J. Mitchell - Midnight City

“The answer is the same as before,” Mira said. “The answer is no. It has to be destroyed. And if you let me destroy it, if you can give it up, like you should… then I will come home. I’ll be proud to.”

Mira stood silently after she finished, watching Lenore, but the woman just remained quiet and motionless, like a statue, perfectly still. “Is that your final answer, then?” Lenore asked.

“Yes. It’s the only answer I can give.”

Lenore’s calm demeanor evaporated in front of Mira, her expression changing subtly into a muted form of disgust. “You would come home?” she asked mockingly. “You would come home ? You have no home. I offered you salvation. Forgiveness. A genuine compromise, and you throw it back in my face for the same selfish, misguided reasons as before.”

The words stung, but Mira kept her composure. “Only you would call what I’m doing selfish,” Mira retorted calmly. “And if everyone else here feels the same way, then you’re right, this isn’t my home. It never was.”

“Ben said you would never come around,” Lenore remarked. “I believed you would see reason. But he was right about you, of course. He knows you better than anyone.”

Something about what Lenore had just said was off, and it took a moment for Mira to figure out what it was. “Ben knows you want to use the artifact?”

Lenore gave Mira a pitying look. “Oh, Mira, how sad. You really don’t know? Didn’t you even at least suspect? Or did your feelings for him cloud everything?”

Mira didn’t like where this was going.

“How do you think I learned about the artifact?” Lenore asked. “How was it I knew with time enough to stop you from taking it out of the city? Did you never wonder that?”

In truth, Mira never really had wondered. Everything had happened so fast after she was caught, and then there was her escape, and she had been on the run ever since. She didn’t have time to think the details through. But Lenore was right: It didn’t add up.

“It was Ben, Mira,” Lenore said venomously. “Ben came to me. Told me what you had made in the lab. And that, like a fool, you wanted to destroy it.”

Mira felt her heart thudding in her chest, felt her knees begin to weaken. “You’re… lying,” she said, her voice cracking. Suddenly, her throat felt very dry. “I… don’t believe that.”

Lenore smiled. “Think, Mira. Who else knew? Was there anyone else who could have told me? Anyone?”

The truth was, of course… there wasn’t. And Mira knew it. But, still, she refused to believe. “Why would—?” she trailed off, uncertain. The world seemed dreamlike now.

“Why would he do it?” Lenore asked sarcastically for her. “Why would he betray his best friend, the person he loved? Ben’s best friend has always been himself, Mira. What was the one thing he always wanted? More than anything else. The thing he asked me for repeatedly.”

“An expedition,” Mira managed, but her voice was nothing but a whisper now. “A fully supplied expedition into the core, so he could try for the Severed Tower.”

“And now you see,” Lenore replied. “He traded what he knew about your artifact for your position as the top Freebooter in Midnight City, for your Points, and for the opportunity to lead a Gray Devil expedition into the core. And I was only too happy to oblige him, if it stopped you from destroying what you made.”

Mira felt sick to her stomach. It all added up, and she was ashamed at never having put the pieces together herself. But still, she didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it….

Lenore moved away from her. “The ironic thing is, you’ll give it to me, regardless. After I’m done, you’ll tell me everything I want to know, you’ll hand it to me yourself. It will take months, most likely. Months and months of pain in the dark. You’ll be an example to the others, that even the highest of us can fall. And when it’s time to demonstrate to the city the power of what you’ve created… it will be you who your artifact destroys. In that way, you can make amends for all you’ve done… and for how much you’ve hurt me.”

Lenore looked back at Mira, and her eyes held both malice and triumph.

“Guards!” Lenore shouted, and waited on the doors to open behind her, for the two burly Gray Devils to enter and bind her prisoner again and take her away to the cavern dungeon.

But the doors didn’t open.

Lenore looked to it, annoyed. “Guards!” she shouted again. When the door remained shut, she strode angrily toward the entryway, grabbed the handles, and swung the doors wide open.

The guards were there, but not as before. Now they were in heaps on the floor, unconscious.

Mira saw Lenore’s eyes widen, then look down the cavern tunnel for any sign of—

There was a hissing sound, a whine of energy, and then the air in the shape of a large sphere flashed once, twice, and shimmered away, revealing two people and a dog standing in the doorway.

Holt was holding a copper pipe he had picked up somewhere. Lenore was stunned, and Holt smiled back.

“You must be Lenore,” Holt said. “Heard a lot about you.” He swung the pipe hard into Lenore’s head. She spun crazily and dropped to the floor, out cold like the guards.

Holt looked up at Mira proudly.

Mira didn’t react. “Took you long enough,” she said, and Holt frowned.

HOLT FROWNED BACK AT MIRA, held up the small compass pendant of Zoey’s. “Hey, I’m sure this thing’s way easy to use outside, ” he said, “but in this place, it’s a little harder.”

Zoey reached up and grabbed the pendant from Holt. “You said I could have it back,” she complained. Holt sighed and let her have it, then held up the Shroud artifact Mira had made earlier, wrapped in duct tape.

“This thing’s toast, right?” he asked.

“Toss it,” Mira replied, and he threw it to the floor. “Did you ditch Los Lobos?”

“Yeah.” Holt grinned and held up Marcus’s big hunting knife, admiring it. “And look what I got.”

Mira patted him on the face. “That’s so cute. Where’s my pack?”

Holt handed over her backpack and watched as she started digging through it. “Was it like you thought?” Holt asked. “Your old room?”

“They trapped it, yeah,” Mira said as she pulled out an artifact of some kind. “Too bad they didn’t know getting caught was part of the plan.”

“What now, we find your thing? How far away is it?”

Mira stood up, looking around the room. “Not far at all,” Mira said, stepping over Lenore and moving to the corner of the room where the photographic equipment sat.

“What’s that one, Mira?” Zoey asked, looking at the artifact Mira was holding. It looked like several different combinations woven into one, with coins, batteries, two magnets, a big yellow marble, and strips of copper wire, all wrapped in tape.

“A Rectifier, sweetheart. It cancels out artifact effects, shuts them off.” Mira passed the Rectifier through the air in the corner, and as it moved, blurred trails of light followed after it, like lens flares in a photograph. It was a disorienting thing to watch; it made Holt wince. Everything seemed to waver and shimmer in the air where Mira passed the thing, growing brighter and brighter. Then something materialized and fell toward the ground.

Mira caught it before it landed—a small black bag. Holt looked at it. “You hid the artifact here ?” he asked in surprise. “In the Ice Queen’s lair?”

“Last place she’d look, right?” Now Mira gave him a devilish look.

Holt was impressed. Mira was smart and clever, self-sufficient, and yet still vulnerable. She didn’t need anyone to take care of her—that much was clear—but that didn’t mean she didn’t want someone to try. Her red hair hung loosely around her neck, and even though only a few flecks of green peeked through the black in her eyes now, she was still beautiful, he thought. Had there been a time when he really didn’t think so?