CHAPTER 37: A WAY IN

  COMMONWEALTH INDUSTRIAL PARK—NOVEMBER 20th, 1992 | EARLY EVENING

  ?

  Leroy pushed the door open and held it in place for Cameron, who exited behind him, sprite following along with a subtle buzz.

  Guts, he called it. What a name. Leroy shut the door behind him, and briefly glanced up at the unmanned lighthouse they’d traveled down. If it were up to him, he’d have at least one person there around the clock. The companies that had a home in the Commonwealth Industrial Park surely had the budget to afford it; but then again, maybe not.

  “So? Where to?” Cameron asked.

  Leroy nodded. “Directly in front of us, a few paces down. I think.”

  Distinct metal vats—tall and looming—were contained within a fenced lot, all of which either held alchemical material or alchemical waste product. A husk of steel was attached to it; an office building mixed with a warehouse, old and prestigious, like it had been built during the Industrial Revolution, and retrofitted with modern amenities and the latest factoryware. Two large chimneys leaked a steady supply of smog, black and brackish and probably toxic to inhale.

  Cameron furrowed his brows. “You think?”

  “We’ll need to circle around, get a better view. Make sure we’re going into the right building.” Leroy said, and started walking forward.

  “And if they notice us?” Cameron followed suit.

  “They won’t. Take a look around, Kessler. We blend right in,” Leroy said.

  Brick-paved roads were interwoven between each of the industrial buildings. Tall, cast-iron fences created rough borders between each of the facilities. Unoccupied spaces were otherwise filled with steel scaffolding, metric tonnes worth of construction materials, or shipping containers waiting to be sent elsewhere. Workers in hard hats and utilitywear loitered on crates. Uniformed factory assemblers entered and exited buildings to the tune of sirens. Trucks and carts meandered through every so often, moving materials and people from one point to another.

  “Plus,” Leroy continued, “I’m doubtful any of these people would know who I am.”

  “And who are you, Leroy Waters?” Cameron said snidely.

  Leroy suppressed a laugh. “Depends on who you ask, and what borough of the city they are from. Anyway, put Guts back in his cage.”

  “What? No,” Cameron retorted.

  “Kessler. That’s about the only thing that’ll get us noticed,” Leroy stated.

  “Blood on our jackets, dirt on our faces,” Cameron remarked. “I could keep going, but you get the idea.”

  Leroy opened his mouth and closed it. He had a point. He brought his hand to his face, rubbed his silver-blond beard, and exhaled. “If anyone asks, we’re with the Argent Group.”

  “You mentioned them before. How the hell does that help us, Leroy?”

  “If you can remember, the Chaptermaster, over at Silver Falls, she should've just hired the Argent Group. They offer escort services—”

  Cameron grabbed hold of Guts, and gently placed him back into the sprite-cage he hooked onto his belt loop. “Prostitutes?”

  “Christ, Kessler. Not that kind of escort. Think.. bodyguards. They get hired out by the companies who have job sites here in the Commonwealth Industrial Park, and deliver their workers and staff to and from here and Silver Falls. People in Silver Falls call them herders. Most of them are mundies with good gear, and enough firepower to put things like garou and lesser demons to rest.”

  Cameron eyed himself up and down, and shrugged. “Yeah. Guess that works.”

  As they sauntered forward, Leroy tipped his checkered flat cap a few times, and offered nods only to those who first nodded to him. Better to act like you belong than to draw attention to yourself. Cameron shuffled both of his hands into his pockets and did well enough. To Leroy’s surprise, he didn’t carry himself with any awkwardness or apprehension, both of which might have invited more than a few hat-tips and nods.

  Before long they arrived at the front facade of the facility. The signage read:

  BLUESTEIN PHILTERWORKS

  “Right,” Leroy said under his breath. “Now we circle to the back. Come on.”

  There were fences all along the company lot, and inside said fences, closer to the door, were the first pair of proper armed guards Leroy had seen since they made it to the Commonwealth Industrial Park. They were too immediately concerned with the people coming and going from the main entrance of the processing plant. Leroy tugged his underarbiter along and they walked back the way they came from, and Leroy mulled over how exactly they were going to get in.

  Bluestein Philterworks, was, of course, expecting Leroy.

  He’d announced as much to that snake of a woman, Maude Dupre, over at their operations office in Godfrey Tower. She’d placed a call for a scheduled tour of the facility, he remembered. Whatever that meant. They didn’t have the gall to try and make a move on an arbiter, that much he knew, but surely, they had something planned. Hence—they enter through the back.

  As they neared the metal vats Leroy had pointed out to Cameron only moments earlier, Leroy couldn’t help but think Ruby Shakur’s arbitration contract was one hell of a job. By this point, no amount of money she had to offer for the gig would’ve been worth it. Everything had spiraled out of control over the course of 48 hours, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was biting off more than he could chew.

  Ether, undoubtedly, had to be destroyed.

  Leroy could see it complicating his life if such a thing was allowed to hit the shelves—more so than it already had. The death of Ruby’s girls had put him down a path he never expected to walk, especially so soon after taking on Cameron as his underarbiter. Donovan Mayfield must’ve been smiling from wherever the hell his soul ended up.

  Favors due to a kingpin. Sabotaging an entire alchemical manufacturing company. Wading through the Pines, fighting alongside Eisenhower and his apprentice. Once all was said and done, Leroy needed a break. A long break. A week, at least, to gather his damn bearings, and to sit Cameron down and show him a thing or two. Maybe even longer, if time allowed. If Marcus allowed.

  “Leroy?”

  Leroy blinked a few times. “What?”

  His underarbiter nodded towards the cast-iron steel fencing.

  “Right. To reiterate—”

  “I start to move people out, you figure out where they are processing ether and a way to destroy it,” Cameron said, almost as if he’d rehearsed it. “I know. But you’re missing that part you told me.”

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  Leroy raised a brow. “What?”

  “You said all it would take is some gasoline and a bullet, you know, to blow up their thing. Don’t see you carrying any oil on you, Leroy.”

  Leroy exhaled. “Yeah, I lied. I don’t know if that actually works or not. But, I do know it’s an alchemical processing plant. They’ll have ingredients. Weird shit inside. Stuff with fire power. I’ll figure it out. You let me worry about the whole sabotage thing, and focus on what it is you wanted to do. Got it?”

  Cameron looked skeptical. “Last thing.”

  A groan, low but punctuated, hummed in Leroy’s throat. “Ask away.”

  “What’s to stop them from, I don’t know, starting up their operation all over again?”

  Leroy pointed to himself. “Already warned that lady over at their corporate office, plus, once this contract is done, I’ll pass on my intel to the Civic & Occult Authority. Captain Holmes is going to have a goddamn conniption, but I’ll be handing him the case of the year.”

  Cameron nodded. “Yeah, fine. Sounds like a plan.”

  Leroy checked under his brown leather jacket.

  His P89 hung in his gun holster. Last he could remember, it still had enough bullets in it to do some damage, with a magazine or two left just in case. With all of the mist in the Pines, he didn’t have to tap into the three waterskins strapped to the opposite side of his chest, and he still had four vials of pasteurized demon blood. He was in a good spot, but Cameron was another matter entirely.

  The garou hadn’t made mincemeat of him on account of his abilities, but Cameron wouldn’t be able to use said abilities. Tough luck. Between his street smarts, his Reign 18, and Guts, he’d have to make it work. Leroy would need to trust that he could make it work.

  With a cursory glance, Leroy glanced from side to side to make sure there were no wandering eyes on him or Cameron. Out of sight, out of mind. The only issue was the fencing. Leroy recognized that distinct black coloring anywhere. Drychus metal. Worse, the fog inside of the walls and barricades was thin—so thin he’d barely have enough to launch them over and inside.

  It would have to do.

  A subtle blue glow erupted out from Yaerzul’s brand on his neck, and Leroy clenched his fist and pulled.

  Thin dredges of mist were pulled towards him from the surrounding area, filtered out from between the lingering pollution and smog, but still tainted by the air of industry. Ice formed as a dull and muddy brown beneath Leroy and Cameron’s feet. Leroy twisted his wrist, and the platform of brackish ice grew, rising just enough for them to leap over the spiked Drychus metal fence.

  The extent of Bluestein Philterworks' private security seemed to end at the front doors. As far as Leroy could tell, the entire side of the processing plant was unattended, and if there were more, they were likely inside. With a nod, Leroy urged Cameron to follow him towards the back of the building. They stuck close to the walls of the processing plant, weaving through the metal skeletons that held up the rows of containment vats they’d first seen upon crossing into the Commonwealth Industrial Park.

  After turning a few corners, they came to a dead end.

  It seemed the plant was built right up against the sigilmasoned walls and barricades, complicating Leroy’s initial plan of circling around the back.

  “Over here,” Cameron said.

  Leroy turned. Cameron had found an access ladder leading up to the rooftop, though the bottom part of it was caged off with a lock covering it. Leroy paced over to it, eyed the lock, and whisked two fingers forward.

  There wasn’t enough mist to form another pillar that could raise them to the rooftop, but there was enough to cover the lock.

  Ice crusted over the metal and froze it over. Leroy reached into his brown leather jacket, removed his P89 from its half-harness, bashed the lock. It fell flat onto the ground and Leroy opened up the sectioned metal gates covering the ladder.

  “Head on up, Kessler,” Leroy said, nodding towards the ladder.

  Cameron grimaced, and stared at it.

  “Come on, what’s the damn hold up?” Leroy asked.

  “Just a lot of prongs, is all,” Cameron stated.

  Leroy scoffed. “You’re scared. Look, you’ve gotta’ get over this height thing. Christ, Kessler, we just walked along those big ass walls—”

  “And on the way up those walls, I almost fell off your stupid pillar. I just as easily could’ve fallen off the wall too,” Cameron interjected.

  “There were no railings. You did just fine then. This ladder has a cage thing around it, and I’ll be behind you the whole time. If you fall, it’s me who hits the ground first. You’ve seen worse, been through worse. You’re gonna stand here and tell me heights are where you draw the line?”

  Cameron grabbed hold of the first prong and worked his way up the ladder. “Yeah, Leroy. I am.”

  “Exposure therapy, Kessler. You’ll reach the top and wonder why you were throwing a tantrum over the whole thing,” Leroy said, smirking.

  ?

  The access ladder they’d happened upon seemed to be there for maintenance workers, given the abundance of cooling units, filtration devices, and exterior piping that ran across the rooftop.

  It was a maze of industrial supplements that forced Leroy to take larger steps than he was used to, and forced him to climb up a few things here and there to make it towards the far side of the roof, where a bulkhead jutted out. That was their way in. He urged Cameron to follow him towards it.

  In the distance, semi-mountainous hilltops and stone crags lingered, shielding the back end of the Commonwealth Industrial Park where the walls couldn’t cover things. Leroy saw the vague impressions of cranes and mining equipment. Closer to him still, however, was a river running just behind the Bluestein Philterworks processing plant, and a small dam.

  It had a green-blue glow to it: half-water and half-something.

  Cameron leaned on the edge of the rooftop, and stared down at the dam attached to the processing plant. “What the hell is that?”

  “Alchemical waste, if I had to guess,” Leroy said, crossing both arms over his chest.

  “You were right, then,” Cameron admitted.

  Leroy smiled. “I’m right about a lot of things, Kessler.”

  “Very funny, asshole. I’m talking about what you said on the Brinehaven Bridge, on the way over here—you mentioned that there’d be stuff like this. It’s going straight into the river,” Cameron said.

  The mist was denser towards the ground and along the riverbed, but not so dense that it covered up the obvious corruption of nature’s bounty. Leylines of the blue-green sludge created what looked like floating fissures of alchemical byproduct that wafted into a river. Somewhere, there was a waterfall at the end of it that dumped off into the coastline, and fed the fishes a not-so-healthy dose of hazardous materials.

  “The cost of doing business, I guess,” Leroy said with a shrug. “We’ve got other things to worry about. Let's move on.”

  “What’s their end goal, do you think? Bluestein Philterworks, I mean,” Cameron asked.

  Leroy had just made it to the bulkhead, where his hand hovered over the doorknob. He stared down at it for what seemed like a long while, noted the rust, and twisted it. Unlocked. Just their luck.

  “Big bad corporations do big bad things,” Leroy joked.

  Cameron leveled his gaze at him, not impressed, and awaited a different answer.

  “Same as any other business, Kessler,” Leroy continued. “To turn a profit. It all boils down to money, and if there is a quicker way of making that money, most people will take it. Convenience breeds collateral. They knew selling ether as a street drug was going to create some complications. Get some people killed. But they did it anyway.”

  Cameron brushed past him into the access stairwell, wearing his usual half-scowl on his face.

  Leroy was surprised to hear nothing further from him, but knew that Cameron felt a certain way about the whole thing. Donovan Mayfield’s victims were only a few drops in a larger pond of casualties that would arise if ether continued to make its way through Cyprus Alley. It was early enough to be isolated there—and fortunately, Marcus Velvet was the only person to Leroy’s knowledge that was actually distributing it directly with a link to the supplier, and no one in Cyprus Alley was stupid enough to try and sell anything. Not under his watch.

  As Leroy proceeded down the stairwell, he listened to Cameron’s steps, and the echo of his descent very nearly put him into a trance. Tension brought a tightness to Leroy’s face, and he mulled over what the future might hold once this arbitration contract was said and done—and what kind of favor he would owe the Uncrowned King of Cyprus Alley. Recent memory revealed itself in the gaps of silence between Cameron’s steps, where his underarbiter’s words spoke louder than they did when he’d first said them.

  … once there’s a second favor, there will be a third, and a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. And every time you do one, you keep giving Velvet something he can work with to bring you down if you refuse.

  Leroy ran his hand along his face, and rubbed his beard.

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

  Enjoying BRINEHAVEN? If so, please a review or a rating, it helps this story gain much needed visibility!