J. Mitchell: The Severed Tower

They kept walking, pushing through the crowds and the strange, converted city of crumbling airplanes, and as they did Holt saw something else. Every once in awhile, he spotted a flag flying above a plane or a ramshackle structure. Colorful ones, ones he recognized with a sinking feeling.

Auburn red, with a huge white wolf’s head. Black, with a white Celtic cross. Green, with a sharp yellow sword.

Midnight City factions. Their outposts in the Crossroads. They’d have to be careful. It wasn’t just Mira they might recognize. Holt still felt a chill when he thought about seeing his name on the Scorewall.

“You come from Midnight?” Echo asked as they walked.

Mira nodded.

“Are the rumors true? The Assembly actually attacked it?”

Mira hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Wow.” Echo seemed stunned. “Still can’t imagine that. I mean, they’ve left it alone for so long, why attack it now, you know?”

This was a dangerous conversation, given that the answer to Echo’s question was walking along with them, holding Holt’s hand. He quickly changed the subject. “We saw Menagerie boats on the way here.”

Echo’s demeanor darkened. “Heard about that, too. Scouts said they anchored about a mile away; been pulling equipment and gear off. Looks like they’re heading into the Strange Lands, crazy as that is. Never met a Menagerie Freebooter, and I wouldn’t want to either. But so far they haven’t made it here, if that’s what they’re intending.”

“Will you turn them back, too?” Holt asked. He hoped the answer was yes.

“Plan to, yeah,” Echo answered tightly. “If I have my way, they won’t get past Southlift. But Menagerie are always armed. And they don’t like the word ‘no’ very much.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Sometimes I’m not sure it’s worth all the headache. Maybe I just oughta leave, let Ben and the Menagerie and Deckard and everyone else do what they want.”

“You’re not Deckard,” Mira said. “But you do keep your promises. You’ve been the Overseer here longer than anyone. No one said it would be easy.”

“Yeah,” Echo replied, “you got that right.”

Someone shouted from ahead of them, a boy’s voice, somewhat soft, but it carried regardless. “Mira!”

Holt looked up at the sound.

The Crossroads was a ghost town this far in, but sitting under a thick, gray canopy was a group of about twenty kids. The canopy was made of tough fabric, strung back and forth between three old fighter jets, marking off a pretty large area of ground. Holt could see sleeping cots, a cooking area, a pool table and showers—and he saw something else, too. From the top of the fabric structure a flag flew, outstretched in the wind. Deep gray and white, with a laughing devil’s face, a forked tongue snaking out of its mouth, horns on its head.

It was the Gray Devils outpost, Holt realized, but, did that mean…?

Someone appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Mira. Holt’s first thought was that the Gray Devils were attacking, but it only took one look to know that wasn’t the case. A boy lifted Mira off the ground and spun her.

He was about her age, with lean muscles under a gray utility shirt. His eyes were full of the Tone, and his hair was razored close to his scalp, leaving a dark outline of color over the top. He had a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses on his nose, and he smiled up at Mira as he spun her around once, twice… and then kissed her.

It was a short kiss. That was Holt’s only consolation. But still, Mira didn’t push him away. When it was done she just stared down at the boy with a mixture of emotions.

“Hi, Ben,” she said in a low, conflicted voice.

It felt like somebody had just stepped on Holt’s heart.

BENJAMIN AUBERTINE had never been classically good-looking. He was lean and agile, in good shape, but most Freebooters were. He had sharp features set in an angular face, and a detached self-confidence behind his eyes. His hair was something he didn’t have an interest in maintaining, so he kept it shaved close, leaving a thin layer of black over his head that gave him a hard-edged look that belied his true nature.

In reality, Mira had never seen Ben fight anyone, never seen him lift a hand in anger, never seen him mad at all. Maybe that was because he had no reason to be. Ben could talk himself out of anything. Mira once watched him convince some Crossmen Freebooters who’d lost their supplies in the third ring that choosing not to rob Mira and himself would ultimately result in two hundred and thirty Points for each of them on the Scorewall. They’d believed him, and he’d been right. That exact amount was figured into their totals when they got back, due to their navigation of the third ring without food or equipment.

Moments like that were reasons why Mira had been pulled to Ben. She rarely found herself attracted to conventional sorts. She was drawn to different qualities, like intellect or creativity or some unique personality quirk. Even with Holt, for all his obvious physicality, her feelings for him mostly stemmed from his wits, his ability to improvise, his calm under pressure.

It was the same with Ben.

Ben was brilliant. He was brilliant everywhere, but most of all in the Strange Lands. He was made for it. His ability to quickly solve complex problems was why he was the best Freebooter in the world. He could study an Anomaly once and have it mastered, could always pass through it from then on, faster than anyone else. His brain was like a sponge for details and patterns, and once something was learned, he never forgot it.

Looking at him beaming up at her, his eyes sparkling in spite of the Tone, she saw the other reason she’d been attracted to him. Ben relied on facts and logic and numbers, and it made him almost emotionless. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be who he was, someone who went the direction his mind pointed him, not his heart.

But it had always been different with Mira.

With her, he smiled. His masks dropped. He shared secrets and dreams, he was a whole person, not an automaton. She was the only one who brought that out in him. And she liked it, she liked that he had opened for her, and for her alone.

Not unlike how Holt had very recently opened for her, too, she thought.

Holt.

The world came flooding back, and she remembered that he and Zoey were right behind her. Watching.

She squirmed in Ben’s grasp until he set her on the ground. Behind him, his team of Gray Devils Freebooters stood up as they slowly recognized who she was.

Mira recognized most of them, too. A redheaded kid named Scott Norwood, the third-highest-rated Freebooter in the Gray Devils and the fifth overall. He’d always had a competitive streak with Ben, though Ben never seemed to notice. Twin sisters, both fourteen, Tara and Ranee Enright, had only been Freebooters a few months before Mira had been exiled, but she remembered they’d shown impressive pathfinding skills. Joseph Pisano, a tall, lanky kid, who had always had a crush on Mira, she thought, though he was too shy to act on it. And others, about twenty in all.

She used to be one of them, someone they looked up to. But now they stared at her with hostility. In their minds, she had betrayed their faction, she was a Point fabricator, and things were very different now. It was another reminder of just how much she’d lost.

The Gray Devils moved toward her.

Behind her, Mira sensed Holt step forward, saw his hands slide toward his pistol. She opened her mouth to speak—

“No.” Another voice beat her to it. Ben’s. Calm, soft and low. But somehow it always carried, everyone always heard it. He slowly held up a hand as he spoke.

The Gray Devils froze in their tracks, staring between Ben and Mira.