C. Redwine: Deception

A steep set of damp-slick stairs leads down into the cavernous basement. Our footsteps echo loudly, and I don’t try to speak until we’ve crossed the fifty yards of gritty stone that separate us from the gaping mouth of the tunnel I’ve spent the last two weeks digging.

A bag of copper parts and spare batteries lies just across the seam that separates the basement floor from the dark earth of the tunnel. I pick it up and grab two torches from the pile of extras lying against the wall. Ian strikes the flint and soon both of our torches blaze brightly against the thick darkness that waits for us.

Our footsteps don’t echo in the tunnel. Every sound is absorbed, swallowed up by the dense earth surrounding us. Every three yards, a steel rib salvaged from Baalboden’s wreckage is jammed against the tunnel’s side to act as a support beam. Thick branches or wooden beams cut to size are wedged across the tunnel’s ceiling as well, each end buried in the opposite wall. Frankie and his handpicked team of helpers have been hard at work for the last two weeks, and I’m pleased with the progress. With so much reinforcement, I’m certain the tunnel won’t collapse when I bring the survivors through it.

As we pass each pair of steel ribs, I count the yards in my head. By the time we reach the solid wall of dirt at the end of the tunnel, I estimate we’ve traveled three hundred sixty-eight yards. That’s about one hundred seventy-three yards past Baalboden’s perimeter and into the northern Wasteland.

“You really do need to fix the machine,” Ian says. He sounds surprised. When I look at him, he tugs on the silver chain he wears around his neck and says, “You’ve never asked for my help before. I figured you had ulterior motives.”

I study him for a moment and say, “I could use the help, but yes, I had ulterior motives. I wanted to talk to you. Alone.”

He grins. “Never thought the first person in camp to try to get me alone in a dark, private place would be you, but—”

“Where did you learn how to fight?”

Ian stiffens and slowly raises his gaze to mine. Torchlight flickers against the blue of his eyes. “What makes you think I know how to fight?”

I step closer. “Answering a question with a question is simply a way to gain enough time to think of a plausible lie.”

His lips thin, but his voice is calm. “I wasn’t trying to think of a lie. I was asking to see what gave me away.”

“You have one minute to explain to me where you learned how to fight and why you’ve been hiding it from the rest of us before I decide you’re the one with ulterior motives here.”

“It was Rachel, wasn’t it?” He slaps his hand against the wall behind him. “I knew she was watching me too closely this morning. She should be happy that someone on that practice field knows what he’s doing.”

“You should be happy I’m the one questioning you instead of her. You’d already be missing a few vital organs. Who are you really, and what are you hiding?”

His shoulders sag, and he seems to shrink a little before my eyes. “I want your promise that what I tell you will stay between us.”

“Absolutely not.”

Something flickers in his eyes, but he blinks it away before I can identify it. “If you don’t—if you tell the others about this, they’ll kill me in my sleep.”

“If you deserve death, you won’t be leaving this tunnel, never mind getting another opportunity to go to sleep.”

He holds his body still, his eyes locked on mine. “I don’t deserve death, Logan. But others might not see it that way.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

The torchlight dances in his blue eyes like inner flames, and he nods slowly. “Judge and be judged.”

“What?”

He shakes his head. “Just something my father used to say.”

“Answer, Ian. Now.”

Without taking his eyes from mine, he says, “My father worked for the Commander. He was . . . loyal.”

He lingers over the word as if it holds some secret meaning for him as he pulls the silver chain out from under his tunic. A small copper dragon-scale charm hangs off the middle of the chain.

“What was your father’s job?”

Ian looks away. “Brute Squad.”

Brute Squad. The Commander’s elite group of guards tasked with torturing prisoners, scaring the population into compliance, and publicly flogging those who broke the law. My palms are suddenly damp, and I clench my fists. “And you?”

“Apprenticed to take his place.”

It takes every ounce of willpower I have to force my expression to remain neutral. Ian’s right. Every person in our group would want him dead if they knew who he was.

When I don’t reply, Ian looks me in the eye again. “In the interest of full disclosure, because I wouldn’t want to be accused of having ulterior motives”—he brackets the words with air quotes—“I know more about Rowansmark than the average survivor in our camp.”

“How?” The stolen Rowansmark tech I wear strapped beneath my tunic suddenly feels heavy and obvious.

“My father died in Rowansmark. Punished at the hands of a tracker for being loyal to the Commander. I was there.” He dangles the dragon-scale charm between us, his gaze locked on the trinket like it hurts him to look at it. “This was the last gift my father gave to me. It’s all I have left of him.”

His voice is crisp. Almost emotionless. I’m not fooled. I can see the horror in his eyes. The scars that rot him from the inside out. I know what it’s like to watch a parent die. To stand helpless while someone bigger and stronger destroys someone you love and leaves you with nothing. I know how the loneliness sours into bitterness until every memory is tainted with the dregs of a sorrow you can never quite shake.

I take a slow breath. “Why didn’t you follow the Commander? Or leave with the group who went to find him?”

“Follow the man who put my father in that position in the first place? No.”

I understand the anger. The desperation to keep his background a secret from the others. He wants a fresh start.

I do, too.

“I’m sorry about your father,” I say, and step back from him. “I won’t tell you it will get easier or that you’ll move on or any of the other useless things people say to make you feel better.”

“I’ll feel better when the man responsible is punished.” Ian stuffs his necklace beneath his tunic again and pushes away from the wall.

Another thing we have in common. We both want the Commander to pay for his crimes.

“Are you going to tell the others?”

“I’ll tell Drake. I don’t want our new society to be a place of secrets. But we won’t spread news of your former occupation to others. You can have a fresh start, but you have to stop pretending to be less skilled than you are. We need you.”

“Will you tell Rachel?”

I imagine Rachel’s reaction to the news that we have an apprenticed member of the Brute Squad in our midst, and shake my head slowly. The Brute Squad held her captive in a wagon while the Commander tortured and killed Oliver. And then they surrounded me on the Claiming stage and nearly took my life. If I told her Ian was apprenticed to the Brute Squad, I don’t know what she’d do. Maybe nothing. Maybe decide he’s an acceptable proxy for the Commander and beat him with her Switch.

“Thanks.” His usual flippant charm chases the seriousness from his face as he crouches beside the silent machine. “Now, are we going to fix this or stand around sharing life stories all day? I have four or five girls I’ve promised to eat lunch with, and I hate to disappoint the ladies.”

I kneel beside him and drive my torch into the ground for light. The machine looks like a multitiered plow with a catch-tray beneath each row of teeth and a pair of pipes attached to each tray, ready to sluice dirt away from the teeth and shoot it backward at the completed tunnel in its wake. Dumping the contents of the tech bag onto the ground, I grab a new gear and exchange it for the stripped one while Ian removes the broken teeth and uses large metal scraps in their place.