///
Beck didn't respond to that at all, but Jess knew he'd scored the point. He waited until the last of Beck's entourage disappeared out the workshop door, then slammed it and shut the bolt from inside before he turned back to Thomas.
Thomas stopped picking up the shattered pieces to look at him, and slowly, very slowly, a grin the likes of which Jess had never seen spread across his friend's face.
"So," he said. "That was glorious."
"It was." Jess didn't want to spoil the moment, which had a kind of demented joy, but he also had to know. "Why did you attack him?"
Thomas's smile dimmed to a curl at the corners of his mouth. "If I hadn't played the German berserker, he'd have done it. It was a good strategy: hobble you, cripple the rest one by one, and we're not likely to be able to flee, even if we've worked out how. Now he knows I'm half-mad, and he thinks he needs me. He will be more careful."
It was part of the truth, Jess thought. Not all. He studied his friend a moment before he said, "Thank you."
Thomas's fingers were restlessly exploring the metal parts in his hands, and he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "You are my best friend," he said. "And I will always fight for you."
As simple as that. Jess's throat closed up, as if Thomas's hand had taken hold, but it was only a rush of gratitude that left him weak.
"Check to make sure we have everything," Thomas said. "All the parts of the Ray. They'll be waiting for us." He was still picking up parts and gears, and Jess didn't really understand why.
"You're not seriously going to make them another press, are you?" he said. Thomas raised his brows and opened the forge. He dumped the entire bucket of metal parts and pieces inside and slammed the forge closed again. It would take only a few minutes to reduce all their work to a metal sludge.
"Absolutely not," he said. "Let's go."
Despite his dislike for digging, Jess was very glad he'd made the effort as they wormed through the newly excavated tunnel under the back wall and out into the rapidly darkening afternoon. The guards were still watching the closed, locked workshop door.
A single drop of rain hit his face as he scrambled out. He couldn't judge the time accurately now.
But it was definitely time to go.
Wolfe, Santi, and Morgan were no longer in the prison. It was deserted-except for the dead bodies of two guards, lying in the bunks that Wolfe and Santi had occupied. They'd been covered up to look like they were sleeping.
Jess remembered what the men had said, in the dim early morning. No going back. They'd meant it.
"Where are we to meet them, then?" Thomas asked.
"Didn't Wolfe tell you?"
"Only to stay with you. Which I will."
"Good. I'd hate to think I was on my own right now," Jess said. He took one last look at the prison, all the cell doors opened. If all the world's a lock, be a key. His father had been right. "We're to head for the grain storage across the fields, far side of city hall. And we'd best do it quickly and quietly."
They were halfway across the park when the rain hit in earnest, and it went from fat, cold drops to a heavy, silvery curtain in moments. The storm was all to the good now, though Jess could see people out moving in the rain. Running here and there. No one could see well enough to recognize them and sound an alarm.
And then he realized that the people were coming out of their houses and buildings. That they were not running for shelter, as would be sensible. The people of Philadelphia were pouring out of the buildings, into the streets, and they all seemed to be heading toward city hall . . . the very place Jess and Thomas, also, had to go.
The rain soaked Jess's clothes and hammered them close to his skin; the force of the drops was truly shocking, and overhead, lightning flashed in heavy, constant explosions. Thunder hit hard enough to echo in Jess's chest. This was very different from a London rain shower; it was violent, full of wind and fury, and the trees in the park-including the one half-burned by the last Library attack-were whipping their branches angrily, as if they intended to rip themselves from the ground and walk.
Thomas leaned close as they broke into a run to shout, "What is it? What's happening? Is this part of the plan?"
"I don't know!" Jess shouted back.
He was sickly certain that it wasn't.
The crowd grew thicker around them, condensing as they drew near city hall, and in the flash of lightning, Jess saw that it numbered in the hundreds now. Nearly all of the city, it seemed, had come out in this storm, which was the opposite of what they needed.