The Severed Tower (21 page)

Mira would be happy never finding out. She kept running for the shack, saw Ravan ram into its door with all her weight and blow it open.

The rumbling static grew and everything went dark as the Ion Storm closed the distance.

Mira lunged inside, hit the ground, and rolled to a stop. She just had time to see two Menagerie behind her scream and shudder as a cloud of blackness washed over them, ripping them off their feet. Their bodies disintegrated into a black, powdery substance that mixed with the rest of the darkness.

Ravan slammed the door shut, holding it sealed with her body.

The two girls looked at each other as the charged rumble built to a fever pitch outside. The building, concrete or not, vibrated as the brunt of the storm washed over it.

“You sure this place will hold?” Ravan asked.

“Ion Storms don’t do as much damage against rock or metal. Give it a few days and it’ll disintegrate the building, but it won’t last that long.” At least, so the old logic went. The Strange Lands were changing, for all she knew this storm could last a month. Mira tried not to think about that, though.

“Wouldn’t roll over if I were you,” Ravan said.

Mira slowly craned her head around slowly. The floor beneath her wasn’t concrete, it was wood, and most of it was rotting away. She could hear it groan under her.

Less than a foot away the wood ended, and a gaping hole of blackness began, a sheer drop into darkness. She had almost rolled off it into … who knew what. The bottom was nowhere to be seen.

“Told you.” Ravan stepped away from the door. The air still rumbled outside.

The floorboards, where they still remained, came to a smooth, orderly stop before the chasm. It meant the hole was intentional, and this shack was built to contain it.

But what
was
it?

The floorboards creaked dangerously as Mira moved to a crouch, peering downward. The hole had concrete walls that dropped into the dark. Along the edge of the wall to her right she could see rusted metal supports bolted into the hard surface.

Mira had seen a lot of desiccated urban environments, and she could put the pieces together. “A stairwell,” she said. “Or it used to be.”

The floorboards groaned as Ravan stood next to her. Mira could see lines of rotted dust tumbling into the dark as the wood began to loosen and split.

“I don’t think we should both be on here,” Mira said, starting to rise—but Ravan’s boot stepped on her shoulder, pushed her back down.

Mira froze. She was right at the edge of the hole.

“Why not?” Ravan asked in a casual tone. “Nice place, this. Out of the storm. Dangerous, though. Who’s to say what might happen in here? Would be easy to just … take a wrong step, wouldn’t it?”

The floorboards creaked again. Mira swallowed. “Still got a ways to go until Polestar,” she said. “Killing me wouldn’t be the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

Ravan had always exhibited powerful self-control, but the look in her eyes right now held more ardor than Mira had ever seen. “Who is Holt to you?” she asked with slow, deliberate words.

It wasn’t the question Mira was expecting. “Holt?”

“You followed him into the Strange Lands, all the way from the Crossroads. Chased after some of the most dangerous Assembly I’ve ever seen, and burned a Solid from Tiberius himself to get me to help you. Who
is
he to you?”

Mira felt the anger that had been building inside her peak. She’d had enough of Ravan’s constant threats and power games. “Who’s he to
you?
” She shoved Ravan’s foot off her shoulder and sent the girl back a step. “Just another Menagerie deathmark with a price on his head? Another Star Point on your hand?” Mira advanced on Ravan and the floor swayed and cracked under them. Neither noticed.

“He’s much more than a dollar sign.” Ravan didn’t flinch as Mira stepped closer. “Especially to me.”

“I’m supposed to believe you two are buddies, is that it? Holt wouldn’t have anything to do with the Menagerie.”

“Oh, little angel, that is
precious.
” Ravan smiled sardonically, studying Mira with thinly veiled contempt. “Holt had
plenty
to do with the Menagerie. And he and I are a lot more than friends.”

The implication wasn’t something Mira had considered, and the words hit hard. She was flustered, tried to find something to say, but couldn’t. It only made Ravan’s smile more intense.

“The Menagerie isn’t what most people think, you know. It’s more than just a disorganized band of idiots pillaging everything they see. It’s a community. For instance, do you know how couples in the Menagerie show their commitment to each other?”

Mira said nothing. She didn’t like where this was going.

“We take the same tattoo. It’s called a Troth.” Ravan held up her right hand. The black raven stood out prominently, wings outstretched to either side. “Has Holt ever shown you
his
right hand?”

Mira’s thoughts wavered, remembering the single glove he always wore. “He … keeps it covered.”

“Does he?” Ravan asked. “Well. I guess you two aren’t very close at all, then.”

Mira stared into Ravan’s clear blue eyes, her emotions reeling back and forth like they were caught in the storm outside. Then the floor disintegrated beneath their feet. Both girls screamed as they plummeted down into the shadows that yawned open beneath them.

20.
CHRONOGRAPH

MIRA TOOMBS WAS SEVENTEEN AGAIN,
running for her life through the old antique shop with Ben as it violently transformed around them.

The air kept rumbling and brightening. The front door was just twenty feet ahead, but getting there wasn’t as simple as it looked. Mira flinched as a whining table saw materialized in front of her, its blade spinning wildly.

Everywhere around her, time was shifting everything into a machine shop that must have existed in the same space at some different time.

Normally, it would have been a fascinating thing to watch, but the fact that she only had about twenty seconds to get out of the Time Shift’s perimeter before she was wiped out of existence sort of killed her curiosity.

And then there was Mira’s Lexicon. Left behind. Lost. Mira forced herself not to think about it.

She dodged out of the way of the table saw, but raked the side of it as she ran by. The impact sent her reeling and crashing to the floor. Mira tried to push up—then cried out as a shelf of books became a shelf of screws, nails, and bolts that poured down and flattened her.

“Mira!” It was Ben’s voice. In a daze, she felt him lift her off the floor and drag her toward the exit, barely dodging a welding station as it formed out of nothing, its blowtorch flaming and sparking.

Somehow they reached the door, burst through it and out into the street. The small town was dark, with an ominous sky full of swirling black clouds and colored lightning. Mira could hear the air crackling around them. The Shift was about to solidify, and they ran as hard and as fast as they could.

The rumbling silenced. The air returned to its normal shade of dark. Mira and Ben spun around, staring back behind them at the antique store. It was surrounded in a sphere of flickering light, the edge of which was just a few feet in front of them.

The perimeter of the Anomaly. They’d made it out. Barely.

Streaks of lightning-like fingers flashed all over the building, and where they touched it the structure transformed. The signage and framing and paint of McKelvey’s Lost Treasures antique store shifted into the equivalent version of Miller and Sons Machine Works.

Mira watched it morph into its new form, watched it all being wiped away. Tears glistened in her eyes. Slowly, pointedly, Mira began to count. “One, two, three…” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ben studying her, but she didn’t look back. “Four, five, six…”

“Mira?”

“Seven, eight, nine…”

“What are you doing?”

“Counting how many extra seconds we had before the Time Shift finished.” When she spoke, the bitterness and anger in her voice surprised even her. “Seconds we could have used to get my Lexicon.”

“Calculating the time it takes a Time Shift’s energy to expend is even more difficult than calculating how long between the events,” he told her, and his dispassionate voice only made her angrier. “You saw how off we were in there.”

“How off
you
were,” she said, still not looking at him. “I would have taken the chance, Ben. I would—”

The shimmering and the flickering lightning all vanished in a heartbeat, sucked away into the air. The Time Shift was gone. So was the antique shop, and so was her Lexicon and all it contained. Everything was still and quiet.

The tears that had been threatening to form now fell from Mira’s eyes.

Ben seemed confused. “A Lexicon can be replaced, Mira.”

“It wasn’t just a Lexicon, Ben, it’s…” Mira shook her head, feeling the anger rising. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. You don’t
feel
anything.”

“Mira…”

“Nothing means anything to you, except the Tower and your Points, though I’m not sure you feel anything for
them,
either. But, hey, I’m glad you got your artifact. That’s what matters, right?”

Ben stared down at her. His face was blank, but there was a slight impression of sadness there. Mira had hurt him. Or at least as much as someone
could
hurt Ben. It was irrational of her, she knew. Feeling the anger toward him. It was selfish and silly, but what was in that Lexicon meant everything to her. It was all she had left, and now it was gone.

Ben looked down at the tarnished chronograph in his hand, its silver chain dripping through his fingers. He stared at it for a long moment in silence.

Then he clicked the button at its top.

Mira could just hear the second hand began ticking clockwise around the colored dial inside the glass, moving from one number to the next, counting up. As it did, the chronograph began to glow. A slight hum formed around Ben, growing louder as the artifact powered up and its second hand kept ticking to higher and higher numbers.

Mira’s eyes widened. She knew, just as well as Ben, that a major artifact of that orientation could only be used once. It was what made it so valuable.

“Ben…”

“I
do
feel things,” he said quietly. The hum kept building. “Not anywhere near as much as you, but I do.”

“Ben, what are you doing?” she asked nervously. She could feel her heartbeat quicken.

“Showing you that I understand.” He let the second hand move a few more clicks, then clicked the button once more.

Mira gasped as a violent sound ripped the air. The world flashed blindingly.

When her eyes adjusted, Ben was gone, and everything in front of her was
moving.

Reversing
was a better word, actually. It was as if someone had hit
REWIND
on a VCR, and Mira watched as time somehow rolled itself backward in front of her. The glowing perimeter of the Time Shift flashed back to life. The machine shop began to painstakingly undo its former transformation, shifting back, piece by piece, into the old antique store.

As it did, the sound of roaring static filled everything. Mira covered her ears with her hands, trying to drown out the building wall of—

The sound and the light vanished. Time advanced forward—just like it had before. Whatever Ben’s chronograph had done, it was spent now.

The streaks of lightning-like fingers arced against the building again, transforming it back to the machine shop. As it did, a frightening realization occurred to Mira. The chronograph could rewind time, just as Ben thought. Which meant that Ben was now
inside
the shop again. He
must
be.

“Ben!”
Mira shouted starting to move for the Anomaly.

But he exploded out the door just then, running hard toward her. Her heart skipped at the sight of him. Tucked under his arm was her Lexicon, undamaged and whole.

The light gleamed everywhere. The Time Shift was almost done. Ben had seconds only.

He lunged past the Time Shift’s perimeter …

… just as it flashed and faded, plunging everything back to darkness.

Mira stared at him as he stopped in front of her, breathing hard, sweating. There were two new cuts on his arm, where he’d hit something sharp this time. His eyes found hers, and then he looked down at her Lexicon and opened the red leather cover. She watched him flip the pages over and reveal the inside binding. Tucked into a fold was a picture.

Ben lifted it out.

It was a black-and-white photograph of a man, leaning against an old station wagon, holding a tiny girl on his shoulders. Behind them the ocean stretched to the horizon. The girl was Mira, years ago, and the man was her father. It had been taken by her mother during one of their summer visits to Portland. It was the one thing still left from that time, the thing she’d had the longest of any of her possessions. The relief she felt at the sight of it was overwhelming.

“I know what this means to you,” Ben said softly.

The chronograph in his hand was no longer silver. Now it was blackened and crumbling. It fell to pieces through his fingers like burnt paper, and then the full realization of what Ben had done hit her. He’d used the chronograph, sacrificed his chance to get what he what he wanted most in the world. He’d risked his life, and he’d done it for
her.

Mira’s eyes glistened again.

“You’re right, I don’t feel much,” he said, staring at her with more emotion than she had ever seen. “There’s logical and illogical choices, that’s how I see things, but … it’s always been different with you. Logic goes out the door.” His hand gently stroked her cheek. “I
do
feel things, Mira. For whatever reason, I just … only really feel them for
you.
”

Mira stared back at him a moment longer. She didn’t care anymore what made sense and what didn’t in the world now. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him to her. Their lips found each other, their bodies pressed tight, and they didn’t need any artifact to make it feel like time had frozen.