J. Mitchell - Midnight City

Along each side of the platform were small, open shacks full of chains, ropes, pulleys, cranks, and wheels, and Mira stopped in front of one.

She reached for a long, antique brass crank attached to huge spoked metal gears. Interestingly, each gear was marked at certain points with old, faded playing cards—clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds—and the gear threaded through a series of giant rusted chains. Mira turned the crank handle, and the gear spun with it, pulling up lengths of chain and winding them through pulleys and slots up above the shed. Outside on the platform, one of the lifts shook slightly as the tension of the chains rippled down to it.

As Mira turned the crank, the cards began to rotate on the surface of the gears. She kept cranking, loading more and more chain, until she finally saw the card she wanted: the six of clubs. She kept cranking until it was pointed straight up, above all the others, and then locked the wheel in place.

The first axis was set, but there were two more to go. And using the formula the Librarian had given her, she set the remaining ones. She pulled a long stretch of thick rope downward, lined with numbers in different colored paint, until a purple 8 appeared. More tension shook the lift outside. For the last axis, she moved over to where additional chain hung, and an assortment of metallic weights hung with it.

“Help me,” she said to Holt. “We need three hundred and twenty-five pounds.” Holt was clearly confused at what they were doing, but he helped anyway. They added weights in different increments—ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty—linking them into hooks on the chains’ surface, until it was the right amount. The chains didn’t move; they were locked over the breach with all the added weight, waiting to descend.

Mira and Holt stepped out of the shed and moved to the closest lift. It was not a quickly cobbled-together box of scrap wood; its pieces had been chosen from strong sources, blended together and rounded into soft curves, and polished and lacquered to a brilliant sheen. Mira opened the door to the closest one and stepped inside, feeling it tilt as her and Holt’s combined weight shifted it.

Inside was a small wooden panel with two large metallic handles. One was marked LOWER and the other RAISE. Mira looked at Holt as he shut the door behind them. “This can be a pretty wild ride,” she said.

Holt studied her soberly. “Yeah, that was my guess.”

Mira smiled and yanked the lever labeled LOWER down and back.

Outside the lift, the huge chains and weights they had just configured in the shed raced through their pulleys as the tension released. The lift lurched and they were flung off the platform and up into the air.

Mira felt gravity catch them as they moved not just upward, but also sideways. Looking up through the small window shaped into the ceiling of the lift, she and Holt saw the ropes and chains that suspended them from the grid-work on the ceiling shift through various metallic rails and tracks as the tension pulled them to a specific spot.

When they reached it, the lift swung to a halt, swaying precariously over the hundreds of feet of empty air between them and the rock floor below.

Holt pushed back against the wall, probably in an attempt to feel something solid and not think about the sheer drop underneath them. Mira held his gaze, finding his discomfort pretty cute, if she were to be honest about it.

“Going down,” she said with another smile…

…and then the lift plummeted at breakneck speed toward the dark of the Vault below them.

MAX WATCHED, chin on his paws, as Zoey rummaged through a collection of items on a desk and placed them one at a time back on the study area’s cabinets. They were all things she assumed were from the Strange Lands—pens, circuit boards, coins in plastic sleeves, springs, candles, spoons, doorknobs—and she watched as they all seemed to writhe and push away from one another, ever so slightly. Or was it a trick of the eye? Zoey couldn’t tell.

“You were supposed to organize them by color,” a stern, gravelly voice said behind her. Zoey turned and saw the Librarian watching her inquisitively, standing near the bottom of the teaching area, where the steps began.

She couldn’t read the old man as easily as she could other people. His emotions were weaker than everyone else’s, but not because he was without feeling. There were feelings there, but she guessed he was so in control of them, they never stood out. There had been only two times when she felt something from him, and both had been mixtures of sadness and apprehension, but so brief, she barely felt them at all. Zoey wasn’t sure if the mastery came from the old man’s age or from some facet of his personality. Either way, that restraint wasn’t something she experienced often.

“I was lining them up by how strong they felt,” Zoey replied, holding the old man’s gaze. She watched as his eyes thinned, and there, right then, she felt something from him: a stir of emotion, surprise mainly, but it fell away almost as quickly as it came.

“And how do you know which are ‘stronger,’ little one?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I just… feel it, sort of.”

The Librarian studied her even more closely now, and she felt the weight of his scrutiny on her. It wasn’t pleasant—she felt like one of his artifacts, like something to be analyzed and cataloged.

“Your name, girl,” the Librarian said bluntly after a moment. “Tell it to me.”

“Zoey,” she answered simply.

“Zoey,” he said in a slow, musing tone, as if deciding whether it truly fit her. “There is an air about you. A vibration almost, like a static charge. It’s something I encounter frequently, but never in people.”

Zoey had no idea what he was talking about, but it was interesting. “Where do you notice it, sir?”

He held her gaze pointedly. “Only in artifacts from the Strange Lands.” There seemed to be some implication in the statement, some musing, but she had no idea what it was. But before she could ask, he spoke again. “Where are you from?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Where did you grow up, I mean,” he pressed.

“I don’t know,” she said again in a lower voice, reaching for more of the artifacts. This subject wasn’t something she liked talking about. “I don’t have many memories.”

The Librarian contemplated her even more intently. There was a long pause before he finally spoke again. “You sensed the artifacts’ power as you touched them. I’d bet you can sense other things, too, can’t you, Zoey?” he asked.

Zoey went still at the question, hands holding the artifacts she was about to stack, and Max’s ears perked up curiously. No one had ever guessed her ability, not from simple observation, and she was suddenly uneasy about the old man. If he was that perceptive, who knew what else he might be able to deduce.

“Emotions, thoughts, memories?” the Librarian kept on. “Which is it?”

Zoey said nothing, just stared at the old man at the bottom of the steps.

“You can tell me, girl. There’s no danger in it,” he told her. “You can tell me if anyone, I assure you.”

Zoey wasn’t convinced. Should she tell him? He already seemed to know the truth, but was it smart to confirm it? What would Mira or Holt say? Mira trusted the old man—Zoey could sense that much—and there was even some affection there, but she was also cautious around him.

Suddenly, she felt a stirring in the back of her mind. The feelings blossoming and coming to life, the ones that had guided her before. When she noticed them this time, the first thing she felt was anger. Why now? Why hadn’t they appeared earlier, when she could have saved Mira from the Tone?