J. Mitchell - Midnight City

“Is it scary?”

Mira smiled at the questions. “Parts of it are, sure. Time and space don’t work right there anymore.”

“Why?” Zoey asked.

“I don’t know—no one does. It didn’t happen until the Assembly came, though, so it must have something to do with them.”

It was almost a year since she had been there, but the memories were still vivid. The air in the Strange Lands had a charge to it, like static electricity, as if it were thick and tangible. The farther you went in, the more you felt it on your skin. On impulse, the hairs stood up on Mira’s arms as she thought about it.

It was a dangerous place, to be sure, but also beautiful and magical in its own way. Skies full of huge antimatter storm clouds, lightning flashes of purple and blue and red. Pulsars that seemed to be all colors at once hovering over gravity wells. Geysers sprayed fountains of dark matter into the air. Floating quark spheres morphed from one incredibly complicated geometric shape to another every second like clockwork….

“It’s pretty,” Zoey said beside her.

It took a moment for the words to sink in. When they did, Mira looked down at the little girl. “ What’s pretty, Zoey?” Mira asked.

“The Strange Lands,” Zoey said. “The colors, the lights… even the storms are pretty.”

“But you haven’t been there,” Mira said carefully.

“No. I saw it through you.”

Mira watched Zoey turn away and look back down to Max, as if she had said nothing of importance. She saw it through her ? She could see in Mira’s mind? Mira felt a chill run up her spine at the implications. For the first time, she looked at the little girl with a touch of fear.

Who was she really?

HOLT LANDED HARD ON the roof of the drugstore, barely stopping himself from rolling forward onto his face. Maybe sliding down the cable wasn’t the best idea, he thought as he unhooked his pack from the line. At least he wouldn’t have that problem going up, though it meant he’d have to climb back to the hotel.

He canvassed the surface of the roof quickly. It was in even worse shape than the others they’d navigated before, pockmarked with cracks and crumbling plaster.

Near the corner at the rear, a large hole had formed in the roof where pooled rain water had worn its way through.

Holt moved to it with careful steps, feeling the spongy surface of the roof warp beneath his feet. It seemed inevitable that the whole thing would come crashing down, but the roof held as he reached the hole and peered down through it.

The light was fading fast around him, and everything inside the hole was dark. He pulled a flashlight from his belt and shone it downward.

The ceiling rafters were just below him, rusted and aged, but they still looked solid. Holt stuck the light in his mouth and lowered himself into the hole. His feet touched down on a metal rafter, and he heard it groan as it accepted his weight. But, like the roof, it held.

From the rafters, shining his light in the space below, he had a pretty clear view of what was left of the store.

The bottom floor was just as flooded as it looked from outside: probably four feet of the same black water. Old shelves sat half sunk, running in rows up and down the store’s length. And Holt saw exactly what he’d hoped for.

The shelves above the water were still stocked with their various wares, untouched, glittering in spite of all the dust in the colorful paper and foil packages of the World Before.

No one had been here to loot this place. It was an absolute treasure trove, and Holt smiled lustfully.

“YOU’RE WORRIED,” ZOEY SAID. “I can tell.”

She was right: Mira was worried. Zoey had somehow pulled images straight out of her mind.

“I just don’t know how you do the things you do, Zoey,” Mira said. “I guess I’m the kind of person who needs to know how things work.”

“I don’t know how it works. It just does. And I can’t pick when it does or doesn’t.”

“Do you have any new… memories? Since we found you? Memories of how you got this way?” asked Mira.

“Not really memories,” Zoey said. “But pictures, sometimes.”

“Pictures?”

“Pictures in my head, kind of. Pictures of things I’ve seen or places I’ve been. At least that’s what I think they are.”

“What kind of pictures, Zoey?”

“Black metal hallways that move up and down, not side to side. Glowing lights. And… other people. Older people. But sleeping, kind of.” Zoey’s voice was low, it was hard to hear her. “I don’t like to think about the pictures. They scare me.”

Black metal hallways? Sleeping older people? To Mira, it sounded pretty clear Zoey had been inside a Presidium, had even seen the state of Earth’s adult population. But by sleeping did she mean just that? Or did she mean “dead”?

“Mira, how do things from the Strange Lands work?” Zoey asked, abruptly changing subjects.

“Well…” Mira collected her thoughts. Artifact creation wasn’t the easiest thing to explain. “Things from the Strange Lands—like pencils or coins or watches—once you take them outside, they become charged with weird properties. And the farther you go in, the stronger they become. The most powerful artifacts are called ‘major artifacts,’ and they’re found near the center.

“The really interesting thing is that with minor artifacts, you can combine them into new and stronger ones with different functions. Want to see?”

“Yes!” Zoey said with excitement. The little girl even stopped petting Max. Mira smiled and reached for her pack.

HOLT HOPPED FROM ONE ceiling rafter to the next, the toxic water ten feet or so below him. The rafters groaned with each leap, but the metal was still strong. The first thing he needed to find was another backpack, because his was almost totally full. He needed a new container for all the spoils he intended to come out of there with.

He found a whole row of backpacks on one of the aisles near the side wall, and they looked like they were mostly for children. Cartoon characters stood out on their fronts and they were dyed in bright colors, but they’d serve his purposes just fine. He grabbed a blue one.

The shelves at the rear of the store were full of medicine and pharmaceuticals, and he stuffed antiseptics, pain relievers, and bandages into the new pack. First aid supplies were some of the most in-demand items in the world now.

From there, he moved on to toiletries. Holt hung down from the beams by his knees, just barely able to reach the top shelves. He gathered toothpaste, deodorant, soap, cleaning agents, all things that would trade for a very nice price.

His new blue pack quickly bulged with the treasures, and Holt had to restrain himself from filling a second one. It was almost pitch black outside as it was, and he wanted to be back in the hotel room before night fell. The danger attributed to the Drowning Plains had seemed exaggerated so far… and it bothered him. He had a feeling this place hadn’t shown its real teeth yet.

But Holt was interested in something at the front of the store, something specific, and he wanted to reach it before he started working his way up and out.

He hopped over two more beams and found himself sitting against the front wall of the store, looking down on the shelves behind what used to be the front counter. The old cash register sat there, probably full of money that was now useless. Crumbling signs with pictures of soft drinks and pretzels and ice cream barely held on to the blackened windows, advertising things that few even remembered anymore.

Holt looked away from the signs. More scars. More reminders of what used to be…