The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge

by Cameron Baity

  “How should I know?” she heaved.

  “Do ya even know where we are?”

  “Gee, I dunno, Toiletboy. Guess I left my map at home.”

  “Then how you know we ain’t supposed to go that way?”

  “You want to go that way, be my guest.”

  “And here I thought you knew somethin’ about this pl—”

  “Hey! STOP!”

  Phoebe and Micah nearly jumped out of their skins.

  Around the corner of the intersection, three workers had just emerged from a factory door. One of them slapped a red button on the wall.

  An earsplitting alarm shrieked. The kids ran.

  There was nowhere to go and nothing to go on but adrenaline. They turned a corner and raced down another hallway. It had to lead somewhere. But there were no signs, and everything looked the same.

  And then she heard it.

  Click-clack-click-clack-click-clack. Metal shoes on concrete.

  Watchmen.

  The sound was close, up ahead. Phoebe and Micah stopped dead in their tracks. The pace of the metal shoes quickened. It was hard to gauge how many, since the clatter sounded like a swarm of metal wasps. She turned back, preferring her odds against the human workers.

  But the sound of metal soles approached from that way, too.

  There was a door ten feet ahead. It was their only chance. Together they yanked it open and stumbled into a cavernous black chamber. They slammed the door and tried to lock it, but there was no bolt. Their eyes hadn’t adjusted, yet judging by the echo of the alarm, they could tell it was a massive space. Daggers of moonlight shone through skylights hundreds of feet overhead, carving out the edges of machinery and nests of dangling chains. The floor of this vast hangar was lined with countless tall, indistinct shapes.

  The kids scuttled behind one of the shadowy forms just as the door crashed open behind them. Watchmen stood silhouetted in the doorway. Slowly they entered, the click-clack of their shoes like the countdown on a time bomb. The door slammed shut.

  Click-clack. Click-clack. The footsteps were spreading out.

  Phoebe tugged at Micah’s sleeve and pointed to a grate set high in the wall. In the pale moonlight that spilled through, they could barely make out the shape of an emergency ladder. He started to scurry toward it, but she hesitated and strained her eyes against the gloom, trying to make sense of the murky shapes all around them.

  And then the terrible truth struck her.

  They were hiding in a sea of Watchmen.

  he squadron of Watchmen stood in military formation, surrounding Phoebe and Micah on all sides. They were sleek chrome skeletons in various states of assembly, streamlined forms of contoured plate and precision circuitry. Every joint and angle was a marvel, a menacing promise of power and speed. Even though some were missing limbs or had open panels in their chilling, expressionless faces, the Watchmen seemed hungry to deploy.

  This was an army.

  Micah stammered and started to back away, but Phoebe stopped him. The Watchman were as motionless as statues.

  But through the shrieking alarm, the metal shoes of their pursuers circled. The kids crawled through the inanimate battalion, doing their best to remain hidden. Hundreds of Watchmen stared down, as if at any second a mechanical hand might shoot out and grab them.

  The overhead lights blared to life.

  Phoebe and Micah stumbled back, exposed, and the gang of bowler-hatted Watchmen rushed at them. The pair made a mad dash for the emergency ladder bolted against the wall.

  The Foundry agents closed in fast.

  Micah scrambled up first, with Phoebe just behind. A gloved hand snatched her ankle and yanked hard. She almost lost her grip but got free with a sharp kick. The Watchmen climbed after them, moving in perfect sync.

  At the top of the ladder, a narrow ledge led to the window. Micah reached it first, and with all his strength he yanked off the metal grate.

  “Heads up!” he shouted.

  Phoebe instinctively twisted out of the way, but the Watchman below her didn’t. The grate bashed his shoulder and sent him spiraling off. The others continued to climb after the intruders, unfazed.

  She whipped the tube of machine oil from her hidden skirt pocket, wrenched its cap off with her teeth, and squeezed the grease onto the ladder below. A Watchman grabbed the oily rung, and for a second it looked like her ploy had failed. But his hand slipped. He tumbled down, knocking four other Watchmen off, and they all crashed to the ground in a jumble.

  As Phoebe hauled herself up the ladder, she could hear the sound of rushing water and taste the bitter, salty sea. The sensation made her tremble, and she fought to gain control. Just a few rungs to go.

  “This way!” Micah urged from the top, framed by the night sky with the brisk wind whipping at his hair. He ducked through the open porthole and disappeared outside. Her stomach churned as she inched to the opening.

  It was a sheer drop cloaked by dense, rippling fog. A fat drainage pipe connected to the next building, like an angled bridge, and Micah was grappling his way up it. He looked back.

  “Come on!” he cried.

  But Phoebe was a shivering, white ghost. A gap had opened in the mist, like the parting eyelid of some ancient leviathan, to reveal the roiling waters of Foundry Bay. The world faded, leaving her in mental blackness.

  “What are you waitin’ for, Freaky?” she heard him shout, but his words were as foggy as the air.

  She clung to the porthole to keep from tumbling through it, only half aware of searchlights slashing through the mist. Her eyes were locked on the violent deluge below. The crash of the raging ocean mixed with the nearly human scream of the alarm siren.

  Phoebe retreated inside.

  “Are you crazy!?” Micah shrieked. He slid down the pipe and reached through the open window toward her. “C’mon!”

  “I—I can’t.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. They’re gonna get us if you—”

  Something hit the corrugated wall beside his head with a clang. Embedded in the metal were two prongs attached to thin coiling wires that crackled with arcs of electricity. The lines extended down the ladder to a Watchman, who retracted the prongs into his fingers with a snap.

  The Foundry agents had begun to hook their elbows and knees through the greased rungs of the ladder, one on top of the other, creating scaffolding for the others to climb. Another Watchman aimed his fingers at them, and they ducked as the shock prongs sizzled past their heads.

  The Watchmen were almost here. They were done for.

  Then Micah did something she would have never expected.

  It seemed to happen in slow motion. She felt the whoosh of him rushing past and saw him plummet into the hangar below. But he didn’t fall. Instead, he grabbed a hoisting chain in midair and swung over to an elevated conveyor belt, legs flailing. He hurled the chain back to Phoebe, who was so stunned she almost didn’t grab it. She clung tight and swung after him, trying not to think about the painful strain in her arms.

  Micah grabbed the chain to steady it while she shimmied down, and then he tied it off so the Watchmen couldn’t follow.

  “You’re welcome,” he jabbed at her.

  There was a brilliant spray of sparks as a flurry of crackling shock prongs studded the pipe by their heads.

  They raced up the zigzagging network of conveyor belts crammed with disembodied mechanical limbs and heads. Forty feet below, the Watchmen scurried around, some trying to find a way up while others jockeyed for a clear line of fire. The kids kicked metal arms and legs off the assembly line, hoping to disrupt their pursuers with a rain of debris.

  Then, without warning, the conveyor belt jolted, tossing Phoebe and Micah flat on their faces. Before they could stand, the speeding runway dumped them down a chute and to the level below. The Watchmen had started
the assembly line to whisk the intruders back down to the ground.

  They charged against the belt like hamsters in a wheel, but it was too fast. Despite their best efforts, they were creeping backward. Micah jumped up to grab the lip of an air duct that ran alongside the platform and hung on for dear life.

  “Get in!” he ordered.

  She crawled up his back, pushed the vent open, and wriggled inside the narrow metal tube.

  “Owww!” he cried as Phoebe planted a shoe in his face for leverage. Once inside, she reached down and grasped his arm. It was a struggle—he was heavy, and his hands were sweaty and gross. But Micah got enough purchase to pull himself in.

  “There,” she said, wiping his sweat off her hands. “Now we’re even.”

  “Even, my butt! You almost got us killed.”

  She ignored him and shuffled quickly through the air duct. It was barely wide enough for them to fit on their hands and knees, and she hoped it was too narrow for the Watchmen.

  “You coulda told me you’re scared of heights,” he said.

  “I’m not.”

  “So what was that all about, then? We coulda gotten out on that pipe.”

  “I didn’t want to go that way.”

  “Look, if you got any other nutty hang-ups, I gotta know,” he said. “I can’t be savin’ you from every little thing.”

  Phoebe clenched her jaw and focused on navigating the maze of air ducts for some kind of way out. Feeling keenly aware of Micah’s judgment, she chose a new direction without hesitation whenever it branched off.

  After a while, she heard a faint voice, and though she couldn’t make out the words, Phoebe recognized it all the same. It reminded her of a cello, warm and resonant. There was unquestioned power in it—the voice of a man who was used to being obeyed. She crawled faster, homing in on the sound. Light shone through a vent ahead, and she approached cautiously to peek down.

  There was a long chamber of burnished white gold hung with dark purple drapery. It glowed with fragmented light cast by enormous pyramid chandeliers. Her eyes rested on a heavyset man with owl tufts of white hair. He was clad in a topcoat made of extravagant platinum-threaded Durall with billowing tails that made him look like a big shimmery locust.

  Mr. Goodwin. Her father’s boss.

  An entourage of Watchmen flanked Goodwin as he talked to a nervous man in a pin-striped suit decorated with medals and golden epaulets.

  “Yes sir, a Code Orange lockdown,” the officer stammered. “But I need your authorization.”

  “All sectors?” Goodwin asked, inspecting his nails.

  “Yes, sir. We have seized the unauthorized vessel in the bay. Just another group of immigrant defectors seeking refuge. No indication of sabotage, but of course we—”

  “And the explosion?”

  “A Cable Bike accident, sir.”

  Goodwin looked up and stared at the officer.

  “The Foundry does not have accidents, Strauss.”

  “Th-the security breach is being resolved as we speak. Our attention was focused primarily on the ship and—”

  “You will proceed with the lockdown,” Goodwin commanded, “and seal the tunnel once I am through.”

  There was a chime, as one of a series of hidden elevator doors slid open. Goodwin and his corps of Watchmen entered.

  “Find the intruders. No excuses.”

  The door slid shut before Strauss could respond. He bustled away, and then the room was quiet.

  Phoebe poked her head out to look around. Satisfied it was safe, she eased out of the duct and lowered herself to the ground using one of the purple draperies. Micah flopped down beside her, and they rushed to the elevators. She hit the button to call a second car while they watched the glowing display to see where Goodwin was going.

  “Who was that fatso?” Micah whispered, glancing over his shoulder.

  “That’s Goodwin. He’s the one. They were taking my dad right to him,” she replied, an anxious thrill in her voice. “We have to follow him.”

  There was a rumble from the air duct. Something moving fast, growing louder. Could the Watchmen fit in that tiny space after all? She bit her lip as the elevator lights counted down past zero and started to display letters and symbols.

  “We have to get out of here!” he said.

  They were closing in.

  “Not until we know where Goodwin’s going,” she insisted.

  The duct was bowing with the weight of whatever was inside. They could see it warp and bulge. It was almost here. The second elevator chimed, and in a flash, Micah pulled her up against the wall and out of sight.

  He was right, she admitted. They had no idea who might be in the elevator. She was getting too excited, too careless.

  The doors slid apart, and thankfully, it was vacant. She took a last look at Goodwin’s elevator—it had stopped at “M.” They dashed into the empty car, caught their breath, and hit the same button.

  They heard a nearby door crash open.

  The kids flattened themselves against the inside of the elevator, out of sight. As the doors closed, ever so slowly, she watched the reflection in the foggy gold elevator wall. A dozen soldiers flooded in and surrounded the rumbling ducts, readying the spinning turrets of their rifles.

  The elevator descended, and they both exhaled.

  “Close one. Who is this Goodwin anyway?” Micah asked.

  “Head of the Foundry.”

  He stared blankly. “You mean, like, he’s—”

  “The head. Of the Foundry.”

  Phoebe was exhausted, and by the looks of it, the twerp was as well. Or maybe that was fear sucking the blood out of his chubby face. So far, they had gotten away by the skin of their teeth. But their luck wouldn’t last forever.

  After a few moments, the elevator changed direction and sped up. Phoebe and Micah took an unconscious step closer to each other as they rocketed sideways. When it slowed to a stop, the kids plastered themselves against the inside panel walls and waited. The doors opened.

  She didn’t know what she was expecting—another hallway, maybe a different kind of warehouse or some sort of basement. But not this.

  A sprawling underground train yard bustled beneath the Foundry.

  The pair gazed up at an epic locomotive that was at least four stories tall and mighty enough to haul the Uniton Tower off its foundation. This titan of a train was sleek and sharp, a silver spear mounted on massive rails that ran into a black tunnel a thousand yards away. Three figures ascended a carpeted gangplank and boarded the train. Goodwin was in the lead, followed by Kaspar dragging a limp figure. Her father.

  Phoebe’s mind detonated.

  She and Micah darted from the elevator to hide behind a giant crate. This depot was unfathomable, so enormous that it seemed impossible they were still inside the Foundry. The ceiling towered far overhead and was filled with a latticework of catwalks and suspended equipment. Hundreds of laborers and Watchmen were at work, sparks flying from rows of war machines being assembled in an earsplitting cacophony.

  Micah was like a kid in a candy store.

  “No WAY!” Micah jabbered, his eyes goggling. “Those are F-20 Bloodtalons! Wha—?! That’s a Gyrojet modded with subterranean Blackout rounds and—custom new Lightforce 7200 rapid repeater guns! Those puppies can fire six thousand rounds a minute. Oh man, Randy’s gonna be so jealous!”

  “Don’t you get it?” Phoebe hissed in his ear.

  “Yeah,” he said with a blissed-out grin. “I died and gone to heaven.”

  “No. We shouldn’t be here.”

  Suddenly, the angry howl of the locomotive’s horn erupted. It shattered what was left of her nerves. She waited for three Mini-lifts hauling chemical tanks to pass by, and when the coast was clear, she ran. Phoebe wove between rows of crates and pallets, using the shipping barriers t
o remain concealed. Micah was by her side as she crawled over the edge of the platform and dropped down behind the train.

  With an electric zap and a tremulous thunk, the train’s engine engaged, its wheels locking on the tracks. She scampered beneath the nearest freight car and scanned the network of machinery for some sort of perch. Micah caught on to what she was doing and pointed to an open spot in the chassis. Together, they climbed into the gap and out of sight.

  Another blast from the horn, and then the train started to move. The oversized wheels squealed and rotated sluggishly. The gears and shafts churned inches from their heads. A railroad tie crept past below them, then another, and another. She shifted her hold on the struts. This wasn’t a good spot, but maybe she could adjust once they were at a safe distance.

  They gained momentum. The clack of wheels on rails was starting to accelerate. Gravel and ties began to blur. They were on their way, headed for the looming black tunnel.

  The vibrations of the locomotive made it hard to hang on. Phoebe wished she was stronger, wished she hadn’t skipped all those years of gym. The faster they went, the more her arms trembled from the strain, but she couldn’t get a better grip without falling. There was nowhere safe to climb. The twirling shafts and pinions pressed in, so close she could feel their hot wind hit her face. One wrong move, and they would crush her for sure.

  Micah wasn’t faring any better. His teeth were gritted and every muscle was tensed. He shook his head and shouted something, but the screaming gears stole his words.

  Blackness swallowed the world as the train plunged into the tunnel.

  Phoebe fell.

  The wind was crushed from her lungs. She hit the ground so hard that she bounced and rolled, turning over and over, she didn’t know how many times—ground to ceiling, ground to ceiling before settling to a stop. Up ahead, Micah lost his grip as well and collapsed to the gravel.

  The howl of the train faded to a phantom echo, and then was gone.

  She lay on the tracks, her body charged with pain. It didn’t feel like anything was broken, but she wasn’t sure. She had never broken a bone before. Phoebe could feel a gathering tidal wave of despair, an angry ocean swell ready to break. Her mind was a seething void. After all she had been through to get here, after all this…