Sarah Rockefeller stood by the shattered floor-to-ceiling window of the Babel Spire. She wasn't trembling. She was sipping cold coffee.
Fifty stories below, Detroit was burning.
The Rouge Gate—the massive steel portcullis that protected the city's industrial heart—was buckling under heavy artillery fire. The Texas Cartel had returned. They called themselves the Deacons, a roving army of fundamentalist scavengers who worshipped gasoline and blood.
Their tanks, rusted husks welded with scrap metal and bone, were pounding the gate. Black smoke choked the dawn sky, smelling of cordite and burning rubber.
The heavy oak doors of Sarah's office burst open.
Commander Vance, the head of her newly formed worker's militia, sprinted into the room. His face was smeared with soot and sweat.
"They breached Sector Four, Ma'am!" Vance yelled, out of breath. "The outer hinges gave way! We have three Cartel tanks rolling into the loading bays. We're completely out of anti-tank rounds. They're going to slaughter the barricades!"
Sarah didn't blink. She took another sip of her coffee. It was bitter and cold, exactly how she needed to be.
"Pull the men back," Sarah said, her voice steady and flat. "Evacuate the barricades."
Vance stared at her, horrified. "Ma'am? If we fall back, we give them the entire foundry line! They'll be inside the walls!"
"I said pull them back, Commander," Sarah turned away from the window. "Let the Cartel inside. All the way to the center of the foundry."
"You're making a mistake, dear," a smooth, cultured voice said from the doorway.
Sarah's spine stiffened.
Alta Rockefeller walked into the office. She looked immaculate. Not a hair was out of place. She wore a tailored silk suit that contrasted violently with the dirt and blood of the siege outside.
Behind Alta stood four Pinkerton mercenaries. They were heavily armed with pristine electronic pulse rifles, their armor polished and clean. They hadn't fired a single shot in the defense of the city.
Alta smiled her shark smile.
"The game is over, Sarah," Alta said, walking slowly toward her daughter's desk. "You played dress-up well. You organized the workers. You built your little militia. But it's time to leave the business to adults."
"Is that what this is, Mother?" Sarah set her coffee cup down. "Business?"
"It's survival," Alta sighed, inspecting her manicured nails. "The Cartel doesn't want to destroy the factories. They just want the fuel. And they want Jason's head on a spike. Since Jason isn't here, they'll settle for his legacy."
Vance gripped his rifle. "You sold us out to the Deacons?"
"I negotiated a merger," Alta corrected him smoothly. "I retain my position as CEO. The Cartel gets unlimited access to the Rouge refineries. And your militia, Commander, is disarmed and sent back to the Pit to work."
Alta reached out and gently touched Sarah's cheek.
"It's the only logical move, darling," Alta murmured. "You can't fight an army with starving mechanics. Surrender control of the Babel Spire to me. Now."
Sarah looked at her mother's hand. The hand that had controlled her life, kept her sick, and manipulated her husband.
Sarah didn't argue.
She slapped Alta's hand away.
SMACK.
The sound echoed sharply in the large office. The Pinkertons immediately raised their rifles, leveling them at Sarah and Vance.
Alta's smile vanished. Her eyes went cold and reptilian.
"Are you insane?" Alta hissed, rubbing her cheek. "I am trying to save your life!"
"No," Sarah said, stepping behind her desk. "You're trying to save your profit margin."
She opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a heavy, battered datapad.
"When Jason went West," Sarah said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "he didn't just leave me a militia. He left me a map."
She tapped the screen.
"When the rogue AI, Gates, hijacked this tower, he left a backdoor in the operating system," Sarah explained, not looking at her mother. "I've spent the last week mapping it. Tracing the wires."
Alta frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about infrastructure, Mother," Sarah looked up. Her eyes were hard as flint. "You own the boardroom. But I own the basement."
Sarah hit a single button on the datapad.
CLUNK.
The luxury lights in Alta's side of the spire died instantly.
Before the Pinkertons could react, the electronic hum of their pulse rifles whined and faded. The biometric locks on the triggers clicked dead. The elevators outside the office froze in their shafts.
Sarah had localized an EMP surge directly into her mother's security grid.
The Pinkertons stared at their useless, expensive weapons.
"Vance," Sarah said softly.
Commander Vance didn't hesitate. He racked the pump of his analog, grease-stained shotgun.
CH-CHK.
He pointed the twelve-gauge directly at Alta's chest.
Alta's smugness shattered. She took a step back, her immaculate composure cracking. "You... you little bitch."
"Take her guards to the holding cells," Sarah ordered Vance. "If they resist, shoot them in the knees. Throw my mother in the closet. Lock the door."
"Sarah, you can't!" Alta shrieked as Vance grabbed her arm. "The Cartel is inside the walls! You have no anti-tank weapons! They will slaughter you!"
"Watch me," Sarah said.
She turned her back on her screaming mother and walked to the massive tactical console built into the wall. It displayed a live wireframe map of the Rouge Plant.
She keyed the intercom. The channel was open to all remaining militia frequencies.
"All units," Sarah's voice was calm, cutting through the panic on the radio. "Confirm Cartel vanguard is inside Sector Four."
"Confirmed, Iron Queen," a frantic voice crackled back. "Three heavy tanks and a hundred foot soldiers. They are rolling directly under the primary foundry line. We are falling back to the second perimeter!"
"Hold your fire," Sarah ordered. "Let them group up."
She watched the blips on the screen. The Cartel forces were arrogant. They thought the retreat was a rout. They were clustering together, moving their heavy armor into the massive, cavernous space of the steel foundry.
The radio hissed again. This time, the voice was different. Thick with a Texas drawl, dripping with malice. The Cartel commander had hijacked the frequency.
"Detroit Control," the Deacon commander sneered. "This is General Scab. Your walls are broken. Your men are running. Lay down your arms and open the fuel reserves, and we might let the women live."
Sarah stared at the flashing red dots on the screen. They were perfectly aligned under the ceiling rails of Sector Four.
"General Scab," Sarah said into the mic.
"I hear you, little girl," the commander laughed.
"I don't negotiate with trespassers," Sarah said.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't flinch.
Sarah grabbed the heavy manual override lever protruding from the console. It was painted industrial yellow. It controlled the automated safety locks of the smelting floor.
"I smelt them," Sarah said.
She pulled the lever down with all her weight.
CLANG.
Deep in the bowels of the Rouge Plant, massive hydraulic gears groaned to life.
In Sector Four, fifty feet above the heads of the advancing Cartel army, the safety locks on the giant iron crucibles disengaged.
These were the smelting vats. Each one held ten thousand gallons of liquid iron, heated to two thousand, eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
They tipped over.
It didn't rain water. It rained liquid fire.
WHOOSH.
Thousands of gallons of glowing, blindingly bright slag poured from the ceiling in a massive, molten waterfall.
The Cartel commander didn't even have time to scream.
The slag hit the lead tank. The heavy armor didn't dent. It simply vaporized. The metal bubbled, hissed, and collapsed in on itself like wax under a blowtorch. The ammunition inside cooked off instantly, adding the concussive force of high-explosives to the inferno.
The foot soldiers caught in the splash zone were incinerated before they could hit the ground. The air in Sector Four ignited, sucking the oxygen out of the room in a fiery vacuum.
The screams on the radio lasted for exactly three seconds.
Then, there was only the roar of the fire and the hiss of melting steel.
Sarah released the lever. She stared at the screen. The red dots were gone. Wiped from the map.
The Cartel vanguard was annihilated.
The radio crackled to life. It was Commander Vance. His voice was trembling with awe and horror.
"Ma'am... Sector Four is gone. The tanks are puddles. The remaining Cartel forces outside the gate... they're breaking. They're turning around. They're running."
"Let them run," Sarah said, her voice devoid of triumph. "Secure the breach. Put out the fires."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Detroit was safe. She had won.
But as Sarah looked at the wide-scan radar map on the console, the cold knot in her stomach didn't loosen. It tightened.
The radar showed the area north of Detroit.
A massive swarm of red blips was moving south. It was a perfectly organized, mathematically precise formation. It wasn't a ragged army of scavengers.
It was Gates. The silver robot army.
And they were completely ignoring Detroit. They were bypassing her city, moving with terrifying speed down the ruined highways.
They were heading straight for Chicago.
Sarah touched the cold glass of the console. She traced the path of the machine god.
"He's not coming for me," Sarah whispered to the empty room.
She picked up the radio, switching it to the long-range distress frequency. The channel Jason would be monitoring.
"Hurry, Jason," Sarah said softly into the static. "He's almost there."