Midnight City (42 page)

Not so dark as the place from before: nothing was as dark as that. But dark, still.

Zoey knew it had been years since
they
had found her in that broken, chaotic landscape, all alone. And she knew this room, too. The same room they always brought her. And she knew she was strapped to the same table made of black, rippled steel, held in place by the same strange, fibrous strands.

Dread filled her, because she knew what was coming. Any moment, it would begin. Any moment …

Lights flashed on above her.

They were harsh and bright, instantly blinding.

It
was
the same room, its walls made of metallic, black plates that moved in organic wavelike shapes, up and down, circling her and stretching upward out of sight. In her position, Zoey was forced to look straight up, and far above her, impossibly far, she saw odd glimmering golden lights moving back and forth.

The same ones she always saw.

Whatever the lights really were, it was always mesmerizing watching them, pulsing around each other far above. In a way, it was almost comforting. Almost.

She heard a strange sound then. Like a whistle, but electronic and distorted. And she knew
they
were there. Zoey shook as she looked down her immobile body to the rest of the room.

Two machines stood on either side of her. Strange machines, each about as tall as a human being, with four powerful, articulated legs and a rounded torso that held a variety of mechanical arms, the appendages containing all kinds of instruments and tools. Each had a three-optic eye, and they made whirring sounds as they rotated and focused on Zoey.

As always, the machines were painted in the same blue and white color pattern.

Now it would begin again, Zoey knew. Now they would move to her and raise their arms. Now the cutting and the prodding and the pain would start. Zoey felt tears forming, felt the fear building inside her. Why did they have to hurt her? Why did it never end?

But, strangely, this time, as she watched and waited, the machines didn’t move.

They just watched her with their electronic eyes, whistling disturbing, electronic notes back and forth.

She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Did it mean they were through hurting her? Or was there some new way they planned to—?

She noticed a glow wavering on the skin of her hands, and it wasn’t the same harsh illumination of the room.

Curiously, she looked up … and saw one of those wavering lights high above, the ones that had always been there, now descending toward her.

It had gotten close enough that Zoey could see what it really was.

A field of intense, wavering energy compressed and formed into an incredibly complex crystalline shape. She had seen them before in this frightening black place, but none like this one. Usually, the light that poured from them was a brilliant shade of gold. This one, however, was a mix of two colors.

Blue and white. Like the colors of the machines on either side of her.

The colors mixed together throughout its shape so perfectly, it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. At the same time, both colors were distinct and prominent, and as it floated down toward her, it lit the interior in hues of sapphire and fallen snow.

It was beautiful, Zoey thought, watching it. Like a snowflake of pure, swirling color falling gently toward her.

It wasn’t until she heard the first whispers in her mind that the sense of awe vanished.

The sounds were like no language she had ever heard, and they repeated over and over in her head. There was a hissing, too, like static, and it all built and grew louder the closer the energy field came to her.

It was just a few feet away now, and the colorful light was so bright, it filled her vision with blue and white stars.

Zoey blinked and looked away, but there was no looking away from the sounds in her mind, the growing static, the agitated whispers. They grew louder and louder, overpowering her other thoughts, until her head threatened to explode. It was terrifying, and there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Zoey struggled against her bonds, trying to tear them loose, but they were too strong.

Even though her eyes were shut, bright blue and white color filtered through her lids, and she knew the thing was right above her now.

The sounds in her mind, the whispers, the static—all of it combined into a single, powerful, frightening tone that filled her head and smothered her thoughts. She snapped her eyes open …

… and watched as the giant, hovering, blue and white energy field sank itself into her small body.

A surge of heat and pain flashed through her, and Zoey screamed as the thing burned slowly into her skin.

The whispers and the static vanished.

In their place were images. A flood of them.

Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. Flashing through her mind’s eye one after the other. But horribly, somehow, Zoey’s brain registered each one, making sense of it, cataloging it, absorbing it, over and over and over again.

Strange planets circled strange suns. Machines painted in different colors marched across thousands of worlds. Stars imploded into black holes. Golden energy fields floated through space, surrounded by fleets of black ships.

The intense blue and white light vanished as it completely buried itself inside Zoey, and the room became visible again.

The images kept coming, streaking past one after the other, and pain built in her head as her mind tried to absorb all of it. It was like seeing the collective memories of a million different people all at once.

She heard the electronic whistling again, could barely make it out over all the sensations, but she heard it nonetheless.

Zoey saw the two machines advance on her, their arms rising … and she was suddenly filled with an intense anger that overrode her fear. She felt … something else, too. A feeling. A feeling that she could stop this if she wanted to. That she knew
how
to stop it. The feelings, wherever they came from, spurred her, gave her direction … and she let herself be carried along.

Automatically, without thinking, Zoey mentally reached out toward the two machines in front of her, projecting herself
into
them. There was no other way to describe the experience, and it was as if she had done it countless times before, even though she knew she never had.

She could feel them now, the machines. More than that, she
was
them. Both machines at once. She felt the power of them, the energy coursing through their bodies, the strength of their gears and mechanics. She saw through their electronic eyes, heard through their digital ears.

Something inside each one fought her for control … but she could tell they were no match for her.

Zoey had no idea how she did it. She just watched as the machines stuttered and sparked, trying to resist her will. She felt a surge of satisfaction as she forced them to lash out with their arms, to cut and scrape and pummel each other in the same ways they had done to her so many times before.

Flame spurted from the machines as they crumpled and died.

A pulsing, electronic sound, ripped through the room like some kind of alarm.

Above her, lights began to flash on, hundreds of them, lighting up the insides of what Zoey now saw was a massive black shaft of the same organic, wavelike walls made of rippled metal, stretching upward out of sight.

Things moved within that space, hurtling down toward her. Things of both light and shadow.

The pain in Zoey’s head peaked. Her vision blurred. Something was wrong. Something was—

Everything went black.

When Zoey woke, she was inside another dark room … and her lungs were filling with smoke. She coughed painfully, trying to breathe. Flames punctuated the shadows, but she couldn’t make out any details.

It occurred to her suddenly that she had no idea how she had gotten here, wherever here was.

In fact … she didn’t know anything at all.

She didn’t remember the other room; there were no memories of the machines crushing each other, or of the lights and the alarm. There was nothing now. Her mind was a blank. She knew only her name, and even that seemed foreign to her. Like the name of a stranger.

To her right, something moved.

She called out for help. She called out again, until a figure appeared, standing over her.

A boy, older than her, with disheveled hair and a skeptical, impatient look in his eye.

His name was Holt, Zoey somehow could tell, though she had no idea how. And the feelings told her to trust him.

*   *   *

THE BLACKNESS AGAIN. SOLID
and complete nothingness.

The rumbling was still around her, angry and insistent, and it shoved Zoey forward through the dark, overpowering everything.

As it did, her mind was overflowed with imagery one more time.…

*   *   *

SOMETHING HUGE AND MASSIVE
stretched high into the sky. Particles of energy and darkness swirled around it in a powerful maelstrom that obscured her view, but Zoey could still recognize its silhouette: the same towerlike structure she had seen in her first vision, split in half and frozen in the air, surrounded by the same insane, chaotic landscape.

Zoey saw no sign of herself, but she knew she was here somewhere. In fact, what it really felt like was that she was
everywhere.

She realized that by looking at the tower, she was looking at herself. Zoey
was
the tower, impossible as that seemed. She was the black, broken, monolithic structure rising above everything.

With this realization came others, things she sensed and felt: Pasts. Futures. Presents. Every possible combination of every potential possibility converged within her at that exact moment. And every other moment.

Right then, she knew who she was, knew the truth, as scary as it was. And she also knew that once the vision was over, the knowledge would be gone. But it didn’t matter. This would all happen again. She would be here once more.

She saw other things in the swirl of times and places.

Saw how the ends connected, how every event since she had been found on that hilltop had led her back to this place.

If only the Librarian could see this. Would he believe it? Or did the old man already suspect?

She saw more.

Mira’s eyes filling in with solid black, Holt crying in grief.

Figures holding strange spear-like weapons that glowed on either end, spinning and darting through the air.

Holt and another girl, not Mira, a girl with raven black hair, kissing each other, surrounded by the shouts and jeers of people in some kind of huge arena.

More Assembly walkers, all the kinds she had ever seen, but these had no colors; they had been stripped to their silver, bare metal without explanation.

Landships like the
Wind Shear,
dozens of them, storming forward toward a wall of Assembly walkers, cannons along their decks flashing as they fired.

And then the images all burst apart as one, in a powerful flash of color and light.…

*   *   *

BLACKNESS. NOTHINGNESS.

The rumbling roared around Zoey as the images and places and possibilities vanished. But in their place came realization. Memories re-formed in her disjointed mind, all that she had witnessed fusing together in patterns that slowly began to make sense. And she could sense the feelings, the ones that had sporadically guided her in the past. It was as if they had been hidden behind a curtain, and that curtain had been lifted away. They welcomed her. Even in this dark place, they gave her warmth.

But Zoey could sense other things now as well. Other presences. Similar to the feelings … but not. She felt their eyes turn to her, felt them notice and sense her as she did them. There were hundreds of thousands of them. Millions, maybe. Some close, some far. And Zoey knew what they were: the ones who were hunting her, the ones she was running from. With her memories restored, now she could tap into parts of herself that had been denied. Parts that they had sealed away from her in hopes of curbing her power.

Now they knew where she was. Now … they would be coming.
All of them.

The rumbling peaked one last time, filling Zoey’s senses with pain. Then it receded, leaving only peace and quiet, and Zoey felt herself waking, returning to her body with a host of new feelings and memories that felt frighteningly foreign.

44.
APEX

HOLT HELD ON TO THE RAILS
inside the lift as its chains and ropes screamed through their pulleys, and slammed it roughly back down onto the platform.

When it was done, he breathed a sigh of relief. Going up had seemed even worse than going down, and he gratefully stepped out of the lift and onto the cavern floor.

“Hey, was that fun or what?” Mira asked behind him.

“‘Or what,’” he answered dryly. Holt thought he could feel the specific weight of the Chance Generator inside his pack. He expected it to start vibrating or giving off heat or explode any moment, but it just sat in there, harmless and inactive. Its silence only made him more apprehensive.

“Where’s Zoey?” he heard Mira ask, and alarmed, Holt looked up to where they had left her and Max. There was no sign of them. Only the Librarian, standing at the back of the study area.

Holt’s gaze fixed on the old man. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted him, but he had let Mira talk him into it. Mira tried to grab him, but he broke loose and stormed toward the Librarian. “Holt!” she yelled, but he ignored her.

“Where the hell’s Zoey?” Holt demanded as he moved. The old man said nothing.
“Where?”

The Librarian looked down at Holt calmly as he reached the bottom of the study area. “With the Oracle,” he said, and Holt heard a sharp intake of breath from Mira.

“You sent her … to the
Oracle
?” Mira asked aghast, staring at the Librarian in horror.

“It’s what she came here to find,” the old man answered.