Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Twenty-Nine

We parked along the side streets outside the American Dynamics complex, spread out, no more than two cars per block to avoid suspicion. I blipped the Prius locked, looking out over the vast, barren parking lot—a holdover from the days when AmDye needed five times as many factory workers. Piper and Garrison, who'd caught rides with me, fell in behind. Gradually we were joined by the Mice who'd driven in other cars.

Josiah bowed theatrically and said, "Show us the way, Molly."

My eyes traveled up the fence, then haltingly along its barbed wire top. I led the group over patchy sod to the weakened section Durwood had identified earlier in the week. Hatch easily yanked the chain link back, the cobra on his forearm swelling, allowing the rest of us to stoop through.

In the distance, the factories looked bleak and forlorn. Rust-streaked smokestacks belched their payloads into the night.

I didn't understand why we had brought so many people to Pittsburgh. If the goal was to slip plant security and attack Jim Steed, a group this size—between fifteen and twenty—would not make it easy.

We slinked along the fence-line toward the old steel factory, keeping clear of the glow cast by towering light posts. The air quality deteriorated with each step, smells of sulfur and standing water. By the time we reached the back door Durwood had said was off the alarm circuit, I was holding my nose.

Piper glanced up the dingy building. "Which window?"

"The middle one," I said.

Everyone looked to Jim Steed's window, the only one lit, a pale yellow square in the gray monotony.

"Let's rock." Hatch produced a rotary saw from his massive trench coat, then spread the RF-blocking bag on the ground. "Everybody take back your phones. This will go fast, and we could end up scattering."

I find my phone and, like the others, impulsively check messages. There's nothing from the guys.

Josiah hadn't surrendered his phone. Now he finished typing something on it with a frenzied grin.

"Fast," he repeated. "Yes—fast and lethal."

Garrison sidled up to me and said in my ear, "Who is Josiah texting? Everybody's here, right?"

I nodded, feeling his warm breath. Things had been a little weird between us since I'd made Algernon. Garrison deferred to me now, would ask if I "thought it was cool" for him to do this or that. During our conversations, I got less of a nervous-talking-to-one-you-find-attractive vibe, more of a conventional post-adolescent reticence. He was almost Zach-like around me.

"'Friends' is what he said earlier. He's been texting them all day."

Garrison pulled a hand back through his hair—a gesture of Quaid's, only with fuller hair. "Are we supposed to go back in our same cars?"

I said I didn't know.

"Well, I'll—is it cool if I find you? After? You know, if it's not too crazy with police and all?"

"Sure," I said. "You can definitely ride with me."

He gave me a crooked, grateful smile that just about made me forget how my night was supposed to end—not in the Prius, but in the Vanagon.

Now the wide beam of a spotlight panned above us. It flashed across the brick building, suddenly giant, then veered on.

Josiah hissed, "Down, everyone down!"

On his lead, we flattened our bodies to the ground. I tasted soil and some sort of grease run-off. I turned my head and spat.

The spotlight continued its sweep of the complex, originating from a seventy-foot guard tower that looked straight out of a jailbreak movie.