There were twelve cars holding all eighty high schoolers.
They were packed into them so tightly it was actually kind of impressive.
Some of them were just regular sedans that should've seated five people at most, and somehow they managed to cram fourteen inside. They used the trunk space, piled on top of each other, and generally ignored every law of comfort and common sense.
It was pretty interesting to watch.
Luckily, Andrew's car wasn't that crowded.
It was just him, Axel, Melanie, and me.
That made the ride a lot less miserable than it could've been.
At first, no one really said anything. The engine filled up most of the silence, and the streetlights outside kept flashing across the windows as we drove. I was still trying to process the fact that I was in Andrew's car at all.
Then something hit me.
"What happened to Josh?" I asked. "Wasn't he part of your inner circle?"
Andrew didn't answer immediately.
"Josh? Hmm..." He looked over at Axel. "What did happen to him? Why don't you tell him, Axel."
Axel sighed like he didn't want to be the one stuck with the job.
"After the attack, he ran away to Salt Lake, raped a girl, and got put in jail," he said flatly. "Unless you read the newspaper, there's no other way you were going to find out. The town covered it up as best they could."
Holy shit.
"Holy shit," Melanie and I said at the exact same time.
"Yeah," Andrew said. "So let's not talk about him anymore."
No problem there.
But then my mind jumped somewhere else.
What should I tell Mel?
I knew she'd feel better if she found out Josh was gone for good, but there was no way I was telling her why. Not that. Never that. She didn't need that in her head too.
The rest of the car ride was quiet.
No one really had anything else to say before we got there.
When we pulled up to Factory 24, there were already a few high schoolers keeping watch at the front gate. The second they noticed Andrew's car, though, they slipped back inside.
That was expected.
Only Andrew's car had come up to the front on purpose. We wanted to look as small and harmless as possible. Four people walking up to the gate looked a lot less threatening than eighty.
We got out and walked up to the entrance.
Then we waited.
One minute passed.
Then two.
Then five.
No one came out.
They were hunkering down inside.
Did they know how big Andrew's group had gotten?
No way.
"Damn it," Andrew muttered. "They want us to walk right into their trap."
"Yeah," I said. "I figured."
He looked over at me.
"Then what?"
"Let's do it."
"Huh?"
"You've got your whole group on a call right now, don't you? If we run into trouble inside, you call them in."
Andrew thought about it for maybe half a second.
Then he grinned.
"Hm. Good plan. Let's go in."
So we did.
We walked straight through the half-working front door and into Factory 24.
And there they were.
Waiting for us.
Thomas's group had bats, poles, and whatever else they could grab in their hands like we were about to charge at them.
Andrew perked up in a playful way.
"Woah there! I just came to talk with you guys. No need to get physical now!"
Liam snapped back immediately.
"Shut the hell up, Andrew. This all started because of you!"
"Aww... is that how you speak to your big bro?"
"Fuck you."
Andrew laughed.
"Funnily enough, I just said those exact two words to ■■■■■■ here not too long ago. And now look at us. Best buddies. Right, ■■■■■■?"
"Yeah. Sure. Whatever floats your boat, Andrew."
Liam and Andrew kept bickering for a few more lines, but then Thomas finally stepped in.
"The hell are you doing here, Andrew? Why would you team up with this loser of a Monarch to get the factory? There's only four of you here. We outnumber you four times over."
"Indeed you do," Andrew said. "Don't worry. I'm not here to fight. I'm just here to take the factory."
Thomas frowned.
"The fuck are you talking about? You're going to have to go through us if you want the factory."
Thomas really didn't understand what he'd signed himself up for.
From the outside, he actually seemed like a decent leader. Calm. Controlled. Reasonable.
But I could tell the only reason he'd made it this far was because of Liam.
Without Liam, he was just another kid trying to sound bigger than he was.
So I decided to poke at him a little.
"Is that permission to lose the peace, Thomas?"
I asked that on purpose, because I remembered exactly what he'd said earlier.
We aren't like Andrew's gang. We want to keep things peaceful.
He smirked.
"Yes, of course. A fifteen against four is easy for us."
I smirked even bigger.
"But is it?"
Then I looked at Andrew.
"Do it now."
Andrew's face lit up.
"BOYS! IT'S TIME!"
Thomas lost his smile immediately.
"Oh no... they're doing something."
A few seconds later, we heard it.
Engines.
A lot of them.
They got louder and louder until it felt like we were right back inside the cars with them.
Then the engines stopped.
Doors opened.
Doors slammed.
And then the factory door opened wider than before.
They came flooding in.
It was endless.
High schoolers pouring into the building in one long stream, one after another, until it felt like the whole factory had been swallowed by them. The place wasn't even built to hold that many people comfortably, and yet there they all were, crowding the floor, the walls, every open stretch of space.
Before Thomas's group could react, they were surrounded.
Completely.
Thomas looked scared now.
Actually scared.
Liam too.
Neither of them had expected this.
"H-hey, guys..." Thomas stammered. "We're peaceful... we'll let you have the factory!"
I laughed harder than I had in a long, long time.
"What? You're going to back out now?" I said. "This is retribution, Thomas. Only one of us gets to rule Factory 24, and it's me."
I was ecstatic.
Maybe even a little high on the rush of it all.
"Fuck. Them. Up."
I wasn't the leader of Andrew's group.
But they still listened.
The fights broke out instantly, and every single one of them was one-sided. For every member of Thomas's group, there were five of Andrew's. It wasn't a fight. It was a beating.
A massacre.
The only ones they kept standing were Thomas and Liam.
Andrew wanted Liam.
I wanted Thomas.
After Andrew's gang beat the rest of Thomas's group to the floor, they cleared out a ring in the middle of the factory like we were about to put on a show.
And, I guess, we were.
I went for Thomas first.
After hearing the way he talked the last few hours, I already knew he didn't know how to fight. If he had, he would've used that a long time ago to get the factory instead of trying to act all "peaceful."
Truthfully, I didn't really know how to fight either.
But I did have one advantage.
My reaction time.
The doctors never said whether it had anything to do with the strokes, but it was abnormally fast. When Thomas threw a punch, I could see it coming way earlier than he could correct it. It made dodging easy.
All I had to do was wear him down.
Light punches. Quick hits. Nothing fancy. Just enough over time.
And after a few minutes of that, Thomas hit the ground.
I'd won.
Andrew's group cheered and clapped like they were watching some kind of boxing match.
But that wasn't the end of it.
There was still Andrew and Liam.
The brother-versus-brother match.
I'll admit, I was a little worried about Andrew at first. The punches he threw at me back in the karaoke room were awful. Slow, wide, and embarrassing.
But I had nothing to worry about.
The second he stepped into the ring with Liam, he locked in.
Maybe it was the adrenaline.
Maybe it was because this one actually mattered to him.
Maybe the alcohol left his system. Although I don't even know if any was there in the first place.
Either way, he overpowered Liam fast.
Liam had no real choice but to forfeit.
After the second round of cheering, something hit me.
Sarah.
Where the hell was Sarah?
"Hey, Liam!" I called. "You still awake in there!? Where the hell is Sarah?"
Melanie reacted at the same time.
"Oh shit. Where is she?"
"I'm over here."
I turned toward the voice, but there was so much movement and noise around me that it took a second to find her.
"Over here! By the office!"
"Oh, there you are!" I said. "Are you okay? They didn't do anything to you, right?"
"No, I'm fine. How did you manage to get a group this big?"
That was such a Sarah response.
No concern about the chaos.
No reaction to the beatings.
Straight to the method.
"Insider's secret."
She nodded once, like that gave her everything she needed.
"So the factory is yours again?"
"Nope."
"Eh?"
Melanie walked over before I could explain.
"This foolish brother of mine gave it to Andrew in exchange for defeating Thomas's group! Unbelievable!"
"Well, I'm sorry, miss smart sister of mine," I shot back, "but could you think of a better way to do it?"
"No," she snapped, "but now we have to deal with eighty kids instead of fifteen!"
She wasn't wrong.
I understood exactly where she was coming from.
But I had a plan.
And that was more than we'd had a couple hours ago.
I looked around at the factory.
At the bodies still groaning on the floor.
At Andrew's gang taking up every inch of space.
At the walls, the bookshelves, the tables, the court, the office, the same building we'd spent years fighting over like it was the center of the universe.
Now it was full of people who didn't build it, didn't grow it, didn't care about it the same way we did.
And somehow, I had just helped put them there.