The Severed Tower (24 page)

Mira unslung her Lexicon and set it on the floor. When she unlocked it she opened it to the artifact combination section and flipped through the pages there. They were alphabetical.
Aleve. Ambient. Amplifier. Android. Anr—

Amplifier.
She open the pages and studied them, and at the top was a summary.

Name:
Amplifier.

Effect:
Amplification of element: air, water, heat, cold, electricity, possibly others.

Effect Time:
Immediate.

Area of Effect:
Must physically touch element.

Power Effect:
Power source dependent; larger coins
=
more amplification. See Note 2.

Duration:
Power source dependent; larger coins
=
longer duration. See Note 1.

Multitier?:
Yes. Two tiers.

Underneath the summary were diagrams and charts, notes Mira had made about the combination’s use with different elements. But she ignored all that, looking down to the list of ingredients at the bottom, and then compared it to what she had in her pack.

She still needed a Focuser for the first tier, as well as a vial of water, and, ideally, a nine-volt battery.

Mira quickly scanned the stuff on the shelves. There was a box of drywall screws. One of those would be fine for the first-tier Focuser. She was hoping for something spherical, and she remembered the pool balls in the rec room, but that meant going back into the hall with those things.

No, a screw would have to work. She also saw a box of Duracell D batteries.

D batteries could work in a pinch. They produced almost the same effect—but the phasing would be off, which meant it would be more powerful. That wasn’t going to matter, either—more power in this case was probably better.

But what about the vial of water? That was going to be tougher.

Mira studied each shelf but saw nothing. She looked to the floor piled with boxes of different things, and shone her light on them, flipping through each one.

After the fourth one she found something. A case of tonic water, all in separate glass bottles. Would tonic work, Mira wondered? Did it have to be plain water? She’d never researched it, she didn’t know.

What other choice was there?

Mira sat her pack down and started rummaging through it. She pulled out a toothbrush and a tube of some kind of paste, as well as the other components she would need for the combination. She opened and squeezed the tube, and a thick, gray substance squirted out onto the brush. She quickly started spreading it on the drywall screws in the box.

“What’s that stuff?” Ravan asked.

“Ever get bubble gum in your hair as a kid?” Mira asked back. “What did your mom do?”

“My mom was too drunk most the time to do much of anything, but I think you mean peanut butter. Spreading it in the hair loosens the gum.”

Mira nodded. “This works the same way. We call it Paste, it’s a mix of silicone, magnet shavings, and mercury. It separates artifacts from each other, loosens the molecular bonds between them and whatever they’re fused to. It’s how we get artifacts loose.”

As Mira spread the paste over the screws they sparked and sizzled, vibrating, pulling loose. She reached in with her fingers and worked one of them free. She smiled. They might get out of this yet.

The door rattled behind Mira. She spun, saw the handle turning and raised her light at it.

The rattling stopped.

Ravan was slouched against the wall, staring off in a daze.

“Ravan!” Mira shouted. It snapped the girl out of it, and she raised her flashlight again. Mira glared at her. “You have to stay
awake
or we’re both dead! The only reason we have a shot is because there’s two of us—we can watch both directions.”

“It’s so hard…” Ravan said, blinking her eyes, trying to focus.

“Talk to me, then,” Mira said. “It’ll help.”

“About what? I don’t got any gossip to share.”

“I don’t know. Tell me your story.” It was the only thing Mira could think of. “Tell me who you were before the invasion.”

Ravan shook her head angrily. “Screw that. Everyone has stories. I’m tired of hearing them. It doesn’t matter who you used to be.”

“Fine. You pick the topic. But
talk.
”

“Fear,” Ravan answered. “Nothing keeps you more focused than fear. It’s the most useful emotion. More than pain, even.”

“You must be a blast at parties.” Mira turned back to the artifacts on the shelf—but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember which one she needed to—

The battery! Right.

She started working on one inside its box with the Paste, loosening it, watching the sparks as she did, using them to guide her. “So tell me what you’re afraid of then.”

“Dying alone,” Ravan simply said.

Mira laughed at the answer. “Well, you beat that one. If we’re going to die, it’ll be together.” Mira burned loose one of the D batteries and grabbed it, set it on the floor with the screw. Then she turned to the case of tonic water, started working on it next. “Is that it? Just dying alone?”

“No. Dying and not … earning it.”

Mira’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Means…” Ravan didn’t finish; just sat blinking, trying to think.

“
Ravan,
” Mira said louder. “What does that
mean?
”

“It means … I’ve seen the Tone take kids worth ten of me. But, I’m still here, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why
me
and not
them
. All I know is, whatever the reason, I don’t want to waste the extra time I got. And I’m scared I might.” Mira felt the girl’s attention shift to her for just a moment. “I mean, doesn’t that bother
you
?”

The truth was, Mira hadn’t always been Heedless. Her answer would be a lot different. But before she could reply, her head filled with dizziness and the components spilled from her hands. She tried to reach for …

What was she reaching for again? Something. Something important …

“
Hey!
” Ravan yelled at her.

Mira focused, remembering what she was doing. She grabbed the components, arranged them on the ground. God, it would feel so much better to just shut her eyes—but she couldn’t. She had to keep going.

“Make the stupid artifact,” Ravan told her. “Talk. Tell me yours. Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

Even in spite of the dizziness, the answer came to Mira’s mind easily, but was it really something she wanted to share with
Ravan?
She hadn’t talked about it with anyone, not even Holt; she’d kept it bottled up inside, and it was starting to ache there. But maybe Ravan was the perfect person to confide in. She didn’t care about Mira one way or another. Plus, they were probably going to die, anyway.

“I’m scared of failing,” Mira said. It was strange to hear the words. A simple sentence that broke down a host of complicated emotions into its most basic idea. It hurt to hear them.

Ravan, however, scoffed. “That’s a softball answer. Everybody’s scared of that.”

“No. I mean failing people I care about. That scares me more than anything.”

Mira finished the first tier, wrapped it in duct tape from her pack, then broke the bottle of water against the concrete floor.

When she did, there was a bright spark and a hum, like something electrical powering up.

A rippling sphere of some kind of blue substance formed over and wrapped around the artifact. It was like a shell of water, only petrified and hard. Mira picked it up. It was cold in her hand.

“Failing who?” Ravan asked her.

Mira tried to focus, to think … “Holt and Zoey. I promised them I’d get them to the Severed Tower. They’re relying on me, but I know I’m not good enough. I’m going to fail, and when I do, they’re going to die. They’re going to die and it will be my fault.” There it was: the truth. Spoken out loud.

Ravan was silent a moment. “The quickest way to screw something up is to believe that’s what you’re going to do,” she said. “You don’t believe in yourself, you might as well quit.”

“It’s not that simple. I know my limits.”

“Limits are bullshit,” Ravan said. “They don’t exist except in your head. Something bad happened to you. Whatever it was, someone should have kicked your ass and got you back out there, but they didn’t. They did the opposite. They told you this stuff and filled your head with it, made you doubt yourself. Whoever that is, they ain’t your friend. I’ve had people like that around me my whole life: bastard father; pathetic mother; brothers in juvenile for stupid, senseless crap. I would have got out of there as soon as I could pass for eighteen, but the Assembly took care of that for me. I meet those kinds of people now—I shoot them.”

Mira laughed. “I’m not really sure that’s an option for me.”

The door to the room creaked open.

Ravan tried to kick it shut, but she was too weak now. She lost her balance and fell over, weakly raising her light back up. Shadows, horrible ones, massing and pulsing around the door, disappeared.

But her light was dimming, it was running out …

“Hurry,” Ravan whispered.

Mira put together the second tier, using the blue-shelled one as the Essence. Her hands shook as she did. It wasn’t just becoming impossible to think, it was getting hard to
move.

She wrapped the combination in duct tape. Another flash, another hum. It was ready.

Mira tried to stand—but failed. She fell to the ground, her head full of fog. She was losing herself.

“Mira…” Ravan’s voice was weak. Her light was dying. The door rattled.

Mira forced herself to move, crawling toward the sink. Above them the air vent into the closet shook as something tried to rip it off. Mira aimed her flashlight up at the vent. The shaking stopped.

There was a soft exhale from Ravan at the other end of the room, and Mira saw her slump to the floor, the flashlight fading away.

“Move.” Mira tried to yell, but the words came out feeble. “Move. Move!
Move!
” Each separate word was louder, carried more force, filled her with partial strength. “
Move!
”

The door creaked open. Things squirmed in the dark outside.

She grabbed the edge of the sink and pulled herself up until she was looking down into the grimy basin. She dropped the artifact inside and reached for the handle. If there was no water, then they were—

The faucet shook and groaned—and then dumped out a stream of blackish liquid.

The Amplifier flashed and water erupted from the basin like a volcano, surging powerfully into the air.

The pipes under the sink burst apart as the liquid was amplified by a factor of around a thousand. Mira was ripped off her feet and blown backward as the closet flooded in seconds.

The chill of it made her gasp, refocusing her dimming mind, and she heard Ravan do the same, as they were flung violently into the hallway, carried in a tidal wave of amplified murk that thrust them forward.

They burst into the control room. Ravan slammed into the reinforced windows, pinned there by the current. Mira was almost shot through the door into the launch tube, but she managed to grab on to the frame and hold on.

Ravan tried to push off the windows, but the wall of water was too strong.

“Grab my hand!” Mira shouted, reaching for Ravan. The pirate reached back, but the distance was too much. “Push
toward
me!”

Ravan groaned as she slowly slid across the windows, the water pressing into her. She reached Mira’s hand. Mira pulled Ravan loose. Together they flew into the huge launch tube, rolling end over end.

Mira broke the surface of the frothing water, gulped air. Ravan appeared next to her, doing the same.

Because the tube had so much more area to fill, the water level was rising slower. Underneath them, the rest of the facility was already submerged. They watched as the door to the control room disappeared. Slowly the two girls began to rise up, following the curving body of the giant missile toward the door in the ceiling.

They could see the still-sparking junction box in the corner, and Ravan started paddling to put herself directly under it. From her belt she removed a pair of long-nose pliers.

“We only get one shot at this before we’re underwater,” Ravan yelled. “What about those things? They gone, or are they in here with us?”

Mira shook her head. “I have no idea.” It was true, she didn’t. She’d never heard what water did to Void Walkers, probably because no one had ever flooded a missile silo to find out. Above them the light peeking through the crack of the giant door was growing brighter. They had light. That was something.

“If I were you, I’d stay on the far side of the tube,” Ravan announced. “Water and high-voltage electricity don’t mix very well.”

If the water kept rising they’d be pushed up to the box in moments—which also meant they would quickly be pushed into the ceiling. When that happened there would be nowhere else to go. Their air would be gone.

Mira swam to the opposite end from Ravan. It was difficult to stay in one spot, with the water churning. She watched the nose of the giant missile sink and disappear. There was only about ten feet of air left between them and the thick door now.

The water carried Ravan high enough to reach the junction box, and she yanked it open, staring inside. More sparks exploded into the air, and Ravan grimaced. “It’s stripped wires!” Ravan shouted.

“Is that good or bad?” Mira yelled back.

Ravan ignored her, just rammed her hands inside the box as more sparks blew out, then yelled in pain and yanked back. “Dammit!”

“Can you fix it?” Mira yelled desperately. The current was becoming impossible to swim against, not just because it was growing stronger, but because Mira was growing weaker. The chill of the water had given her some of her senses back, but she could feel her mind going numb again.

Ravan kept twisting and turning things inside the box.

Then, above, came the groaning of the massive door as its hydraulics reactivated. A speck of daylight shot in from a crack near the center of the room. Mira yelled for joy—and then cringed as the sound died and the door stopped. More sparks shot from the box, and Ravan stared at her.