Metaltown (41 page)

“Keep walking,” she told Chip, reaching for her knife. Her muscles tensed. Probably a junkie or a perv out trolling.

“Hey!” the voice called again, and through the gray, predawn haze she saw what looked like a man wearing a hat of snakes.

She squinted. Not snakes.
Dreads.

She gripped the knife low at her waist. “Watch my bad side,” she told Chip, who obediently jumped to her left.

They glanced around the corner and spotted two figures. It took her a moment to recognize them.

“About time somebody showed up,” Dreads said. Beside him, Schoolboy folded his arms over his chest.

A dark understanding settled on her bones. McNulty hadn't sent anyone else, which meant that he didn't intend to take back Metaltown. He wanted her dead so he could collect his bounty from Hampton.

She crouched low, revealing her knife. If she ran into the street the Brotherhood would see her, and they certainly wouldn't help. But if she stayed here, she'd have to take them both. After their last interaction, she doubted they'd let her off easy.

“Why'd you cross the line, schoolboys?” she said, putting a hard edge in her tone.

Dreads gave a snort. “McNulty sent us.”

She loosened her shoulders. Beside her, Chip flashed a new shank—a metal butter knife he'd lifted from St. Mary's. “What's McNulty want with us?”

“What's McNulty want with anyone?” said the boy with curly hair, clearly annoyed. “He wants to collect.”

“Collect what?” asked Chip. “Ty doesn't got any green.”

The two Bakerstown boys tossed their heads back and laughed, revealing a flash of their lime-colored belts.

“Your friend's worth more than your life, kid,” said Dreads. “Her daddy used to own half of this hellhole.”

Curiosity got the better of her. “He owned a factory?” Nothing else made sense—there wasn't anything else in Metaltown that carried any weight.

Schoolboy turned to Dreads. “Just one or two,” he said, with a bite of sarcasm.

“Small Parts?” asked Chip hopefully. Ty was glad he asked.

“Try the entire scientific world,” said Dreads. “Every clinic, hospital, and food testing plant. The Medical Division, ever heard of it?”

When he reached into his pocket, Ty hissed and nearly stuck him, but he only revealed what looked to be a crumpled wrapper. Slowly, he smoothed it out against his chest, then turned it to show them. The black and white image had been divided by fold creases where the paper had thinned, but a man's face was still visible in a small, boxed segment.

He had short, slicked hair, and a mustache. Round glasses. Serious eyes.

Ty felt her stomach drop. Her knife nearly slid out of her hands. The man was familiar. She'd seen him before.
Known
him before. Not just from a picture like this—news images were only on screens and tablets, and no one in Metaltown had one of those. The closest she'd gotten to one had been when Otto Hampton had once carried his through the factory.

No, she'd seen him before in person, she was sure of it.

She snatched it from the boy's hands, trying to sound out the words above the picture, frustrated that she couldn't read faster.

“Doctor and his wife succumb to flu, it says,” Dreads told her. “Survived by their only child.” She barely heard him snickering.

“Where'd you get this?” she said, unable to tear her eyes away.

“McNulty had it. Said you might want it. Says to tell you he plans on seeing you real soon.”

She should have been looking for her nearest exit, but she couldn't take her eyes off the picture. She knew what this man looked like without his glasses. When he lay on the floor, and played trains with her. He helped people—he was a doctor. A
doctor.

See you later, Astorgator,
he used to say. Every morning before work. One hand went absently to her stomach, to the round scars there. He'd had to give her a shot. Something so she wouldn't get sick.

Astor, that was her name.

Her head throbbed painfully. Was she making it up? Forcing the pieces to fit in the outline of a puzzle they'd provided? It seemed too good to be true.

But it was true. She could feel it in her bones, the same way she knew that Jed Schultz was bad and Colin was, well, Colin.

Her family had owned the Medical Division.

She had heard the stories. That the heir had gone missing—a suspected victim of the corn flu. By the time she was old enough to work at Small Parts, that speculation was all gossip. A joke they would tell—Matchstick especially.
When I collect my inheritance …

Hampton Industries had absorbed the division, and no one fought Hampton.

Until Colin.

“I told McNulty the deal,” she choked out. “He helps me, and I help him.”

“What did you think we were doing here, She-male?” asked Dreads. He held out his hand, and Ty jumped back, thinking he held a weapon. But it was empty.

“Skaggs,” he said, then pointed to his schoolboy friend. “This is Liam.”

“Ty,” she said slowly. Then, “Astor.” But the name sounded wrong on her tongue. “Ty's fine.”

They shook hands. Then Liam led them back to a thin, dark street, and her mouth dropped open.

“Ty, what's going on?” Chip asked.

She couldn't answer. Fifty men filled the alley. Rough, ugly brutes. Muscle. All wearing some flash of green. They crowded together, keeping quiet, like a bomb ready to explode.

“What's the call?” asked Skaggs, grinning. “We gonna bust some heads or what?”

*   *   *

Dawn was breaking by the time they'd gathered the others. Word spread like wildfire in Metaltown. Ty found Matchstick and Noneck burning trash under the bridge, both of them wide-eyed with shock when they caught sight of the train of men lurking in the shadows behind her. They agreed to split up—one would take Keeneland Apartments, the other Beggar's Square. Chip had already torn off toward Lacey's to catch any stragglers.

Nerves rattling her clean through, Ty led the Bakerstown lot through the backstreets, toward the Small Parts shipping dock. Two Brotherhood thugs were waiting, but when they caught sight of the army behind her, they ran, just like the yellow cowards they were.

Ty knew they'd tell their friends. It would only be a matter of time before Jed gathered his troops and attacked—if the cops didn't come after them first for the damage at the food testing facility.

She glanced back at the Bakerstown boys and chuckled to herself. It would take a whole lot of cops to take them down now.

“So how is it a bunch of inbred Metalheads start thinking they can take on the big boys?” Liam fit a pair of fingerless leather gloves over his knuckles. When he made a fist, the hard material creaked.

Though the claim made her balk, she supposed he was right. They may not have started with the intention of going to war, but they were ready for one now. The poor workers of Metaltown were about to take on the richest man in the Northern Fed, and if they won, they would prove that a swarm of rats was a lot scarier than one big snake.

While they waited, Ty explained why they were pressing.

“If this works,” said Liam, looking less burdened than he had when she'd seen him on his own turf, “if the workers get their rights, a lot's going to change. For everyone. Maybe us, even.”

“You got something in mind?” she asked.

He scratched his ear. “Maybe after we give Schultz a workout, we can head over the beltway.”

He wanted to take on McNulty. It occurred to her McNulty might be the Schultz of Bakerstown. She looked around, but if anyone had heard, they didn't seem too bothered. Could be they all felt that way.

Could be she'd need more friends in her corner when this ended and she had to come up with the green she owed McNulty. If they weren't firmly on his side, maybe they'd help watch her back while she figured out how to collect her inheritance.

Her
inheritance.

It didn't seem possible. It certainly wasn't fair. She could have had everything, and instead, she'd lived thin, stomach aching with hunger, never certain when a knife might end up in her back. It was the only way she knew how to be, and imagining another life just felt wrong.

One battle at a time.

“I don't know,” Liam added. “Things change over there, I might try to finish school.”

Bakerstown pansies,
thought Ty, but she smirked anyway. “Thought you had to be bright to go to school.”

He grinned. “Least I can read, Metalhead.”

She socked him in the shoulder.

The start of the shift drew closer. Chip reported that more of the Brotherhood had gathered at the front of the building, and soon Minnick and his shells would start showing up. They needed to make themselves visible, make their intentions known. To bring the bite to Hampton's door.

She was just about to give the order to creep around the building and block the entrances when Zeke showed up, two tall men in tow.

“Thought we might need some help,” he said, white teeth flashing.

From behind him stepped the Walter brothers.

Colin was tired—she could see it in his eyes. Tired in the body, tired in the soul. Whatever had happened with Lena Hampton hadn't turned out the way he'd hoped, which didn't make Ty as happy as she'd hoped. Still, he'd come back to her, because they both knew she could fix him. She would do what she'd always done: give him something to fight.

As he looked over McNulty's crew, his jaw fell slack. “Ty, how…”

She beamed. “If I was flush, I'd build us an army.”

He slung one arm over her shoulder, shaking Henry's hand with the other.

“Looks like you might be flush,” he said.

She swelled with pride, feeling like she could take on the Brotherhood, the Hamptons, the whole Northern Fed. She wondered if this was how Colin had felt all these years. Bigger than life. Important. Meant for something more.

With a nod from Colin, she told Skaggs and Liam to get ready. They were about to go into battle.

 

36

LENA

Lena paced around the brightly lit hospital room. The monitor attached to the wall beeped the steady rhythm of Otto's heart, slowed by the drugs he'd demanded they give him to dull the pain. Now he was passed out again, as still as he'd been on the floor in her bedroom after Colin had beaten him to a bloody pulp.

She stared at him in a state of detachment, unsure what to feel. Otto's face was blackened, swollen. His cheekbone had been broken. He'd lost two teeth. Part of her accepted responsibility, and with it, guilt, because Colin had only attacked in her defense. But there was something else within her too. A wild streak of jealousy, as if it should have been her hands clawing Otto to pieces, her fists pummeling him raw. He'd hurt her, not once but many times, and right then she didn't care if he'd learned how from their father, or that he had suffered at Josef's hands too. She felt vindicated by his pain, and that made her wonder if she had suddenly become psychotic.

So she said nothing, and kept her lips closed in a thin, firm line while the nurses and doctors all fussed over Mr. Josef Hampton's son.

“You didn't recognize the assailant, Miss Hampton?” A police officer in a stiff black suit shot a glance at Josef Hampton, who'd arrived two hours after she and Otto had been shuttled to the hospital.

Lena turned and stared out the window at the river, wishing she could see the tainted sludge that ran beneath that dyed blue façade. Something real. Anything to distract her from the betrayal she'd seen flash in Colin's eyes.

She'd sent him away to save his life. She'd been cruel, and righteous, and so much like a Hampton that it had nearly torn her apart. But it had worked. He'd gone. He'd left her in the house he'd come to rescue her from. Watching him leave had been harder than kicking him out.

When she had called for help, she'd told the staff that Otto had come to her room when he'd heard a noise outside. She'd hidden in the bathroom, but after hearing a skirmish, cracked the door. Her presence must have scared the intruder away. He'd gone through her window, and run for the north wall. None of the staff had dared to question her, and it gave Colin more precious time when the alarm on the opposite side of the property had been tripped. Once her brother woke, the truth—at least what he knew of it—would be revealed. Hopefully by then Colin would be halfway across the Northern Federation, somewhere her father couldn't touch him.

“I only saw him from the back as he ran away,” she said. “It all happened so fast.”

“The color of his hair perhaps?” the officer pressed, looking again to Lena's father as if afraid he would be punished for her amnesia. “Was he about my size?”

“Now that you mention it,” Lena said, spinning on him. “Yes, he was your size exactly. And with dark hair, cut just like yours. And green eyes. How strange that you have green eyes as well, Officer.”

“
Lena,
” said her father firmly. “I don't know what's come over you.”

The policeman tucked his recorder into his breast pocket and wiped his sweating palms on his thighs. “It's all right, Mr. Hampton. Shock, I think. Understandable, given the situation.”

Deliberately, her father reached for her hand, his expression warped with concern.

“I'm just glad she's all right,” he said. “That my son was there to protect her.”

She jerked her hand away, aware of each scar beneath the fine fabric of her gloves.
And where were you when I needed protection?

“Indeed.” Sensing the tension, but smart enough not to acknowledge it, the officer turned quickly to the door. “If you think of anything else, Miss Hampton, you know how to reach me.”

Lena wished she could leave too, but her father's guards were keeping watch right outside the door. She was trapped on the ninth floor of an unfamiliar building, while Colin was running as far and as fast as he could.