J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

Mira turned and studied him. “What do you know. Something Ben Aubertine isn’t good at.”

They lay there, watching each other in the firelight. “What would you do,” Ben asked, “if you could do anything?”

Mira’s answer came so easily, it surprised her. “Stop the Tone.”

Ben nodded. “Why?”

“Because…” Mira felt a sting of pain at what she was about to say. The truth was it was always at the back of her mind, the one thing that drove her and kept her going. The possibility that not everything was lost. She looked at the photograph again. “Because maybe I could have my dad back.”

“Me, too,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to be a Freebooter. To change things.”

“Change them how?”

“There are ways. One way, really. If you found it, you could make it so the Assembly never came here. You could reset everything. Start it all over,” he said, studying her. “You could see your dad again.”

Mira stared back silently. She knew what he must mean.

In a land full of myths, the Severed Tower was the biggest one, the most glamorous and exciting. Supposedly, if you could reach and enter it, the Tower would make one wish come true. For Mira, it had always sounded too amazing to be real.

“It might not be a good idea to think like that, Ben,” Mira said carefully.

“Why?”

“What if the Tower’s not real? What if it’s just something someone made up? What if you believe in it and you get there and it isn’t what you think?”

“It’s real, ” Ben said with conviction, “and I think I might be the only person in the world capable of making the right decision inside. I think it’s what I’m supposed to do.” His gaze refocused on her, turning serious. Or, at least, more serious than usual. “I don’t know why I told you that. I’ve never told anyone that.”

Mira smiled again. She liked knowing there were parts of him that were only accessible to her. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Ben. I don’t know what the Tower is, or what happens when you’re inside it, but if someone were supposed to go there… I think it would be you.”

The barest glimpse of a smile formed in Ben’s eyes. He leaned over and dug through his pack, pulling something out. It was a necklace, a gold chain with two small pendants. Mira recognized them instantly. They were brass dice, the same kind Ben juggled between his knuckles when he was thinking.

He slowly slid it around her neck and she took it in her fingers, watching the firelight reflect on the tiny brass surfaces.

“Now we each have something of the other,” Ben said.

She looked up at him, confused. “What do you have of mine?”

“The best thing you could give me.” Ben looked back up at the stars, at the constellation Scorpius. “Something to figure out.”

Mira smiled and moved closer to him. “We’ll work on that.”

“You were wrong, you know,” Ben said, serious again. “It’s not me that’s supposed to go to the Tower. It’s us. In here we’re one person. We can’t survive alone, I know that now. I need you, and you need me.”

Something about that statement, as sweet as it was, seemed… off. But Mira felt warmth spread through her nonetheless, pushing away the doubt. A warmth she hadn’t felt in years. It was the feeling of belonging, of being home.

“I’ll always protect you, Mira. Always keep you safe.” Ben’s fingers gently slid along the length of her jaw. “I promise. ”

They lay there holding each other, staring up at the sky where the stars shattered apart in bright, streaming flashes, over and over.

MIRA WOKE FROM EXPLODING STARS to the sounds of strange, fragmented thunder. The light around her was dim, and what little there was had been filtered to a sickly shade of yellow. It meant she was deeper into the Strange Lands. Soon there would be no light at all.

She blinked groggily, trying to push through the gloom. The horribly mournful sound of snapping metal and wood of Polestar as it fell was something she would hear the rest of her life. Platforms and buildings and memories, all of it cascading down in slow motion.

Mira closed her eyes, trying to seal it away, but it did no good.

“You were dreaming,” someone said.

Mira opened her eyes. Holt sat with his back against what looked like the bottom rung of a set of bleachers.

They were in what was left of an old basketball arena, a high school one, judging by the banners and posters still clinging to some of the walls. ELECT WAYNE LEONARD CLASS VP one read. EMILY BRANDT FOR FIFTH GRADE TREASURER said another. The school had apparently been in the middle of student council elections when the Strange Lands had formed. More in a long list of decisions and choices that now would never be made.

Most of the gym had been blown apart by Antimatter lightning, and its walls were full of gaping holes that gave glimpses of the dark landscape outside, and the occasional flashing of red, green, or blue. The court rested in tattered pieces, about half of it consumed by glowing upsurges of Antimatter crystals.

The White Helix were there, too. A dozen of them, broken into three groups of four. Each group stood equidistant from the others in a triangle, practicing different skills. One group sparred against itself, their Lancets whizzing and humming through the air. Another worked agility drills, tumbling and balancing in handstands. The third practiced with their Antimatter rings, leaping high into the air, floating back to the ground, dashing from one point to another in blurs of motion, all while wrapped in flashes of different colors.

Every few minutes their small, fiery leader would clap her hands loudly. When she did, the Helix stopped what they were doing, moved clockwise to the next point of the triangle, and began training again, this time in a new skill.

Watching the White Helix train was something Mira never thought she would ever do, the kind of thing that would have thrilled her not that long ago. Now the sight failed to move her at all.

“You okay?” Holt asked.

Mira’s answer came instantly. “No.”

“We don’t know she’s dead.”

“She might as well be.” Mira didn’t want to, but it was all she could think of now. Zoey alone in the Strange Lands, lost, helpless. If she wasn’t crushed under the ruins of Polestar…

“That kid comes with a lot of surprises,” Holt said. “I can’t think we came all this way just to be stopped here.”

“I can. She came with me. ” She felt Holt look at her.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he told her.

Mira’s smile was full of irony. “Yes it was. It wouldn’t have happened if she’d been with Ben.”

“Ben left you to die, Mira,” Holt said. “Took your plutonium, trapped you and ran. You really think he’s who we should have trusted? I’d put her in your hands all over again.”

Mira didn’t say anything. Holt was biased, his feelings for her clouded his thoughts—and besides that, he didn’t understand. Not really. No one did. No one except her and Ben and Echo and Deckard. Now she and Ben were the only ones left—and even Ben wasn’t Ben anymore. Her eyes stung, started to glisten, and it made her angry. Just another sign of her weakness. Just more proof she didn’t belong here.

The flashing of Antimatter lightning flared outside through the broken remains of the gymnasium walls. Everything beyond them seemed barren and lifeless.

“What happened here, Mira?” Holt asked softly.

Mira exhaled a long breath. Why not tell him? He deserved to know who he was traveling with. “To be a Freebooter you have to pass a trial. Mine was to go to a place called the Mix Master, in the second ring. It’s a Gravity Well, but different than Polestar’s.”