There’s a dingy lantern hanging from a pole in the bow, casting a dim light over the water. We must be far enough from the base that Romeo feels safe using light. I strain my eyes, trying to get my bearings, but all I get are spots swimming in front of my vision. My soldiers sometimes claim they can see things out here, lights that seem to lead off into the swamp. The rebels call them will-o’-the-wisps, out of some fairy tale from ancient Earth. In all my time here, I’ve never seen anything but my own mind playing tricks on me—and, I suppose, the occasional rebel lantern bobbing through the marsh. But when you’re surrounded by nothingness, your eyes will create anything to keep you from feeling alone. I blink hard to clear the spots dancing in front of my eyes.
“Why do this instead of killing me on the base?” I say finally, twisting my wrists, trying to see how much give there is in the rope. Not much. It’s thick from repeated soakings, and stiff with age. “Are you planning some public execution?”
Romeo’s lips press together more tightly, but this time he keeps his eyes on the swamp ahead of us as he poles through the clumps of floating algae. “You really are insane.”
My mind is racing, taking stock of my injuries. My head aches from the gas fumes, sending spikes of nausea rippling through me, and my side hurts. But there doesn’t seem to be much blood, so he can’t have wounded me that badly. “I don’t see why it’s crazy to want to know exactly how you plan on murdering me.” I’m not done yet. All things considered, I’m in decent shape. I can still get out of this.
“I don’t plan on murdering you at all.” Romeo still won’t meet my eyes. “That might be your first instinct, but it’s not mine. You’re going to get me inside the facility you’ve been hiding from us and show me exactly what you’re doing in there.”
“My first instinct was to arrest you,” I snap. “You’re the one who brought a gun to my bar.” I keep staring behind us, but there’s no sign of the lights from the military base. “What facility?”
“The secret base to the east. It wasn’t there last week, and now there’s a full setup. Buildings, security fencing, the works. I’ve seen it, you don’t need to pretend. I want to know how you got it set up so fast, and without anybody knowing. I want to know what it’s for.”
My hands go still, my attempt to escape momentarily forgotten. “Secret base,” I echo, trying to quell the dread rising in my gut. It’s one thing to be captured by a rebel. It’s another to be taken into the swamp by a delusional madman.
“Act as surprised as you want,” he replies with a shrug. “But you’re getting me inside that facility.”
His face is impassive, but he’s not as good at concealing his hand as he thinks he is. There’s a thread of white-hot desperation in his features, a tension pinching his lips and eyes I’ve seen before, countless times. For the first time, I wonder if he was telling the truth before, that he really was in the bar looking for information—and not a target for that antique gun of his.
My mind races. There’s no base to the east of us—even if the military had the funding to expand to a second base in this part of TerraDyn’s territory, which we don’t, there’d be no reason to keep it a secret. But he believes it. I can see that as clearly as I can see his desperation.
This is a good thing, I tell myself. Even if he’s mad, he’s still only one guy. If I’d ended up in their rebel hideout, I’d be dead for sure. But here…there’s still a chance I could escape. For now, my only hope is to play along.
“So what is it you think you’re going to find in this secret facility?”
Romeo doesn’t answer straight away, leaving me watching as he poles the boat through the swamp. Though there is an engine hanging off the stern, he hasn’t touched it since I came to. This poling technique is one a few of us have campaigned for training on from HQ, but to no avail. We’re forced to navigate the swamps with noisy engines that get clogged every five minutes with swamp debris, while the natives slip through the narrow corridors soundlessly. A military patrol could pass not fifty yards away from us and never know we were here.
He pauses, withdrawing the pole and laying it across the boat so we merely drift along with the sluggish current. He’s favoring his leg, which has a makeshift bandage tied around it where I embedded that plastic cocktail sword. It gives me a surge of satisfaction to think that he probably doesn’t have the tools out here to fish out the broken piece. He drops down onto the bench, letting me see his face more clearly. He still looks oddly familiar, though I’m sure I would have remembered him if we’d met before tonight. “What am I going to find?” he asks, reaching for a canteen stowed underneath the seat and taking a long drink from it. “You tell me.”
“I can’t tell you,” I say, trying to hide my irritation. And my thirst, watching him swallow. Play along, I remind myself savagely. Earn his trust, such as it is. Use it to get out of this mess. “I would if I could, but I’ve never heard of a facility to the east.”
Romeo rolls his eyes. “Right. Well, there could be anything in there. Weapons, maybe. Some new tool to flush us out of the caves, for all I know. It has to be out of the ordinary for you to get it set up so fast, and with such secrecy.”
I peer through the fog. It’s growing lighter, which means I must’ve been unconscious for at least a few hours. Dawn is approaching. “That’s what you risked capture for, snooping around on my base? We already have weapons that outmatch yours ten to one. We’ve already tried every state-of-the-art technology to find your hideout. This swamp of a planet makes it impossible.”