by Wren Weston
“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.
Fingers twitched.
Reaper’s twitched.
Lila noticed.
When Reaper wheeled around and aimed his Weberly at her head, she didn’t budge. She’d already drawn her Colt, just as she’d practiced so often with Sergeant Jenkins, trigger ready for one short pull.
She could have taken them all down, perhaps should have, but she needed to be sure that she had the right person, that Zephyr hadn’t sent a lackey in his place.
Dixon and Tristan’s weapons followed a half-second behind, covering the bodyguards.
No one said anything at first. Lila passed her gaze them all, hoping no one fired. Best-case scenario: everyone took a dart to the neck and Fry, Dice, and Frank carried them all back to the truck. On the other hand, perhaps not everyone’s gun was filled with darts.
That was the worst-case scenario.
Even if it didn’t come to that, she had to make sure she got Zephyr to Shaw before he had the chance to speak to anyone else, before he had a chance to send his article to the press.
She couldn’t do either of those things if she had a dart in her neck.
“You’re Zephyr?” Tristan asked.
Reaper shrugged, his eyes remaining on Lila. “I have many names. Many jobs. Natalie didn’t tell me that I’d be meeting you. Perhaps I should have figured it out from your message, but who would have thought that you’d meet with your former masters? Who would have thought you’d need another hacker?”
Well, that answered one question. Reaper really was Zephyr.
“Put down the gun, Reaper,” Tristan said. “I’m here because I need someone to do a job that Hood can’t.”
“Won’t,” Lila corrected, playing along.
Reaper bit his lip. “You’re right. There are far too many guns in this room.” He holstered his, motioning for his men to do the same. He then strode forward and clapped Dixon on the shoulder. “You almost gave me a heart attack, you tongueless—”
Dixon shoved him away angrily, rubbing his shoulder.
“Too hard?”
“Quit screwing around. Can you break into Liberté or not?”
“Perhaps.” Reaper grinned. The smile did not go to his eyes.
Outside, the shouts of the mob increased. Whistles pierced the air. Catcalls. Dares. Something had changed in the tenor of their voices.
The hairs rose on the back of Lila’s neck.
“They’ve stopped laughing.” She eyed the windows.
Tristan’s hand moved to his holstered gun. He’d felt it too. “How soon can you start the job?”
“Not so fast, boy. Let me explain how this works, since you’re new. You tell me what information you want, and I’ll tell you what information you need. In my experience, clients often don’t know. They think they need one thing, and often they just need another.”
“I know exactly what I need. I need you to break into Liberté. Natalie should have already given you the bank account number from—”
“Take my advice and things will go smoother for you. I give great advice. I’m sure Natalie explained that.”
“You assume I trust Natalie. I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re not an idiot. I’m curious, though. Why do you need information about that particular bank account?”
“It’s bound up in a job. I need to know who the account belongs to. That’s all you need to know.”
“Did you bring the payment you mentioned in your message?”
“I have the girl waiting in a safe spot. The emperor comes later. Much later. After I have the information that I need. After you make this partnership worth my while.”
“You have other jobs for me, then?”
“Had. That was before I knew who you were. You’ve either been holding back on me all these years, or you’re not nearly as good as Natalie claimed. I don’t know if I’m wasting my time here.”
“You get what you pay for, Tristan. If you recall, I’ve been giving you money, rather than the other way around. Do you really think that if I had a rich uncle, I’d be passing the money on to you?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Yes, like Tristan DeLauncey offering up a slave girl as payment.”
“She’s not a slave. She’s a prisoner of war.”
Reaper rubbed his stubby chin. “The girl is worthless, but I’ll take her as a down payment. The emperor is the real prize. I’m sure I’ll find something useful to do with his brat in the meantime, though.”
A sneeze broke the silence in the factory.
Two puffs of air followed, less than a second later.
Both bodyguards fell.
Tristan sprinted toward Reaper before he could draw his weapon, barreling into him with his full weight, knocking him onto the concrete floor, getting in the way of Lila’s shot.
Dixon followed, a few seconds too late.
The men wrestled on the floor, a collection of curses and grunts. A Weberly revolver spun out of the fray toward Lila.
By the time she reached them, Tristan and Dixon had Reaper’s arms spread and pinned.
“What are you doing?” he growled as another sneeze cut through the air.
Frank and Fry emerged from behind the conveyer belts. They picked the hacker up from the ground and dragged him to the side of the factory, securing him to the wall.
“I’m sorry, Tristan,” Frank said after sneezing again.
“It’s okay. The conversation was boring me, anyway.”
“Natalie set me up?” Reaper shouted, fidgeting in Frank and Fry’s grasp. “Does that bitch know who she’s dealing with? Do you?”
“Apparently not. You’ve been selling out the workborn.”
“I’ve been making money.”
“Is that why you’ve been digging into the BIRD?”
Reaper laughed. “I could cut you in, Tristan. Bribing the highborn is a lucrative business, more lucrative than playing the wronged avenger. You couldn’t even guess who I have on the end of my hook.”
“Tell it to Bullstow, maybe they’ll care.”
“Bullstow? Since when do you work—”
Dixon wobbled suddenly beside his brother. At first Lila thought he meant to punch Reaper, but his hands didn’t fly high enough, didn’t move quickly enough or with enough purpose.
Tristan reached out, catching his brother as he stumbled drunkenly. “Careful, careful, careful,” he chanted, as though he only needed a bit of coaching.
Dixon looked up, opened his mouth as if to say something, but all that came out was a groan.
Lila helped Tristan guide his brother to the floor, taking care of his head, which had begun to loll from side to side.
Tristan un
buttoned the neck of Dixon’s shirt.
“A little earlier than I’d planned,” Reaper said, flinching when Frank pulled back his arm for a punch.
Tristan looked up. “What did you do?”
“Oh, that’s cute. You really are surprised by this. Did you people honestly think I’d come unprepared? I deal with people much nastier than you on a regular basis.”
“What the fuck did you do?”
“I call it Reaper’s Back Door, though I’m sure it has a much more scientific name somewhere. I stick it in someone whenever a situation makes me nervous. Like seeing you and Hood somewhere that you shouldn’t be.”
“It’s okay, Tristan. He’s breathing,” Lila whispered.
“Not for very long,” the hacker said. “The poison is harmless, more or less, as long as he gets the antidote within the hour. If he doesn’t, he’ll be dead. So my question is, how badly do you want Bullstow to have me?”
Chapter 27
“Do you expect us to believe that bullshit?” Tristan hopped up from his brother’s side and strode toward Reaper, grabbing his collar. “What the fuck did you do to him?”
“Exactly what I told you. You can either believe me now, or you can believe me in an hour after he’s dead.” Reaper smirked. “Don’t worry. One of my men outside has hidden the antidote. When I leave the factory safely, he’ll—”
Tristan let go of Reaper’s coat, then slammed the hacker’s head against the wall, stunning him. After Tristan’s arm pumped back, Reaper screamed so loudly that he drowned out the shouts of the mob outside, including the crackling of a fire in a nearby warehouse.
A knife protruded from Reaper’s shoulder.
Blood trickled from the wound as Tristan yanked it out.
Reaper screamed again, panting as though he’d run for blocks.
Lila dug her forehead into Dixon’s chest, rubbing his cheek as he moaned on the factory floor, his face pale and sweaty. She’d never seen Tristan turn to naked violence before, never seen him do anything worse than throw a punch. He’d acted with all the speed and force of a bullet train, and with all the apathy.
Only the poorer classes showed such violence.
But if that was true, why did Lila want to draw her own knife and join in?
“You stabbed me!”
“No, that was just me asking politely. Tell me where the antidote is.”
“It doesn’t work like that. One of my men hid it. Even I don’t know where. The only way to get the antidote is to—”
Tristan dug into Reaper’s coat, found his palm, and pressed the device into his chest. “If your man doesn’t bring me the antidote in the next five minutes, I’m going to put my blade through your heart. How do you like my back door?”
Reaper’s clutched at his palm. His fingers shook on the touch screen. “Okay, I’ll—”
A shot cut through the air outside.
Everyone looked up and turned toward the windows, listening.
Everyone except Reaper. He tapped the screen, ignoring the world. “I have to get out of here. Shouldn’t have agreed to this. Shouldn’t have come.”
“Watch him,” Tristan told Frank and Fry. “If he does something you don’t like, stab him between his legs.”
Reaper whimpered and typed even faster.
Tristan returned to Lila and Dixon, kneeling down at his brother’s side. He dug into Dixon’s pockets, opened the notepad to a random blank page, and placed the pen in Dixon’s fingers. “I know you feel like shit, but you have to tell us what’s going on. If we can’t get the antidote from Reaper, I need to tell Doc what—”
The pen slipped from Dixon’s hand. He pitched forward suddenly, gagging, and a river of coffee spewed over the floor.
Tristan and Lila dragged him back from the mess and rolled him onto his side.
“It’s okay,” Tristan told him, patting him on the head. “We’ll figure it out. Just hang tight. We’ll get you to Doc soon.”
Chants started up outside the factory.
A burning piece of lumber flew through one of the open windows and struck the floor. It flamed in the center of the factory.
“I think things just got bad,” Lila said over the catcalls and whistles of the crowd.
“We have to get out of here before the building goes up in flames. If we lose Reaper, can you tap into the security system? Can you find his guy with the antidote in the security footage if we fetch your laptop?”
“If the cameras still worked, sure.”
Another burning piece of wood sailed into the building, bounced off one of the conveyer belts, and rolled into the center of the room.
“Sooner or later, they’re going to get bored with that and torch the sides,” Frank called out. “We have to get out of here.”
“Dice,” Tristan shouted into the dark.
Tristan’s last man slipped out from behind one of the conveyer belts like a shadow. “We packing it in yet?”
“Damn straight. Frank, Dice, drag the tranqed men outside. Hood and Fry, take the weasel. Make sure he doesn’t get away. I’ll get Dixon. They—”
Lila ignored his directions. She sprinted to the window, ran up the side, and grabbed on to the frame, crying out when shards of glass stabbed her palms.
But she refused to let go.
Members of the Wilson family and contracted workborn, both old and young, sprinted around the building, makeshift clubs lifted, guns firing into chaos. Some of them fired real bullets.
She couldn’t tell what the crowd was firing at, though, not at first. There were too many heads in the way, too many clubs raised in anger, too many shadows cast by the burning buildings.
Then all at once, the crowd parted. Blackcoats had taken up positions around several of the structures, golden roses stitched onto their coats, guns aimed, pumping darts into the crowd.
People fell around the buildings, grabbing their necks.
Blackcoats fell, grabbing bloody shoulders and legs.
“Oracle’s light. It’s a war. Bullstow’s here. There are dozens and dozens…” Lila caught sight of a blackcoat nearby. He darted a man in the shadows, a man who wore the same clothes as Reaper’s bodyguards, a man who fell forward into a fire.
The flames caught quickly.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t get up and move away. He had been sedated. He couldn’t even run or roll out the flames.
No one noticed him burn.
No one moved to help, at least not at first. A Bullstow officer finally noticed him. He tugged at the man’s boots and dragged him out of the fire, but it was too late to do much but pat the fire out.
Lila dropped back down to the factory floor, yanking a shard from her palm as soon as she hit the ground. There was too much glass lost among the blood to find them all by sight. She’d have to rely on pain.
“Was your man outside wearing the same thing as your bodyguards?” she asked Reaper, wincing as she tugged another shard free.
“Yes, of course.”
“He’s dead, then. I just saw one of Bullstow’s finest dart him before he fell into a fire. I don’t think they pulled him out in time.”
Tristan lunged toward the door.
“Stop! If I thought we could get to him in time, I would have gone through the window myself. It’s chaos out there, Tristan, and he’s tranqed anyway.”
Another burning log stuck the floor. This time it was too close to the wall. Dice sprinted forward and kicked it back.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
A corner of the wooden structure caught fire.
“We have to get out of here,” Dice shouted, backing away, as the flames spread. He sprinted back to one of the black-clad bodyguards, tossed him over his shoulder, and carried him toward the back door, ripping it open before he even peeked outside.
There was no ti
me for precautions. Whatever lurked outside couldn’t be worse than what would happen to them inside.
Frank holstered his gun and grabbed the other bodyguard.
Tristan stole Lila’s scarf off her neck and approached Reaper. “If you utter one peep, I’ll put my knife through your heart.”
“You can’t do that. You don’t know what your friend has pumping through his veins. If you shoot me, you won’t have me around to help you anymore. If I don’t get out of here safely, he dies.”
Tristan shoved Reaper against the wall and grabbed his hands, tying them tightly behind his back with the scarf. “If my brother dies tonight, I’m going to find out what it feels like to torture a man. You better pray I don’t enjoy it. If I were you, I’d get to work on remembering the name of that poison, and don’t you dare open your mouth until I say you can.”
Lila pulled out another shard of glass from her hands, heart thudding when she saw how much blood poured from the wound.
She needed stitches.
Fry threw Reaper over his back. “I’ll get him,” he said, eyeing Lila’s hands. “Stop pulling out the glass. Let Doc do it back at the shop.”
Tristan picked up Reaper’s gun and rolled Dixon onto his shoulder. The group dashed through the back of the factory just in time, for the flames had spread to the ceiling with a furious whoosh, licking the timber beams.
It wasn’t much better outside. The smell of gasoline had gotten much stronger. Smoke hovered in the air like a thick fog, rising toward the sky in thin wisps, choking her throat.
She coughed and struggled to breathe, her lungs crying out for fresh air.
It was like Slack & Roberts all over again, but worse, for she was inside it in this time.
Fires raged around them with small lanes between the buildings, filled with the mob, slumped bodies, and the occasional blackcoat.
Another shot. An abbreviated scream.
Frank and Dice abandoned their charges in a clearing behind the factories, near some tranqed members of the Wilson family, stumbling over limbs.
There were a few sharp cracks as Dice stepped on a man’s fingers.
“You got the weasel?” Tristan called out.
