Bars like thiS have a lot of back doors. It's sensible. The sort of place where, if the Badge comes in the front door, there are going to be a lot of people who might want out of the building. Quickly. Wilson and I fit this description exactly, with maybe double emphasis on the quickly. The girl was of a like mind, though possibly of opposite intent. I assumed Wilson would just head to one of these many doors. Incorrectly.
Wilson just ran to the window, snatching up a chair for protection as he went, and plunged straight through. No time to adjust, once I knew what he was doing, so I stuttered to a halt and fell through the open window. Of course, the next window over was a fire escape. Nice, reliable ladder, just out of reach. Wilson snagged it with his spindly spider arms and swung away. I fell.
Just far enough that it hurt when I got a hand around the iron filigree that lined the second floor. Hurt a lot. The skin of my hand opened up, my shoulder wrenched, and then I swung like a battering ram into the wall. Winded, my grip slick with my own blood, I was sliding down before I could get a better handle. Hit the floor with both boots and my knees crumpled. I curled onto the ground and gasped until my lungs opened up. Wilson landed next to me and started pulling at my elbow.
"Get up, man. Get to your feet," he hissed without looking at me. I tried to convey the seriousness of my wounds, and how a lot of it was his damn fault for leading me through a window, but all I could get out was a squeaking wheeze. Finally he looked down at me. "Stop screwing around, Jacob. We're very interesting to all the wrong people."
I looked up and saw the girl, leaning out over the blood-spattered railing. She had her strange eyes on the street below. I followed her eyes. A second group of the Badge were nearly on us. I could hear the ones who had rushed inside still yelling. Our waitress was nowhere to be seen. Typical. The girl looked down at us, almost curiously, then disappeared.
"Come on," I croaked. "We should be going."
"I've been saying that," Wilson said. We went in opposite directions, then I stumbled to a halt and ran after him.
"Remember next time," I yelled after him. "Walls. Windows. Open pits." I spat a wad of blood onto the cobbles. "I need ladders for that sort of thing."
"You need to learn to adapt, Jacob. Take some risks."
I muttered nonsensically, because that's all I could think of. We scrambled around a corner and lit off down an alley. The Badge was behind us, clumsily pushing past the stacked crates and rubbish bins. Those jackets of theirs were not made for pursuit. They needed to rethink their uniforms.
"So who do you think that was?" Wilson asked me as we came out into a wider avenue and I caught up with him. I looked over at him with wide eyes. Still trying to catch my breath after that fall.
"Talk about it. Later. Now is running," I gasped.
"Fair enough. But it's an interesting question. I mean, was our waitress trying to get the Badge because of her, or because of us? Or did she send the waitress to get the Badge, to help capture us?"
"Fascinating," I puffed. "Run."
"Yes, yes. This way," he said, then darted into a side alley. Again I stumbled to a stop, had to double back to follow. We were going to have a talk when this was over.
The alley went about ten feet, turned sharply twice, then ended in a high, brick canyon. No ladder.
"Oh, for the love of gods, Wilson," I was bent over, hand on my knees, trying to find some oxygen that could do the job of completely filling my lungs. "We talked about this. Walls. I can't just…" I fluttered my fingers. "I'm not a damn butterfly."
"I would never have mistaken you for one. You know, you're really out of practice with this stuff. Like you've forgotten your buddy Wilson here plans for this sort of thing."
He bounded up the wall, spider arms clattering against the bricks. He disappeared over the lip of the building. A second later a knotted rope coiled down the wall, landing at my feet. Wilson's narrow face and sharp smile reappeared.
"Up, up," he said, then was gone.
I put a hand around the rope and gave it a tug. It wasn't too far up, but farther than I'd climbed in a while.
"Not much better, buddy," I whispered. Didn't want him to hear me. Cutting the rope wasn't out of the question, if he got in one of his moods. Arm over arm, feet pressed against the bricks like a mountain climber, I went up. Halfway there, the Badge arrived.
"You!" they yelled, because there were so many other people they could be talking to. "On the rope! Come down from there!"
Wilson reappeared, counted heads, and drew his knife. He jerked his head, indicating that I should hurry, because clearly I had been taking my time. This was like a vacation for me. Words, Wilson. We were going to have words.
"Come down or we'll fire!" one of them yelled. He drew a shortrifle, to emphasize the point. I found that I could go faster. Another of them started up after me. A healthy lad, who had not recently fallen from a window. He was making good time.
"Come on, come on, son. Up, up!" Wilson spat. My arms were getting numb, and I couldn't keep my boots on the wall. Everything that wasn't numb was on fire. I tried to give him an angry look, but I suspect it came out as plumb exhaustion. He grimaced, sheathed the knife and then disappeared behind the lip of the building.
A second later the rope shook. I almost let go, but then Wilson's straining face popped into view.
"Hold on!" he said through tiny, gritted teeth. I held. He pulled with all his many arms and his unnaturally hard legs. Up I went. The Badgeman yelped and fell. The first bullet skittered off the brick just as I rolled onto the roof. Wilson and I lay in a tangle of very many arms. The rope tensed again, and Wilson casually leaned over and cut it.
"You're in terrible shape," he said. "Getting soft in your criminal ways."
"Falling from a window does that to me," I said, still trying to get my breath sorted. I took the loose end of the rope in my hand and gave it a shake. "You have these all over the city?"
"Escape routes? Some. Not as many as I used to. It's been a quiet couple of years for us." He stood, and pulled me to my feet, though I'm not sure I was ready for that much verticality. "Good to be at it again, huh?"
"Huh," I answered. Dared a peek over the edge, ducked back when all I saw were shortrifles pointing at me. A couple shots went off, but nothing too close. "Well. What now?"
"They'll go around in a minute. Come up the stairs or something. We should try to get to the next. Huh."
"Huh?" I repeated. Looked at him, then where he was looking.
The girl was several buildings over, moving across the roof with a dancer's grace. She came to the edge and leaped, like a gazelle clearing a pond. Beautiful to look at, if not for the mask. If not for the chase. If not for the fact that everything about her stank of predator, not prey.
"Interesting," Wilson whispered. I grabbed his coat and pulled him away.
"Interesting later," I spat, and we ran. So much running today. I really was out of shape.
We went rooftop-to-rooftop for a while, until it became clear that I was the weak link in that exchange. She was fast, Wilson was fast. I was tired. Wilson pried open a rooftop hatch and we clambered down into a shuttered factory. It was set up to manufacture the sort of machinery that cogwork couldn't replicate. The first ladder took us to a catwalk that creaked dangerously under our feet. The factory floor was bisected by machinery that was draped in white sheets and dust. A partially dissected assembly line snaked between the ghost machines. The only light was what little leaked in from the stained skylights in the roof. In that semi-dusk glow, the draped machines loomed in a field of darkness.
At the prompting of the unstable catwalk, Wilson and I found a ladder down to the main floor. We'd barely touched boot to concrete when we heard footsteps on the shingled roof. I pulled the anansi into the forest of machinery and ducked under some of the drapery. Dust puffed up around us. The floor was littered with dead bugs that crunched underfoot. I tried to not think about the dead body in Crane's room, and its plume of maker beetles.
The footsteps on the roof slowed, the ceiling beams creaking with the girl's passage. Finally they stopped. Wilson and I sat still, breathing in dust and dead bugs. Wilson probably didn't mind, but I was getting uncomfortable. Minutes passed, and then the footsteps continued. The hatch groaned open, then footsteps on the ladder. The catwalk creaked under her feet.
"Did you see an exit anywhere?" Wilson whispered to me. It sounded deafening in the shuttered factory. I shook my head and waited for the footsteps overhead to stop. They didn't. The girl kept walking slowly along the catwalk. Several minutes, and her progress continued. She had to be halfway across the factory by now. The catwalk sounded terrible, the metal pinging and groaning under her feet.
"She's past us," Wilson breathed in my ear, then scooted a little distance away and pulled the drapery up so he could look out.
"What are you doing?" I hissed, pulling him back in. He shrugged me off. How was she not hearing this?
"Looking for a way out. We can't just sit here forever."
"Maybe we can. Maybe the catwalk will collapse and then she'll stop being our problem."
Wilson looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling, then shrugged. "I'm not sure that would stop her from being our problem."
He went back to looking out from under the machine, then slipped completely out. I heard him cross the aisle to another mothballed unit. I sat there cursing under my breath, then followed.
Either my eyes had adjusted to the artificial dusk of the factory floor, or there was more light in here now. I could clearly see the skeletal framework of the catwalk, criss-crossing the building. There were many machines on the floor that had not been draped, too. They stood out as blacker blacks in the darkness. Glad we hadn't run into any of those on our way to our hiding place.
Wilson was crouched behind one such machine, his hands lightly on its surface, peaking out around the corner. I got behind him, then stretched up to look over the machine. There was the girl, high up among the catwalks. She was almost to the other side of the building.
"Can we get back to the ladder and get out of here?" I asked.
"Not without her noticing. And then we're right back where we were, jumping from roof to roof." He looked at me over his shoulder. "Have you suddenly developed a preternatural ability to keep up with me?" I grimaced, which somehow he saw. "So we need to find an exit on this floor, and a quiet way to get to it."
I stood up a little taller, risking a look around the factory floor. Lots of these mothballed machines, and a raised track that once moved some kind of product from station to station. Carriage factory? It was impossible to tell in this condition. Worse, all the machinery prevented me from clearly seeing the walls. After several seconds of frustration, I found the closest thing to a door. Pulling Wilson back, I explained.
"Whatever they made here, it was pretty big. At the end of the assembly line there's a galley door. Fifteen feet tall, with sliding shutters."
"That's it?"
"That's all I can see. Best news is that it's on our end of the factory. The line starts down there, where she is. Comes out over here," I said, pointing.
"Galley door will be bolted shut," Wilson said. "Probably from the outside."
"You're saying you can't pick a lock through a wall?" I asked.
"No, Jacob. There's the wall to contend with, and…" he stopped when he realized I wasn't serious. Gave me a look. Probably the same look he gave to things he was about to kill and eat. "Point is, even if we get to it, we can't get through it."
"You've never worked in a factory, I take it," I said. "There'll be an entrance beside the galley."
"Like a cat door," Wilson answered. "Fine. That will be more traditionally locked." He peered back around the machine. The girl was standing immobile, facing the wall opposite us. She had her hands open, as though in a benediction. "Strange girl. But I think she'll still hear us."
"She seems to be pretty distracted," I said. "I think we could make a break for it."
"Sure," Wilson said. "You first."
"You're the one who's going to be picking the lock."
"Which is why it's important that you go first. In case she hears you, you can run off in some other direction and distract her while I get the door open."
"Seriously?" I asked. Wilson shrugged.
"I just don't want to go first," he said.
"What happened to 'Good to be back at it,' huh?"
"It was better on the roofs. I knew what I was doing." He folded into himself a little and shivered. "This place is like a damn tomb."
"Tomb," I said, quietly. "Dead bodies. Trying to kill me."
"What?" Wilson asked.
"Nothing," I said. Rubbed my face and checked where the girl was one more time. "Nothing. Let's go. Like you said, if she notices me I'll jump off the other way. Get the door open and I'll come around."
"If who notices," he asked. Nervously.
"The girl, Wilson," I said, then I noticed the way he was staring past me. Back to where the girl was. Had been. Was gone.
"Oh, hell," I whispered. I stood up. A room full of ghost machines and black shadows, the floor littered with the dry shells of bugs. "Just get to the door. Go."
"Jacob, this is getting weird fast. Maybe we should…"
"Go!" I yelled, pulling my revolver out and giving the anansi a shove. He stumbled gracelessly, then gathered himself and skittered off toward the galley door. His footsteps pattered and echoed off the high rafters. Another sound, too. Smooth, even, soft. Another set of feet. Hard to tell where it was coming from.
"Wilson, quiet for a second. Quiet!"
"What?" he hissed, loudly.
"Be quiet!"
He was. We stood twenty feet apart, immobile, but I could have sworn I could hear his heartbeat. Nearly as loud as mine. No other sound. Nothing. We stayed that way for a half-handful of heartbeats, then I nodded at him to continue. He crept off, much quieter this time. I could barely hear it. And then, footsteps. Over there.
I pulled myself quickly up onto the machine I had been hiding behind to get a better look. The girl's strange head bounced smoothly into view, moving along the far wall, one hand against it. I took an off-balance shot that got nowhere near her. She went down.
"Get her?" Wilson yelled from somewhere close to the door.
"No," I yelled back. "I think she knows we're here, though."
"Yeah," Wilson answered.
My eyes were getting used to the light of the factory. I squatted down and moved laterally, edging closer to where I'd seen our lovely pursuer. Away from Wilson, in case she decided to follow the anansi. Give me a chance to sneak up behind her. And if she followed me, then he had more time to get the door open. Quietly, I crept from machine to machine, my feet barely dusting the floor. I held the revolver in front of me and stepped around a corner, sighting into the darkness.
Abruptly, the revolver was no longer in front of me, and a moment later pain registered throughout my hand. The hand was no longer in front of me, for that matter, and then the pain was in my jaw and chest. Dimly, I recognized the sound of a pistol clattering to the floor and sliding some distance away. Also a boot, moving through the air in a way I usually associate with birds of prey. I was on my back, scrambling away like a crab. She came around the corner. In the darkness the lenses of her eyes glittered like lightning through distant thunderheads.
"Wilson!" I yelled, although it wasn't as loud or as urgent as I wanted. I tried to get to my feet while still retreating, and only managed to cartwheel flat on my back. Dust haloed around me and the breath left me. Twice in one day. Good times. I got the heels of my hands under my back and sat up. She stopped, just out of reach, weight on her back heel, the toes of her front leg barely off the ground. Like an insect, a spider, tasting the web. Waiting to strike.
The lights came on, accompanied by several rolling booms around the perimeter of the factory floor. Smoke rose up. I threw my arm over my head to shield my eyes from the sudden brightness. The girl didn't move, other than to cock her head to one side.
"Badge!" a machine-enhanced voice rolled out from all sides of the building. "We have the room surrounded and all exits blocked. Come out and submit yourself to the Council's justice!" The words echoed through the building, crashing against each other and distorting in the high places of the factory. Carefully, I got to my feet, never taking my eyes off the girl.
She ignored me. As soon as the noise of the machine-voice settled down, a wave of crashing boots shuffled through dozens of doors that we couldn't see. They were in the building, all sides of it, from the sound of it. She gave up her fighting stance and stared at the ceiling for two heartbeats. I saw my pistol, under the fluttering sheet of the machine just behind me. Decided not to go for it yet.
The girl stared at the machine behind me, then the next one, then another. She walked to the last one with stiff determination. She ripped off the sheet that covered it, revealing an antique-looking control panel, all switches and valves and dials that looked like they hadn't been used in a generation. Without pause she began throwing switches, going from lever to lever like it was a memorized routine and she was being timed. The switches threw with a satisfyingly mechanical clack, like primitive musical instruments. She went through a half-dozen complicated motions, then put her hand on a throw-wheel and looked back at me. I had been going for the pistol. I stopped; she looked from me to the revolver, then back to my face. I couldn't read anything in that iron mask. I wasn't even sure she was alive, the way she moved. Like a routine, like a show. Finally she spun the wheel.
The factory roared into wild mechanical life. The sheets blew off the machines or were consumed and shredded, spewed up into the air like linen snow. The sound was tremendous, the tearing of cloth, the grinding howl of engines that hadn't been maintained, suddenly awake and shuddering with disuse. With a clattering moan, the track that crisscrossed the factory floor lurched into motion.
The engine that I was standing next to unfolded like a spider on its back. I rolled to the ground, scooped up my pistol and scrambled, face to the floor, away from its spinning arms. When I got to my feet, the girl was gone. The Badge, though, was everywhere.
They took the restart of the factory as some kind of initiation of hostilities, and were taking no chances. The tiny open space where I stood was pinned in on three sides by whirling machinery, going through the motions of assembling and production. The fourth side was bordered by the rattling assembly track. Beyond, I could see a unit of Badgemen advancing, shortrifles leveled, ballistic shields strapped to their arms. They hadn't seen me yet. In fact, they seemed to be advancing on a pile of crates that had somehow survived the animation of the engines around them.
I hunched below the lip of the assembly track, creeping as close as I dared without risking getting caught in its gears. The air was filled with shreds of linen, floating down like confetti. Some of them were alight, and there was a great deal of smoke billowing up from the floor. Either a friction fire, or exhaust from the primitive engines, I wasn't sure. A large section of sheet slumped to the ground near the patrolmen, temporarily blocking their view of the crates. The girl hopped out from where she had apparently been hiding, landed near the still collapsing sheet, and then charged through its fluttering edges and into the Badgemen. Chaos and gunfire ensued, and then she was past them, bounding between machinery to disappear among the burning linen and screaming engines. The patrol was a shambles, several of them down, more still trying to react to the sudden assault. They huddled like a tortoise, shields out, shortrifles flicking back and forth. Yelling. Lots of yelling.
"There's one here," from behind me, and I turned. Three officers on the other side of the whirling spider-machine. "Come on out, lad," they said from behind the barrels of their weapons. I jumped up on the track, thinking to make it to the other side and try my luck with the frightened tortoise. But the track was not smooth, and not to be jumped on lightly by someone like me. The iron girl probably could have managed it. The surface was articulated, a series of thin levers that depressed and gripped whenever pressure was applied. I applied pressure with my foot, and the thing ate my leg up to the shin. I stumbled, went down, submitted hands and elbows and face into the hungry track. Metal pinched flesh and drew blood. Bullets sang off the track around me, and then something sharp and unyielding went into my ribs, stitched a line up to my shoulder. I finally got free, to see that I was in the process of being unmade by the newly awakened factory. The track had traveled a good bit while I was struggling with it, and the tortoise was too far away to be much more than a nuisance. It was the factory itself that I had to worry about.
This part of the track was the most heavily populated with machinery. There was no friendly shore to hop off, no clearance on either side of the track. Engine after engine lurched at me, some still wrapped in the burning remains of their covers, some so far out of balance that they were just twisting and thrashing at the conveyor. I ducked under an array of fitting arms and right-sizers. And then one of the machines downtrack of me stopped its assault, seized up and collapsed across the track. Like a branch across a river, and I grabbed for it. The metal was still hot, and bits of smoldering linen burned my skin, but I pulled myself free of the track and onto the machine. Gasping for my breath in the smoke-thick air, I slumped onto the factory floor and lay there, looking up at the ceiling and wondering how I'd gotten to this horribly uncomfortable stage in life. Wasted childhood, perhaps. I know there's some way to blame my father for all this. Surely.
Groaning, I pushed myself into a sitting position and looked around. I had no idea where Wilson had gotten to, where the girl was, or how I was going to get out of here. The Badge was everywhere. Although none of them could see me, I could hear them calling out to each other, tightening their search. The machine-voice was still booming incoherently over the cacophony of the awakened factory. I got to my heels, squatted and drew my revolver. At least I still had that. I looked up, into the eyes of the iron girl.
She was hidden in the lee of a particularly large machine. It was all boiler and flywheel, the moving parts safely on the other side of the engine. She was folded neatly into the gap below the tank. It must be terribly hot there, but she didn't seem to mind. What she did seem to mind, however, was my attention. It seemed like she was glaring at me, through those matte black lenses. Impossible to tell, really.
I yelped and stood, bringing the iron up to fire. She was on me in a breath, slapping the revolver to the side and striking across my chest and legs. Treated me just like she had the control panel, each movement as if she had choreographed and practiced it her whole life. Fist came down on my leg moments before I was able to balance on it, elbow against my throat a heartbeat before I could yell, knee striking forearm once, twice, each blow disrupting my aim just enough to keep the barrel of my gun away from her. I fired anyway, but the blast did more to distract me than to bother her. Finally she set her heel behind my leg and shoved me in the hips and shoulder, and I was impossibly overbalanced. As I went down she snatched the pistol from my flailing arm. I was on my back, looking up at my own pistol.
She stood there for a moment. I finally detected the slight movement of breath in her chest. So she was alive, at least. A pleasant change, considering the last day. When she was done glaring down at me, she flipped the revolver in her hand, slapped the chamber open and emptied the shells harmlessly onto my face. Then she brought her hands together, did something complicated, and when she spread her arms again the pieces of my revolver scattered across the floor. Like a party trick. With her hands still wide, she backed away. Right into Wilson's tackle.
The anansi came over the top of the big boiler she had been hiding under, the six long, thin limbs that sprouted from his back carrying him up and over the cast iron dome. His regular hands were empty, and his clothes looked a little charred. Must have been working on the door when the Badge made their appearance in force. The din of the factory drowned out the sound of his approach. He pounced, as only a spider can.
He hit her in stride, and they went down in a heap of legs and iron. She rolled to her feet, but Wilson swiped them away, first one then the other. She did this odd hopping dance, regaining one foot as he took the other, three or four times as he kept striking and she kept recovering. It would have been funny if not for the look on Wilson's face, the frustration and fear. Finally he gave up on unbalancing her and turned his many-armed attention to doing the girl harm. Eight arms in all, six tipped in sharp talons, two hard as rocks. Something about anansi bones made them super dense. For all that Wilson was a tall, skinny, bookish looking guy, he was incredibly strong. And that strength came out and he struck with the six arms that hung over his shoulders, each one darting in, only to be brushed aside by the girl's close defense. She didn't move an inch more than she had to, deflecting each attack with armored forearms or the knife-edge of her hands. Each talon that flashed past her whipped back to strike again, to be deflected again, to whip back again. It was dizzying to watch.
The iron girl was moving backwards, herded by the ferocity of Wilson's attack. Smoke was getting heavy in the air. Something was burning, and not just scraps of sheet and cranky gearshafts. I rolled heavily to my feet, abandoned the dissected remains of my stolen revolver, and tried to find something that could make a difference in the dazzling melee that was going on before me. Needn't have worried. I heard a shout and looked up to see Wilson drawing back, bloody on the tip of one of his talons. His eyes were on fire with hungry triumph. The iron girl's sleeve was torn, the dark tan skin beneath gashed open. Wilson howled and redoubled his attack.
Several more blows landed in the next few breaths. The iron girl was tiring, pushing the attacks farther away than was absolutely necessary. Hard to imagine using this word to describe the nearly mechanical precision of her actions, but she was getting sloppy, and Wilson was taking advantage.
It was the Badge that saved her, and nearly finished us all. The two combatants were making enough noise now to draw the attention of even the most casual of patrolmen; the guys coming at us in riotplate were not terribly casual. They ignored me and set up a firing line on the other side of the assembly track. They couldn't have had more than an obscured view of the fight, but it was enough to convince them this was one of those 'shoot first, questions later' kind of situations. They shot.
I mentioned the boiler. It was big, iron. Incredibly old. Iron enough that the first two slugs did nothing more than flake rust and dimple the skin. Old enough that the third, fourth and tenth slugs went inside. Inside, where the fire was. The fire came out. Rapidly.
Wilson and the iron girl both turned their heads when the first shots impacted the boiler. Situational awareness, they call that. I saw them looking concerned, and I've been around Wilson enough to know that his concern is my concern. When the acrobats-militant flipped out of the way and threw themselves to the ground, I did the same. The fire washed over me in a sheet of angry heat. It treated the rest of the factory poorly, including those riotplated Badgemen.
It was all noise to me. Screaming, tearing metal, the rapid rush and roar of consumed air and guttering fire. Engines tearing free of their moorings to bounce playfully across the floor. More screaming. Wilson pulled me up, shook me. Looked concerned when I opened my eyes. He was talking but I couldn't hear anything over the din of the factory. I looked around the floor. Dimpled concrete where there had been machines. Fire where there had been Badgemen. Nothing where there had been an iron girl.
He shook me again. I got the idea. We had to go. Now.