Thad peered up at the high building walls through the slits on his mask. The spiderweb of cables was thickest here, giving the street something of an indoor feel. A structure across the street had been cannibalized, its materials used to buttress the Academy. The roof had been crenellated, and an enormous machine loomed in the center, hidden from a distance view by the cabling. Thad could only see the thing because he was under the same cables. It had a gun barrel the size of an oak tree. Other, smaller, machines were scattered around it. Automatons and spiders worked on them, adding pieces, cutting, welding, riveting. Through it all, the loudspeakers blared Mr. Griffin’s message of fatherly love and obedience, and more automatons worked in the streets. Many of them had strange-looking rifles, and groups of automatons were drilling with them, marching in perfect unison. All this in the few hours he had been anesthetized in Mr. Griffin’s lair. What would they accomplish in a week? Or a year?
