J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

It was an Antimatter Storm, a big one—and it should have been impossible. This was the third ring. Antimatter Storms only existed in the fourth, but those types of rules had stopped applying fairly recently.

Zoey hung limp as Mira ran. She had to get her to Polestar, it was the only shelter they had. She just hoped the Gravity Well could repulse Antimatter Storms as well as Ion. It had never had to do so before.

With Zoey’s weight, Mira ran slower than everyone else, and the Menagerie began passing her, heading down the hill. To her left she spotted Holt, running with tied hands.

Then more lightning flashed and he was blown to the ground as a red bolt struck just a hundred feet away. Where it hit, the ground erupted in a mound of glowing red crystals.

Ravan slid to the ground next to him and cut his bonds with a knife. “Don’t guess you’re going to run in the opposite direction, are you?” Mira heard Ravan say. Holt got up and started running again, followed by Max, barking and howling with each lightning hit. Thunder rolled constantly around them like cannon fire.

Mira looked ahead. Polestar was near, she could see the tall, makeshift wall encircling the old city ruins. A huge steel gate made out of the rusted remains of cars blocked their way inside. It was sealed. Hopefully, someone would see them coming and—

A lightning strike, a thick flash of green, blew Mira off her feet. She crashed down and Zoey fell from her grip, hit, and rolled limply away.

Mira screamed, then watched as Holt grabbed Zoey and kept running. Mira felt Ravan’s hands yank her up, pulling her along. “Always saving your ass, Freebooter!”

More lightning flashed, more discharges of energy, more strange glowing crystals erupting from the ground all around them. More Menagerie were sent flying in the blasts, or inadvertently impaled themselves on sharp glowing crystalline masses.

Mira saw Holt and Max, with Zoey in tow, reach the massive gate ahead. In a few more frantic steps, so did she. It was painted with a giant, multicolored δ.

Mira slammed into it hard, hoping to wake up whoever was on guard duty. “Hey! Open the gate!” She banged on it furiously. “We’re out here!”

What was left of the Menagerie, about twenty pirates, skidded to a stop. The lightning continued to flash down, and behind them the barren countryside was now a debris field of glowing crystals. All it would take was one hit at the edge of the wall to fry them all.

Ravan kicked at the gate. “Find handholds! Get this damn thing—”

The gate shuddered and slid open on the creaking wheels of the bottom cars.

Everyone dashed inside, and Mira looked up. The storm swirled above, but whenever it got close to the beam of the Gravity Well, it dematerialized into the air. The city was repelling it. Mira exhaled a relieved—

Everyone froze at the sound of gun hammers clicking into place, and stared into the barrels of more than twenty rifles.

The Menagerie responded quickly, their own weapons flashing out. Thunder rolled everywhere in the air.

“Hard as I try, I can’t think of any reason why I should let armed Menagerie scumbags into my city.”

Mira recognized the voice instantly. Her eyes found its owner, standing easily in the middle of a group of Polestar kids, presumably guards, all armed and ready to shoot. He was a tall boy about Mira’s age, the most muscular kid in sight, black, and his name was Deckard.

No one moved. The two groups kept their rifles and shotguns pointed at each other.

Deckard calmly scanned the faces of the Menagerie in front of him, until his eyes found Mira among them—and then they widened in surprise.

“Mira Toombs,” he said with disdain. “Well, that makes up my mind for me. Toss ’em all back outside.”

Everyone tensed as the Polestar guards moved forward.

“Deckard, stop! ” Mira yelled angrily. “We have a sick little girl with us!”

Deckard looked at Zoey’s limp form in Holt’s arms with disinterest. “Sounds like more of a ‘your problem’ than a ‘my problem.’”

Mira glared at him. “You’re honor-bound to accept Freebooters into Polestar.”

Deckard smiled. “Don’t see any Freebooters here, Toombs. All I see is a bunch of low-life pirates—and you. ”

Deckard was always an arrogant prick, but he respected obligation, more than anything else probably. Mira forced herself to speak with authority.

“You know the Librarian’s edict,” she told him sternly. “You were there when it was made. Let us inside. Right now. ”

Mira made herself hold Deckard’s stare. After a moment he spat in disgust. “Fine. Already let your partner in. Distasteful as it is, might as well let you in, too.”

Mira’s eyes widened. “Ben’s here?”

“Showed up last night after the Orb fell, him and ten Gray Devils.”

Ten men? That was half the number he set out with.

“The Menagerie can stay until the storm passes, but they ain’t coming in the city,” Deckard continued. “And they’ll have to do away with their weapons.”

Ravan shook her head. “I don’t think so. Kinda feel naked without my guns, you know?”

Deckard crossed his arms. “It ain’t negotiable.”

Mira turned to Ravan. “If they kick you back outside you’re all dead.” More distorted thunder rolled around them as if to punctuate her point. But Ravan didn’t seem to care.

“How about, as an alternative, we just kill this guy and his little guards, take this place for our own?” Her tone was dangerous.

The rifles in the Polestar guards’ hands all tensed. So did the Menagerie’s.

“Ravan…” Holt said warningly. More thunder echoed from behind the gate, the sky flashing green and blue.

Ravan kept her rifle pointed at Deckard, considering. Then she relented. “Fine. Just so no one can say I can’t be diplomatic. Boys… disarm. ” The pirates all dropped their guns to the ground. When they did, the Polestar guards started gathering the weapons up, along with all the Menagerie’s gear, even the big crate they’d been carrying.

“Put everyone but Toombs and the little kid in the old sheriff’s office,” Deckard ordered. “Cram ’em into the cells if you have to. Leave ’em there ’til we get this mess sorted.”

Ravan stared up at the big kid. “Such generosity.” She and her men grudgingly let the Polestar guards push them down one of the old city’s few streets, toward its abandoned town square.

Before they took him, Holt moved to Mira and handed her Zoey. The little girl was still out cold. Max whined underneath them, staring up at Zoey.

“Take Max, too,” Holt told her. “They might kill him otherwise.”

Mira nodded, studying him. Holt looked back. This was the closest they had been in a long time. “Holt…”

“Just go, Mira,” he said quietly. “Do what you have to do now.”

Holt held her gaze a moment longer, and then one of the guards yanked him away, down the street with the others. Mira stared after him until he vanished.

MIRA WATCHED HOLT AND RAVAN LED AWAY into the old city ruins. She knew where they were taking them. It used to be the Mobridge sheriff’s office in the town square. It still had its jail cells, and Deckard used them when people got unruly.

But what could she do? Zoey’s weight in her arms reminded her she didn’t have a choice, at least not right now. So she ran until she finally caught Deckard.

“Take the kid up to the infirmary,” he said. “Too busy to deal with you right now.”

The Gravity Well flickered and pulsed in front of them, a giant column of light burning into the air, disappearing into a ceiling of swirling clouds thousands of feet above. She could hear its familiar soft hissing. Oddly, it always seemed the same volume, no matter how close you were. It was pleasant, usually, like a soft whisper, and she had always drifted off to sleep listening to it.