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moved cautiously along the wall, which sloped increasingly to her left as she went, as if the whole structure had a slight twist to it. She whispered a call for Stench Machine, which she knew was useless even while she was doing it. She found the source of the light, pouring up from an open doorway in the floor below her. The top of a ladder was visible, obviously having been propped up there for someone to go down into the sideways apartment without falling in and breaking their neck. Stench Machine was perched at the edge of the doorframe, peering down inside.
    Something grabbed the cat. In a blur, he disappeared into the opening below.
    Zoey ran to him, glancing back one more time to see if anything or anyone else had followed her into the building. She reached the open door, crouched, and peered into a lit chamber full of harsh shadows and debris. She yelled for the cat again, which again was stupid, because even if he responded he wasn’t going to climb a ladder (even if cats in general could climb ladders, she was pretty confident that hers couldn’t). So, she climbed down and found herself in a broken, sideways dining room. There were shattered windows on the floor, showing off a view that consisted of nothing but impacted mud and dead weeds. Furniture was tossed around the wall. Above her, to the right of the door she had just dropped through, was a sideways kitchenette with a bar. Two large, filthy Latino men used the bar as a bench, their muddy work boots dangling over the black marble countertop. Zoey turned and saw four more men standing behind her. One was holding a sledgehammer, another a pickaxe, another a regular axe. The fourth, a stocky man with Spanish words tattooed on his forearms, cradled Stench Machine in one hand and held an unlit blowtorch in the other. They all stood in silence for a moment, under the dim glare of a work lamp that lit the room like a medieval torture dungeon.
    The man who was holding her cat said, “You lost, Chica?”
    She was just so, so tired. She gave the ladder a look but she wouldn’t make it up two steps before they grabbed her. As if she could leave without Stench Machine anyway.
    Zoey sighed exhaustedly and said, “People are after me. I just need a place to hide. You guys got this … area here and that’s fine. It’s a big building, I’ll find another room. But that’s my cat. I’d like him back, please.”
    The stocky man said, “We can’t let you do that.”
    One of the other men said something to him in Spanish, and he answered in kind.
    Zoey said, “Just let me have the cat. Please.”
    â€œAnd then where you gonna go?”
    â€œSomewhere else. Please —”
    Her phone rang. Thinking that somehow this could be a rescue, she pulled it out. The hologram of Will Blackwater blinked to life once more, floating above the phone in the dim light of the room. Everyone around her reacted, and started bantering with each other in Spanish. The stocky man with Zoey’s cat let out a harsh laugh.
    Zoey hung up on the call.
    The stocky man looked her up and down.
    â€œYou’re not from around here, am I right?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAnd you got no place to stay? No friends, no family? That why you’re tryin’ to squat in a horizontal building?” Zoey didn’t answer. Instead she wiped tears from her face and thought about how much she just wanted to go lay down somewhere. So tired .
    He said, “Make you a deal. I’ll give you a ride wherever you want to go. Maybe even give you something to eat. But you got to do something for us, first.”
    Two of the men started talking to him in Spanish, talking over one another, insistent. The stocky man gestured with the blowtorch and said, “ Callate. ”
    He turned back to Zoey and said, “And you got to do it for all of us.”

 
    SEVEN
    Behind the sideways building was a row of mobile homes parked