J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

“Gideon’s your leader?” Mira asked.

“Our teacher. A great man.”

“Because he makes you strong?” Holt asked back carefully. It was a phrase he’d heard the White Helix use a number of times. It must mean something. Masyn turned around and studied him curiously.

“No,” she said. “The Pattern does that. Not Gideon.”

“You mean the Strange Lands,” Mira said. “How do they make you strong?”

“By weeding out the weak,” Castor answered. “When one of us falls, the rest grow stronger.”

“How Darwinian of you,” Holt observed.

“Gideon says it’s the way of all things,” Masyn continued, slowly somersaulting backward. “Here most of all. It’s making us ready.”

Ready for what? Holt wondered. He started to ask more, then froze, looking past the train to the end of the bridge. “Where’d your pals go?” he asked. There was no sign of the White Helix now. All ten of them were simply gone, as though they had vanished. Everyone turned and followed Holt’s gaze, staring at the empty space at the end of the bridge where Avril and her Arc had been.

“That’s… never a good sign,” Masyn stated, alarmed.

“Well, that makes me feel much better,” Holt replied.

“If they’re gone, they have a reason.” Castor unslung the Lancet from his back. Masyn did the same. “Keep going.”

Holt didn’t argue. He started moving again, faster than before. One step, another—and then something flashed ahead of them, near where the others had been. Something big—reflective enough that it amplified what little light there was in the darkened landscape.

“Outlander!” Castor exclaimed behind them.

“Holt—” Mira started in exasperation.

“Wait,” Holt said, staring ahead.

“There’s nothing there but—” The air around them fizzled suddenly. Little sparkles of light materialized and floated like fireflies. Holt studied them in confusion, and then looked at Mira. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

“It’s syncing back!” she shouted, and shoved him forward.

Holt darted forward across the metal roof with abandon now. The static hiss in the air grew louder and he could feel the train underneath him begin to vibrate through his shoes. Things were about to get unpleasant.

They kept running. The end of the train was in sight, they were—

The sparkles in the air doubled, tripled, became so many that Holt’s vision turned white. The hiss of static drowned out everything. Then a jarring roar filled the air as the train and the bridge violently reconnected with the timeline.

Holt heard Mira scream, thought he saw Castor and Masyn leap clear in flashes of purple. The world upended, the aurora in the sky rolled past over and over, as the sounds of grinding metal and snapping wood filled the air, Holt free-fell down toward—

Everything went pure white.

Within the white he saw something. Something familiar. Holt saw Zoey. Standing still, staring at him, all around her a strange, vibrating flux of colored light that was both a part of her and separate at the same time.

There was a sound like a powerful, punctuated blast of distorted noise, and a quick wave of heat. Holt gasped, his stomach clenched, his ears rang…

He rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes.

Through the eerie, twisted fingers of dead trees, the strange aurora wavered. He wasn’t in the middle of a raging river or crushed beneath tons of train cars. He was alive in the woods, and everything was quiet.

Mira stared at him, also on her back, her eyes full of confusion. “I saw…” she started slowly.

“Zoey,” Holt said, holding her look.

A strange, electronic rumble sounded above them. They both looked up…

…right into the red, green, and blue three-optic eye of an Assembly combat walker. Five legs, a powerful, blocky body, armor bereft of color. It was the same one that had appeared twice before, and now it stood almost on top of them.

It was so surprisingly surreal that neither really reacted. They just looked at it, stunned, watching the strange eye whir and spin, left and right, studying them back.

“Hi, Holt,” a tiny voice said behind them. Both Mira and Holt turned. Zoey stood there, smiling. “Hi, Mira.”

Each of them stared at the little girl with the same blank look.

“Zoey…” Mira whispered, still unsure. It only took a few more seconds before it all clicked. “Zoey!” Mira lunged toward the little girl and pulled her close. Zoey giggled at the attention.

Before Holt could move, something big and furry slammed into him and knocked him back to the ground. Max wiggled on top of him, licking his face. Holt laughed and petted the dog, rubbing his head and ears. He felt just as much relief seeing Max as he did Zoey. He hadn’t really been sure if he would ever see either again.

Holt looked past Max at Zoey. The little girl stared through Mira’s red hair and smiled at him. “I get a hug, too?”

Mira let Zoey go and watched her run to Holt. He looked at Mira as he held her, and they shared the same emotion.

“You okay?” Holt asked Zoey.

“Yeah,” Zoey said. “Ambassador brought me here. I asked him to.” Behind them came the same strange, distorted rumbling. Slowly, both Holt and Mira turned back to the huge, silver walker. It just sat there silently, watching and hulking over them. Holt felt the first stirrings of apprehension.

“Don’t worry, Ambassador’s nice,” Zoey said. “He’s my friend. I think.”

“Is that right?” Holt asked, not entirely convinced.

“Well, he’s not really a ‘he,’” Zoey continued. “The Assembly don’t have boys and girls, but that’s how I think of him.”

“It has a name?” Mira asked, studying the thing warily.

“I gave it to him. He was going to take me to the Tower, but I wanted to go with you instead. He has to do what I tell him. It’s pretty cool, actually.”

“If that’s the case,” Holt said, “have you thought about… maybe telling your new friend to disappear back wherever he came from?”

Zoey shook her head. “That’s the only thing he won’t do.”

“Of course.” This was getting more confusing by the second. Holt wasn’t sure, but it seemed like, somehow, this thing had not only saved Zoey’s and Max’s lives, but his and Mira’s as well. That still didn’t make his feelings for the thing all warm and fuzzy. It was an Assembly walker, a big, weird one, and every instinct told him to get as far away from it as he could.

“He has a connection with someone again,” Zoey explained. “He doesn’t like being without other voices. It bothers him.”

“Great.” Holt sighed. “World full of killer alien robots, and we get the nervous one.”

The thing’s three-optic eye shifted to ponder Holt. It rumbled its strange sound.

Holt studied their surroundings. It looked like they were in the dead trees that had been flanking the train tracks, but the tracks themselves and the bridge and the White Helix were nowhere to be seen. “Zoey, did your friend… teleport us away from that bridge?”

“Yeah,” Zoey replied, rubbing her temples. “Ambassador calls it ‘shifting.’ But he can only do it if you touch him. The pretty shape inside the machine, I mean. So… I had to help.”

“That’s why we saw you,” Mira said.

“I touched all of us at once. And the lights, did you see them, Mira? Like strings that blossom out like flowers in all kinds of colors?”

“Yes.” Mira nodded. “They were pretty.”

“That’s Ambassador,” Zoey told them. “That’s what he looks like. In my mind, anyway. He—” The little girl cut off with a groan, clutching her head. Holt reached out for her, and Mira moved closer, alarmed.