The Scribe scrubbed his hand over his face. "Which means they won't need the blood camps anymore."
"Right. The officials will still have their stables of High Bloods and the Troika will always need labor camps, but the humans in the blood camps will become ... obsolete."
"Shit," Dare breathed.
"It gets worse," I began. Now that I was knee-deep in this story, I realized how horrible the news I brought them actually was. It was one thing for me to hear the Troika discussing their plans in the plush rooms of the compound. It was something else entirely to share the information with humans who for all I knew might have relatives or friends in those camps. But considering one of the people I was telling the story to had a gun pointed at my head, I was pretty sure I couldn't just change my mind. "Once they had a synthetic blood, they had another problem to solve. Humans are dying rapidly in the camps, but there are still millions of people hooked up to bleeding machines that will be obsolete once they roll out the blood."
Dare cursed under her breath. The Scribe went white. And the mouth of Icarus's gun bit harder into my skin. Grimacing, I soldiered on. "That's when Castor had what he's calling his most brilliant plan to date. He called it 'The Factory.'"
As soon as the words left my mouth, the room fell dead silent. Even Polonius had frozen, like he sensed danger on the air.
"Where is it?" Icarus asked, his tone grave.
The Scribe twitched like he'd just been zapped by a thought. "So that's what it is," he breathed, almost to himself.
"What do you mean?" Dare demanded of the old man.
He shuffled away, his lips moving as he muttered to himself. "It's here somewhere." With gnarled hands, he began shuffling through stacks of paper on the large table. Icarus looked at Dare and she shrugged. Since he had the gun on me, she went to investigate.
"What are you looking for, Saga?" she asked in a patient, kind tone that told me she was well-used to the old man wandering off and speaking to people who weren't there.
"It was here." More shuffling. "I didn't know what it was. But then she-- Yes, hmm. Perhaps over here." He moved to the other end of the table and started going through another sheaf of papers. Whatever he was looking for, it was clear our conversation wouldn't continue until he'd completed his search. Awkward for me, considering the gun.
"Is the gun still necessary?" I asked conversationally.
Icarus's lips tightened into a frown. "Quiet."
Before I could react to that, The Scribe bellowed, "Aha! I knew it was here."
"What is it?" Dare asked, moving closer to inspect the paper in his hand.
"A few weeks ago, one of the patrols in sector four reported some building activity near the river. They brought me that drawing."
Dare frowned at the sheet as she walked over to share it with Icarus. I craned my neck to catch a glimpse, but before I could see more than what looked like a building with three chimneys, she jerked it away. "Well, it certainly looks like a factory," Dare offered.
"When Jeremiah brought it to me, I dismissed it," The Scribe said, "but when the girl told us about it I remembered a detail I'd found odd at the time." He pointed a hand to the paper. The land around the building was covered in a spider's web of parallel lines.
"Train tracks, probably," Icarus said. "So?"
"So the Troika have transportation rovers to handle large shipments of goods," Saga said. "Why suddenly use trains?"
I knew the answer, but I kept silent. Better to let them figure it out than to be blamed for the truth once it hit them.
"They'll have to make large batches of synthetic blood. Maybe trains can carry more--"
The Scribe shook his head. "That factory isn't producing synthetic blood."
Icarus frowned. "What do you mean? She said they built the factory to make synthetic blood."
"No, I didn't," I said in a small voice.
"Then what are they making there?" Dare asked.
I swallowed hard and looked at The Scribe, who I could see was already well ahead of the others. "They're not making anything there but ashes."
Icarus lowered the gun and his face morphed into a mask of denial. "They ... no." He paused, shook himself. "No!" He kicked a pile of books taller than his head. The colorful spines came crashing down with what remained of his illusions.
Saga remained silent and grim-faced, despite the abuse Icarus was dealing to his precious books. Dare made a distressed sound and hurried to soothe him. I turned my back on both of them and went to join Saga. "Can you show me where this is on a map?" I said quietly.
The old man hesitated, but finally nodded and walked over to the desk. Behind me, Dare spoke softly to Icarus. His anger filled the room like smoke. Saga slowly unrolled a large map across the surface. He used small stacks of books to anchor each of the four corners. I squinted at the hand-drawn image of the area that used to be called New York City.
Almost immediately following the war, the Troika government had redrawn borders to turn the United States into three distinct regions, each controlled by one of The Prime's handpicked governors. But the center of power for the Troika remained in New York, since it was during that final battle that they crippled the human forces enough to finally surrender the entire war. They'd renamed the city Nachtstadt--Night City--and destroyed every human landmark in the center of the city and replaced them with vampire-designed towers and monuments to the Prime.
The map showed not just Nachtstadt, which now included parts of old New Jersey--over the river where Hoboken used to be. My brain flashed up a painful image of the old Victorian mom and I used to live in that overlooked the Lincoln Tunnel. It had drafty windows and creaky floors, but its walls had been filled with mostly happy memories.
See? I said to myself, they're wrong. Those are my memories. My very real memories.
I looked up from the map at Saga. "You drew this?"
He nodded. "Brooklyn born and raised." His pride was evident both by his tone and the way he lovingly depicted the outskirts of the city, where the structures built by humans still slouched like crumbling memento mori.
Saga tapped a calloused finger near the top of the map, near the river. "According to the patrol, the building is about here."
I nodded and studied the map. "What is the date?"
He frowned. "Why?"
"Because when I last heard about the Factory, the impression I got was construction was almost done. I'm trying to figure out how long you have until they fire up those furnaces."
He told me the date. I looked up quickly. "Almost time for the Blood Moon."
Saga looked equally impressed and worried. "They'd want to baptize their new project in the light of their most sacred moon."
"Three nights isn't much time for you to make a plan."
He tilted his head toward me. "Why do you keep saying 'you' instead of 'we,' child?"
I stood up straighter. "What do you mean? You wanted information. I gave it to you. I'm free to go now?"
A bitter laugh echoed through the cavernous room. "You're not really that naive, are you?"
I turned to face Icarus with my hands on my hips. But before I could respond, Dare pointed an accusing finger at me. "She's lying! They sent her here to trap us!"
It took about every ounce of strength in my body not to roll my eyes at her. "Your own people confirmed that the factory exists."
"They confirmed something looking like a factory is being built." She crossed her arms. "And even if it's really what you say it's for, we could still show up and find an army of vampires waiting to kill us."
I laughed. "If you think the Troika sees your pathetic little team as enough of a threat to orchestrate an elaborate scheme like staging my escape, you're not just misguided--you're delusional. The Chatelaine brought me to you, remember? I didn't seek you out. None of this has anything to do with me. I just want to move on and try to cobble a life together."
They stared at me like I'd spoken in a foreign language. "It has everything to do with you," Saga said. "And if you think we want anything different than that life you just spoke of, you're the one who's delusional. Do you think we enjoy living underground and running from bat patrols? Like it or not, you're just as involved in all this as we are now. More, maybe."
I didn't like where this was going. "Look, I didn't escape the Troika only to get involved in some scheme that would put me back into their crosshairs. I'm sorry if people are going to die, but I don't plan on being one of them."
The unmistakable sound of a gun cocking made my heart skip a beat. I turned slowly. Dare had taken Icarus's ancient six-shooter and pointed it at my head. I was getting tired of people pointing weapons at me, but she looked determined enough for this not to be an idle threat. "You don't get to pretend to have a choice in this." Her hand shook a little, but I didn't mistake it for fear. Anger drove Dare. "Your days of sitting in the ivory tower are over sweetheart. It's time to get your hands dirty."
She had no idea how dirty my hands were, and I wanted to punch her for believing my life had been anything close to easy. But I didn't want that gun to start shouting. "Whoa," I said, "let's not get emotional here."
She blinked. "Not get emotional?" she snorted. "I lost the luxury of emotion the day they took my family."
I frowned at her. "But you're a vampire--"
She laughed like rusty nails scoring metal. "Not all vampires hate humans. Some of us loved them."
"So when you say your family, you mean ... "
Her hand tightened on her gun. "My husband and daughter."
I cursed quietly. "I'm sorry."
"No you're not!" she barked suddenly. Cold fear rose up my spine. Before she'd been angry, but now she looked crazy and fully capable of murder. "While you were sucking the Troika's cocks, my daughter was murdered and hung to bleed out from the window of our apartment building to serve as a warning to the other vampires who were considering mating with humans."
