Metaltown

by Kristen Simmons

  She beamed. “If I was flush, I’d build us an army.”

  He slung one arm over her shoulder, shaking Henry’s hand with the other.

  “Looks like you might be flush,” he said.

  She swelled with pride, feeling like she could take on the Brotherhood, the Hamptons, the whole Northern Fed. She wondered if this was how Colin had felt all these years. Bigger than life. Important. Meant for something more.

  With a nod from Colin, she told Skaggs and Liam to get ready. They were about to go into battle.

  36

  LENA

  Lena paced around the brightly lit hospital room. The monitor attached to the wall beeped the steady rhythm of Otto’s heart, slowed by the drugs he’d demanded they give him to dull the pain. Now he was passed out again, as still as he’d been on the floor in her bedroom after Colin had beaten him to a bloody pulp.

  She stared at him in a state of detachment, unsure what to feel. Otto’s face was blackened, swollen. His cheekbone had been broken. He’d lost two teeth. Part of her accepted responsibility, and with it, guilt, because Colin had only attacked in her defense. But there was something else within her too. A wild streak of jealousy, as if it should have been her hands clawing Otto to pieces, her fists pummeling him raw. He’d hurt her, not once but many times, and right then she didn’t care if he’d learned how from their father, or that he had suffered at Josef’s hands too. She felt vindicated by his pain, and that made her wonder if she had suddenly become psychotic.

  So she said nothing, and kept her lips closed in a thin, firm line while the nurses and doctors all fussed over Mr. Josef Hampton’s son.

  “You didn’t recognize the assailant, Miss Hampton?” A police officer in a stiff black suit shot a glance at Josef Hampton, who’d arrived two hours after she and Otto had been shuttled to the hospital.

  Lena turned and stared out the window at the river, wishing she could see the tainted sludge that ran beneath that dyed blue façade. Something real. Anything to distract her from the betrayal she’d seen flash in Colin’s eyes.

  She’d sent him away to save his life. She’d been cruel, and righteous, and so much like a Hampton that it had nearly torn her apart. But it had worked. He’d gone. He’d left her in the house he’d come to rescue her from. Watching him leave had been harder than kicking him out.

  When she had called for help, she’d told the staff that Otto had come to her room when he’d heard a noise outside. She’d hidden in the bathroom, but after hearing a skirmish, cracked the door. Her presence must have scared the intruder away. He’d gone through her window, and run for the north wall. None of the staff had dared to question her, and it gave Colin more precious time when the alarm on the opposite side of the property had been tripped. Once her brother woke, the truth—at least what he knew of it—would be revealed. Hopefully by then Colin would be halfway across the Northern Federation, somewhere her father couldn’t touch him.

  “I only saw him from the back as he ran away,” she said. “It all happened so fast.”

  “The color of his hair perhaps?” the officer pressed, looking again to Lena’s father as if afraid he would be punished for her amnesia. “Was he about my size?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Lena said, spinning on him. “Yes, he was your size exactly. And with dark hair, cut just like yours. And green eyes. How strange that you have green eyes as well, Officer.”

  “Lena,” said her father firmly. “I don’t know what’s come over you.”

  The policeman tucked his recorder into his breast pocket and wiped his sweating palms on his thighs. “It’s all right, Mr. Hampton. Shock, I think. Understandable, given the situation.”

  Deliberately, her father reached for her hand, his expression warped with concern.

  “I’m just glad she’s all right,” he said. “That my son was there to protect her.”

  She jerked her hand away, aware of each scar beneath the fine fabric of her gloves. And where were you when I needed protection?

  “Indeed.” Sensing the tension, but smart enough not to acknowledge it, the officer turned quickly to the door. “If you think of anything else, Miss Hampton, you know how to reach me.”

  Lena wished she could leave too, but her father’s guards were keeping watch right outside the door. She was trapped on the ninth floor of an unfamiliar building, while Colin was running as far and as fast as he could.

  She should have gone with him.

  The monitor over Otto’s bed beeped. Her boots groaned as she transferred her weight. She read her father’s movements, trying to sense his mood behind that social mask.

  “It seems the testing facilities across the river need to review their security protocols,” said Josef, looking down at his son with clinical detachment.

  So he did know, after all.

  “Perhaps their ethical protocols as well,” she said. “I know Hampton Industries does.”

  When he turned to face her, the lines beside his mouth and eyes had drawn tight. He tapped his middle finger against his thigh in warning.

  She stared up at him defiantly.

  “Hit me,” she said. “And this time I will hit you back.”

  A strange light dawned in his dark eyes. Almost like respect.

  “Metaltown has changed you, my dear.”

  “I find a little time there is all I need,” she answered, throwing back the lesson he’d once taught her. “It reminds me how grateful I am for all that I have.”

  He bared his teeth in a grim smile. “Then it’s a pity it’s about to become a war zone.”

  Her blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

  “Your friend has been spotted back at the factory. It seems he’s staging another protest. I warned him and his colleagues what would happen if they tried something like this.” He sighed. “Their loss, I suppose. Mr. Schultz and his Brotherhood have kindly agreed to impart a lesson on my behalf.”

  This couldn’t be. Colin was gone. She’d thrown him out. He was smart enough to run. But she knew from the way her stomach sank that her father was right. Colin took direction from his heart, not his brain, and he would fight to the end to see his friends protected.

  “It’s your loss,” she snapped. “You’re worried about slowing labor for the press, what do you think is going to happen if all of your workers are injured or worse?”

  “Then I don’t suppose they’ll be much use to anyone, will they?”

  She stared at him, fury scalding her. She wasn’t shocked; he was beyond shocking her. But the fact that he was willing to lose his precious money just to keep his pride intact surpassed even his usual arrogance.

  He turned and reached for Otto’s leg, resting his hand on his ankle in a rare gesture of affection. “There will be something special for the boy, of course. I hope his mother and her sick playmate won’t be too devastated.”

  “What have you done?” she asked weakly.

  “Made a business decision. You do still want to learn what I do, don’t you?”

  Like she had in the house after he’d struck her, she felt the overwhelming urge to get out. Get away from him. Sick with fear, and with nothing in her mind but finding Colin, she strode from the room, only to be caught in the hallway by her father’s new driver.

  “Miss Hampton,” he said, fixing his suit from where she’d rumpled it. His bushy eyebrows were drawn together. “May I escort you home?”

  It was not a question.

  She slipped by him and sprinted for the stairs. Ten steps away, his wiry arms clamped around her shoulders and lifted her off the shiny white floor. Swinging back, she booted him hard in the shin, and he let out a hiss of pain.

  “Let me go!”

  “Why don’t we go back to your estate?” he asked between his teeth, tightening his grip. Around them, a dozen faces had turned their way. Hospital staff, policemen. Watching blankly. Refusing to help.

  She struggled all the way down the stairs, but the big man was immune to her flailing elbows an
d snapping jaw. Warnings screamed in her head as he shoved her into the car. She couldn’t go home. She had to get back to Metaltown. She had to warn them.

  She tried to scoot across the seat, but he’d already locked her in from the outside. Frustrated, she beat her hands against the glass, screaming, hoping to attract anyone, but though two women watched with interest, they did little more than whisper and point.

  “Nothing to see,” he called, and they moved along, glancing back over their shoulders. They disappeared into the building, leaving the private parking lot empty.

  Lena wasn’t watching him as he opened the door; she was concentrating all her efforts on tearing the inner handle off the passenger door. But when she heard a short male yell, she spun back around. Her mouth opened in horror. The guard had fallen to the pavement, revealing a slight figure behind him, dressed all in black.

  A moment later Darcy slid into the front seat, the defuser still in her hand. She shoved the key into the ignition, and brought the electric engine to life.

  Lena’s body was flung against the siding as the small car tore out of the parking lot. Without looking back, Darcy lowered the partition between them.

  “What are you doing?” Lena screeched. They pulled onto the main highway, zipping in and out of traffic in the direction of Bakerstown.

  “Something I’ve been trying to do for some time,” Darcy said, more determined than Lena had ever seen her. “I’m getting out of Tri-City, and if you have any sense, Miss Hampton, you’ll come with me.”

  Lena stared at her in shock. This was Darcy, who frowned and fretted and worried, who Lena had once thought didn’t have the spine to fight back. She knew better now. Darcy had survived her father, waiting for just such a moment to make her escape.

  “How did you get out?” she asked.

  “Your father’s security is distracted with Otto’s attack,” she said. “I told the driver I needed to check in on you at the hospital. I was in the waiting room when you were removed. It is my place as your tutor, after all, to make sure you’re safe.”

  She swerved across a lane, gripping the wheel with both hands.

  “Take me to the Small Parts factory,” said Lena.

  Darcy’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the wheel. “And what happens then?”

  The sharpness in her tone made Lena scoot back an inch. I find Colin, she thought. I help the Small Parts Charter.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

  Darcy shook her head. “No disrespect, dear, but sometimes you can be such a Hampton.”

  Lena’s back slouched against the seat.

  “You can’t fix this,” Darcy said, veering into an open lane. “You can’t sweep in on title alone and expect the world to change. The Small Parts factory is just a cog in your father’s machine. One piece of the problem. There are still the other factories, the other workers, the poor who’d kill to fill those workers’ spots. The war.”

  Lena closed her eyes. “There are people in danger. If I can help…”

  “Then today everyone will raise their glass in your honor,” Darcy finished. “But what about tomorrow? What about a year from now? What about when the war ends?”

  “I don’t know!” Lena shouted. When the war ended, Colin would be jobless, along with all the workers she wanted so badly to protect. But if the Small Parts factory closed, the war could not sustain. She could hardly imagine a world without war.

  “Come with me, while your father and his security are preoccupied. Leave this place. Let it destroy itself. I’ve heard the Advocates will take people over the border to the Eastern Federation.”

  The Advocates, whom her father was providing with ammunition to attack their own people just so that the war continued.

  “Darcy, that’s insane. The Eastern Federation? We’re fighting against them!”

  “We’re fighting against ourselves,” Darcy retorted, and Lena wondered just how much she knew of her father’s weapons dealings. “The time has come to choose, Miss Hampton. The war in Metaltown, or the war outside it.”

  Lena considered it only a moment, and then she placed her hand on her tutor’s tense shoulder.

  “Take me to Metaltown.”

  “They’re rioting there, last I heard.” There was no surprise in Darcy’s tone. Bakerstown rose on their left, a mass of red brick, with the shops clustered on the right side of the road and the residential towers and schools on the left. Lena thought of what Colin had told her one night, standing on the bridge. That he would come out here, and think of his past, and wish things were different.

  “Then take me as close as you can,” she said. “Thank you, Darcy.”

  A tight smile pulled at the corners of Darcy’s mouth. “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Hampton.”

  * * *

  Darcy let her off near the bridge, across from Lacey’s Bar, where Lena and Colin had met her family during the protest. She slammed the door behind her, and an instant later was running up the hill toward the Small Parts factory, Darcy’s defuser tight in her grip. The sweat ran in her eyes and chilled her skin, and her blood pounded through her veins, but she didn’t stop. She had to find Colin. She had to warn him of what her father had promised.

  The noise could be heard three blocks down. A quiet roar, like all of the grinding machines had been left on, punctuated by higher-pitched screams. The sounds made her muscles seize, threatening to slow her down, but she pushed on, and made it as far as the Stamping Mill before the chaos blocked her path.

  The fights had broken out all down Factory Row. It was like the press, but overwhelmingly larger. Brotherhood, and the Small Parts Charter, and others, too. Men and women in navy or white uniforms, employees of the Stamping Mill and the Chem Plant. There were people wearing green as well, and where they had come from, she didn’t know.

  They fought tooth and nail, throwing punches, attacking with their fists and their bodies, and weapons fashioned from whatever they could find. She saw a trash can flung through the air, and screamed when something exploded a hundred feet before her, on the opposite side of the street.

  Too late. The fear echoed between her temples. Too late to save him.

  Through the clatter of raining debris, she thought she heard a woman cry her name. But though Lena spun toward the sound, she saw nothing but violence.

  Ducking low, she searched for Colin, but she could barely see ten feet before her for all the clashing bodies. If she could get to the front of the building, she could climb up the metal trash bin and get a better view from higher ground. She raced toward it, taking a hard hit to her ribs on the way.

  Before her, a man hovered over a small figure on the ground, a child, curled up into a ball. She recognized the Brotherhood mobster by the flash of his brass knuckles, and stared in horror as he wheeled back and kicked. The boy went sprawling.

  “Chip!” The familiar female voice broke Lena’s sudden freeze. “Chip! Get out of my way!”

  Lena’s gaze shot up and locked on Ty, trying in vain to shove through the crowd to get to the boy. Lena recognized him now. He was one of the workers. Part of the charter.

  The man attacking him wiped his sweaty brow on his bare forearm, and swung his leg back to kick Chip again. Ty was still too far away; even if she broke through from the fighting, she wasn’t going to make it in time to help him.

  Lena rushed forward.

  “You bastard!” She stuck the point of the defuser into the man’s back and pulled the trigger. He hit the ground in a fit of seizures, mouth gaping, eyes wide. She jumped over him to Chip and dragged the boy to his feet.

  “Are you all right?”

  Chip shook free. “I had him!”

  Behind him, Ty’s stare locked on Lena’s. The hate she’d come to expect in the girl’s eyes gave way to wariness. She gave Lena a brief nod, and then called for Chip, and disappeared back into the fight.

  Before Lena could follow, iron hands clenched around her ribs, dragging her backward through the crowd.
She dropped the defuser and lost sight of Chip as the others closed in around him. Terrified, she fought, twisting, kicking, sinking her teeth into the dirty, sweat-drenched sweater covering the man’s shoulder. He growled and squeezed her harder, so hard that she could barely breathe.

  She was pulled through a line of men, into the alley, where the sounds of the street echoed against the high factory walls.

  “Let go!” she screamed. “Colin! Colin!”

  And then they were in the Small Parts factory. Her heels couldn’t gain traction as she was dragged through the employee locker room, past the metal detector to the foreman’s office, where she was sat roughly in a chair. Immediately she attempted to leap out, but the man had grabbed her wrists, and fastened them behind her with a thin wire, which he wrapped tightly enough to make her fingertips prickle with numbness.

  He spun the chair around, nearly tipping it over, and as he leaned down to meet her gaze she saw his face for the first time.

  Lena’s eyes widened. Before her stood Jed Schultz, the leader of the Brotherhood.

  37

  COLIN

  Colin’s pulse pounded in his eardrums. Before him, Imon swung a silver knife, nearly catching his gut. He bowed back at the last second, belly sucked against his spine, and stumbled backwards onto the crumbling sidewalk. He’d already landed a couple clean shots on the big man’s jaw, but Imon was a machine—nothing seemed to slow him down. He loomed over Colin, knife low, face red, lips snarling over crooked, blackened teeth. Colin’s heart kicked up his windpipe as he scrambled backward in an attempt to regain his footing.

  And then Imon staggered, as if a pallet of scrap metal had been dumped onto his back. Hayden’s face appeared over his shoulder, his forearm locked around the foreigner’s throat. The look on his face was crazed, and as angry as Colin had ever seen it.

  Hayden released Imon only for a second, and with his other hand wheeled back and knocked him hard in the back of the head with a broken brick. Imon collapsed with a grunt and a spray of dust.

  The Walter brothers stared down at Imon for a full second, waiting for him to rise. When it was clear he was out, Hayden swiped the knife off the ground where it had fallen.