagerie.”

“Oh, little angel, that is precious. ” Ravan smiled sardonically, studying Mira with thinly veiled contempt. “Holt had plenty to do with the Menagerie. And he and I are a lot more than friends.”

The implication wasn’t something Mira had considered, and the words hit hard. She was flustered, tried to find something to say, but couldn’t. It only made Ravan’s smile more intense.

“The Menagerie isn’t what most people think, you know. It’s more than just a disorganized band of idiots pillaging everything they see. It’s a community. For instance, do you know how couples in the Menagerie show their commitment to each other?”

Mira said nothing. She didn’t like where this was going.

“We take the same tattoo. It’s called a Troth.” Ravan held up her right hand. The black raven stood out prominently, wings outstretched to either side. “Has Holt ever shown you his right hand?”

Mira’s thoughts wavered, remembering the single glove he always wore. “He… keeps it covered.”

“Does he?” Ravan asked. “Well. I guess you two aren’t very close at all, then.”

Mira stared into Ravan’s clear blue eyes, her emotions reeling back and forth like they were caught in the storm outside. Then the floor disintegrated beneath their feet. Both girls screamed as they plummeted down into the shadows that yawned open beneath them.

MIRA TOOMBS WAS SEVENTEEN AGAIN, running for her life through the old antique shop with Ben as it violently transformed around them.

The air kept rumbling and brightening. The front door was just twenty feet ahead, but getting there wasn’t as simple as it looked. Mira flinched as a whining table saw materialized in front of her, its blade spinning wildly.

Everywhere around her, time was shifting everything into a machine shop that must have existed in the same space at some different time.

Normally, it would have been a fascinating thing to watch, but the fact that she only had about twenty seconds to get out of the Time Shift’s perimeter before she was wiped out of existence sort of killed her curiosity.

And then there was Mira’s Lexicon. Left behind. Lost. Mira forced herself not to think about it.