I shove through the next set of double doors and instantly regret it.
The smell hits like a wall of bricks. Hot meat. Hot,wetmeat, to be exact.
I’d almost rather smell Skippy.
Almost.
The factory floor is chaos. Stainless-steel tables. Giant vats churning. Steam vents hissing. Plastic-wrapped towers of meat product waiting to be processed. The constant buzz of machinery and conveyor belts grinding mysteryprotein into shapes that should not legally exist. This is hell for vegetarians and assassins alike.
Shots ping off metal behind us. Footsteps. Yelling.
“Move!” I shout at Alejandro.
“I’m trying!” he barks, kicking one of the stroller’s wheels until it limps forward. “Skippy’s leaking again!”
“Then stop pushing him like a toddler and pick up the whole damn thing!”
“I’m not carrying a corpse like a baby, Saint!”
I ignore him. I’m scanning for parts. Tools. Anything long, hollow, and structurally stupid enough to become a makeshift weapon.
Bingo.
A thick, stainless-steel sanitation tube—twelve inches in diameter, maybe four feet long—leaning against a wall near a maintenance station. Perfect rocket-launcher body.
I snatch it up, the weight solid and promising, and jog deeper into the factory. Alejandro curses behind me, fighting off an attacker who leaps from behind a bin of raw pork slurry.
There’s a grunt, a smack, and a wetthud.
Alejandro yells out, “I think he landed in the meat!”
“Then he’s finally contributing to society.”
An attacker rounds the corner at me. I don’t slow. I palm my knife thrusting fast into his abdomen six times before he even registers the first cut. He folds over with a wheeze. I kick him backward into a vat of boiling water. The churn blooms dark red in an instant.
I keep going, my mind already assembling the weapon.
Propellant. Stabilizer. Ammunition.
This place has all three.
Unfortunately.
I move fast, weaving between conveyor lines and towering racks of boxed product, Alejandro swearing somewhere behind me as he clatters over equipment with Skippy’s stroller.
I cut behind a massive metal cabinet and freeze.
Someone’s already there.
A factory worker, curled into himself like a human shrimp. Hairnet trembling. Safety goggles fogged. Apron speckled with meat dust. He looks at me like I’m a hallucination brought on by inhaling too much steam-processed protein.
I keep my gun raised out of habit. He flinches.
“Name?” I ask, clipped.
He mumbles something unintelligible. My ears catch only the tail end: “–ark.”
“Speak up.”
