Chapter 6 - The Ironwood Foundry-6
The cold, torrential rain battered the windshield of Liam’s old, dented pickup truck as we tore down the deserted industrial roads toward the shipping canal. I sat in the passenger seat, wrapped in a heavy blanket, a tight elastic medical binder compressed around my ribs to keep them from shifting with every bump in the road. Every breath tasted like copper, but I kept my eyes locked on the laptop screen sitting on my lap, monitoring the real-time signal tracker I had linked to Ethan’s briefcase.
"The briefcase is moving," I said, my voice strained over the roar of the truck's engine and the thunder shaking the sky. "It just left the Grand Horizon complex. He’s heading north on Highway 4. He’s going exactly where I thought he would. The Ironwood Foundry."
"How much time do we have before he arrives?" Liam asked, his hands white on the steering wheel as he pushed the truck through a flooded intersection.
"He’s in a high-performance luxury SUV, and he has a police escort courtesy of Senator Vance’s private security detail," I said, checking the navigation overlay. "He’ll be at the foundry in twelve minutes. We have a five-minute head start if we take the old gravel service road along the canal banks."
"The gravel road is flooded, Clara," Liam said, peering through the blurred windshield as the rain turned the world into a gray, featureless sheet. "The truck might not make it through the deep mud near the locks."
"It has to make it," I said, turning to look at him. "Liam, if he reaches that console before we do, he’ll realize I’ve frozen his assets permanently. He won't just try to save the money anymore—he’ll realize his life is over, and a man like Ethan when he’s cornered will burn everything to the ground just to ensure no one survives to tell the story."
Liam didn't answer. He simply slammed his foot down on the accelerator, veering the truck off the paved highway and onto a narrow, unlit gravel track that wound through the skeletal silhouettes of abandoned factories and rusted cranes. The truck fishtailed violently, the tires churning through thick, brown mud, blasting sheets of dirty canal water over the roof.
Within minutes, the massive, dark shape of the Ironwood Foundry loomed out of the darkness ahead. It was a terrifying structure—a sprawling, multi-acre complex of corrugated iron and shattered brick, its towering smokestacks reaching up into the stormy sky like broken fingers. The main gates were secured by a heavy iron chain, but Liam didn't slow down.
"Hold on!" he yelled.
CRASH.
The truck’s heavy steel bumper smashed through the chain, the iron links snapping with a loud bang as the gates tore open, swinging wildly on their hinges. Liam pushed the vehicle through the overgrown courtyard, parking it deep within the shadow of an old loading dock, completely hidden from the main access road.
We cut the lights, plunging the world into a dark, wind-howling silence.
I opened the laptop, my fingers trembling as I accessed the foundry's localized wireless perimeter grid. "The shadow server room is three levels down, beneath the old blast furnaces. There’s a pneumatic elevator shaft in the central administrative block, but the power grid is off. We’ll have to use the emergency maintenance stairs."
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"Can you walk?" Liam asked, stepping out of the truck and coming around to my side, helping me lower myself onto the wet gravel.
A sharp, blinding bolt of pain shot through my left side as my boots hit the ground, and I stumbled against his chest. I swallowed the groan that rose in my throat, clutching my ribs tightly. "I’m fine. Let’s go before the headlights appear on the highway."
