The Severed Tower (10 page)

Unfortunately, the shelf they needed was just above the gap, and she had no way to reach it. Mira studied the shelves and, near the one she needed to get to, saw an old coat hanger screwed into the frame.

Quickly, she unslung the Lexicon from her shoulders and carefully leaned toward the hanger, circling its thick strap around it. When it was done, she shifted her weight to the right, leaning outward and holding onto the strap to keep her from falling. It held her weight, which meant she could reach the top shelf now.

“The odds are good I’m gonna end up breaking your fall,” Ben observed.

“Do you want what’s up here or not?” Mira used her free hand to rub off the dust that had caked the shelf’s glass cabinet. It was filled with exactly what Ben predicted: timekeeping devices from a variety of eras—water clocks, hourglasses, pendulums, wrist watches, even an old armillary sphere made of gold, silver, and topaz. Of all the items, it hummed the loudest, and Mira stared at it greedily. She could only imagine what
that
would do if activated.

“Three minutes, give or take,” Ben announced from below, studying his stopwatch. “You see them?”

She made herself focus. Near the back of the shelf rested six chronographs, complicated kinds of stopwatches that could record individual times for comparison. Of course, Mira only knew that because Ben had told her. It was what he’d brought them this deep into the Strange Lands for: a chronograph of a certain era that had become a major artifact. He had his own theories about what it would do, but the truth was he never intended to use it. It was a bargaining chip, a valuable one. Something he would give Lenore Rowe, the leader of the Gray Devils back at Midnight City, in exchange for what he truly wanted: a fully funded expedition to the Severed Tower.

It would probably work, too, if the artifact did what Ben thought. It was something someone as ambitious as Lenore Rowe would trade anything for.

But they had to get it first.

“What am I looking for again?” Mira asked, gingerly opening the glass cabinet.

“An older one, early twentieth, late nineteenth century. No Seikos or Timexes.”

“What about Gallet?” she asked, studying two of the older looking ones.

“Gallet works,” Ben said. “But it can’t be a wristwatch.”

“One is,” Mira told him, her eyes finding the oldest one. “But the other looks like a pocket watch. An old one.”

“Grab it. Hurry,” Ben instructed her.

No one knew why, but major artifacts didn’t fuse to whatever they were touching like the minor ones did. It was a good thing in time-sensitive situations like this, it meant you didn’t need to use Paste to get them loose. All Mira had to do was reach in and pull the old chronograph out of the shelf—and when she did it vibrated slightly in her hand, which was a good sign. Whatever it did, it was powerful. She smiled and looked down at Ben and saw what she hoped. The barest, most subtle glimpse of excitement in his expression. It wasn’t often you saw it, and Mira relished times like these.

“This the one you want?” she asked, letting it dangle by the silver chain.

“Yes,” Ben said, reaching up.

Mira held it out of his grasp. “You’re
sure?
”

“Mira…”

“I’m just checking,” she told him innocently. “We only get one shot at this. Scale of one to ten, how certain are you that, of all the chronographs in this place, this is—”

“
Mira,
” Ben said with intensity. There was a new emotion on his face now. Annoyance. And it was even cuter than the first.

“Okay, here, take the—”

The coat hanger her Lexicon strap hung from broke loose from the old cabinet in a shower of splinters.

Ben rushed forward, valiantly trying to catch Mira, but her momentum was too much. They both went crashing to the floor, Mira on top of him.

When the dust cleared, he stared up at her with the same, dim annoyance. “As predicted…”

She stared back down at him—and then was overcome with laughter. Ben didn’t join in, he rarely laughed, but he did smile, and that was worth just as much. They stared at each other, close, inches away, the chronograph and the Time Shift and the major artifacts all around them forgotten.

Then Mira saw it in his eyes. Something that flickered to life in moments like these, and it stirred the same tension as always. Her smile vanished. She rolled off him and sat up on the floor, dusting herself off.

Ben did the same. He didn’t say anything, but she could still feel his eyes on her, knew what he was thinking.

“Don’t,” she said.

“You never want to talk about it.”

Mira sighed. “Because we’ve
already
talked about it, Ben. And we agreed.”

“
You
agreed,” Ben replied.

She frowned and looked back at him. “We
both
agreed. And you know it.”

Mira and Ben had been tied together since their trial to become Freebooters. Initially it had been because of the Librarian’s decree, a unique stipulation that neither could enter the Strange Lands without the other. Agreeing to the Librarian’s condition was the only way they could become Freebooters, and they had taken it.

They both knew, however, that even if the requirement was suddenly removed nothing would change. They had a connection now, a stronger one than either had felt for anyone since the invasion, and it had only grown.

They had given into it only once. And as nice as it had been, they both agreed it could never happen again. What was the point, after all? They had three, maybe four years left before the Tone took them. Developing feelings like those made no sense in the world as it was now. It only made the inevitable that much harder to deal with.

But still there were moments—like just now—where Mira wondered how much sense it really made.

When she looked back at him, the old chronograph was clutched in his hand, but his eyes were on her.

Mira sighed. “Ben—”

She cut off as a rumbling grew around them, deep and powerful, but somehow it couldn’t be felt. The items on the shelves or the floor didn’t shake. It was as if the air itself was vibrating. And there was something else. It was growing brighter, too. Steadily.

Mira’s eyes widened. “You said
three
minutes, give or take!”

“I also said there’s no exact math!” Ben lunged forward and yanked her up, dragging her forward through the store.

Mira tried to balance, to turn forward so she could—

Something occurred to her. Something bad.

“My
Lexicon!
” she shouted, turning back around, spotting the big, precious tome on the floor where it had fallen.

“There isn’t time!” Ben kept pushing her forward.

“Wait! You don’t understand!” She squirmed desperately in his grip, trying to get free, but he was just too strong. “
Ben!
”

The rumbling and the brightness continued to grow. Everything around them—the pieces and parts of the old shop, the shelves, the items—flickered like lights, and then one by one began vanishing into thin air … only to be replaced with other pieces and parts that had nothing to do with an antique shop: drill presses, router saws and lathes. The Time Shift was engaging, morphing the local area into a completely different point in time, one that appeared to be when this same building had been a
machine shop.

If they didn’t get out now they would be wiped away with the antiques.

Mira felt physical pain as she realized the truth. They had to run. She had to leave the Lexicon, and everything inside it, behind. With a scowl, she turned and ran with Ben toward the front door, as the air continued to rumble and flash, the world morphing around her.

8.
COMPASS

THE DARKNESS RECEDED IN SLOW MOTION
as Mira opened her eyes. When she did, she wasn’t where she expected to be. She could hear water rushing by fairly close, and there was a strand of spruce trees towering over her against the wavering aurora that filled the sky.

Mira wasn’t in an antique shop, and she wasn’t where she’d fallen earlier. She was lying on a sleeping bag on the perimeter of a camp, and she could hear voices around her. Ones she recognized. There were about twenty kids, all dressed in some shade of gray and white, some around camp fires, others checking gear or sleeping under the shade from the trees.

It was a Gray Devils camp. Which meant …

“You’re safe,” a voice assured her, and Mira spun around. Ben sat next to her, working in his green-and-blue Lexicon on the ground, a pencil behind his ear. His brass dice cube was absently moving over the knuckles of his left hand, back and forth. “We’re away from the Crossroads.”

Her shoulder hurt. She remembered where she had been before. With Holt and Zoey. And the Hunters.

“Where are…?” she started, but couldn’t finish. Her throat was sore and her mouth was dry. Ben handed her a canteen and she drank from it greedily.

“My guys found you outside Northlift,” he said. “Sent them to look for you, figured you might follow us. They watched until your friends were taken away, then they brought you here.”

Mira sat up angrily. “Why didn’t they
help?
”

“Because then they’d be dead, too. Fighting Assembly is suicide, you know that.”

“Holt and Zoey aren’t
dead,
” Mira said pointedly. “The Assembly took them, it’s not the same thing.”

“Might as well be. Either way, you’ll never see them again.”

She glared at him—but a part of her knew he was right. If the Assembly had them, then …

“No,” she said and stood up, fighting through a wave of dizziness. “They’re
alive.
We can get them back. It’s like you say, there’s always a solution.”

“There’s always exceptions, too. This isn’t a problem you can solve.”

“Damn it, Ben—”

“
Think,
Mira,” he cut her off softly. “Even if you weren’t talking about going after a pack of Assembly walkers, the Strange Lands are different now. The old routes might not work anymore. Everything might be new. Everything might need to be solved—all over again.” Mira could hear the faint traces of excitement in his voice as he contemplated the possibilities. “Besides, I finally have what I need to get to the Tower. I can’t risk that, it’s too important.”

“More important than people’s lives?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “The Tower represents infinite possibilities. If I can get there I can make everything right. Isn’t that worth two lives? Or four? Or a hundred?”

Mira closed her eyes. “Ben…”

“I understand why you’re torn, Mira,” he said. “You’ve always had problems detaching yourself emotionally when you needed to, especially here. But you know I’m right. Going after them makes no sense. It doesn’t add up.”

What he said rang true in the same cold, logical way that everything he said did. The odds of her finding Holt and Zoey were beyond small. And even if she did, what would she do? Fight the Hunters by herself? But that wasn’t what really bothered her, was it? She was in the Strange Lands, and it meant she would have to navigate it by herself, without Ben. On her own she would fail. Eventually. She wouldn’t be good enough. And whoever was with her would pay a price for that. Just like they had so long ago.

Instinctively, Mira thought back to the Crossroads. How she froze when the Tesla Cubes were almost on them. How she couldn’t move, couldn’t even think. How could she hope to make it on her own?

“Your things are over there,” Ben said. “Your Lexicon, your packs.” Mira saw her stuff piled neatly on the other side of the campfire. “I saw your plutonium. Good quality. Couldn’t have been easy to get.”

The plutonium was the batch from Clinton Station. That had been a month ago, but it seemed like forever. It had been in her pack ever since, a glass cylinder wrapped with a Dampener, an artifact that absorbed the heat that naturally poured off the contained element inside, making it safe to transport. For the most part, anyway.

“I got it to trade for your life,” Mira said. “But turned out that wasn’t necessary. Didn’t it?”

It was true. She had hoped to use the plutonium to bargain her way out of Midnight City after she rescued Ben. But Ben had been long gone by the time she’d gotten there. It would have worked, too, the bargain. Plutonium was one of the most valuable substances on the planet because of what it supposedly granted you entrance to. The Severed Tower.

It was ironic, in a way. Everything she had gone through to get the plutonium—avoiding bounty hunters, scouring different cities for clues, eluding Holt, surviving Clinton Station—had seemed pointless once she’d learned that Ben had been the one who told Lenore about her artifact. And yet it turned out to be critical in a different way. If she hadn’t gotten it, how would they possibly get Zoey to the Tower, where she claimed she needed to go? It all felt like … fate.

Ben moved closer to her, took her hand. “I know it must have been difficult,” he told her. “But you’re safe now. And you’ll go with me. We’ll go to the Tower together, like we always said. We’ll make the loss of your friends worth it. I promise.”

Mira looked up at him. Ben had a singular belief, one that had driven him his entire life. It led him to become a Freebooter, it pushed him deeper and deeper into the Strange Lands, it dictated everything he did. The belief wasn’t a simple one. Ben believed that the Severed Tower, the mysterious center of the Strange Lands, was a fusing of all possibilities and realities. If you could reach it and enter it, then you could do
anything.
Ben’s intention was and always had been to change the world. Literally. To make a new reality, one where the Assembly had never invaded, where none of the horror had ever occurred. And he believed that he was the only one who could do it.

Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t. Mira wasn’t sure if she believed in his theory or not. It sounded too easy. But it had never been a pressing concern, really. After all, they could never reach the Tower, they didn’t have the resources. No one reached it without an expensive expedition, funded by a Midnight City faction. It was just too difficult. But now it was within Ben’s reach. He could find out the truth for himself. And she could go with him, if she wanted. It was something she always
had
wanted. But things had changed a lot in the last few months.