J. Mitchell - Midnight City

The Tone was what Earth’s survivors called the telepathic signal broadcast by the Assembly only a few hours after their invasion, and it had ended any resistance against the aliens in one fell swoop.

A mind control signal, and it worked horrifically well. Anyone who heard it instantly Succumbed to Assembly control. Soldiers left their posts. Government officials walked out of their offices. Parents left their children crying in their beds. Zombielike, Earth’s adult population began a unison march to the nearest Assembly Presidium, the massive ships stuck like huge daggers in the hearts of the human cities. They marched toward them, these millions of people… and, one by one, they disappeared inside.

To this day, no one knew what had happened to them, or where the Tone was broadcast from, or even how it worked.

What was very quickly apparent, however, was that the Tone seemed to affect the human brain only once it matured. A chemistry that added up to something around twenty years of age. Which meant that there was an entire demographic of the population that was immune to its call. At least temporarily.

Children.

It was why Holt hadn’t seen an adult in almost a decade. It was why the world was left to the devices of its youngest daughters and sons. But their time was always running out. The older they became, the more sway the ever-present Tone began to have on them.

A grim, slow, inevitable, ticking clock.

Unless they were Heedless, Holt thought bitterly. Those rare few, for whatever reason, who were immune. Like him. He would never suffer Mira’s fate. He would grow old, alone in a world where everyone else had Succumbed, one of the last “lucky” few to age beyond twenty years old, alone with an entire, empty, dead planet to call his own.

“Holt…,” Zoey said, watching Mira in alarm.

Holt watched Mira convulse and shake, her fists clenching handfuls of grass behind her back and ripping them from the ground as she fought against the signal.

Seeing it now brought the memories flooding back. It had been the same with Emily. The convulsing, the struggle to keep her mind intact, to ward off the voices and the static hiss.

Holt watched Mira in silent horror, her eyes shut tight, trying to block out the sounds. He had prayed never to see this again. And here it was.

Prisoner or not, his way to escape the Menagerie or not, Holt instinctively reached out for Mira. She tried to push him away again, but he pulled her into his lap. “Mira,” he said into her ear, listening to her sharp, painful intakes of breath. “Is this your first time to fight it?”

Mira said nothing, just shivered in his arms.

“Mira tell me, is it your first time?”

Beneath him, he noticed the briefest hint of a nod from her.

“It helps if someone talks to you, if you concentrate on their voice. It can help you push it into the background again.”

Mira shuddered beneath him. Holt exhaled, thinking of what to say. With Emily, he had played games. Memory games. They always helped bring her back.

He tried to remember them, what he used to say.

“What’s the thing you miss most about the World Before?” he asked Mira. “You’re old enough to remember it.” Mira shook silently, coping with the Tone’s attack. “You can fight it, Mira. You’re strong. Tell me.”

“The…” Mira tried to speak. The words came slowly and painfully. But they came. “The… food…”

Holt smiled. “Yeah, me, too. What kind of food?”

“Junk… junk food…,” she said. The words were coming easier. It was a good sign. If she could hold on, she could push it back.

“Girl after my own heart. Pick your poison, then. What would you have right now if you could? Twinkies? Red Vines? Oreos?”

“Hostess CupCakes…”

Holt laughed. “Now, that is a stellar choice. I haven’t thought about those in a while, but I remember them. The chocolate cake, the icing, right?”

“The… cream in the center…”

“Yeah,” Holt said, holding her, remembering. “The cream in the center. How they came two to a pack. Do you remember that? And that little zigzag of white on the top?”

“Yes…”

“You know what the good news is about that choice, right, Mira?”

“What?” she said weakly but coherently. It was easing.

“Good news is, those things are virtually indestructible. Hostess CupCakes, along with cockroaches, would survive a nuclear holocaust.”

Mira laughed softly. “And an alien holocaust?”

“That, too,” Holt said. “In fact, if you found an unexplored place, a place no one had picked over yet… you could probably find Hostess CupCakes, still in their packages. And they’d taste just as good now as they did back then.”

“I doubt that,” Mira said, opening her eyes and looking up at him. “Eight years on, they’d have to be a little stale.”

Her green eyes were even more full of the black now. The Tone had spread; it was taking her over. Slowly. Day by day. She had a year left, at most, Holt realized as he studied her. The realization twisted his stomach….

“A little, maybe. But you wouldn’t notice,” Holt said, looking back with his guiltily clear eyes. “Doing better?”

Mira nodded. “It was… awful. I didn’t know… I didn’t know it would be so bad. The voices… they were…”

“I know,” Holt said. He did know. It was the worst part, hearing them in your head. At least that was what Emily had said. Older kids started to hear voices buried within the static. The language was incomprehensible… at first. But, frighteningly, the older they got, the more it seemed to make sense. The more you could understand it. Suggesting things to you, calling to you. “The next few will be easier as you get used to it. Then… it starts to get harder.”

“How long?” Mira asked.

Holt had hoped she wouldn’t ask. But he wasn’t going to lie to her. “Depends on how strong you are. Average age is twenty. Some people last longer. Some less. But I’ll help you. As long as I can.”

“Until you turn me in?” she asked evenly. Holt stared back silently, but didn’t answer. What was there to say?

They lay like that awhile longer. Holt had come to enjoy the warmness of her body beneath him, how soft she felt in his grip.

Then the roar of two more Raptors flying overhead broke the spell. Holt remembered everything. So did Mira. They separated, once again saw the enormous red army blanketing the valley below, in between them and their path north.

Zoey was studying both of them and grinning. Holt and Mira frowned at the little girl.

“What?” they both asked in unison.

Zoey just chuckled, hid her face under her arms.

Holt shook his head, got them all up. They would have to move fast. The first part of the journey would be the most dangerous. At least from an Assembly perspective. They’d be the closest to the reds then, where the tributary they intended to follow below passed near the alien patrols.

When they were ready, Holt moved to Mira. He pulled his father’s Swiss Army knife from his belt, opened the blade… and touched it to her bonds.

Mira looked at the knife curiously.

“You can’t go back. You can’t go forward,” Holt told her. “You want to survive, your best chance is with me. Yes?”

Mira considered him calmly, weighing her options. “Yes,” she said. “Assuming you know what you’re doing.”

“I said your best chance, not a guaranteed chance. I’m making this up as I go along.”

Mira smiled at him as he cut her bonds, let the ropes fall to the ground. She rubbed her wrists appreciatively.

Holt whistled two sharp notes. Max darted westward, hugging the tree line as he scouted ahead of them. Holt, Mira, and Zoey walked after him.