The factory's front gate was chained shut with a thick, rusted iron chain. But the chain hadn't completely sealed the gap, there was a crooked opening at the bottom, maybe twenty centimeters wide. Just enough for someone lean to squeeze through sideways.
Marco crouched down and tested it.
Nope. Not happening. That passage clearly wasn't designed for him.
Fortunately, most companies didn't have the habit of embedding broken glass in the tops of their walls. He took a few steps back, got a running start, and vaulted over the fence. His boots hit gravel on the other side.
The yard was pitch black. He looked toward the workshop and office building, there seemed to be faint traces of light leaking from inside. He pulled out his high-powered flashlight and waved it around like a lightsaber. Everywhere the beam touched, he saw waist-high weeds and scattered industrial debris.
As the light swept across the entrance to the office building, it caught two figures standing completely still in the shadows. They were so motionless they'd almost blended into the environment. The moment the flashlight hit them, they started shouting.
"Off with his head!"
"By order of the Queen!"
Then they charged.
Marco got a good look at them as they ran toward him. Street thugs, both of them. One had a shaved head and prison tattoos crawling up his neck. The other was younger, skinnier, with the kind of facial scarring you got from meth use. They might've even been Cobblepot's guys, hard to say. Not that it mattered. he would beat Cobblepot himself if the bastard tried to cause problems.
The bald one reached him first, swinging wild. Marco stepped inside the punch and drove an uppercut into the guy's jaw. The impact traveled up his arm. The thug's head snapped back, and his eyes rolled up immediately. He was out before he hit the ground.
The second one came in swinging an axe. A fucking axe. Where the hell had he gotten that?
Marco sidestepped the downward chop, the blade bit into the dirt where he'd been standing a second ago, and swung his flashlight like a club. The heavy metal tube connected with the side of the guy's head, right at the temple.
Both of them lay sprawled on the ground, not moving.
"It's past your bedtime anyway," Marco muttered, checking the flashlight. Still worked. Police-grade equipment really was built to last.
He approached the office building's front door and shoved it open. The hinges shrieked, and a wave of stench hit him in the face. Mold and rotting wood. The smell was so thick he could taste it. He gagged, pulled out a dust mask from his jacket pocket, and slapped it over his nose and mouth.
"Fucking hell... I don't usually side with environmentalists, but this smell alone..."
He stepped inside, raising the flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness, revealing nothing but decay. The walls were covered in faded, peeling cartoon wallpaper. The floor was littered with soggy pamphlets and ruined toy catalogs, their colorful pages long destroyed by water damage and mold. His boots made squelching sounds with every step.
It felt like some disaster had struck mid-operation, freezing everything in place. To his left, the open workshop still had half-finished plastic toy parts hanging from an injection molding machine's conveyor belt. He walked over to an unsealed cardboard box and flipped it open.
Inside were palm-sized transforming robots.
"Wow! Optimus Prime. And Starscream."
Marco picked one up and turned it over in his hands. With a few twists and folds, the robot changed from a jet into a humanoid form. He'd wanted one of these so badly when he was a kid. Back when his parents had still been married... back before his old man got shot and his mother ran off to Star City. He'd seen these toys in store windows and imagined playing with them for hours.
Never got the chance.
He slipped a few of the small robots into his jacket pocket. Fuck it. Nobody else was using them.
The nearby workbench was covered in tools and unfinished toys. A plush teddy bear slouched in the work chair, one button eye dangling by a thread, the other staring blankly at the ceiling. Synthetic stuffing spilled from a tear in its side, stained gray.
"Rough life you've had," he said to the bear.
But the factory wasn't silent. Somewhere in the building, he could hear intermittent dripping, and a rhythmic thumping.
"Safety first. Power off before leaving the workstation." He swept his flashlight across the abandoned machines. "Can't even manage that? No wonder you went bankrupt."
He moved through the workshop, stepping over waterlogged boxes and torn plastic sheeting, heading toward a half-open metal door on the far side. He raised the flashlight and read the words stenciled on the door.
R&D AND TESTING.
Beyond the door was some kind of laboratory or sample room. Several mannequins dressed in bright blue puff-sleeved dresses and white aprons were arranged in a circle. In the center sat an old battery-operated teapot. The mannequins' faces had been painted with exaggerated, crooked smiles.
The workbench against the wall was covered with printouts from an old EEG monitor, hand-drawn circuit diagrams, and several worn copies of Alice in Wonderland piled to one side.
He'd found the right place.
His flashlight beam had swept across the far end of the room, landing on a small, sealed chamber. On its heavy metal door was a small observation window. And behind that window, a pale, twisted face wearing enormous round glasses was staring directly at him without moving.
A speaker crackled to life somewhere in the room. The face behind the window opened its mouth and shrieked.
"Why?! Why won't you obey my orders?!"
Marco quickly lunged forward and slammed his fist against the observation window. The glass was thick, probably bulletproof. It didn't even crack. He shook his hand, pain radiating up his arm. The face behind the window jerked back, yanked down a metal shutter over the observation port, and disappeared.
He spun around and bolted out of the R&D room, flashlight swinging wildly as he searched for a staircase. In the chaotic movement of the beam, he thought he saw a cloaked figure flash through the air above him, but when he looked again, there was nothing.
He stopped, pulled out his phone, and dialed.
The person on the other side answered on the second ring. "Officer Vitale?"
"Yes, Officer Marco Vitale here. I'm at the Grimm Toy Factory. North bank of the river. I found the Miller Bay suspect."
"The Mad Hatter?"
"Unless there's another psycho running around with a fetish for Alice in Wonderland, yeah. It's him."
"Are you in danger?"
"Not yet. But I'm going to need backup. And tell Edward Nygma I need those shielding chips he was working on."
"How many officers should we bring?"
"As many as you can spare. But no firearms. The victims in here are hypnotized. If they attack and someone starts shooting, we're going to have a bloodbath."
There was a pause on the other end. Then the officer said, "Understood. Batons and restraints only. We'll be there in fifteen minutes."
Marco hung up and pocketed the phone.
He circled the first floor several times, but every iron door connecting the various workshops was locked tight. Unless he'd brought explosives, he wasn't getting through them. Shooting a lock open with a pistol only worked in movies. In reality, you were more likely to catch a ricochet in the thigh than break the lock.
He eventually found the staircase and took the steps two at a time. The office area door was heavy wood, but the lock was clearly weaker than the ones downstairs. After a few kicks, it finally gave way, swinging inward.
He stood in the doorway and looked inside.
The corridor was lined with red and green bulbs. The colored lights made visibility better than the pitch-black first floor. Marco moved down the corridor, expecting traps. But aside from the warped, uneven flooring, there was nothing.
"Doesn't seem that dangerous..."
At the end of the long hallway was a large conference room. He stopped outside the door and listened. Inside, he could hear scuffling sounds, laughter, and high-pitched voices, repeating the same phrases over and over.
BANG!
He kicked the door open. It slammed against the inner wall.
The scene inside made him freeze.
"What the fuck..."
In the center of the conference room, a dozen tables had been pushed together to form one enormous tea table, covered with a black-and-white checkered tablecloth. Dozens of teacups and teapots were arranged across the surface. Many of the cups held thick, half-dried liquids.
Sitting around the table were seven or eight young girls, all wearing the signature bright blue puff-sleeved dresses and white aprons, golden wigs, and black headbands. Their faces were blank. Their eyes were hollow. They moved like perfectly crafted dolls, picking up empty teapots and pouring nonexistent tea for one another, repeating in dreamlike voices:
"Would you like some sugar? It's afternoon tea time."