The Blue Tower

Chapter 10

IN THE AFTERNOON, our group of twelve gathers again with Sarai. Everyone is there, even Max. He sits on the opposite side of the room from Hank, who now wears a bandage around his head. Max keeps his eyes down, staring at his thumbs twiddling on the desk.

Sarai teaches us more about the other towers. She explains that Yellow and Green are our natural allies. Black and Red are our usual enemies. But it's not so simple, she says, because every group has an assignment during the Scouring. The assignments are a starting point, but the fight rarely goes as planned.

"Come, watch," she says. "That's the best way to learn."

We rise quietly and join her by the wall of glass. Our group seems to be in a somber mood, probably because of what happened with Max and Hank.

The view from this high takes my breath away. The surrounding lands stretch as far as I can see, but the other four towers are close—the black iron pole, the red mountain keep, the green tree, and the yellow castle. The towers look the same height, spaced about as far from each other as they are tall. In the center of the towers is a vast open space surrounded by a high gray wall with five sides—shaped like a pentagon. The gray ground of the open space is perfectly flat and empty. In the center of the pentagon there is a small white circle. There are gateways into the pentagon from each side, one for each tower. Our tower's gateway must be below us.

Sarai comes to my side. "You understand your assignment?"

"We're supposed to capture Emma from Yellow," I say, "and bring her back. But who's Emma?"

"You'll have to find her, without letting yourself get caught. Be constantly on your guard. And work together." She glances at Max. "We'll keep refining your group until you're ready."

"What happens if we can't find Emma, or capture her?"

"Then you start over," Sarai says, "as you will again and again, as many times as it takes."

That doesn't sound good. It seems too harsh. "You mean in the cavern, with my mind wiped?"

"Yes. Reset." She turns to the wall of glass. "Look, today's Scouring begins. You will see."

The gateways of each tower are opening below. Figures appear in them, their colors vivid against the gray wall and ground. A group from the Red Tower charges out. The twelve of them look as small as ants from our height. They fan out in pairs, going different directions. A group from Black is packed closely together. I can't count their number they're so close, but it's probably twelve. They march steadily forward like a solid cube of metal sliding across the open expanse. Groups from Green and Yellow move more slowly. Those from Yellow form into a circle. Green takes an odd shape, like a snake slithering out from the gateway toward the middle. And the twelve from Blue, directly below us, makes sixty total out there.

Someone from Red reaches the center of the open ground. The person steps onto the white circle, which looks like quartz in the middle of the slate gray plaza. The red figure stops, in the middle of the white. The other colors continue approaching.

The phalanx of black figures gets there first. They slam into the red person, quickly overwhelming and covering the white stone. The other groups begin to surround the group from Black, as if testing it. The tip of the line of Green strikes at one edge of Black, while a few from the Blue Tower hover near the other edge. Yellow arcs out around a corner of the Black. The pairs from Red are dispersed everywhere, charging and bouncing through the other colors like pinballs.

The movements become too fast and scattered to follow. The colors—the people—are colliding, blending, in a sea of conflict. My eyes are drawn to a single boy from Blue. He's below us, close to our tower. He has long brown hair and stands beside a girl in a red dress. A boy from Red, with a helmet and beard and gleaming weapon, races toward them. Then, just as the Red attacker comes close, he's pushed back. He stays on his feet and comes again. He's flung back again.