Midnight City (31 page)

Mira stared back at the giant of a boy, her fists clenching at her sides. “Pretty clear, yeah.” Mira looked at Zoey. “Zoey, it’s gonna be all right, I promise. Okay?”

Zoey continued to struggle in spite of the assurances.

“Mira, don’t do this…,” Holt said, then groaned as Marcus’s hand dug into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Holt,” Mira said. When he looked up, her eyes were on him again. They were filled with a steady resolution; she had her plan, and she was sticking with it. But there was guilt there, too. “This is my problem … and my mistake. And no one else is getting hurt trying to fix it.” She reached out and gently touched his hand. “But thank you for coming this far with me.”

Holt felt her hand on his a moment more, then watched as she leapt through the opening in the floor down to the Gray Devils cavern below and disappeared.

34.
PHOTOGRAPH

MIRA FELL FROM THE HOLE
and hit the floor running, leaving it quickly behind. It was funny. When she had lived here, she walked past that opening every day, but never really gave it much thought. Just another cramped, impassable chute that wound off into the unmapped areas of the caverns, or so she’d believed. She wondered how many times a Lobo spy had watched her walk right under it.

Mira saw she was in the tunnel to the Gray Devils residence hall, just like Marcus had said. Illuminators floated near the ceiling, providing light, and a few smaller rooms branched off it. They were all sealed with doors brought in from the outside and framed into the openings. They were also all locked, Mira knew.

She dug through her pack and pulled out a key chain loaded with about a dozen small keys of different colors and shapes, each marked with the δ symbol. They were Skeleton Keys, major artifacts from the Strange Lands’ deeper parts, and they would open any lock that took a key. Not every key from the Strange Lands was a Skeleton Key—only certain ones developed the right properties, and Mira usually found only one for every eight she brought out. They were rare, very valuable, and this key ring, which held about half a dozen, represented her entire collection.

She plucked two of them from the ring as she moved. Ahead of her was one of the doors, inset into the wall. When she reached it, she shoved one of the Skeleton Keys into the lock. There was a spark and a hum, and Mira could feel the door handle vibrate slightly in her hand.

She twisted the key and, with a flash, the door clicked as it unlocked. Mira quickly opened the door, stepping into the small, rocky room beyond. When she removed the key, there was another flash … and the entire thing crumbled into a palmful of metallic shavings and dust in her fingers. Mira brushed off the residue as she stepped inside the room and shut the door behind her. Skeleton Keys could be used only once.

It was a supply closet, as she’d expected, lined with cabinets full of all kinds of things: paint cans, scrap metal, boxes of nails, tools, car batteries, thick chain, rope and pulleys, pieces of plywood. Mira set her pack down amid it all, and quickly dug through it, removing two dimes, a small piece of a mirror, and a glass vial.

Mira assembled the components and hurriedly wrapped them with her ever-dwindling supply of duct tape. As she did, a crackling charged the air, and a light humming sound built and faded away.

Mira examined at the artifact, another Shroud, but this one wasn’t for her. She just hoped he remembered what she’d told him. She set the newly Interfused Shroud on her pack and tossed the ring of Skeleton Keys on top of them as well.

She left the closet, leaving the door unlocked. From a pocket, she pulled out a line of red string and quickly wrapped it around the door handle. It didn’t stand out completely. If you weren’t looking for it, you probably wouldn’t notice it.

The hallway was still empty and quiet, and she moved down it again, heading for where the tunnel ended and widened into a new room. As she approached it, a deep sound, like constantly rumbling thunder, grew louder the farther she went.

The Gray Devils residence hall was a massive, cylindrical cavern that rose hundreds of feet straight up. There were ledges and indentations all through the rough, black rock walls, and built out from them were dozens of platforms made of wood and sheet metal, bolted and hung with rope and chains into the sides of the cavern.

Each platform was the personal space of a Gray Devils member, and each person made the space their own, customizing it with different furnishings and possessions. They were painted shades of gray and white, but most had additional drawings or writing underneath them, so they were visible from the ground. Seen from below, it made a kaleidoscope of color and personality that ascended far above to the cavern ceiling. Ladders climbed up the walls, and precarious bridges stretched between them all the way to the top.

Large Illuminators floated in the air at the top of the ceiling, bathing everything in dim light, while even smaller ones had been strung between the ceiling’s stalactites. Hanging down from that same ceiling were two huge banners, each emblazoned with the smiling devil logo. And between them, at the very top of the cavern, was something like a balcony, where light from candles and lanterns gleamed in the dark. It was Lenore’s residence, and Mira stared up at it warily before turning to examine the room’s most prominent feature.

A large underground waterfall burst out of the cavern wall far above and tumbled downward, crashing into a pool at the far end of the room, draining away through some hidden underwater tunnel system. A grid of latticework and sheet metal hung next to it, attached to mechanical arms, but there was no indication what they were used for.

Large blue Illuminators were installed behind the tumbling water, and the light that shone through made the falls glow like sapphire in the dark. It was an impressive sight, and Mira paused to admire it. She had built and installed those blue Illuminators herself, a project that won her enough Points to finally become the top Freebooter in Midnight City, and she smiled as she looked at it.

Mira had forgotten how loud the falls were, and marveled that she had ever been able to sleep in here. But she’d gotten used to it. Eventually, you stopped hearing it altogether.

The good news was, because the waterfall was so loud, she didn’t have to worry about being quiet. She did, however, have to worry about being seen.

Mira ducked into the shadows of the closest wall and looked upward at the multitude of colorful platforms above her. Her eye moved to two of them, on the fifth level, close to each other, and both of them were dark and lifeless.

Her platform, and a few down to the left, Ben’s. Two places where, in another life, she’d made a lot of memories. Seeing them again, dark and without any indication of life, caused a hollow ache in her stomach. Going back to how things were wasn’t why she’d come here, Mira reminded herself. There was
no
going back.

Mira looked away, found the nearest ladder, and started scaling it. It was a wooden one, and pretty sturdy, but she could see it went only as far as the third level. From there, she’d have to take one of the bridges to a new ladder.

She kept climbing, and passed by one of the lower-level platforms. She knew this one: it belonged to a boy named Daniel who led salvage runs into the ruins on the surface and always came back with nice items, a few of which she had traded for. His cavern wall was still decorated with dozens of faded postcards from the old world, some of them with writing on them. They were all from city ruins he had explored, Mira knew. Daniel always had a rule that he first found a postcard as a memento before doing any treasure hunting. It was bad luck otherwise.

She had liked Daniel; he was always nice to her. Now if he saw her, he would most surely raise an alarm and help run her down. Funny how quickly things could change here.

Mira continued upward and reached the end of the ladder, where it connected to one of the cavern’s many rope bridges. The thing swayed precariously when she climbed onto it. It was the same for all the bridges here, and Mira had never gotten comfortable crossing them. They always seemed on the verge of falling apart or tipping you off, but as far as she could recall, none of them had ever collapsed, a testament to just how solid they really were, in spite of their appearance.

She moved over the bridge as quickly as she dared, holding on to the rope railings that ran along the sides. She kept an eye on the dark platforms as she went, looking for any sign of movement. From a few came the flickering light of candles or lanterns, but they were all mostly dark, which is what she’d counted on. From a distance, anyone looking would assume she was just another faction member heading to bed. That was the plan, at least.

Ahead of her, the bridge connected with two other ladders that moved diagonally to a far wall. Mira took the one she needed and started climbing, moving past the fourth level and stopping at the fifth.

Her quarters were dark and empty, as she’d expected, and Mira jumped silently off the ladder onto her platform and ducked out of sight.

Everything was, for the most part, exactly as she’d left it, though somewhat dusty now. Her hammock and blankets still hung between the cavern wall and a pole she’d attached to the floor in the middle of the platform. A row of blue metal shelves were at the far end, about half empty, which wasn’t surprising. It was where Mira had kept her favorite major artifacts, which would all have definitely been stolen by now.

There were still a few things left, though. Candles, a tea jar, old books, a binder of Strange Lands maps, a jewelry box. A Polaroid picture was glued to the wall behind the shelf, and a small lump of jagged, purple crystals sat in the middle. On the bottom shelf was a small, ornate wooden chest made of a flowing combination of cherrywood and gold and silver.

The crystal was a remnant of a lightning strike from one of the numerous antimatter storms that hovered over the Strange Lands’ fourth ring. In spite of how dangerous it could be, Mira had always thought the antimatter lightning was beautiful. It ripped the air in a whole range of colors, and wherever it hit, its flash incinerated the ground into crystal of the same color. As a result, navigating through the fourth ring was like traversing a neon-colored crystalline maze. The first time she’d explored it, she brought back this chunk as a keepsake.

The Polaroid was even more meaningful: a picture she’d snapped at the edge of the fourth ring, the farthest she had ever gone in. The picture showed huge wavering bands of color filling the sky over a horizon of city ruins, like a borealis. Silhouetted against them were two massive blurry wedges of darkness, spinning powerfully in the distance. They were tornadoes, but not like any in the normal world—six times as big and made entirely of swirling dark energy. They were isolated to the core, the deepest, most deadly part of the Strange Lands, and whatever they touched, they absorbed into themselves, ripping it from existence. She had taken this picture the morning before she and Ben returned home, and she remembered having to pull him away. Exploring the core was his obsession, and it hadn’t been easy to make him leave.

She studied the entire platform with a mixture of emotions. It felt so comfortable here, and part of her expected Ben to swing down onto her dais as he always used to. But the rest of her knew things had changed beyond repair, and that those times were gone forever.

Mira focused on each individual object in her old space, wondering which one Lenore had chosen. It would be something meaningful, something Mira would absolutely take, but there were several choices that fit that criteria.

Mira hesitated. She was about to move past the point of no return, and by doing so, she would put others at risk—people she cared about, maybe even loved. She could always leave now, go back to the secret tunnel, forfeit the plutonium she had worked so hard to get. But this was what she’d come here for. And she had to go forward. She had to make things right … as much as she could.

Mira exhaled and moved for the small chest at the bottom of the shelf. She pulled out the second Skeleton Key and shoved it into the lock. The lock was made for a much smaller key, but that made no difference. When the artifact hit the keyhole, there was a spark and a hum, and it somehow reorganized its shape to fit inside the smaller lock.

She turned the key, and it flashed as it unlocked the chest, then dissolved away into a small pile of metallic dust that fell through her fingers onto the floor when she removed it.

Mira lifted the top half of the chest with trepidation … but nothing unexpected happened; it simply opened. Inside rested a tarnished but well taken care of brass stopwatch, a circular mirror with a frame of silver, and a magnet about the size of a silver dollar attached to a very long length of gold chain.

Mira smiled at the sight of her tools. With just these three items, she could survive 80 percent of Strange Lands anomalies, and these specific ones had gotten her all the way to the fourth ring. When she had escaped Midnight City, there wasn’t enough time to grab these on her way out, and she had always regretted it.

Mira reached into the chest and pulled the items out one at a time. Each time, she expected the worst … but still, nothing alarming happened.

Mira contemplated the tools in her hand, thinking. If it wasn’t them, then what was it?

She stuffed the three items in a pocket. It was good to feel their familiar weight and shape again. Their absence had felt like she was missing an arm or a hand.

Mira reached up and touched the purple crystal remnant on the shelf. Nothing. She touched the Polaroid. Nothing. She ran her hands over the books, picked up her old tea jar, touched the candles one at a time.

Nothing.

Mira was becoming worried. Had she been wrong about everything? If so, then her plan wasn’t going to work … and she was in a lot of trouble.

Quickly, she looked around the rest of her space. There wasn’t much else; she had always kept it fairly minimal. There was just the hammock, and …

Mira stopped, staring at something on the cavern wall behind the hammock. A small, faded, black-and-white photograph. Slowly, Mira stood up and moved to the item, staring down at it with a haunted look. It was a picture of a man leaning against an old station wagon, holding a small girl on his shoulders. Behind them, the ocean stretched to the horizon.