J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

Ben stared up at her sadly and stuffed the Chance Generator in his pocket. “The Tower is too important. I tried to explain it to you, but you wouldn’t see.”

“Ben, don’t do this,” Mira begged him. “Your entire team will die. You will die. This isn’t—”

“I know it seems horrible to rationalize away their deaths, but the Chance Generator will guarantee I reach the Tower. And I have to reach it. Everything depends on it.”

Mira spun helplessly in the Void. She watched Ben kneel down to her pack and remove something from it. When she saw what it was her heart sank. Her glass cylinder of plutonium, with the Dampener still attached to its surface. The one she’d been carrying all this time, the one she’d risked everything for, the one she needed if she was going to fulfill her promise to Zoey.

He put the plutonium in his own pack and looked back at her. His face was full of more emotion than she had ever seen on it. “This comes the closest of anything in my life to hurting me, knowing you will never understand why I’m doing this. Knowing you’ll never forgive me. It hurts more because, once I change everything, this reality will be gone. It will be replaced with how it should have been, a world without the Assembly. And I’ll never get a chance to make it up to you. Because we’ll never have met.”

“Ben, no!” she yelled. “I can’t get Zoey inside the Tower without the plutonium!”

“That’s the point, Mira. You won’t have a reason to follow me now. I’m saving you this way. You can’t make it to the Tower on your own, you know that. If you’re honest, a part of you is relieved you no longer have to try.”

“Ben, please don’t!” she begged, struggling in the Void. “ Zoey is the one who’s supposed to change everything. Not you! ”

Ben didn’t answer, he just looked up to the sky above them. “I wish I could see the Scorpion, but… I can’t. I think it’s something only you can do.” He looked back at her. “I meant what I said before. I love you, Mira.” Then he turned and disappeared down the ramp back into the Spire.

“ Ben! ” Mira yelled mournfully, but there was nothing she could do. The plutonium was gone and so was Ben.

* * *

ZOEY STOOD AT THE top of the dam once more, staring down at the flood plain below. The shadows writhed there as before, but there were more of them this time. Thousands instead of hundreds, rising and boiling up out of the still water and reaching for her.

Why? The suggestion came, projected upward, and this time it was so strong it filled her mind with pain and darkness.

Why?

The land wasn’t a still photograph anymore, it was all moving—only it moved quicker than it should, as though time were advancing faster and faster. Only the shadows seemed to move in normal time.

“Wake up, Zoey.” A voice filled her mind. Her own voice, tiny and low. “Balance must be restored.”

Everything sped up, faster and faster. The flood plain dried up, the trees and grass wilted to charred blackness, the dam cracked and crumbled and fell apart into dust. The world went a searing shade of white…

“Wake up!”

She did… and everything flashed away.

* * *

ZOEY BLINKED GROGGILY AS she awoke in a strange place that wasn’t where she remembered being. She wasn’t on the hill anymore, watching the frightening storm. She was in a room full of beds and cabinets and wavering opalescent light that rained down from the ceiling, and no one else was there. Except the Max. He was underneath her, staring up with worried eyes. Zoey smiled and rubbed his ears.

The movement caused her head to hurt, and she winced. “Ouch…” she said.

Zoey slowly rolled over and sat up, and the pain blossomed in her head as she did. It wasn’t as bad as before, when she had gone to sleep, but it was still painful.

Then Zoey noticed something. Sensations. All around her. Filling the air. It was connected to the pain in her head, just like when those strange cubes had appeared at the junkyard city. It was like energy flowing everywhere, but it gave off no heat or feeling, she just knew it was there, and whenever she felt it pulse and blossom, the same happened in her head.

Zoey stood up and moved for the exit. Max whined and followed her outside.

An amazing city was all around them, stretching high above on an impossible collection of scaffolding and supports. Buildings, much bigger than they should be, jutted precariously out from the support system that wound and wrapped upward into the sky.

It was Polestar, Zoey knew, because she had seen it all in Mira’s mind, and it was beautiful. But it was also different. Zoey saw what was left of the Orb shattered on the ground below. A hundred or so kids moved over it, like worker ants, disassembling what could be salvaged and laboriously cleaning up the rest. At the very top of the city, Zoey could see where the thing had once rested, as well as the twisted metallic supports that had ripped loose when it came crashing down.

The ground below was ablaze in prismatic, reflected color, which must be from the Gravity Well, but she couldn’t see the Anomaly. The twisting spiral of buildings and walkways was blocking her view, so she started downward, following the path as it wrapped around and in between the city’s multisurfaced buildings. She moved through throngs of kids, none of them really paying her much mind, they were too busy talking about the Orb and the Antimatter Storm and whether or not they should leave while they had the chance. Even so, very few were headed down to the exits—they were all climbing back to their homes and lofts and workshops.

Zoey realized they were all wearing the same colors as the kids in Midnight City. Looking upward, she could see banners fluttering out from some of the buildings, each with different symbols and colors. The factions from that place were represented here, apparently, which made sense. Freebooters came from Midnight City, and this was a Freebooter outpost.

She stepped onto a colorful stairway that curved to the ground, and when she reached the concrete-covered Mezzanine, Zoey followed the light reflected from it back up into the air, and finally saw it.

A giant, massive column of pure bright, flickering energy that streamed upward into the sky. The Spire of Polestar wrapped around it in a dizzying corkscrew. It was strange to look at. It felt like the entire thing should come immediately tumbling down, but somehow it didn’t. It just hung precariously in the air, and she could see a thousand kids climbing up and down its ladders and twisting paths.

But mainly she looked at the Gravity Well.

She could tell it was the source of the sensations she was feeling. The pain in her head ebbed and flowed to its rhythmic pulsing. And there was something else, something probably only she could really see. It was growing dimmer, the time between its flashes was lengthening. As it did, the pain in her head seemed to lessen.

Zoey saw a brick wall erected in a circle around the base of the Gravity Well, where the energy exploded out of the ground. But it wasn’t sealed. An archway allowed entrance inside, and Zoey moved for and passed under it.

On the other side was a circular courtyard with benches and tables for people to watch the Well as it pulsed upward. Zoey could see why; from this close, it was staggeringly beautiful.

Max whined as she moved toward it and stood at the very edge of the concrete, the Well itself just a foot or two away. Oddly, it didn’t give off any heat, Zoey noted, and barely emitted any sound, just a strange, fragmented hissing that wasn’t at all unpleasant.

Instinctively, Zoey closed her eyes and concentrated on the Anomaly—and when she did the pain in her head lessened.