Chapter 182: Taking on too Much

When Lisa found Wayne, he was standing nervously around the turn from the serum lab’s entrance. Wayne visibly relaxed once their eyes met. Seeing the armed guards still by the lab doors, Lisa signaled with her hands for him to follow her.

“We are leaving now. Let us hurry to the exit.” Lisa whispered.

“Are you talking about the hidden exit or the vent we came through?” Wayne asked with a twinge of worry in his voice.

“The hidden exit.” Lisa replied and seeing the disbelief appear in his eyes, clarified the situation before he could speak. “Look, they are convinced that we are apart of the gang and remember those two I knocked out are still in the room with the busted vent. If they see us, they will undoubtably remember our faces and cause trouble. Our best bet is going out the normal way.”

Wayne gulped nervously, “I hope you’re right.”

“Pfft, relax.” Lisa chuckled giving a small, much needed, grin. “We got this far, what could go wrong?”

“Isn’t that a ‘red flag’ saying?” Wayne asked, but it was too late.

Coming towards them was nonother than one of the three newly appointed overseers of this unground factory, Branch. Branch was one of the last people Lisa wanted to come across. He knew her face from watching the Match Fights with the triplets. If he recognized her than getting out of this underground factory in once piece would be nearly impossible for the both of them.

“Seriously?” Lisa seethed.

As Lisa and Wayne drifted to one side of the metal hallway, Lisa tried to lower her Yankee’s hat as low as she could to cover her face. Branch was carrying a mismatched stack of papers and folders under his arm and seemed to be more focused on the cigar in his grubby looking hands. Though he was someone that Lisa was now warry of, she couldn’t help but look at this hippy dressed man and wonder at how such a nerdy and flowery person had ended up in a position of power in a gang.

Suddenly, without warning, a door just ahead of Branch shot open and smacked right into Branch’s face! Papers and folder flew about in every direction and across the floor. The clueless man that had opened the door, peered around the doors edge to see what he had hit.

Branch stood frozen in place, not because of the sudden collision or that he had dropped his documents, but that the cigar in his hand was smashed and the burning end was almost completely put out. Almost comically slow, Branch looked between the smoldering, ruined cigar, and the gangster and then back to the cigar.

“Man, are you serious right now?” Branch droned with a rhetorical voice. “That was some quality imported stuff. We can’t even make this here. What are you going to do about this?”

The gangster that opened the door seemed to visibly relax seeing that it was just this lackadaisical hippy and not someone tougher looking. “My bad, uh, sir.” The gangster responded nonchalantly. “I was in a hurry and forgot to look through the window. Here, let me pick this up.”

The gangster bent down to start picking up the papers and Branch shuffled back a step to look down at the man dumbly. Lisa and Wayne were at this point still trying to pass by unnoticed but despite the high look on Branch’s face, he was well aware of their presence.

“Hey, you two.” Branch muttered as he pointed the ruined cigar butt at them. “Help pick this up too.”

“Sorry, but we got to be somewhere.” Lisa replied softly and keeping her head down.

“What’s the rush girly?” Branch replied drifting lazily into their way. He then leaned in closer and attempted to look under Lisa’s hat brim by cocking his head dramatically to one side. Lisa could smell the foul smoky breath coming from him. Peering up from his orange tinted glasses Branch continued speaking, “You guys don’t want to go against my orders. I might not look like much, but Martinez won’t tolerate insubordinates.”

“How annoying.” Lisa groaned to herself. “This guy is clearly under the influence, but he’s not completely wasted yet. Also, I got the feeling that this guy is more than meets the eye. Though his appearance is stupid and lazy, a lazy man would not have as muscular of a body as this. I need to be cautious of him.”

Lisa quickly dropped down onto one knee before Branch could get a good look at her and started picking up a few papers near her. Wayne did likewise. There were only a few papers left when Lisa noticed something written on the first paper she had picked up.

“Raw Material purchasing locations. Note: needed for the creation of Inducement Serum XXI.”

Seeing this, Lisa knew she needed to be quick and commit the list of locations listed below to memory. Branch was still standing above the three of them and she couldn’t afford to become anymore suspicious than she already seemed.

“Moab City, Glass Works Inc. (Owner: Max Malls) Needles, glass vaccine vials and packaging materials.”

“Moab City, Neko-munda Narcotics (Owner: Spindle). Materials: Thiomersal, Gelatine, Succinic acid, and Potassium Phosphate based Salt.”

Though these words meant little to her, Lisa recognized some of these as parts of a vaccine’s fluids composition and what is being used in their creation process. It seemed to her that these gangsters were building the vaccines themselves rather than buying them. It seemed odd that that one machine she had seen earlier could be capable of making vaccines for the serum. There had to be more to this factory than she had seen so far. Then she continued skimming the rest of the list.

“Moab City, Silver Block and Associates. (Owner: Undisclosed). Materials: Antibiotics, GMOs, Twisted animal cell stains, HEK-584 Cell Line, Formaldehyde and Glutaraldehyde.”

“Twisted cells?” Lisa thought as her interest peeked even further. “Are Inducements derived from Twisted? I thought they were a freak mutation that had messed up animals exposed to nuclear radiation.” Then thinking back to some of her opponents and how they had their bodies change dramatically during battle this guess didn’t seem too far off.

“Shadow of the Sky Island, (Owner: Sun People) Materials: Raw fluids and processed organs. Particularly, the blood from…”

“What are you doing?” Branch asked as he ripped the paper out from her grip. “I told you to pick them up not read them.”

“Sorry.” Lisa muttered and gathered a few more papers at her feet and lifted them up to him.

Branch snatched them from her. “Hmpf, you don’t seem to be all that useful for a red banded member. What are you doing here anyway?”

“We were just delivering a few reports from the compound.” Lisa lied casually as she stood back up. Lisa still kept her hat’s brim lowered and this seemed to further frustrate Branch.

“If you say so.” Branch replied narrowing his eyes at her. “How come I haven’t seen you there before? You do look kind of familiar though.”

“I’m usually on patrol in the town.” Lisa replied calmly maintaining her composure. “Perhaps you’ve seen me walking by or in the distance.”

“Are you sure? Let me see you face. A woman your size is not normal.” Branch said reaching up to grab at her hat.

“Ya, speaking of which.” Wayne butted in just in time and Branch stopped reaching for the hat. “W-we need to get back before dark and check on the market area on the way back. We should probably go now.”

“Fine. Go on.” Branch sighed waving his simmering cigar at them. “The night is getting closer, and I need to relax some. Though without my cigar here, its not going to be easy.”

“I’ll be going too.” The other gangster replied as he turned on his heel to leave.

As Lisa and Wayne hurriedly left, they could hear Branch calling back the gangster. Though what went on or what might have been said was not their concern and they rounded the next turn to go for the hidden exit. Lisa nudged Wayne and gave him an excited thumbs up. They were finally about to get out without getting caught!

…

“I can’t believe you messed up my cigar like that.” Branch said with a lazy tone.

“I said sorry already.” The gangster answered while turning with a smirk to give a shrug. “What else can I do?”

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it. You need to pay some other way.” Branch said as his laidback voice suddenly hardened, and he took a step closer to the gangster.

Not noticing the change in Branch’s tone, the gangster chuckled. “What are you planning on doing with me? I know you’re a boss now, but you are not someone I can just give my respect too. Not with those stupid clothes.”

Branch moved like a snake striking a mouse. He landed a karate chop to the gangster’s neck, causing the gangster to slump forward. Branch then proceeded to kick out one of the man’s knees from behind and he crumpled all the way to the floor. Branch then grabbed the man by the hair and yanked his head back to expose his stunned face. Branch buried the hot, charred end of his cigar right between the gangster’s eyes!

“Graaa!” The gangster yelled.

A quick punch in the cheek silenced him and before the gangster could recover, Branch grabbed the man by the throat and leaned close to the gangster’s ear. Branch’s voice was practically shaking with rage, “Let me be clear. You will not disrespect me again.”

Then without warning Branch violently tossed the man’s head into the metal wall, knocking him out cold. Looking down at the still and battered gangster, Branch pushed back his disheveled long brown hair out from under his orange tinted glasses and sighed heavily to calm himself. Branch then picked up his papers and files, stepped over the unconscious body, and proceeded to his office all while returning to his normal laidback hipster expression.

…

When Lisa and Wayne were let out of the underground factory, they quickly made their way over the golf course fence and hurried across the open desert scrublands back to the town. They didn’t stop running until they reached the foot of the hill going up to the Powerhouse building.

“Now that was fun!” Lisa cheered. “We learned so much stuff, but now comes the hard part.”

“Breaking into that place was the fun part?” Wayne sighed with exhaustion. “What are we doing next?”

“I’m going to tell everyone once we are inside.” Lisa replied.

Twenty minutes later, Lisa had gathered everyone into the lower level of the Powerhouse building and they were now seated around the white plastic table. Everyone was anxious to know what had happened, but Lisa calmed them down and explained everything that they had witnessed. Save for the information she had read on Branch’s paper. That was going to be something only she needed to know.

“Now, after hearing everything we discovered, here is our next move.” Lisa announced. Everyone leaned forward expectantly. “We are going to breakout every single worker in that factory in two days and bring them back here. They can’t be left in there any longer.”

“What? You want to bring more people here!” Sadie asked breaking the silence that had fallen on the room. “You already have your hands full with the MFA, getting this entire dam working, cleaning out the storage units, working with the ERM, getting us food, all your plans to take over the Mad Dogs, all the deals you’ve been making with the townspeople, and everything that’s going on with Hanna too. You are taking on too much!”

“Yep, I am, and I know I can do it!” Lisa replied. “Besides, we need them for two reasons. One, if we are going to be providing for this town, we need more help than the few people we have now. Mr. Seller will be back any day now with the building supplies I ordered from him and we need to be ready to work. Two, I need a surefire way to get Martinez to challenge me soon, taking over the Mad Dogs is taking too long. Helping to free those, basically slaves, from him will be the right way to get the ball rolling!”