Paolo Bacigalupi - The Doubt Factory

Jersey?

She measured the distances and was surprised to discover that Haverport was as close to northern New Jersey as it was to Hartford. They were in opposite directions, but the distances matched almost perfectly.

Could that really be?

Alix switched to satellite view and started looking over the entire area where Maple Confections was housed. All she could see were a lot of huge buildings that all looked alike from above.

She tried Google Street View and was surprised to find that the area was documented. With the street view, she could roam back and forth between each of the huge buildings, as if she were walking. But it felt wrong to her. This wasn’t an industrial area. It seemed to be mostly foods that were produced here. There were a lot of abandoned food-storage and grain elevators.

She stopped and scrolled back.

Gotcha .

One building in particular had the style of windows that she remembered from 2.0’s locker room, and for sure the building was huge.

On the outside it said NEW JERSEY CANNING SYSTEMS in letters so faint she could barely make them out.

It was strange to drive to the place where she had been held captive. Was she insane to be seeking out the people who had kidnapped her? Was she crazy to be tracking down Moses?

He put you in a cage .

And yet here she was, crossing into Jersey.

She’d left a note to her family not to expect her for dinner, that she was going out with Sophie, and now she was crossing state lines.

Alix wondered if she should have done something to protect herself. Set up some kind of fail-safe, maybe. 2.0 had let her go the last time, but that had been part of the plan. What would happen when she showed up on the doorstep?

She found her exit and followed an eighteen-wheeler that was also exiting into the warehouse district. She wound between the factories and warehouses, following the blue arrow on her phone’s GPS. More eighteen-wheelers were parked at loading docks, and big rigs were on all the roads, driving in and out of the area, looming over her tiny car.

She bumped over train tracks, making her way into quieter and more abandoned areas. As she got closer to her target, her heart began to thud, and she noticed that her palms were slick on the steering wheel. Nervous energy ticked under her skin.

“You’re okay,” she reminded herself, and then hated that she had to say it out loud. “You’re stalking them this time.”

There .

She pulled to a stop in the shadow of a wrecked warehouse and shut off the car, staring up at the building. New Jersey Canning Systems . They’d fooled a lot of people, but this was it. This was the real factory. She was sure of it. This was the place she’d first met the rebellious tribe that had shaken her world.

You can still turn around. Go home and call the FBI…

“Who are you kidding?” Alix muttered. She wanted to see them again. She wanted them to know that she’d tracked them down. To show them that even though they were smart, she was smarter.

Hell yes, she wanted this confrontation.

Alix grabbed her purse and climbed out of the car. In case things went badly, she kept her phone in hand. They wouldn’t catch her off guard this time. She’d see them coming. She made her way to the factory.

Weeds grew green between cracks in the pavement. Not far off, the Maple Confections factory puffed steam, but the winds weren’t blowing her way today. She hadn’t smelled bread when she’d been held captive, but there was the evidence. With the winds coming in the right direction, she could imagine the factory blanketed with the scent of baking bread.

This is the place. This is really the place. You did it. You found them .

Slowly, Alix circled the huge building, wary for signs of movement.

Nothing seemed to be happening. No cars were parked nearby. She crept up to a door and rattled it. Locked.

She went around the corner, feeling exposed and out of place in the industrial zone. Half of her expected some workman to yell at her to get out of where she didn’t belong. Her little red MINI stood out like a sore thumb where she’d parked it in the weeds. It looked cute and small and vulnerable among the looming factory buildings.

The next door Alix came to was also locked. She kept working her way around the building and, finally, came to a pair of wide double-bay doors. She yanked, expecting them to be locked as well, but, to her surprise, they opened immediately, sliding aside easily on well-oiled tracks.

The factory was empty.

At first, she thought she had the wrong building.

How could it be empty?

She walked through the echoing factory, trying to match the layout to her memories. Her shoes clicked loudly on the concrete, the only sound in the cavernous space.

It felt bigger now, without anyone in it, and lonely. She remembered Tank skating across the concrete expanse. She remembered a heavy bag for some kind of training. She remembered weights. It was all gone. She opened doors and found old hunks of machinery that might have once been stamps or presses, stored in silent rows.

She paused, listening. Were those footsteps?

“Hello?”

No response.

Was she even in the right place, she wondered? If she was, 2.0 had left it completely pristine. There was no history here except her own memories, and as she walked through the cavernous rooms, she even began to doubt those. It was too clean. She pushed open another door and found a kitchen and felt a surge of relief and recognition.

It was definitely the same place. The steel table was still in the center of the room. The steel counters had the right layout. She’d definitely been here. She walked around the table, running her hand across its surface, and pulled out a chair.

This is where they made me sit. Cynthia there. Tank there. Adam there. Kook on that counter over there .

And Moses, of course, the one they all looked to and trusted, right there across from her. Right there .

But they were gone, just like their pizza boxes and rounds of gourmet cheese.

She left the kitchen and strode out across the open space, her shoes clicking and echoing. The map felt right now. With the kitchen to orient her, it all felt exactly right. Here were the floor-to-ceiling storage racks, and there were the conveyor lines. It was all here.

She was walking faster and faster, recognizing all of it now. In the locker room, she found all six sinks, still in a line. Of course the toothbrushes were gone, and the lockers were scoured clean, without even a cashmere thread to indicate that Cynthia had installed an entire high-end wardrobe there.

“I was here.” Just knowing that the place existed felt like a giant Alix-has-not-in-fact-lost-her-shit kind of affirmation. 2.0 had lived here. They’d showered here. They’d skated here. They’d plotted here.

And now, even though she remembered being frightened and angry and lost and alone when she’d been trapped, Alix was suddenly struck by how disappointed she was that they were gone. Suddenly, absurdly, intensely, Alix wished that 2.0 had never released her.

When Alix had returned to Seitz after the kidnapping, Sophie had asked her what would have happened if 2.0 had kept her; Alix knew she was really asking, Would you have ended up chopped into a million little pieces? But now Alix wondered if the real danger was being trapped at Seitz.

Stifling her disappointment, Alix headed back to the open factory floor and scanned it one last time.