by Amie Kaufman
Sean stares down into the bottom of the currach, voice hushed in horror. “Flynn Cormac, you never did. McBride is going to throw a party and use her head for a punch bowl.”
“This is an opportunity, Sean. If the military will ever trade for anyone, it will be her. If we play this right, we could exchange her for medical supplies, perhaps some of our people they’ve got in their cells—maybe even leverage for the planetary review in a few months.”
“Or she could tell everybody who you are, and what you look like, and where to come calling if they feel the urge to visit.”
“She doesn’t know.” I let myself grin. “Fair to say she didn’t exactly volunteer to help steer the currach home. She saw nothing, and we can make it that way when she leaves.”
“You’ve got to be joking. That’s Lee Chase, Flynn. We can’t let her go back. You think she can’t tell them plenty about you?”
“What, you think I let her scan my genetag?” I cut in over him. “I didn’t tell her my name.”
“They’ll never trade for her. They don’t trade. McBride would say asking will make us look weak.”
Weak. Why is it weakness to want to talk before I kill someone? “McBride won’t know.”
“You seriously think there’s a chance they’ll listen to us?”
“I seriously think we’re going to ask them. Now help me get her somewhere out of sight, before she wakes up.”
We muscle her out of the bottom of the currach together, draping my jacket around her shoulders to hide her uniform. I thought she’d be stirring by now, but whatever dropped her out in the swamp hit her even harder than the fumes from my gas can did. As we navigate the corridors toward the disused caverns below, I keep having to catch her head before it can loll against the stone walls.
Sean huffs softly, shaking his head at me for taking the trouble. This is the guy who has a collection of photos tacked up on the stone wall next to his hammock, women from brightly lit worlds laughing and smiling and pouting for the camera. Wives or girlfriends or lovers, I suppose. Pictures he takes off the bodies of the soldiers and pins up as morbid trophies. This is what the fight does to people. To someone like Sean, who devotes his time to teaching our children, but can’t bring himself to see the soldiers as human.
There are a number of caverns at the bottom of our network of tunnels that we don’t use anymore. Too damp for living space, and there are far fewer Fianna now than there were during my sister’s time. Sean binds the trodaire while I keep watch at the door, scanning the empty passageway, waiting for someone to round the corner and discover us. He’s tying her down, looping the rope tightly through a post drilled into the stone that was once used to stabilize shelving. At one time this had been a storeroom for weaponry. “You really think there’s any chance this works out at all?” he asks, finishing off a knot and stepping back to inspect his work.
I can hear the doubt in his voice, and the long, exhausting night I’ve had crowds in on me all at once. I need a moment’s respite. I need Sean, of all people, on my side. “Lecture me later,” I say, as pain pulses through my leg again. “I need a little first aid before I can take any more.”
Sean’s initial alarm fades when I unwrap my makeshift bandage to reveal the miniature stab wound in my leg. Leaning close to inspect it, he frowns and asks, “What is that?”
I lean against the wall, taking the pressure off my leg. “A cocktail garnish,” I mutter.
Sean’s head jerks up so he can look at me—my expression prompts a burst of laughter as he realizes who’s responsible for the plastic sword in my thigh. The bands of tension around my chest ease a fraction. Sean leaves me there as he goes off in search of a pair of pliers; no sense risking anyone else discovering Lee Chase nearly bested me with a cocktail sword. By the time he comes back, Sean’s still grinning.
“You’ve had worse luck with girls,” he points out, widening the rip in my pants leg so he can get at the plastic with the pliers. “Remember that time you tried to sweet-talk Mhairi and she laughed at you?”
I wince as he loses his grip on the remnants of the cocktail sword. “I was thirteen, shut up.”
“Or Aoife? Or Alejandra?”
“What are you talking about? Alejandra and I—”
“Poor girl felt sorry for you.” He huffs, pulling the thing free and holding it up for us both to take a look at it. It’s annoyingly small, the hot pink still visible beneath the darker red of my blood. He starts laughing again and grabs at the wall beside him for support. “No wonder you were able to capture her, if this is all she had to work with.”
“Just bandage it up, Sean, before I start listing your romantic failures. We’ll be here all day.”
By the time he’s done, his smile has faded. The laughter couldn’t last forever, but it was enough of a rest to let me breathe a little easier. Sean’s my pressure valve, my best friend as well as my cousin, but he’s as fierce a fighter as we’ve got. We lean against the rocky wall for a little, side by side, eyes on the unconscious soldier tied up near the far side of the cave.
“What the hell, man?” Sean breaks the silence, his voice quiet. “What were you even doing on their base?”
I hesitate. If I tell Sean about the facility I saw, he’ll insist we send scouts, and how can I tell him there’s nothing there anymore? “I got itchy, I was scouting. Things are getting tense, and I wanted to know what’s in the wind.”
He groans, tipping his head back to let it smack gently against the stone wall. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I know you know what happens if you of all people get caught. McBride’s just waiting for the chance to move while you’re off following a hunch. He nearly did tonight, without you there to speak against it. Where does the trodaire come into this?”
“She spotted me. I spotted an opportunity.”
“To bring her to our home? To risk discovery?”
“She has information we need, and think what we could trade her for.” I grit my teeth. “You think I should’ve killed her?”
“Yes,” he replies, exasperated. “Yes, I think you should have killed her.”
“And set them panicking about an assassination on their own base?” I can hear the snap in my voice and I swallow it down, carefully even out my tone. The idea comes so easily to Sean, one of the best, gentlest guys I know. Maybe it seems natural to him because it is natural. Maybe I’m as mad as McBride thinks I am, trying to settle a decade-old conflict with words.
Or maybe Sean’s good nature, the sweetness in him that’s been there since we were children, is fading. Maybe it’s one more casualty of this war.
The image of the secret compound is right there when I close my eyes—a wire fence, a small collection of prefab buildings built into the gentle slope of the island. I want to tell him I saw it. I want to tell him I went back and it was gone. But it’ll only convince him I’m losing my mind. He’s my greatest ally—my closest friend. I can’t afford to alienate him.
Sean sighs, eyeing the trodaire again. “What are we going to do about your girlfriend?”
“I’m going to get Martha to send word to the base. Lee Chase is valuable to them; they’ll trade for her. It’ll show McBride that my way gets results too, without bloodshed.”
“And if they refuse to trade?” Sean raises an eyebrow.
I square my jaw. “I don’t want her killed.”
“You’re too soft, cousin. If you were their prisoner, she’d never spare your life.”
“I know.” Even now, the words stab at my heart. We’re both thinking of Orla. “But if we kill her, that’s it for the ceasefire. They’ll come for us like they never have before, and we wouldn’t survive that kind of assault.”
“You wouldn’t make that argument with McBride, I bet.”
“Tell McBride he’s not strong enough to beat someone in a fight, first thing he does is find a way to justify punching them in the face.” I kick at a loose pebble, hearing it ricochet off the opposite wall of the cave. “He’d find a way
to make it about me and how I’m afraid to fight.”
Sean hesitates. “You could lead us,” he says finally. “If it came to a fight. You could—”
I don’t find out what he might have said next. Fergal’s voice echoes down the corridor. “Uncle Sean, I need you to tuck me in.” He must have followed us.
Sean curses, leaping to his feet and leaving the cave and its unconscious occupant. “I don’t want him or the other kids to know about this,” he mutters. “You want to keep it hidden, fine. Just don’t let anyone find her, because then it’s going to get noisy.”
Though unspoken, I recognize what he’s saying: he’ll trust me. For now. “Sean—thanks.” We share a beat of silence, and then Sean heads back up the passageway to collect Fergal.
I retrieve the lantern, hoping darkness will make it harder for the trodaire to work out an escape when she wakes, and hurry away before anyone realizes we’re down here. The relief at having Sean’s support is short-lived; I know it won’t last. One of these days even Sean will run out of patience. Already I feel us drifting, sense it in the silences between us. But whenever that day’s coming, it’s not today. For now, I know he’ll follow me, because I asked him to.
I just wish I knew where I was leading him.
The girl is under the counter in her mother’s store, her reading punctuated at random intervals by the door chime as customers come and go. She’s reading about deep-sea divers in an ancient submarine. There are no oceans on Verona, but the girl is going to grow up and be an explorer.
“Jubilee,” the girl’s mother calls. “Where are you? Come help me, we’re going to make dumplings to sell.”
The girl holds her breath. Sea monsters are more exciting than dumplings, especially since the dumplings are always accompanied by a lecture about preserving her heritage. Maybe her mother won’t look for her here.
“Relax, Mei.” That’s her father; she didn’t know he’d come home. “She’ll come around. As I recall, you spent our whole first date complaining that your dad was making you learn calligraphy. Let her just be a kid—there’s plenty of time.”
The girl shuts her eyes. No—this is all wrong. Wake up…wake UP.
I KNOW BEFORE I OPEN my eyes that I’m in trouble. I can smell mildew and decay, and I’m so cold I could cry. It’s pitch-black, wherever I am, and the surface underneath me is hard and damp. Stone. I’m half propped up on my knees, but when I try to sit up I go crashing toward the ground. My arms nearly jerk out of their sockets and I’m caught a few inches away from hitting the floor. Pain lances through my shoulders, making my eyes water. My gasp echoes aloud in the room, rattling through my parched throat.
My wrists are bound together behind my back. I follow the rope with my fingers to find it tied through a metal post drilled into the rough-hewn floor. The rope is short enough and tied high enough that I can’t lie down without it pulling my arms painfully upward. I can’t stand, can’t even sit properly. Whoever did this knows exactly how uncomfortable this must be.
The memory of a pretty face flashes in front of my eyes. Romeo. After that entire ill-fated journey through the swamp, I still don’t know the bastard’s name. And I’m probably not likely to, at this rate. Somewhere out there is a rebel with a limp, probably getting two inches of hot-pink plastic pulled out of his thigh as we speak. Either they’ve left me here to die on my own of dehydration, or they’re going to try to get information or resources out of the military in exchange for my life.
But we don’t make deals with rebels. And that means I’m going to die. I can’t help but think of my platoon, and how they’ll manage without me. I know each of them like I know myself. I watch them every day, I keep track of their dreams, I monitor how each of them is coping, living this close to the ragged edge. This close to the Fury. I can tell when one of them is about to snap, when they’re done here and need reassignment off Avon before they hurt someone. Who will watch over them when I’m dead?
In the darkness, my mind conjures up the image of what I saw out in the swamp. A flash of what Romeo claimed he saw: a facility where there shouldn’t be one, high fences and spotlights and guards. It’s impossible for something to be there one moment and gone the next—far more likely I was hallucinating, experiencing some early side effect of whatever drug Romeo used to knock me out.
Though that doesn’t explain the thing I found, the thing in my boot that I can’t get to now, with my hands tied.
I twist a little until I can get the sole of one of my boots against the post embedded in the floor. Wrapping my hands around the rope to take the pressure off my wrist joints, I pull as hard as I can, straining and trying to feel for the slightest give in the rope.
No dice. It was a long shot anyway.
I let go, taking a few seconds to find my breath again. I can sense no trace of whatever drug he used to knock me out on that island. The whispering sound is gone, and except for a few cold-induced tremors, my body’s under control again. No more shaking. No more metallic taste in my mouth.
If the ropes won’t give, maybe the stone will. They’re not exactly high-tech out here—maybe the hole they drilled isn’t perfect. I brace myself the best I can without any slack in the rope and kick back, pounding at the stake with the sole of my boot.
Nothing.
I stay there, panting, grimacing at the floor. I’ll have to wait until they move me. Which they’ll have to do eventually, no matter what. They could just shoot me here, but it’s much easier to move a body by making it get up and walk somewhere than it is to carry it.
Then again, one of them was wandering around asking questions in a military bar like it was a good idea. They’re not exactly the smartest rebels ever.
Gritting my teeth, I get to work on the post again. It has to give. Each blow travels up my leg and makes my jaw ache. But better a little ache now than to be stuck here for a week, dying of thirst. I can taste my own fear, sour like bile at the back of my throat.
No. Captain Chase is never afraid.
“It’s hammered down pretty hard.” An amused voice comes from the shadows, making my heart lurch in fear. But a moment later, I recognize it—and in the darkness, any familiar voice is a welcome change from silence.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” I manage, trying not to pant too audibly as I search the shadows for Romeo.
He unshields a lantern, sending a sliver of light slicing through the gloom. I’m tied to a post in the middle of a cave, its only feature a long tunnel behind Romeo, leading into the shadows. The lamp is burning, not battery-powered. I watch the flame until my eyes water, a tiny part of me glad that at least I’m not going to be killed in the dark.
I didn’t expect to see him again, that’s for sure. He didn’t strike me as the type to do what he’s no doubt come here to do. And yet, here he is. Maybe there’s more to Romeo than I thought.
He steps forward. “Are you going to kick me if I come in close enough to give you some water?” In his other hand he’s holding a canteen.
My vision is still wavering, my head still ringing, and my mouth tastes like swamp mud. “That depends,” I say through gritted teeth. “Are you planning on drugging me again?”
“I didn’t drug you then, and I’m not going to now.” Romeo takes another step forward, and I can’t help it—I move backward, the rope rasping across the stone like snakeskin. “And I could clean that graze for you if you let me. I didn’t realize how bad it was when we were on the water.”
I glance down to see what looks like ink in the lantern light staining the side of my T-shirt. Our struggle in the mud outside Molly’s comes flooding back to me, and with memory comes the awareness of pain, flickering up through me like a tiny fire.
He starts to move forward again, and this time I’m snapping back before I have time to think. “You can stay right where you are.”
My fingers clench around the ropes binding my hands. It’s not like I can do anything to him if he comes. Maybe I could sweep his legs from und
er him, but it wouldn’t be enough to take him out, and even if it was—what then?
But he stops anyway, watching me in silence. After a while he slings the strap of the canteen over his shoulder and crosses his arms. “How’re you feeling?” His smile is insulting.
You dragged me out of my bar, shot me, forced me to breathe chemical fumes, took me into the middle of nowhere, drugged me, then tied me to a post in an underground cave. How do you think I’m feeling?
But I’ll tear my own arms off trying to get free before I’ll give him the satisfaction of an honest reply. I smile back at him, giving it every ounce of malice I can summon. “Just peachy, Romeo. How’s your leg?”
His smile vanishes, and I see the subtle shift of his weight from one foot to the other. I wonder who pulled the hot-pink plastic out of his leg, and if they gave him a hard time for it.
“It’s the least of my problems.”
“Your problems? Romeo, you shouldn’t have brought me home if you didn’t think Mom and Dad would like me.”
“I’ll know better next time.” He tips his head to one side. “Sure you don’t want some water?” He jiggles the canteen so the water sloshes audibly. My mouth suddenly feels like it’s wallpapered with sand.
I want to tell him to go to hell. I want to tell him to get iced. I want to punch that perfect jaw until the smug assurance falls off.
But I want the water more.
I swallow, trying to ignore how dry my throat feels. “You drink first.” Not that that helped me before.
He rolls his eyes, like it’s unreasonable for me to mistrust him. He unscrews the canteen and puts it to his mouth.
I was expecting him to take a sip. Instead he gulps it down with a noisy glug glug of water. When he finally lowers it, he makes a show of squinting into the mouth of the canteen. “Oh, shoot, most of it’s gone now. You want what’s left?”
