J. Mitchell - Midnight City

Holt stepped to the telescope and peered through. It was pointed at a specific block on the Scorewall’s left side, which was full of titles, most beginning with OS. The one dead center in view was OS107 and there was a number written next to it.

872.

“OS one-oh-seven?” Holt asked skeptically.

“ OS stands for ‘Outsider,’” Amelia replied evenly as she reached up for a thin red rope hanging from the ceiling. When she pulled it, a small bell rang loudly on the platform outside the curtain. “And one-oh-seven is the number of the Outsider helping Mira Toombs.”

A boy, clad in orange, entered through the curtain and nodded to Amelia expectantly, but the little girl’s eyes remained on Holt.

“There’s a rumor that my faction has, in its compound, a secret exit out of Midnight City.” Amelia picked up a small notepad and pencil next to the telescope and began writing on it. “You want to trade the plutonium to use that exit.”

“Yes,” Holt said.

“The good news is the exit’s real. The bad is that it’s going to cost you three things. The first of which is your full name.”

Holt studied her uneasily, saying nothing.

Amelia smiled again. “It’s a small price to pay. Tiny, really. Especially for someone who isn’t at all interested in our games.”

Holt frowned. He didn’t see that he had much choice, but he wasn’t sure he was going to like where this went. “Holt Hawkins,” he said.

Amelia wrote something else on the notepad, then ripped a sheet loose, handed it to the boy waiting by the curtain. He analyzed it quietly, then disappeared back through the orange fabric. Holt didn’t know what to make of it, but Amelia’s next words quickly made him forget.

“There are two more prices for the use of our exit, and neither of them is your plutonium,” she said, and Holt’s eyes widened in surprise. “It is valuable, but only if you have the drive to use it, and I’m afraid I don’t. Entering the Severed Tower isn’t something that interests me. Points, however, do.”

Holt tried to contain his shock. Mira had never even mentioned the possibility of the Lost Knights not wanting the plutonium. To her, it was the most priceless substance on the planet, and the reaction of every person he had ever seen had been nothing less than lustful.

“You… don’t want the plutonium?” Holt asked.

“No,” she said. “I first want the sum total of all Points you earn here, an amount I have a feeling will be very large. In one day, you’ve acquired almost a thousand. It’s impressive.”

“Fine,” Holt said with distaste. “You’re welcome to them. What else?”

“It’s called the Chance Generator,” she said, and her voice was wistful as she said the words. “A major artifact from the Strange Lands that belongs to the Crossmen. They keep it in the Artifact Vault.”

“Which is what?”

“You really are an Outsider, aren’t you? The Artifact Vault is a storage cavern for powerful artifacts that their owners want to keep secure, or which are too dangerous to remain in the city. Only Freebooters can get past its main gate, and once inside, the Librarian protects everything else.”

“And the Librarian would be who?” Holt asked with thinly veiled annoyance. He was starting to lose his patience with this whole thing.

“The fool keeper of the Vault,” Amelia replied. “A moron who took it upon himself to stand watch over all that power below the city. He rarely ventures outside of his lab and his school, but don’t let his appearance fool you. He’s cunning… and dangerous. Even the faction leaders won’t cross him willingly.”

This was sounding less and less like a good trade. “Well, that’s just great. Enlighten me—what makes you think we can pull all this off?”

“Because you have no other choice, Holt Hawkins,” Amelia said. The little girl looked away from him and peered through the telescope again. When she pulled away, she was smiling. “Look.”

Holt frowned but did as she said, bending over and peering through the lens.

He saw the same section as before, but now one of the Scorekeepers filled the frame, hovering over the black wall. Holt saw that the title OS107 had been erased, replaced with something else. He felt a chill run down his back.

It now read HOLT HAWKINS. And the number next to it had grown to 945.

Holt looked up at Amelia, more than a little disturbed.

“You see, Holt?” she asked with amusement and malevolence. “Everyone in Midnight City plays our games. Whether they want to or not.”

Holt just stared at the little girl silently.

“Bring me the Chance Generator,” she continued. “Mira will know where to find it. Do that… and you escape Lenore’s grasp.”

Holt frowned at her, but knew there was no real choice. Maybe it would have been better to head east when he had the chance after all.

HOLT FOLLOWED MIRA through an ever-tightening tunnel that stretched and wound out of sight ahead. While the ceiling mercifully stayed the same height, the walls had pushed in to the point where they had to sidle through the cavern.

“Glad I skipped breakfast,” Holt remarked, wiggling through a particularly tight section. Behind him, Max and Zoey followed, annoyed at the slow progress. They were a lot smaller, after all.

“You’re sure she said the Chance Generator?” Mira asked. She’d been only slightly surprised that the Lost Knights hadn’t wanted the plutonium; they marched to a different beat, apparently. But their desire for the Chance Generator was something she just couldn’t seem to understand.

“Yeah,” Holt answered. “What is it, anyway?”

“It’s a major artifact, a scary one, probably fourth ring, maybe even the core. A Crossmen Freebooter brought it out, I don’t know who.” Mira said, “Basically, it makes a sphere of ‘good luck’ around the user.”

“Good luck?” Holt asked.

“Mmm-hmm. Once you’re inside the influence sphere, you become… incredibly lucky—I don’t how else to put it. Things that normally might go bad for you, go right instead. And they go right over and over again.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Zoey piped up from the end of the line.

“Yeah, I gotta agree,” Holt replied, pushing past another tight intersection. “It not only doesn’t sound bad, it sounds valuable.”

“It isn’t,” Mira said. “It’s horribly dangerous. In order to increase your luck, it reduces someone else’s to the same degree. Say it lets you win at dice. Someone else nearby loses. Maybe it saves you from a falling rock? Someone else has an accident.”

“And what if someone tries to kill you?” Holt asked, but he had a pretty good idea what the answer was.

“You live… someone else dies,” she answered. “The more you use it, the more negative effects it has to generate to keep your own luck going. And the more dependent on it you grow, the more it becomes like a paranoid addiction. You don’t feel comfortable doing anything without the artifact. The only good thing about it is that it can be used only so many times a day before it runs out of power and has to recharge. It’s been kept in the Vault for years by the Crossmen. They’re terrified of it, never use it, only hold on to it for Points. If it were me, I wouldn’t even do that much. I’d send it back to the Strange Lands to be destroyed.”

“Seems like a lot of things that come out of that place need to be destroyed,” Holt said pointedly. Mira opened her mouth to retort… then shut it. What was there to say? Most artifacts were scary, and they did scary things. Including the one that had gotten her banished from Midnight City, the one she’d made herself….