CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The spy work was less glamorous than movies suggested.
Olivia spent a week doing exactly what she'd been doing before—laundry, food prep, training—except now she paid attention to everything. Conversations in chow lines. Whispered arguments in corridors. The way people looked at each other, avoided each other, touched each other.
She enlisted allies without telling them the full story. Gloria, with her network of civilian gossip. Dee, who heard everything in the laundry room. Marcus, now recovered and working supply distribution, who knew which officers requisitioned unusual items.
"There's a group," Marcus reported one evening, meeting her in the storage shed. "They meet late at night, in the old maintenance tunnels. I don't know who they are, but they're secretive. And they wear pins under their collars."
"Pins?"
"Small metal things. I saw one when a guy leaned over to lift a crate. It fell out. Circle with a jagged line through it."
Olivia's pulse quickened. "Who was the guy?"
"Captain Voss."
The scarred commander from the leadership meeting. The one who'd dismissed her at the assessment, who wanted Lucas to operate the Key regardless of risk.
"How many in this group?"
"At least a dozen. Maybe more. They call themselves 'The Sundered.'"
The Sundered. People who wanted the worlds to merge. Who believed the Legion's rule was inevitable, desirable.
"We need proof," Olivia said. "Solid evidence we can take to Sable."
"How do we get it?"
"We attend a meeting."
Marcus stared at her. "You want to infiltrate a secret cult?"
"I want to infiltrate a secret cult disguised as a recruit. You're my backup. We get in, we observe, we get out. Simple."
"Nothing with you is simple."
"That's why you like me."
They planned for three days. Marcus used his supply position to learn the meeting schedule—every Thursday at midnight, maintenance tunnel seven.
Olivia prepared her cover story: a disillusioned laundry worker, angry at the Vanguard for assigning her to menial labour, open to "alternative viewpoints. "
Thursday night, she descended into the tunnels.
They were worse than she'd imagined—narrow, damp, lit by flickering emergency lights that cast everything in sickly yellow. The air smelled of rust and mold and something else, something sweet and wrong.
She found the meeting place by following the sound of chanting. A dozen figures stood in a circle, hooded, their faces hidden. Captain Voss stood at the centre, holding a candle that burned with purple flame.
"The Veil weakens," Voss intoned. "The worlds merge. The Sovereign rises. We who are Sundered welcome the transformation. Humanity will be remade. Stronger. Purer. Free from the weakness of the old world."
"Free from the weak," the others echoed.
"The Key was a setback. The tree was healed. But the door remains open. The Legion waits. And we will open the way for them, when the time is right."
Olivia recorded everything on a hidden device Lucas had given her. She needed to leave, to get this to Sable, to expose them.
Then someone grabbed her from behind.
"Spy," a voice hissed.
She reacted on instinct—elbow to the ribs, stomp on the foot, twist free. But there were three of them, and the tunnel was too narrow for her fighting style to work properly. They pinned her arms, dragged her into the circle.
Voss's scarred face emerged from his hood, smiling. "The laundry girl. I should have known. Small bodies can hide large ambitions."
"Large enough to expose you," Olivia spat.
"Perhaps. But who will believe you? A civilian recruit with delusions of grandeur?
Or a decorated captain with twenty years of service?
" He leaned close, his breath smelling of the purple candle's wrong sweetness.
"You should have stayed in the laundry, little weasel.
Now you'll be the first sacrifice to the Sovereign's return. "
He raised a knife.
The tunnel exploded.
Not literally—but the wall beside them shattered inward, concrete flying, dust filling the air. When it cleared, Lucas stood in the breach, his sword drawn, his eyes glowing gold, his face a mask of fury that Olivia had never seen before.
"Touch her," he said, his voice resonating with power, "and I'll show you what a real sacrifice looks like."