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I swallowed as I quickly decided how much to share, which was as little as possible. "Before I escaped, I overheard that they were starting a program to try to breed more AB types."
"The camps are filled with mostly Os," Icarus said. "If they're trying to make more ABs, they'll keep those offspring for the Troika's officials and give the synthetic blood to the lower level vampires."
Instead of blood type, vampires were judged based on the purity of their genetic line. The Troika's officials all came from the most pure vampire lines, while the rest of the vampire population came from lineages soiled by human blood.
"So the synthetic is for the plebs? Why make it at all?"
I nodded. "I heard Castor talking to his cabinet about some riots in the city over blood rationing. They're hoping the synthetic blood will mollify the plebeian vamps."
The Scribe scrubbed his hand over his face. "Which means they won't need the blood camps anymore."
"Right. The officials will still have their stables of High Bloods and the Troika will always need labor camps, but the humans in the blood camps will become ... obsolete."
"Shit," Dare breathed.
"It gets worse," I began. Now that I was knee-deep in this story, I realized how horrible the news I brought them actually was. It was one thing for me to hear the Troika discussing their plans in the plush rooms of the compound. It was something else entirely to share the information with humans who for all I knew might have relatives or friends in those camps. But considering one of the people I was telling the story to had a gun pointed at my head, I was pretty sure I couldn't just change my mind. "Once they had a synthetic blood, they had another problem to solve. Humans are dying rapidly in the camps, but there are still millions of people hooked up to bleeding machines that will be obsolete once they roll out the blood."
Dare cursed under her breath. The Scribe went white. And the mouth of Icarus's gun bit harder into my skin. Grimacing, I soldiered on. "That's when Castor had what he's calling his most brilliant plan to date. He called it 'The Factory.'"
As soon as the words left my mouth, the room fell dead silent. Even Polonius had frozen, like he sensed danger on the air.
"Where is it?" Icarus asked, his tone grave.
The Scribe twitched like he'd just been zapped by a thought. "So that's what it is," he breathed, almost to himself.
"What do you mean?" Dare demanded of the old man.
He shuffled away, his lips moving as he muttered to himself. "It's here somewhere." With gnarled hands, he began shuffling through stacks of paper on the large table. Icarus looked at Dare and she shrugged. Since he had the gun on me, she went to investigate.
"What are you looking for, Saga?" she asked in a patient, kind tone that told me she was well-used to the old man wandering off and speaking to people who weren't there.
"It was here." More shuffling. "I didn't know what it was. But then she-- Yes, hmm. Perhaps over here." He moved to the other end of the table and started going through another sheaf of papers. Whatever he was looking for, it was clear our conversation wouldn't continue until he'd completed his search. Awkward for me, considering the gun.
"Is the gun still necessary?" I asked conversationally.
Icarus's lips tightened into a frown. "Quiet."
Before I could react to that, The Scribe bellowed, "Aha! I knew it was here."
"What is it?" Dare asked, moving closer to inspect the paper in his hand.
"A few weeks ago, one of the patrols in sector four reported some building activity near the river. They brought me that drawing."
Dare frowned at the sheet as she walked over to share it with Icarus. I craned my neck to catch a glimpse, but before I could see more than what looked like a building with three chimneys, she jerked it away. "Well, it certainly looks like a factory," Dare offered.
"When Jeremiah brought it to me, I dismissed it," The Scribe said, "but when the girl told us about it I remembered a detail I'd found odd at the time." He pointed a hand to the paper. The land around the building was covered in a spider's web of parallel lines.
"Train tracks, probably," Icarus said. "So?"
"So the Troika have transportation rovers to handle large shipments of goods," Saga said. "Why suddenly use trains?"
I knew the answer, but I kept silent. Better to let them figure it out than to be blamed for the truth once it hit them.
"They'll have to make large batches of synthetic blood. Maybe trains can carry more--"
The Scribe shook his head. "That factory isn't producing synthetic blood."
Icarus frowned. "What do you mean? She said they built the factory to make synthetic blood."
