The opening of the factory was a relatively low-key affair. A small crowd of people had gathered around a podium placed in front of the main gates. Members of the press, the surrounding residents, and a handful of anti-monarchy protestors were assembled to listen to Micah speak about his new investment.

It was a big, brown box of a building with wide, arched windows. The classical architecture was intended to blend in with the development that surrounded it, but like in every other case of a property developer making that claim, the pragmatic side of the design office won out and used a selection of cheaper materials that gave it a distinctly different aesthetic.

Micah appeared to a mixture of polite applause and angry yells of protest. Standing in front of the microphone in a suit that was at least two sizes too big for him despite his robust figure. He was practically swimming in it – and the hapless look on his face when he noticed how small the crowd was only enhanced the comedic effect.

It was a long, boring, mostly on-script speech where he ran through all of his reasons for choosing to open the factory.

“For years now, Walser has been at the mercy of outside markets when it comes to the creation of paper. Now more than ever the demand for paper is increasing, with newspapers, universities and organizations all clamouring for their fair share. That demand has resulted in an unfortunate spike in prices. This factory is the first step in rectifying the situation. We’ll provide affordable paper, made in Walser, with Walserian labour, and help drive the innovative industries that have made us the envy of the world.”

The paper mill would even take in used paper and recycle it, which was extremely innovative by Walserian standards. That kind of environmentalism was at least one hundred years from becoming an active concern. The era was all about exploiting every natural resource you could and worrying about the consequences later. The biggest difference was that magical energy was used in some places instead of coal.

One of the journalists approached the stage with a notepad in hand.

“Mister Greenblatt, do you have anything to say about the recent instability?”

Micah put on a showman’s smile and nodded.

“My opinions on the direction of our government are well known. I have little sway in the end – but I hope that it’ll come to a peaceful resolution soon enough. In times like these, the last thing we want is for our own countrymen to be at each other’s throats.”

How diplomatic of him. It was almost like he wasn’t partly responsible for the situation that was unfolding in the first place!

“Are you happy that this is a good time to open a new factory?” he followed up.

“This project has been in the making for a long time, and I won’t pretend that the disquiet is not a risk to our operation, but I’m of the belief that no matter what happens Walser will keep ticking on.”

The rest of the questions were similarly soft or easily deflected with his affable fence-sitting replies. The protest group chanted a few slogans and waved signs, but dispersed when they realized that they were neither capable of riling him up or attracting a big enough audience for their noise-making to matter.

“Make sure to tell your friends and family about this opportunity! We’re actively looking for experienced hands to join us, and the wages are better than any you’ll find elsewhere in the city!” Micah declared – finishing his big pitch and promptly leaving the wooden stage.

Behind the scenes, my friends were already working to ensure that we could get some private time with the man of the hour. Veronica and Frankfort were scouting the factory and figuring out where the empty areas were. They would have to adapt to the route that Micah took as he returned inside to finish up his business.

I kept my head down and headed to a gate on the other side of the perimeter wall, jostling the lock open with my tools and stepping through. With so many points of entry to such a huge building, I was spoilt for choice when it came to getting inside without being seen.

I entered a small loading area where the carriages (and later mechanized delivery vehicles) would collect the finished product. I could hear Micah’s voice echoing through the inactive factory beyond the doors.

“I think that went rather well, all things considered. Did the police not listen to our request to keep those rabble-rousers away from the stage?”

“I’m afraid their response was at the last minute sir. They said they did not have the officers to spare to manage a small media event,” an unseen attendant replied.

“I should have guessed as much,” Micah grumbled, “This is why I wanted Jones to work with me. What good are all of those loyalists they’ve gathered if we’re not putting them to use? Make sure that the papers put my best lines into their articles, please.”

“I’ll get in touch with them right away.”

The attendant scurried off to do his bidding and send glowing notes to the press and newspapers. I remained at a safe distance and allowed Veronica and Frankfort to do the hard work. After ghosting him for some time I heard them give the signal. I broke cover and ran up to him as quickly as I could with one injured leg.

He turned to face the source of the noise, surprised to find a teenage girl skulking around the factory, but the real threat was approaching from behind. Veronica wrapped one arm around his neck and dragged him away, his legs kicking and flailing in an attempt to free his body from her grasp.

They had found a nice, quiet patch in one of the production rooms to use for our friendly conversation. Frankfort locked the doors from the inside or blocked them using what was on hand while Veronica forced him down to his knees at gunpoint. He knelt there in a panic-stricken silence for two minutes straight before she returned to us.

We were sitting on top of a metal walkway that overlooked the work floor below. Several large machines designed to recycle used paper were crammed from wall to wall. We didn’t have a lot of time to do this, so I hurried things along. I motioned at Frankfort and Veronica to begin the next step.

“Rope him up.”

Micah was helpless to resist as the two women descended on him and wrestled him to the floor. A coarse length of rope was tied around both of his ankles and locked up tight with a knot strong enough to hold his body weight. At the same time, I descended the steps and moved onto the factory floor. Turning on the machine was surprisingly easy.

The metal monster rumbled to life, filling the air with the churning of metal teeth. It was a long fall from the walkway into the open mouth of the mulcher. Micah squawked and protested the entire time but his cries wouldn’t be heard, drowned out by the machine he had purchased.

Veronica and Frankfort finished securing him to the metal railing and pushed him up against it.

“I have to give you credit for constructing such an innovative factory, Sir Greenblatt. But I do have some concerns about the safety of your workers. It could be very easy to slip over the edge of that railing and into the mouth of this machine.”

His face turned white as a sheet as the implication became obvious.

“Now, you may be thinking that we’re here for ‘answers’ about what is going on at the palace, but we already have all of the information we need. You’re a close personal acquaintance of Gerard Verner Welt, and you have been assisting him with his coup plan, have you not?”

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about!” he pleaded.

“Spare me your denials, Micah. We have a list of names and yours is on it. You want to be on the winning team – so I’m going to offer you an opportunity to switch sides while you still have the chance because Welt isn’t going to be sitting pretty for much longer if we get our way.”

“Are you crazy? Welt’s taken control of the police, of the army, even WISA! The entire damn state is going to come after you!”

I nodded at them, and Micah’s expressions of anxiety quickly turned into screams of terror as his body tipped over the edge and flew down towards the open maw of the hungry machine. The rope pulled taut at the very last second, tugging harshly on his legs and leaving him to swing back and forth over it with his arms dangling down.

“You’re crazy! You’re all bloody crazy!” he roared. His wide eyes stared longingly at the metal teeth rotating inches from his head and the tips of his fingers. Veronica leaned over the railing with one hand on the rope’s anchor point, letting him know what would happen if he failed to comply with our questions and demands.

It would be a messy and undignified end, and the very last type of death one of these blowhards wanted was one where they had a closed-casket funeral. If you offered them a choice between a bullet to the heart and one to the face, they’d pick the former every single time.

“At WISA we didn’t normally use techniques like this – but I don’t see a problem with mixing it up every once in a while,” Veronica mused.

“You’re with them?” he shrieked, “What the hell is Jones doing? I’ll have his bloody head for this!”

“No, we’re not. Jones decided that it was a good idea to try and kill us both before we could become problematic. Ironically that’s the whole reason we’re here.”

“You want Jones?”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“That’s right. We want Jones. I know that you don’t have his location, but you do have a personal line of contact to reach him. You promise to use that for us, and you won’t have to make an unfortunate trip into that machine.”

Micah dangled there helplessly. There was no time to consider his options. He was under immense duress and could be cut loose at any moment. It was a sight to see, like something out of an old cartoon. The hot-headed tycoon didn’t take very long to crack and beg for mercy.

“Alright! Alright! I’ll give you what you want! Just pull me back up!”

I gave them the signal and his heavy carcass was slowly rewound up onto the catwalk. I turned the machine off so we could hear and returned to the group with an evil grin on my lips.

“Isn’t the spirit of cooperation alive and well, even in these trying times?”

“Go bugger yourself, you damnable hell spawn!” he gasped.

Micah clutched his chest and wheezed desperately. His heart was threatening to burst from the stress of what just happened to him, and all of the blood rushed from his head back down into his extremities.

“Don’t make us string you up there again – Greenblatt. I have no patience for your sort. Perhaps you can do something good with your life and assist us in rectifying this horrible situation your friend Welt has created.”

Veronica tugged on the rope and reminded him of what was at stake; “How do we get to Bernard Jones?”

Micah shook his head, “Bernard can’t stand me! We’ve been at each other’s throats for months now. He’s not going to arrange a meeting with me without a good reason!”

“We can give him a very good reason to meet with you, actually,” Veronica quipped. She nodded in my direction, and it was only then that what she meant settled in. His worried expression shifted to one of frank disbelief.

“Maria Walston-Carter! You mean to tell me that-”

I made a show of approaching him full of confidence; “Indeed, that is my name. I’m sorry for the abrupt and somewhat violent manner of taking your time, but a busy gentleman like yourself is very hard to get to these days.”

Micah caught on to the fact that he was giving the game away and tried to look unperturbed. It was too late; the gate was open and the horse had bolted. We already warned him that we knew what he was doing, but the fright of nearly being turned into mulch must have clogged his ears.

“We know that you’re closely connected to Gerard Verner Welt, so let’s not play any silly games. You are one of the men in his inner circle, providing him with the money and support he needs to rough roughshod over Walser.”

“Preposterous! Do you really believe that you can break into my factory and threaten my life like this?”

“Yes. We already did, and let me remind you that we can just as easily throw you over the edge without that rope tied to your ankles. Wouldn’t it be a great shame to spoil such a well-designed machine by clogging it with your entrails?

His eyes darted to the two older women, who were both armed, flanking him on either side. There was nowhere for him to run from this situation – and no guards or private security to swoop in and save the day.

“Jones already told you about the report he received from the men at the Academy, did he not?”

He kept his tone low and steady; “I overheard one or two incidences. He does not offer the full reports to anyone but Welt. I heard your name.”

“Jones is more concerned about what happened at the Academy than Welt is. It’s your lucky day – my friend, because you’ve now seen the true face of your foe in the flesh! All of those ‘crazy’ stories about what happened at the Academy were true. If you were to tell him, then he’d simply have to offer you the security you’ve been begging for.”

“Quit with the maddening blather, girl! What the hell do you want from me?”

“We already told you. What we want from you is for you to help us get to Bernard Jones. He’s a very elusive man.”

“And then?”

“He’s going to tell us where we can find Welt, and if he doesn’t tell us...”

I trailed off and hummed.

“...well – we’ll have to think of a punishment worse than being turned into recycled paper. That said, he might not have a very happy ending even if he does reveal where we can find him.”

Veronica and Frankfort were going to make sure he regretted trying to burn them before. I didn’t need to ask them to figure that out. He was a dead man walking at this point. Micah turned his ire towards them instead of facing me.

“What do you two think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be protecting Walser, not acting like a pair of common thugs for the sake of a spoilt child!”

“I’m afraid that my obligations to upholding the law ended abruptly when Jones attempted to murder me,” Veronica complained, “It’s always your sort who throws the first punch and then whine when they end up on the losing end of the deal. I’m a civilian now.”

“Then you’ll be prosecuted and arrested,” he huffed.

“Is that the case? It was downright elementary for us to break into your factory and hold you hostage. What do you suppose will happen if you squeal to the police or WISA without our permission?”

“Here is what is going to happen. You’re going to tell Mister Jones about everything that’s happened here up until this point in our conversation. You will reveal to him that I was the one who repelled the hostage-takers at the Academy and that I am organizing an effort to depose him and Ekkehard from the throne.”

“What? You’re going to give away the element of surprise just like that?”

“There are two eventualities. Welt already doesn’t believe that I was responsible, and that will not change even if Jones insists that it is true. Or he manages to convince Welt that their reports were accurate, which is the worst-case outcome for my plan. I’ve already made contingencies for both. Your truthful report of this encounter is all for the sake of concealing another lie.”

We were going to lure Jones in. Micah would tell him the full details of this conversation and that we were trying to arrange a meeting with him to find Welt. That was all we needed Micah to do.

“So, here’s what is going to happen...”

----------------------------------------

Marco Fisichella was having a rough go of it.

He wasn’t the type to throw a pity party when something didn’t go his way. He was used to being kicked while he was down or having his plans blow up in his face. That was life. You could never guess if you were going uphill or downhill, and he was lucky enough to spend most of his life going up.

All of that was being counterbalanced by his incarceration in a high-security jail in the city. He was still awaiting trial, and he hadn’t heard a single reply from his state-assigned defence attorney for days. He almost chewed his fingernails down to the root waiting for a meeting with him.

“What the hell is happening?” Marco asked, “Aren’t you supposed to stay in contact with me in the run-up to the trial?”

It had been a long, painful and complicated process. Marco was originally meant to be charged with over a dozen contract killings, attempted murders, and additional offences for being the leader of a criminal gang. His lawyer had done a commendable job of whittling them down to an arrangement that would potentially see him receive one or two life sentences instead of five or six.

To charge him for all of them would be a sprawling, complex effort that the jury would inevitably get lost in the quagmire of. It would demand hundreds of witnesses, pieces of evidence, testimony, opinions from experts, and more. Keeping track of all of that would be downright implausible even with a well-educated jury.

His lawyer and the judge pressed the state to reduce the scale of its case. There was no point in overdoing things if he was already caught dead-to-rights on charges that would see him locked up for life, or if the judge chose, executed.

The attorney, Nikolaus, swabbed his head with a handkerchief.

“Where do I even begin? The trial has been delayed indefinitely.”

“What? How?”

“They don’t tell you any of the news in here – but the entire government has collapsed. The King has been replaced with someone else, and a lot of the judges who were seen as loyal to the republican cause have been removed from the bench. In effect, there are too many pending cases and too much uncertainty for it to continue.”

“I’d rather we get it over with,” Marco insisted, “I know I’m going down for a long time unless a miracle happens.”

“That’s not all. The more problematic part of the situation is what happened to the government’s witnesses. Two of the experts from WISA, including the woman who apprehended you at the scene, have left the organisation and gone missing. It’s blown a gaping hole in the side of their case outline.”

And without the central, recent charge for the others to cling to, it would be difficult to have a ‘sure thing’ with the jury. Marco sighed and leaned back in his chair, swinging on the rear legs with his hands behind his head.

“You ever worry about how screwed up this entire system is?”

“That is what you have to accept to be a lawyer. If you’re asking if I regret representing you – then I’m afraid you won’t get a satisfactory answer. I firmly believe that every person, no matter how evident their guilt, deserves a zealous legal defence.”

“That is the problem. You are too principled to defend a man like me. At this rate, there will not be a trial to defend me in. Doesn’t that cut against your ideals?”

Nikolaus shrugged, “Like in war – much of the outcome of a trial is dependent on what happens as both sides prepare. I’ve had many cases end before they begin for exactly that reason. Just like it is my responsibility to adhere to the rules and law, the prosecution has to do the same for the public interest.”

“So that’s it? I’m going to be sat in this jail for even longer?”

“I don’t have an estimate for when a trial date will open up. I’m afraid it may be a long wait while all of the chaos settles down.”

Their private discussion was interrupted by a knock at the door of the visitation room. Marco twisted around in his chair and shouted at the person on the other side.

“I’ve still got ten minutes in here! It’s my lawyer!”

A brief silence was followed by another set of forceful knocks.

“These guards are unbelievable sometimes,” he griped, standing up straight from his chair and approaching the closed door. It was when his hand twisted the knob and pulled it open that a thought occurred to him. Why would they need to knock? They had keys to every door in the prison already.

The answer came in the form of a hand shooting through the gap and gripping him by the throat. Nikolaus was forced to watch as his client was forcibly pulled through the doorway and out of his sight. Marco kicked and struggled against his attacker – but they had an incredible level of strength, and seemed to shrug off any attempt to fight back.

“Who the fu-”

His profanity did little to alleviate the danger. His feet left the ground. A mighty heave from the strange man sent him flying through the hallway and onto the stone floor with a heavy thud and a grunt of pain. Marco’s instincts carried him. He twisted around onto his stomach and got back up, breaking into a sprint in one fluid motion.

He had to clear a gap between him and the man before he could beat him any further. Unfortunately, the attacker wanted him to clear the way between him and the visitation rooms. Marco screamed in pain as a bolt of energy struck him in the back and seized control of his muscles.

“Bastard!” he cried through gritted teeth. He was on his hands and knees again.

“We’re here to clean up your mess.”

“Who are you? Here for revenge? Did I kill one of your little friends before?”

A hand gripped the scruff of his prison coveralls and twisted him back around to face the mountain of a man who had attacked him. Marco didn’t recognize him. Whoever it was – he hadn’t been in a direct conflict with him before. Was he a ghost of the past, a bereaved relative or lover, or just someone who lost a lot of money because of Marco and his gang?

“Welt sends his regards to another former thorn in his side.”

He should have guessed his name first.

Every word took a huge effort to utter; “Don’t you have anything better to do than pick off a crook who’s already in prison?”

He didn’t receive an answer. Marco braced himself for an uneventful and miserable end. Of all the places he could have died, why did it have to be the back halls of an inner-city maximum-security prison? There was nothing romantic about that!

“Hello, Marco.”

The hand holding tight to his clothes tensed for a second, before slackening. The huge body slumped over and landed in a heap next to him, completely immobile, with dead eyes and squalid skin. It took his mind a moment to catch up with what just happened. He was milliseconds away from being killed by Welt’s fixer – and now he was face to face with...

“Maria?”

That minuscule size and distinctive high-class accent could only belong to one girl. She was wearing a mask and plain clothes to conceal her identity from onlookers.

“You’re being let out on bail. I suggest you come with me before the guards notice that your heavy-set friend ripped a hole in the back wall of the prison.”

“What? Why the hell are you here?”

How did she know the exact time to arrive and save the day?

“We need you for an important task. I suggest you come with me.”

But who was he to refuse such a kind offer?

“Fine! This better not be a trick.”

“I’ve been nothing but forthcoming with you.”

That was debatable.