Midnight City (34 page)

“No,” Mira said. “I made it, I should be the one to deal with it.” She stuck it in her pack and looked up at Holt.

Holt nodded, then glared at the unconscious form of Lenore. “What about her?”

Mira forced her gaze back onto Lenore’s still body. When she did, Holt couldn’t tell if she was frightened, remorseful, or angry. It might have been all three. “Leave her,” Mira finally said in a low voice.

“She won’t stop coming after you, you know, not after this. She’ll send the entire faction to find you.”

Mira looked down at Lenore, her face the same combination of emotions. “I’m not going to kill her,” Mira said firmly. “I’m not her, and I never will be. Let’s get out of here.”

“How are we going to do that without the invisibility thing?” Holt asked.

Mira smiled up at him. “It’s called a Shroud. And I said not to worry—we have a plan.” She took Zoey’s hand and quickly started moving.

“Okay.” Holt frowned after them. “Is it possible I could know the details of this plan at some point?”

“Trust me, you’d rather not.” Mira and Zoey ran through Lenore’s cavern toward the balcony at the opposite end. He and Max followed.

The view from the balcony was amazing. It looked out over the residence hall from above, the dozens of platforms circling down the steep walls of the cavern to the floor far below, and all the bridges and ladders that connected them. The waterfall was directly underneath, roaring up at them, and the cavern’s highest walkway passed just seven feet below.

From here, they were almost close enough to touch the two big Gray Devils banners that hung from the ceiling, and the static hum of the big Illuminators that were lighting them and hovering in the air a few feet away floated around them.

Mira slipped on her pack and looked at Zoey. “Get on my back, honey.” The little girl jumped up and wrapped her arms around Mira’s neck.

Holt stared apprehensively at the cavern floor far, far below. “Are we jumping?” he asked uneasily. “Tell me we’re not jumping.”

“The tunnel up here is tight and one-way,” Mira said. “It takes too long, and we need to get out now. Plus, if anyone’s coming up to check on us, we’re screwed. We jump to the banners, ride them down, jump off. They’re bolted into the ceiling—they’ll hold us.” Mira moved to the ledge, seemingly unbothered by the sheer drop below her. “In theory.”

“That’s comforting.” Holt groaned, looking down at the giant drop with trepidation. “And how’s Max supposed to get down?”

“I’m sure the mutt will figure it out,” Mira said, looking at the dog unpleasantly. He growled low back up at her.

“I bet he beats you down to the floor,” Holt replied.

“You’re on,” Mira said as she leapt from the edge, sailed through the air, and grabbed hold of the huge gray banner. The giant piece of fabric sailed backwards, propelled by her momentum.

Holt picked Max up, leaned over the edge, and carefully dropped him. The dog yelped slightly as he fell, then landed on the walkway underneath them. When his legs stopped wobbling, he looked back up at Holt.

“Go!” Holt said, pointing to the floor far below. The dog took off in a dash, circling down and around the walkway toward the bottom of the cavern in a blur of motion.

Mira was still hanging from the banner, gathering it all up into her chest. She wrapped her arms around it … and started sliding down it like a pole.

Holt frowned as he watched her, envying how easy she made it look. He studied the second banner, the same distance away. He exhaled his tension, long and slow, trying to work up the courage for the leap. “In theory,” he skeptically said to himself. Then he ran and leapt off the edge.

He flew through the air, felt it rush around him, saw the gray of the banner coming toward him.

Holt slammed into it, tried to grab it … and missed badly, kept falling.

In a panic, he felt the angle of his flight shift to a downward trajectory toward the ground. The gray fabric flared all around him, and he tried to get his hands around it, but it was going too fast now.

Any moment, he would run out of banner to grab, and slam right into the floor.

He did the only thing he could think of. Marcus’s hunting knife was still in his hand. Holt drove it down into the banner as he fell.

The sharp blade punctured it easily, catching the fabric. It jarred violently when Holt’s weight slammed onto it, and he almost lost it. But he held on, grabbing it with both hands.

The knife ripped through the banner as he fell, slowing his fall. And the sharp sound of tearing fabric echoed throughout the cavern.

The big knife sliced through the remainder of the banner; then Holt was free-falling again toward—

He slammed into a rope bridge just below him, and the whole thing shook loudly. Above him, the huge banner swayed and rocked, split in two … and tore loose from the ceiling, falling downward in a flurry of gray fabric.

Holt, wide eyed, tried to roll out of the way, but it was too late. The giant mass of falling cloth buried him as it crashed down, pinning him under its increasing weight.

He struggled underneath it, trying to breathe and get it off him any way he—

Someone yanked the remains of the banner away, and he stared up into angry green and black eyes. He braced himself as Mira opened her mouth to yell at him …

… and a dog barked under them. They all looked down to the floor below, saw Max there, staring up at them impatiently, his tail wagging.

“The Max beat you!” Zoey exclaimed.

Mira rolled her eyes, looked back to Holt. “Real nice work,” she said.

All around them, people were stirring. Lights were flashing on in the platforms that circled the giant cavern, and Holt realized he’d just woken the entire Gray Devils faction.

Mira was up and moving, pulling Zoey along with her toward the edge of the bridge. “Jump after me when I get down,” she told the little girl.

Holt pulled himself loose from the heavy banner as Mira crawled off the edge of the bridge and dropped to the floor about ten feet below. All around, he could hear shouts starting to ring out as the faction members slowly realized what was happening. Their prized captive was escaping, aided by a little girl, a dog, and a clumsy moron.

Zoey dropped from the bridge into Mira’s arms, and Holt ducked under its railing, falling as well, landing on the ground, and moving after them.

But Mira wasn’t running back the way they had come. Instead, she was running toward the waterfall.

The torrent of water thundered down in front of them, and Mira reached for a length of thick chain that ran up the side of the wall next to it.

When she yanked it, more chains above them began sliding through pulleys as counterweights fell downward. A large latticework of sheet metal that Holt hadn’t noticed before began slowly tilting down on the other side of the waterfall. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but whatever it was, it needed to happen fast.

Above, dozens of figures were leaping from the platforms, scaling ladders, and running over bridges. Max barked up at them.

The large wing of sheet metal continued to lower … and finally passed into and under the water that was crashing down from above. The sheet metal wing shuddered under the impact, but it held together as it deflected the waterfall outward, shifting the flow a few dozen feet to the left.

With the falls diverted, a new tunnel that had been hidden behind the water was revealed. Mira raced into it, pulling Zoey along.

The Gray Devils reached the floor, and Holt raced after Mira and Zoey, signaling Max to follow.

Behind him, Holt heard a new sound that overpowered even the roaring waterfall: bells, all kinds and tones, ringing incessantly. The Gray Devils had raised the alarm; the entire faction would be waking now to hunt them down.

37.
AQUEDUCT

HOLT SPLASHED THROUGH THE NEW TUNNEL,
noting that he was ankle deep in flowing water. “Where does this thing go?” he shouted at Mira up ahead.

“Nowhere, if we don’t outrun all the trouble you just stirred up!” she yelled back.

“It wasn’t my idea to leap off a ledge twenty stories off the floor!”

Behind him, Holt heard the cries of kids splashing after them. Ahead, the tunnel widened into a new room, and Holt raced after Mira into it.

It was huge and it wasn’t what he’d expected. Several other tunnels converged in this same spot, and they all contained flowing water. Where it collected sat a big crystal-clear pool that stretched from one end to the other, and branching out from it were more of the aqueducts Holt had seen in the main hall. They traveled in different directions, disappearing into tunnels that looked like they’d been cut through the rock by human hands.

Each aqueduct was labeled with large letters, which read things like,
MAIN HALL, LOST KNIGHTS, CROSSMEN, LOS LOBOS,
and
MARKET HALL.
Each went to a different part of Midnight City, Holt realized, and each had a large iron gate hovering above it, which could seal off the flow.

No wonder the Gray Devils had amassed so many Points: they could shut off the water supply to any part of the city with the turn of a handle.

Mira and Zoey didn’t stop to admire the view in the same way as Holt; they just rushed forward and jumped into the flowing water of a specific aqueduct, which flowed fast toward the other end of the room. They were quickly whipped under and out of sight.

“Hey!” Holt yelled angrily as he leapt in after them. The water ripped him forward. It was deep, probably up to his chest, and it was flowing fast. He tumbled and rolled a few times before he finally righted himself.

Ahead of him, he spotted Mira and Zoey again, right before they disappeared into a tunnel. Seconds later, everything went dark as he did, too. He felt himself sucked under and tossed back and forth against the rocky walls. Try as he might, he couldn’t reach the surface in the current, and he was starting to worry he—

He felt a hand grab him by the hair and yank him to the surface.

“Grab on!” Mira’s voice shouted above him. “Pull yourself out!”

Holt saw Mira and Zoey standing on the edge of another aqueduct, trying to keep him from sailing past. He grabbed the edge, started to pull himself up … when Max tumbled past.

Holt grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and the dog coughed out water and inhaled. “Zoey!” Holt yelled. “Get Max out!”

The little girl reached for the dog, helping him scramble over the side of the structure. Holt did the same thing, and when he was out, collapsed on top of the aqueduct. His heart beat heavy in his chest as he breathed deeply.

“Come on, you can pass out later,” Mira said, leaping quickly down from the aqueduct.

Holt opened his eyes and took in the new cavern underneath the aqueduct. It wasn’t as big as the aqueduct hub or the residence hall, but it was still large. Half a dozen workbenches were dotted around the room, cramped with tools and supplies. The walls were lined with metal cabinets and cases, each of them filled with objects that glowed or sparked or hovered or flashed colors. On the room’s largest, flattest wall, a giant gray δ was painted, with the Gray Devils logo resting inside the round circle on its bottom.

Holt realized he was in the faction’s artifacts lab. He was surrounded by objects from the Strange Lands.

Next to him, Zoey and Max both climbed down from the aqueduct.

“Holt! Get down here!” Mira yelled under him, and he rolled off the aqueduct and landed on the floor.

Mira was near one of the cabinets, building something from the components there. As she did, Holt studied the room more closely. There was only one exit, and it seemed to head right back where they had come from. Other than that, he saw no other way out.

“This is a dead end,” Holt said in exasperation.

“Not according to Marcus,” Mira answered, hurriedly building her artifact combination.

Marcus? What did the Lobos member have to do with—?

And then it hit him. “The other secret tunnel,” Holt said, looking around.

“Yeah, and I need you to find it,” Mira answered, concentrating on her work.

Holt scanned the room again, trying to find any sign of another tunnel, but he couldn’t find anything. The walls were solid, there was nothing behind any of the workbenches that—

“Is that it, Holt?” Zoey asked from beside him. The little girl was pointing with a finger straight up.

Holt stared upward. Above them, a hundred feet or more, was a small black opening in the ceiling. It was also, of course, completely out of reach.

“Son of a…,” he started.

Mira looked over, following his gaze upward. When she saw it, her face dropped.

“Real nice work,” Holt said, echoing her tone from before.

And then, from the tunnel came the sounds of running feet and angry yells. The faction was almost on them again.

Mira sprinted for the tunnel entrance, holding her new combination. Holt saw it was made of a pencil, a D battery, and two dimes wrapped together with red string.

She reached the tunnel entrance, took the artifact, and drew a long line with the head of the pencil, starting at the floor, then up one side, along the top, down the other side, and back to where she’d started.

When the two lines connected, there was a bright flash of light in the air contained by the square. Everything hummed powerfully for a moment, and then the tunnel entrance was darkened by some kind of fluctuating, black energy.

Mira stepped back and away from it … as two Gray Devils rounded the corner at full speed and slammed into the field of black energy. They were tossed back as though they had just run into a wall, crashing to the ground and staring up at the field of energy in surprise.

Then the boys glared at Mira, realizing what she’d done.

More and more kids were appearing in the cramped tunnel. A few others slammed into the energy field before they all figured it out. They piled up next to it, kicking and punching, trying to break through. But for the moment, the shield was holding.

“How long will that thing last?” Holt asked.

“I used dimes, so not long,” Mira said, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. “We have to find a way up there.”