Inside the building, Eleanor moved more quickly. She tiptoed down a flight of well-lit stairs, seeking the shadows. She found them on a fragile looking catwalk of steel and wood, suspended high above the floor of the warehouse.

From her vantage point, the details of the work were not immediately apparent. She could see large bubbling vats that emanated an acrid stench, bathed in the glow of electrical lights. Two long work tables spanned the length of the warehouse. Each of these held metal parts, which workers were assembling into oversized rifles, far larger than a normal man could wield.

Around the perimeter of the work space, a group of automatons patrolled. As her father had told her, each of these was a mostly lifelike replica of one of the former Presidents of the United States. She could make...

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