Lila nodded as Tristan’s men tried to scale the wall, a wall that was too high and smooth for them to climb. They fell off again in a flurry of grunts. “So many cameras have been destroyed that it won’t be hard to avoid the ones left,” she said.
“Good. You’ll keep us from them?”
“Of course.” Lila backed up and ran at the wall, grabbing the top easily, as though it were another morning at the obstacle course. While the men changed tactics and boosted one another up, she held herself at the top, peering into the compound and the people who dwelled inside.
Tristan had clearly chosen this spot for another reason, for the warehouses and old factories sat before them, row upon row of abandoned and shuttered buildings.
Darkness would not be a problem. A few of the abandoned structures had been set on fire. Mobs milled around the burning structures, some swinging cut
lumber at their sides like bats. Others passed around metal flasks. From time to time, a member of the crowd tried to get his or her neighbors to start up a chant, but it never seemed to gain any power.
It would, though. Soon. They only needed a few more fires, a few more sips to fuel their thirst.
Reluctantly, Lila swung herself over the wall.
“Shit,” Frank said when he hit the ground beside her, staring at the mob. “How badly do you want this guy, Tristan?”
“Very. Walk quietly.”
The group crept in the shadows toward an old factory, only a few buildings away from the mob and their fires. The crowd wore torn and dirty clothes, and wandered the area like starved zombies. Some of them had tied red strips of cloth around their right arms.
Lila didn’t have a chance to wonder about the meaning, for Tristan unlocked the back door of the factory and held open the door. She heard cracking inside, like popping knuckles on bubble wrap, as Fry and Dice broke a few tubes. The men shook them and dropped them inside the back entrance.
A green glow lit up the interior.
Most of the machinery had been ripped out of the factory, but several conveyer belts remained, pushing the ghosts of Wilson industry through the abandoned space. The belts seemed so small without the machines beside them, cutting, stamping, and snarling.
Frank sneezed. The noise echoed off the metal walls.
Tristan checked his watch. “I told Zephyr to use the back entrance. We’ll keep the front locked, so there’s less chance of surprise from the mobs outside.”
“That’s also one less exit if things go bad,” Lila said, her boots making prints in the dust. “The back might get blocked.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it. We do have a last resort, though.” Tristan pointed to a row of broken windows along the side of the factory, all placed just a bit too high to reach. His people started off immediately for a lounge in the corner. They dragged dusty, half-broken chairs across the factory floor and placed them under the windows, sweeping away the shards of broken glass from under the chair legs.
Lila wasn’t sure if the rickety furniture would hold her weight, much less Fry’s. The man was a giant. He might have cleared out the entire factory by himself, one machine at a time.
“If things get bad, we go through the windows,” Tristan said.
Frank, Dice, and Fry disappeared behind the maze of conveyers, each taking up positions in the dusty gloom.
“Let’s hope things don’t get bad,” Lila said after they hid. “Let’s hope we’re all still well enough to climb if they do.”
“Yes, let’s do that,” came a voice at the door. A short, chubby, balding man, with two black-clad bodyguards in tow, entered the room. Dressed in a shabby pair of trousers and a brown leather coat, he had a Weberly revolver holstered at his side, a weapon he’d likely never shot in his life.
At least, she would have thought that an hour ago.
“Reaper?” Tristan asked, head tilting to the side.
Lila swallowed hard. Here was the man who had written the article. Here was the man who could ruin her father’s career.
And hers.
Reaper looked back and forth from Tristan to Lila’s hood, his face twisted in startled confusion.
Dixon closed the back door with a whack.
Reaper and his bodyguards spun.