The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge (5 page)

Commence Operation Seek the Freak.

Shimmering Crest was the main boulevard that zigzagged down the steep hillside to the park at the base. That's where the Zip Trolley stop was. Instead of taking the winding road, he was going straight down the hill, a gnarly drop that cut through all the switchbacks.

Micah thought about Maddox, hero of the absolute best Televiewer show ever. He was a hard-boiled Special Ops soldier who didn't take crap from nobody. Right about now, the Greinadoren Kommandei would be everywhere, leagues of deadly shadows shifting in the trees. Maddox wouldn't even sweat. He'd just smirk and say:

“No guts, no glory.” Micah growled it in his best Maddox voice and cocked his gun.

He leaped into position among the birch trees, pressing against the trunks. Nodding a command to his imaginary strike force, he hurtled out and fired his gun wildly. One washer missed, but two hit their mark, thudding into a tree.

Direct hit. Go, go, go!

Micah dodged imaginary fire and ran deeper into the clump of birches. He slid down a steep embankment, clung to exposed roots, and scrabbled down to the road below, tumbling the last few feet awkwardly.

The enemy's right on our tail! Watch your six!

Margie was the one who had turned him on to
Maddox
. His older sister was a hard act to follow with her perfect grades, a scholarship to MIM, and immediate recruitment into a special engineering corps. She was pretty much the only one who gave two spits about Micah.

He wondered where she was nowadays. They hadn't heard from her in more than a year. Apparently, she was on some sort of top-secret mission. With all the threats of war and stuff on the news, he bet it was super important.

Micah raced across the street, crawled through the underbrush, and jumped onto the roof of a garage below. He clung to the rain gutter and shimmied to the ground.

The homes on this lane were nice, but nothing like Plumm
Estate and the other mansions at the top of the hill. These houses
were packed close together and made from cheaper alloys.

The sky was growing darker. He had to hurry.

They're closing in. It's now or never.

Micah made a break for it. He let loose a flurry of rounds as he sprinted down the block, plugging imaginary Greinder Kommies left and right.

CLANG!

He froze. One of his shots had nailed a nearby mailbox mobile. It was a pointless doodad, a few dinky brass propellers and dangling baubles. As Micah hurried over to inspect the damage, he noticed that the center pinwheel was held on by a platinum hex grommet, a size eight.

Just the kind he had been looking for.

With a quick glance around, Micah spit on his hands and used his newly developed calluses to unscrew the grommet. He crammed it in his pocket and continued on his way.

It was the Doc who had first encouraged Micah to build stuff, noticing that he had a gift for the gears. “When a
worker
finds a spare part, he thinks it's the missing piece of an old machine,” Dr. Plumm once told him. “But when an
inventor
finds a spare part, he imagines it's the perfect addition to something new. Which one do you want to be?”

He didn't have to think too hard on it: neither. Being a worker was as lame as being a servant, and being an inventor sounded like doing math with a bunch of losers. No, he was destined for bigger things. And as soon as he was old enough to get into the Military Institute of Meridian next year, he'd prove it.

Micah hurdled over a steel picket fence, dashed across the yard, and scrambled down into the undergrowth, scaring a couple squirrels out of hiding. It was a sheer slope packed with thorny shrubs and thistles, but he muscled his way through it, feeling the brambles poke through his pant legs.

After a few steep drops, the heavy brush opened up to reveal the park. Gold and silver lampposts sculpted to look like metal dandelions illuminated the walking trail. The fireflies were out as well, flickering like copper pennies in the dark. A few folks hung around the silver fountain, while others jogged along the path.

None of them noticed the filthy soldier watching them from the shadows.

Hugging the outskirts of the park, he snuck from tree to tree and approached the Zip Trolley stop. He figured that Tennyson was at least five minutes behind, the way he drove. Micah huddled near some boulders so that he would have Freaky in his sights as soon as she arrived.

Unless he had already missed her. Or did she take a different route home? That would be annoying—just like her, come to think of it.

Minutes ticked past. Micah picked clumps of white paint out of his hair and waited. If he didn't find her, at least he had managed to get a whiff of freedom. And he got the size-eight hex grommet, so it wasn't a total loss.

He was just thinking about the long trek back up the hill when a familiar lanky shadow came loping down the trail.

Target sighted!

Seeing her again brought his anger back to a rolling boil. She had made him look like a moron in front of his brother and friends. Plus, she'd gotten paint all over his stuff. He whipped his gun out and closed in on his prey.

She looked nutty, hugging herself and throwing glances over
her shoulder. Good, she was already nervous, here all alone.

Micah lunged out from his hiding place and ran at her pell-mell.

“BLAHHHH!” he screamed. Phoebe screamed louder. She got about four feet of air. Her reaction was even better than he had hoped. Micah took aim with his Snakebite and fired—
click, click
.

Dang! Outta ammo.

He squealed with laughter anyway, stomping and running around in little circles. She was white as a stinkin' ghost, and her eyes were big as eggs, though they narrowed to mean little gashes when she saw who it was.

Mission accomplished
.

“I hate you! I hate you!” she hissed, and punched him all over his back and arms. Her weak little blows made him laugh louder, even though her bone-sharp knuckles kinda stung.

Oh man, this was too good. Micah had never seen her so raw. Maybe he could even get her to cry. That would be a first.

“Gotcha!” Micah cackled. “That's for the paint!”

Her nasty little mouth puckered, and she stubbornly jutted out her pointy chin. She tossed back her stringy mop of hair and marched away from Micah like a peacock on stilts.

“You little maggot,” Phoebe snapped. “Next time I'll load it with bleach.”

“Aw, come on!” Micah said, bouncing along behind her. “Don't be a sore loser. Hey! Wait up, Freaky!”

“That's Miss Plumm to you, Toiletboy.”

“Pffft!” Micah scoffed. “Fine, be that way. I was gonna show you my secret shortcut back home so you could go cry to your daddy, but…”

“Oh, go unclog something, you—” She stopped abruptly. Her mouth hung open as his words registered. A firefly drifted past her face, lighting her eyes.

Then she broke into a full-tilt run up the hill.

“Hey, you can't go back alone!” Micah shouted after her. “He's gonna think I didn't do my job!”

hoebe rocketed up the front steps of the manor and flung open the doors. The foyer was still and thick with shadows. Where was all the brightness and activity? Where was everybody? The hairs on her arms rose and she hugged her body tight, wishing she had something warmer to wear than just this short-sleeved blouse and loose skirt. She crept across the slices of moonlight splayed across the copper plank floor. The silence was heavy, save for the hollow heartbeat tick of the grandfather clock.

“Daddy?” Her voice cracked with uncertainty.

Phoebe's thin oval suitcase of crosshatched aluminum sat beside the front door.

Footsteps approached from the study. She tensed. The sound grew loud, pounding across the metal floor and reverberating through the massive hall.

Her father rushed forward, arms wide.

She leaped into his embrace. Her confusion over the last few months, the terror of the stranger with the bowler hat, all dissolved so fast that they might as well have never existed. He grasped her tight, lifting her until her feet dangled off the ground. She buried her face in his collar. He smelled like a machinist—the scent of sweat, grit, and smoky iron. It was always stronger when he returned from one of his trips, though he usually tried to cover it up with lemon-lavender aftershave. He seemed to have forgotten it this time, but she could not have cared less.

Phoebe felt a swell in her throat but fought it down. She hadn't cried in nearly three years and was not about to start. Not in front of him.

“Cricket,” her father whispered.

Normally, she hated when he called her that—it made her feel like a five-year-old. Not now. She savored the word.

“You're here,” she said. “But why are you all alone? Where is everyone?”

“I sent them to their quarters. It's just you and me.” He looked over her shoulder at Micah, who was standing in the doorway and watching the reunion with nosey insistence. “That'll be all, son.”

She hadn't heard Micah enter, and she didn't bother to look. Her world started and stopped within her dad's embrace, and not even the Tanner twerp could ruin it. The boy lingered as if he wanted to say something, but her father's stare made it clear he had been dismissed. He wandered out the front door, scuffing his feet in that lazy way that normally drove Phoebe up the wall.

But at this moment, she couldn't care less about Micah.

When Phoebe's dad lowered her to the ground, she saw that he was filthy, his features now haunted and severe. But then he smiled. His tired eyes crinkled gently, the worry seemed to fade, and he was her father again.

“I—I thought you weren't coming back this time,” Phoebe confessed.

His smile vanished, and he placed his hand on her shoulder.

“We have to go,” he insisted. “We have to get away from here. We're leaving everything behind. Do you understand?”

Phoebe shook her head no—she did not understand.

“Of course you don't. How could you?”

His grip tightened on her shoulder, and she looked down at it. His right hand was covered in a mottled green bruise and wrapped in a filthy bandage. Her dad pulled it away and gestured to Phoebe's suitcase.

“I had Mrs. Tanner pack our bags. We have to go,” he said.

“But she's not permitted to touch my things. I need to check it to see if—”

A muted rustle of bushes outside. Her father looked up sharply and put a finger to his lips. A long silence choked the room. Phoebe fidgeted.

“Now,” he said at last. “Through the sitting room. They're probably watching the front door.”

“Who?” Phoebe whispered. “The man in black?”

“What man?”

“With the dark glasses. A hat and curly mustache.”

His eyes widened. “It couldn't be. Not here in the city.”

“He's been following me. He chased me.”

“If they are here…Come, Phoebe. Now!”

Her father dragged her across the threshold and through the adjacent sitting room, suitcase in hand. He swept open the curtained glass doors that led to the side yard.

The stranger in the bowler hat stood blocking their way.

He looked like a corpse in the twilight.

Phoebe screamed, and her dad slammed the doors. The panes shattered, sending the intruder backward in a shower of glass. Her father grabbed her and ran. Their pounding steps thundered through the house as they dashed for the front door. But it swung open before they could reach it.

“Hello, doctor.”

The words pierced the shadows with ice-pick precision. Phoebe felt her dad's hand slacken. They both took a trembling step back, and her father dropped the suitcase.

The dark figure that entered was uncommonly tall, like he had been painfully stretched. As the man stepped into a shaft of moonlight, Phoebe shuddered at the sickly sight of him. He was broad-shouldered with a sinewy neck, wound as tight as a rope, and his dark eyes were buried deep in shadowed sockets. Every move he made was sharp and deliberate. Beneath his unbuttoned overcoat he wore a flak jacket of finely woven bronze fibers and olive-colored military fatigues, and his gloves and high boots were black leather. His splotchy complexion was the color of disease, and the skin was pulled so tight across his angular cheekbones and hairless skull that it gleamed.

But it was his mouth that held Phoebe's gaze. His chapped lips pulled back in a malevolent sneer to reveal tiny grayish teeth spaced too far apart in his gums, like a sparse graveyard of weathered tombstones.

“Kaspar.” Her father's voice faltered.

Another figure appeared in the doorway behind the menacing soldier. It was the stranger in the bowler hat. He should have been sprawled out unconscious in the side yard. How had he gotten around the house so quickly? Phoebe backpedaled but bumped up against something.

No. It was impossible. The stranger stood behind her as well, glass shards dusting his black suit. She looked from one to the other—the two men were identical in every way, from their cadaverous color to the symmetrical curl of their smiling mustaches. They ignored Phoebe, their impenetrable black spectacles focused on her dad.

“Your files,” Kaspar rumbled.

“What do you think you're doing?” Strength had returned to her dad's voice. “Breaking into my home, threatening my family. This is low even for you. Does Goodwin know his little lapdog has released Watchmen into Albright City?”

There was no longer any trace of fear in her father. Had he looked frail before? Now he seemed to rise before her very eyes, emanating resolve.

Kaspar nodded to the Watchmen. One grabbed Phoebe by the collar, and the other seized her dad's arm, twisting it hard behind his back. She stamped on her captor's feet and swung her bony elbows wildly, but the Watchman didn't budge.

“Don't you touch a hair on her head,” her father warned.

“Your files,” Kaspar repeated.

“Explain yourself. Or so help me—”

Kaspar nodded to the Watchman holding Phoebe. A cold, white-gloved hand clamped her mouth as another wrapped around her throat, squeezing her windpipe. She thrashed and tore at his hands, but his grip was unbreakable. Her dad broke away from the Watchman restraining him but was yanked back viciously.

She couldn't breathe. The world swam before her eyes.

“Stop!” her dad shouted, pointing to the dimpled copper door at the end of the foyer. “Through there.” The pressure on her throat released, and she sucked in a blessed lungful of air. She looked to her father for some kind of answer.

“Everything's going to be okay, Cricket.”

Phoebe nodded, wanting desperately to believe him, but the glimmer in Kaspar's eyes made her think otherwise. As he strode past, she could smell the oiled leather of his gloves and boots, masking a bitter scent of decay. He kicked open the door to the study and marched inside as the Watchmen dragged Phoebe and her father along.

Moonbeams poked feebly through the stained glass window but did little to penetrate the shadows.

“I warned Goodwin that you were nothing more than a common thug,” her father snapped. “Do you really think you can get away with this?”

Kaspar looked at the flames and curled ashes in the fireplace. “What did you destroy?”

“My documents are classified, and you have no authority. When I inform Goodwin what you have—”

“Who do you think sent me, doctor?”

Her dad drew back. Then he clenched his jaw and composed himself. “Release her. Then we can talk.”

The Watchman holding her father kicked the back of his legs, dropping him to his knees. Kaspar grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back painfully. Phoebe wanted to scream, but the sound died in her throat.

Another two identical men in bowler hats appeared at the study door.

Was she going crazy? It seemed like the world had been replaced by a hall of mirrors. Phoebe was beginning to wonder if she could trust her senses.

The Watchmen ripped open cabinets and seized files, gathering them into bundles. They carefully collected the ashes and burned fragments of paper from the fireplace, then unplugged the Computator and hauled it all away.

“I'll ask once more,” Kaspar said, with a yank of her dad's hair.

Phoebe clenched her jaw.

Think.

No one was going to come to their rescue. She had to find a way to help them escape.

Phoebe looked around the room, searching for a weapon or a distraction of any kind. Perhaps she could throw one of those burning logs in Kaspar's rotten face or light the rug on fire with it or something. No, they would grab her before she even got close. Maybe there was something in her sniping pockets that could help. She tried to focus. What did she have? Firecrackers? No, she used the last one a week ago. There was a packet of itching powder. It would keep her captor busy for a little while, but she didn't have enough to use on all of them.

“Where is the rest?” Kaspar asked, his voice unwavering. “Tell me, or I will break her fingers.”

The Watchman holding Phoebe snatched her hand in one white-gloved fist and spread her fingers wide.

She couldn't think straight. Her father turned to her, his darkened eyes suddenly drained of hope. His expression seared her heart.

Everything was
not
going to be okay.

Her dad croaked, “Behind the mirror.”

The Watchman held her fast while another crossed to the six-foot mirror framed with etched iron and lifted it. She flinched as he hurled it to the ground. A cascade of shards splashed across the floor, and a wave of mirrored glass slid to her feet. She caught a glimpse of her broken reflection in the twinkling daggers, the image of her own shocked face broken into a thousand shattered pieces.

Embedded in the wall was a black iron safe.

“The combination is—” began her father, but Kaspar wasn't listening. He seized the handle, and with slow and deliberate effort, he peeled the front of the safe off of its hinges. The metal twisted in his gloved hands like wet paper. There was a series of loud pops as the steel bolts of the lock snapped.

This isn't happening.

Kaspar took his time, enjoying the horrific screech of the shearing metal. He hefted the door, which was several inches thick, then tossed it aside to grab the documents within.

“Now we go,” said Kaspar in a maddeningly calm voice. “Mr. Goodwin awaits.” A sick gray grin cut across his face as he leaned in close. “And he knows
everything
.”

The Watchmen dragged them through the dark manor and out the front door. She kicked and writhed, but her captor's grip didn't yield in the slightest.

“Phoebe!” her dad called back to her.

Two stretched Auto-mobiles were parked in front of the house, their engines softly purring. They were identical to the one she had seen that morning, glossy black with a stripe of bronze. Watchmen sat placidly in each driver's seat. Dr. Plumm was hurled into one vehicle, Phoebe into the other. Two Watchmen climbed into the backseat on either side of her, and Kaspar leaned his head through the window.