The Severed Tower (3 page)

The net slammed into it and bounced off.

Holt and Mira stared at it in shock. Another walker—but different.

It was big, much larger than the Hunters, and it had five massive legs arranged around a blocky body. There was no discernible weaponry, but a shimmering field of clear energy circled it, like some kind of protective barrier.

There was something else.

This walker, unlike every other Assembly machine Holt had ever seen,
had no colors.

It was just bare metal, as if its paint had been stripped away. The machine gleamed in the afternoon sunlight.

Its three-optic eye shifted and focused, bore into them. Then it emitted a strange, deep rumbling sound, and leaped powerfully into the air, soaring over them. It shook the ground when it hit. Three more Hunters skidded to a stop in front of it. The boldly marked one trumpeted in anger, missiles and plasma bolts flashing out.

The ordnance sizzled and exploded as the machine’s flickering energy field absorbed them, protecting them but each impact sent it reeling back a step or two.

The silver walker charged forward, slamming into the tripods like a battering ram, sending them crashing through the wall of a grocery store.

Whatever the thing was, it had drawn attention away from Holt and the others.

“Um, if there’s more to this ‘plan,’ we should probably make it happen right now,” Mira said.

She was right. This was their chance. Holt whistled two short notes and Max darted forward. He got Zoey up and moving, and they all raced after the dog. Behind them came more explosions, thuds, and distorted electronic sounds.

Max barreled into the concrete structure and Holt rounded the corner right after him. Then his eyes widened at what was there. It was a tunnel, alright, just like he’d guessed—but it was
huge
, about twenty feet in diameter, disappearing into the darkness beyond.

“Damn it,” he said under his breath. The tripods could
easily
follow them through this. It wasn’t an escape at all.

The huge silver walker landed with a bone-jarring thud on the ground right outside, its multicolored eye instantly finding them.

Zoey grabbed Max’s collar, stopping him from charging the machine. Holt instinctively pulled everyone behind him, pushing them farther inside the tunnel.

More plasma bolts slammed into the walker’s shield. It was flickering now. It looked weaker. The thing hesitated a second more, studying them intently—then it rumbled and rushed right at them.

“Back!
Get back!
” Holt shouted, pushing everyone down, trying to get away from it.

The silver walker slammed with incredible power into the concrete overhang of the tunnel. The whole thing cracked and sprayed dust, then fell apart in a fury of fractured sound.

Holt shoved the others to the ground as the entrance collapsed in on itself, sealing away the daylight and the battle raging outside—and leaving them trapped in a thick cocoon of darkness.

2.
RED FLAGS

THE TUNNEL WAS A BLACK SQUARE
of nothingness that stretched endlessly ahead. Only what Holt’s and Mira’s flashlights illuminated was visible, and it was all so repetitive—gray concrete, clumps of dirt, water trickling by—if it wasn’t for the decades-old graffiti here and there, it would have seemed as if they weren’t moving at all.

Max walked ahead of them, tail wagging enthusiastically, and Holt had to keep calling him back before he disappeared ahead and got into trouble. Behind him, Holt heard the plodding sounds of Mira and Zoey as they followed through the water of the tunnel floor.

He kept thinking back to that strange silver walker, stripped of its colors, how it had seemingly blocked the nets that were about to ensnare all four of them, and then crushed the sewer entrance, sealing them inside. Even for Assembly, it was odd behavior, though when it came to Zoey, Holt had given up trying to understand their motives. Their interest in the little girl was as mysterious as her powers.

“Holt, what’s in your pocket?” Mira’s voice startled him from his thoughts, and he looked back. She was studying him with a strange look. A suspicious one. It was only then that Holt noticed his hand was stuck in his coat pocket, his fingers clutched protectively around the Chance Generator. He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d reached in for it.

“My head hurts,” Zoey said before Holt could answer.

“Hurts
how,
kiddo?” Holt asked.

“On the sides mainly, comes and goes.” Zoey stopped moving and rubbed her temples.

“From the truck maybe?” Mira asked. It was a good question. Holt couldn’t imagine what kind of strain came with Zoey’s abilities, and to be honest, a headache would be the least of what he’d expect.

“Everyone gets headaches now and then,” Holt said, gently rubbing the little girl’s head. “Rest a sec, there’s no rush.”

The little girl leaned against the wall and Max whined gently, pushing his nose into the girl’s hand. “The Max…” she said softly, petting the dog’s head.

Holt looked back up at Mira. Her eyes were already on him. “You’re using the abacus.” There was a note of accusation in her voice.

Unexpectedly, Holt felt a swell of anger. Who was she to ask? She wasn’t his boss, or in charge of him. Hadn’t he saved them back in Midnight City, saved
her,
all with the artifact? Hadn’t he and it just saved them a few minutes ago?

The anger grew so intense, it startled him a little. It wasn’t like him to feel that way. He was probably just jumpy, he told himself, on edge from the previous experience.

When he thought about it … why
wouldn’t
Mira question him? She’d already said she thought the Chance Generator was dangerous. She was an expert, wasn’t she? She’d warned him.

Besides, signs that suggested she cared had been rare the last few days. There were moments where he thought he detected it again. Glances. Smiles. Incidental touching that lasted longer than it should, but they had only been glimpses, a dim reflection of what had passed between them at the dam when they’d kissed.

Holt wasn’t positive where her hesitation came from, but he had an idea.

The other one, the Freebooter she’d been close to, the one they were probably going to run into sooner or later.
Ben.
It wasn’t something Holt was looking forward to.

It didn’t really matter, though. Mira wasn’t the real reason he was here. Zoey was.

As much as he didn’t like it, the kid had pulled one hell of a rabbit out of her hat at Midnight City. She’d saved them all, and at the same time done something even more impossible. She’d gotten Holt to believe that things could change—maybe even that the Assembly could be beaten—and Holt had promised to help her, whatever it took. He’d promised.…

“Holt?” Mira asked again.

“Yeah, I was using it,” he answered, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “And if I hadn’t we’d all be dead. We wouldn’t have made it to that truck, and we definitely wouldn’t have outrun the tripods.”

“That doesn’t make it right!” Mira exclaimed. “We can’t start depending on something unpredictable. We have to rely on our own skills or we’re going to wind up in trouble, especially where we’re going.”

Where they were going, of course, was the Strange Lands. A dangerous place to the north, where, for whatever reason, time and space no longer worked right. Mira was a Freebooter, someone who specialized in traversing that landscape and bringing back the artifacts that lay there—common, everyday objects that had been imbued with otherworldly powers. The abacus in his hand, the subject of their argument right now, was one such artifact, one Holt had unwillingly become the owner of in Midnight City. Since then, it had proved to be more valuable than he could have imagined.

Holt frowned. “I don’t see what’s wrong with having a little luck on our side.”

“What’s ‘wrong’ is that, in order to increase your luck, that thing drains someone
else’s
nearby. Did you forget that?” Her eyes burned into his. “What happens when you use it in the Strange Lands, and there
is
no one else nearby? Who do you think it’ll take the luck away from? Max? Me?
Zoey?
”

Holt shook his head. “If we stay in its influence sphere, we should be—”

“You don’t know that! It could kill
everyone
in order to profit, you—me, and Zoey included.” She held her hand out toward him. “I’m sorry, Holt, but I need you to give it to me. It’s just too dangerous. I shouldn’t have asked you to carry it in the first place.”

Holt stared at her and felt the anger begin to rise again. Now she was giving him
orders?
She just expected him to do as he was told?

Holt pushed it back down. Again, it wasn’t like him … and maybe there was something to that.

He pulled the Chance Generator out of his pocket. It looked harmless—an ornate antique piece of wood with chipped, colorful beads running its length. As he looked at it he felt the need to slide a few of them upward. Just to be safe.

Just a few of them …

Holt’s eyes narrowed. He pushed all the beads down, shutting the abacus’s power off. He showed it to Mira. “Look, it’s off, see? If it’ll make you feel better, I won’t use it anymore.”

“Holt—”

“I
promise.
If you think it’s dangerous, then I’ll leave it alone. You know more than me, and nothing’s more important than you and Zoey. I’ll shut it off, and I’ll keep it. You said it shouldn’t be near your other artifacts, that they might react to each other.”

Mira stared at him, unsure, thinking things through. In the end she nodded. “It
would
be best if you could hold it, but I’d feel better if it was in your pack, not your pocket.”

“Done,” Holt said, though he felt a slight twinge of worry. All the same, he shoved it in his pack and sealed it away. “Okay?”

Mira smiled and reached out, touching his hand. “Thank you.” It had been a day or more since Holt had felt her hand. It felt good.

The two stared at each other, then Zoey spoke up beneath them. “I feel better now,” she said. “The Max helped, I think.”

They looked down at her. The little girl had an arm around the dog’s neck while she scratched his ears.

Mira frowned. “I doubt that. Unless his smell overpowered the pain.”

“The Max doesn’t smell!” Zoey insisted.

“You know, if her powers are causing the headaches, it’s just another reason she shouldn’t use them,” Holt said. “The Assembly come running every time she does.”

“Once we get to the Strange Lands, that won’t be a problem.” Mira smoothed the little girl’s hair. “The Assembly never go in there.”

“I can’t even imagine that,” Holt said. “Not having to look over our shoulder every five minutes.”

“We might lose the Assembly,” Mira replied, “but there’ll be plenty of other things to watch out for. You might end up
missing
our alien friends.”

Holt doubted that was true, but then again, he had very little idea what was ahead of him. He’d never been farther north than Midnight City, and certainly never stepped foot in the Strange Lands. Yet, their plan was to go farther than even that.

In the Midnight City artifact vault, Zoey had interacted with the Oracle, a major artifact that functioned something like a fortune-teller. Holt didn’t completely understand all that it had revealed to the little girl, but it had been clear about one thing: To get the answers Zoey needed, there was a place she needed to go—an infamous landmark in the center of the Strange Lands called the Severed Tower. Supposedly, so the stories went, if you could survive the Strange Lands and make it to the Tower, it would grant you one wish.

It always sounded like a fairy tale to Holt, but lately he’d been witness to some fairly amazing things he wouldn’t have believed a few months ago. He really didn’t know what to think anymore. All he knew was that Zoey said she needed to get to this Tower, and he had promised to help her.

“Is that a way out, Holt?” Zoey asked. Holt followed her gaze upward with his flashlight.

A steel ladder ascended the concrete wall to what looked like the bottom of a manhole. “Good eye, kid.” Holt tested the ladder. It was rusted, but it seemed sturdy enough.

He quickly scaled it and pushed the heavy cover out of the way. Daylight poured in and Holt winced at the brightness before crawling up and out.

They were near the edge of the old city now, just a few wrecked houses and buildings, most of them burned-out husks. He looked south, where they had come from. There were no sounds of explosions, no flashes, but there were several columns of smoke a few miles away, probably from the battle they’d escaped.

While there was no sign of anything now, those green-and-orange ones could cloak themselves, Holt reminded himself, so you never really knew.

He looked north, saw the plains widening and advancing again, back toward where they needed to go. Toward the Strange Lands.

He hoped Mira was right about the Assembly not following them inside. That would be a blessing, even in spite of her insistence that the place itself could be much worse. It was a chance he was happy to take.

“Look safe?” It was Mira, underneath him.

“Safe as it’s gonna be, ladies,” he said. “Come on.”

In a few minutes they were all up, moving northward, Holt making sure to take advantage of whatever limited cover the remains of the urban environment offered. All too soon they’d be back in the plains, where everything was open.

The giant Antimatter storm they’d witnessed a few days ago was gone now. They could no longer see its strange, multicolored lightning, but there was another indication they were headed the right way: the eerie aurora effect, wavering and fluctuating like the pictures he’d seen of the northern lights as a kid. Only these were visible in the middle of the day, and they were coming closer.

Instinctively, Holt’s hand slid into his pocket—and found it empty.

There was a brief flash of panic before he remembered he’d shoved the abacus inside his pack. He relaxed. He could get to it if he needed to, he told himself.