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Chapter 19 - Across Enemy Lines

Tin was in agreement that he shouldn't go home just yet. We had stopped by the Arc and Siro had helped me find some clothing for him. The shirt he had tied around his waist had barely kept him decent, and the absolute last thing we wanted was to be stopped by a copper and then end up in jail because the world could see Tin's balls.

Once he was dressed and covered so no one would see his face, we went to Renaldo. I had thought to take him to my tenement, but I didn't have any medical supplies and we needed to hear what he knew.

Oddly, and I guess in a turn of good fortune, nothing went wrong during this whole endeavor. By late morning, Tin was in a bed next to Fiz while the doctor worked him over. The weasel was wiping his brow when he came out of the room and looked at Renaldo, Rut and myself.

"Several deep cuts and some required stitching. Dehydration, hunger, and he said whomever had been holding him had been giving him injections of something, but he didn't know what. I don't really have a way to figure that out."

"So he's going to be okay?" I asked, straightening up from my leaning position on the wall.

"Just let him rest and watch him. I'm sure he'll be fine -- I can't find anything lasting on his body and he doesn't have any broken bones. I'll be back the day after tomorrow." The weasel closed his black medical bag after putting his stethoscope inside.

"Thanks doc," Renaldo said, patting him on the shoulder and slipping him some bills. I didn't see how much but winced. I was going to be in Renaldo's debt forever at this rate. I briefly wondered if I could pay it off with a good romp but shook the thought away.

When we were allowed in the room, Fiz was sitting up and talking to Tin who already looked annoyed.

"How captured?" Fiz asked.

"By not paying attention," Tin said with a grumbling voice.

"Oh." Fiz frowned...but then smiled. "But still alive! Lucky."

"I suppose so."

"Can help kill later." The black fox grinned and flexed his fingers, claws displayed nice and sharp. He had been chewing on them to make them dangerously sharp since he had been stuck in bed sans knife (which was actually on the far table, in sight but out of reach. Rut had threatened Fiz should the black fox ever go near that knife, and surprisingly, he had listened).

"Iron is a traitor, a bastard, and a dead man," Tin growled as he sat up in bed, his eyes glaring at the lot of us. "Don't let anyone in here, or any tiger either. He's working for that asshole, and that means the entire gang is the caracal's pawn now."

Renaldo's face looked gray and he whistled loudly with his fingers in his muzzle. A fox poked his head into the room. "Get the tigers on the first floor outta here. Tell them we're doing something private and they can come back around later." The underling nodded and vanished down the stairs.

"I doubt they'll cause a fuss in here. I don't think they saw you either," Renaldo said and looked at me briefly. "Simon was smart enough to come in the backway."

"I do something right from time to time," I said casually, yawning and covering my muzzle with a hand. I was starting to feel exhausted. I had been up since yesterday morning and even then I barely got any sleep.

"Iron has been going to Crossbell Tower a lot. I've had someone tailing him since we found out Tin was missing."

"Don't trust tigers?" Tin said with a scowl. I wasn't sure if he was playing or not.

Renaldo shook his head with a serious expression. "And this time my instincts seemed to be right on the money. Your brother was gonna sell us all out for, what, money? Power?"

The tiger growled. "Look, Family is different, okay? It's not like it was just some random person who tricked me."

"Exactly," the red fox countered. "Your brother played you like a fiddle and you almost got killed. On top of it all, Simon went in and saved your striped ass. What would have happened if Mordecai had been there and got him?"

"We'd all be dead," Rut said calmly. "Within forty-eight hours, I bet. The only thing keeping us alive is because Mordecai doesn't know exactly where Simon is, so any one of us is either information or bait. The moment we stop being valuable to catching Simon is the moment we're dead."

"No die," Fiz said stubbornly.

"Look," I said and stepped forward. "We can talk about this until we're all blue in the face, but the point is we came out on top and I'm not gonna let this opportunity pass us by. We have until, what, this evening I think until Mordecai will go back to that hell hole and discover Tin isn't there. That means we have today to get as much information as we can while Mordecai is content -- the moment he realizes Tin is absent is the moment he'll probably become paranoid."

Rut looked at me flatly and sighed. "You're planning something stupid and reckless, aren't you?"

I grinned and winked to my friend, putting my arm around his shoulders. "You have no idea. Now come on, you and I have a Tower to watch."

---

I was bored. We had been waiting in the café across the street from the front entrance to Crossbell Tower for three hours. I had also worn a hat and a heavy coat so I was covered mostly from head to toe, but this also made me very hot. And not in a sexy way.

Rut was the one facing the doorway, and he had been watching intently while also looking like he read the paper. I had one in front of me as well, but I was so bored of reading the same news stories that I had almost fallen asleep in my chair more than once -- a kick to my shin had forced me awake more than once.

The white fox in front of me looked up and folded his paper, putting it down on top of the table. "Come on," he said and stood up.

"We're going in?"

"I just saw Iron go inside the building. Come on." With that we were crossing the street and entering the tower of a man who wanted at least one of us dead.

For as crazy as Mordecai Crossbell is, I can't deny he had good taste. Marble floors with high pillars, golden accoutrement lined the walls with handsome murals of New York on one side and London on the other. I saw a painter working on a third mural, this one of San Francisco from the small sign posted near it. In front of us was a large receptionist desk with a sleek ocelot sitting behind it, his bowtie and handsome uniform doing nothing to detract from the fact that he was almost comically young for the job. When we approached, he looked up with a smile.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. How can I be of service?" Did his voice crack? I had to resist a grin.

"Just a meeting with Williamsby," Rut said, leaning forward on the counter with a charming smile. "Informal, of course. He said we could come right in but I wanted to check in with the front so everything was in order."

"Yes, sir," the ocelot said, picking up a clipboard and looking over his sheet. "I don't see Mr. Williamsby having any guests on the schedule today..."

"As I said, it was informal. He said to stop by whenever we had a chance. We're looking to set up some investments with Mr. Crossbell but wanted to go through the right channels first."

"I'm sorry sir, but if you aren't on the schedule--"

I watched Rut slide a twenty-dollar bill across the counter toward the kid. His eyes nearly bugged out of his skull. That was a lot of money to just be throwing about.

"As I said, informal. If we're on the books, someone could find out, and then our prices would go up if that someone was working for our competitors. So how about just adding a 'Mr. Smith' and a 'Mr. Jones' to the schedule and leave it at that?"

The kid looked down at the bill and then up at the two of us. His hand came out and quickly snatched up the money, putting it into his pocket. "W...Welcome to Crossbell Tower," he said and motioned behind him.

I was impressed. I walked with Rut, passed the front desk and looked at him. He gave me a glance and a playful little grin. "What, didn't expect me to be capable of bribery?"

"Just not used to seeing someone throw a twenty down so easily," I countered, hands in my coat pockets.

"When you live with Fiz," Rut said, "you learn to always keep a lot of money ready. It's good to keep people off your tail."

---

I had never been inside a building so glamorous and advanced in my whole life -- and I never thought I would stand in the presence of such wealth and power as I did at that moment. I was an orphan boy from London who worked as a chimney sweep in a poor part of town, most of the homes I saw were stone and cheap wood. In comparison, this place was cut stone and marble, and the windows shone with a brilliance that I hadn't ever really seen before. It was so modern -- no, so futuristic.

Everyone knew about the electric lightbulb, but few had been to places that were actually wired for the whole thing. And this building had light fixtures with glowing bulbs everywhere. Chandeliers and sconces of light were gilded with gold and fine metalwork. It was opulence on a scale that reminded me of what I thought Buckingham Palace would look like on the inside. Bensley's home was the most expensive house I'd ever been in, and compared to this place, it may as well have been a flea-ridden tenement.

There was even an elevator with a metal cage door and a lift. We heard it turn on and rumble to life when we passed by, as people started climbing onboard. The sound made Rut nearly pull out his gun. I chuckled a little and elbowed him as we wandered down the corridor and into the stairwell. I don't think either of us was ready to climb aboard such a thing.

"Was he always this obsessed over new technology?" Rut asked me as we were on the tenth floor, walking down a hallway with windows all along one side and wooden doors with frosted glass on the other. Names in gold were painted on the doors in fancy lettering, some with titles.

"You act like I know him intimately," I said, looking at Rut with a frown. "You know I've only ever spoken to him once? And it wasn't for that long."

"He acts like you two have known each other for years" Rut was still looking curiously and somewhat cautiously at the electrical lights in the hallway.

"I've been saying he's insane for weeks now, are you just now realizing it?" I said it with a bit of exasperation, but still grinned a little to show I wasn't really upset. "He's insane and I have no idea why he wants me, or cares so much about me."

Rut shrugged. "Sometimes things just don't make sense. Sometimes things are just weird and you have to accept that. I think Mordecai is one of those things -- you just have to assume he's not going to fit the mold and will react accordingly. He's almost like Fiz in that way."

We kept wandering the lower, public levels of the building. We knew Iron had to have gone higher up, but we didn't want to stick our noses too much into things without having a better idea of the lay of the land. We had taken it floor by floor and found a small cafe on the 12th floor where we stopped and admired the view from the window. We had been here for hours and listened in on casual conversations, but nothing of relevance was really revealed to us.

That was, until we found Mortemer.

On the fifteenth floor, we had passed a large, plain looking door wide open. Where the walls and floor had been marble and handsomely decorated, the interior of this room was brick and utilitarian, which meant that it was not meant for the public to see. There was a mouse standing at a workbench holding some pliers and twisting some wires around in his hand. The man was dressed in nice slacks and a shirt with a sharp bowtie and a tan vest.

There was a toolkit next to him on the table, and he was working on something complex. I was ready to pass by him without much interest, but Rut stopped me and motioned for me to look more inside. Upon inspection, I saw that the mouse was working on the new electrical lines that ran through the tower. He seemed to be getting wires ready for something. I stepped up with a grin.

"Excuse me, do you know -- woah, what is this room?" I said with a bit of false amusement in my voice. I stepped in further and admired all the bulbs on the wall, replacements clearly, and spools of wire.

The mouse jumped a little bit and fixed his glasses while looking up at me. He smiled a little bit and held a hand on his chest. "You gave me a fright, son, don't walk up on an old mouse like that."

"You're hardly old," I said, frowning. "You look my age."

The mouse, whom we would come to find was named Mortemer, smiled politely. "Charming. Does that work?"

"More often than you think," I said honestly, my hands going back in my pockets. "But you don't look old."

"I believe age is more how you feel, and right now I feel like I could use a new back!" The mouse laughed at his own joke but then cleared his throat. "Was there something I could do for you gentleman?"

"We're here visiting a friend and this is our first time in a private building with electric lights everywhere," I said, looking up and touching one of the bulbs hanging from the ceiling. It was hot! I winced and sucked on my finger. "I thought lightbulbs were supposed to be cold."

The mouse chuckled and shook his head. "Electricity still generates heat m'boy," he said and leaned against the table, taking a break to talk about the new technology and clearly his passion in life. "There's a filament in each bulb that glows and that creates heat, so the bulb gets hot to the touch."

"But not so hot that it could start a fire?" Rut asked, now joining in on the conversation.

"Depends," the mouse squeaked back. "But generally no, it's much safer than a flame lamp, lantern, or candle. Plus you don't need to pour flammable oil everywhere and risk a quick setting fire. Crossbell Tower is the way of the future."

"You work here?" I asked, looking around the room. "Is this like your lab or something?"

"Oh no." The mouse extended his hand out to me. "I'm Mortemer Halfpint, senior electrician for Lumiere Electrical."

I shook his head. "'Lumiere,' that's French, isn't it?"

"Oui," the mouse said with an exaggerated accent. "Parlez-vous français?"

"Je comprends un peu le français," I responded, wincing at how I probably sounded. I smiled nonetheless. "I grew up in London and some of my old clients were French, they taught me some things."

"Oh, an English boy, are you? I couldn't tell, your accent is nearly impossible to hear," Mortemer said with a charming smile.

"It took practice," I admitted, and looked around. "So your company wired Crossbell Tower then? For electric lights?"

"That's correct. Mr. Crossbell has invested heavily in Lumiere and wanted us to show off his new tower as a model of the future. Every room has electrical lighting, with our patented light bulbs that are guaranteed never to go out!"

In the distance, we could hear the bell strike eleven in the morning. Mortemer fished out a golden pocket watch from his pocket and checked it over. "Bah. I knew I had lost track of the time. Wait right here boys, I'll show you what our lighting can do when I get back."

When the mouse left Rut uncrossed his arm and moved to the door in the back of the small workshop. He turned the handle and found himself in a much larger room with a large elevator that ran up the center of the tower by the looks of things.

"This looks like it's made for cargo, not people," I said, running my hand along the metal frame of the elevator. "I've seen wooden ones for ships when I worked on one, but nothing like this. Not for a building, and certainly not made of metal."

"I think Mordecai has a power plant of some kind in the building, something to generate all this power. It must be massive and loud... I bet it's in the basement," Rut said, looking around and peeking into some of the boxes along the wall. They were lined with various components for electrical repair, as well as other materials for building maintenance.

"So besides the electricity thing, this place seems normal."

"We've only been on the first few floors; if Mordecai is half as smart as he thinks he is, he'll have the bottom floors be as squeaky clean as he can possibly make it. It's where he'll likely show off the building and all its wonders, after all." Rut rolled his eyes when he said the word 'wonders.'

The white fox continued: "You saw that map when we walked into the lobby, where the top floors are all marked 'Crossbell Industries New York Division and Personal'? I'm guessing those fancy elevators don't even go up that high."

"This one probably does." I rasped my knuckles along the metal door. "If this is freight, it's the only way to get big things up those stairs."

Rut nodded. "This could be our ticket into the restricted areas of the building. The lock on the electrician's workshop is just a simple lock, so I could probably pick it with a claw."

"Let's go up to the lowest level of those personal floors. We'll probably be stopped, but we can say we got lost and they'll escort us out. As long as we avoid the top levels, we should be safe."

"You're right, but I don't want to stay too long, I think--" Rut stopped dead in his tracks and tilted his head up into the air, breathing deeply. He was gravely silent for a few moments as he turned his head again and again.

Rut crouched down and touched something on the floor near the elevator door, lifting it up to his nose and wincing away at the odor. I frowned. This wasn't good.

"What is that?"

"We may have a new problem," Rut said as he stood up, holding his fingers out to me so that I could the smudges on it. "This is explosive powder used in bombs. There's no other reason this would exist here except for explosives."

"Yeah, but it's just a smudge."

Rut shook his head and walked over to one of the wooden boxes. He grabbed the crowbar from the wall and jammed it into the side of the crake, wrenching the nailed-in lid off with a crackling thud. He reached in and pulled out a glass jar of black powder.

"No, Simon. This is just the tip of the iceberg."