J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

At first Mira stared in fascination, her natural Freebooter curiosity overriding her fear, but then she darted around the side of the helicopter, away from the advancing funnel of darkness. Everything shuddered as it approached.

She ducked around the side of a building just as the Tornado rumbled by, twisting and morphing everything. Seconds later the Anomaly dissipated, rising back up into the dark clouds as they flashed green and blue.

Mira closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. She was still here. She wasn’t dead yet. The Vortex was just ahead of her, less than a block away, a giant swirling wall of death. She could have been the best Freebooter in the world, but without plutonium, there was no—

Mira noticed something in front of her.

Leaning against the flattened wheel of a tow truck sat a backpack. One she recognized. Old and faded and gray, with black leather straps and a white δ etched into it. She had seen that pack countless times, carried it more than once herself. It was Ben’s pack, and Mira’s eyes widened at the realization.

Zoey stirred in her sling as the wind cut into them. It brought Mira back to reality. “Hold on, sweetie,” she said, moving for the pack at a run. “Hold on.”

Mira reached it, her heart thundering in her chest, not from exertion, but from apprehension. It couldn’t work out so easily. Could it?

With shaking hands, Mira opened the pack. It was full, much fuller than her own, with artifact components and supplies, and she dug through it all frantically, desperately searching for what she—

Mira’s hands closed around the cool, smooth, glass canister of plutonium.

She almost cried in relief as she pulled it free. It wasn’t unlikely that Ben would have left it behind, he wouldn’t want to carry two batches of plutonium, who knew how the Vortex would react. What was unlikely, what seemed nearly impossible, was that Mira would have chosen the exact same route to the Vortex as he did.

She heard Gideon’s words and a chill ran over her. The Tower will provide.

Mira stared down at the plutonium. It was the same one she had gotten herself all that time ago in Clinton Station. She remembered that night—almost dying from the Fallout Swarm, rescued by Holt and promptly bound. When she analyzed all the decisions she had made, all the seemingly disconnected events that had to happen to bring her here…

Mira looked up again, to the giant, black tower-like shape that hovered in the air over everything. Something about the sight of it made her feel powerless, and she was running right toward it.

Zoey moaned on her chest. In the end it didn’t matter, did it? She knew what she had to do.

Mira swallowed, tucked the plutonium under her arm and dashed toward the Vortex, where it rose straight into the air. As she approached, she could see it more clearly, see that it was made up of billions of tiny flickering particles. She heard a static-like hiss that hinted at something powerful. She closed her eyes… and rushed inside.

The Vortex immediately encircled her, and the force of it almost ripped her from the ground. It wasn’t like the wind before, this was like stepping into a fast-flowing river. It took everything she had to keep her balance.

Regardless—she wasn’t dead, and that was something.

The plutonium in her hand flared brightly, a superheated pinprick of light. There was no real indication it was working, only the billions of swirling particles of the Vortex never reached her. They just dissolved, their light dying out before they hit, and as she moved through the Anomaly she was surrounded in a sphere of blank air.

Yet she still felt the Anomaly’s force. It knocked her sideways, and it took a Herculean effort to just move forward. There was nothing to grab onto either. No buildings or vehicles, all of it had been stripped clean, but still she could see where she needed to get: the black, hulking tower, less than a mile away.

Of course, a mile in this insanity might as well have been—

Mira screamed as the Vortex yanked her off her feet. She tumbled in the air, then hit the ground hard on her left arm, barely avoiding crushing Zoey or losing the plutonium.

She felt the bone snap. It was more of a shock that jarred through her than pain. That came later, when she tried to push herself up—a burning, electrical agony that shot through her arm.

Mira gasped outloud. Her vision went dark. Thick nausea overtook her.

Then the fear set in. Her arm was broken, badly, but she had to get up. She had to do it now, or she would succumb to the pain and exhaustion, and then it would all be over.

“Get up!” she screamed, pushing to her feet, struggling forward through the powerful stream of particles. The Severed Tower was there, she could see it, everything she was supposed to do, what she had promised to do. It was within her grasp. She forced herself to move, ignoring everything that—

Mira lost her footing again, was lifted up a second time and thrown down hard. The wind gushed from her lungs. Pain flared and blackness threatened to overtake her. She struggled to get to her feet—but then she was rolling over the ground, backward, away from the Tower, tossed like a leaf in a hurricane, the pain blossoming with each hit.

When she came to a stop her mind was fading. There was nothing she could do. She was too weak. She had been an idiot to think she could accomplish this. The Severed Tower was even farther away now. She would never reach it, no matter what anyone thought.

“I’m sorry, Holt…” she said, and then the Vortex yanked her and Zoey violently back into the air.

HOLT AND MAX DASHED THROUGH the ruined post office as plasma bolts shredded the walls, the windows, the ceiling, all of it, the half-circle gunships trying to mow them both down from outside.

The end of the building was coming up, a brick wall lined with windows. There was nowhere else to go. Holt yelled, and burst through the glass, spiraling down and crashing into an old Dumpster in an alley. A pile of decades-old trash in a cloud of dust and worse exploded around him.

He coughed, started to rise—and Max dropped on him from above, driving him back down.

“You always have to land where I do?” Holt asked testily, grabbing and dropping the dog over the edge before rolling out himself.

In the sky, the gunships circled, firing everywhere, and Holt could see muzzle flashes at the top of the buildings from the Menagerie positions, shooting back.

Colored lightning flashed. One of the impossibly huge Dark Matter Tornadoes materialized from the clouds and drifted downward, and behind him, at the other end of the alley, flashes of light strobed, as six green-and-orange Hunters decloaked.

One of them was different. Its markings bolder, more commanding. Holt knew that walker—and it knew him. Its three-optic eye whirred as it focused in his direction.

“I really hate this place,” Holt reiterated. He and Max ran the opposite direction.

Yellow bolts shredded the alley, spraying mortar and brick everywhere, and Holt ducked. A piece of debris caught him on the side of the head and he stumbled, crashing into the street outside.

Pain flared, making him dizzy, and there was blood on his scalp. Hands grabbed and yanked him up, and he stumbled after a figure, eventually slamming down behind a twisted city bus. About seven Menagerie pirates were there, dirty and bleeding, reloading their guns.

“This belong to you?” one of them asked.

Through his blurred vision, Ravan crouched down next to him. “A prized possession.”

Holt stared up at her through the pain. “Hi.”

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked, studying not just the blood, but the dirt and grime all over him.