"You can't just force yourselves in here!"
Liam was angry.
"What do you mean? It's technically public land, right?"
Andrew snapped back quickly.
"Even if you guys found the place, anyone can enter and leave whenever they want."
"You have no real authority."
That one got to Leo, but he didn't do anything irrational.
The two Melanies and I decided not to make a scene and just let them in.
George, Leo, and Liam were angry at us for that, but they didn't know what else to do.
Andrew and Josh were both over six feet tall, so it's not like we could physically force them out.
Josh was fat, too, which didn't help.
Even though we didn't want to make a scene, a couple of giants walking into Factory 24 was enough to make everyone look up.
Then straight back down.
There were about forty kids at the factory.
Too many.
We told them they'd have to go outside until the high schoolers left, and none of them refused.
Faced with a wall, what other choice did they have?
Most of them went out through the garden door.
They were probably trying to listen through the wall.
"Does this mean we get our tour?"
Andrew sounded excited.
"Yeah, yeah..."
I waved him off.
"Great. I told you all they'd agree!"
"Shut the hell up!"
George wasn't having it.
Mel knew the place better than the rest of us, so she tried to give the tour, but she was scared and could barely speak.
"Th-this is the bookshelf area..."
"It has books... and... um... board games..."
She was so quiet, I doubted they could hear her.
"I'm sorry, miss, could you speak up a bit? I couldn't quite catch that!"
Josh was picking on her.
The other two laughed, but didn't say anything.
"Th-th-these are the bookshelves...!"
"Oh, nice! I get it now!"
"Over here is the main area...!"
"There are just a bunch of tables to hang out at here...!"
"In the back there's the basketball court and the projector for watching movies...!"
Good job, Mel.
"Wow. Fancy place you've got going."
"Where'd you get all the furniture, though?"
I answered that one.
"Most of it came from members' families giving away stuff they didn't need anymore."
"The projector too?"
I nodded.
"What's that door lead to? Doesn't look like the rest of them."
Axel asked that one.
Damn.
I'd been hoping they wouldn't ask about it.
"That's the office. It's where we hold most of our meetings. We also keep some papers in there."
"Nice. Let's check it out!"
"Fine..."
Might as well get it over with.
"Woah... what happened to the window?" Josh asked.
George answered before anyone else could.
"We had to break it to get into the factory."
"The adults don't know that, though."
George!?
Why would you tell them that?
Great.
Now they could use it against us.
If they told the adults, who knew what would happen.
Andrew started laughing.
"Haha! I can see the shock written all over your faces!"
"Huh!? What are you talking about!?"
George still hadn't realized his mistake.
"Don't worry. We won't involve any adults in this. This stays between us children... got it?"
He said that last part like a threat.
Like if we broke that rule, he'd come after us himself.
"Sure," Leo replied.
George was still confused.
———————————————————————
They started asking even more questions about the place.
The bathroom, for one.
The factory didn't have one.
There wasn't even any plumbing.
I'm guessing the workers used to have a porta-potty, but once the factory was abandoned, it got taken away.
So the boys usually do their business behind the factory.
The girls have to go home, though.
We actually did think about building a makeshift bathroom once.
But after reading about plumbing and what it would take to install one, we realized how difficult and expensive it would be.
Axel didn't seem impressed.
"The more of this place I see, the less I want to take it over."
"It seems like more work than it's worth."
He wasn't wrong.
This place is ragged.
We haven't had any new members in a while, and now our class system has basically gone back to equality outside of the founders.
So no one but the founders really cleans the place.
I miss when we had newer kids to make clean.
Andrew still had energy.
"Come on, Axel, don't be like that! At least do it for fun!"
That's not scary.
Not scary at all...
This guy wasn't even doing it because he wanted the place.
He was doing it because he was bored.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Andrew!?"
Liam was pissed by this point.
The longer the tour went on, the angrier he got.
"Why can't you just leave us alone!?"
"You don't even care about the fucking place!"
"Go find someone else to harass!"
Andrew laughed again.
"Oh, chill out, little brother! It's just a game!"
"You really think this factory is that important?"
"Just get the fuck out...!" Liam snapped.
"You've seen everything at this point, so just leave."
Josh cut in.
"Hm... I don't know."
"I haven't really gotten a feel for the place yet, you know?"
Then he looked at one of the girls.
"Hey, little miss, what's your name?"
I didn't like where this was going, but I couldn't stop it.
Mel paused for a few seconds before answering.
"M-Melanie..."
She said it so quietly I could barely hear her.
"Melanie? Odd name."
"How about you come to my place tonight?"
What.
The.
Fuck.
A sophomore in high school had just hit on a seventh grader.
Yeah.
I was going to kill him.
George beat me to it.
The second he heard that, he started swinging.
But nothing landed.
Andrew was there in a second.
He grabbed both of George's wrists and stopped him cold.
He did it so calmly, like he'd done it a thousand times before.
It almost seemed playful.
Like he wanted George to keep going.
"Fired up, huh?"
"Are you fucking kidding me!? You're defending this creep!?" George yelled.
Josh just laughed.
Then Andrew joined in.
Axel stayed indifferent.
"Alright, I think we've had our fun," Andrew said.
"What do you say we get out of this shithole?"
"Yeah, let's," Josh said.
Then they left.
We were so stunned by what had just happened that we just let them go.
When the members noticed the high schoolers leaving, they all started coming back inside and immediately asked us what had happened.
We didn't know what to tell them.
So we went back into the office to figure it out.
"We have to make this public."
Leo was the first to speak after about five minutes of silence.
"Public?" Melanie asked.
"Yeah. We need to tell Factory 24."
"I agree," I said.
"Now that they know something is up, their trust is going to drop if we don't tell them anything."
"We'll gather everyone three days from now. Wednesday."
Everyone agreed to the plan.
Then we all started doing our own thing again.
I didn't have much to do, so I just stood there and watched everyone work.
George most of all.
He kept going with his flag idea.
He found some of the more artistic kids and had them start sketching it out.
They kept asking if it had something to do with the high schoolers, but he dodged the question well.
I could've tried to stop him from making the flag.
But at that point, it felt too important.
Like we really were about to wage war with another country.
We needed people to know who we were.
We needed a symbol.
When I saw the finished sketch, it looked exactly like the one from my memory.
Nothing was different.
A giant 24 in the center.
The bottom of the 2 extended beneath the 4.
A bright gold crown sat on top of the numbers, barely fitting.
The only reason it didn't fall off visually was because of the flat side of the 4.
And in the middle of the crown was a clean red jewel.
It hurt.
Watching them make it.
My memory was lining up with reality again.
But...
As long as I didn't become the leader.
The king.
The king of Factory 24.
I couldn't let my present become my past.
I would beat the high schoolers on equal terms with everyone else.
I am above nobody.
I am below nobody.
After George gave the final okay on the design, he started working with them on how to mass-produce it.
They'd bring in a bunch of old bedsheets, cut them into flags, and paint each one by hand.
At that point, the members were really curious about what was going on, but none of them pushed George any further.
———————————————————————
What a full day.
So many things happened.
From the mall to the factory...
Too much development in too little time.
The high schoolers know what Factory 24 looks like now.
They know more about the founders than they should.
Andrew is treating this like a game.
Josh is a creep and a problem.
Axel acts like he has no real stake in any of it, but he knows exactly how to push people's buttons.
Fifteen members is believable.
Fifty would've been possible, but now it feels less likely.
Still, we can't be sure Andrew told the truth.
The high schoolers stepping inside the factory changed something.
Not physically.
Mentally.
It doesn't feel like ours in quite the same way anymore.
And with the flag being made, it feels even more like both sides are preparing for something bigger.
Something neither side is going to back down from once it starts.