Fear Her Wrath II: Crucible of Glass

Chapter 21

The Black Kilns was a labyrinth of old warehouses, furnaces, and foundries—a necropolis for the city's once-thriving steel industry. The old steelworks had provided jobs for thousands of working-class people in the Fen before they were shuttered by the city council—allegedly on environmental grounds. They promised to rebuild the district as an industrial park and lure in new investors, like Nix Industries in Triumphia. New jobs, more jobs, better jobs. We'd heard it all before. Ten years later, and the Black Kilns still languished on the north end of Chilltern Banks—its lifeless smokestacks towering like funerary obelisks over the city's poorest slums. Like many of the more desolate corners of Marbrose City, this wasn't the kind of place you visited without good reason. Besides being deserted and creepy, it was decidely unsafe—especially at night.

And yet, here I was.

In case you're wondering, nobody's really sure where the name "Black Kilns" comes from. There may have been a brickworks by that name back in the early 1800s—before Thomas Dreyfuss set out to transform Fenley Island into the steel capital of the Great Lakes—and there had been a brick factory operating in the Kilns when the city closed everything down. Now, however, the name "Black Kilns" was merely synonymous with the despair and decay that seemed to grip the Fen and the people who lived in it. People said the words wearily, like they were a painful reminder of a hope long lost.

Josie's dad had worked security on one of the larger blast furnaces at the center of the complex—back when the city still cared whether or not the Kilns were used as shelter by runaways and tramps. I could see a faint light high up in the metal structure that showed it wasn't fully deserted. It was comforting, in a way, because the steelworks were eerily silent, and I half-expected to see a ghostly figure looming over me in the moonlight each time I looked over my shoulder.

It's nice to know you're not alone, even when the other person is a terrorist.

Taking Josie alive would be easy enough if I could just get to her. Based on the descriptions I got from Julie and Emery, I was about head taller than she was and at least forty pounds heavier, so I could overpower her without any trouble. The trick was not getting myself killed, which was a closer thing than usual.

I saw the thin metal wire stretched across the walkway just in time.

"Woah. That was close."

"Hmm?" came the voice in my ear.

Despite the fact that I was facing possible obliteration, Ellie had evidently been multitasking. She wasn't about to let superhero business get in the way of her sterling GPA.

"Booby trap," I said, bending over to examine the tripwire. "This whole place looks like it's rigged to blow. You'd almost think the Nihilist had a death wish."

"Well, d'ya blame her?"

"Not really. I'd just rather she not take me with her."

I adjusted the contrast on my night vision and continued deeper into the blast furnace. Now that I knew to be on my guard, it wasn't hard to spot the improvised traps—mostly tripwires and homemade mines. Obviously these were intended to deter trespassers rather than actually stop an intruder. Maybe, deep down, Josie wanted to be found.

It took just a few minutes for me to find my winding way up to the apex of the furnace. I kept my eyes fixed on the faint light above me, making only occasional use of my grappling hook when Josie's traps made a staircase or walkway impassable. As I finally pulled myself up onto the highest platform, I saw the words scrawled on the walls of the furnace in red paint, illuminated by a small kerosene lamp.

DESTROY THE WHOLE FILTHY ORDER

This had to be the Nihilist's lair. Bomb-making materials, tools, and empty boxes were scattered across the platform, and Josie's next special delivery lay half-finished on a worktable just a few inches from a lamp—which, yeah, she definitely had a deathwish if she was being that careless. Besides what she needed to make her explosive packages, Josie also had several drums of some incendiary material stacked tightly and strung with wires, which meant my suspicions were correct—this whole place was rigged to blow. I found a sleeping bag, a waterproof tent, a portable radio, an old laptop, and a few weeks' supply of food, but no other comforts until I started digging through the army surplus footlocker she'd brought with her from the orphanage. Beneath a pile of old clothes and a few unfinished prototypes of her signature explosive device, I found the diary she kept in an old, ragged notebook bound in leather. Well, I say "diary"—she called it a "manifesto," and a brief perusal told me it was written in the same grandiose style as the notes she sent to the police. Still, it told the whole story, and in her own words. This was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.