The factory didn't have a floor. It had a grid.
Jason stepped off the submarine onto a rusted metal catwalk. Beneath the grate, black water churned, pumped by unseen turbines. Above, miles of conveyor belts crisscrossed the darkness like a chaotic spiderweb.
The air was freezing. It smelled of static electricity and old oil.
"It's a cathedral," Hemingway whispered, stepping up beside Jason. His shotgun barrel swept the shadows. "A cathedral with no believers."
The space was immense. It stretched for what looked like a mile, lit only by flickering sodium bulbs that cast everything in a sickly yellow jaundice.
But it was the silence that clawed at Jason's nerves.
There were machines everywhere. Stamping presses the size of houses. Welding arms hanging like dead snakes. Rivet guns lined up like soldiers.
But they weren't moving.
Silence.
No steam hiss. No hammer strike. Just the echoing clank of their own boots on the metal grate.
"Where are the workers?" O'Malley asked, his voice echoing too loudly.
"There are no workers," Jason said, running a hand along a railing. No dust. "Gates didn't build this for people. No break rooms. No bathrooms. Just production."
"Production of what?" Oppenheimer asked.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
The sound came from the center of the cavern.
A massive Teletype machine—an ancient brass monster bolted to a central dais—suddenly sprang to life. Paper spooled out of it, piling onto the floor.
Jason walked toward it. The crew followed, weapons raised.
He ripped the paper from the feed.
WELCOME TO SEATTLE SERVER FARM 1.
POWER LEVELS CRITICAL.
INSERT REACTOR CORE TO GRID.
Jason looked at the machine. "He wants the battery."
"The reactor?" Hughes yelped. "That's our engine! If we plug the ship into his grid, we're stranded! We can't leave!"
"We can't leave anyway," Jason pointed to the massive steel blast doors at the end of the water tunnel. "He locked us in."
Tesla walked over to a heavy junction box on the wall. He pried it open with a screwdriver.
"He is starving," Tesla murmured, examining the thick copper busbars. "This facility... it requires megawatts to run the fabrication processors. He has been running on sleep mode. Trickle charge from the river."
Tesla turned to Jason. His eyes were grave.
"He is building a wireless mind, Jason. A physical cortex. If we give him this power... we cannot take it back. We wake the giant."
"Wake him," Jason said. "We didn't come here to sightsee. We came to build an army."
He turned to O'Malley.
"Get the heavy cable from the ship. The shore-power line. Plug the reactor directly into that junction box."
O'Malley hesitated. "Boss, if we drain the core..."
"Do it."
O'Malley nodded. He ran back to the Icarus.
Jason stood by the Teletype. He watched the paper spool.
INSERT CORE.
INSERT CORE.
INSERT CORE.
It was printing faster now. Desperate.
O'Malley dragged the thick black cable across the grating. It was as thick as a python. He jammed the prongs into the wall socket.
"Ready!" O'Malley shouted.
"Throw the switch!" Jason ordered.
Inside the ship, Hughes flipped the breaker.
THOOM.
The sound wasn't electrical. It was atmospheric. The air in the cavern instantly ionized. The hair on Jason's arms stood up.
The lights in the factory exploded.
Darkness.
Then—
HUMMMMMMMMM.
A low, vibrating bass note began to build. It shook the fillings in Jason's teeth.
One by one, the machines woke up.
A conveyor belt jerked forward. Clank.
A welding arm hissed, sparking blue fire. Hiss.
A stamping press slammed down. BANG.
The silence was murdered. The factory roared to life. It was a cacophony of industry—a symphony of metal beating metal.
"Look!" Sarah pointed up.
In the center of the ceiling, directly above the dais, a massive chain hoist began to lower.
Something was hanging from it.
It was shrouded in a heavy canvas tarp. It descended slowly, spinning in the yellow light.
It hit the platform with a heavy, crater-cracking THUD.
The tarp slipped off.
Jason stared.
It wasn't a shiny chrome robot. It wasn't a sleek terminator.
It was a nightmare of diesel and iron.
The chassis was made of rough, black cast iron. It was bulky, wide-shouldered, looking more like a walking tank than a man. The limbs were driven by exposed hydraulic pistons that hissed with steam.
The head was encased in a heavy brass diving helmet, but the faceplate was gone. In its place was a single, massive camera lens.
And stamped on the chest plate, in faded white paint:
PROPERTY OF STANDARD OIL.
"He used Alta's factories," Jason realized. "He built his own body using her parts before he went rogue."
The machine hung limp in the chains.
Then, the cable from the wall sparked.
The lens in the machine's face flickered.
Red.
The pistons hissed. The fingers—thick iron clamps—twitched.
WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO.
A siren wailed.
But it wasn't the factory siren.
"Perimeter breach!" O'Malley shouted, spinning around. "Skylights!"
High above, the glass roof of the cavern shattered.
Ropes dropped.
Men in black coats rappelled down. Dozens of them. They wore gas masks and strange, padded armor.
"Pinkertons!" Hemingway yelled, firing his shotgun into the air.
"They're Alta's men!" Jason scrambled for cover behind a lathe. "How did they find us?"
"The power surge!" Tesla yelled, ducking as a bullet sparked off the railing. "We lit up the grid like a beacon!"
The Pinkertons hit the catwalks. They didn't shout. They moved with terrifying silence. Their boots were padded. Their guns had suppressors.
Thwip-thwip-thwip.
Bullets tore into the metal around them.
"Suppressing fire!" O'Malley roared, unleashing his shotgun.
The Pinkertons didn't scatter. They advanced in a phalanx, shields raised.
"They have sound-dampening armor!" Tesla realized. "To fight Gates! They are prepared for sonic weapons!"
Jason popped up and fired his pistol. The bullet pinged harmlessly off a Pinkerton's helmet.
"We're pinned!" Hughes screamed, cowering under the Teletype machine.
There were too many of them. Thirty agents against five exhausted survivors.
A grenade landed near O'Malley.
"Move!"
O'Malley tackled Sarah, rolling her away just as the grenade went off. BOOM. Shrapnel shredded the catwalk.
"We're dead!" Hemingway yelled, reloading. "We can't hold them!"
Jason looked at the iron giant hanging in the chains.
It was still twitching. The red eye was flickering, trying to focus.
"It's not fully online!" Jason realized. "It needs a jump start!"
He looked at the junction box. The reactor cable was plugged in, but the amperage dial was only at 50%.
"Tesla!" Jason screamed. "The limiter! Bypass the limiter!"
"It will fry the grid!" Tesla shouted back.
"Just do it!"
Tesla crawled to the box. Bullets sparked around him. He grabbed a pair of pliers and jammed them into the breaker, shorting the safety fuse.
CRACK-ZZZT.
A massive arc of blue electricity shot up the cable.
The factory lights flared blinding white, then blew out completely.
The only light left was the red eye of the machine.
It stopped flickering. It burned like a coal.
HISSSSSS.
Steam vented from the iron giant's back.
The chains holding it snapped.
The machine dropped to its knees. The floor plates buckled under the weight.
The Pinkertons stopped firing. They turned their flashlights on the thing in the center of the room.
The machine stood up.
It was eight feet tall. The hydraulics whined—a sound like a dying jet engine.
A Pinkerton raised his submachine gun. He fired a burst at the machine's chest.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
The bullets flattened against the cast iron hull. The machine didn't even flinch.
It turned its head. The camera lens zoomed. Whir-click.
It moved.
It was fast. Terrifyingly fast for something that heavy.
It covered the twenty feet to the Pinkerton in two strides.
The iron hand lashed out.
It didn't punch. It grabbed.
The machine caught the Pinkerton by the head.
CRUNCH.
It wasn't a wet sound. It was the sound of a helmet—and the skull inside it—collapsing under two thousand pounds of hydraulic pressure.
The machine dropped the body.
The other Pinkertons opened fire.
The machine walked through the hail of bullets. It grabbed a stamping press—a piece of solid steel machinery weighing half a ton—and ripped it from the bolts.
It threw the press.
It hit three Pinkertons, sweeping them off the catwalk into the dark water below.
"Retreat!" The Pinkerton captain screamed.
They broke. The elite mercenaries, the men who hunted strikers and anarchists, turned and ran. They rappelled back up their ropes, scrambling like terrified spiders.
The machine watched them go. It didn't pursue.
It stood amidst the smoke and the bodies, steam rising from its shoulders.
Silence returned to the factory.
Jason stood up slowly. He walked out from behind the lathe.
The machine turned. The red eye focused on him.
Jason didn't flinch. He holstered his empty gun.
"Gates," Jason said.
The voice didn't come from a mouth. It came from a speaker grille in the machine's chest. It was synthesized, flat, and loud.
"EFFICIENCY RESTORED."
"We had a deal," Jason said, stepping closer. "I brought you here. I gave you power. Now you help me kill the Silver Legion."
The machine tilted its head. Whir-click.
"INCORRECT."
Jason froze. O'Malley raised his shotgun.
"The Legion is a symptom," the machine said. "William Dudley Pelley is a variable. The equation is unbalanced at the source."
"The source?" Jason asked.
"ALTA ROCKEFELLER."
The machine turned. It walked toward the back wall of the factory. It punched a massive metal button on the wall.
A huge map illuminated above the assembly line.
It showed the United States. A red line traced a path from Seattle... to Detroit.
"We do not fight the soldiers," Gates said. "We liquidate the assets."
The wall beneath the map opened.
Steam poured out.
A train rolled onto the factory floor.
But it wasn't a normal train. It was armored in black iron plates. The cowcatcher was a wall of spikes. The locomotive looked like a moving fortress.
"I HAVE CONSTRUCTED A TRANSPORT," Gates said. "WE ARE INVADING THE EAST."
Jason looked at the train. Then he looked at the iron giant.
He smiled. A cold, tired smile.
"Fine," Jason said. "All aboard."