J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

“Changed what? ” Avril asked.

She shook her head. “When the airships got close, I could… feel them. Hear them. Their thoughts. I could—”

Mira cut off suddenly as similar “thoughts” pushed into her mind. They were like projections of sensation, forced to the forefront, and while they didn’t hurt, it wasn’t pleasant having her own thoughts overwritten. They weren’t words. It was more like the inherent meanings behind words, the intent, the emotion, and they stood out in her mind, whether she wanted them to or not.

Guardian, they said. We come.

Mira stood up and away from the car and peered to the south. A five-legged walker charged toward them, flanked on either side by two Hunters. The sight of them was striking. Their distinctive green and orange was gone. Now there was only bare metal, shining in the sun.

The White Helix tensed as the walkers approached. So did the Menagerie. But the walkers stopped several blocks away, keeping distance between them. “Ambassador…” Mira said.

Guardian, the projection came. It was clear who she was communicating with, and the realization sent a chill down her back.

“Why call me that?” she asked out loud. She could see everyone staring back and forth between her and the walkers in the distance. The idea that she could suddenly talk to the Assembly, the great enemy of humanity, was an unsettling one, but Mira didn’t care.

You are the Guardian of the Scion, Ambassador projected into her mind.

Mira felt her shame intensify. Whether the title was meant as an insult, given what had just occurred, she couldn’t tell, but she didn’t like it much, regardless.

“Do you know what’s happened?” Maybe she could use her mind to talk to the aliens, but she’d be damned if she would. She wasn’t one of them, and they weren’t her friends. She felt Holt’s hand slip into hers and she took strength from it.

Mas’Shinra has the Scion, came the reply. They fly west.

“What’s west?”

The Collective. Mira stared back in confusion, and her frustration must have been discernible. You say the Citadel.

Mira’s eyes widened. The Citadel was something she knew. Everyone in North America probably did. She had never seen it, but it was supposedly a giant Assembly structure that rose over city ruins far to the west, so big it dwarfed even the Presidiums. Unlike those base ships, the Citadel had been built by the Assembly where it stood, fabricated from tons of harvested resources from all over the continent. Most survivors considered it the Assembly’s seat of power, and everyone gave it a wide berth.

“They’re taking her to the Citadel,” Mira said, and stunned murmurs swept through the crowd.

“If that’s the case, your little friend’s good and gone,” Ravan declared. “The Citadel’s in San Francisco. It’ll take weeks to get there, and you have to go through the Barren to do it. Whatever the Assembly plan to do with her, they’ll have done it long before you ever make it.”

Mira wanted to feel anger at Ravan, but she couldn’t. She was right, and Mira only felt anger at herself. The Assembly might as well have been taking her across the sea.

“Landships,” Holt said next to her. “In Freezone. Currency is… what? Two days’ hard walk from here? We can take Landships from there, be at the Citadel in less than a week.”

“Even if you somehow got the Wind Traders to help you, that’s still too long,” Ravan said. “Those ships’ll be there in a few hours. ”

“Well, we have to do something! ” Holt yelled back. “We have to try!”

“This is ludicrous,” Dane said above them.

“Your eyes are clear, Dane,” Avril said. “She healed us, and brought us back from the dead.”

Dane looked at Avril with intensity. He didn’t say anything else.

Ravan, however, wasn’t convinced. “She saved my men from the Tone, too. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not marching off to the ocean on some fool’s errand. I got things that need finishing.” Mira saw her stare settle on Holt, and he returned it.

More murmurs passed through the crowd, doubtful ones, and it broke apart around Holt and Mira into hundreds of groups, all debating and yelling. Mira ignored it all. There was only one person whose opinion mattered to her, and she looked at him now.

“Ravan’s right,” Holt told her. “Even if we got there in a week, even if we somehow wrangled enough Landships to carry all the White Helix—it’s suicide. Have you ever seen the Citadel? Because I have. You think the army we saw yesterday was big? It’s nothing compared to what’s there. ”

Mira stared at him in genuine dismay. “So you’re saying… what? We just… let her go? We let them have her?”

“No.” Holt shook his head. His next few words he said as soberly and as pointedly as he could. “I’m saying… if we do this… it’s going to be a one-way trip.”

Mira stared back at him, his meaning sinking in. There was no real chance of success. They would die trying to free Zoey—but they would still have tried.

Mira stared at Holt a few more seconds, then simply nodded.

Holt grabbed his Ithaca from the ground and tightened his pack in place. Mira did the same with her things, and they both started walking, pushing past the angry, yelling crowd, ignoring all of it. Holt whistled and Max chased after them.

Mira motioned for Holt’s shotgun. He handed it to her, along with a fistful of shells. “You know how to do that?”

“I can build six-tiered artifact combinations,” she said and shoved a shell into the chamber, then rammed the pump, priming the shell. “I can handle loading a shotgun.”

“I like you more every day,” Holt said and grabbed a magazine for his rifle, loading it as they walked.

As they moved through the crowd the arguments silenced, and everyone turned and watched the two figures heading south purposefully.

Ravan leaned casually against a warped sedan, staring at them. After a moment, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Boys, mount up,” she said forcefully. “I believe we are done here.” Her men obeyed, securing their packs and guns. Ravan stood away from the car and pushed Avril forward. “That means you, too, dear heart.” The small Doyen stared daggers, but started moving all the same.

As the Menagerie stepped into line next to them, Holt and Mira glanced at Ravan. The pirate shook her head with contempt. To Ravan, what they were doing was a bad idea, it was foolish to put other people’s needs before your own, but Mira didn’t care. It was what she had to do.

Something fell to the ground in front of them. A pair of black goggles, the kind the White Helix wore. Two more pairs fell. Four more. A dozen more. Everyone looked up as they walked. There, high above, figures leaped in between the ruined buildings in flashes of yellow and cyan.

“Well, well,” Ravan said with amusement, watching the White Helix jump rooftop to rooftop. “Aren’t we a motley crew?”

Avril looked up with everyone else—and smiled at the sight of her brothers, dozens at first, but growing, gradually becoming a wave of color that followed after them. Dozens turned to hundreds. Hundreds became thousands, blocking out the sky, dropping their goggles to the ground as they did in a shower of black. They no longer needed them, Mira guessed. There was no more Pattern to see.

Guardian, a projection cut through everything. Ambassador and the silver Hunters waited just a block away, their three optic eyes flickering back and forth. Mira stared at them.

We are… of you, it projected.