Midnight City Read Online Free PDF Page A

broken heap across the ground where it had crashed years ago. Part of it had come down on one of the administration buildings, crushing it to dust.
    Unlike most abandoned places these days, Clinton Station had no graffiti, no signs of looting or pillaging, no indication that anyone at all had set foot inside in years.
    Mira wasn’t surprised. Some stories were scary enough to keep anyone out of a place, and given the original purpose of the power plant, those stories were undoubtedly hiding and waiting in the dark tunnels beneath her feet.
    She moved for the nearest building, her footfalls echoing far too loudly for her comfort.
    She stood at the door there a long time, trying to convince herself to simply open it. It wasn’t easy. She could feel the fear trembling through her, fear of what might be beyond. But she hadn’t come all this way, risked everything she had risked, to freeze up here.
    Mira steeled herself and reached for the handle. The door opened with a groan of rusty hinges …
    … and nothing whatsoever happened. No sounds of spindly legs rushed forward; no shadows writhed and twisted and lunged at her. Everything beyond the door seemed empty and devoid of life.
    Mira stepped inside cautiously nonetheless.
    It had been a control room of some kind, Mira guessed. The banks of knobs and dials were still in one piece, but covered in so much dust, they were impossible to make out. She brushed some of it away, revealing a host of gauges and switches whose original purposes were long forgotten.
    She surveyed the room quickly, found what she was looking for. A big, thick, faded red door in the far wall. She moved to it and wiped the dust away from a sign fastened on its surface.
    Clinton Station: main access route. Entry beyond this point limited to authorized personnel only.
    “Jackpot,” Mira said to herself, smiling.
    But what if it wasn’t here? She had traded a lot of artifacts (useful, valuable artifacts) for the information that led her here. Everyone she traded with had seemed trustworthy, but the world had evolved a certain degree of dishonesty. Everyone was a good liar when they had to be. You just never knew anymore.
    It would be here, she told herself. It had to be.
    Through a window in the control room, Mira saw the last traces of color fading from the sky, being consumed by the dark. She didn’t have much time now.
    She pulled her pack loose, set it down on the floor. On the front of it, something had been embroidered into the fabric in bright red thread. A letter from the Greek alphabet, the δ symbol, a marking used the world over now to identify “active” artifacts from the Strange Lands. Her pack was overloaded with them—batteries, watches, vials full of glittering powders, springs, pencils, a bag of paper clips, magnets, lightbulbs, nails, and, of course, dozens of different coins, each wrapped in separate pieces of plastic.
    Whenever she looked at the artifacts, they all seemed to writhe and push away from one another, as if some subtle, invisible force was slipping in and out between them. Mira had never decided if it was a real phenomenon or just her imagination.
    She shifted through them and found what she was looking for. A large antique lantern that looked like it was ready to fall apart … but Mira knew it never would. At least not outside the Strange Lands. Artifacts were virtually indestructible once taken out. Mira remembered the Librarian’s theory that it was because their molecular structures “froze” once they were extracted. It was a good enough explanation for her.
    Mira added oil to the lantern pan, then stuck a wick into a small hole in the bottom and fed it up through the top. But she didn’t light it. Not yet. Not until it was time.
    Mira slipped her pack on, grabbed the lantern, pulled a flashlight from her belt … and stared at the big red door waiting in front of her. Her heart beat heavy and thick in her chest. Outside, the sun had set. It was now or