To The Tower Came - 6/7 (DW/Heroes/HP/BtVS; 19,060 words; 12+)
[ Full Headers and Art | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | E | Read on DW ]
SIX
He'd heard about it from Molly first, talking together in the hospital while his dad and her whatever Matt was were looked after. Then there had been Mohinder and Monica; his mother, coming back sick and powerless, but going into the flames anyway, because, really, wasn't that what he did? Get people killed? Not the point now, though: the point now was the virus was more than a bug; it was a power that looked like a disease, that shifted and mutated as a disease did. A power with a drive, an intelligence, a name -- for a girl not dead, but transfigured into another kind of life entirely: Shanti.
"What sort of a plan is this?" Mickey complained as Micah skidded to a halt at his side, reaching down to pull him up. The bat-monk that had been on him had gone to aid Glory as she shrieked and giggled and smacked at the hordes of the infected.
"A rescue plan?" Micah offered blithely as Rose came up to them. "Come on!"
"We've got to get the others out," Rose contradicted, not slowing as she passed, heading for the chained prisoners Glory had been using as food, and there was something else Micah wasn't thinking about.
"Seriously," said Mickey, coming with them, "any plan that involves killer zombies is not a good plan."
"They're not zombies," Micah pointed out lamely. "Jake!"
"Help me," Rose called from where she was blasting the chains. "Can't you ask them to open?"
"It's too slow if they're not electronic," Micah said digging in his pockets and pulling out a screwdriver. Mickey, joining him, proved to be a dab hand with a lock-pick -- Micah had to remember to learn that -- and between the three of them they managed to get the prisoners released in less than a minute, sending them racing for the side door.
Even that short time was enough for Glory to throw off her rage and Infected both and appear, in a blur, between them and the exit. Still, she seemed worse for the wear. The shifts were happening more rapidly now, almost continuously, as if her body couldn't remember what size or shape it should be. Rot ran across her in green-black waves. Her mouth worked silently for a while before she could force out the word, "Filth!"
"Bath," said Rose.
The crumpled remains of the cast iron tub whipped across the room, smashing into Glory, driving her into the regrouping Infected.
"Run!" yelled Mickey, and Micah yelled "Jake!" again simultaneously; this time, the dog came bounding to meet them, leaving the bat-monk he'd be harrying cowering in the corner.
"Round," Rose gasped out, "there," absently firing spells blindly behind her.
They took the corner. Micah saw the door, marked "Private Exit: Staff Only". To his delight, it actually had a number pad, and he sprinted harder to reach it, slapping a hand against the buttons and pushing. The system complained but gave, and he shouldered the door open. Jake bounded out in front of him, and then Mickey was there, pushing him through; Rose too, slamming it behind her and then doing something complicated with her wand that made the door melt into the wall.
"Not that that'll stop her for long," Rose added, leaning against it for support, absently casting wordless drying spells on herself and Micah. "I think I near pulled my shoulder summoning that bath, and she threw it one handed! I wonder if she's part giant?"
Giants were apparently real too. Fun.
Jake was jumping up at Mickey, tail wagging nineteen to the dozen, but Micah knew they weren't even close to safe. He looked around, trying to see in the dim light, trying to find something to use. They were in -- huh. They were in a railway. Not just one track like before, but lots of them, with actual platforms and everything. Which meant he'd been heading right here all along, and wasn't that a fun thought?
"How did you find me?" Mickey asked.
"Micah has a thing," Rose said.
"A life-signs detector," Micah explained as they all started moving again, heading by silent agreement parallel to the tracks and away from the building. "Rose fixed it for me, and we followed it. You show up really well for some reason."
"Artron energy," Mickey said. Micah blinked at him. Mickey waved this off. "And you drove through the Infected to get them to follow you in?"
"I saw them earlier, while I was walking," Micah explained.
"Have I said how incredibly bad that idea was? Because it was a seriously, seriously bad idea."
"Um", said Rose and they looked around to find she'd gone off to the side and was looking at something. "I have a bad idea as well."
Micah glanced back at the station, but there was no sign of pursuit yet. He hurried to join Rose as Jake bounded ahead of them, to sniff at a crumpled wheel. It was a train engine, Micah realised, over on its side. He didn't recognise the design. The name "Silver Bullet" was stencilled on the side, though the engine itself was blue where the paint hadn't flecked off the rusty metal beneath, and basically box-shaped.
"You know how to drive," Rose was saying to Mickey, "and Micah does his machine thing, and I can get it up and--"
"And the tracks vanish a hundred yards down and we all crash to our deaths?" Mickey finished.
"I think it could work," Micah offered.
"Your plan involved zombies!" Mickey yelled, making Jake bark.
"You're not letting that go, are you?"
Rose cut in before Mickey could argue. "I said it was a bad--"
There was an explosion behind him. Something smashed up through the roof of the station and fell back before they could make it out, trailing smoke and fire. Thin screams reached them.
"Yeah, okay," said Mickey. "Train."
"Can you get it up?" Micah asked. "It's gotta be heavier than the bath."
"I can make it lighter first," Rose said, already waving her wand. "Get around the other side and push. I'll pull from here."
They worked quickly -- after Micah dragged Jake out from underfoot, anyway -- and got the engine up. Getting it positioned on the tracks proved harder, partly because of a broken axle, but mostly because the screams and bangs from the station were getting louder.
"What the hell is she doing in there?" Mickey muttered.
Micah was sure he didn't want to know. "Fix it, would you?"
"Reparo isn't a universal panacea," Rose snapped back. "It's like with your detecting thing. I have to know exactly what I'm doing or it'll merge wrong."
"Can't you know what you're doing quickly?" Micah asked.
Mickey dragged him away from Rose and pushed him up into the driver's compartment, which took up most of the rear two thirds of the boxcar. "Do your talking thing. Tell her what it needs."
Micah placed his hands against the dash and concentrated. The train's computers were sluggish but friendly. Despite a lack of a third rail, as far as Micah had seen, there seemed to be power coming into it from somewhere. It was half-blocked though, and he started shouting instructions to Rose, hoping his English was coming out intelligibly. It wasn't really right to say he talked to machines; it didn't feel like language, exactly, but more a sort of flow, a mutual information exchange that bordered on merging.
(When he'd rigged the election for Petrelli, it had actually taken him a long moment to find his real body again.)
Power thrummed through him and through the train. Lights came on all over the cab.
"You did it," Mickey called to Rose. "Now, just--"
The largest bang yet came and, with it, pieces of brick and mortar, raining down all around them. Jake yelped. Rose and Mickey both swore as Glory appeared in the hole now gaping in the station wall. Her eyes were black, her dress tattered, and she was covered in something like blood, dripping with it. There was no sign of the bat-monks, and Micah had a horrible thought that the one explained the other.
"Get in!" he yelled, reaching for Rose even as Mickey started darting from control to control, hitting and pulling things.
The train jerked around him, almost throwing him out, and then again the other way, letting him pull Rose on-board. With a deep, metallic groan, it began to edge forwards.
"Faster!" Rose cried, grabbing hold of a yapping Jake to keep him inside.
"I'm trying," Mickey snapped back.
Micah pushed past Rose, back up to the dash. Reaching through it for that odd power source, he begged it for any help it could give. The reply was so strong he could taste batteries; something crackled and an electric whine was all the warning before the train shot forward. Mickey, holding onto the controls, managed to keep his feet. The other three went sliding towards the rear of the cab, Rose's wand clattering to the floor and rolling out of view.
A wild grab caught a lever that snapped off in his hand, cold air suddenly blowing from vents overhead. He fell back against the controls, scrabbling for purchase, and a horn sounded, all but drowning out Rose's sudden scream. He turned as he hit the floor right at the back of the cab, and found himself face to face with an enraged Glory. His own scream got caught in his throat as she swiped at him, fingers just missing as the train pulled away again.
Rose grabbed him, pulling him back, and he went with her, scrambling on elbows and heels -- except somehow Glory was there again, there still, lunging with inhuman speed. Her hand closed around his ankle and this time Micah did cry out, in pain, disgust and fear. He started sliding back, despite Rose's death-grip, and yelped again, kicking wildly at Glory's mad grin but hitting nothing.
Jake's teeth closed on Glory's wrist.
Her agonised scream wasn't anywhere near as horrific as the wet snapping as Jake twisted his jaws and ripped Glory's hand clean off. She fell back, sobbing and wailing, caught a foot in the rail and went tumbling, crashing to the ground and rolling, over and over. In seconds she was barely a dot on the horizon. Jake spat the hand out, gagging. Micah scrambled backwards, away from it, ending up being yanked into Rose's arms for a tight hug.
"What the fu--" Mickey started, and then Rose screamed; something hit Micah hard in the back; Rose batted at him; he rolled; something scuttled -- the hand, the freaking hand was moving, all by itself it was moving, that broken handle in its fingers, coming back at him again, stabbing, cutting right through his jacket before Rose could get it off him, kicking it away, and again, so it flew out into the open air and fell away.
There was a long stunned silence and then, to his complete embarrassment, Micah burst into tears.
*
There was a hole in his backpack where the broken lever had pierced through, and a dent in his father's medal of honour. He rubbed at it with his thumbs, as if he could just smooth it out.
"Thanks, dad," he whispered, holding it tight.
*
"It's getting lighter," Mickey said.
Micah looking up, frowned. "It's dark as anything."
"Nah." Mickey nodded forward, which was more sort of sideways, and who designed a train cab you couldn't see directly out of? Okay, the open sides and back made leaning out to check easy, but hardly safe. What sort of alternate world had it come from? How was it picking up power, and from what, and was there some way to do the same? Micah couldn't begin to explain how much he seriously missed constant, working electricity. Not to mention running water.
Not having people whose hands came alive when you cut them off and who could run as fast as a damn train was right up there too.
"Micah," repeated Mickey, and Micah blinked at him. "Yeah, you went away for a second there. Maybe you should sleep."
Rose was. She'd said something about having had a bajillion cousins and learning to be able to sleep anywhere, plonked herself down in a chair, and promptly drifted off. Jake had squeezed in next to her and done the same.
"I'm good," Micah said, shaking his head. He leaned out a little, carefully, to look. It was brighter ahead, the sky lightening along the horizon. When he glanced back, though, the darkness was still thick and deep, swallowing even the crazy-paving stars. Looking forward was better, so he did again, and frowned. "Hey, I think there's something up ahead."
Mickey leaned out around him to look and Micah frowned, because, come on, and then had a better idea and went to talk to the train again. It was confused for a moment, and then light shimmered down in front of the controls, becoming a projected virtual windscreen, with complimentary HUD. Micah whistled appreciatively.
"Man, what is it?" Mickey asked, trying to poke the screen. His fingers went right through it, sending little ripples racing outwards through the dark silhouette ahead.
Dark was the wrong word, though, Micah thought. It wasn't that it was dark, it was that you couldn't see it clearly behind its lights. The structure was tall, a vaguely conical spire in a jagged, pointy, metallic Christmas tree sort of way but -- and maybe it was just because they were rushing towards it through the dark at high speed but -- it wouldn't stay still. Pieces that at first seemed near were suddenly far away, while large, distant outcroppings were really tiny and close. It was like it was hiding in plain sight.
"Maybe we should wake Rose," Mickey said.
"Maybe you should slow down," Micah returned.
There was a slight pause and then Rose said, without opening her eyes, "You do know how to slow down, I take it?"
"Um," Mickey said, which wasn't reassuring at all.
"I can just ask the train," Micah said, and reached out to do so. The train assured him it was quite happy going this fast, thank you, and it could even go a bit faster if they wanted. "Um."
Rose swore, bouncing to her feet, startling Jake. She grabbed at herself and then looked panicked. "My wand!"
"You dropped it earlier," Micah remembered. "It must have rolled--"
They both went down on their knees, searching for it.
"I think I can see it," Rose said, pressed against a control cabinet. "Under there -- you're smaller; can you reach?"
"Here, let me try," Micah said, squeezing in next to her, pushing Jake aside when he tried to help.
"I don't think we need to worry about our speed," Mickey said in a strangled sort of way.
"Why not?" asked Rose absently, while Micah wriggled his arm into the tiny gap, just managing to get her wand with his fingers tips.
"Because we're running out of track," Mickey said.
Micah jerked Rose's wand out so fast he tore his sleeve open from elbow to wrist.
"You really should take better care of your clothes," Rose said distantly, and Micah was too busy gaping at the screen and the way the rails just stopped to gape at her.
"We'll have to jump," Mickey said. "We can -- I dunno, roll with it or--"
"We're going too fast for that," Micah said. "Rose, can't you magic us out or--"
"I'd splinch us across half a mile of tracks," Rose snapped.
"Wait, wait, you can make us lighter," Mickey said. "Like with the train -- we can float down."
"Momentum is conserved," Rose said. "Negating mass might reduce our downwards acceleration but our forward velocity would be--"
"--decreased by air-resistance," Micah interrupted, raising his voice as the rumbling of the track got louder and the train horn started blaring cheerfully.
"We'll still hit the--"
"But not as bad!" Mickey yelled back. "We're out of track! Do it!"
"Fine!" Rose said, flicking her wand at all of them. It felt like being hit by a wave of water, like something was pushing Micah up and back, somehow buoyant in air. Jake started whining, tail down. "This is insane!"
"It is my turn!" Mickey grinned. "Jump!"
They lunged. Everything went white.
*
Micah blinked.
"Um." He frowned, looking around. There were strings of fairy-lights, hanging baskets filled with greenery, dark stone pillars and arches. light stones underfoot. His clothes were ripped, but no more than earlier, and his back-pack, also on its last threads, was still on his shoulders. He didn't feel dead, just a little light still. "What just happened?"
"Felt like a port-key," Rose said.
"Or a transmat," Mickey said, crouching to soothe a startled Jake. "Are we in a church? It feels church-y."
It did; there was a kind of expectant hush to the place, like a choir had just finished and a sermon was about to begin. In fact, if Micah really concentrated, he could swear he could still hear the echoes of a song.
"I think we're in the tower," Rose said.
They moved to join her at the small wall. The sky was growing brighter to the east. To the west, the sky was thick and dark. Below them, they could see train tracks leading away into the distance. A cold breeze whipped across them, carrying the stench of decay, and they flinched as one, moving back.
"This seems weirdly familiar," Mickey muttered.
Micah barely heard him. There was definitely a song. It was quiet, less a sound and more a vibration in the stones around him, but it was there. It seemed to be coming from somewhere both above and below them. He followed it as best he could, walking this way and that until it was loudest, and there was an oddly shaped corner and suddenly a twisting, rising spiral staircase in front of him.
"Up," he said to himself and started climbing. Jake clambered up after him, then beside, then bounded up. The music, the song was getting louder. As he took the first turn, jumping up two and three steps at a time, he only barely noticed Mickey and Rose were following too.
In defiance of architecture, the stair somehow opened out into a large, round room, with a half-dozen big circular windows in the walls and a complicated stained glass ceiling. A second staircase led down on the opposite side, though Micah hadn't seen it coming up -- but then there had been only the night sky above him until he'd come level with this floor, so that wasn't that surprising.
In the centre of the room, there was a -- a well, Micah decided. It was like an old stone well, from a fairy story, coming up to the middle of his chest. Rippling, spiralling, watery light shone faintly up in a column from the middle. When he touched the stones, they seemed to melt under his fingers, revealing complicated racks of buttons, knobs and levers. They played notes in his head like the world's most complicated piano.
When he looked up, it was to find that Mickey, Jake and Rose had all been drawn to windows.
"I've seen this," Rose was saying. "In my dreams. I've seen this view. Scorpius was there--" She waved vaguely back at the well, still looking out. "--and I was here and-- Oh! It's dawn."
The sun, just clearing the horizon, was framed in the window. It gleamed, bright and cold, and Micah felt suffused with gold, soft and warm as honey. The song rose triumphantly.
"It's singing," he said. "Can't you hear it? It's singing like -- like -- I don't know!" He laughed, grinning at them. "I don't know what!"
"I know what it is," Mickey said. "She's a TARDIS."
[ Full Headers and Art | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | E | Read on DW ]
SIX
He'd heard about it from Molly first, talking together in the hospital while his dad and her whatever Matt was were looked after. Then there had been Mohinder and Monica; his mother, coming back sick and powerless, but going into the flames anyway, because, really, wasn't that what he did? Get people killed? Not the point now, though: the point now was the virus was more than a bug; it was a power that looked like a disease, that shifted and mutated as a disease did. A power with a drive, an intelligence, a name -- for a girl not dead, but transfigured into another kind of life entirely: Shanti.
"What sort of a plan is this?" Mickey complained as Micah skidded to a halt at his side, reaching down to pull him up. The bat-monk that had been on him had gone to aid Glory as she shrieked and giggled and smacked at the hordes of the infected.
"A rescue plan?" Micah offered blithely as Rose came up to them. "Come on!"
"We've got to get the others out," Rose contradicted, not slowing as she passed, heading for the chained prisoners Glory had been using as food, and there was something else Micah wasn't thinking about.
"Seriously," said Mickey, coming with them, "any plan that involves killer zombies is not a good plan."
"They're not zombies," Micah pointed out lamely. "Jake!"
"Help me," Rose called from where she was blasting the chains. "Can't you ask them to open?"
"It's too slow if they're not electronic," Micah said digging in his pockets and pulling out a screwdriver. Mickey, joining him, proved to be a dab hand with a lock-pick -- Micah had to remember to learn that -- and between the three of them they managed to get the prisoners released in less than a minute, sending them racing for the side door.
Even that short time was enough for Glory to throw off her rage and Infected both and appear, in a blur, between them and the exit. Still, she seemed worse for the wear. The shifts were happening more rapidly now, almost continuously, as if her body couldn't remember what size or shape it should be. Rot ran across her in green-black waves. Her mouth worked silently for a while before she could force out the word, "Filth!"
"Bath," said Rose.
The crumpled remains of the cast iron tub whipped across the room, smashing into Glory, driving her into the regrouping Infected.
"Run!" yelled Mickey, and Micah yelled "Jake!" again simultaneously; this time, the dog came bounding to meet them, leaving the bat-monk he'd be harrying cowering in the corner.
"Round," Rose gasped out, "there," absently firing spells blindly behind her.
They took the corner. Micah saw the door, marked "Private Exit: Staff Only". To his delight, it actually had a number pad, and he sprinted harder to reach it, slapping a hand against the buttons and pushing. The system complained but gave, and he shouldered the door open. Jake bounded out in front of him, and then Mickey was there, pushing him through; Rose too, slamming it behind her and then doing something complicated with her wand that made the door melt into the wall.
"Not that that'll stop her for long," Rose added, leaning against it for support, absently casting wordless drying spells on herself and Micah. "I think I near pulled my shoulder summoning that bath, and she threw it one handed! I wonder if she's part giant?"
Giants were apparently real too. Fun.
Jake was jumping up at Mickey, tail wagging nineteen to the dozen, but Micah knew they weren't even close to safe. He looked around, trying to see in the dim light, trying to find something to use. They were in -- huh. They were in a railway. Not just one track like before, but lots of them, with actual platforms and everything. Which meant he'd been heading right here all along, and wasn't that a fun thought?
"How did you find me?" Mickey asked.
"Micah has a thing," Rose said.
"A life-signs detector," Micah explained as they all started moving again, heading by silent agreement parallel to the tracks and away from the building. "Rose fixed it for me, and we followed it. You show up really well for some reason."
"Artron energy," Mickey said. Micah blinked at him. Mickey waved this off. "And you drove through the Infected to get them to follow you in?"
"I saw them earlier, while I was walking," Micah explained.
"Have I said how incredibly bad that idea was? Because it was a seriously, seriously bad idea."
"Um", said Rose and they looked around to find she'd gone off to the side and was looking at something. "I have a bad idea as well."
Micah glanced back at the station, but there was no sign of pursuit yet. He hurried to join Rose as Jake bounded ahead of them, to sniff at a crumpled wheel. It was a train engine, Micah realised, over on its side. He didn't recognise the design. The name "Silver Bullet" was stencilled on the side, though the engine itself was blue where the paint hadn't flecked off the rusty metal beneath, and basically box-shaped.
"You know how to drive," Rose was saying to Mickey, "and Micah does his machine thing, and I can get it up and--"
"And the tracks vanish a hundred yards down and we all crash to our deaths?" Mickey finished.
"I think it could work," Micah offered.
"Your plan involved zombies!" Mickey yelled, making Jake bark.
"You're not letting that go, are you?"
Rose cut in before Mickey could argue. "I said it was a bad--"
There was an explosion behind him. Something smashed up through the roof of the station and fell back before they could make it out, trailing smoke and fire. Thin screams reached them.
"Yeah, okay," said Mickey. "Train."
"Can you get it up?" Micah asked. "It's gotta be heavier than the bath."
"I can make it lighter first," Rose said, already waving her wand. "Get around the other side and push. I'll pull from here."
They worked quickly -- after Micah dragged Jake out from underfoot, anyway -- and got the engine up. Getting it positioned on the tracks proved harder, partly because of a broken axle, but mostly because the screams and bangs from the station were getting louder.
"What the hell is she doing in there?" Mickey muttered.
Micah was sure he didn't want to know. "Fix it, would you?"
"Reparo isn't a universal panacea," Rose snapped back. "It's like with your detecting thing. I have to know exactly what I'm doing or it'll merge wrong."
"Can't you know what you're doing quickly?" Micah asked.
Mickey dragged him away from Rose and pushed him up into the driver's compartment, which took up most of the rear two thirds of the boxcar. "Do your talking thing. Tell her what it needs."
Micah placed his hands against the dash and concentrated. The train's computers were sluggish but friendly. Despite a lack of a third rail, as far as Micah had seen, there seemed to be power coming into it from somewhere. It was half-blocked though, and he started shouting instructions to Rose, hoping his English was coming out intelligibly. It wasn't really right to say he talked to machines; it didn't feel like language, exactly, but more a sort of flow, a mutual information exchange that bordered on merging.
(When he'd rigged the election for Petrelli, it had actually taken him a long moment to find his real body again.)
Power thrummed through him and through the train. Lights came on all over the cab.
"You did it," Mickey called to Rose. "Now, just--"
The largest bang yet came and, with it, pieces of brick and mortar, raining down all around them. Jake yelped. Rose and Mickey both swore as Glory appeared in the hole now gaping in the station wall. Her eyes were black, her dress tattered, and she was covered in something like blood, dripping with it. There was no sign of the bat-monks, and Micah had a horrible thought that the one explained the other.
"Get in!" he yelled, reaching for Rose even as Mickey started darting from control to control, hitting and pulling things.
The train jerked around him, almost throwing him out, and then again the other way, letting him pull Rose on-board. With a deep, metallic groan, it began to edge forwards.
"Faster!" Rose cried, grabbing hold of a yapping Jake to keep him inside.
"I'm trying," Mickey snapped back.
Micah pushed past Rose, back up to the dash. Reaching through it for that odd power source, he begged it for any help it could give. The reply was so strong he could taste batteries; something crackled and an electric whine was all the warning before the train shot forward. Mickey, holding onto the controls, managed to keep his feet. The other three went sliding towards the rear of the cab, Rose's wand clattering to the floor and rolling out of view.
A wild grab caught a lever that snapped off in his hand, cold air suddenly blowing from vents overhead. He fell back against the controls, scrabbling for purchase, and a horn sounded, all but drowning out Rose's sudden scream. He turned as he hit the floor right at the back of the cab, and found himself face to face with an enraged Glory. His own scream got caught in his throat as she swiped at him, fingers just missing as the train pulled away again.
Rose grabbed him, pulling him back, and he went with her, scrambling on elbows and heels -- except somehow Glory was there again, there still, lunging with inhuman speed. Her hand closed around his ankle and this time Micah did cry out, in pain, disgust and fear. He started sliding back, despite Rose's death-grip, and yelped again, kicking wildly at Glory's mad grin but hitting nothing.
Jake's teeth closed on Glory's wrist.
Her agonised scream wasn't anywhere near as horrific as the wet snapping as Jake twisted his jaws and ripped Glory's hand clean off. She fell back, sobbing and wailing, caught a foot in the rail and went tumbling, crashing to the ground and rolling, over and over. In seconds she was barely a dot on the horizon. Jake spat the hand out, gagging. Micah scrambled backwards, away from it, ending up being yanked into Rose's arms for a tight hug.
"What the fu--" Mickey started, and then Rose screamed; something hit Micah hard in the back; Rose batted at him; he rolled; something scuttled -- the hand, the freaking hand was moving, all by itself it was moving, that broken handle in its fingers, coming back at him again, stabbing, cutting right through his jacket before Rose could get it off him, kicking it away, and again, so it flew out into the open air and fell away.
There was a long stunned silence and then, to his complete embarrassment, Micah burst into tears.
*
There was a hole in his backpack where the broken lever had pierced through, and a dent in his father's medal of honour. He rubbed at it with his thumbs, as if he could just smooth it out.
"Thanks, dad," he whispered, holding it tight.
*
"It's getting lighter," Mickey said.
Micah looking up, frowned. "It's dark as anything."
"Nah." Mickey nodded forward, which was more sort of sideways, and who designed a train cab you couldn't see directly out of? Okay, the open sides and back made leaning out to check easy, but hardly safe. What sort of alternate world had it come from? How was it picking up power, and from what, and was there some way to do the same? Micah couldn't begin to explain how much he seriously missed constant, working electricity. Not to mention running water.
Not having people whose hands came alive when you cut them off and who could run as fast as a damn train was right up there too.
"Micah," repeated Mickey, and Micah blinked at him. "Yeah, you went away for a second there. Maybe you should sleep."
Rose was. She'd said something about having had a bajillion cousins and learning to be able to sleep anywhere, plonked herself down in a chair, and promptly drifted off. Jake had squeezed in next to her and done the same.
"I'm good," Micah said, shaking his head. He leaned out a little, carefully, to look. It was brighter ahead, the sky lightening along the horizon. When he glanced back, though, the darkness was still thick and deep, swallowing even the crazy-paving stars. Looking forward was better, so he did again, and frowned. "Hey, I think there's something up ahead."
Mickey leaned out around him to look and Micah frowned, because, come on, and then had a better idea and went to talk to the train again. It was confused for a moment, and then light shimmered down in front of the controls, becoming a projected virtual windscreen, with complimentary HUD. Micah whistled appreciatively.
"Man, what is it?" Mickey asked, trying to poke the screen. His fingers went right through it, sending little ripples racing outwards through the dark silhouette ahead.
Dark was the wrong word, though, Micah thought. It wasn't that it was dark, it was that you couldn't see it clearly behind its lights. The structure was tall, a vaguely conical spire in a jagged, pointy, metallic Christmas tree sort of way but -- and maybe it was just because they were rushing towards it through the dark at high speed but -- it wouldn't stay still. Pieces that at first seemed near were suddenly far away, while large, distant outcroppings were really tiny and close. It was like it was hiding in plain sight.
"Maybe we should wake Rose," Mickey said.
"Maybe you should slow down," Micah returned.
There was a slight pause and then Rose said, without opening her eyes, "You do know how to slow down, I take it?"
"Um," Mickey said, which wasn't reassuring at all.
"I can just ask the train," Micah said, and reached out to do so. The train assured him it was quite happy going this fast, thank you, and it could even go a bit faster if they wanted. "Um."
Rose swore, bouncing to her feet, startling Jake. She grabbed at herself and then looked panicked. "My wand!"
"You dropped it earlier," Micah remembered. "It must have rolled--"
They both went down on their knees, searching for it.
"I think I can see it," Rose said, pressed against a control cabinet. "Under there -- you're smaller; can you reach?"
"Here, let me try," Micah said, squeezing in next to her, pushing Jake aside when he tried to help.
"I don't think we need to worry about our speed," Mickey said in a strangled sort of way.
"Why not?" asked Rose absently, while Micah wriggled his arm into the tiny gap, just managing to get her wand with his fingers tips.
"Because we're running out of track," Mickey said.
Micah jerked Rose's wand out so fast he tore his sleeve open from elbow to wrist.
"You really should take better care of your clothes," Rose said distantly, and Micah was too busy gaping at the screen and the way the rails just stopped to gape at her.
"We'll have to jump," Mickey said. "We can -- I dunno, roll with it or--"
"We're going too fast for that," Micah said. "Rose, can't you magic us out or--"
"I'd splinch us across half a mile of tracks," Rose snapped.
"Wait, wait, you can make us lighter," Mickey said. "Like with the train -- we can float down."
"Momentum is conserved," Rose said. "Negating mass might reduce our downwards acceleration but our forward velocity would be--"
"--decreased by air-resistance," Micah interrupted, raising his voice as the rumbling of the track got louder and the train horn started blaring cheerfully.
"We'll still hit the--"
"But not as bad!" Mickey yelled back. "We're out of track! Do it!"
"Fine!" Rose said, flicking her wand at all of them. It felt like being hit by a wave of water, like something was pushing Micah up and back, somehow buoyant in air. Jake started whining, tail down. "This is insane!"
"It is my turn!" Mickey grinned. "Jump!"
They lunged. Everything went white.
*
Micah blinked.
"Um." He frowned, looking around. There were strings of fairy-lights, hanging baskets filled with greenery, dark stone pillars and arches. light stones underfoot. His clothes were ripped, but no more than earlier, and his back-pack, also on its last threads, was still on his shoulders. He didn't feel dead, just a little light still. "What just happened?"
"Felt like a port-key," Rose said.
"Or a transmat," Mickey said, crouching to soothe a startled Jake. "Are we in a church? It feels church-y."
It did; there was a kind of expectant hush to the place, like a choir had just finished and a sermon was about to begin. In fact, if Micah really concentrated, he could swear he could still hear the echoes of a song.
"I think we're in the tower," Rose said.
They moved to join her at the small wall. The sky was growing brighter to the east. To the west, the sky was thick and dark. Below them, they could see train tracks leading away into the distance. A cold breeze whipped across them, carrying the stench of decay, and they flinched as one, moving back.
"This seems weirdly familiar," Mickey muttered.
Micah barely heard him. There was definitely a song. It was quiet, less a sound and more a vibration in the stones around him, but it was there. It seemed to be coming from somewhere both above and below them. He followed it as best he could, walking this way and that until it was loudest, and there was an oddly shaped corner and suddenly a twisting, rising spiral staircase in front of him.
"Up," he said to himself and started climbing. Jake clambered up after him, then beside, then bounded up. The music, the song was getting louder. As he took the first turn, jumping up two and three steps at a time, he only barely noticed Mickey and Rose were following too.
In defiance of architecture, the stair somehow opened out into a large, round room, with a half-dozen big circular windows in the walls and a complicated stained glass ceiling. A second staircase led down on the opposite side, though Micah hadn't seen it coming up -- but then there had been only the night sky above him until he'd come level with this floor, so that wasn't that surprising.
In the centre of the room, there was a -- a well, Micah decided. It was like an old stone well, from a fairy story, coming up to the middle of his chest. Rippling, spiralling, watery light shone faintly up in a column from the middle. When he touched the stones, they seemed to melt under his fingers, revealing complicated racks of buttons, knobs and levers. They played notes in his head like the world's most complicated piano.
When he looked up, it was to find that Mickey, Jake and Rose had all been drawn to windows.
"I've seen this," Rose was saying. "In my dreams. I've seen this view. Scorpius was there--" She waved vaguely back at the well, still looking out. "--and I was here and-- Oh! It's dawn."
The sun, just clearing the horizon, was framed in the window. It gleamed, bright and cold, and Micah felt suffused with gold, soft and warm as honey. The song rose triumphantly.
"It's singing," he said. "Can't you hear it? It's singing like -- like -- I don't know!" He laughed, grinning at them. "I don't know what!"
"I know what it is," Mickey said. "She's a TARDIS."
[ Full Headers and Art | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | E | Read on DW ]