J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

MIRA AWOKE FROM PLEASANT MEMORIES to pitch blackness and instantly felt sharp pain in her knee and left side. There was no way to know how long she’d been out, but she didn’t really care right then. She just grimaced and waited for the pain to pass.

A shadow shaped like Ravan sat next to her, her back against what must have been the wall of the concrete shaft they’d fallen into. Her rifle lay just to her side. She was shaking, and her right fist was clenched so tightly the knuckles were white.

Even in the dark, she could see the pain in Ravan’s eyes.

Mira had been lucky, it was obvious. She’d gotten scraped and banged, but as far as she could tell, she didn’t have any major injuries. Judging from the way Ravan was shaking and breathing, the pirate hadn’t been as lucky.

Mira could hear her sharp, painful intakes of air. The girl was tough as nails. If she was showing this much discomfort, she must be hurting bad. “Your shoulder?” Mira asked.

“Dislocated,” Ravan said through clenched teeth, breathing as shallowly as possible. Mira could see the girl’s left shoulder jutted upward, far behind where the ball normally would be. It made Mira wince.

Ravan groaned as she sat up against the wall. She braced her feet on the dirty floor, squared her shoulders, took a deep breath—and pushed backward.

The move was clearly designed to flatten her protruding shoulder blade and shove the ball back into the socket. It didn’t work. Ravan screamed, pushing as long as she could, and then collapsing to the floor on her right side, breathing heavy and moaning.

“Well,” Mira said. “That didn’t look fun.”

“Screw you,” Ravan said between ragged breaths. Through sheer force of will, she started driving herself back up against the wall. She made it about halfway before collapsing back down.

Mira watched the girl start to try again, then rolled her eyes. “Oh God, hang on…” She pushed herself toward Ravan.

With her good arm Ravan grabbed her rifle. She may have been injured, but she wasn’t helpless. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Mira froze. “I was thinking about helping you.”

“You think I’m stupid? You think I’d let you get close to me?”

Mira frowned. “You know, the problem with being so tough and self-reliant is that, once you get in trouble, you’re all on your own. Sit there in pain if that’s what you want, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Ravan gave her a skeptical look. “ Why would you help me?”

Mira stared back. It was a good question. “You saw that big steel door in the ground up there. You and I both know that’s the only way out of whatever this place is, and it’s going to take both of us to figure it out.” Mira held Ravan’s stare, a half smile forming on her face. “Besides, me pulling your shoulder back into place? That’s going to really, really hurt.”

Ravan returned Mira’s look—then she laughed out loud. It was loud, full of irony, and in its own way contagious. Mira started laughing, too. Their voices echoed up and down the small, dark, concrete hole.

Ravan grimaced and stopped herself. “Okay—okay, stop, that hurts. Come over here, sit down on my left.”

Mira did as Ravan said. From this close, the shoulder was even more clearly out of alignment. Mira noticed something else. On Ravan’s right forearm, above the dark bird on her wrist, there were three long horizontal scars. They looked like they had been cut there intentionally.

“You like my badges?” Ravan asked, her voice laced with pain.

“Did that to yourself?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ravan slowly eased down onto the floor, lying on her back. “When a Menagerie leader fails in a raid without being wounded, they wound themselves. A punishment. A reminder. It’s not something that happens to me very often.”

Mira shivered at the brutality of it. “You’ve failed three times?”

“Two were raids. One was… personal.” Ravan looked at Mira squarely. “You’re gonna put your foot in my armpit, then grab my left hand.”

Mira nodded, took the girl’s hand and wedged her foot into place.

“You have to use your foot to brace the shoulder. Then you pull as sharp and hard as—”

Ravan wailed as Mira yanked the girl’s arm toward her.

There was a horrible crunching sound as her shoulder snapped down and forward, back into its socket. Ravan groaned through a clamped jaw, rolling over onto her side. Every breath was a moan of pain. Mira smiled. She couldn’t help it.

“Better?” she asked.

“You… bitch…” Ravan growled.

“What? Was I supposed to count to three or something?” Ravan looked up at her, her eyes full of pain and fury. Mira grabbed her pack and Lexicon from the floor, pulled out two flashlights and tossed one to Ravan. Bright white light streamed outward, illuminating the environment around them.

The “hole” was really a square concrete shaft dug maybe fifty feet into the ground. When Mira lighted what was left of the floor above, she realized just how lucky she and Ravan had been. As far as they fell, they should both probably be dead.

What remained of a rusted metallic staircase wound its way up the walls of the pit. It stopped about halfway up, the remainder hanging loosely where it had ripped from its supports long ago. It groaned eerily in the shaft, bending and shifting dangerously.

Mira guessed what was left of those stairs had broken her fall and saved her life. They touched down just a few feet away, opposite a thick, metallic door set into one of the shaft’s walls.

Mira watched Ravan slowly pull herself up into a seated position, grimacing as she moved. She was sore, obviously, but she wasn’t shaking anymore.

Mira helped her slowly stand, and Ravan winced as she came to her feet. Once she was up, Mira shined her light onto the heavy door set into the wall. It was rusted, still in one piece, and it was cracked open. There was only pitch dark on the other side.

Mira pulled on it experimentally. It didn’t budge. She tried again. It groaned, the bottom of its frame cutting into the floor, but it only moved a few inches.

“Gonna take both of us,” Ravan said. She grabbed the door with her good arm and nodded to Mira.

Together, they yanked it backward—and the door scraped open with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. The echo reverberated into the chamber beyond, bouncing mournfully back and forth in the darkness there.

The two girls looked at each other, neither eager to step through.

From above came a sudden, horrible groaning sound. They looked up in time to see what remained of the rusted staircase begin to crumple in on itself. The supports ripped free from the walls, spraying great plumes of concrete and mortar.

With a shuddering lurch, it all came crashing down with a howl of bending metal.

MIRA FELT RAVAN GRAB AND SHOVE HER forward through the dark doorway. They hit the floor hard on the other side, as the stairs crashed down, burying everything in a flood of metal and concrete where they had just been. Dust poured through in a huge wave.

When it was over Mira sat up and coughed raggedly, swatting away the dust and mortar and staring back at the doorway. Her light showed it had been replaced by a bulging mass of metal from the collapsed staircase.

“Just perfect,” Ravan said next to her, covered in dust, gingerly rubbing her shoulder.

“Well, you couldn’t have climbed out of there anyway,” Mira replied.

“I still would have liked the option.”

Mira looked at Ravan. She knew what she was about to say was probably going to hurt. “Thanks.” She wasn’t wrong.