The Severed Tower (53 page)

She raised the pack again to—

“Mira,” Holt’s hand stopped her. She looked at him—and then she felt the tears form. Hot, angry ones. She leaned against the car and brought her shaking hands to her face, trying to hide what was obvious to anyone who looked.

Holt’s arms wrapped around her. She sunk into his chest and time seemed to slow. Zoey was
gone.

She sensed the crowd moving in, heard figures land on top of the station wagon. “Where’s the Prime?” a voice she recognized demanded.

Mira held on to Holt and looked up at Dane and two other White Helix. It was clear they had already guessed the answer. “You
lost
her!”

The words cut like a knife.

“Back off!” Holt yelled up at Dane. “You saw those gunships, what was she supposed to do?”

“She shouldn’t have had her on the
roof!
She lost her!” As he spoke the Lancet twirled from his back and aimed down. In the same instant Holt drew his Ithaca and pulled Mira behind him. Max growled low and vicious.

“Dane!” A strong voice stopped him cold. Maybe the only voice that could. Avril stood a few feet away, out front of what was left of the Menagerie. Her hands were bound, Mira saw. Her Lancet was gone. Ravan stood next to her, and in spite of everything the daughter of Tiberius Marseilles seemed calm.

“The Tower’s gone now,” Avril said, wincing in the sunlight. “It can’t help Zoey anymore, there’s nothing anyone could have done.”

Dane didn’t seem to hear the words. His fury at Mira was quickly replaced with fury at the lengths of rope that bound Avril’s hands. His eyes found Ravan and he spoke with barely contained menace. “Set her free—or you will all die.”

Ravan just smiled. She didn’t even reach for the rifle on her back. “Well, that wouldn’t be very …
honorable
of you. Would it?”

“It’s
my
choice, Dane,” Avril said, though it was clear she wasn’t completely resolved. “It’s what Gideon wanted.”

“Gideon’s
dead!
” Dane spat. “And with the Prime gone, so is everything he believed in. What was the point of
any
of this? Can anyone tell me?”

Mira heard Zoey’s last words in her mind.
I … made a deal, kind of. A trade.

Thoughts swirled in her head, trying to form into something solid. “I think she may have planned this,” Mira said, and everyone looked at her. “It sounded like … she used the Tower to set all this in motion.”

“You mean she
wanted
the Assembly to take her?” Ravan asked dubiously.

“How convenient for you, Frebooter,” Dane said with a sneer.

“Mira,” Holt said, tilting her face up with her hands. “If she told you that, then she had something figured out. You
have
to know what it is; she would have told you somehow.”

Mira thought back desperately, running through the conversation again, but only one thing really stuck out. “Zoey did something to me. She … touched me. Went inside my mind, changed something.”

“Changed
what?
” Avril asked.

She shook her head. “When the airships got close, I could … feel them.
Hear
them. Their thoughts. I could—”

Mira cut off suddenly as similar “thoughts” pushed into her mind. They were like projections of sensation, forced to the forefront, and while they didn’t hurt, it wasn’t pleasant having her own thoughts overwritten. They weren’t words. It was more like the inherent meanings
behind
words, the intent, the emotion, and they stood out in her mind, whether she wanted them to or not.

Guardian,
they said.
We come.

Mira stood up and away from the car and peered to the south. A five-legged walker charged toward them, flanked on either side by two Hunters. The sight of them was striking. Their distinctive green and orange was gone. Now there was only bare metal, shining in the sun.

The White Helix tensed as the walkers approached. So did the Menagerie. But the walkers stopped several blocks away, keeping distance between them. “Ambassador…” Mira said.

Guardian,
the projection came. It was clear who she was communicating with, and the realization sent a chill down her back.

“Why call me that?” she asked out loud. She could see everyone staring back and forth between her and the walkers in the distance. The idea that she could suddenly talk to the Assembly, the great enemy of humanity, was an unsettling one, but Mira didn’t care.

You are the Guardian of the Scion,
Ambassador projected into her mind.

Mira felt her shame intensify. Whether the title was meant as an insult, given what had just occurred, she couldn’t tell, but she didn’t like it much, regardless.

“Do you know what’s happened?” Maybe she could use her mind to talk to the aliens, but she’d be damned if she would. She wasn’t one of them, and they weren’t her friends. She felt Holt’s hand slip into hers and she took strength from it.

Mas’Shinra has the Scion,
came the reply.
They fly west.

“What’s west?”

The Collective.
Mira stared back in confusion, and her frustration must have been discernible.
You say the Citadel.

Mira’s eyes widened. The Citadel was something she knew. Everyone in North America probably did. She had never seen it, but it was supposedly a giant Assembly structure that rose over city ruins far to the west, so big it dwarfed even the Presidiums. Unlike those base ships, the Citadel had been built by the Assembly where it stood, fabricated from tons of harvested resources from all over the continent. Most survivors considered it the Assembly’s seat of power, and everyone gave it a wide berth.

“They’re taking her to the Citadel,” Mira said, and stunned murmurs swept through the crowd.

“If that’s the case, your little friend’s good and gone,” Ravan declared. “The Citadel’s in San Francisco. It’ll take weeks to get there, and you have to go through the Barren to do it. Whatever the Assembly plan to do with her, they’ll have done it long before you ever make it.”

Mira wanted to feel anger at Ravan, but she couldn’t. She was right, and Mira only felt anger at herself. The Assembly might as well have been taking her across the sea.

“Landships,” Holt said next to her. “In Freezone. Currency is … what? Two days’ hard walk from here? We can take Landships from there, be at the Citadel in less than a week.”

“Even if you somehow got the Wind Traders to help you, that’s still too long,” Ravan said. “Those ships’ll be there in a
few hours.
”

“Well, we have to do
something!
” Holt yelled back. “We have to try!”

“This is ludicrous,” Dane said above them.

“Your eyes are clear, Dane,” Avril said. “She healed us, and brought us back from the dead.”

Dane looked at Avril with intensity. He didn’t say anything else.

Ravan, however, wasn’t convinced. “She saved my men from the Tone, too. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not marching off to the ocean on some fool’s errand. I got things that need finishing.” Mira saw her stare settle on Holt, and he returned it.

More murmurs passed through the crowd, doubtful ones, and it broke apart around Holt and Mira into hundreds of groups, all debating and yelling. Mira ignored it all. There was only one person whose opinion mattered to her, and she looked at him now.

“Ravan’s right,” Holt told her. “Even if we got there in a week, even if we somehow wrangled enough Landships to carry all the White Helix—it’s suicide. Have you ever seen the Citadel? Because I have. You think the army we saw yesterday was big? It’s nothing compared to what’s
there.
”

Mira stared at him in genuine dismay. “So you’re saying … what? We just … let her go? We let them have her?”

“No.” Holt shook his head. His next few words he said as soberly and as pointedly as he could. “I’m saying … if we do this … it’s going to be a one-way trip.”

Mira stared back at him, his meaning sinking in. There was no real chance of success. They would die trying to free Zoey—but they would still have tried.

Mira stared at Holt a few more seconds, then simply nodded.

Holt grabbed his Ithaca from the ground and tightened his pack in place. Mira did the same with her things, and they both started walking, pushing past the angry, yelling crowd, ignoring all of it. Holt whistled and Max chased after them.

Mira motioned for Holt’s shotgun. He handed it to her, along with a fistful of shells. “You know how to do that?”

“I can build six-tiered artifact combinations,” she said and shoved a shell into the chamber, then rammed the pump, priming the shell. “I can handle loading a shotgun.”

“I like you more every day,” Holt said and grabbed a magazine for his rifle, loading it as they walked.

As they moved through the crowd the arguments silenced, and everyone turned and watched the two figures heading south purposefully.

Ravan leaned casually against a warped sedan, staring at them. After a moment, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Boys, mount up,” she said forcefully. “I believe we are done here.” Her men obeyed, securing their packs and guns. Ravan stood away from the car and pushed Avril forward. “That means you, too, dear heart.” The small Doyen stared daggers, but started moving all the same.

As the Menagerie stepped into line next to them, Holt and Mira glanced at Ravan. The pirate shook her head with contempt. To Ravan, what they were doing was a bad idea, it was foolish to put other people’s needs before your own, but Mira didn’t care. It was what she had to do.

Something fell to the ground in front of them. A pair of black goggles, the kind the White Helix wore. Two more pairs fell. Four more. A dozen more. Everyone looked up as they walked. There, high above, figures leaped in between the ruined buildings in flashes of yellow and cyan.

“Well, well,” Ravan said with amusement, watching the White Helix jump rooftop to rooftop. “Aren’t
we
a motley crew?”

Avril looked up with everyone else—and smiled at the sight of her brothers, dozens at first, but growing, gradually becoming a wave of color that followed after them. Dozens turned to hundreds. Hundreds became thousands, blocking out the sky, dropping their goggles to the ground as they did in a shower of black. They no longer needed them, Mira guessed. There was no more Pattern to
see.

Guardian,
a projection cut through everything. Ambassador and the silver Hunters waited just a block away, their three optic eyes flickering back and forth. Mira stared at them.

We are … of
you,
it projected.

It was cryptic. Had it been just words, Mira might not have understood, but it was more. It was emotion, and intent. For reasons still uncertain, Ambassador and the others had come here to keep Zoey from falling into Assembly hands. They had failed—and now there was only one course open to them. The same as Mira’s and Holt’s.

Mira nodded to the machine as they approached, and answered with a single word. “Okay.”

Ambassador turned and stomped southward, followed by the Hunters. Light flickered brightly off the armor of the rest of the silver Assembly in the distance. Engines roared to life. Walkers began to move. Dropships lifted off, gathering up machines for transport.

Bright flashes and pulses of sound accompanied dozens of other walkers like Ambassador, teleporting in with yet more forces. Mantises, even three or four Spiders, all of them beginning to move, joining the others, their footfalls echoing like thunder.

All around them the White Helix were landing on the ground, thousands, stretching in every direction, following after Holt and Mira, chanting a single word, over and over.
“Strength! Strength! Strength!”

For once, she and Holt weren’t alone. On the contrary, as strange as it was, it appeared they had an
army.

“Go find her, boy,” Holt told Max, and whistled three loud notes.

Max darted forward, eagerly tearing ahead of everyone, blowing past three of the silver Hunters. They trumpeted in surprise, racing after the dog, but even they couldn’t keep up with him.

Holt took Mira’s hand. She gripped it tightly. They walked south; down one last, unseeable road. Together.

ALSO BY J. BARTON MITCHELL

Midnight City

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