We parked along the side streets outside the American Dynamics complex, spread out, no more than two cars per block to avoid suspicion. I blipped the Prius locked, looking out over the vast, barren parking lot—a holdover from the days when AmDye needed five times as many factory workers. Piper and Garrison, who'd caught rides with me, fell in behind. Gradually we were joined by the Mice who'd driven in other cars.

Josiah bowed theatrically and said, "Show us the way, Molly."

My eyes traveled up the fence, then haltingly along its barbed wire top. I led the group over patchy sod to the weakened section Durwood had identified earlier in the week. Hatch easily yanked the chain link back, the cobra on his forearm swelling, allowing the rest of us to stoop through.

In the distance, the factories looked bleak and forlorn. Rust-streaked smokestacks belched their payloads into the night.

I didn't understand why we had brought so many people to Pittsburgh. If the goal was to slip plant security and attack Jim Steed, a group this size—between fifteen and twenty—would not make it easy.

We slinked along the fence-line toward the old steel factory, keeping clear of the glow cast by towering light posts. The air quality deteriorated with each step, smells of sulfur and standing water. By the time we reached the back door Durwood had said was off the alarm circuit, I was holding my nose.

Piper glanced up the dingy building. "Which window?"

"The middle one," I said.

Everyone looked to Jim Steed's window, the only one lit, a pale yellow square in the gray monotony.

"Let's rock." Hatch produced a rotary saw from his massive trench coat, then spread the RF-blocking bag on the ground. "Everybody take back your phones. This will go fast, and we could end up scattering."

I find my phone and, like the others, impulsively check messages. There's nothing from the guys.

Josiah hadn't surrendered his phone. Now he finished typing something on it with a frenzied grin.

"Fast," he repeated. "Yes—fast and lethal."

Garrison sidled up to me and said in my ear, "Who is Josiah texting? Everybody's here, right?"

I nodded, feeling his warm breath. Things had been a little weird between us since I'd made Algernon. Garrison deferred to me now, would ask if I "thought it was cool" for him to do this or that. During our conversations, I got less of a nervous-talking-to-one-you-find-attractive vibe, more of a conventional post-adolescent reticence. He was almost Zach-like around me.

"'Friends' is what he said earlier. He's been texting them all day."

Garrison pulled a hand back through his hair—a gesture of Quaid's, only with fuller hair. "Are we supposed to go back in our same cars?"

I said I didn't know.

"Well, I'll—is it cool if I find you? After? You know, if it's not too crazy with police and all?"

"Sure," I said. "You can definitely ride with me."

He gave me a crooked, grateful smile that just about made me forget how my night was supposed to end—not in the Prius, but in the Vanagon.

Now the wide beam of a spotlight panned above us. It flashed across the brick building, suddenly giant, then veered on.

Josiah hissed, "Down, everyone down!"

On his lead, we flattened our bodies to the ground. I tasted soil and some sort of grease run-off. I turned my head and spat.

The spotlight continued its sweep of the complex, originating from a seventy-foot guard tower that looked straight out of a jailbreak movie.

Many of our faces had wound up close together, and now Josiah gestured frantically for the rest to bring theirs in too. Over several mad seconds, a pinwheel formed with our faces in the center and legs radiating out.

"This is our moment, Mice," he began. "We've nibbled their foundation of lies. Can you feel them quivering? Can you feel the world quivering? American Dynamics released 314 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere last year. Gigatons! For decades, they've bathed us in soot and grime while paying their laborers in pennies.

"But tonight, thanks to our newest Algernon"—all eyes found me, and I felt queasy—"we serve notice that these crimes are known. These impacts are felt. We will deliver our grievances directly to the man responsible, and when the world sees his fate—and the fate of the criminal organization he leads? Everything will change. They have been spilling gasoline for years, far and wide. We are only the match."

In our small circle, his pink eyes seemed alien. He pulled out his phone and tweeted, striking the screen with stiff fingers:

our chorus of squeaks grows into symphonic DOOM

He turned to Hatch and said, "Your knife."

The giant Libertarian paused only a second before pulling the weapon from his ankle holster, handing it over.

I peeked at the time on my own phone. Were we too early? Had the guys not arrived yet? The cars ahead of me in the caravan had been pushing eighty-five miles per hour on the highway, and I'd felt I had to keep up.

Durwood had said his surveillance was everywhere. "You just get 'em here. We'll intercept."

But when?

Hatch lined up his rotary saw with the back door's deadbolt. The tool screeched violently but only took a second severing the bolt. He twisted the knob and, with an air of surreal formality, held the door for us.

Josiah led the way through a tiled hall, then up three flights of stairs. To his left was a rubber-sealed entrance to the factory floor; to his right, a hall of offices.

"Algernons go right," Josiah said, "with me."

The rest he sent into the factory with instructions to dump bins of parts, shatter water lines, piss in radiators—any mayhem they saw fit.

Garrison glanced over his shoulder at me as they went. I thought he mouthed, After?

Josiah waited for the last non-Algernon to pass through the rubber seal, then turned to face us. "Now. About those grievances."

There were six of us counting me. As we started for Steed's office, I felt my lungs pushing up my chest. What was wrong—where were the guys? How far would they let this go?

We moved through the hall in single file. The temperature was frigid—the thermostat must have been in after-hours mode—and a low industrial hum surrounded us. I couldn't tell if the hum came from the factory, or these overhead light panels, or some unseen ventilation system.

Creeping up on his office, looking in from an angle, we saw Jim Steed. He was standing at his computer with a stumped expression. Freestanding piles of manila folders and loose papers littered the floor—it looked like a tornado had just passed through.

Josiah pulled up short. "Somebody's missing their Merry Maid."

He looked playfully to me as he said this. I stared back, dumbstruck. He kept looking. Now the others looked too, seeming to await my response.

What was he saying, that I was a Merry Maid? Yeah, I had been. Temporarily. It was nothing to shame people about. My face hardened. What a crock that Josiah, josiahTheAvenger, who professed to speak for the oppressed, would belittle a woman for doing honest work, the kind of labor nobody else—

"Your source," he said. "Merry Maids—the woman who tipped you off?"

Oh. Right.

Josiah became intense, his pink eyes seeming to rotate in place.

I scrambled, "Right, Merry Maids! Yep, I'll bet he wishes he had them. That office is a disaster..."

Everyone looked at me like I had a gob of mustard on my chin. Piper's hard eyes moved from me to Josiah, then back to me. I reached into my pocket and squeezed my key fob, as though I could summon the Prius for a rescue.

Had I just blown everything? Would Josiah going to take out the knife and execute me on the spot?

A high screech sounded from the factory. We all spun that direction. Jim Steed, in his office, looked around his monitor.

Josiah recovered and whispered, "Now, now—we go!"

We scampered forward. I wondered what that noise had been in the factory—if the guys were involved, if Garrison was safe—but there was no time to worry. In the next moment, we were swarming Jim Steed's office.

The CEO's eyes bulged with shock, then narrowed in recognition. "You! Is this you—my factories?"

He frowned at his computer screen, which I couldn't see. Josiah advanced coolly from the threshold, starting his strides slow and snapping them at the finish. The thumb of his left hand kept twitching.

"Your factories," Josiah said. "Not the shareholders'?"

Jim Steed grunted. "I don't need a lecture from you. Okay, where is it? Where'd you plant the bomb?"

The Algernons straightened up at the implicit accusation—all except Josiah, who grinned.

"The guilt runs so deep." He squatted as he said this—a quick, strange motion of the knees. "You sense it, don't you? In your veins, in your organs. I know you do. You sense the righteousness of what's occurring."

Steed reared back dismissively. As he did so, he seemed to be scanning the Algernons, cataloging each face. He'd never met me, but he knew the guys had a mole—female—inside the Mice.

Was he trying to guess which of us it was?

"Little snot. Think you know some things? I got the burden of the Rustbelt across my back." Steed bowed forward as if demonstrating. "Why don't you go home to your parents' X-Box, sport? Huh?"

Josiah took a long, swooping step closer. "Ah, defender of the Rustbelt. More like defiler..."

He launched into a detailed excoriation of AmeDye's environmental record. To the gigatons of CO2 figure, he added metrics about water consumption and deforestation and ocean plasticization—damning numbers Josiah knew from memory.

Steed's square head became redder and redder, a brick, until he yelled, "Shut the frick up! It's commies like you lost us the Vietnam War. Goddamn environment. Environment's fine. I lived here in the fifties, I've seen smog. Real smog. You don't know how good you got it. Was up to me, I'd ship you off to China and see how you liked—"

"It's not," Josiah said. "Up to you. At this moment, exactly nothing is up to you."

Only a few feet separated them. Now Josiah extended his arm like some bony harpoon and planted the tip of his index finger in Steed's neck.

"White dress shirt with blue collar," he observed. "The symbolism is delicious. The man who pretends to be a workingman—who pretends to be on the workingman's side. But it's all surface, yes? You'll rape them at below living wage surely as you'll rape the earth."

Steed looked down at Josiah's finger on his clavicle, his mouth compressing to a pea. Fury filled his eyes. He slapped the finger away.

They fought. As I leaned back to check up the hall—something was definitely wrong; the guys should be here—Steed wrestled Josiah into a headlock. Josiah flung back an arm and raked Steed across the eyes. Steed roared and, having momentarily lost his grip, tried wrapping Josiah's neck again. He missed, but his biceps clubbed Josiah's ear.

Josiah was scrappy and impervious to pain, but Steed—the more practiced fighter—eventually subdued him.

Hatch stepped forward with a sigh. "Let him up."

Steed, one temple caked with blood, looked up into Hatch's face. Way up—Hatch had him by a solid foot. His lips curled into a snarl, but his fist was relaxing around Josiah's sleeve.

"You're gonna fit right in at Riker's Island," Steed said. "Know that? All those tats? Oh yeah, pretty boy. Bet you'll make someone a real nice—"

"Be. Quiet. Now."

In a wink, a blade was poised at the CEO's throat, and Josiah was holding it. I experienced an awful, vertiginous deja vu—this was Ted Blackstone all over again—and screamed inside my head:

Guys, where ARE you?