J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

“It’s more important than you think.” Holt stood his ground, neither moving for the door nor surrendering his guns.

“No.” Ravan drew her sidearm, a Beretta 9 like his own, and aimed it at his chest. “We had an agreement. You’re not going anywhere.”

Holt didn’t move or react, he just stared at her evenly. “Zoey can heal the Tone, Ravan. She can stop it from spreading, reverse it.” The Menagerie all around him hesitated, unsure they’d heard him correctly. “And she has other powers, amazing ones, powers the Assembly are hunting her for.”

“The Prime…” The soft, musing voice behind everyone grabbed their attention. It was Chase, leaning against a wall and staring at Holt. “The Prime… is with you? ”

Holt stared back in confusion. “You mean Zoey? The Librarian called her the Apex, is that what you mean?”

Chase stood up straight, studying Holt in a new way. “Avril’s Arc has been searching for her for days. When Gideon said she was here, I didn’t believe it. It seemed so… impossible. We have waited for her return a very long time.”

Holt was even more confused, but Ravan interrupted them both.

“This is insane. The Prime? Magical powers? This is why you’re here?” Ravan looked disgusted. He wasn’t surprised. If he hadn’t seen everything he had with his own eyes, he doubted he’d believe it either.

“What happened to you, Holt?” Ravan continued. “You never would have gotten involved in anything as hopeless as this. Never would put something intangible above survival. It isn’t you.”

“It’s not intangible,” Holt said. More groaning from outside. He had to get out there. “I’ve seen it.”

Ravan stared back at him like a stranger. “So the little girl has powers, so what? She’s one little kid. What can she possibly do, save the world? Is that what this is all about? I mean, really? Look around you, Holt.” She stared at him intently. “There’s nothing left to save!”

Holt held her gaze. “I used to believe that, but not anymore. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t either. I have to go, Rae. If you need to kill me—then that’s what you should do.” Holt took a step toward the door. The guns tensed all around him. “But I’m going after them.”

“After her, ” Ravan said. Her voice was ice.

“After both of them.” Holt took another step. The Menagerie looked between Holt and their Captain, unsure. Holt, for his part, just stared at Ravan. He could see the pain there, but there was nothing he could do. Things were the way they were, regardless of what he felt for her. “You wanted me to trust you, to think you might be more than I believed. That’s what I’m doing right now.”

She stared back silently. The gun shook in her hand. Holt took another step. The building shook again, there were more screams outside.

Ravan lowered her gun. So did her men. “Go,” she told him, her voice a ragged whisper. “Just go.”

Holt felt relief flood through him, and at the same time guilt. He had hurt her again, the latest transgression in an unending cycle.

“Go!” she yelled at him in fury, and Holt spun and dashed outside, leaving her and the pirates behind. The relief he felt was quickly replaced by shock and fear.

Everything was chaos.

People fled and tripped and shoved each other as they raced down the stairways of Polestar, trying to escape the city. Others were bypassing the line altogether, leaping from the lower buildings onto the ground. Whoever made it ran in a mad scramble as fast as they could away from the Spire.

The once beautiful Mezzanine was buried in the remnants of several buildings that had fallen from the top of the city, and Holt was in time to see another one slam into the ground in an explosion of steel and wood, spraying debris everywhere.

Holt stared up at Polestar in stunned silence. Ravan was right, it was suicide. But it didn’t matter. They were up there somewhere, and they needed him.

Holt shoved his way through the panicking crowd, the only figure in a sea of people trying to get into the city. He saw what looked like a giant stairway on the ground, climbing upward and dividing into different walkways and bridges that went in every direction.

He kept pushing and shoving, and when he reached it he saw someone he recognized. The overseer, Deckard. He stood at the entrance to the city, staring around in a daze.

“Where’s Mira?” Holt shouted as he ran toward him. Deckard said nothing, just stared into the distance mutely. Holt grabbed him and slammed him against the stairway in spite of the kid’s size. “Where’s Mira?”

“I… don’t know…” the big kid spoke. “Don’t matter anymore, anyway.”

In desperation, Holt craned his neck to look upward at the city. Where would she go? Where would she be? A thought occurred to him. He gripped Deckard harder. “Where would she go if she wanted to destroy an artifact?”

“The… Anvil.” Deckard said. He looked like he was in shock, but Holt didn’t particularly care.

“Where the hell’s that? ”

“At the… top. Very top.”

Holt sighed. “Of course it is.” He let Deckard go and started pushing his way through the crowd again, climbing up the stairs.

“It’s all coming down, you know?” Deckard’s voice was laced with horror. “All of it. It’s all through.”

Holt ignored him and pushed on. He had to get to them. He had to.

* * *

ZOEY STOOD WHERE THE giant, hissing Gravity Well erupted into the air. In the background she could hear the sounds of screams and metallic shudderings and violent crashes and even the Max’s barking, but she tried not to think about any of it.

She only had one thing to worry about now, trying to keep the Gravity Well alive. Tears streamed down her face as golden, wavering luminescence poured off her. She was pumping all her energy into the Anomaly. Even so, she was still only stalling it. The pain in her head was almost unbearable.

But she held on, and she would keep holding on until the strain was too much and she collapsed and was buried under the fallen city, but at least she might be able to buy time for Holt and Mira and everyone else to escape. Maybe she could make up for all the damage she had done. Maybe they would all forgive her, then…

Zoey held on. The pain continued to build.

* * *

MIRA HUNG HELPLESSLY IN the air, spinning in slow, lazy circles in the zero gravity, while Polestar collapsed all around her. She felt sick watching it, the death of a place that had meant so much to her, and, fittingly, she had the best seat in the house. She would sit in her perch while it all horribly fell in on itself, and then have the next few hours to think about it before the Gravity Void finally lost its power and she plummeted to the ground more than a thousand feet below.

Mira shook herself out of her funk. She wasn’t dead yet, so she should stop acting like it. If she could just find a way out of this Void she could escape.

She looked around for anything, but just like before, there was nothing to grab. However, as she looked, she saw something unexpected. It took a moment for her to figure out what it was.

Far beneath her, on the ground outside the city, a dozen figures dressed in black and gray ran toward the walls. Bright points of color followed after them—red, green, and blue. They were Antimatter Crystals, and it meant the figures were White Helix.

She watched as they leaped over the wall in flashes of yellow light, easily dodging all the falling debris, jumping and spinning through the air onto the city’s various levels, fanning out, as if searching for something—but what?