The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (21 page)

Lexis looked like she was going to keep arguing, but the fact that her workers were at risk seemed to finally sink in.

"Okay. Go ahead and examine it. If you say it needs to be shut down then we'll shut it down, but at least check that it's really that far gone."

Brennan looked for a second like he was going to respond with something biting, but instead he took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay, let's go take a look."

The drive belt turned out to be all the way over on the other side of the production floor. The far corner of the building housed a massive electrical motor that used a heavy rubber belt to drive a series of long, slender steel shafts that each powered more than a dozen sewing machines.

The pipe room had seemed incredibly dangerous to me back when I'd first arrived in the compound. It was nothing like the sterile, shiny machines that had provided for all of our needs on the other side of the barrier. Maybe the Society's heavy industry installations—mostly hidden underground—had been a different matter, but I suspected that even those hadn't looked much like the pipe room or even the foundry.

As dangerous as the pipe room had been, the foundry had felt like it was an order of magnitude worse. I'd thought that the foundry was as bad as things were going to get danger wise, but the textile factory was even worse. Spinning shafts and whirling belts were in operation all over the floor with only the most rudimentary of physical guards to keep someone from being pulled into the machinery.

The corner next to the motor housed a massive weaving machine that looked like it would cut a person in half if they wandered too close to it, but there wasn't any wall of safety glass encircling the dangerous machine, only a bright orange line painted around it to warn people to keep their distance.

I was so caught up in analyzing the dangers all around me that it took me several seconds to realize that Lexis had fallen back to the tail end of the group. I'd expected for her to lead the way to the drive belt—full of spit and fire—but instead she was lagging behind everyone else. I belatedly remembered that she'd been slaving over clothes for me when she should have been working on much more important stuff.

"I'm sorry, Lexis. If I'd realized how critical things were, I never would have let you waste time on stuff for me."

She waved away my concern. "You weren't the one who asked me to do it, child. The truth is that I welcomed the distraction. I've known for days now that we were headed into an impossible situation, but I just didn't know how to fix things.

"I've had all of the machines manned and going full-tilt ever since the power came back up. We extended our normal two shifts so that the machines are going round the clock, which means that Brennan's going to shut us down because the belt has a lot more wear on it than he realizes. Tailoring your outfits down—mostly by hand—was a break from worrying about everything else, but even if it hadn't been, none of this is your fault."

I shrugged uncomfortably. "Actually, it probably is. I was in the pipe room inside the secondary power generation facility when the regulators down in the foundry burned out. If I'd been faster realizing what was going on, the damage down in the foundry wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as it is right now."

Lexis snorted. "I'm one of Brennan's direct reports, Skye. I heard the whole story. You were inside the pipe room rather than out monitoring the communications from the foundry. You realizing what was going on when you did was an outright miracle. Besides, if you hadn't saved Brennan from that bruiser, none of this would have any point whatsoever. Don't be so hard on yourself."

The group had stopped, Brennan at the front where he could see the spinning driveline, and the other two bodyguards flanking him so that they could watch the factory floor. Lexis sighed and started forward so that she could hear Brennan's verdict on the belt. Based on the way he was shaking his head, it didn't look good.

"You've been running longer shifts, haven't you?"

"Yeah, the girls agreed not to draw any kind of overtime though, just their normal wage."

"That's not what I'm concerned about, Lexis, and you know it. This belt could go any day now. We need to shut everything down before it snaps and we end up with real damage to fix."

"You're sure it can't last another day or two? That won't be enough to let us get through the stock of fabric that we have built up, but it will let us spin and weave the last of the cotton that the farms have produced. That way we can at least continue sewing the raw fabric by hand."

"I said it needs to be shut down, Lexis. Now are you going to get up there and turn it off, or do I have to do it myself?"

Under other circumstances it probably would have been humorous to watch Lexis struggling to keep her calm, but somehow the stakes involved sucked all of the amusement out of the situation. I'd been going along blindly for the last few days completely unaware of the pressures building up inside of the compound.

Brennan's creations had made the compound feel like some kind of massive, indestructible monolith, but the truth was that the stresses being placed upon his organization from the outside were incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't part of his inside circle. The territories around Brennan's domain were only one step away from open hostility, and he was being forced to navigate a razor's edge with his efforts to keep goods and materials flowing in without giving up his sovereignty.

Rather than laugh at Lexis, I moved closer to Brennan's side to get a better look at the drive belt. I didn't really know what I was looking for, but it did appear that the belt was frayed in spots.

"Don't get too close, Skye. If your clothes brush up against the belt it could pull you into the drive mechanism."

I nodded absently, already having moved as close as I was planning on getting. A dozen feet away, up on the platform containing the motors controls, I heard Lexis swear.

"The controls are stuck. I'm going to try speeding the motor up slightly to see if that will break things loose."

Brennan turned towards Lexis, mouth open as though to stop her, and then all hell broke loose.

Everything happened so fast that the adrenaline didn't even manage to hit my system and activate my nanites before I was in mortal danger.

A split second after the pitch of the motor changed, there was a clunking sound, and then something slammed into me. I was falling to the ground still trying to understand what had happened when I saw Brennan slammed into the ground, thrown there by the titanic impact of the massive rubber belt that had just broken loose from the drive mechanism.

The rest of the belt whipped past me, clipping the new guard and throwing him into Alan—crushing his chest as bad or worse than it had just crushed Brennan's chest, but I barely registered that. My attention was on Brennan and I was already crawling towards him, desperate to find out if he was still breathing.

Brennan, the man whose life's work I'd been sent to sabotage, had just thrown himself in front of me in an effort to save my life.

Chapter 15

My training included some minimal first-aid courses, but they had all been targeted at treating the wounds of someone with military-grade nanites in their system. When trying to save the life of someone from the Society, you generally didn't have to do much more than stop the bleeding and occasionally perform rescue breathing.

If you could keep their blood pressure up, their blood circulating, and keep them breathing, then usually you were only hours from having them make a full recovery from anything that didn't destroy an organ outright. What I knew about keeping someone alive beyond that wouldn't have filled up a very tiny book, but I was very much aware that things didn't work that way for someone who wasn't carrying several trillion nanites inside of them.

I made it to Brennan's side to find him gasping in a vain effort to fill his lungs, and thought for a moment that I might be sick. The way the entire right side of his chest had been caved in was nothing less than grotesque—it was no wonder he was having such a hard time breathing.

There was surprisingly little blood given the force with which he'd been struck. As fast as the belt had been moving, I would have half expected it to shear through human flesh, but instead it had manifested primarily as blunt-force trauma.

I tipped Brennan's head back, clearing his airway, and then placed my mouth on his and pushed air into his lungs. I broke contact to get a fresh breath of air, and saw tears running down his face, but despite the pain as his ribs ground against each other, he didn't fight me.

Alan reached me as I bent back down to give Brennan another breath, dropping down next to me as Lexis was still making her way down from the control platform. Alan evaluated the situation with surprising composure and then started yelling for someone to go get Tyrell. As Lexis joined us, Alan turned back to me.

"How much training do you have? Can you stabilize him?"

"Next to none, if we have access to anyone else we need to get them." I spoke quickly, between breaths as I continued to try to keep Brennan conscious.

Alan grabbed Brennan's wrist, taking his pulse. "His heart is still beating. Tyrell's the only person I know who might be able to keep him alive, but every second counts. We need to get Brennan to the hospital."

Lexis sprang back up to her feet. "Sammy, Marcy, Pam, grab the big stretcher. We have to move him and Skye at the same time."

The next few minutes were a blur of activity. Lexis and Alan marshaled the workers and got us moving towards the headquarters building. Brennan went completely white when they moved him onto the stretcher, and I thought we were going to lose him then and there, but I continued to perform rescue breathing and Alan continued to report that Brennan's heart was still beating.

The trip out of the factory made my skin crawl. The eight women carrying the stretcher were doing their best to provide a smooth ride, but they weren't perfect and I could feel his ribs grinding together each time one of them missed a step.

I was so focused on trying to keep Brennan alive that I didn't notice when Tyrell joined us. It wasn't until we started down the stairs that I realized he'd altered our destination, and even then I only realized things had changed because the guards who'd taken over carrying the stretcher moved much more smoothly than the workers had been managing.

By that point I was starting to get lightheaded from the strain of breathing for both of us, so I didn't even question when we were ushered into a bedroom rather than the hospital I thought we were headed to. Jax had to say my name several times before I registered the fact that he was trying to talk to me.

"Skye, I'm taking over, you need to move out of the way."

I started to comply, still punchy from giving Brennan mouth to mouth, but I apparently wasn't moving fast enough because a second later strong hands picked me up. Tyrell and Jax moved Brennan onto a padded table and then Jax began rescue breathing while I stood there trying not to pass out.

Despite my concern for Brennan, months of training reasserted itself and I found myself scanning my surroundings in an effort to identify any possible threats. The hammock hanging in the corner of the room gave testament to the fact that we were in someone's bedroom, and the sheer size of the room told me that its owner had to be in Brennan's inner circle.

Given the way that Tyrell was taking over treatment of Brennan, it was only reasonable to assume that we were in his room, but I found myself startled at the sheer amount of medical equipment crammed into the space. None of the paraphernalia in the room was as advanced as the equipment in Brennan's workshop. All of it looked like it had been constructed using the compound's current technology, but there was a surprising amount of tubing, a dozen glass syringes, and what looked like a hand-powered centrifuge.

I'd known that Tyrell was smart, but I hadn't realized that his expertise was anywhere near that broad. The act of educating oneself in one discipline given the almost complete loss of knowledge due to the Desolation was impressive enough. The fact that Tyrell had also managed to become conversant with medical practices was the next best thing to miraculous. I didn't question our good fortune though, I was too busy hoping that his skills and rudimentary implements would be enough to keep Brennan alive.

Tyrell looked up, searching for some piece of equipment, and I moved forward so I'd be able to hand him whatever he needed, but as soon as he met my eyes, he frowned.

"Clear the room. Alan, get everyone out—the last thing I need right now is someone distracting me at a key moment. Jax and I will see to Brennan."

I'd lost my weapon at some point along the way, which was a good thing, because when Alan tried to pull me out of the room I started to fight him and it was only the sound of someone chambering a round that brought me back to myself. I looked up to see that Tyrell had a rifle trained on me.

"If you really care about him, you'll get out of my way and let me get started trying to save him."

I nodded shakily and allowed myself to be conducted out of the room, but that didn't stop me from leaning to the side in an effort to see around the door as it swung shut. I would've stood there, desperate for some news, but Alan gently grabbed my arm and ushered me down the hall.

"I know you're worried, but you can't stand there. If I let you stay, all you're going to do is wear yourself out and make whoever is assigned to guard the door nervous."

"They should be nervous—we should all be nervous!"

Alan shook his head. "We are, but the simple fact of the matter is that you making everyone more nervous than they already are isn't going to help Brennan. Go to your room and do something to take your mind off of what's happened."

"Great idea, except for the fact that there's nothing to do in my room."

Alan ran his hands through his hair. "I don't know what you want me to tell you, Skye. I'd send you to the shooting range, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to give you a rifle right now. Hand-to-hand is out too because we're going to need every available body out there patrolling the compound to make sure nobody uses the accident to create some kind of incident."