J. Mitchell: The Severed Tower

Regardless of what he’d said, Holt knew if they got into something really dangerous—if Mira’s or Zoey’s lives were in danger—he’d do the same thing he did in Midnight City. He’d use the Chance Generator again… but only in an emergency, he told himself. Only in an emergency. He’d promised, after all.

* * *

SUNRISE LIT A HUGE rolling landscape of hills covered in overgrown prairie grass. Holt had never been this far north, and he couldn’t believe how open and empty it seemed. He understood why in the World Before it had been called Big Sky Country. The blue above them was the dominant feature, so big it felt like walking in a snow globe. In the distance, the aurora continued to waver.

Mira was re-sorting her gear underneath the overgrown water tower they’d made camp next to. It stood at the top of a crest overlooking the Missouri river, as it cut a path through the hills to the north.

Zoey and Max were playing “Keepaway Fetch,” an invention of their own making. The game began like regular Fetch, in that Max gleefully raced after a thrown ball, but after that it took a hard turn in a different direction. The dog was much more interested in someone chasing him to get the ball back, than in returning it and starting over.

Zoey screamed gleefully as she ran after Max, in and out of the rusted support columns of the tower, but the dog was too quick, and kept slipping away.

“Zoey, watch out for sharp things, please,” Mira intoned without looking up. If the little girl heard, she didn’t show any sign. She just kept laughing and spinning after Max.

Holt looked at Mira. Artifact components littered the ground in front of her—pencils, magnets, vials of all kinds of dust, batteries, paper clips, coins of different denominations wrapped in plastic. They looked like everyday objects, but they were anything but. Each was imbued with unique, otherworldly properties, and they could be combined into stronger and stronger ones that did incredible things.

Holt had hated artifacts even before he met Mira, but they had their uses, he had to admit now, and Mira was amazingly skilled with them. She was studying one in particular, a complicated combination made up of over a dozen different objects, all tied together with linked silver chain and purple leather twine. Its main aspect was an antique gold pocket watch that rested on the exterior, with a silver δ ornately etched into the metallic cover.

Holt had only seen the artifact twice since they’d left Midnight City. Mira kept it deep in her pack, as far away from her as possible. She hated it. It repulsed her, and for good reason.

It was the ugly result of an obsession with forging a combination that could slow down the Tone but it had all gone wrong. The combination didn’t slow down the Tone, it accelerated it. Made it so that anyone, Heedless or otherwise, would Succumb in a matter of seconds. Making it had cost her everything—her life in Midnight City, her freedom, whatever future she might have had.

She was bringing it into the Strange Lands to destroy it, and Holt didn’t blame her.

“You okay?” Holt asked.

Mira stared at it a moment more, then stuffed it down into her pack. “Yeah.”

“You can destroy it at this Crossroads place?”

“It’s not that easy.” Mira’s voice was bitter. “To destroy an artifact, you have to be in the ring where it was created. If it’s a combination, you have to be in the ring of its most powerful component.”

“So what ring is that, then?” Holt asked.

“The fourth.” There was a look in her eyes suddenly that Holt had never seen there. To see it in Mira was startling. It looked like… fear.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

Mira blinked and looked up, but not at him. She looked at Zoey, running back and forth after Max. “I’m… worried.”

“About what?”

“The Strange Lands.”

“You’re a Freebooter. You’ve been there a million times.”

“Never on my own.” Her voice was so low he almost couldn’t hear it. “Except once. A long time ago.”

Holt studied her in confusion. He had never seen Mira rattled, never seen her doubt herself. She was always so confident, so capable.

“Mira, if anyone can get us to where we need to go, it’s you, ” he said, trying to reassure her. “Zoey knows that, too.”

She looked back at him. The fear was still there, he could see it even more clearly now and it felt like Mira wanted to tell him something. To reveal whatever weight she was carrying—but Zoey’s voice stopped her before she could.

“How do we know when we’re in the Strange Lands?” The little girl and Max were wrestling on the ground now. The foreign look vanished from Mira’s eyes. Whatever it was, she had pushed it back down.

“We’ll feel it, for one thing,” Mira replied. “It’s called the Charge. Makes the hair on your arms stand up. Gets stronger the farther you go in. But there’s only so many ways into the Strange Lands. The Crossroads, where we’re headed, is one of them. Once you leave there… you’re inside.”

“Why can you only go in from certain places?” Zoey asked.

“Because of the Stable Anomalies.”

“What’s a… ‘stablonamy’?”

Mira smiled. “Anomalies are the dangerous parts of the Strange Lands, honey. Stable ones are permanent, they stay in place for the most part, and they’re usually invisible. Unstable Anomalies can move around, but the good thing is you can see them.”

“Like the storms a few days ago?”

Mira nodded. “Exactly. All the rings are circled by Stable Anomalies, including the first. You can only enter the first ring in a few places, where there’s a gap. The Crossroads is one of those places. It’s the main entrance for Freebooters from Midnight City, so it gets a lot of traffic.”

Something flashed and caught Holt’s eye to the northeast. He looked and saw the Missouri river, and on the river he saw the source. In the distance, powering north, were two large river craft painted solid black. Each flew the same flag.

Red, with a white, eight-pointed star.

Holt felt his heart skip. He hit the ground, pulling Zoey and Mira down with him. They studied him questioningly, until he nodded toward the river.

Mira’s eyes widened when she saw it. “ Menagerie. What the hell are they doing here?”

“Raider ships,” Holt replied. It was a nice way of saying pirate ships. They attacked merchant vessels and River Rat crews up and down the larger streams, and it was a fairly new phenomenon. The Menagerie was a pirates and thieves guild, and until a few years ago they kept mainly to a place called the Barren, the desert wastelands of the old American Southwest. Then, the first Menagerie pirate ships appeared up and down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, as far south as the Low Marshes. It meant they were expanding, and for a group as dangerous as the Menagerie, that wasn’t a good thing.

“Never heard of them coming this far north, have you?” Mira asked.

The answer was no. There was no profit in it. Few ships worth plundering ran this stretch of the river.

“Why’d we drop down?” Mira turned back to him.

“Just playing it safe. If those ships are having a bad week, there’s nothing stopping them from unloading a shore party and coming after us. ”

Of course there was a lot more to it than that. The Menagerie had put a death mark on Holt’s head almost a year ago. A death mark from the highest ranks, and he’d been on the run from them ever since. The bounty on Mira’s head was supposed to finance his trip east to escape, but, well… complications had ensued, as always.

Mira knew he had a death mark, but Holt had never told her from whom, if only because it would beg other questions. Questions he wasn’t eager to answer. What would Mira think if she knew the truth? The half-finished tattoo under Holt’s glove itched.…