Chapter 130
The foreman groaned when the floor pressed against his back. The hard, filthy concrete gave no mercy with its cold bite through the fabric of his jacket. He squinted, staring at the ceiling. Only when Duke kicked his boot against the side of the leg did he fully open his eyes, looking like a man waking from a bad dream.
"Good morning, sunshine," Duke said, in a voice with a low and slow drawl that was barely noticeable. His gaze locked like a hammer. The foreman flinched, blinking against the single harsh fluorescent light overhead; the beams cut into his face like knives.
I stay back a step, silently observing as I often did—measuring, listening, and waiting. My hands practically itched, not from the fight but from my nerves. I wanted to find a way to rip the truth from this man. He knew something, and right now, both Kaysi and Becky are fighting for their lives. As we race to take down the one behind the dome and get them to a proper hospital before... My chest tightened, and I couldn't finish my thought.
Josh moves forward. I can see the heat under his skin even from here—squared jaw, fists clenched. He looks like he wants to burn the room down and find answers in the ash. I would be lying if I said I don't feel the same way.
Josh grabbed the man's jacket. "My girlfriend's in a makeshift hospital, fighting for her life." Josh's voice shakes, half-anger, half-raw panic. "We got people who need help. That dome—it's got to come down. We found records in another warehouse—planning, lists, and payments. You were going to use it. Tell us everything." His voice cracked with anger. The frustration looked ready to boil over, like lava. "If you know anything—anything—you've got to talk, or I swear.
"I won't talk to anyone, nothing!" the foreman hissed, spitting on Josh's cheek. His eyes locked on him. "You little brats can go shove it where the sun doesn't shine. I don't give a rat's ass about your girlfriend or your friends."
Josh's fist bursts into flames as he hurls a punch at the guy's face before I could move to stop him.
Duke clamps Josh's forearm like a vise and moves him back. The old man's not the only one who knows how to make a point.
"We will see about that," Duke says, voice soft enough to be a promise or a threat. Looking at the man when he tells Josh, "Take the others outside. Cool your head. Twenty minutes. That's all I ask."
The foreman's grin faltered slightly.
After maybe 10 minutes, Duke met us outside. I noticed a smear of red on his dark gray hat, barely noticeable in less light. "Duke...Your hat—blood?" I asked, voice low.
He flicks the brim with a thumb, as if testing a memory. "Sometimes," he says without looking up. "Sometimes when folks play with demons, they don't scare easily. Angels don't frighten everyone." He leans down close to the foreman. "So I had to try a different approach."
"Evan, I want you to come in with me. I think he will open up, but if he doesn't... You're the only one I want to know what I may do. He comes off cocky around you kids, underestimating you. I think we can use that to our advantage to finish him."
I walk back in with Duke. This time, the foreman turned his head to spit blood on the ground from a busted lip and a few missing teeth. Courtesy of Duke, no less—guessing from his earlier comment.
"Talk," I said with no threats or theatrics. Just words, measured and slow. "Names, places, who's moving what in the warehouses. If you say something useful, we will walk out. If you shut up, you go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. Which is it?"
He laughed weakly and brittlely. "You think I'm scared? I've seen what they can do. They don't play by the rules. Your children are fighting grown men."
"Maybe," I say, "but right now the people you're hiding from aren't men; they are victims. Every minute this dome is up, another person's life is at risk! There is this kid—Thomas—we are the difference between him and others being alive or dead right now." I watched his face tighten. The name Thomas landed like a stone.
The foreman's jaw works; I know that. But he is stubborn to the bone. That said, stubbornness, like bones, can be broken.
He shakes his head. "I'm not telling you anything." Then, quieter, he adds something I don't want to hear: "You're too late. You don't know what's under the dome."
Duke's boots thunk back into the room. He doesn't have to look at me to know what his next move is.
The foreman's smirk goes paper-thin. My eyes meet Duke's, and for a second, there's an unspoken language between us. I don't like what I read in it, but I understand why he does what he does. Desperation makes men dangerous.
I took this position so Josh's anger wouldn't cause him to leap again if provoked. But still, I tear at the same feelings.
The information comes grudgingly: names, a loading dock, times when shipments left the old textile warehouse for pockets of the city that never made sense to anyone who lived a normal life. A leader—an organizer—someone the foreman calls The Master Foreman, a name that isn't a name and all the worse for it. He rattled off contact points—a map of shadowed rooms that smelled of oils and herbs, like an old church.
He says more than I expect. He says the Order is more rooted than the rumors suggest, and that it collects endowments under the guise of charity. That they gave leases and protection for a price. That some of the missing were not "drifters" but pawns to be used for a higher purpose.
From what I saw in the Abyss, I hate to think of food to keep the demons at bay.
I carve his words in my head, keeping my mind as steady as I can. As Mme and the Duke walk out to discuss our findings with the others. Kaysi's image floods my mind, tired with tubes and monitors, the way she sat so still and silent in the bed as if she was waiting for me to figure this out.
"He's gone," someone said—Josh, I think, pushed to the light and anger again. The foreman's body lies slack, eyes half-rolled. His chest doesn't move.
Duke walked back into the room and checked for a pulse. White foam from his mouth says it all. "Sometimes," he says, looking up at us with a flat voice, "the things you dance with will not keep you when you stop moving. That's their kick. They must have had a bug on him when he was outside his zone for too long; they hit the button."
"How many more people are like this?" I stared at the lifeless body of the foreman.
"As many people as they need to complete their goals." Duke tilted his hat.
"How do we know who is behind this and who is in danger?"
"We don't; we keep moving forward and find the next target, or better yet, who is behind this and stop it."
We leave the foreman where he falls. We don't have time to argue funerals or decide what to do with bodies. We left a note for the police and the other construction workers who were present. They will remain asleep until we go, thanks to Baby's powers.
The sun had set by the time we had left. The battle and integration afterward took up almost all of the daylight. Outside, the night had a cold sting. The mill's shadow ate the alley we entered, though. But the city presses on beyond the fences—a car, a blaring horn, and someone laughing too loudly on the street corner. Life keeps going like they had no idea how frail life was, how we were all toys in a dollhouse. The dome was our prison, and we waited for the next person to come along and toy with us.
When we left, Duke's face showed nothing but numbness. The memory left a foul taste in our mouths. Josh was a bit shook up. He noticed the blood on Duke's hat as well. But before Josh could say a word, the duke spoke.
"I did what had to be done. Sometimes people forget they're not immortal. You wanted answers, and we got them, but not everyone can be so fortunate. You have to make difficult decisions, putting the life of one person ahead of saving the lives of many. These people pay the price for engaging in these demons' games. Furthermore, he was arrogant to believe he was higher up the food chain. Dealing with these folks will always be inconvenient. There will be instances where you must act against your moral convictions to do the right thing."
There was a silence, then my mind flooded again with feelings about Kaysi and Becky lying on the hospital cots. The machines' hum, in the distance, almost drowned out my mind. If Duke is the only one willing to get his hands dirty, then what will it take for me to be the leader I am supposed to be? I can't help my friends if he is not around, and he won't always be there to guide me.
Josh swallows words she wants to say, words that looked like they may have divided us. Time in the Abyss made him cold toward the people of this world, except for those close to him. He could hardly be called a waymaker; his heart grew cold, and ironically, I think Becky would be the only one to thaw it out. He looks at Duke and then back at me and nods his head as a man who understands the calculus of blood and hard choices.
We move out—careful, quick. The foreman's secrets have granted us a map; it wasn't much to go off of, but enough to take the next step: an entry point, a silver lining of hope. We have to push ourselves. We have to leverage every scrap of information and move fast before the rot of being under the dome spreads any further.
As we left the mill miles behind, I left the scars of the man's details behind and held on to the knowledge he gave. The order is thicker than the single foreman there; we will have to face more people. That's the worst kind of enemy: not a single head to cut off, but a network of people around the city, feeding off of others' misery until we choke them out.
Josh fell quietly beside me. I can see the hardware rage playing in his mind. He's plotting something, a route, a plan. He says nothing; he shares nothing, not about nightmares or ways of memories that can destroy you from the inside out—it's not the time. Not yet.
Duke lifts his hat in a slow half salute and tucks it back down. "Get some rest; we camp out here for now while Baby and I take the watch."
I nod, but I don't sleep—the city noise counts the minutes in my head. Who will be the next victim? My words play in my head as I close my eyes.