J. Mitchell - Midnight City

Holt groaned as he started pulling himself inside the lift…

…and then another figure flew through its door and slammed into the back wall.

Cesar.

He and Holt glared at each other, and then the Lobos leader sneered and lunged toward him as the wind howled everywhere outside. It was so powerful, the lifts began to slide back on the platform toward the sheer drop on the other side of the ledge.

Cesar clamped on to Holt’s fingers, started prying them loose from the edge.

As Holt struggled with him, he looked the boy in the eyes. “Al mal paso, darle prisa,” Holt said. “Take bad steps quickly.” Cesar hesitated. Holt smiled. “It’s good advice.” He grabbed Cesar by the hair and yanked as hard as he could. The wind blowing through the cavern filled the lift enough to make the kid buoyant, and he flew through the door and fell screaming into the long drop below.

Holt pulled himself into the lift as it bucked and spun in the tumultuous winds. And then, finally, it all died down. The lifts slid back to their original position. The angry howl silenced. Everything was eerily quiet.

Holt and Mira crawled weakly out. There were six or seven Lobos and Gray Devils warriors left, but they were too exhausted for the moment to do anything.

Holt instinctively looked up to find—

Max rammed into him, licking and rubbing against him, and Holt sighed in relief. Zoey was running up behind the dog. “Holt!” she yelled.

Holt and Mira pushed to their feet, grabbed Zoey, and ran, heading for the tunnel back to the Shrine. Holt stared at it with intensity. They could make it if they hurried. They could make it….

But behind them, what was left of the factions began to stir.

HOLT AND THE OTHERS DASHED into Midnight City’s main hall, the haphazard buildings climbing up the black rock above them on either side of the underground street. They moved fast toward the Lost Knights compound, which lay on the northern end, on the other side of the Scorewall. The secret exit was their only hope of escape, and time was running out.

People all around Holt gasped as they recognized Mira. Holt kept moving, but the crowd thickened and pushed in on them, everyone trying to get a look or stopping to point, hundreds of them. It was getting tough to shove through it all.

“Move it, come on!” Holt yelled as he pushed to the front, trying to clear a path, taking Mira and Zoey’s hands. He was frantic, could feel their window of opportunity closing, in spite of all they had achieved. Getting Mira’s artifact. Escaping the Vault. Most important, Zoey had apparently found what she had come here for. Maybe she could heal Mira now, Holt thought with hope. Maybe everything was finally in his grasp. But the only way to find out was to get out of this cursed place.

His stomach twisted into knots as it always did when a goal was in sight. The last few steps were always the most precarious, the most dangerous, the point at which everything could be lost. And the feeling of Mira’s hand in his reminded him that he, for better or worse, once again had a lot to lose. The thought spurred him onward, and he pushed through all the people, dragging Mira and Zoey with him.

They were almost through. They were almost—

Shouts rang out from behind them. “Stop them! Stop Mira Toombs!”

Holt and Mira looked behind them… and saw dozens of kids dressed in gray and white pushing after them. At the front ran Lenore, a purplish red bruise on the side of her head where Holt had knocked her out. She glared at Mira with burning eyes. The rage that radiated from Lenore was enough to easily part the crowd before her. He felt Mira’s grip on his hand tighten.

“Out of the way!” Holt yelled in despair, turning back to the crowd in front of him. They were almost through ….

But the crowd reached for them. Max barked viciously, lunging and driving them back, but it wasn’t enough.

“Holt!” Zoey yelled in fear behind him. But there was nothing he could do.

Holt felt dozens of hands on him, grabbing and tearing and punching. He felt searing pain in his head and ribs, and most horribly, he felt Mira and Zoey’s hands ripped out of his, heard their screams over the yells of the Midnight City mob, heard Max growl as two kids kicked him out of sight.

Holt struggled, but there were just too many hands on him, too many people to fight off.

The crowd calmed and suddenly parted, and the Gray Devils pushed into view, led by Lenore. Holt saw Zoey and Mira, both struggling, held in place by groups of kids, hands clamped over their mouths.

Lenore moved forward with a slow, predatory walk, her eyes holding Mira’s. Mira, for her part, glared right back, refusing to look away. When Lenore reached her, she smiled thinly, gently ran her hand down Mira’s cheek.

“My Mira,” Lenore said softly. Mira tried to squirm away, but the kids all around her held her in place. “I don’t think I can ever hurt you like you’ve hurt me.” The gentle, almost tender caress of Lenore’s hand shifted as she slapped Mira hard across the face. “But I’m going to try all the same.”

Fury roared to life inside Holt. “Touch her again, bitch, and I’ll kill you!” he shouted at Lenore maliciously, pulling and struggling against his captors. His anger was so intense, he didn’t even notice the first in a series of punches that finally got him in line.

Lenore never looked at him. “I’ll touch her, Outsider,” the woman replied drawing a knife from her belt in a smooth, patient gesture. The blade gleamed, as it moved toward Mira’s face. “Touch her, and much more. Make him keep his eyes on this. I want him to watch.”

Mira screamed a muffled cry, pulled against the hands holding her. Holt struggled violently, but it was no use. The hands on him were too strong. The knife approached…

…and then the entire cavern shook.

Debris and rock fell from the ceiling and the buildings, crashing to the ground and spraying splinters of sediment. From outside came a strange rumbling.

Everyone in the hall, even Lenore, looked up in alarm.

The room shook again, more intense this time, and sounds filtered in from the surface. Deep, percussive booms that could be only one thing: explosions.

Alarm horns began sounding throughout the city, echoing loudly against the thick cavern walls.

The crowd went stock-still, their eyes wide. Whatever those horns meant, very few had ever heard them, and judging by the looks on their faces, they had never expected to.

But Holt didn’t need to know what the horns meant. He’d heard enough plasma explosions in his life to recognize an Assembly attack when one was happening.

The kids all around him panicked as the horns continued to sound. Holt felt the hands holding him disappear. As everyone fled one way or another.

In the chaos that consumed the huge room, Holt saw Lenore knocked backwards and away, disappearing into a crowd of stampeding people.

Holt hit the floor as Mira and Zoey dropped, too.

He moved for them, but now the crowd was a completely different obstacle. It wasn’t fixed in place anymore. Instead, it was spilling in a panic in every conceivable direction, and Holt yelled out as feet stepped on his arms and legs and chest.

He had to claw his way to his feet and push with all his strength against being swept away in the frothing, manic crowd.

“Holt!” he heard Zoey shout from somewhere up ahead, but everything had blended into a sea of desperate, running kids.

“Zoey!” he yelled back, trying to find her, trying to push toward her.

“Holt, here!” he heard her shout to his right, and he moved, punching and kicking his way through until he saw the little girl huddled on the floor, covering her head with her arms. He yanked her up onto his shoulders.