J. Mitchell - Midnight City

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. You and me. Okay?”

Zoey nodded and tried to take solace in his words, but it was hard. Behind them, Mira stirred, lost in some dream, and the crowd continued to grow below, churning and cramming forward, completely oblivious to the three figures staring somberly at them from above.

HOLT AND EMILY LAY exhausted underneath the bright afternoon sky, outside the collapsed truck stop. It was a long moment before Holt heard his sister weakly say his name.

He turned and looked. The color was gone from her eyes; there were only little specks of white peeking out through all the black now. It was the worst he had ever seen it.

No words came to him, and even if they had, he wasn’t sure he could have found his voice. Emily took his hand and stared into him. He felt her fingers trembling.

When she spoke, her voice was ragged, just weak, fragmented whispers. She was fading, Holt could tell. But there were no spasms this time, no moans, no curling into a ball as she fought against the Tone’s waves of voices and static in her mind.

She was calm now, motionless… peaceful almost. The sight filled him with anguish.

Holt felt tears in his eyes; he knew this was all his fault. If he hadn’t gone after her, if he had just done what she’d told him…

Emily was trying to marshal her strength, trying to speak. She could manage only one or two slow, painful words at a time, but she held on long enough to deliver them.

She told him to be strong and brave.

She told him to be smart, like their father.

He needed to understand how happy it made her knowing he would carry all their memories forward.

And he had to absolutely, above all else… survive.

Tears fell down Holt’s face as he listened.

Emily asked him to promise. Promise he would do everything she asked. Holt forced himself to nod, but it wasn’t enough. She made Holt say the words, made him tell her that he promised. Promised to survive. Survival had to be everything for him now, or what she had done here might all be for nothing.

Holt found his voice, promised her, said it with as much conviction as he could.

At his words, Emily nodded and finally relaxed.

Holt watched her body tense and shake one last time, and then her muscles all released. Emily deflated into the grass underneath her, went so completely still, she could have been sleeping.

Holt said her name. She didn’t respond.

He said it again, touched her arm, tried to wake her. But she didn’t stir.

Holt pulled himself up, looked at her eyes. They stared blankly up at the sky.

They were solid black now, and Holt knew what that meant.

He heard a sudden wail of anguish release from some far-off place, and it took a moment for him to realize it had come from him. Everything was like a dream now, blurry and slow motion, and he looked at the world through a haze.

In it, he watched his sister rise from the grass to stand above him. Saw her turn and look to the north with that same mindless, black stare.

Instinctively more than anything else, he reached for his sister’s hand. But it hung limp there, the fingers did not close around his.

A moment more, and she began to walk toward something just visible in the far distance. Something that towered into the sky, black and vile and ominous. The Assembly Presidium.

Holt held on to Emily’s hand, willing her to stop and turn around and be herself again, but she didn’t. Her arm trailed limply behind her as she moved… and then fell loose when her hand tore away from his.

She kept walking, one slow step after another, moving farther and farther away.

The world shifted and rocked, and Holt realized he must have fallen to his knees. He couldn’t feel the tears running down his face. He didn’t feel anything anymore.

He stared after Emily for almost an hour, watching her gradually become smaller and smaller in the distance, until she finally disappeared somewhere between the horizon and the sky.

Not once, in all that time, did she look back.

HOLT PUSHED THROUGH THE TIGHTLY crammed mass of people in the Scorewall room, who were all staring up at the gigantic wall of polished black rock filled with its insane, arbitrary, mathematical nonsense. The survivors here stood shoulder to shoulder, and it took a lot of effort to move through them.

He looked to where he was headed: a platform built against the far wall, maybe fifteen feet off the floor, which stretched the length of the giant room. It was divided into sections by walls of polished wood or gleaming metal, or hanging sheets of colored glass, and hanging over each section were the giant, colorful banners of the Midnight City factions. Some he’d come to recognize. The horned, laughing face of the Gray Devils, the red wolf’s head of Los Lobos. Neither of those platforms were populated right now, which was a good thing, seeing as how they were both looking for him.

There were other banners, too, of course: a yellow sword, a black scorpion, a white Celtic cross, and others, twelve in all. Most were filled with a dozen or more people, watching the action unfold on the Scorewall. Dedicated runners for the factions dashed back and forth between the platform and the Scorekeepers, exchanging and bartering information, watching the Point totals rise and fall.

Holt studied each banner until he found the one Mira had described. Orange with a red shield sewn brilliantly into it. He saw people there, each wearing some piece of clothing that was orange, watching the action in the room below them.

It took a few more minutes to push through and reach the platform, and when he did, two large orange-clad youths moved to block him.

“Your business?” one of them asked coldly.

Holt reminded himself what Mira had told him about the Lost Knights. It was a faction without an official leader. No one had any doubt there actually was a leader, but whoever it was didn’t make his or her identity known. On the Scorewall, the leader’s Points were listed under the name Rebus, and that was all anyone knew. Direct audiences with Rebus were generally refused, so as to preserve the figure’s anonymity. But that didn’t mean there weren’t ways to communicate with him or her.

“I’m here to speak with the platform’s emissary,” Holt said, exactly as Mira had told him. The response he got was the expected one.

“The emissary’s too busy to waste time speaking with an Outsider who has no Points,” the other guard said with contempt. “Turn around and start walking.”

“I have information the emissary will want to hear.”

One of the guards raised an eyebrow. “And what information is that?”

“The location of Mira Toombs,” Holt said, holding the boy’s gaze.

The two guards looked at each other, then turned back to Holt. “Wait here a second.” One of them moved to the platform, where a small wooden tray hung from a rope tied to the very top. Next to it was a notepad and a pencil. He wrote something, tore a page loose, set it in the tray, and then nodded to a girl at the very top. She reeled it up and disappeared out of sight on the platform above.

The response took a few minutes to come, but when it did, it wasn’t verbal. A large drawbridge-like ramp that was stained in various shades of orange began to lower from the top of the platform. When it did, the guards motioned Holt past, and he climbed the ramp. As he did, he noticed the factions up and down the platform all watching him with curious looks, trying to determine who he was and how he might be valuable.

Holt crested the ramp and stepped onto the Lost Knights’ platform. It was more extravagantly appointed than it looked from the floor. Telescopes of different types were installed along the railing, probably for examining specific parts of the Scorewall, which loomed above them. An orange rug filled the space, and the platform contained two sitting areas, a work area, and a large, cushioned, elevated chair that looked almost like a throne. Behind it all was an orange curtain, covering something he couldn’t see.