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Sebastian made it across the market without any more incident and stepped into the corridor with some relief.
“Yeah… We’re almost there now. Down to the end of this hall, then turn right.”
There were no people in the hallway now, so they must have left the bulk of the town behind.
“Okay, it’s that door there at the end.”
The sounds of mechanical whirring and voices could be heard faintly on the other side of the heavy metal door, but instead of a handle or a button, there was a blocky, worn keypad.
“567845,” Noah said without hesitation.
Sebastian didn’t plug it in. “That’s not yours, is it? You don’t want to be linked to what I’m about to do.”
“It’s Neumann’s.”
Sebastian grinned and punched the code in. “I think you and I could get along, Noah.”
The door slid open to reveal a simple factory line: a large forward path lined with screens, buttons, and levers, and men and women pressing and pulling them. It was all more digitized than Sebastian had been expecting, but he supposed the chemicals were too dangerous to work with by hand, and the Turner’s factories were more state-of-the-art than the crumbling old ones Tava still had.
“Alright, I’ve got you in. Now what happens?” Noah’s tension was like a headache, pulling along Sebastian’s scalp.
Sebastian ignored it for a moment, walking down the factory line and riffling through his memories of the maps he’d studied, turning them this way and that in his mind to get his bearings. It clicked into place as he reached the end of the line.
He needed a console on the factory’s closed network. His maps told him there was one several paces down to his left, tucked into an alcove. He could go to it now, complete his mission, grab a ship from the hangar a little bit farther than the console, and be in and out just like that. No one the wiser until centrifuges started shaking themselves apart and vats started overflowing.
Noah’s tension spun tighter as though he could feel Sebastian’s thoughts. “What happens now?”
“Now we find me a new body.” Sebastian turned away from the sure victory when a low, thrumming drone filled the air. He froze.
Noah’s panic spiked through his mind. “That’s the security alarm.”
“I know.” Sebastian swallowed.
“It means—”
“I know what it means. Now shut up.” Sebastian tightened his claws around the little parcel of Noah’s consciousness, and Noah curled away into fearful silence.
It meant that the factory was on alert but wasn’t ready to sound the full alarm yet. Turner had told him about the mechanism. Shrieking sirens panicked people and flicked on their fight-or-flight instincts. Good for a fire, but the last thing the factory wanted was to trigger anything like a fight response from its perpetually simmering workforce.
The low drone meant security knew there was a leak, a plot, a threat, and they were coming to crush it. Workers were supposed to drop to their knees and wait when they heard it and hope they wouldn’t be dragged away.
Sebastian looked over his shoulder to where he could make out the opening of the alcove. That’s where he was supposed to go. He was supposed to finish it. Do his job. Sacrifices had to be made for the cause.
The heavy drone pressed on his mind.
Then Sebastian faced forward again, in the opposite direction, and scurried off, Noah’s short legs rushing over the ground. Sebastian had sacrificed plenty for the cause. He wasn’t going to force other people to as well.
Sebastian uncurled his claws from Noah’s mind and felt him tentatively raise his consciousness again. “Do you…do you know where you’re going?”
“Yes.” Sebastian came to another intersection, looked both ways, thought for a second, and then grinned ferally in a way Noah’s muscles obviously found foreign. “I know exactly where I’m going.”
Another spike of fear from Noah, this one having nothing to do with Sebastian’s claws hooked into his brain. “I don’t go this way.”
The drone of the alarm changed its pitch, scratching at his mind just as he had managed to tune it out.
“But I do.”
“But with the alarm—” Noah cut off as two sets of heavy, measured footsteps sounded from around the corner, even though no one could hear him but Sebastian. Sebastian ducked into an open doorway—a small break room, empty—and pressed himself against the wall inside as two guards strode past.
