J. Mitchell - Midnight City

Floating above the Scorewall were large, bright lights that lit up the giant surface along its entire length. The lights hovered in the air somehow, and when someone got in between them and the wall, they automatically shifted, up, down, left, right, in order to keep shining on the information. More artifacts, Holt guessed.

In front of the bright, floating lights, dozens of kids hung from ropes and pulleys attached to the cavern ceiling, allowing them not only to hover in front of the Scorewall, but also float up and down its length and height. They were called Scorekeepers, and they constantly moved around the wall, changing score totals based on the official information they received, writing in different colors of chalk, changing numbers, raising and lowering them, adding the occasional name.

The denizens of the city packed inside the giant chamber yelled up at the Scorekeepers as they did their jobs, shuffling back and forth. Everything was chaotic, energetic, ludicrous… and very weighted.

“Been here twice,” Holt said. “But never came in this room. Always heard about it, but… wow…”

“It’s hard to understand until you see it,” Mira said, taking it all in like it was the first time.

Holt watched the churning crowd, watched it shout and yell and celebrate and curse, all depending on the numbers that cycled this way and that as fast as the Scorekeepers could write them. “Everyone acts like this thing is life or death.”

“In Midnight City… it is.” She looked at him, held his gaze. “Want to see something?” She moved left, pushing through the crowd, and Holt and Zoey and Max followed after her.

At the very end of the Scorewall, where the list of residents ended, past the anonymous visitors and the frozen point totals of Freebooters who had gone missing in the Strange Lands, was a section of the wall with about thirty names on it. Each of the names had one thing in common: They were written in red chalk, and the number of Points next to them was 0.

“What is it?” Holt asked, gazing up at the names.

“It’s the part of the Scorewall that tracks the Unmentionables,” Mira said, “people who have had all their Points removed.”

She nodded to the topmost name in the section, almost in the far left corner. The box there was owned by MIRA TOOMBS. And next to the name was a single, lonely 0.

Mira glared up at it a long time, the emotions on her face switching between anger and bitterness and sadness. Holt let her look, said nothing while she did so. He had no idea what to say, anyway. He barely understood any of this, so how could he even begin to understand what she was feeling?

Eventually, she looked back at him. “Let’s get out of here,” she said crisply, and then began pushing back through the churning madness of people, as if the environment had suddenly turned toxic.

MIRA MOVED AS QUICKLY as she could out of the Scorewall room and leaned against a cavern wall, out of breath and shaking.

Seeing her name among the Unmentionables had way more of an effect than she’d expected. She knew it would be there—where else would it be? But, still, seeing it with the rest and that zero in the box, a zero that at one time had been more than ten thousand…

She shuddered at the loss; it felt like she’d been physically struck.

And there was something else: The Unmentionables box was kept in order of the names added. Which meant another name should have been right above hers. But it wasn’t.

Ben’s.

The person she’d come all this way to save. Mira didn’t know what that meant. Was he still on the main board? Or was he dead and they had moved it off completely?

Mira shook the thoughts from her head. None of them were helpful. That part of her life was over now, no matter what she did. But she had come here for something specific. She had a plan, and she would carry it out. She could still salvage some of the mess she’d made of everything.

Mira felt Holt’s hand gently touch her back. She wanted to turn and hug him, to feel his arms around her… but that wouldn’t help anything either. It would feel good, certainly, but it wouldn’t help.

She wiped away the beginning traces of tears from her eyes and turned around. “I’m okay,” she said, feeling Zoey’s hand slip into hers.

Holt studied her. “You know, if you want me to help,” he began, “it’d be good if I knew what was going on here.”

Mira stared back at him. He was right, of course: he probably should know. But she still wasn’t sure about having him help. This was her mess, and the idea of risking the lives of people she cared about to fix it didn’t sit well with her.

Mira took in the new room they’d entered. It was in the market district, which was different from the business district in that the wares sold here were mainly for residents. The smells of all types of food filled the air, sizzling on grills and hot plates. Items in bulk gleamed on shelves, either refurbished, salvaged, or newly made. The room was lined with people, plodding in between the stalls, trading for supplies.

Mira moved for a hut made out of an old, green Volkswagen van someone had found a way to get inside, with tables and a counter attached to it. A lone girl wearing the orange color of the Lost Knights stood behind the counter, and she smiled as Mira ordered three cups of tea. The shop had a good stockpile of tea bags on a shelf behind her, still in their dusty packaging.

When it was brewed, Mira offered the girl a small sewing and repair kit she’d picked up somewhere as trade. It was enough. Normally she would have traded Points, but as she’d just personally witnessed, she didn’t have those anymore. She, Holt, and Zoey sat down at a makeshift table attached to the doorframe of the old van, while Max curled up at Holt’s feet, gently chewing on his boot heel.

“I don’t like this,” Zoey said as she sipped her tea and crinkled her nose. “It’s not sweet.”

“It’s tea, sweetheart. Try some of this in it.” Mira pushed a tube of honey on the table toward the little girl.

Mira watched the crowd as it seethed past them, churning among the stalls and booths. They were completely surrounded by people who might recognize Mira, but she knew that wasn’t likely. If there was one thing certain about Midnight City, it was that it had a short attention span.

“Making artifact combinations always came easy to me,” Mira finally said. “The more complicated it was, the more I liked it. Portals. Chinooks. Magnatrons. But the best was when someone asked for something new, something that had never been made before. A new artifact, with new properties and powers.” She smiled as she remembered the feelings. “Making an established artifact can still be challenging, but there’s no sense of danger. It’s like putting a puzzle together you’ve done a dozen times before. But… a new combination? Starting from nothing, trying to figure out the right mix of components, the right Focusers, the right Essences? There’s nothing like it.”

Next to her, Zoey was still pouring the honey into her tea from the plastic squeeze bottle, and Mira took it from her with a frown. “That’s enough, Zoey, you’ll make yourself sick.”

The little girl sipped her tea, then looked up at Mira and smiled.

“So, you were making something new,” Holt guessed.

Mira nodded. “Something I’d experimented with for years, and as I got closer to finding the right pairings, I started passing over paid commissions to work on it. My Points started declining, the rest of the faction wondered what I was doing, why I kept making trips into the Strange Lands.”

Zoey looked up from her tea curiously. “What were you making, Mira?”