J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

Zoey stirred and opened her eyes, and was surprised to find the real world just as black.

As she did, another “presence” made itself known, this one of a more physical variety. It was hairy and warm. It whined and pressed against her. Zoey smiled in spite of everything, as it licked her face.

“The Max…”

The dog was just a dark, squirming shadow in all the black, and when Zoey tried to pet him she found she couldn’t. Something hard and cold surrounded her on all sides, like a metallic coffin, and she couldn’t move.

The realization brought with it a surge of memories. She remembered the Gravity Well flickering and fading to nothing, and the sound of the giant city above her collapsing.

Zoey’s smile vanished. Panic sunk in. She was trapped. Buried alive surely, in some dark hole, crushed underneath all the weight of Polestar’s remains, and she would never be found. She would lay there, imprisoned, unable to move, until the darkness finally faded. The thought was terrifying. Zoey screamed and squirmed in the tiny, metallic space that was her tomb, trying to—

The walls of the coffin lifted powerfully and slowly up and off her. Gears and actuators twisted, mechanics hummed. It was a machine of some kind, held aloft by five giant legs. The world around her groaned and rumbled as the thing somehow displaced the impossible weight of the ruined city which had buried it.

Max barked wildly, and Zoey pulled him close against her. She knew now what had been resting on top of her, and it was more than just the ruins of Polestar.

It was an Assembly walker. The one without any colors, the one that had been following her, the one that appeared right before everything came crashing down and covered her at the fall.

Scion. Be still.

The flickering light from the thing’s energy shield pushed the darkness away and surrounded them in a curving sphere that stretched about ten feet in every direction. Beyond that, Zoey could see the remains of Polestar, a now solid, crumpled mass of wood and metal and pipes and shattered glass, all of it pressed heavily against the walker’s shield, the only thing protecting them from being crushed.

There was an electronic, distorted rumbling, and Max growled at the sound. Zoey’s first impulse was to push away from the machine, but there was nowhere to go. Not here.

Scion. You are safe. Be still.

Zoey didn’t feel reassured. What was she going to do? The shield around them seemed to flicker more and more, like it was weakening. With all the weight pressing on it, she wasn’t surprised. How long until it finally gave out? Her panic rose, she felt tears forming.

Scion. Be still. We are here.

But we’re trapped. She instinctually projected her thoughts, just like the Royal had shown her. Are we… going to die?

There was a pause before the walker responded. Die. Cease to be.

It seemed unsure, as if having difficulty understanding the concept. She wasn’t sure why, but the idea of death to the Assembly was not something well understood. Somehow, death, while possible, was not a forgone conclusion for the aliens, and the concept carried a tremendous weight.

No, Scion, the walker projected back, we can remain. But you must understand.

The shield outside flickered brightly, the weight of all the metal and wood and debris pressing down on it groaned. The ruins were winning, it looked like. The shield would fall soon.

We can shift. But you must touch us.

Zoey couldn’t make sense of that. Maybe she had translated it wrong, or maybe there was simply no real translation.

I don’t understand, she thought.

We can shift. Somewhere else.

Zoey thought back to the first time she saw the walker, how it appeared from thin air in a flash of light. It had done something similar at the Crossroads. Maybe “shifting” meant… teleporting? Could it get them out of this place and back into the open air?

Yes. The machine sensed her thoughts. Touch us and we will shift.

The shield flickered again, the city’s corpse rumbling. Zoey didn’t hesitate. She held onto the Max with one hand and thrust her other up, touching the undershell of the armored walker.

No. Touch us.

The ruins groaned horribly. The Max barked wildly. Zoey felt her panic begin to rise again. I am!

No. Touch us .

Her hand was firmly pressed into the walker’s metallic plating, she was touching it. But… was the machine really who she was communicating with? Or was it the complex crystalline shape inside? If so, then how did it expect her to touch it?

The shield flickered violently suddenly… and shrank inward! The ruins outside thundered as they shook, falling just a little bit. There wasn’t much time.

Zoey couldn’t reach inside and touch the entity with her hands, but there was one way she knew she could. She wrapped her arms around the Max and shut her eyes. Zoey reached out with her mind, concentrating on the swirling mass of color in the darkness, pressing her consciousness towards it. When she did, the colors exploded in prismatic brilliance, and she felt energy wash through her.

Then there was a sound. Like a powerful blast of static and noise, and a quick wave of heat washed over her. The Max howled. Zoey’s stomach clenched, her ears rang—and then it was over.

A new silence was broken by the whine of gears as the walker slowly stepped off of Zoey and Max. The little girl opened her eyes and gasped.

The infinite, crushing mass of debris that had buried them was gone. Instead there was daylight. Not the sickly, muted light from the Strange Land’s interior, this was full sunlight, bright and strong, and Zoey sighed at the feel of it. What was more, the pain in her head was mercifully gone. One possibility occurred to her. The walker had teleported them somewhere outside the Strange Lands.

Just like that.

Zoey peered up at the machine. Like all Assembly, it had the same red, green, and blue three-optic eye, and the sensor whirred and rotated as it studied her, then shifted to Max as the dog let out a single, defensive bark. Zoey quieted him, pulling him back. “It’s okay. I don’t think it saved us just to hurt us.” The Max seem unconvinced.

Zoey stared up at the powerful machine. She was closer to it this time, and, for once, she wasn’t running for her life. It meant she could study it in detail. Its five legs were spaced equally around its body, and were the thickest and most powerful of any she’d seen. Its fuselage was blockier and somehow looked more solid, too. Zoey remembered she had never seen it fire weapons. It had always barreled into opponents. Is that what it was designed for? Just as the Hunters were designed for stealth and speed?

Scion. A new projection entered her mind. You remain.

Remain. It was hard, translating the Assembly’s images and feelings, but that was as close as she could get. The entity inside the machine had used that expression earlier. Then, it had meant “alive.” Maybe it meant the same now.

Thank you, Zoey projected back at the walker. Are we out of the Strange Lands?

A simple thought entered her mind in answer. Yes.

How?

We shifted.

Can you… “shift” anywhere you want? Zoey was curious. If so, it was an amazing ability.

Only where we have been. The machine stood motionless, its multicolored optic eye the only point of movement, whirring and rotating. The eye never seemed to keep still, shifting just bare inches, up and down, left and right, as if analyzing her inch by inch. Zoey chuckled. It was funny-looking, that eye, like some kind of big, spasming bug caught in a jar.